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69 xxxii The Thyrsus for Franz Liszt What is a thyrsus? By its moral and poetical meaning, it is a sacerdotal emblem in the hand of priests or priestesses celebrating the divinity they interpret and serve. But physically it’s nothing but a stick, a hoppole , a vine-prop—dry, hard, straight. Around this stick, in capricious meanders, stem and blossom frolic and frisk, the former sinuous and shy, the latter bent like a bell or a cup turned over. And an amazing glory gushes forth from this complexity of soft or dazzling lines and colors. Could we not say that the curve and the spiral pay court to the straight line and dance before it in mute admiration? Or claim that all these delicate corollas, all these flower-cups, explosions of scent and color, execute a mystic fandango around the hieratic stick? And what imprudent mortal, after all, will dare decide if the flowers and shoots are made for the stick or if the stick is only a pretext for exhibiting the beauty of shoot and flower? The thyrsus is the representation of your astonishing duality, master strong and venerable, dear Bacchant of mysterious and passionate Beauty. No nymph provoked by invincible Bacchus ever shook thyrsus over her maddened cohorts with more energy and caprice than your genius stirs in the hearts of your brothers .—The stick is your will, direct, firm, steadfast; the flowers, they are your fancy’s ramble about your will; the feminine element’s prestigious pirouettes around the male. Straight line and arabesque, intention and expression, firmness of will, sinuosity of word, unity of aim, variety of means, all-powerful and indivisible amalgam of genius, what analyst will have the vile temerity to divide or separate you? Dear Liszt, past the mists, beyond the rivers, above towns where pianos sing your glory, where the presses translate your wisdom, wherever you are, in the splendor of the eternal city or in the fogs of 70 the dreamy lands Cambrinus9 consoles, improvising songs of delectation or ineffable sadness, or confiding to the page your abstruse meditations , cantor of eternal Voluptuousness and Anguish, philosopher, poet, artist, I salute you in your immortality. 9. Supposed inventor of beer. ...

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