"Black Sin" "To you I call across the fields that you may come eluding sluggish clouds, you hot rays of midday, you ripest rays, that I may know through you this new day of my life." "For things are different than before!" "Gone, gone are my trials with human beings!" "As though" "I'd grown strong pinions, with me all is well and airy up here above it all, and rich enough and glad enough and splendidly I dwell here near the fiery chalice," "filled with spirit to the brim and wreathed with flowers he himself has cultivated" "my father Etna offers me his hospitality." "And as the subterranean storm celebrates by reaching to the cloudy precincts of the blood-related Thunderer, flying heavenward" "with joy my heart too flourishes;" "with eagles here I sing the canticle of nature." "He did not think that here in unfamiliar country another life would bloom in me when shamefully he drove me from our city my royal brother." "Ah!" "He did not know, the clever fellow, the blessings he bestowed on me when from the bonds of humankind he declared me free, as free as soaring wings of heaven." "And that was only right!" "That's why it was fulfilled!" "With scorn and curse the nation girded up its loins, the nation that was mine, and turned against my soul" "and ostracised me;" "not without effect I still can hear the clamor of a hundred voices in my ear, the chilling laughter, when the dreamer, the jester, went weeping on his way." "O judges of the dead!" "I well deserved it!" "And it was salutary;" "poison heals the sick and one sin punishes the others." "For much from my youth onward have I sinned" "I never loved humanity in fitting human ways," "I served as fire and water blindly serve;" "in turn my fellows never met me as a human being till finally they dared humiliate me to" "my face; they seized me, as you did once long-suffering nature!" "You too possess me;" "between the two of us the old love kindles once again." "You call, you draw me close and closer to yourself." "And when the wave would whelm me, then my mother's arm embraces me;" "oh what have" "I to fear, is there anything to fear?" "Others may be terrified of this." "For it is the death of them." "O you!" "Well known to me, you thaumaturgic frightful flame!" "How noiselessly you dwell, here and there you flit, shying from yourself, and you flee yourself, you soul of all that lives!" "From me you'll hide, O fettered spirit, no more," "I'll see you clearly in the light, for I am not afraid." "And, yes, I want to die." "This is my right." "Ha!" "Youth!" "Like daybreak all around me now and down below the rage that roared storms by!" "Down, down with you, you thoughts of accusation!" "O care-filled heart!" "I need you now no more." "By now and not in vain, dear friend, I have scouted all about our new homeland." "They've banished us, humiliated you, you good man!" "And you must believe for some time now they could not suffer you;" "too intensely in the midst of their rubble, in their night you shone a light too bright for desperadoes." "Now they want to end it all left undisturbed a storm offshore, obscuring their polar star, has caught them unprepared." "They sail in circles." "Up here there is a new fatherland." "I knew it well, divine man, from you all arrows are deflected, striking and throwing other men." "And harmlessly, as on the caduceus serpents coil at play, the fickle crowd" "you helped to educate has always played about you, the crowd you held within your heart, you loving man!" "Now!" "Let them go!" "May they falter as they shy from the light, stumbling on the ground that bears them, and craving all, fearing all run themselves ragged;" "let the brushfire burn till it goes out— we'll dwell here tranquilly." "Yes!" "Tranquilly we'll dwell;" "they open mightily before us here, the holy elements, bestir themselves without exertion, always in the same inspiring measure, here about us." "On firm shores surging then reposing the ancient sea, and mountains all ascending to heed the roaring of their streams;" "winds respire and rush within the wood from vale to vale below." "While here above, the lingering light, as ether stills the spirit and our more mysterious yearnings." " We'll dwell most tranquilly!" " You'll stay upon these heights, you'll live in your own world;" "I'll serve you well and see to all our needs." "My needs are very few, and I myself from this point on would rather see to them." "But friend!" "Already I've assembled some of what you'll need at least at first." " Do you know what I need?" " As though I did not know what satisfies a man so easily pleased." "A life that's come to need