Tower of Ivory: A Novel

John Ordham had been in Munich several months before he met Margarethe Styr. Like all the young men, native and foreign, he chose to fancy himself in love with her, and although both too dignified and too shy to applaud with the vehemence of the Germ ... Read more

John Ordham had been in Munich several months before he met Margarethe Styr. Like all the young men, native and foreign, he chose to fancy himself in love with her, and although both too dignified and too shy to applaud with the vehemence of the Germans, he never failed to attend a performance at the “Hof” when the greatest hochdramatische the new music had developed sang Iseult or Brynhildr. He was not sure that he wanted to meet her, for in a languid and somewhat affected manner he persuaded himself that she existed on the stage alone, and that did he even permit his imagination to picture her in private life it must be as a commonplace American woman of German extraction who drank enormously of beer and ate grossly, like the people in the restaurants. And as at that time he cultivated the sensuous rather than the stronger elements of his nature, he avoided what might have attenuated one of the most exquisite of his pleasures. It was true that in the second and last acts of Götterdämmerung her tragedy was so stupendous, her grief so poignant, her despair so fathomless, that he turned cold to his marrow, and felt as if the sufferings of all humanity were drowning him. But vicarious woe has all the voluptuousness and none of the hell of Life’s cruelties at first hand. Less