Work Text:
(A leaf slipped between the pages of Clerval’s worn Persian anthology, its edges soft with handling. There is a thumbprint smudged near the closing lines.)
Forgive me this intrusion among your beloved verses, my dear, but I could not resist the impulse to slip something of mine into the same company as Hafez and Rumi, that I might pretend, for a foolish instant, that my thoughts were worthy of dwelling among theirs—and yours. Should you, upon some idle evening, open this volume of verse and find within it this scrap of parchment, know that I have committed the terrible, childish act of tucking it away in your book, as though I were sixteen again, too shy to speak the truth plainly and too fond of you to keep it wholly to myself, one I will confess only to paper, and thus to you, for paper is your truest confidant and I am but a humble petitioner at its margins.
I write simply to say I have been thinking of you continually this afternoon, dear, sweet, absurd, heavenly creature that you are; I imagine how your face will look when you discover this, how your brow will furrow in confusion before softening with that dear, irrepressible smile. I shall not sign this, though you will know my hand at once, for I ought not to write you things so sentimental as this, for you will laugh at me, or worse, you will look at me with that ineffable gentleness that makes me wish to hide my face in the crook of your shoulder and never surface again.
Think of this, then, as a trifle, only a bit of nonsense from one who cannot quite stop thinking of you, a passing thought tucked away between the pages. But should you read these words and happen to think kindly of their author, I ask only this: do promise me, when I meet you next, you will allow me the great, dizzying privilege to press your hand to mine once more, and to hear the sound of your voice strum the harp of my ear, and to let me press a thousand kisses to your lips, your knuckles, the plane of your forehead, and all manner of these incidental little things. And if, by some mercy, you should blush at the thought, then I will count myself the happiest fool in all of Ingolstadt—for even that fleeting image, my Henry, would be a delight sufficient to sustain me till the end of my days.
(A hastily written recipe in sizable parchment, wasted for its minimal words, in Clerval’s clumsy hand. It lays over the whole page of a culinary book.)
Disregard this cookbook that I know you are attempting to read, for it needlessly over-complicates a simple sweet!!! Follow only my instruction!!!
Apple Pie
No. 1: Peel the apples
No. 2: Slice them thin
No. 3: Pour a little molasses
No. 4: Sprinkle some sugar over them
No. 5: Grate on some lemon-peel, or nut meg
If you wish to make them richer, put a little butter on the top. Best of luck.
Never would I have assumed a man such as yourself would be in need of guidelines for pie. Do try my father’s recipe at once, and with swiftness you are to inform me if it was to your tastes! And if you may be so kind as to bring one or perhaps two slices for me with your words, I shall be very well delighted.
(A narrow scrap of parchment tucked within the margin of Clerval’s lecture notebook; a single pressed violet, brittle and pale, marks its place.)
You were right—as, alas, you so often are, and I so seldom admit—the violets at the gate beside the courthouse have indeed opened, in their modest and unassuming little congregation of blue. I passed them on the way to lecture this morning, and in that instant I thought of you, my prophet of spring. I confess that, when you first made your prediction that the blooms would emerge at the week’s end, I doubted you, not out of disbelief in you, but a belief in the cruel constancy of this chill. Yet, as ever, Nature prefers your counsel to mine, and has obeyed you with the most affection. How utterly strange it is, the way the smallest of your predictions seems to rearrange the order of my entire day! You say, “the violets will bloom,” and suddenly every patch of earth, every stirring of wind, every flicker of color on the roadside, all these become urgent, charged with expectation, as if the world itself were holding its breath for your pronouncement to come true. And so, when next you chide me, as I know you will, for robbing Nature of her finery, I pray you forgive me, for I could not resist the impulse to steal a little beauty for your keeping; I knelt down and plucked one. I have pressed it between the leaves of your notebook beneath this very note, so that it may keep its color longer than life permits.
I am, as ever, your incurable disciple, your worshiper of small blossoms and large ideas, your companion in foolish errands and in every shade of affection that can possibly fit between one breath and the next.
(A finely trimmed square of parchment, carefully positioned on their shared desk, inked by Clerval’s delicate cursive. In the corner, there is the faint stain of a kiss in rouge.)
