The Poetry of C-Murder

Over the years I have listened to the music of No Limit Records and struggled to understand what lies at the heart of it, at the heart of the thoughtless violence, the anger, the cruel irony, the effortless creation, and the triumphant joy blended together into something both banal and mystical, and endlessly replicated to the delight of millions. Paradoxes, puzzles, dark currents beneath everyday life, much can be revealed when we cast a curious eye towards a place we may be too proud or too afraid to look. C-Murder is sometimes mocked as a thoughtless goon who has contributed nothing but violence to this world, but anyone who knows him through his music will recognize that he has given us something more, poetry that can be discussed rather than simply covered over in disgust. If indeed C is a killer, he is fairly unique among murderers in that he publicly declared his willingness to kill, was celebrated for that willingness, and then ultimately lived by his words. C-Murder was brought into the rap game by his brother, Master P, an almost otherworldly figure who, armed with limited skill but boundless enthusiasm, started No Limit records by selling tapes out of the trunk of his car and built it into a hundred million dollar business. The twin fates of these two brothers, linked by the simplistic vulgarity of their early lyrics but forever separated by their destinies, deserves its own analysis. To know the full story of the early years of these two and how they both came to be who they are would truly be priceless. C only made a few guest appearances on the early No Limit material, but two verses in particular should serve to show that murderous thoughts were always a feature of his style. Later we can examine how his poetry went beyond mere violence to encompass deeper themes. On Sonya C's track "I Aint to be Fucked With", C has the third verse.

"....Check ya nuts, and get your ass a gat G

Cause if I die, im taking niggaz with me

I was born to kill, thats what my people say

Never thought Id ever live to see another day...."

"....When I kill, I feel so uplifted

Cause when it comes to killin I'm so gifted

So keep fuckin with me boy is what I'm hoping

You’ll be bleedin on the ground with your eyes open

I know you wish they had life after death nigga

You shoulda known that I was quick to squeeze the trigga

I grab my gun and put my hands on my fuckin dick

And let you niggaz know I ain’t to be fucked with"

These are two telling stanzas. The theme of a remorseless unwillingness to swallow disrespect is clearly established. Of course, though this may sound horrific, it is not too far removed from any other gangsta rap verse. On Master P's track "Just an Everyday Thang" (also a fascinating example of the different destinies of the two brothers put in rap form), C, in the first verse, tells a story about taking revenge after getting shot. The story ends with:

"Rat tat tat tat tat tat then we bailed out

Got away clean smoking blunts in the house

I cant trip cause ya reap what ya sow man

Cause murder is an every day thang"

Here the violence is tempered by a jarring biblical reference that represents the other aspect of C's lyrics: A coldly reflective philosophical engagement with his way of life

It seems like C-Murder is a rare example of a rapper who both preaches and lives by the "thug life" code that requires its disciples to bow to no man and meet threats with lethal force. Rappers who live in this way, who interweave their lyrics and their life to create a strange sort of art, are in grave danger. Soulja Slim, a No Limit gangster-turned-rapper much like C, was murdered in New Orleans. Mac, another No Limit artist, is in prison for life. Tupac is perhaps the best comparison to make. The first and most famous preacher of the “thug life”, Tupac shot at police, was given a harsh sentence in a controversial court case, and was ultimately murdered. C based much of his music and philosophy on that of Tupac. Many phrases coined by Shakur were taken up by C and his brother Master P. All their talk of “thug niggaz”, “feel my pain”, “heaven for a gangster”, “only god can judge me” , “soldiers” etc came from the gospel of Tupac. Love for the struggles of the ghetto, paranoia, pain and anger from being trapped in a life of violent crime, praise for comrades and threats of death for enemies and fake individuals, all of this can be seen as somewhat derivative. It is understandable that the Miller brothers, as aspiring rappers, looked up to Tupac. They both paid tribute in their own way after his death, Master P with the West Coast Bad Boys vol. 2 album track “RIP Tupac” and C by covering the Tupac song “When we Ride on our Enemies” on his 1999 album “Bossalinie”. Ultimately, both Miller brothers did not just imitate Tupac, but became two of his most vital interpreters. Tupac was a powerful artist because he lived his art. His music was more than mere entertainment because it captured his existential struggle, his search for a meaningful code to live by in this amoral modern age. He professed to find honor and freedom in violent recklessness, stating “a coward dies a thousand deaths, a soldier dies but once”. Tupac’s honesty and his willingness to die for what he believed in has made him a hero to many. Perhaps C-Murder approached life and music in a similar way.

Tupac’s influence is less apparent on C-Murder’s early work with No Limit. C carved out a place of his own through his storytelling, gangster lyrics and a voice that can be simultaneously ironic and haunting. On “Christmas in the Ghetto” from the West Coast Bad Boys 1994 album “High for Xmas", C tells a story about an unfortunate encounter he has with an undercover cop while selling crack during the holiday season.

