 Part 6 of BLAST, Issue No. 1, edited by Wyndham Lewis. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Indissoluble Matrimony, by Rebecca West. When George Silverton opened the front door, he found that the house was not empty for all its darkness. The spitting noise of the striking of damp matches, and a mild growling exclamations of annoyance, told him that his wife was trying to light the dining-room gas. He went in, and with some short, hot-style sound of greeting, lit a match, and brought brightness into the little room. Then, irritated by his own folly in bringing private papers into his wife's presence, he stuffed the letters he had brought from the office deep in the pockets of his overcoat. He looked at her suspiciously, but she had not seen them, being busy in unwinding her orange motor-veil. His eyes remained on her face to brood a little sourly on her moving loveliness, which he had not been sure of finding, for she was one of those women who create an illusion, alternately, of extreme beauty and extreme ugliness. Under her curious dress, designed in some pitifully cheap and worthless stuff by a successful mood of her indiscreet taste, she had black blood in her, her long body seemed pulsing with some exaltation. The blood was coursing violently under her luminous yellow skin, and her lids, dusky with fatigue, drooped contentedly over her great, humid black eyes. Perpetually, she raised her hand to the mass of black hair that was coiled on her thick golden neck, and stroked it with secretive enjoyment as a cat licks its fur, and her large mouth smiled frankly but abstractedly at some digested pleasure. There was a time when George would have looked on this riot of excited loveliness with suspicion, but now he knew it was almost certainly caused by some trifle, a long walk through the stinging weather, the report of a socialist victory at a by-election, or the intoxication of a waltz refrain floating from the municipal bandstand across the flats of the local recreation ground. And even if it had been caused by some amorous interlude, he would not have greatly cared. In the ten years since their marriage, he had lost the quality which would have made him resentful. He now believed that quality to be purely physical, unless one was in good condition and responsive to the message sent out by the flesh if Adne could hardly concern one. He turned the bitter thought over in his heart, and stung himself by deliberately gazing on a moved upon her beautiful joyful body. Let's have supper now, she said rather greedily. He looked at the table and saw she had set it before she went out. As usual she had been in an provident hurry, it was carelessly done. Besides what an absurd supper to set before a hungry solicitor's clerk. In the centre, obviously intended as the principal dish, was a bowl of plums, softly red, soaked with the sun, glowing like jewels in the downward stream of the incandescent light. Inside them was a great yellow melon, its sleek sides fluted with rich growth, and a honeycomb glistening on a willow-pattern dish. The only sensible food to be seen was a plate of tong laid at his place. I can't sit down to supper without washing my hands. While he splashed in the bathroom upstairs, he heard her pull in a chair to the table and sit down to her supper. She'd annoyed him. There was no ritual about it. While he was eating the tong, she would be crushing honey on new bread, or stripping a plum of its purple skin, and holding the golden globe up to the gas to see the light filter through. The meal would pass in silence. She would innocently take his dumbness for a sound of abstraction, and for bare to babble. He would find the words choked on his lips by the weight of dullness that always oppressed him in her presence. Then, just about the time when he was beginning to feel able to formulate his obscure grievances against her, she would rise from the table without a word, and run upstairs to her work, humming in that uncanny, negro way of hers. And so it was. She ate with an appalling catholicity of taste, with a nice child's love of sweet foods, and occasionally she broke into that hoarse, beautiful croon. Every now and then she looked at him with two obvious speculations as to whether his silence was due to weariness or uncertain temper. Timidly she cut him an enormous slice of the melon which he did not want. Then she rose abruptly and flung herself in the rocking chair on the hearth. She clasped her hands behind her head, and strained backwards so that the muslin stretched over her strong breasts. She sang softly to the ceiling. There was something about the fantastic figure that made him feel as though they were not properly married. Ivadne, yes? What have you been up to this evening? I was at Millistaffer Dales. He was silent again, that name brought up the memory of his courting days. It was under the benign eyes of blond plebeian mille that he had wooed the distracting creature in the rocking chair. Ten years before, when he was twenty-five, his firm had been reduced to hysteria over the estates of an extraordinarily stupid old woman named Mrs. Mary Ellacre. Her stupidity, grappling with the complexity of the sources of the vast income which rushed in spate from the properties of four deceased husbands, demanded oceans of explanations, even over her weekly rents. Silverton, alone in the office, by reason of a certain natural incapacity for excitement, could deal calmly with this marvel of imbecility. He alone could endure to sit with patients in the black panel drawing room, amidst the jungle of shiny mahogany furniture, and talk to a mass of darkness who rested heavily in the window seat, and now and then made an idiotic remark in a bright, hearty voice. But it shook even him. Mrs. Mary Ellacre was obscene, yet she was perfectly sane, and although of that remarkable plainness, noticeably most often married women, in good enough physical condition. She merely presented the loathsome spectacle of an ignorant mind, contorted by the artificial idiocy of cockatry, lack of responsibility, and hatred of discipline, stripped naked by old age. That was the real horror of her. One feared to think how many women were really like Mrs. Ellacre under their armour of physical perfection or social grace. For this reason he turned eyes of hate on Mrs. Ellacre's pretty little companion, Elise Staffordale, who smiled at him over her embroidery with wintery northern brightness. When she was old she too would be obscene. This horror obsessed him. Never before had he feared anything, he had never lived more than half an hour from a police station, and as he had by some chance missed the melancholy clairvoyance of adolescence, he had never conceived of any horror with which the police could not deal. This disgust of women revealed to him that the world is a place of subtle perils. He began to fear marriage as he feared death. The thought of intimacy with some lovely, desirable and necessary wife turned him sick as he sat at his lunch, the secret obscenity of women. He talked darkly of it to his friends. He wondered why the church did not provide a service for the absolution of men after marriage. Life desertion seemed to him a beautiful return of the tainted body to cleanliness. On his fifth visit to Mrs. Ellacre, he could not begin his business at once. One of Millie Staffordale's friends had come in to sing to the old lady. She stood by the piano against the light so that he saw her washed with darkness, amazed of tropical fruit, and before he had time to apprehend the sleepy wonder of her beauty, she had begun to sing. Now he knew that her voice was a purely physical attribute, built in her as she lay in her mother's womb, and no index of her spiritual values. But then, as it welled up from the thick golden throat and clung to her lips, it seemed a sublime achievement of the soul. It was smoldering contralto, such as only those of black blood can possess. As she sang, her great black eyes lay on him with the innocent shamelessness of a young animal, and he remembered hopefully that he was good looking. Suddenly, she stood in silence, playing with her heavy black plat. Mrs. Ellacre broke into silly thanks. The girl's mother, who had been playing the accompaniment, rose and stood rolling up her music. Silverton, sick with excitement, was introduced to them. He noticed that the mother was a little darker than the conventions permit. Their name was Hannon, Mrs. Arthur Hannon and Evadney. They moved, lively and quietly out of the room, the girl's eyes still lingering on his face. The thought of her splendour and the rolling echoes of her voice disturbed him all night. Next day, going to his office, he travelled with her on the horse car that bound his suburb to Petrick. One of the horses fell lame, and she had time to tell him that she was studying at a commercial college. He quivered with distress. All the time, he had a dizzy illusion that she was nestling up against him. They parted shyly. During the next few days, they met constantly. He began to go and see them in the evening at their home. A mean flat crowded with cheap glories of bead curtains and oriental hangings that set off the women's alien beauty. Mrs. Hannon was a widow, and they lived alone in a wonderful silence. He talked more than he had ever done in his whole life before. He took a dislike to the widow. She was consumed with fiery subterranean passions. No fit guardian for the tender girl. Now he could imagine