by Jean Giono
Finally, from the height of this platform, I attacked the stags and I retreated, then I hit with my whole head, and, each time, I was torn open, and the water ran between the deers’ antlers and they shook their heads with anger, and they bared their teeth and bit into me, and everything was a chaos of spray and sweat.
And then, I felled them like huge trees, and in my depths, they became mud.
That’s the law.
Am I the one who will teach you, Sea, what mud is, you who saw your bitter greenness flower with life, at the time when life descended upon the earth like a seed, at the time when earth entered through that door of the sky into the regions where life is permitted. You who saw that bitter mud of your shores lift like the back of a serpent and toss to bits all the creatures of the world .8
Earth!
It was one evening.
And I had no more anger, no more fight, and I was flowing.
It was evening; in peace I crossed a large blue forest and the whole sky sang our two songs.
On one of my sloping banks, there were the tracks of beasts. And, in the midst of them, the tracks of man.
THE SARDINIAN (He raises his hand to stop the cripple). Stop, River, stop!
Ah!
Repeat what you said: the tracks of man were in the midst of the tracks of the beast?
THE RIVER. Yes.
Wide tracks that went off into the woods.
THE SARDINIAN. I’m lost, that’s my death.
That’s the death of me, the living earth!
No longer will I be this big beast sprawling in the sky.
But I’ll be put to pasture like the cow.
If man has become the master of the beasts.
Speak!
THE RIVER. I don’t know.
I saw that image of feet that pierced the mud here and there and entered the woods.
But I couldn’t follow.
Ask the Tree.
So here we are in pursuit of man. Here we are in pursuit of that primary position held by the Sardinian.
For right now, I’m not going to translate the rest of the play. I only wanted to give a long series of scenes to show how the serpentine action unfolds. Furthermore, it does not form a whole, a round fruit well sealed off from the sky all around, but it is, on the contrary, like a soft fig, too ripe on one side, its honey dripping gold, and on the other side, bitter and creamy with the milk of the tree, because the shepherds don’t all have the same poetic powers, and in the best flow, there is some water without taste.
As for the Sardinian’s prime place, it will be threatened throughout by the Sea. Glodion will have his say from time to time and each time, it will brutally interrupt the Sardinian’s inspiration. So that finally he will be told:O Sea, made jealous by all your salt;
Of all this salt that burns your skin,
Jealous of all the greenness.
Leave us in peace.
It would be a beautiful world indeed if it was made up only of you,
We would be soft as an egg without a shell,
And you would lose your fish in the sky
All along your course.
To tell the truth, as for the Sardinian’s primary position, that power that launches the drama like gunpowder, no one wants to see it taken away from the one who holds it. Except for the cripple who did the River, the other shepherds are not up to it, and never will anyone say anything that can compete with the opening monologue, which I call “the birth and youth of the earth.” Even the cripple has faults. He can only improvise in a trance, in a sort of fever that makes his eyes glow in a wind that thrashes him about, limbs strewn. The Sardinian remains motionless as a column. He only moves for the greetings. From this stillness flows a great nobility and when, at the end of the drama, remaining alone, he makes a few essential gestures, they go to the height of tragedy in a single bound.
So here is the pursuit of man.
The Tree arrives. It says what it sees from the top of its head:
From the shores of that river
to the red tree
and beyond more than twenty hills which mount each other like rams and ewes.
It indicates man’s route, that track in the grass: like the slime of a slug. But from the red tree on, it loses sight of it.
But, there’s the Wind and here it comes with a leap. The Wind, at the end of one of its courses, has encountered man and has accompanied him because it has found him:. . . not at all thorny
and supple as silk, and very light on the two springs of his legs.
And his arms are like two wings that tickle without beating me.
It accompanied man in a strange search, full of leaps and slides flat on the stomach, of breathless races. Finally, the man found what he was looking for: his female. She was there:naked, hidden in the grass like a frog.
And there was the chase, angular and quick as a flash of lightning, and then the man seized the female. And there, the wind saw nothing more because the two bodies pulled each other down under the shelter of the bushes, in the grass.
