41     K    =#            -II
"m,.               — al"   'gui- -tl.
"ll.
1w,                  I                      Um
I MAN                               HEMS"4




i
i
I


THRE


 1, /






I




I




I




I




VOLUME XXV           VACATION, 1914         NUMBER IV
JUDITH
A Tragedy in Five Acts
BY FRIEDRICH HLEBBEL
Translated from the German by Carl Van Doren
CHARACTERS
JUDITH.
HOLOFERNES.                             e ~
CAPTAINS OF HOLOFERNES..:*
CHAMBERLAIN OF HOLOFERNES.
AMBASSADORS FROM LIBYA.
AMBASSADORS FROM MESOPOTAMIA.
SOLDIERS AND HALBERDIERS.
MIRZA, Judith's maid.
EPHRAIM.
THE ELDERS OF BETHULIA.
PRIESTS OF BETHULIA.
CITIZENS OF BETHULIA, among them:
AMMON.
HOSEA.
BEN.
ASSAD AND HIS BROTHER.
DANIEL, dumb and blind, God-inspired.
SAMAJA, Assad's friend.
JOSHUA.
DELIA, Samaja's wife.
ACHIOR, the captain of the Moabites.
ASSYRIAN PRIESTS.
WOMEN, CHILDREN.
SAMUEL, a very old man, and his grandson.
The action takes place before and in the city of Bethulia.
257
Copyright, I94., by The Poet Lore Company. All Rights Reserved.


293650




258


JUDITH


ACT I
(The camp of HOLOFERNES. In the foreground, at the right, the
pavilion of the commander-in-chief. Tents. Armed forces and
tumult. In the background, a range of mountains, in which a city
is visible.  The commander-in-chief, HOLOFERNES, comes forward
with his captains from the open pavilion. Music. After a little he
makes a sign, and the music ceases.)
Holofernes.- Sacrifice!
High Priest.- To what god?
Holofernes.- To whom was the sacrifice made yesterday?
High Priest.- We drew lots at thy command, and the choice
fell to Baal.
Holofernees. — Then Baal is not hungry to-day. Sacrifice
to one that you all know and yet know not.
High Priest (in a loud voice).- Holofernes commands us to
sacrifice to a god that we all know and yet know not.
Holofernes (laughing).- That is the god I honor most.
(The sacrifice is made.)
Holofernes.- Halberdier!
Halberdier.- What is the will of Holofernes?
Holofernes.- Whoever among my warriors has a complaint
to make of his captain, let him stand forth. Proclaim it.
Halberdier (going through the files of soldiers).- Whoever
has a complaint to make of his captain, let him stand forth.
Holofernes will hear him.
A Warrior.- I complain of my captain.
Holofernes.- Wherefore?
The Warrior.- In yesterday's assault I captured a slave,
so beautiful that I grew fearful before her and dared not touch
her. The captain came into my tent about evening, when I was
absent, saw the girl, and hewed her down because she resisted him.
Holofernes.- The accused captain must die. (To a trooper.)
Be quick. And the complainant, too. Take him with thee.
But the captain shall die first.
The Warrior.- Wilt thou have me slain with him?




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


259


Holofernes.- Because thou art too forward. I made the
offer but to try thee. Were I to permit such as thou to utter
grievances against your captains, who would insure me against
the complaints of the captains?
The Warrior.- For thy sake I spared the maiden; I would
have brought her to thee.
Holofernes.- When the beggar finds a crown, he knows certainly that it belongs to the king. The king does not thank him
with many words when he brings it. However, I shall reward
thee for thy good intention, for I am gracious this morning.
Thou mayst make thyself drunk with my best wine before they
kill thee. Hence!
(The soldier is led off at the rear by the trooper.)
Holofernes (to one of the captains).- Have the camels bridled.
Captain.- It is already done.
Holofernes.-Had I commanded it?
Captain.- No, but I thought thou wouldst presently
command it.
Holofernes.- Who art thou, that thou darest to steal my
thoughts from out my head? I will not have it, this officious,
presumptuous conduct. My will is One, and thy deed is Two,
not the other way round. Mark thou that!
Captain.- Pardon! (Goes of.)
Holofernes (alone).- That is the art of not being fathomed -
to remain eternally a secret. The water does not understand
this art; they build a dyke for the sea and a bed for the river.
The fire, too, does not understand it. It has fallen so low that
scullions have discovered its nature, and now it must cook every
ragamuffin's cabbage. Not even the sun understands it. His
course has been spied out, and cobblers and tailors measure off the
time by his shadow. But I understand it. Here they skulk
around me and peep into the cracks and crevices of my soul, and out
of every word from my mouth seek to forge a picklock for the
inner chamber of my heart; but my to-day is never like yesterday.
I am not one of the dolts who fall down like worthless cowards
before themselves, and make one day always the fool of another.




260


JUDITH


I hack the Holofernes of to-day merrily into pieces and give him to
the Holofernes of to-morrow to eat. I see in life not a mere
tedious gorge, but a never ending birth and re-birth of existence.
Why, at times it seems to me among all these stupid people that
I am alone, that they can become conscious of themselves only
as I hew off their arms and legs. They, too, notice it, more and
more, but instead of coming nearer and climbing up to me, they
draw miserably away and flee me as the hare the flame that might
singe its beard. Oh, if I had but one enemy, but one, who dared
to stand against me! I would kiss him, I would throw myself
upon him, when after a fierce battle I had hurled him to the dust,
and die with him. Nebuchadnezzar, alas, is nothing but an
arrogant figure that beguiles the time by multiplying itself forever by itself. If I should withdraw with the Assyrians, nothing
would be left of him but a human skin stuffed with fat. I will
conquer the world for him, and when he has it, take it from him
again!
A Captain.-A messenger from our great king has just
arrived.
Holofernes.- Bring him to me at once. (Aside.) Neck,
art thou pliant enough now to bend? Nebuchadnezzar takes
care that thou dost not unlearn it.
Messenger.- Nebuchadnezzar, before whom the earth
cringes, to whom is given glory and power from the rising of the
sun to its setting, sends his captain Holofernes a master's greeting.
Holofernes.- In humility I await his command.
Messenger. — Nebuchadnezzar wills it that henceforward no
other god beside him shall be worshipped.
Holofernes (proudly).- Probably he came to this decision
when he received the news of my latest victories.
Messenger.- Nebuchadnezzar commands that to him alone
shall offerings be made, and the altars and temples of other gods
shall be consumed with fire and flame.
Holofernes (aside).- One instead of so many! Indeed, that
is most pleasant, but for no one more pleasant than for the king.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


261


He takes his shining helmet in his hand and pays his devotions to,
his own image. He has nothing to guard against but colic, that
he may not make wry faces and frighten himself. (Aloud.)
Surely Nebuchadnezzar has not had the toothache again the
last month?
Messenger.- We thank the gods for it.
Holofernes.- Himself thou meanest?
Messenger.- Nebuchadnezzar commands that a sacrifice
shall be made to him every morning at sunrise.
Holofernes.- To-day, unfortunately, it is too late. We shall
think of it at sunset.
Messenger.- Finally, Nebuchadnezzar commands thee, Holofernes, to spare thyself and to expose thy life to no mischance.
Holofernes.- Yes, friend, if swords could only achieve
remarkable things without men. And then - hark thou, I
endanger my life by nothing more than by drinking the king's
health, and that I cannot possibly leave off.
Messenger.- Nebuchadnezzar said that none of his servants
could take thy place, and he has yet much for thee to do.
Holofernes.-Good, I shall love myself, because my king
commands it. I kiss his footstool. (The messenger goes out.) J
Halberdier!
Halberdier. What is the will of Holofernes?
Holofernes.- There is no god but Nebuchadnezzer. Proclaim it.
Halberdier (goes through the files of soldiers).- There is no
god but Nebuchadnezzar!
(A high priest passes.)
Holofernes.- Priest, thou hast heard what I have had
proclaimed?
Priest.- Yes.
|,  Holofernes.- Then go and destroy that Baal we are dragging
n with us. I will give thee the wood.
Priest.- How can 1 destroy that to which I have prayed?
Holofernes.- Baal can defend himself. One of two things,
thou destroyest the god or thou hangest thyself.




262


JUDITH


Priest.- I destroy it. (Aside) Baal wears golden armbands.
Holofernes (alone).- Cursed be Nebuchadnezzar! Cursed
be he, because he had a great idea, an idea which he cannot
dignify, which he can only bungle and make ridiculous.  I have
long felt it? Mankind has but one great purpose, to bring forth a
god. And this god that they bring forth, how will he show that
it is he, if he does not set himself in eternal strife against them,
if he does not crush all the foolish emotions of pity, awe of himself, repugnance to his horrible demands; if he does not grind
them into the dust and even in the hour of death wrest from
them an exultant song? Nebuchadnezzar knows how to do it more
easily. The herald will declare him god, and I am to prove to the
world that he is.
(The HIGH PRIEST passes.)
Holofernes.-Is Baal destroyed?
Priest.- He is in flames. May he forgive it!
Holofernes.-There is no god but Nebuchadnezzar. I
command thee to seek out the reasons therefor. For every reason
I will reward thee with an ounce of gold, and thou hast three
days' time.
Priest.- I hope to fulfil thy command. (Goes off.)
A Captain.- Ambassadors from some king beg an audience.
Holofernes.- From what king?
Captain.- Pardon. No one can possibly remember the
names of all the kings who humble themselves before thee.
Holofernes (throws him a golden chain).- The first impossibility that ever pleased me! Bring them in.
Ambassadors (prostrate themselves).- Thus will the king of
Libya throw himself in the dust before thee, if thou wilt do him
the honor to enter his capital.
Holofernes.-Why did you not come yesterday, the day before
yesterday?
Ambassadors.- Lord!
Holofernes.  Was the distance too great, or your respect
too small?




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


263


Ambassadors.- Woe to us!
Holofernes (aside).- Wrath fills my soul, wrath toward
Nebuchadnezzar. I must be gracious that this race of worms
may not be exalted and consider itself the source of my wrath.
(Aloud.) Arise and tell your king
Captain (enters).- Ambassadors from Mesopotamia.
Holofernes.- Bring them hither.
Mesopotamian Ambassadors (prostrate themselves).- Mesopotamia offers submission to the great Holofernes, if it may thus
obtain his favor.
Holofernes.- I bestow my favor, I do not sell it.
A  Mesopotamian Ambassador.- No. Mesopotamia submits under any condition, and merely hopes for favor.
Holofernes.- I know not whether I may realize this hope.
You have delayed long.
A Mesopotamian Ambassador.- No more than the long journey required.
Holofernes.- It is all one. I have sworn to annihilate the
people that offered submission last. I must keep my oath.
A Mesopotamian Ambassador.- We are not the last. On the
way we heard that the Hebrews, and they only, will defy thee,
and have fortified themselves.
Holofernes.- Then take word to your king that I accept
your submission. On what conditions he will learn from one
of my captains whom I shall despatch to him to arrange the
matter.  (To the Libyan ambassadors.)   Tell your king the
same. (To the Mesopotamian ambassadors.) Who are the He-,
o- brews?
'/       A Mesopotamian Ambassador.- Lord, they are a race of
7/      madmen. Thou perceivest it already, since they dare to withstand thee. Still more wilt thou know it by this, that they pray
to a god whom they cannot seen or hear, of whom no one knows
where he lives, and to whom they yet bring sacrifices as though,
fierce and threatening even as our gods, he looked down from
the altar upon them. They live in the mountains.
Holofernes.- What cities do they hold? How powerful are




264


JUDITH


they? What king rules over them? How many warriors are
at his command?
A Mesopotamian Ambassador.- Lord, these people are reserved and suspicious. We know no more of them than they
themselves know of their invisible god. They avoid contact with
strangers. They eat and drink not with us; at best, they fight
with us.
Holofernes.- Wherefore speakest thou if thou canst not
answer my question? (Makes a sign with his hand; the ambassadors, bowing and prostrating themselves, go out.) Let the captains
of the Moabites and the Ammonites appear before me. (The HALBERDIER goes out.) I respect a people that will oppose me. Alas,
that all I respect, I must destroy! (The captains enter, among
them ACHIOR.) What kind of people are those that live in the
mountains?
Achior.- Lord, I know them well, these people, and I will
tell thee how matters stand with them. They are contemptible
when they go forth with spears and swords; their weapons are
useless toys in their hands which their own god breaks in pieces,
for it is not his will that they should fight and stain themselves
with blood. He alone will undo their enemies. But fearful are
these people when they humble themselves before their god as he
demands; when they fall upon their knees and cover their heads
with ashes; when they cry out in lamentation and curse themselves. Then it seems as if the world becomes another world,
as if nature forgets her own laws; the impossible becomes real,
the sea divides so that the waters stand fast on both sides like
walls along a highway, bread falls down from heaven, and out of <
the desert sand wells a draught of fresh water.
Holofernes.- What is the name of their god?
Achior.- They think they take something from him by the
mere utterance of his name, and would surely slay the stranger
who should utter it.
Holofernes.- What kind of cities have they?
Achior (points to the city in the mountains).- The city which
lies nearest us, and which thou seest there is called Bethulia.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


265


This one they have fortified. Their capital, however, is Jerusalem. I was there and saw the temple of their god. There is
nothing like it upon earth. It seemed to me, as I stood in wonder
before it, that something laid itself upon my neck and forced
me to the ground. Suddenly I was upon my knees and knew not
myself how it came. They came near to stoning me, for when I arose
I felt an irresistible impulse to enter the sanctuary, and the
penalty thereof is death. A beautiful maiden barred my passage
and told me, I know not whether out of pity for my youth
or fear of the profanation of the temple by a Gentile. Now hear
me, O king, and despise not my words. Inquire whether the
people have sinned against their god. If they have, let us come
upon them; then will their god surely give them into thy hands, and
thou wilt bring them easily under thy feet. If, however, they have
not sinned against their god, then turn back, for their god will protect them, and we shall become a jest to the whole land. Thou
art a mighty hero, but their god is too powerful. If he can oppose
to thee none who equals thee, he can force thee to strive against
thyself and put thyself out of the way with thine own hands.
Holofernes.- Dost thou prophesy to me out of fear or guile?
I could punish thee, because thou presumest to fear ahother beside
me, but I will not do it. Thou shalt have spoken judgment upon
thyself. What awaits the Hebrews awaits thee. Seize him and
take him safe hence. (It is done.) And whoever at the capture
of the city shall slay him and bring me his head, to him will I give its
weight in gold. (Raising his voice.) Now on to Bethulia!
(The column is set in motion.)
ACT II
(JUDITH'S chamber. JUDITH and MIRZA at the loom.)
Judith.- What sayest thou to this dream?
Mirza.- Ah, listen rather to what I said to thee.
Judith.- I went on and on, and I was in great haste, and yet
I knew not whither I was impelled. At times I stood still and
reflected; then it seemed to me that I was committing a great sin.
'On, on!' I said to myself, and went more swiftly than before.




266


JUDITH


Mirza.- Ephraim just passed. He was very sad.
Judith (without listening to her).- Suddenly I stood upon a
high mountain; I was dizzy; then I grew proud, the sun was so
near me; I bowed to it and looked steadily upward. At once I
marked a chasm at my feet, a few steps from me, dark, immeasurable, full of smoke and vapor. And I was powerless to retreat
or to stay -I reeled forward. 'God! God!' I cried in my
anguish. 'Here am I,' echoed a voice from the abyss, gentle,
sweet - I sprang - tender arms caught me -- I thought I was
resting upon the breast of one whom I could not see, and I was
unspeakably happy. But I was too heavy, he could not sustain
me; I sank, sank- I heard him weeping, and burning tears
seemed to fall upon my cheek.
Mirza.- I know a soothsayer. Shall I call him for thee?
Judith.- Alas, it is against the law. But this I know, such
dreams are not to be held lightly. Behold, I believe this concerning them. When men lie in slumber, relaxed, no longer bound
by the consciousness of themselves, a sense of the future displaces
all the thoughts and images of the present, and the things which
are to come glide like shadows through the soul, preparing, warning, consoling. Thence comes it that the truth so seldom or
never takes us unawares, that we hope so confidently for good
long before it comes, and forebode, though unwittingly, every ill.
Often have I wondered whether one dreams just before death.
Mirza.- Why dost thou not listen when I speak to thee of
Ephraim?
Judith.- Because I shudder at men.
Mirza.- And yet thou hast had a husband.
Judith.- I must confide a secret to thee. My husband was
mad.
Mirza.- Impossible! How could that have escaped me?
Judith.- He was mad. I must call it so if I am not to feel
horror of myself, if I am not to believe that I am a terrible, a
fearful being. Behold, I was not yet fourteen years old when I
was brought to Manasses as his bride. Thou wilt remember the
evening, for thou didst follow me. With every step I took I grew




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


267


more disquieted. Now, I thought I should cease to live; again,
that I was just to begin living. Ah, and the evening was so charming, so seductive, none could resist it! The warm air lifted my
veil as if it would say, 'Now it is time.' But I held it fast, for I
felt that my face was glowing and I was ashamed. My father
walked beside me. He was very solemn and spoke much that
I did not hear. At times I looked up at him and then I thought:
'Surely Manasses will not be like him.' Didst thou not notice
all this? Thou too wast there.
Mirza.- I was ashamed with thee.
Judith.- At last I entered his house and his old mother came
toward me with solemn mien. It cost me an effort to call her
mother; I thought that my mother must feel it in her grave and be
grieved by it. Then thou didst anoint me with spikenard and oil,
and truly I had a feeling that I had died and was being anointed as
one dead. Thou saidst also that I grew pale.; Now Manasses
came, and when he looked upon me, first hesita~ting, then bolder
and still bolder, when at last he grasped my hand and wished to
speak, but could not, then did it seem indeed to me as if I were
on fire, as if I were bursting forth in furious flames. Pardon,
that I tell thee this.
Mirza.- Thoif-didst first hide thy face in thy hands a few
tmoments, then thou sprangst quickly up and fell upon his neck.
I was confounded.
Judith.- I saw it and laughed at thee; all at once I thought
myself much wiser than thou. Now, hear me further, Mirza.
We went into the chamber; the old woman did sundry strange
things and spoke something like a blessing. I was again troubled
and anxious when I found myself alone with Manasses. Three
candles were burning there; he went to extinguish them. 'No,
no!' said I, pleading. 'Foolish girl,' he said, and sought to lay
hold on me. One of the lights went out - we hardly noticed it.
He kissed me - the second was extinguished. He shuddered
and I after him; then he laughed and spoke: 'I will put out the
third one myself.'  'Quick, quick!' I said, then turned cold.
He did it. The moon shone brightly into the room. I slipped




268


JUDITH


into bed. The moon shone directly into my face. Manasses
called out: 'I see thee as clearly as if it were day,' and came
toward me. All at once he stopped; it seemed as if the black
earth had thrust out a hand and clutched him with it. I was uneasy. 'Come, come,' I cried, and was not at all ashamed to do it.
'But I cannot,' he answered dully. 'I cannot,' he repeated and
stared at me in terror, with wide eyes. Then he staggered to the
window and said at least ten times in succession, 'I cannot.' He
seemed to see, not me, but something strange, monstrous.
Mirza.- 0, wretched woman!
Judith.- I began to weep violently; I believed I was defiled,
I hated and loathed myself.  He spoke tenderly to me.  I
stretched my arms out toward him, but instead of coming, he
commenced to pray softly. My heart ceased to beat, my blood
seemed frozen. Inwardly I raged against myself as against
something foreign, and when at last I lost myself gradually in
sleep, I felt that I was yet awake. The next morning Manasses
stood beside my bed. He looked at me with boundless pity.
I was oppressed, almost suffocated. Then something seemed to
give way within me. I broke out into wild laughter and could
breathe again. His mother scrutinized me, gloomy and scornful.
I perceived that she had listened. She said not a word to me
and walked, whispering with her son, into a corner. 'Fie!' he
cried aloud suddenly and angrily; 'Judith is an angel,' he added,
and would have kissed me. I refused him my lips. He nodded
his head strangely, as though it seemed right to him. (After a
long pause.) Six months was I his wife - he never knew me.
Mirza.- And r-?
Judith.-Thus we lived on side by side. We felt that we
/belonged to each other, but something seemed to stand between
us, something dark, unknown. At times his eyes would rest
upon me with an expression that made me shudder. In such
moments I could have strangled him, out of terror, in self-defense.
His gaze pierced me like a poisoned arrow. Thou knowest it
was three years ago at the time of the barley harvest, when he
came back from the field sick, and on the third day lay dead. I




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


269


felt that he would steal away something from my inmost self.
I hated him because of his sickness; it seemed that he threatened
me with his death as with a crime. 'He must not die,' I cried out
in my heart, 'he cannot bear his secret with him into the grave.
Thou must take courage and question him at last. 'Manasses,'
I said, and bent over him, 'what was it on our wedding night?'
His dark eyes were already closed; he opened them wearily. I
shuddered, for he seemed to lift himself out of his body as out of a
coffin. He looked at me a long time, then he said: 'Yes, yes, now
I may tell thee. Thou-' but suddenly, as if I might never know
it, death strode between me and him and closed his lips forever.
(After a long silence.) Speak, Mirza, must I not be mad myself,
if I cease to think Manasses mad?
Mirza.- I shudder.
Judith.- Thou hast often seen me, when I seem to be sitting
quietly at the loom or some other kind of work, suddenly collapse
and begin to pray. Therefore am I called pious and God-fearing.
I tell thee, Mirza, if I do that, it is because I no longer know how
to save myself from my thoughts. My prayer is then a plunge
into God, it is only another kind of suicide. I spring into the
infinite as desperate men into deep water
Mirza (changing the subject suddenly). - In such moments
thou shouldst step before a mirror. Those spectres, fearful and
blinded, would flee before the radiance of thy youth and beauty.
Juditk.- Foolish! Knowest thou the fruit that can feed
upon itself? Thou wert better not young and not fair, if thou
must be so for thyself alone. A woman is nothing; through man '
only can she become something; through him can she become a  \
mother. The child that she bears is the only thanks she can offer
nature for her existence. Unblessed are the unfruitful; doubly
unblessed am I, not a maid, nor yet a wife!
Mirza.-Who forbids thee to be young and fair for others, even
for a beloved husband? Canst thou not choose among the noblest?
Judith (very solemnly). - Thou hast not in the least understood me. My beauty is that of the deadly nightshade; enjoyment of it brings madness and death.




