The Apes of God by Wyndham Lewis

Author:Wyndham Lewis [Lewis, Wyndham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780876855126
Google: 1_NaAAAAMAAJ
Amazon: 0876855125
Publisher: Black Sparrow Press
Published: 1981-04-14T14:00:00+00:00

ii

The masked figure has lain laughing at the split-man, and has addressed himself to his own disguise. In a half-hour the heavy toilet may be said to be complete, percoct in his literary kitchen.

“Aah-Tehuti!” he cried, “seed-moon, grain-moon, great arithmetical wanderer—water-wizard, shower-bath, shaman of the sky—shechinah of our halting judgments, god of lunatics, tell me where my cob and wand has got to! Flash down your roving light!”

He grovelled beneath the bed, and found what he had been looking for.

Upright once more, glancing out of the window, he said, “Pardon. I did not notice you were so small”; as though, having been exhorting to love an exhausted man, he had suddenly observed the malapropos.

There, in the thrilling chasm of the sky, the ever-vivid meniscus was visible.

The masked figure kisses his hand to it as an attic husband-man would to the new sun, and he turned the little silver coins in his pocket. He wished. His wish was a child’s prayer—monotonous with happiness. This tsabian gesture exposed a large bronzed hand, which he now began to darken further—with sunburn powder, purchased in Lausanne, sold to alpinists.

The low window, over whose sashes he looked, allowed the mild tranquillity of the night to flow in. The candle in front of the mirror, only disturbed by the maternal pressures of the atmosphere or the more eccentric movements of the man, shed its light upon the small room. It made arbitrary graded zones of the accidental scene—with its position, its colour and particular incandescence—as does the eye of the painter with the objects of his world.

A small iron bedstead, a table beside it, with a cloth of dyed lockram—a chair, a stool, clothes hanging like a carcass in a stall gaping and sagging—handless, footless, and without head: two shelves of books: an open creel which had contained his disguise and the material of that of Ratner, a mat of stained hemp bristles.

A pergamene mask of coarse malignity through the eye-holes in the tawny canvas fixed fiery eyes upon the mirror—or that speck on it representing a comedo imbedded in his jaw, which his fingers were removing. He snipped the last tell-tale vibrissa.

Sputum gathered upon the brutal lips—cracks represented with darker paint, manufactured for this masquerade. He tugged the black lambskin of the beard to the left. He stepped back, examining again the symmetry of his composite clown.

Six feet from head to foot he was composed as follows—like a Mexith’s renowned statue bristling with emblems:

A large hat, the crown of which was the mask, representing in a projecting horn, pointing upward, the beak of the Ibis: a miniature representation of the Atef crown of Thoth.

A pearl upon the front of the hat, beneath the beak or horn—the Urna or third eye of Siva.

A pearl at the back of the hat to stand for the pineal eye.

A green feather at the side from the crest of Huitzlipochtli.

The mask was a canvas vizard stopping at the nostrils.

Inside the eye-sockets a film of white rose from the lower lid.

Very long coarse lashes formed fans above and below the opening.

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