Christmas in the ghetto just aint worth jack,

Tell santa claus he better watch his back
I guess I get the same damn thing I got last year,
Sittin in a burnt out buildin drinking beer
I dont have a job, no food, no fun
But I got the dope, 3 keys and a gun
So I tell the fiends, to me on the block
Open up shop, and start sellin rocks.
Im making big dollars off these god damn fools
If they wanna jack, then the money’s in my shoes
Now here comes a dope fiend begging for a hit
Saying can I please get a 50 dollar fix
He showed me the money, so I went for my stash
Got the dope fiend a big 50 dollar bag
The man said freeze and my mouth just dropped
The stupid dumb fool was an undercover cop.
Yea I was mad, but I didnt want to run
Staring me in the face was a big black gun.
Now its christmas eve and I’m locked behind bars
Sitting in a cell looking up at the stars
Reminiscing about my kids with tears in my eyes
Thinking to myself, I just want to die
Living in a house with no food, no heat
It may be cold but hell is the street.
Cause the place I’m from santa don’t leave gifts
In my house santa only shoplifts
Holidays in the hood aint no god damn joke
When people all around you is starving and broke
Cause if you black and poor, its hell
You only hear gunshots, you never hear bells
So if you got a way out then go
Cause it aint no fun when its christmas in the ghetto

In this short verse, there are many themes that will recur in C’s work. He is describing a grim ghetto situation, how a happy holiday is reduced by poverty into the same base struggle for existence that occurs every other day. But he is describing this bleak situation with a sort of upbeat flow, grim humor, and rhyming couplets that transform the tragic scene into a sort of nursery rhyme or simple song that dulls and overcomes the pain of the situation. There is also an eerie kind of lyrical premonition that we will encounter in many of his works, a prediction or a strange act of the self defining future possibilities, similar to the prophecies in the art of Tupac. Events in the story move along briskly from line to line. C mocks Santa Claus, and recounts his sorry state of “no food no fun”. But things instantly take a turn for the better in the next line, in which C states “but I got the dope, three keys and a gun.” With these tools, C moves into action, “setting up shop”, even stashing his money in his shoes, taking all possible precautions to protect his wealth. Then, a dope fiend comes up, powerless, in demand of the product that C controls. C-Murder gleefully goes to his stash and measures out a large bag. In this moment he is the master of the situation and of the fiend who begs for a hit. In classic C-Murder storytelling style, the situation instantly switches. The fiend is an undercover cop. C finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun, and then, soon after, in jail. He reflects on life both inside and outside prison, and counsels “if you got a way out then go”. No Limit records is constantly advocating “trying to make it out the ghetto” (see Mr Serv On's song with this title), and C-Murder’s lyrics often speak on this struggle. The “ghetto” comes to represent the cycle of poverty, crime, murder, and hopelessness. Some use violence and crime to escape from violence, crime and poverty, and so become trapped. ‘The ghetto’ comes to describe a near impossible situation which inhabitants try desperately to escape, only to end up sinking deeper into sin and danger. In the song “The Ghetto is a Trap”, from TRU’s second album, C Murder tells a similar story, but of even more epic proportions. His is the second verse:

Nigga as you know I’m C-Murda
kicking the funky shit that you never even hearda
I’m talking 'bout, the motherfucking ghetto
Where many punk bitches, get killed ho
but I don’t give a fuck about that G
cause I’m rolling with a sick ass posse
I met a kingpin, said he want to kick it
I didn't know he was the mother fucking police.
I said fuck, and kicked him in his knees,
and got away across the street in some trees.
I started laughing saying, "Damn, he done slacked up,"
little did I know the 5-0 done had backup.
All I heard was “freeze!”,
with three bullets to my back I fell to my knees.
I started screaming and crying,
everything getting black, yo, I’m dying.
All I could remember,
thought I’d always catch a bullet, from a gang member.
Then the ambulance came, paramedics asking me my motherfucking name.
Damn I almost choked,
with six fuckin' doctors sticking tubes down my throat.
But through all that I made it.
Why I wanna live man? I think I’m crazy.
Now I’m going to the pen. But I don’t give a fuck cause I’ll be out in 10.
All that shit, cause I'm tired of eating scraps.
The ghetto is a trap.