270


JUDITH


Ephraim (enters hastily).- Ha! You are so calm while Holofernes stands before the city?
Mirza.- Now God have mercy upon us!
Ephraim.-Verily, Judith, if thou hadst seen what I saw,
thou wouldst tremble. One might swear that all that can inspire
fear and terror is in the service of the Gentile: this multitude of
camels and horses, of chariots and battering rams. It is fortunate
that walls and gates have no eyes. They would fall down for
very dread, if they could behold all those horrors.
Judith.- I think thou sawest more than others.
Ephraim.- I tell thee, Judith, there is none in all Bethulia
who does not look as if he had the fever. Thou appearest to know
little of Holofernes; I know so much more about him. Each word
from his mouth is a beast of prey. When the twilight falls
Judith.- He has the candles lighted.
Ephraim.-That is what we do, I and thou.    He has
villages and towns set on fire and says: 'These are my torches;
they cost me less than others.' And he thinks himself very
merciful when he has his sword furbished and his meat broiled
by the flames of one and the same city. When he beheld Bethulia,
they say he laughed and asked his cook in jest: 'Thinkest thou
that thou couldst roast an ostrich egg by that?'
Judith.- Would I could see him! (Aside.)  What did I
say then?
Ephraim.- Woe to thee if thou wert seen by him! Holofernes kills women with his kisses and embraces, as he does men
with spear and sword. Had he known thee to be within the
walls of the city he would have come for the sake of thee alone.
Judith (smiling).- Might it be so! Then I should need only
to go out to him, and the city and land were saved!
Ephraim.-Thou alone hast the right to think such a
thought.
Judith.- And why not? One for all, and one who ever asked
herself vainly, 'Wherefore art thou here?' Ah, and even if he
did not come for my sake, could he not be brought to think that
he had done so? If the giant's head towers so high into the clouds




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


271


that you cannot reach it, why, then throw a jewel at his feet. He
will stoop to pick it up, and then you can overcome him with ease.
Ephraim (aside).- My plan was simple. What I thought
would strike terror into her soul and drive her into my arms,
emboldens her. I feel myself judged when I look into her eyes.
I hoped that in this general need she would cast about for a
protector, and who was nearer than I? (Aloud.) Judith, thou
art so bold that thou ceasest to be beautiful.
Judith.- Being a man, thou darest to tell me that!
Ephraim.- I am a man and may tell thee more. Behold,
Judith, evil times approach, times when none are safe but those
who dwell in tombs. How wilt thou endure them who hast
neither father nor brother nor husband?
Judith.- Thou wilt not, then, have Holofernes woo for thee?
Ephraim.- Jest not, but hear me. I know that thou disdainest me, and had the world about us not changed so threateningly, I should never again have come before thy eyes. Seest
thou this knife?
Judith.- It is so bright I can see my own likeness in it.
Ephraim.- I sharpened it on the day when thou didst drive
me scornfully from thee, and, verily, if the Assyrians stood not this
hour before the gate, it would now be thrust into my heart. Then
thou couldst not have used it for a mirror, for my blood would have
rusted it.
Judith.- Give it to me. (She strikes at his hand, which he
draws back.) Fie! Thou darest to speak of suicide, and yet
shrinkest from a prick in the hand!
Ephraim.- Thou standest before me, I see thee, I hear thee;
now I love myself, for I seem myself no longer. I am full of thee.
Such things can be only in the deep night, when only pain is awake
in the heart, when death presses upon the soul as sleep upon the
eyes, and one seems to carry out involuntarily what an invisible
power commands. Oh, I know it, for I was so far that I myself
knew not why I went no further. It is no matter of courage or
cowardice; it is like bolting the door at bedtime. (JUDITH holds out
her hand to him.) Judith, I love thee; thou dost not love me.




272


JUDITH


Thou canst do nothing for the one, I nothing for the other. But
knowest thou what it means to love and be disdained? It is like no
other pain. If something is taken from me, the next day I learn
that I can dispense with it. If I am wounded, I have the op(portunity to seek a cure.  But when my love is treated as folly,
then the holiest passion of my heart is made a lie. For if the
emotion that draws me to thee betrays me, what assurance have
I that the one which bows me down before God is genuine?
Mirza.- Dost thou not feel it, Judith?
Judith.- Can love be duty? Must I give my hand to this
man so that he will let fall his dagger? I almost believe it.
Ephraim.- Judith, once more I sue for thee. That is, I
sue for permission to die for thee. I wish to be nothing but the
shield on which the swords that threaten thee may hack in vain.
Judith.- Is this the same man whom one look upon the
camp of the enemy seemed to have disheartened, who
appeared before me like one to whom I must lend a petticoat?
His eyes flash, his fists clench! 0 God, I respect so gladly;
it is like cutting into my own flesh, for me to despise anyone. Ephraim, I have wounded thee. It grieves me. I wished
to cease being lovely in thine eyes, for I could give thee nothing;
therefore I mocked at thee. I will reward thee! I can do it!
But woe to thee if now thou dost not comprehend me, if, as soon
as I utter the word, the deed, as imperative as necessity itself,
does not stand before thy soul, if it shall not seem to thee that
thou livest only to fulfil it! Go hence and slay Holofernes!
Then - then ask of me whatever reward thou wilt.
Ephraim.- Thou ravest! Slay Holofernes in the midst of
his host? How were it possible?
Judith.-How is it possible? Do I know? Then I should
do it myself. I know only that it must be done.
Ephraim.- I have never seen him, and yet I see him!
Judith.- And I, too, with a countenance that is all an eye,
an imperious eye, and with a foot from which the world which he
treads upon seems to shrink. But there was a time when he was
not; therefore one can come when he will be no more.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


273


Ephraim.- Give him the thunder and take away his host and
I will dare it, but nowJudith.- Only will it! And up out of the depths of the abyss,
and down from the firmament thou wilt call the holy protecting
powers, and they will bless and guard thy work, if not thee. For
thou wilt do the will of the world, that which the godhead broods in
his first wrath, and that with which nature, which trembles at the
giant birth of her own womb and will not create a second man, or
only that he may destroy the first, wrestles in her tortured
dream.
Ephraim.- It is only because thou hatest me, because thou
wishest to slay me, that thou commandest this unthinkable
deed!
Judith (passionately).- I judged thee aright! What! Does
not such a thought inspire thee? Does it not make thee drunken?
I whom thou'lovest, I who would exalt thee above thyself that Ii
might love thee again, I put it into thy heart, and is it nothing to,
thee but a burden that bows thee only deeper into the dust?
Behold, if thou hadst received it with exultation, if thou hadst
snatched impetuously at a sword and hadst taken not even the
time for a fleeting farewell; then, oh, I feel it, then should I have
thrown myself weeping in the way! I should have painted the
danger for thee with a heart that trembled for its best beloved;
I should have detained thee or followed thee. Now- ha, I
am more than justified. Thy love is the penalty of thy paltry'T
nature. It became a curse to undo thee.  I should be angry if I
detected in myself a stir of pity for thee. I comprehend thee
fully, I comprehend even that for thee the loftiest must be
as the basest, that thou must smile while I pray!
Ephraim. —Despise me! But first show me him who can
make possible the impossible.
Judith.- I will show him to thee. He will come! Ah, he '
must come! And if thy cowardice is that of thy whole sex, if all}
men see nothing in danger but a warning to escape it- then|
has a woman won the right to do a great deed - then, ah, I have
demanded it of thee - I must prove that it is possible!




274


JUDITH


ACT III
(JUDITH'S chamber. JUDITH, crouching in sackcloth and
ashes.)
Mirza (enters and looks at her).- There she has been sitting
now for three days and nights. She does not eat, she does not
drink, she does not speak. She never sighs nor laments. 'The
house is on fire,' I cried out to her yesterday evening, and pretended
that I had lost my wits. She did not change countenance and
sat quite still. I believe she wants some one to pack her into a
coffin, nail the lid over her, and carry her away. She hears all
that I am saying, and yet she says nothing. Judith, shall I send
for the gravedigger? (JUDITH motions her with her hand to go
away.) I will go, but only to come back at once. I forget the
enemy and all our distress because of thee. If an arrow were
aimed at me, I should not notice it so long as I saw thee sitting
there like one dead. At first thou hadst so much courage that
the men were ashamed, and now - Ephraim was right. He said:
'She defies herself that she may forget her fear.' (Goes out.)
Judith (springs to her knees).-God! God! I feel that I
must clutch Thee by the hem of Thy garment, as One who threatens to forsake me forever! I did not wish to pray, but I must
pray as I must breathe, if I am not to stifle. God! God! Why
dost Thou not incline unto me? I am too weak to ascend to
Thee. Behold, here I lie as if out of the world and out of time.
Anxiously I await a sign from Thee that will bid me arise and
act. When danger drew near us, I saw it with rejoicing, for to
me it was but a sign that Thou wouldst glorify Thyself among
Thy chosen people. With trembling ecstacy I saw that what uplifted me, abased all the others. Then it seemed that Thy finger
pointed graciously toward me, as if from me Thy triumph was to
proceed. With rapture I saw that everyone to whom I would have
relinquished the great work, to make in humility the greatest
sacrifice, groveled, cowardly and trembling, before it like a
serpent in its wretched slime. 'It is thou! It is thou!' I cried
to myself and fell down before Thee and swore a sacred oath




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


275


never again to rise, or only when Thou hadst shown me the way
that leads to the heart of Holofernes.   I listened within
myself, because I believed that a lightning flash of annihilation must burst from my soul; I hearkened to the world without, because I thought, 'Some hero has made thee superfluous';
but both within and without it remained dark. Only one thought
came to me, only one, with which I played and which always
returned. But it came not from Thee. Or did it come from
Thee? (She springs to her feet.)[ It came from Thee! I The    f /
way to my deed leads through sin! I thank Thee, I thank    [ A
Thee, Lord! Thou makest clear mine eyes. In Thy sight S
the impure becomes pure. If Thou didst place a sin between I
me and my deed, who am I that I should contend with Thee, [
that I should draw back from Thee? Is not my deed worth l
as much as it costs me? May I love my honor, my immaculate
body more than Thee? Oh, the knot within me is untied! Thou
madest me beautiful; now I know wherefore. Thou didst deny
me a child; now I feel why and rejoice that I have not to love
my own self in another. What I formerly held a curse, now
appears to me a blessing! (She steps before a mirror.) I greet
thee, my likeness! For shame, cheeks, that you do not yet
glow! Is the way from you to my heart so long? Eyes, I praise
you; you have drunk fire and are intoxicated. Poor mouth, I do
not take it ill of thee that thou art pale; thou shalt kiss Horror.
(She turns from the mirror.) Holofernes, all this is thine; I have
no longer a share in it. I have withdrawn to the inmost depths
of my soul. Take it, but tremble when thou hast it. I shall
emerge at an hour when thou dost not expect it, like a sword
from the scabbard, and pay myself with thy life. If I must nx
kiss thee, I will imagine that it is with poisoned lips; if I embrace
thee, I will think that I am strangling thee. God, let him commit atrocities before my eyes, bloody atrocities, but saveme from
Iseeing aught good in him!
Mirza (comes in).- Didst thou call me, Judith?
Judith.- No - yes. Mirza, thou shalt adorn me. ~V
Mirza.- Wilt thou not eat?




276


JUDITH


Judith.- No. I will be adorned.
Mirza.- Eat, Judith, I can endure it no longer.
Judith.- Thou?
Mirza.- Behold, when thou wouldst eat and drink nothing
whatever, I swore that neither would I. I did it to compel thee;
if thou hadst no mercy for thyself, thou shouldst have it for me.
I told thee, but thou canst not have heard it. It is three days
now.,Judith.- Would that I were worthy of so much love!
Mirza.- Let us eat and drink. It will soon be the last time,
at least to drink. The pipes to the fountain are cut down, and no
one can get to the little fountains at the wall, for they are guarded
by soldiers. Yet there are those who, rather to be killed than to be
thirsty, have gone out. They say of one that he crawled, though
run through, to the well to refresh himself at last. But before
he could raise to his lips the water which he held already in his
hand, he gave up the ghost. No one expected this cruelty from
the enemy, and so the scarcity of water in the city became thus
general at once. Whoever has a little hides it like a treasure.
Judith.- Oh, it is detestable to take, instead of life which
cannot be taken, the essential of life! Kill, lay waste, but deprive not men of necessities in the midst of nature's abundance!
Oh, I have already delayed too long!
Mirza.- Ephraim has brought me water for thee. Thou
v   mayst know by that the greatness of his love. He denied it to
his own brother!
Judith.- Fie! This man is one of those who sin even when
v/ they wish to do something good.
Mirza.-That did not please me either, but still thou art
too hard toward him.
Judith.- No, I tell thee, no! Every woman has a right to
demand of every man that he be a hero. When thou seest one,
does it not seem that thou seest what thou wouldst be, shouldst
be? A man may forgive cowardice in another; a woman, never.
Canst thou pardon the prop for breaking? Thou canst scarce
pardon thy need of a prop.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


277


Mirza.- What, couldst thou expect Ephraim tb obey thy
command?
Judith.- From one who had laid hands upon himself and had
thereby turned his life out of doors, I might have expected it. I
struck him as I would a flint which I did not know whether to keep
or throw away. Had he given back a spark, the spark would
have flashed into my heart; now, I spurn the vile stone.
Mirza.- But how could he have carried it out?
Judith.- The archer who asks how to shoot will miss.
Mark - eye - hand - it is there! (Looking toward heaven.)
Oh, I saw it hover above the world like a dove which seeks a nest
to brood upon, and the first soul which burst the bonds of its
torpor must have conceived the thought of liberation! But,
Mirza, go and eat, then adorn me.
Mirza.- I will wait as long as thou.
Judith.- Thou lookest so sorrowfully upon me. Well, I
will go with thee. But afterwards, get all thy wits together and
adorn me as if for my wedding. Smile not! My beauty is now
my duty. (They go out.~:
(An open place in Bethulia. Many people. A group of
young citizens, armed.)
A citizen (to another).- What sayest thou, Ammon?
Ammon.- I ask thee, Hosea, which is better, death by the
sword, which comes so quickly that it gives thee no time whatever
to fear it and feel it, or this tedious withering that confronts
us?
Hosea.- If I were to answer thee, my throat would have to be
less dry. Speech makes us thirstier.
Ammon.- Thou art right.
Ben (a third citizen).- One can go so far as to grudge one's
self the few drops of blood that still trickle in one's veins. I
would like to tap myself like a cask. (Puts a finger in his mouth.)
Hosea.- The best thing is that thirst makes us forget our
hunger.
Ammon.- Well, we still have something to eat.
Hosea.- How long will it last, especially, if people like




278


JUDITH


thee, who can carry more victuals in their stomachs than on
their shoulders, are tolerated among us?
Ammon.- I pay my own way. It is nobody's business.
Hosea.- In time of war all is common. Thou and thy kind
ought to be put where the arrows fall thickest. Above all, the
gluttons should be thrust out. If they are victorious, thanks will
not be due to them, but to the oxen and fatted calves whose marrow rumbles in them; if they fall, that is all the better. (AMMON
gives him a cuff on the ear.) Do not think that I will give back
what I receive, but mark this: if thou art in danger, do not expect
me to run to aid thee. I will ask Holofernes to avenge me.
Ammon.- Ingrate! To cudgel a man is to forge him a
cuirass out of his own skin. To-day's cuff on the ear makes thee
indifferent to the one that awaits thee to-morrow.
Ben.-You are fools. You quarrel and forget that you should
be on guard at the walls even now.
Ammon.- No, we are sensible people. As long as we wrangle
with each other, we do not think of our want.
Ben.- Come, come, we must go.
Ammon.- I am not sure but that it would be better to open
the gate to Holofernes. The one who did it, he would certainly
not kill.
Ben.- Then I should kill him. (They go off.)
(Two older citizens in conversation.)
One.- Hast thou heard any new atrocity of Holofernes?
The Other.- O, yes!
The One.- How thou findest things out! But tell me.
The Other.- He will stand and speak with one of his captains
of all kinds of secrets. Suddenly he notices a soldier near by.
'Hast thou heard what I said?' he will ask him. 'No,' answers
the man. 'That is lucky for thee,' says the tyrant, 'otherwise I
should have had thy head struck off, because there are ears on it.'
The One.- Thou wouldst think a man would fall down lifeless
on hearing such a thing. That is the basest thing about fear,
that it only half kills, not altogether.
The Other.- I cannot understand God's long suffering.  If




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


279


He does not hate such a Gentile, whom is He to hate? (They
pass by.)
(SAMUEL, a very old man, enters, led by his GRANDSON.)
Grandson.- Sing unto the Lord a new song, for His goodness
endureth forever!
Samuel.- Forever! (He sits down on a stone.) Samuel is
thirsty. Grandson, why dost thou not go and bring him fresh
water?
Grandson.- Grandfather, the enemy stands before the city.
He has forgotten it again.
Samuel. —The psalm! Louder! Why dost thou stammer?
Grandson.- Bear witness unto the Lord, O youth, for thou
knowest not whether thou wilt become old; praise Him, O age,
for thou grewest not old to conceal what His mercy has done to
thee!
Samuel (angrily).- Does the well no longer hold as much
water as Samuel needs to drink for the last time? Cannot my
grandson draw water, even though the noon be hot?
Grandson (very loudly).- Swords keep the well guarded,
spears bristle; the Gentiles have great power over Israel.
Samuel (rising).- Not over Israel! Whom did the Lord
seek when He gave the winds and waves power over the boat,
so that it was tossed hither and thither? Not him at the helm,
but yet another, the defiant Jonah who was sleeping quietly. Out
of the security of the ship He thrust him, into the tempestuous
waves, out of the waves into the jaws of Leviathan, out of the
jaws of the beast, through the threatening teeth into the dark
belly. But when Jonah had repented, was the Lord not mighty
enough to bring him out of the belly of Leviathan? Arise, you
workers of hidden iniquity, who sleep as Jonah slept; wait not
until your lot is cast. Stand forth and say, 'It is we,' that
the innocent may not be annihilated with the guilty. (He seizes
his beard.) Samuel smote Aaron - sharp was the nail - tender
was the brain - deep was Aaron's slumber in his wife's lap.
Samuel took Aaron's wife and begot Ham upon her, ut she died
of terror when she beheld the child, for his head bore the mark of




280


JUDITH


the nail, like the head of the dead man, and Samuel withdrew into
himself and hid his face from his own soul.
Grandson.- Grandfather! Grandfather! Thou thyself art
Samuel, and I am the son of Ham.
Samuel.- Samuel shore his head and placed himself before
his door, and awaited vengeance as men await fortune, for seventy
years and more, till he could no longer count his days. But the
pestilence passed by and its breath smote him not, and affliction
passed by and visited him not, and death passed by and touched
him not. Vengeance came not of itself - and he had not the
courage to call it.
Grandson.- Come, come. (He leads him to one side.)
Samuel.- Aaron's son, where art thou, or his son's son, or
his brother, that Samuel does not feel the blow of thy hand or the
kick of thy foot? An eye for an eye, said the Lord, a tooth for a
tooth, blood for blood.
Grandson.- Aaron's son is dead, and his son's son and his
brother - the whole race.
Samuel.- Did no avenger remain? Are these the last days,
that the Lord lets stand the sin that has sprung up and breaks
the reaping-hooks? Woe! Woe! (HisGRANDSON leads him off.)
(Two citizens.)
First.-As I tell thee, water is not lacking everywhere.
There are people among us who not only guzzle their fill, but they
even wash several times daily.
Second.-Oh, I believe it!   I will tell thee a secret.
My neighbor, Assaph, has a she-goat that fed cheerfully in his
little garden. I look down directly into the garden, and every
time I beheld the creature with her full udder I yearned like a
pregnant woman. Yesterday I went to Assaph and asked him for
a little milk. When he refused me I seized my bow, killed the
goat with one quick shot, and sent him what she is worth. I did
right, for the goat tempted him to be hard-hearted to his nearest
neighbor.
First.- One would expect such a trick from thee. When
thou wert but a mere child, thou madest a virgin a mother.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


281


Second.- What?
First.- Yes! Yes! Art thou not the firstborn? (They pass
over.)
(One of the elders enters.)
The Elder.- Hear, hear, men of Bethulia! (The people gather
around him.) Hear what the holy High Priest Joachim makes
known to you through my mouth.
Assad (a citizen who leads by the hand his brother DANIEL,
blind and dumb).- Take heed, the High Priest wishes us to be
lions. Then he can play the hare all the better.
Another.- Blapheme not.
Assad.- I will accept no arguments to console us, but those I
can draw out of the well.
The Elder.- You should remember Moses, the servant of the
Lord, who smote the Amalekite not with the sword, but with
prayer. You should not tremble before shield and spear, for one
word from the saints will put them to shame.
Assad.- Where is Moses? Where are the saints?
The Elder.- You should take courage and remember that the
sanctuary of the Lord is in peril.
Assad.- I thought the Lord would help us. Now it turns
out that we ought to help Him.
The Elder.- And above all, you should not forget that the I
Lord, if He lets you perish, can requite your death and your
martyrdom to your children and your children's children even
unto the tenth generation.
Assad.- Who can tell what my children and children's
children will prove to be? May they not be rascals of whom I
must be ashamed, who will go about disgracing me? (To the
ELDER.) Man, thy lips tremble, thy eyes shift restlessly, thy
teeth would like to rend the sounding words that conceal thy
anxiety. How canst thou demand of us the courage that thou
thyself hast not? For once I will speak to thee in the name of all
these people. Command the gates of the city to be opened. Submission will find mercy. I say it not for my own sake, I say it for
the sake of this poor mute, I say it for the sake of the women and




282


JUDITH


children. (The bystanders give signs of approval.) Command it
instantly, or we will do it without thy command.
Daniel (jerks away from him).- Stone him! Stone him!
People.- Was not this man dumb?
Assad (looking at his brother in amazement).- Dumb and
blind. He is my brother, thirty years old, and has never spoken
a word.
Daniel.- Yes, that is my brother. He has nourished me
with food and drink. He has clothed me and given me shelter
in his house. He has cared for me by day and by night. Give
me thy hand, thou faithful brother. (As he grasps it, he dashes
it, as if seized with horror, from him.)  Stone him! Stone
him!
Assad.-Woe! Woe! The spirit of the Lord speaks out
of the mouth of the dumb! Stone me!
(The people run after him, stoning him.)
Samaja (hurrying after them dismayed).-What will you
do? (Goes out.)
Daniel (inspired).- I come, I come, saith the Lord, but
whence you shall not ask. Think you it is time? I alone know
when it is time.
People.- A prophet! A prophet!
Daniel.- I let you grow and prosper like corn in summertime. Think you that I will surrender my harvest to the Gentiles?
Verily, I say unto you, that shall never come to pass.
(JUDITH and MIRZA appear among the people.)
People (prostrating themselves).- Joy! Joy!
Daniel.- And however great your enemy be, I need but a
little to overthrow him. Blessing, blessing be upon you! For
I will dwellwith you and will not forsake you, if you forsake me not.
(After a pause.) Brother, thy hand!
Samaja (coming back).- Thy brother is dead. Thou hast
slain him. That was thy thanks for all his love! Oh, how gladly
would I have saved him! Why, we were friends from youth up.
But what could I do against so many whom thy folly had maddened. 'Take care of Daniel,' he cried to me when his dimming




