FATA MORGANA
A Masque
Author's Notes for Fata Morgana.
-
Launcelot (Costume of novice). Plumbing the
mystery of his evil (at and after his devotions.)
- The other knight monks (Job's comforters).
- The persian guest.
- The descent into Hell.
- Devils and Sins.
- Lucifer.
- Angro-Mainyus.
- Fuit sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum.
- Persian. Serve then my master since he is evil.
- Launc. Knowing the evil, now I choose the good.
- The cell again. The Angel.
- Thou hast repented. See that thou repair.
Hindoo/Unity/Sin/Thesis.
- Quest of Merlin.
- Girlhood of Guenevere.
- Brociliande.
Persian/Duality/Effects/Anthithesis.
- Holy Grail.
- Morte d'Arthur.
- The Descent into Hell.
Hellenic/Unity in Complexity/Resolutions/Synthesis.
- Arthur in Avalon.
- The New Earth.
- Voices of the Sea.
The Sailing of the Serpent (?)
NOTES ON FATA MORGANA
Of “Fata Morgana” he says in the Schema: “It
suggests the ethical drift of the series.”
The foregoing early study indicates that in “Fata
Morgana”—sometimes called “The Masque of
Ethics”—he would have embodied his views regarding
the Trinity.
The three masques would have involved his philosophy.
The Morgana was to have treated ethics
somewhat as the masque of Taliesin treats æsthetics.
It is easy to see that from the unity, which means
unrelatedness through the duality, which means contention
by opposition, to the trinity, which means
inter-action, personality is a psychological evolution
which he had outlined for this masque. The word
Hellenic used here instead of Hegelian, modern, or
Christian, probably indicates that he would have
used the Trinity in physical beauty as his symbol in
the masque.
As Taliesin presented the education, consecration,
and function of the artist, so the “Masque of Evil”
must have finally embodied the rôle of religion, or
the philosophy of religions, in the evolution of evil
or discord into good or harmony.
He found himself facing the Hindoo unity, then
the philosophy of duality, which he dramatically
represented under the name of Persian in the outline,
and the Persian guest in the characterization.
Later the trinity brought him to what he had called
Hellenic Unity in Complexity, or what he later
might have called Christian or Human Unity in
Trinity.
“The Masque of Evil,” a study of the problem
of good and evil, was a natural product from the
author of the essay “The Duece, or Goethe's and
Marlow's Faust.” This essay, read at the School
of Philosophy at Farmington when he was twenty-five,
was doubtless to this poem what a sketch is
to a painting: hardly a cartoon, but the preliminary
thought digested somewhat in mind but without the
sacramental form which at once discovers and manifests.
But the deeper development of his conception
of the rôle of evil in the cosmos, which in those last
ten years would have been prepared to be blazened
by his genius in “Fata Morgana, The Masque of
Ethics,” can only be guessed by those who know
the trend and deepening of his thoughts in that
time.
ANGRO-MAINYUS
I am the Most High God;
Worship thou me!
Put not up vain prayers to avert my wrath,
For my wrath shall fall like the thunderbolt
And thou shalt be cleft asunder as an oak.
I am Angro-mainyus, the Most High God.
Cry not unto me for mercy, for I am merciless.
Sin and Death are my ministers,
And my ways are ways of torture and the shedding of blood.
I am the Lord thy God.
I am the Destroyer.
My sword is as fire in the forest;
My feet are inexorable.
Ask me not to deliver thee from evil.
I am Evil.
Ahura-mazda is God too,
The beneficent one, the saviour!
He dwelleth in the Sun,
But I in the terror of tempests.
There are two thrones, but one God.
The waves of the sea war mightily,
But in the deeps there is calm.
Ahura-mazda and I are one God;
There is war between our legions,
But in us peace.
Behold, he knoweth my thoughts and I his,
And there is no discord in us.
He worketh in light
And I in darkness;
His ways and my ways are asunder.
But blaspheme not, calling me “Devil,”
Neither saying, “There are two Gods;”
I am the Most High God,
And I and Ahura-mazda are one.