"I have in this dream play attempted to imitate the inconsequent yet transparently logical shape of a dream." "Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable." "Time and place do not exist;" "on an insignificant basis of reality the imagination spins, weaving new patterns;" "a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations." "The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, disperse, assemble." "But one consciousness rules over them all, that of the dreamer;" "for him there are no secrets, no illogicalities, no scruples, no laws." "He neither acquits nor condemns, but merely relates;" "and, just as a dream is more often painful than happy, so an undertone of melancholy and of pity for all mortal beings accompanies this flickering tale." "Sleep, the liberator, often seems a tormentor, but when the agony is harshest comes the awakening and reconciles the sufferer with reality" "which, however painful, is yet a mercy, compared with the agony of the dream." "The castle is still rising from the earth. ... do you see how much it has grown since last year?" "I've never seen that castle before..." "never heard of a castle rising ... but" "Yes, it has grown eight feet, but that's because they've manured it..." "And if you look carefully, you'll see that a wing has grown on the side facing the sun." "Won't it flower soon?" "We're past midsummer." "Don't you see the flower up there?" "Yes, I see it!" "Father, why do flowers grow out of dirt?" "Because they don't like the dirt, so they run up into the light as fast as they can, to blossom and die!" "Do you know who lives in the castle?" "I did once, but I've forgotten." "I think there's a prisoner inside." "I'm sure he's waiting for me to free him." "But at what price?" "One doesn't bargain about one's duty." "Let's go into the castle." "Yes, let's go." "You mustn't, you mustn't." "Please, Agnes, let me keep my sword." "No, you'll break the table." "Go down to the harness-room and put the window in, and we'll meet later." "You are a prisoner in your room." "I have come to free you." "I suppose I've been waiting for that." "But I wasn't sure you'd want to." "The castle is strong, it has seven walls, but we'll manage." "Do you want to or not?" "To be honest, I don't know." "Either way I'll suffer." "Every joy in life must be paid for with a double portion of sorrow." "Sitting here is hard, but if I buy my freedom I'll have to suffer threefold." "Agnes, I'd rather stay here," "if only I can see you." "What do you see in me?" "The beauty which is the harmony of the universe." "There are lines in your figure which I find only in the orbits of the solar system, in the sound of a violin, in the vibrations of light." "You are a child of God..." "So are you." "Then why must I guard horses?" "Clean stables, and shovel manure?" "So that you shall long to get away." "I do long, but it's so hard to break the habit." "But it's a duty to seek freedom in the light." "Duty?" "Life has never shown any sense of duty towards me." "You feel life has been unjust to you?" "Yes!" "It has been unjust." "You don't want it?" "A silk cloak for me, my dear?" "What's the use?" "I shall die soon." "You believe what the doctor says?" "Even what he says, but mostly I believe the voice that speaks in here." "And you think of your children, first and always." "They've been my life, my justification, my joy and my grief." "Kristina, forgive me — for everything." "Oh, my dear." "Forgive me, dearest." "We have tormented each other." "Why?" "We don't know." "We couldn't do otherwise." "But here are the children's new clothes." "See they change twice a week on Wednesday and Sunday, and that Louisa washes them - all over." "Are you going out?" "I must go up to the college." "It's eleven o'clock." "Ask Alfred to come in before you go." "Here he is, the little dear." "My eyes are starting to go, too." "Yes, it's getting dark." "Alfred." "Come here." "Who is that girl?" "It is Agnes." "Oh, is it Agnes?" "Do you know what they say?" "That she's the God Indra's daughter, who asked to be allowed to come down to earth to see what human life is really like." "But don't say anything." "She is a god's child!" "Alfred dear, I shall soon be leaving you and your brothers and sisters." "Let me give you some advice." "Yes, Mother." "It's just this." "Never strive with God." "What do you mean, Mother?" "You mustn't go round feeling life has been unjust to you." "But when people do treat me unjustly?" "You're thinking of the time you were unjustly punished for stealing a penny that was later found?" "Yes." "And that injustice warped my whole life." "I know." "But now go to that cupboard " "You know, then?" "It's " "The Swiss Family Robinson." "Which " "Don't go on." "Which your brother got punished for - and which you'd torn up and hidden." "Fancy that cupboard still standing there after twenty years." "We've moved so often, and my mother died ten years ago." "Well, what of it?" "You always have to ask questions about everything." "That way you'll ruin the best life has to offer." "Ah, here's Lina." "Please, madam." "It's very kind of you, but I can't go to the christening " "Why not, child?" "I've nothing to wear." "You can borrow this cloak of mine." "Oh, madam, I can't do that." "I don't understand." "I shall never go to any more parties" "What will Father say?" "It's a gift from him " "He wouldn't be so small-minded." "Are you lending my gift to the servant?" "Don't speak like that." "Remember I was once a servant too." "Why must you hurt someone who is innocent?" "Why must you hurt me, your husband?" "Oh, this life!" "When one does a good deed, there's always someone for whom it's ugly." "Help one person, you hurt another." "Ah, this life!" "Alas for mankind!" "You think so?" "Yes." "Life is hard - but love conquers all!" "Come and see." "Isn't that shawl ready yet?" "Why, no, my dear." "Twenty-six years is no time for such a task." "And your lover never came back?" "No, but it wasn't his fault." "He had to go away, poor man." "That was thirty years ago." "Wasn't she a dancer?" "Up there, in the opera?" "She was the star." "But when he went, he seemed to take her dancing with him." "And she never got any more parts." "Everyone complains." "With their eyes, if not their tongues." "I don't complain." "Not now, since I got a fish-chest and a green fishing-net." "And that makes you happy?" "Oh, yes, so happy!" "It was the dream of my youth." "And now it's come true." "Of course, I'm - fifty now" "Fifty years for a fish-chest and a fishing net " "A green fishing-net, a green one." "Give me the shawl, then I can sit here and watch the people." "But you must stand behind and tell me about them." "Today's the last day before the theatre closes." "Now they learn whether they're being kept on or not " "What happens to those who aren't?" "Blessed jesus, you'll see." "I'll put the shawl over your head." "Poor people." "Look, here comes one." "She's not one of the chosen." "See how she's crying." "Alas for mankind!" "But look at this one." "There's a happy man." "He is to marry Miss Victoria." "Victoria!" "She'll be right down." "The carriage is waiting, the table laid, the champagne on ice." "May I embrace you, ladies?" "Victoria!" "I am here!" "Ah, well." "I'll wait." "Do you know me?" "No." "For seven years I have walked here and waited for her - at noon, when the sun stood above the chimneys, and at evening, when the gloom of night began to fall." "Look at the floor here, you can see the footprints of the faithful lover." "Hurrah!" "She is mine!" "Victoria!" "Well, she's getting dressed." "You've a fishing-net, I see." "Everyone at the opera house is crazy about fishing-nets - or rather fish!" "They like dumb fish, because they can't sing." "What does a thing like that cost?" "It's quite expensive." "Victoria!" "Look- it's