Citizens, Soldiers, Officers
Place
Act I: The Open Fields.
Act II: A Hall in the King's Palace.
Act III: A Waste Place in the Caucasus.
Act I
The open fields at the end of winter.
Enter, at the back, simon agnel, dressed like a peasant. He bears upon his shoulder the body of a woman, and carries a spade.
Enter, in front, cébès, walking slowly.
Cébès: I stand here,
Untaught, irresolute,
A man new-born confronting things unknown.
I turn my face towards the Future and the lowering arch of the sky. My soul is full of weariness!
I know nothing. There is nothing I can do. What shall I say? What shall I do?
How shall I use these hands that hang at my sides, these feet
That bear me about as in a dream?
Speech is but a noise and books are only paper.
There is no one here but myself. And all that is about me,
The foggy air, the rich fields,
The trees, the low-lying clouds
Seem to speak to me, soundlessly, to ask inarticulate questions.
The ploughman
Turns homeward with his plough. I hear its slow creaking.
It is the time when women bring water from the wells.
It is night.—What am I?
What am I doing? For what do I wait?
And I answer, "I do not know!"
And in my heart there is a wild desire
To weep or to cry aloud
Or to laugh or leap in the air and wave my arms!
"Who am I?"
There are still some patches of snow. I hold in my hand a sprig of pussy-willow.
For March is like a woman blowing a fire of green wood.
—That the Summer
And the dreadful day under the glare of the sun may be forgotten,
O Nature,
Here I offer myself to you!
I know so little!
Look at me! There is something that I need.
But what it is I do not know and I could cry forever
Loud and low like a child that one hears in the distance, like children left alone beside the glowing embers!
O lowering sky! Trees, earth, darkness, night of rain!
Look upon me! Grant my prayer!
(He sees simon.
Who is that?
(He approaches him.
Are you digging a drain? It is getting late.
Simon (straightening his back): Who is there? What do you want?
Cébès: What are you doing there?
Simon: Does this field belong to you?
Cébès: It is my father's.
Simon: Suffer me to dig this hole in it.
Cébès (seeing the body): What is that?
Simon (continuing to dig): The woman who was with me.
Cébès: Who is she? Oh, I know her! And is she dead!
Simon: I did not cause her death.
Cébès: Oh! Oh! It is she! It is she!
And is it thus that I find you! Cold and wet!
You that were kind to all, light-hearted, vital!
Simon: Cébès!
Cébès: What? You know me?
Simon: What do they call that slate-roofed belfry, Cébès?
What place is this?
Cébès: Agnel! Simon Agnel!
Simon: Are any of my family still here?
Cébès: No. The house has been sold.
Simon: Is my father alive?
Cébès: He is dead, and your mother also.
The others have gone away.
Simon: Is it so!
Cébès: Where have you been, unhappy man? Why did you go?
And what of that woman lying there?
Simon: Why? Who knows?
A wild and adventurous spirit, shame,
A desire to reach the end of the road, to follow the lure of the plain that stretches towards the horizon,
And I went out from the house and left the old familiar faces.
Dead!
Cébès: Where did you go?
Simon: I did not know that she loved me.
One day I caught her by the throat, crushing her body against the side of the barn,
For I was a violent man. She came to join me.
I have wandered,
I have dreamed many dreams, I have known
Men and the things that at present exist.
I have seen strange roads, strange cultures, strange cities. One leaves them behind and they are gone.
And the sea that is very far away and further than the sea.
And as I was returning, bringing back the branch of a pine …
Cébès: It was there that she found you?
Simon: Together
By many mountains and rivers we wandered seeking the South and that other ocean.
Then we returned to this place.
Cébès: Where did you say?
Simon: There, to that hut. I tried to light a fire but it was too wet.
—I think it is deep enough now.
(He climbs out of the hole.
Cébès: O that she should be lying there like this!
Simon: O this place! This place!
Turning hence my unworthy eyes what have I sought among multitudes of men but the testimony of my own soul!
And it was here that, girding up its loins, it came to find me!
Standing in the red of the dawn, the warmth of the rising sun on our hair,
We