The two stories that C tells on these early No Limit tracks are very similar. The flow is slower on this track, but with the same simple rhymes. Once again, C starts out his rap with a joke. Some rappers come onto a track spitting angry flames, others try to show off all lyrical, but C begins the second verse with “nigga as you know I'm Cmurda/kicking the funky shit that you never even hearda”. The simplicity of his lyrics creates an interesting structure for his story. He feels above the dangers of the ghetto because he is “rolling with a sick ass posse”. He meets a kingpin who wants to “kick it”. In most rap songs this would signify entry into the upper echelon of the drug world, a quick road to power and riches. In a C-Murder song though, things take a different turn. Just like in “Christmas in the Ghetto”, the situation is not as it appears. The kingpin, who appears to hold the key that opens the door to riches and success, is an undercover cop ready to lock C up. The situation switches in a single line, with little emotion in C’s voice. He simply reacts. In a slapstick moment that is easily visualizable, he kicks the undercover officer in the knees and runs away. Once again the situation has shifted, and C-Murder laughs at the officer’s incompetence. In one rhyme, laughter and tears are joined. “I started laughing saying damn he done slacked up/ little did I know the 5-0 done had back up.” C Murder is a great storyteller because he captures the simple unpredictability of life, and because of the tone in which he reacts to this unpredictability. In the same way in which he rhymed ‘C Murder’ and “hearda”, he describes being shot by the police. “I started screaming and crying/everything getting black, yo, I'm dying”, is a brutally simple description of impending death. His last thought is that he always suspected he would die at the hands of a gang member’s bullet. But he is revived by paramedics. His thoughts at being resurrected? “damn I almost choked/ with six fucking doctors sticking tubes down my throat/ but through all of that I made it/ why I wanna live man? I think I'm crazy”. In these rhymes C describes the futility of existence. It is all senseless circular struggle; he is shot by the cops only to be revived by the doctors. He is sent to prison, but does not “give a fuck cause I’ll be out in ten”. Over the course of this verse, C triumphs over cruel and fickle fortune by assuming an unshakably stoical attitude. Unlike Tupac, C provides little in the way of social or political commentary, and expresses little emotion. C tells his stories in an almost mocking way, ripping away layers of illusion and intricacy to lay bare the banal senselessness of life. Where Tupac preaches hope, C teaches resolve. These early stories contain little talk of “thug life”. They are more reflections on the inescapable machinations of fate. C understood man’s fundamental helplessness and faced it fearlessly in his lyrics. This should pave the way to an understanding of his later period when he took up and interpreted Shakur’s philosophy.

C had a few other appearances on early No Limit material, but was mostly absent in 1996 when No Limit was on the rise, unfortunately not making an appearance on Master P's classic album of that year, “Ice Cream Man”. Regardless, in 1997 he was back with a new, more passionate voice and delivery that seems to have been influenced by Tupac’s oratorical style. In 1998, at the height of No Limit’s popularity, he was finally able to release a solo album. The album title, “Life or Death”, recalls themes from his early stories, in which he pondered the swift and merciless workings of fate, the way things can switch in an instant. One can be alive and about to become rich, and the next moment bleeding from bullets to the back. But “Life or Death” also brings to mind a choice, an existential decision that must be made every moment yet is out of our control.  Yet it is impossible to think in terms of life “or” death. Life must necessarily end in death. C’s opposition of these two concepts in his album title can be troubling. He speaks about a choice that is not a choice, something difficult and seemingly contradictory. Throughout the album, C returns again and again to this essential theme, to a consideration of death and how it shapes our lives. Like Heidegger in Being and Time, C considers Being-towards-death, how death is our ownmost possibility and must be at the forefront of our thoughts when we consider what life is and how to live. On some tracks C plays the role of the death dealer, while on others he describes the fear and angst that plague us all in our daily quest to escape obliteration and nothingness. Thoughts of death are never more than a line away. They seem to seep into even the most banal reflections, coloring them with a grave and serious aspect. For example, on the song “On the Run”, C begins his verse with emphatic boasting that quickly turns to serious consideration of life and death.

“There aint no limit to the motherfucking bitches we fuck,

My tank niggaz bout to make, the world blow up,

We get rowdy in the club, so show me some love,

It’s been two years, since I've possessed some drugs,

Nigga hard times, is a thing of the past,

Give me two keys and I’ll give you back cash

I’mma hustle till I’m dead,

ball till I fall,

I won’t rest till they put,

My name on the wall”

Reflections on sexual conquests and the success of No Limit inevitably lead to a consideration of how to live until death. C reflects on the life that he lives, and then affirms it three separate times. While Soulja Slim, also featured on the track, chooses to describe being literally ‘on the run’ from the law, C takes a different, more subtle approach. He considers man’s flight in the face of existence, the constant running away and avoidance of the reality of inevitable death, and then confronts it in a Nietzschean manner, with joyous affirmation. C has moved away from the grim stoicism of his earlier work. It seems like he has found freedom and happiness in the choices available to him. The ghetto may be a trap, impossible to escape even when one becomes wealthy (see “Ghetto Ties” later in the album), but when one has recognized the trap and the impossibility of escape one can finally begin living and considering real possibilities.

C’s matured philosophy is best expressed in the song “Feel my Pain”. The second verse is particularly instructive.

