IMRE MADÁCH

TRAGEDY OF THE MAN

Translated from the Hungarian by
OTTÓ TOMSCHEY

 

       

Madách Könyvtár - Új folyam 21.

 

 

Madách Irodalmi Társaság
Budapest
2000

 

 

(c) Translation: Ottó Tomschey

Készült Budapesten, 2000-ben, felelős kiadó,
műszaki szerkesztő, borító: Andor Csaba.

ISBN 963 85991 2 X
ISSN 1219-4042

 


 

FIRST SCENE

The Heaven. The LORD encircled by glory is sitting on his throne. ANGELS are kneeling. The four ARCHANGELS are standing near the throne. Great brightness.

ANGELS' CHOIR

Eternal glory be to our God on High,
Let him be prais'd by the earth and heaven,
Who created the Universe by one word
And his glance has govern'd the end again.
He is the power, knowledge and happiness,
Our share's only his shade cast over us,
We adore Him for his endless patronage
For having this allotment in his light.
Yes, the great Thought has become incarnated,
Complete is, as a whole, the Creation
The Lord waits at his holy hassock from all
Living creations their due devotion.

THE LORD

The work, the great work is now completed,
Machine is running, the creator rests.
It will move for some millions of years
Till one of its cogs will need some repairs.
Up! Guardian spirits of my world! Arise!
Let you start your never-ending orbit.
As you whizzing past under my feet
Let me be with you highly delighted.

(The spirits of stars rolling single, double star spheres, comets and nebulae of different size and colour rush in front of the throne. Music of spheres in a subdued voice.)

ANGELS' CHOIR

What a stately flare-ball's coming
In its brightness pretentiously,
Though it serves to a modest group
Of stars just now unconsciously.
Like a lamp of glimmery light
This tiny star twinkles only
Yet millions of creatures
Are living on its globe lonely. -
Two balls fight against each other
To disjoint and to encounter
And this struggle is the grand curb
In its orbit it to govern. -
That will rush down with a thunder,
You look at it with some fearing,
In its bosom millions find
Happiness and peaceful being. -
How simple's it - though it some time
Will be lustrous star of the love,
As solace to the earthly life
Be it protected from above. -
There are small worlds all to be born,
Here's the coffin for extinction,
Warning voice to all conceited
For despondings' stimulation. -
Disturbing all comes the comet
With exorbitant appearing,
And its path becomes just order'd
When hears the Lord's voice of warning. -
Come along, thou young nice spirit
With your globe that's always changing,
Who both sorrow and the light-pall
With a white guise are exchanging.
Be bless'd by God! And go ahead
Without disbar: that is your fate,
In your tiny quiet realm
Great ideas will militate.
Though smile and tear like the winter
And like spring will you inundate,
Light and shade will be together
On it the Lord's favour and rage.

(Spirits of stars marched off.)

GABRIEL ARCHANGEL

Thou, who the endless space have measur'd
And created in it the Substance,
Thou, who by one word generated
All the mightiness and the distance:
Hosanna be to Thee, Thought! (Throws himself down.)

MICHAEL ARCHANGEL

Who unifies the eternally
Changing and the unchanging nations,
Creating infinity and time
And entities and generations:
Hosanna to Thee, Power! (Throws himself down.)

RAPHAEL ARCHANGEL

Thou, who irradiates blessedness
Bringing to consciousness the body,
And allows piously the whole world
Your wisdom forever to study:
Hosanna to Thee, Goodness! (Throws himself down.)

(Pause.)

THE LORD

You, Lucifer, are silent, proudly stand,
Or you have no words to my laudation?
Or you dislike what I have created?

LUCIFER

And what to like in it? That some matter
Endowed with different characteristics
That before being manifested maybe
You did not foresee in them and if yes,
You possess now no power to change them,
Being moulded in some balls by fits and starts,
These attract, pursue, repel one another
And become conscious in some sorry worms,
Till all will be fill'd and all will be cool'd
And there remains the neutral slag only. - -
Man will certainly learn this by watching
And will simulate it in his kitchen. -
You put into your great kitchen your man
And of his bungling you take no notice,
He brews and fancies himself to be God.
But when he wastes and damages the brew
You will fly into a passion afterwards.
Albeit, what do you expect for dilettants? -
And for what purpose is the whole creation?
You wrote a nice ode to your own glory,
Put it into a useless machinery
And don't lose your interest endlessly
In the same song always with the same tune.
Is this toy worthy of such a greybeard
That may divert only infantile children?
Where only a pugged spark imitates
His Lord, but is his misbirth, not his wraith;
Fate and freedom are hunting each other:
And the concordant judgement is missing. -

THE LORD

I can only be respected, not be judged.

LUCIFER

I can pass nothing except my essence.
(Pointing to the angels.)
You are praised enough by this caddish crowd,
As to praise you is only fair of them.
You gave birth to them as light to shadow,
But I've been living since eternity.

THE LORD

Insolent! Were not you born by matter,
Where did your power, you exist before?

LUCIFER

This my question would be to You, as well.

THE LORD

I have planned it since eternity
And lived inside me what's now created.

LUCIFER

And did not you feel gap among your thoughts
That encumbered all life you wanted
And forced you to perform the creation?
Lucifer has been the name of this gap,
Who has been the spirit of negation.
You triumph'd over me since it's my fate
As to go under always in my fights,
But revive and be reinforc'd again.
You gave birth to matter - I won the space,
Life is accompanied always by death,
Happiness always by deep depression,
Light always by shade and so doubt by hope. -
That's all. I stand in all time where you are:
Thus, who knows you so, should I respect you?

THE LORD

Get out! Rebellious spirit! Get out!
I could annihilate you but I won't,
Hunting out of all the mental relations
You have to struggle in the dirtiness,
In painful feeling of your bare loneliness
You must be anguished by the endless thought:
That it is useless to shake your shackles,
Your fight is illusory against the Lord.

LUCIFER

No! You daren't jostle me out of the way
Like wretched tool that became superfluous. -
The creation is ours. I do clamour
For my share.

THE LORD (with irony)

Well, be as you want it. Look at
The Earth. Among the trees of Eden, now
Just in the middle the two slender fruit-trees
I damn and these will be yours forever.

LUCIFER

You are hard-fisted, why you're powerful Lord,
And I need only the soil underfoot,
Where negation gains only a foothold,
It will certainly overthrow your world. (Starts to exit.)

ANGELS' CHOIR

Be off the presence of our Lord! You damn'd!
Hosanna to Him who has us govern'd. -

 

SECOND SCENE

In the Paradise. In the middle the trees of knowledge and of immortality. ADAM and EVE come, different animals surround them with gentle confidence. Glory radiates through the open gate of Heaven and the soft harmonic voice of angels' choir is heard. Sunny day.

EVE

To live, to live: how sweet, how delightful!

ADAM

And to feel to be lord of everything.

EVE

To feel that we are protected from above
And we have to give for this only pure love
To Him who provides us all these delights.

ADAM

Being subordinated: that's your style. -
I'm thirsty, Eve. Look, how temptingly
This fruit is smiling.

EVE

           I'll pluck one of them.

THE LORD'S VOICE

Stop there! Look out! I gave you the whole Earth,
Adam, but keep clear of the two trees there,
Their bewitching fruits serve other powers
And will surely die who does savour it. -
Here the reddening bunch of grapes you find,
There you get gentle shade with tranquillity
In outrageous heat of the shining noontide.

ADAM

That's strange command but seems to be true.

EVE

Why are these trees nicer than others or why
Are these forbidden?

ADAM

                Why is the sky blue?
Why is the bosk green? - It is so, it's enough.
Let's follow this warning, come, come with me, Eve.

(They seat themselves in a bower.)

EVE

Come to my arms and I will gently fan you.

(Strong flurry, LUCIFER appears among the leaves.)

ADAM

Ah! What's that! I have not heard something like this,
Like an inimical and strange force would
Suddenly spring on us.

EVE

                   I am trembling.
The heavenly voice became silent, too.

ADAM

Here in your arms it seems to me to hear it.

EVE

And I find it in your bright eyes, Adam,
When glory above will become overcast.
Ah, where could I find it besides you, where?
Who was born only due to your craving
Like in its flood of light the princely sun
Takes the colour of water - as lonely not
To be in infinite universe - plays
With it, enjoys to be accompanied,
Forgetting generously that it is
Only the pale image of its own fire
That would disappear together with it.

ADAM

Do not say that, Eve, don't put me to shame.
What's the voice when nobody understands?
And tell me what is beam without colour?
What would I be when not be mirror'd
In you, like both the echo and the flowers
In which I can adore only myself?

LUCIFER

Why do I listen to this mild flirting?
I look away otherwise I'll be ashamed:
The cold and self-seeking reasoning will
Become envious of the artless mind.

(A tiny bird begins to sing on a twig.)

EVE

Adam, listen to it, tell me, do you
Perceive the song of this merry lover?

ADAM

I listen'd to the babbling of the creek
And found it to sing the same merry song.

EVE

Darling, this is wonderful harmony,
These diverse words and one reason only. -

LUCIFER

Why do I tarry? Let me start to work.
I swore to seduce them, they should be perish'd.
And now I'm doubting again and again,
Is it not useless to fight against them
With fascinating arms of the knowledge
And ambition, against their emotion
That like an asylum is protecting
And supports who's ruin'd. But away with care!
Only none but the brave deserve the fair!

(Strong flurry again. LUCIFER occurs before the frightened human couple. The glory grows dark. LUCIFER laughs.)

LUCIFER

What do you gaze at? (To EVE who starts to run.)
                                        Stop! You graceful lady!
Let me admire you for a short moment.

(EVE stops and takes courage.)

LUCIFER (aside)

This pattern will repeat for million times. (Aloud.)
Adam, you fear?

ADAM

  You? You shabby fellow?

LUCIFER (aside)

He is good forefather of the proud mankind. (Aloud)
Hail to thee! Brother-in-mind!

ADAM

                                        Who you are?
From where you come? From above or below?

LUCIFER

As you like it. It's all the same for me.

ADAM

I didn't know that man's living except us.

LUCIFER

Oho! There's a lot that you do not know and
Will not forever. Or the kind old man
Would create you from this penurious clay
To give a share you in the Universe?
You praise Him, and He keeps you in exchange,
He says: take this and be afraid of that,
He guards and governs you as a brute beast;
To have cognition, you do not have need.

ADAM

To cogitate? - Do you think I do not?
And I do not feel the blessing sunshine,
Pleasant happiness of my existence,
And endless benevolence of my Lord
Who created me as God of this realm?

LUCIFER

Maybe small worms that are eating your fruit
And the eagle that swoops on the tiny bird
Hold both the same opinion of these.
Or why you would be nobler than others?
That's a gleam glimmering in your dim mind,
That is a stirring move of an endless force,
Like tiny drops of wave that having flash'd
For a moment, fall back imperceptibly
Into dark grey depth of their common bed. -
Maybe, there will be one thing, yes, the thought
That's slumbering in your unconscious heart,
This would emancipate you entrusting to
Your self-effort to choose the right or wrong,
To govern your fate only by yourself:
This would absolve you from the providence.
But it's better for you to flourish like a
Dung-worm in the mild lap of your own small scope
And to burn out with your life without knowledge. -
It's easy to resign to your confession;
It's nobler but hard to be your own master. -

ADAM

You tell us great words, these make my head swim.

EVE

I'm keen on these, you tell nice and new things.

LUCIFER

But knowledge in itself is not enough
To be realized in magnificent works.
Immortality is also needed.
What the short life is able to produce?
These two trees possess this ability
And Lord has forbade you to have their taste.
If you would taste it you would know as Lord
And your grace would be agelessly preserved.

EVE

Our Lord has been even cruel to us!

ADAM

And maybe you betray?

(Glory is somewhat clarified.)

HEAVENLY CHOIR

                    Woe is thee, world,
The true negation is haunting.

THE LORD'S VOICE

                                   Man! Look out!

ADAM

What's that voice again?

LUCIFER

                Wind is shaking the twigs.
                        Help! My forces!
                        Help! Elements!
                        To bag the man
                        For all events!

(Flurry, the glory grows dark.)

These two trees are mine.

ADAM

                           Who are you after all?
Since you seem to be similar to us.

LUCIFER

Look at the eagle as wheeling among clouds,
Look at this mole rooting down in the soil,
Both of them are of different horizons.
The spiritual world lies out of your scene
And man does mean you the highest known grade.
Dog takes only a dog as its idol and
Honours you with its companionship.
But as you are endlessly scornful of it
And you overhang it like its ill fate
Hailing down blessing and curses on its head,
So we, stately sharers of the world of
Spirits, have been superior to you.

ADAM

You would be one of these higher powers?

LUCIFER

Oh yes, most powerful among the mighty,
I stood there, close to the throne of the Lord
And got my share of his greatest glory.

ADAM

Why did you not remain in the bright heaven?
Why did you descend to this vale of dust?

LUCIFER

I had enough there of the second site,
Of the monotonous regular life,
The immature choir with infantile voice
That always praises but has no free choice.
I want struggle and fight against the old
That generates new power and new world,
Where the soul may be in itself mighty
And where me the brave can accompany.

ADAM

Lord said that he will strictly punish us
When do not follow the way that He has mark'd.

EVE

Why would he do? - When He set out the way
For us to go along as He it wanted,
His creatures are certainly made so
Not to be obedient to vicious bents.
Or why He put us above deep whirl with
Dizzy head, being sentenc'd to perdition. -
Yet, if He figur'd in to be sinful
Like the storm occurs between sunshinny days,
Who believes more sinful while it jangles
Than this for its animating ardour?

LUCIFER

Well, the first philosopher has appear'd. -
You'll have, my dear, a lot of inherents
Who will debate this in million manners;
Many of them will stray wobbly in madhouse,
Many will shy off, none of them get home.
Now, give up this meaningless meditation,
All the things bear many-many colours,
Who does want to know it all in detail,
Will know less than he knew at the first moment,
And will have no time to decide what's it.
Meditation is the death of action. -

EVE

Well, I decided to pluck one of these fruits.

ADAM

The Lord damn'd it.
(LUCIFER laughs)
                                                But never mind. Pick it.
Come what may, let us be as wise as our
Lord: to know everything.

(First EVE then ADAM taste the apple of knowledge.)

EVE

                  And above all
For ever young.

LUCIFER

  This way, come, here you are,
This is the tree of immortality.
Come along! Be quick!

(He draws them to the other tree, a CHERUB blocks their way with a blazing sword.)

CHERUB

                  Off with you, sinners!

THE LORD'S VOICE

Adam, Adam! You have abandon'd me,
I also leave you. See what you are alone.

EVE

We are lost.

LUCIFER

You despair?

ADAM

                                No, not at all.
That's the shiver of walking of my mind. -
Let's get out from here, my lady, get out!
This land is desolate and unwonted.

HEAVENLY CHOIR

Ah! Be the whole world tear-stain'd wherever,
Lie's winning - the Earth is lost forever.

 

THIRD SCENE

Picturesque landscape outside the Paradise. Small, clumsy wooden hovel. ADAM sticks pegs for closure, EVE builds a bower. LUCIFER

ADAM

This is mine. Instead of the roomy world
This scene will be my home. I'll cultivate
And will guard it from all the wild animals
And will compel it to give me harvest.

EVE

I will build a bower similar to the
Former and so I try to retrieve for us
The lost Paradise.

LUCIFER

        Ah! How great words you
Have said. Family and private ownership
Will be the twofold promoter of the world,
That generates all pleasures and torments.
These two ideas will grow unbroken
While producing homeland and industry,
All that is generous and magnificent
That engorges its own individuals.

ADAM

You tell mysteries. You have promised me
Knowledge, I gave up the pleasures of instinct
That though struggling hardly, to be mighty.
And what's the outcome.

LUCIFER

                        Do you not feel it?

ADAM

I feel that as my Lord left me plunging
Into the bare loneliness by empty hands,
I left him, too. I became myself to
My own God and all what I'll attain, will be
Justly mine. This is my power and self-pride.

LUCIFER (aside)

You vain pawn, you flout now the heaven proudly,
Let us see your heart when thunders flash loudly.

EVE

And it's just only proper pride of mine
To be ancestress of the whole mankind.

LUCIFER (aside)

Glorious is her thought, that's really,
To hand down evil sinful misery.

ADAM

What should I thank to Him? My bare existence?
But this being if would be worthy of
Its share, will be the outcome of my labours.
The delight to drink a glass of water
I have to deserve by the glow of my thirst,
The price of savouring a kiss is where
It is wandering: in deep despondency.
Though the mask of gratefulness is off me
And became free to govern my own fate
And to deteriorate what I've planned
Soundly again and again - maybe your
Help should not have been truly provided,
I could have made it alone, by my force.
And you did not save me from the heavy bond
That binds my body to this dusty ground.
Though I don't know its name, I feel what's it,
Maybe it's a thread - and it's all the more
Infamous - that restraints my proud being.
Look, I try to spring but I'm falling back,
My eyes and my ears are out of their duty
When I sound secrets of the remoteness;
If my soul wants to reach higher levels
Hunger forces to be humiliated
And return again to the trampled matter.

LUCIFER

This bond is stronger than I ever be.

ADAM

You are a very infirm spirit, yes,
If this obscure thin spider-work, this nothing
That cannot be seen by the millions
Who gambol with the feeling of freedom
In this net being suspected by some
Higher spirits only, is flouting you.

LUCIFER

And only this, this is able to flout me
'Cause it's spirit like me. Or do you think
That though being still and of hidden act
It's not strong? - Don't think, it's sitting in mist
Who staggers and shakes and creates a world:
Its visual appearance would swim your head.
Only the man-made things curtail'd by the
Limited life are glinting and rattling.

ADAM

This running operation let me see
- For a moment only, I'm strong, you know -
How it acts on me who in myself am
So alone but am the totality.

LUCIFER

"I am" - it's mad word. You were and will be,
Life is eternal ring of being and death.
But let you look 'round and see with spirits' eyes.

ADAM (What he says in the following, become visible)

What a flow is so springing up around me
Prograding continuously upwards,
Aspires high, where it bifurcates and runs
As a storm up to the poles.

LUCIFER

                                This is the warmth
That brings life to permanently frozen lands.

ADAM

And these two fire streams roaring beside me,
I'm afraid it will carry me away
And yet, I feel its animating effects.
What's that? What's that? It makes me feel dizzy.

LUCIFER

That's the magnet.

ADAM

        The ground's quaking below.
What I believed to be constant, amorphous:
Becomes bubbling, elementary matter
That's trying hard for individual shape
And life. Here it takes the form of crystal,
There that of a bud. In this confusion
Where will I find the unique presence of mine,
What you'll be my frame, I trust crazily
As a firm footing in my ambitions,
Imaginations and pretentious desires?
You overindulg'd body, who makes me
Both troubles and tears and some ecstasy,
You'll be debas'd to a handful of dust,
While your being that was reddening and
Glad like water and brilliant delusion
Will ascend with my own being to the clouds?
All my words and all the thoughts in my poor mind
Consume the single parts of my being,
I am burning! - And this disastrous fire
Is perhaps inflamed by a mystic spirit
To warm, while I am burning to ashes.
Off with this vision, 'cause I'm going mad.
To be at war with the awkward feeling
Of loneliness among thousand elements:
That's fearful, frightful! - Oh, why I dismiss'd the
Sheltering providence surmised by my
Instinct but never appreciated
And wanted by my knowledge - but in vain.

EVE

Aha! I have also similar feeling,
When you'll be fighting against the beasts of prey
Or when flagging I shall tend our garden
I will cast my eyes about the spacious world
And no kins in heaven and earth, no friend
Will be to encourage as shield me or you.
No, this was not the case in the good old times.

LUCIFER (with irony)

Ah, if your soul is so petty-minded
That you feel cold without paternal care,
Subordination is your only need:
I evoke a God for you who will be more
Friendly than the rigourous grim greybeard:
The spirit of this Earth, I know him from
The heaven's choir, he is very modest.
                        Come spirit, come, you see
                        You are no match for me,
                        Nobody dares to call
                        You except me, at all.

(Flames shoot up from the ground, a dense black cloud is formed with rainbow and with horrific thunder.)

Ghost, who are you - this is not you I call'd,
The spirit of Earth is tender and kind.

THE VOICE OF THE EARTH'S SPIRIT

What you saw in the heaven's choir to be weak
Is endless and strong in its own domain. -
Here I am, 'cause I had to listen the word
Of a spirit, but keep it for yourself:
It's another thing to thrill and govern.
If I take on my wraith, you will sink down and
These two worms will be annihilated.

LUCIFER

Tell me how man is able to reach your proud
Proximity if he takes you as God?

THE VOICE OF THE EARTH'S SPIRIT

Partitioned in waters, clouds and possets,
Everywhere he will enter with solid
Ardent eagerness and with bosom held up.

(Disappears. The bosk and spring are peopled by elfish playful nymphs.)

EVE

Ah! Look at these pleasant fraternal cheeks,
Look, look how charmingly they salute us,
We're beyond loneliness and solitude,
Happiness descended to us with them.
They give words of encouragement in grief
And a sound piece of advice in mistrust.

LUCIFER

That's the best to you to seek their wise advice
- Who when asking have come to a decision -
And these elfish phenomena will answer
In harmony as you have raised the question:
They look smiling at the pure guiltless heart
And are frightful phantoms for those in despair;
They will accompany you along your life
In hundreds of differently transform'd shapes,
This is the fresh shade of the inquiring sage
And the ideal of ageless hearts and souls.

ADAM

What do I care for this, this glittering joke
That passes off me but I can't grip it -
And I will have a mystery one more.
Don't beguile with promises, Lucifer,
But let me know everything as you promised.

LUCIFER (aside)

Your knowledge will be sorrowful, you will see
And you'll hunker after the fool's paradise.
(aloud)
Have patience. You know you have to merit
Even the seconds of delight by fighting;
You have to complete your studies and you'd be
Disappoint'd till understand everything.

ADAM

It's easy for you to talk about patience,
Your perspectives possess immortality,
But I did not eat fruit of the tree of life,
The short being forces me to hasten.

LUCIFER

All being that lives will live for the same length,
Secular trees and the tiny may-fly:
Is born, rejoices, loves and comes to grief,
Having perform'd its labour and eagerness.
Not time is running: we are those who change,
A century or a day, that's the same.
Never fear, you will also fill your part,
Don't believe that man's personality
Is roll'd only into this dirt-made body.
You saw the ant and the cluster of bees:
Thousands of neuters wander by fits and starts,
They act at a venture, blunder and fail,
But the whole as a constant entity
Lives and acts in a collective intellect,
It performs perfectly the plan determined
Till the end comes and whole comes to rest.
Your remains will disintegrate, as well,
But you will revive in thousands of forms,
And you need not start anything afresh:
You were guilty, you'll suffer in your son,
And your gout you will continue in him,
All things you will feel and perceive and learn
Will be your own for millions of years.

ADAM

That is only the reminiscence of Lord,
But my bosom has an eager desire:
To have a look at my future to see
Why I am struggling, why I'm suffering.

EVE

Let me see, too, in this regeneration
Will be preserv'd or not my fascination.

LUCIFER

So be it. My witchcraft gives the wanted charms
And you will have a look at future by chance,
In the ideas of fugacious dreams;
But if you will see how crazy is your aim,
How grave's your action to fight again, again;
So, that you don't show the lack of spirit
And don't give up the struggle you've to fight:
I'll charm you a tiny beam that is bright,
It will encourage you: it's a vain scope
All what you see - and this beam is the hope.

(Meanwhile he leads ADAM and EVE into the hovel who fall asleep there.)