The Sardinian calls the Grass.
The Grass has seen it all and tells it all. It tells it, without fear of words and things. It’s all men here, and what took place in the shelter of the bushes is the act of life, as simple, as pure as the swelling of a cloud.
The Grass uses a beautiful word to speak of the man’s actions; he uses “pastéjavo” which means, “he kneaded the dough.”
And the Grass saw the slow life of the couple and those hours of dreaming in which, more than the beasts, these new creatures remained there, motionless, and:went off into the depths of the hour
on a serpent’s back.
One day:Then, from each side of his female
he hollowed two great streams.
And there she was like a spring,
there she was like a fountain of children;
and the children flowed from her like the stream from the fountain.
And the last ones are still there crawling close to her like fresh nuts, while, already on their two feet the first ones have arrived at the edge of the forest, before the world, and in their thick hands, they carry the fruit of fire.
The Grass’ account was the peak of the drama. If someday the Sardinian must be defeated, I hope—and he himself hopes—that his replacement will be the shepherd who spoke the words of the Grass for us.
When he had finished speaking, the Sardinian approached him, his hand extended. They shook hands two or three times and the Sardinian said, “Bravo! . . .”
This shepherd is an assistant for the herd for which the Sardinian is the master.
After the Grass came the Rain. That one told us all it knew of man’s exterior:
Because I’ve encountered him many times!
And because there is not a fold, not a groove in his body which I have not kissed.
He has:
A head like that stone which makes fire
and the power that makes hillocks of his chest and his legs and his arms, it comes from within his head.
And the female:
Some are as lively as little mice
and they are like the fruit of the thyme, that little green star soft with honey, but with a bitterness that swells the tongue.
I run over her as over the naked hills but I never go farther than her belly because a fire is hidden there, hotter than the fire of the sun.
The one that will tell us of man’s interior is the Cold. That one has entered, has gone within to the inside of man, all the way to:
That place where life and death are welded together: to that welded place where there is a roll of flesh like in those earthworms which have been cut and which have grown back together.
Inside man it has seen:
Stars and suns, and huge shooting stars which bring fire to all the corners and the beautiful shepherd’s stars which climb in the calm of peace.
A vast sky, all blue like the sky of earth, with a sun, storms, and great, spiteful flashes
of lightening.
And quantities of stars that go off in all directions, herds here, herds there, in the great turmoil of joy, when he approaches his female.
The Cold has seen the whole interior of man like a sky full of powers. The Beast who comes next will say that he is:
like a pot full of honey which overflows, and which nourishes with its overflow a whole tribe of flies.
For us, he is like a great tree we desire after a long trot in the sun.
He is like the grass slope for the feet of those who have climbed.
He is fresh water;
he is the spring.
He is the great palm, the beautiful stream, the cool leaves, and all of these together.
It will speak of that seduction that is in man’s eyes and it will tell the Earth the great secret, the beasts’ great hope:Do you know why we are afraid, Earth?
Do you know why we are wild,
why we listen to the wind and sniff the dust?
It’s because we feel ourselves carried by you, crossing the sky at a horrible speed.
And, he who has come,
we’ve read in his eyes that he doesn’t see your life, Earth.
We’ve read in his eyes tranquillity and peace, and that’s why we love him.
And then, from there, the play will make two leaps that will carry it to the end.
First, a long monologue from the Sardinian. The nine shepherds, who were the Sea, the Mountain, the River, the Tree, the Wind, the Grass, the Rain, the Cold, the Beast, are still and silent. They hold one another’s hands and they form a horseshoe around the Sardinian.
The Sardinian gives us the final word on Earth’s anxiety and why it has questioned so hungrily. It knows, it recognizes the danger that threatens it. If man becomes the master of beasts, it, the Earth, is lost:I see him, already, there ahead of the great herd.
He will walk along at his easy pace and behind him, there you will all be.
And then, he will be the master.
He will command the forests.
He will make you camp out in the mountains,
He will make you drink the rivers.
He will make the sea advance or retreat, by merely moving the flat of his hand.
