A
drama of flesh and blood, a drama of spirit, a drama of dreams. Only a
very young poet could have had the courage to charge it with such a
weight of symbolism; but he had contrived to breathe into his symbols
the breath of life; the phantoms of his brain, a shadowy Helen and
Achilles, turned into flesh and blood under his hands. It was as if
their bodies, warm, throbbing, full-formed, instinct with irresistible
and violent life, had come crashing through the delicate fabric of his
dream.
As she read Lucia's mind was troubled, shaken out of its critical
serenity. She heard a new music; she felt herself in the grasp of a
new power, a new spirit. It was not the classic spirit. There was too
much tumult in its harmonies, as if the music of a whole orchestra had
been torn from its instruments and flung broadcast, riding
triumphantly on the wings of a great wind. There were passages
(notably the Hymn to Aphrodite in the second Act) that brought the
things of sense and the terrible mysteries of flesh and blood so near
to her that she flinched. Rickman had made her share the thrilling
triumph, the flushed passion of his youth. And when she was most hurt
and bruised under the confusion of it, he lifted her up and carried
her away into the regions of spiritual beauty and eternal strength.
It was all over; the tumult of the flesh and the agony of the spirit;
over, too, the heaven-piercing singing, the rapture of spirit and of
flesh made one.
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