 

FOURTH SCENE

Egypt. In the foreground an open hall. ADAM as PHARAOH is young and sits on the throne. LUCIFER as minister to him; in a respectful distance illustrious attendants. In the background slaves are building a pyramid under the control of supervisors with whips. Bright day.

LUCIFER

Your Majesty! The people who would be glad
To fail for you has asked full of anxiety,
What's that doesn't allow the great Pharaoh
To have a rest on the cushion of his throne?
Why do you sacrifice the day's delights
And the honey-sweet dreams of peaceful nights,
And why don't you leave troubles of your plans
To the slaves who would take this with heartful thanks,
When all honours, all dominations and all
Delights all over the world that can be
Ever tolerated: all these are yours.
Treasures of provinces proclaim your lordship,
For you the fragrant flowers open their bells,
Fruit-trees yield their sweetness only to you.
Thousand ladies fling out their arms to you:
The blond fairness with her fornicating eyes
Like a fond and charming graceful vision,
Brunettes wait for you with wheezing-throbbing lips
And with eyes misted by violent ardour -
All these are yours. Their fate is your fancy,
They feel their duty to be kindly performed
Having dulcified even some hours of you.

ADAM

My soul has no hunger for vanities
Like these taxes collected spontaneously,
I don't strive for it coming without my work. -
But this monument that I'm creating
Will certainly help me to find the way
Leading to the summit of true greatness.
Its art will now be marvellous to nature
And will preserve my name for thousand years,
No earthquake, no disaster will worsen it:
Man became much stronger than the Lord himself.

LUCIFER

And yet, Pharaoh, are you bestowed
On this fancy. Tell me in all honesty.

ADAM

No, I'm not. I feel extreme emptiness.
No matter, I did implore not happiness,
Only the fame, and this is open'd to me.
Crowd should not foresee my distress - if it
Would pity me, its adoration would cease.

LUCIFER

And if some time you will understand that
Fame has been a flashing silly-crazy fun?

ADAM

That's nonsense.

LUCIFER

                And if it were so?

ADAM

                                                  I should die,
Having call'd down curses upon the whole world.

LUCIFER

You will not die, but understand it some time,
You'll even recommence with your past success.

(Supervisors beat one of the slaves so he runs wailing and persecuted by supervisors into the hall and falls down in front of the throne.)

THE SLAVE

Mylord! Help!

EVE (as wife to the slave parts from the workers and drops herself on his husband with heart-rending howl.)

You do implore him in vain!
Who never had share in our suffering
He's at a loss! The cry of pain is low
And throne stands too high. Why do you not call me
Who conceals you and holds off all the lashings
By her body.

ADAM (to the supervisors who crush in and want to drag away the slave and his wife)

Leave them there and get away.
(Supervisors exeunt)
What's the feeling in my heart unknown so far,
Who's this woman and what's her glamour which
Like a chain pulls down the great Pharaoh
To this worm who is rolling in dirty dust? (Stands up.)

LUCIFER

This is one of the threads again by which
Your Lord has scoffingly afflicted you,
To remember even if you flutter
Proudly: you are a small worm in yourself.
You saw how strong this slender thread may be,
It winds out always of your hands and hence
I can't tear it to bits.

ADAM (Walking down the throne's steps.)

                You would be wrong.
It is as outrageous as it's pleasant.

LUCIFER

But it's befitting that a sage and king
Should suffer from it.

ADAM

                                What shall I do then?

LUCIFER

Ah, there is nothing for it but knowledge
Denies the existence of this hidden thread
That's laughed harshly by power and matter.

ADAM

I can neither laugh it off nor deny it.

EVE

Darling, your blood is running drop by drop,
I'll stop it, does it give much pain to you?

THE SLAVE

Life is painful to me but not for long.

EVE

This is not so, why would you have lived so far
When you would die now, as you have found me?

THE SLAVE

Why slaves have to live? - He bears stones to the
Pyramid for the mighty, when his issue
Is in his yoke, dies. - Millions for one.

ADAM

Oh, Lucifer, what outrageous words these are!

LUCIFER

That is feverish madness of agony.

ADAM

What did he say?

LUCIFER

        Great Pharaoh, what's that?
Well I never! It is magnificent:
It is less by one slave who live on the Earth.

EVE

For you poor number, but for me the world,
Woe to me, oh woe to me, who will love me? -

THE SLAVE

Me not more. - Forget me, lady, for ever. (He dies.)

ADAM

It's me who does it. Hi, carry out the corpse!
(People lift up the corpse.)
Arise! My lady! The throne is your due,
You are the princess of fascination like
Me that of the power - we have to find each
Other anywhere.

EVE

  Oh, great Pharaoh,
I know your order is fate of all slaves,
I don't make excuses, but allow me
A short time only, then I wait your orders.

ADAM

Let this word be off! Oh, the fate of my reign,
Not to go beyond the words of orders?

EVE

It's enough now that this order does not
Cause pain to me; oh, in this first moment
Don't be envious of my tears for this corpse. -
This corpse, how beautiful is it, my God!
(Drops herself on it.)

ADAM

Beautiful and dead: what contradiction!
Is this coolness mocking to our efforts
Or a woeful smile to our vanity?

LUCIFER

It's an escaped slave who flouts you proudly,
Saying: I became stronger than your shackles.

ADAM

Peace to his remains and hail to the life.
It's all very well for him, but I can't
Spare your smile.

(The corpse is carried out. ADAM leads EVE to the throne.)

Let you be, my lady, here!
Oh! It's wonderful to have a rest with you.

(Yammering among the workers. EVE shudders.)

What's amiss with you?

EVE

                        Oh, do you not hear
The people's woe?

ADAM

          It's first that I perceive it.
It has an ominous ring, but never mind!
Kiss me, kiss me and forget, forget the world. (To LUCIFER)
And you stop the mouth of this crazy crowd.

LUCIFER

It is beyond me, this is people's right,
Together with yoke it's the heir of it.

(Yammering again. EVE cries out, ADAM rises.)

ADAM

Lady, you suffer and I do not know
How to help. The scream beats my head through your heart
Like the summer thunderbolt from the blue
And I feel so that the world cries for help.

EVE

Oh, Pharaoh, stamp flat but forgive me
When this people's wailing does not make me ease,
I'm aware of being your docile maid
And it's my aim to entertain your lordship.
I shall forget everything outside me:
Misery and greatness, reveries and corpse
For I've beatific smile and ardent lips;
But if the people of millions of arms
Suffers the cuts with whip and wails outside
Like small scraps of the ever-aching body,
Me, the renegade maiden of this people,
In my heart am a prey to these torments.

ADAM

And so do I. - The millions for one -
The dead also said. -

EVE

                  Oh, great Pharaoh!
Your brow darkened and this is my fault,
Cast me off or, please, instruct me how to be
Deaf as a stone.

ADAM

   You've been much better master,
You have taught me to perceive the wailing. -
I'll hear it never again. - See! Be free
All the slaves. What good will the fame do to me
That I can catch up only as one person
Through ruination and wail of millions
Who breathe also like the human being;
I feel many times pain, but once the delight.

LUCIFER

Oh, Pharaoh, you are in clouds; the crowd
Is the brute beast of fate that will work hard
Under every types of every systems.
This is its fate. Let it be released from this:
What you fling away, it does not win it
And seeks for new lordship even tomorrow.
Do you believe to foist yourself on it
When does not feel to need master by all means?
Or when is self-respected by itself?

ADAM

Why is it wailing, why? As slavery
Would be painful?

LUCIFER

          It doesn't know what's wailing.
Everybody has a desire to rule,
Only this and not fraternity will
Pursue the huge crowd to join and be behind
The banner of freedom, - this is fairly well
Free of consciousness and it worried by
Surmises for everything what is new
And negation of those existing so far.
This is the blind hope to see its dreams on the
Happiness to be vainly realized.
People: it's an abyssal sea being not
Translucent to sunbeam; it'll be always dark,
Only the wave is sparkling thrown in the air
And maybe just you'll be the gleaming wave.

ADAM

Why just me?

LUCIFER

All the same, akin to you
Who became conscious of the popular drive
And who as the beloved hero of freedom
Tries to replace you at your higher place.
Meanwhile, the crowd, winning but nothing, will
Change its name, the master is preserved.

ADAM

Your obstinacy runs in an endless ring,
Maybe there's no way to escape from it

LUCIFER

There is. Give these men endow'd with special
Privilege some armlets, rings or other
Knick-knacks, say: here you are, I prefer you
To the crowd and this is why you'll be nobler -
They take for granted and disdaining the crowd
Endure to be despised by you, as well.

ADAM

Don't tempt me with such fascinating fancies.
Get out with the slaves! Be free all of them.
Proclaim this to them, but be in hurry,
Not to be too late if I would regret it.

LUCIFER (aside)

Go ahead proudly, go about your way,
Think you're going when fate carries away.

ADAM

This object must remained uncompleted,
Warning ruin to megalomany,
Question-mark to our power and frailty.

(Outside shouts of joy, workers disperse. Re-enters LUCIFER.)

LUCIFER

Be glad you slaves, the mighty has bow'd down,
But don't believe it to act under pressure.

EVE

Be consoled, oh be consoled, my darling!
What good will the barren glory do to us
While creeping between us like a serpent.

ADAM

But it is great.

EVE

Get out with it! You see, wail
Became silent, will not disturb our delight.
What do you crave for when rest in my arms?

ADAM

Your horizon is narrow and flimsy,
And just this attracts the proud man to your arms -
Indulgence only can be loved by power
Like protecting parents support their son
Most heartily due to his resourcelessness.

EVE

Alas, Pharaoh! Maybe I bore you
With my idle talk and my empty chatter?
All is in vain! I am not more cultur'd.                       

ADAM

Don't want to be more clever, my darling.
I am sound of mind and that's enough to me.
I search your arms neither for power, neither
For greatness nor for knowledge, into all these
I can go further in my books. You have
To chatter so I listen to your voice
To be aware throughout me of its flutter.
It's the same what you tell, nobody will ask
What the tiny bird is singing. We shall
Listen to it with sweet expectations.
Be you only flower, a dear trinket
That's useless but fair: this is its merit. (To LUCIFER)
And yet, I am eagerly wishing something.
Maybe it's crazy - but please, meet my wish -
Let me have a fearless look in advance,
To several thousands of years: how my fame
Will live on afterwards?

LUCIFER

                        While you are kissing
Do you not feel lukewarm and gentle breeze
That lightly laps your face and flies away?
Thin layer is left where it is flying off,
This dust thickens a year only some inches,
But amounts to ells during centuries,
Millennia will bury your pyramids,
Your name will be sunk into the sand dunes,
Jackal howls in your gardens of delight,
Beggars, slaves will populate the desert

(What LUCIFER says, all become visible)

And this is done neither by sky-shaking
Tempests, nor by roaring and howling earthquakes:
Only by mild breeze that flutters round you.

ADAM

Dreadful picture!

LUCIFER (with irony)

        Don't fear! Just your mind is lost,
Your body is preserv'd as a mummy:
Object of curiosity of school-boys,
With distorted face and without the faint script
Whether it was a slave or perhaps master.

(He kicks towards a mummy that occurred meanwhile in front of he throne and now is slowly rolling down on the throne's steps.)

ADAM (jumping up)

Infernal delusion! Get out! Get out!
Vain efforts, crazy megalomany -
It rings in my ear: millions for one.
I have to assert the right of millions
In free state - elsewhere that's impossible.
Be the person vanish'd when people lives
Making the whole from individuals.

EVE

And you leave also me, me, your true love?

ADAM

Indeed! I leave you, the throne, everything.
Guide me, Lucifer, to new intentions,
Anyhow, I fool away many time
In this wrong track.
(Starts, drawing his sword.)

EVE

                Mylord! If you return with
Broken heart, you will find retreat in my arms.

ADAM

That's true, I suspect to find also you
In an image that is highly purified.
Then you'll hold me in your arms not by order
But - equal in rank - with feeling of delight. (exit)

LUCIFER

Don't be in hurry, you will run down your scope
In time, maybe much farther back than you hope,
You'll cry when you see, it is crazy and hard,
While I am laughing. - Let's go ahead. Forward!

 

FIFTH SCENE

Athens. Agora with a platform in the middle. In the foreground aside an open temple with sculptures of gods, garlands and altar. EVE as LUCIA, wife to general MILTIADES, with her son CHIMON accompanied by servants bringing sacrificial vessels are coming towards the temple hall. In the agora people are standing in rags. Bright morning.

EVE

This way, this way my beloved little son.
Look, your father sailed to that direction
To battle at far frontiers of our home.
Rude people are there living who have been
Rashly a threat to our homeland and freedom.
Let's pray, let's pray my beloved son, so our
Justness be protected by the Heaven
And let your knight father return safe and sound.

CHIMON

Why my noble father has gone far away
To safeguard this ragged and coward people,
While his fair lady's eating out her heart?

EVE

Alas! Don't judge your generous father,
These children lie under the curse of god,
Only the woman in love has the right
To bewail the actions of her husband that
Would be missing, she would be made ashamed.
Your father did his duty as expected.

CHIMON

You fear, mother, he will be defeated?

EVE

Not at all, my son. Your father's hero,
He wins, but I fear for him he's unable
To triumph over himself.

CHIMON

                        How is that?

EVE

Soul has always a selfish word, this is
The ambition. It is asleep in all slaves
Or, when repress'd, is degraded to crime.
But getting warm it is made grow high by the
Freedom and is shown as civic virtues.
This generates all beauties and the great,
But if it's too strong, attacks its breeder
And will fight till one is bleeding to death. -
If this strong selfish word would him overcome
And if he would betray this holy land,
I would swear at him. Let's go to pray, son.

(They go into the temple, meanwhile more and more people come to the agora.)

FIRST FROM THE CROWD

There is no exciting news, as if our
Army would find the enemy nowhere near.

SECOND FROM THE CROWD

And also at home everybody's sleepy,
Maybe nobody's working on some plans
Like in days gone by, that to be realized
The howl of high people would be needed.
I am wandering since this morning here
And nobody wanted to buy my vote.

FIRST FROM THE CROWD

Monotonous life, what to do at all?

THIRD FROM THE CROWD

There would be no harm to make disorder.

(During this time EVE set light to the altar's fire, washed her hands and made herself ready to offer up the sacrifice. Servants to her start to sing hymns that lasts during the subsequent scene The agora is full with citizens and people; two DEMAGOGUES struggle for the platform.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Get out! This is my place, this is my site,
Our land is endanger'd if I cannot speak.

(People howl acclamation.)

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

It will be lost if you speak. Agent, get out!

(People laugh and applaud.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

You are not agent since nobody buys you.
Citizens! It's painful to me to speak,
It is sorrowful to humiliate
Deeply the great and to be forced to drag
The grand soldier to your unfailing court
From the triumphal car.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

                        That's good, evil!
Now trim with flowers the brute beast to be
Offered in sacrifice.

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

                  Get out of the way!

SOMEBODY FROM THE CROWD

Why we've to listen to that mad scoffer.

(People haul the second demagogue.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Though I have aches in my heart, I have to speak,
Since you, glorious and princely people
I set above your military leader.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

This mean-souled starving group in rags and tatters
That like a dog is on the outlook for
Garbage of its masters? - Oho, you poltroon,
I can't be envious of your fancy.

SOMEBODY FROM THE CROWD

Down with him! He's also traitor, down with him!

(He is much more insulted. EVE offers two pigeons and incense on the altar.)

EVE

Holy Aphrodite! Oh, take and accept
The smoke of this incense and answer my pray:
I want my man not to be crowned by laurel
To free but his heart from domestic troubles.

(EROS occurs smiling in the smoke of sacrifice, GRACES stand round it and scatter roses on it. Devoutly standing group.)

SERVANTS

Answer her!

EROS

                  Woman, be blessed by the
Pure heart!

GRACES

                  And the protection of Graces
Be with you!

SERVANTS

        Thanks, thanks be to Aphrodite!

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Now, let you hear the charge! Great Miltiades
Betrayed his country.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

                  Oh, you lie, you lie!
Hold your tongue or else the shame of belated
Regret is yours.

FIRST FROM THE CROWD

        Get out of there, rotter!

(He is whirled into the crowd)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

He's holding your bloom in his hands, he captured
Lemnos with one stroke and now he's tarrying
At Paros. He is certainly bought over.

THIRD FROM THE CROWD

The death to him!

FIRST CITIZEN

        Come on! Come on! Shout! Or
Get along with you of my reserved site.

(Sacrifice is ended, gods disappear.)

EVE

What's that buzz outside? Let me see, my son.

CHIMON

A traitor is condemn'd mother, I think.

EVE

My heart sinks when seeing the sentence of the
Starving crowd pass'd on the powers that be.
When mighty is defamed, the mob is gloating
Over and insult it with mockery
As it would verify its own aspersion.

SECOND FROM THE CROWD

My good sir! I am hoarse and I want to
Shout.

SECOND CITIZEN

        Here you are! Drink and make your gorge wet.

SECOND FROM THE CROWD

And what should I shout then?

SECOND CITIZEN

                                        Say death to his head.

SOMEBODY FROM THE CROWD

To death! To death!

EVE

                About whom are they speaking?

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

About who else as about him, a head
Taller than others, they'll have none of it.

EVE

Miltiades? - Oh, my almighty gods!
And you, old Chrispos, who was liberated
From slavery by him, you shout also death?

CHRISPOS

Forgive me, lady, only one of us
May live. I'm sustain'd with three children by him
Who wants me to vote so.

EVE

                        Oh, woe to thee,
Chrispos, if your fate drags down you to depths!
Though I indulge seeing that you're starving.
But you, Thersites? And you all, you all,
Who sleep in the languishment of abundance
'Cause my husband dislodged the enemy
From your gates. - Oh, you're highly ungrateful! -

THERSITES

Oh, my lady, it is sorrow and painful
But what to do, that's the public anger:
Who will venture all what he possesses
Defying everything and braving the waves!

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Now I declare the judgement of people.

(LUCIFER as soldier, comes running with distracted face.)

LUCIFER

To arms! To arms! Enemy is at the gates!

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

That's nonsense! Our victorious general
Is not there?

LUCIFER

                   Just he, he is the enemy.
He found out what you have contemplated,
The rightous anger flared up in his heart,
While you speak, he'll be here with fire and sword!

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

This misfortune is due to you, traitors!

SOMEBODY FROM THE CROWD

Let's knock them down! - Hail to the general! -
Oh, woe to us! Alas! Run for your lives! -
Everything is lost.

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

        Not at all! To the gates,
Pay homage to him! -

EVE

                Oh, almighty gods!
The judgement wail'd that took off you from me,
But it is to me more sorrowful that
You verified it - though I shall regain you. -

FIRST FROM THE CROWD

Take as hostage his wife: if our town will be
Damag'd, she must die together with her son.

EVE

I would die, husband, heartily for you
But curse of homeland must not fall on my son. -

CHIMON

Don't have fears for me, come with me, mother,
This shrine will protect us from all maltreatments.

(They go up to the hall from the pursueing group, two NYMPHS lower a rose-chain behind them, the pursueing group immediately stops. Trompets sound outside, people disperse with wailing. - NYMPHS disappear.)

LUCIFER (rubs his hands and laughs)

It was a nice joke. To laugh it is so kind
Where broken are the hearts and goes blank the mind.
(turning towards the temple)
But to see this ever rejuvenating,
Everlasting beauty always disturbs me.
I feel cold in its unfamiliar sphere
That makes prudish all those who have nothing on,
Makes all sins to be noble and the fate
To be majestic - with its pure roses
And inviting lips of simplicity. - -
Why my world is behind its time for so long,
The monster, the dreadfullness full with doubt
To frighten far away this delusion
Which always revives the man being on
The verge of going under in this long fight. -
But it remains to be seen whether soon
The horror of death comes certainly to us,
Your unentertaining phantom will be
Perish'd, when it goes to its utmost limits.
(He mingles in the crowd.)

(ADAM as MILTIADES is wounded and guided by an armed group. Before him the imploring crowd and the DEMAGOGUES)

SOMEBODY FROM THE CROWD

Long live our leader! Be merciful to us!

ADAM

What is your fault, and why do you implore me?
And what powerful may ask from the weak?
But my wife, my son don't come to meet me;
Are they insulted or perhaps injured! - -

EVE

Oh, Miltiades, why do you come when
Your wife can't rejoice at your arrival, -
My son, your mother sinks down, help me... Your
Father does not will a good name to you! -

ADAM

What's that? It is beyond me. Crowd implores,
My wife curses and my chest bleeds for the home. -

EVE

But both home and my heart bleed much stronger,
Why did you come at the head of your army?

ADAM

Is it not due to me to be escorted?
I've come, 'cause my heavy wound does not allow
To be equal farther to all my duties.
I've come that, as traditional, to give back
My power to majestic people, to put
It in its hands and account for my acts.
Now, I disband you my comrades in arms,
You have deserved the quietness of your heart.
And now, Athena Pallas, consecrating
This sword I hang it over your altar.

(He is guided into the temple's hall; his soldiers disperse.)

EVE (falls about the neck of her husband)

Oh, Miltiades, who is more happy than
Your wife, you noble and generous man!
Look at your son, he favours his father,
How beautiful he is!

ADAM

                Oh, my dear ones!

CHIMON

I knew very well, my father knows what
To be done. -

EVE

Oh, don't make me ashamed of it,
His good lady ought to know it much better.

ADAM

My son, your father's sword offer you up.

CHIMON (hanging up the sword)

Protected be this dear sword by you, goddess,
Till some day I return to you for it.

EVE

Let the mother offer up this incense
To this sacrifice in pairs. Pallas, help us!
(She offers up incense.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE (on the platform)

Was I at all right, that he's a traitor?
That Dareios bought over him? The wound is
Pretence, he does not want against him to fight.

SOMEBODY FROM THE CROWD

The death to him!

ADAM

        What's all the noise about?

EVE

Alas, Miltiades, that is dreadful charge:
You're said a traitor by the crowd anew.

ADAM

It's a foolish charge; me to be a traitor
Who won the fight at Marathon?

EVE

                                          Oh, that's true,
What you have found here, it's a depraved world.

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Why do you wait? Arrest him?

(People crowd before the temple hall, LUCIFER among them.)

EVE

                                        Miltiades!
In this shrine you are kept safe, do not leave it.
Why did you disband your comrades in arms?
Why you have had not burnt down this den of vice?
This mob deserves only to be shackled,
'Cause it feels that you are the born lord of it,
Who are nobler alone than they're together,
And will kill you but not to fall at your feet.

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Do you hear how the wife to a traitor
Is speaking?

EVE

                   That's the right of woman to
Defend her husband even he's guilty,
Even he's morally high as he is!
And his enemy as freak as you are. -

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Why majestic people lets itself to
Be dispraised.

FIRST FROM THE CROWD

Maybe it is right what she says.

FIRST CITIZEN

Suspects are who vote for them. Shout and cry,
You dirty dogs or starve to death, you wasters.

SOMEBODY FROM THE CROWD

To death!

ADAM

                Veil my son, oh, I want him not
To see my blood - leave me, my lady, leave me,
Not to be touched by thunderbolt that comes.
Let die alone me - but why I have to live
When I find the liberty, the reason why
I've striven for a lifetime, to be absurd.

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Why do you hesitate?

SOMEBODY FROM THE CROWD

                To him the death!

ADAM

I do not swear at this infamous crowd,
The blame lies wholly with its weak nature:
To be denounced by destitution as slave
And slavery perverts it as to be the
Bloodthirsty pawn of some insolent rebels.
Only me alone, only me was fool
To think that such a freak crowd needs liberty.

LUCIFER (aside)

You recited the rhym'd epitaph for you
And for some large graves of your late descendants.

ADAM

Let me lead down from here. I don't have recourse
To this shrine.

(He lets himself lead down the steps putting EVE tenderly into the servant' arms.)