its intimacy with Nature, a life familiar with her, will find" "the smallest things are most significant." "Yet as you slept on bare earth here beneath the scorching sun I had to think a softer bed at cool of night and security of walls would be far better." "Then too, we objects of suspicion here are almost too near the others' dwellings." "I did not want to leave your side for long and so I hurriedly ascended;" "luckily I found as though designed for you and me a quiet house concealed within a gorge and shaded by thick oaks." "There among the shadows of the mountains near a bubbling spring, and verdant all around, a cornucopia of herbs, and for your bed dry leaves and grass in rich excess." "There none can harm you; it's steep and still, the very place for your reflections, and when you sleep." "Come, see for yourself, and don't say I'm no use to you in times to come;" "to whom else could I be of use?" "You're too useful." " How could I be?" " You too are far too faithful;" "you're a foolish child." "You can say so if you like;" "I know nothing wiser than belonging to the one for whom I saw the light of day." " How can you be so sure?" " How not be sure?" "What reason did you have back then when I was like an orphan on a shore that bred no heroes;" "I sought a patron god, was wandering wretchedly;" "what reason to extend to me your hands, good man?" "With an eye unerring, for what good reason with your power, tranquil light, did you rise before me, banishing my sad twilight?" "Since then I've been another, I've been yours," "And closer to you, more solitary with you;" "Near you my soul can wax felicitous and free." "Tell yourself whatever story pleases you, for me the past has passed, it is no more." "I know full well what's passed for you, yet you and I remain to one another." " But speak to me of other things, my son!" " What else do I possess?" " No more of that!" " Why, what is it?" "A friendly word abash you, my dear friend?" "Go!" "Obey me, be silent now and spare me" "Don't you too stir up my heart.—" "Have not you all transformed my memory into a dagger?" "And marveling still, they confront me with questions." "No!" "You are guiltless— my son!" "It's only that I cannot bear what crowds me close." "And so you cast me off!" "Think of yourself, be what you are and look at me and give me a token of your former self and friendship." "Away!" "I've told you this before and tell you now again, it is not good of you to thrust yourself so uninvited on my soul," "you're clinging to my side as though you knew of nothing else in your anxiety." "You have to know" "I don't belong to you, nor you to me;" "the paths that you will tread are not mine;" "for me it flowers elsewhere." "And what I am intending now is not a matter of today, for at my birth, already then, it was concluded." "Look up now and be brave!" "What is merely one will shatter;" "love dies not at budding time, and everywhere in open joy life's great tree shares its luxuriance." "No bond that's sealed in time remains as is, we have to part, my child!" "Do not delay my destiny, do not procrastinate." "Behold!" "The image of ecstatic earth, divinity itself, is present in you, boy." "It rushes raging, sweeps through every land, transforms itself in youthful, lithe, and pious earnest forms, the energetic circle dance in which the mortals celebrate the spirit of their ancient father." "Then go and wander without tumult as befits a human being, and think on me at eventide alone." "What suits me is the silent hall, mine is the spacious chamber looming high above," "for I need rest, too sluggish now are these limbs of mine, to entertain the quick-change play of mortals;" "if once upon a time my youthful jubilation sang its festive song the thrum of fragile strings has now succumbed." "O melodies above me!" "It was all in jest!" "And childishly I dared to imitate your song, a distant anesthetic echo it resounded in me incomprehensibly—" "Now, godly voices, I hear you all more earnestly." "I know you no more, can only mourn, and everything you say is like a riddle to me." "What have I done, what have I done to you that you should treat me as you please" "and that your heart should take some nameless joy in driving off its sole and final friend." "Rejection never was the plan when we, despised, slipped past the houses of mankind together, banished to the wilderness of night." "And friend!" "Was I not there when the tears of heaven's rain assailed your face and did I not observe you when you smiled and dried your rags at midday underneath the scorching sun on shadeless sands where like a wounded deer, hour