The Immortal Lure

In Short

This collection of four verse plays—Giorgione, Arduin, O-Ume’s Gods, and The Immortal Lure—examines how deep-seated romantic obsessions collide with religious or artistic devotion. Across settings ranging from Venetian studios and Egyptian laboratories to the forests of India and feudal Japan, the characters struggle to reconcile their carnal desires with their faith. Because the pursuit of love often demands the destruction of the status quo, the results are almost always fatal. The work endures as a stark, lyrical inquiry into the "immortal lure" of unattainable perfection.

The Story

The collection opens in Venice, where the painter Giorgione, feeling betrayed by his beloved Isotta, vows to ruin her reputation by exhibiting a portrait of her as a common wanton. His master, Bellini, pleads for restraint, but Giorgione is consumed by the bitterness of a discarded lover. When Isotta unexpectedly returns, she reveals that she fled not for another man, but to seek refuge in a convent to save her soul from the intensity of their illicit passion. Before they can reconcile, it is discovered she has contracted the plague; she dies in his arms, leaving him in total despair.

In Arduin, set in Egypt, an aging alchemist seeks to resurrect his dead wife, Rhea, through forbidden science. He is so blinded by his obsession that when Myrrha, a young girl, accidentally reveals herself in his lab, he mistakes her for the returned spirit. When she admits she loves someone else—his own nephew, Ion—Arduin’s hope curdles into murderous rage. Convinced that women are inherently faithless, he strangles her, only to be left in a hollow, agonizing solitude.

O-Ume’s Gods moves to Japan, where a young woman, O-Ume, finds her traditional loyalties strained by her love for a foreign Christian priest. Her servant, Ama, constantly invokes the spirits of her ancestors to guilt her back to the Buddhist faith and her betrothed, a samurai named Sanko. When Sanko learns of the priest, he murders him in a fit of jealous, dogmatic fury. In an act of radical defiance, O-Ume casts both her Buddhist shrine and the priest’s crucifix into the river, rejecting all external gods to reclaim her own agency.

Finally, The Immortal Lure tells of a young Indian saint, Rishyas, raised in isolation by his ascetic father. A court woman, Koil, is sent to seduce him in hopes that his presence will end a drought. Rishyas, ignorant of the world, is instantly enthralled by her beauty and, fueled by the wine she brings, prepares to abandon his hermitage. When his father intervenes and strikes the girl, the saint’s world collapses. Realizing his purity was a fragile illusion and that his father’s "wisdom" was merely a mask for cruelty, Rishyas is left to grapple with the bitter awakening of mortal desire.

How It Unfolds

The painter’s betrayal Giorgione decides to publicly shame Isotta by displaying a portrait he intended to be private, seeking vengeance for her perceived infidelity. He ignores the warnings of his master, Bellini, and invites his rivals to witness the degradation of the woman he once adored.

The alchemist’s delusion Arduin pours his life into the hope of raising the dead, fueled by ancient symbols and celestial alignments. His single-mindedness creates a vacuum where he cannot distinguish reality from his own desperate, projection-filled dreams.

The clash of faiths O-Ume resists the mounting pressure from her servant and suitor to conform to traditional expectations. As the conflict between her personal love and her ancestral religion intensifies, she chooses a lonely, total rejection of both.

The saint’s awakening Rishyas encounters the outside world through Koil and immediately finds his ascetic life hollow. The subsequent violence between his father and the girl shatters the young man’s spiritual foundation, replacing his innocence with a devastating, worldly realization.

The People

Giorgione is a master painter who equates his art with his emotional possessiveness; his refusal to forgive Isotta turns his creative genius into a tool of spite. Isotta, conversely, possesses a quiet, tragic integrity, attempting to navigate the tension between her erotic devotion to Giorgione and her need for spiritual atonement.

Arduin represents the dangerous extreme of intellectual obsession. He seeks to conquer death, but his inability to trust the living—or to understand his nephew Ion—renders him a monster. Myrrha is an innocent bystander, a victim of Arduin’s inability to distinguish between the woman she is and the ghost he demands she be.

O-Ume is a woman trapped between the suffocating expectations of her culture and the pull of a new, forbidden love. Her evolution from a conflicted girl to a figure of cold, decisive action marks the play’s climax. Sanko acts as the agent of the old order, his brutality serving as a final, unsuccessful attempt to enforce harmony through blood.

Rishyas, the young saint, begins in a state of absolute, sheltered ignorance. His encounter with Koil acts as a catalyst; he learns that desire is not a sin but a fundamental human reality. His father, Vishwamya, serves as the embodiment of the rigid, fearful authority that eventually breaks under the weight of its own hypocrisy.

In Its Own Voice

Describing the volatile nature of his former love, Giorgione laments the depth of his obsession:

"Tho it has been till now my adoration! The fairest of my dreams and the most holy!"

Confronted with the impossible choice between her faith and her heart, O-Ume rejects all dogma:

"Be all the gods forsaken--even as these!"

What It's Really About

The central theme is the incompatibility of human passion with the structures of "purity" that society—and the individual—imposes upon it. Whether through religious devotion, alchemy, or artistic pride, the characters attempt to shield themselves from the vulnerability of loving another human being. The book argues that these shields are inevitably illusory. The "immortal lure" is the siren song of absolute certainty or transcendence, which, when pursued, invariably destroys the very life it seeks to elevate. It asks why we value the ideal over the real, and suggests that the cost of such devotion is almost always the loss of one’s humanity.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate the intense, high-stakes drama of the Victorian poetic tradition will find this collection compelling. Its blank verse is precise and rhythmic, carrying a weight that reflects the gravity of its themes. Those who enjoy psychological studies of obsession—where the protagonist is their own worst enemy—will find the character arcs in Arduin and Giorgione particularly resonant.

However, the reader should be prepared for a certain period sensibility. The plays rely on a romantic, somewhat heightened view of "the East" and "the Renaissance" that was common in early 20th-century literature but may strike the modern reader as stylized or exoticized. The dialogue is dense and formal, and the dramatic resolution in each piece is relentlessly tragic. There is little room for levity; the tone is consistent in its focus on the "infinite passion and pain" mentioned at the start. Despite these stylistic formalities, the fundamental struggles—the fear of abandonment, the search for identity, and the conflict between the roles we are expected to play and our internal truths—remain as relevant as they were a century ago. This is a book for those who value the craft of language and are willing to sit with the darker, more uncompromising aspects of human desire.