That place where life and death are welded together: to that welded place where there is a roll of flesh like in those earthworms which have been cut and which have grown back together.
Inside man it has seen:
Stars and suns, and huge shooting stars which bring fire to all the corners and the beautiful shepherd’s stars which climb in the calm of peace.
A vast sky, all blue like the sky of earth, with a sun, storms, and great, spiteful flashes of lightening.
And quantities of stars that go off in all directions, herds here, herds there, in the great turmoil of joy, when he approaches his female.
The Cold has seen the whole interior of man like a sky full of powers. The Beast who comes next will say that he is:
like a pot full of honey which overflows, and which nourishes with its overflow a whole tribe of flies.
For us, he is like a great tree we desire after a long trot in the sun.
He is like the grass slope for the feet of those who have climbed.
He is fresh water;
he is the spring.
He is the great palm, the beautiful stream, the cool leaves, and all of these together.
It will speak of that seduction that is in man’s eyes and it will tell the Earth the great secret, the beasts’ great hope:
Do you know why we are afraid, Earth?
Do you know why we are wild,
why we listen to the wind and sniff the dust?
It’s because we feel ourselves carried by you, crossing the sky at a horrible speed.
And, he who has come,
we’ve read in his eyes that he doesn’t see your life, Earth.
We’ve read in his eyes tranquillity and peace, and that’s why we love him.
And then, from there, the play will make two leaps that will carry it to the end.
First, a long monologue from the Sardinian. The nine shepherds, who were the Sea, the Mountain, the River, the Tree, the Wind, the Grass, the Rain, the Cold, the Beast, are still and silent. They hold one another’s hands and they form a horseshoe around the Sardinian.
The Sardinian gives us the final word on Earth’s anxiety and why it has questioned so hungrily. It knows, it recognizes the danger that threatens it. If man becomes the master of beasts, it, the Earth, is lost:
I see him, already, there ahead of the great herd.
He will walk along at his easy pace and behind him, there you will all be.
And then, he will be the master.
He will command the forests.
He will make you camp out in the mountains,
He will make you drink the rivers.
He will make the sea advance or retreat, by merely moving the flat of his hand.
A moment of silence, then the Earth begins to look around:
The great reflection of all images.
And as it reads the hidden writing, its voice reassures and prophesies.
The great barrier!
It will always be between beast and man, that high barrier black as night, high as the sun.
And were all the pity piled up in your skin, you would never be able to make it run from you or make the beasts drink from it.
You will never jump the barrier and enter on equal footing the great forest of the beast’s reflections.
You will not look at the same reflections.
You will see the trees from the other side, and the others, they will see another side of the trees.
And all that, because I am going to be harsh with you, harsh and spiteful, and I am going to think about my spitefulness.
You will be the master of gold and stones, but without understanding the stones, you will massacre them with your trowel and your pick.
And as for gold, made of light, you will guard it in the dark stench of your mouth.
You will make yourself aids with iron, bolts and hinges.
But you will be obliged to offer your head and your heart to all your machines and you will become as evil as the iron and the jaws of the hinge.
Then, the Earth is delighted and begins to laugh from all its volcanoes.
At that moment that the drama takes its second leap and the Sardinian ends with a simple gesture. He sheds his Earth character, and he again becomes what he is: a man. More than that: a shepherd. More than that: a master of beasts, one of those masters that the earth dreads. And that is the truth.
He takes three steps, he disengages himself from the semi-circle of the elements. Slowly, he kneels; he lies down belly to the earth; he embraces the earth with his outspread arms. We hear him say:
Earth!
Earth!
We are here, it’s us, the masters of beasts!
We are here, it’s us, the first men!
There are some among us who have kept their hearts pure.
We are here.
Do you feel our weight?
Do you feel how we weigh more than the others?
They are here, those men who see the two sides of the tree and the inside of the stone, those who walk in the thinking of the beast as in the wide meadows of Dévoluy above the well-loved grasses.
They are here, those who have leapt the barrier!
He remains for a brief moment not saying anything, waiting for a response that doesn’t come and he cries his great cry of defiance:
Do you hear, Earth?
We are here, it’s us, the shepherds!
All the instruments fall still at the same time. Silence!
You can hear the fires crackle.
And it’s over.
I HAVE not spoken of the music for some time. Never did it stop playing a part in the drama. Never did it stop being another drama beside the drama, full of reflections, in which leaves became foliage and the image of one hill became the rolling sea of the whole hilly country. During the last scene, when the narrator kneels and lies down on the earth, the most beautiful song of rejoicing breaks out, the most beautiful song of the world, the most charged with hope, but the task that I had imposed upon myself, which was to capture it word for word, to follow the text with all my attention, prevented that swaying abandon which alone could have carried me through the images of that music. Nevertheless, I still have a few of them under my eyelids; they are there, as hard as grains of sand or as soft as tears.
WE UNTIED the mare. Already, the herds were heading off; already, far off, above, in the Sisteron passes, the tide of beasts sounded like the great rolling waters.