Tut, tut. Can it be that you coat your words and actions in tender sweetness, so that I may be too smitten to lecture you as would be fit? “Look like th’ innocent flower, but be the serpent under’t,” spoke Lady Macbeth, and I have reason to believe you have taken such advice into your heart. Alas, there is for certain no doubt that Nature has now been made into a rather displeased mother; to have one of her brilliant blooms, once gay and vivacious in blossom, plucked from its simple yet content life—no longer swaying gently in the cool breeze of Ingolstadt, as flowers ought to do, but pressed, in its lifeless state, betwixt the leaves of a book! Yet, it must be confessed, my little mouse, that in this regard I only tease you. I cannot, in earnest, sit and protest against your methods in a manner that is true; it is a delightful little bloom of a most splendid colour, loveliness doubly doubled for you were the one to present it to me. I am happy, so very happy. I shall preserve it so long between the pages that it stains a part of my paper its violet colour, so that in spite of its inevitable loss (you know I am of the terribly disorganised sort; I searched for an hour for my quill to pen this), its essence shall remain marked upon the paper. And thus, yours, forever.
(A brief note addressed to Clerval, left strewn upon the breakfast table. Where a cup has rested, a ring of tea has stained the corner of the page.)
If you should wake before my return and find the bed beside you absent of me, know that I have gone only to post a letter, a small correspondence to Elizabeth (though you may scold me later for venturing out before breakfast), a brief errand that shall not detain me long, and that I have left upon our table a meal of bread and butter—do eat it warm, and take the cup of tea I have left steeping before you begin your studies; do not wait on me, though I know you will, for you are ever the most obstinate and impossible of men. I love you very tenderly, Henry, and shall think of you with every step I take away from you.
(A letter, tucked into the well-used pages of Victor’s lecture notebook, penned in Clerval’s hand.)
I hope most keenly that you were not so perturbed by the queerness of my character in the early morn.
Yesternight I dreamed of you in a manner so strange that I do not know if it can be named sweet. Details transform into hazy pictures—as dreams have their tendency to do—making it thus that the only remaining image that I could discern was you. You and I, our bodies merging into each other, a fervent, ceaseless amalgamation, as if in some urgent biological union, so that I was you and you were I, my breath as your breath, your thoughts as my thoughts, my skin as your skin. Enigmatic visions, or however sights as otherworldly as mine may be called, are not so common of an occurrence in my resting mind that I roused from sleep with so violent a start that I fear that I would have waken you, had I not hastened to clamp my quivering lips.
In the evening, after the classes that if I may be truthful I was not able to give my fullest attentions, I contemplated my dream with the utmost care: I must be influenced by Aristophanes. It was indisputably an Aristophanic vision; I have been reading the Symposium, and perhaps it was this myth of the primeval man that prompted me, not the work of some trickster god exciting me in my sleep with nonsensical dreams of cryptic pictures. Yet, verily—was such a dream truly so nonsensical, so detached from worldly reason and logic? Is it not true that you, my heart, sit in the depths of my immortal soul, with a forever unyielding presence that penetrates into my every thought, both waking and in sleep’s embrace? Can I be so bold to deny your inhabitance in every story I read, every poem I write, all the music that I do listen? You live inside me, in the same way I am sure that I live inside you, our souls are intertwined and blurred into a singular entity—a mutual deification, it may perhaps be called. Should it not be so that our bodies were meant to be fused as our souls are, following this natural logic? Then our anatomical separation is surely God’s error: I should not be separated from you.
I embarrass myself with these strange ramblings and only shamefully distract you. The true purpose in writing this little message is to apologise for my uncertain distance, not disturb you with fantastical visions. When you find my note in your writing-book, my dear, I only ask that you forgive my morning’s peculiarity and berate me as due.
(An epistle penned in Victor’s elegant hand. The ink is blotted near the end, and a faint indentation marks where the quill pressed too hard.)
