(In the heavens. The Lord on his throne, ringed with glory. A host of angels kneeling. The four archangels stand beside the throne. Great brightness.)

CHORUS OF ANGELS

Glory on high to God, our God,

Let earth and the great heaven praise his name,

Who with one word called all that is to being,

And on whose glance the end depends again.

He is the whole of power, knowledge, joy,

Our portion only the shadow he has cast,

We worship him for the unbounded grace

That granted us this share within his light.

The eternal great Idea has taken flesh,

Behold, creation now is brought to close,

And from all things to which he grants a breath

The Lord awaits due tribute at his holy footstool.

THE LORD

The great work is accomplished, yes, it is.

The engine turns, its maker rests at last.

For aeons it will run upon its axle

Before a single cog has need of mending.

Up then, you guardian-spirits of my worlds,

Begin your courses without end.

Let me delight in you once more

As you go thundering past beneath my feet.

(The guardian-spirits of the stars rush past before the throne, rolling star-spheres of various sizes and colors — single, double, comets, and nebular stars. The music of the spheres sounds softly.)

CHORUS OF ANGELS

How proudly comes that flame-ball yonder,

Self-confident in its own fire,

And to a modest cluster of stars

It serves, unknowing, even so. —

This tiny star, how dimly it blinks,

You would think it a feeble lamp,

And yet a million creatures’ world,

Immeasurably vast. —

Two spheres contend, each against the other,

To fall together, to fly apart:

And this strife is the splendid brake

That leads each onward on its course. —

That one rolls thundering down below,

You watch it from afar in dread:

And in its bosom a million beings find

Their happiness, their gentle peace. —

How modest there — one day to be

The star of love itself,

May a tending hand preserve it,

A comfort to the earthly race. —

There, worlds about to be born,

Here, the coffin of those that perish:

A warning word to the vain,

A heartening to the despondent. —

There yonder, breaking order, comes

The comet’s terrifying shape:

And lo, hearing the word of the Lord,

Its crooked path becomes order. —

You come, dear youthful spirit,

With your changeful globe of world,

You who put on mourning and a mantle of light,

Trade green for white by turns.

The great heaven’s blessing be upon you!

Only onward, undismayed;

Within your little bounds great ideas

Will stand in conflict.

And though the fair and foul, the smile and tear,

Like spring and winter, circle round it,

Its light and shade will be together:

The Lord’s good favor and his wrath.

(The guardian-spirits of the stars have passed by.)

ARCHANGEL GABRIEL

You who measured out the endless void,

Creating matter within it,

Which brought to being magnitude

And distance at your single word:

Hosanna to you, Idea! (He prostrates himself.)

ARCHANGEL MICHAEL

You who unite the ever-changing

And the unchanging in one,

Creating the infinite and time,

Individuals and generations:

Hosanna to you, Power! (He prostrates himself.)

ARCHANGEL RAPHAEL

You who pour out happiness in floods,

Bringing the body to self-awareness,

And making a whole world partaker

In your wisdom:

Hosanna to you, Goodness! (He prostrates himself.)

(Pause)

THE LORD

And you, Lucifer, you keep silent, stand self-assured,

Do you find no word to praise me,

Or does it perhaps not please you, what I have made?

LUCIFER

And what is there to please? That a few bits of matter,

Each endowed with this or that property —

Properties you, before they declared themselves,

Did not so much as suspect in them, it may be,

Or, if you did, you had no power to alter them —

Kneaded together at random into a few spheres,

Now draw, now drive, now repel one another,

In a few worms wake to self-awareness,

Until all is filled, until all has cooled,

And the neutral dross remains. —

Man, if one day he spies this out,

Will do as much in his own kitchen-laboratory. —

You set your man in your great kitchen,

And overlook his bungling there,

His botching, while he fancies himself a god.

But when at last he squanders and ruins

The dish, then you flare into belated wrath.

Yet what else can you expect of an amateur? —

And then — to what end this whole creation?

You wrote a poem to your own glory,

Set it inside a sorry mechanism,

And never tire, world without end,

That the same tune should always go that way.

Is such a plaything worthy of an aged one,

A game that only a childish heart could warm to?

Where a little spark kneaded into mud apes

Its lord — a botched shape only, not his image;

Where fate and freedom hound each other,

And the harmonizing sense is missing. —

THE LORD

Homage alone befits me, not critique.

LUCIFER

I can give nothing but what is my essence.

(Pointing to the angels)

This worthless troop praises you well enough,

And it is fitting that they should praise.

You bore them, as the light bears its shadow,

But I have lived from all eternity.

THE LORD

Ha, insolent one! Did matter not bear you?

Where was your sphere, where was your power before?

LUCIFER

This I might just as well ask of you.

THE LORD

I have planned from infinite time,

And what now came to be already lived in me.

LUCIFER

And did you not feel, among your ideas, the void

That stood as a barrier to all existence

And forced you, through it, to create?

Lucifer was the name of that barrier,

The ancient spirit of negation. —

You triumphed over me, for it is my fate

That in my battles I should fall unceasingly,

But rise again with new strength.

You bore matter, I won space,

Beside life there stands death,

Beside happiness the descent of spirits,

Beside light the shadow, doubt, and hope. —

I stand, you see, where you do, everywhere,

And knowing you thus, should I yet do you homage?

THE LORD

Ha, rebel spirit! Away from me, away,

I could annihilate you, but I will not,

Banished from all communion of spirits,

Struggle among the dross, hated, alien.

And in the aching sense of your bleak solitude

Let the endless thought torment you:

That in vain you shake your chains of dust,

Your fight is futile, against the Lord.

LUCIFER

Not so — you will not cast me off so lightly,

Like a worthless tool grown superfluous. —

We created together: I demand

My share.

THE LORD (with scorn)

Be it as you wish.

Look down upon the earth, among the trees of Eden,

These two slender trees, here at the very center,

I curse — then let them be yours.

LUCIFER

You measure with a miser’s hand, but then, you are a great lord,

And one foot’s breadth of earth is enough for me,

Where negation may plant its foot

And bring down your world. (He starts off.)

CHORUS OF ANGELS

Away from God’s countenance, accursed,

Hosanna to the Lord, who has given the law. —

(In paradise. At the center, the trees of knowledge and of eternal life. Ádám and Éva enter, surrounded by various animals in gentle trust. From the open gate of heaven a glory [gloria] shines forth, and the soft harmony of angelic choirs is heard. A bright, sunlit day.)

ÉVA

Ah, to live, to live: how sweet, how fair!

ÁDÁM

And to be lord over all things.

ÉVA

To feel that we are cared for,

And for all this only to stammer thanks

To him who offers all these delights.

ÁDÁM

Dependence, I see, is your life-principle. —

I thirst, Éva, look, how alluringly

This fruit gazes at us.

ÉVA

I’ll pick one presently.

THE VOICE OF THE LORD

Stop, stop! The whole earth I give to you,

Ádám — only shun these two trees, shun them,

Another spirit guards their tempting fruit,

And he who tastes them dies the death. —

Yonder the grape-cluster reddens,

There gentle shade invites you with repose,

In the parching heat of radiant noon.

ÁDÁM

A strange command, but it seems to be in earnest.

ÉVA

Why are these two trees fairer than the rest; or why

Just these forbidden?

ÁDÁM

Then why is the sky blue,

Why green the grove — enough that it is so. —

Let us follow the word; come after me, Éva.

(They settle down in an arbor.)

ÉVA

Lean on my breast, and I will fan you.

(A great gust of wind; Lucifer appears among the foliage.)

ÁDÁM

Ha, wife! What is this? I never heard the like.

As if a hostile, alien

Force had broken in upon us.

ÉVA

I tremble.

The heavenly music too has fallen silent.

ÁDÁM

Here on your breast I think I hear it still.

ÉVA

And I, if up there the glory clouds over,

Find it here below in your eyes, Ádám.

Where else could I find it, but in you,

You whom only your ardent longing brought to being,

As — in the flood of his light, the kingly sun,

That he might not stand orphaned in the universe —

Paints his own image on the water’s surface

And dallies with it, glad to have a companion,

Magnanimously forgetting that it is only

The pale reflection of his own fire,

Which together with him would sink to nothing.

ÁDÁM

Do not speak so, Éva, do not shame me.

What is sound, if there is none to grasp it?

What is the ray, if no color catches it?

What would I be, if — as in echo and in flower —

My being did not unfold to fairer life in you,

Wherein I may love my own self?

LUCIFER

Why do I even listen to this soft dalliance? —

I turn away, or else such shame will yet befall me,

That cold, calculating intellect

Will come to envy the childish heart.

(A little bird begins to sing on a nearby branch.)

ÉVA

Listen, Ádám — oh, tell me, do you understand

This little fool’s love-song?

ÁDÁM

I was listening to the brook’s murmur,

And I find it sang in just the same way.

ÉVA

What wondrous harmony this is, my love,

This manifold voice and a single meaning. —

LUCIFER

Why do I delay so long? To work, to work,

I swore their ruin, they must perish.

And yet I stand here doubting once again,

Whether I do not fight in vain, with knowledge,

With ambition’s alluring weapon,

Against them, among whom there stands, like a refuge,

That which guards their hearts from flagging,

That which raises up the fallen: feeling.

But why do I brood? He wins who dares.

(A new gust of wind. Lucifer appears before the startled human pair. The glory clouds over. Lucifer laughs.)

Why do you marvel so? — (To Éva, who starts to flee.)

Oh, stay, graceful lady!

Allow me one moment to admire you.

(Éva halts and gradually takes heart.)

(aside) This pattern will renew itself a million times.

(aloud) Ádám, are you afraid?

ÁDÁM

Of you, base shape?

LUCIFER

(aside) This too is a good forefather for the proud race of men.

(aloud) Hail to you, brother-spirit!

ÁDÁM

Say, who are you?

Do you come to us from below, or from above?

LUCIFER

As you please — with us it comes to the same.

ÁDÁM

I did not know that there was any man besides ourselves.

LUCIFER

Oho! There is much yet that you do not know,

Nor ever will. Or would the pious old one

Have shaped you out of dust for this,

That he should share the world with you?

You praise him, he provides for you,

Tells you: take of this and fear that other,

Guards and leads you, like a woolly beast;

To think, you can have no need at all.

ÁDÁM

To think? — And would I then not think:

Do I not feel the blessing sunbeam,

The sweet joy of existence,

And my God’s unending grace,

Who made me the god of this earth?

LUCIFER

This perhaps the little worm holds too,

Which eats the fruit before you,

And the eagle, swooping on the small bird.

Or what makes you the nobler one?

A spark, that glimmers within you,

The stirring of an endless force;

And like the single ripples of the brook,

Glinting an instant, falling back

Into the gray depths of their common bed. —

Yes, there might be one thing — thought —

That lies benumbed within your unconscious heart,

This would make you of age, would set you

Upon your own strength, to choose between good and evil,

To order your fate yourself,

And would release you from providence.

But perhaps it is better for you, like a dung-worm,

To breed in the soft lap of your little circle,

And to fade away with your life, without knowledge. —

It is great comfort, to rest content in faith;

Noble, but burdensome, to stand on one’s own feet. —

ÁDÁM

You speak great things; my head swims with them.

