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Authors: Jean Giono

BOOK: The Serpent of Stars
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But I'll be put to pasture like the cow.
If man has become the master of the beasts.
Speak!
 
THE RIVER.
I don't know.
I saw that image of feet that pierced the mud here and there and entered the woods.
But I couldn't follow.
Ask the Tree.
So here we are in pursuit of man. Here we are in pursuit of that primary position held by the Sardinian.
For right now, I'm not going to translate the rest of the play. I only wanted to give a long series of scenes to show how the serpentine action unfolds. Furthermore, it does not form a whole, a round fruit well sealed off from the sky all around, but it is, on the contrary, like a soft fig, too ripe on one side, its honey dripping gold, and on the other side, bitter and creamy with the milk of the tree, because the shepherds don't all have the same poetic powers, and in the best flow, there is some water without taste.
As for the Sardinian's prime place, it will be threatened throughout by the Sea. Glodion will have his say from time to time and each time, it will brutally interrupt the Sardinian's inspiration. So that finally he will be told:
O Sea, made jealous by all your salt;
Of all this salt that burns your skin,
Jealous of all the greenness.
Leave us in peace.
It would be a beautiful world indeed if it was made up only of you,
We would be soft as an egg without a shell,
And you would lose your fish in the sky
All along your course.
To tell the truth, as for the Sardinian's primary position, that power that launches the drama like gunpowder, no one wants to see it taken away from the one who holds it. Except for the cripple who did the River, the other shepherds are not up to it, and never will anyone say anything that can compete with the opening monologue, which I call “the birth and youth of the earth.” Even the cripple has faults. He can only improvise in a trance, in a sort of fever that makes his eyes glow in
a wind that thrashes him about, limbs strewn. The Sardinian remains motionless as a column. He only moves for the greetings. From this stillness flows a great nobility and when, at the end of the drama, remaining alone, he makes a few essential gestures, they go to the height of tragedy in a single bound.
So here is the pursuit of man.
The Tree arrives. It says what it sees from the top of its head:
 
From the shores of that river
to the red tree
and beyond more than twenty hills which mount each other like rams and ewes.
 
It indicates man's route, that track in the grass:
like the slime of a slug.
But from the red tree on, it loses sight of it.
But, there's the Wind and here it comes with a leap. The Wind, at the end of one of its courses, has encountered man and has accompanied him because it has found him:
. . . not at all thorny
and supple as silk, and very light on the two springs of his legs.
And his arms are like two wings that tickle without beating me.
It accompanied man in a strange search, full of leaps and slides flat on the stomach, of breathless races. Finally, the man found what he was looking for: his female. She was there:
naked, hidden in the grass like a frog.
And there was the chase, angular and quick as a flash of lightning, and then the man seized the female. And there, the wind saw nothing more because the two bodies pulled each other down under the shelter of the bushes, in the grass.
The Sardinian calls the Grass.
The Grass has seen it all and tells it all. It tells it, without fear of words and things. It's all men here, and what took place in the shelter of the bushes is the act of life, as simple, as pure as the swelling of a cloud.
The Grass uses a beautiful word to speak of the man's actions; he uses
“pastéjavo”
which means, “he kneaded the dough.”
And the Grass saw the slow life of the couple and those hours of dreaming in which, more than the beasts, these new creatures remained there, motionless, and:
went off into the depths of the hour
on a serpent's back.
One day:
Then, from each side of his female
he hollowed two great streams.
And there she was like a spring,
there she was like a fountain of children;
and the children flowed from her like the stream from the fountain.
And the last ones are still there crawling close to her like fresh nuts, while, already on their two feet the first ones have arrived at the edge of the forest, before the world, and in their thick hands, they carry the fruit of fire.
 