Here you are - I am ready. -

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

Defend yourself, nothing is lost at all now.

ADAM

I would be heavily wounded if I would
Speak up for me.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

        Do it, surely this crowd
Has just been crawling in the dust before you.

ADAM

Oh, this is why everything is in vain,
The crowd does not overlook its self-disgrace.

LUCIFER

Did you undeceive yourself?

ADAM

                                Oh, far too.

LUCIFER

Did you understand that you were nobler lord
Of this crowd than it was noble to you?

ADAM

Maybe, but both of them are damnations;
Fate is the same but with different names.
It is a vain hope to fight against it,
And I'll never do. - Why would any hot heart
Have high aspirations, why would it do?
Be it retiring, be it search of delight
To fill somehow the very short being, to
Stagger deliriously to Hades. -
Guide me, Lucifer, guide me to new ways
And I will laugh to see the virtues and
Pains of others, while wishing delights only.
And you, lady, who - I seem to remember -
Conjured a bower out of the desert,
If you want as respectable mother bring
Up my son to be a brave citizen,
You're mad, are justly mocked by the maid
Sitting in the brothel with painted face
And with wine-excited and inviting lips.
Enjoy and pass time and deny virtue. -
Let me mount the scaffold, as I'm sentenc'd,
Not because I could do any sordidness,
But 'cause could be inspir'd by the great thoughts. -

(Meanwhile a block is brought in front of the steps, LUCIFER stands close to it with a hatchet. ADAM lowers his head.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Put to death! The fatherland for ever!

LUCIFER (whispering to ADAM)

Nice farewell, it is. - Well, my fearless sir,
Are you not thrill'd now oddly enough by the
Unfriendly wind of the wry-faced cold death? -

EVE

Oh, Pallas! You did not answer my prayer. -

(The spirit of death like a gentle young man comes out of the temple and walks up to ADAM with torch and wreath.)

ADAM

Pallas answered me. - Good-bye, good-bye,
Lucia, my poor heart is satisfied.

LUCIFER

Be you damn'd, illusory world of dreams,
You spoiled my most beautiful hours again. -

EVE

Be you damn'd, you plebeian and rigid crowd,
You treated brutally the happiness
And its sweet flower was just stamp'd in dust.
Albeit, liberty is not so sweet to you
As painful and dolorous it was to me.

 

SIXTH SCENE

Rome. Open hall with sculptures of gods, vessels in which volatile oil is burning. View to the Appennines. - In the middle spread table with three couches. ADAM as SERGIOLUS, LUCIFER as MILO, CATULUS, all as leachers, EVE as JULIA, HIPPIA and CLUVIA as harlots carouse in frivolous dresses. GLADIATORS are fighting on a platform, slaves stand awaiting orders, flutists are playing. Twilight, later night.

CATULUS

Look, Sergiolus, how skilful and brisk
Is this gladiator mark'd with red ribbon.
I'll be bound that he will defeat the other.

ADAM

By Hercules! No!

CATULUS

        Ah, by Hercules, and
Who's so crazy of us to believe in gods?
Take Julia, I'm ready to believe.

ADAM

All right.

LUCIFER

           You swear to well-founded bases:
You replaced the false god by an other one.
But tell us what to understand on this oath:
Her beauty, her love are to be understood,
Or just her unbroken faithfullness to you? -

CATULUS

Charm is short-lived and if it would not be,
What now's delighting, will be dull tomorrow,
And you'll be seduced by the woman of
Less worth, by the witching charm of novelty.

ADAM

I said her faithfullness. Or who squanders
More on his lady than me?

HIPPIA

                                You're silly!
Can you endlessly even make love to her?
And if you could, you who are desirous of
Grasping delight and are flighty in vain,
Since only dispersed tiny fragments of
Delight you can find in each woman you love,
While the ideal of delight and beauty
Before you blinks as twinkling illusion;
How do you know that one of its whims or a
Daydream don't allow herself to be tempted? -
The crash'd muscles of a gladiator -

ADAM

That's true, that's true, Hippia, say not more,
Why this delight attracts me as Tantalus,
When the Herculean power is missing
And like Proteus we can't change ourselves.
And a despised slave delights in an hour
After a painful week, that's uselessly
Wanted by his lord. - Is delight only
A glass of cold water to man be athirst
And death to those who want to swim in it?

LUCIFER

What an illustrious moral course on
The bosoms of fair girls and at flower'd cups. -
But what about your bet? -

ADAM

                                If I lost then
Julia is yours.

CATULUS

If you win?

ADAM

                          Your horse
Is mine. -

CATULUS

                To four weeks you can take it back,
I thrust it else into the fishpond of mine. -

LUCIFER

Look, Julia, at this fine and thick fish:
Eat, you'll certainly fatten an other.

EVE

No beastly worm does feast within you now?
Be happy who lives, or when no chance is
To be happy, have a good laugh at the least. (she drinks)

ADAM (to the gladiator)

Heigh! hold your own!

CATULUS

                  Gallantly up ahead, go!

(The gladiator of CATULUS falls and imploring for his life he raises his fingers. ADAM wants to show the sign of clemency but CATULUS pins his hand and with clenched fist he turns thumb towards the gladiator.)

Recipe ferrum! - Coward freak! I have
Enough slaves and I'm not so hard-fisted
To stint this short but thrilling performance
Of you, my dear and beautiful ladies,
Since kissing is much more sweeter and the
Lust is warmer when some blood was pouring.

(Meanwhile the gladiator was executed by the other.)

ADAM

The horse is mine, come Julia, kiss me, come.
Slaves, carry out the corpse. - And you, dancers,
Let you make now some comedy to us,
That was enough for today.

(The corpse is carried out, dancers take their place on the platform.)

CATULUS

                                Cluvia!
To me, come, I cannot see a good while
When others are kissing.

LUCIFER

                        What about us,
Hippia, do we follow their action?
But smack your lips: are they not wet by poisons?
Well, now we can enjoy ourselves, my darling.

ADAM

Why your heart is beating so heavily,
I don't find, Julia my rest on it.
(They are talking in undertones.)

LUCIFER

Listen, this fool's speaking about the heart! -

CATULUS

You see, darling, I do not maltreat your heart,
You make what you want, I don't want to know,
If your kiss is hot and is free for me.

CLUVIA

You are kind-hearted! Hail! To your health this wine!
(she drinks)

CATULUS

That's right, Cluvia, but don't refuse your
Soft arms and delicate bosom from me,
You see, my garland has slipped off my head. -
(To the dancers)
Oh, that's a favourable turn in your dance,
It's full of voluptuous fire and of charm!

CLUVIA

I cover your eyes and you will find there
What is also my most eager desire
And I cannot deserve even a good word. -
(Pointing to LUCIFER)
But rather look at this vinegar-faced chap, -
Why does he occupy this bonny girl,
If the only good service to him is that
To leave her being asleep and while he
Treats with sardonic smile and with stony face
A lot of delightful though purposeless things
That add relish to the conversation. -

CATULUS

Really, such a wry face is equal
In a party to freeze the atmosphere.
Who goes against the enchantment of seconds
And does not himself to be carried away,
He's good-for-nothing, I wish him to stay home. -

HIPPIA

Indeed, I feel frighten'd that in this fellow
The black death devastating the country
Has settled.

ADAM

                  Away with this sorrowful
Nightmare, away. Sing us some piquant songs.
Who of you'll sing the most beautiful one?

HIPPIA (sings)

Wine together with love
May be never enough;
Every sort has its
Own flavour and spice.
And rapture, delightful rapture
Like sun all the subsided graves,
Brightens and lights up our life.
Wine together with love
May be never enough;
All the maidens are
Differently nice,

ALL

And rapture, delightful rapture
Like sun all the subsided graves
Brightens and lights up our life

CATULUS

That's very good, now Cluvia that's your turn!

CLUVIA (sings)

In days gone by foolish world was that,
Lucretia in her widow's bed
Was by a fair cavalier look'd for,
Her lips are silent, wants no delight more,
She lays off into brothel to go,
Stabs herself to death without ado.

ALL

Let's be happy, this world better is,
Let's be happy, I am who here lives.

CLUVIA

In days gone by foolish world was that:
Brutus didn't sit in his cabinet,
Took his sword and has gone to contend
Like a hireling but to what an end?...
Fought for the ragged crowd's peace and wealth
And on the bare ground he bled to death.

ALL

Let's be happy, this world better is,
Let's be happy, I am who here lives.

CLUVIA

In days gone by foolish world was that:
Ghosts upset the heroes, it was bad,
Thought as holy, we are laughing at
And if there were somebody who's mad,
They could play in the circus in hood:
For us as sight, for the wild as food. -

ALL

Let's be happy, this world better is,
Let's be happy, I am who here lives.

LUCIFER

Oh, Cluvia, you bore down Hippia.
I'd like to be the poet of this nice song.

ADAM

You don't sing, Julia, why are you grieve?
Around us the others rejoice and laugh
Or you don't like to have rest in my arms?

EVE

Oh, I do. But forgive me, Sergiolus,
When happiness makes my brow darkened,
I hold that this laugh is very false to me.
The most delightful moment of us is
Spiced by one drop of an inexpressible grief,
We guess perhaps, this moment is - flower,
And thus languid.

ADAM

        Ah, I have the same feeling.

EVE

Particularly if I hear music,
I do not listen to the empty words,
But flood of sound will swing me like a ship,
And I feel as to fall into a deep sleep:
I fly back by this gentle sound to the past
Beneath the sun-flooded palms I was there
Unguilty and unsophisticated,
The mission of my soul was magnificent.
Forgive me, all this is the enchantment of
The crazy dream. - I kiss you again. - I wake.

ADAM

Away with music and dance, the flood of
Eternal sweetness is mawkish to me,
My heart wants rather some bitterness and
Some gall into my wine, a sting to the
Reddening lips and disaster on me.

(Dancers exeunt; wailing from outside.)

What's that wail, what is this spine-chilling shriek?

LUCIFER

Some madmen who dreamt of fraternity and
Equality before law, are crucified.

CATULUS

It serves them right, why they did not remain at
Home while enjoying and forgetting the world,
Why did they deal with business of others?

LUCIFER

Beggar does want the rich to be his brother,
Invert them and see, he will crucify you.

CATULUS

Let us laugh off misery and the power,
The plague that takes its tithe of the people,
And let us laugh off all fates of the gods.

(Wailing again.)

ADAM

And I feel as to fall into a deep sleep
And fly back by this gentle sound to the past,
The mission of my soul was magnificent. -
You said so, Julia, did you?

EVE

                                Indeed.

(Meanwhile it grew dark. A funeral procession passes in front of the hall, with torches and wailing women. The whole company is wrapped in deep silence for a while.)

LUCIFER (bursting into a laugh)

As I see, merriness is gone away.
The wine is over or the joke is lost
So that the vinegar-faced chap has enough?
Or somebody of us maybe is fearing
Or just was converted.

ADAM (throwing his cup towards him)

                  Die, if you think.

LUCIFER

Well, I'll invite a new guest in our ranks,
Maybe he will bring here merriness again.
Hallo there! Slaves, hallo! bring him at once
Who passes this way under the torchlight.
We'll offer him, after all, a glass of wine. - -

(Slaves carry in the corpse in an open coffin and put it on the table. The companionship remains in the background. LUCIFER drinks the health of the guest.)

My nice chap! Drink! To-morrow me, to-day thee!

HIPPIA

Maybe you want rather a kiss.

LUCIFER

                                        Embrace him
And steal out the obulus of his mouth.

HIPPIA

If I kiss you why not to kiss him at all?

(She kisses the corpse. PETER APOSTLE emerges from the attendants.)

PETER APOSTLE

Hold on! Hold on! You imbibe the black death itself!

(All arise shrinking back in horror)

ALL

The black death it's dreadful - let's get out from here!

PETER APOSTLE

You caddish gang! - Coward generation,
Who while swimming in the goodwill of fortune,
You are as cheeky as a cock-sparrow,
You tread with mocking on God and virtue.
But when disaster your window will shake,
When you're burden'd by almighty hand of God,
You come to heel with disgusting despair.
Do you not feel that you are burden'd by the
Judgement of God? Look 'round! only look 'round!
The town is ruin'd and rude strangers are crushing
Your standing ripe on your heavy earth,
Law is disorganized, nobody orders,
Nobody obeys. Plunder and murder
Haunt all over the peaceful and pleasant homes
Follow'd by ghastly care and by horror
And you have no help from heaven or earth.
You are unable to silence the voice with
Intoxication of the nice delights
That breaks the silence of your bosom's depth
And incites you to nobler aims in vain.
To you this is by no means satisfaction,
Your heart's disgusted only by delight,
You glance round worried, your lips are trembling:
All is in vain, you are free of faith in the
Ancient gods that became disintegrated.

(God-sculptures disintegrate.)

These fall to dust and you don't find new God
Who'd liberate you from dirtiness anew. -
Well, look around! What devastates in your town
With greater power than black death itself;
Thousands leave their soft couches to take the road,
To populate the large empty squares of
Thebais with infuriated hermits,
To seek there for something to irritate and
Excite their torpid, dull amativeness. -
You'll be exterminated, freak nation,
From the purifying scene of this great world.

HIPPIA (falling down in front of the table)

Oh, woe to me, that is a dreadful pain,
I'm in cold sweat, I bath in Orcus' fire -
The plague, the plague - Oh, I'm lost, I was lost!
Will nobody assist me out of you
Who have shared with me so many delights?

LUCIFER

To-day thee, my darling, to-morrow me. -

HIPPIA

Well, kill me then, kill me, else I swear at you.

PETER APOSTLE (walking up to her)

Don't swear, my maid, don't swear but be forgiving -
I will assist you and also the great Lord,
The eternal Lord of the holy love.
Arise to Him, see: by means of this water
Your soul will be purified immediately,
You hasten to Him. -

(He baptizes her with water from a dish on the table.)

HIPPIA

                        Father - I relax. (dies)

CATULUS (starts to go)

I leave for Thebais even today.
I am put off all the nefarious world.

CLUVIA

Wait me, Catulus, I'll go also with you. (exeunt)

ADAM (Being lost in thoughts, comes to the foreground, EVE follows him.)

And you, Julia, what are you doing here,
Where death does allow no glimmer of delight?

EVE

Now, where I must be? Of course, where you are.
Oh, Sergiolus, you could find a lot
Of generous feelings in my loving arms
Where you were after passing delights only. -

ADAM

And was after them in myself, oh in vain!
To perish miserably and pettily
And till then to be in pain. If God does live,
(He kneels down and lifts up his hands to heaven)
If He cares for and has power over us,
Let Him bring new nations and new thoughts to this
World, those to transfuse the freak race and these
To allow the nobler to rise. I feel
Everything we have possess'd, lost its glamour -
And to generate something new, our power
Is insufficient. Answer me, my Lord.

(In the sky the cross occurs in glory. From behind the mountains the redness of burning towns is seen. From the peaks nomad troups descend. Devote hymn is heard from a distance.)

LUCIFER (in himself)

This scene gives me a thrill somehow in my heart,
But I've to fight only against the man!
He is doing for me what I can't at all:
That's a similar joke I have often seen.
If the glory, yet slowly, will be lost,
Remains for me there the bloodthirsty cross.

PETER APOSTLE

Lord has answer'd you. - Take a look around.
The retrograded earth begins to revive.
These bearskinned, barbaric warriors
Who set the luxurious cities afire,
Whose horses stamp flat all what past centuries
Produced and find their stockyard within the
Desolated temples, will refresh the
Blood in the degenerated arteries.
Those who sing hymns in the hippodrome while the
Faming tigers tear to pieces their bosoms,
Will bring new thought, that is fraternity and
Liberation of the individuals,
That will the whole world stagger in its basis. -

ADAM

I feel, the soul's eager for something that's bright
And differs from the vain and torpid delight;
What can be a match to the bliss of bleeding
Slowly the heart with some ecstatic feeling?

PETER APOSTLE

Be your aim: Eternal glory to the Lord,
And to you labour. The person is free
To enforce all what he bears in himself,
Bound by one and only order: by love.

ADAM

Arise to fight, arise to burn for the new
Tenet! Create a different and new world
Crown'd by the heroic, knightly virtue and
On its holy altar the exalted
Idol of woman be the poetry.
(He starts being supported by PETER.)

LUCIFER

Adam, impossibilities you attempt,
This is worthy of the man and just decent.
It pulls you to heaven, this enjoys your Lord

And the devil who sees your hopeless effort. (follows ADAM)

 

SEVENTH SCENE

Constantinople. Market with some loitering citizens. - In the middle the palace of patriarch, in the right a nunnery, in the left a grove. ADAM as TANCRED, in the flower of his manhood comes accompanied by knights at the head of crusaders returning from Asia and with colours flying and with drums beating. LUCIFER as squire to him. Evening, then night.

FIRST CITIZEN

Here's a barbaric troup coming again,
Let's run and close the doors and all the gates,
Not to provoke them to have taste for plunder.

SECOND CITIZEN

Let's hide our ladies; this ferocious mob
Knows fairly the delight of seraglios.

FIRST CITIZEN

Our ladies know the rights of conquerors.

ADAM

Stop there! Why do you run away from us, why?
Or do you not see this holy symbol
That's connecting us in fraternity? -
We brought the light of our faith and the tenet
Of love to Asia, where the holy
Birth of our salvation rocked in the past,
So that the heathens be aware of its grace.
Among you would not be the love at all?

FIRST CITIZEN

We have often heard this kind of oration
And our house has been set afire at once.
(They scatter in all directions.)

ADAM (to the knights)

Well, as you see this is the fatal result
When so many reavers wave the holy
Banner but with hidden infamous plans
And treacherously flattering the dull crowd
Obtrude themselves unbidden to be the head. -
My knight friends! Till our sword is contending
For the spotless honour, for glory of
The Lord, for guard of women and for the
Heroism, we are destined to keep within
Bounds this ghastly and horrific demon,
And guide it to make the great and superbness
Against its wishes and eagernesses.

LUCIFER

This sounds nice, Tancred, but if the crowd believes
not any longer that you are its leader - -

ADAM

Where spirit is, there is the victory.
I will stamp it flat.

LUCIFER

        And if it had spirit?
Do you condescend to it?

ADAM

                        For what end?
I think it would be nobler to inspire it. -
To dispair of the hard struggle in lack of
Comrades is just as petty as to leave out
Somebody ungenerously of the game
'Cause being jealous of his well-deserved share.

LUCIFER

You see, how degenerated the great thought,
The reason why the hippodrome's martyrs died. -
Is this the liberation of entity? - -
That is a marvellous fraternity!

ADAM

Don't mock me. - Don't think that I can't comprehend
The holy words. That's the wish of my life. -
Who bears the holy fire, may and must do,
Who wins his way to us, he will be welcome,
One sword-stroke gets him into our order,
But we have to preserve the treasures of
Our order in this rioting confusion.
Oh, I wish the fullness of time would come,
Our salvation will come only true when all
Limits fall down 'cause everything will be plain. -
I'd be doubtful of such a day to come
When, who brought this great work into action,
Would not have been the almighty Lord himself. -
My dear friends, you saw how we were welcome here.
Being lonely in this clamorous town
There's nothing left but to encamp in that grove
As it was our wont among the heathens
And be patient till it falls out for the best.
Let you start off, I'll follow you and each knight
Is responsible for his attendants.

LUCIFER

It is great pity that your lofty thoughts
Yield only the fruit that is red outside but
Its flesh is powder only.

ADAM

                          That's enough!
You don't believe in something that is nobler?

LUCIFER

If I did, what good will that do to you if
Your race doesn't. - This order of knighthood
You put as Pharos into rolling sea, it
Will blow out and will be ruin'd some day,
And will be more fateful to bold passangers
Than any other that has ever lighted. -
All what lives and acts while spreading the grace
Will die some time, its spirit will be lost,
The body survives as a ghastly beast
While blowing out murderous miasmas
Into the new world generated round it. -
You see, the greatnesses of past will be
Preserv'd so.

ADAM

Till our order is ruin'd
Maybe its holy word will affect the crowd,
Then there's no danger more.

LUCIFER

                                   The holy Word! - -
This holy word is your curse, however,
If you hit on it, by chance, wherever:
You eviscerate, make it turn and twist
And keep it tapping with hardened fist,
Till it will be madness or bonds of some kind
'Cause no exact concept may enter your mind,
And yet you hunt for it, arrogant man,
But it's always to you a dreadful damn.
Or look at this sword, be it either small
Or long, its essence does not change at all.
We may continue endlessly this talk
And where's the point, where we will stop the walk?
Your feeling will it immediately find
When follows the change in a greater kind. -
But it is tiring, why I wag my tongue,
Look around yourself only for a long.

(Some citizens re-enter again.)

ADAM

My friends! My legion's tir'd, it asks for retreat.
Maybe here, in the seat of Christianity
It is not in vain. -

THIRD CITIZEN

          Maybe you are much
Worse in heresy than heathens are themselves.

FOURTH CITIZEN

What do you believe: Homousion
Or Homoiusion?

ADAM

        That's beyond me.

LUCIFER

Don't admit it, that's major above all.

FOURTH CITIZEN

He's in doubt, he is also of false faith.

MANY

Leave them alone, let's shut the door against them. -
Let be accurs'd who provides them a shelter.
(They pass away.)

(The PATRIARCH comes from his palace with princely pomp and companionship, followed by a group of friars escorting heretics in chain, soldiers and people bring up the rear.)

ADAM

I'm lost in wonder! - Tell me who's the prince
Coming up so haughty and provokingly? -

LUCIFER

He is prelate, follower of apostles.

ADAM

And what's this barefooted and dirty mob
That escorts the people in chain with gloating
And with the malice of false humility?

LUCIFER

It's a christian-cynic group of friars.

ADAM

I did not see these in my ancestral hills.

LUCIFER

You will see; you know, poisoning only
Slowly spreads. But take care, don't insult this
Folk that is highly moral and just thence
Highly relentless.

ADAM

        Ah, what's that may be
The virtue of such an eccentric people?

LUCIFER

Asceticism and renouncement are their aim
Commenced by your famous master on the cross.

ADAM

This was the redemption of the world by him,
But this mob blasphemes only the God like the
Rebels looking down upon their favours.
Anyone is fool who takes up the arm
Against a gnat that is proper against
A bear.

LUCIFER

        Maybe they mistake the gnat for
The bear? - Or do they have no right to this?
Have they no right also to send the rakes to
The devil when feeling their heroism? -

ADAM

I see as Thomas and I am in doubt. -
I shall face bravely these hallucinations. -
(He steps to the PATRIARCH.)
Father! Now, warriors of the Holy
Sepulchre we are, after our tiring way
We cannot have rest in this settlement. -
You are so powerful, please, give help to us.

PATRIARCH

My son, I cannot deal with pitty affairs,
I've to serve the glory of God and the
Welfare of people: to condemn heretics
Who sprinkling moral poisons grow as the weeds.
And although we put them to fire and sword
The devil floods us with them with renew'd force. -
But if you have been warriors of the cross,
Why you seek Saracens so far away,
Here you've more dangerous enemy. Up,
Go into their thorps, kill them out, kill all the
Women, all the aged and all the children.

ADAM

Father, you dare not want to kill innocents! -

PATRIARCH

The serpent is innocent while it's small
Or when it lost its poison-tooth, and do
You spare it?

ADAM

Indeed, it can be fearful
Crime that has infuriated the church
Of eternal love.