coming into leaf again." "For the eighth time." "Victoria!" "Now she's combing her fringe." "Come, madam, let me go up and fetch my bride." "No one's allowed on to the stage." "Seven years I have been walking here." "Seven times three hundred and sixty-five makes two thousand five hundred and fifty-five!" "And that door I've stared at two thousand five hundred and fifty-five times, without discovering where it leads to." "And that clover-leaf to let in light." "For whom does it let in light?" "Is there someone inside?" "Does someone live there?" "I don't know." "I've never seen it opened." "It looks like a pantry door" "I saw when I was four and went away one Sunday afternoon with the maid." "Away, to other maids, but I never got beyond the kitchens, and I sat between the water-cask and the salt-barrel." "I've seen so many kitchens in my time, and the pantries were always in the porch, with bored round holes and a clover-leaf." "But the opera house has no pantry, for they have no kitchen." "Victoria!" "..." "Tell me, she can't go out any other way but this, can she?" "No there's no other way." "Good, then I shan't miss her." "Now she must be here soon." "I say!" "That flower out there, that blue monk's-hood." "I haven't seen that since I was a child." "Is it the same one?" "I remember in a parsonage, when I was seven - two doves, on it, blue doves under that hood" "but once a bee came and crept into the hood." "Then I thought, "Now I have you!"" "so I pinched the flower shut;" "but the bee stung through it and I cried." "But then the parson's wife came and put wet earth on it and we had wild strawberries and milk for supper." "I think it's getting dark already." "Where are you going?" "Home for supper." "Supper?" "At this time of day?" "Look - may I go in for a moment and telephone to the rising castle?" "What do you want there?" "I must tell the glazier to put in double windows, for it'll soon be winter and I'm so terribly cold." "Who is Miss Victoria?" "The girl he loves." "Well answered." "What she may be to us and others, he doesn't care." "All she is, is what she is to him." "It's getting dark quickly today." "To the gods a year is as a minute." "And to humans a minute can be as a year." "She hasn't come yet?" "No" "She'll come." "She'll come." "But perhaps I'd better cancel the lunch." "As it's already evening." "Yes, I'll do that." "May I have my shawl now?" "No, take a little time off, I'll do your job." "I want to learn to know people and life, to find out if it's as hard as they say." "But you mustn't sleep at your post here." "Never sleep, night or day" "Not sleep at night?" "Yes, if you can, with the bell-rope round your wrist there are night-watchmen on the stage and they're relieved every three hours," "But that's inhuman " "You may think so, but folk like me are glad of such a job, and if you knew how envied I am" "Envied?" "For doing this?" "Yes." "But, you know, what's worse than the hours and the drudgery and the draughts and the cold and the damp is being everybody's confidante." "They come to me - why?" "Perhaps they read in the lines of my face the runes of suffering that invite confidences." "That shawl hides thirty years of sorrows, mine and others'." "It's heavy too, and it burns like nettles." "Wear it if you wish." "When it gets too heavy, give me a shout and I'll come and relieve you." "What you can bear, I surely can." "We'll see." "But be kind to my little friends, and don't yawn at their sorrows." "From all the evidence, summer is past and autumn near." "I see that from that lime-tree and that monk's-hood." "But the autumn is my spring." "Then the theatre will open again!" "And then she must come." "Kind lady, may I sit on this chair for a little while?" "Sit, my friend." "I can stand." "If only I could sleep a little, things would be better." "This door, that gives me no peace." "What is behind it?" "There must be something." "Ah!" "Now the rehearsals have begun." "What is this?" "Light and darkness - light and darkness?" "Day and night." "Day and night." "A merciful Providence wishes to shorten your waiting;" "so the days flee the pursuing nights." "There's the bill-poster with his fishing-net." "Had good fishing?" "Oh, yes." "The summer was hot and a little long." "The net was very good, but not quite as I'd imagined" "Not quite as I'd imagined." "Because the thought is more than the deed - bigger than the fact." "Hasn't she come down yet?" "No, not yet, but she'll come soon." "Do you know what's behind that door?" "No, I've never seen that door open." "I'll telephone for a locksmith to come and open it." "What was wrong with your net?" "Wrong?" "Well, there wasn't anything actually wrong but it wasn't as I'd imagined it, so I didn't get so much pleasure from it." "How had you imagined the net?" "How?" "That I can't say" "Let me tell you." "You had imagined it as it wasn't." "Green, yes, but not that green." "You know, madam!" "You know everything - that's why everyone comes to you with their worries," "If you'd listen to me just once too" "Yes, gladly." "Come in here, and tell me everything" "Has Miss Victoria gone?" "No, not yet." "Then I'll wait." "She'll come soon, won't she?" "Oh, yes, certainly." "Don't go now, you'll be able to see what's behind this door, for I've sent for the locksmith." "It'll be really interesting to see that door opened." "That door and the rising castle." "Do you know the rising castle?" "Do I know it?" "I've been a prisoner there." "No, was that you?" "But why did they have so many horses there?" "It was a cavalry barracks, of course." "How stupid I am." "Fancy my not realizing that!" "Has Miss Victoria left?" "No, she hasn't left." "She never leaves." "That is because she loves me." "You mustn't go before the locksmith comes to open this door." "Oh, is the door to be opened?" "What fun!" "I must just ask the stage-door keeper something" "Has Miss Victoria left?" "Not as far as I know." "You see!" "Didn't I say she was waiting for me?" "You mustn't go before the door is opened." "Which door?" "Is there more than one door?" "Oh, I know." "The one with the clover-leaf." "Yes, I'll certainly stay." "I must just have a word with the stage-door keeper." "Is that the locksmith?" "No, the locksmith was busy." "But it can be done as well by a glazier." "Yes, yes, I'm sure." "But have you got a diamond?" "Of course." "Who ever heard of a glazier without a diamond?" "That's true." "Then let us get to work!" "Locksmith - or glazier - do your duty!" "A moment such as this does not often recur in a person's life, so, my good friends, I beg you, consider carefully " "In the name of the law I forbid the opening of this door!" "Oh, God, the trouble whenever one wants to do anything new and big!" "We'll take it to court." "To the advocate!" "Then we'll see how the law stands." "To the advocate!" "Say, my sister, please may I have the shawl?" "I'll hang it in here till I light the stove." "Then I'll burn it with all its griefs and sorrows." "Not yet, I want to finish it first." "And I want to gather up all your griefs, the confidences you've received about crimes and vices, unjust imprisonments, slanders, calumnies" "My little friend, your shawl would not suffice." "Look at these walls." "Isn't it as though all these sins had soiled the wallpaper?" "Look at these documents on which I write accounts of injustices." "Look at me." "No one ever comes here who laughs." "Only hard glances, bared teeth, clenched fists." "And they all spray their malice, their envy, their suspicions, over me." "Look, my hands are black, and can never be cleansed, do you see how they are cracked and bloody?" "I can never wear clothes for more than one or two days because they stink of other men's crimes." "Sometimes I have sulphur burned here, but it doesn't help." "I sleep in here and dream only