The Grass' account was the peak of the drama. If someday the Sardinian must be defeated, I hope—and he himself hopes—that his
replacement will be the shepherd who spoke the words of the Grass for us.
When he had finished speaking, the Sardinian approached him, his hand extended. They shook hands two or three times and the Sardinian said, “Bravo! . . .”
This shepherd is an assistant for the herd for which the Sardinian is the master.
After the Grass came the Rain. That one told us all it knew of man's exterior:
 
Because I've encountered him many times!
And because there is not a fold, not a groove in his body which I have not kissed.
He has:
 
A head like that stone which makes fire
and the power that makes hillocks of his chest and his legs and his arms, it comes from within his head.
And the female:
 
Some are as lively as little mice
and they are like the fruit of the thyme, that little green star soft with honey, but with a bitterness that swells the tongue.
I run over her as over the naked hills but I never go farther than her belly because a fire is hidden there, hotter than the fire of the sun.
The one that will tell us of man's interior is the Cold. That one has entered, has gone within to the inside of man, all the way to:
That place where life and death are welded together: to that welded place where there is a roll of flesh like in those earthworms which have been cut and which have grown back together.
Inside man it has seen:
 
Stars and suns, and huge shooting stars which bring fire to all the corners and the beautiful shepherd's stars which climb in the calm of peace.
A vast sky, all blue like the sky of earth, with a sun, storms, and great, spiteful flashes of lightening.
And quantities of stars that go off in all directions, herds here, herds there, in the great turmoil of joy, when he approaches his female.
The Cold has seen the whole interior of man like a sky full of powers. The Beast who comes next will say that he is:
 
like a pot full of honey which overflows, and which nourishes with its overflow a whole tribe of flies.
For us, he is like a great tree we desire after a long trot in the sun.
He is like the grass slope for the feet of those who have climbed.
He is fresh water;
he is the spring.
He is the great palm, the beautiful stream, the cool leaves, and all of these together.
 
It will speak of that seduction that is in man's eyes and it will tell the Earth the great secret, the beasts' great hope:
Do you know why we are afraid, Earth?
Do you know why we are wild,
why we listen to the wind and sniff the dust?
It's because we feel ourselves carried by you, crossing the sky at a horrible speed.
And, he who has come,
we've read in his eyes that he doesn't see your life, Earth.
We've read in his eyes tranquillity and peace, and that's why we love him.
And then, from there, the play will make two leaps that will carry it to the end.
 
First, a long monologue from the Sardinian. The nine shepherds, who were the Sea, the Mountain, the River, the Tree, the Wind, the Grass, the Rain, the Cold, the Beast, are still and silent. They hold one another's hands and they form a horseshoe around the Sardinian.
The Sardinian gives us the final word on Earth's anxiety and why it has questioned so hungrily. It knows, it recognizes the danger that threatens it. If man becomes the master of beasts, it, the Earth, is lost:
I see him, already, there ahead of the great herd.
He will walk along at his easy pace
and behind him, there you will all be.
And then, he will be the master.
He will command the forests.
He will make you camp out in the mountains,
He will make you drink the rivers.
He will make the sea advance or retreat, by merely moving the flat of his
hand.
A moment of silence, then the Earth begins to look around:
 
The great reflection of all images.
 
And as it reads the hidden writing, its voice reassures and prophesies.
 
The great barrier!
It will always be between beast and man, that high barrier black as night, high as the sun.
And were all the pity piled up in your skin, you would never be able to make it run from you or make the beasts drink from it.
You will never jump the barrier and enter on equal footing the great forest of the beast's reflections.
You will not look at the same reflections.
You will see the trees from the other side, and the others, they will see another side of the trees.
And all that, because I am going to be harsh with you, harsh and spiteful, and I am going to think about my spitefulness.
You will be the master of gold and stones, but without understanding the stones, you will massacre them with your trowel and your pick.
And as for gold, made of light, you will guard it in the dark stench of your mouth.
You will make yourself aids with iron, bolts and hinges.
But you will be obliged to offer your head and your heart to all your machines and you will become as evil as the iron and the jaws of the hinge.
Then, the Earth is delighted and begins to laugh from all its volcanoes.
At that moment that the drama takes its second leap and the Sardinian ends with a simple gesture. He sheds his Earth character, and he again becomes what he is: a man. More than that: a shepherd. More than that: a master of beasts, one of those masters that the earth dreads. And that is the truth.

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