by Edgar Quinet
The shadow of cities and bell-towers that rolled their humid voices in the depths of my waves served me as shelter beneath vaults of foam. Often, a soul that chanced to gaze at my quivering skies has held me in suspense in order to respire his secret, or his troubles, or his joy, better than a myrtle in my bay of Naples, or an incense tree in my Arabian gulf. I loved those human crowds, those cries, those resonant tongues, the eternal sigh that emerges from the human species like the breath from my nostrils when I arrive at a beach. Tell me, where is it? what is it doing? what has it become, that monster with a thousand feet of marble and granite, which had gilded walls for scales, crenellated towers to march over the sand, cities for teats, and which girded all my shores with peoples and empires, like a giant serpent going to sleep in my sunlight?
AHASUERUS
I’m seeking it, as you are. The flowers in the woods don’t remember that it ever existed; the dust of the road hasn’t retained the traces of its feet. The meadow daisies have been better able to defend the crowns on their heads than the iron-clad kings. The rushes you have sown have lasted longer on their stems than the bastioned towers that climbed to their summits to call to you from further away.
I’ve seen the crowd dissipate gradually around me, as on a feast day when evening comes. People sat down on the boundary-markers and searched in the heather for their hearts, which had ceased to beat. Their souls were dead in their bosoms, but they waited, still standing, for a thought, a hope, some name, some forgotten god to come and reanimate the life in their breast.
The children looked into their mothers’ eyes, and found them empty, devoid of tears and thoughts, and cried out in terror: “Let me go, Mother, Return me to the unknown virgin who cradled me, before birth, sighing more profoundly than you. Her eyes were softer, her veil was longer, the stories she knew gave me more joy than yours.”
The peoples went away too, their eyes empty, searching, groping over the flowers and the stones for a name they could no longer read. If, by chance, they encountered me, I heard them saying, with their hands joined: “Ahasuerus, good Ahasuerus, you whose eyes still see, tell us the name for which we’re searching, which we’ve lost, which would have saved us.” But when I replied. “Do you mean Christ?” or “Do you mean his Father?” they laughed and continued: “Christ? Oh yes, of course, Jesus of Nazareth. He’s too old for us. The earth’s furrow no longer produces new gods for or hunger. Jehovah, Christ, Mohammed we sowed their ashes in our fields a long time ago. Now we’re gleaning nothingness. Our souls have dried up in our breasts, like a cistern that lacks rain-water. How can we obtain the rain of the firmament? The thirst of our hearts can no longer be cured. You, remain after us to sing our funeral hymns. We leave you as a heritage the tears that we still have to shed, and all the bile that we have not drunk.”
THE OCEAN
So, day and night, when I implore my shore to send me, from the crossroads, the songs of love that lulled me yesterday, I’d do better to hide myself in my bed. So the kings will no longer throw me their cups full of Cyprus wine, and the Doge of Venice, who was my fiancé, will no longer pass his necklace of pearls around my neck.
AHASUERUS
No. Don’t wait any longer. The Bucentaur will no longer go forth with her gilded keel to rock in your waves. The bells of Venice will no longer ring for your marriage. The Doge, with his embroidered ermine mantle, will no longer go on to the poop to place the ring of espousal on your finger.
Oh, go your own way now, if you wish; give your sighs to your azure grottoes, your kisses to the sands of the Lido, and your amorous caresses to your sleeping gulfs. Rock in your arms an old derelict boat, fully laden with your mud. Crown, if you wish, with the flowers of your lagoons, the rusty anchor of a galley turning to dust. Wash, like a woman in her laundry, a soiled veil, holed by the tempest, which your breeze now hesitates to touch. Ask, evening and morning, murmuring beneath the balconies of the city, like a poor man begging in the street, for the embalmed serenades for which your waves are avid, your share of the flowers and perfumes of the royal feast, your women’s veils, your madonna with her lighted lamps, the banderoles that played in your bosom, and the blessed sword that your fiancé buckled by his side.