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


283


eyes recognized me.  I lay these words to thy heart as a burning legacy. (DANIEL attempts to speak and cannot; he whimpers.)
(Samaja to the people).-Shame upon you that areon your knees!
Still more shame upon you that have put to death a noble man
who wished you well. Ha! You followed him as furiously as if in
him you could stone your own sins to death. All that he uttered
here against the elder, not out of cowardice, but out of pity for
your affliction, was agreed upon by us this morning. This dumb
man sat by, cowering and apathetic, as always.  His face
betrayed no abhorrence. (To the ELDER.) Everything that my
friend demanded I still demand: the prompt opening of the gates,
submission to favor and disfavor. (To DANIEL.) Now, show
that the Lord spoke through thee. Curse me as thou didst curse thy
brother. (DANIEL, in the greatest anguish, tries to speak and
cannot.) Do you see the prophet? A demon of the pit that
wished to seduce you, unsealed his lips, but God closed them
again and closed them forever. Or can ye think that the Lord
makes the dumb speak in order that they may become fratricides?
(DANIEL strikes himself.)
Judith (comes into the midst of the people).- Attempt it not.
Did it not lay hold upon thee like God's presence and bow thee
down to the earth in holy annihilation? Now wilt thou permit
thr deepest feeling to be given the lie?
Samaja.- Woman, what wilt thou? Dost thou not see that
this man is in despair? Dost thou not divine that he must despair
if he is a man? (To DANIEL.) Tear thy hair! Bruise thy head
against the wall, so that the dogs may lick up thy brains. That is
the only thing in the world for thee to do now. What is contrary
to nature is contrary to God.
Voices among the People.- He is right.
Judith (to SAMAJA).- Wilt thou prescribe the path which the
Lord should follow? Does He not cleanse every path by following it?
Samaja.- What is contrary to nature is contrary to God. \,
The Lord wrought miracles among our fathers; our fathers were
better than we. If He wishes to work a miracle now, why does




284


JUDITH


He not send rain? And why does He not work a miracle in the
heart of Holofernes and move him to retreat?
A Citizen (pressing upon DANIEL).-Die, sinner, thou who
hast misled us to stain our hands with the blood of the
righteous!
Samaja (steps between him and DANIEL). — No one may kill
Cain. Thus spake the Lord. But Cain may kill himself. Thus
speaks a voice within me. And Cain shall do it. Let this be a
token: if this man lives till morning, if he can bear his deed a whole
day and a whole night, then do according to his words and wait
till you sink down dead, or a miracle releases you. If not, do as
Assad told you, open the gates and surrender. And if in the
heaviness of your sins you dare not hope that the Lord will touch the
heart of Holofernes, then lay hand upon yourselves. Kill each
other and leave only the children alive. The Assyrians will spare
them, for they themselves have children, or wish to have. Make
a great slaughter of it, where the son shall stab the father, and
where the friend shall show his love to his friend by cutting his
throat without first being asked. (Takes DANIEL by the hand.)
I shall take this dumb man to my house. (Aside.) Verily, the
city his brother wished to save shall not go to destruction through
his raving. I shall lock him in an inner chamber; I shall slip a bare
knife into his hand. I shall speak to his very heart till he
fulfils what I, in the name of nature and as her prophet, have predicted. Thank God he is only blind and dumb, that he is not
deaf as well! (He goes off with DANIEL.)
The People (confusedly).- Why were our eyes not opened
before? We will wait no longer. Not an hour! We will open
the gates. Come!
Joshua (a citizen).- Whose fault was it that we did not submit as the other peoples did? Who led us to lift up our heads, already bowed down? Who bade us look at the clouds and thereby
forget the earth?
People.- Who but the priests and the elders?
Judith (aside).- 0 God, now do the unrighteous quarrel with
those who made them from nothing into something. (Aloud.) Do




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


285


you see in the misfortune which overtakes you only the charge
to deserve it by baseness?
Joshua (goes about among the people).- When I heard of the
march of Holofernes, it was my first thought that we should go
out to meet him and implore his mercy. Who among you thought
otherwise? (All are silent.) Why did Holofernes come? Only
to subdue us. If our submission had met him half way he would
not have come the whole distance, but would have turned back,
for he has enough to do. Then we should be sitting in peace
now, enjoying food and drink. Instead our miserable life leads
to nothing but all possible tortures.
People.- Woe! Woe!
Joshua.- And we are guiltless, we have not hardened our
hearts, we have always feared God. But Holofernes was still
far away, and the elders and priests were near and threatened&us. /
Then we forgot one fear in the other. Do you know what to do?
We will drive the elders and priests out of the city and say to Holofernes: 'These are the rebels.' If he have mercy upon them,
good; if not, we would rather lament for them than for ourselves.
People.- Will that save us?
Judith.- That is just as if one who could not defend himself
with his sword, were to murder with it the armorer who gave it
to him.
People.- Will it truly help us?
Joshua.- Why not? A head off is not a foot or a hand off.
People.- Thou art right. That is the way!
Joshua (to the ELDER, who has been gravely regarding the
scene).- What sayst thou to this?
The Elder.- I should offer counsel myself, if it could avail.
I am seventy-three years old to-day and should like well to go
unto my fathers. A few breaths more or less matter little. I
believe, indeed, that I have earned an honest grave, and should
rather rest in the grave than in the maw of a wild beast; but if you
think that I can suffice for you all, I am ready. I give you this
gray-head, but be quick, that death may not anticipate you and
hurl the gift scornfully into a ditch. Yet allow me once more




286


JUDITH


to make use of this head that now belongs to you. It is not a
question of me alone, but of all the elders and priests. Will you
not take the pains, before you begin to sacrifice, to count the
offerings?
Judith (wildly).- Can you listen to that and not beat your
breasts and cast yourselves down to kiss the feet of the old man?
Now could I seize the hand of Holofernes and lead him hither, and
sharpen his sword even, if it grew dull before it had cut off every
head here.
Joshua.- The elder spoke wisely, very wisely. He could
not resist - that he saw - so he yielded, and in such a wayI wager if the lambs could speak, not one of them would wish to be
slaughtered. (To JUDITH.) Certainly it is not thee alone he
has moved.
Judith. — Resist he could not, but he could put to shame your
evil plan; he could kill himself. And he gripped his sword convulsively; I saw it and stepped nearer to hinder him; but
straightway something, like inward victory, burst forth upon his
face. He drew back his hand as if ashamed and looked upward.
The Elder.- Thou thinkest too nobly of me. It was not
my will, but His above.
People.- Thy counsel is bad, Joshua; we will not follow thee.
Judith.- I thank you.
Joshua.- But the opening of the gates, do ye still insist
upon that? Remember that an enemy to whom ye open them can
never be so cruel as one who is obliged to open them himself.
(To the ELDER.) Command it! For my proposal I shall ask
thy pardon, that is, to-morrow, if I am still alive.
Judith (to the ELDER).- Say no!
The Elder.- I say yes, for I myself see not whence help can
come to us.
Achior (advances among the people). —Open the gates, but
expect no mercy from Holofernes. He has sworn to exterminate
the people who should submit to him last so that no trace of them
shall remain. You are the last.
Judith.- He has sworn it!




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


287


Achior.- I stood beside him. And whether he will keep his
oath, you may know by this: He became enraged at me when I
spoke of the might of your God, and his anger is death. But
instead of hewing me down, he commanded, as you know, that I
should be led to you. You see he doubts your fall so little
that he lets the man whom he hates, and for whose head he will
pay its weight in gold, out of his hands. He cannot wreak
vengeance upon him until he can wreak it at the same time upon
you. And any thought of mercy is so far from him that he can
conceive of no heavier penalty than the one upon which he has
decided for you.
People.- The gates shall not be opened. If we are to die
by the sword, we have swords ourselves.
Joshua.- Let us appoint a time. Everything must have an
end.
People.- Appoint a time! Appoint a time!
The Elder.- Dear brethren, have patience yet five days
and await the aid of the Lord.
Judith.- And if the Lord needs five days more?
The Elder.- Then we shall be dead! If the Lord helps us, it
must be in these five days. Otherwise we shall not all live to see
the end of them.
Judith (solemnly, as if pronouncing sentence of death).Therefore in five days he must die.
The Elder.- We must do our utmost to hold out so long.
We must divide the Lord's offerings, the sacred wine and oil,
among us. Woe is me, that I must give such counsel!
Judith.- Yes, woe to thee! Why dost thou not counsel another extremity? (To the people.) Men of Bethulia, venture a
sally. The fountains lie close beside the wall. Divide into halves;
the one must cover the retreat and guard the door, while the other
makes an assault in mass. You cannot fail to bring back water.
The Elder.- Thou seest that none answer.
Judith (to the people).- How am I to understand that?
(After a pause.) Still, it pleases me. If you have not the heart
to undertake it with several hundred soldiers, you will be still less




288


JUDITH


bold to tempt the vengeance of the Lord, and stretch impious
hands toward the food upon the altar.
The Elder.-This is necessary, and it shall be replaced an
hundred fold.  The other is hazardous; an open gate ~would
be the death wound of the city. Even David ate the sacred
bread, and he did not die from the eating.
Judith.- David was the anointed of the Lord. If you will eat
as David, first become as David. Eat and drink, but first justify
yourselves.
A voice from the crowd.- Why do we listen to her?
Another.- Shame upon him who does not! Is she not an  J/
angel?
A Third.- She is the most God-fearing woman in the city.
So long as it was well with us, she sat quietly in her chamber.
Has anyone seen her in public except when she went to prayer
or sacrifice? But now that we are in despair, she leaves her
house and comes among us to comfort us.
The Second.- She is rich and has many possessions, but do
you know what once she said? 'I hold these possessions in trust
J   only; they belong to the poor.' And she does not say it merely,
she does it. I believe she does not take a husband again, only
because she would then cease to be the mother of the needy. If
the Lord helps us, it will be for her sake.
Judith (to ACHIOR).-Thou knowest Holofernes. Tell me
of him.
Achior.- I know that he thirsts for my blood; but believe
not that I slander him. If he stood before me with uplifted sword
and called to me, 'Kill me, or I will kill thee,' I know not what I
should do.
Judith.- This is thy feeling! He had thee in his power and
let thee go free!
Achior.- Oh, it is not that. That would rather make me
rebel. The blood rises to my cheek when I think how little he
must respect a man whom he himself sends over to his enemy,
weapon in hand.
Judith.- He is a tyrant!




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL.289


Achior.- Yes, but he was born to be one. Whoever is in his
presence feels his own self and the world to be nothing. Once I
was riding with him through the wildest mountains. We came
to a chasm, broad, dizzily deep. He spurred his horse; I seized the
reins, pointed at the abyss and said,'It is unfathomable.' 'Why,
I am not going down, I am going over,' he called and dared the
frightful leap. Before I could follow, he had turned and was back
beside me. 'I thought I saw a spring there,' he said, 'and wanted
a drink but it is nothing. Let us sleep away our thirst.' He
threw me the rein, sprang down from his horse, and went to sleep.
I could not restrain myself. I, too, climbed down. I touched
his garments with my lips and placed myself between him and the
sun that he might have shade. I am so much his slave that I
praise him whenever I speak of him.
/      Judith.- He loves women?
Achior.- Yes, but not otherwise than he does eating and
drinking.
Judith.- Curse him!
Achior.- What dost thou expect? I knew a woman of my
people who was mad because he disdained her. She stole into
his chamber and, just as he had lain down in bed, stepped threateningly before him with drawn dagger.
Judith.- What did he do?
Achior.- He laughed and laughed until she stabbed herself.
Judith.- I thank thee, Holofernes! I need but to think on
this and I shall have courage like a man.
Achior.- What meanest thou?
Judith.- Oh, rise up from your graves before me, you whom
he has put to death, that I may behold your wounds! Come before me, you whom he has dishonored, and open once more your
eyes, now closed forever, that I may read therein how guilty he
was! You shall all have reparation. But why do I think of you,
why not of the youths whom his sword can yet devour, of the
maidens whom he can yet crush in his arms? I will avenge the
dead and protect the living.  (To ACHIOR.)  Am I beautiful
enough for a sacrifice?




290,


JUDITH


Achior.- None ever saw thy equal.
Judith (to the ELDER).- I have business with Holofernes.
Wilt thou have the gate opened for me?
The Elder.- What dost thou mean to do?
Judith.- No one may know it save the Lord our God!
The Elder.- May He be with thee! The door stands open.
Ephraim.- Judith, Judith, never wilt thou accomplish it.
Judith (to MIRZA).- Hast thou the courage to accompany
me?
Mirza.- Still less should I have the courage to let thee
depart alone.
Judith.- And thou hast done what I commanded thee?
Mirza.- Here are wine and bread. It is only a little.
Judith.- It is too much.
Ephraim (aside).-Had I suspected this, I should have
followed her counsel! How hideous is my punishment!
Judith (goes a few steps, then turns once more to the people).Pray for me as for one who is dying. Teach the little children my
name and let them pray for me.
(She goes to the gate; it is opened. When she is outside, all
but EPHRAIM fall upon their knees.)
Ephraim.- I will not pray for God to protect her; I will
protect her myself. She is going into the lion's den - I believe
she does it only because she expects that all the men will follow
her. I will follow; if I die, I shall die only but a little before the
others. Perhaps she will turn back! (Goes out.)
Delia (comes among the people in the greatest agitation).Woe! Woe!
One of the Elders.- What ails thee?
Delia.- The dumb man - the terrible dumb man! He has
throttled my husband!
A voice from the crowd.- That is Samaja's wife.
The Elder (to DELIA).- How could that happen?
Delia.- Samaja came home with the dumb man. He went
with him into the rear chamber and barred the door behind. I
heard Samaja speaking loudly and the dumb man groaning and




<F


FRIEDRICH HEBBEL                   291
sobbing. 'What is it?' I thought and crept to the chamber
door and listened through a crack. The dumb man sat holding a
sharp knife in his hands, while Samaja stood beside him and severely reproached him. The dumb man turned the knife against
his own heart. I uttered a cry, aghast, for I saw that Samaja
made no attempt to prevent his mad deed. But suddenly the
dumb man threw the knife away and fell upon Samaja. He
dragged him, as if with superhuman power, to the floor, and seized
him by the throat. Samaja could not defend himself; he wrestled
with him. I called for help. Neighbors rushed in; the door,
barred on the inside, was broken down. Too late. The dumb
man had already strangled Samaja. Like a beast he was still
raging against the corpse, and laughed when he heard us enter.
When he recognized my voice, he became quiet and crawled to me
upon his knees. 'Murderer,' I cried. At that he pointed his
finger toward heaven, then searched for the knife on the floor,
picked it up, handed it to me, and indicated his breast, as if he
wished me to thrust it into his heart.
A Priest.- Daniel is a prophet. The Lord has made the
dumb to speak. He has wrought a miracle in order that you may
believe upon the miracles that He will yet do. Samaja, with his
prophesying, is brought to shame. He wronged Daniel; at
Daniel's hand has he received his reward.
Voices among the people.- Away to Daniel, that no harm
come to him!
The Priest.- The Lord has sent him, the Lord will protect /
him. Go hence and pray.
(The people disperse in different directions.)
Delia.- They have no further consolation for me than to
say that he whom I loved was a sinner. (She goes off)
ACT IV
(Pavilion of HOLOFERNES. HOLOFERNES and two of his
CAPTAINS.)
One of the Captains.- The commander looks like a fire about
to go out.




292


JUDITH


The Second.- One must beware of such a fire. All that come
near it, it swallows up that it may nourish itself.
The First.- Knowest thou that Holofernes came near to
killing himself last night?
The Second.- That cannot be true
The First.- But it is. A nightmare haunted him, and he
thought in his sleep that some one leaped upon him and strove to
throttle him. Caught in a net of dreams, he seized his dagger and,
thinking to run the enemy through from behind, he thrust it
into his own breast. Fortunately the steel glanced from his rib.
He awoke and saw it, and called out laughing, when the chamberlain went to bind up the wound: 'Let it run. It cools me- I
have too much blood.'
The Second.- It sounds incredible.
The First.- Ask the chamberlain.
Holofernes (turning quickly).- Ask me myself. (They are
terrified.) I call out to you because I am fond of you, and do not
like to have two heroes I can use prate away their lives, from
mere tedium, in mean speculations and comparisons. (Aside.)
They wonder that I could hear their conversation. Shame enough
for me, that I had time and attention for it! A head which cannot
fill itself with thoughts, which has room for the whims and
crochets of others, is not worth its keep. Ears collect alms for
the mind. Only beggars and slaves need them, and whoever uses
them becomes one or the other. (To the CAPTAINS.) I quarrel
not with you. It is my fault that you have nothing to do, and that
you must chatter to cram yourselves with lies. You shall live.
What was food yesterday, is filth to-day; woe to us that we must
muddle in it! But tell me what would you have done, if you had
actually found me dead in bed this morning?
The Captains.- Lord, what should we have done?
Holofernes.- If I knew, I should not tell it. He who can
think himself out of the world and name his successor, belongs
there no longer. I am thankful that my ribs are of iron. Such a
death would have been a very jest! And this error of my hand
would surely have fattened some lean god, for example, him of the




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


293


Hebrews.   How Achior would have swelled up, with pride in
his prophecy, and respect for himself! One thing I would know:
what is death?
One of the Captains.- A thing wherefore we love our lives.
Holofernes.- That is the best answer. Ah, indeed, only
because we can lose it hourly, do we hold it fast, and squeeze it
and suck it, until it bursts in pieces. If it went ever on as yesterday and to-day, we should see in the opposite of life its worth
and aim; we should rest and sleep and in our dreams fear nothing
so much as awakening. Now we seek by eating to protect
ourselves from being eaten and strive with our teeth against
the teeth of the world. Wherefore is it so matchless sweet to die
of life itself, to let the stream so swell that the vein which should
contain it bursts, to mingle the extreme of bliss with the shudder
of extinction. Often it seems to me that I once said unto myself:
'Now I will live.' Then I was released, as from the tenderest embraces, it grew bright around me, I shivered, a start, and I was
alive. So also would I say some time to myself: 'Now I will die.'
And if, as soon as the word is spoken, I do not vanish and be
sucked up by all the thirsty lips of creation, then shall I be
ashamed and confess to myself that I have made roots out of
fetters. Is it possible one may be slain by his bare thought?
One of the Captains.- Holofernes!
Holofernes.- Thou wouldst say one must not become intoxicated. True, for who knows not intoxication, knows nothing,
therefore, of how stale abstinence is. And yet is intoxication
the riches of our poverty, and I like it well so, when it bursts
from me like a sea and overflows all that bears the name of dam
or boundary. And if it once so drives and rushes through all
that lives, then should it not break through and come together,
and like a mighty storm in thunder and lightning, be able to
triumph over all the cold, wet, tattered clouds which the wind
hunts at its own sweet will? Surely, surely! (To the CAPTAINS.)
You wonder at me that I make of my head a spindle and wind
thread after thread from its ball of dreams as from a bundle of flax. y/
Indeed, thought is the thief of life., The seed dragged from the




294


JUDITH


earth into the light will not sprout. That I know right well, but
to-day, after the loss of blood, let it pass. Even now we have
time, for the people there in Bethulia seem not to know that the
soldier sharpens his sword as long as they prevent him from using
it.
A Captain (entering).- Lord, a Hebrew woman whom we
took upon the mountain stands before the door.
Holofernes.- What kind of a woman?
The Captain.- Lord, each moment in which thou seest her
not is a lost moment. Were she not so beautiful I should not
have led her to thee. We lay at the fountain, waiting for any
one who dared approach. Then we saw her coming, her maid
behind her like her shadow.  She was veiled and at first went
so rapidly that the maid could scarcely follow her. Then suddenly
she paused as if she would turn back, faced toward the city, and
threw herself upon the ground and seemed to be praying. Then
she came toward us and went to the fountain. One of the guards
went to meet her. I thought he would even lay violent hands
upon her, for the soldiers are fierce from long idleness, but he
bowed, drew water, and handed her the vessel. She took it
without thanks and raised it to her lips, but before she had drunk,
she put it away and poured it out slowly. This vexed the watchman; he threatened her with his sword. Then she threw back
her veil and looked at him. He all but cast himself at her feet.
She, however, spoke: 'Lead me to Holofernes. I come because
I wish to humble myself before him and lay bare the secrets of
my people.'
Holofernes.- Bring her in. (The CAPTAIN goes out.) All the
women of the world I am glad to see except one, and her I have
never seen and will never see.
One of the Captains.- Who is that?
Holofernes.- My mother. I have as small wish to see her
as to see my grave. The thing that pleases me best is that I
know not whence I came. Hunters picked me up, a sturdy lad,
in a lion's den. A lioness suckled me. So it is no wonder that
I once crushed a lion itself in these my arms. But what is a




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


295


mother for her son? The mirror of his weakness of yesterday orf
to-morrow. He cannot look upon her without thinking of the
time when he was a pitiful brat that paid for the few drops of
milk he swallowed with smacking kisses. And if he forgets this,
he sees in her a spectre that juggles age and death before him and
makes his own person, his flesh and blood, repugnant to
him.
Judith (enters. She is accompanied by MIRZA and the CAPTAIN, who both stop at the door. At first she is confused, but quickly
gets possession of herself, goes toward HOLOFERNES, and falls at
his feet).- Thou art he whom I seek. Thou art Holofernes.
Holofernes.- Thou thinkest he must be lord here on whose
garments glitters the most gold.
Judith.- Only one has such a countenance.
Holofernes.- Were I to find a second, I should lay his head
at his feet, for to my countenance, I think, I alone have the right.
One of the Captains (to the other).- A race that has such
women is not to be despised.
The Second.- The women alone would be fit cause for war.
Now.Holofernes has a diversion. Perhaps she will smother his
whole wrath with kisses.
Holofernes (lost in contemplating her).- As long as one looks
upon her, is it not as if one were taking a costly bath? What a
man sees, he becomes! The great rich world did not enter the
bit of distended skin in which we live; we received eyes that we
might gulp it down piecemeal. None but the blind are miserable; I swear that never again will I have anyone blinded.  (To
JUDITH.) Thou art yet upon thy knees? Arise. (She rises.
He seats himself upon his throne under the canopy.) What is thy
name?
Judith.- My name is Judith.
Holofernes.- Fear not, Judith. Thou pleasest me as none
has ever pleased me.
Judith.- That is the goal of all my wishes.
Holofernes.-Now acknowledge wherefore thou hast left
those in the city and come to me.




