by Edgar Quinet
AHASUERUS
Which direction?
MOB
This way.
AHASUERUS
How dark it is!
MOB
That’s the shadow of my wings.
RACHEL, semi-conscious
Oh, how cold it is!
MOB
That’s the cloud that carries me.
RACHEL
Where am I? What’s making that noise that woke me up?
MOB
The great bell of Strasbourg.
XVIII.
The organ and bells of Strasbourg Cathedral resound and respond alternately.
THE CATHEDRAL
1.
Can you hear my voice, which rumbles, my voice, which booms? I sleep curled up beneath my stone mantle. Organ with pipes made in the sky, beautiful organ, what do you want with me? Why are you intoxicating me with your cries, like a cup of Rhine wine? My bells and belfries are trembling, my windows quivering, my feet tottering beneath the hail and wind of your songs.
Get up, my stone saints, get up, my colored saints, drowsy in my windows, on your feet! Can you hear? Get up, my granite virgins, sing in your niches while turning your spindles. Get up too, my gryphons, which bear my pillars on your heads, open your mouths. Get up, my serpents, my marble doves, which hang from the branches of my vaults! Get up, my long-haired kings, who are dreaming along my galleries on your caparisoned horses in Vosges rock! Cut, wound, spur their flanks, lacerate their rumps, break your granite scepters on their granite breasts and manes, so that the stone whinnies, so that at length, in the vicinity, the mares of the Vosges will ask their masters in the stable: “Master, master, where are the whinnying stone horses going? Where are the stone cavaliers going, who are mounted at the gallop from the towers to the edge of the clouds?”
Get up, dwarfs, angels, serpentine dragons, salamanders and gorgons incrusted in the pleats of my pillars, inflate your cheeks, open your mouths, shout, sing with your tongues and your voices of porphyry; howl in the arcades of the vault, in the paving-stones, in the tip of the spire, in the dust of the crypt, in the niches of the nave, in the hollows of the bells. Give me all your songs in the folds of my mantle, as I rise into the sky with my highest tower.
More! More! Oh, I want to rise higher. One more step, one more wall, one more turret, one more corroded shaft that would enlarge me enough for me to hurl their voices with my own voice to the highest cloud of all, on which the Lord is seated!
2.
Who traced, a thousand years ago, on a scroll of parchment, the plan on my indented towers, of my gilded nave? Was it a master from Cologne, or a master from Reims? Who traced in vermilion the plan of my agile columns, my roaring doors? Was it a master from Vienna, or a master from Rouen? No, no. It was the Devil who sold it to the workman for the price of his soul; so rise up, my turret; disheveled, dressed in mourning, slip and slide into the cloud like a soul knocking with its silken wing on the vault of heaven, without being able to open it.
3.
My head, ah, my head has pierced the autumnal cloud. It has pierced the highest of the clouds. Why do the trees not want to rise higher than the ferns? Why do the hawks not want to rise higher than my belt? It is because the hawks’ wings are weary; it is because the hawks’ eyes are troubled. Already my towers have vertigo. What will they do to come down their steps again?
4.
Look! My little black chapels are lying around me like black heifers at the foot of a mountain. Have no fear, my little chapels. Stone trefoils and vines are growing my valleys; the reaper will not scythe them, the grape-gatherers shall not uproot them from my vineyard. The trunks and branches of fir-trees are sprouting on my summits. The woodcutters shall not fell fire-trees in my forest, shall cut neither trunks nor branches on my hillsides.
5.
Kings and popes are enthroned in my valleys; for castles they have niches chiseled by good workmen. If the falling rain discrowns them drop by drop, after a thousand years, they have above their heads an awning of rock festooned in three days by a fay’s needle. The sun’s rays salute them as soon as it rises; the hawks build nests on their diadems; the ivy remakes their mantles every autumn. Day and night, for a thousand years, they hold up their scepters over the frosts and massed storms that kneel at their feet.
6.
Listen! Listen! Without lying, I’ll tell you my secret, in order not to crumble. Numbers are sacred to me; on their harmony I support myself fearlessly. My two towers and my nave make the number three and the Trinity. My seven chapels, bound to my side, are my seven mysteries that hug my flanks. Oh, how dark and mute and profound their shadow is! My twelve columns in the choir of African stone are my twelve apostles, who help me bear my cross; and I’m a great lapidary figure that Eternity has traced on its wall with its wrinkled hand in order to count its age.