Go now to search your shores; you will no longer find anything for your thirst but sand and rushes. You shall no longer rise up on to the flag-stones of the ducal palace for your wedding. You shall only have for lovers the weary star that goes to its repose in the evening, the iron ring suspended from the rock, the broken oar, the tattered mesh of a fragment of a net, the moss of the reef, the grass uprooted from your mud, and my soul, shipwrecked in the ocean of your dolor.
THE OCEAN
If there are no more festival banners for me; if the cities will no longer throw me shadows or incense or songs of love; if the boats I love have all folded their wings under the wind of death, what have I to do henceforth in appealing with my tempestuous voice to the shores that no longer reasons? What have I to do in bounding with my streaming rump, if I no longer have any merchant ship with embroidered robes to carry, nor any frigate with silken veils? If there is no more spouse or fiancé for me, I would rather be an obscure spring, hidden in the forest of Ardennes, known in the universe solely to the bullfinch who comes to its bank to bathe his coral throat in secret.
AHASUERUS
Do you not fear, on the contrary, that your waves will dry up, one after another, in your bed, as the souls of peoples have dried up in their bosom?
THE OCEAN
For some time, truly, the rivers have no longer been descending to my valley; they are sleeping in their lakes, giving no further thought to their work. I have raised my voice in vain; they are amusing themselves on the way on their golden sands. Doubtless they have gone astray in some bushy wood, since the guide who showed them the way every day no longer climbs the stairway of the lighthouse on my promontory with his beacon.
AHASUERUS
Now that your piers are destroyed and your harbors have crumbled, where will you come ashore?
THE OCEAN
Nowhere.
RACHEL, to the Ocean
And you too, do you not believe that your master can return all your waves with his urn, when you ask him for them?
THE OCEAN
Yes, when my foam was born with the world, when the grass of my shores brushed my shoulders for the first time, yes, then I believed. Without looking back, I marched to my master and each of my waves called “Lord! Lord!” But you, Rachel, are younger than the youngest of my waves. My grass, which I tore up this morning, has lived more than you; and my white foam is more soiled by the years than your heart in your bosom. If, like me, you had sounded all my abysms; if, like me, you had waited in the hollow of the rock, during the hail and the tempest; if, like me, you had spent your days wearing away the sand of my shores, you would say, like me: “God is dead; let us celebrate his funeral rites.”
RACHEL
Be careful that they are not your own.
II.
AHASUERUS, to Rachel
Angel who follows me go, return to your abode if you can find it again. The closer the dusk of the world approaches, the more the aguish of my soul increases. When humans lived, I walked with them, in their crowd, in the evening. I knocked on the gates of cities and the guards opened them to me. Now that the cities are closed and the guards can no longer get up to draw the bolts, even the Ocean is going to hide in the hollow of its bed. Have you not seen the spring from which I had drunk dry up beneath my feet, the star on which I had rested my eyes fade, the forest that had lent me its shade wither? Flee, if you don’t want to end up like them. Soon, I shall have no other companion in the universe but a single sprig of heather upright on its stem. The earth will be empty around me, but I shall still be marching on my path; even my shadow will leave me; and the last night, the immense night, will come, without my having yet found with my iron-tipped staff a fragment of wall on which to sit down, or a host to lend me his lamp.
RACHEL
Let the flowers die on their stems, if their day is done; let the star fade; let the heather dry up on its rock; I shall always find a mountain spring in order to bring you water to drink, and a path to guide you. Ah, what do the cities and the doors on which we knock matter to me? Human voices were so harsh when we passed by! Their stairways we so sad to climb! Always, when they looked at us, they seemed to be cursing us. I’d rather climb this hard path than climb the steps of their threshold.
AHASUERUS
But their traces are being effaced, and our path is fading away.
RACHEL
Have no fear. Keep walking. The more their traces are effaced, the better I shall be able to recognize in the valleys the footprints of my Lord, with his large sandals, before the cities and the towers and the walls have collapsed.