of crimes." "I've a murder case right now; that I can bear, but do you know what's the worst of all?" "To part a husband and wife;" "that makes the earth cry out to heaven, cry treachery against creation, against goodness, against love." "And when these briefs are filled with their mutual accusations and at length a humane fellow creature receives one of the two in private, takes him or her by the ear and, smiling, asks the simple question," ""What is your real complaint against your husband or wife?" - then he or she stands there, speechless, unable to answer." "Once, yes, it was a question of a green salad, another time a single word, most often it's nothing." "But the pain, the suffering!" "These I must endure." "Look at me!" "Do you think I could win a woman's love with this criminal's visage?" "And do you think anyone wants to be friends with a man who must collect all the city's debts?" "Alas for mankind!" "Alas indeed." "And what people live on is to me a riddle." "They marry on an income of a two thousand crowns, when they need four thousand crowns." "They borrow, of course, everyone borrows." "They live from day to day and muddle through to death." "And they always leave debts behind them." "Who will pay in the end, tell me that?" "He Who feeds the birds." "Yes." "But if He Who feeds the birds were to step down to His earth and see how His poor children fare," "He might perhaps be moved to pity" "Alas for mankind!" "Alas indeed." "What do you want?" "I only wanted to ask if Miss Victoria has left." "No, she hasn't, you may rest assured." "Why are you pointing at my cupboard?" "I thought that door was so like" "Oh, no!" "No, no!" "Is there a funeral?" "No, they're conferring degrees, doctors' degrees." "And I must go and be made a Doctor of Law." "Perhaps you'd like to become a Doctor and get a laurel crown?" "Yes, why not?" "It'd make a change" "Shall we go at once to the great ceremony?" "Just go and get dressed." "Look, now I've washed the shawl." "But why are you standing here?" "Didn't you get the wreath?" "No." "I was unworthy." "Why?" "Because you embraced the cause of the poor, said a good word for the criminal, lightened the burden of the guilty, won reprieves for the condemned." "Alas for mankind." "They are not angels;" "but they are much to be pitied." "Speak no evil of mankind." "I shall plead its cause." "Why do they strike their friends in the face?" "They know no better." "Come" " I will give you a wreath which will suit you better." "Now I will play for you." "Have mercy!" "Hear us!" "Pity us mortals!" "Eternal One, why hast Thou forsaken us?" "From the deep we beseech Thee: mercy, O Eternal One!" "Place not too heavy a burden on Thy children." "Hear us!" "Hear us!" "What do you hear, sister?" "What do you hear?" "I hear raindrops falling." "They are the tears of humans weeping." "What else do you hear?" "Sighing - wailing - mourning." "Mankind's complaints have reached here." "They reach no further." "But why this eternal lamentation?" "Has life no cause for joy?" "Yes, the fairest of things, which is the bitterest:" "love." "A wife and a home;" "the best thing, and the worst." "I shall try it." "With me?" "With you." "You know the rocks, the reefs." "We shall avoid them." "I am poor." "What of that, if we love each other?" "And a little beauty costs nothing." "I hate things which you may love." "Then we must compromise." "If we tire of each other?" "Then a child wall come and give us a happiness which will never fade." "You want me, poor and ugly, despised, an outcast?" "Yes." "Let us unite our faults." "So be it, then." "I'm pasting, I'm pasting." "I'm pasting, I'm pasting." "You're shutting out the air." "I'm suffocating..." "Air." "Now there's only one little crack left." "Air, I can't breathe!" "I'm pasting, I'm pasting." "That's right, Kristin." "Heat costs money." "Oh, it's as though you were pasting my lips together!" "Is the child asleep?" "His cries scare away my clients." "What can we do about it?" "Nothing." "We must find a bigger apartment." "We have no money." "May I open the window?" "This air is stifling me." "Then the heat will go and we shall freeze." "It's horrible." "May we scrub the floor out there, then?" "You haven't the strength, nor have I, and Kristin must paste." "She must paste the whole house tight, every crack in the ceilings, the floors, the walls." "Poverty I was prepared for, but not dirt." "Poverty is always more or less dirty." "This is worse than I had dreamed." "We're not too badly off." "There's still food in the pot." "But what food!" "Cabbage is cheap, nourishing and good." "If you like cabbage." "It revolts me." "Why didn't you say so?" "Because I loved you." "I wanted to make a sacrifice for you." "Then I must sacrifice for you my love of cabbage." "The sacrifice must be mutual." "Then what shall we eat?" "Fish?" "But you hate fish." "And it's dear." "This is harder than I had dreamed." "You see how hard it is!" "And the child, that was to have been our bond and our blessing, is becoming our ruin." "My dearest!" "I am dying in this air, in this room with its window on the yard, the child's ceaseless crying so that I can never sleep, the people out there with their complainings, strifes and accusations." "I must die if I stay here." "Poor little flower." "No light, no air" "And you say there are some who are worse off." "Many of the neighbours envy me." "I could bear it if only I could have a little beauty in my home." "I know you mean a flower, if possible a heliotrope, but it costs a krona and fifty öre, and that's six litres pints of milk or four casings of potatoes," "I'll gladly do without food if I may have my flower." "There is a kind of beauty which costs nothing, and whose absence from a home is the worst torment for a man who loves beauty." "What is that?" "If I say, you will be angry." "We have agreed not to be angry." "We have agreed." "Everything will be all right," "Agnes, as long as we don't speak sharply." "You know what I mean." "Not yet!" "We shall never do that." "I never shall." "Tell me, now." "Well." "When I enter a home I first look to see how the curtain sits on its rail." "If it hangs like a rope or a rag, I leave." "Then I glance at the chairs." "If they stand straight, I stay." "Then I look at the candles in their sticks." "If they are crooked, the whole house is awry." "This is the beauty, you see, my dear, that costs nothing." "Don't speak so sharply, Axel." "I was not speaking sharply." "Yes, you were." "Look, for God's sake!" "What kind of language is that?" "Forgive me, Agnes." "But I have suffered from your untidiness as much as you suffer from dirt." "And I haven't dared to tidy things up myself, because then you get angry as though I had reproached you." "Ugh!" "Shall we stop now?" "It is horribly difficult to be married." "The most difficult thing of all." "I think one has to be an angel." "Yes." "I agree." "I think I shall begin to hate you after this." "Woe to us then!" "Let us beware of hatred." "I promise I shall never remark on your untidiness again - though it tortures me." "And I shall eat cabbage, though it tortures me." "We must torture each other, then." "What makes one happy, torments the other." "Alas for mankind!" "You see it now?" "Yes." "But let us in God's name avoid these reefs, now we know them so well." "Let us do that." "We are humane and enlightened people." "We can forgive and forget." "We can smile at such trifles." "We can - we can!" "Do you know, I read in the paper this morning - by the way, where is the paper?" "Which paper?" "Do I take more than one paper?" "Smile now, and don't reproach me." "I used your paper to make the fire." "For God's sake!" "Smile, now." "I burned it because he mocked what is sacred to me" "And what is not sacred to me." "Well!" "I shall smile, I shall smile so that my back