PATRIARCH

        My son! Oh, my son!
No, not who flatters the flesh, loves in truth,
Rather who orders the spirit to return
Though by sword or through flares to the Eternal,
Who said: I brought not peace but rather fighting
To this Earth. - In the mysterious tenet
Of the Holy Trinity this false-hearted
Mob preaches the homoiusion,
While Church has decided: be the basis
Of confession the homousion. -

FRIARS

To death, to death, the stake is now flaming. -

ADAM

Give up, my friends this ominous "I",
Your fearlessness will be greater sacrifice
In the great fight for the Holy Sepulchre. -

OLD HERETIC

Satan, don't tempt us, we shall bleed for our true
Confession where God has foreordained.

THE FRIAR

You insolent! You boast of true confession?

OLD HERETIC

Did the Council of Rimini or some
Others not speak for us?

THE FRIAR

                        It went astray.
But at Nicaea and in other true
Councils they gave the case for us, did not they?

OLD HERETIC

The factious did! - What a shameless attempt is
To compete with us. Or tell me, tell me
Have you any Doctors of the Church, like
Arius and the two Eusebius's?

THE FRIAR

And have you any Athanasius?

OLD HERETIC

Where are your martyrs?

THE FRIAR

                        We have more than you have!

OLD HERETIC

Nice martyrs are who were beguiled by devil
By its delusion and condemn'd them to death. -
I say, you have been the large Babylon,
The courtesan that cited by Saint John,
That will disappear from the scene of this world. -

THE FRIAR

The seven-headed dragon, the Antichrist
You are, being cited by our Saint John.
You are truthless, you're the devil's disciples.

OLD HERETIC

Robbers, serpents, fornicators, murders...

PATRIARCH

Away with them! We've just now lost too much time,
Burn them at stake, burn them to glory of God!

OLD HERETIC

That's right, you evil, to glory of God,
The victim's dying to his great glory. -
You are powerful and do what you want,
But your doing will be judg'd by heaven. -
Your ill time is already numbered,
New warriors will generate from our blood,
The thought is living and the blazing flame
Will light over subsequent centuries. -
Come friends, let's go into the glorious death. -

HERETICS (singing in choir)

1.    My God, My God, why desert me? Why do my cries of anguish bring no help?
2.    I cry by day, but thou wilt not reply, and no relief comes to me in the night.
3.    Yet, thou art throned, my God - - (Psalms, 22)

FRIARS (interrupt in choir)

1.    Fight those who fight me, O thou Eternal, war on those who war on me;
2.    Seize the shield and buckler, stand up as my champion,
3.    Draw thy spear and battle-axe, to cope with my pursuers (Psalms, 35.)

(In the meantime the PATRIARCH and the procession march away. Some friars with written texts mingle with the crusaders.)

LUCIFER

Why do you stand silent, why you shudder?
Do you consider it as tragedy?
Take as comedy, it will divert you.

ADAM

Alas! Don't joke! - Is it true that for one "i"
One can go so resolutely to die? -
What's then majestic and magnificent? -

LUCIFER

That maybe ridiculous to others.
One hair separates the two concepts only,
A sound in your heart will vote for this or that,
This mystic judge is sympathy that either
Deifies or kills you with its mocking. -

ADAM

Why I looked at these sins only, that are
Captious fights in the superb science; this is
Murderous poison being brilliantly
Extracted from the most refreshing flower. -
This beautiful flower, I knew it once,
In early age of our pursued confession;
Where is the sinner who impoverish'd it?

LUCIFER

Sinner is, yes, the victory itself
That subverts, bears thousands of interests.
Danger binds and produces martyrs and
Always confirms; it speaks for the heretics. -

ADAM

Really, I would throw my sword away
And would go back to my homeland in the north,
Where in shade of intact ancient forests,
The esteemed virtue, the pure simplicity
Outdare all poisons of this false epoch,
If I wouldn't be inspired by mystic words
That I have to regenerate this epoch

LUCIFER

That's useless effort. You'll never assert
The individual against his era:
Age is a stream that carries or dips in,
Person is only swimmer, not leader. -
Those who are said as great and those who have
Some effects, have followed their centuries
But did not create new and new concepts.
Not the day is breaking 'cause cock is crowing,
But the cock crows because day is breaking. -
Those who hurry there in chains to suffer the
Martyrs' death and are laughed at from everywhere,
Only they have some guess through generations,
The new thought will loom only among them;
And for which they die, their descendants will
Breathe in it from the air almost free from care. -
Enough of it! Let's have a look at your camp,
What that infamous friars are doing there,
What they are selling, what they are speaking
With crazy and raging gesticulation. -
Let's listen to them.

A FRIAR

                Champions, warriors,
Take this book of expiation that will
Be your guide in all your incredulities,
This will teach you how long the murder and the
Fornicator, the sacrilegist and
The prejurer will suffer all pains of hell.
This will teach you that one year penalty
Can be bought off by some twenty thalers
By the rich and by three if you were poor,
And who cannot pay, can buy it off by
Several thousands of hard cuts with whip. -
Take this excellent book warriors, take it! -

CRUSADERS

Let me have it, let me have it, father! -

ADAM

He's a bad huckster and buyers are worse,
Draw your sword and disperse this ugly market!

LUCIFER (with some confusion)

Forgive me, this friar's my old fellow,
And see, I do not hate so this kind of world,
As though glory of Lord has taken me up,
I have risen in rank just then with it.
Only you have remained somewhat lower.

(EVE as ISAURA and HELENE, chambermaid to her run shrieking to ADAM being pursued by some crusaders who slink away but immediately.)

EVE (falling down)

Save me, my champion!

ADAM (supporting her)

                        Oh, relax, my lady,
Here you will have rest. Raise your charming eyes.
Ah, what bewitching! - Tell, what has happen'd?

HELENE

We just took a rest in the open air,
In the shady thicket of our garden,
We set about the fresh grass free from care
And listen'd to the magic nightingale's song;
Suddenly we beheld two eyes brighting
With wild flame from behind the thick-set bush.
Growing alarm'd we started to run and the
Four crusaders pursued us with trampling steps,
They just caught us up, when we found you here.

ADAM

I don't know yet, do I wish you to wake up;
Maybe you will leave me like a vision?
How a body can be so ethereal,
Noble, so worthy of adoration. -

LUCIFER

Ethereal body! - That is true, oh, the fate
Could not give more punishment to the lover
For his craziness than to fulfil all that
He will say or believe about his sweetheart. -

ADAM

I seem to remember, I knew you once,
We stood together, there at the stool of Lord.

LUCIFER

Would you be so kind as to not forget:
As your love is entertaining in pairs,
It's as not to the taste of a third party.

ADAM

She opens her eyes - smiles; thanks be to God!

EVE

My knight, you rescued me, how to thank to you?

ADAM

One word of your lips is the richest prize!

LUCIFER (to HELENE)

This prize is poor enough, I don't win it? -

HELENE

And what my thankfullness would be to you?

LUCIFER

Oho, you think that the generous knight
Did rescue also you? What a vanity!
When the knight does rescue the beautiful miss,
His squire will surely rescue her chambermaid.

HELENE

And what could I win? Am either thankful
And it's the same as danger caught me up;
Or unthankful and thus also damn'd. -
Albeit, pursuers were not so ugly.

ADAM

My lady! Where should I guide you to, tell me!

EVE

In front of us there is the cloister's door.

ADAM

The cloister you say? But tell upon your
Honour, its door will not close the hope for me!
Give me a sign to fasten it to this cross,
While that calls me to fight in my duty,
Bring this back to me my most beautiful dreams
And not to wait for everlasting years
At the end of which my reward shimmers. -

EVE

Take this ribbon. -

ADAM

                This pitch-black ribbon, this?
Oh, my lady! Give me hope, not sorrow!

EVE

This sign is mine, I can't give else to you.
Within the cloister there will be no hope.

ADAM

And no love, of course. But where you are, there
Must be love, my lady, there must be love!
I see your guise, this shows you are not novice.

EVE

Do not beset me with your urgent questions,
But you beset me when I see your grief grows.

LUCIFER

So will this mystic door close also you?

HELENE

Indeed, but its key is not thrown into sea.

LUCIFER

What a pity - I could fabricate a nice
Elegy of this case. -

HELENE

                You are false, get out!

LUCIFER

But why? Is it not magnificent thought
To submerge to the seafloor for your key?

HELENE

Oh, I do not wish this.

LUCIFER

                        I'm off at once. -
The depth's monster bears ill will towards me.

HELENE

Come back, come back, oh, I will die of fear -
The key will be sooner in my window. -

ADAM

Well then, let me know your name at the least,
Let me remember it in my hot prayer,
To ask benediction to you, if you
Refuse to share the mourning of your fate.

EVE

Isaura is my name and what is yours?
Prayer better suits those who are cloister'd.

ADAM

My name's Tancred.

EVE

                Tancred, farewell to you.

ADAM

Isaura, do not so suddenly leave me,
Else I shall swear at the name you said first
When you said the unhappy farewell to me. -
This minute was short even for a dream,
How can I keep it on, you'll be secret
And I'm unable to embroider it with
Thread of your fate? -

EVE

                        Let you know my sad fate.
My father fought for the Sepulchre, too,
Once in a night the wild enemy broke in
Upon him and his camp with fire and sword,
There was no hope to fly from before them.
He made a holy vow to Blessed Virgin:
Me, who at that time was a child only,
To offer for her if he will return.
Returned, and now I communicated
At this assurance.

ADAM

        Oh, Holy Virgin!
You, who are the incarnated pure love,
You didn't draw back with injury from this
Blasphemous assurance that does condemn
All your virginal and graceful virtues,
Turning into curse the divine aid of God. - -

HELENE

And you, you do not want to know my fate?

LUCIFER

I know: you loved and were disappointed,
You loved again and already you deceiv'd,
Again you loved - you'd enough of your gallant,
Now your empty heart waits for a new prey.

HELENE

It's strange! Maybe you've a pact with the devil;
But I didn't believe you so meek to be
That you will figure my heart to be empty.

LUCIFER (to ADAM)

My lord, be quick, you can't bid farewell to her
And I can't prevent my total victory.

ADAM

Isaura! All your words are stings in my heart,
Let its poison be sweeten'd by a kiss.

EVE

My knight, what do you wish - you heard my vow.

ADAM

Maybe, it's not forbidden me to love you.

EVE

You're happy but how shall I forget you?
Tancred, I start or all my powers fail.
Good-bye, farewell! - We shall meet in the heaven.

ADAM

Farewell. - This day's memory will never fade.

(EVE enters the cloister.)

HELENE (aside)

You poltroon - have I to do everything? (aloud)
Key will be in window, not in the sea. (follows EVE)

ADAM

Well, let's go. -

LUCIFER

        It's too late. It is finish'd.
You see how crazy is your breed at all,
He takes the woman once as object of his
Brutal wish and dusts the bloom of poetry
Of her face with roughened hands stripping
Himself without consideration of
The most graceful flowers of his sweetheart; -
Then puts her on the altar as goddess
And bleeds and contends for her but in vain,
Till her kiss will unprofitably fade. -
Why he does not consider and esteem her
As a woman in her female vocation?

(Meanwhile it has become dark, the Moon rises, ISAURA and HELENE in the window.)

EVE

How longing were his eyes, how he trembled,
Ah, this heroic man trembled before me,
But my chastity and faith are above all -
I pass away here as holy victim.

HELENE

It's wonderful how crazy our sex is!
When she does break with her prepossessions,
Runs for delights as a riotous beast,
Tears away the dignity from her visage
And flounders in the mud, held in contempt;
When not, is afraid of her own shadow
And lets wither away her useless charms
Stealing the delight from her and the other. -
Why she doesn't choose happy mean? Or why
Is hurtful to have a passing fancy
Though with propriety. That's beyond me,
The woman has not been a spirit only.

EVE

Helene, look around, he's standing there?
How could he so easily run away.
I wish to hear, to hear his voice again!

ADAM (to LUCIFER)

Oh, look around, maybe she stands in window,
And maybe she will send a glance after me.
I wish to see her slim figure again! - Oh,
Isaura, do not regret me to be here.

EVE

It would be better for us, you were not here.
Broken hearts can easily unite and
It's painful when they are torn from each other.

ADAM

Do you not fear to listen to the calm night,
That like the heart beats from the love itself
And only we are forbidden to love?
Do you not fear: its charm will sweep away? - -

EVE

This lives inside me, too, like a magic dream
That haunts this world perhaps from heaven only;
Wonderful, nice sings vibrate in the air,
In leafy crowns we saw thousands of spirits
With smiling eyes and fraternal kisses,
But they will speak to us, Tancred, nevermore.

ADAM

But why? Does this unkind wall hamper me? -
Having exacted ransom from the heathens,
Is it beyond me as to pull down this wall? -

LUCIFER

It is, 'cause the time-spirit protects it
And is stronger than you.

ADAM

                          Ah! Who says that!

(In the background the flame of a stake lights up.)

HERETICS (in choir from afar)

20.    Rescue me from the sword, save my life from these cub
21.    Pluck me from the lion's jaws, pluck my unhappy soul from these wild oxen's horns.
22.    Then shall I tell my fellow of thy fame and praise thee in our gathering.

EVE

My Lord, be merciful to their sinful souls! -

ADAM (drawing back in horror)

Oh, what frightful song!

LUCIFER

                        That's your wedding-song.

ADAM

No matter, be it, I will not take fright.
For you I fly in face of everything.

FRIARS (in choir from afar)

26.    Shame and dishonour cover those who are insolent to me!
27.    But may they shout for joy, may they be glad, who love to see me righted!
         May they have ever cause to say: "All hail to the
         Eternal, who loves to see his servant prospering!"

(Simultaneously with the commence of this choir ADAM having walked up to the cloister's door, stops again, on the tower a sparrow owl howls, witches are flying in the air, in front of the door a skeleton gets up and stands threateningly in front of ADAM.)

EVE (swinging the window to)

My Lord, help me!

SKELETON

          Be off this holy groundsel.

ADAM

Who are you ghost?

SKELETON

                That's me who will be in all
Your wry kisses and in all your embracements. -

WITCHES (laughing)

Sweet standing corn, harsh-flavour'd fruits,
By small pigeons the serpent broods,
Isaura, you're invited!

ADAM

                        What phantoms!
You have become transformed or just myself?
I knew, I knew you when you were smiling.
What is the verity and what is dream here?
My arms languish to your magic power.

LUCIFER

Ah, I happen'd to meet this nice company.
I have long been expecting this encounter,
Decent and beauty brood of nice witches
That, in spite of everything, shines down highly
The nak'd nymphs in its baffling impertinence;
This old comrade, the dreadful ghastly death
Who, when distorting the rigid virtue,
Fills the human being with loathing for it.
To thee all hail! What a pity that I am
Busy and can't cackle away time with you. -
(Phantoms disappear.)
Arise, Tancred! Arise! Your sweetheart swang the
Window to; why we're standing here in the night?
Wind is cold, you will be afflicted with gout.
Helene is coming and what can I do?
The devil himself will surely not make love,
He would lay himself open to ridicule
And would engorge his power by himself. -
That's wonderful! The human being yearns for
Love with ardent heart but gains only pains.
With stony heart the devil is forced to seek
For chances to free himself in time from it.

ADAM

Guide me to new spheres, guide me, Lucifer!
I went into fight for the holy thoughts
And found only curse in sordid perception,
Man was sacrificed to the glory of Lord
And man was freakish to fill my ideal.
I wanted to improve all our delights
And our delights were all stigmatized as sins,
I set the virtue of knights and this plunged
Dagger into my heart. Let's get out from here.
I made perfectly clear what's my moral worth,
I knew the mode to contend and to renounce,
I can leave my post free of being shamed.
I don't want to be animated more,
The world in any motion be as wants,
I will not more repair its impelling force
Looking at its slips impassively.
I am tired. - I want to have a rest.

LUCIFER

Have a rest then. But I hardly believe
That your mind, this turbulent force allows
To have a rest. Adam, come, come after me.

 

EIGHTH SCENE

Prague. The garden of the imperial palace. In the right there is a bower, in the left a tower for astronomic observation with a large balcony, with Kepler's desk, chair and astronomic tools. LUCIFER as famulus to KEPLER stands on the balcony. In the garden courtiers and ladies are walking in groups, among them EVE as BARBARA, wife to Kepler. - Emperor RUDOLPH with ADAM as KEPLER are standing and talking. In the background a stake of a heretic is burning. Evening, later night. Two COURTIERS come to the foreground.

FIRST COURTIER

Who is there getting nicely warm again,
A heretic or a witch?

SECOND COURTIER

                  I don't know.
It is out of fashion me to care for it.
Only the dregs gather around the stake
And they are not raving with happiness
But look around and murmur in themselves, too.

FIRST COURTIER

In olden days it was a celebration
With the court and nobility present.
Ah, so degenerate the good old times. -
(They pass away.)

LUCIFER

This cool evening fire gives pleasure to me,
Certainly, it has warmed for very long times,
But I'm afraid, it'll burn out within a while
Being put out not by manly decision,
Being not replac'd by new ideas,
But in this age that's free of interest,
Nobody will stir up the glowing embers
And I will be cold. - All great thoughts have the fate
To suffer finally this petty come-down.
(He enters the tower.)

(RUDOLPH and ADAM enter the forestage.)

RUDOLPH

Cast, Kepler, my horoscope, in the night
I had a nightmare and I am fearing
About the constellation of my star.
Rather ill omen has occurred not long
Ago in its ring, there at the serpent's head.

ADAM

I'll do it, as your majesty order'd.

RUDOLPH

When these cliacteric days are over
Again we'll also commence the masterpiece
That has remained lately unsuccessful.
Again I've studied Hermes Trismegistus,
Synesius, Albertus, Paracelsus,
The Key of Solomon and other works
Until I recognized where we were at fault.
As we made the antiquated king sweat,
The raven and the red lion have occurr'd,
Then the Twofold Mercury has develop'd
On the joint effect of the two planets
And the elixir of ores descended.
But we made a blunder in the wet fire,
In dry water and this is only why
Holy wedding, the great result did not come
That's rejuvenating the blood of greybeards
And sublimates the worthless metallic vein.

ADAM

I see, your majesty.

RUDOLPH

           Just one word more.
Bad tale is going about you in the court:
You join'd yourself to believe in new doctrines,
You screen the tenets of the Holy Church;
And now when your mother is imprison'd and
Lies under charge the heaviest can be,
You will be under grave suspicion, too,
When you are trying to release her so
Headily and indefatigably.

ADAM

But your majesty! I'm the son to her!

RUDOLPH

The Holy Church, son, is your true mother,
Let world exist, it is the best as it is,
Don't want to improve it like a botcher. -
Or did I not shower blessings on you?
You know, your father was an innkeeper,
I did set your nobility behind doubts
Though that was for me to worry about.
I raised you up to my throne and you got
The hand of Barbara Muller only so.
Thus, I repeat my son, be careful of you. (exit)

(ADAM being absorbed in thought stops at the step of the balcony. Two COURTIERS come to the forestage.)

THIRD COURTIER

Look, how the star-gazer's brooding again.

FOURTH COURTIER

Anxiety is always with him, the poor.
He tried to be used to new demands in vain,
Vulgarity is written on his face.

THIRD COURTIER

He cannot comprehend that the true knight,
Adoring though the woman like a goddess,
Is ready to lay down his blood for her
If chastity of her would be defamed; -
He suspects lurking thoughts in reverence.

EVE (Joins the two COURTIERS with an other group and while laughing she beats the shoulder of the SECOND COURTIER with her fan.)

By God, mylord, be merciful to me, 'cause
I die almost about your jokes with laughter. -
Look here, how grave these two gentlemen are. -
Maybe the fatal spirit of reform
Has occupied both your soul and your mind?
Yes? Then get out! I do strongly dislike
The race that with its bitter and woeful mind
Grew envious of our bright and quiet
World and works hardly to create an other.

THIRD COURTIER

This charge, my lady, does not concern us,
Who would be so mad to want to change this scene?

FIRST COURTIER

If I don't mistake, there's a man standing
With these dark imprints on his stony face.

EVE

My poor husband? - For God's sake, my good lords,
Spare him the mistrust of this kind when speaking
With me, who is bound to him with holy
Bonds. - 'Cause he is ill, he is very ill.

SECOND COURTIER

This illness is caused perhaps by these bright eyes?

THIRD COURTIER

In truth, what nobody dares, he would affront
Her with a jealous and false apprehension? -
Oh, I wish I were your knight, I would fling
The gauntlet to this audacious fellow.
(Meanwhile they walk to ADAM)
Oh, master! I am happy to meet you,
I just want to visit my goods and chattels,
I need a weather forecast.

FIRST COURTIER

                                For my part
I want to know the horoscope of my son,
He was born just last night, and in the small hours.

ADAM

For morning, my lords, both will be ready.

FOURTH COURTIER

Society breaks up, let's also go.

THIRD COURTIER

Here is the staircase - good night, my lady.
(whispering)
In an hour.

EVE

                In the right, in the bower.
(aloud)
Good night, my lords. - Come, come with me my John.

(COURTIERS exeunt, ADAM and EVE walk to the balcony, ADAM sits down in the armchair. EVE stands in front of him. It grows slowly dark.)

EVE

John, darling, I would need some money in cash.

ADAM

I have not a penny, you've flung away all.

EVE

Is constant necessity of my fate?
The court-ladies are blazing like the peahens,
And I'm ashamed to appear among them.
That is true, when one of the courtiers
Bends towards me and tells with broad smile that
The queen I am, the only queen of court,
I feel ashamed of you, who presents her
To the majestic court, the queen as she is.

ADAM

Do I not work to death at day and night?
I have betrayed my knowledge only for you,
And poison it when making these useless
Weather forecasts and crazy nativities.
I keep to myself what my mind explores
And proclaim what I know not to be true.
I have to be abash'd, worse I became
Than the sibyls who did believe in all that
They augured and I do not believe in.
But I do it and I try to please you
And what I'm doing with the blood money?
I have need for nothing in this funny world,
I need only the night and its bright stars,
Only the mystic harmony of the spheres,
The surplus is your. - But you must know, the
Emperor's pouch is most often empty
And most of the bills are paid with some delay.
What I'll get in the morning, will be yours
And you're unthankful, this gives pain to me.

EVE (crying)

You reproach me what you have done for me,
Did I spend not enough on you at all?
The daughter of a noble family, yes,
When having joined my fate to your doubtful rank
And not this is why you could attain to the
High court? You, you are unthankful, deny it. -

ADAM

Are mind and knowledge doubtful ranks at all?
Is on my brow the bright heavenly beam
Of ambiguous, misty origin?
Outside this, where, where is nobility?
What you call nobility, it's only
A moulder'd phantom, that's free of its soul,
But that of mine is eternal and strong. -
Oh, my lady, if you could conceive me,
If your soul would akin to me, as I
Believed it when you kissed me at first,
You would be proud within me and would not look
For happiness outside my lonely world;
You would not unbosom all sweetness of you
To the world and would not keep everything
That is bitter as gall for our own poor hearth. -
Oh, lady, I loved you with all my heart
And even now I love you, but the honey
You gave me has turned bitter in my soul.
It's painful to see how noble you'd be
If you could be woman: fate degraded you
To nothing that's deified as a pawn;
As was deified by medieval knights,
But at that famous time they believed in her,
Now, nobody believes, the age is freak,
The pawn-god conceals only faults and crime. -
I'd be divorced from you and though it's painful
I'd pull out my heart in hope of restfullness
And so you could be free of me more happy;
But in vain, there is the existing order:
And this fame - the word of our Holy Church:
We have to bear till are beyond the grave.

(He reposes his head on his hands, EVE strokes him with emotion.)

EVE

My John, do not take it so serious
When I tell sometimes, not often, this and that,
I did not want to make you dolorous.
But see, the high court is so marvellous
And ladies are so haughty and mocking,
Why I have to fly in proud face of them?
We aren't on bad terms more, is it not so?
Good night, - for morning don't forget the cash.
(She walks down into the garden.)

