Urania Part 1

Urania.

by Camille Flammarion.

Part First.

THE HEAVENLY MUSE.

I.

A DREAM OF YOUTH.

I was seventeen years old; her name was Urania.

Was Urania a fair, blue-eyed maiden, a dream of spring, an innocent but inquisitive daughter of Eve? No; she was simply, as in days of yore, that one of the nine Muses who presided over astronomy, and whose celestial glance inspired and directed the chorus of the spheres; she was the angelic idea which soars above terrestrial dulness. She had not the disturbing flesh, nor the heart whose palpitations are communicated at a distance, nor the gentle ardor of human life; but she existed nevertheless in a sort of ideal world,--lofty and always pure,--and yet she was human enough in name and form to produce a strong and deep impression upon an adolescent soul, to arouse in that soul an indefinite, indefinable feeling of admiration,--almost of love.

In his hours of solitude, and even through the intellectual labors with which the education of the day overloads his brain, a young man whose hand has never plucked the divine fruit from the tree of Paradise, whose lips are still untouched, whose heart has not yet spoken, whose senses are beginning to awaken amid vague new aspirations, thrills with a presentiment of the divinity to which he is soon to sacrifice, and personifies beforehand in ever-varying forms the unknown being who floats through the airy fabric of his dreams. He wishes, longs to reach this unknown being, but dares not yet, perhaps may never dare, in the purity of his admiration, unless some helping hand come to his aid. If Chloe is not well informed, indiscreet and talkative Lycinion must take it upon herself to instruct Daphnis.

Whatever tells us of the yet unknown attraction can charm, interest, delight, and captivate us. A cold engraving, showing the oval of a pure face, even an old-fas.h.i.+oned painting, a sculpture,--a sculpture especially,--awakens a new feeling in our hearts; the blood flows faster, or seems to stop; the idea crosses our reddening brow like a flash, and remains floating in our pensive mind. It is the beginning of desires, the beginning of life, the dawn of a beautiful summer day, harbinger of the sunrise.

As for me, my first love, my adolescent pa.s.sion, had, not for its object a.s.suredly, but as a determining cause--a clock! It is rather odd, but so it is! Humdrum calculations used up all my afternoons from two until four; it was merely correcting observations, made the night before, of stars or planets by applying the reductions arising from atmospheric refraction, which itself depends on the height of the barometer and the temperature. These calculations are as simple as they are tiresome; they are made mechanically, by the help of prepared tables, while thinking of something else.

The ill.u.s.trious Le Verrier was then director of the Paris Observatory.

Although in no way artistic, he had in his study a golden bronze clock of very beautiful design, dating from the end of the First Empire,--the work of Pradier's chisel. The pedestal of this clock represented in bas-relief the birth of astronomy on the Egyptian plains. A ma.s.sive celestial sphere surrounded by the zodiacal circle, supported by sphinxes, held the dial; Egyptian G.o.ds adorned the sides. But the chief beauty of this artistic work consisted of an exquisite little statue of Urania, lithe, elegant,--I had almost said majestic.

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The celestial Muse was standing. With her right hand she measured the degrees of the starry sphere by the aid of a compa.s.s; her drooping left hand held a small astronomical telescope. Superbly draped, she looked down in an att.i.tude of stately grandeur. I had never before seen so beautiful a face as hers. With the light falling directly upon it, the pure countenance looked grave and austere. If the light came to it obliquely, it appeared somewhat meditative; but coming from above and from the side, the enchanting face brightened with a mysterious smile, her glance grew almost caressing, her exquisite serenity gave place to an expression of joy, amiability, and happiness delightful to contemplate. It was like a song of the soul, a poetic melody. These changes of expression fairly made the statue alive. Muse and G.o.ddess, she was beautiful, she was enchanting, she was adorable.