with what silent rapture Evadney had watched his agitation. Almost when the first she had meant to marry him. He was physically attractive, though not strong. His intellect was gently stimulating, like a mild white wine. And it was time she married. She was ripe for adult things. This was the real wound in his soul. He had tasted of a divine thing created in his time for dreams out of her rich beauty. Her loneliness, her romantic poverty, her immaculate youth. He had known love. And Evadney had never known anything more than a magnificent physical adventure which she had secured at the right time, as she would have engaged a cab to take her to the station in time for the cheapest excursion train. It was a quick way to light-hearted living. With loathing, he remembered how in the days of their engagement she used a gaze purely into his blinking eyes and with her unashamed kisses incite him to extravagant embraces. Now he cursed her for having obtained his spiritual revolution on false pretenses. Only for a little time had he had his illusion for their marriage was hastened by Mrs. Hannan's sudden death. After three months of savage mourning, Evadney flunk herself into marriage and her excited candour had enlightened him very soon. The marriage had lasted ten years and to Evadney their relationship was just the same as ever. Her vitality needed him as he needed the fruit on the table before him. He shook with wrath and a sense of outraged decency. Oh, George! she was yawning widely. What's the matter? he said without interest. He's so beastly dull. I can't help that, can I? No, she smiled placidly at him. They were a couple of dull dogs, aren't we? I wish we had children. After a minute, she suggested, apparently as an alternative amusement, perhaps the post hasn't passed. As she spoke, there was a rat-tat and the slither of a letter under the door. Evadney picked herself up and ran out into the lobby. After a second or two, during which she made irritating, inarticulate exclamations, she came in reading the letter and stroking her bust with a gesture of satisfaction. They want me to speak at Longton's meeting on the 19th. She purred. Longton, what's he up to? Stephen Longton was the owner of the biggest ironworks in Petric, a man whose refusal to adopt delivery of busy oafishness thought proper to commercial men, aroused the gravest suspicions. He's standing as a socialist candidate for the town council. Socialist, he muttered. He set his jaw. That was the side of Evadney. He considered as little as possible. He had never been able to assimilate the fact that Evadney had, two years after their marriage, passed through his own orthodox radicalism to a passionate socialism and that after reading enormously of economics, she had begun to write for the socialist press and to speak successfully at meetings. In the jaundiced recesses of his mind, he took it for granted that her work would have the lax fibre of her character that it would be infected with her oriental crudities. Although once or twice he had been congratulated on her brilliance, he mistrusted this phase of her activity as a caper of the sensualist. His eyes blazed on her and found the depraved, over-sexed creature looking milder than a gazella, holding out a hand-bill to him. They've taken it for granted. He saw her name, his name, Mrs. Evadney Silverton. It was at first the blaze of stout scarlet letters on the dazzling white ground that made him blink. Then he was convulsed with rage. Georgie, dear! She stepped forward and caught his weak body to her bosom. He wrenched himself away. Spiritual nausea made him determined to be a better man than her. A pair of you, you and Longton, he snarled scornfully. Then, seeing her startled face, he controlled himself. I thought it would please you, said Evadney, a little waspishly. You mustn't have anything to do with Longton, he stormed. A change passed over her. She became ugly. Her face was heavy with intellect. Her lips coarse with power. He was at arms with the socialist lead. Much he would have preferred the bland sensualist again. Why? Because. His lips stuck together like blotting paper. He's not the sort of man my wife should. With movements which terrified him by their rough energy, she folded up the bills and put them back in the envelope. Georgie, I suppose you mean that he's a bad man? He nodded. I know quite well that the girl who used to be his typist is his mistress. She spoke it sweetly, as if reasoning with an old fool. But she's got consumption. She'll be dead in six months. In fact, I think it's rather nice of him to look after her and all that. My God! He leapt to his feet, extending a shaking forefinger. As she turned to him, the smile dying on her lips, his excited weakness wrapped him in a paramedic illusion. It seemed to him that he had been through all this before. A long, long time ago. My God, you talk like a woman of the streets. Evadne's lips lifted over her strong teeth. With clever cruelty, she fixed his eyes with hers, well knowing that he longed to fall forward and bury his head on the table in a transport of hysterical sobs. After a moment of this torture, she turned away, herself distressed by a desire to cry. How can you say such dreadful, dreadful things? She protested chokingly. He sat down again. His eyes looked little and red, but they blazed on her. I wonder if you are, he said softly. Ah, what! she asked petulantly, a tear rolling down her nose. You know, he answered, nodding. George! George! George! she cried. You've always been keen on kissing and making love, haven't you, my precious? At first you startled me, you did. I didn't know women were like that. From that morass he suddenly stepped on to a high peak of terror, amazed to find himself sincere, he cried. I don't believe good women are. George, how can you be so silly? exclaimed Evadney shrilly. You know quite well I've been as true to you as any woman could be. She sought his eyes with a liquid glance of reproach. He averted his gaze, sickened at having put himself in the wrong. For even while he degraded his tongue, his pure soul fainted with loathing of her fleshliness. I'm sorry. Too wily to forgive him at once, she showed him a lowering profile with downcast lids. Of course, he knew it was a fraud. An imputation against her chastity was no more poignant than a reflection on the cleanliness of her nails. Rude and spiteful, but that was all. But for a time they kept up the deception while she cleared the table in a steely silence. Evadney, I'm sorry. I'm tired. His throat was dry. He could not bear the discord of a row added to the horror of their companionship. Evadney, do forgive me. I don't know what I meant by. That's all right, silly. She said suddenly and bent over the table to kiss him. Her brow was smooth. It was evident from her splendid expression that she was preoccupied. Then she finished clearing up the dishes and took them into the kitchen. While she was out of the room he rose from his seat and sat down in the armchair by the fire setting his bulldog pipe alight. For a very short time he was free of her voluptuous presence but she ran back soon having put the kettle on and changed her blouse for a loose dressing jacket and sat down on the arm of his chair. Once or twice she bent and kissed his brow but for the most part she lay back with his head drawn to her bosom rocking herself rhythmically. Silverton, a little disgusted by their contact sat quite motionless and passed into a dose. He revolved in his mind the incidents of his day's routine and remembered a snub from a superior. So he opened his eyes and tried to think of something else. It was then that he became conscious that the rhythm of Avadne's movements was not regular. It was broken as though she rocked in time to music. Music? His sense of hearing crept up to hear if there was any sound of music in the breath she was emitting rather heavily every now and then. At first he could hear nothing then it struck him that each breath was a muttered phrase. He stiffened and hatred flamed through his veins. The words came clearly through her lips the present system of weed slavery. Avadne, he sprang to his feet you're preparing your speech. She did not move. I am, she said. Dammit, you shan't speak. Dammit, I will. Avadne, you shan't speak. If you do, I swear to God above I'll turn you out into the streets. She rose and came towards him. She looked black and dangerous. She trod softly like a cat with her head down. In spite of himself his tongue licked his lips in fear and he cowered a moment before he picked up a knife from the table. For a space she looked down on him with a sharp blade. You idiot, can't you hear the kettle's boiling over? He shrank back, letting the knife fall on the floor. For three minutes he stood there controlling his breath and trying to still his heart. Then he followed her into the kitchen. She was making a noise with a basin full of dishes. Stop that row! She turned round with a dripping dishcloth in her hand and pondered whether to throw it at him when she was tired and wanted peace so that she could finish the rough draft of her speech. So she stood waiting. Did you understand what I said then if you don't promise me here and now? She flung her arms upwards with a cry and dashed past him. He made to run after her upstairs but stumbled on the threshold of the lobby and sat with his ankle twisted under him shaking with rage. In a second she ran downstairs again closed in a big cloak with