teeth show." "I shall be humane, and sweep my opinions under the carpet, and say yes to everything and act the hypocrite." "So, you've burned my newspaper." "I see." "Now I'm tidying things again, and you'll be angry." "Agnes, this is impossible." "Yes, yes." "But we must go on, not because of our vows, but for the child." "That's right." "For the child." "Oh - oh - we must go on." "And now I must go out to my clients." "Listen, they're buzzing with impatience to get at each other's throats, have each other fined and imprisoned." "Lost souls " "Unhappy people." "I'm pasting, I'm pasting!" "Oh, how that latch squeaks!" "It's as though you were squeezing my heart's springs" "I'm squeezing, I'm squeezing " "Don't do it!" "I'm squeezing!" "No!" "I'm - !" "Allow me." "Certainly." "Since you are now a Doctor." "Now life lies before me!" "All paths stand open to me, my feet are on Parnassus, I have won my laurels, immortality, honour." "Everything is mine." "What will you live on?" "Live on?" "You must have a home, clothes, food?" "That always works out, if only one has someone who loves one." "Perhaps." "Perhaps." "Paste, Kristin!" "Paste!" "Till they can't breathe." "I'm pasting!" "Till they can't breathe." "Will you come with me now?" "At once." "But where?" "To Fairhaven!" "There it is summer, there the sun shines, there are young people, children and flowers, singing and dancing, feasting and joy!" "Then I want to go there." "Come, come!" "Now I am returning to my first hell." "This was the second - and the worst." "The greatest happiness is the greatest hell." "Now she's dropped hairpins on the floor again." "Fancy, now he's found the hairpins too." "Too?" "Look at this one." "Here are two prongs, but one pin." "It is two, but it is one." "If I straighten it out it is a single entity." "If I bend it, it is two without ceasing to be one." "That means: these two are one." "But if I break it - so!" "Now they are two, two!" "All this he has seen." "But before one can break it, the prongs must diverge." "If they converge, then it will hold." "And if they are parallel, then they never meet." "They will neither hold nor break." "The hairpin is the most complete of all created things." "A straight line which is identical with two parallels." "A lock which fastens when it is open." "Clasping a plait of hair, whose ends stay open when it is clasped shut." "Like this door." "When I shut it, I open, the way out, for you, Agnes." "Shall we go, then?" "Why, Ordstrom!" "Have you landed here?" "Yes, I'm here." "Is this Fairhaven?" "No, that's on the other side." "This is Foulstrand." "Then we've come wrong." "We?" "Won't you introduce me?" "No, that wouldn't be proper." "This is Indra's own daughter!" "Indra's?" "I thought it was Waruna herself." "Well, aren't you surprised I'm black in the face?" "My son, I am fifty years old, and then one is no longer surprised." "I assumed immediately that you were going to a masked ball this evening." "Quite right." "And I hope you will join me?" "By all means." "This place - doesn't look tempting." "What kind of people live here?" "The sick ones live here, the healthy over there." "There are only poor people here, then?" "No, my lad, these are the rich ones." "Look at that fellow on the rack there." "He's eaten too much grass with truffles and drunk so much Burgundy that his feet have become like briar-wood." "Briar-wood?" "Yes." "He's got briar-wood feet." "And that fellow lying on the guillotine." "He's drunk so much brandy they had to run his spine through the mangle." "That's not good either." "Everyone lives here who has some grief to hide." "Look at him, for instance." "It's the Major!" "Our old schoolfellow!" "Don Juan!" "You see, he's still in love with that spook at his side." "He doesn't see that she's grown old, that she's ugly, faithless, cruel." "There's love for you." "I'd never have believed that lecher could love so deeply and sincerely." "You're very charitable." "I myself have loved Victoria." "Yes, I still walk the corridor and wait for her " "Is it you who walks in the corridor?" "It is I." "Well, have you opened the door yet?" "No, it's sub judice." "The bill-poster is out with his fishing-net, of course, so they're held up for evidence." "Meanwhile the glazier has put the windows in at the castle, which has risen half a storey." "It's been an uncommonly fine year this year." "Warm and damp." "But you've never been as warm as it is where I work." "How hot is it in the ovens, then?" "When we disinfect cholera suspects, we bring it up to a hundred and thirty." "Is the cholera loose again now?" "Don't you know?" "Yes, of course I know, but I so often forget what I know." "I often wish I could forget, especially myself." "That's why I go to masquerades, fancy-dress balls and social occasions." "Why, what have you done?" "If I talk about it they say I'm boasting, if I keep quiet they call me a hypocrite." "Is that why you've blacked your face?" "Yes." "A little blacker than I really am." "Who is that coming now?" "Oh, some poet who needs a mud-bath." "Mud?" "Surely he needs light and air!" "No, he always lives miles up in space, so he gets nostalgic for mud." "It makes your skin hard like a pig's to roll in mud." "Then he doesn't feel the gadfly's sting." "This curious world of contradictions!" "Out of clay the god Ptah created man on a potter's wheel, a lathe" " Or some other damned thing!" "" "From clay the sculptor creates his more or less immortal masterpieces." "Which are usually just crap!" "From clay are created those indispensable kitchen utensils which men call by the common names of pots and plates." "What the hell do I care what they're called?" "Such is clay!" "When clay is liquid they call it mud." "C'est mon affaire!" "Lina!" "Lina, show yourself to Miss Agnes." "She knew you ten years ago when you were young and happy" "See how she is now!" "Five children, drudgery, squalling, starvation, ironing!" "See how her beauty has gone, how her joy has vanished, through the performance of those duties which should have given her that inner happiness which expresses itself in the harmony of the facial lines and the still glow of the eyes " "Stuff it, stuff it." "That's what they still say." "And if one is silent, then they say: "Speak!" Impossible creatures." "Let me hear your complaint." "No, I daren't." "Or he'll make things worse." "Who is so cruel?" "I daren't say, or I'll get beaten." "That's the way it is." "But I'll tell you, even if this blackamoor knocks my teeth out." "Let me inform you that injustices sometimes occur." "Agnes, daughter of God!" "Do you hear music and dancing from the hillside up there?" "Well, that is Lina's sister, who has come home from the city, where she - went astray, if you understand me?" "Now they are killing the fatted calf, but Lina who stayed at home has to carry the swill and feed the pigs." "They rejoice because the prodigal has ceased from her straying, not simply because she has come home." "Remember that." "Very well." "But then put on a dance and a supper each evening for this irreproachable working-girl who has never strayed!" "Do that." "But they won't do it." "When Lina isn't working she has to go to church to be reproached for not being perfect." "Is this justice?" "Your questions are so difficult to answer, because " "Look at that." "Perfect happiness, unqualified bliss." "The joy of young love." "See what a light shines from them!" "It is Victoria!" "Well?" "It is his Victoria." "I have mine." "And mine, no one may see." "Raise the quarantine flag now, and I'll pull in the net." "Imagine being able to talk like that, to do such things, when one sees two people in love!" "Don't touch them!" "Don't touch Love!" "It's lese-majeste!" "Alas, alas!" "Now all that is beautiful must be debased, hauled down into the mud!" "Yes, yes!" "It