But the idea of Delphi had always touched me very deeply and Bryher and I, back in that winter London of the previous spring — it was a winter London that spring — had talked of the famous sacred way. She herself had visited these places with her father before the 1914 war and I had once said to her, while convalescing from the 1919 illness, “If I could only feel that I could walk the sacred way to Delphi, I know I would get well.” But no, now that we were so near, we could not go to Delphi. We were going in another direction, Brindisi, Rome, Paris, London. Already our half-packed bags, typewriter, books lay strewn about; we obviously were leaving. And we were not leaving Corfu in order to return to Athens, as we had talked of doing when we first landed at Corfu, with the thought of a possible arrangement, after all, with a party from one of the archaeological schools at Athens, from Athens itself, overland to Delphi. Travel was difficult, the country itself in a state of political upheaval; chance hotel acquaintances expressed surprise that two women alone had been allowed to come at all at that time. We were always “two women alone” or “two ladies alone,” but we were not alone.
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There had been writing-on-walls before, in Biblical, in classic literature. At least, all through time, there had been a tradition of warnings or messages from another world or another state of being. Delphi, specifically, was the shrine of the Prophet and Musician, the inspiration of artists and the patron of physicians. Was not the “blameless physician,” Asklepios himself, reputed to be Phoebus Apollo’s own son? Religion, art, and medicine, through the latter ages, became separated; they grow further apart from day to day. These three working together, to form a new vehicle of expression or a new form of thinking or of living, might be symbolized by the tripod, the third of the images on the wall before me, the third of the “cards” I threw down, as it were on the table, for the benefit of the old Professor. The tripod, we know, was the symbol of prophecy, prophetic utterance or occult or hidden knowledge; the Priestess or Pythoness of Delphi sat on the tripod while she pronounced her verse couplets, the famous Delphic utterances which it was said could be read two ways.
We can read my writing, the fact that there was writing, in two ways or in more than two ways. We can read or translate it as a suppressed desire for forbidden “signs and wonders,” breaking bounds, a suppressed desire to be a Prophetess, to be important anyway, megalomania they call it — a hidden desire to “found a new religion” which the Professor ferreted out in the later Moses picture. Or this writing-on-the-wall is merely an extension of the artist’s mind, a picture or an illustrated poem, taken out of the actual dream or daydream content and projected from within (though apparently from outside), really a high-powered idea, simply over-stressed, over-thought, you might say, an echo of an idea, a reflection of a reflection, a “freak” thought that had got out of hand, gone too far, a “dangerous symptom.”
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But symptom or inspiration, the writing continues to write itself or be written. It is admittedly picture-writing, though its symbols can be translated into terms of today; it is Greek in spirit, rather than Egyptian. The original or basic image, however, is common to the whole race and applicable to almost any time.
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So far the pictures, the transfers or “ ’calcomanias,” have run level on the wall space between the foot of the bed and the wash-stand. Now they take an upward course or seem about to do so. The “buzzing”
seems to have ceased or the black flies have flown away or the shadow-people faded out. The first three pictures or “cards on the table” were static, they were there complete; or dimly there, they became less dim as the outline and the meaning became recognizable. But this picture or symbol begins to draw itself before my eyes. The moving finger writes. Two dots of light are placed or appear on the space above the rail of the wash-stand, and a line forms, but so very slowly — as if the two rather heavy dots elongated from their own centers, as if they faded in intensity as two lines emerged, slowly moving toward one another. They will meet, it is evident, and from the pattern (two dots on a blackboard) we will get a single line. I do not know how long it took for these two frail lines to meet and then to remain one, intensified or in italics, underlined as it were. One line? It may have taken a split fraction of a second to form, but now I am perfectly well aware that this concentration is a difficult matter. My facial muscles seem stiff with the effort and I may become frozen like one of those enemies of Athené, the goddess of wisdom, to whom Perseus showed the Gorgon head. Am I looking at the Gorgon head, a suspect, an enemy to be dealt with? Or am I myself Perseus, the hero who is fighting for Truth and Wisdom? But Perseus could find his way about with winged sandals and the cloak of invisibility. Moreover, he himself could wield the ugly weapon of the Gorgon’s severed head, because Athené (or was it Hermes, Mercury?) had told him what to do. He was himself to manipulate his weapon, this ugly severed head of the enemy of Wisdom and Beauty, by looking at it in the polished metal of his shield. Even he, the half-god or hero, would be turned to stone, frozen if he regarded too closely and without the shield to protect him, in its new quality of looking-glass or reflector, the ugly Head or Source of evil. So I, though I did not make this parallel at the time, still wondered. But even as I wondered, I kept the steady concentrated gaze at the wall before me.
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There is one line clearly drawn, but before I have actually recovered from this, or have had time to take breath, as it were, another two dots appear and I know that another line will form in the same way. So it does, each line is a little shorter than its predecessor, so at last, there it is, this series of foreshortened lines that make a ladder or give the impression of a ladder set up there on the wall above the wash-stand. It is a ladder of light, but even now I may not take time, as I say, to draw breath. I may be breathing naturally but I have the feeling of holding my breath under water. As if I were searching under water for some priceless treasure, and if I bobbed up to the surface the clue to its whereabouts would be lost forever. So I, though seated upright, am in a sense diving, head-down underwater — in another element, and as I seem now so near to getting the answer or finding the treasure, I feel that my whole life, my whole being, will be blighted forever if I miss this chance. I must not lose grip, I must not lose the end of the picture and so miss the meaning of the whole, so far painfully perceived. I must hold on here or the picture will blur over and the sequence be lost. In a sense, it seems I am drowning; already half-drowned to the ordinary dimensions of space and time, I know that I must drown, as it were, completely in order to come out on the other side of things (like Alice with her looking-glass or Perseus with his mirror). I must drown completely and come out on the other side, or rise to the surface after the third time down, not dead to this life but with a new set of values, my treasure dredged from the depth. I must be born again or break utterly.