"Nobody knows when your time gon’ come,
I live life to the fullest, TRU niggaz don't run.
Anticipating your death, make you soft and sick,
I leave my worries at home, when I'm hanging with my click.
I reminisce about all my niggaz thats dead.
A lesson was learned when they put you in the grave.
It don't matter what you got when a nigga wanna get ya,
Cause if a nigga wanna hit ya, a nigga gone hit ya.
Bulletproof with Ak's and 100 round drums,
Can't stop one bullet penetrating your dome.
That's why I value nothing, but family and friends,
You lose material shit, you can get it again.
But ain't no coming back, when you meet the Reaper
I done lost too many thugs to the permanent sleeper
Cause everyday a nigga taking a chance,
Only thug niggaz feel my pain.
Feel my pain"

This is about as directly philosophical as C is willing to get, but this one small verse can be written on endlessly. In the manner of all great thinkers, C attempts to grasp truths about reality, and then to shape his beliefs around these truths. He observes that no one is able to predict the time of their death, that even with the greatest precautions and offensive firepower, even the strongest man is at the mercy of one small bullet from an enemy’s gun. Interestingly, he contradicts many religious traditions that emphasize recognition of and meditation on our mortality by stating that "anticipating your death makes you soft and sick". There is no coming back from death, and every day we all must take chances. From these simple truths, C concludes that one must live life to the fullest, not run from what is inevitable, and that one should place value on what is truly precious and irreplaceable; the unique human existences that surround him. His earlier stories seemed to laugh at the pointlessness of existence. Here he considers the other side of the paradox; existence is priceless, it is wealth beyond wealth. Yet in an instant it is all dust. Such a thing can drive us poor thinkers mad. We can fill up libraries reflecting upon it, but perhaps this is not what a TRU individual should do....

I have presented only four examples of what is an extensive body of work, but I believe that some things have become clear. In his own way, C is a poet and a thinker who attempts to live according to what he believes is the truth about the world. Of course much of what C says can be called offensive, foul, and reprehensible. Any discourse that deviates from the droning voice of reason can be dismissed in this manner without even being understood. As we speak, C is locked in the prison that he often imagined he would inhabit in his rhymes. One of his premonitions has come to pass, just as Tupac made many references to his impending death. Surely C cannot be as dispassionate as he seems in his music, and surely jail has placed a great strain upon his spirit. But perhaps C will face this burden with the same stoical resolve that he constantly expressed in his lyrics, continuing to live by the troubling code that he defined for himself and saw through to its destined end.

 There is something triumphant about the best No Limit music. It can be trite and cheap sounding, yet honest and life affirming. At its core is a dark union of tragedy and comedy, for they turn death and destruction into entertainment and profit effortlessly, in the strangest kind of alchemy. Their success and our enjoyment of their work speaks to hidden aspects of our world and psyches that we never acknowledge. Perhaps we are not as peaceful as we seem, perhaps we cannot help but admire those who are willing to live and die and create and destroy without hiding. Or perhaps the message No Limit records transmits is at heart not one of violence but one of transfiguration, of taking pain and suffering and transforming it into a twisted comedy, embracing the dirtiest and most dangerous aspects of life without gloved hands and upturned noses, being willing to live fully in the environment they find themselves in, understanding the rules of the game and making music that expresses the codes they live by, being a "TRU playa". Maybe those of us who despise violence and strive to live peacefully are merely weak and have no stomach for reality. We wish to put down our words and weapons and be humble and gentle with each other, seeking harmony and understanding. But we cannot truly hold up these dreams as real and righteous until we really understand what is at work in the music of No Limit, and I doubt that we ever will. The violent aspect of our spirit seems to be a near insurmountable problem for the peaceful to understand or ever overcome. "A coward dies a thousand deaths, a soldier dies but once." Every time we submit, every time we swallow insult, do we die a small death of the soul? Many spirits can be healed with love and faith, but what answer do the good have for the proud man who wishes only to face life with a grim smile, refusing to bow, refusing to hide? Too many of us believe in the annihilation of the spirit after death to completely refute this cold ethic. If we all end in the same nothingness, the path that we choose to take through this world of confusion, in which we have but one chance to define ourselves, can be based on whatever strange ideals we decide or are compelled to cherish, and is ultimately meaningless anyway. As the chorus of an early Master P song says: "Anything goes/life's a trip/but that's how the game goes."

Of course, the music of No Limit is only one example of violent art that glorifies violent people. We love to watch the strong as they force the world to bend to their will. I am not sure how the world can be healed while this love of power remains so deeply embedded in our hearts. But any healing must begin with understanding. C-Murder cannot be the worst of men, because he spoke what was in his heart, no matter how ugly or shameful. Maybe the truly evil hide their darkness from the world, hide behind a false mask of goodness so they are more free to manipulate those around them. Rap music dares to express some often buried truths of the spirit. Emotions and ways of thinking that were once hidden at all costs, then unleashed in secret or on the powerless, are brought to light in rap songs, and perhaps thus made less monstrous. By speaking what is in our minds, by attempting to really communicate with each other, even when the words may reveal something frightening or ugly, we contribute to understanding. Maybe with understanding can come peace. We are very far from working out any of this. Perhaps their is no solution at all. The strong care nothing for reasoned arguments for meek goodness. No words have the power to stop them from gobbling down as many delicacies as they can from the table of life during their allotted time. They don’t care to understand those of us who seek to understand. Understanding could be a symptom of a weak spirit that has already been pushed away from the banquet table and seeks to know why it is hungry.