AHASUERUS
Did you not hear the Ocean? There is no longer anyone but you who believes in your Lord. Do you think you know better than the banks of rivers and the sand of the sea?
RACHEL
The more the Ocean sinks to seek its drop of water, the more the forest is desiccated above my head, the more the star hides away, the more clearly I see his eyes shining in the forest, and his mantle in the firmament.
AHASUERUS
For me the night only gets darker.
RACHEL
Don’t you remember when you saw him on the stained-glass window of the cathedral, and he said: “That’s Ahasuerus?”
AHASUERUS
How many years have gone by!
RACHEL
They have not made us a day older.
AHASUERUS
Look. That sun going pale, is it not his aureole dimming on his head? That blue sky behind the cloud is it not the remains of his tunic, torn apart by the tempest? That bed which the sea has just quit, is it not his sepulcher, excavated for him in the rock?
RACHEL
Ahasuerus, you who will live forever, don’t talk as the dead talk.
AHASUERUS
If I had been born in the first days of the world, when the star as it rose, the spring as it saw the sand of its bed, the flower gazing at the sky for the first time, and the bird shaking its down over the abyss said: “Master, here we are; what have we to do to earn our daily wage?” I too, my soul in my bosom, would have sung with them. I would have sat down to repeat, within myself, the canticles they had commenced. But all that the things my eyes can see, the grotto, the star, the flower on its stem, no longer have a voice, nor a sigh. There is no longer anything but you that prays.
RACHEL
Let me pause to pray once again for you.
AHASUERUS
Yes, pray again. Oh, if I could believe!
1.
Everything dies, everything is effaced. Stars and skies, everything falls apart; islands, capes, distant seas, everything disappears, save for this plaint in my bosom, save for these tears in my eyes, save for this cup upon my lips. The daylight fades. Like a breath of Oblivion, the firmament evaporates. Like migrating teal, the worlds pass rapidly through the mist, and do not return. After them, in their shadow, nothing remains but dolor.
2.
Nameless dolor, voiceless dolor, formless dolor, which infinity exhales as the censer exhales incense, what are you waiting for before you vanish? The last star has shone, the skies are extinct; so extinguish too that glimmer in my heart, and don’t forget, this evening, to dissipate the vapor of my thought with a breath.
3.
Agonizing lamp, why must I gleam, alone in the night, by the death-bed of the human race? since it is dead in its bed, and its great eyelid will never reopen to shed a tear, nor its mouth to say “Are you keeping vigil? Anoint my moribund forehead with Christ’s oil.”
4.
Further on! Let’s go! When the world has passed, a bitter drop still remains in its glass; when it has fallen silent, one can still hear quivering in its place a word that calls itself Despair. Its branches have shed its names, its feast-days, its calumnies and its bloody flowers; like dead leaves in November, my feet stir them up. When will it be my turn for my season of November to come?
5.
Further on! Further on! Here, perhaps, I shall be better off. No more road, no more undergrowth; no more deafening water, no more verdant grass; no plain, no valley; no thatch, no heather: it’s the crossroads at which everything is lost. Over its door is written: ABSENCE. Hola! Without knocking, enter here as a guest. Neither my dolor nor my soul can follow me there.
6.
Ah, further on! Still further on! Yet further on! Until the end, will eternity amuse itself with you? Beneath its weight the skies have crumbled, and in my bosom a memory remains upstanding, without tottering. The universe has dissipated, and my utterly sickened heart is not yet worn away! The storm has carried away a world; on my lips it has left my soul and my breath, and a name lighter than a leaf.
Everything has withered, everything is empty—save for my chalice, which is still full of lees.
RACHEL
Give it to me; I will drink half.
(She takes the chalice and drinks.)
III.
The four evangelists in Heaven;
at their feet, the lion of St. Mark and the eagle of St. John.