a black bundle clutched to her breast. For the first time in their married life she was seized with a convulsion of sobs. She dashed out of the front door and banged it with such passion that a glass pane shivered to fragments behind her. What's this? What's this? He cried stupidly standing up. He perceived with an insane certainty that she was going out to meet some unknown lover. I'll come and tell him what a slut you are! He shouted after her and stumbled to the door. It was jam now and he had to drag at it. The night was flooded with the yellow moonshine of midsummer. It seemed to drip from the lacquered leaves and shrubs in the front garden. In its soft clarity he could see her plainly although she was now two hundred yards away. She was hastening to the north end of Samatra Crescent an end that curled up the hill like a silly kitten's tail and stopped abruptly in green fields. So he knew that she was going to the young man who had just bought the Georgian manor whose elm trees crowned the hill. Oh, how he hated her! Yet he must follow her or else she would cover up her adulteress so that he could not take his legal revenge. So he began to run silently for he wore his carpet slippers. He was only a hundred yards behind her when she slipped through a gap in the hedge to tread a field path. She still walked with pride for though she was town bread night in the open seemed not at all fearful to her. As he shuffled in pursuit his carpet slippers were engulfed in a shining pool of mud. He raised one with a squelch. The other was left. This seemed the last humiliation. He kicked the other one off his feet and padded on in his socks snuffling and anticipating of a cold. Then physical pain sent him back to the puddle to pluck out the slippers. It was a dirty job. His heart batted his breast as he saw that Evadny had gained the furthest hedge and was crossing the style into the lane that ran up to the manor gates. Go on, you beast! He muttered, go on, go on! After a scamper he climbed the style and thrust his lean neck beyond a mass of wilted hawthorn bloom that crumbled into vagrant petals at his touch. The lane mounted yellow as cheese to where the moon lay on his iron tracery of the manor gates. Evadny was not there. Hardly believing his eyes he hobbled over into the lane and looked in the other direction. There he saw her disappearing round the bend of the road. Gathering himself up to a run he tried to think out his bearings. He'd seldom passed this way and like most people without strong primitive instincts he had no sense of orientation. With difficulty he remembered that after a mile's mazy wanderings between high edges this lane sloped suddenly to the bowl of heather overhung by the moorlands in which lay the petric reservoirs two untamed lakes. Eh! She's going to meet him by the water! he cursed to himself. He remembered the withered ash tree seared by lightning to its root that stood by the road at the bare frontier of the moor. May God strike her like that! he prayed as she fouls the other man's lips with her kisses. Oh God! Let me strangle her or bury a knife deep in her breast. Suddenly he broke into a lolliping run. Oh my Lord! I'll be able to divorce her. I'll be free, free to live alone to do my day's work and sleep my night's sleep without her. I'll get a job somewhere else and forget her. I'll bring her to the dogs. No clean man or woman in Petric will look at her now. They won't have her to speak at that meeting now. His throat swelled with joy. He leapt high in the air. I'll lie about her. If I can prove that she's wrong with this man, they'll believe me if I say she's a bad woman and drinks. I'll make her name a joke and then he flung wide his arms in ecstasy. The left struck against stone. More pain than he had thought his body could hold convulsed him so that he sank on the ground, hugging his aching arm. He looked backwards as he writhed and saw that the hedge had stopped. Above him was the great stone wall of the county asylum. The question broke on him was there any lunatic in its confines so slavoured with madness as he himself. Nothing but madness could have accounted for the torrent of ugly words, the sea of uglier thoughts that was now a part of him. Oh, God! Me to turn like this! He cried, rolling over full length on the grassy bank by the roadside. That the infidelity of his wife, a thing that should have brought out the stern manliness of his true nature, should have discovered him as lecherous lipped as any pot-house lounger, was the most infamous accident of his married life. The sense of sin descended on him so that his tears flowed hot and bitterly. I've had gone to the Unitarian chapel every Sunday morning and to the ethical society every evening for nothing. His spirit asked itself in its travail all those browning lechers for nothing. He said the Lord's Prayer several times and sat for a minute quietly crying. The relaxation of his muscles brought him a sense of rest which seemed forgiveness falling from God. The tears dried on his cheeks. His karma-consciousness heard the sound of rushing waters mingled with the beating of blood in his ears. He got up and scrambled round the turn of the road that brought him to the withered ash tree. He walked forward onto the parched heatherland mound whose scarred sides heaped with boulders, tufted with mounting grasses shone before him in the moonlight. He scrambled up to it hurriedly and hoisted himself from ledge to ledge till he fell on his knees with a squeal of pain. His ankle was caught in a crevice of the rock. Gulping down his agony at this final physical humiliation he heaved himself upright and raced onto the summit and found himself before the devil's cauldron filled to the brim with yellow moonshine and the fiery play of summer lightning. The rugged crags opposite him were a low barricade against the stars to which the mound where he stood shot forward like a bridge. To the left of this long lisp-peck pond they are trailing serpents its silver scales glittered as the winds swept down from the lands to the east. To the right under a steep drop of twenty feet was the whimsy pond more sinister shaped in an unnatural oval sheltered from the wind by the high ridge so that the undisturbed moonlight lay across it like a sharp edge sword. He looked about for some sign of Evadne she could not be on the land by the margin of the lakes for the light blazed so strongly as each reed could be seen like a black dagger stabbing the silver. He looked down lisp-peck and saw far east a knot of red and green and orange lights. Perhaps for some devilish purpose Evadne had sought lisp-peck railway station but his volcanic mind had preserved one grain of sense that assured him that subtle as Evadne's villainy might be it would not lead her to walk five miles out of her way to a terminus she could have reached in fifteen minutes by taking a train for the station down the road. She must be under cover somewhere here. He went down the gentle slope that fell from the top of the ridge to lisp-peck pond in a disorder of rough heather unhappy patches of cultivated grass and coppices of silver birch fringed with flaming broom that seemed faintly tarnished in the moonlight. At the bottom was a roughly hewn path which he followed in hot aimless hurry. In a little he approached a riot of falling waters there was a slice ten feet broad carved out of the ridge and to this narrow channel of black shining rock the floods of lisp-peck leapt some feet and raced through to whimsy. The noise beat him back the gap was spanned by a gaunt thing of paint-blisted iron on which he stood dizzily and noticed how the wide step that ran on each side of the channel through to the other pond was smeared with sinister green slime. Now his physical distress reminded him of a vadne whom he had almost forgotten in contemplation of these lonely waters. The idea of her had been present but obscured as sometimes toothache may cease active torture. His bloodlust set him on and he staggered forward with covered ears. Even as he went something caught his eye and a thicket high up on the slope near the crags. Against the slender pride of some silver birches stood a gnarled hawthorn tree. Its branches flattened under the stern moorland winds so that it grew squats like an opened umbrella. In its dark shadows faintly illumined by a few boughs of withered blossom there moved a strange bluish light. Even while he did not know what it was it made his flesh stir. The light emerged. It was the moonlight reflected from a vadne's body. She was clad in a black bathing dress and her arms and legs and the broad streak of flesh laid bare by a rinse down the back shone brilliantly white so that she seemed like a grotesquely patterned wild animal as she ran down to the lake. Whirling her arms above her head she trampled down into the water and struck out strongly. Her movements were full of brisk delight and she swam quickly. The moonlight made her the center of a little feathery blur of black and silver with a comet's tail trailing in her wake. Nothing in all his married life had ever staggered Silverton so much as this. He had imagined his wife's adultery so strongly that it had come to be. It was now as real as their marriage more real than their courtship so this seemed to be the last crime of the adulterous. She had dragged him over those squelching fields and these rough moors and changed him from a man of irritations with no passions into a cold designer of murderous