But is understanding really seeking to understand? Or is it seeking to take a topic, dance around with it, and so demonstrate its own weak strength? Did C-Murder really create his art to express himself, or did he simply give the world what it demanded in order to make money? And why does the world want to listen to young black men speak about killing and crime? How much real suffering is covered over by catchy beats, rhymes, jokes, and our smiling, nodding, winking, cynical enjoyment? We misunderstand Corey Miller, we misunderstand his art, we mistakenly create something that seems to understand but misunderstands, and then we are misunderstood. What lies at the heart? Lies at the heart. So all of this is wrong, but to hide it away would just add to the constant pretension maintained by the world and everyone in it that everything is on its way towards making sense.

"Don't You Worry Child"

Excerpt from "Neils Lyhne" by Jens Peter Jacobsen

About a month after Niels's twelfth birthday, two new faces appeared at Lönborggaard. One was that of the new tutor; the other was that of Edele Lyhne.

The tutor, Mr. Bigum, was a candidate for orders and was at the threshold of the forties. He was rather small, but with a stocky strength like that of a work-horse, broad-chested, high-shouldered, and slightly stooping. He walked with a heavy, slow, deliberate tread, and moved his arms in a vague, expressionless way that seemed to require a great deal of room. His high, wide forehead was flat as a wall, with two perpendicular lines between the eyebrows; the nose was short and blunt, the mouth large with thick, fresh lips. His eyes were his best feature, light in color, mild, and clear. The movements of his eyeballs showed that he was slightly deaf. Nevertheless, he loved music and played his violin with passionate devotion; for the notes, he said, were not heard only with the ears, but with the whole body, eyes, fingers, and feet; if the ear failed sometimes, the hand would find the right note without its aid, by a strange, intuitive genius of its own. Besides, the audible tones were, after all, false, but he who possessed the divine gift of music carried within him an invisible instrument compared to which the most wonderful Cremona was like the stringed calabash of the savage. On this instrument the soul played; its strings gave forth ideal notes, and upon it the great tone poets had composed their immortal works.

The external music, which was borne on the air of reality and heard with the ears, was nothing but a wretched simulation, a stammering attempt to say the unutterable. It resembled the music of the soul as the statue modeled by hands, carved with a chisel, and meted with a measure resembled the wondrous marble dream of the sculptor which no eye ever beheld and no lip ever praised.

Music, however, was by no means Mr. Bigum's chief interest. He was first of all a philosopher, but not one of the productive philosophers who find new laws and build new systems. He laughed at their systems, the snail-shells in which they dragged themselves across the illimitable field of thought, fondly imagining that the field was within the snail-shell! And these laws--laws of thought, laws of nature! Why, the discovery of a law meant nothing but the fixing of your own limitations: I can see so far and no farther--as if there were not another horizon beyond the first, and another and yet another, horizon beyond horizon, law beyond law, in an unending vista! No, he was not that kind of philosopher. He did not think he was vain, or that he overvalued himself, but he could not close his eyes to the fact that his intellect had a wider span than that of other mortals. When he meditated upon the works of the great thinkers, it seemed to him that he strode forward through a region peopled by slumbering thought-giants, who awoke, bathed in the light of his spirit, to consciousness of their own strength. And so it was always; every thought, mood, or sentiment of another person which was vouchsafed the privilege of awakening within him rose up with his sign on its forehead, ennobled, purified, with wings strengthened, endowed with a power and a might that its creator had never dreamed of.

How often had he gazed with an almost humble amazement on the marvelous wealth of his soul and the divine assurance of his spirit! For it would often happen that different days would find him judging the world and the things of the world from entirely divergent points of view, looking at them through hypotheses that were as far apart as night and morning; yet these points of view and hypotheses, which he chose to make his own, never even for one second made him theirs, any more than the god who had taken on the semblance of a bull or a swan becomes a bull or a swan and ceases to be a god.

And no one suspected what dwelt within him--all passed him by unseeing. But he rejoiced in their blindness and felt his contempt for humanity growing. A day would come when the light of his eye would go out, and the magnificent structure of his mind would crumble to its foundations and become as that which had never been, but no work from his hand, no, not a line, would he leave to tell the tale of what had been lost in him. His genius should not be crowned with thorns by the world's mis-judgment, neither should it wear the defiling purple cloak of the world's admiration. He exulted at the thought that generation after generation would be born and die, and the greatest men of all ages would spend years of their life in the attempt to gain what he could have given them if he had chosen to open his hand.

