The Dweller of the Threshold in _Zanoni_ is no
red-cloaked, demoniacal figure springing from a trap-door with a
deafening clap of thunder, but a "Colossal Shadow" brooding over
the crater of Vesuvius.
The romance, _Zanoni_ (1842), which Lytton considered the
greatest of his works and which Carlyle praised with what now
seems extravagant fervour, was based on an earlier sketch,
_Zicci_ (1838), and embodies a complicated theory which he had
conceived several years earlier after reading some mediaeval
treatises on astrology and the occult sciences. While his mind
was occupied with these studies, the character of Mejnour and the
main outlines of the story were inspired by a dream, which he
related to his son. According to Lytton's theory, the air is
peopled with Intelligences, of whom some are favourable, others
hostile to man. The earth contains certain plants, which, rightly
used, have power to arrest the decay of the human body, and to
enable man, by quickening his physical senses and mental gifts,
to perceive the aerial beings and to discover the secrets of
nature. This supernatural knowledge is in possession of a
brotherhood of whom two only, Mejnour and his pupil Zanoni, are
in existence. The initiation involves the surrender of all
violent passions and emotions, and the neophyte must be brought
into contact with the powerful and malignant being called the
Dweller of the Threshold:
"Whose form of giant mould
No mortal eye can fixed behold,"
Mejnour and Zanoni are supposed to have been initiated--the
former in old age, the latter in youth--more than five thousand
years before the story opens.
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