The Serpent of Stars

Appendix

A complete translation of Scene IV of the Shepherds’ Play

THE GREAT SILENCE HAS COME. The narrator is without words, there, between the fires. He has just spoken the words which must bring about man’s birth. The play needs a man with his terrors, one of those from before the waters, wide eyes trembling like bees, mouth open over his ecstasy, his fear and his drool. And if such a man is present, it’s only by chance. It takes a shepherd with a heavy heart to do this man, and you don’t always find him because that heaviness of heart (as Barberousse explained to me) comes from the sediment misfortune leaves in man. Many misfortunes, much sediment, and a heavy heart.

Great silence. Here and there, a ram’s bell rings. A shepherd stands up. He doesn’t move forward into the stage clearing. He remains in the middle of the audience. The narrator has heard the noise of the shepherd who has stood. He turns his way. He greets him in silence, raising his left hand. The shepherd greets the narrator, also raising his left hand, and then, shrugging his shoulders, he sheds his heavy homespun cloak.

THE MAN (He cries slowly, in a high-pitched voice). Lord, I am naked, and you have tossed out handfuls of fleece and foliage.

Lord, I am naked, and you have given the claws from your hands and the toenails from your feet to the beasts.

Lord, I am naked, and you have given me a poor heart all sick with wind like the bell of little flowers.

THE NARRATOR (who plays the role of the world. He speaks in a solemn voice and a muted gargoulette that accompanies him lowers the tone further still). And man will be upon me like a mountain among mountains; he will flow with forests, he will walk, dressed in all the hair of the beasts.

He will be the lion among lions: the odor from his mouth will terrify the lambs and fawns, and even the birds high in the air, those who are like the bell of little flowers.

He will be the summit among summits: his head will climb to meet the stars and with his blue gaze he will count the stars, like sheep in the folds of the pastures.

THE MAN. Lord, I am naked, and your pity has bent over the water and not over me. And you have given the water, with its beautiful green skin, that garb of grasses and trees, and you have told that skin that it would make the spray, and your sun lights that spray with a higher joy than the most wide open flowers.

Lord, I am naked, and your pity has bent over the water and not over me. And you have given the water a wide body that strikes the mountains and the sands, flesh that runs through claws, a depth in which sleeps silence more beautiful than woman. You have made water the never wounded, the forever living, unique, eternal, without pain or demise.

Lord, I am naked, and your pity has bent over the water and not over me. And you have given the water the joy of fits of rage, and you have given it that honey which is a song, a flow beneath the grass. Ah! Lord, they are under the willows, and the swaying of the brambles, so beautiful, those songs, so pure, so right, so round with the lovely line that closes the world, that nothing is left to me but the freedom of groaning.

THE NARRATOR. He will walk over the waters.

He will have the round seas crushed under the arches of his feet like rotten fruit.

He will go off over the waters at his easy pace.

He will have wide wooden shoulders and he will swing his wooden shoulders walking over the waters.

He will make himself wings with the white grasses, his chest will be like a wishbone from a goshawk and he will go off over the waters to meet death full of images.

THE MAN. Lord, I am naked, and you have bound me wrist and ankle and you have thrown me to the cold earth like a kid to be slaughtered.

Lord, I am naked, and you have shown me your wide hands full of salt, and you whistled between your lips as if to call me, and I followed you as far as the salt stones⁹ because I was hungry for that good bitterness.

Lord, I am naked, and you have kicked me in the stomach to push me away, and I haven’t had my share of that good bitterness. I haven’t had my share of salt, while the whole world lapped all around the salt stones.

THE NARRATOR. Around him, there are good trees and grass as thick as clouds, and he lives in a long morning. The flowers answer each other from hillside to hillside and on the hills, there are flights of pigeons like smoke from dry wood.

And there all around him are the beech trees and the durmast oaks, the apple trees, with apples green as worlds.

And there is the beautiful sun, flowing free like water, spreading under his feet.

Man, listen to this great song of all creation, of all the living, of all that surrounds you. If you walk, everything walks beside you and your route is followed by herds of spine-swaying hills, shaking their springs like bells, rubbing the thick wool of their woods under your feet. If you stop, listen to the fish that jump in the lake; listen to that flat water that comes to sing, lapping at the willows; listen to the beautiful wind resting in the apple trees; listen to the beautiful wind rearing up under the pines like a horse in fresh oats.

THE MAN. Lord, Lord, I am bound like the beasts and you have tied my elbows behind my back, and my heels are bound, and my chest is offered up, and here is my neck, bare and hot, offered up, with all its poor life running up and down it like a mad little mouse.

Lord, Lord, I am bound like the beasts, and I am waiting for your knife, and I can only see a bit of the sky, and maybe your knife is going to come from that corner I can’t see, which is hidden behind the big star polished like a ram’s brow.

Lord, Lord, I am bound like the beasts and here is my neck, offered up.

THE NARRATOR. Man! Freer than smoke itself, if only you understood your great liberty!

Oh! Starved for air, oh seeker of the beyond, who are you to have looked into the great face of the depths of the sky, which is made up of clouds in play?

Your feet, your hands, your eyes, your mouth, the whole circle of your thighs, and the whole circle of your arms, and the sharpness of your belly, and the flat of your hand, all of that is besieged with happiness; happiness lies upon it like the oceanic sea on its base of mountain. And you shut yourself in like clay and you search for happiness within yourself.

Open yourself!

Here you are crossed by the suns and the clouds; here you are traveled by wind. Listen to the beautiful wind that dances over your blood as over mountain lakes; listen to the way it makes the beautiful sound of its depths ring out!

Here you are bristling with sun, free to walk in the thorns, and the thorns break under your heel, and your head is buzzing like a nest of wasps.

Here you are all light with clouds, and you leap into the sky, and you leap through the beautiful waves of the sky like an eagle.

Open yourself!

Obey the law of the trees and the beasts. Harden your brow; face things with the forehead of a ram. The circle of your arms, see, it is exactly the size of your female. It slips into those two beautiful valleys that she has above her hips. It flows into those valleys of her flesh like waterfalls into the folds of mountains. Your hand is hollowed to the exact roundness of her breasts. You are like the great shore bordering the sea, and the sea surrounds your promontories and enters your bays, and the law of the worlds fuses you to your female like it fused the sea to its shore.

Open yourself!

The highest meadows will enter into you with their colors and smells; with the shaft of oats, with the swaying of grasses ripe with grain, with the heavy “yes” of the gentians who say “yes” all day long nodding their big yellow heads up and down in the wind.

The spring that lies under there under the chestnut tree trembling under the dead leaves like a sensitive little creature, feel it! It has just opened itself above your heart, in your flesh, yes, in your warm flesh the source of water has just opened itself; it runs over your heart as over a stone in the forest, and each drop is like a drum beat, and everything sounds in you, and everything resounds in you from the little cord which makes your fingers move to the big nerve which gives you the strength of a man. It runs over your heart as over a stone in the forest and will polish your heart into the form of a true heart, and it’s a living fruit that you are now going to carry in your chest, and the juice of this fruit will come to your lips, and from between your lips will run a spring to come to and drink.

Open yourself, open yourself: happiness and joy are there wanting to enter.

And sing the glory of being naked, sing the pride of being naked.

Ram who walks before the great herd!

The shepherd who took the part of the man lowers his arms in a great disheartened gesture. Those around him pick up his heavy homespun cloak, stand up, and cover him. He lets them. He remains motionless for a moment, standing there, doubled in thickness since he is clothed, big as a rock. You can only see the white circle of his face. He pulls his cloak tight; he sits down; again he becomes a man among men.