296


JUDITH


Judith.- Because I know that none can escape thee! Because our own God will give my people into thy hands.
Holofernes (laughing).- Because thou art a woman, because
thou dost rely upon thyself, because thou knowest that Holofernes has eyes; am I not right?
Judith.- Hear me graciously. The wrath of our God is
kindled against us.  Long has He made known through his
prophets that He will punish my people for their sin.
Holofernes.- What is sin?
Judith (after a pause).- A child once asked me that. The
child I kissed. What I should answer thee, I know not.
Holofernes.- Speak further.
Judith.- Now they stand between God's wrath and thy
wrath and tremble sorely. Withal they are suffering of hunger
and dying of thirst. And their great need misguides them to new
offense. They wish to eat the holy offering, which even to
touch is forbidden. It will become as fire in their entrails.
Holofernes.- Why do they not yield?
Judith.- They have not the courage. They know that they
have deserved the worst. How could they believe that God
would turn it from them? (Aside.) I will try him. (Aloud.)
In their anxiety they go further than thou canst go in thy fury.
Thy vengeance would grind me to pieces if I were to say how much
their fear dares to sully the hero and the man in thee. I look up
at thee, I descry in thy countenance the noble bounds of thy
wrath, I find the point beyond which in its mightiest passion it will
not flare. Then must I blush, for I remember that they presume
to expect from thee every horror which only a guilty conscience, in
cowardly self-torture, can conceive, that they venture to see in
thee a hangman, because they themselves are worthy of death. (She
falls down before him.) Upon my knees I beg of thee forgiveness
for this affront from my deluded people.
Holofernes.- What dost thou? I will not have thee kneel
x/ before me.
Judith (rises).- They believe that thou wilt slay them all.
Thou smilest instead of being indignant? Oh, I forgot who thou




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


297


art! Thou knowest the natures of men; nothing can surprise
thee. It excites thee only to scorn when thy image appears in a
clouded mirror, deformed and distorted. But this must I say in
praise of my people: they of themselves would never have conceived such a thought. They desired to open the gate unto thee,
when Achior, the Moabite, came among them and terrified them.
'What are you doing,' he cried. 'Know you not that Holofernes
has sworn the ruin of all of you?' I know thou didst bestow upon
him life and liberty. Thou didst send him over to us, because
thou wouldst not wreak vengeance upon an unworthy object.
Magnanimously didst thou place him in the ranks of thine enemy.
He thanks thee for it by painting thy picture in blood and estranging every heart from thee. Is not my little race full of
conceit when it thinks itself worthy of thy rage? How couldst
thou hate those whom thou knewest not at all, whom thou didst
encounter upon thy way only by accident, and who shun thee not,
only because terror benumbs them and robs them of life and
senses? And if indeed something like courage had inspired them,
could that move thee to become less than thyself? Could
Holofernes himself persecute and malign in others all that makes
him great and peerless? That is unnatural and will never come
to pass. (She looks at him. He is silent.) Oh, would I were thou!
Only for a day, for an hour! Then should I, by sheathing my
sword, celebrate a triumph such as none has ever celebrated with
the sword. Thousands are trembling before thee now in that
city. 'You have defied me,' I would call out to them, 'yet even
because you have insulted me, will I give you your lives.  I will
avenge myself upon you but through yourselves. I will let you
go free, that you may be wholly my slaves.'
Holofernes.- Woman, dost thou not surmise that thou
makest this all impossible for me, because thou dost prompt me
to it? Had the thought arisen in me, perhaps I should have executed it. Now it is thine and- can never become my own. It
grieves me that Achior is right.
Judith (breaks out in wild laughter).- Forgive me! Give me
leave to scoff at myself. There are children in the city so inno



298


JUDITH


cent that they will laugh when they see the gleaming steel that
is to spit them. There are maidens in the city that tremble at
the sunbeam that would penetrate their veils. I was thinking
of the death which awaits these children; I was thinking of the
shame which threatens these maidens. I pictured this horror
to myself and thought that no one could be so strong as not to
recoil from such scenes. Pardon me for having ascribed to
thee mine own weakness.
Holofernes.- Thou wouldst adorn me, and that deserves my
thanks, even if the manner becomes me not. Judith, we must
not reason with each other. I am destined to inflict wounds,
thou to heal wounds. Were I negligent of my calling, thou
wouldst have no pastime. And thou must make allowance for
my warriors. People who know not to-day whether they will live
till to-morrow, must reach out bold hands and surfeit their bellies,
if they would have their share of the world.
Judith.- Lord, thou surpassest me in wisdom even as in
valor and strength. I had gone astray within myself, and now I
owe it to thee that I have found myself again. Ah, how foolish I
was! I know that they have all deserved death, that it was long
since foretold them. I know that the Lord my God has appointed thee His avenger, and yet I throw myself, overpowered
by mercy and pity, between them and thee. Happy for me that
thy hand held fast its sword, that thou didst not let it fall to dry
a woman's tears! How they would be confirmed in their arrogance! What would remain for them to fear, if Holofernes passed
by them like a storm that does not break? Who knows but that
they would see cowardice in thy magnanimity, and make mocking
songs to thy mercy?  Now they sit in sackcloth and ashes and do
penance, but for every hour of abstinence would they reconcile
themselves perhaps with a day of wild lust and frenzy. And all
their sins would be added to my reckoning, and I should be forced
to perish of remorse and shame. No, lord, remember thy
oath and annihilate them. Thus speaketh the Lord my God
through my mouth: He will be thy friend even as thou art their
foe.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


299


Holofernes.- Woman, I feel that thou art playing with me../
But no, I insult myself when I think that possible. (After a
pause.) Harshly dost thou accuse thy people.
Judith.- Thinkest thou I do it with a light heart? It is the
penalty of my own sins that I must accuse them of theirs. Believe
not that I have fled from them merely to escape the general ruin
that I saw before my eyes. Who would feel himself so pure as to
dare, when the Lord sits in mighty judgment, to withdraw from
it? I came to thee because my God commanded it, commanded
me to lead thee to Jerusalem, to deliver my people into thy hands
like a flock that has no shepherd. This did He bid me do one
night when I knelt before Him in despairing prayer, when I implored of Him thousandfold destruction of thee and thine, when
each of my thoughts sought to bind and throttle thee. His voice
resounded, and I cried aloud in triumph, but He had rejected my
prayer. He pronounced sentence of death upon my people; He
laid upon my soul the hangman's office. Oh, what a change was
that! I grew numb, but I obeyed. Hurriedly I left the city and
shook the dust from my feet. I came before thee and admonished thee to annihilate them for whose rescue I would so shortly
before have offered up flesh and blood. Lo, they will revile me \
and set a brand upon my name forever. That is more than death,
yet am I steadfast and waver not.
Holofernes.- They will not do it. Can anyone revile thee
if I leave none alive? Verily, if thy God will perform what thou
hast said, he shall become my god, and I will make thee great as
woman never was. (To the CHAMBERLAIN.) Lead her to the
treasure-house, and give her food from my table.
Judith.- Lord, I may not yet eat of thy food, for I should
sin. I came to thee, not to be recreant to my God, but to serve
Him aright. I have brought something with me; of that I shall
eat.
Holofernes.- And when that is gone?
Judith.- Be assured that before I can consume this little,
my God will perform through me what He intends. For five
days I have enough, and in five days will He fulfil it.  Still I




300


JUDITH


know not the hour, and my God will not tell me before it is come.
Therefore give order that I, without hindrance from thy people,
may go out into the mountains before the city to pray and await
the revelation.
Holofernes.- Thou hast permission. Never yet did I set
v/watch upon a woman's steps. And so in five days, Judith.
Judith (throws herself at his feet and then goes to the door).In five days, Holofernes.
Mirza (who for a long time has been showing by gestures her
terror and abhorrence).- Accursed, hast thou come to betray thy
people?
Judith.- Speak loudly! It will be well if all hear that even
thou believest my words!
Mirza.- Say thyself, Judith, if I must not curse thee?
Judith.- It is well! If thou doubtest not, surely Holofernes
cannot doubt.
Mirza.- Art thou weeping?
Judith.- Tears of joy, that I deceived thee. I shudder at
the power of a lie in my mouth. (They go off.)
ACT V
(Evening. HOLOFERNES' pavilion lighted up. In the rear
'a curtain that conceals the sleeping apartment. HOLOFERNES,
CAPTAINS, CHAMBERLAIN.)
Holofernes (to one of the captains).- Thou hast reconnoitered?
How is it in the city?
The Captain.- It is as if all there had buried themselves.
Those who keep the gates seem to have risen from the grave. I
took aim at one, but before I could let fly he fell to the ground
dead.
Holofernes.- Victory without strife, then. Were I younger,
that would displease me. Then I thought I was stealing my life
if I did not conquer it anew every day. What was bestowed
upon me I did not think I possessed.
'The Captain.- Priests are seen slinking through the streets,




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


301


mute and solemn - long white garments, such as among us the
dead wear -hollow eyes which seek to pierce the heavens -
cramp in their fingers whenever they fold their hands.
Holofernes.- May no one kill such priests! The despair
upon their faces is my confederate.
The Captain.- When they raise their eyes toward heaven
it is not god they seek there, but a rain-cloud. But the sun consumes the thin clouds that promise a drop of refreshment, and upon
their cracking lips falls his hot beams. Then hands are clenched,
eyes roll, heads are dashed against the walls so that blood and
brains flow down.
Holofernes.- We have seen that often. (Laughing.) We
ourselves have lived through a famine, when one would draw
back afraid from another's kiss for very fear of a bite on the cheek.
Holloa! Prepare the meal, let us be merry! (It is done.) Is
not to-morrow the fifth day?
The Captain.- Yes.
Holofernes.- Then it will be decided. If Bethulia surrenders, as this Hebrew woman foretold, she will come groveling
of her own will, this stiff-necked city, and lay herself at my
feet
The Captain.- Holofernes doubts?
Holofernes.- All things that he cannot command. But if it
comes to pass as the woman promised, if it is opened to me so
that I need not knock with my sword, then
The Captain.- Then?
Holofernes.- Then shall we receive a new god. Verily, I
have sworn that the god of Israel, if he favors me, shall become
likewise my god, and by all that are my gods already, by Bel
at Babel, and by great Baal, I will keep it. Here, this beaker
with its wine will I offer to him, to Je - J  (To the CHAMBERLAIN.) What saidst thou he is called?
The Chamberlain.- Jehovah.
Holofernes.- May the offering please thee, Jehovah! A
man offers it, and such an one as would not need to do it.
The Captain.- And if Bethulia does not yield?




302


JUDITH


Holofernes.- Oath against oath. Then will I have Jehovah
scourged, and the city - but I will not yet mark off the limits
of my wrath. That would be to play schoolmaster with the
lightning. What is the Hebrew woman doing?
/      The Captain.-Oh, she is beautiful!  But she is also
coy.
Holofernes.-Hast thou attempted   her? (The CAPTAIN
stands in confused silence.) Thou didst dare and yet knewest
that she was pleasing to me? (With a savage look.) Take that,
dog. (He hews him down.)    Take him  away and bring the
woman hither. It is a shame that she goes about among us Assyrians untouched. (The body is carried out.) A woman is a woman
and yet one imagines that there is a difference. Truly a man
feels his worth nowhere so much as on a woman's breast. Ah, when
they strive, trembling, against his embraces, in a struggle between
lust and shame; when they make feints at flight, and then, all at
once mastered by nature, hurl themselves upon his neck; when
their last bit of independence and consciousness rallies and impels
them, since they can no longer bid defiance, to voluntary complaisance; when their desire, awakened in every drop of blood by
treacherous kisses, vies with the desire of the man, and they urge
him where they should offer resistance - yes, that is life; then
one learns why the gods took the pains to make men, then one has
abundance, overflowing measure! And it is complete, if their
little souls were filled but a moment before with hate and cowardly
rancor, if the eye that now grows dim with rapture, closed
darkly when the victor entered; if the hand that now caresses
would gladly have mixed poison with his wine! That is the triumph of triumphs, and often have I celebrated it. And this
Judith - indeed, her glance is kindly and her cheeks smile like
sunshine, but in her heart dwells none but her god, and him will
I now dislodge. -In the days of my youth when I met an enemy,
instead of drawing my own sword, I would wrest his from his
hand and hew him down vith it. So will I undo this woman.
She shall fall before me through her own emotion, through the
perfidy of her own desire.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


303


Judith (enters with MIRZA).- Thou hast commanded,
mighty lord, and thy handmaid obeys.
Holofernes.- Sit down, Judith, and eat and drink, for thou
hast found favor in my sight.
Judith.- That will I do, my lord. I will be merry, for all
my life long I have never been so honored.
Holofernes.- Wherefore dost thou hesitate?
Judith (shuddering, and pointing to the fresh blood).- My
lord, I am a woman.
Holofernes.- Consider it well, this blood. It must flatter
thy vanity, for it flowed because it was kindled with passion for thee.
Judith.- Woe!
Holofernes (to the CHAMBERLAIN).- More carpets here. (To
the CAPTAINS.) Away with you! (The carpets are brought. The
CAPTAINS go out.)
Judith (aside).- My hair rises, but yet I thank Thee, 0 /
God, that Thou hast shown me horror, and in this form. The
slayer can I more easily slay.
Holofernes.- Now sit down. Thou hast become pale, thy
bosom flutters. Do I terrify thee?
Judith.- Lord, thou wert gracious unto me.
Holofernes.- Be honest, woman.
Judith.- Lord, surely thou wouldst despise me, if I
Holofernes.- Well?
Judith.- If I could love thee.
Holofernes.- Woman, thou darest much. Forgive me.
Thou darest nothing. Such a word I never heard before. Take
this golden chain for that word.
Judith (confused).- My lord, I understand thee not.
Holofernes.- Woe to thee if thou didst understand me! The
lion looks kindly upon the child who plucks boldly at his mane,
because he does not know him. Were the child, grown larger and
wiser, to attempt the same thing the lion would tear him to
pieces. Sit beside me, we will talk together. Tell me, what
didst thou think when thou didst first hear that I threatened thy
fatherland with my hosts?




304


JUDITH


Judith.- I thought nothing.
Holofernes.- Woman, they think of much who hear of
Holofernes.
Judith.- I thought of the God of my fathers.
Holofernes.- And cursed me?
Judith.- No, I hoped my God would do it.
Holofernes.- Give me the first kiss. (He kisses her.)
Judith (aside).- Oh, why am I a woman!
Holofernes.- And then when thou heardst the rumbling of
my chariots and the trample of my camels and the clatter of my
swords, what didst thou think then?
Judith.- I thought thou wert not the only man in the world,
and that out of Israel would arise one who should be equal to thee.
Holofernes.- When thou sawest that my name alone sufficed
to humble thy people to the dust, that your God forgot to work
miracles, and that your men wished for the garments of women -
Judith.- Then I cried out, fie, and hid my face as soon as
I saw a man, and when I wished to pray, my thoughts rose up
against me, and lacerated one another, and wound themselves
like serpents about the image of my God. Oh, since I experienced
that, I shudder at my own breast! It appears to me a cave into
which the sun shines, and which nevertheless harbors in its secret
corners the foulest reptiles.
Holofernes (looking sideways at her).- How she glows! She
reminds me of a fiery meteor I once saw climbing up the heavens
on a gloomy night. Be welcome, lust, distilled at the flames of
hate./Kiss me, Judith. (She does it.) Thy lips bore like leeches
and yet are cold.  Drink wine, Judith.  In wine is all we
lack.
Judith (drinks, after MIRZA has poured it out for her).- Yes,
in wine is courage, courage.
Holofernes.- And so thou hast need of courage to sit with
me at my table, to sustain my glances and meet my kisses?
Poor creature!
Judith.- 0 thou      (Controlling herself.) Pardon. (She
weeps.)




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


305


Holofernes.- Judith, I look into thy heart. Thou hatest
me. Give me thy hand and tell me of thy hate.
Judith.- My hand? O scorn, that lays the axe to the roots
of my humanity!
Holofernes.- Truly, truly, this woman is to be desired.
Judith.-Arise, my heart! Restrain thyself no longer.
(She stands up.) Yes, I hate thee, I curse thee, and I must tell
thee, thou must know how I hate thee, how I curse thee, if I am
not to grow frantic! Now kill me.
Holofernes.- Kill thee? To-morrow, perhaps; to-day we
shall first go to bed together.
Judith (aside).- How easy for me on a sudden! Now may
I do it.
Chamberlain (enters).-My lord, a Hebrew waits without,
before the tent. He implores urgently to be admitted to thy
presence. Things of the greatest importance
Holofernes (rises).-From the devil?  Bring him in. (To
JUDITH.) Are they going to surrender? Then tell me atonce the
names of thy kindred and friends. Them will I spare.
Ephraim (falls at his feet).- My lord, dost thou assure me of
my life?
Holofernes.- I assure it.
Ephraim.- Well! Then —      (Approaches him, draws his
sword suddenly and strikes at him. HOLOFERNES gives back.)
Chamberlain (rushes in).- Knave, I will show thee how men
are hewn down. (Is going to hew EPHRAIM down.)
Holofernes.- Hold!
Ephraim (tries to fall upon his sword).- Judith saw that.
Shame upon me forever?
Holofernes (prevents him).-Venture not a second time.
Wilt thou make the keeping of my word impossible? I assured
thee thy life and so I must protect thee against thyself. Seize
him. Is not my favorite ape dead? Put him into its cage and
teach him the tricks of his waggish predecessor. The man is a
curiosity; he is the only one who can boast of having struck at
Holofernes and come off with a whole skin. I shall show him at




306


JUDITH


court. (CHAMBERLAIN goes of with EPHRAIM. To JUDITH.) Are
there many snakes in Bethulia?
Judith.- No, but many mad men.
Holofernes. —To kill Holofernes; to quench the lightning
that threatens to consume the world; to crush the seed of an
immortality, to give a wide-mouthed braggart a brave beginning,
and at the same time hasten his end - Oh, how alluring that!
That is to seize upon the reins of destiny. To that I could mislead
myself, were I not what I am. But to seek to do great things in a
small way; first to spin the lion a net out of his generosity and
then attack him, murder in heart; to dare the deed and to buy off
the danger beforehand, cowardly and prudent: is that not,
Judith, making gods out of dung? Surely thou must cry fie
upon it, even though thy best friend attempts it upon thy bitterest
foe.
Judith.-Thou art great and others are small. (Softly.)
God of my fathers, save me from myself, that I may not honor
what I abhor! He is a man.
Holofernes (to the CHAMBERLAIN) Make my couch ready.
(CHAMBERLAIN goes off.)  Behold, woman, these arms of mine
have been plunged to the elbows in blood; my every thought
brings forth horror and devastation; my word is death. The world
seems wretched to me; methinks I was born to destroy it that
something better may come. Men curse me, but their curses
cling not to my soul; she spreads her pinions and shakes off their
curse like a mere nothing. So I must be in the right! 'Oh,
Holofernes, thou knowest not what this means!' a man once
groaned, whom I was roasting upon a grate. 'Truly, I do not
know it,' I said, and lay down at his side. Wonder not; it was
folly.
Judith (aside).- Cease, cease! I must slay him, if I am not
to kneel before him!
Holofernes.- Power! Power! That it is. Let him come
who will oppose me, who will overthrow me! I long for him.
It is dull to be able to respect no one but myself. He may bray
me in a mortar if it please him, and with the pulp fill up the hole




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


307


that I have torn in the world. I bore deeper and yet deeper
with my sword; if the cry of murder awake no rescuer, there is
none. The hurricane roars through the air in search of a brother;
but the oaks which seem to defy him he uproots, the towers he
topples over, and the globe he wrests from its hinges. Then he
sees clearly that he has no equal, and in disgust falls asleep. Nebuchadnezzar my brother! My lord he is, of a truth. Perhaps
he will throw my head yet to the dogs. Much good may such
fare do them! Perhaps I shall yet feed his entrails to the tigers
of Assyria. Then - yes, then I shall know that I am the measure
of humanity, and through an eternity I shall stand before their
dizzy eyes - an unattainable divinity, girt round about with
terror. Oh, the last moment! the last! Would it were already
here! 'Come hither, all to whom I have given pain,' I shall cry
out, 'you whom I have maimed, you from whose arms I have
wrested wives, and from whose sides, daughters, come and devise
tortures for me. Draw off my blood and let me drink it; cut
flesh from my loins and give it to me to eat.' And when they
think they have done their worst to me, and I tell them of something yet worse, and ask them graciously not to deny it to me;
when they stand around in shuddering astonishment, and I, in
spite of all my agony, in death and frenzy, smile upon
them, then shall I thunder forth: 'Kneel down, for I am your
god,' and close my lips and eyes and die quietly and unseen.
Judith (trembling).- And if the heavens hurl the lightning at
thee to dash thee to pieces?
Holofernes.- Then shall I stretch out my hand as if I myself
had commanded it, and the flash of death will clothe me with
somber majesty.
Judith.-Monstrous! Appalling! My senses and my
thoughts whirl like dry leaves. Man, monster, thou forcest thyself between me and my God! I must pray at this moment, and
I cannot.
Holofernes.- Fall down and worship me.
Judith.- Ha, now do I see clearly again. Thee! Thou




308


JUDITH


presumest upon thy power. Hast thou no foreboding that it
has gone astray, that it has become thy foe?
Holofernes.- I rejoice to hear something new.
Judith.- Thou believest thou hast thy power to storm the
world; what if it were given thee to master thyself? But thou
hast made it the food of thy passion; thou art the rider whom his
horses devour.
Holofernes. — Yes, yes, power is fated to kill itself, says
wisdom, which is not power. To struggle with myself, to make
my left leg a stumbling block for the right, that it may not tread
down neighboring ant hills! That fool in the desert, who fought
with his shadow, and at nightfall cried out, 'Now am I beaten,
for my enemy is as large as the world,' that fool was really sensible, was he not? Oh, show me the fire that quenches itself!
Do you find it not? Then show me that which feeds upon itself.
Do you find it neither? Then tell me, does the sentence pronounced upon the fire rest also upon the tree consumed by
it?
Judith.- I know not whether thou canst be answered.
Where the seat of my thoughts was, are now desolation and
gloom. Even my heart I no longer understand.
Holofernes.- Thou hast a right to laugh at me. One must
not wish to make anything comprehensible to a woman.
Judith.- Learn to respect woman! A woman stands before
thee to murder thee, and she tells thee of it!
Holofernes.- And tells me so as to make the deed impossible!
Oh, cowardice which thinks itself greatness! But truly thou desirest it only because I go not with thee to bed. To protect myself from thee I need only to give thee a child.
Judith.- Thou knowest not a Hebrew      woman! Thou
knowest only creatures who in their deepest degradation feel
themselves happiest.
Holofernes.- Come, Judith, I will know thee. Struggle as
thou wilt, for awhile — I will tell thee how long.  Another
beaker! (He drinks.) Now leave off struggling, it is enough.
(To the CHAMBERLAIN.) Away with thee! And whoever disturbs




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


309


me this night, he shall pay for it with his head. (He forces JUDITH
off.)
Judith (going out).- I must —I will —shame upon me,
now and forever if I cannot!
Chamberlain (to MIRZA).- Thou wilt remain here?
Mirza.- I must await my mistress.
Chamberlain.- Why art thou not such a woman as Judith?
Then I could be as fortunate as my master.
Mirza.- Why art thou not such a man as Holofernes?
Chamberlain.- I am what I am for Holofernes' convenience;
that the great hero himself may not need to serve up his food
and pour his wine; that he may have some one to put him to
bed when he is drunk. Now assure me in turn, why are there
ugly women in the world?
Mirza.- So that a fool can scoff at them.
Chamberlain.- Truly, and that one may spit in their faces
by daylight, if one has had the misfortune to kiss them in the dark.
Holofernes once cut down a woman who came before him in an
unseasonable time, because he did not find her beautiful enough.
He always strikes aright. Crawl into a corner, thou Hebrew
spider, and be quiet. (He goes off.)
Mirza (alone).- Quiet, yes, quiet! I believe that there (she
points toward the sleeping apartment) someone is being murdered,
whether Judith or Holofernes I do not know. Quiet, quiet!
I once stood upon the shore and watched a man who was drowning.
Anxiety urged me to spring in after him; anxiety held me back.
Then I screamed as loud as I could, and I screamed only that I
might not hear his screams.  So I speak now! O Judith,
Judith! When thou camest to Holofernes and madest him a
deceitful promise I did not understand, to deliver thy people into
his hands, then I held thee for a moment a traitress. I did thee
injustice and felt it at once. Oh, might I do thee an injustice now!
Might thy half-spoken words, thy looks and gestures deceive me
now as before! I have no courage, I am only afraid; but it is
not fear that speaks from me now, not a dread of failure. ]A
woman should bear men; never should she kill men!