The fact that he lived in such a humble fashion gave him a curious pleasure, simply because there was such a magnificent extravagance in using his mind to teach children, such a wild incongruity in paying for his time with mere daily bread, and such a colossal absurdity in allowing him to earn this bread upon the recommendation of poor, ordinary mortals, who had vouched for him that he knew enough to take upon himself the miserable task of a tutor. And they had given him non in his examination for a degree!

Oh, there was rapture in feeling the brutal stupidity of an existence that cast him aside as poor chaff and valued as golden grain the empty husks, while he knew in his own mind that his lightest thoughts was worth a world!

Yet there were other times when the solitude of his greatness weighed upon him and depressed him.

Ah, how often, when he had communed with himself in sacred silence, hour after hour, and then returned again to consciousness of the audible, visible life round about him, had he not felt himself a stranger to its paltriness and corruptibility. Then he had often been like the monk who listened in the monastery woods to a single trill of the paradise bird and, when he came back, found that a century had died. Ah, if the monk was lonely with the generation that lived among the groves he knew, how much more lonely was the man whose contemporaries had not yet been born.

In such desolate moments he would sometimes be seized with a cowardly longing to sink down to the level of the common herd, to share their lowborn happiness, to become a native of their great earth and a citizen of their little heaven. But soon he would be himself again.

The other newcomer was Edele Lyhne, Lyhne's twenty-six-year-old sister. She had lived many years in Copenhagen, first with her mother, who had moved to the city when she became a widow, and, after her mother's death, in the home of a wealthy uncle, Councillor of State Neergaard. The Neergaards entertained on a large scale and went out a great deal, so Edele lived in a whirl of balls and festivities.

She was admired wherever she went, and envy, the faithful shadow of admiration, also followed her. She was talked about as much as one can be without having done anything scandalous, and whenever men discussed the three reigning beauties of the town there were always many voices in favor of striking out one name and substituting that of Edele Lyhne, but they could never agree on which of two others should yield to her--as for the third, it was out of the question.

Yet very young men did not admire her. They were abashed in her presence, and felt twice as stupid as usual when she listened to them with her look of mild toleration--a maliciously emphasized toleration which crushed them with a sense that she had heard it all before and knew it by heart. They made efforts to shine in her eyes and their own by assuming blase airs, by inventing wild paradoxes, or, when their desperation reached a climax, by making bold declarations; but all these attempts, jostling and crowding one upon the other in the abrupt transitions of youth, were met with the faint shadow of a smile, a deadly smile of boredom, which made the victim redden and feel that he was the one hundred and eleventh fly in the same merciless spider's web………

No matter in how exalted a place a human being may set his throne, no matter how firmly he may press the tiara of the exceptional, that is genius, upon his brow, he can never be sure that he may not, like Nebuchadnezzar, be seized with a sudden desire to go on all-fours and eat grass and herd with the common beasts of the field.

That was what happened to Mr. Bigum when he quite simply fell in love with Miss Edele, and it availed him nothing that he distorted history to find an excuse for his love by calling Edele Beatrice or Laura or Vittoria Colonna, for all the artificial halos with which he tried to crown his love were blown out as fast as he could light them by the stubborn fact that it was Edele's beauty he was in love with; nor was it the graces of her mind and heart that had captivated him, but her elegance, her air of fashion, her easy assurance, even her graceful insolence. It was a kind of love that might well fill him with shamed surprise at the inconsistency of the children of men.

And what did it all matter! Those eternal truths and makeshift lies that were woven ring in ring to form the heavy armor he called his principles, what were they against his love? If they really were the strength and marrow and kernel of life, then let them show their strength; if they were weaker, let them break; if stronger--. But they were already broken, plucked to pieces like the mesh of rotten threads they were. What did she care about eternal truths? And the mighty visions, how did they help him? Thoughts that plumbed the unfathomable, could they win her? All that he possessed was worthless. Even though his soul shone with the radiance of a hundred suns, what did it avail, when his light was hidden under the ugly fustian of a Diogenes' mantle? Oh, for beauty! Take my soul and give me my thirty pieces of silver--Alcibiades' body, Don Juan's mantle, and a court chamberlain's rank!

But, alas, he had none of these graces, and Edele was by no means attracted to his heavy, philosophic nature. His habit of seeing life in barbarously naked abstractions gave him a noisy dogmaticism, an unpleasant positiveness that jarred her like a misplaced drum in a concert of soft music. The strained quality of his mind, which always seemed to knit its muscles and strike an attitude before every little question like a strong man about to play with iron balls, seemed to her ridiculous. He irritated her by his censorious morality, which pounced on every lightly sketched feeling, indiscreetly tearing away its incognito, rudely calling it by name, just as it was about to flit past him in the course of conversation.

