elf in the quivering river
light. Sometimes he is a seraphic creature outspreading his mighty
pinions to greet some tremendous spirit sunrise. And in those last,
bleeding, agonizing preludes, there is still the breath of flight. But
this time it is another motion. Is it "the wind of death's imperishable
wing"? Is it the blind hovering of the spirit that has quit its earthly
habitation in the moment of dissolution? One cannot tell.

And it was the flight of ecstasy that he sought to achieve in his
symphonic poems. He had made for himself a curious personal religion, a
bizarre mixture of theosophy and neoplatonism and Bergsonian philosophy,
a faith that prescribed transport; and these works were in part
conceived as rituals. They were planned as ceremonies of elevation and
deification by ecstasy, in which performers and auditors engaged as
active and passive celebrants. Together they were to ascend from plane
to plane of delight, experiencing divine struggle and divine bliss and
divine creativity. The music was to call the soul through the gate of
the sense of hearing, to lead it, slowly, hieratically, up through
circle after circle of heaven, until the mystical gongs boomed and the
mass emotion reached the Father of Souls, and was become God. With Jules
Romains, Scriabine would have cried to his audiences:

"Tu vas mourir tantot, sous le poids de tes heures:
Les hommes, delies, glisseront par les portes,
Les ongles de la nuit t'arracheront la chair.
Qu'importe!
Tu es mienne avant que tu sois morte;
Les corps qui sont ici, la ville peut les prendre;
Ils garderont au front comme une croix de cendre
Le vestige du dieu que tu es maintenant!"

In "Prometheus" he introduces a _clavier a lumiere_ into his orchestra,
vainly hoping to induce the ecstasy through color as well as sound, and
after his death there was found among his papers a sketch for a
"Mysteria" in which the music was to be conjoined not only with light,
but with dance and perfume as well. It is a pity it was not granted him
to achieve this work. The theosophic programs of his orchestral works
are, after all, innocuous. Much of the half-mystical, half-sensual
coloration of his orchestra is due them. And had the score of the
"Mysteria" been as much an improvement over that of "Prometheus" as
"Prometheus" is over the other symphonic works, Scriabine might indeed
have proved himself as eminent a writer for