310


JUDITH


Judith (rushes in with loosened hair, reeling. A second curtain
is drawn back. HOLOFERNES is seen asleep.    At his bed's
head hangs his sword).- It is too light here, too light! Put out
the candles, Mirza; they are shameless!
Mirza (leaping up).- She lives and he lives! (To JUDITH.)
How with thee, Judith? Thy cheeks glow as if the blood would
burst from them. Thy eyes are afraid.
Judith.- Look not upon me, Mirza. No one shall behold
me. (She reels.)
Mirza.- Lean upon me; thou art faint.
Judith.- What! I so weak? Away from      me! I can
stand, oh, I can more than stand!     I can do infinitely
more!
Mirza.- Come, let us fly from here.
Judith.-What, art thou in his pay? He dragged me off,
he pulled me down upon his shameful couch, he stifled my soul.
Wouldst thou endure all this? And now that I will be repaid
for the annihilation which I suffered in his arms; now that I
will avenge myself for his brutal attack upon my humanity;
now that I will wash off with his heart's blood the degrading
kisses which still burn upon my lips -now dost thou not blush
to draw me away?
Mirza.- Wretched woman, what wilt thou do?
Judith.- Miserable creature, dost thou not know? Does thy
heart not tell thee? I will do murder. (MIRZA draws back.)
Is there the least choice? Tell me that, Mirza. I would not
choose murder, if I - what am I saying?  Speak no word further,
maid. The world spins about me!
Mirza.- Come.
Judith.-Never! I will teach thee thy duty. See, Mirza,
I am a woman. 01, I should not feel that now! Hear me, and
do as I bid thee. If my strength should fail, if I should sink
down unconscious, do not sprinkle me with water. That will
avail nothing.\ Cry into my ear: 'Thou art a harlot!' Then will
I spring up, perhaps seize upon thee and try to strangle thee.
Then be not afraid, but cry to me: 'Holofernes made thee a




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


311


harlot, and Holofernes yet lives.' Oh, Mirza, then shall I be a
hero, such a hero as Holofernes!
Mirza.- Thy thoughts grow too mighty for thee.
Judith.-Thou dost not understand me, but thou must,
thou shalt understand. Mirza, thou art a maiden. Let me
bring light into the sanctuary of thy virgin soul. A maiden is a
silly being, who trembles at her own dreams, because a dream can
wound her mortally, and who yet lives only by the hope that she
will not always remain a maiden. For a maiden there is no
greater moment than when she ceases to be one, and every bound
of the pulse which she subdued before, every sigh which she has
repressed, exalts the worth of the sacrifice which she has to offer
in that moment. She brings her all - is it too haughty a demand,
if she wishes to inspire, with that all, etstacy and bliss? Mirza,
hearest thou me?
Mirza.- How should I not hear thee?
Judith.- Now think of it in its entire naked hideousness;
now picture it to thyself even to the point where shame throws
itself with upraised hands between thee and the figures of thy
imagination, and when thou cursest a world in which the greatest
atrocity is possible.
Mirza.- What then? What shall I picture to myself?
Judith.- What picture to thyself? Thyself in thy deepest
humiliation - the moment when thou art crushed body and soul
like grapes that come to a scene of drunken revelry and help to
close a coarse debauch with a coarser one - when sleeping desire
borrows from thy own lips as much fire as it needs to commit
murder of the thing most sacred to thee - when even thy senses,
made drunk like slaves who no longer recognize their lord, arise
against thee - when thou beginnest to think thy whole former
life, all thy thought and feeling, a mere insolent revery, and thy
shame thy true existence.
Mirza.- Thank God, I am not beautiful!
Judith.- I overlooked that when I came hither, but how
plainly did it rise up before me when I (she points toward the
chamber) entered there, whehn my first glance fell upon the couch




312


JUDITH


made ready. I threw myself down upon my knees before the
monster and groaned, 'Spare me!' Had he listened to the cry of
/my anguished soul, never, never would I -- but his answer was
to tear off my neckerchief and praise my breasts. I bit his lips
when he kissed me. 'Temper thy rapture; thou goest too far,'
he laughed in scorn and - oh, I was nearly unconscious, all a
convulsion, when something bright glittered before my eyes! It
was his sword. Upon that sword my reeling senses seized. If
I have forfeited in my degradation the right to exist, I will win
it back with this sword. Pray for me; now will I do it. (She
rushes into the chamber and snatches down the sword.)
Mirza (upon her knees).- Awaken him, 0 God!
Judith (sinks to her knees).- What, Mirza, what prayest
thou?
Mirza.- God be praised, she cannot do it!
Judith.- Mirza, is not sleep God himself, Who embraces
weary men? Whoever sleeps must be secure. (She rises and
looks at HOLOFERNES.) And he sleeps quietly, he has no foreboding that murder draws his own sword upon him! He sleeps
quietly - ha, cowardly woman, does what should arouse thee
make thee merciful? This quiet sleep after such an hour, is it not
the bitterest offence? Am I a worm that one may tread upon
me, and then, as if nothing had happened, go quietly to sleep?
I am no worm. (She draws the sword from the scabbard.) He is
smiling. I recognize it, that hellish smile. Thus he smiled when
he drew me down to him, when he --- kill him, Judith, he deflowers thee a second time in his dream; his sleep is only a beastly
chewing of the cud of thy dishonor. He stirs. Wilt thou delay
till desire, hungry again, awakes him, till he clutches thee anew
and       (She strikes off HOLOFERNES' head.)  See, Mirza,
there lies his head. Ha, Holofernes, dost thou respect me now?
Mirza (swoons).- Help!
Judith (shaken with horror).- She swoons. What, is my
deed so heinous that it congeals the blood in her veins and flings
her down as if dead? (Vehemently.) Wake from thy swoon,
fool; thy swoon accuses me, and that I will not endure.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


313


Mirza (waking).- Throw a cloth over it!
Judith.- Be strong, Mirza, I implore thee, be strong. Each
shudder of thine costs me a part of myself. This shrinking of
thine, this fearful turning away of thine eyes, this pallor of thy
countenance, might declare to me that I have done something
inhuman, and then must I —   (She seizes the sword.  MIRZA
throws herself upon her breast.) Rejoice, my heart, Mirza can still
embrace me! But woe to me, she took refuge in my breast, only
because she cannot look upon the dead, because she trembles at
the thought of a second swoon. Or will the embrace cost thee a
second swoon? (Thrusts her away.)
Mirza.- Thou art unjust to me, and more to thyself.
Judith (catches her hand, speaking softly).- If it were an outrage, Mirza, if I had really committed a crime, thou wouldst
not let me feel it, wouldst thou? Thou wouldst say to me kindly,
if I sought to sit in judgment and condemn myself, 'Thou art
unjust; it was an heroic deed.' (MIRZA is silent.) Ha, fancy
not that I stand as a beggar before thee, that I have already condemned myself and await thy pardon. It is an heroic deed, for
that was Holofernes, and I - I am such a thing as thou. It is
more than an heroic deed. I would fain see the hero whom his
greatest deed cost half as much as mine has cost me.
Mirza.- Thou speakest of revenge. One question I must
ask thee. Why didst thou come in the splendor of thy beauty
to this Gentile camp? If thou hadst never set foot in it, thou
wouldst have had nothing to avenge.
Judith.-Why did I come? The misery of my people
scourged me hither, the menacing famine, the thought of that
mother who tore open her own veins to suckle her languishing
child. Oh, now am I once more reconciled with myself! All this
I had forgotten.
Mirza.-Thou hadst forgotten it. Then it was not that
which impelled thee to plunge thy hand in blood?
Judith (slowly, crushed).- No- no- thou art rightit was not that - nothing impelled me save thought of myself.
Oh, what a swirl is here! My people are delivered, but if a stone




314


JUDITH


had beaten Holofernes down - they would have owed more
thanks to the stone than now to me. Thanks! Who wishes
that? But now I must bear my deed alone, and it bruises me.
Mirza.- Holofernes embraced thee. If thou bearest him
a son, what wilt thou answer if he asks thee of his father?
Judith.- Oh, Mirza, I must die, and I will! Ha, I shall hurry
through the sleeping camp, I shall raise aloft the head of Holofernes, I shall proclaim the murder, so that thousands will arise
and tear me to pieces. (Is going out.)
Mirza (softly).- Then they will tear me also to pieces.
Judith (stops).- What shall I do? My brain is dissolved
into smoke, my heart is like a mortal wound. And yet I can think
of nothing but myself. Oh, were it otherwise! I seem an eye
that is directed inward. And no matter how sharply I watch
myself, I become smaller, ever smaller, yet smaller. I must
cease, or I shall disappear into blank nothing.
Mirza (listening).- Hark, some one comes!
Judith (confused).- Be quiet, quiet! No one can come. I
have stabbed the world to the heart (laughing), and I did it well.
Now it will stop. What will God say to that, when he looks
down early in the morning and sees that the sun can go no more,
and that the stars have grown lame? Will He punish me? Oh,
no! I am the only one who is still alive. Whence could life come
again? How could He slay me?
Mirza.- Judith!
Judith.- Oh, my name hurts me!
Mirza.- Judith!
Judith (indignantly).- Let me sleep. Dreams are dreams.
Is it not ridiculous? Now I could weep. Oh, that I had some one
to tell me wherefore!
Mirza.- There is no hope for her. Judith, thou art a child.
Judith.- Yes, yes, God be praised! Only think, I did not
know that any more; I had deceived myself into intelligence, as
into a prison, and something fell to behind me, terrible, fast as a
brazen door. (Laughing.) I shall not be old yet to-morrow, or
even the day after, shall I? Come, we will play again, but some



FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


315


thing better. Just now I was a wicked woman who had done
a murder. Ha! Tell me what I shall be now!
Mirza (with averted face).- God! She is going mad..Judith.-Tell me, what shall- I be? Quick! Quick! Else
I shall be again what I was.
Mirza (pointing to HOLOFERNES).- See!
Judith.- Thinkest thou I do not know that still? Oh, yes,
yes! I beg for madness even, and it grows, now and then,
gloomy within me, but not dark. In my head are a thousand
holes, but they are all too small for my great thick understanding;
it seeks in vain to creep in.
Mirza (in greatest anguish).-The morning is no longer
distant. They will torture me and thee to death, if they find us
here; they will tear us limb from limb.
Judith.- Believest thou truly that one can die? I know,
indeed, that all believe it, and that one should believe it. Once I,
too, believed it; now death seems to me a nonentity, an impossibility. To die. Ha! What gnaws in me now will gnaw forever.
It is not toothache or fever, it is already one with me, and it will
suffice eternally. Oh, we learn something in pain! (Indicating
HOLOFERNES.) He, too, is not dead. Who knows that it is
not he who tells me all this, that he does not avenge himself by
making known to my shuddering spirit the secret of its immortality?
Mirza.- Judith, have mercy and come!
Judith.- Yes, yes, I beg of thee, Mirza, tell me what I shall
do. I am anxious even yet to do something.
Mirza.- Then follow me.
Judith.- Ah, but thou must not forget the most important
thing. Put the head there into a sack; I will not leave it behind.
Thou wilt not? Then I will not go a step. (MIRZA does it,
shuddering.) See, the head is my possession; I must take it with
me, that the people in Bethulia may believe I- woe, woe!
they will praise and extol me, when I make it known. And
woe, woe again, I feel that I thought of that before.
Mirza (going).- Now?




316


JUDITH


Judith.- My way grows clear. Listen, Mirza, I shall say
that thou hast done it.
Mirza.- I?
Judith.- Yes, Mirza, I shall say that in the moment of decision my courage grew recreant, but the spirit of thy God came
upon thee, and thou didst deliver thy people from their greatest
adversary. Then they will despise me as an instrument the Lord
cast aside, and for thee will be glory and praise in Israel.
Mirza.- Never!
Judith.-Oh, thou art right! It was cowardice. Their
joyful cries, their clanging cymbals and rolling drums will crush
me, and then shall I have my reward.    Come.    (Both go
of.)
(The city of Bethulia, as in the third act. An open place looking
toward the gate. A watch at the gate. Many people, lying and
sitting down in various groups. It is growing dawn. Two PRIESTS,
surrounded by a group of WOMEN, MOTHERS, etc.)
A Woman.- Did you deceive us when you said God is
almighty? Is He like a man, that He cannot fulfil what He
promises?
Priest.- He is almighty. But you yourselves have bound his
hands. He can help you only as you deserve it.
Women.- Woe, woe! What will become of us?
Priest.- Look behind you, and you shall know what awaits
you.
A Mother.- Can a mother sin so much that her innocent
child must die of thirst? (Holds up her child.)
Priest.- Vengeance has no bounds, for sin has none.
Mother.- I tell thee, priest, a mother cannot sin so much.
In her womb, the Lord may, if He is angry, smother the child;
if it is born, it should live. We bear children that we may have
a double self, that we may be able to love that self in the child
when it laughs at us so pure and innocent, when we must hate
and despise that self in ourselves.
Priest.-Thou flatterest thyself. God lets thee bear children that He may chastise thee in thy own flesh and blood, that
He may pursue thee yet beyond the grave.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


317


The Second Priest (to the first). —Are there not enough desperate people in the city already?
First Priest.- Wilt thou be idle when thou shouldst sow?
Strike root while the ground is soft.
Mother.- My child shall not suffer for me. Take it away!
I shall shut myself in my chamber and meditate upon all my sins,
and for each I shall visit upon myself two-fold torture. I shall
punish myself until I die, or until God Himself calls down from
heaven, 'Cease.'
Second Priest.- Receive thy child and nurse it. Thus wills
the Lord thy God.
The Mother (presses it to her breast).- Yes, I shall watch it
until it grows pale, until its whimpering is stifled and its breath
stops. I shall not turn away from it, not even if anguish makes its
childish eye expressive before its time, and it looks up at me as if
from an abyss of misery. I shall do it, to do unequalled penance.
But if it becomes still more expressive and looks upward and
clenches its fist?
First Priest.- Then shalt thou close them, and thou shalt
learn with horror that a child, too, can rebel against God.
The Mother.- Moses' staff smote the rocks and a cool spring
gushed forth. That was a stone! (She strikes her breast.)
Accursed breast, what art thou? From within the most passionate love urges; from without, hot innocent lips press thee, yet
thou givest not a drop. Give! Give! Draw each vein dry
and give the little one to drink again.
Second Priest (to the first).- Does it not move thee?
First Priest.- Yes. But I never see in emotion aught but
an assault upon my faith, and I repress it. With thee the man is
dissolved into water. Thou canst catch him up in a handkerchief
or freshen a violet with him.
Second Priest.- Tears whereof we ourselves know nothing
are allowed.
Another Woman (pointing to the other).- Hast thou no consolation for her?
First Priest (coldly).- No.




318


JUDITH


The Woman.- Then thy God sits nowhere but on thy
lips.
First Priest.- This word alone is enough to make Bethulia
fall into the hand of Holofernes. Upon thy soul I lay the downfall of the city. Thou askest wherefore she suffers. It is because
thou art her sister. (The group passes by.)
(Two citizens who have seen the incident come forward.)
First.- Through my whole body I feel this woman's suffering. Oh, this is fearful!
Second.- It is not yet most fearful. That will not be until
it occurs to this woman that she can eat her own child. (He
strikes his forehead.)  I fear that has occurred to my wife already.
First.- Thou art mad!
Second.- That I might not be obliged to slay her I fled from
my house. Lie not! I ran forth because I shuddered at this inhuman fare for which she seemed to lust, and because I feared
that I could partake of it.  Our little son lay dying; she, in
boundless sorrow, had fallen to the floor. Suddenly she raised
herself and said softly: 'Is it indeed a misfortune that the boy is
dying?' Then she bent down to him and murmured, as if indignant: 'Still life in him!' It grew hideously clear to me; she
saw in her child only a morsel of flesh.
First.- I could go thither and strike down thy wife, even
though she is my sister!
Second.- Thou wouldst come either too soon or too late.
If she had not killed herself before eating, certainly she would do
it as soon as she had eaten.
A Third Citizen (enters).- Perhaps rescue will come. This is
the day set for Judith's return.
Second.- Rescue now! Now! God, God! I withdraw all
my prayers. That Thou couldst hear them, now it is too late,
that is a thought I have not had, that I cannot endure. I will
praise thee and glorify thee, if thou canst prove thy infiniteness
even in increasing misery, if thou canst drive my numbing spirit
beyond its bounds, if thou canst place before my eyes a horror
which can make the horror I have already beheld, forgotten and




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL


319


ludicrous. But I shall curse thee, if thou comest now between
me and my grave, if I must bury my wife and child and cover
them with earth instead of with the clay and mould of my own
body. (The group goes off.)
Mirza (before the gate).- Open the gate, open the gate.
Watch.      o is there?
Mirza.- It is Judith, Judith, with the head of Holofernes.
Watch (calling out to the city, while opening the gate).Holloa! Holloa! Judith is come back!
(The people gather. Elders and priests come in. JUDITH
and MIRZA enter the gate.)
Mirza (throws down the head).- Know you this?
People.- We know it not.
Achior (comes forward and falls upon his knees). - Great art
Thou, God of Irsael, and there is no God beside Thee! (He rises.)
That is the head of Holofernes. (He catches JUDITH by the hand.)
And this is the hand into which it was given? Woman, my
brain reels to look upon thee.
The Elders.-Judith has set her people free! Praise her
name!
People (gather about JUDITH).-Judith! Judith!
Judith.- Yes, I have killed the first and the last man of this
earth, in order that thou (to one) mayst tend thy sheep in peace;
that thou (to a second) mayst plant thy cabbage; and that thou
(to a third) mayst ply thy craft and beget children which shall be
like thee.
Voices among the People.- Forward! Out to the camp!
Now they are without a master.
Achior.- Hold! As yet they know not what has happened
in the tnight. Wait until they themselves give the signal for
attack. When their outcry is heard, then shall we sally forth
among them.
Judith.- You owe me gratitude, gratitude which you cannot
discharge with the firstlings of your flocks and of your gardens.
I was impelled to do the deed; it is for you to justify it. Become




320


JUDITH


holy and pure; then can I be vindicated. (A wild, confused outcry
is heard.)
Achior.- Hark, now it is time.
A Priest (points at the head).- Set it upon a pike and bear it
before you.
Judith (steps in front of it).- The head shall be buried
straightway.
Watch (crying down from the walls). —The guards at the
fountain flee in wild disorder. One of the captains stands before
them - they draw their swords upon him. One of our people
comes running toward them. It is Ephraim. They do not see
him at all.
Ephraim  (before the gate).- Open! Open! (The gate is
opened. EPHRAIM rushes in.  The gate remaining open, Assyrians
are seen flying past.) They might have spitted me, roasted me
upon the grate. All that I escaped. Now that Holofernesis
headless, so are they all. Come, come! A fool who still fears!
Achior.- Away! Away!
(They swarm out of the gate. Voices are heard crying, 'In
Judith's name!')
Judith (turns away in disgust).- That is butcher's courage.
(The PRIESTS and ELDERS form a circle about her.)
One of the Elders.- Thou hast blotted out the names of
heroes, and set thine own in their place.
The First Priest.- Thou hast put people and church deeply
in thy debt. No more to the dark past, but to thee may I point
henceforth, when I wish to show how great is the Lord our God.
Priests and Elders.- Demand thy reward.
Judith.- Do you jest at me? (To the ELDERS.) If it were
not a holy duty, if I might have left it undone, is it not then pride
and crime? (To the PRIESTS.) When the sacrifice falls with
rattling throatat the altar, do you torture it with questions what
price it sets upon its blood and life? (After a pause, as if seized
by a sudden thought.) And yet, I demand my reward. Pledge me
first that you will not deny it.
Elders and Priests.- We pledge it in the name of all Israel.




FRIEDRICH HEBBEL                    321
Judith.- Then you must kill me, when I ask you to do it.
All (astounded). — Kill thee?
Judith.- Yes, and I have your word.
All (shuddering)- Thou hast our word.
Mirza (seizes JUDITH by the arm and leads her forward, out
of the circle).- Judith! Judith!
Judith.- I will not bear Holofernes a son. Pray God that.
my womb be unfruitful! Perhaps He will be gracious unto me.




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN*
BY F. JEAN-DESTHIEUX
I         ROM   now  on it is necessary to distinguish two parts
in the work of Nicolas Beauduin.
The first - so far the longest, but which is not
likely to remain the most important -includes the
majority of his works from        The Ascending Road to
The Sisters of Silence. Such a production would be
enough to occupy the lifetime of an ordinary poet. Many would
pay dear, I imagine, to be able to leave behind them a monument
as imposing as that of which this man, who is still quite young,
happily bears the weight. For it is a real monument now, this
collection of poems full of grace and life, of youth and pride, of
hope and the future. And yet, considerable as it is, the work
erected so far by Nicolas Beauduin forms only the foundation for
the palace of his dreams.
For I do not believe that he cares to see, in these first volumes, anything but harmonious and skilful preludes. They have
nothing in common with what he will give us, although it is
difficult to foresee what his definitive work will be: it has scarcely
begun.
The   Ascending    Road    leads   to  the   Triumphs.     Nicolas
Beauduin has followed it; for he knew well that these Triumphs
alone would procure for him that Divine Folly which gave him
Two Kingdoms.       And when there passed, in        The Cities of the
World, the Nocturnal Review of The Princesses of His Dream and of
The Sisters of Silence, how have we not understood that he was
*We take particular pleasure in introducing to our readers the work of M.
Nicolas Beauduin, the distinguished founder of the Paroxyst school in French poetry,
and the founder and editor of the important French quarterly review of modernist
art and literature, 'La Vie des Lettres.' M. F. Jean-Desthieux, who sends us this careful
study of M. Beauduin's work, is a well-known French critic of the advance guard, and
associate editor of the review, 'La Flora.' We publish M. Beauduin's article on 'The
Poetry of the Epoch' in conjunction and cooperation with the Mercure de France, to
whom we tender our best thanks, and M. Beauduin has personally selected the poem
which seems to him to be most representative of his aims, and the dynamic tendency
of the school he represents. - THE EDITORS.