treacheries so that he might witness a swimming exhibition. For a minute he was stunned then he sprang down to the rushy edge and ran along in the direction of her course crying, Evadny, Evadny! She did not hear him. At last he achieved a chest note and shouted, Evadny, come here! The silver feather shivered in midwater. She turned immediately and swam back to shore. He suspected sullenness in her slowness but was glad of it. For after the shock of this extraordinary incident he wanted to go to sleep. Drowsiness lay on him like lead. He shook himself like a dog and wrenched off his linen collar winking at the bright moon to keep himself awake. As she came quite near he was exasperated by the happy snorting breath she drew and strolled a pace or two up the bank. To his enragement the face she lifted as she waded to dry land was placid and she scrambled gaily up the bank to his side. Oh, George! Why did you come? She exclaimed quite affectionately laying a damp hand on his shoulder. Oh, damn it! What does this mean? He cried, committing a horrid tennis squeak. What are you doing? Why, George! she said I came here for a bath. He stared into her face and could make nothing of it. It was only sweet surfaces of flesh soft radiances of eye and lip a lovely lie of comeliness. He forgot this present grievance in a cold search for the source of her peculiar hatefulness. Under the sick gaze she pouted and turned away with a peevish gesture. He made no sign and stood silent watching her saunter to that gaunt iron bridge. The roar of the little waterfall did not disturb her splendid nerves and she drooped sensuously over the handrail sniffing up the sweet night smell too evidently trying to abase him to another apology a mosquito word into his face. He killed it viciously and strode off towards his wife who showed by a common little toss of the head that she was conscious of his coming. Look here, Evadny! he panted. What did you come here for? Tell me the truth and I promise I'll not. I'll not. Not what, George? Oh, please, please tell me the truth. Do you, Evadny? he cried bitterly. But dear, what is there to carry on about so? He went on so clearly about my meeting that my head felt fit to split and I thought the long walk and the dip would do me good. She broke off amazed at the wave of horror that passed over his face. His heart sank from the loose-lipped hurry in the telling of her story, from the bigness of her eyes and the lack of subtlety in her voice. He knew that this was the truth. Here was no adulterous whom he could accuse of war courts and condemn into the streets no resourceful sinner whose merry crimes he could discover. Here was merely his good wife, the faithful attendant of his heart, relentless wrecker of his soul. She came towards him as a cat approaches a displeased master and hovered about him on the stone coping of the noisy sluice. Indeed, he found himself saying sarcastically, indeed. Yes, George Silverton, indeed, she burst out a little frightened. And why shouldn't I? I used to come here often enough on summer nights with poor Mamma. Yes, he shouted. It was exactly the sort of thing that would appeal to that weird half-black woman from the back of beyond. Mamma, he cried tauntingly, Mamma! There was a flash of silence between them before Evadny clutching her breast and balancing herself dangerously on her heels on the stone coping broke into gentle shrieks. You dare talk of my Mamma, my poor Mamma, and she called in her grave. I haven't been happy since she died and I married you, you silly little misery-you. Then the rage was suddenly wiped off her brain by the perception of a crisis. The trickle of silence overflowed into a lake over which their spirits flew, looking at each other's reflection in the calm waters. In the hurry of their flights, they had never before seen each other. They stood facing one another with dropped heads quietly thinking. The strong passion which filled them threatened to disintegrate their souls as a magnetic current decomposes the electrolyte, so they fought to organize their sensations. They tried to arrange themselves and their lives for comprehension, but beyond sudden lyric visions of all the incidents of hatefulness, such as a smart inquiral of six years ago as to whether Evadny had or had not cheated the railway company out of one and eight pence on an excursion ticket. The past was intangible. It trailed behind this intense event as the pale hair trails behind the burning comet. They were preoccupied with the moment. Quite often, George had found a mean pleasure in the thought that by never giving Evadny a child, he had cheated her out of one form of experience, and now he had paid the price for this unnatural pride of sterility. For now, the spiritual offspring of their intercourse came to birth. A sublime loathing was between them. For a little time it was a huge perilous horror. But afterwards, like men aboard a ship whose mass seek the sky through steep waves, they found a drunken pride in the adventure. This was the very absolute of hatred. It cheapened the memory of the fantasias of irritation and ill-will they had performed in the less boring moments of their marriage. And they felt dazed as amateurs who had found themselves creating a masterpiece. For the first time, they were possessed by a supreme emotion, and they felt a glad desire to strip away, restraints and express it nakedly. It was ecstasy. They felt tall and full of blood. Like people who, bewitched by Christ, see the whole earth as the breathing body of God. So, they saw the universe as the substance and the symbol of their hatred. The stars trembled overhead with wrath. A wind from behind the angry crags set the moonlight on Lisbeck, quivering with rage, and the squat's hawthorn tree creaked slowly like the irritation of a dull little man. The dry moors parched with harsh anger waited thirstily and, sending out the murmur of rustling mountain grass and the cry of wakening fowl, seemed to huddle closer to the lake. But this sense of the earth's sympathy slipped away from them, and they loathed all matter as the dull wrapping of their flame-like passion. At their wishing, matter fell away and they saw sarcastic visions. He saw her as a toad squatting on the clean earth, obscuring the stars and pressing down its hot moist body on the cheerful fields. She felt his long boneless body coiled round the roots of the lovely tree of life. They shivered fastidiously with an uplifting sense of responsibility. They realised that they must kill each other. A bird rose over their heads with a leaping flight that made it seem as though its black body was bouncing against the bright sky. The foolish noise and emotion precipitated their thoughts. They were broken into a new conception of life. They perceived that God is war and his creatures are meant to fight. When dogs walk through the world, cats must climb trees. The virgin must snare the wanton. The fine lover must put the prude to the sword. The gross man of action walks, spurred on the bloodless bodies of the men of thought who lie quiet and cunningly do not tell him where his grossness leads him. The flesh must smother the spirit. The spirit must set the flesh on fire and watch it burn. And those who were gentle by nature and shrank from the ordained brutality were betrayers of their kind, surrendering the earth to the seed of their enemies. In this war there is no discharge. If they succumb to peace now, the rest of their lives would be dishonourable, like the exile of a rebel who has begged his life as the reward of cowardice. It was their first experience of religious passion and they abandoned themselves to it so that their immediate personal qualities fell away from them. Neither his weakness nor her prudence stood in the way of the event. They measured each other with the eye. To her he was a spidery thing against the velvet blackness and hard silver surfaces of the pond. The light soaked her bathing dress so that she seemed against the jagged shadows of the rock-cutting as though she were clad in the garments of dark polished mail. Her knees were bent so clearly, her toes gripped the coping so strongly. He understood very clearly that if he did not kill her instantly she would drop him easily into the deep riot of waters. Yet for a space he could not move but stood expecting a degrading death. Indeed, he gave her time to kill him but she was without power too and struggled weakly with a hallucination. The quarrel in Samatra Crescent with its suggestion of vast and dimensionable antagonisms, the swift race through the moon-drenched countryside or crepitance with night noises, the swimming in the wine-like lake, the isolation on the moor which was expressedly hostile to them as nature always is to lonely man and this stark contest face to face with their resentments heaped between them like a pile of naked swords. These things were so strange that her civilized self shrank back appalled. There entered into her the primitive woman who is the curse of all women, a creature of the most utter femaleness, useless, safe for childbirth with no strong brain to make her physical weakness a light accident, abjectly and corruptingly afraid of man. A squaw she dared not strike her lord the illusion passed like a moment of faintness and left her enraged at having forgotten her superiority even for an instance. In the material world she had a thousand times been defeated into making prudent reservations and practicing unnatural