7.
Courage, my saints, my dragons, my virgins incrusted in my pillars! You’ve replied to me in the dust of the crypt, the niche of the nave, the hollow of the bell. Your voices are magnified, my doors are howling, my towers are resonating like a hurricane; my columns and colonnettes are vibrating like the string of a viol.
8.
The sheer mountains have no voice to reveal their secrets; the rocks have none in their grottoes, nor the forests of fir-trees in their graying crowns. I speak for them; from my summit, I listen night and day to their stray genii, their mute spirits, in order to lend them my voice of brass, and to roll their idle soul in the winter clouds, on my bounding words and my songs with wheels of bronze.
9.
When the young workers with their trowels had climbed up, singing, to the foot of my tower, they said to their master: “Master, will we be finished soon? The work is long, and life is short.”
The master made no reply.
When the young workers, who had become men, had reached the window of my tower, they said to the master: “Master, will we be finished soon? Look, our hair is turning white, our hands are too old, we are going to die tomorrow.”
The master replied: “Tomorrow your sons will come, and then your grandsons after them, in a hundred years, with brand new trowels; and then your descendants; and no one, master or worker, will ever see the tower close beneath the sky, nor its last stone. That’s God’s secret.”
10.
In the folds of my robe I draw eternal peoples; in my belt I knot chiseled centuries around my waist, to make myself more beautiful. For a thousand years, I sought in the city a place to sit down. Who knows, who knows where in the city is the busiest crossroads at all hours, in order that I might see from my windows where the kings, peoples, years, empires and generations of debauchees, monks, thieves and dyers who pass days and night over my paving stones, without ever returning, are going with their muddy feet, as the she-wolf huddles with her cubs to watch the snow fall from her fissure in the rock?
11.
Do you know who my master is? Ah, do you know his name? He has reddened my windows with the blood of his tunic. He is the one who attached my nave to the shore of the sky by a rope of stone, like a Galilean boat to the trunk of a fig-tree, in order to sail when it pleases him. Get up, my nave, sail, sail, with your rigging, with your granite mast, over the mist. Sail with your handsome pilot, with your marble sails furled into spindles, high and low, over the sea of the centuries, as far as the city of the angels.
CHRIST, on one of the cathedral’s stained-glass windows
That’s enough, my cathedral.
THE CATHEDRAL
Lord, I’ll say no more.
SAINT MARK, on one of the windows
And me, Lord, I beg you, let me remove my crystal mantle from my eyes in order to gaze, through my azure eyelids, at the people who are entering the church. It’s time for the dance of the dead. All the dead have heard the cathedral’s voice. Here they are. They’re coming, they’re coming for the dance. They’re coming with a light tread, noiselessly, along the galleries, noiselessly, into the
chapels, noiselessly, behind the rood-screen, like snow falling in flakes in an orchard on Christmas Eve. Can you see them?
They all have their best clothes on; now they’re leaning over the balconies like little waterfalls over their rocks. Oh, how sad their expressions are for coming to the dance! When the oak-leaves swirl in the wind in the crossroads of the heather, they don’t regret the crowns of the trees, or the hollow of the grotto, more profoundly. My tears are raining down one after another beneath my aureole. But what are they thinking, turning their empty eyes toward the clock?
Now they’re hanging with their teeth on the grilles of the choir; they’re clinging with their fingernails to the dragons of the pillars; they’re huddling in the niches; they’re bumping into one another, crushing one another under the vaults, on the steps of the main altar.
Now the doors are shut; the church is full. What are the popes and archbishops doing? They’re keeping their miters on their heads; after them come the kings, who are wearing their crowns on their skeletal heads; after the kings, six thousand peers covering the napes of their necks with their cloaks. Look at them! The ranks are tightening to make room for them.
Now they’re holding hands. They’re forming a great circle in the nave, and they’re beginning to sing. What are they going to say? Their feet make no sound on the paving-stones. Their sheathed swords are clashing at their sides. Their unsteady heads are colliding; the cathedral is prancing with them like a boat in a tempest on the sea of Galilee.