322




F. JEAN-DESTHIEUX


323


preparing the marvelous expedition whose return we shall
presently see, charged with glory and trophies?
These are but a preparation; they are the preludes full of
promise for the titan music that he is going to offer us.
For this poet is a wise man. Before rushing upon the waves
of the infinite ocean, he wished to sound these depths and to have
knowledge of these voices. It is thus that he knew how to charm
us. To the cold Parnassian mouldings and the mystic fogs of
symbolism, he opposed - a living and specifically modern song -
the symphony of his heart.
Nicolas Beauduin has written: 'The poet is of all time; he
contains in him the past, the present, and the future.'  From his
explorations in the Past, he has brought back to us rich and ripe
harvests. It is there that he conquered that Divine Folly which
makes true poets and which has permitted him to understand all
the great mythic figures of Legend and History.
M. Gaston Picard very well defined the dominant idea of
this volume which is, at the same time, a lofty philosophic sum,
when he wrote: 'In The Divine Folly, the poems keep a singly unity.
This unity is Love regenerating the World..... In these poems
which follow one another in the giant frescoes of a unique epic,
the idea of Love the regenerator appears incessantly... '
Such, in fact, is the general theme of this series of dramatic songs
which do not form poems, but a single poem of remarkable unity.
Prometheus, Samson, Michelangelo, the Christ Himself, all cry
out their sublime lamentations; the same destiny bows them and
the same God imposes on them His Will.
If we had the time to delay longer on this book, I should like
to show how great the art of Nicolas Beauduin already was, how
sure he was of himself, writing a very pure tongue, speaking everyday words and yet expressing himself with an amplitude and a
force of which few great poets were capable.
Some have wished to compare The Divine Folly to the Legende
des Siecles, even to the Sovereign Rhythms of Verhaeren. I can
scarcely understand why. It is true that such comparisons are




324


NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


always impulsive and rarely explicable. But I ought to confess
that, in the design of the book, I see nothing comparable to these,
except the fact of setting before us heroes we know and making
them utter words of eternal truth. One must admit that the
system, excellent and perilous as it is, has served others besides
Nicolas Beauduin, Victor Hugo and Verhaeren. Now, in the
expression, I see nothing else which could make a person think
especially of Hugo. I believe that Nicolas Beauduin possesses
lyric faculties of which Victor Hugo has given an example in our
national literature. But is this enough to warrant comparisons?
Nicolas Beauduin is powerfully original enough, I think, for a
man to take the trouble to see it. But if it is absolutely necessary
to make some sort of a comparison, then it does not seem to me
impossible, and I am willing to say that The Divine Folly seems
to me more like a series of new Destinies than a paraphrase of the
Legende des Siecles. For to what end are the magnificent discourses of heroes in this book, if not to reveal to us in some sort
the real enigma of their destinies?
As I am unable to pause at all the steps successively traveled
by the poetic genius of the author of The Two Kingdoms, I shall
be pardoned for proceeding at once to The Cities of the World.
Moreover, has not one critic contended that The Two Kingdoms
is the logical complement to The Divine Folly? I willingly agree
with him. On the other hand the importance of Nicolas Beauduin's The Nocturnal Review is such that one cannot, in a general
study of this kind, pass over the poem in silence with the design of
enlarging longer on another.
Onorate l'altissimo Poeta...
Sovra gli altri com'aquila vola.*
The epigraph of Nicolas Beauduin's poem confesses to us his
desire: to sing the poet and to honor him. From the heights on
which he had set our admiration, he rushes forth to mount still
higher; he attains then a lyricism of an intensity hitherto un*Honor the Sublime Poet... Over the rest like the eagle he flieth.




F. JEAN-DESTHIEUX


325


known and which makes us say that he has attained paroxysm.
From this point dates the beginning of the new school of poets of
modern life, called paroxysts. But this is not exact, for he has
shown us since that he was capable of a still greater pathos and of
a still more living vision of the world.
I consider as marking a single resting-place in the evolution
of Nicolas Beauduin's art The Cities of the World, The Princesses
of My Dream, and The Sisters of Silence. Very little time separates them; and I am almost certain that, later, when the poet will
publish his works in a definitive edition, he will reunite in a single
volume these three short poems. And he will have reason. For
by them he wishes to prove - first to himself and then to usthat he was capable of equalling by the extraordinary force of his
lyricism the most powerful poets that France has had before him.
The critics who have spoken with some intelligence of these poems
have thoroughly understood this; and it is comforting for us to
perceive that true talents do not pass altogether unnoticed in a
time when, although her priests are numerous (much too numerous!), poetry is not often understood and sought out.
It is the custom for the critics to be silent about the works of a
young author. And we are sensible of a certain consolation when
we think, that if he knew others, Nicolas Beauduin did not know
this injustice at least. From his first appearance this will attest
the rare worth of his talent - he was taken into consideration by
the critics of the vanguard. The three poems which occupy me at
present brought him numerous articles. I shall not pass these
articles here in review; this is not the place; but I have pleasure
in averring that their authors have, most often, nobly endeavored
to enter into the poet's design. M. G. F. Tautain, for example,
merits particular praise. It seems to me that he was blessed with
a rare clairvoyance when he wrote in Le Parthenon:
'The occultists recognize in things a triple and single significance: positive, symbolic, analogical. Nicolas Beauduin has
in like manner given to The Princesses of My Dream a literal sense,
Woman; a comparative sense, Nature; and a superlative sense,
Truth or God. Thus, across the mystics and the theosophists, the




326


NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


poet knows how to arrive again at the conclusions of Dante and
Goethe, on the Eternal Feminine...
Perhaps Nicolas Beauduin in composing The Princesses of
My Dream did not imagine that his work would be considered
from this point of view. M. Paul Bourget has admirably said
that the artist can no more measure the extent of his work than
a father the energies of the son sprung from him. There is a
phenomenon here which I cannot consider, but of which Nicolas
Beauduin is certainly an illustration. Never, I am sure, would
he have dared to believe that in composing, for his pleasure and to
satisfy his natural need of expansion, a poem such as The Princesses, he would realize a work which is only comparable to the
Vita Nuova. And I exaggerate nothing. Long before me, M.
Roger Devigne has marked this glorious distinction. And when,
in speaking of one of the poet's very first works, M. Maurice
Gauchez cried: 'Ideas, thoughts, philosophies crowd, heap up,
entangle and interlace in the most voluptuous windings of his
imaginative flight...', he justly noted what should lead
Nicolas Beauduin to the most elevated realms, sometimes of the
subjective and the unconscious. For, with M. Beauduin, the
instinct for synthesis is innate. He synthetises as rapidly as
others conceive. And it is, I suspect, a peculiarity in every way
worthy of remark.  I shall make no more of it for the moment;
I speak only of the poet, and not of the aesthete nor the philosopher. Moreover, of the philosopher in himself, I shall say no
more. There is in this connection a phenomenon of subjective
order which must be taken into account. So fine a critic and
psychologist as M. Abel Hermant recently exclaimed: 'O such
depth! Shakespeare comprehends all Shakespeare.' This reflection seems to me most acute. And I would wager that
Nicolas Beauduin does not understand all that, later, one will
be apt to read into his words - and even now, that which one
reads into them. And so we return to M. Paul Bourget's expression.


In his metre, as well as in his ideas, Nicolas Beauduin has




F. JEAN-DESTHIEUX


327


evolved a great deal, has evolved incessantly, increasing his acquisitions, fortifying his art. The verses of The Divine Folly
always followed one another by strophes or by leashes when the
poem was not uniformly composed; and each leash or strophe was
written in verse with the same number of feet. As he evolves,
Nicolas Beauduin introduces more variety in his works. The
three poems of which I am speaking are almost composed in
rhymes, or at least assonanced, vers libres, which recall the methods
of a La Fontaine, but which mark a very clear step toward a
dynamic poetry of new expression.
'In Nicolas Beauduin,' M. Romain Rolland has written
lately, 'there is enough stuff to make ten poets, of which only
one is of the first rank. Let this one kill the others. Otherwise
the rest will be in danger of stifling him.' There is a certain
pessimism in this assertion. But I do not think that, at bottom,
M. Rolland is much mistaken: now that Nicolas Beauduin has
fulfilled the thousand deeds of prowess of which he had to show
us that he was capable; now that he has let the stream overflow
in order that the neighborhood might be beneficently watered
it is necessary that he decide to choose at the crossroads from the
highways which call him,-that the poet in him which predominates
should discipline the other nine (but not kill them!) and the
future will be his!
It is interesting to study in detail the new phase which
Nicolas Beauduin's work assumes, representative as it is of what
we call the new poetry. No one of the poets in the generation of
1900 to which the author of The Cities of the World belongs, has
made proof of as much activity as he. And by his rare power of
assimilation, by his extraordinary faculties of synthesis, he has
managed to set himself up among his brethren as a true prophet.
Nicolas Beauduin wished to become the poet of virile and
modern humanity. Far from him are the amorous poets who seek
in Woman the beguiler and fondler, priests of luxury! On the
other side of the mazes of the decadents, he plunges desperately
into the great modern light.




328


NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


Pioneer poet, we see him now advance, iron wand in hand,
'to the encounter of his brethren.' He has breathed into art the
principle of action. To death, to regret for yesteryear, to sterile
lamentation of a world which perishes, he has preferred modern
beauty. She has appeared to him renewing the whole inspiration
of lyric poetry. He has drawn the muse from her solitude and
from her house of cards, to project her into the midst of social
life, into the tumult of 'laborious days,' into this great sonorous
workshop of a world, among living men. Far from your wan
lovers, says he:
'In the midst of thy formidable modern activity,
Thou shalt dance on the steamer and the aeroplane,
Thou shalt be in the lighthouse with its multiple rays,
And thou the tardy, and thou the soft and the passive,
Free, thou shalt skip on the locomotive.'
It is the 'new beauty' that he sings! And he is one of those
who, by strength of lyricism, has, in a manner, created it: has
made it at least nearly undeniable.
No doubt, we may say that the railroad is no longer so new;
in fact, it is an old story. And I cannot forbear smiling when I
say that, notwithstanding, the poets of our day,- those who seek
what is new,- each claim the honor of having been the first to
express the poetry of the express train and of the country which
flows by its windows.
It is a bit childish, as a matter of fact. The modern world is
not wholly summed up in the railroad, and I shall even reproach
M. Beauduin for having called the railway station the 'modern
temple': this enthusiasm for the railroads is rather astonishing.
Was it not De Vigny who, a long time ago, first sang of the railroad?
The railroad is by no means the newest thing in the world,
and the pioneers in the poetic art of to-morrow are mistaken who
pretend to see nowhere but in the railroad the 'new beauty.'
To understand this new beauty, one must be 'born anew,' feel
an extraordinary power to render it concrete by images, to trans



F. JEAN-DESTHIEUX


329


pose it into the realm of reality on the plane of enthusiasm, and to
breathe into it the spontaneous illumination of the lyric creator.
Nicolas Beauduin, by his power of expression, by the vertiginosity
of his images, by the dynamic force of his rhythms, has found
himself at the summit of such a task. His knowledge of modern
philosophic systems has served him well. It would be easy to
trace the affinities existing between his lyrical attitude and the
mystic personalism, the pathetic suggestion, the introspectiveness
of Lipps, and all that refers to monism, to Bergson and to Bazaillas.
He is the singer of the mechanical applications of science:
'Beauty of movement, beauty
Of capitals radiant in the light,
Of neighing autos, of fluid lights
And of peoples rearing in their immense effort.
Dynamic beauty of many faces,
Sometimes of blood, sometimes of fire, sometimes of iron.'
He sings wholly of magnified modern effort:
'In place of Parthenons under blue olive-trees
We shall name the beauty of factory flame,
The palpitation of artisan suburbs,
The fever of steamers lashing toward America,
The dry docks, the wharves and the dockyards.'
This is the beauty that Nicolas Beauduin sings in many
poems of The City of Men and of The Cosmogonic Man:
'Ah! the New Beauty....
Inclined toward conquest and the vastest life,
She was indeed the goddess whom nothing resists,
Dynamic beauty of swiftness and hope,
Thrusting always more afar, out of black spaces
Dancing and paroxyst humanity.
Beauty of brass, beauty of fire,




330


NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


Beauty of steam, geometric beauty,
Modern beauty having for temple and for landscape
Blast furnaces casqued with purple and gold,
Cities mad under their electric lamps,
Hurling at conquered Heaven in spirals of pride
The roar of dynamos and the tumult of windlasses,
And dominating the night of silence and hate
The terrible flight of Hertzian waves.'
This 'new beauty,' free, active, and dynamic, is opposed to
the ancient aesthetic which abhorred 'the movement which displaces lines.'... The old divorce of art and science ceases; art
and science are now not only united, but confounded; the whole
social life is sung in its plenitude; the whole formidable modern
machinery which, to the eyes of poets, enamored with forms of the
past and idyllic reveries, seems to offer nothing but ugliness, is
magnified at last in odes to the modern powers, to the vastest
life, and to the solidarity of human efforts.
The muse is no longer the grief-stricken dolorous creature
of yesterday, but
'The red goddess, on a galloping courser,
Shouting over the cities with their vertebrae of steel
The hymn of gold to the modern world.'
She is no longer
'The elegiac muse with eyes in tears
But the dancer who bounds on the heights
In the flight of the aeroplanes.'
More social, more human, she comes nearer to the toilers
of the globe. She sings them. In the effort of men, Nicolas
Beauduin magnifies the conquerors, the builders, the sailors on the
anguish of waters, masons on scaffoldings, the labor of scientists
in laboratories, engineers on locomotives, layers of cables,




F. JEAN-DESTHIEUX


331


'To sing them all, yearning toward what is new,
To sing the hard muscle and ardent thought,
And the eyes exalted with faith toward the heights,
And the desires urging like motors
The flying planets in infinite space.'
Nicolas Beauduin is therefore the real poet of this scientific,
industrial, and commercial epoch, the poet of total life, of the
whole world. He inhales the struggle, audacious life, grand and
brutal, savage even. He tends toward 'an hegemony of the
powers of his being.' By it he maintains in their integrity against
dilettantism, dissolving dreams, and cui bono negations, his living
forces which he magnifies for the full blossom of his lyric mistress.
It is a kind of discipline freely accepted, exalted to enthusiasm.
On the other side of positivist serenity and experimental realism,
he attains to supreme plenitude.  As in the poem Action of
Grace from The City of Men, which begins thus:
'O this morning of ardor I bind all life.
I possess the world in my pious arms.
The Only One is in me.
I am God Himself
Since I have the joy
To possess Him.'
One sees that this 'daily' inspiration does not exclude
lyricism.
And this lyricism is eminently representative of our multiple
and contrasted epoch, which tries to make its escape from scientific
materialism toward a transcendent belief.
Not only does serene immobility, amorphism repel him, but
this poet wishes to escape from determinism, to surpass his
destiny, to attain to the vastest life, to paroxysm, to exaltation,
'that rich state of the person,' as Bazaillas puts it.
'Toward the most formidable and the reddest target
I direct my bold will,




332


NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


Which goes there below in a passionate rut,
Toward the summits of the world, to the impossible.'
This active lyricism thus escapes narrow methods and purely
objective exactitude. It is nearer to life. Moreover, in place of
flight, instead of shutting himself up in his room away from the
noise outside, the poet hears the roar of the factories ascend to
his side.
'All shows me action, ardor and conquest,
All the sounds of labor are for me sounds of feasting.
All enkindles and intoxicates me,
The song of the dynamos with copper wings,
The roar of ardent aeroplanes,
All excites my courage,
And forces me, joyous, to feel even more
With the audacious life of my time.'
This is wholly a lyricism in direct communion with our epoch,
a lyricism which is its product, and whose profound roots plunge
deep in the living heart of crowds.
This living art cannot but sing life, and faith. That is why
in these fervent poems are exalted our trembling civilization,
the modern metropolises,the industrial cities, the era of machines,
all human toil.
Moreover, the poet is a prophet. He feels truly the apparition of something new, the apparition of that God whom he
will also sing in The Cosmogonic Man! He hears him come in the
roar of crowds; something palpitates and is exalted,
'Trains whistle in shadow and forges pant,
Steamers sail on the seas of the planet,
Harbors are full of cries, of sails and masts,
Something is coming to birth...
The new sense of the oecumenical, of the universal, takes
possession of it, in hours of faith




F. JEAN-DESTHIEUX


333


'The universe pants in its being';
a conscience, that which we have called 'cosmogonic,' brings to
birth
'Something greater than our Ego.'
The advent of this new God is hailed by Nicolas Beauduin
in The Cosmogonic Man. He is the man who, not finding God
outside himself, deifies himself in turn, ideally, unanimously:
'We wish for him: well we need to see Him born;
And if he comes not, this vast god, this god
Hewn of a single block, and with a gesture of fire,
We shall take his place, implacable, for being.
We wish for a God!'
Rich with such enthusiasm and such profound truth, the
inspiration of the poet withdraws from the circle of personal
sensation, attaining to intuitive, oecumenical life:
'And the exaltation of a mysterious fire
Made me equal the whole infinity of the world!'
And it is for this very thing that we must praise the poet.
In an epoch of atheism, he seeks a new God. He seeks him in the
most humble manifestations of life. He wishes a human God,
if we may say so! And this God he not only seeks, but he knows
how to find, in the whole colossal new flight of our century.
'A tremendous hope renews the old world,
Wrings the fiery towns and the iron cities,
And the globe thence more lively and arrogant
Expands from day to day her fertile powers.
The peoples are passionate with the utmost will.
At every hour a more violent pride is born.
Humanity thence erects from out of the blackness
Her huge face.


Something rumbles and rises




334


NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


And it is then more than a desire and more than a
dream.'
Such are the elements of this original poetry, so truly modern
in its dynamism, in its paroxysm!
The poet has realized this admirable synthesis in his Cosmogonic Man. The importance of this work is very great, for that
very reason, and also because it must count among the few
durable works which have been produced by Nicolas Beauduin's
generation, which promises more than it has yet fulfilled.
'The City of Men,' writes the critic, Paul Desanges, 'is not
yet his masterpiece. It is, if you like, an aspiration toward his
masterpiece, a sign that one foresees will be huge, but that is not
yet half-finished, a beautiful effort which remains incomplete.
All the same, it reveals already a clear consciousness of the poet's
greatness, of his true mission. He is on the point of discovering
the law, his law. And this law he will very soon express in a
really beautiful poem, which will be a sort of Ars Poetica...
very poetic, and which the author will call by the expressive
title, 'The Cosmogonic Man.'
The Cosmogonic Man! Such will be the God of the future,
of whom I have just spoken.
And what more can I say of this poetic work? No more
than the many others, who have written of him before me, can
I pretend to be complete. If I have wished to speak of this poet,
it is because already his influence has been considerable and decisive upon his disciples. Under the glorious standard of paroxysm many of us are already grouped. We have even now a group
of young poets who have arrived placing themselves under his
protection. And this is especially significant.
Moreover, it is a new poetic art, scientific, social, and how
modern and alive! that this poet thus realizes, to whom new
realities have appeared. Nicolas Beauduin has seen all lyricism
contained in power in the cinematographic vision of contemporary
life, in the mechanical transfiguration of the world. He has




F. JEAN-DESTHIEUX


335


sought to realize a living art, rooted in the unique epoch wherein
we live, an art weighty with significance and human meaning.
By all these merits, and many more, the work of Nicolas
Beauduin deserves henceforth to be known to every one. For
my feeble part, I have wished to introduce him to a somewhat
wider circle than knows him now. For this poet is great.
I shall not attempt to say what place he occupies beside
Emile Verhaeren, Walt Whitman, Zola, Hugo. Such speculation
is idle and fatally unjust. Let Hugo remain Hugo. Render to
Verhaeren the things that are his. Without blaspheming others,
let us hail the work of Nicolas Beauduin and not trouble to inquire in what respect he has been an innovator, and in what a
disciple. An artist's originality is not measured in feet or pints,
but by the power of his lyricism and by Poetry.
Because I have thought it better to let the dead rest in peace
and to venerate them, and to hail worthily those amongst the
living whom we wish to glorify and to await the future with
patience and surety, I have wished to hail Nicolas Beauduin, who
is one of the most representative, one of the most powerful
revealers of the modern epoch.
The foreigner reads him passionately, and tries to translate
him. The two Americas pulsate to the rhythm of his heart. If
it is by the lyric power of her poets that the strength of a nation
is measured, France owes to Nicolas Beauduin the distinction
that no man could have more magnificently exalted her power.




THE POETRY OF THE EPOCH
BY NICOLAS BEAUDUIN
YOUNG thinker, M. Gaston Riou, proved quite
recently in a volume which made some stir, the
anarchy, the intellectual chaos of our epoch. Literature appeared to him  multiple, contradictory.
He found in it no directions, no precise aims. It
appeared to him without unison, a sort of 'symphony of the King of Siam,' as the excellent Emile Faguetwould
say. One man, he wrote, lives in the eighteenth century, another
is inspired by Rabelais, another by the Middle Ages, another by
the Greek and Latin classics; this man returns to naturalism,
that man to symbolism, this other man to the Parnassians, and
so on.
Indeed one could prove in the younger groups the same
cacophony, the same opposed attitudes. We find intellectuals
and psychologists, in whom the critical spirit has not only destroyed all creative spontaneity, but killed the man's individuality. Then there are those who remain pure mystics plunged
in dreams and without any bonds with the real world. And
some are only 'philosophising' pedagogues, shut up forever in the
pillory of their narrow formula. Finally, you find others, and
these above all are the men who interest us, rushing forth on the
roads of life to the conquest of the truths of their epoch. And it is
with these that we shall occupy ourselves particularly.
Has not this diversity of tendencies which our critic has remarked existed in all literary epochs? Has not each of them
presented at first this disparate and anarchic aspect? It seems
as if it has always been so. And this is exclusively true in the fact
that among the incalculable number of those who write, very few
really represent something; - I mean to say, respond to their
epoch, know how to see it by grasping the motives of living and
336




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


337


aspiration, and are capable of revealing these motives in noble
works.
Indeed, noisy chaos, little by little under the influence of
Time, are directed by the demiurge. And works without real
significance, without representative value, sink into oblivion.
If we are still plunged too deeply in the whirl of ephemeral
manifestations to see the true figure of our literary age clearly outlined, it seems possible nevertheless to define certain details, and
by their aid, to trace it as a prefiguration.
While the poets do not think in flocks, and while never
more than in our days, as all inquiries have confirmed, have they
been more thoroughly individualists (so that not one of the recent
literary schools has been able to hold its ground, so great is their
will not to submit to any intellectual constraint), the result none
the less is that certain works, a very small number, reveal what
literary historians call 'the general spirit of the time.'
What is this spirit? From now on, an exercised intelligence
has the power to discern - what official criticism will not register
for a good twenty years at least - the principal lines, perhaps
also the unity, and even the principle of unity.
Evidently there have been, and truly there will be always,
passive poets, those who are called contemplatives, of Buddhist
spirit, who live plunged in self-annihilation, outside of time.
These poets, who are not all poetry, are all the same a very large
part, the most 'habitual,' the most 'fitting,' considering that the
poet has not been considered till now except under the aspect
of a sort of dehumanized mystic, a crazy dreamer, a sentimental
degenerate, unfit for social life. Now what justly differentiates
our literary epoch and characterizes it, is that its most representative poets (I mean those who express it, reveal it in its highest
significance) are essentially 'active lyrics,' who oppose to the
conception of the 'poet-child' that of the 'conscientious poet,'
according to Goethe.
In poetry, so to speak, nothing is ever old-fashioned. Repe



338


THE POETRY OF THE EPOCH


titions are rare indeed: is not poetry an ideal view of the world in
which the personal equation is the decisive factor? Indeed it is
sufficient for a gifted poet to breathe new life into three or four
general themes - nature, love, death - to give them an appearance of novelty.
All the same there exists, at the present moment, a poetry
which draws from 'actuality' at the time its inspirations, its
reason for existence, and its profound truth. And this actuality,
which is the cinematographic vision of contemporary life, the
mechanical transfiguration of the world, is most propitious in
creating the least expressed and the greatest active lyricism which
exists.
It is evident that the new poetry - and it is easy to discern
the reasons why - is as remote from whining sentimentalism
as it is from equivocal skepticism, elegant dilettantism, and other
sorts of profoundly inhuman anchylosis with a 'tower of ivory'
attitude. In full sympathy and communion with what surrounds it, it is a call to action, a call to life. To be sure, it has
affirmations which are sometimes contradictory, but it affirms, it
creates its faith untiringly, and it goes forward.
To art for art's sake, that social nonsense, born of a transcendent contempt for active and productive humanity; to art
for truth's sake, which is and can be only a utopia, generous like
all utopias and always deceptive, the present lyric generation
opposes art for life's sake, and not art for the sake of the life of
art, as is now proposed in what is still, it seems to us, the attitude
of an aesthete and a dilettante. It finds itself thus in perfect
conformity with the contemporary anti-intellectualist philosophy, which is a return to life as well, and the other innovating
arts, which, by their dynamic aesthetic of movement, also seek a
more direct and profound reconciliation with the real.
The new poets therefore no longer divorce art from life.
For them, art is not on one side, life on the other. No, the two
penetrate each other. An art which intrenches itself apart from
the life of its time is a dead art, lacking any links with the real.




