Free The Serpent of Stars by Jean Giono Page B

up!”
    He stands up, he goes over, he stands facing the Sardinian, he answers. Only then you know that the one whose velour elbows rubbed against your side was the Sea, was really the sea; he has its voice and soul. When he has finished, he stays there. He has taken his place among the elements. There are even some who won’t ever leave their elemental rank; they’ll remain all their lives as the the Sea, the River, the Woods. It’ll be said that the Sea has claimed his pasture to the left of Seyne, or that the River will come down tomorrow, because one night they were so much that sea and that river that they can never again be called by their father’s name, but only by the name of what they are.
    The one who has finished speaking remains there with the Sardinian. Another one comes, speaks, then falls silent, and then, he takes
the hand of the man who was there before him and he waits. At the end of the play, there is a whole wreath of big homespun men holding each other’s hands.
    All that happens on stage are steps and greetings, steps to take up one’s position, greetings to the Sardinian. As for the rest, it’s the words that must show it, and the man who speaks remains still, his arms dangling. There are just two or three places where there is some stage action, always very simple, but occurring at the very height of the pathos. These will be indicated in the play’s translation on the following pages.
    Written down, the text presents in translation a chaos of bristling and tragic words. Tragic, because I sense all their dense beauty and because I am hopeless before them. The language is the most wild type of sea jargon, made up of Provençal, Genoese, Corsican, Sardinian, Niçoise, Old French, Piedmontese, and words invented on the spot as needed. It is a marvelous instrument for epic drama: cries and howls themselves can be long narratives. The imitative harmony is such that gestures are superfluous as the procession of the planets, the rocking of the sea, the drenched course of the land losing its oceans in space all suddenly appear before the stunned listener. I say this to make your mouth water, but you’ll find nothing of all that in my translation. I’ve done my best to put it into very faulty French, but the language of free men is a leaping beast and, here, I’ve only forced open the bars of the cage a little.
    May I be forgiven.

V

    N IGHT. DISTANT SAINT-JEAN FIRES are eating away at the whole circle of the horizon.
    The Mallefougasse plateau. Four fires at the corners of a square of grazed earth. Next to each flame, a man is standing, a heavy branch of leaves in his hand. All around this lit clearing, the night, and just at the edges of the night, like bubbling foam, the shepherds are seated in their mantles, their overcoats, their big velour jackets.
    The Sardinian. He stands up. He looks to the right, and then to the left, and, at the same time, there is silence to the right and then to the left.
    â€œSo, should we begin?”
    Just at that moment, without any other command but that silence, the wind descends, worked by the harps. The flutes begin to play the sound of a man who is walking in the sea.

    THE SARDINIAN (He moves forward to the middle of the clearing; raises his hand in greeting). Listen, shepherds:
    The worlds were in the god’s net 1 like tuna in the madrague:
    Flips of the tail and foam; a sound that rang out, expelling the wind from every side.
    The god was in the sky up to his knees.
    From time to time, he leaned over, he took some sky in his hands. It ran between his fingers. It was white as milk. It was full of creatures like a huge stream of ants. And in it, images became clear and then faded like things in dreams.
    The god washed his whole body with the sky. Slowly, to get used to life’s cold. He had a sensitive belly. Because everything was created in his belly.
    Afterwards, he began to walk into the sky until he was out