ÉVA

I am inspired — you speak fair and new things.

LUCIFER

But knowledge alone would still not be enough;

That it might take flesh in splendid works,

Immortality would be needed too.

What can a span’s-breadth of life achieve?

These two trees hide all this domain,

And from them he barred you, who made you.

You will know as God does, if you taste of this,

From that, your charm stays ever young.

ÉVA

Then our maker is cruel after all!

ÁDÁM

But what if you deceive me? (The glory clears a little.)

HEAVENLY CHOIR

Woe to you, world,

The ancient negation tempts. —

THE VOICE OF THE LORD

Man, beware!

ÁDÁM

What sound is this again?

LUCIFER

The wind shakes the boughs.

Help me,

You elements,

To win you

Man. —

(A gust of wind; the glory clouds over.)

These two trees are mine!

ÁDÁM

Who are you, then?

For you seem to appear just as we are.

LUCIFER

Look there at the eagle, wheeling among the clouds,

Look at this mole, burrowing in the earth below,

Each is girdled by a different horizon.

The spirit-realm lies beyond your sight,

And man is the highest that you can conceive.

For the dog too, a dog is the highest ideal,

And it honors you, if it takes you for companion.

But just as you look down on it,

And stand above it as its fate,

Scattering blessing or curse upon it like a god,

Just so do we look down on you,

The proud partakers of the spirit-realm.

ÁDÁM

And are you then one of those?

LUCIFER

Yes — among the strong, the mightiest,

Who stood there beside the Lord’s throne,

And had my share of its fairest glory.

ÁDÁM

Why did you not stay then in the bright heaven,

Why did you come down here among us, to this world of dust?

LUCIFER

I grew weary there of the second place,

The monotonous, well-ordered life,

The childish-voiced heavenly choir

That always praises, counts nothing evil.

I crave struggle, discord,

Which breeds new strength, gives a new world,

Where the soul may be great within itself,

Whither, whoever is brave, may come with me.

ÁDÁM

God told us he would punish

If we chose another path than the one he set.

ÉVA

Why would he punish? — For if he set the path

Along which he wishes us to go,

He shaped us at the same time so

That no sinful inclination should draw us elsewhere.

Or why did he set us over a deep abyss,

With reeling heads, marked out for damnation? —

And if sin too lies within his plan,

Like the storm among the sunlit days,

Who calls the one more guilty, because it rages,

Than the other, because it warms and gives life?

LUCIFER

See, the first philosopher has appeared!

A great line will come after you, fair sister,

Disputing this anew by a million roads;

Many of them will stray into the madhouse,

Many will shrink back, and not one reach harbor.

So have done with your reasonings —

Every thing has so many sides

That whoever surveys them all

Knows less than at the first glance,

And cannot come in time to a decision.

Reasoning is the death of the deed. —

ÉVA

Then I will pick one of the fruits.

ÁDÁM

The Lord has cursed it.

(Lucifer laughs.)

But go ahead, pick.

Let come upon us what must come,

Let us be knowing, like God.

(First Éva, then Ádám tastes the apple of knowledge.)

ÉVA

And over and above this,

Forever young. —

LUCIFER

This way, this way only.

This is the tree of immortality.

Make haste, then!

(He draws them toward the other tree; a Cherub with flaming sword bars their way.)

CHERUB

Back, sinners.

THE VOICE OF THE LORD

Ádám, Ádám! You have forsaken me,

I too forsake you — see now what you are worth alone.

ÉVA

We are undone.

LUCIFER

Do you lose heart?

ÁDÁM

Far from it, believe me.

This is only the shudder of my awakening. —

Away from here, my lady — anywhere — away, away!

This place is alien now, and desolate.

HEAVENLY CHOIR

Ah, weep your brotherly tears,

Falsehood is victorious — the earth is lost. —

(A palm-treed country outside paradise. A small, rough hut of wood. Ádám is driving in stakes for a fence. Éva is making an arbor. Lucifer.)

ÁDÁM

This is mine. In place of the great world

This plot shall be my home. I am its master,

I will defend it from the marauding beasts,

And compel it to bear fruit for me.

ÉVA

And I will make an arbor, exactly such

As the former one, and so I will conjure round us

The lost Eden.

LUCIFER

Ah, what great words

You two have spoken. Family and property

Will be the world’s twin movers,

From which all joy and pain will be born.

And these two ideas will grow without cease,

Until from them come homeland and industry,

The parent of all that is great and noble,

And the devourer of its own child.

ÁDÁM

You speak in riddles. You promised me

Knowledge; for it I renounced the pleasure of instinct,

That, though by struggle, I might be great.

And what is the result?

LUCIFER

Do you not feel it?

ÁDÁM

I feel that, when God forsook me,

Thrusting me empty-handed into solitude,

I forsook him too. I became my own

God to myself, and what I win

Is mine by right. This is my strength, my pride.

LUCIFER (aside)

Vain puppet, now you snap your fingers at heaven,

We shall see your heart when lightnings burn.

ÉVA

And my pride is only this,

That I shall be the mother of the world.

LUCIFER (aside)

A glorious ideal, this woman’s heart bears,

To perpetuate the sinful misery.

ÁDÁM

And what should I thank him for? My bare existence?

For this existence, if it should prove

Worth its burden, is only the fruit of my toil.

The pleasure that a draught of water gives

I must earn with the heat of my thirst,

The price of the kiss’s honey lies

In its wake — in the descent of spirits.

But though all the clasps of gratitude

Have fallen from me, though I became free

To shape my fate and to pull it down again,

Groping toward what I planned —

For that, perhaps, your help was not even needed,

My own strength could have borne it.

And you did not free me from the heavy fetter

That binds my body to the dust of earth.

I feel, though I do not know its name, what it is —

Perhaps a single hair — the more shameful for that —

That limits my proud soul.

Look, I would leap, and my body falls back,

My eye, my ear give up their service

When I scan the secrets of the distance;

And if my fancy draws me to higher spheres,

Hunger constrains me, cowed,

To descend again to the trodden matter.

LUCIFER

This rope is stronger than I am.

ÁDÁM

Ah, then you are a feeble spirit indeed,

If this invisible cobweb, this nothing,

Which a hundred thousand beings never even notice,

And in whose mesh, with the sense of freedom,

They flounder — which only a few rare,

higher spirits divine — can still defy you.

LUCIFER

And it is just this that can defy me,

For it is spirit, as I am. Or do you think,

That because it works hidden and noiselessly,

It is not strong? — Do not believe it; in darkness sits

That which shakes a world and creates it,

For at the sight of it the head would reel.

Only man’s work glitters and clatters,

Whose bound is a span’s-breadth of life.

ÁDÁM

Let me look, then, on this working

— For one moment only, my breast, you know, is strong —

Which can flow into me, who within myself

Am so set apart and whole.

LUCIFER

"I am" — a foolish word. You were and you will be.

Eternal becoming and decay is all life.

But look around you, and see with spirit-eyes. —

ÁDÁM (All that he says in what follows becomes visible as well.)

What flood is this that wells up so around me,

Striving aloft unceasingly,

Where it parts in two, and to the poles of earth

Rushes like a storm.

LUCIFER

That is the warmth

That carries life to the home of the ice.

ÁDÁM

And these two flame-streams, which run roaring

Past me, so that I fear they will sweep me off,

And yet I feel their life-giving effect:

What is it, what is it? I grow dizzy with it.

LUCIFER

That is magnetism.

ÁDÁM

Beneath me the earth sways.

What I held until now for solid and formless

Has become seething matter,

Irresistible, striving after form,

Struggling toward life. There as crystal,

Here as bud. Oh, in this chaos

Where will the enclosed selfhood of my I go,

What will you become, my body, in which, as solid

Instrument, I so foolishly trusted

In my great plans and great desires.

You spoiled child, who bring me trouble

And pleasure alike,

Will you sink to a few handfuls of dust only,

While the rest of your being is water and fleeting air,

Which but a moment ago reddened and rejoiced,

And straightway, at my being’s word, steamed into the cloud.

My every word, every thought in my brain

Consumes a part of my being, one by one,

I burn away! — and the perilous fire

Perhaps some secret spirit fans,

To warm itself upon my smoldering. —

Away with this vision, for I shall go mad.

To stand in such a war among a hundred elements

With the agonizing sense of abandonment,

How terrible, terrible! — Oh, why did I cast

That providence away from me,

Which my instinct sensed, but did not prize,

And my knowledge longs for — oh, but in vain.

ÉVA

Is it not so, is it not so — I feel the like.

When you battle with the wild beasts,

Or I, grown faint, tend our garden,

I look about me on the wide world,

And in heaven or on earth there is no kinsman,

Not one friend to hearten or to guard me.

It was not so once, in a fairer time.

LUCIFER (mockingly)

Why then, if your souls are so petty

That you shiver without a tending care and hand,

And subordination is so much your need:

I will summon up a God for you,

Who will be kindlier than the harsh old one:

The spirit of this earth — I know him

From the heavenly choir, a fair, modest youth. —

Appear, O spirit,

You see you cannot master me,

The ancient negation

Calls — no other would dare.

(Flames shoot up from the earth, a dense black cloud forms with a rainbow, with terrible thunder.)

LUCIFER (stepping back)

Who are you, specter — it was not you I summoned,

The genius of the earth is gentle and mild.

THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH

What you saw as feeble in the heavenly choir

Is, within its own sphere, endless and strong. —

Lo, here I am, for to the spirit’s word

I had to yield — but mark this well,

To rouse me up and to govern me are two different things.

If I take on my own shape, you will crumple down,

And these two worms here will be annihilated.

LUCIFER

Tell me, then, how can man come near

Your proud presence, if he takes you for his god?

THE VOICE OF THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH

Parceled out in water, in clouds,

In groves, everywhere he looks

With strong desires and an uplifted heart. (He vanishes.)

(Charming, playful nymphs people the grove and the spring.)

ÉVA

Ah, look at these dear sister-faces,

Look, look, how gracefully they greet us,

There is no more abandonment, no wilderness,

Happiness has come down among us with them.

They give us a heartening word in our sorrow,

Good counsel in our doubt.

LUCIFER

Nor could you ask for counsel in a better place —

You, who, as you ask, have already decided —

Than from just these dear, sprightly shapes,

Who answer just as your question runs:

On the pure heart they look smiling,

A frightful specter to the despairing;

They will accompany you through a hundred shapes,

Transformed a hundredfold,

The fresh shade of the prying philosopher

And the ideal of ever-young hearts.

ÁDÁM

What use, what use is the glitter of this play,

Which flows before me, but which I cannot enter into. —

And one more riddle has fallen to my lot. —

Do not beguile me, Lucifer, no further,

Let me know all, just as you swore.

LUCIFER

(aside) Bitter will this knowledge of yours one day be,

And for ignorance you will pine to go back.

(aloud) But patience. You know that even the moment

Of pleasure must be earned by struggle;

Many a school you have yet to pass through,

Much to be disappointed in, before you understand all.