after hour you left traces," "inscribing them with blood that dripped from naked soles upon your stony path." "Alas!" "It was not for this I left my home and drew upon me curses from my father and my nation, that you, arriving here to dwell and rest toss me aside as though I were an empty vessel." "And would you travel farther on?" "Where to?" "Where to?" "I'll wander with you, though I do not stand, like you, in steadfast league with all the forces of beloved Nature." "To me, unlike you, the future is not open." "Yet soaring joyful out into the night divine the pinions of my mind will flex and will not fail before the gazes of the mighty." "Yes!" "For even if I were a weakling I would be as strong as you, if only for the love of you." "Divine Heracles!" "Even if you plummeted to seek below the violent ones, to conciliate defeated Titans, plunging down" "from that peak there into the groundless gorge, and if you dared to penetrate abyssal precincts" "where patiently before the day begins the heart of earth conceals itself, where all her pains she tells, our darkling mother, tells you, nocturnal one," "the son of ether!" "I'd follow you below." "So stay!" "What do you mean?" "You gave yourself to me; you're mine;" "do not question!" " So be it." " And tell me once again my son will you give your blood and your soul to me forever?" "As though I had been speaking drowsily resisting sleep the moment when I promised you that?" "Incredulous!" "I say it and repeat it, this too, this too is not a matter of today, when I was born it was concluded." "I am not who I am, Pausanias, my stay will not be counted off in years," "a shimmer only, quickly passing, a fading note" " within the symphony of strings—" " That's how they always sound, vanishing together into thin air!" "And their reverberations echo in a friendly way." "Do not beguile me any longer!" "Let that go, bestow on me the honor that is mine!" "Have I not borne enough deep pain inside," "how can you think of further hurt!" "O all-sacrificing heart!" "And this one for my sake flings away his golden youth!" "And I!" "O earth and sky!" "Behold!" "Still, still you are near, although the hour flies, and still you bloom, you, my eyes' rejoicing." "Things remain as they were, I hold you in my arms as though you're mine, indeed, my prey," "and once again the lovely dream befuddles me." "Yes!" "It would be splendid if into the pyre's flames thus arm in arm instead of one left all alone a festive pair at end of day went off companionably" "and gladly I would take the one that here I loved, the way a noble stream sweeps all its tributaries into the depths below, libations to the holy night." "Yet better it would be if each of us pursued his own path, as divinity has meted out, less guilt there is in this, no damage done." "And meet it is and just that everywhere a human being's mind stands on its own." "Then too— more lightly and securely does a man endure his burden when alone." "As you will!" "I shall not strive against you." "You speak to me and what you say is true and loving this final word from you is suitable to me." "And so I go!" "Your tranquillity I'll not disturb in times to come;" "you are right to say my mind is not designed for silence." " But now, my friend, you are not angry?" " With you?" "With you?" "What is it then?" "Ah, yes!" "Do you know where to go?" " Command me." " It will have been my last command," "Pausanias!" "My lordship now is at an end." "My father!" "Counsel me!" "So many things" "I should relate, and yet I keep them from you." "It seems my tongue well-nigh refuses mortal talk, and rejects all words that speak in vain." "Behold, my beloved, it is otherwise with me and soon" "I'll breathe more easily, and as the snow on Etna's peak, exposed to the sunlight, warms and glistens, goddess Iris' cheerful bridge blooms and spans across the waterfall," "thus my heart is plunged, all that time heaped up, and all that's heavy falls, and falls, and brightly flowers ethereal life above me." "Now walk with courage, son, for with kisses" "I bestow promises upon your brow, the dim horizon there reveals the hills of Italy," "the Roman lands, so rich in deeds, you'll flourish there where men exhilarate the moment when they meet upon the racing course," "a heroes' city there!" "And you, Tarentum!" "Your fraternal halls, where often" "I was drunk with light while wandering with my Plato and to us youths the years seemed ever new and every day commencement in our sacred school." "So visit him, my son, and greet him there for me his friend of old down at his homeland's stream the flowering Ilissus, where