ADAM

Woman! What a fantastic mixture of the
Ill and good, composed of poison and honey.
Why she attracts? Because good of her own,
But her crime's of her age that her begot.
Famulus!

(Enters LUCIFER with a lantern and puts it on the table.)

LUCIFER

        What can I do for you, Sir?

ADAM

A weather forecast and a nativity
Are what I need, please prepare these at once.

LUCIFER

Indeed, bright and promising ones, of course;
Who would pay for the stubborn facts in cash?

ADAM

But do not these so as to be absurd.

LUCIFER

Maybe, it is beyond my power to call
Phantoms that would the parents scandalize.
Is not the new arrival Messiah,
A bright star, occurr'd on the family's sky
That grows later to as cheeky as common.

(In the meantime EVE got the bower, the THIRD COURTIER comes forward.)

THIRD COURTIER

How long you make me pine, you are so cruel.

EVE

Maybe, it's too great sacrifice to you
To suffer frosty winds during the night,
While I am unfaithful to my good husband,
And draw upon myself the heaven's curse
And judgement of the world for you, my knight?!

THIRD COURTIER

Oh, curse of heaven and judgement of the world
Will not reveal the secret of this bower.

ADAM (meditating)

I wanted the age that fights for nothing,
When traditions of the society,
When these consecrated preconceptions
Are intact and when I can have a rest,
When it is allowed me to wait for the
Healing of my wounds with phlegmatic smile. -
The age came but why, if here in my bosom
The soul lives, this holy, painful heritage
That the silly man got from the heaven. -
It wants to be active, and allows no rest
And fights against the inactive enjoyment. -
Hey! Famulus, bring wine, I so shudder,
This frosty world I must warm up with this wine.
In this freak age you have to be ardent and
Can leave its abusing muck only this way.

(LUCIFER brings wine, ADAM plies the bottle till the end of scene.)

Ah, you infinite sky, uncover to
Me your mystic and consecrated great book;
When I have learnt the secrets of your laws,
I forget my age and everything of me.
You are perpetual, and that is mortal,
And you exalt while that grieves deeply me.

THIRD COURTIER

Oh, Barbara, if you could be only of mine!
If Lord would take to himself your husband
To better understand the order of sky,
What he dreamt of through his laborous life.

EVE

Silence, my knight, I'd be sorry for him
So you could not among my tears a kiss win.

THIRD COURTIER

You play a joke.

EVE

        I tell you even the truth.

THIRD COURTIER

Who can perceive this mystic frame of mind?
Barbara! So you don't love me at all.
Or, tell me, if I were poor or banish'd
What would you do for your true devotee?

EVE

That is beyond me, upon my honour.

ADAM

Will be there any age that will melt this
Rigid apathy and will be facing the
Old-fashioned lumbers with renew'd hopes and force
That will be judge, that will punish and clear,

(He stands up and walks with a stagger to the margin of the balcony.)

That does not shrink back from magnificent tools,
Does not fear to say the words out of sight,
That will rush down on its disastrous way
As some gigantic rolling mass, that may
Perhaps crush him who denominated it.

(The melody of the Marseillaise is heard.)

I hear, I hear the hymn of the future,
I found the magic words, the great talisman
That will rejuvenate this age-worn world.

 

NINTH SCENE

The scene turns suddenly to Paris, place de Greve. The balcony turns into a guillotine-platform, the desk into the guillotine itself, besides it LUCIFER stands as executioner. ADAM as DANTON makes a speech to the buzzing crowd. A group of recruits occurs with drums beating and the group aligns at the guillotine. Bright day.

ADAM (continuing)

Egality, fraternity, liberty! -

THE CROWD

To all the death who don't agree with it!

ADAM

I say also this. - Two words save the great
Thought that's now highly threaten'd from everywhere,
We tell one of these to all who're loyal:
"The homeland's in danger" and they will awake,
The other's thunder'd to the crime and sounds so:
"Be in fright" - and they'll be annihilated.
Kings have revolt against us and we now flung
Before them the head of our reigning prince,
Also the clergy rebell'd against us:
Their false lightning was wrested out of their hands
Laying back the pure reason to its high throne.
The other message, sent to brave men by
Our fatherland is not repeated yet.
Eleven armies combat at the borders
And what heroic youth streams without cease
To replace all the heroes killed in action.
Who declares that ferocious craziness
Will decimate the great generous nation?
When ore is boiling, the slag will fall out
And the precious part will be well preserv'd.
And let us be ferocious or bloodthirsty,
Or let us be consider'd as monsters,
I do not care for my name, be it accurs'd,
It's all one, only the homeland be free. -

RECRUITS

Give arms, give arms and a captain us!

ADAM

Well said! That's true! You want arms only for you
Though you are short of any other goods,
Your dress got tatter'd and you are barefooted,
But with your bayonets you will gain all,
'Cause you will triumph. People's invincible.
One of our generals was executed,
Who allow'd to be defeated at the
Head of his army.

THE CROWD

        He was a traitor!

ADAM

You are right. People has no riches but
Only its blood that it sacrifices
With generosity to the fatherland. -
Who is in command of this holy treasure
And is unable to conquer the world, now
He is a traitor. -

(An OFFICER leaves the ranks.)

THE OFFICER

        Please, put me in his place,
Citizen, and I'll wipe out this insult.

ADAM

Your overconfidence's praiseworthy, my friend,
To prove, you will be true to your promise,
It's your duty to show in the front line.

THE OFFICER

This guarantee exists within my soul,
And, by the way, I have also my head,
Maybe that's more worthy than that you cut off.

ADAM

Who ensures me that you'll bring it if I ask?

THE OFFICER

The best guarantee I am in myself,
Who makes ever nothing of his own life.

ADAM

This cannot be the believe of the youth.

THE OFFICER

Citizen, I summon you to do it.

ADAM

Be patient, you will reach your aim some day.

THE OFFICER

I see, you don't trust in me, citizen,
Let you be of better belief about me.
(He blows out his brains.)

ADAM

Poor fellow, he would deserve a bullet
Of the enemy. My friends, carry off him. -
See you again soon, after victory.
(The recruit army marshes off.)
Oh, I wish I could share your envied fate. -
But my only share is the fight, not glory,
Not that enemy by whom it's nice to fall,
But that who treacherously watches for
Me and my fatherland with its practices.

THE CROWD

Put your finger on and death, death to him!

ADAM

Whom I could point out, are already died.

THE CROWD

And who are suspected? - They are guilty
In addition, they are stigmatized by
Public anger, this unfailing oracle. -
Death, death to the aristocracy of blood! -
Let's go to prison cells and let's fulfil the
Law, the people's law is consecrated.

(The crowd starts towards the prisons.)

ADAM

Danger is not there, the bolt's strong enough,
The stinking heavy air that anyhow
Kills the soul and body, helps to you, leave them.
Treachery laughs with head erect, and sets
Dirk on the benches of Convent for you.

THE CROWD

Up to the Convent! It consists not of the
Wanted members. - No, let the Convent put off,
Let's go first to prisons, to have some practice,
And till then, Danton, gather the names of
All traitors.

(The crowd exits with threats. In the meantime some SANS-CULOTTES carry a young MARQUIS and EVE as sister to him in front of the platform.)

A SANS-CULOTTE

                                Danton, here you are, we bring
Two young aristocrats again to you,
This haughty visage and these white dresses
Show their undoubtful heavy guiltiness!

ADAM

Oh, what a generous pair. Come to me here.

THE SANS-CULOTTE

Let us follow our comrades rapidly
Where labour for us and storm for traitors wait.

(SANS-CULOTTES go away with the crowd, the MARQUIS and EVE get up the platform around which only a few guards remain.)

ADAM

I cannot perceive my sympathy to you,
I save you, however for my own risk.

THE MARQUIS

No, Danton, not so, if we were guilty,
When you don't judge us, you betray your homeland,
If we were not, we need not your empty grace.

ADAM

Who're you, how you dare to speak to me so?

THE MARQUIS

I am marquis. -

ADAM

        Wait! Or do you not know:
We have no titles except "citizen"?

THE MARQUIS

As far as I know, our king did not suppress
The titles.

ADAM

                Unlucky fellow, that's enough,
This guillotine is also just eavesdropping. -
Enter our army, your calling is sure.

THE MARQUIS

I have no permission from my sovereign
To enter an other foreign army.

ADAM

Then you will die.

THE MARQUIS

        It's one person more in
My family who suffer death for the king.

ADAM

Why do you run into the foolhardy death?

THE MARQUIS

Do you think, this generous privilege is
Only your plebeian priority? -

ADAM

You do defy me, I'll defy you, too.
Who'll be stronger? I save you despite your will,
And my gesture will be accepted by
The well-balanc'd times to come that will be
Free of party quarrels. - National guards! Come,
Carry to my home, you're liable for him!

(Some armed guards escort the MARQUIS.)

EVE

Brother, be firm!

THE MARQUIS

        Sister, the Lord be with you. - (exit)

EVE

Here you have a head, not worse than Roland's one.

ADAM

Oh, delicate lips, do not tell so hard words.

EVE

On the scaffold no tender words have been used.

ADAM

My only world is this horrific platform.
When you enter'd it, a piece of heaven
Has descended and closed me in its shrine.

EVE

The brute beast to be sacrificed was not
Mock'd by sacerdotal society.

ADAM

Take for granted, the victim is myself.
And if they are envious of my lordship,
I look at my royal chair without the
Happiness, disdaining both the life and death,
Hundreds are falling down here from day by day
And I wait the time when my turn follows. -
In these torrents of blood I'm anguish'd by the
Loneliness and guess: how good would be to love. -
Oh, lady, could you teach me this knowledge
Of heaven only for one day - next day I
Would put my proud head under axe without fear. -

EVE

In this world by horror haunted you want love,
Your conscience does not scare you away? -

ADAM

Conscience has been privilege of the
Commons; who's govern'd by the fate itself,
Has no time to go ahead with foresight. -
Have you ever heard that the storm will stop
When the weak rose keeps bending on its way? -
And who would be temerarious enough
To judge representatives of the commons?
Who foresees the fate that guides on its scene
Either a Brutus or Catilina?
Or it's believ'd that who became famous,
Will abandon his human being and
Turns into a superhuman spirit
Who is not interested in the scorn'd
Relations and in the worries of life. -
Alas! The heart pulses also on the throne
And if Caesar has had a sweetheart, so
She perhaps knew him merely as nice boy,
And she had not the slightest idea
That the world fears and is shaken by him. -
And if it's so, tell why you could not love me?
Are you not woman and me not a man?
It is said that heart either hates or loves
As it is its own since it's coming to life:
I feel that my heart is related to yours,
And you, lady, could not conceive this word? -

EVE

And if so, what's the use of it? You are
With other God than I have in my heart.
We shall each other never understand. -

ADAM

Let be your outmoded ideals off!
Why do you sacrifice the old banish'd gods?
Altar is the only due of woman
That is always young - and this is the heart.

EVE

Oh, deserted altar may also have
Martyrs. Oh, Danton, it's more majestic
To preserve the remains with reverence
Than to cry hail to the uprushing power;
And this mission fits much better the woman.

ADAM

Nobody saw me to become maudlin
And if he saw now, enemy or friend,
That the man, hunted by the cruel fate
To purify the world like a roaring storm,
Makes a pause on the scaffold and wants to love,
He stops at a young maid with tears in his eyes:
One would forebode that Danton will be fail'd,
He would laugh loudly, nobody would feel fear. -
Yet, I implore you for a beam of hope.

EVE

When your soul will relent beyond the grave
And puts off the bloody dust of this age -
Maybe -

ADAM

                Don't tell more, my maid, don't tell more,
I do not believe in that other world,
My fight is illusory against my fate.

(The crowd re-enters with bloody arms and with bleeding heads on spears, some from the crowd reach as far as the platform.)

THE CROWD

We did the justice. - How a proud race it was.

A SANS-CULOTTE (giving a ring to DANTON)

Take this ring to the alter of fatherland,
One of the rotters put it in my hand
When I pointed my knife at his throat.
These rotters believe us to be bandits. -
You are alive? - Go after your brethren!

(He daggers EVE who falls down at the back of the platform.)

ADAM (Shading his eyes with his hands)

Alas! She's lost! - Oh fate, who equals you?

THE CROWD

And now to the Convent. Danton, guide us! -
Did you gather all the names of traitors? -

(The crowd clears off the platform. EVE as a ragged, angry plebeian woman emerges from the crowd and with dagger in one hand and with a bleeding head in the other, she runs to DANTON.)

EVE

Danton! Have a look at this conspirator!
He wanted to murder you but I kill'd him.

ADAM

If he'd be better here than me, you have done
Wrong; if not, you have all done correctly. -

EVE

My act's correct and I clamour for my share:
A night spend with me, magnificent man.

ADAM

What a sympathy may arise in this maid?
How fine the feelings of a tigress are?

EVE

In fact, citizen, you seem to join
Yourself to the blue-blooded aristocrats,
Or you are delirious to speak so. -
You are man, and I am young and woman,
My high amazement leads me to you, great man.

ADAM (aside)

I shudder, I have to avert my eyes.
I can't suffer this dreadful delusion.
What a magic similitude! - Who knew
The angel and has seen her after her
Failing, only he can feel something like this.
All are the same: the feature, shape and speech,
Only a small nothingness is missing
That can't be specified fairly well enough
And how different is this entity! -
That I could not possess, its glory saved her,
This is disgusting for the devil's odour. -

EVE

What do you talk to yourself?

ADAM

                                I'm counting,
Woman, that I have not so much free nights
As many traitors are in our fatherland.

THE CROWD

Up to the Convent! Designate them only!

(In the meantime ROBESPIERRE, SAINT-JUST and other members to he Convent come with a new group of rebels and stand on an improvised platform.)

SAINT-JUST

How he could do it? He's their main connive. -
(The crowd is murmuring.)

ADAM

You dare to judge me, Saint-Just, you don't know
How strong I am?

SAINT-JUST

        You only were stronger
In the crowd. But people's wise, got to know you
And just confirms the decree of the Convent.

ADAM

I reject all justice in case of mine
Except people, and I know it is my friend.
(The crowd is murmuring again.)

SAINT-JUST

Your friend's the enemy of fatherland
The majestic people will be your justice,
I accuse you in presence of it: of
Smuggling with proprieties of government,
Of your sympathy to the aristocrats
And of your keen hunger for tyrannousness.

ADAM

Saint-Just, take care, my words will shatter you.
Your charge is false. -

ROBESPIERRE

                        Don't leave him to perorate,
You know he is smooth-tongued like serpent.
Arrest him in the name of our liberty.

THE CROWD

Silence him! Silence him! Death to his head!

(They surround and arrest him.)

ADAM

Well, be it, but I also don't want to hear
This sordid charge. We cannot convince with speech
Each other. You did not defeat me by acts.
Robespierre, you only outstripp'd me,
That's all, don't parade with this victory.
I lay down the arms of myself - it's enough. -
But now I adjure you to follow me
In this fatal way within less then three months. -
Be clever, headsman - you kill a giant.

(He bows his head under the guillotine.)

 

TENTH SCENE

The whole scene turns suddenly into that of the eighth scene. ADAM as KEPLER again sits at his desk and bows his head on his hands, LUCIFER as FAMULUS to him stands beside the desk and slaps on the shoulders of ADAM. Break of the day.

LUCIFER

Beheading is now postpon'd for this once. -

ADAM

Oh, where, where I am and where are my dreams?

LUCIFER

They're gone away, sir, with your giddiness.

ADAM

In this perfidious age only the dreams
Bring the great to the age-worn tired man?
How wonderful scene came to sight of my eyes!
All are blind who don't perceive the thought of Lord
Though it was blemish'd both by blood and squalor.
How gigantic were both its crime and virtue
And how astonishing were both of them
Because power was their governing force. -
Oh, why did I wake up? when looking around
I've to better perceive this aborted age
With its crimes hidden by its smiling visage
And with the false virtues of habitude.

LUCIFER

I'm familiar with this depression
That is always falling after revelry.

EVE (coming out the bower)

Get out! - Well, my suspicion has come true,
You venture to ask me to kill my husband,
You think the woman whom you lie as your
Idol, will accomplish this dirty act.

THE COURTIER

For heaven's sake! Compose yourself, darling,
If we are noticed, a scandal you make.

ADAM

The two women meant also dream only?
It is enough now, one woman in two forms
As my roaring fate has been always changing
Like surf that is sometimes bright, sometimes dark.

EVE

Ah, just scandal is important to you,
What crime would interest you when it is hid,
You, the knight refusing all reprimands! -
Alas! You mock woman while she hurls down the
Old tradition of her virgin chastity
Like a wrong prejudice and then you take her
With disparaging smile and use as the
Infamous tool of heinous crime of your own. -
Get out, from now on I don't want to see you.

THE COURTIER

Don't overdo it! We will be mock'd when
We take so ceremoniously this
Prosaic affair. - We shall communicate
Further on with provok'd smile and flirtation
About what happened no word will be said.
Good morning, lady. - (exit)

EVE

                                Oh, the wretch! The wretch!
Now, here I am with my crime and with my tears. (exit)

ADAM

It was only dream and is now finish'd.
But not all is over. Thoughts are stronger than
The wrong matter. This can be broken down
By brute force, those will be perpetual.
I see my holy thoughts how they evolve
Getting always improved with dignity
Till will spread though slowly all over the world.

LUCIFER

Time's running on, master, lesson waits for you,
Students are gathering in front of the door
To get by watching a word of your wisdom.

(He rings the bell hanging on the astronomic tower.)

ADAM

Don't be sarcastic, don't mock me with knowledge,
I have to blush when I am prais'd for this.

LUCIFER

Do you not teach many excellent boys?

ADAM

I do not educate but only train them
According to words, they don't understand
And have no intellect to take this or that.
The unwise wonders only and believes,
These nice words are used to conjure up spirits,
But all these are tricks of the trade to conceal
Underhand manoeuvres of delusion.

(A STUDENT comes in hurry and enters the balcony.)

STUDENT

Master, you were so kind to summon me and
Promised to content my hunger for knowledge
And will allow me to lose myself in it
More than you allow others to do this.

ADAM

That's true, that's very true, you're so studious
That this privilege is the due of you.

STUDENT

Here I am, it is my most ardent wish
To have a sight into the nature's workshop.
To perceive all and find much delight in it,
To predominate with supremeness feeling
In the world of matter and of spirit.

ADAM

You want too much. Puny being of the world,
How can you understand the entity? -
You want power and delight and knowledge.
If its load would not crush you to death and you
Would reach all these you want, you would be the Lord. -
Be modest, want less, perhaps you get it.

STUDENT

Unravel though any secret of knowledge,
Generous man, it will be my profit
Because I feel, I understand nothing.

ADAM

Well, I see that you are worthy of my trust,
I guide you into the most secret sanctum,
See reality as I have seen it.
But be sure, there's no eavesdropper around us
'Cause this truth is fatal and highly dreadful
If it in our days would be popularized.
The age will come, oh I wish it would come,
When it will be topic of man in the street,
When the folk will break off its infancy. -
Now, your hand on it! You never reveal
What you understand. - Well, mind what I say. -

STUDENT

I'm shaking with fear and curiosity. -

ADAM

What did you tell me some minutes ago?

STUDENT

That I essentially nothing understand.

ADAM (with care)

See: so do I - and everybody else.
Philosophy's the only poetry
Of all the things, that we about nothing know. -
Among the others this is least dangerous
Since it's enjoying peacefully itself
In its world by soft fantasies haunted.
Nevertheless, there are some other kinds
That make drawing and lines in the sandy ground,
He terms one of the lines to be the vortex,
The ring to be a shrine; you almost laugh
At the comedy when you recognize that
It is a matter of the life and death.
All who are wise try to avoid these pictures
With constricted heart and with true fearing,
Traps are here and there, and the dare-devil
Who steps into them will be captured in blood.
These futilities cross always our way,
To protect the old existing power
With consecrated and holy reverence. -

STUDENT

I understand, will this be so for ever?

ADAM

People will laugh at it sometimes laud and long.
The statesman whom we have call'd magnificent,
The orthodox man whom we have gaz'd at,
Are consider'd as clowns by posterity
When are replaced by the true nobility,
That is free of adornments, is common,
That puts the horse at jump where pot-hole is found
And builds road only where land is open.
Some day everybody though never learnt
Will understand this tenet that hounds you now
To madness with its complicated essence.

STUDENT

Thus, the language is that of apostles
And that can be easily understood. -
But if every other things are lumbers,
Don't kill my faith, don't dash my hopes in art.
To memorize these I need some rules from you.

ADAM

It is the peak of perfection of the art
That it's hidden, it can be marked neither.

STUDENT

Should I remain at the stubborn facts at all?
Idealization gives our work the soul.

ADAM

That's very true, this gives spirit to it,
This assures it to enjoy equal rights with
Nature and makes it created being
'Cause without this, it's only inert matter.
Don't be afraid that while making ideals
You get over the great living nature,
But let the rule and pattern to have a rest.
Who possesses power and bears the Lord,
Will perorate, sculpture or sing a song,
When he is blue he'll harrowingly cry
And will smile while dreaming on the sweet delight,
And though breaks new way, he achieves his aim. -
Abstraction will make new rules from his work
That will be perhaps fag but never the
Motive power of freak generations. -

STUDENT

Oh, tell me master, what have I to do?
I've addicted myself to knowledge so far
And the result is that I'm equal to fools
And all my labour proved to be vain efforts?

ADAM

This is not in vain, 'cause this gives you right
To disdain now the temptations of it.
Who did never laugh in the face of danger
And retreats, he is craven. The tried knight
Bravely avoids the picker of quarrels,
His courage is above all suspicions. -
Take now these foxy age-worn pergaments,
These folios that are mould-spotted lumbers,
Throw into the fire. These make us forget
To be our own master and these spare us
The troubles of natural cogitation.
These hand down the errors of past centuries
To the new world as preconceived ideas.
Let them burn up! and let's go outdoors at all!
Why you should learn always what is song itself,
What is forest while your life comes to an end
Within the dusty and joyless room of you?
You account your life to be long enough
To learn theories to your dying day?
We both say good-bye to the alma mater,
Let you be governed by your flower of youth
To have merry days and effectual life;
Guide me you, my ill-reputed spirit
Into the new world that will develop,
When it understands the thoughts of a great man
And allows to word all the conceal'd notions
Above the damn'd ground of felled ruins. -

 

ELEVENTH SCENE

London. Market between the Tower and the Thames. Motley crowd noisily surges to and fro. ADAM as aged man with LUCIFER are standing on the bastion of the Tower. Late afternoon.

CHOIR (From the crowd's noise and murmur slowly merging into one sound accompanied by soft music.)

The flow of life murmurs loudly
Each of its waves has no pear,
Why you pity if that's sinking
And if this climbs why you fear? -
Then you fear that the crowd will the
Poor person eliminate
And afraid you are that one man
Thousands will annihilate.
Now you're fearing for poetry,
Then for knowledge above all
And you immure all the free thoughts
Into a circular wall.
Anyhow, you fight and labour,
Nothing you'll have in your net,
The majestic ocean will roar
Further on and laughs you at.
Let the sea roar, and life will know
What is good and what is wrong.
In its struggle nothing is lost,
Rejuvenates always its ghost,
Let you hear its charming song.

ADAM

This is, this is for what I have been yearning,
My course of life was so far fully wrong,
Life's before me, in its entity burning,
How beautiful and stirring is its song.

LUCIFER

That's beautiful choir here, high up in the air,
Any hoarse sound, the cry of pain or sigh
Will merge into melody while get here. -
The Lord hears only this melody and
This is why he trusts the world well-created.
But down below it differently sounds
Where feeling of the heart assists, as well.