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Whenever I had occasion to go to the eminent mathematician it was not his world-wide reputation which impressed me most. I forgot the formulas of logarithms, and even the immortal discovery of the planet Neptune, to bow beneath the charm of Pradier's work. The beautiful figure so admirably modelled beneath its antique drapery, the graceful throat, the expressive face, attracted my eyes and captivated my thoughts. Very often, as we were leaving the office about four o'clock to go back to Paris, I would peep through the half-open door to see if the director were absent. Monday and Wednesday were the best days,--the first because of the Inst.i.tute meetings, which he seldom missed; the second on account of the Bureau of Longitudes sessions, which he avoided with the most profound disdain: he would even leave the observatory expressly, to make his contempt for them more emphatic. Then I would stand before my dear Urania and look at her to my heart's content, enraptured by her beauty of form and face, and go away more satisfied, but not happier,--she charmed, but filled me with regrets.

One evening--the evening on which I discovered how the light could change her face--I found the library-door wide open. A lamp stood on the chimney-piece shedding its rays over the Muse in one of her most bewitching aspects. The slanting light lovingly caressed the brow, cheeks, lips, and throat. Her expression was wonderful. I went in, and for a while stood there in motionless contemplation. Then I tried changing the position of the lamp, making the light play over the shoulders, arms, neck, and hair. The statue seemed to live, to think, to awake, and smile again! Odd, whimsical idea; strange feeling! I had actually fallen in love! I had changed from admirer to lover! If I had been told then that what I felt was not real love, and that this platonism was but a childish dream, I should have been very incredulous.

The director came in, but did not seem so much surprised at my presence as I might have feared. (The study was often used to reach the observation rooms.) "You are late for Jupiter," he said, as I replaced the lamp on the chimney-piece; and when I reached the threshold he added, "Can it be possible that you are a poet?" lengthening out the last syllable as though he had said "poet."

I might have answered him by quoting Kepler, Galileo, D'Alembert, the two Herschels, and other famous savants who were poets and astronomers at the same time. I could have reminded him that the first director of this very observatory, Jean-Dominique Ca.s.sini, sang of Urania in Latin, French, and Italian verse. But the observatory pupils were not in the habit of answering the senator-director in any way whatever; senators were personages of importance in those days, and the directors.h.i.+p of the observatory was a life-office. Then too the great geometrician would have looked upon the most wonderful poem by Dante, Ariosto, or Hugo with the same profound disdain that a big Newfoundland dog would show if one should put a gla.s.s of wine to his mouth. Besides, I was clearly in the wrong.

How that charming figure of Urania haunted me, with all the delicious changes of expression! Her smile was so gracious, and sometimes her bronze eyes had such a real look. She lacked nothing but speech.

That night, just as I fell asleep, I saw the divine G.o.ddess again; and this time she spoke.

Oh, she was really living now! And what a pretty mouth! I could have kissed each word. "Come," she said, "come up into the sky. Far away from the earth, you shall look down upon this lower world, you shall contemplate the great universe in its grandeur. Come and see."

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II.

UNKNOWN HUMANITIES.

Then I saw the Earth sinking down into the yawning depths of immensity; the cupolas of the observatory, Paris with its lights, were rapidly fading away. Although feeling as if I were motionless, I had the same sensation which one experiences on rising in a balloon and seeing the earth descend. I went up, up, in a magic flight toward the inaccessible zenith. Urania was with me, a little higher up, looking at me kindly and pointing out the kingdoms below. Day had come again. I recognized France, the Rhine, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Mediterranean, Spain, the Atlantic Ocean, the Channel, England. But all this liliputian geography soon shrank away. Speedily the terrestrial globe was reduced to the dimensions of the moon in its last quarter; then to a little full moon.

"There," said she, "is the famous terrestrial globe on which so many pa.s.sions stir, within whose narrow limits the thought of so many millions of human beings is confined, whose sight cannot extend beyond it. See how its apparent size diminishes as our horizon develops. We can no longer distinguish Europe from Asia; and there is North America. How very small it all is!"

