The Statue

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Title:     The Statue
Author: Arthur C. Benson [More Titles by Benson]

I saw a strange and moving thing to-day. I went with a friend to visit a great house in the neighbourhood. The owner was away, but my friend enjoyed the right of leisurely access to the place, and we thought we would take the opportunity of seeing it.

We entered at the lodge, and walked through the old deer-park with its huge knotted oaks, its wide expanse of grass. The deer were feeding quietly in a long herd. The great house itself came in sight, with its portico and pavilions staring at us, so it seemed, blankly and seriously, with shuttered eyes. The whole place unutterably still and deserted, like a house seen in a dream.

There was one particular thing that we came to visit; we left the house on the left, and turned through a little iron gate into a thick grove of trees. We soon became aware that there was open ground before us, and presently we came to a space in the heart of the wood, where there was a silent pool all overgrown with water-lilies; the bushes grew thickly round the edge. The pool was full of water-birds, coots, and moor-hens, sailing aimlessly about, and uttering strange, melancholy cries at intervals. On the edge of the water stood a small marble temple, streaked and stained by the weather. As we approached it, my friend told me something of the builder of the little shrine. He was a former owner of the place, a singular man, who in his later days had lived a very solitary life here. He was a man of wild and wayward impulses, who had drunk deeply in youth of pleasure and excitement. He had married a beautiful young wife, who had died childless in the first year of their marriage, and he had abandoned himself after this event to a despairing seclusion, devoted to art and music. He had filled the great house with fine pictures, he had written a book of poems, and some curious stilted volumes of autobiographical prose; but he had no art of expression, and his books had seemed like a powerless attempt to give utterance to wild and melancholy musings; they were written in a pompous and elaborate style, which divested the thoughts of such charm as they might have possessed.

He had lived thus to a considerable age in a wilful sadness, unloving and unloved. He had cared nothing for the people of the place, entertained no visitors; rambling, a proud solitary figure, about the demesne, or immured for days together in his library. Had the story not been true, it would have appeared like some elaborate fiction.

He built this little temple in memory of the wife whom he had lost, and often visited it, spending hours on hot summer days wandering about the little lake, or sitting silent in the portico. We went up to the building. It was a mere alcove, open to the air. But what arrested my attention was a marble figure of a young man, in a sitting position, lightly clad in a tunic, the neck, arms, and knees bare; one knee was flung over the other, and the chin was propped on an arm, the elbow of which rested on the knee. The face was a wonderful and expressive piece of work. The boy seemed to be staring out, not seeing what he looked upon, but lost in a deep agony of thought. The face was wonderfully pure and beautiful; and the anguish seemed not the anguish of remorse, but the pain of looking upon things both sweet and beautiful, and of yet being unable to take a share in them. The whole figure denoted a listless melancholy. It was the work of a famous French sculptor, who seemed to have worked under close and minute direction; and my friend told me that no less than three statues had been completed before the owner was satisfied.

On the pedestal were sculptured the pathetic words, _Oimoi mal authis_. There was a look of revolt of dumb anger upon the face that lay behind its utter and hopeless sadness. I knew too well, by a swift instinct, what the statue stood for. Here was one, made for life, activity, and joy, who yet found himself baffled, thwarted, shut out from the paradise that seemed to open all about him; it was the face of one who had found satiety in pleasure, and sorrow in the very heart of joy. There was no taint of grossness or of luxury in the face, but rather a strength, an intellectual force, a firm lucidity of thought. I confess that the sight moved me very strangely. I felt a thrill of the deepest compassion, a desire to do something that might help or comfort, a yearning wish to aid, to explain, to cheer. The silence, the stillness, the hopelessness of the pathetic figure woke in me the intensest desire to give I knew not what--an overwhelming impulse of pity. It seemed a parable of all the joy that is so sternly checked, all the hopes made vain, the promise disappointed, the very death of the soul. It seemed infinitely pathetic that God should have made so fair a thing, and then withheld joy. And it seemed as though I had looked into the very soul of the unhappy man who had set up so strange and pathetic an allegory of his sufferings. The boy seemed as though he would have welcomed death--anything that brought an end; yet the health and suppleness of the bright figure held out no hope of that. It was the very type of unutterable sorrow, and that not in an outworn body, and reflected in a face dim with sad experience, but in a perfectly fresh and strong frame, built for action and life. I cannot say what remote thoughts, what dark communings, visited me at the sight. I seemed confronted all at once with the deepest sadness of the world, as though an unerring arrow had pierced my very heart--an arrow winged by beauty, and shot on a summer day of sunshine and song.

Is there any faith that is strong enough and deep enough to overcome such questionings? It seemed to bring me near to all those pale and hopeless agonies of the world; all the snapping short of joy, the confronting of life with death--those dreadful moments when the heart asks itself, in a kind of furious horror, "How can it be that I am filled so full of all the instinct of joy and life, and yet bidden to suffer and to die?"

The only hope is in an utter and silent resignation; in the belief that, if there is a purpose in the gift of joy, there is a purpose in the gift of suffering. And as thus, in that calm afternoon, in the silent wood, by the shining pool, I lifted up my heart to God to be consoled, I felt a great hope draw near, as when the vast tide flows landward, and fills the dry, solitary sand-pools with the leaping brine. "Only wait," said the deep and tender voice, "only endure, only believe; and a sweetness, a beauty, a truth beyond your utmost dreams shall be revealed."

[The end]
Arthur C. Benson's essay: Statue

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