ÁDÁM

It is easy for you to speak of patience,

Before you an eternity lies spread out,

But I have not eaten of the tree of life,

A span’s-breadth of life, that prompts me to make haste.

LUCIFER

Everything that lives, lives equally long,

The hundred-year-old tree and the one-day insect.

It thinks, rejoices, loves, and falls,

When it has fulfilled its day’s work and its desires.

It is not time that passes: it is we who change,

A century, a day, comes to much the same.

Fear not, you too will fulfill your aim,

Only do not believe that the selfhood of man

Is confined within this mud-body.

You have seen the ant and the swarm of bees:

A thousand workers roam foolishly to and fro,

Acting blindly, erring, falling,

But the whole, like an enduring individual,

Lives, acts in a collective spirit,

Surely brings to pass its appointed plan,

Until the end comes, and the whole stops. —

Your dust-body too will fall apart thus, it is true,

But in a hundred shapes you will live again,

And you need begin nothing afresh:

If you have sinned, you are punished in your son,

You carry on your gout in him,

What you experience, feel, and learn,

For aeons will be your possession.

ÁDÁM

This is the old one’s backward glance.

But my young breast’s ardent longing is another:

To cast a glance into my future.

Let me see for what I struggle, what I suffer.

ÉVA

Let me see too, in all this renewal

Whether my charm does not flag, does not lose itself.

LUCIFER

So be it. I will lay enchantments on you,

And you shall see to the very end of the future

Beneath the images of a fleeting dream;

But lest, when you see how foolish the aim,

How heavy the struggle into which your road turns,

Despondency should overtake you for it,

And you should flee from the battle:

I give a small ray to its sky,

Which will hearten you, that the whole vision

Is a deceptive phantasm — and this ray is hope. —

(Meanwhile he leads Ádám and Éva into the hut, where they fall asleep.)

(In Egypt. In the foreground, an open hall. Ádám as Pharaoh, young, seated on the throne. Lucifer as his minister; at a respectful distance, a brilliant retinue. In the background, slaves labor at the building of a pyramid, under overseers who keep order with the whip. A clear day.)

LUCIFER

Most gracious lord! Your people, anxious, asks,

The people who would be glad to bleed to death for you,

What it can be that does not let the great Pharaoh

Rest on the cushion of his throne?

Why do you sacrifice the joys of day,

The sweet dream-images of night,

And not entrust the care of your great plans

To the slave, to whom it properly belongs,

When in any case throughout the wide world

All glory, all dominion is yours,

And all the pleasure that a man can bear. —

A hundred provinces call you the lord of their abundance,

For you their fragrant flower opens its cup,

And grows sweet fruit for you alone.

A thousand women’s bosoms sigh toward you:

The blonde beauty, with her languid eye,

Fine, tender, like a sportive vision,

The brown girl, with panting lips,

In her burning eye a mad passion —

All are yours. Their fate, one whim of yours.

Each feels she has fulfilled her calling

If she could spice a few of your moments.

ÁDÁM

None of this holds any lure for my heart.

It comes like a forced tribute; I do not battle

For it, I cannot thank myself for it.

But here, with this work that I am building,

I hold that I have found the road

That leads to true greatness.

Its artistry nature itself admires

And for millennia will proclaim my name.

There is no earthquake, no tempest, to topple it:

Man has become stronger than God.

LUCIFER

And yet, O Pharaoh, are you happy

In this fancy? Lay your hand upon your heart.

ÁDÁM

I am not. I feel a void, an unutterable void.

But no matter — for I did not crave happiness,

Only glory, and that has opened before me.

Only let the mass not guess my torment —

If it could pity me, it would worship me no more.

LUCIFER

And what if one day you see clearly for yourself

That glory is a brief and foolish game?

ÁDÁM

That cannot be.

LUCIFER

And yet, if it should be?

ÁDÁM

I would turn to die,

Cursing the world behind me.

LUCIFER

You will not die, though you do see it clearly one day,

Indeed, you will begin afresh, with your old success.

(Among the laboring slaves, the overseers beat one so cruelly that, wailing and hunted, he runs all the way into the open hall and collapses before the throne.)

THE SLAVE

My lord, help me!

(From among the laborers Éva, as the slave’s wife, breaks free and, with an anguished cry, throws herself on her husband.)

ÉVA

In vain you ask him,

Who had no part in our agonies,

He does not understand, does not understand! — Low is the voice of the cry,

And high the throne. Why do you not call me,

Who would cover you, and with my body shield off

Every blow.

ÁDÁM (To the overseers crowding in, who want to drag away the slave and his wife.)

Leave them there. Away from here.

(The overseers go.)

What unknown feeling steals into my heart,

Who is this woman, and what is the spell, the charm she has,

With which, as with a chain, she drags the great Pharaoh

Down to herself, groveling in the dust? — (He rises.)

LUCIFER

This is again one of the threads

With which your lord encircled you in mockery,

To remind you of your caterpillar nature,

When in your self-conceit you flit like a butterfly.

This thin thread, you have seen already, how strong it is,

It slips from our fingers, and therefore

I cannot tear it apart.

ÁDÁM (coming down the steps of the throne)

Do not so, either.

As hurtful as it is, just so pleasant.

LUCIFER

But it is unseemly that a sage and king

Should groan beneath it.

ÁDÁM

What shall I do, then?

LUCIFER (with scorn)

Nothing remains but that knowledge

Should deny the existence of this hidden thread:

And that force and matter should laugh it coarsely down.

ÁDÁM

I can neither laugh it away nor deny it.

ÉVA

Ah, my beloved, your blood flows streaming,

I will staunch it; it hurts very much, does it not?

THE SLAVE

Only life hurts, and that not for long now.

ÉVA

Not so, not so — why would you have lived till now,

If you should die now, just as you were found.

THE SLAVE

Why does the peasant live? — He carries stone

To the pyramid for the strong man, and, setting up an heir

To his yoke, he dies. — Millions for the sake of one.

ÁDÁM

Ah, Lucifer, what a terrible speech this is!

LUCIFER

The feverish raving of a dying man.

ÁDÁM

What was it he said?

LUCIFER

Great Pharaoh, what troubles you?

Why, I can tell you, it is a splendid matter:

There is one slave the fewer on the earth.

ÉVA

To you a paltry number, to me a world.

Oh, alas, who will love me now? —

THE SLAVE

I no more. — Forget me, woman, forever.

(He dies.)

ÁDÁM

Then I will take you. Away from here with the corpse.

(The body is lifted up.)

Up, my lady, your place is on the couch of this throne:

You are the sovereign of charm just as much

As I of force — we had to find

Each other anywhere.

ÉVA

Oh, great Pharaoh,

I know, your command is the peasant’s fate,

Nor do I refuse it; only a little time

Grant me to myself, then command.

ÁDÁM

No more of this word. Oh, then does my empire

Never reach beyond the word of command?

ÉVA

Enough, if for the moment the command

Does not touch me with pain — oh, do not begrudge

My tears, this first moment, to the dead. —

How fair a corpse, oh God, how fair!

(She bends over him.)

ÁDÁM

Fair and dead; what an antithesis this is:

Either a mockery of our striving, this repose,

Or a pitying smile at its vanity.

LUCIFER

A runaway slave, who defies you,

Saying: I have grown stronger than your chains.

ÁDÁM

Peace to the dead, salvation to the living.

The one does not feel your tears, while to be without

Your smile is torment.

(The corpse is carried out; Ádám leads Éva to the throne.)

To my side, woman!

Ah, how sweet to rest upon your breast.

(Wailing among the laborers; Éva starts.)

What ails you, my love?

ÉVA

Oh, do you not hear

The people’s cry?

ÁDÁM

Now for the first time I notice it.

Not fair music, true: but pay it no heed,

Kiss me, and forget the world.

And you — silence that wailing.

LUCIFER

That I cannot, this is the people’s right by now,

Together with the yoke they inherited it.

(The cry again. Éva shrieks; Ádám rises.)

ÁDÁM

My lady, you suffer, and I do not know how

To help it. Through your heart

The cry, like lightning, strikes into my head,

And I feel as if the world cried out for help.

ÉVA

Oh, Pharaoh, crush me, but forgive,

If the people’s cry will not let me be at peace,

See, I know well that I am your handmaid,

That the aim of my life is to amuse you,

I forget all that is outside myself:

Misery, greatness, reverie, the dead,

That my smile be salvation, my lips a flame;

But if the people, this million-armed being,

With scourged backs wails out there:

Like a tiny particle of a hurting body,

I, I, the people’s estranged daughter,

Feel in my heart all this pain as well.

ÁDÁM

And I with you. — Millions for the sake of one —

The dead one said it too. —

ÉVA

Oh, great Pharaoh!

You have grown somber, and I am the cause,

Drive me from you, or teach me how

I must become deaf.

ÁDÁM

You were the better master,

For you taught me to hear the cry. —

Let me hear it no more. — Lo, let the slave-

people be free. What is the worth of glory

That a man attains in his single person

By the loss of millions and the cry of millions,

In whom that same man breathes;

A million times I feel the pain, once the pleasure.

LUCIFER

Ah, Pharaoh, you rave; why, the mass

Is the beast condemned by fate to that,

Which will draw at the mill of every order,

For it is created for that. Free it today already:

What you cast off, it will not gain,

And tomorrow it seeks a new master for itself.

Or do you think you could sit on its neck,

If it did not feel the need of a master?

If self-awareness dwelt in its breast?

ÁDÁM

Then why does it wail, as if servitude

Hurt it?

LUCIFER

It hurts, though it does not know what.

For every man longs for dominion,

It is this feeling, and not brotherhood,

That drives the great mass to the banner of freedom —

though it never wakes within it

To self-awareness, and only as a presentiment

Goads it toward all that is new,

And that is the negation of what already is;

Hoping to see embodied in it

The dreams it has fancied of happiness.

And yet the people is a deep sea: no sunlight

Pierces its mass; dark it will stay,

Only the wave glitters, that its surface throws up,

And which wave, by chance, just happens to be you.

ÁDÁM

And why just me?

LUCIFER

Or another, kin to you,

In whom the popular instinct has become awareness,

And who, as the admired champion of freedom,

Dares to push into your shining place.

While the mass, gaining nothing at all,

Changes a name, the master remains.

ÁDÁM

What an endless round your reasoning is,

From which there is perhaps no escape at all.

LUCIFER

There is escape. Give these few

Select individuals a chain and a ring,

Give them some other toy, and say: lo, above

The mass I set you, this makes you nobler —

And they will believe it, and despising the people

Will suffer that you despise them too.

ÁDÁM

Do not tempt me with such alluring false pretexts.

Away with the slaves! Let all be free.

Proclaim it to them, but make good haste,

So that, before I repent, it be already too late.

LUCIFER

(aside) Onward then, self-assured, upon your road,

Believe that you go, when the tide of fate draws you.

(He goes out.)

ÁDÁM

Let this work stand unfinished,

A warning ruin to him who aspires to greatness,

The great question-mark of our strength and weakness.

(Outside a great shout of joy; the laborers disperse. Lucifer returns.)

Rejoice, peasant, that greatness has bowed

Before you. Only do not think it was by compulsion.