As we pa.s.sed through the Moon's neighborhood I had noticed our satellite's hilly landscapes, the mountain crests radiant with light, deep valleys filled with shadows, and I should have liked to stop for a nearer study of the surroundings; but Urania did not deign to bestow so much as a pa.s.sing glance at it, and drew me on in a rapid flight toward the sidereal regions.

We were still ascending. The Earth grew smaller and smaller as we receded from it, until it looked like a simple star s.h.i.+ning from solar illumination on the bosom of dark and empty s.p.a.ce. We turned toward the Sun, which shone in s.p.a.ce, but without filling it with light, so that we could see stars and planets at the same time, no longer obscured by its rays, because it could not illumine empty s.p.a.ce. The angelic G.o.ddess showed me Mercury, in close neighborhood to the Sun, Venus, s.h.i.+ning on the other side, the Earth, equalling Venus in appearance and brilliancy, Mars, whose inland seas and ca.n.a.ls I recognized, Jupiter, with its four enormous moons, Saturn, Ura.n.u.s. "All these worlds," said she, "are upheld in vacancy by the attraction of the Sun, around which they revolve with great speed. It is an harmonious choir gravitating about its centre. The Earth is but a floating island, a little hamlet of this great solar country; and the solar empire itself is but a little province on the breast of sidereal vastness."

We rose still higher. The Sun and its system were rapidly pa.s.sing. The Earth was but a little spot now; Jupiter himself, that colossal world, had melted away, like Mars and Venus, to a tiny little dot scarcely larger than the Earth. We pa.s.sed within sight of Saturn, surrounded by his gigantic rings, whose study alone would be sufficient to prove the immense and unimaginable variety reigning in the universe. Saturn is a whole system in itself, with its rings composed of particles torn from it in its dizzy revolution, and with its eight satellites accompanying it like a celestial retinue.

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As we soared aloft, our Sun decreased in grandeur. Soon it had descended to the rank of a planet, then lost all majesty, all superiority over the sidereal population, and was nothing more than a star, scarcely more brilliant than the others. I looked about me at all this vast extent, on whose spangled bosom we were still going upward, and tried to recognize the constellations; but their forms were beginning to change perceptibly, from the lengthening perspective caused by my journey. I thought I could see that our Sun had insensibly dwindled to a tiny star and joined the constellation of the Centaur; while a new light, pale, bluish, and very strange, seemed to greet me from the direction toward which Urania was bearing me. This new brightness had nothing terrestrial about it, and reminded me of no effect that I had ever seen on the Earth among the changing tints of the sunset after a storm, or in the undefined mists of morning, or during the calm and silent moonlight hours on the mirror of the sea. This last effect is nearer its appearance; but the strange light was, and became more and more, of a real blue,--blue, not like a reflection of celestial azure, nor like a contrast a.n.a.logous to that produced by an electric light compared with gas, but blue, as if the Sun itself were blue.

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Imagine my amazement when I discovered that we were approaching the influence of an absolutely blue sun, like a s.h.i.+ning disk, which might have been cut from one of our most beautiful terrestrial skies, standing out luminously upon a perfectly black background all thickly studded with stars. This sapphire sun was the centre of a planetary system lighted by its rays. We were to pa.s.s quite near one of the planets. The blue sun increased perceptibly in size; but--another phenomenon as singular as the first--the light it threw upon this planet seemed to be tinged on one side with green. I looked into the sky again, and saw a second sun,--this one a beautiful emerald green. I could not believe my eyes!

Urania said: "We are crossing the solar system of Gamma Andromedae, of which you see but one part as yet; for it is made up, not of these two suns, but in reality of three,--one blue, one green, and one orange yellow. The blue sun, which is the smallest, turns around the green sun; and the latter gravitates with its companion around the great orange sun, which you will perceive in an instant."

Sure enough! A second later I saw a third sun, colored with a glowing radiancy, whose contrast with its two companions produced a most dazzling illumination. I knew about this interesting sidereal system from having observed it more than once through the telescope; but I had never suspected its real splendor. What fiery depths! what scintillations! what brilliancy of color in that strange source of blue light in the second sun's green illumination and the tawny, golden effulgence of the third!