ADAM

You incredulous scoff, is this world not more
Beautiful than those you carried me along?
All mouldly restrictions have fallen down,
All dreadful phantoms have now disappeared
That are the glorified heritage of past
To feel them as distracting curse today.
Now, for everybody the race ground is free,
No pyramides are built by slaves in our times.

LUCIFER

Groan of slaves would not be heard up to the
High throne so loudly either in Egypt
And yet, how divine is the art of them!
Or in Athens did the majestic people
Act not in proper way and wonderfully
When gave up its great and belov'd hero
'Cause it believed the homeland was in danger;
That's true, when we look at it from above and
Tears and other vile notions don't disturb us.

ADAM

Silence! Dry up! you perpetual sophist.

LUCIFER

Though these are preserv'd, as the wail is dead,
All that lives, has become uninteresting. -
Where's the high that attracts? the depth that deters?
Where is the adorable gaudiness of life?
It's not the magnificent flow of sea more
But a dirty swamp that is full with frogs.

ADAM

Feeling of public welfare makes it up.

LUCIFER

Well, your verdict on life moving at your
Feet is the same at your high position
As that of history on the past times.
It does not hear wail, harsh speech, what it records
Is and will be the song of past only.

ADAM

Ah, the devil romanticizes, too,
Or doctrinaire becomes? Both are success!

LUCIFER (pointing to the Tower)

That's no wonder when we are standing on
The ghost of ancient times in renewing world.

ADAM

This old-fashion'd view I also deny,
I descend courageously to the new world
And I am sure, again I will find the
Poetry and the great thoughts among its waves. -
Maybe it will avoid to come out as
Sky-shaking and ancient titanic struggle,
But will create a more bewitching and
Beneficial world with its modest sphere.

LUCIFER

It would be useless anguish to fear for it.
So long as persists the substance itself,
So long my power will also exist
As the negation that fights against it.
And so long as heart lives and mind is free
And extent system will confine the wish,
Poetry and great thought will also exist,
As negation in the spiritual world.
But tell me, what a shape we have to put on
While descending into the murmuring crowd,
Our dress is suitable to stand here only
Where the fancies of past flutter around us.

ADAM

Anything will do, since no great persons live,
Thanks to the fate. To know what is its feeling:
We've to merge into the crowd without fearing.

(Both of them go down into the Tower and soon they come out from its gate as workers and mingle in the crowd. - A PUPPETEER stands close to its stall on which there is a monkey sitting in a red coat, fastened in chains.)

THE PUPPETEER

This way, this way, good my lords, this way here,
The performance opens immediately.
This is an attractive nice comedy:
How serpent has cheated the first woman
Who was inquisitive at that time, too;
How her curiosity led into fix
The man. - You see quick monkey also, how it
Plays majestically the man himself,
You can see bears as nice dancing masters.
This way, this way, my good lords, this way here! -

(Rush and scramble around the stall.)

LUCIFER

Ah, Adam! We are mention'd and cited here!
It is nice to have a role that after
Nearly six thousand years we are objects of
Entertainment of the good cheerful youth. -

ADAM

Enough of this joke in bad taste! - Let's go.

LUCIFER

Joke in bad taste? Look at these red boys, how they
Enjoy themselves and a minute ago they
Were asleep when had to learn the Latin.
Who will tell you that who is right at all,
Those who enter the life with self-regard of
Power that is beginning to awake, or
Those who though with rotten mind, give it up. -
Or do you like Shakespeare, the perfect, more
Than they like this misfashion'd hugger-mugger?

ADAM

Deformity, that's I'll have none of it!

LUCIFER

That's your heritage from the ancient Greek world,
See: me, the son or father, as you like it,
It's quite the same in the spiritual world -
Of the new direction, of romanticism,
Am just delighted with deformity.
A trait of monkey onto the man's face;
Dirty revilement after the nice grace;
Perverted feeling and honest hair-shirt;
Words of modesty after blissful flirt;
Flattery to perfidity and smallness,
Curse of a debauchee to delightfulness:
All make me forget that my reign is lost
'Cause in a new form I revive as ghost. -

THE PUPPETEER (striking at ADAM's shoulder)

Why do you occupy this nice good place,
You bad lot, only who's tir'd of life and want
To hang up himself, will cost-free divert.

(ADAM and LUCIFER step aside. A YOUNG GIRL comes selling violets.)

THE YOUNG GIRL

Tiny violets, first nice harbingers
Of the kind, fair spring. Buy it as you like.
This small flower gives bread to the orphan,
And beautiful ornament to the poor.

A MOTHER (buying violets)

Give me, I pout it in hands of my dead child.

A GIRL (also buying)

It'll be my dark hair's most beautiful flower.

THE YOUNG GIRL

Tiny violets! - Buy it, my good lords! (exit)

A JEWELLER (in his stall)

It's vexing that this girl contends with us
And we cannot elbow her out of fashion. -
Only pearls at high price suit well the fair necks,
Who has brought it up with disheartening
Hardihood, had to fight against ghost of
Abyssal monsters of the merciless sea. -

(Two CIVIC-GIRLS are coming together.)

FIRST CIVIC-GIRL

How many fabrics, how many nice jewels!

SECOND CIVIC-GIRL

Oh, I wish somebody to buy me fairing.

FIRST CIVIC-GIRL

The man of our days would make this only
With a lurking thought that aims at some pairing.

SECOND CIVIC-GIRL

Neither that, his taste has been well disgrac'd,
By caviar and gay girls it's deprav'd.

FIRST CIVIC-GIRL

'Cause he's highly conceited, he neglects all.

SECOND CIVIC-GIRL

Or he is so modest that fears us to call. (They pass away)

(Under a hovel covered by leaves there is a pub with feasting WORKERS around the table. In the background music and dance. Soldiers, citizens and others are revelling and loitering.)

INNKEEPER (among his guests)

Be cheerful, my lords, yesterday is gone,
What happens tomorrow that's not our pain,
Our Lord fodders all birds of the blue sky,
And Bible says that all things are in vain.

LUCIFER

Now, this philosophy appeals to me.
Let's sit down on this shady garden seat
And let's view the crowd how gladly and cheap
Revels it with weak wine and with false music.

FIRST WORKER (at the table)

I say, machines are the works of devil,
They take the bread out of our hungry mouth.

SECOND WORKER

Let us have only wine, we forget the rest.

FIRST WORKER

The rich the devil is, he sucks our blood,
Let he come! I would send him to the devil
More case we need now than not long ago.

THIRD WORKER

Where do you come in? For it he'll be hang'd,
Our destiny, as before, will be rank'd.

SECOND WORKER

That is a crack-brained talk, well, let the rich come,
I don't maltreat him, offer him a seat,
Let's see who is master, who knows to revel.

THE INNKEEPER (to ADAM)

Sir, what can I do for you?

ADAM

                                Thanks, nothing.

THE INNKEEPER

Away with you from here, ragamuffins.
You think perhaps I have stolen money,
Or my wife and child were born to be beggar.

ADAM (standing up)

You've the face to tell this?

LUCIFER

                                        Leave the rotter.

ADAM

Let's go, why to look how degenerates
The superb man into a revelling dolt.

LUCIFER

Ah, here you are what I've hunted for so far,
We revel with joy and without constraint.
This rumbling noise and wild laugh everywhere,
The excitement of this Bacchanalian
Fire that conjures the face to be rosy
Like silly fancy is screening distress,
Are these not splendid?

ADAM

                        This turns my stomach.

(Meanwhile they reach the dancing people. Two quarrelling BEGGARS come.)

FIRST BEGGAR

This is my own place and I have permission.

SECOND BEGGAR

Be merciful to me else I shall die,
For a fortnight I have found no labour.

FIRST BEGGAR

This means that you are not a true beggar,
Good-for-nothing you're, I cry for patrol. -

(The SECOND BEGGAR slinks away. FIRST BEGGAR sits down.)

By the five wounds of our Christ, give alms, give alms,
My good lords, to the suffering have-nots! -

(A SOLDIER takes off the dancer of a JOURNEYMAN)

SOLDIER

Get out, bumpkin! - Or do you think yourself
To be somebody at all.

JOURNEYMAN

                        Just wait and see
If you don't mind.

SECOND JOURNEYMAN

        Leave him alone. Avoid him:
All power and all the fame are his own.

FIRST JOURNEYMAN

But why he adds contempt to power and fame
If anyway he has been a blood-sucker.

A COURTESAN (singing)

Once the dragons were defeated
For the golden apple wanted -
Trees bring the fruit even today,
Dragons died out, this knows who may:
Those who wonder and it don't pluck,
Are fool and live free of good luck.
(She snuggles to a youth.)

LUCIFER (being lost in looking at the revellers.)

This is amusing coquetry to me.
Let the rich show what treasures he laid up.
In the closed coffer where the niggard sits,
May be either sand or is full with gold. -
How soul-stirring is the worry of this gawk!
How he treasures the glance of his sweetheart,
He knows the esteem of this short moment
Though he's fully aware that shortly soon she'll
Fly to arms of someone else, but he doesn't care.

ADAM (to a musician)

Why you handle so awfully the art, friend!
Now, tell me, do you like yourself what you play?

THE MUSICIAN

Oh no! By no means! But it is endless pain
To play up this song and only to wonder
How they revel on it with shouts repeated.
This wild sound's haunting also in my dreams.
But what to do, I must live and don't know else.

LUCIFER (still being lost in looking around)

Oh, who would imagine such a thorough
Philosophy, the nice youth is dealing with. -
This maiden knows that in her life this is not
The last moment what she is enjoying now
And while kissing her eyes are looking for
New relations. - Ah, my dear and nice kids;
To me it is quite a treat to see you,
How joyfully you're engaged on my work!
Crime and distress be my benediction. -

SECOND JOURNEYMAN (singing)

After working through the week
Who says toast on kiss and wine
With pure heart and with sweet song
He makes snooks at devil's crime. -

(Some final accords of sacred music are heard. EVE as CIVIC-GIRL comes out from the church with her MOTHER and with prayer-book and with a bouquet in her hands.)

A SELLER

This way, only this way, dear beautiful miss!
You can buy cheaper nowhere but here only.

ANOTHER SELLER

Don't trust him, his scales are wrong and the goods
Are out of fashion. - This way, beautiful miss! -

ADAM

Ah, Lucifer! You bind me to this site
While the incarnated salvation will melt
Away without my perception of it.

LUCIFER

This and all that sort of things are common. -

ADAM

She comes from church, how beautiful she is!

LUCIFER

She's there to be seen or maybe to see.

ADAM

Your scoff is sarcasm, do not insult her.
Devotness still covers her pretty lips.

LUCIFER

You're converted or will be pietist.

ADAM

That's bad joke; be my heart whatever cold,
It's painful to me; but wish the girls' heart
To be full with preconception, with this
Holy poetry, with this music of past,
With this intact ornament of the flower. -

LUCIFER

Now then show me the part of heaven you want -
You dare not expect for the devil to
Hunt always after your fastidious taste.
It is enough when he satisfies your wish.

ADAM

Can it be else as this lady? -

LUCIFER

                                  Rain-bird's
Also of this view, when finds worm for itself,
It looks around jealously and believes
It is best catch, has no equal on earth,
But pigeon's looking at it with disgust.
Man finds his bliss, too, only by himself
And maybe this will often happen just
Where others made their life the hell on earth.

ADAM

How dignified and how pure she can be;
I'm fearing even to make up to her.

LUCIFER

Don't be afraid! You are not beginner
And as I esteem, she is to marry off.

ADAM

Shut up!

LUCIFER

        Maybe she's dearer than others.

(Meanwhile a YOUNG MAN joins modestly EVE and gives her a heart made of honey-cake.)

THE YOUNG MAN

My young lady, please take this small fairing
From my hand, I give it with great pleasure.

EVE

Arthur, you are so kind to me remember.

THE MOTHER

It's long since we saw you, why don't visit us?

(They talk in a low voice, ADAM looks excitedly at them till the YOUNG MAN goes away.)

ADAM

This callow youth would thus possess all what
My mature heart so eagerly wishes -
How intimately they talk, she smiles
And waves him good-bye - oh what an anguish! -
I'm forced to speak to her. (comes near to EVE)

THE MOTHER

                                Arthur's parents
Are wealthy, that's true, but I do not know
How they consider his romance to you.
Be careful and do not neglect the other
Who surprised you today with this bouquet.

ADAM

Allow me, my dear ladies, to escort you,
To safeguard you in this buzzling, hustling crowd.

EVE

What an impertinence!

THE MOTHER

                  Get out meddler!
Maybe you think this girl to be a maid
Whom anybody may tell pretty things? -

ADAM

And can he tell else? - I have dreamt many times
This most beautiful ideal of woman.

THE MOTHER

Your dreams are yours and you dream as you like it;
But graces of this maiden do not bloom to
An aggressive rapscallion as you are. -

(ADAM stands dazedly, a GIPSY WOMAN steps to EVE.)

GIPSY WOMAN

Ah, marvellous lady, wonder of the world,
Let me see your tiny graceful, white hand,
Let me tell you how millions of grace of fate
Will brighten and light up your happy life.
(looking at her hand)
Happy betrothal, that is your soon fate,
Pretty children, health, wealth wait for you maid.
(she gets some cash)

LUCIFER (showing to ADAM)

My sister! Tell something on my friend's hope. -

GIPSY WOMAN

To me it's not clear, hunger or the rope. -

ADAM (to EVE)

Do not turn me away, don't give refusal,
I feel that your heart is created for me. -

EVE

Mother, refuse him to -

THE MOTHER

                        I call policeman
If you don't clear out.

EVE

                  No, he'll think better of
And actually, he did nothing that's wrong.
(They pass away.)

ADAM

Holy poetry, did you disappear
Finally from this very prosaic world?

LUCIFER

Not at all! What else were the honey-cake,
Bouquet, and dance, and shady bower, were
What else? Don't be so over-squeamish, to
Indulge in fancies you've objects enough.

ADAM

What good will that do when greed for gain and
Selfishness lurk around them and selfless
Solemnity has disappear'd at all.

LUCIFER

You find it fairly well all in the schools where
Life did not intervene in the morals.
Here you're such fellows are coming this way.

(Some PUPILS come in walk.)

FIRST PUPIL

Be happy, boys, we're free and left the mold,
Now let's enjoy some nice and awful rows.

SECOND PUPIL

Let us outdoors, this town, its obtuse order,
This profiteering world I hate like poison.

THIRD PUPIL

Let's try to pick with somebody a quarrel,
It is exciting and manly amusement.

FIRST PUPIL

Let's tear away the girls from the hirelings' lap
And we shall have our war just immediately;
Then let us hurry outdoors with the girls,
We can pay for music, for some glass' of beer,
Crown'd with remembrance of our victory
We'll be princes among the wine-red cheeks.

FOURTH PUPIL

It's glorious to vex the good philistine.

FIRST PUPIL

This will fasten chains of our unity -
Now let's enjoy ourselves all we know how,
Some day while burning for the holy homeland
Our power asserts itself on nobler lists.

(They pass away.)

ADAM

It's nice to see them in this world of baseness,
I suspect in it the germs of progress.

LUCIFER

You'll see what this germ will produce at all
Working off the mold of the lecture rooms.
These two manufacturers coming here
Were similar in their youth to these boys.

(Two MANUFACTURERS come in talk.)

FIRST MANUFACTURER

I can't take the contention after all,
Everybody tries to buy cheaper things,
I've to debase the quality of my goods.

SECOND MANUFACTURER

Wages have to be reduced first of all.

FIRST MANUFACTURER

That's nonsense, they are turbulent now, too,
That they can't get along, the dirty dogs,
Though there's something in their constant complaints
But who suggest them to be forced to wed,
And who suggest to beget six children.

SECOND MANUFACTURER

One makes them work harder than ever before,
They have to work through nights in our factories,
The remaining time is enough to rest
For those who dare not sleep for useless dreams. (exeunt)

ADAM

Away with them. - Why you have let me see them. -
But tell me where is the girl I look'd for?
That's your turn, Lucifer, show your power
And help me to be successful.

LUCIFER

                                        I do not
Potter my power for such vain nullities.

ADAM

For you what's nothing, that's for me the world.

LUCIFER

Let you win it. - But take care and curtail
Your feelings, do not fear to say falsehood,
Reply as I ask and she will be yours.
(Aloud, so the GIPSY WOMAN eavesdropping behind them should hear it.)
You see mylord now, how it is unpleasant
To mingle in the crowd in complete disguise,
Again, again we are insulted hardly.
If crowd would suspect that four ships of ours
Will come safe into port as late as today,
The welcome would be warmer.

ADAM

                                          Certainly.

GIPSY WOMAN (aside)

This disclosure is worth a pretty sum. (to ADAM)
I want a word with you - you have disguised
Yourself, I punish'd you with the prophecy
Because no secret is hidden for me
Who has had a pact with the devil himself.

LUCIFER (aside)

What next! you good-for-nothing age-worn beldam.

GIPSY WOMAN

Your ships come into port as late as today
But for you it is much more fortunate:
A beautiful girl hankers after you.

ADAM

How I'd win her favour?

GIPSY WOMAN

                        She's almost yours.

ADAM

She refused me.

GIPSY WOMAN

        For that reason she'll be yours.
You see, she will be here like a tiny bird,
Remember only the fortune-teller's word. (exit)

ADAM

Lucifer! this hag will get over you.

LUCIFER

I don't deny her marvellous merit,
She's superseded the devil's credit.

(A CHARLATAN comes on a barrow surrounded by the crowd, with trompet-call and stands in the centre.)

THE CHARLATAN

Keep out of my way! - all honour to me,
My head has turned grey due to the science
While I research'd for hidden resources
Of the nature with untiring diligence.

ADAM

Who's this extravagant fool, Lucifer?

LUCIFER

The science that's charlatan to get along,
Like that time when you made your researches
But more ado is needed now than that time.

ADAM

I've never made it so insolently.
It's a scandal.

LUCIFER

But thus is not his fault.
To fear is his own, it comes natural to
Him to avoid this type of epitaph:
        Ex gratia speciali
Mortuus in hospitali.
Having devoted to others much time
His reward he wants for which he does pine.

THE CHARLATAN

I spared no troubles in mankind's behalf,
Here you see the wonderful results:
Elixir of life is in this small pot
That rejuvenates sicks and adults.
The great pharaohs took this medicine,
That is Tancred's drink of ecstasy,
Helene used this nice beautifier,
And this is Kepler's astrology. -

ADAM

Do you hear what he sells? - Whilst we searched for light
In the future, he saught for it in the past.

LUCIFER

Present is never worthy of respect,
Like human grandness in domestic bedrooms.
This is our wife after ten years of marriage -
Even we know how many sun-spots she has.

THE CHARLATAN

Take it, will never regret it who takes,
It was and will be never, this is the case.

FROM THE CROWD

Let me have it. - For me any of them fits -
How lucky! - I like these expensive small gifts.

LUCIFER

You see, this crowd has lost completely its faith,
But snaps up all things that seem to be magic.

(EVE comes back with her MOTHER, the GIPSY WOMAN follows them speaking below her breath.)

EVE

Your words are to no purpose, we know you well.

GIPSY WOMAN

Be my soul not saved if this is not true.
This gentleman fell so in love with you
That you'll be his mistress even today
His rooms are bright like those of a princess.
He goes to pass time by four-in-hand coach.

THE MOTHER

If we consider, it's more practical
Than to fade away getting unmarried
In the stinking shop of a grubby cobbler.

GIPSY WOMAN

Look, look, there he stands - how he looks around.

EVE

That's unkind of him not to notice me. -
His hands are delicate, his port's noble. -

THE MOTHER

Either his friend has nothing against my taste
Though he's hawk-nosed and slightly bandy-legged,
But is a honest oldish gentleman.
I go away, my dear, best intercession
Is to leave you both mainly to yourselves.

GIPSY WOMAN (to ADAM)

Well, here's your rose, see how she pines for you. -

ADAM

I run to her, oh, this is delightful!

GIPSY WOMAN

Do not forget the intercessor at all.

LUCIFER (giving her cash)

Here you're: cash from my friend and handshake from me.

GIPSY WOMAN (crying out)

Ugh! your hand is strong! (exit)

LUCIFER

                          You'd feel its delight
If you'd be whom you play, you age-worn hag! -

EVE (to ADAM)

You may buy fairing to me, if you want,
These aids to beauty will certainly do. -

ADAM

The charm of feminity of your cheek
Is unrivalled make-up of your own.

(Meanwhile the CHARLATAN passes away.)

EVE

Ah, you are so kind.

ADAM

                Don't put me to the blush:
Bejewel your neck with diamonds and pearls
Not to decorate you but these can't glitter
Elsewhere that would be more worthy than yourself.

EVE

Farther on I saw jewellers and goldsmiths
But these do not go with such prosaic girl.

ADAM

Let us visit them.

LUCIFER

        It is unneeded.
Some decorative jewels I have by chance.

(He gives jewels to EVE who eyes and fits on them with joy.)

EVE

These are very nice, I'd be envied for them. -

ADAM

But this, this heart I want see not any more.

EVE

If it's against you, I fling it away.
(She throws off the heart)

LUCIFER

That's right, and I will tread down it.
(He stamps on the heart.)

EVE

                                                        What's that:
I hear a cry or am hallucinated?

(Meanwhile a CONDEMNED is transported through the scene by a barrow followed by the crowd.)

FROM THE CROWD

Let's be quick! - There now! I said no guts he had -
He is still rugged. - Let's see him to behead!

ADAM

What is that buzz, what is that outrageous press?

EVE

A man will be hang'd. It's good that we're here.
Let's go 'cause this sight is highly exciting
And a good chance to swagger with my jewels.

ADAM

What's the crime of the rotter?

EVE

                                          I don't know.

LUCIFER

No matter but I tell you the story:
He work'd for long in the plant of Lovel,
But tin is poison and he much inhaled it,
For several weeks got the hospital.
His nice wife has been short of certain things,
The son to Lovel was young, generous,
They each other found and forgot everything. -

FIRST WORKER

Be happy, old chap! - You bleed as martyr,
We shall preserve and not forget your name.

LUCIFER

The husband was up, did not find his wife,
His workplace was fill'd, pined for work in vain,
His heart rebelled, ventur'd to threaten,
The son to Lovel slapp'd him at the face.
The fool rotter took up suddenly a knife -
He's carried here - the old Lovel lost his mind. -

(During that last words LOVEL comes with crazy dignity.)

LOVEL

You lie, you lie, I did not lose my mind,
Do I not perceive what tells my son's wound?
Take off, rake off my abundant riches
And help not to grasp it, be I rather mad.

THIRD WORKER

Do not fear, your death will be surely repaid.

FIRST WORKER

Go with head erect, they are grovelling. -

(The CONDEMNED passes away with his escort.)

ADAM

Ghastly illusion, why do you haunt me?
Who tells me whether who is more guilty,
Or community is guilty alone? -
Where it's rotten the crime predominates.

LOVEL

The society. - Take off my riches
But let me not grasp more the words of that wound. (exit)

EVE

Let's go in hurry 'cause we miss our place.

ADAM

Bless to you, my fate, that I'm not a judge,
How easy it's to write laws free of charge -
How easy it's to judge with some negligence
And how hard when one will the heart analyze
And will be aware of all its details.

LUCIFER

Under these percepts no action would finish.
Nobody does the wrong because it is wrong.
Also the devil cites only titles
And all believe that their own one is the best.
The authority on law only cuts
The tangly knot the threads of which thousand
Philanthropists could not unbind at all. -

(Meanwhile they get the Tower in a niche of which there stands an image of a saint.)

EVE

Stop my friend, only for a moment, stop,
Let me stick to this picture my bouquet.