ÉVA

Take comfort, oh my beloved,

What in any case is that bleak glory worth,

Like a cold serpent that creeps in between us.

ÁDÁM

But great, but great.

ÉVA

Away with it; you see, the cry

Has fallen silent, it no longer breaks off our bliss,

What other desire have you, when you rest on my breast?

ÁDÁM

Oh, woman, how narrow, how paltry your horizon.

And it is just this that draws the proud man to you —

Only weakness can be loved by strength.

As the protecting parent most ardently embraces

The helplessness of his son.

ÉVA

Ah, Pharaoh, do I perhaps already weary you

With this useless, this foolish prattle?

It cannot be helped, if I am not wiser.

ÁDÁM

Do not even wish to be, my beloved.

I have wit enough for myself,

Not for strength and greatness do I lean on your breast,

Nor for knowledge — all this in my books

I can find far better. You, only

Speak, speak, that I may hear your voice,

Its tremor stream over my heart.

Whatever you say, it is all the same; oh, who asks

What the little bird sings, and yet

With sweet surmise we hear its notes.

You — be only a flower, a precious trinket,

Useless, but fair, and this is your merit. (To Lucifer)

And yet one longing rouses me from my intoxication,

A foolish longing, perhaps — — oh, but fulfill it —

Let me cast one daring glance

Forward, to a couple of thousand years from now,

What will become of my fame?

LUCIFER

While you kiss,

Do you not feel the tepid breath

That brushes your face and flies away?

A thin layer of dust remains where it passes,

In one year this dust is but a few lines’ breadth,

In a hundred years already a few cubits,

A couple of thousand years buries your pyramids,

Entombs your name in a barrier of sand,

In your pleasure-gardens the jackal howls,

On the waste, beggars and slave-folk camp.

(What Lucifer says becomes visible as well.)

And all this is wrought not by the heaven-shaking storm,

Not by the bellowing earthquake,

Only by a feeble breeze that dallies round you.

ÁDÁM

A terrible image.

LUCIFER (with scorn)

Fear not, only your spirit perishes,

But your body remains, like a mummy,

The curiosity of schoolboys,

With a grotesque face from which the writing

Has worn away, whether it was slave or commanded.

(He kicks at a mummy that has appeared meanwhile before the throne, and which slowly tumbles down its steps.)

ÁDÁM (leaping up)

Hellish illusion, away with you,

Vain striving, foolish ambition —

It still rings in my ear: millions for the sake of one.

These millions I must vindicate.

In a free state — nowhere else can it be.

Let the individual perish, if the commonwealth lives,

Which makes a great whole out of single ones.

ÉVA

And will you forsake me too, your love? —

ÁDÁM

I forsake you, the throne, everything.

Lead me, lead me, to a new aim, Lucifer,

In any case I have wasted many a fair hour

On this false road. (He starts off, drawing his sword.)

ÉVA

My king! With broken hope

If you return, your heart will find a refuge in this breast.

ÁDÁM

Yes, yes; I sense that you too

I shall find again in a purified shape.

And then you will not embrace me out of command,

But as an equal — with the sense of pleasure. (Exit.)

LUCIFER

Not at such a gallop, you will reach it in good time,

Perhaps sooner than you hope, the aim,

And you will weep then, seeing how foolish it is,

While I laugh at you. — Let us go, then, onward.

(In Athens. The public square, with a speaker’s rostrum at its center. In the foreground, off to one side, an open temple-hall with statues of gods, garlands of flowers, an altar. Éva as Lucia, wife of the general Miltiades, comes toward the temple hall with her son Kimón, attended by several handmaids who carry the objects of sacrifice. On the square a ragged crowd loiters. A radiant morning.)

ÉVA

This way, this way, my dear little son.

Look, that way your father set off in his swift ship,

To do battle far off, at the borders of our homeland.

A coarse people lives there, who recklessly

Threatened the freedom of our country.

Let us pray, let us pray, my son,

That heaven defend the right of this homeland,

And guide your heroic father safely home to us.

KIMÓN

But why did my father go to so distant a land,

To defend this ragged, cowardly people,

While grief consumes his fair wife at home?

ÉVA

Oh, alas, do not judge your good father,

God’s curse sits upon such a child.

Only the loving wife has the right

To grieve over her husband’s great steps,

Which, if he did not take them, he would be ashamed of.

Your father did as a man must do.

KIMÓN

Are you afraid, then, mother, that he is weak, that they will beat him?

ÉVA

No, no, my son, your father is a hero, he will conquer,

There is only one thing I can fear for him,

That he will not conquer himself.

KIMÓN

How so?

ÉVA

There is a strong voice in the soul,

Ambition. In the slave it sleeps,

Or in its narrow circle debases itself to vice.

But fed with the blood of freedom,

It grows great, as civic virtue.

This wakes to life all that is fair and great,

But if it grows too strong, it turns upon its mother,

And struggles with her, till one of the two bleeds out. —

If this voice should grow over-strong in him,

If it could deceive this holy homeland,

I would curse him. Let us pray, my son.

(They go into the temple hall; meanwhile the square fills with more and more people.)

FIRST OF THE PEOPLE

One hears no stirring

News, as if our army met no enemy at all.

SECOND OF THE PEOPLE

And here at home too, every man is so drowsy,

Perhaps no one hatches plots any more,

As in former days, for the carrying out of which

The throat of the sovereign people was needed.

Since this morning I have been pacing this place,

And there is no buyer for my vote.

FIRST OF THE PEOPLE

A dull life — what is there left to do?

THIRD OF THE PEOPLE

A little disturbance would not come amiss.

(Éva meanwhile has kindled the fire of the altar, washed her hands, and made ready for the sacrifice to be brought. Her handmaids begin a hymn, which blends section by section into the following scene. The square has filled with citizens and people, two demagogues struggle for the rostrum.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Off! This place here is mine.

The homeland is in danger, if I do not speak.

(The people howl their approval.)

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

Then it is lost, if you do speak. Hireling, down from there!

(The people laugh and applaud.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

You are no hireling, for no one would even buy you.

Citizens! With pain I raise my voice,

For it pains the noble heart to abase

The great into the dust; and a great man

I must drag before your judgment-seat

From the chariot of honor.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

A fine start, scoundrel!

Why, garland the beast

That you have marked out for sacrifice.

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Away from here!

FROM THE PEOPLE

Why even listen to that mocker.

(They drag at the second demagogue.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

But however my heart pains me, I will speak still,

For you, O glorious, sovereign people,

I esteem still higher than your general.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

This hawking-souled, starveling rabble,

Which, like a dog, watches for the scraps

From its masters’ table? — Oh, you coward,

I cannot envy you your taste.

FROM THE PEOPLE

Down with him, he too is a traitor, down with him!

(They abuse him still more. Éva sacrifices two doves and incense on the altar.)

ÉVA

Holy Aphrodite! Oh, receive, receive

The smoke of this offering, hear my prayer:

Not the green laurel do I ask for my husband’s head,

Only the comfort of home for a warrior’s heart.

(In the smoke of the offering Eros appears, smiling, the Graces stand round him and scatter roses upon him. The group sinks into devotion.)

THE HANDMAIDS

Hear her!

EROS

Oh, woman, the blessing

Of the pure heart be upon you! —

THE GRACES

And the protection

Of the Graces be with you! —

THE HANDMAIDS

Thanks, Aphrodite!

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Hear the charge, then, people! The great Miltiades

Has sold the homeland.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

Oh, you lie, you lie!

Be silent, or the shame of late

Remorse will overtake you.

FIRST OF THE PEOPLE

Down from there, insolent one!

(He is swept entirely into the crowd.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

He has the flower of your youth in his hand,

He could take Lemnos at a single stroke,

And now stands idle at Paros. He was paid off.

THIRD OF THE PEOPLE

Death upon his head.

FIRST CITIZEN

Well, shout out,

Or clear out of my rented stalls.

(The sacrifice is over, the deities have vanished.)

ÉVA (rising)

What is that noise outside? Let us look, my son.

KIMÓN

They are condemning a traitor, mother.

ÉVA (stepping onto the steps of the hall)

My heart always tightens, when I see a starving people

Pass judgment upon the great.

When the shining one falls in the mire, with malicious joy

The peasant watches, treats him with mockery,

As if he thereby justified his own filth as well.

SECOND OF THE PEOPLE

Sir, I am hoarse, and I would like

To shout.

SECOND CITIZEN

Here, oil your throat.

SECOND OF THE PEOPLE

And then what shall I cry?

SECOND CITIZEN

Cry death upon his head.

FROM THE PEOPLE

Death! Death! —

ÉVA

And who is it, then, that is in question?

SECOND DEMAGOGUE (stepping up to her)

Who else but one who is a head taller

Than his fellow citizens, and that they cannot bear.

ÉVA

Of Miltiades? — Oh, great gods!

And you too, old Crispos, whom from slavery

My husband ransomed, now cry for his death?

CRISPOS

Forgive me, my lady, of the two of us

Only one can live. He who has me vote thus

Sides with my three children.

ÉVA

Woe to you,

If your lot, Crispos, so debases you!

Yet I forgive, if you are hungry.

But you, then, Thersites? And you all, you all,

Who slumber peacefully in your well-being,

Because from the gates your enemy

My husband drove away. — Oh, ingrates! —

THERSITES

Ah, my lady! Bitterly though it comes,

What can we do? This is the mood of the people:

Who would risk all his property,

Defying the swollen waves!

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

I pronounce, then, the people’s judgment.

(Lucifer, as a warrior, comes running, with a terrified face.)

LUCIFER

I cry alarm! The enemy is at the gates!

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

That cannot be, is not our victorious general

Before them?

LUCIFER

He himself is the enemy.

He has learned what you brew against him,

In his heart the righteous wrath has risen,

And while you speak, with fire and sword he will be here.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

You brought all this upon us, traitors.

FROM THE PEOPLE

Let us strike them down. — Long live the general! —

Woe to us, let each flee where he can. —

All is ended. —

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

It is not. To do him homage

Before him, to the gates!

ÉVA

Gods!

The verdict that took my husband from me

was painful, oh, but more bitter still,

That you have justified it — though I win you back. —

FIRST OF THE PEOPLE

Seize his wife; if our city

Suffers harm, let her die with her child.

ÉVA

I would die for you gladly, my husband,

Only let the curse of the homeland not reach my child. —

KIMÓN

Fear not for me, mother, come, come with me,

This sanctuary will shield us from all harm.

(They go up into the hall before the pursuing crowd; two nymphs let down a chain of roses behind them, before the people, who at once draw back. From without trumpets sound, the people scatter, wailing. — The nymphs vanish.)

LUCIFER (laughing, rubbing his hands)

A fine jest it was. How good it is for the intellect

To laugh where hearts are breaking.

(turning toward the temple)

If only the sight of this ever-renewing,

eternally beautiful one did not always trouble me.

I am so cold in its strange presence,

Which makes even the naked modest,

Sin noble, and fate

Sublime with its roses

And with the kissing lips of simplicity. —

Why is my own world so long in coming,

The grotesque shape, the dubious terror,

To scare off this illusion,

Which in my struggle, again and again,

Raises up the all-but-fallen man anew. —

But we shall see, when the horror

Of death comes to us before long,

Whether your tiresome shadow-play

Will not then have its final boundary here.