isn't nice." "But everyone must come here, everyone who has been contaminated." "What have we done?" "You don't need to have done anything to be contaminated by the petty dirt of life." "So short is happiness and joy!" "How long must we stay here?" "Forty days and nights." "Then we'd rather go back." "Live here, among scorched hills and pigsties?" "Now I'm lighting the sulphur." "Please step inside." "Oh!" "My blue dress will lose its colour." "And turn white." "Your red roses shall also turn white." "And your cheeks." "Forty days!" "That will please you." "No, it will not." "Your joy was the cause of my grief, but - it doesn't matter" " I am now a Doctor and have a standing over there" "Ho, ho, yes, yes." "And in the autumn I shall get a place in a school to read with schoolboys the lessons I learned in my childhood and youth, and must learn now, the same lessons, throughout my manhood and my old age," "the same lessons ..." "How much is two times two?" "How many times does two go into four?" "Till they retire me and I can go jobless, waiting for mealtimes and newspapers, until at last they carry me out to the crematorium and burn me up." "Have you no pensioners out here?" "That must be the worst thing after twice two is four:" "to start school again, when you've got your Doctorate;" "to ask the same questions until you die." "Look, there goes a pensioner, waiting for death;" "doubtless a captain who never became a major, or a high-court clerk who never rose to be judge." "Many are called, but few are chosen." "He's waiting for his lunch" "No, for my paper!" "My morning paper!" "And he's only fifty-four." "He may live twenty-five more years waiting for his meals and his paper." "Isn't it horrible?" "What isn't horrible?" "Answer me, answer!" "Yes, answer who can." "Now I must study with schoolboys;" "twice two is four!" "How many times does two go into four?" "Oh, Victoria, whom I loved, and therefore wished all happiness on earth - now she has happiness, the best she can imagine, and I suffer - suffer - suffer!" "Do you think I can be happy, when I see you suffer?" "How can you think that?" "Perhaps it soothes your pain that I must sit imprisoned here for forty days and nights?" "Tell me, does that soothe your pain?" "Yes and no." "I cannot be happy while you suffer." "Ah!" "And do you think my happiness can be built on your suffering?" "Alas for us all!" "Eternal One, hear them!" "Life is cruel!" "Alas for mankind!" "Here is the peace and joy of holiday." "Work has stopped." "They have parties every day." "The people walk in holiday clothes." "They play and dance even in the mornings." "Why don't you go inside and dance, children?" "Us?" "But they are servants." "Oh, yes." "But why is Edith sitting there instead of inside?" "Don't ask her." "She has been sitting therefore three hours and no one has asked her to dance." "What a cruel pastime!" "Why don't you go inside as I told you?" "Because" " I can't offer myself." "I'm ugly, I know that, so no one will dance with me, but I don't need to be reminded of it by you." "Come!" "Well, my boy, can you tell me what two times two is?" "Stand up when you're asked a question." "Two times two." "Let me see." "It is two two!" "I see." "You haven't done your homework." "Yes, I have, but" " I don't know why, but I can't say it." "You're making excuses!" "You know, but you can't say it?" "Perhaps I can help you." "Oh, this is dreadful, it's dreadful." "Yes, it's dreadful that such a big boy has no ambition " "A big boy, yes, I am big, much bigger than them." "Why am I sitting here?" "I'm a Doctor." "Why am I sitting here?" "Aren't I a Doctor?" "You are, but you must sit and mature, you see." "You must mature." "Isn't that right?" "Yes, that's right, one must mature." "Two times two - is two, and I can prove that by analogy, the highest of all forms of proof." "Listen now." "One times one is one, so two times two must be two." "For what applies to one must apply to the other." "Your proof obeys the law of logic, but your answer is incorrect." "What obeys the law of logic cannot be incorrect." "Let us try." "One into one goes once, so two into two goes twice." "Quite correct, according to your analogy." "But then, how much is one times three?" "It is three!" "Then two times three must also be three." "No, that can't be right." "It can't." "Unless " "No, I'm not mature yet." "No, not by a long way." "But how long must I sit here, then?" "How long here?" "Do you think that time and space exist?" "Suppose that time exists, then you must be able to say what time is." "What is time?" "Time." "That I can't say, but I know what it is;" "therefore I can know how much two times two is without being able to say it." "Can you tell me what time is?" "Of course I can." "Say, then." "[delete]" "Time?" "Let me see." "While we talk, time runs." "So, time is something that runs while I talk." "You're talking now, and while you talk I run; so I am time." "That is perfectly correct, according to the laws of logic." "But then the laws of logic are insane, for Nils who ran away cannot be time." "That is also perfectly correct according to the laws of logic, although it is insane." "Then logic is insane." "It certainly seems so." "But if logic is insane the whole world is insane, and why should I sit here and teach you insanities?" "Let's find a bottle and have a drink and a swim." "This is posterius prius, time reversed." "People swim first and drink afterwards." "You old duffer!" "Now, Doctor, don't be impertinent." "Lieutenant, if you don't mind." "I am an officer, and I don't understand why I'm sitting here being scolded among schoolboys" "We must mature!" "The quarantine's starting!" "Oh, there you are." "Can you imagine, this fellow makes me sit on a school bench, although I'm a Doctor." "Well, why don't you get up and go?" "What?" "Go?" "I can't do that." "I should think not." "Just you try." "Save me!" "Save me from his eyes!" "Come along." "Come and help us dance." "We must dance before the plague breaks out." "We must!" "Will the warship sail then?" "It will sail first." "And then there'll be tears." "Always tears." "When he comes, and when he goes." "Let us go." "Is no one happy in this Paradise?" "Yes, there are two who are newly wed." "Listen to them!" "I am so happy that I should like to die." "Why die?" "Because in the midst of my happiness there grows a seed of sadness." "It consumes itself like fire." "It cannot burn eternally, but must die." "This foreboding of the end destroys my happiness at its peak." "Let us die together, now." "Life is cruel." "Alas for mankind!" "Look at this man!" "He is the most envied of all who live here." "He owns these hundred Italian villas;" "he owns all these bays, inlets beaches, forests, the fish in the water, the birds in the air and the game in the woods." "These thousand people are his tenants and the sun rises over his seas and sinks over his lands " "Does he complain too?" "Yes, and with reason, for he cannot see." "He is blind." "The most envied of all!" "Now he wants to see the ship sail out, with his son on board." "I do not see, but I hear." "I hear how the anchor claws the sea-bed as when one draws the hook from a fish and the heart follows up through the throat." "My son, my only child, is going abroad across the wide sea." "I can accompany him only in my thoughts." "Now I hear the cable screech, and - something flutters and swishes like clothes drying on a line - wet handkerchieves, perhaps" "and I hear how it snuffles and sobs, like people crying perhaps the small waves lapping against the nets, or is it the girls on the shore, the abandoned, the comfortless?" "Once I asked a child why the sea was salt, and the child who had a father at sea replied at once:" ""The sea is salt because sailors cry so much."" ""Why do sailors cry so much?" "Oh," said