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But, as I have said, we were approaching one of the worlds belonging to the system of the sapphire sun. Everything was blue,--landscapes, water, plants, rocks,--slightly greenish on the side lighted by the second sun, and hardly touched by the rays of the orange sun, which was rising on the distant horizon. As we floated into the atmosphere of this world a soft, delicious music was wafted into the air like a perfume, a dream.

Never had I heard anything like it. The sweet, deep, distant melody seemed to come from a choir of harps and violins, strengthened by an accompaniment of organs. It was an exquisite anthem, which charmed at once; it needed no a.n.a.lyzing to be understood; it filled the soul with ecstasy. It seemed to me that I could have lingered there listening for an eternity. I was so fearful of losing a single note that I dared not speak to my guide. Urania noticed it; stretching out her hand toward a lake, she pointed to a group of winged beings who were hovering over the blue waters.

They had not the earthly human form. They were beings who had evidently been created to live in air. They seemed woven out of light. At a distance I thought they were dragon-flies; they had their slender, graceful shape, the same wide wings, quickness, and lightness. But on examining them more closely I noticed their height, which was not inferior to our own, and realized from the expression of their eyes that they were not animals. Their heads were very like that of the dragon-fly, and like those aerial creatures they had no legs. The delicious music to which I had been listening was but the noise of their flight. They were very numerous,--perhaps many thousands.

From the mountain-tops could be seen plants which were neither trees nor flowers, whose slender stalks rose to an enormous height; the branched stems bearing, as though with outstretched arms, great tulip-shaped cups. These plants were alive, or as much so as our sensitive growths, perhaps more, and like the _desmodium_, with its moving leaves, showed their internal impressions by their motions. These groves formed actual vegetable cities. The inhabitants of this world had no other dwellings, but reposed among the fragrant sensitive-plants when not floating in the air.

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"This seems a very strange world to you," said Urania; "you are wondering what kinds of ideas, habits, or history these people could have,--what kinds of arts, literature, and sciences. It would take a long time to answer all the questions you might ask. Know only that their eyes are superior to your finest telescopes; that their nervous system vibrates at the pa.s.sing of a comet, and discovers by an electric sense facts which you on the Earth will never know. The organs which you see under their wings serve as hands, more skilful than yours. Instead of printing, they take the direct photography of events and the phonetic impression of words. They care very little for anything but scientific research; that is to say, the study of Nature. The three pa.s.sions which absorb the greater part of earthly life--eager greed for fortune, political ambition, and love--are unknown to them, because they require nothing to live on, there are no international divisions nor government, except a council of administration, and because they are androgynous."

"Androgynous!" I repeated; and ventured to add, "Is that best?"

"It is _different_. It is a great deal of trouble saved to a humanity."

"To be in a condition to understand the infinite diversity displayed in the different phases of creation," she continued, "it is necessary to cast aside all terrestrial feelings and ideas. Just as the species of your planet have changed in succeeding ages from the uncouth creatures of the first geological periods to the appearance of man, and as even now the animal and vegetable population of the Earth is still composed of the most widely varying forms, from man to the coral, from bird to fish, from an elephant to a b.u.t.terfly, so on an incomparably vaster scale the forces of Nature have given birth to an infinite diversity of beings and things throughout the innumerable worlds of heaven. The form of its occupant is the result in each world of some element peculiar to that globe,--substance, heat, light, electricity, density, weight.

Shape, functions, the number of the senses,--you have but five, and they are rather poor ones,--depend on the vital conditions of each sphere.

Life is earthly on the Earth, Martial on Mars, Saturnian on Saturn, Neptunian on Neptune,--that is to say, appropriate to each habitation; or, to express it better, more strictly speaking, produced and developed by each world according to its organic condition, and following a primordial law which all Nature obeys,--the law of progress."