(He mingles with the people.)

(Ádám as Miltiades, at the head of an armed troop, is led in wounded. Before him the people and the demagogues, begging.)

FROM THE PEOPLE

Long live our general. Have mercy, great man.

ÁDÁM

What then is your offense, that you beg pardon?

And what can the strong ask of the weak? —

But my wife does not come to meet me, nor my child;

Surely no harm has befallen them! — —

ÉVA

Ah, Miltiades, why even come, when your wife

Cannot rejoice at your coming. — My son,

Your mother is sinking, hold her up, hold her up... Ah,

Your father leaves you not even a good name! —

ÁDÁM

What is this? I do not understand. The people implores,

My wife curses, and this breast bleeds for my homeland. —

ÉVA

But the homeland and my heart bleed more.

Or why did you come, tell me, at the head of an army? —

ÁDÁM

Does not such an escort befit my rank?

I came, because this grievous wound permits not

That I fulfill my office any longer.

I came, that into the hand of those who sent me,

Into the hand of the sovereign people,

Laying down my power, I might render account to it.

Lo, I dismiss you, my comrades in arms,

You have earned the peace of the hearth.

And now I too, this sword, Athena Pallas,

Consecrating, fix above your altar.

(He has himself led up the steps of the hall. His armed men disperse.)

ÉVA (falling on her husband’s neck)

Ah, Miltiades, where is there a happier wife

Than your wife, noble, great man!

Look, look at your son, how like

He is to you, how great, how fair!

ÁDÁM

You dear ones!

KIMÓN

I knew well that what my father does

Is well done. —

ÉVA

Oh, do not shame me,

This the wife should have known better.

ÁDÁM

My son! Present your father’s sword.

KIMÓN (hanging up the sword)

Guard, goddess, this precious sword,

Till one day I come to you for it.

ÉVA

To this twofold offering let the mother

Scatter the incense. Pallas, look down.

(She offers incense.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE (on the rostrum)

Was I not right, that he is a traitor?

That Darius bought him? The wound

Is mere pretense, he will not battle against him.

FROM THE PEOPLE

Death upon him.

ÁDÁM

What noise is that outside?

ÉVA

Ah, Miltiades, a terrible speech:

The mass calls you traitor again.

ÁDÁM

A ridiculous charge; me, a traitor,

Who conquered at Marathon?

ÉVA

Oh, but so it is.

An evil world it is that you have found here.

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Why do you delay to seize him?

(The people throng before the temple hall, among them Lucifer.)

ÉVA

Miltiades!

In this sanctuary you are safe, do not stir. —

Why did you disband the army?

Why did you not have this den of crime burned down?

This rabble deserves only chains,

It feels that you were born to be its lord,

You who are nobler than they all together,

And it kills you, kills you, lest it fall at your feet. —

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Do you hear, how a traitor’s wife

Speaks? —

ÉVA

It is the woman’s right

To defend her husband, even if he is guilty,

How much more when he is as pure as my lord!

And his enemy as degenerate as you. —

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Why does the sovereign people let itself

Be so reviled?

FIRST OF THE PEOPLE

What if she speaks the truth.

FIRST CITIZEN

Whoever sides with them is suspect. Shout out,

You ragged souls, or starve to death.

FROM THE PEOPLE

Death upon him. —

ÁDÁM

Cover this boy’s face.

Let him not see my blood, and away, woman, from this breast.

Let the lightning that strikes the cliff not reach you.

Let me alone die — or why even live,

When I see how foolish is the freedom

For which I struggled through a whole life.

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Why do you hesitate still.

FROM THE PEOPLE

Death upon him!

ÁDÁM

This cowardly people I do not curse,

It is not at fault, it is its nature

That misery should brand it for a slave,

And servitude should sink it to the bloodthirsty

Tool of a few haughty rabble-rousers.

I alone was the fool,

Believing that such a people needs freedom.

LUCIFER

(aside) You have spoken your own epitaph,

And after you, a fitting one for many a great tomb. —

ÁDÁM

Lead me down. I claim no longer

This sanctuary.

(He has himself led down the steps, tenderly placing Éva in the arms of her handmaids.)

Lo — I am ready. —

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

Defend yourself, all is not yet lost.

ÁDÁM

The wound would torment me too sorely, if I spoke

In my defense.

SECOND DEMAGOGUE

Do it, why, this people

But a moment ago groveled in the dust before you.

ÁDÁM

Ah, just for that all is useless,

The people does not forgive its own shame.

LUCIFER

Have you sobered up, then?

ÁDÁM

Oh, entirely.

LUCIFER

Have you seen that you were a nobler lord

To the besotted mass, than it to you?

ÁDÁM

It may be, but both are damnation;

Under another name, fate is the same.

It is vain striving to fight against it,

Nor will I. — And then why, why

Should any ardent heart aspire on high.

Let it live for itself, and seek the pleasure

With which it fills the span’s-breadth of existence,

And reel drunkenly toward Hades. —

Lead me to a new road, Lucifer, lead me,

And laughing I will watch the virtues of others,

The torments of others, craving only pleasures.

And you, woman, who — so it seems to my heart —

Once conjured an arbor for me

In the wilderness, if from my son besides

You would raise a citizen, as an honorable mother:

You are a fool, the girl rightly mocks you,

Who, with painted face, sits in the brothel

With wine-inflamed, kiss-craving lips.

Rejoice, make merry, deny virtue. —

To the scaffold now, for my punishment.

Not as if I had been able to do anything base,

But because a great idea was able to inspire me.

(Meanwhile a block is brought before the steps; beside it stands Lucifer with an axe. Ádám bows his head.)

FIRST DEMAGOGUE

Execute him. Long live the homeland!

LUCIFER (half-whispering)

A fine farewell, is it not? — Well, my valiant lord,

Does the bleak wind of grotesque-faced death

not blow upon you now, a little strangely? —

ÉVA

Ah, Pallas! You did not hear my prayer. —

(From the temple the genius of death, as a gentle-faced youth, steps to Ádám with an inverted torch and a wreath.)

ÁDÁM

Pallas has heard me. — Heaven be with you,

Peace has come into my heart, my Lucia.

LUCIFER

A curse upon you, vain world of illusion,

Again you have spoiled my fairest moment. —

ÉVA

A curse upon you, you base, bleak people,

You have coarsely laid hands on happiness,

And its fresh flower at once fell into the dust.

Yet freedom is not so sweet

To you as it was painful to me. —

(In Rome. An open hall with statues of gods, ornamental vessels in which perfumes burn, with a view toward the Apennines. — At the center a laid table with three couches. Ádám as Sergiolus, Lucifer as Milo, Catulus — all so many voluptuaries — Éva as Julia, Hippia, and Cluvia, courtesans wantonly dressed, carouse. On a raised stage a combat of gladiators is in progress, slaves stand ready for command, flute-players make music. Dusk, later night.)

CATULUS
Look, Sergiolus, how nimble, how skillful
This red-ribboned gladiator is,
I would wager he overcomes that other.

ÁDÁM
No, by Hercules!

CATULUS
Ah, what of "by Hercules,"
Who still believes among us in the gods?
Swear by your Julia, I shall believe you sooner.

ÁDÁM
So be it.

LUCIFER
You swear upon a firm foundation:
Setting a false god in a false god’s place.
But tell me, how are we to understand that oath:
Are we to understand her beauty, or your love,
Or perhaps just her faithfulness toward you? —

CATULUS
Charm is fleeting, and even were it not,
What ravishes today will weary tomorrow,
And a woman of lesser grace lures you from it
With the bewitching allure of novelty.

ÁDÁM
I meant her faithfulness. Or who lavishes
More on his lady than I?

HIPPIA
Oh, you fool!
Why, can you embrace her without end?
And even if you could, you, who insatiably
Crave pleasure and flit about in vain,
Because you can find only one severed
Part of pleasure in each single woman,
While the ideal of beauty and pleasure forever
Hovers before you, an unattainable charm,
How do you know that some whim of hers,
Some phantasm, will not lure her away too?
A gladiator’s mangled muscles — —

ÁDÁM
True, true, no more, Hippia.
Why does pleasure draw us on, like Tantalus,
If we lack the strength of Hercules,
If we cannot change like Proteus,
And a despised slave, after a wretched week,
Enjoys such an hour as his master
Vainly longs for. — Or is pleasure only
A draught of water to the worn-out one,
And death to him who plunges into its waves?

LUCIFER
Ah, what a splendid course in morals,
On fair girls’ breasts, by the garlanded cup. —
But what of your wager, then? —

ÁDÁM
If I should lose,
Then Julia is yours. —

CATULUS
And if you win?

ÁDÁM
Your horse
Is mine. —

CATULUS
Four weeks hence you may take it back,
Or I will toss it into my eel-pond. —

LUCIFER
Look, Julia, what a fine fat fish:
Eat, for you will fatten another. —

ÉVA
And does no foul worm feast on you as well?
Let him rejoice who lives, or if he cannot
Even rejoice, let him at least laugh. (She drinks.)

ÁDÁM (to the gladiator)
Hold your ground, there! —

CATULUS
Go to it now, bravely.
(Catulus’s gladiator falls, and begging for his life, raises his fingers. Ádám wants to give the sign of mercy, but Catulus holds back his hand, and clenching his fist, turns his thumb toward the gladiator.)
Recipe ferrum! — Coward wretch. I have
Slaves enough still, I am no miser.
Who would grudge you this little stirring
Scene, fair ladies,
When the kiss is so much sweeter,
The longing hotter, if a little blood has flowed.
(The gladiator is meanwhile dispatched by his opponent.)

ÁDÁM
The horse is mine, come, my Julia, embrace me.
Carry out that corpse. — Dancers!
Make a comedy for us now,
Of this we have had enough for today.
(The corpse is carried out, the stage is taken by dancers.)

CATULUS
Cluvia!
Come, you too, I cannot watch for long
When another embraces.

LUCIFER
And shall we, Hippia,
Follow their example as well?
But lick your lips, is there not poison on them,
So now, now we may make merry, my dove.

ÁDÁM
Why does your heart beat so hard,
I cannot rest above it, Julia. (They whisper.)

LUCIFER
Listen, this fool still talks of the heart! —

CATULUS
See, my dear, I do not touch yours,
You may do anything you like with it, only let me not know,
So long as your kiss is hot and always ready for me.

CLUVIA
Magnanimous darling! Lo, to your health, this wine. (She drinks.)

CATULUS
Good, good, Cluvia, but your soft arm,
Your little tender bosom, do not draw from me,
My garland too has slipped, see, from my head. —
(to the dancing-girls)
Ah, this is a fine turn in your dance,
What wanton fire, joined with grace!

