The Tragedy of Mister Morn Read Online Free PDF Page B

me!
    It’s been a while, it’s been a while … Midia …
    a masquerade … Lights, perfume … quick, quick!
    Hurry, Ella!
    ELLA:
We’re going, we’re going …
    TREMENS:
So,
    you’ve decided to betray me, my friend?
    GANUS:
    Don’t, Tremens! We’ll talk some other time …
    It’s hard for me to argue now … Perhaps
    you are right. Farewell, dear friend … You
    understand …
    ELLA:
I won’t be late …
    TREMENS:
Go, go.
    Klian has long been cursing you, himself
    and everything else. Ganus, don’t forget …
    GANUS:
    Hurry up, hurry up, Ella …
[ They leave together .]
    TREMENS:
So, you
    and I are left alone, my serpent chill?
    They’re gone—my fugitive slave and poor
    twirling Ella … Yes, seized and exhausted
    by the simplest passion, Ganus seems to have
    forgotten his true calling … But somehow
    I sense that hidden within him is that spark,
    that scarlet comma of contamination,
    which will spread the wondrous cold and fire
    of tormenting illness across my country:
    deathly revolts; hollow destruction;
    bliss; emptiness; non-existence.
CURTAIN

Scene II
    A party at MIDIA ’s house. The drawing room: to the left the entrance to the salon; to the right [ at the back ] a lighted niche by a tall window . [ MIDIA with ] several GUESTS [ including KLIAN, DANDILIO , and the FOREIGNER ].
    FIRST GUEST:
    Morn says—though he himself is not a poet—
    “It should be thus: in the flicker of daily life,
    unexpectedly, in the chance combination
    of light and shadow, you feel within yourself
    the divine happiness of conception:
    it grabs you and is gone; but the muse knows
    that in a quiet hour, in the seclusion
    of the night, the poem will begin to beat
    and fly off the tongue, fiery and babbling …”

    KLIAN:
    I have never felt like that … I myself
    create differently: with persistence, disgust,
    tying a wet rag around my head … Perhaps
    that’s why I am the genius …
[ Both of them pass on .]
    FOREIGNER:
Who is that—
    the one that looks like a horse?
    SECOND GUEST:
The poet Klian.
    FOREIGNER:
    Talented?
    SECOND GUEST:
Shh … He’s listening …
    FOREIGNER:
And that one,
    the silvery one, with the bright eyes—speaking,
    at the doorway, to the mistress of the house?
    SECOND GUEST:
    You don’t know? You sat beside him at dinner—
    it is the carefree Dandilio, the grey-haired
    lover of antiquity.
MIDIA [ to DANDILIO ]:
But why? It is
    a sin: Morn, Morn and only Morn,
    and the blood sings out …
    DANDILIO:
There is no sin on earth.
    Loves, sorrows—all are necessary, all
    are beautiful … One must snatch the hours of fire,
    the hours of love from life, as a slave grasps
    at shells underwater—blindly, hungrily:
    there is no time to prise them open, to choose
    the sick one, with its precious tumour … They
    shimmer, suddenly turn up, so grab at them
    in handfuls, whatever’s there, however you can—
    and at that very moment when your heart
    is bursting, you push off with your heel
    convulsively, and, stumbling and panting,
    empty out the treasure on the sunlit shore
    at the feet of the Creator—he’ll sort them out,
    he knows … So let the broken shells be empty,
    for the whole sea hums with mother of pearl.
    And he who seeks only pearls, setting aside
    shell after shell, that man shall come to
    the Creator, to the Master, with empty hands—
    and he will find that he is deaf and dumb
    in heaven …
    FOREIGNER [ approaching ]:
I often heard your voice
    in my childhood dreams …
    DANDILIO:
Really, I never
    can remember who has dreamt me. But
    your smile I do remember. I meant to ask you,
    courteous traveller, where have you come from?
    FOREIGNER:
    I have come from the Twentieth Century, from
    a northern country, called …
[ Whispers .]
    MIDIA:
Which one is it?
    I don’t know that one …
    DANDILIO:
How can you say that!
    Don’t you remember, from children’s fairy tales?
    Visions … bombs … churches … golden princes …
    revolutionaries in