The Serpent of Stars

Notes

1

Net: I have translated the word baragne as net, though really it means hedge. A flowering hedge, a hedge that the god has sown in the sky and behind which the orchards that never die will turn green. But the end of the sentence allows me to translate baragne as net. Unless you imagine a hedge of seaweed, a net made of huge seaweed from the beginning of the world.

2

Crouching: The text reads: ajoucado din la mamado dou ciel. It is as clear-cut as flint, but in French, becomes cloudy. I can see it. I saw it the moment the Sardinian spoke. He didn’t make a move. I saw the earth rolled in a ball, knees to belly, head to knees, nose touching chest, crouched like all creatures about to be born.

3

That smell. . etc.: Sunday morning, housewives in little villages make tomato soup. Tomatoes cut in half and seeded — adapted, as they say — water, a cruet of oil, a dish of thin fried onions. All that in the earthenware cookpot on the fire. When it’s eleven o’clock, all the cookpots begin to boil and the whole village smells of tomato soup. The shepherd had arrived in the morning and, all heavy with fatigue and dust, he sleeps under the plane trees. That smell of tomato soup is the smell of Sunday for him, of wonderful Sunday, when you have the day off, a house, a clean table, a cool hearth, washed, blue of the blue of stone and lavander in the shelves of the wardrobe; wonderful Sunday when your wife is ready to stretch out beside you, with all her flesh, when you’re no longer a shepherd, that sailor of the land, that runner between ports of call, that wanderer. . All that a dream, because the shepherd is alone under the plane trees and the village belongs to others.

4

Here, in the two speeches of Glodion and the Sardinian, we have the very model of the improvisation that makes every performance different from all others. Glodion clearly and purposefully distanced himself from the subject to speak of the sea’s anger. It became a duel between him and the Sardinian. We clapped for the lines on the sea’s anger. We clapped for the Sardinian’s lines in response. Often, within the drama’s text, we will find this dueling between the narrator and the actor. Fundamentally, I believe that the whole interest for the shepherds lies in this battle of words. The Sardinian interrogates and tries to trip up the actor, who responds by slipping out of his way, as in a round of wrestling, and grabbing a handful of flesh. Victory goes to whoever will throw the other into the dust.

5

forms: dolls

6

This curse. . etc.: literally, this manure which makes me create things.

7

I am the River: There was an “Ah!” There was no more music, except the sound of the aeolian harps. Regarding the importance of the distant instruments in this type of performance: they don’t participate in the emotion produced by sudden dramatic action, and from them, music flows continually. Thus, the drama is always in suspension. The River and the Mountain had come to an agreement before the performance of this scene which left the Sardinian a little disconcerted for the moment. We immediately see the Sea take advantage of this to attack the narrator with a new improvisation. Thus we can understand the mechanism for continual renewal in this oral drama.

The narrator — here, it’s the Sardinian — is like the holder of a cup, a title, a torch. Everyone conspires to unseat him. He is alone against all the others.

8

For some time now, the lame one who is the River has been speaking, stirred by the trances that inhabit and agitate him. He makes gestures; he moves his arms about.

I learned afterwards that he is very famous among the shepherds for his gushing inspiration which bursts forth on all sorts of occasions when he is alone with people of the mountains. I have two of his poems: “Mary-Mother’s Breast” (a hymn for his church) and “My Valley Under the Oaks” (a song).

9

Pierre d’assalier: In the high pastures, the shepherds go find flat rocks and they line them up in the grass. These are the salt stones. Every night, the shepherds pour four or five handfuls of rough gray salt on these flat rocks. It’s for the nursing ewe; it’s for the trembling young lamb; it’s for the good sheep huddled with cold or the one who has a thorn in its foot; it’s a consolation and a remedy; it thickens their fat and makes the beast’s heart a little more solid. Who can know the sheeps’ suffering in the high meadows? Who can know? I have seen some of them who, with their stone brows, stood up to a terrible twilight, heavy with despair. Oh! that light, and that air, and the dark scent of the earth wet with crushed grass: all that truly erases hope; all that truly erases hope to the end of all time. And they were there, and they gazed without blinking, and I saw that the night rose in those heads like water in a bowl at the fountain. And then, in the end, they swung their heads in despair and slowly went off toward the salt stones. I saw them in the blurred remains of the day; I saw them before I myself sank into a horror of despair; with great strokes of their tongues, they licked what was left of the salt on the stone.

These salt stones are lined up in the grass. You can see them from far off. A sheep who sees a salt stone doesn’t get lost; it will return to the pasture as if drawn by a rope. At those times when the mountain is deserted and the herds have gone below, you can find solitary salt stones here and there. They are polished like worshipped rocks, all the rough edges have been licked, worn smooth by tongues and lips.