CLUVIA
I will cover your eyes, lo, if you find there
That for which I too run the race,
And cannot earn so much as one good word. —
(pointing to Lucifer)
Look rather at this sour face —
Why does this one have so fair a girl,
If he can put her to no better use
Than to let her drowse, while he himself
With mocking smile and cold eyes
Accompanies a hundred sweet, though foolish, things,
That make the perfume of conversation. —

CATULUS
Indeed, one such face throws a frost-shroud
Over the poetry of whole companies.
He who resists the spell of the moment,
And does not let his soul be swept off by the tide,
Is no good man either, and had better stay at home. —

HIPPIA
Indeed, I almost fear that in the poor wretch
The black death has already taken hold,
Which lays the city waste. —

ÁDÁM
Away with him,
With that mournful face. A wanton song for us,
Whoever knows the fairest among you.

HIPPIA (sings)
With wine, with love,
One can never have one’s fill;
Every cup
Has another savor.
And the rapture, the sweet rapture,
Like the sun the sunken graves,
Gilds our existence.
With wine, with love,
One can never have one’s fill,
Every girl
Has another spell.

ALL
And the rapture, the sweet rapture,
Like the sun the sunken graves,
Gilds our existence.

CATULUS
That is well enough; now, Cluvia, what do you know?

CLUVIA (sings)
A foolish world it was in days of old:
When a fair gallant came courting
Lucretia in her widowed bed,
Her lips do not flame, she asks no more pleasure,
She does not run with open heart to the brothel,
She plunges the cold steel into herself. —
Let us rejoice, a wiser world is here,
Let us rejoice that we live in it. —
A foolish world it was in days of old:
Brutus did not sit in his fair villa,
He took up the sword and went to fight,
Like a worthless mercenary, and to what end?
For the welfare of the ragged people,
And on bare ground he bled to death for it.

ALL
Let us rejoice, a wiser world is here,
Let us rejoice that we live in it. —

CLUVIA
A foolish world it was in days of old,
A specter walked in the heroes’ brains,
They held sacred what we laugh at today,
And if one or two such madmen turned up,
In our circuses they would do nicely,
A spectacle to us, food to the beasts.

ALL
Let us rejoice, a wiser world is here,
Let us rejoice that we live in it.

LUCIFER
Ah, Cluvia, you have outdone Hippia.
I should like to be the poet of this song.

ÁDÁM
And you do not sing, why do you brood, Julia?
All about us is merry and laughing.
Does it not please you to rest upon my breast? —

ÉVA
Ah, well, very well. But forgive it, Sergiolus,
When happiness turns one solemn.
I hold that the kind that laughs is not the true.
Even into our sweetest moment there mingles
A drop of unutterable sorrow,
Perhaps we sense that such a moment — is a flower,
And so, fading.

ÁDÁM
Ah, I feel something of the kind too.

ÉVA
And above all, when I hear song and music besides,
I do not heed the narrow-bounded word,
But the flood of sound rocks me, like a ship,
And I feel as if I lay in a dream:
On the trembling note I would soar to a distant past,
Where, beneath sun-bright palm-trees
I was innocent, sportive, childlike,
And great and noble was my soul’s calling.
Forgive me, the spell of a mad dream,
All this. — I kiss you again — I wake.

ÁDÁM
Away with the music, the dance, it sickens me,
This endless sea of sweetness,
My heart would crave something bitter now.
Wormwood in my wine, and a sting
For the red lips, and ruin above my head.
(The dancers go off, wailing is heard from outside.)
What cry is this, that pierces so to the marrow?

LUCIFER
A few madmen are now being crucified,
Dreamers of brotherhood and of rights.

CATULUS
It serves them right, why did they not stay home,
Enjoying and forgetting the world,
Why did they meddle in others’ affairs.

LUCIFER
The beggar wants the rich man for his brother,
Change them about, and he will haul him to the cross.

CATULUS
Let us laugh, then, at misery, at power,
At the plague that decimates the city,
At all the decrees of the gods. (A new cry.)

ÁDÁM (to himself)
I feel as if I lay in a dream,
On the trembling note I soar to a distant past,
Where great and noble was my soul’s calling. —
Did you not say so, Julia?

ÉVA
Yes.
(Meanwhile it has grown dark. Before the hall a funeral procession passes with pipes, torches, and wailing women. The whole company sinks for a while into rigid silence.)

LUCIFER (laughing out)
As I see, here good cheer has clouded over.
Is there no more wine, or has the wit run out,
That even the sour lord finds it too much?
Perhaps someone among us is afraid,
Or has even been converted.

ÁDÁM (hurling his cup at him)
Perish, if you think so.

LUCIFER
Well, I will call a new guest among us.
Perhaps renewed cheer will come in with him.
Hey! Bring him in, slaves, smartly,
Whoever travels this way by torchlight.
We will only offer him a cup of drink. — —
(The dead man is brought in, in an open coffin, and set upon the table. His escort remains in the background. Lucifer drinks to him.)
Drink, comrade, tomorrow mine, today yours!

HIPPIA
Or perhaps you would rather a kiss?

LUCIFER
Embrace him,
And steal the obolus from his mouth.

HIPPIA
If I kiss you, why not him?
(She kisses the dead man. The Apostle Peter steps forth from the escort.)

THE APOSTLE PETER
Stop, you draw the plague into yourself.
(All start back in horror and rise in their places.)

ALL
The plague — terrible — away from here.

THE APOSTLE PETER
You wretched breed! — cowardly generation,
While fortune smiles upon you,
Like a fly in the sunbeam, insolent,
Trampling on God and virtue with mockery.
But when calamity knocks at your door,
When God’s mighty finger touches you,
You cower like cowards, foully despairing.
Do you not feel that heaven’s punishment
Weighs upon you. Look only, look around,
The city falls to ruin, a coarse foreign people
Tramples your golden harvests,
Order dissolves, no one commands
And no one obeys. Robbery, murder
Walk with heads held high among the peaceful dwellings,
And in their wake, pale care, terror,
And from heaven, from earth, neither pity nor help.
You cannot, can you, with the rapture of pleasures,
Lull to sleep that voice
Which stirs up the depths of the heart
And vainly goads it toward a better aim.
You feel no contentment, do you,
Pleasure wakes only disgust in your breast,
And anxious you look about, your lips quiver:
All is in vain, in the old gods
You have faith no more, they have stiffened into stones.
(The statues of the gods crumble to dust.)
They crumble away, and you find no new god
To raise you again from the dross. —
Look only round you, what lays waste your city
More mightily than the plague,
Thousands rise from their soft couches,
To people the empty plains of the Thebaid
With wild anchorites,
Seeking there, for their dulled senses,
What may still excite them, what may still uplift. —
You will perish, degenerate generation,
From the now-cleansing face of this great world.

HIPPIA (collapsing before the table)
Oh, woe is me, what dreadful pain,
Cold sweat, the fire of Orcus —
The plague, oh, the plague — I perish.
Not one of you supports me,
You with whom I shared so much pleasure?

LUCIFER
Today you, tomorrow me, my dear. —

HIPPIA
Then kill me, or my curse strikes you.

THE APOSTLE PETER (stepping to her)
Do not curse, daughter, rather, forgive —
I will support you, I and the great God,
The eternal God of holy love.
Rise up to him, lo, with this water
Your soul will at once be cleansed of the dross,
And hasten to him.
(He baptizes her from a vessel taken from the table.)

HIPPIA
Father — I am eased.
(She dies.)

CATULUS (starting off)
This very day I journey to the Thebaid.
I am sickened of the sinful world.

CLUVIA
Stay, Catulus, I too will go with you.
(They go out.)
ÁDÁM (lost in thought, steps to the foreground, Éva follows.)
And you are here, Julia, tell me, what do you seek here,
Where death has killed all joy.

ÉVA
And is my place not there, where you are?
Ah, Sergiolus! How many a noble
Feeling you would have found in this breast,
Where you sought only for fleeting pleasure. —

ÁDÁM
And in myself as well. What a pity that it is so!
To perish wretchedly, pettily,
And to suffer until then. Oh, if God lives,
(He kneels, and raises his hands to heaven.)
If he cares for us, and has power over us,
Let him bring a new people and a new idea into the world,
The one, to pour better blood into the degenerate,
The other, that the nobler may have a sphere
To strive on high. I feel, all is worn out
That was ours — and to bring forth something new
Our strength is too little. Hear me, my God.
(In the sky, in a glory, the cross appears. Beyond the mountains, the red glow of burning cities is seen. From the peaks half-wild bands descend. From afar a devout hymn is heard.)

LUCIFER (to himself)
This sight makes my back shiver a little,
But is it not with man that I must struggle?
What I cannot do, he does in my stead.
I have often seen the like of this jest before.
If the glory slowly fades away,
The bloodthirsty cross still remains.

THE APOSTLE PETER
The Lord has heard you. — Look around,
The degenerate earth begins to be born again.
These bear-skinned barbarian warriors,
Who cast firebrands on shining cities,
Whose horses trample the sowing of past centuries
And find a stable within abandoned
Temple-walls, will bring new blood
To the debased, dwindled veins.
And those who sing a hymn in the circus,
While the fierce tiger tears out their breasts,
Bring a new idea, brotherhood,
And the liberation of the individual,
Which will shake the world. —

ÁDÁM
Ah, I feel it, I feel it, the soul asks for something else
Than the slothful pleasures on swelling cushions;
The slow flowing-out of the heart’s blood
Is such a pleasure as — what could match it?

THE APOSTLE PETER
Let your aim, then, be: glory to God,
For yourself, work. The individual is free
To bring to fruition all that is within him.
Bound only by one command: love.

ÁDÁM
Up then to battle, up then to be inspired
For the new doctrine. To make a new world,
Whose flower will be the virtue of chivalry,
Whose poetry, beside the altar,
The exalted ideal of woman.
(Leaning on Peter, he starts off.)

LUCIFER
Ah, the impossible inspires you, Ádám!
Worthy of a man it is, and glorious indeed.
It pleases God, for it drives toward heaven,
And is dear to the devil, for it will cast you into despair.
(He follows him.)

(In Constantinople. A marketplace with a few loitering citizens. — At the center the Patriarch’s palace, to the right a nunnery, to the left a grove. Ádám as Tancred, in vigorous manhood, with other knights, at the head of crusading armies returning from Asia, comes to the sound of waving banners and drums; Lucifer as his squire. Evening, later night.)

FIRST CITIZEN
Lo, here comes another barbarian troop.
Let us flee, let us bar door and gate,
Lest they take it into their heads to plunder again.

SECOND CITIZEN
Away with our women; this wild rabble
Knows the pleasures of the harems.

FIRST CITIZEN
And our women, the conqueror’s right.

ÁDÁM
Stay, why do you flee thus before us;
Or do you not see this holy sign,
Which binds us brotherly to one aim? —
We carried the light of our faith to Asia,
The doctrine of love, that its savage
Millions, among whom rocked the holy cradle
Of our salvation, might feel its grace.
And among you there would be no love?

FIRST CITIZEN
We have heard such speech many a time already,
And straightway the firebrand flew upon our houses. (They scatter.)

ÁDÁM (to the knights)
Lo, you see, this is the accursed fruit,
When, with base design, so many a marauder
Waves the holy banner in his hand,
And, cravenly flattering the popular passion,
Thrusts himself forward, unbidden, as a leader. —
Knight-friends! While unstained
Honor, the holy praise of God,
The defense of woman, and heroism
Are upon our swords, we are the ones called
To hold this foul demon in check
And to lead it, so that, against its own desire,
It works the great and the noble unceasingly.