SAINT MARK
If I were on the lake of Nazareth now, the two oars attached to my boat wouldn’t save me. Look! What a tempest the four winds are amassing on the lake of humankind! Is not the faithless creation coming apart, bit by bit, in the hands of the Creator, and falling into the abyss, as the chaplet of an Armenian priest falls at his feet, bead by bead, on the threshold of a church, when the copper clasp and knot have broken? The rain is even reaching us; it’s tarnishing our aureoles. The wind is plunging into my niche and tonight the mist of Oblivion has moistened the panes of my window. For more than a thousand years, I’ve read my golden book to the end without raising my eyes. Since it’s finished and its clasp is shut, take it in your claw, my lion; keep it under my feet, without wearing away the binding, in order that I can look down there, beneath the clouds, where Ahasuerus is passing.
THE LION
Great saint, I beg you, let me return to my land of Nubia. My claws are weary of carrying your book and striking the air with the flat of your sword. The centuries have eaten away my mane. Tel me, what good has it done me to hold your bronze escutcheons, your stone bible, your trophies of victory, your thunderbolts, your clouds and the globe of the world that emperors have given me above my head, day and night, winter and summer? If I had only been able, one day, instead of your treasures, to carry in my claws a little desert sand, or a blade of grass uprooted by the wind, I would have fewer dead leaves now, and a little dust on my road to make my litter.
SAINT MARK
Oh well! Go to the earth, if you wish, for an hour. In three bounds you’ll have seen it all. Look at your cave in Palestine and the white bones you heaped up there; come back afterwards and tell us what you’ve found.
SAINT JOHN
Saint Mark, do you hear my eagle screeching on my shoulder? Its beak has devoured the golden radiance around my head; its wing is shaking the curls of my hair down my back; its thirsty tongue is licking the edge of my cup, which it has emptied. Why are you screeching so loudly on my shoulder, eagle of Christ?
THE EAGLE
Master, I beg you, let me return to the hollows of my ravine on my Syrian mountain. Shall I never see again, with my diamond eye, the sea beating her wings in her aerie, over the brood of waves that she has suspended beneath my crag? Shall I no longer see beneath my yellow-tinted eyelid the sun building his open nest over my head, to make me a fiery prey in my old age? Take the ring off my feet. My eyes are weary of spelling out the future on your parchment scroll; my claws are worn away supporting your soul at the summit of heaven. Find someone other than me to drink the beverage of flame drop by drop from your cup and to tear apart the bloody lamb of Eternity with his talons. Tell me, what good has it done me to war a diadem
of emeralds and gold sequins on my head? What good has it done me to grip in my claws the scepters of emperors, the crowns of kings, the miters of popes, the flags of pashas and the necklaces of queens? If I had once pecked at a warbler’s nest, the stubble of heather, a white shell on the shore, or verbena on a rock, I would at least have a scrap of bark, an empty shell and a marsh reed now, to make an aerie for my little ones.
SAINT JOHN
Take flight, if you wish, and skim the summit of the earth in passing. Go alight momentarily on the sand of my isle of Patmos; when you have gone twice around the world, come back and tell us what you’ve seen.
THE LION
Am I late, Master? Here I am, back from the source of the Euphrates.
SAINT MARK
No, What have you found on your journey?
THE LION
I’ve swept the dust of a hundred cities with my tail. My mane is thoroughly soiled by the ashes of kings and the cobwebs of the tombs of their peoples. I’ve sniffed harsh noises. When I went by, the flowers in the hedges, the streams in their beds and the summits of the mountains were saying: “No, no, there is no God. Look! The lion of St. Mark has lost his master. His flanks are thin. In all his sky, he has not found what he requires to staunch the thirst of his palate. He has not had a wage for his eternal servitude. What good will it do us to wait, like him, for our master? He will not come to our summits, nor our banks, to see whether our flowers have bloomed in their seasons; whether we are drawing our brimming waves from our urns; whether we are rising up for our hour in the sun; and whether we are keeping alight, for his arrival, the heaths of our volcanoes. That’s enough perfumes lavished in their air; that’s enough waves on our banks; that’s enough rays shed from our clouds. Let’s rest, without doing any more, since our master isn’t coming to inspect our work.”