the child," ""because they are always having to go away." "That's why they always dry their handkerchieves up on the masts." ""Why do people cry when they are sad?" I asked him." ""Oh," said the child, "because their eyes have to be washed sometimes so that they can see more clearly."" "What does that flag mean?" "It means yes." "That is the lieutenant's "Yes" in red, like the red heart's blood drawn on the blue cloth of heaven." "How does "No" look, then?" "It is blue, like the spoiled blood in his veins." "But see how happy Alice is!" "And how Edith is crying." "Meeting and parting." "Parting and meeting." "That is life." "I met his mother." "And then she went away." "I kept our son." "Now he is going." "He will surely come back." "Who is that?" "I have heard that voice before, in my dreams, in my youth, when the summer holidays began, in the first year of marriage when my child was born." "Every time life smiled, I heard that voice." "like the whisper of a breeze from the south, like the music of harps from above, as I imagine the angels to have welcomed Christ on Christmas night." "I see." "Yes, that's what they've done." "Now you have seen almost everything, but you haven't experienced the worst thing." "What can that be?" "Repetition." "Repeating the pattern." "Go back!" "Learn your lesson again." "Come!" "Where?" "To your duties!" "What is duty?" "It is everything you shrink from." "Everything you don't want to do and must." "It is to abstain, to renounce, to go without, to leave behind." "Everything unpleasant, repulsive, tedious " "Are there no pleasant duties?" "They become pleasant when you have performed them" "When they no longer exist." "So duty is always unpleasant." "What is pleasant?" "Sin is pleasant." "Sin?" "Which must be punished, yes." "However, go back to your duties, or I shall sue you, and we shall go through all the three courts, one, two, three." "Go back?" "To the iron stove with the pot of cabbage, the child's nappies - ?" "Yes." "Today is washing day." "We must wash all the handkerchieves" "Oh, must I do all that again?" "Life consists of doing things again." "I would rather die." "Die?" "One may not." "Firstly, because it is dishonourable, so much so that even one's dead body is condemned to insult, and secondly - because it disqualifies us from grace." "It is a mortal sin." "I shall not return to that dirt and degradation" "I want to return whence I came, but first I must open the door that I may know the secret." "I want the door to be opened!" "Then you must retrace your steps, return by the same path, and endure all the horrors of trial, the repetitions, the repetitions, the repetitions" "So be it." "But first I must go alone into the desert to rediscover myself." "We shall meet again." "Come with me." "What was that?" "The unhappy people of Foulstrand." "Why do they cry so much more piteously today?" "Because the sun is shining here, because here there is music,dancing and youth." "It enhances their suffering." "We must free them." "Try." "Someone tried once, and they hanged Him on a cross." "Who did?" "All right-thinking people." "Who are they?" "Don't you know all right-thinking people?" "Well, you must meet some." "This is Paradise!" "This is hell!" "Ninety in the shade." "I can't work in this heat." "I'm giving it up." "Then they'll arrest you." "And you'll have no food." "No food?" "We who work most must eat least;" "and the rich who do nothing, they get most." "Don't it seem a bit unjust?" "What do you think, Daughter of God?" "Tell me." "What have you done that you are so black and your lot so hard?" "What have we done?" "We were born of poor and not very good parents." "Maybe got punished once or twice." "Punished?" "Yes." "The unpunished sit up there in the casino and eat eight courses with wine." "Can this be true?" "Broadly speaking, yes." "You mean that every human being has at some time done something deserving of imprisonment?" "Yes." "You too?" "Yes." "Is it true that these poor men are not allowed to bathe here?" "Not even with their clothes on." "Only those who have tried to drown themselves escape a fine." "And they get a thrashing in the police station." "Couldn't they go outside the town and bathe somewhere in the countryside?" "There isn't any countryside, it's all enclosed." "This is not Paradise." "I assure you it isn't." "But why do people do nothing to improve their lot?" "Oh, some do." "But all the improvers end in prison or the madhouse." "Who puts them in prison?" "All right-thinking men, all honourable" "Who puts them in the madhouse?" "Their own despair at the hopelessness of endeavour." "And yet we are society's cornerstone." "If you didn't get any coal carried, the stove would go out in the kitchen, the fire in the living-room, the machine would stop in the factory;" "then the lights would go out in the streets, in the shops, in the home; darkness and cold would descend on you." "And so we sweat in hell." "What do you give us?" "Help them." "I know everyone can't be totally equal, but need they be so unequal?" "Do you feel like playing cards?" "No, I must take a walk to be able to eat lunch." "To be able to eat lunch?" "To he able - ?" "God damn it!" "It's time to bring out the knives and operate on this rotten body." "God damn them!" "This is not Paradise." "No." "It is hell." "Where have you led me?" "Far from the hum and wailing of mankind, To the limit of the world, this grotto which We call the Ear of Indra," "since the Lord Of heaven hearkens here to man's complaints." "Here?" "How?" "Do you not see this cave is built like a shell?" "Do you not know your ear is shaped like a shell?" "You do, but have not considered it." "When you were a child, did you never hold A shell to your ear and hear your heart's blood sigh, Your thoughts whisper in your brain," "A thousand worn knots snap in the web of your body?" "You hear that in this tiny shell." "Imagine How it must sound in this far greater one!" "I hear nothing but the sighing of the winds." "Let me interpret." "Listen!" "The winds' complaint." "Born in the broad abyss of heaven We were sent by Indra's lightning" "Down to dusty earth." "The field-mud soiled our feet." "We had to endure The highway's dust, the city smoke, foul breaths, The stink of food, the fumes of wine." "We soared Over the broad sea to cleanse our lungs, Shake our wings, wash our feet." "O Indra, Lord Of Heaven, hear us!" "Hear us when we sigh!" "The earth is not clean." "Life is not good." "Men are not evil." "Nor are they good." "They live as they can, a day at a time." "The sons of dust in dust must wander." "Born of dust" "To dust they return." "They were given feet to plod," "Not wings." "They grow dusty." "Is the fault theirs or yours?" "I heard this once" "Hush!" "The winds sing still" "We are winds, the air's children." "We carry the complaints of men." "Did you hear us In the chimney on autumn evenings," "In the cracks of the stove, the gap in the window" "When the rain wept outside on the tiles, Or on winter evenings in snowy forests?" "On the gale-swept sea, did you hear our walls and weeping In the sails and in the rigging?" "We are the winds, the air's children." "The human breasts through which we passed" "Taught us these notes of sorrow." "In sickrooms, battlefields and, especially," "Nurseries where new-born babies wail and cry" "At the pain of being born, that is us, us," "The winds that whistle and lament." "Alas!" "Alas!" "Alas!" "I seem to have heard this once" "Hush!" "The waves sing." "It is we, we, the waves, That rock the winds to rest." "Green cradles are we." "Wet and salt, we are like tongues of fire" "Quenching, burning, cleansing, bathing, begetting," "It is we, we, the waves, That rock the winds to rest." "False waves and faithless," "all that is not burned On earth is drowned - in the waves." "See