Svengali

“ He had bold, brilliant black eyes, with long, heavy lids, a thin, sallow face, and a beard of burnt-up black which grew almost from his under eyelids; and over it his mustache, a shade lighter, fell in two long spiral twists. He went by the name of Svengali, and spoke fluent French with a German accent, and humorous German twists and idioms, and his voice was very thin and mean and harsh, and often broke into a disagreeable falsetto. ”

“ I thought I could teach a woman how to sing till I heard that blackguard Svengali's pupil. He has married her, they say!"
A HUMAN NIGHTINGALE
"That blackguard Svengali!" exclaimed Little Billee ... "why, that must be a Svengali I knew in Paris—a famous pianist! a friend of mine!"
"That's the man! also une fameuse crapule (sauf vot' respect) ; his real name is Adler; his mother was a Polish singer; and he was a pupil at the Leipsic Conservatorio. But he's an immense artist, and a great singing-master, to teach a woman like that! and such a woman! belle comme un ange—mais bête comme un pot. ”

“ He poured them all into his little flexible flageolet.
Svengali playing Chopin on the piano-forte, even (or especially) Svengali playing "Ben Bolt" on that penny whistle of his, was as one of the heavenly host.
"AS BAD AS THEY MAKE 'EM"
Svengali walking up and down the earth seeking whom he might cheat, betray, exploit, borrow money from, make brutal fun of, bully if he dared, cringe to if he must—man, woman, child, or dog—was about as bad as they make 'em. ”

“ Trilby, no longer under the hypnotic influence of Svengali, sings horribly out of tune; the audience are supposed to rise in their wrath and threaten to wreck the house (rather a strong order this, but, as I have hinted, what no other dramatist dares Potter dares) ; and then the miserable Svengali, after writhing and twisting in his last agony, and "doing a back-fall" across a table with his head downwards towards the foot-lights, his breath shaken out of his body, his hair out of curl, his eyes staring horribly, dies,—a terrible topsy-turvy death never before seen on any stage. ”

“ Cloud omnibus; and he admired how they added hypocrisy to their other crimes!
Svengali had gone back to Germany, it seemed, with his pockets full of napoleons and big Havana cigars, and wrapped in an immense fur-lined coat, which he meant to wear all through the summer. But little Gecko often came with his violin and made lovely music, and that seemed to do Little Billee more good than anything else.
It made him realize in his brain all the love he could no longer feel in his heart. ”

“ If so, it was a capital piece of impromptu tit-for-tat admirably acted, and a very ugly gleam yellowed the tawny black of Svengali's big eyes. He was so fond of making fun of others that he particularly resented being made fun of himself—couldn't endure that any one should ever have the laugh of him.
At length Little Billee said: "Thank you so much. It is a capital song."
"Yes," said Miss O'Ferrall. "It's the only song I know, unfortunately. My father used to sing it, just like that, when he felt jolly after hot rum and water. It used to make people cry; he used to cry over it himself. ”

“ Paul Potter's undeniably clever end most effective play. But surely Svengali's diabolically jealous hatred of "Little Billee," his successful rival in the affections of Trilby (when unhypnotised) would be sufficient, motive for the brutal insult he inflicts on Miss O'Ferrall's faithful, but insignificant, little lover, and for which, at the hands of the strong man, Taffy, the fiend-like Svengali has to pay with his life. ”

“ This last passage, I think, suggests that Mr. du Maurier would have produced a much less charming story, indeed, but a vastly more artistic one, had he directed his readers' attention rather upon the tragedy of Svengali than upon the tragedy of Trilby. For Svengali's position as complete master of a woman's will and yet unable to call forth more than a factitious love—"just his own love for himself turned inside out and reflected back on him as from a mirror"—is a really tragic one, and a fine variation on the old Frankenstein motif. ”

“ Once I actually walked in my sleep—and woke up in the market-place at Prague—and found an immense crowd, and poor Svengali bleeding from the forehead, in a faint on the ground. He'd been knocked down by a horse and cart, he told me. He'd got his guitar with him. I suppose he and Gecko had been playing somewhere, for Gecko had his fiddle. If Gecko hadn't been there, I don't know what we should have done. You never saw such queer people as they were—such crowds—you'd think they'd never seen an Englishwoman before. ”