dosilities but in the world of thought she had maintained unfalteringly her masterfulness in spite of the strong yearning of her temperament towards voluptuous surrenders. That was her virtue its violation whipped her to action and she would have killed him at once had not his moments come a second before hers. Sweating horribly he had dropped his head forward on his chest his eyes fell on her feet and marked the plebeian moulding of her ankle which rose quickly over a crease of flesh from the heel to the calf. The woman was coarse in grain and pattern he had no instinct for honourable attack so he found himself striking her in the stomach she reeled from pain not because his strength overcame hers for the first time her eyes looked into his candidly open, unveiled by languor or lust their hard brightness told him how she despised him for that own warlike blow he cried out as he realised that this was another of her despicable victories and that the whole burden of the crime now lay on him for he had begun it but the rage was stopped on his lips as her arms flung wildly out as she fell backwards caught him about the waist with abominable justness of eye and evil intention so they fell body to body into the quarrelling waters the feathery confusion had looked so soft yet it seemed the solid rock they struck the breath shot out of him and suffocation warmly stuffed his ears and nose then the rock cleft and he was swallowed by a brawling blackness in which world of vortex that flung him again and again on a sharp thing that burned his shoulder all about him fought the waters and they cut his flesh like knives his pain was past belief though God might be war he desired peace in his time and he yearned for another God a child's God and immense arm coming down from the hills and lifting him to a kindly bosom soon his body would burst for breath his agony would smash in his breastbone so great was his pain that his consciousness was strained to apprehend it as a too tightly stretched canvas splits and rips suddenly the air was sweet on his mouth the starlight seemed as hearty as a cheer the world was still there the world in which he had lived so he must be safe his own weakness and lovableness induced enjoyable tears and there was a delicious moment of abandonment to comfortable whining before he realised that the water would not kindly boy him up for long and that even now a hostile current clasped his waist he braced his flaccid body against the sucking blackness and flung his head back so that the water should not bubble so hungrily against the cords of his throat above him the slime of the rock was sticky with moonbeams and the leperous light brought to his mind a newspaper paragraph read years ago which told him that the dawn had discovered floating in some oily mercy dock under walls as infected with wet growth as this a corpse whose blood encrusted fingertips were deeply cleft on the instant his own fingertips seemed hot with blood and deeply cleft from clawing at the impregnable rock he screamed gaspingly and beat his hands through the strangling flood action which he had always loathed and dreaded had broken the hard mould of his self-possession and the dry dust of his character was blown hither and thither by fear but one sharp fragment of intelligence which survived this detrition of his personality perceived that a certain gleam on the rock about a foot above the water was not the cold putrescence of the slime but certainly the hard and merry light of the moon ray striking on solid metal his left hand clutched upwards at it and he swung from a rounded projection it was his touch told him a leaden ring hanging obliquely from the rock to which his memory could visualize precisely in some past drier time when Lisbeck sent no flood to Whimsy a waterman mooring a boat strewn with pale-bellied perch behind the stooping waterman he remembered a flight of narrow steps that led up a buttress to a stone shelf that ran through the cutting unquestionably he was safe he swung in a happy rhythm from the ring his limp body trailing like a caterpillar through the stream to the foot of the steps while he gasped in strength a part of him was in agony for his arm was nearly dragged out of its socket the part of him was embarrassed because his hysteria shook him with a deep rumbling chuckle that sounded as though he meditated on some unseemly joke the hole was pervaded by a twilight atmosphere of unenthusiastic gratitude for his rescue like the quietly cheerful tone of a Sunday evening sacred concert after a minute's deep breathing he hauled himself up by the other hand prepared to swing himself onto the steps but first to shake off the wet, worsted rags once his socks that now stuck uncomfortably between his toes he splashed his feet outwards to mid-stream a certain porpoise-like surface met his left foot fear dappled his face with goose flesh without turning his head he knew what it was the vadne's fat flesh rising on each side of her deep furrowed spine through the rents in her bathing dress once more hatred marched through his soul like a king compelling service by his godhead and like all gods a little hated for his harsh lien on his worshipper he saw his wife as the curtain of flesh between him and celibacy and solitude and all those delicate abstentions from life which his soul desired he saw her as the invisible worm destroying the rose of the world with her dark secret love now he knelt on the lowest stone step watching her wet, seal-smooth head bobbing nearer on the waters as her strong arms covered with little dark points where her thick hairs were clotted with moisture stretched out towards safety he bent forward and laid his hands on her head he held her face underwater scornfully he noticed the bubbles that rose to the surface from her protesting mouth and nostrils and the foam raised by her arms and her thick ankles to the end the creature persisted in turmoil in movement, in action she dropped like a stone her hands with nothing to resist them slapped the water foolishly and he nearly overbalanced forward into the stream he rose to his feet very stiffly I must be a very strong man he said as he slowly climbed the steps I must be a very strong man he repeated a little louder as with the hot and painful rigidity of the joints he stretched himself out weakness closed him in like a lead coffin for a little time the wetness of his clothes persisted in being felt then the sensation oozed out of him and his body fell out of knowledge there was neither pain nor joy nor any other reckless plowing of the brain by nerves he knew unconsciousness or rather the fullest consciousness he had ever known for the world became nothingness which is free from the yeasty nuisance of matter and the ugliness of generation was the law of his being he was absorbed into vacuity the untamed substance of the universe round which he conceived passion and thought to circle as straws caught up by the wind he saw God and lived in heaven a thousand years or a day and this little corner of time in which he found happiness shrank to a nutshell as he opened his eyes again this piece was hardly printed on his heart yet the brightness of the night was blurred by the dawn with the grunting carefulness of a man drunk with fatigue he crawled along the stone shelf to the iron bridge where he stood with his back to the roaring sleuths and rested all things seemed different now and happier like most timid people he disliked the night and the commonplace hand which the dawn laid on the scene seemed to him a sanctification the dimmed moon sank to her setting behind the crags the dual lights of Lisbeck railway station were weak cheerful twinklings a steaming bluish milk of morning mist had been spilt on the hard silver surface of the lake and the reeds no longer stabbed it like little daggers but seemed a feathery fringe like the pompous grass in the front garden in Samatra Crescent the black crags became brownish and the mist disguised the sternness of the moor this weakening of effects was exactly what he had always thought the extinction of Avadne would bring to the world he smiled happily at the moon yet he was moved to sudden angry speech he had my time over again he said I wouldn't touch her with the tongs for the cold he had known all along he would catch had settled in his head and his handkerchief was wet through he leaned over the bridge and looked along Lisbeck and thought of Avadne for the first time for many years he saw her image without spirits and wondered without indignation why she had so often looked like the cat's about to steal the cream what was the cream and did she ever steal it now he would never know he thought of her very generously and sighed over the perversity her fate in letting so much comeliness if she had married a butcher or a veterinary surgeon she might have been happy he said and shook his head at the glassy black water that slid under the bridge so that's boiling sloose a gust of ague reminded him that wet clothes clung to his fevered body and that he ought to change as quickly as possible or expect to be laid up for weeks he turned along the path that led back across the moor to the withered ash tree and was learning the torture of bare feet on gravel when he cried out to himself I shall be hanged for killing my wife it did not come as a trumpet call for he was one of those people who never quite hear what he said to them and this deafishness extended in him to emotional things it