CHORUS OF DEAD KINGS
Let’s go back into our crypts. Our eyelids are too heavy; our hair is shaking too damp a dust around us; our dangling hands are too cold. O Christ, O Christ, why have your deceived us? O Christ, why have you lied to us? For a thousand years we’ve been rolling in our crypts, beneath our sculpted stones, seeking the door to your heaven. We’ve only found the webs that the spiders wove over our heads. Where, then, are the sounds of viols and your angels? We only hear the sharp saw of the worm that eats away our tombs. Where is the bread that ought to nourish us? All we have to drink is the tears that are hollowing out our cheeks. Where is your father’s house? Where is his canopy of stars? Is this a dried-up spring that we’re excavating with our fingernails? Is this a polished slab that we’re striking with our heads, day and night? Where is the flower of your vine, which ought to cure the wound in our hearts? We’ve found nothing but vipers crawling over our slabs; we’ve seen nothing but snakes vomiting their venom over our lips. O Christ, why have you deceived us?
CHORUS OF WOMEN
O Virgin Mary, why have you deceived us? On waking up, we’ve searched at our sides for our children, our grandchildren and our beloved, who ought to be smiling at us in the morning, in niches of azure. We’ve found nothing but brambles, faded mallow and nettles, which are plunging their roots into our heads.
CHORUS OF CHILDREN
Oh, how dark it is in my cradle of stone! Oh, how hard my crib is! Where is my mother to lift me up? Where is my father to rock me? Where are the angels to give me my robe, my beautiful robe of light? Father, mother where are you? I’m frightened, I’m frightened in my cradle of stone.
THE CATHEDRAL, to the sound of bells and the organ
Dance, dance, kings and queens, children and women; this is no time to weep. Eternity is laughing at you, like the wind, when it amuses itself through the crossroads with the haymakers’ grass that it has heaped up in the clearings.
KING ATTILA
Is this my kingdom? Six feet long for its king to lie down? A curse on my amulets! A curse on the sorcerers’ wands! My mare has gone astray in Christ’s forest. Look! She’s unhorsed her rider beneath her black breast. Tell me, then, my amulets, where the crowned vultures and the gray crows who follow them have gone? Tell me, my beautiful black mare, where my people have gone, who grew beneath the hooves of your ebony feet like the shadows of evening in autumn? The shadows have remained. My brothers have gone. My tent, the color of your coat, is hanging over my head from the branch of the tree of battles by the ring of death. Take me to them in the steppes of the sky, my beautiful black mare. I shall bathe you one day, up to your breathless rump, in the spring from which the stars drink.
KING SIGEFROY20
Is this Valhalla? No, this is not Valhalla. Is this the ash-tree of the Aesir, becoming verdant over the world? Is this the charger of the seas whinnying on the waves with the men off war? And that howling voice, is it the raven prophesying on Revil’s21 shoulder? She-wolves harnessed to vipers; magical horns that the oxherd fills to intoxicate the lips of heroes; antlers of stags that distil the rivers drop by drop; runes engraved on the sword-blade, on the oar-blade, on the shield’s rim, on the vessel’s prow, on the chariot’s wheel, on the cloud’s tip; all of Revil’s stormy sky, how has that changed above my head into vaults of rock? Why do the valkyries have beds of stone? And why have the nebulous Norns put granite girdles around their waists? Woe, woe! The gods are dead; their twilight has arrived. Let us sing the funeral chant.
KING ARTHUS, to his court
No, no, Lancelot, Tristan, Perceval, my honest men, don’t say that this is the forest of Broceliande. For more than a hundred years I have been listening, my ear to the ground, for the enchanted horn of Clingsor.22 For more than a hundred years, I’ve only heard the chariot of a fay bumping my crown with its axle. Why have we left our cups half full on our round table? If we had stayed in our places, the dwarfs of Brittany would have filled them until the end of the world. But Christ has nothing to give us. He has neither bread, nor wine, nor pantler, nor cupbearer, nor courteous squire. Look! His table is empty and hollow. It can only accommodate one guest at a time. His cup is only ever filled by raindrops sweated by the flag-stones, one by one, every year.