Bigum knew very well what an unfavorable impression he made and how hopeless his love was, but he knew it as we know a thing when we hope with all the strength of our soul that our knowledge is false. There is always the miracle left; and though miracles do not happen, they might happen. Who knows? Perhaps our intelligence, our instinct, our senses, in spite of their daylight clearness, are leading us astray. Perhaps the one thing needful is just that unreasoning courage which follows hope's will-o'-the-wisp as it burns over seething passions pregnant with desire! It is only when we have heard the door of destiny slam shut that we begin to feel the iron-cold talons of certainty digging into our breast, gathering slowly, slowly around our heart, and fastening their clutches upon the fine thread of hope on which our world of happiness hangs: then the thread is severed; then all that it held falls and is shattered; then the shriek of despair sounds through the emptiness.

In doubt, no one despairs.

On a sunny afternoon in September, Edele was sitting on the landing of the half-dozen broad, old-fashioned steps that led down from the summer parlor into the garden. Behind her, the French windows were wide open, flung back against the motley wall-covering of bright red and green vines. She leaned her head against a chair piled high with large black portfolios, and held an etching up before her with both hands. Color prints of Byzantine mosaics in blue and gold were scattered on the pale green rush matting that covered the boards of the landing, on the threshold, and on the oak-brown parquet floor of the summer parlor. At the foot of the steps lay a white shade hat; for Edele's hair was uncovered, with no ornament but a flower of gold filigree in a pattern to match the gold bracelet she wore high on her arm. Her white dress was of semi-transparent stuff with narrow silky stripes; it had an edging of twisted orange and black chenille and tiny rosettes in the same two colors. Light silk mitts covered her hands and reached to the elbow. They were pearl gray like her shoes.

The yellow sunlight was filtered through the drooping branches of an ancient ash. It pierced the cool dimness, forming distinct lines of light, powdering the air with gold dust, and painting the steps, the wall, and the doors with spots of light, spot of sun upon spot of sun, like a perforated shade. Through the tracery of shadow, each color rose to meet the light: white from Edele's dress, blood-red from crimson lips, amber from yellow-blonde hair, and a hundred other tints round about, blue and gold, oak-brown, glitter of glass, red and green.

Edele dropped the etching and looked up despondently, her eyes expressing the silent plaint she was too weary to give vent to in a sigh. Then she settled down as if to shut out her surroundings and withdraw within herself.

Just then Mr. Bigum appeared.

Edele looked at him with a drowsy blinking like that of a child who is too sleepy and comfortable to stir, but too curious to shut its eyes.

Mr. Bigum wore his new beaver hat. He was absorbed in his own thoughts, and gesticulated with his tombac watch in his hand, until the thin silver chain threatened to snap. With a sudden, almost vicious movement, he thrust the watch deep down into his pocket, threw back his head impatiently, caught the lapel of his coat in a peevish grasp, and would have gone on with an angry jerk of his whole body, his face darkened by all the hopeless rage that boils in a man when he is running away from his own torturing thoughts, and knows that he runs in vain.

Edele's hat, lying at the foot of the steps and shining white against the black earth of the walk, stopped him in his flight. He picked it up with both hands, then caught sight of Edele, and as he stood trying to think of something to say, he held it instead of giving it to her. Not an idea could he find in his brain; not a word would be born on his tongue, and he looked straight ahead with a stupid expression of arrested profundity.

"It is a hat, Mr. Bigum," said Edele carelessly, to break the embarrassed silence.

"Yes," said the tutor eagerly, delighted to hear her confirm a likeness that had struck him also; but the next moment he blushed at his clumsy answer.

"It was lying here," he added hurriedly, "here on the ground like this--just like this," and he bent down to show where it had lain with an inconsequential minuteness born of his confusion. He felt almost happy in his relief at having given some sign of life, however futile. He was still standing with the hat in his hand.

"Do you intend to keep it?" asked Edele.

Bigum had no answer to that.

"I mean will you give it to me?" she explained.

Bigum came a few steps nearer and handed her the hat. "Miss Lyhne," she said, "you think--you must not think--I beg you to let me speak; that is--I am not saying anything, but be patient with me!--I love you, Miss Lyhne, unutterably, unutterably, beyond all words I love you. Oh, if language held a word that combined the cringing admiration of the slave, the ecstatic smile of the martyr, and the gnawing homesickness of the exile, with that word I could tell you my love. Oh, listen to me, do not thrust me away yet! Do not think that I am insulting you with an insane hope! I know how insignificant I seem in your eyes, how clumsy and repulsive, yes, repulsive. I am not forgetting that I am poor,--you must know it,--so poor that I have to let my mother live in a charitable institution, and I can't help it, can't help it. I am so miserably poor. Yes, Miss Lyhne, I am only a poor servant in your brother's house, and yet there is a world where I am ruler, powerful, proud, rich, with the crown of victory, noble by virtue of the passion that drove Prometheus to steal the fire from the heaven of the gods. There I am brother to all the great in spirit, whom the earth has borne, and who bear the earth. I understand them as none but equals understand one another; no flight that they have flown is too high for the strength of my wings. Do you understand me? Do you believe me? Oh, don't believe me! It isn't true, I am nothing but the Kobold figure you see before you. It is all past; for this terrible madness of love has paralyzed my wings, the eyes of my spirit have lost their sight, my heart is dried up, my soul is drained to bloodless poltroonery. Oh, save me from myself, Miss Lyhne, don't turn away in scorn! Weep over me, weep, it is Rome burning!"