stole on him calmly like a fog closing on a city when he first felt hemmed in by this certainty he looked over his shoulder to the crags remembering tales of how Jacobite fugitives had hidden on the moors for many weeks they lay at least another day of freedom but he was the kind of man who always goes home he stumbled on, not very unhappy except for his feet like many people of weak temperament he did not fear death indeed it had a peculiar appeal to him but while it was important, exciting it did not, like most important and exciting things try to create action he allowed his imagination the vanity of painting pictures he saw himself standing in their bedroom plotting this last event with the white sheets and the highlights of the mahogany wardrobe shining ghostly at him through the darkness he saw himself raising a thin hand to the gas bracket and turning on the tap he saw himself staggering to their bed while death crept in at his nostrils he saw his corpse lying in full daylight and for the first time knew himself certainly unquestionably dignified he threw back his chest in pride but at that moment the path stopped and he found himself staggering down the mound of heatherland and boulders with bleeding feet always he had suffered from sore feet which had not exactly disgusted but were still disappointed of Adne a certain wistfulness she had always evinced when she found herself the superior animal had enraged and humiliated him many times he felt that sting him now and flung himself down the mound cursing when he stumbled up to the withered ash tree he hated her so much that it seemed as though she were alive again and a sharp wind blowing down from the moor terrified him like her touch he rested there leaning against the stripped grey trunk he smiled up at the sky which was now so touched to ineffectiveness by the dawn that it looked like a tent of faded silk there was the piece of weakness in him which he took to be spiritual because it had no apparent physical justification but he lost it as his dripping clothes chilled his tired flesh his discomfort reminded him that the phantasmic night was passing from him daylight threatened him the daylight in which for so many years he had worked in the solicitor's office and been snubbed and ignored the garish day he murmured disgustedly quoting the blasphemy of some hymn writer he wanted his death to happen in this phantasmic night so he limped his way along the road the birds had not yet begun to sing but the rustling noises of the night had ceased the silent highway was consecrated to his proud progress he staggered happily like a tired child returning from a lovely birthday walk his death in the little bedroom which for the first time he would have to himself was a culminating treat to be gloated over like the promise of a favourites pudding for supper as he walked he brooded dozingly on large and swelling thoughts like all people of weak passions and enterprise he loved to think of Napoleon and in the shadow of the great asylum wall he strutted a few steps of his advance from murder to suicide with arms crossed on his breast and thin legs trying to strut massively he was so happy he wished that the military band went before him and pretended that the high hedges were solemn lines of men stricken in awe to silence as their king rode out to some nobly self-chosen doom vast he seemed to himself and a magnificence like music and solemn like the sphinx he had saved the earth from corruption by killing Evadny for whom he now felt the unremorseful pity a conqueror might bestow on a devastated empire he might have grieved that his victory brought him death but with immense pride he found that the occasion was exactly described by a text he saved others himself he could not save he had missed the style in the field above Samatra Crescent and had to go back and hunt for it in the hedge so quickly had his satisfaction borne him home the field had the fantastic air that Jerry builders give to land poised on the knife edge of town and country so that he walked in romance to his very door the unmarred grass sloped to a stone hedge of towers of loose brick trenches and mounds of shining clay and the fine, intense spires of the scaffolding ran the last unfinished house and he looked down on Petrick though to the actual eye it was but a confusion of dark distances through the twilight a breaking of velvety perspectives he saw more intensely than ever before his squalid walls and squalid homes where mean men and mean women enlaced their unwholesome lives yet he did not shrink from entering for his great experience as Christ did not shrink from being born in a stable he swaggered with humility over the trodden mud of the field and the new white flags of Samatra Crescent down the road before him there passed a dim figure who paused at each lamppost and raised a long wand to behead the yellow gas flowers that were now wilting before the dawn a ghostly herald preparing the world to be his deathbed the Crescent's curved in quiet darkness save for one house where blazed a gas-lit room with undrawn blinds the brightness had the startling quality of a scream he looked in almost anxiously as he passed and met the blank eyes of a man in evening clothes who stood by the window shaking a medicine his face was like a wax mask softened by heat the features were blurred with the suffering which comes from the spectacle of suffering his eyes lay unshiftingly on George's face as he went by and he went on shaking the bottle it seemed as though he would never stop in the hour of his grandeur George was not forgetful of the griefs of the little human people but interceded with God for the sake of this stranger everything was beautiful beautiful beautiful his own little house looked solemn as a temple he leaned against the lamppost at the gate and stared at its empty windows and neat bricks the disorder of the shattered pane of glass could be overlooked by considering a sign that this house was a holy place like the Passover blood on the lintel the propriety of the evenly drawn blind pleased him enormously he had always known that this was how the great tragic things of the world had accomplished themselves quietly Evadni's raging activity belonged to trivial or annoying things like spring cleaning or thunderstorms well the house belonged to him now he opened the gate and went up the asphalt path sourly noticing that Evadni had as usual left out the lawn mower but it might very easily have rained with the wind coming up as it was a stray cat that had been sleeping in the tuft of Pampas grass in the middle of the lawn was roused by his coming and fled insolently close to his legs he hated all wild homeless things and bent for a stone to throw at it but instead his fingers touched a slug which reminded him of the feeling of Evadni's flesh through the slit in her bathing dress and suddenly the garden was possessed by her presence she seemed to amble there as she had so often done sowing seeds unwisely and tormenting the last days of an ailing geranium by insane transplantation exclaiming absurdly over such mere weeds as mourning glory he caught the very clucking of her voice the front door opened at his touch the little lobby with its closed doors seemed stuffed with expectant silence he realised that he had come to the theatre of his great adventure then panic seized him because this was the home where he and she had lived together so horribly he doubted whether he could do this splendid momentous thing for here he had always been a poor thing with a habit of failure his heart beating him more quickly than his raw feet could pad up the oil clothed stairs behind the deal door at the end of the passage was death darkness it would escape him even the idea of it would escape him if he did not go to it at once when he burst at last into its presence he felt so victorious that he sank back against the door waiting for death to come to him without turning on the gas he was so happy his death was coming true but Evadny lay on his deathbed she slept there soundly flung back on the pillows so that her eyes and brow seemed small in shadow and her mouth and jaw huge above her thick throat in the light her wet hair straggled across the pillow onto a broken cane chair covered with her tumbled clothes her breast silvered with sweat shone in the ray of the street lamp that had always disturbed their nights the counter pain rose enormously over her hips her circles of glazed linen out of mere innocent sleep her sensuality was distilling a most drunken pleasure not for one moment did he think this a fantastic appearance Evadny was not the sort of woman to have a ghost still leaning against the door he tried to think it all out but his thoughts came brokenly because the dawn light flowing in at the window confused him by its pale glare and that lax figure on the bed held his attention it must have been that when he laid his murderous hands on her head she had simply dropped below the surface and swam a few strokes underwater as any expert swimmer can probably he had never even put her into danger for she was a great lusty creature and the weir was a little place he had imagined the wonder and peril of the battle as he had imagined his victory he sneezed exhaustingly and from his physical distress realised how absurd it was ever to have thought that he had killed her bodies like his do not kill bodies like hers now his soul was naked and lonely as though the walls of his body had fallen in