LUCIFER (whispering)

Don't allow her to do else we shall be lost.

ADAM

She is innocent - I don't prevent her. -

EVE

Since my childhood I've been in the habit
Of remembering this sacred image
When walking here, now it's pleasant to me.
I'll be ready soon and we will remedy
Quickly that else we lose.

(She sticks the bouquet to the picture but the flowers suddenly die down, the jewels on her neck and arms turn to lizards and run down.)

                                My God, what's that?

LUCIFER

I strongly advised not to allow her. -

EVE

                                                        Help!

ADAM

Have no fear, darling, people look at you -
I promise I buy more beautiful jewels.

EVE

Get out! Get out! Lord have mercy on me!
Base swindlers and a disgusting harridan
Brought dishonour on me, a honest woman.

(People begin to form a group, the GIPSY WOMAN comes with policeman.)

GIPSY WOMAN

They must be here, they gave me false coins,
Fused to mercury in my hands.

LUCIFER

                                        Maybe
Fault's bound to your hand, not to the coins. -
Adam, let's go, it's not good to pass time here.

(They enter the Tower and while grouping and confusion increase below, they appear again at the bastion's top.)

ADAM

Again I am disappoint'd, I thought
It is enough to pull down ghost of past
And to guarantee the free competition. -
I pulled out a screw from the great machine,
The reverence that held together it
And failed to replace it by a stronger one.
What a fight is this when one has the sword
Against opponents who are free of weapons,
What independence is when hundreds starve
If only are not yoked by the mighty.
That is fight of dogs wrangling for the bones.
Instead of this I want a society
That guards, fires and does not punish and scare,
That cooperates with common power
And dreamt for itself by the science so far,
Order of which is controll'd by reason. -
This will come, I know and I feel it comes,
Guide me Lucifer, into this wanted world. - -

LUCIFER

Vain are you, man, because your purblind eyes
Below see only groups in disorder,
You think that there's no cooperation,
There is no order in the workshop of life?
See by spirits' eyes, only for a moment
And see the labour that they are producing
But only for us and not for their delight.

(It becomes dark. The whole market turns into a group that is digging the grave in the scene's centre, they dance it round and jump into it after each other, partly without speaking, partly as they spoke.)

CHOIR

Come on, come on, let the hoe twang,
Finish today, tomorrow it's late,
Though after some millennia
The masterpiece you should re-create.
Birth and coffin are well the same,
They end now what commence tomorrow,
Are always hungry and sated
What now enters, rises in sorrow.
(The funeral bell sounds.)
Sounds just now the funeral bell,
All is over, let us have a rest,
Whom the morning wakens to life
Commence the great work and do their best.

THE PUPPETEER

The comedy, as a whole, I play'd,
I did not pass time but entertain'd.

THE INNKEEPER

All drained their glass to the last drop,
Good night my guests, good night my mob.

THE YOUNG GIRL

All my violets were sold, you saw,
New ones will again on my tomb grow.

GIPSY WOMAN

Future was that all wanted to see
Now they do not want know-all to be.

LOVEL

Treasures did not give me happiness,
Now free of charge I find quietness.

WORKER

The week's over, now comes its last night,
I shall take a rest after my fight.

PUPIL

I was roused though I had a nice dream,
Let you come, the only hope you mean.

SOLDIER

I believed I was very brave
And now slip up over this grave.

COURTESAN

Giddiness is over, make-up's worn down,
So cold I'm here, let me get warm there down.

THE CONDEMNED

Remain my fetters on this dirty ground,
Behind this threshold new laws will be found.

THE CHARLATAN

We fool'd each other that we are so wise,
When seeing the truth we will show surprise.

EVE

Yawning gulf, why do you stand before my feet,
Don't think your darkness to frighten off me,
Dust produced by this ground falls just into it,
I will step over it with my glory.
The spirits of love, poetry and youth
To my eternal homeland open the way,
Only my smile brings delight to this Earth,
Like sunbeam warms the face at start of the day.

(Throwing her veil and cloak into the grave, she rises with glory.)

LUCIFER

Do you know her, Adam?

ADAM

                        Ah! That's Eve! That's Eve! -

 

TWELFTH SCENE

Court of a U-shaped grandiose phalanstery. The ground-floor of the two flanks forms an open columnar hall. In the right hall workers are in action among moving wheeled steam-engines. In the left hall, in the museum exhibiting different objects of natural sciences, mechanical tools, astronomic and chemical instruments and other specialities, a SCIENTIST is working. All belonging to the phalanstery are uniformly dressed. ADAM and LUCIFER emerge from the ground in the court's centre. Day-time.

ADAM

What's that country and nation, where we are?

LUCIFER

These old ideas are out of fashion.
Was not petty the notion of the homeland?
It was produced once by the prejudice,
Was screened by stinginess and rivalry.
For all is now the whole world the homeland,
All men are partners to each the common goal,
Above attractive and silent order
There stands as safeguard the science itself.

ADAM

Ah, the ideal of my heart is fulfill'd,
That's very good, I have got what I wanted.
I only deplore the notion of homeland,
I think it would exist under this new
Order, as well. Human being does want
Limitations and fears the infinity,
When it expands, its inner worth's decreased;
It is devoted to its past and future;
I am afraid, it does not burn for the world
As it was keen on the tomb of parents.
Who'd be ready to bleed for family
Would his friends only bewail at the most.

LUCIFER

You cast off your great ideas, I see,
Before these at all embodied could be.

ADAM

Don't think by any means. But I'm peeping:
What is the thought that unifies the great world,
That commands the whole enthusiasm of man,
This holy and eternal fire of him,
That was excited only by lowness
Harnessing it to have purposeless fights,
Finally to this wonderful nobler aim. -
But tell me, where we are, what is this place?
Then guide me, let my heart take delight in the
Happiness, that is well-deserved by the
Uninterrupted fights of the struggling man.

LUCIFER

Like all the others it's a phalanstery,
Residence of man of the new ideas. -

ADAM

Well, let us go.

LUCIFER

  Stop! do not be in hurry.
First we have to cast our ancestral skin.
When we arrive as Adam, Lucifer,
This learned world would not believe in us,
We'd be destructed or closed in a retort.

ADAM

What imprudent things you tell me again.

LUCIFER

Well, this is the case in the world of spirits.

ADAM

Do what you want but as fast as you can.

(LUCIFER transforms both of them into creations similar to those in the phalanstery.)

LUCIFER

Now, take these slops, away with your ringlets - well,
We are ready. -

ADAM

        Let's call on this scientist.

LUCIFER

Hail to thee, scholar!

SCIENTIST

                Do not molest me
In my grand work, I don't have time to chatter.

LUCIFER

I'm sorry, we're candidates of scholars
From the very far thousandth phalanstery
And visit you for your very good name.

SCIENTIST

Well I never, that's commendable zeal.
But my work could be interrupted at all,
I wish the heat not to decrease in my flask,
Matter will surely comply with my will. -

LUCIFER

That's good, I was not disappointed,
The utmost vanity's scum persisted
Even in you, who both man and nature
Experienced. -

SCIENTIST

  Well, now we can have a talk. -
But what's your specific profession at all?

ADAM

Our will for knowledge wants more than one line,
We try to sum up everything as a whole. -

SCIENTIST

That is wrong view. Great is conceal'd in the small,
So much are branches and our life's so short.

ADAM

That's true. - I know, there must be someone who
Always the sand trails or the carving makes:
Without them my space will not develop.
But they're rambling only in mysteries
And do know nothing about what they help. -
Architect does see only the entity
And though he cannot cut the stone correctly,
Creates the masterpiece like a god himself. -
This architect is grand in science, too.

LUCIFER

This is why we came to visit you, great man.

SCIENTIST

It is well done, I appreciate your turn.
Abundant lines of the science itself
Are different traits of one system only,
They're charming together.

LUCIFER

                                Like a lady.

SCIENTIST

But all the same the chemistry only -

LUCIFER

Is the focus where its essence is found. -

SCIENTIST

You are right.

LUCIFER

This was said on mathematics
Long ago by a mathematician.

SCIENTIST

Yes, every man regards himself to be
Central figure of his own narrow purview. -

LUCIFER

To take chemistry, this praises you for
Your choice.

SCIENTIST

I'm sure in it in full measure. -
But let's visit our museum now that
Is unrivalled in our recent era,
Extincted beasts of the primitive world
Stand here well-stuffed as original
Individuals. - Millions of them lived
In our fathers' times when they were barbaric
And gave them share in the power on the world. -
A lot of strange tales tell stories on them,
See, it's said to be used as locomotive.

ADAM

That is horse, well I never, but a freak,
Once Al-borak was finer than this is.

SCIENTIST

This animal is now said that man kept it
As his friend, free of charge and without labour
And it was able when watching faithfully
To comprehend the thoughts of its master.
And what is more, it's said, it contracted
His own crime, the concept of the property
And as guard it laid down its life for him. -
I tell you all these as it is written
Not as I'd believe these things by all means.
In our past you find much dreamy and mad things,
We herited only as tales like these.

ADAM

That is dog. - All's correct you said about it. -

LUCIFER

Take care, Adam, you will reveal yourself. -

SCIENTIST

And now, this was the slave of poors themselves.

ADAM

Like poors were always oxen of the riches.

SCIENTIST

This is the king of the steppe.

ADAM

                                        The lion -
And here are tiger and the slippy deer,
Tell me what kinds of beasts are still living here?

SCIENTIST

What a question! Is it at you not the same?
Lives what useful is and which could not be
Substitut'd so far by science itself:
Pig and sheep but by no means in the very
Imperfect and bad form as created by
Ancient nature in a bungling manner:
That is living fat, this is meat and wool
Serving like retorts only our purposes.
But as I see you all these old things know,
Let's go further. Here are our minerals.
Look at this very great fragment of coal:
Mountains consisted once of this black matter,
At man's disposal was this substance that
Is now filtered from air by science
With arduous work. This ore was once call'd
Iron and till it had been mineable
No research was made for aluminium. -
This small piece is gold and it is very
Famous and very useless thing of naught.
At that time when the man in his sightless faith
Adored the beings superior to him,
That had the upper hand of his own fate:
He did believe gold to be such a thing,
On his altars he offer'd welfare, law
And all holy things, in order to be
The owner of one magical piece of it,
For which he could buy all what he wanted -
It is marvellous fact, even bread, too.

ADAM

Show me something else, these are known for me.

SCIENTIST

Really, you're great scholar, new-comer.
Let us see then the paleoflora.
This is the last rose that bloomed in the world.
Useless flower that together with its
Some hundred thousand allied useless flowers
Took the most fertile field of corn in the ear;
It's handsome plaything of adult children.
This phenomenon's in fact peculiar,
How there was a run on this type of toys;
Even the spirit brought in flowers, too:
Daydreams of the faith and of poetry,
And indulging in arms of deceptive dreams
It threw away its best capacities
So, its aims in life were left unfulfill'd.
Here you are, we have preserv'd two of these
Rarities. One of them is a poem;
Once when the person wanted to succeed
By nefarious overconfidence,
The author was call'd Homer. He described a
Fanciful world, the mane of which was Hades.
We proved wrong each line of it long ago.
The other's "Agricola" by Tacitus,
These are ridiculous but sad pictures
Of concepts from the ancient barbaric world.

ADAM

How then? Some fragments of the great old days
Did persist like a testament at all,
And these cannot the degenerated
Late descendants so excite to act strongly
And to destroy your false and factitious world? -

SCIENTIST

That is correct, we comprehended this,
The poison in it is very dangerous,
This is why no one is allowed to read them
Except those who are above sixty years
And bound themselves to science for ever.

ADAM

But the enchanting songs of nursemaid, do not
These implant expectations into the
Weak heart?

SCIENTIST

                  Certainly, these do, this is why
Nursemaids tell our children solely about
The higher equations and geometry. -

ADAM (aside)

Assassins, you do not fear to deprive
The heart of its whole and most beautiful age! -

SCIENTIST

Let's continue. - Here are these instruments
And objects of art of fantastic figure.
This is a gun with enigmatic device:
Ultima ratio regum. - How it
Was used? Who knows that? - Here you are a sword,
A tool solely to kill the man himself -
And was unguilty who murder'd with it.
This picture was drawn completely by free-hand,
Maybe this needed at least half a life-time,
And its object is only a queer tale.
Now sun commits this hard work instead of us
And while that falsely idealized is,
This serves our aims with profound fidelity.

ADAM (aside)

But art and the intellect both are missing -

SCIENTIST

This diverse objects, how fancy and how
Infantine they are. Flower on the cup,
A dreamy arabesque on chair-back are
Squander'd works of art made by the man's hand.
Are more refreshing the water from this cup,
More comfortable to sit on that chair?
Now, our machines do all these instead of us,
In most practical and in the simplest form,
And perfection has been guaranteed by
The fact that workers who are making screws
Will make that only till their last workday.

ADAM

This is why no life and no character
Exist now that would go beyond its master. -
Where do power and thought gain even ground
To verify their heavenly origin?
If man wants to fight and will look around
In this regular and superior world,
Neither the delight of feeling hazard
Nor ferocious beast he'll find everywhere.
I'm disappointed at science, too:
I find only a dull infantine school
Instead of gladness I so eagerly wish'd.

SCIENTIST

Fraternity do you miss here at all?
Or is the man short of the wherewithal?
Really, such false thoughts would rather deserve
The punishment.

ADAM

    Tell me now what is the thought
That gives unity to society,
That's able to fire as a common ground?

SCIENTIST

In our case this thought is the sustenance.
When man entered the scene of this world,
It was a larder full with all worldly goods:
He had to stretch out his hand only to
Reach everything what he needed at all.
This is why he wasted without forethought
Like worm in cheese, that's why in his sweet delight
He had too much time to search for stimuli
And poetry in false hypotheses.
We, however, now should be close-fisted at
The last morsel since we have recognized:
We are out of cheese and will starve to death.
After four thousand years the sun gets cool,
No plants will be born in the frozen land;
We have only these just four thousand years
To discover how the sun can be replaced.
This time enough is, it is my belief.
Water, this highly oxidized matter
Seems to be the best fuel of future.
The secrets of organism itself are
Very, very close to revelation, too. -
It's good that our talk govern'd us this way,
I all but forgot of my own retort,
Since I am working also in this field.

LUCIFER

Man gets strongly old when turning to the
Retort if he wants to produce the life. -
But if your work'd be successful at all
It will be monster like the wordless thought,
Like feeling of love without its object,
Being that will by nature be denied,
That does not possess contrasts or relatives
When person himself does not curtail it.
From where will it take its own character
When isolated from outworld and sorrow
Coming into world in a narrow retort?

SCIENTIST

Look how it's boiling, look hot it's flashing.
Ephemeral forms are moving here and there,
In this pleasantly warm and closed retort where
Both affinity and countereffect
Are concordant and matter will be forced
To defer itself to my compelling will.

LUCIFER

I admire your work, my only question is
Could you perform that those who are akin
Don't attract each other and by contrast
Be not repell'd.

SCIENTIST

        Ah, that's foolish talk.
That's perpetual law of every matter.

LUCIFER

I see, but tell me what's the ground of this?

SCIENTIST

What is the ground? That's law because it's so,
This is shown by the pure experience.

LUCIFER

Thus, you are only the fireman of nature
As for the rest it is done by itself.

SCIENTIST

But I determine its limits by this glass
And force it to come out of the mystery.

LUCIFER

I do not see the sign of life as yet.

SCIENTIST

This cannot happen. Me, who thoroughly search'd
All the mysteries of the organism,
Me, who hundred times analyzed the life -

ADAM

You've got only corpse always as result.
Science follows the existing and young
Experience with staggering footsteps
And like a well-paid false poet of the king,
Who's ready to make comments on great acts
But has no licence to tell prophecies.

SCIENTIST

Why do you deride, do you not see that
One spark is needed and it comes to life?

ADAM

But from where you take this, this spark at all?

SCIENTIST

I have to do one step only, not more.

ADAM

But who did not make this one step forward,
Nothing did and does know nothing at all.
The long walk was done only round and round,
Only this last one would lead to the result. -
Will be someone who will ever make this? -

(Meanwhile the fume floating above the retort grows denser and becomes to thunder.)

THE VOICE OF THE EARTH'S SPIRIT (from the fume)

No, will never be. - For me this retort's
Very narrow and very wide. - Do you know
Me, Adam, don't you? - They do not guess at me.

ADAM

Did you hear this word, this word of spirit?
Look out, look out you proud and forceless being,
How could you defeat who is floating there. -

SCIENTIST

That's fit of raving madness, I fear for you.
(The retort cracks, the spirit disappears.)
Retort is cracked, I can the great work
Commence again. When goal does make signs
A tiny lump, the absurd blind event
Blocks me.

LUCIFER

                Once it was called as the blind fate
And to break down under its power was less
Humiliating than to defer to
The absurd and blind event.
(A bell sounds.)
                                                      What does it mean?

SCIENTIST

Work is stopped now, this is the time to walk,
Here they are coming from plants and from the field,
Who was found guilty will now be punish'd,
Women and children will be classified.
Let us go, I've something to do there, too.

(Men come in long lines, in other lines women, some of them among others EVE with children. In the court they form a circle, a GREYBEARD steps in front of them. ADAM, LUCIFER and the SCIENTIST stand in the foreground next to the museum.)

THE GREYBEARD

Number thirty!

LUTHER (coming out of the line)

That's me.

THE GREYBEARD

                          You heated again
The furnace beyond the desired measure.
It seems so, indeed, that it is your passion
To endanger the entire phalanstery.

LUTHER

Who could resist the temptation when the
Wild element, the bursts of flame surround
Him while flashing and fearfully roaring,
It does want to reach and annihilate you:
To stand dauntlessly and make the fire burn
Knowing that it's ruled only by yourself. -
You do not know the magic power of fire
'Cause you know it from below pot only.

THE GREYBEARD

That's vain boasting, thus today you will not dine.

LUTHER (drawing back)

But next day I'll make the fire burn again.

ADAM

Who is that? I know this man very well.
He's Luther.

THE GREYBEARD

Number twohundred and nine!

CASSIUS (coming out of the line)

That is me.

THE GREYBEARD

                I warn you just for the third time
'Cause you are after row without reason.

CASSIUS (drawing back)

Without reason 'cause I don't make complaints? -
Faint is who looks for the help of others
While his arms are strong. Or was my rival
Weaker 'cause he did not defend himself? -

THE GREYBEARD

None of your sauce! - Neither the shape of your
Skull excuses this tendency to worn,
'Cause it's generous and without mistake.
But your blood is in an uproar and wild!
You will be cured till you will become docile.

ADAM

Ah, Cassius! If you'd recognize me, your
Brother in arms at Philippi. - Whether this
Wrong order and the theory could make
Mistake that such a generous heart stunts
It only and doesn't discern its merit.

THE GREYBEARD

Number fourhundred.

PLATON (coming out of the line)

                I hear.

THE GREYBEARD

                                You have lost
Yourself again in your dreams, false illusions
And the oxen left to you were damaged.
To be awake, you have to kneel on peas now.

PLATON (standing back)

I've beautiful dreams even on the peas.

ADAM

What a poor part you have, ah, Platon in
The society you so eagerly wish'd!

THE GREYBEARD

The number seventy and two!

MICHELANGELO (coming out of the line)

                                  That's me. -

THE GREYBEARD

You left your workroom in great disarray.

MICHELANGELO

Because I had to fabricate the chair-legs
To the quality as poor as it can be.
I appeal'd for long, let me modificate,
Let me engrave some ornaments on it.
They did not permit. I wanted as a chance
The chair-back to change but all was in vain.
I was very close to be a madman
And I left the pains and my workroom, too. (stands back)

THE GREYBEARD

You get house arrest for this disorder
And will not enjoy this nice and warm day.

ADAM

Michelangelo, the torments of hells
May be for your heart forbidden to create. -
How many friends here, how many spirits,
How many good friends of primitive force.
He fought with me and others died as martyrs,
Other found the globe too narrow again.
How state made them to be so petty-minded
And uniform. Come, Lucifer, let's go;
My soul's infirm to watch this dreadful scene. -

THE GREYBEARD

Now, two children have completed the time
Until maternal care has been needed.
They are awaited in common boarding-school.
Come on, come on!

(EVE and an other woman come out of the line with their children.)

ADAM

           What a glorious figure!
Well, this reserv'd world possesses something
Of poetry!

LUCIFER

                Now, Adam, don't we go?

ADAM

On the contrary, we shall have some rest here.

THE GREYBEARD

Scientist! Let you the phrenologic
State of these two children observe.

(The SCIENTIST investigates the children.)

EVE

                                                        My God!

ADAM

This voice!

LUCIFER

                  But what you fall this woman for,
Who tasted the kiss of Semiramis?

ADAM

At that time I did not know this.

LUCIFER

                                                That's fine!
This is the very old song of all lovers:
Each of them believes he had discover'd
The passion and that prior to him no
Man could make the love; this is the story
Since millennia without break at all.

SCIENTIST

Well, this child has to be a medical man,
That will be herdsman.

THE GREYBEARD

                        Bring them now away.

(They want to separate the children, EVE resists.)

EVE

Don't touch him! This child is the child of mine:
Who would be so rude to wrench him from my heart! -

THE GREYBEARD

Do now what I said. Do not hesitate.

EVE

My only child! - Ah, I fed you but with
The blood of my heart. - Where is the power
That's able to break this holy relation?
Should I give you up as lost for evermore,
To vanish in the crowd and my eyes have
To look for you with maternal care in vain
Among hundreds of uniform strangers.

ADAM

My friends, if there were something holy to you,
Do not separate him from his mother.

EVE

Is it not so, you bless'd but unknown man.

THE GREYBEARD

Foreigner, you do a venturesome game;
When we allow to come to life again
The prejudice of family, then all
Feats of the holy science would be undone.

EVE

What do I care for the rigid science!
Be it defeated when nature breaks force.

THE GREYBEARD

Are you ready?

ADAM

Ah! Don't dare to touch him.
There is a sword, I'll teach you a lesson
Of its true handling.

LUCIFER

                Vision, stop to move!

(He takes his hand on ADAM's shoulder who remains still. The fatal power of my hands you must feel. -)

EVE

My child!

(She falls down, her child is led away.)

THE GREYBEARD

                These two women have not their pairs
Come forward who wants these women as his pair.

ADAM

I need this woman.

THE GREYBEARD

        Scientist, what you say.

SCIENTIST

Fanatic man and neuropathic woman
Beget a freak, this is not the correct pair.

ADAM

I do not give up when she also wants it.

EVE

I am always yours, you generous man.

ADAM

I love you, lady, with all fire of my heart.

EVE

I also love you for good and all, I feel.

SCIENTIST

This is madness. - It's a strange case, really,
To see the ghost of past as it's appearing
In our enlighten'd days. - How this may be?

ADAM

That is late glimmer of the Paradise.

THE GREYBEARD

It's a pity. -

ADAM

Don't feel sorry for us. -
This madness is ours; we don't envy you
For your pure reason. All what in this world was
Great and generous, was the same madness,
Being always free of the cool thinking. -
That is spirits' talk that sounds to us from the
Superior world like a nice poem,
It is the witness that we are kindred
To it and disdain the dust of this ground
And are looking for the way to superb worlds. -
(He holds EVE in his arms.)

THE GREYBEARD

Why listen to them, rush them to hospital!

LUCIFER

You need rapid aid, Adam, let us go! (they go down)

 

THIRTEENTH SCENE

The space. A section of our Earth is seen in the farness that turns smaller and smaller till it will be similar to stars and mingles with the others. The scene starts with semi-darkness that turns slowly into total darkness. ADAM as old man and LUCIFER are flying.

ADAM

Where our raging flight will lead us, tell me!