here." "See what the sea has plundered and destroyed." "Only the figureheads of the sunk ships remain," "And their names:" "Justice, Friendship, The Golden Peace, Hope." "That is all that remains of Hope." "Treacherous Hope." "Rockweed, rowlocks, bailers" " And see!" "The lifebuoy." "He saved himself but let The mariners perish." "Here is the name-board of the good ship Justice," "That left Fairhaven with the Blind Man's son." "So it has sunk." "And there on board Was Alice's lover, Edith's hopeless love." "The Blind Man?" "Fairhaven?" "I must have dreamed that." "And Alice's lover and ugly Edith." "Foul- strand and the quarantine, sulphur and carbolic, the ceremony in the church, the Advocate's office, the corridor and Victoria," "the rising castle and the Officer - I dreamed it all." "I wrote it." "Then you know what poetry is" "Then I know what dreaming is." "What is poetry?" "Not reality, but greater than reality." "No dream, but waking dreams." "And mortals think we poets only play, Invent and fabricate." "It is better so, my friend." "Else would the earth Lie waste for lack of encouragement." "Men would lie on their backs and look at heaven." "No man would take his turn with plough or spade, Plane or pickaxe." "You say that, Indra's Daughter, You who are of the gods?" "You are right to reproach me." "I have been down here too long, bathing like you in mud." "My thoughts can no longer fly." "Clay on my wings; earth on my feet; and I" "I sink, sink." "Help me." "Father, O God of Heaven!" "I can no longer hear him." "The ether No longer bears his speech to my ear's shell." "The silver thread has snapped." "Ah!" "I am earthbound!" "Will you leave us soon?" "As soon as I have burned this flesh." "The ocean cannot cleanse me." "Why do you ask?" "Because I have a boon to ask." "A petition" "What kind of petition?" "A petition from mankind to the Master of the world, written by a dreamer." "To be presented to him by" "By Indra's daughter." "Can you speak your poem?" "I can." "Speak it, then." "Better that you should." ""Why were you born in pain?" "Why do you torment your mother," "Child of man, when you should give her The joy of motherhood, the greatest of all joys?" "Why do you awake to life?" "Why do you greet the light With a cry of hostility and pain?" "Why don't you smile at life, Child of man, since the gift of life" "Is meant to be joy itself?" "Why are we born like the beasts," "We children of the gods and men?" "Our spirit craved another dress" "Than this of blood and dirt." "Will God's image change its form?"" "Hush!" "A creation should not censure its maker." "No one has yet solved the riddle of life." ""And so begins our pilgrimage Over thistles, thorns and stones." "Wherever the track is beaten, it is forbidden." "If you pluck a flower, it belongs to someone else." "If the road is blocked by a field and you must go on," "You tread on others' crops." "Then others tread on yours to even matters." "Every joy that you have brings grief to others," "But your grief brings joy to none." "So grief follows grief, So goes the journey until your death," "Which other men will harvest."" "Son of dust, is it thus you would approach the Highest?" "How shall the son of dust find words Light, clean and simple enough to rise from earth?" "Child of God, will you translate our complaint" "Into words more fitting for the ears of the Eternal One?" "I will." "What is that floating there?" "A buoy?" "It is like a lung with a windpipe." "It is the watchman of the sea." "When danger is near, it sings." "The sea seems to be rising." "The waves thunder." "It's an ordinary ship, in distress." "Why does the buoy make no sound?" "Look - the sea is rising, the waves run high." "Soon we shall be imprisoned in this cave." "The crew are waving to us." "But we shall perish." "Do you not want to be liberated from the flesh?" "Of course I do." "But not now." "And not by water." "Now they are crying, and the sea is crying." "But no one hears." "Walking on the water?" "There is only One Who walks on water." "It cannot be Peter, the rock, for he sank like a rock." "Is this He?" "It is He, the crucified" "Why - tell me, why was He crucified?" "Because He wished to liberate mankind." "Who" " I have forgotten - who crucified Him?" "All right-thinking people." "The sea is rising." "Darkness is falling on us." "The storm is rising." "The crew is crying with fear, now they see their Saviour." "And now - they are jumping overboard, in fear of the Saviour." "Now they are crying because they have to die." "They cry when they are born and they cry when they die." "Has the Lord Chancellor come yet?" "No." "Or the Deans?" "No." "Then call them at once, the door is to be opened." "Is that so important?" "Yes, it is." "People feel that the solution to the riddle of existence lies hidden there." "So call the Lord Chancellor and the Deans of the four faculties." "Thus!" "And don't forget the glazier with the diamond, or we can't open it." "Victoria!" "She'll be down in a moment." "I am here!" "The carriage is waiting, the table is laid, the champagne on ice." "May I embrace you, madam?" "Victoria!" "I am here!" "I think I have seen this before." "I too." "Perhaps I dreamed it?" "Or wrote it, perhaps?" "Or wrote it." "Then you know what poetry is." "Then I know what dreaming is." "I feel we stood somewhere else and spoke these words." "Then you can soon work out what reality is." "Or dreaming." "Or poetry." "It's this question of the door, of course." "What do you think." "Dean of Theology?" "I do not think, I believe." "i rationalize " "I know " "I doubt, until I have proof, with witnessess." "Now they're going to quarrel again." "Dean of Theology, what is your opinion?" "I believe that this door should not be opened." "It conceals dangerous truths." "Truth is never dangerous." "Truth is never dangerous." "That which can be proved by two witnesses." "Anything can be proved with two witnesses by a law-twister." "Truth is wisdom, and wisdom, which is knowledge, is philosophy." "Philosophy is the science of sciences, the knowing of knowledge, and all other sciences are philosophy's servants." "The only science is natural science." "Philosophy is not a science." "It is merely barren speculation." "Bravo!" "You say bravo." "Your sort have always been the enemies of knowledge." "You are the contradiction of science, you are ignorance and darkness" "Bravo!" "You say bravo, you, who can't see further than your magnifying glass." "You only believe in your treacherous senses, your eyes which may be long-sighted, short-sighted, blind, dim, squinting, one-eyed, colour-blind, red-blind, green-blind" "Idiot!" "Ass!" "Quiet!" "No need for the pot to call the kettle black!" "If I had to choose between these two." "Theology and Medicine, I'd choose - neither of them." "And if I had to judge between you three, I'd condemn you all." "You can't agree on a single issue, and have never been able to." "But to the point." "My Lord Chancellor, what is your opinion regarding this door and whether it should be opened?" "Opinions?" "I have no opinions." "I am merely appointed by the government to see that you don't break each other's arms and legs during your deliberations as how best to educate the young." "No, I beware of opinions." "I had some once, but they were immediately refuted." "Opinions are always immediately refuted - by one's opponent, of course." "Perhaps we may open the door now, even at the risk that it may conceal dangerous truths?" "What is truth?" "Where is truth?" "I am the truth and the life" "I am the knowing of knowledge" "I am the exact science." "I doubt " "Teachers of the young, you should be ashamed!" "My Lord Chancellor, representative of the government, supremo of all teachers, punish this woman's presumption!" "She told you to be ashamed, which is an insult, and in a