at death and the grossness of Evadny's sleep made him suffer more unlovely a destitution than any old beggar woman squatting by the roadside in the rain he had thought he had had what every man most desires one night of power over a woman for the business of murder or love but it had been a lie nothing beautiful had ever happened to him he would have wept but the hatred he had learnt on the moors obstructed all tears in his throat at least this night had given him passion enough to put an end to it all quietly he went to the window and drew down the sash there was no fireplace so that sealed the room then he crept over to the gas bracket and raised his thin hand as he had imagined in his hour of vain glory by the lake he had forgotten Evadny's thrifty habit of turning off the gas at the main to prevent leakage when she went to bed he was beaten he undressed and got into bed as he had done every night for ten years and as he would do every night until he died still sleeping Evadny caressed him with warm arms End of Part Six Part Seven of Blast Issue Number One Edited by Wyndham Lewis This LibriVox recording is in the public domain In a Necessity Review of Kandinsky's Book by Edward Wadsworth Extracts from Kandinsky's Uber das Geistige in der Kunst Translated by Edward Wadsworth A permission by Messrs Constable who have recently published a translation of the book by M. T. H. Sadler The Art of Spiritual Harmony This book is a most important contribution to the psychology of modern art The author's eminence as an artist adds considerable value to the work Fine artists as a rule being extremely reluctant to or incapable of expressing their ideas in more than one medium Herr Kandinsky however is a psychologist and a metaphysician of rare intuition and inspired enthusiasm He writes of art not in its relation to the drawing room or the modern exhibition but in its relation to the universe and the soul of man He writes not as an art historian but essentially as an artist to whom form and colour are as much the vital and integral parts of the cosmic organisation as they are his means of expression The Art of the East has always consciously and passionately expressed this point of view which, if it has been perceived dimly in western art has been only half-heartedly expressed European artists of the past have treated art almost entirely from a too obviously and externally human outlook Europe today which is laying the solid foundations of the western art of tomorrow approaches this task from the deeper and more spiritual standpoint of the soul Herr Kandinsky is concerned chiefly in pointing out that the raison d'etre the beauty and the durability of art are only possible if they have their root in what he terms the principle of inner necessity In a necessity he says arises out of three mystical fundamentals it is created out of three mystical necessities One, every artist as a creator has to express himself element of personality Two, every artist as a child of his epoch has to express what is particular to this epoch element of style in an innocence composed of the speech of the epoch and the speech of the nation as long as the nation exists as such Three, every artist as the servant of art has to express what is particular to all art element of the pure and eternal qualities of the art of all men, of all peoples and of all times which are to be seen in the works of art of all artists of every nation and of every epoch and which as the principle elements of art know neither time nor space It is necessary to penetrate with one's mental vision only the first two elements in order to see this third element exposed One sees then that a coarsely carved Indian temple pillar is animated with exactly the same spirit as even the most modern vivacious work Only the third element of the eternal and pure qualities remains ever alive It does not lose its strength with time but continually acquires more An Egyptian statue astounds us certainly more today than it could have astounded its contemporaries For them it was associated much too strongly with characteristics and personalities of the period which weakened its effect Today we hear in it the exposed timbre of eternal art and contrarially the more a modern work possesses the first two elements naturally the more easily will it find access to the spirit of its contemporaries and further the more the third element exists in a modern work the more will the first two be drowned Consequently the access to the spirit of its contemporaries becomes more difficult On this account Centurism must sometimes pass away before the timbre of the third element reaches the soul of man The preponderance then of this third element in a work of art is a sound of its greatness and the greatness of the artist These three mystical necessities are the three necessary elements of a work of art and are closely united to one another The event of the development of art consists to a certain extent of the progression of the pure and external from the elements of personality and the style of the period so that these two elements are not only accompanying forces but also restraining forces These two elements are of a subjective nature the whole epoch desires to reflect itself and express its life aesthetically The artist desires to express himself in the same way and chooses only those forms which are related to his spirit Gradually in the end the style of the epoch shapes itself and acquires a certain external and subjective form The pure and eternal art is, on the contrary the objective element which becomes intelligible by means of the subjective The inevitable desire to express the objective is the force which is here termed in a necessity and which today extracts one universal form from the subjective and tomorrow another It is clear then that the inner spiritual force of art uses contemporary forms only as a step by which to progress In short the effect of inner necessity or the development of art is a progressive expression of the eternally objective within the temporarily subjective or otherwise the subjugation of the subjective by the objective So one sees finally that this is of indescribable importance for all time and especially for today that the search after personality, after style and consequently national style cannot only never be attained by this search but also has not the great importance which today is imputed to it And one sees that the common relationship between works that have not become effete after centuries but have always become more and more powerful does not lie in externality but in the root of roots the mystical content of art And this principle of inner necessity Herkandinsky applies not only to the basic inspiration of creation but also to the concrete problems of execution This same force that animates the roots must generate a solid stem and permeate the picture in every branch and fibre and in the organic structure of every leaf This leads him to an extended consideration of the emotional and psychical effect of forms and colours as such divorced as far as is humanly possible from their attendant associations And Herkandinsky does not consider the effect of form and colour on the soul only but also his relationship to the other senses and its effect on the physical organism colour is more habitually accredited with powers of emotion than form but by establishing a common roots principle with regard to the emotional effects of form and colour Herkandinsky destroys this erroneous opinion and he does this not only by means of logical argument and metaphysical raciocination but also by a minute analysis of the colours themselves their physical characteristics and the possibilities of psychic effect in all their gradations of lightness and darkness and in their warm and cold tones form, the suitability of the form to the emotion the artist wishes to express springs from the same fundamental principle of inner necessity and has always a psychic import and this is true not only of the whole composition of a picture but also of its component parts and their relationship to one another and also again of the form created by their relationship to the whole composition form alone even if it is quite abstract and geometrical has its inner timbre and is a spiritual entity with qualities that are identical with this form a triangle, whether it be acute angled obtuse angled or equilateral is an entity of this sort with a spiritual perfume proper to itself alone in combination with other forms this perfume becomes differentiated acquires accompanying nuances but remains radically unalterable like the smell of the rose which can never be mistaken for that of the violet it is easy to notice here that some colours are accentuated in value by some forms and weakened by others in any case bright colours vibrate more strongly in pointed angular forms e.g a yellow triangle those that have a tendency to deepen will increase this effect in round forms for example a blue circle it is naturally clear on the other hand that the unsuitability of the form to the colour must not be regarded as something inharmonious but on the contrary there is a new possibility and consequently harmony form in the narrower sense is however nothing more than the boundaries between one surface and another this is its external meaning but since everything external implicitly conceals an interior which comes to light forcibly or feebly so also every form is in a sense form is then the utterances