The first endeavor of the "Société de Belles-Lettres" succeeded in all its aims, and happily Saskia was in attendance of the triumph. Although she cared little, I think, for much of my efforts—the dress seemed to make her outright uncomfortable—nevertheless, my own best is brought out always by the desire to impress a woman. I played the devil-may-care hero to my mother my legal father never was, in hopes she who provided me with so much would be less unhappy with our dreary home life, and now…now, something in my Mauerblümchen inspires similar labors.
Saskia, however, suffers under a far different deprivation. Whereas Mother once enjoyed a social life at which she had been the center and always had many male admirers before Terrence Roberts caged her, Saskia fears to reveal her brightest plumage. I don’t know whether to try to draw her out against her will, or leave her be: to love her is to accept her as who she is, but the girl is so young to be so certain that only solitary work can atone for all the obsessive guilt she carries with her.
Regardless, some personal good has already come from her influence. I was asked why Mademoiselle Marchand and I did not hold the festival like its predecessors in Port-a-Lucine, which has magnificent facilities and is known for its support of the arts. Yes, Port is a cultural beacon, but part of my hope in this "Société" undertaking is to spread an appreciation for the fine arts throughout more of the Core. Coming from a modern city myself, I find it very puzzling that the advances I take for granted are so slow in their adoption elsewhere.
Many say fine art is an impractical luxury in hardscrabble lands like Barovia. But I say artistic expression separates us from the animals. We each live alone in our isolated minds, but art—if it is sincere and truthful—for a moment lets us peer with recognition into another’s personal world.
Like lightning jumping from cloud to cloud.
Trying to understand Saskia and formulate my feelings about her have helped these ideas mature.
Die MauerblümchenMy Love may wilt to bear this poem. Her eyes—
That camouflage in iris fronds of green
All hoped for joy and succor my bootless cries
In agony summon from their jaded sheen—
Are staid, unmoved. Despairing poet dies,
Impaled on thorny glance of sadness keen.
My lips, a fertile lyre, she stills unstrung—
Raised finger stems the pollen of my tongue.
She rues that filthy soil corrupts her roots,
Believing not in her own human soul.
She cloaks in purist white her tempting fruits,
To ward my wound that would but make us whole
And grant those gifts of grafting (nascent shoots),
Appended boon to wedded, golden bole.
Though I drew aside dark drape and cleared my sill—
This empty window she declines to fill.
My shear could by no means cut her petaled grace
From out the barrenness in which she grows,
And bear her slighted body in full embrace,
Across my threshold like a potted rose.
For though her fragrance fills my heart-shaped vase,
An ancient gardener chides as one who knows:
“Such flowers blossom twixt the cracks of stones:
“Tis meet to leave
die Mauerblümchen ‘lone.”
[The model for the poem's verse structure is "
Sailing to Byzantium" (Yeats).]