LUCIFER
You speak well, Tancred, but then, when the people
Will believe no longer that you are a leader — —

ÁDÁM
Where the spirit is, there is the victory.
I will strike it down. —

LUCIFER
And if it too has spirit?
Will you descend to it?

ÁDÁM
Why descend?
Is it not nobler, if I raise it up. —
To abandon the hard post of struggle
For want of comrades is just as petty
As it is narrow-hearted not to take in a comrade,
Begrudging him his share of the prize. —

LUCIFER
See, see, what the great idea has dwindled to,
For which the martyrs of the circus died. —
Is this the liberation of the individual? — —
A brotherhood of a marvelous kind. —

ÁDÁM
Do not mock me. — Oh, do not think I fail
To grasp the glorious doctrine. It is my life’s longing. —
Let him act, and let him act, in whom there is a holy spark,
Who struggles up to us, we gladly welcome,
One stroke of the sword raises him into our order.
But we must guard the treasures of the order
Against the still-seething chaos.
Oh, if it would only come, if only the time would come,
Our redemption will be fulfilled only
When the barrier falls, because all is pure. —
But the coming of such a day I would doubt,
If he who began the great work
Had not himself been the great God. — —
My friends, you have seen how they received us.
Orphaned, among the clamoring city’s people.
Nothing remains but, there in that grove,
To pitch camp, as we grew used to do
Already among the pagans. Till it turns to the better.
Set off, I too will follow you,
Each knight is answerable for his people.
(The crusading army pitches camp.)

LUCIFER
What a pity that your fair ideas, once again,
Bear only such a notorious apple,
Red without, but its core is dust.

ÁDÁM
Stop.
Do you then no longer believe in anything nobler?

LUCIFER
Even if I did believe, what use, if your race does not.
This order of knights, which you set up
Like a lighthouse amid the sea’s waves,
Will one day go out, half collapse,
And become a more perilous reef to the daring traveler
Than any other, that never gave light. —
Everything that lives and works, scattering blessing,
Dies in time, its spirit takes flight,
The body outlives it like a foul carcass,
Which breathes murderous miasmas
Upon the new world that develops around it. —
See, this is how the great ones of past ages
Come down to us.

ÁDÁM
Until our order falls,
Perhaps its holy doctrines penetrate the mass,
And then there is no danger.

LUCIFER
The holy doctrines. — —
Ah, it is just the holy doctrine that is always your curse,
When by chance you stumble upon it:
For you twist it, sharpen it,
Split it, hone it,
Until it becomes madness or a fetter.
Since the mind cannot grasp an exact concept,
You still always seek for this,
To your own curse, you proud men.
Or look at this sword, by a hair’s breadth larger,
It might be smaller, and unchanged in essence,
We could carry this on world without end,
And where is the exact point that sets a boundary?
Though your feeling at once finds it,
When the change sets in on the great scale. —
But why do I strive — speech wearies me,
Just look a little around you for yourself.
(A few citizens appear again.)

ÁDÁM
My friends! My people is weary, it asks for shelter.
Perhaps in the capital of Christendom
It will not ask in vain.

THIRD CITIZEN
The question is, whether you are not
Worse than the pagan in heresy.

FOURTH CITIZEN
Tell us, what do you believe, the Homousion,
Or the Homoiusion?

ÁDÁM
This I do not understand. —

LUCIFER
Do not confess it, this is the main thing here now.

FOURTH CITIZEN
See, he wavers, this one too is of false faith.

SEVERAL
Away from them, away, let us shut ourselves in our houses. —
A curse upon him who gives them shelter. (They scatter.)
(The Patriarch comes from his palace in princely pomp and with a retinue, a band of monks follows, escorting heretics in chains, and last, soldiers and people.)

ÁDÁM
I am amazed! — But tell me, what prince
Approaches yonder, so haughtily, so defiantly? —

LUCIFER
That is the high priest, the successor of the apostles.

ÁDÁM
And this barefooted, foul rabble,
That with malicious joy, with the color of false humility,
Escorts the fettered people?

LUCIFER
A band of Christian-Cynic monks.

ÁDÁM
I saw nothing like it among my native mountains.

LUCIFER
You will see it later; leprosy, you know,
Spreads slowly. But beware, do not offend
This absolutely virtuous, and therefore
Implacable, people.

ÁDÁM
Ah, what
Virtue could be the property of such a breed.

LUCIFER
Their virtue is mortification, renunciation,
Which your master began upon the cross.

ÁDÁM
By that he redeemed a world,
But these cowards only blaspheme God,
Like rebels, despising his graces.
He who takes up against a gnat such a weapon
As it would be heroism to wield against a bear,
Is a fool.

LUCIFER
But what if they take the gnat
For a bear? — Have they not the right?
Have they not the right, in the sense of their heroism,
To drive every man of pleasure to hell? —

ÁDÁM
I look, like Thomas, and I do not believe. —
I will look into the eyes of these illusions. —
(He steps before the Patriarch.)
Father! We are warriors of the Holy Sepulchre,
And from the toilsome road to take our rest
The people of this city will not even admit us. —
You who are so mighty, help our cause.

PATRIARCH
My son, I have no time now for trifling matters,
The glory of God, the salvation of the people calls me,
For I must pass judgment over heretics,
Who, spreading poison, breed like weeds,
And though we root them out with fire and sword, unceasingly
With renewed strength hell sends them against us. —
But if you are knights of the cross,
Why do you seek the Saracen far off,
Here is the more dangerous enemy. Up then,
Up to their villages, root them out,
Lay waste woman, old man, child.

ÁDÁM
The innocent, father, surely you do not wish. —

PATRIARCH
The serpent too is innocent while it is small,
Or when its poison-fang has already fallen out,
And do you spare it?

ÁDÁM
Truly a terrible crime
It must be, that could kindle to such wrath
The Church of love.

PATRIARCH
Son!
He does not love who flatters the flesh,
But he who leads the soul back,
If need be, on the sword’s edge or through flame,
To him who said: Not peace, but a sword
I bring to the earth. — These evil-believers,
In the mysterious doctrine of the Trinity,
Preach the Homoiusion,
While the Church established the Homousion
As an article of the faith.

MONKS
Death upon them, the pyre is already burning. —

ÁDÁM
Give up, my friends, that iota,
A fairer offering will your contempt of life be
In the heroic battle to be fought for the Holy Sepulchre. —

AN OLD HERETIC
Satan, do not tempt us, we for our true faith
Will bleed there, where God appointed.

ONE OF THE MONKS
Ha, insolent one, you boast of true faith?

THE OLD HERETIC
Is not the Council of Rimini with us,
And countless others?

THE MONK
It strayed onto an evil road.
But at Nicaea and in other true-believing
Councils, did they not judge in our favor?

THE OLD HERETIC
The rebels. — What an insolent attempt
Still to vie with us. Or, answer,
Where is there even one Church Father of yours
Like Arius and the two Eusebii? —

THE MONK
And have you an Athanasius?

THE OLD HERETIC
Where are your martyrs?

THE MONK
More than yours.

THE OLD HERETIC
Fine martyrs, whom with his illusion
The devil lured away, damned to death. —
I tell you, you are the great Babylon,
That harlot of whom Saint John wrote,
Which will perish from the face of the world. —

THE MONK
The seven-headed dragon, the Antichrist
You are, of whom Saint John speaks,
Scoundrels, deceivers, the devil’s confederates.

THE OLD HERETIC
Robbers, serpents, fornicators, gluttons...

PATRIARCH
Away with them, away, we tarry too long already,
To the glory of God, to the pyre with them!

THE OLD HERETIC
To the glory of God, well said, scoundrel,
To the glory of God the victim falls. —
You are strong, you do as you please,
But whether the deed is good, heaven will one day judge. —
Your hours of sin are numbered now,
From our blood new champions will be born,
The idea lives, and the flame that blazes up
Casts light into the centuries to come. —
Come, my friends, into the glorious death. —

THE HERETICS (singing in chorus)
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me, and why art thou so far from my salvation,
and from the words of my crying?
O my God, I cry by day, but thou
hearest not, and in the night also I have no rest.
But thou art holy — — (Psalm 22.)

THE MONKS (cutting in, in chorus)
Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me, and fight
against them that fight against me.
Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up
for mine help.
And draw out the spear, and stop the way
against them that persecute me. (Psalm 35.)
(Meanwhile the Patriarch and the procession move off. A few monks mingle among the crusaders with their tracts.)

LUCIFER
Why do you stand so silent, tell me, what makes you shudder?
Do you take it for a tragedy? Look at it now
As a comedy, and it will amuse you. —

ÁDÁM
Oh, alas, do not jest! — Can one then go, for a single iota,
So resolutely to one’s death? —
What then is the sublime, the magnificent? —

LUCIFER
That which to another is perhaps laughable.
A single thread divides these two concepts,
A single voice in the heart judges between them,
And this mysterious judge is sympathy,
Which deifies, or kills with its mockery. —

ÁDÁM
Why did all this sin even strike my eye!
This petty battle in proud learning,
This murderous poison masterfully distilled
From the brightest, most refreshing flower. —
This fair flower I once knew,
In the budding age of our persecuted faith:
Who is the guilty one, who has ruined it?

LUCIFER
The guilty one is victory itself,
Which scatters, breeds a hundred interests.
Calamity, which brings together, creates martyrs,
Gives strength; it is there with the heretics. —

ÁDÁM
Indeed, I would fling away my sword,
And go back to my northern home,
Where still in the shadows of the ancient forests
Manly honor, pure simplicity
Defies the poison of this smooth age,
Did not a secret voice whisper unceasingly
That it is I who must remake this age anew.

LUCIFER
Vain striving. For you will never
Bring the individual to prevail against the age:
The age is a current that carries or submerges,
The individual is its swimmer, not its leader. —
Those whom the chronicle calls great,
All who have effect, understood their century,
But did not father the new concepts.
It does not begin to dawn at the cock’s crow,
But the cock crows because it dawns. —
There yonder, those who, in fetters, hasten
To a martyr’s death, ringed with mockery,
See but one man’s footstep forward,
Among them dawns the new thought;
And for it they die, what their descendants
Will breathe in carelessly with the street air. —
But let this be, look a little into your camp,
What those dirty monks are doing there,
What market they hold, what they harangue,
In the wild accompaniment of mad gestures. —
Let us listen to them.

A MONK (among the thronging crusaders)
Warriors, take it!
Take the doctrine of penance
As a guide in all your doubts,
It will teach you how many years the murderer, the fornicator,
The temple-robber, the false witness
Will suffer in hell.
And it will teach you that a single year’s punishment
The rich man may redeem with twenty solidi and a few,
While the poor man with three.
And he who is quite unable to pay,
With a few thousand strokes of the lash as well. —
Take this precious book, take it. —

THE CRUSADERS
Here with it. — For us too, holy father! —

ÁDÁM
Ha, evil seller, and still worse buyers.
Draw your sword, and scatter this foul market!