THE EMPEROR CHARLEMAGNE
Lower your voice, Arthus. If you take one step more on my flag-stones with your resonant spurs, my gleaming white beard, my imperial orb, my scarlet doublet, the twelve peers by my side, my heart of an Alpine eagle and my fleurs-de-lis scepter cut from a forest of Roncevaux, will fall into dust on a flap of your royal mantle; and you will say, as you shake the earth from the flap of your tarnished mantle: “Where is Charlemagne, my kinsman? Which way did our emperor go, with neither heralds nor pages, who was holding his orb in his hand just now, like a sleeping falcon?” (Joining in the dance.) Christ! Christ! Since you have deceived me, give me back my hundred monasteries hidden in the Ardennes; give me back my gilded bells, baptized in my name, my reliquaries and my chapels, my banners spun by Berthe’s23 wheel, my silver-plated ciboria, and people kneeling all the way from Roncevaux to the Black Forest.
THE CATHEDRAL
In the shady valley that leads to Italy, I know a grotto more hidden than your hundred monasteries; I know a peak in the mountains higher than your belfries; the clouds, in summer, float higher than your banners spun by Berthe’s wheel; the dew is fresher on a Linange daisy than in your silver-plated ciboria, and the Ocean waves are bowed down to the earth more deeply than your people extended from Roncevaux to the Black Forest.
CHORUS OF WOMEN
Give us back our sighs and tears!
THE CATHEDRAL
The winds also sigh when evening comes; ask the winds for your sighs. The grottoes weep as they distil, drop by drop; ask the grottoes for your tears.
CHORUS OF CHILDREN
Give back to us our crowns of flowers; give back our baskets of roses, which we have thrown into the path of priests at Corpus Christi.
THE CATHEDRAL
There are stone roses on my stem; there are stone garlands around my head. Children, if you wish, discrown my head and take back your roses from my stem.
POPE GREGORY
And me, what shall I do henceforth with my double cross and triple crown? The dead are assembling around me in order that I give each of them the portion of nothingness due to them. Woe! Paradise, Hell and Purgatory were only in my soul; the hilts and blades of the Archangels’ swords were only flamboyant in my bosom; t
here were no infinite heavens but those my genius folded and unfolded itself to shelter its desert... But perhaps the hour will sound when Christ’s door will grate on its hinges... No, no! Gregory of Soana,24 you have waited long enough! Your feet have dried up tramping the flag-stones; your eyes have melted in their orbits gazing at the dust of your crypt; your tongue has worn itself out in your mouth calling “Christ! Christ!” and you hands have remained empty; yes, they are empty still, always empty, as before! Look, look, my good lords; it’s the truth: look! let all the dead hide their wounds from me! let all the martyrs put their wounds in shadow! I can’t cure any of them. I bring in return a web spun by a spider to those who have given their crowns to Christ; I bring, in the palm of my hand, a pinch of ashes to those who were expecting a kingdom of stars in the ocean of the firmament.
CHORUS OF ALL THE DEAD KINGS
Woe! Woe! What will become of us?
THE CATHEDRAL
Ha! What would all of you do with an eternal kingdom if I were to give you one? Believe me, your arms are too thin, your hands too cold, to bear once again a scepter, an orb or a crown. Two or three days of life, standing in the sun, have dried out the marrow in your bones. What would you say if it were necessary to bear upon your head, like me, summer and winter, beneath snow and rain, without flinching, a diadem of rock? Come on! When the clock has chimed beneath my arcades, the tremulous hour did not say to Eternity: “Stop me on the rim of the bell; I want to last, I want to vibrate forever!” And me, I am Eternity visible on earth. You are the errant hour that has put on its resounding mantle in the world, on the run. Now, let me enjoy with you, if you please, my crowned hours, oh, so fragile!—is it possible?—oh, so capricious! oh, so noisy! Come on! amuse me, cheer me up, smooth my brow. My beautiful reddened hours! Sound a carillon, make your papal miters, your archbishops’ crosiers, your kings’ scepters, your nodding heads, your dangling hands, your captains’ swords, your hermits’ chaplets, your cavaliers’ spurs, your blazons, your names and your crowns vibrate in the air, one against another, like a bell-ringer marking my day! I’m sad; you’re my playthings; dance and dance, kings and queens, children and women, until dawn!