he dwells." "And if the soul in you refuses rest, then go inquire of my brothers far away in Egypt." "You'll hear the earnest thrum of strings" "Urania plays and all their shifting tones." "So many things await you that are luminous and grand;" "you'll learn that mortals standing face to face are but images and signs yet this will not disturb you, my dear friend!" "Now!" "Do not delay!" "Don't ponder any longer but pass away!" "Yes, pass!" "That we may have some quiet" " and a brighter day, mirage!" " What?" "Whence?" " Who are you, man?" " One of the marvelous, those who, when prick of thorn pains them, spin out dreams." "That console them greatly, one of the tribe of the wretched" "I'm sent at the propitious time to you who think yourself the darling of the sky, to indicate the wrath of heaven, of god, who won't be named in vain." " Ha!" "You know him?" " I told you many things upon" " the banks of the far Nile." " And you?" "You here?" "No miracle in that." "Ever since I died to all the living the dead rise up to greet me." "The dead do not reply to questions that you put to them." "And yet if you should need a word, pay heed." "I heed the voice that's long been calling me." " So that's the way it speaks to you?" " Why this talk, stranger!" "Yes!" "A stranger here, and in the midst of children." "For that's what all you Greeks are." "I've often said so in earlier times." "But don't you want to tell me how you fared with your own people?" "Oh, why remind me?" "Why dredge it up again?" " Things went precisely as they should have." " I knew that in advance, and long ago I prophesied it to you." "Well, then!" "Why do you delay it?" "Why threaten me with all the flames of the god I know, the god I serve, if only as a plaything, and you, blind man, presume to judge my holy right." "What you go to encounter I'll not alter." "And so you came to sate your curiosity?" "Speak not in jest, and honor this your festival, enwreathe your head and decorate" "the sacrificial beast that does not fall in vain." "For death, the sudden steep, as you know well, to the baffled ones, to those who are your kin, is there from the beginning, it has long since been allotted." "Your will declares it!" "Let it be!" "Yet you should not abandon me and go down thoughtlessly, not as you are;" "I have a word that you must ponder, my besotted friend!" "For one alone in our time is it fitting;" "one being alone ennobles your black sin." "That one is greater than I am!" "For as the vine bears witness to the earth and sky when, saturated by the lofty sun it rises from dark soil," "thus this being grows, a child of light and night." "The world around him bubbles in ferment, and all disruption and corruption in the mortal breast is agitated, and from top to bottom; whereupon" "the lord of time, grown apprehensive of his rule, looms with glowering gaze above the consternation." "His day extinguished, lightning bolts still flash, yet what flames on high is inflammation, nothing more;" "what strives from down below is savage discord." "The one, however, the newborn savior, tranquilly grasps the rays of heaven and lovingly he takes mortality unto his bosom, and the world's strife grows mild in him." "The human being and the gods he reconciles;" "again they live in close proximity, as in former times." "No sooner has the son appeared, that he may not surpass his parentage, and that" "the holy spirit of life may not remain in shameful fetters forgotten up above, on his account, the unique one" "now turns aside, although he is the idol of his times, destroys himself, so that a pure hand executes whatever of necessity befalls the pure one; he shatters" "his own fortune, now too fortunate for him, and unto the element that glorified him, restores whatever he possessed, now wholly cleansed." "Are you that man?" "The very one?" "Are you this?" "I know you by your gloomy words, and you who are all-knowing recognise me too." "Oh, tell us who you are!" "And who am I?" "Can it be so, that still, still you tempt me, coming as my evil spirit, descending on me here at such an hour?" "Why not let me go in hushed tranquillity, man?" "You challenge me, you irritate, that I might walk my holy path enraged?" "A boy I was back then, my eyes did not know what mysterious things were under way from day to day," "the great configurations of this world, the joyous ones that surrounded" "the inexperienced, slumbering heart within my breast." "Astonished oftentimes I heard the waters' flow and saw the sun burst into bloom;" "our silent earth at youthful day catch fire from that sun." "A hymn was in me, splendidly it soared, my