LUCIFER (in confusion)
Forgive me, this monk is an old comrade of mine.
Nor do I loathe such a world,
If the glory of the Lord has lifted it up,
I too have been lifted up along with it.
Only you have stayed a little below.
(Éva as Isora, and Helen, her chambermaid, come rushing, shrieking, to Ádám, pursued by a few crusaders, who, however, quickly slink off.)

ÉVA (collapsing)
Save me, warrior.

ÁDÁM (catching her in his arms)
Come to yourself, oh noble lady,
Here you are safe. Lift up your fair eyes.
How bewitching! — What can have befallen you?

HELEN
We had gone to enjoy nature
Amid the shady thickets of our garden,
Sitting carelessly on the fresh turf,
Listening to the nightingale and following its song;
When we saw two eyes glittering
With wild passion from behind the bush.
Frightened, we began to run, while behind us,
Panting and tramping, four crusaders
Almost overtook us, when we reached you.

ÁDÁM
I scarcely know whether to wish that you wake;
What if you leave me then, like a dream-image?
How can a body be so transfigured,
So noble, and so worthy of worship —

LUCIFER
A transfigured body! — Oh, fate truly
Could not better punish the lover
For his madness, than by fulfilling
All that he heaps upon his beloved. —

ÁDÁM
It seems to me I knew you once,
That we stood together at God’s footstool.

LUCIFER
I beg you, by everything, never forget,
Your love, as amusing as it is
For two, is just as insipid to a third.

ÁDÁM
She looks up — she smiles, oh, thanks to you, heaven!

ÉVA
Knight, you have saved me, how shall I thank you for it?

ÁDÁM
Is the word on your lips not a rich enough reward?

LUCIFER (to Helen)
A lean enough reward, and shall I not earn even such? —

HELEN
And what thanks would I owe you?

LUCIFER
Why, do you think the noble knight
Saved you too? What vanity.
If the knight saves the young lady,
Her chambermaid the squire surely saves.

HELEN
And what would I have gained. Either I am grateful,
And then I am as if the peril overtook me:
Or ungrateful, and so damned either way. —
And the four pursuers were not ugly.

ÁDÁM
Oh, lady, where shall I escort you, command me.

ÉVA
Before us stands the nunnery door.

ÁDÁM
The nunnery, you say? Oh, but its door
Does not bar hope from me, does it?
Give me a token to fix to this cross,
That while the one calls me to struggle in my duty,
It may bring back the image of my fairest dream,
And I may not weary of waiting through the long years,
From whose end my prize beckons. —

ÉVA
Lo, this ribbon. —

ÁDÁM
This night-black ribbon? —
Oh, lady! Hope, hope, not sorrow.

ÉVA
This token is mine, I can give no other.
Within the convent walls no hope grows.

ÁDÁM
Nor love either. And where you are,
How could there fail to be love, girl!
Your dress shows you are not a nun yet.

ÉVA
Do not torment me further with your questions,
Yet you torment me, when I see your grief growing. —

LUCIFER
And will this wall shut you in too?

HELEN
It will indeed, but its key is not cast into the sea.

LUCIFER
A great pity — what a fine elegy I would carve
On this mournful case. —

HELEN
Deceiver, go away from me!

LUCIFER
And why? Is it not a great idea, when
I descend to the sea-bottom for your key?

HELEN
Ah, that I do not even ask.

LUCIFER
I am going already. —
The monster of the deep bares its tusk at me.

HELEN
Come back, come, fear will be the death of me —
Rather, the key will be at my window. —

ÁDÁM
Let me know at least your name,
Into my prayer, let me know what to weave,
Asking blessing upon you, if your fate’s
Mourning you will not let me share. —

ÉVA
My name is Isora. And yours, knight?
A prayer befits a convent-maid better.

ÁDÁM
I am Tancred.

ÉVA
Tancred, God be with you.

ÁDÁM
Isora, oh, do not leave me so hastily,
Or I shall curse the name
That, in farewell, you spoke for the first time, —
This moment was too brief, even for a dream,
How shall I go on, if you remain such a riddle,
And I cannot embroider with the precious thread
Of your fate? —

ÉVA
Hear my fate, then.
My father too was a warrior of the Holy Sepulchre.
When one night the savage enemy surprised
His camp, howling, with fire and sword.
There was no hope left for his escape,
And he made a holy vow to the Virgin Mary,
That me, who was still a child,
If he might return, he would offer up to her.
He returned, I took the holy host
Upon this promise.

ÁDÁM
Oh, holy mother!
You incarnate, pure love,
Did you not turn away, offended by such
An unhallowed promise, which sets
A brand of sin upon your virtues,
Making a curse of heaven’s grace. — —

HELEN
And do you not wish to know my fate?

LUCIFER
That I know already: you loved, were deceived,
You loved again, and then it was you who deceived.
You loved once more — wearied of your hero;
And your empty heart now waits for a new tenant. —

HELEN
This is strange! Is the devil in you, perhaps?
But I did not think you so modest
As to believe my heart empty at present.

LUCIFER (to Ádám)
My lord, make haste. You cannot bid farewell,
And I cannot hinder my victory.

ÁDÁM
Isora! Your every word is a sting in my heart.
With a single kiss, oh lady, sweeten its venom.

ÉVA
Knight, what do you ask — you heard my vow.

ÁDÁM
But it is not forbidden, perhaps, that I should love you.

ÉVA
You are happy, but how shall I forget you?
Tancred, I am going now, or my strength fails.
God be with you — I shall see you there, in heaven.

ÁDÁM
God be with you. — The memory of this day stays with me. —
(Éva enters the nunnery.)

HELEN (aside)
Ah, you coward — must I do everything then? (aloud)
The key will be at the window, not in the sea.
(She follows Éva.)

ÁDÁM (coming to himself)
Now then, let us go.

LUCIFER
It is too late — it is over. —
See, such a mad breed is yours,
Now it regards woman as the tool
Of its animal craving, and with coarsened hands
Wipes the bloom of poetry
From her face, robbing itself
Of the most graceful flowers of its love;
Now it places her, as a god, upon an altar,
And bleeds for her, and struggles in vain,
While her kiss withers, barren. —
Why does it not regard and esteem her as a wife,
In the marked-out sphere of her womanly calling.
(Meanwhile it has grown wholly dark, the moon rises. Isora and Helen at the window.)

ÉVA
How longingly he gazed at me, how he trembled,
Ah, this heroic man trembled before me,
But my woman’s virtue and the faith command —
Here I shall suffer to the end, like a holy victim.

HELEN
It is marvelous, how mad our sex is!
If it breaks with prejudice,
It rushes like a wild beast after pleasure,
Tears the dignity from its own face
And, despised, flounders in the mire.
If it does not break, it trembles at its own shadow,
Lets its barren charms wither,
Robbing itself and others of pleasure. —
Why does it not walk the middle road. Or what harm
In a little adventure, a little tender liaison
With propriety, now and then, I cannot conceive.
Why, woman is not pure spirit either.

ÉVA
Helen, look out, is he still standing there?
How could he have gone so easily.
If only I could hear his voice but once more.

ÁDÁM (to Lucifer)
Look around, is she not at her window,
Would she not send one glance after me?
If I could only see her slender shape once more —
Isora! Oh, do not mind that I am still here.

ÉVA
For both our sakes it were better you did not stand here.
The torn heart easily knits together again,
And only hurts the more, when we tear it apart anew. —

ÁDÁM
Are you not afraid thus to gaze into the quiet night,
Which, like a great heart, throbs with love.
Where to love is forbidden only to us?
Are you not afraid its spell will sweep you off? — —

ÉVA
All this lives in me too, like a sprightly dream,
That haunts this world, perhaps, from heaven;
On the waves of the air a fair song floods,
I see a thousand genii smiling
With a brotherly kiss behind every leaf,
But to us, Tancred, they speak no more. —

ÁDÁM
And why, why! Does this wretched wall hinder it? —
I, who fought so much tribute from the pagan,
Can I not scale this rampart? —

LUCIFER
No, for the spirit of the age defends it,
Stronger than you.

ÁDÁM
Ha, who says that!
(In the background the glow of a pyre flares up.)

THE HERETICS (in chorus, from afar)
Deliver my soul from the sword;
my darling from the power of the dog.
Save me from the lion’s mouth: for thou hast
heard me from the horns of the unicorns.
I will declare thy name unto my brethren:
in the midst of the congregation will I praise thee.

ÉVA
Have mercy, God, on their sinful souls! —

ÁDÁM (recoiling in horror)
What a dreadful song.

LUCIFER
It is your wedding-hymn.

ÁDÁM
No matter, be it so, I am not dismayed.
For your sake I will defy everything.

THE MONKS (in chorus, from afar)
— — let them be clothed with shame and
dishonour that magnify themselves against me.
Let them rejoice and be glad that favour my
righteous cause; and let them say continually: Let
the Lord be magnified, who hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant.
(At the beginning of the chorus above, Ádám, who had stepped to the nunnery door, halts again; on the tower a screech-owl cries, witches fly through the air, and before the door a skeleton rises from the ground and stands threateningly before Ádám.)

ÉVA (slamming the window shut)
God help me!

THE SKELETON
Away from this consecrated threshold.

ÁDÁM
Who are you, specter!

THE SKELETON
I am the one who will be there
In every kiss of yours, in every embrace. —

WITCHES (laughing)
Sweet sowing, sour fruit,
From dove’s young hatch out serpents.
Isora, we call you!

ÁDÁM
What shapes!
Have you changed, or is it I myself?
I knew you, when you were smiling.
What here is reality and what is dream?
At your spell my arm grows faint. —

LUCIFER
By chance into what charming company
I have come. How long I have awaited this good fortune,
This decorous, fair witch-band,
Which nevertheless surpasses the naked nymph
Far in shamelessness,
This old comrade, dread death,
Who, caricaturing bleak virtue,
Makes the son of earth loathe it.
I greet you all. A pity I have no leisure
To while away the night among you. —
(The apparitions vanish.)
Tancred, up, Tancred! Your beloved has slammed
The window; why do we stand here in the night?
The wind is cold, gout will be your reward.
And Helen will come at once, and what shall I do?
The devil will not make love, I suppose,
He would become ridiculous forever,
And then he would lose his power of his own accord. —
It is marvelous, man with ardent heart
Yearns and pines after love,
And reaps only torment. The devil with icy heart
Can scarcely free himself from it in time.

ÁDÁM
Lead me, lead me to a new existence, Lucifer!
I went into battle for holy ideas,
And found a curse in base conceptions,
To the glory of God they sacrificed man,
And the man was degenerate, to fulfill my idea.
I longed to make our pleasures nobler,
And branded the brand of sin upon enjoyment,
I set up the virtue of chivalry, and that drove
A dagger into my heart. Away from here, into a new world,
I have shown well enough what I am worth,
I who could fight and could renounce,
I can leave my post without shame. —
Let nothing inspire me any more,
Let the world move as it will,
I will set its wheels right no longer,
Watching its stumbles indifferently.
I am weary — I want to rest. —

LUCIFER
Rest, then. But I scarcely believe
That your spirit, this restless force,
Will let you rest. Ádám, come after me.