Do not, I beg you, imagine that your “queerness of character” perturbed me. To be perturbed implies the shock of novelty—but what you name strangeness I have long since come to regard as essential to you, as perfume to the rose, or radiance to the flame. You could not be my Clerval without this singularity of soul. If such a nature be deemed queer, then so too must the universe that conceived it, and I, who cannot behold such beauty without a stirring of my very spirit, must share the same sweet affliction.
You ascribe your dream to Aristophanes—ah, Henry, what a vision to set before my mind! Two bodies united in one form, each pulse and breath indivisible from the other, every thought mirrored and returned as if by divine reflection. When I contemplate our friendship, I am possessed by that same notion—that our separation, though physical, is but the temporary condition of two beings whose natures were made to correspond, torn asunder by some cruel necessity from the same mould, and left to wander until chance or fate should bring us again within the same orbit. I cannot deny that I have felt your spirit quicken within my own, tempering my harsher impulses, lending me gentleness where I should be severe, compassion where I should be proud. Yet even as I write these things, shame pricks at me, and I feel again that wild confusion that attends the border between affection and sin. You must forgive me, as you have so graciously forgiven me before, for the boldness of such confession. There is a fever that attends my thoughts of you—not of the body, but of the mind—and I know not whether it proceeds from love, or from some strange malady of my own constitution. But you need not fear, my dearest friend, that your dream disturbed me; rather, it has given shape to my own unrest.
I find myself unable to conclude. You recall the passage from the Symposium; I will end, then, as you began, with the very words that have ensnared me since I first encountered them:
“Do you not desire the closest union and singleness to exist between you, so that you may never be divided night or day? If so, I will melt you together, and make you grow into one, so that both in life and death ye may be undivid-ed. Consider, is this what you desire?”
Tell me, Clerval—is this indeed what you desire?
(A letter, perched over a stack of Victor’s book on their desk, in Clerval’s hand.)
During my noon lecture, I have met and quickly made the acquaintance of one Ferdinand Bassermann. He is a man of mild manners and a somewhat reserved nature, though he retains a certain enthusiasm on the subject of sailing that I find much admirable and I believe you would as well. When we met, we were sitting beside one another in the auditorium, and I did not initially pay much attention to my soon-to-be friend; the words of my professor, M. Döderlein, occupied my attention so much that I did not take notice of my fellow students.
In the midst of his speech, the professor briefly spoke of one Sanskrit epic that held scarce relevance to the overall topic (and for that reason I do not recall its title), yet from that fleeting mention alone I felt the position of my seatmate shift: Ferdinand Bassermann—who I was then unacquainted with—turned to me rather unexpectedly and inquired if I had read that poem, to which I informed with regret that I am yet to have read. After politely introducing his name, he with swiftness embarked upon a smaller lecture of his own: my new-found friend told me he had read this epic in his youth, and that it, in my summarisation, concerned a sailor’s ill-fated love for his ship who in the end was swallowed by the Ocean with his boat. If only you had seen him then; he spoke with such eloquence and emotion! Bassermann revealed his wishes to become a seaman upon leaving Ingolstadt, and that his reasoning to take this study was to become well-versed in languages far from his native, so that he may have less struggle on his eventual arrangements to travel the world. His vivid words served as a distraction for me, but it was a most pleasant distraction; Bassermann’s little speech had thoroughly enraptured me and the passion he had displayed reminded me very much of your own, dearest Victor. In hushed tones we continued to converse, so that we may not be a disturbance for our fellows.
A newly made friendship, and so rapidly conjured at random! I was most happy when we, upon the lecture's end, took leave of the hall together. I questioned Bassermann if we could meet at perhaps a later date, and he quickly informed me that it would delight him greatly to see me again. I wish for you to come with me, so that I may introduce you to him, and him to my better part. I assure you that you shall find him to be an extremely agreeable man; he is of an excellent disposition and impressed me greatly. If you are able to attend, I invite you to accompany me to the gardens tomorrow afternoon, so we may all meet.
(A letter written upon the reverse of one of Clerval’s discarded drafts of poetry, in Victor’s script.)
Do not burn this poem. You are cruel to obliterate what I so admire.