He had fallen to his knees on the steps, wringing his hands. His face was blanched and distorted, his teeth were clinched in agony, his eyes drowned in tears; his whole body shook under the suppressed sobs that were heard only as a gasping for breath.

"Control yourself, Mr. Bigum," she said in a slightly too compassionate tone. "Control yourself, don't give way so, be a man! Please get up and go down into the garden a little while and try to pull yourself together."

"And you can't love me at all!" groaned Mr, Bigum almost inaudibly. "Oh, it's terrible! There is not a thing in my soul that I wouldn't murder and degrade if I could win you thereby. No, no, even if any one offered me madness and I could possess you in my hallucinations, possess you, then I would say: Take my brain, tear down its wonderful structure with rude hands, break all the fine threads that bind my spirit to the resplendent triumphal chariot of the human mind, and let me sink in the mire of the physical, under the wheels of the chariot, and let others follow the shining paths that lead to the light! Do you understand me? Can you comprehend that even if your love came to me robbed of its glory, debased, befouled, as a caricature of love, as a diseased phantom, I would receive it kneeling as if it were the Sacred Host? But the best in me is useless, the worst in me is useless, too. I cry to the sun, but it does not shine; to the statue, but it does not answer--answer! . . . What is there to answer except that I suffer? No, these unutterable torments that rend my whole being down to its deepest roots, this anguish is nothing to you but an impertinence. You feel nothing but a little cold offence; in your heart you laugh scornfully at the poor tutor and his impossible passion."

"You do me an injustice, Mr. Bigum," said Edele, rising, while Mr. Bigum rose too. "I am not laughing. You ask me if there is no hope, and I answer: No, there is no hope. That is surely nothing to laugh at. But there is one thing I want to say to you. From the first moment you began to think of me, you must have known what my answer would be, and you did know it, did you not? You knew it all the time, and yet you have been lashing all your thoughts and desires on toward the goal which you knew you could not reach. I am not offended by your love, Mr. Bigum, but I condemn it. You have done what so many people do: they close their eyes to the realities and stop their ears when life cries 'No' to their wishes. They want to forget the deep chasm fate has placed between them and the object of their ardent longing. They want their dream to be fulfilled. But life takes no account of dreams. There isn't a single obstacle that can be dreamed out of the world, and in the end we lie there crying at the edge of the chasm, which hasn't changed and is just where it always was. But we have changed, for we have let our dreams goad all our thoughts and spur all our longings to the very highest tension. The chasm is no narrower, and everything in us cries out with longing to reach the other side, but no, always no, never anything else. If we had only kept a watch on ourselves in time! But now it is too late, now we are unhappy."

She paused almost as if she woke from a trance. Her voice had been quiet, groping, as if she were speaking to herself, but now it hardened into a cold aloofness.

"I cannot help you, Mr. Bigum. You are nothing to me of what you wish to be. If that makes you unhappy, you must be unhappy; if you suffer, you must suffer-there are always some who have to suffer. If you make a human being your god and the ruler of your fate, you must bow to the will of divinity, but it is never wise to make yourself gods, or to give your soul over to another; for there are gods who will not step down from their pedestals. Be sensible, Mr. Bigum! Your god is so small and so little worth your worship; turn from it and be happy with one of the daughters of the land."

With a faint little smile, she went in through the summer parlor, while Mr. Bigum looked after her, crestfallen. For another fifteen minutes he walked up and down before the steps. All the words that had been spoken seemed to be still vibrating through the air; she had so lately gone, it seemed that her shadow must still linger there; it seemed that she could not yet be out of reach of his prayers, and everything could not be inexorably ended. But after a while the chambermaid came out and gathered up the engravings, carried in the chair, the portfolios, the rush matting--everything.

Then he could go too.

In the open gable window up above, Niels sat gazing after him. He had heard the whole conversation from beginning to end. His face had a frightened look and a nervous trembling passed through his body. For the first time he was afraid of life. For the first time his mind grasped the fact that when life has sentenced you to suffer, the sentence is neither a fancy nor a threat, but you are dragged to the rack, and you are tortured, and there is no marvelous rescue at the last moment, no awakening as from a bad dream.

He felt it as a foreboding which struck him with terror.

Read the book here: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300751h.html