“ Svengali has also fallen by the wayside, a number of characters have been very happily forgotten, so the story drags along to the close on three not very attractive legs, Taffy, the Laird and Gecko. It is a bad drama worse staged, with an ignorant bawd for heroine, a weak little thing for leading man, an impossible Caliban for heavy villain and Atheism for moral. ”

“ Svengali's other friend and pupil was (or rather had been) the mysterious Honorine, of whose conquest he was much given to boast, hinting that she was "une jeune femme du monde." This was not the case. Mademoiselle Honorine Cahen (better known in the quartier latin as Mimi la Salope) was a dirty, drabby little dolly-mop of a Jewess, a model for the figure—a very humble person indeed, socially. ”

“ It isn't Trilby, the hypnotised subject, but Svengali, the fearful "object," the dirty demoniac hypnotiser, on whom all eyes are fixed, and in whom the interest is centred. He is Shylock and Fagin, Mephistophelesized; he is as loathsome as Hyde without Jekyl; he is the Spirit of Evil in the story of the Devil's Violin; he is the haunting, cringing fiend in the Shadowless Man; he is, in fact, the very Deuce himself.
"O don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt," is the "old song" which, at first, Miss Trilby O'Ferrall "cannot sing," but which, when hypnotised by Satanical Svengali, she does sing ”

“ He will be all alone on a platform, and play as nobody else can play; and hundreds of beautiful Engländerinnen will see and hear and go mad with love for him—Prinzessen, Comtessen, Serene English Altessen. They will soon lose their Serenity and their Highness when they hear Svengali! They will invite him to their palaces, and pay him a thousand francs to play for them ”

“ Trilby croaking "Ben Bolt" for the edification of les trois Angliches were a sight worthy of a lunatic asylum. It was even more ridiculous than the social performance of that other half-wit, Little Billee, in Carrel's atelier. Stupidity covers even more sins than charity, hence we should not judge Du Maurier's heroine too harshly. As weak intellects yield readily to hypnotic power, Svengali had an easy victim. I have no word of criticism for the poor creature. ”

“ Bagot was a small person from a small village in Devonshire, and one whose heart and eye had hitherto been filled by no larger image than that of Little Billee; and Little Billee's fame, as she now discovered for the first time, did not quite fill the entire universe.
And she mustn't be too much blamed if all these obvious signs of a world-wide colossal celebrity impressed and even awed her a little.
Madame Svengali! Why, this was the beautiful girl whom she remembered so well, whom she had so grandly discarded with a word, and who had accepted her congé so meekly in a minute ”

“ And then, his voice quivering with strong emotion, he stood up and said, "Madame Svengali's trials and sufferings are all over!"
"Oh, good God! is she dead?" cried Mrs. Bagot.
"Yes, Mrs. Bagot. She has been dead several minutes—perhaps a quarter of an hour."
VINGT ANS APRÈS
PORTHOS-ATHOS, alias Taffy Wynne, is sitting to breakfast (opposite his wife) at a little table in the court-yard of that huge caravanserai on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris, where he had sat more than twenty years ago with the Laird and Little Billee; where, in fact, he had pulled Svengali's nose. ”

“ From whencesoever the inspiration of them came, inspiration it was and no invention. He is content with that knowledge; and if it please the hearer to call it diabolic, diabolic it shall be. If he has a devil, he will make the most and the best of him. If these things come from hell, let us look to it and hold them fast, that we may see what it is that divides hell from heaven.
"As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is the Angel sitting at the tomb : his writings are the linen clothes folded up. ”

“ In preparation for his holy office every year Svejnoha ascended to the garret, where he opened a mysterious chest, out of which he brought forth St. Nicholas’s toilet. The chief of these was a golden cap, high and magnificent, such as could only be conceived and executed by some bold inventive genius. The front of it was decorated with a silver cross, and the back had long streamers that hung gracefully over gray locks and beard that would easily reach to a man’s knees. Thus attired, Svejnoha was a saint, a saint who scattered smiles, happiness and joy. ”