A moment of silence, then the Earth begins to look around:
The great reflection of all images.
And as it reads the hidden writing, its voice reassures and prophesies.
The great barrier!
It will always be between beast and man, that high barrier black as night, high as the sun.
And were all the pity piled up in your skin, you would never be able to make it run from you or make the beasts drink from it.
You will never jump the barrier and enter on equal footing the great forest of the beast’s reflections.
You will not look at the same reflections.
You will see the trees from the other side, and the others, they will see another side of the trees.
And all that, because I am going to be harsh with you, harsh and spiteful, and I am going to think about my spitefulness.
You will be the master of gold and stones, but without understanding the stones, you will massacre them with your trowel and your pick.
And as for gold, made of light, you will guard it in the dark stench of your mouth.
You will make yourself aids with iron, bolts and hinges.
But you will be obliged to offer your head and your heart to all your machines and you will become as evil as the iron and the jaws of the hinge.
Then, the Earth is delighted and begins to laugh from all its volcanoes.
At that moment that the drama takes its second leap and the Sardinian ends with a simple gesture. He sheds his Earth character, and he again becomes what he is: a man. More than that: a shepherd. More than that: a master of beasts, one of those masters that the earth dreads. And that is the truth.
He takes three steps, he disengages himself from the semi-circle of the elements. Slowly, he kneels; he lies down belly to the earth; he embraces the earth with his outspread arms. We hear him say:
Earth!
Earth!
We are here, it’s us, the masters of beasts!
We are here, it’s us, the first men!
There are some among us who have kept their hearts pure.
We are here.
Do you feel our weight?
Do you feel how we weigh more than the others?
They are here, those men who see the two sides of the tree and the inside of the stone, those who walk in the thinking of the beast as in the wide meadows of Dévoluy above the well-loved grasses.
They are here, those who have leapt the barrier!
He remains for a brief moment not saying anything, waiting for a response that doesn’t come and he cries his great cry of defiance: Do you hear, Earth?
We are here, it’s us, the shepherds!
All the instruments fall still at the same time. Silence!
You can hear the fires crackle.
And it’s over.
I HAVE not spoken of the music for some time. Never did it stop playing a part in the drama. Never did it stop being another drama beside the drama, full of reflections, in which leaves became foliage and the image of one hill became the rolling sea of the whole hilly country. During the last scene, when the narrator kneels and lies down on the earth, the most beautiful song of rejoicing breaks out, the most beautiful song of the world, the most charged with hope, but the task that I had imposed upon myself, which was to capture it word for word, to follow the text with all my attention, prevented that swaying abandon which alone could have carried me through the images of that music. Nevertheless, I still have a few of them under my eyelids; they are there, as hard as grains of sand or as soft as tears.
WE UNTIED the mare. Already, the herds were heading off; already, far off, above, in the Sisteron passes, the tide of beasts sounded like the great rolling waters.
Césaire went off to find water for the mare to drink. The little sorceress lay down in the bottom of the cart. The two of us, Barberousse and I, stayed there, with no will to do anything, bruised and softened from all sides, bathed in the bath of life like that god at the beginning who washed himself with the sky, and we watched the trembling lantern of dawn lighting up.
The aeolian harp players passed close to us, returning from their heights. They spoke loudly, with voices full of young laughter. Barberousse recognized among them the voice of a friend and cried, “Greetings, Boromé!”
“And who is that?” said Boromé, stopping himself mid-conversation.
Then he moved forward, recognized Barberousse, and they embraced heartily, beard to beard. Despite his laugh, Boromé was also an old shepherd, gray-haired, skin all hollowed by the scars of time.
“You get the smallest share,” I said to him.
He answered me, “Why is that?”
“Because you harp players are so far away, up above, and you can’t hear the beautiful speeches.”
He said to me, “No, don’t think that. Shares! Who’s to say who gets the biggest share! We are alone on top of the hill, with our sounds. We say what we want to say, without words.
“We look at the sky. And just now, high up in the middle of the night, I saw a great serpent of stars! It’s enough to imagine.”
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 s
ilence. 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.