You have, I see, taken to your dreadful habit of destruction again—and yet, if you could see as I see the way your words alter the atmosphere when you speak them aloud, the way even the stillest air seems to shiver with awe beneath their passage, you would never again consign a single verse to the flame. What crime is there in candor, my love? That your pen should confess too tenderly its own heart? Do not, I implore you, feed the fire with these pages—leave at least this one to my keeping, as reparation for the others you have so ruthlessly condemned. I have written on its reverse expressly so that you cannot, without immolating my own words as well, which would surely stay your hand for at least a moment’s hesitation (and perhaps that will suffice).
You are ever too merciless with yourself, Henry, and not half so critical of your friends; thus it falls to me, then, to defend your poetry from its own maker. There are few enough lovely things in this world; why must you, who are one of the loveliest, seek to diminish the rest through needless modesty?
And, my dear Clerval, do you know—for I am certain you do, though you may feign ignorance—that I find your very handwriting to be a form of poetry itself? Even the flourishes of your ‘y’s and ‘g’s, the hurried smudges of ink where your thoughts have outrun the obedience of your hand, the uneven pressure of your quill where emotion overtook precision—these too are traces of you. I have caught myself pressing my lips to those errant ink-blots you leave upon the page, as though in that act I may gather some of your nearness. I would be embarrassed, perhaps, if I believed there was anything shameful in love.
Forgive that the back of your page is now marred by my sprawling rambles. I entreat you to keep it, though, for I have touched it too fondly to bear its destruction; and when your Muse next visits, write upon this same sheet, so that my hand may linger beneath yours.
(Below, written crosswise in a smaller hand, a later addition—)
If there is ugliness in your writing, let me be its witness; if there is beauty, let me be its keeper.
(A twice-folded scrap of paper, unevenly ripped from a corner of a notebook, buried into the bottom of Victor’s coat pocket. Clerval’s writing, scarcely legible, is scrawled. Inkspills mark the note.)
Lucidity has vanished, abandoning a now poor and muddled head. At this moment I ought to be engaged translating the verses of Al-Mutanabbi, yet in spite of my continuous efforts I am utterly incapable of proceeding with any degree of coherency—once more this quill fails to write the poetry and prose which it has been fashioned for, to instead tremble and produce the scribbles of a child’s hand; there is nothing I can think about at present, that is not you. I must write a few silly lines addressed to you and see if that will assist in expelling you from my mind for even only five measly minutes. يا ساكن ،روحي , I miss you most dreadfully. I can no longer dress words in metaphor. My love has made me selfish, shameless; I am reduced to a piteous mess that wants nothing but Victor. O! Victor, it is not possible for me to exist without you! My adoration for you overflows my human frame and renders me sick with it; this mad longing reshapes itself into throttling hands that cannot be fought. I am lying on my stomach in our little bed whilst I write, and in that stomach, with my heart, eyes, and legs I feel your heart beating inside my body, louder than the great horn that will announce the Judgement Day. I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again—upon my soul I cannot think of anything else! I know well that not a day shall pass until I am with you again but like a woman I am struck with vast amounts of despair in the shortest periods of solitude. I am at a loss.
Hasten, then, my dearest friend, to return to your forlorn and impatient friend, for in your absence I may not feel at ease. I am yours until stubborn Atropos severs my life’s thread.
(A note left for Clerval upon their desk, folded into the crude likeness of a paper boat, the creases uneven and soft with having been redone several times, the ink blotted in several places as if from unsteady fingers.)
Do you remember the ridiculously, utterly charming little paper boats you made when we were boys, and how you would send them sailing across the stream behind your father’s garden, commanding each as though it were a proud frigate bound for glory? I can see it still: the crown of your curls haloed in sunlight, the current’s glint catching in your eyes, all puffed pride and childish authority. I have tried my hand at one now, though I have not your artistry, and my fingers are clumsy and my folds uncertain, and so my vessel lists dreadfully to one side—still, I trust she will find her way to you, as I ever do, and I fancied nevertheless that the gesture might amuse you. There is, after all, a sort of poetry in imitation, even a poor one.