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


339


Literature must plunge its roots in palpitating life: a literature
uprooted from its epoch has no excuse for existence, it is meaningless, without human value.
Otherwise it is no more than the plaything of dehumanized
aesthetes.
From this sterile art some poets are violently detached. To
be sure their number is not yet great. And the number is yet
slighter of those who not only express the life of their epoch, but
(recalling on this important matter the doctrine of Hegel on the
unity of the subject and the object of its development pari passu),
put themselves into their creations, thus communicating to them
that truth and passion which are the revealers of all true work.
This vision of the modern world which I have personally
exalted in The City of Men and more recently still in The Cosmogonic Man, and of which we find the beginnings in Whitman,
whose influence with us increases from day to day, in Zola, Paul
Adam, Rosny aine, Verhaeren and Richard Dehmel, others also
have understood and expressed,-Alexander Mercereau, in his
Words Before Life; Henri Guilbeaux, in his Modern Berlin; Louis
Pierard, in his book, Flames and Smoke; Lebesgue, Canudo,
Jules Le Roux, Guerber, Divoire, Mandin, Parmentier in some of
their poems; as well as Pierre Hamp, in his novel, The Rail. In
England, in the United States, some poets perceive the same
revelation; and in the countries of German speech, one must
specially mention, among the newcomers, Paul Friedrich, Ernst
Lissauer, Alfons Paquet, Wilhelm Schmidtbonn, Paul Zech and
Stefan Zweig.
If it is true that poetry is in its highest - or at least in its
most suitable - acceptation an 'evasion of the real,' an aspiration, a bridge, just like prayer, between the finite and the infinite,
it is not less true any more that the chanter of modern life -
and it is in this that the true poet, always a creator of the infinite,
is recognized - instinctively transposes his creation, attains to a
superior plane of beauty and transfigures, illumines, projects it
in a supra-real world. The religious sentiment is not absent from




340


THE POETRY OF THE EPOCH


his living synthesis, an organism into which he has breathed a
soul, his own. On the contrary, it seems that metaphysical preoccupations have never been greater than at the present hour.
Not only does the lyric revealer wish to live with intensity
his individual existence, to participate in the vastest life, to
raise himself always more in the reality of Being, but to live with
the global life of the world, with the universal and omnipresent
existence of a God. He wishes to integrate the universe, not to
disappear, to annihilate himself, as certain adept poets do who are
more or less conscious of monistic theories; he wishes to be incarnate in nature, to rule her, to be her supreme manifestation
and consciousness.
It is like the advent of a new God; it is man who, not having
found God 'sensible' elsewhere than in himself, deifies himself
ideally.
Who does not see the new fact, heavy with religious consequence, in such a philosophical literary conception?  Who does
not discern here a new phase of the infinite aspiration, inalienable
in man, who forces it to wish to exhaust in the paroxyst plenitude of a moment of his existence all that eternal and conscious
life in which he once believed?
It seems useless to insist longer on the eminently religious
character of modern inspiration.
Rich with such fervor and power of life, poetry is selfdelivered from the circle of personal sensation, wherein the first
symbolism takes exclusive delight. It attains to oecumenical,
intuitive, divine, and continued life. It has emerged from the
labyrinths of decadent obscurantism to plunge into the modern
light. Like its epoch, greedy for athletic sports, travel, dangerous
action, it has taken a taste for lyricism, which is active joy,
bounding and reeling, with muscular phrase, powerful expression,
true, concrete and brutal imagery, and salient metaphor, disengaged from swathings or rhetoric.
Poets no longer wish to slumber 'under the Buddhist cedar,'
examining minutely the magic litanies of human despair, but,




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


341


iron wand in hand, advance on the great highway to the meetingplace of the living. For if our epoch is that of divining intuition
and delirious clairvoyance - not that of vague dreaming and
unformulated aspiration - it is above all that of 'the act.' And
the new poets have thoroughly understood this, who have preferred to the bizarre, the incomprehensible, the inorganic, and
the inarticulate, lucid realizations, rich with significance and
human worth.
Formerly, almost always, the poets, detached from the rest
of the world, lacking any real contact with their surroundings,
warbled for their own satisfaction egotistical and vain songs.
They refined upon their spiritual crises, delighting in the esoteric
auscultation of their Egos. No doubt it is sometimes great to
isolate one's self from others, to assume a superior pedestal and
disdain them - yet it would be easy to prove the contrary. It
presents some advantages, and also some bad disadvantages, of
which the least is to take from things a conception so high that
it is chimerical. 'There are summits where the contemplator
loses sight of infinitesimal men and embraces no more than his
own dream.' That is generally what happens. We may admire
this category of minds; but we need not follow them. And there
are excellent reasons for this, among which it seems well to prefer
creative life to sterile analysis and distorted dreams, active sympathy to Buddhist immobility, beneficent co-operation to indifference, however high it may be.
The evolution of poetry has been rapid and terrible, like
material evolution. Under an estate of marvelous scientific
discoveries allied to audacity, the thirst for danger, the contempt
for death of those who applied them, in a few years the moral and
intellectual overthrow has been accomplished. And the revelation of a new man, the man-machine, the multiplied man, the
man-bird has been apparent to the least clairvoyant.
It is visibly evident that the rapidity of mechanical evolution
has put us in a state of anxious frenzy, of incessant movement,
of hope renewed without cease, of continued childbirth, of
' ii':




342


THE POETRY OF THE EPOCH


sharpened faculties, of permanent enthusiasm which places our
epoch at the antipodes of 'the point of repose,' which mechanics
call 'stable equilibrium.' The rhythm of the world is considerably accelerated, at the same time that life is enriched with
new splendors.
The great press of information, thanks to the telephone and
wireless telegraphy, has transformed our mentality. In us now
stir and live the most diverse worlds. And one can hear and hail
already the advent of a new consciousness of omnipresence, of the
cosmogonic conscience, of the modern man, who 'lives' simultaneously in himself, daily, all the multiple 'facts' of the globe.
Only a few ages ago, man remained confined in a narrow
frame, without rapid communications with the rest of the universe; to-day thought goes round the world with the speed of
lightning. Humanity lives in each of us, is integrate there day by
day, I may say hour by hour, second by second, in the uninterrupted flow of events transmitted by cablegrams and wireless
telegraphy and in an interval next seen and understood, caught
alive, by the instantaneous phonocinematograph.
The ancient conceptions of multiple, time, space, are profoundly modified in our spirit. The human fluid encompasses
the world, captures it and tames it to its will. And the field of
vision and thought has been so immeasurably and suddenly
aggrandised, that it creates in man a constant emotional state
which steels his faculties and creates a considerable increase of
vital power. Moreover, we must add to this anguished plenitude, born of the mechanical transformation of the world, the
moral and social preoccupations created by the strife of classes, so
terrible and so violent, by the unchaining of individual appetites,
by national imperialisms opposing, face to face, their millions of
men in arms; all this in an inflamed atmosphere already furrowed
by purple lightning-flashes of the storm. And then you will agree
that never in any past era has man lived in such an explosive
furnace.
In this terrible fury of adverse forces, it seems that he feels
instinctively the vital, imperious necessity for violent motives




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


343


of faith. More and more he is seeking ardent certitudes, superior
reasons for striving and living, 'categorical imperatives.' In the
absence of a God, he needs his gods; in the absence of the old
disaffected cathedrals, he needs his temples. For his gods, he has
fashioned them willingly with his hands, he possesses them; as
for his temples, he finds them in those 'points of concentration,'
which are the great thundering metropolises, where so many
furious energies, wills and human appetites are agglomerated.
A recent passion, blind as an elementary force, drives men toward
the town. Everybody rushes to increase it, to swell monstrously
this titanic mother in labor with a new god.
The passion of the towns is one of the most characteristic
facts of the modern age. To be sure, superficial minds will not
discover its consequences. But those who possess some sense
of the future see already prefigured the unimaginable civilizations of to-morrow. There is a whole world there in germ, a
whole sketch of colossal, scientific cities of the future, where, all
dynamism and movement, the terrible architecture of iron, will
reign.
That these coming realities should already take life in the
ardent soul of some poet, is nothing to cause astonishment.
What is called the 'gift of prophecy' is generally nothing more
than a simple clairvoyance.
That the new poets, who try to express all this, break with
the aesthetic conceptions of their predecessors, is readily seen.
Does not each epoch possess its own adequate expression, its
special technique, as it has its own methods of feeling and thought
and its motives of inspiration? Ours cannot disregard this; after
innumerable gropings, it has come to realize its own techniques
as well. I say its techniques, for they are many and incessantly
renewed. They are purely dynamic. They are opposed to the
ancients, who all, indifferently, abhorred 'the movement which
displaces lines.' Now -and here is 'the new fact' -'actual'
aesthetic is not only a change from its predecessors, but a fundamental opposition, a complete reverse of essential principles. To




344


THE POETRY OF THE EPOCH


the dogma of impassibility, to the hieratic attitude, to immobile
serenity, to mathematical metrics, to conventional rhythms, in
short to a static aesthetic, it substitutes, in every domain, an
aesthetic of movement, a dynamic necessity, truer than the other,
while plunged more in the real, more identical with the life of
things. An asthetic of the intuitive and continuous, it flees
from the art of 'concept,' of 'notion,' of 'abstract knowledge,' of
'syllogism,' to attain, beyond a background of ideas, and with the
aid of an appropriated pragmatism, the multiform and active life
and the new splendors of our epoch - in a word, the New Beauty.
In the works of those who sing, express, reveal, endow with
infinity and artistic truth this New Beauty, this passionate,
active, and free Beauty, born of that action which is life, one feels
a trembling, a harmony of vibrations, a quickened rhythm, and
an impulse really unknown until now. Words, images, metaphors, sonorities, intuitive analogies, bound, intermingle, give
an impression of the whirling, audacious and overheated life of
our epoch, which possesses, included in herself, in her lights, in
her roars, in her hasty crowds, as no epoch has ever possessed,
the divine fire of paroxysm, that sublime faculty and manifestation of a God.
It is well here to note the confirmations that the contemporary philosophy of mobility brings to the new aesthetic.
In fact, since the abandoning of Spencer's system, which
reduced to unity the psychological and biological facts, a whole
philosophy, that of Bergson, has been substituted, the philosophy
of 'dynamic notions of qualitative duration, of heterogeneous
continuity, of multiple and mobile states of consciousness.' As
it is easy to account for, these are opposed to notions of homogeneous and quantitative space, 'of a real broken, static, and deprived
of life.' This is the justification of the new aesthetic; we find it a
contribution to the conception of the New Beauty and of dynamism in poetry, this incessant creation of ourselves. It is no
longer a sign, an attitude, a state of soul isolated from the surrounding reality.  It is life itself manifested in its continuity, in




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


345


touch with what surrounds it and which consequently becomes
a part of it. That is why we wrote above that the new poem, as
we conceive it, is no other than a movement of life in relation
with all the other movements of universal life. That is why, to
the old definitions of 'verse,' of the 'strophe,' of the 'leash,' of
'vers libre,' and so on, recent theorists have substituted the t~erm
'dynamic rhythm,' indispensable to 'the polyphonic orchestration' of the new poem, the rhythm which gives to the poem its
proper movement and the form of its architecture.
In every domain we find confirmations of this aesthetic,
showing thus the profound truth, the vital and ineluctable
necessity of an art in such perfect concordance with the epoch.
It would be very interesting indeed to show all the existing
parallelisms; but the time and the place are wanting, and we content ourselves with indicating the points of contact which unite
it to Rodin's sculpture, which is action; to the new music, which
is movement; to the great modern orchestras, which are 'intensity'; and to the dynamism of the architecture of the future,
that of steel.
In this epoch of impatient plenitude, in this hour of sharpened life, of tumult, of gestation, where being is trans-humanized,
where matter itself seems 'to rise to consciousness,' where a sort
of new oecumenical sense is born in men, it seems that lyric poetry,
even more than all the other arts, tends violently toward a pathetic as yet unexpressed, toward a paroxyst and very acute expression of this modern world where man, at last delivered from
himself, feels that he is potentially a god.
Futurism, so far as there is good in it, is born of this aspiration; but from the very fact that it is called Futurism, it gives
too much the impression of being outside our epoch; it appears,
right or wrong, to be an abdication of the present.
Romanticism was a flight into the past; Futurism seems a
flight into the future. Both meet outside life, in a vague domain,
that of death for Romanticism, that of the unforeseeable, of the
development not yet arrived, for Futurism. Futurism, therefore,




346


THE POETRY OF THE EPOCH


deserts the living community for the domain of abstractions. It
has the figure then of an aesthetic 'cloud,' and appears to be a
purely verbal formula.
On the other hand it is to something real and concrete that
the effort of the active lyricists corresponds - what matters the
label by which we know them? In contrast to the vague and
intemporal idea of Futurism, and to the conception of literature
as a 'social amusement,' 'the relaxation of clever men, as the
neo-classicists regard it, they see in literature, and more especially in the new poetry, not a pastime, nor a distraction, nor
an evasion aside from life and modern efforts, but on the contrary
'the keenest manifestation of that life and effort.' They are
united, as we have seen, by no formula, but a first principle of
aesthetics is their bond. They wish a new poetry as yet unexpressed and social, which will be above all a new expression of
beauty, born of the mechanical applications of science.  They
perceive the elements of poetry contained in the terrible modern
cities, in the locomotives of great express trains, in the extraordinarily rapid evolutions of aeroplanes, in a one hundred-horsepower automobile, in the explosive force of a dreadnought, in a
fleet of submarines; they perceive the intensity of incalculable
life which is agitated in a stock exchange, in a Wall Street, or in
the Paris bourse; in the mechanical energy of a Creusot, of an
electric power plant, of a coaling dock; in the stock of tools of a
great modern port with its lighthouses, its railways, its dry docks,
its shipyards, its arsenals, its drawbridges and trans-shipments
and its monstrous pack of steamers sailing to the most fabulous
countries of the globe. And their dream is widened by every
scientific marvel.
The poets up till now - or almost up till now -only
lamented over the ruins, and translated the anguishes and the
last upheavals of a world now dead. To-day all the fervor,
tumult and violence of 'laborious days,' all the cheerfulness of
sonorous shipyards and giant cities in course of construction is
sung and exalted in their work.




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN                  347
Every great epoch has been an age of faith. Ours, after
having created its affirmations, is exalted and raised in its turn
toward a belief weighty with human significance and oecumenical
by increase.
We are at the dawn of a new belief. Let us hail it. And
let us demand that it be made up of truth in life and of that
beauty 'which is beyond the shadow.'




THE TOWN IN ME
BY NICOLAS BEAUDUIN
Translated from the French by E. J. 0.
I
O Whirlwinds of fever where everything is gaining!
The Town is insane, the Town is delirious;
The autobuses pass on wings,
The crowds go at random,
And the tramways and the carriages
Hum and seem to fly away.
The hoardings flame, twisting their raw colors
On the golden brow of the immense town.
The cafe-bars offer the length of the streets
Their tipsiness and their madness.
Ha! rushing and whirlings,
Clamors and cries, songs and brawls,
And trepidations of motors foolish with rage
And nightly dazzle!
Ha! the dens and the bazaars and the theaters,
The stores and their millions of eyes;
Odors of attar and petroleum, odors of plaster
And ruts of bodies held toward kisses of fire!
Ha! the squalls of the machines,
The flashes of trolleys on the shadow which scares,
The chugging of motors and the gesture of lighthouses
On the night that their electric sword assassinates!
Ha! the joys, the angers
Vertiginous and darted,
348




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


349


The divine fulguration of Ideas,
And the bonded gambling houses
Where is played on the stroke of a die
The fate of an entire existence!
Ha! the tumult of affairs
In the midst of the jingling of gold!
And all this in scenes
Of flame, of fever and effort,
Of panics and lights!
All this, all this,
Which roars and rolls and turns and goes,
Holds me, clasps me, electrifies me.
Breathes on my soul and stirs it,
And puts in my flesh
All life with its thunders and lightnings!
II
There is come in me an exchange of forces.
Fires re-enter me, fires are born with me,
Shatter their core and their rind
And bound in flights of faith.
It is cries which scourge me
And whirlwinds assail me.
Fierce life pinches me
And fertilizes me without rest.
The desires of the immense town
In jets of fire, as in madness,
Enter and dilate my heart.
All becomes suddenly interior,
Bars, movies, crowds, brawls.
And my heart, and my heart
Is exalted to the rhythm of motors




350


THE TOWN IN ME


And beats as a conqueror's tocsin
In the center of the capital.
My being rebounds uplifted
With the streets and the bazaars
And the autos of the boulevards
Whose wheels gnaw the pavement.
My flesh is exalted desperately.
A new soul penetrates me,
And I feel like another being,
Another I, another understanding.
Other senses under the firmament.
I feel my soul identical
With that which shines red in electric flames
'Mid the automobile stands and the rings,
The movies, the public halls,
The theaters, the crazy places
Where the Town kicks and flys away
And dilates
Like a tremendous shell which bursts
And disperses in trails of gold.
Forces are in me, challenges, scenes,
And myriads of lives.
Ho! Is it this evening endlessly pursued
That the whole Town is exasperated and cries aloud
In an explosion of vertigo combining
Violence, desire and folly?
III
Ha! I am like a being in labor!
I feel myself full of a world unequalled.
In my heart are rumbling machines
And whirling suns.




NICOLAS BEAUDUIN


351


Ha! Ha! torture and joy,
Force which slays, force which grinds,
Light and sounds, cries and brawls,
Beat my soul with blows of rage!
I am afraid this evening when I feel
Every desire haunting my blood.
I am electrified in thy furnace,
O Town, where delirium spreads her jets of lava,
Where iron burns, where air neighs,
Where everything explodes
In a red apotheosis
Which terrifies the infinite.
Ha! my body reigns without bounds.
I augment myself with the world, O Life, and with thy
forms,
I feel in the depths of me pass thy enormous soul;
And my spirit of fire halts in terror
Seeing all at once in myself appear
No more my feeble and personal humanity,
But the terrible face of Being!
Of Being!




THE WINGS*
BY JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
CERDIC.
2ELFRIC the King.
BRUN.
EDBURGA.
Northumbria before 700 A.D.
(The scene passes within a wide hut, Saxon-built. At back,
open window-spaces, and to the right a doorway, past which the seabirds fly in a gray light.- Against the right wall, a seat and a shelf
with one or two great books, a half-loaf of bread, and a lamp without
a light. Near by, a large unlighted lantern. — On the left wall, a
rude wooden cross; below it, a bench with a slab of stone upon it,
covered over; mallet, chisel and other tools. Also to the left, a low
door, now shut, leading to an inner cell.-  Twilight of a bleak day.)
Enter BRUN the fisher-boy, doubtfully. He looks from bench
to books, and shakes his head.   There appears on the threshold
behind him the figure of a woman in a long cloak. BRUN, when he
turns, waves her back with a gesture of warning entreaty.
Brun.- No more, but wings and wings! And still no light.
He is not here, for all the night be wild.
The wind cries out; - there will be broken wings,
And they do vex him, ever. —
(EDBURGA appears in the doorway.)    Nay, forbear!
Gudewife, forbear! Ye may not step within.
He is not here, although the door stood wide;
See you, the holy Cerdic is not here.
Edburga.- Where, then?
*'The Wings' was produced at the Toy Theater, Boston, January 15, 1912.
With the permission of Josephine Preston Peabody, 'The Wings' is reprinted from
Harper's Magazine. Copyright, 1905, by Harper and Brothers.
All acting rights are reserved by the author.
352




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY


353


Brun. —God wot! 'Twill be a mickle hap
That holds him fast; and no light litten yet.
The light is wanting.- Do not come within;
Bide yonder.
Edburga.- Wherefore? Wit ye who am I?
(He shakes his head. She draws aside veil and wimple, discovering a young face and long braids of red-gold hair; then she steps
in arrogantly, to his dumb distress. While he replies in abashed
singsong to her questions, she looks about her with something between scorn and curiosity.)
Deem ye the holy Cerdic hides away?
Or that I come for naught? - What art thou called?
Brun.- Brun, son of Wulfstan....
Edburga.- And what dost thou here?
Brun.- Ye bade me lead you hither from the shore,
See you; —therefore I came. Often I come,
Likewise to bring the holy Cerdic bread,
And tidings from the Abbey.... Ye can hear
Our bell, save when the wind will be too high,
At vesper-time and curfew.- He would fast,
Ye wit, till he were like the lanthorn yon,
As ye could see a light through, if let be!
Then I row hither, or across the bar
I come here at low water, and bring bread.And if I did not, sure the Angel would.
Edburga.- Sooth!
Brun.- All folks say. Once I lay by to watch
Till nigh I heard it coming. For I dread
Some day the Angel seize me by the hair!
Lady, ye wit no woman can be here,
In holy Cerdic's cell.
Edburga.-               Was this thy dread? —
And dare no townsfolk come?
Brun.-                     Save they be sick
And sore possest, no nigher than the door.
But ye have come within. Pray now, go forth!