sneering and ironic tone she called you the teacher of the young, which is a slander." "Alas for the young!" "She pities the young; that is the same as accusing us." "My Lord Chancellor, punish her presumption." "Yes, I accuse you, all of you, of sowing doubt and discord in the minds of the young." "Listen to her!" "She arouses doubt of our authority in the minds of the young, and accuses us of sowing it!" "Is not this a criminal offence?" "I appeal to all right-minded people." "Yes, it is criminal." "All right-minded people have condemned you." "Go in peace with your winnings." "Otherwise" "My winnings?" "Otherwise - ?" "Otherwise what?" "Otherwise you will be stoned." "Or crucified." "What does he mean by "my winnings"?" "Probably nothing." "It's what we call talk." "He was just talking." "But he hurt me deeply by saying it." "That's why he said it." "Hurrah!" "The door is opened!" "What is hidden behind the door?" "I can't see anything." "He can't see anything, no, very likely!" "Deans!" "What is hidden behind the door?" "Nothing!" "That is the solution of the riddle of existence." "Out of nothing in the beginning God created heaven and earth." "Nothing will come of nothing." "Bosh." "That is nothing." "A fraud has been committed here." "I appeal to all right-thinking persons!" "I appeal to all right-thinking persons!" "Yes, answer who can!" "All right-thinking persons usually means just one person." "Today it is I and mine, tomorrow you and yours." "One gets nominated, or rather one nominates oneself." "We have been betrayed!" "Who has betrayed you?" "Indra's daughter!" "Will you kindly tell us what you meant by opening this door?" "No, my good friends." "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me." "But there is nothing there." "Exactly." "But you don't understand." "She is talking bosh." "Bosh!" "They are to be pitied." "You are serious?" "Always serious." "Even the right-thinkers?" "They most of all." "And the four faculties too?" "Them too, and not least." "Four heads, four senses, one body!" "Who created that monster?" "She doesn't answer!" "Beat her, then." "I have answered." "Listen, she is answering." "Beat her!" "She's answering!" "Whether she answers or does not answer - beat her!" "Come, seer, and far from here I will explain the riddle to you but out in the wilderness, where no one will hear us, no one will see us." "For " "Have you forgotten your duties?" "Oh, God, no!" "But I have higher duties." "My child!" "Alas, I am earthbound." "My child." "This barb in my breast." "This pain - what is it?" "Don't you know?" "No." "It is the pangs of conscience." "Is this the pangs of conscience?" "Yes." "And they come after every neglected duty, every joy, even the most innocent." "And there is no cure?" "Yes, but only one." "It is, immediately to perform one's duty " "You look like a demon when you say that word "duty"." "Your child misses you." "Can you understand that a human being is suffering for you?" "Now I feel discord in my soul." "I have broken in two." "I am tearing apart!" "That is life's small disharmonies - you see?" "Ah, how it tears me!" "If you could guess how I have spread grief and destruction through fulfilling my calling yes, my calling!" " which is one's highest duty - would you not be willing to grasp my hand?" "How do you mean?" "Your child!" "These are my children." "Each of them is good when alone, but once they meet they fight and become demons." "Farewell." "The moment is nigh when, consumed with fire, I shall rise again into the ether." "That is what you call death and which you approach with fear." "Fear of the unknown." "Which you know." "Who knows it?" "Have you always doubted?" "No." "I have often felt certain." "But after a while, my certainty always departed, like a dream when one awakes." "It is not easy to be a mortal." "You see it, and admit it?" "Will you answer me the riddle?" "Yes, but to what purpose?" "You will not believe me." "I will believe you, for I know who you are." "Well, I will tell you." "In the morning of time, before the sun shone, Brahma, the divine primal force, allowed Maja, the world mother, to induce him to multiply himself." "This contact between the divine element and the earthly element was heaven's sin." "Thus it is that the world, life, and mankind are but a phantom, an illusion, a dream vision" "My dream!" "A true dream." "But to be liberated from the earthly element," "Brahma's descendants crave privation and suffering." "So, suffering is the liberator." "But this need for suffering conflicts with the human desire for pleasure, and with love." "Do you yet understand what love, is, wit its sharpest joys inseparable from sharpest suffering, happiest when it is most bitter?" "I understand." "And the end?" "That you know." "The strife between the agony of ecstasy and the ecstasy of agony." "Strife, then?" "Strife between opposites generates power" "But peace?" "Rest?" "Hush!" "You must ask no more and I may not reply." "The altar is already decked for the sacrifice." "You say this as calmly as though suffering did not exist for you." "Not exist?" "I have suffered all your torments a hundredfold, for my perceptions were finer " "Tell me before you go." "What did you suffer from most down here?" "From - being human." "From feeling my sight weakened by eyes, my hearing muffled by ears, and my thought, my light, airy thought, cabined by the windings of a brain." "Now at last I shake the dust from my feet" "the earth, the clay." "Perhaps I may burn up my shawl too?" "And I my roses, which have nothing left but thorns." "My posters can go, but my fishing net, never." "My diamond, that opened the door." "Farewell." "The great lawsuit of the Pope's beard or the depletion of the sources of the Ganges." "A mite, the black mask which made me a blackamoor against my will." "My beauty, my sorrow." "My ugliness, my sorrow." "Hurry, hurry, life is short!" "I have read that when life approaches its end, everything and everyone rushes past in a single stream." "Is this the end?" "Yes, it is mine." "Goodbye." "Say something to us." "No, I can't." "Do you think your words could express our thoughts?" "I am rejected by God, I am persecuted by men, rejected by the government and mocked by my fellows." "How can I believe, when no one else believes?" "How shall I defend a God who will not defend His own?" "It's all bosh!" "Do you know what this is?" "A book of martyrs, a calendar with a martyr for every day in the year." "Martyr?" "Yes, one who has been tortured and killed for his beliefs." "Tell me why!" "Do you believe that all who are tortured suffer, that all who are killed feel pain?" "Suffering is the release, and death the liberator." "I'm pasting, I'm pasting, till there's nothing left to paste." "And if heaven itself cracked, you would try to paste that together." "Go!" "Have you no double windows in your castle then?" "No, none there." "Our parting is at hand, the end approaches." "Farewell, you child of man, you dreamer," "You poet who best knowest how to live." "Hovering on wings above the earth" "You plunge occasionally into the mire To shake it from your feet, not to stick fast." "Now I am going" " In the moment of goodbye, When one must be parted from a friend, a place," "How suddenly great the loss of what one loved, Regret for what one shattered." "Oh, now I feel the agony of existence!" "So this is to be mortal." "One even misses what one did not value." "One even regrets crimes one did not commit." "One wants to go, and one wants to stay." "The twin halves of the heart are wrenched asunder" "And one is torn as between raging horses Of contradictions, irresolution, discord." "Farewell." "Tell your brothers and sisters I shall remember them" "In the place to which I return, and in your name" "Shall set their griefs before the throne of God." "Farewell!"