The Thyrsus

To Franz Liszt

What is a thyrsus? According to the moral and poetical sense, it is a
sacerdotal emblem in the hand of the priests or priestesses celebrating
the divinity of whom they are the interpreters and servants. But
physically it is no more than a baton, a pure staff, a hop-pole, a
vineprop; dry, straight, and hard. Around this baton, in capricious
meanderings, stems and flowers twine and wanton; these, sinuous
and fugitive; those, hanging like bells or inverted cups. And an
astonishing complexity disengages itself from this complexity of tender
or brilliant lines and colours. Would not one suppose that the curved
line and the spiral pay their court to the straight line, and twine
about in a mute adoration? Would not one say that all these delicate
corollae, all these calices, explosions of odours and colours, execute
a mystical dance around the hieratic staff? And what imprudent mortal
will dare to decide whether the flowers and the vine branches have been
made for the baton, or whether the baton is not but a pretext to set
forth the beauty of the vine branches and the flowers?

The thyrsus is the symbol of your astonishing duality, O powerful
and venerated master, dear bacchanal of a mysterious and impassioned
Beauty. Never a nymph excited by the mysterious Dionysius shook her
thyrsus over the heads of her companions with as much energy as your
genius trembles in the hearts of your brothers. The baton is your
will: erect, firm, unshakeable; the flowers are the wanderings of
your fancy around it: the feminine element encircling the masculine
with her illusive dance. Straight line and arabesque--intention
and expression--the rigidity of the will and the suppleness of the
word--a variety of means united for a single purpose--the all-powerful
and indivisible amalgam that is genius--what analyst will have the
detestable courage to divide or to separate you?

Dear Liszt, across the fogs, beyond the flowers, in towns where the
pianos chant your glory, where the printing-house translates your
wisdom; in whatever place you be, in the splendour of the Eternal
City or among the fogs of the dreamy towns that Cambrinus consoles;
improvising rituals of delight or ineffable pain, or giving to
paper your abstruse meditations; singer of eternal pleasure and
pain, philosopher, poet, and artist, I offer you the salutation of
immortality!