354


THE WINGS


Edburga (stealthily).- And I, worn weary, I must forth
again
Into the wet, for that I am a Woman!
Brun.- Needs must ye take it ill to be a woman.
But see, there is a tree to shelter by,
A dark tree yonder, hard upon the dune.Forsooth, all womankind he should mislike;
And beyond that, men say it was a woman
Drove Cerdic from the King.
Edburga.-        Men say?... What men?
Brun.- Sooth, did ye never hear?
Edburga.-             What do they say?
Brun.- It was for chiding the King's light-o'-love,I wot not who, no more than ye;. —
Edburga.-                Her name
Is called Edburga.
Brun.-                       Ay, an evil woman!
She was it, brought mislike upon the King,
And Cerdic bade him leave her. -- And the King
Would not; but still she wasteth all his days,
And, for her sake, he hath no mind to wed.
And he was wroth; and, likewise, for her sake
He drove the holy Cerdic from the town. -
But Cerdic found our island. And, they tell,
His faring here must bring a blessing down.Edburga.- Ay, hath it fallen yet? Methought the isle
Looked bare enough, and starven!
Brun.-                           Nay, not yet.
But likewise there are curses in the court,
And men cry out on AElfric i -- Wit ye well,
Their longing is for Cerdic home again.
Edburga.- And Cerdic, will he hence? When the King
comes,
With shining gifts! (Between her teeth.)
Brun.-                       If he put her away,
It may be... See you, Cerdic is so holy,




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY


355


They tell he will not look upon a woman
When he must speak with them. But I'm a man:
I talk with him, and look. And so I too
Would not have spoke with ye, but that ye came
To ask the way
Edburga.-                Unto that holy man.
Yea, truly! I would see and speak with Cerdic.
Ye deem he cometh hither soon?
Brun.-                           God wot!
He hath a Book here that he reads upon;
Likewise he knoweth how to grave on stone,
With pictures like the frost. But oftentime
All day he standeth on the rocks, adream,
So stark the sea-birds have no fear of him,
And graze his face in flying. So, belike,
It is a Vision that doth keep him now;
For still the light is ever lit, by now.
He will be coming.... Ye must bide beyond.
Edburga.- Go thou. And I will follow to thy tree,
There to sit down... and pray... till I behold
Thy holy Cerdic coming.- Have no fear!
See: I will wrap my mantle round my hair,
As holy men would have us do.- Such peril,And dear enchantment, in a woman's hair!
So: 'tis my will to stand thus in the wind
Now, while the sun sets, and until the Fiend
That rends me, have his own, or Cerdic
Brun.-                               Woe!
The Fiend!Edburga.- That dwells in Woman: thou hast said.
Brun.- Woe that I brought ye here to Cerdic's cell!
Edburga.- Nay, thou wilt never rue it.- Take this scarf
So, knotted thrice,- unto the farthest rock,
Where thou shalt bind it to that only bush,The thorn thou shewedst me; and so let hang
That the sea-winds may sift and winnow it.




356


THE WINGS


This if thou do - and look not back again,And say thy prayer, likewise, for holy Cerdic!
There shall no hurt come nigh thee from the Fiend.But I must bide by yonder starven pine,
Till Cerdic pass,... to shrive me.
Brun (terrified). —               Ay, go hence!
There doth lie bless the sick.
Edburga.-                         I follow thee.
And may the saints forgive it to this -- saint,
There stepped upon his threshold one poor woman,
Seeing he knew not! - I will after thee.
Brun.- Nay, do not! Sooth, I will as ye have said. —
Edburga.- Never look back!
Brun.-               By holy Guthlac, never!When ye are shriven..  take the self-same way
Back to the shore..
(Running out.)
God shield the holy Cerdic!
Edburga (alone, stretching out her arms with savage relief).
God crush the holy Cerdic, with His shield!
(She looks about her, between curiosity and aversion; then begins
to sing with exuberant defiance of the place.)
If the moon were mine
For a silver cup.
Ah, but I would fill it up
With red wine, red wine!
Then, 0 love of mine..
(She stops singing as she comes to the bench with the covered
stone, and draws near to look, as if it fascinated and repelled her;
then she turns away, silent. From the doorway, she seems to listen;
then calls through her hands in a soft, high voice, like the wind.)
AIlfric... the King!
(Exit EDBURGA. The door blows shut after her. Deep twilight
falls. There is a pause, filled with the crying of wind and of seagulls.  Then the low door in the left wall opens, and CERDIC gropes
his way in, carrying a taper.  He is a young monk with the




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY


357


keen face of a mystic, worn white with fatigue. He seems half
tranced.)
Cerdic.- The darkness here.... Need be, I fell asleep.
Sleep, sleep for me, and in the daytime! - Ah,
The little sleep! Could I not watch one hour?
Yea, Lord, for all the hours of day and night;
Save that in sleep, the wings stoop near to me
I grasp for vainly, waking.... Was it sleep?
Or were they here, the voices and the wings?Not yours, beloved birds! Not yours that beat
Gray through the wind and wet, in search of me.Lady of Heaven, forgive me that I slept,
Forgetful of thy birds, to call them in
And break my bread with them.(He goes to the shelf, and taking the loaf down, breaks and
scatters it from the doorway, afterwards closing the door.)
Take all,-take all!
For I have slept; and I am filled indeed,
With manna and with light.
Yet, O thou Blessed!
If my poor prayer and longing may avail
Like hands of need, dragging thy garment's hem,
Vouchsafe to me here in my wilderness,
One sign, to ease the hunger of my heart
That calls and echoes, prays and hears the prayer,
Echoed and ebbing, till it surge again;
High tide,- low tide,-but never any word.
High tide,- low tide; never a face to see.
(He comes down to the bench. From his taper he lights the
lanthorn, and sets it by; then reverently he lijts the covering-cloth from
the stone, to look upon his work.)
Our Lady of all Comfort. Rose of Heaven!
Could I but make her, here, as in my dream,
That blessed Face,- the stone should put forth might
Unto blind eyes, and they would look, and see!
Ah, when? -Poor scribbled track, sore pitiful,




358


THE WINGS


Of wingless longing! Here the Face should be,
With this gray blankness where the eyes would shine,
More lovely blue than ever twilight sea.
And here would be her hair; - a golden wave
Of sunset, ebbing redly in the west...
Her hair.... But never can I make her hands,
Like to those palest roses that did grow
Close to the Abbey wall.... Ah, could I know,
Even in a dream! Since unto lowlier men
Than blessed Luke she hath vouchsafed to see
Her very face. — Comfort this halting tool,Quicken this stone! Let not the earth go dark
Of such a likeness for men's hearts to keep,
Beautiful, on the altar of that temple
Whose walls be blazoned with the shapes of earth,Scribbled and scarred with basest names and things,
Foul upon clear! Even as my Dream did fade
When some voice in my soul, more ware than I,
Thrust me awake crying, ".Elfric. the King!"
And I awoke, and heard no more. —
(Lifting his face with shut eyes.) Let be!
There shall no soil come near my dream of thee;
But I will count a thousand dawning suns,
Patient, so be that on some dawn of day,
Thou lean from out of heaven, and I may see
Thy face like dawn above thy Star-in-the-East,
Mother of all the motherless,- God's Mother!
And still, though I should count the thousand years,
Still shall my heart be ready.
(The wind shakes the door; and the gulls go by.)
- Ah, the wings!
Ever thy birds, the while I hark for thee;
Never thy word, but only call of birds,
And waves and wind, and evermore the wings
Of sea-gulls that I hear with quickened heart
Of hope: because they knock upon my door,




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY


359


Knocking and mocking ever! Be it so.
Lady of Heaven, beside thy flock of stars,
Who broodest over this mid-world as though
It were an ailing lamb, I wait for thee.
I harken, and my heart is at the gate...
My soul doth wait, as a poor vacant chamber
With the door wide like famine, but for thee;
Ay, and the torches waiting for a fire
White from the stars, not breathing, save for thee.
O Moon of Pity, if this loneliness,
And the sore heart of man that knows but how
To seek a home, can ever draw thee down,
Lean from thy glory with thy mother-looks,
Lean down to bless,- follow thy pity, down,Down to this solitude. -  Let me once look
On Thee!
(A knocking on the door. CERDIC looks up with fixed eyes.
The door swings open, and EDBURGA stands on the threshold, her veil
shadowing her face, the two long golden braids hanging below, upon
her breast.- She steps in, and stands regarding him for a moment;
then speaks in a voice without emotion of any kind.)
Edburga.- Knowest thou me?
(CERDIC, as in a trance, crosses his arms on his breast. His
face grows radiant with beatitude. Without giving sign of her
bewilderment, EDBURGA comes forward slowly, facing him. Then
she loosens the veil from her head and the cloak from her shoulders.
They fall about her feet; she stands richly arrayed. CERDIC sinks
upon his knees.)
Behold me.... Thou art Cerdic.
Cerdic (in a far-off voice).- Lady, thou knowest.
Edburga.- Yea, thou hast well said.
I know thee what thou art. Thou dost not know
What I am.-Dost thou dream?
Cerdic.-                      It well may be...
I dream.
Edburga.- Awake.- For thou shouldst know me, Cerdic.




360


THE WINGS


(He does not move. She regards him with a closer curiosity.)
Make me some firelight here. For I am cold.
Cerdic.- Lady, have pity that my heart is shamed
And my poor home is witless of the fire,
What warmth may be. I had no thought - of this.
Edburga.- Wake, Cerdic. 'Tis no dream, albeit thine eyes
Never looked yet on mine. Guess, who am I?
Thy lips have used my name. Why art thou dumb
But now?
(He answers in a joyful prayer.)
Cerdic.- Thy grace must needs unseal this mouth.
Thou knowest.- Give me leave to tell of thee,
In words like golden harp-strings; but to tell
How all the air is summer with thy coming,
And morn doth flush the furrows of the sea;
Yea, how thy voice hath fallen, like white manna,
To fill the craving hunger of the soul
That longed for God and thee.
(She recoils with sudden contemptuous laughter.)
Edburga.                         -   Nay, for us twain!
This, then, is Holy Cerdic, who would look
Upon no woman!... Thou, who wouldst have us
Forswear all earth, for heaven somewhere outside,
Tell me, O wise one, of this precious rede,
How to keep both, shut fast in godly hands!
(CERDIC, stricken aghast, reaches towards the fallen mantle and
touches it in horror, to make sure. As his vision breaks, he rises and
stands back, striving to master his anguish.)
Dreaming, good sooth! You touch it, to make sure,
Dreamer of far-off women? But this dream
Is a true dream; as I am very Woman.
Nor shalt thou bid me hence till I have said.
So mild thou wert, before I made me known!
Cerdic (gravely).- Known, maiden?
(She regards him keenly; then goes to the door, shuts it, and turns
towards him, with triumph growing in her looks.)




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY


361


Edburga.- Nay, then! I will tell thee more.
How shouldst thou know me? I am the first woman,
Haply, thine eyes have met; and so, like Eve,
Older and wiser than thou! —I come to tell,
First, of the few, far things thdu dost not know;
Then, of thyself, thou knowest less than all;.
Then... what a pitiful King's Counsellor
Thou wert,- too craven to behold a woman!
Cerdic.- No longer give I counsel, well or ill,
Unto the King. Another counsellor
He hath preferred before me, for whose sake
I am an exile, and this place my home.
Edburga.- Haply it was Edburga?
Cerdic.-                               Even she,The King's Edburga.- If I have been craven,
Speak out thy hurt. For I will hear, and learn.
(He lights the lamp also, from the lanthorn; then stands
with his arms folded, looking at her calmly. She begins with a cold
irony that grows passionate.)
Edburga.- Ay, learn.- If that Edburga drave thee here,
Bethink thee, that Edburga was a woman.
Learn that there was some strength around her then,
Stronger than thou, to drive thee from his heart -.Elfric the King's - and from the city gate!The woman's strength, the one might that is Woman.
And though ye give and take us as your own,
What is it that ye flee from and ye fear?
Dreading this... Softness, once it be unchained!
Con thy blank heart. For I will write in it
The runes that might unriddle thee the world;
And thou shalt ponder them, one little hour.
And look upon me.- Nay, I do not come,
Save but in hatred. Thou art safe from all
Thy heart can fear, and long for - and despise!
I hate thee; and I tell thee; and I come
To speak thee sooth, and at my going hence




362


THE WINGS


To leave full goodly token that I hate.But thou, look back, and be the wiser,- thou!
When I did enter, ere we came to speech,
What was it bowed thy knees before me here
Against thy will? Thou'rt dumb. Why then, poor
clod,
What, but this weird which thou couldst never face?
This little power-and-glory-all-for-naught!
What save one Woman? And that one, to thee,
The basest woman-weed in all the world! - Edburga.
Cerdic.- Ah, my God! No, no. -
Edburga.-                          The King's! —
The King's Edburga!
Cerdic (apart).- Ah, forgive - forgive
Edburga.- Prayest me now forgiveness?
Cerdic (sternly). ---                  Nay, not thee!
Not thee.
Edburga. — Then haply heaven: that thou wert moved
By this poor beauty that I wear upon me?Waste not thy prayer. The peril that I bring
Is nothing strange; 'tis old and grim and free.
Have I not said, I come to tell thee of it.
And what I am that reckon with thee?
Cerdic.-                                 Speak.
Edburga. — I am Edburga, and the daughter of Ulf.
My mother was a slave. For she was sold
And given in her youth unto Svanfleda,
Sister of Ulf,- a just and holy woman,
Who bought and set her free, for Ulf to wed,And had it written in the gospel-book -
When that his heart clave to her. That, 0 monk,
Thou canst but hear, not heed! And I was grown,
When Ulf came to be made an ealdorman.
And Bertric would have taken me to wife,
Save that I came before the eyes of AElfric
The King; and so...




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY


363


-What are you, men and monks,
That you may give us unto such an one
To bind your lands together? Or to bring
The sum of twenty spears or more, to follow
You, at the man-hunt? - Women bring you forth,
As Darkness cherishes the doomful light
Of the Sun, that being grown, shakes his bright locks
And puts all to the sword! - I'll not be given
To Bertric, would that Bertric have me now:I, a free-woman and the gladlier free,
That being yet unborn, I was a slave!
I am a creature rooted in the dark,
But born to sunlight and the noble air.
I will to give; and I will not be given.
I fear not right nor left, nor east, nor west;
Nor thee! - For that I have is all mine own
To give or keep. And I am all I have.
And I am AElfric's,- for a kingly gift.
(A bugle sounds distantly. Neither hears as they face each
other fiercely.)
I reck no more. But thou, thou shadow-thing,
Unwitting what or men or shadows be,
And 'hearing of my name and how time sped',
And fearing for the council and the peace,
Thou wouldst have hurled my one gift of myself
Into the dust; and call all men to see
And curse and stone me hence: ay, an thou couldst!
As there were no degrees 'twixt mire and me.
O thou wise Cerdic, hear the end of this.
For thy 'King's Peace,' thou hast so ploughed the state,
And turned the people's heart against their King,
That now they clamor for their holy man!
Like rain and snow, two names make dim the air
With 'Cerdic' and 'Edburga'!
Cerdic.-                        I knew not this.
Edburga.- Quoth he! Thou hast it, now. Yet even so,




364


THE WINGS


Truly, thou wilt not come again, to rule!.
Thou piece of craft, I know thee. Dost thou think
Cerdic shall win? Or, haply, base Edburga?
The King is here, without... and nigh at hand,
Coming with torches.
(Lifts her hand to listen.).. Ay!
Cerdic (dazed).-The King is come....
Edburga.- Yea, so.- Tho' thou be traitor, he's a King;
And thou hast been a one-time counsellor.
He comes to say farewell... And I am first,
To shew thee something of this world, before
Thou tak'st thy leave for that far other world
Thou knowst so well; - and liker home for thee,
Than this warm Earth so full of seas and sun,Too golden — like my hair!
The tide is in.
It was low water when I walked across;
But I did seal my name upon the shore!
Cerdic.- AElfric is come...
Edburga.- I have said. — And AElfric's men.
Cerdic.- Thou speakst not truly. AElfric is a king,
Though he be young.
Edburga.-             But,- Cerdic or Edburga!
Cerdic.- Not thus for AElfric! He bore love to me.
Edburga.- Ay, long ago.... For any of the earls
He would not so have done. — It was for me.
Save thyself, Holy Cerdic! -
(She points to the door with ironic invitation. CERDIC turns
towards the bench, and grasping his mallet, looks on the carven stone,
lifting the cloth from it. She sees with amusement.)
Let us see
How monks may fight!..
(He covers the stone and faces her with sudden indignation, still
grasping his mallet.)




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY


365


Stout tools they look: and thou hast need of them.
If thou wilt cling to such a meagre life,
Who scants a moment? Surely not the King!
Yet dost thou look not now, as when I came,
Kneeling adaze before me! And belike
I seemed not thus to thee.- What I did seem,
I wonder yet, O blind man with new eyes! -
I wonder yet.(The Abbey bell sounds faintly far off. It is followed by confused sounds of approach.)
Cerdic.- Hear, then! Thou sayst truth:How much of truth I may have time to tell thee,
Thou bitter truth, Edburga! - When I kneeled,
Not knowing,- for my heart was worn with dreams,
Mine eyes were worn with watching,- I had prayed
Only to hear one knock upon the door;
Only to see one Vision, that I strove
To carve there on the stone.... There came a knock,
There stood one... at the door.- And I looked up,
And saw in thee what I had prayed to see,And knew not what I saw, believing thee -
God rede' to me this day in Paradise
The meaning of that mock! - believing thee
The Vision... of all pity and all grace,
The Blessed One. the Mother of Our Lord! -
Edburga.- Out! Mock me not. - Be still -
Cerdic (with anguish).- The Blessed One!Believing thee... the Mother of the Lord!...
(EDBURGA gives a strange cry and falls huddled against the door,
with her veil gathered over her face, as CERDIC breaks the stone into
fragments.- There is a bugle-blast without, and the sound of voices
and steel; then a blow upon the door. CERDIC hurls away the mallet.)
Could spears bite out this broken heart of a fool,
And tear it from me!Bid them in.


Voice (withtout).

Come forth!




366


THE WINGS


(Enter AELFRIC alone. The open door shows the torches outside.
CERDICfaces him, sternly motionless. EDBURGA is crouched by the
doorway, her face covered. The King looks from one to other in
amazement.)
Jlfric.-Where was thy signal? Twice I sounded horn.(To CERDIC.)
I bade thee forth. Why cam'st thou not?
Is Cerdic
Afraid to die?What makes Edburga here?
Thou wert to give me signal.... What befell?
Thou cowering in thy veil? When have I seen
This thing? - Speak!
Edburga (faintly).-  Elfric
Elfric.-                Up! Rise up and speak.
Come forth, out of thy veil!
Edburga.-                            I cannot.
Elfric. ---                                Come.Look up.Edburga.- Let be.... Ah, ah!..,Elfric (fiercely). — Out...from thy veil!
(Still she shrinks, covered. He turns on CERDIC, drawing his
sword with a cry.)
Thou diest! -
(EDBURGA flings herself against him and clasps his knees,
reaching up towards his arm.)
Edburga.- No, AElfric, no. But give me time; - not yet.
Let be... I do not know... I do not know...
I cannot tell thee why...
Ellfric. —                     Thou wilt not speak?
Edburga.- Yea, soon.... Be patient,.. hear!
(In a gasping whisper.)
Put up thy sword.
Ilfric.- Thou plead for him? Am I become thy fool?
For he it was so called me, on a time! -
Speak.- Hath one hour stricken thy mind from thee?




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY


367


Art thou Edburga? And am I the King?
What hath he said? - For whom was ambush set?
Gods! - I would make all sure, but I am loath
To shame the King I was, before my thanes.
(He pushes the door shut and stands against it, holding his
sword drawn.)
Answer, Edburga.- Was't for me or thee,
I took this errand on me? Thou hast said
One of you twain must live, the other die.To death with him.
Edburga.-                  It shall dishonor thee.
iElfric.- Bid in the hands to do it.- For that cause
Thou wouldst have had them hither. Let them be
Dishonored! So: - was it not all thy deed?
Edburga.- Mine, mine,- not thine! But thou, undo my
deed,
And cast it from thee.- He hath spoken true...
In part- not all, not all! - 'Tis I have clasped
This mantle of dishonor round thy neck,
That is so foul upon thee.- I saw not; -
But now I do behold... and all is strange.
Yea, I hate Cerdic... and I hate myself...
I bade thee do it, and I pray thee now,
Hear me again, and do it not!
jElfric (as she clings to him again).- Edburga!
Edburga.- All I have asked of thee, - unto this hour,
Put it away from thee and me,... away!
iElfric.- Edburga!
(She stands up, with a cry.)
Edburga.- Doubt me not. Thou dost believe!
I loved thee, and I love thee, and... I love thee.I loved thee that thou wert the kingliest man;
And I have made thee lesser.- Be not... less.
The people love thee yet.- Ah, but they shall!
I did not know... but now...
Thou wilt believe? -




368


THE WINGS


Undo me from thy neck.- Cast me away. —
I love thee, and I know thou didst love me. -
Cast me away!(CERDIC stretches his arms out to them, suddenly illumined with
great joy.)
Cerdic.- 0, woman! - Child.... God's Child.
(They turn to him, perplexed, EDBURGA sobbing at the feet of
AELFRIC.)
Wilt thou forgive?
Edburga (doubting).- Forgive thee, Cerdic?... Ah!.
Cerdic.- Then hear me, and forgive when I have done.
I took thee for a bitter mockery
Of my fair dream. Thou wert to me one sent
To bow my pride, who deemed such prayer could win
The blessed Vision..
So I let break the image that I strove
To make of Her; for that it was dishonored.
I brake it... and my heart was sore abased.Blest be that shame and sharpness! - This thy word
Makes me to know the answer to my prayer,
Now that I see, through all these sevenfold veils..
The Likeness!...
Edburga.-             Nay,...to Her?
Cerdic. —                           Even to Her,
Yea, and to Him who did so love the world: --
Love, the one Likeness...
Elfric (after a silence).- Cerdic, thou shamest me.
(He puts up his sword. EDBURGA hides her face against his
knees.)
Cerdic.- Lift up her head, and set her by thy side....
Wed her. Whom thou hast humbled, lift her up.The gift that thou hast taken, hold it high.,Elfric.- Come with us, Cerdic.- Be at our right hand.
Cerdic.- Not yet. For I have lived within a dream
Too long.... Not yet know I enough of God,Or men.




JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY                    369
(As they turn to go, EDBURGA leaves the King's arms irresolutely.
She draws near the bench and gathers up the fragments of the broken
stone to lay them together with a half-fearful touch, not looking at
CERDIC. Exeunt EDBURGA and the King. —CERDIC follows them
to the threshold, looking out, his hands held after them in farewell.
There is a sharp command.    The torches go, and the footsteps
on the pebbles. A gust of wind blows suddenly; and CERDIC reenters with a hurt sea-gull. There is the faint sound of the Abbey
bell once. CERDIC comes slowly down towards the bench and
the stone fragments, his face set, and the sea-gull held close to his
breast.
Ah, Thou! - Have pity on all broken wings.




THE BURDEN OF LOST PROPHETS
BY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
Slowly, slowly go the golden horses
Trampling through the dust of prophets dead.
Though they knew the goal of old adventure,_
Never shall an echo of their tread
Rouse their souls to gather at the trooping
In living song the deeds of mighty men,
For the swords of many a vigil guard their sleeping,
And the gate of beauty never opes again.
In the harvest of the strife were many wounded,
But their will would have them battle with the foe,
And a host of mighty enemies were singing
The battle hymn that only victors know.
Was it thus in the day before the peril
Leaped to flame upon the altar of the God?
Ah! 'Twas thus ere the worlds had their beginning. —
They were born by this hymn at His nod.
And their dust is the road of our journey
From the womb of life to ever wider lands,
Guiding songs did they make for our knowing,
Dust they shaped for the work of our hands.
Onward ever runs the trail of beauty,
Luring us, the cavalry of song,
To ride through the dust of our fathers
And to fail in the battle of the strong.
Slowly, slowly go our golden horses
Trampling through the dust of prophets dead.
Though we know the end of their adventure
Never shall an echo of the tread
Rouse our souls to gather at the trooping
In living deed the songs of mighty men,
For the swords of many a vigil guard their sleeping,
And the gate of beauty never opes again.
370
+I', 4lt




I








I








111111111111
3 9015 00842 0765
A4DO NOT REMOVE
IkiA, IiI  'ORH




41     K    =#            -II
"m,.               — al"   'gui- -tl.
"ll.
1w,                  I                      Um
I MAN                               HEMS"4