My point, if I may pretend to have one, is thus: if ever there were a day that demanded of us some frivolity, it is this one! The hour is fair and lucid; the light outside my window trembles upon the lake like molten glass, and the willows are all hung with beads of dew. I entreat you to come down, then, to the water’s edge when your reading is done; I shall have a small rowboat waiting for you. Abandon your books (only for an hour—though Heaven forgive me my selfishness, I would keep you longer) and come out into the sunlight. I have had my fill of study, and my thoughts, wayward and disobedient things, have turned wholly to you. Let us make our escape, however brief, from the tyranny of prose and professors, and row out until the spires of Ingolstadt are but a faint mirage behind us, until the water alone surrounds us like a wide blue mercy. The very air today seems steeped in the promise of renewal. I would see it reflected upon your face.
If you have any pity for one who is condemned to languish in solitude, fold your papers closed, cast off your scholar’s chains, and come to the water. I shall be waiting with the oars set upon my knees, in a poor facsimile of Charon upon the Styx without his purpose—for who, my ever effervescent academic, could ferry me to life but you?
(A message in Clerval’s script, marked onto the waterlogged flyleaves of a dusty and worn tome.)
Have you any recollection of this work? Whether these heavy volumes slipped into my baggage by a misplacement—an act of which, most shamefully, I am far too prone to accomplishing—or if I simply do not recall having packed them with me when I set out for Ingolstadt, here upon your nightstand does now sit your De Occulta Philosophia. The pages, yellowed from age (though I do not think you have known it new), are relatively wrinkled in its edges; it had been drenched at some point in time, very likely by rainwater, but you may see for yourself that chiefly it remains intact and in fair condition.
This discovery of Cornelius Agrippa among my own possessions had brought the sweet memories of our boyhood rushing back to the mind with the intensity of tides—I daresay that it had nearly struck me down. Beloved boy! Do you remember what I do? Those waves pushed me back to a winter morning with much chill and not much sunlight, when I was scarcely past my fourteenth year and you were approaching your fifteenth. It was in my father’s home where together we sat before the grand fireplace, firmly perched upon a number of velvet cushions with my late mother’s quilt shared between us, draping over both of our bodies. During this period I was desirous of a sanctuary against the clawing frost that, like the mythical beasts constructed in the imagination of my infancy, circled the house of my father and I thus endeavoured to distract my mind, making the decision to revise the drama I have written in the last week, so that upon the renewal of warmth I shall have had a little play prepared in advance. Any wish to abide by this arrangement dwindled by the second you gingerly tugged at my arm, entreating us to venture out into the woodland as you bestowed upon me that silly, ineffably charming grin. How opposed I was to leaving the warm parlour of my father’s house yet how quickly I did yield to your gentle request to venture out into the cold of the woodland!
Youth’s memory of fine details is swift in succumbing to inevitable decay in the mind as it ages into maturity, but I believe that your reasoning to sit in the forest was your favourite routine of reading under the trees—the text of choice, that time, being the second volume of this very book. It is an endearing habit in the summer, when the shade of leaves provides refuge from the relentless heat of the Sun, but it is less pleasant when it is the months of dead leaves, the time of which even the Sun does cover herself in cloudy furs. And you had insisted upon my presence that day, did you not? For I was “necessary company”—these childish words that I do recall with distinction. Would dear Elizabeth have been made to come as well, were the poor girl not already so ill? Selfish, reckless friend whom I do so love dearly. We joined Elizabeth in the sickbed not so long after our wanderings, you must remember. The fault was undoubtedly yours, Victor! I ought to have kicked you for the damage to my health, yet in my heart of hearts I am all too aware that even now, in spite of the ‘mature shrewdness’ expected in manhood, if you would only clasp my hand and ask in your sweet voice, I would follow you like a sheep would his shepherd into the icy regions of the Arctic.
The occult has never particularly interested me as it has interested you, though still I am touched by an inexplicable fondness when I think about such topics now, as if it were on your behalf. Dear heart, why is it that this foolish, boyish giddiness fills me when I am reminded of you? It is surely some sort of curse inflicted upon my disposition. All that I wish for now is for this old book, and my doting reminiscence, to bring you some of the pleasure that it has brought me today. Ever since boyhood I have loved you tenderly—know that to your mythology I am the mere footnote, a stray thread in your grand tapestry and a single ray of your light.