"The Unconsolable" "It went like this." "We were climbing the path through the woods of the shades." "They were already far behind - Cocytus, the Styx, the boat, the lamenting." "One was just glimpsing on the leaves the first glimmer of the sky." "I heard behind me the rustle of her footstep." "But I was still down there in Hades and had on my back its cold." "I was thinking one day I'd have to come back here, that what has been will be again." "I was thinking of my life with her, as it had been before;" "that a second time it would end." "That what's been will be." "I was thinking about the cold, about the void I'd crossed and which she was carrying in her bones, in her marrow, in her blood." "Was it worth the pain to live again?" "I was thinking of this, and barely saw the glimmer of daylight." "Then I said, "Let it end,"" "and turned around." "Eurydice disappeared the way a candle goes out." "I heard only a squeak, like a mouse makes escaping." "Strange words, Orpheus." "I almost can't believe it." "Here it's said you were dear to the gods and to the muses." "There are many of us who follow you because they know you're in love and unhappy." "You were so in love that, alone among men, you crossed through the gates of nothingness." "No, I don't believe it, Orpheus." "It wasn't your fault if fate cheated you." "What does fate have to do with it?" "My fate doesn't cheat." "It's ridiculous that after that voyage, after looking nothingness in the face," "I'd have turned around by mistake or caprice." "Here it's said it was for love." "One doesn't love one who's dead." "Yet you mourned across mountains and hills, you sought her and called her, you descended into Hades." "What was that?" "You say you are as a man, so you know of men that they know not how to deal with death." "The Eurydice I mourned, she was a season of life." "I was looking for something quite different down there, quite different than her love." "I was looking for... for a past Eurydice doesn't know." "I understood it among the dead while singing my song, while watching, seeing the shades stiffen and stare emptily and the lamentations stop." "I saw Persephone hide her face, saw him himself, dark impassive Hades, bend over like a mortal and listen." "I understood that the dead aren't anything anymore." "Sorrow's shaken you, Orpheus." "Who wouldn't want the past returned?" "Eurydice was almost reborn." "To die then a second time, Bacca." "To carry in her blood the horror of Hades and to tremble with me day and night." "You don't know what it is, nothingness." "And so you, who by singing had repossessed the past, rejected and destroyed it..." "No, I can't believe it!" "Understand me, Bacca." "The past was real only in song." "Hades sees himself only when he listens to me." "Already while climbing the path that past vanished, became memory, tasted of death." "When the first glimmer of sky reached me," "I jumped for joy like a boy, happy and incredulous, I jumped for me alone, for the world of the living." "The season I'd sought was there in that glimmer." "I cared not at all about her who'd been following me." "My past was the light, it was song and morning." "And I turned around." "How have you been able to resign yourself, Orpheus?" "Those who saw you on your return you made afraid." "Eurydice had been existence for you." "Nonsense!" "Eurydice in dying became something else." "That Orpheus who descended into Hades was no longer husband or widower." "My crying then was like one's crying when a boy and one smiles remembering it." "The season has passed." "I was seeking, crying, no longer for her." "It was for myself, for a fate, if you want." "I was listening to myself." "Many of us follow you because they believed." "They believed in your crying." "Have you then deceived us?" "O Bacca, Bacca, you really won't understand?" "My fate doesn't cheat." "I sought myself." "That's all one seeks for." "Here we're simpler, Orpheus." "Here we believe in love and in death and we cry and laugh with everyone." "Our most joyful feasts are those where blood flows." "We, the women of Thrace, don't fear these things." "Seen from the side of life, everything is beautiful." "But believe someone who's been among the dead..." "It's not worth the pain." "Before, you weren't like this." "You weren't talking about nothingness." "Approaching death makes us like the gods." "You yourself used to teach us that an intoxication overwhelms life and death." "It makes us more than humans." "You've seen the feast." "It's not the blood that counts, girl." "Neither intoxication nor blood make an impression on me." "But it is difficult to say what a man is." "Not even you, Bacca, know." "Without us you'd be nothingness, Orpheus." "I said so and I know it." "So what does it matter?" "Without you I descended into Hades." "You descended to search for us." "But I didn't find you." "I wanted something completely different." "Which, turning to the light, I found." "Once you sang Eurydice on the mountains!" "Time passes, Bacca." "The mountains are there, Eurydice is no more." "These things have a name, and are called man." "Invoking the gods of the feast doesn't help." "You invoke them too." "A man does everything, in a life." "He believes everything in his days." "He believes even that his blood flows at times in others' veins." "Or that what's been can be undone." "He thinks he can break fate with intoxication." "All this I know, and it's nothingness." "You don't know how to deal with death, Orpheus, and your thought is only of death." "There was once a time when the feast rendered us immortal." "And you, enjoy the feast." "All is permitted to someone who doesn't know yet." "It's necessary that each descend one time into his own hell." "The orgy of my fate ended in Hades, ended as I sang in my fashion about life and death." "And what does it mean, that a fate doesn't cheat?" "It means that it's inside you, your being;" "deeper than blood, beyond any intoxication." "No god can touch it." "Maybe, Orpheus." "But we aren't seeking a Eurydice." "So how is it that we descend into hell, we too?" "Every time one invokes a god one meets death." "And one descends into Hades to wrench something away, to violate a fate." "One doesn't conquer the night and one loses the light." "People debate themselves there obsessively." "You say bad things!" "So you've lost the light, you too?" "I was nearly lost, and I sang." "Through understanding, I found myself." "Is it worth the pain to find yourself this way?" "There's a simpler way of ignorance and of joy." "The god is like a lord between life and death." "We abandon ourselves to intoxication, we tear to pieces, we're torn to pieces, we're reborn each time, and we wake up like you in the daylight." "Don't talk of daylight, of waking up." "Few men know." "No woman like you knows what it is." "Maybe it's for this that they follow you, the women of Thrace." "You are for them like the god." "You descended from the mountains." "You sing verses of love and death." "Fool." "With you one can talk at least." "Maybe one day... you'll be like a man." "Provided that first the women of Thrace..." "Say it." "Provided they don't tear to pieces the god." "Translation Tag Gallagher"