The Serpent of Stars
Page 9
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.
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.
Copyright © 2004 Archipelago Books English translation copyright © 2004 Jody Gladding
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Giono, Jean, 1895-1970.
[Serpent d’etoiles. English]
The serpent of stars / Jean Giono ; translated by Jody Gladding.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-935-74445-0
I. Gladding, Jody, 1955–II. Title.
PQ2613.157S413 2004
843’.912–dc22
2003023998
Publication of this translation was assisted
by a grant from the French Ministry of Culture–
Centre National du Livre.
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