LUCIFER

Did not you want of dirty ground to be free,
Did you? To get the superb world from where
You have heard the sound of similar spirits,
If I caught you well.

ADAM

                That's true but I did not
Fancy my way to them to be so bleak.
This space's so bare, so unfamiliar
As sacrilegist would be haunting in it,
And in my heart two feelings are fighting:
I feel how sordid's the ground and that it
Restricts my superb soul, I want to leave it;
I wish it back, I'm gone away, that cause pain.
Ah, Lucifer! Just look back upon our Earth,
At first nice flowers have pass'd out of our sight,
Then leaves of the forests have disappear'd;
The well-known landscape with its marvellous scenes
Degraded into characterless plain.
All that was charming has become indistinct.
Now cliffs have been changed into shrunken bad lumps.
Clouds with thunderbolt meaning to peasants from
Above the holy voice and startling them,
Degenerate to pity and woeful haze.
The great infinity of roaring sea,
Where has it got to? It's only a grey spot
On the sphere that is revolving and will
Mingle with thousands of stars, that was our world.
And, Lucifer! What, ah what is with her - -
Is it my fate to leave, to leave also her? - -

LUCIFER

Well, from our sublime aspect first the charm will
Disappear, this is follow'd by greatness
And power, and as a final result
We shall have only the cold mathematics. - -

ADAM

The stars are left behind us and I don't see
My aim and do feel no difficulties.
What good will the life do without love and
Struggle? It gives me the creeps, Lucifer!

LUCIFER

If your valiance did take only so long,
Then let us turn back to play in the dust.

ADAM

Who says? Let's go ahead, let's go ahead, it
Is painful only till all the links will
Totally break that bind me to the Earth. -
Alas! What is that? My breath dies in me,
My strength fails me and my mind is confus'd.
Antaeus would be more than only tale
Who lived till was in contact with the ground of
The earth?

THE VOICE OF THE EARTH'S SPIRIT

                Yes, this is much more than tale only.
You know me well, the spirit of the Earth.
That's only me who in you lives, you know.
The barrier's here and my power stops here.
Come back and you'll live - go on and you'll die,
Like primitive worm that gambols in its small
Droplet. - To you this droplet is the Earth.

ADAM

Defy you, it is useless to frighten me,
Maybe my body is yours, my soul's mine,
Both thought and truth have been never-ending,
They lived prior to your material world.

THE VOICE OF THE EARTH'S SPIRIT

Vain man! Try it and you'll come beastly down.
Whether are prior odour to the rose, or
The shape to body or sunbeam to the sun?
Ah, if you saw your abandoned soul
When revolving in the infinite space,
When looking for mind and its expression
In vain in world that is unfamiliar,
Feeling nothing, and understanding none,
You would be horrified. 'Cause all concepts
And all sentiments in your own are only
The emanation of this group of matter
That you call Earth, that if it were something else,
It would not exist more together with you. -
You took off beauty and the bad, bliss and
The hell to you from my own spirit only
That gives the order to your tiny home. -
Ah, what is here an eternal and great truth
That's only nonsense in an other world.
And absurdness can be there natural.
Weight does not exist, being does not move,
What here is air, maybe there is the thought,
What here is light, maybe there is the sound,
What here is growing, maybe there is dead.

ADAM

You won't deter me, my soul does strive upwards. -

THE VOICE OF THE EARTH'S SPIRIT

Adam, Adam, your ultimate hour comes:
Return to Earth, you may be mighty there,
But when you wrench yourself from the ring of the
Universe, Lord will not tolerate you when
You approach him and blasts you immediately. -

ADAM

Anyhow will death not blast me at all?

THE VOICE OF THE EARTH'S SPIRIT

Do not say, do not say this empty word
Of perpetual lie, here in spirits' world. -
The nature would be horrified at it. -
The holy secret is it what Lord has
Kept for himself. The apple of knowledge
Could crack it neither.

ADAM

                   I'll be who cracks it.

(They fly on. ADAM cries and grows stiff.)

I am lost! -

LUCIFER (laughing)

                  Now, the old lie is triumphant. -
(As he drives off ADAM)
This puppet-godship may revolve now in the
Space as a novel planet and I do hope
To find some kind of life that will meet my taste. -

THE VOICE OF THE EARTH'S SPIRIT

Don't be malicious, Lucifer, don't be!
He only touch'd the unfamiliar world.
It's not so easy to leave my own realm. -
Homeward voice calls you, come my son to yourself!

ADAM (coming to his senses)

I am alive again. - 'Cause I suffer,
But this sorrow is very nice to me,
It's so dreadful to be annihilated. - -
Ah, Lucifer! Bring back me to my homeland,
Where I fought so much, so much though in vain,
Let me again fight and I'll be happy.

LUCIFER

And in spite of these unsuccessful fights
You think your new strife will be successful,
You win your goal, you hope? In fact, this faithful
Childish humour's only the own of man. -

ADAM

This false fancy does not tempt by all means,
I know, the aim I shall hundred times not reach.
That is nothing. Really, what's the aim?
Aim is always the break of heroic fight,
Death is the aim and life is the struggle,
And man's aim has been this struggle itself.

LUCIFER

Really, that is nice consolation,
Even if the thought of fight would be so great
Tomorrow you'll mock for what you now fight,
It was nothing what has animated you. -
Did you not bleed to death at Chaironea
In the defense of defeated liberty,
And did you not fight for Constantin's legions
Giving aid him for world hegemony?
Were you not lost as martyr of the faith
And later did you not resist to the faith
With all results and arms of science itself?

ADAM

That's true but is the same how infamous was
My thought at that time it animated me,
It raised me, so it was great, holy thought,
It's all one, cross or science, liberty or
Ambitiousness were fermentative agents,
These have forwarded mankind as a whole. -
Ah, let's go back to the Earth to have new fights.

LUCIFER

Did you forget the word of scientist
Who calculated, after four thousand years
Your world will freeze and struggle will be cease?

ADAM

If our wise science would not outdare it.
But it defies it, I feel and I know. -

LUCIFER

What then? Is any fight, greatness, force there
In the man-made world that is organized
By reason from its grounded theories
What you could observe a short while ago? -

ADAM

Let it just save the earth - it will also
Be over as all things that have perform'd their
Mission, and then the great thought will again
Raise breathing courage into its dead spirit.
Guide me just back, wish eagerly to know
What's the new tenet for which I will burn
On the rescued Earth. -

LUCIFER

                        Let's go back again! -

 

FOURTEENTH SCENE

Mountainous, treeless landscape covered with snow and ice. The Sun like a red and beamless sphere stands among mist streaks. Filter light. In the foreground there is an igloo among some degenerated birch, juniper and runner bushes. ADAM as a very old broken greybeard comes down from the hills with a stick, with LUCIFER.

ADAM

Why do we wandering this endless snow-world
Where death looks at us with dull and blind eyeholes,
Where only seal once and again makes a noise
Rousing up when hears our heavy footfalls;
Where all plants are tir'd always to struggle and
Among lichens the dwarfy bush exists
And Moon like lantern of death looks with red
Face from behind mist streaks into the cold grave. -
Guide me where palm-trees are growing green and bloom,
To the land of sunshine and of nice fragrance,
Where both soul and the power of man have grown
Completely to his consciousness of his own. -

LUCIFER

We're on the spot. This blood-red ball's your Sun.
Beneath our feet there is the globe's equator. -
Over its fate science did not triumph. -

ADAM

That's awful world! - It's good only to die.
I don't regret what I shall abandon.
Ah, Lucifer! Me, who at one time witness'd
The birth of man, who really has seen the
Great prospects that did appear vaguely in it,
Who fought all fights always in first line only,
Who meditates now on this gigantic
Tomb covered by the black hangings of nature,
As first and latest man living on the world:
I am eager to know how my race fail'd?
Whether superbly, in generous fights,
Or miserably, being disjointed,
Without greatness and unworthy of my tears.

LUCIFER

Ah, when you are so proud of your great spirit -
As you are fond of denominating
The power that flows your circulation
And drives young hearts to magnificient thoughts:
Don't want to stay as witness at your own
Funeral bed or catafalque. - Now, this hour
Is miraculous examination
Of the accounting made without the master.
Delirious fever will scare off all
The brighting pictures of delight in life
And now then, who knows what of them was true.
The pitty-minded wail of final fight
Is great scoffing to struggle of our life.

ADAM

Why I did not die high above in the space
When I felt the force of my power and heart,
Rather this would be than to hear my own
Epitaph declaim'd by cold apathy
Of a spirit who does not go shares in
My toilsome fights and in my death to come. -

LUCIFER

I recognize your race again in your tears
That accompany your awakening
From pamper'd illusion to pure consciousness. -
But set your heart at rest, 'cause your race lives.
Look, there is also a home of a man
And its owner just steps out of its door.

(An ESKIMO steps out of the igloo, supplied with tools for seal hunting.)

ADAM

This freakish figure, distorted man the
Usurping heir of my greatness would be?
Why you let me see him, Lucifer! Indeed,
Solace is much worse than was my sorrow.

THE ESKIMO

How then, the gods still exist above us?
They have appeared here, just in front of me. But
Who knows, however, they are good or ill,
I fly from them, this is least dangerous.
(He wants to retreat.)

LUCIFER

Stop for a moment!

THE ESKIMO (throwing himself down)

                Have mercy, mylord!
To you the first seal I offer I hunt,
Only listen to me and spare my poor life.

LUCIFER

Now, what is your right to the seal you will hunt
That you redeem your life at all with its life?

THE ESKIMO

So I'm match for it: 'cause I see everywhere
How lively fish is eating tiny worm,
How seal is eating fish and I the seal.

LUCIFER

And you serve as food to the great spirit.

THE ESKIMO

I know, I know but I buy off with this
Bloody sacrifice the very short time
He mercifully allowed me to live in.

ADAM

What a coward view!

LUCIFER

                Did you do something else?
Between you it's the only difference
That he offer'd seals and you offer'd man
To the godness whom you have created
After your own face like this after his own.

THE ESKIMO

You're angry with me, I feel its reason
Because in my need I had the face to pray
To the generous kind god of our Sun who
Never asks but gives, who as to our old
Legend was our lord here. - Ah, be forgiving
And I accurse it for ever.

ADAM

                        Great my Lord,
Look down and be blush'd: how miserable's
Whom you created to be superb, the man! -

THE ESKIMO

Your friend is angry, maybe he's hungry, too?

LUCIFER

Nay, he is angry 'cause he is not hungry.

ADAM

Why you fabricate ale-wash'd wits again!

LUCIFER

That is truth, not wit. Your argumentation's
That of fulness why that of your mate
Is philosophy of the rumbling stomach.
You don't gain over each other with cause
But will agree at once when you are starv'd
Or he will be of feeling of fullness.
Yes, whatever the things be you imagine,
Always it's the best that governs yourself,
And only having pacified this instinct
Has the man time for disdaining proudly
The feature of him that's his main essence. -

ADAM

This speech is worthy of you, Lucifer,
Who all holy things draws down to the ground
With malicious joy. Are now all great thoughts and
Generous acts the fumes of our kitchen
Or the crazy son of a condition
That from first to last is bound and moved by
Some rules of the poor and valueless matter? -

LUCIFER

Otherwise can it be? - Or do you think
Leonidas would die in the narrow pass
And he would consume his diluted mixture
In a republic that is shorthanded in
Pecuniary means, instead of drinking
In a Lucullan cottage all delights
Of the fabled East? Or Brutus would die
Instead of running home to his Porcia and
Recovering from the excitement of
The fight after a substantial dinner?
How does crime flourish and how the nobleness?
Did not misery produce the former
And both sunshine and liberty did this,
Handing down in all subsequent descendants
Itself both in shape and in the spirit?
How many have said to get square with themselves
And hang'd themselves to the first tree they found,
But when were unchained by unbidden hands,
Sudden rebirth made them to forget the
Strongly decided show-down with their own. -
If Hunyad, the great would not have born in his
Nation, if the shade of a Saracen
Tent would have floated above his small crib,
What would have been the first hero of the cross?
Or if Luther would have been Holy Father
And Leo'd have been reader in a German
University, who knows whether they
Would not have changed their duties in the Church?
See Napoleon, what he would have been if
A nation's blood would not have help'd his path?
He would have moulded in a putrid barrack. -

ADAM (clapping his hand over LUCIFER's mouth)

Not any more! - All you expounded seem
To be so plain, to be so real but all
The more hurtful. - Superstition will blind
Stupid fellow only who does not perceive
Spirit that acts and works among us; see
The good, however, would perceive his brother
If your cold tenet would not kill him with facts. -

LUCIFER

So, talk with your mate, it will not harm you
To have some lessons of self-recognition.

ADAM

Are you many here living from hand to mouth?

THE ESKIMO

Many, many, yes, more than I may count
On my fingers' ends. - Well, all my neighbours
I've beaten to death but all was in vain,
New ones are always coming and we are
So short of the seals. - If you are God, please,
I pray you, get through that there be less man
And more seals. -

ADAM

        That's enough! Let's go, Lucifer.

LUCIFER

Well, but let's visit his wife at the least.

ADAM

I won't to see her, when degenerated
Is the man, it is horrid sight to our eyes
But incites only disdain in our heart.
Woman, however, soul of poetry
Will be only freak when degenerated
And incites horror. I won't her to see.

(Meanwhile LUCIFER dragged ADAM to the igloo and now kicks in the door, inside EVE is seen as wife to the ESKIMO. ADAM standing on the threshold is flabbergasted.)

LUCIFER

Do you not find in her an old acquaintance?
Embrace now her 'cause this honest good man
Will be mortally offended if you
Do not honour her with this old gesture.

ADAM

Should me embrace her, who embraced once an
Aspasia! Her, in whom I see to loom
The features of the immortal other,
However, so while kissing she would turn
Into beast. -

THE ESKIMO (entering the igloo)

My wife! Guests we are having.
Receive the guests with cordiality.

(EVE flings her arms around ADAM's neck and draws him into the igloo.)

EVE

Hail to thee, stranger, let you have a rest here.

ADAM (disentangling himself)

Help, Lucifer! Let's go away from here,
From my future guide me into the recent,
I want see no more my furious fate:
The useless fight. Let me think over whether
Want to defy the destiny of my Lord.

LUCIFER

Well then, wake Adam! Your dream is ended.

 

FIFTEENTH SCENE

(The scene turns into the landscape with palm-trees as in the third scene. ADAM, again as a young man, comes out from the hovel, heavy with sleep and looks amazed around. EVE is asleep in the hovel. LUCIFER stands in the centre. Bright day.)

ADAM

Ah, dreadful visions, where did you melt away?
Around me everything lives and smiles so
As I left it but my heart is broken.

LUCIFER

Vain man! Do you want in your vanity
The order of nature now to be disturbed
And new comet to appear on the sky,
The earth to be shock'd for a worm that died? -

ADAM

I dreamt only or I'm dreaming just now,
And is more than a dream the being at all,
Falling on the dead matter for minutes
Finally to break up together with it?
Why, why we have this short consciousness, so
That to see the horror of nothingness? -

LUCIFER

Why do you whimper? - Only cravenness
Takes up disaster and don't want to fight
Until it power has to walk round it.
Strong, however, looks at perpetual signs
Of destiny with tranquillity and so
Does not murmur at them, but looks only
For the chances how to keep his own end up.
Above history is floating this fate,
You only are a puppet govern'd by it.

ADAM

No, that is false, you lie, the will is free.
I've fairly deserv'd to me to possess it,
Renounced for it the Paradise itself, and
I drew a lesson from the visions I dreamt,
I lost my faith in most of them and now
It's my decision how I want to go on.

LUCIFER

If forgetting and the eternal hope
Would not be both allies of destiny
So while the former heals the wound in time,
This strains a safety net above the depth
And encourages you: hundred bolds fell in,
You will be only who will spring it over. -
But as scientist, you'd to see among
Other oddities such a stomach-worm
That can live only in falcon or in cat,
But the first part of its evolution
It survives only in the tiny mouse.
Neither this nor that mouse's predestinat'd
To meet the claws of falcons or of cats,
Being careful it can carry these off
And it will die only in senile weakness.
It is, however, the law of nature
To warrant so much mice to their enemies
That is enough, so after thousand years
Even the weaklings could exist in the world.
Neither the man is tied down in his person,
But human race well carries its limits;
Ardour like a stream overruns the man
Now for an object, and then for other,
Stakes will always have the victims of their flames
And will survive those who will be derisive. -
Who will register the number of lists
Will be dumbfounded on the steadiness
Of fate that deals out in right proportions
Matrimony and death, crime and virtue,
Faith and distraction and the self-murder. -

ADAM

Hold on! I have a thought that flash'd through my mind -
I can defy you, even you, my Lord.
Though hundred times fate set date of my life:
I laugh at it and if suits me, I won't live.
Or am I not all by myself in the world?
There is the cliff for me and depth's below...
A jump as a last moment of an act,
The comedy, I'll say, has come to an end.

(ADAM moves towards the cliff, EVE steps out of the door.)

LUCIFER

The end, the end! Ah, what a foolish talk!
Are all minutes not end and start at once?
Tell me, why did you see some million years? -

EVE

Adam, why did you sneak so lightly off me
I feel your last kiss was so very cold,
And I see now care or rage in your face.
I am afraid of you...

ADAM (continuing his way)

                Why you're after me,
Why do you keep watch on my steps at all?
For me, for the man, for master of the world
I've else to do but to kindly toy with you.
Woman does not grasp it, she is drag only.
(being softened)
Why did you not sleep only for along,
Now, sacrifice I have to make for the
Future of my own, will be heavier. -

EVE

If you hear me it'll be perhaps lighter,
'Cause what doubtful has been to this moment,
It is now doubtless: the future itself.

ADAM

How so?

EVE

          I do know, your dark brows will be clear'd
When I tell you. But come closer to me:
Ah, Adam, I'm in the family way.

ADAM (goes down on his knees)

My Lord, you conquer'd me, I'm in the dust,
Without, against you my fight is in vain, and
Raise or punish me, I open my heart.

LUCIFER

You worm! You forgot all your mightiness
You have to thank me it. -

ADAM

                                Enough said! Well!
It was vain vision, this is peace itself!

LUCIFER

Crazy woman, why do you parade? Why?
Your son is sin-born even in the Eden,
This will bring crime and distress to the earth.

EVE

If Lord wants it so, will other be conceiv'd
In the distress who will annihilate it
Bringing fraternity to us to our world -

LUCIFER

Do you against me rise, you rascal slave?
Arise, you brute! Up!

(He kicks towards ADAM. The Heaven opens and the LORD surrounded by angels appears in glory.)

THE LORD

                  Fall to the ground, spirit!
No mighty exists to me.

LUCIFER

                        Malediction!

THE LORD

Be up, Adam, don't be heavy-hearted
When you see I take you back in my goodwill.

LUCIFER (aside)

If I aright see, a family row
Will be here that is nice to all sentiments
But unamusing to my intelligence.
It's best to slink away. (He starts to go)

THE LORD

                        Wait, Lucifer!
To you I've some words, hence you must stay here.
And you, my son, tell me what is wrong with you.

ADAM

My Lord, I was by dreadful visions anguish'd
And I do not know what's the truth in them.
Ah, tell me, tell me what will be my fate:
Is all of my own this restricted life
Among the fights of which my soul is filter'd
Like wine that will finally clarify, and
You pour it out to be imbib'd by ground?
Or have you other aims with this fine wine?
Does my race some time prograde on the whole,
To grow generous for approaching your throne,
Or tires to death like beasts always in flour-mills
And will never, never break loose from its ring?
Will the generous heart get its just deserts
That is always mock'd by the vulgar crowd
'Cause bled for their sins? Wise me up, my Lord, and
I shall bear all the kinds of destiny;
I can gain only on this exchange 'cause
This uncertainty is the hell. -

THE LORD

                                   Don't ask
For the secret that is generously
Concealed by Lord's hand for your inquiring look.
If you saw: your soul found temporary
Rest on the Earth, and there eternity waits:
It would not be a virtue here to suffer.
If you saw, the dust would absorb your soul, what
Would excite you to give up the delight
Of short-lived minutes, in view of great thoughts?
While now, looking at your future through clouds
You will sink under the burden of your life,
You'll be raised by feel of infinity.
If its loftiness would carry away you
You'll be limited by the span-wide life.
Greatness and virtue will be guaranteed. -

LUCIFER (laughing)

In fact, the way you chose is full with glory,
Greatness and virtue will be your commander,
Two words that can be embodied only if
Being safeguarded by superstition,
By the prejudice and by ignorance. -
To make greatness from man why I have tried,
Who is moulded from dust and from the sun-beam
And who's dwarf to know but great to be blind. -

ADAM

Do not mock me, ah Lucifer, do not mock:
I saw the pure work of your superb knowledge,
Well, that's too cool for my heart to exist there. -
Ah, my Lord! Who will control me at all
So not to leave the straight and narrow path?
You took away from me the guiding hand
As I have tasted the fruits of knowledge.

THE LORD

Your arms are strong and your heart's generous:
The space is endless that calls you to work,
And if you're mindful, a voice sounds to you
Without break that calls back and raises you,
You have to follow it. If in the noise
Of your life this sound of heaven will end,
The crystal-clear soul of this weak woman,
Farther of all dirts of the interests
Will get to know and through her heart-beat this will
Turn to poetry and to a noble song.
With the aid of these tools she will support you
Both in the ill fate and in happiness,
A consoling and jolly genius. -
And you, Lucifer, who're only a ring
In my universe - let you act longer:
Your cold knowledge and your crazy negation
Will be ferments that will boil everything,
Divert the man, although for hours only,
But that's nothing, he will come back again.
Your punishment will be perpetual,
You've always to see: what you want to damage
Will be the new germ of nobility. -

ANGELS' CHOIR

Between crime and virtue to have
Free choice, this is great clemency,
And yet, to know that above us
Are the Lord's will and his mercy.
Do bravely and even if the
Crowd's unthankful, do not deplore,
'Cause the aim is not self-respect
For the man who will do great more,
To do otherwise, he's asham'd;
And the feeling of this disgrace
Will stamp flat the infamous man
But the hero, him it will raise. -
In superbness of your proud way
Don't be blinded by the vision
That what you do it is well done
By you to the God's ambition,
And He would need just as the
Tool of doing what wanted He,
Even you gain glory from Him,
He allows you active to be.

EVE

Ah, I perceive the song, praise be to my Lord!

ADAM

This song begins to dawn on me, I'll follow.
Alas! The end! If I'd forget for morrow!

THE LORD

I told you, man: fight, trust and be full of hope!

 


 

A sorozat eddig megjelent kötetei:

1. I. Madách Szimpózium (1995)

2. II. Madách Szimpózium (1996)

3. Fráter Erzsébet emlékezete I. (1996)

4. Imre Madách: Le manusheski tragedija (1996)

5. III. Madách Szimpózium (1996)

6. Balogh Károly: Gyermekkorom emlékei (1996)

7. Nagyné Nemes Györgyi-Andor Csaba: Madách Imre        rajzai és festményei (1997)

8. IV. Madách Szimpózium (1997)

9. Andor Csaba: Ismeretlen epizódok Madách életéből (1998)

10. Andor Csaba: Madách Imre és Veres Pálné (1998)

11. V. Madách Szimpózium (1998)

12. Fejér László: Az ember tragédiája bemutatói (1999)

13. Madách Imre: Az ember tragédiája. I. Főszöveg (1999)

14. Madách Imre: Az ember tragédiája. II. Szövegváltozatok, kommentárok (1999)

15. I. Fráter Erzsébet Szimpózium (1999)

16. VI. Madách Szimpózium (1999)

17. Imre Madatsh: Di tragedye funem mentshn