“ Large numbers are truly described by Swedenborg, who found hells whose occupants believed themselves in heaven and sang praises therefor. Such praises we may hear in the loud laughter proceeding from dens where paradise has been gained by the cheap charm of a glass of gin or a prostitute’s caress. ”

“ You don't need any other, do you? I know most of the boys on your mobile junkyard. They trust me, so they'll trust you. You have my word that Cerobie will go for the idea."
"You talk to Cerobie and let me know what happens. Meanwhile, I'll think over your suggestions."
The ship-calling light blinked off and Swenson went back to coding the speech insert.
As he was finishing, O'Toole came in.
Swenson looked up. "O'Toole, sure and it's one hell of a job you're doing. You've got me in a fight with myself. My Swedish half wants to ignore you and my Irish half wants to punch you in the nose. ”

“ Swedenborg’s ‘Christian Religion’ is a system of theology, calm and orderly throughout, illustrated with plates—the Memorable Relations. I interpret these marvellous narratives much as Swedenborg does the Mosaic record. I do not question their historic truth, for Swedenborg. Such things he saw and heard; for to such a mind all abstraction takes substantial form. His mental transitions are journeys. Every proposition has its appropriate scenery; every group of verities incorporates itself in a drama, and becomes a speech and action. ”

“ Swedenborg had to have a revelation from heaven to enable him to catch a glimpse of his malady which he ought to have known by intuition. His nature was all the time complaining, and what an expression that is when men speak of their "complaints," when by pains, which are warnings, nature is reporting her grievances at head-quarters. But the heavens were opened and Swedenborg went into ecstasy over the kindness of the angel whose message to him was a warning not to eat so much. ”

“ Swanhilda also was beautiful; although nature had formed her charms on a very different model from those of Brunhilda. Her golden locks waved bright as the beams of morn: only when excited by some emotion of her soul did a rosy hue tinge the lily paleness of her cheek: her limbs were proportioned in the nicest symmetry, yet did they not possess that luxuriant fullness of animal life: her eye beamed eloquently, but it was with the milder radiance of a star tranquillizing to tenderness rather than exciting to warmth. ”

“ These grand rhymes or returns in nature,- the dear, best-known face startling us at every turn, under a mask so unexpected that we think it the face of a stranger, and carrying up the semblance into divine forms,- delighted the prophetic eye of Swedenborg; and he must be reckoned a leader in that revolution, which, by giving to science an idea, has given to an aimless accumulation of experiments, guidance and form and a beating heart. ”

“ From what has now been said, we trust that Swedenborg's meaning, when he says that heaven is in the human form, will be sufficiently plain. And although the heavenly societies are innumerable, and all different from each other, yet there exists the most perfect union among them—a union corresponding to, and beautifully symbolized by, that among the different organs of the human body. ”

“ Once upon a time there was a king in Sweden, and his son Sweno sailed on the sea. Upon a certain day Sweno took ship; he had many men on board and red gold too, in heaps. His stepmother was a wise woman, and she bade him beware of Paraff (Cape Wrath) , of Pol-dhu, and of Pol-darrachgawn.
He sailed and he sailed, till he anchored in Porst-an-Stuvanaig (Port of Sweno) as it is now called; but he did not know what land he had made. The men of the place armed themselves, and blackened their faces with soot from their pots. ”

“ Whether this be the root or not, Svein is in the North a strong youth, generally a servant, but in the form of Svend becoming the favourite name of the kings of Denmark, belonging to him whom Ethelred’s treachery brought down on England, where it was called Swayn, and translated into Latin as Sueno, while Tasso calls the crusading Swend, Sveno. Svinbjorn occurs in Iceland, and is our Swinburn. Svenke, again, is the active or slender youth. It is amusing to see how, from a strong man, the swain became a young man, then a bachelor, then a lover, and, finally, a shepherd. ”

“ The history of hierarchies seems to show, that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid, and, at last, nothing but an excess of the organ of language.
Swedenborg, of all men in the recent ages, stands eminently for the translator of nature into thought. I do not know the man in history to whom things stood so uniformly for words. Before him the metamorphosis continually plays. Everything on which his eye rests, obeys the impulses of moral nature. The figs become grapes whilst he eats them. ”