twilit heart I poetised in prayers when I gave names to all these strangers" "the present ones, the gods of Nature;" "to me the spirit showed itself in words and images felicitous, to solve the mysteries of life." "So quietly I grew, while other things prepared themselves for me." "For far more violent than inundating waters, savage waves of humankind crashed against my breast and the voice of my poor people" "I came to hear in all that din." "And while I paced in silence in my halls at midnight rose in tumult their lament they stormed across the fields, and weary unto death" "with frenzied hands they tore down their own homes, they razed their desecrated and abandoned temples;" "when brother fled from brother, when lovers passed each other by in ignorance, when fathers failed to recognise their sons, when human words no more" "were understood, nor human laws, the meaning of it all assailing me, I trembled:" "it was my nation's parting god!" "I heard him, and upward to unspeaking stars" "I gazed, the place from which he had descended." "And then I went to placate him." "For us there still were many radiant days." "It seemed, in the end, we might still invigorate ourselves;" "and thus consoled by memories of the Golden Age, that all-confident and brilliant morning full of force," "the frightful melancholy was lifted from me and from my people;" "we sealed with one another free and firm bonds," "yet often when the people's thanks crowned me with wreaths, and to me alone, the nation's soul draws closer, melancholy stole upon me." "For when a country is about to die, its spirit at the end selects but one among the many," "through whom its swan song, the last life, will sound." "I had an intimation, yet served the spirit willingly." "And now it has transpired." "To mortals" "I belong no more." "Oh, the termination of my time!" "O spirit!" "You who raised us, you who secretly prevail beneath the sun as well as in the clouds, and you, O light, and you, our mother earth!" "Here I am, tranquil, for I await that which prepared itself so long ago, my new hour." "No longer now in images, not as before among the mortals steeped in sometime happiness," "in death I'll find the living one;" "today will be the day I meet him, for today the lord of time inaugurates a festival, sends a sign, a cloudburst, for me and himself." "Do you feel the calm about us now?" "Do you sense the silence of the sleepless god?" "Await him here!" "At stroke of twelve he will accomplish it for us." "For if as you have said you are the Thunderer's familiar, and in a single mind with him," "your soul knowing the path and wishing to walk it, then come with me and banish dire loneliness;" "the heart of earth lamenting to itself, and remembering their ancient unity, the darksome mother" "reaching out her arms of fire, toward the ether;" "and if the ruler comes in his bright ray we'll follow him, to signify that we are blood related, going down in holy flames together." "But if you yourself would rather tarry at a safe remove, why not grant me what is mine?" "If this is not allotted to you as your own, why deprive me of it, why disrupt!" "My gratitude to you, you tutelary spirits, who when I began were close to me, you far-projecting ones!" "You I thank for releasing me, the long count of my sufferings ending here;" "emancipated from all obligations," "I go to meet my free death, obey divine law!" "For you it is forbidden fruit!" "So leave me and depart, and if you cannot follow me, at least judge not!" "The pain inflames your spirit, you poor man." "Well then, feckless friend, why not heal it?" "How is it with us?" "Are you quite sure of what you see?" "You tell me, you who see all things!" "Let us remain at peace, my son!" "And let us always learn." "You taught me once;" "now learn from me today." "Have you not told me everything?" "Oh, no!" " And now you'll go?" " I'll not go yet, old man!" "From this green earth and her beneficence my eye should not depart deprived of joy." "And even now I'll think on times gone by, on friends of early days, those dear friends now far away in Hellas' happy cities," "and on my brother too, who cursed me, it was bound to happen;" "leave me now;" "over there when the light of day goes down, you'll see me once again." "New world" "and it looms, a brazen vault the sky above us, curse lames" "the limbs of humankind, and the nourishing, gladdening gifts of earth are like chaff, she mocks us with her presents, our mother" "and all is semblance—" "Oh, when, when will it open up the flood across the barren plain." "But where is he?" "That he conjure the living spirit"