of its inner content this is its inner meaning one must think here of the simile of the piano but apply form instead of colour the artist is the hand which through this or that key equal to form makes the human soul vibrate appropriately it is clear then that the harmony of form must be based only on the appropriate striking of the human soul this we termed the principle of inner necessity the two aspects of form just mentioned are at the same time is two aims and on account of this the external limitation is thoroughly appropriate only when its best expresses the inner meaning of the form the exterior of the form i.e its boundaries to which the form in this case is subservient may be very diverse in spite of all diversity that the form can offer it nevertheless will never exceed two exterior limits namely one either the form serves as a shape and by means of this shape to cut out a material object on the surface i.e to draw this material object on the surface or two the form remains abstract i.e it represents no real object abstract entity such pure abstract entities which as such have their life their influence and their effect are a square a circle, a triangle a rhombus, a trapezium and the other innumerable forms which become ever more complicated and possess no mathematical significance all these forms are citizens of the abstract empire with equal rights having accepted the emotional significance of form and colour as such it follows that the necessity for expressing oneself exclusively with forms that are based on nature is only a temporary limitation similar to though less foolish than the 18th century brown tree convention today's laws of harmony become tomorrow's external laws which on further application depend for their life only on this now external necessity and so logically this axiom must be accepted that the artist can employ any forms natural, abstracted or abstract to express himself if his feelings demand it those who perceive no emotional significance in form and colour as such invariably argue that to avoid human and natural forms is to sterilise one's creative faculties and to rob oneself of all that is noble in art but on the other hand there is no perfect concrete form in art it is not possible to represent a natural form exactly the artist succumbs well or badly either to his hand or his eye which in this case are more artistic than his soul which is incapable of desiring more than photography the conscious artist however who cannot be content with recording or visual objects seeks unconditionally to give expression to the object represented what one formerly called to idealise later on to stylise and what tomorrow may be called anything else this impossibility and futility in art of copying an object without any aim this striving to borrow expression from the object itself is the starting point from which the artist begins to purely aesthetic aims pictural as opposed to literary representations and so the abstract element comes always gradually to the front in art which even yesterday was concealed timidly and was scarcely visible behind purely material endeavours and this development and eventual preponderance of the abstract is natural it is natural since the more the organic form is repelled the more the abstract comes to the front and acquires timbre the organic that remains however has as we have said its own inner timbre which is either identical with the inner timbre of the second component or abstract part of the form simple combination of both elements or its maybe of a very different nature complicated and perhaps necessarily inharmonious combination in any case however the timbre of the organic is heard in the form it chooses even if it is quite suppressed on this account the choice of the real object is important in the twofold timbre spiritual chord of both component parts of the form the organic can support the abstract by means of concord or discord or it can be disturbing to it the object can create only an accident timbre which if substituted by another calls forth no essential difference in the fundamental timbre a rhomboidal composition is constructed for instance out of a number of human figures one judges it with one's feelings and asks oneself the question are the human figures absolutely necessary to the composition or could one substitute other organic forms for them without thereby injuring the inner fundamental timbre of the composition and if yes then the case is imminent where the timbre of the object not only does not help the timbre of the abstraction but directly injures it inappropriate timbre of the object weakens the timbre of the abstraction and this is not only logical but is as a matter of fact the case in art in the above case then either some object should be found which corresponds more to the inner timbre of the abstraction corresponding concordantly or discordantly or this whole form should remain purely abstract the more abstract the form the more purely and therefore the more primitively it will resound in a composition then where the corporeal is more or less superfluous one can more or less leave it out and substitute for it either purely abstract forms or abstracted corporeal forms in either of these cases one's feelings must be the only judge guide and arbiter and indeed the more the artist uses these abstract or abstracted forms the more he becomes at home in their kingdom and the deeper he enters into this sphere and in the same way the spectator who gathers more and more knowledge of the abstract speech until he finally masters it is guided in this by the artist and so on the one hand the difficulties of art will increase but at the same time the abundance of forms as a means of expression will increase also both in quality and quantity here the question of bad drawing will disappear and will be replaced by another much more aesthetic consideration how far is the inner timbre of the given object mystified or defined the alteration in one's point of view will always progress and lead to a still greater enrichment of one's means of expression since mystery is an enormous force in art the combination of the mysterious and the definite will create a new possibility of light motif in a composition of forms composition of this kind corporeal and particularly the abstract ways appear as unfounded arbitrariness to those who do not perceive the inner timbre of forms the apparent inconsequent distortion of the single forms on the surface of the picture appears in these cases like an empty joke with the forms when for instance features or different parts of the body are distorted or perverted for aesthetic reasons one strikes against purely pictorial questions as well as anatomical ones which restrain the pictorial intentions and obtrude upon their subsidiary calculations in our case however everything subsidiary disappears and there remains only the essential the aesthetic aim exactly this apparently arbitrary but in reality extremely determinable possibility of distorting forms is one of the sources of the enormous number of purely aesthetic creations the flexibility of the single form then it's in an organic change if one may say so its direction in the picture movement the preponderance of the corporeal over the abstract in this single form on the one hand and on the other the combination of the forms which create the big shape of the whole picture further the principles of concord and discord in all the four said parts i.e. the juxtaposition of the single forms the inner penetration of one form with another the distortion, the banding and tearing apart of the individual forms the same treatment of the group of forms or of the combination of the mysterious with the definite the rhythmic with the non-rhythmic on the same plane the abstract forms with the purely geometrical simple or complicated and the less definitely geometrical the same treatment of the combination of the boundary lines of the forms from one another heavy or light etc etc all these are the elements which create the possibility for purely aesthetic counterpoint and which will lead up to this counterpoint and colour which is itself a material for counterpoint which conceals in itself endless possibilities of drawing lead to a great pictorial counterpoint on which will be built also a pictorial composition that will serve God as a real pure art and the same infallible guide brings it to that dizzy height, the principle of inner necessity this insistence on the value of one's feelings as the only aesthetic impulse means logically that the artist is not only entitled to treat form and colour according to his inner dictates but this is his duty to do so and consequently his life his thoughts and deeds becomes the raw material out of which he must carve his creations the author points out that on account of this although the artist is absolutely free to express himself as he will in art he is not free in life he is not only a king in the sense that he has great power but also in the sense that his duties are great the constructive tendencies of painting Heier Kandinsky divides into two groups one, simple composition of a more or less obviously geometrical character which he calls melodic composition and which has been more generally employed by western artists Lucio Ravena Moseics Cezanne and two, complicated rhythmic composition which he calls symphonic and which is the characteristic medium of oriental art and of Kandinsky himself End of Part 7