PART I
DEDICATION
- I feel a long and unresolved desire
For that serene and solemn land of ghosts
- What I possess seems far away from me,
And what is gone becomes reality.
PRELUDE ON STAGE
- Be brave, and show them what you’ve got,
Have Fantasy with all her chorus, yes,
Mind, Reason, Passion, Tears, the lot,
But don’t you leave out Foolishness
(comedian)
- Just seek to confuse them, in the dark:
(director)
(comedian)
- By chance we meet, we feel, we stay,
And bit by bit we’re tightly bound:
Happiness grows, and then it’s fenced around:
We’re all inflamed then comes the sorrowing:
Before you know it, there’s a novel brewing!
- And wherever you grasp, there’s interest.
- They’ll gain now this and that from your art,
So each sees what is present in their heart.
- I had nothing, yet enough:
Joy in illusion, thirst for truth.
(dramatist)
- Age doesn’t make us childish, as they say,
It finds that we’re still children.
(comedian)
(director)
- Why talk so much of inspiration?
Delay won’t make it flow, you see.
- Tomorrow won’t do what’s undone today,
We shouldn’t waste a minute, so
Decide what’s possible, and just
Grasp it firmly like a hoe,
Make sure that you let nothing go,
And work it about, because you must.
PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN
Mephistopheles:
- How men torment themselves is all I see.
- If he’d just lie there in the grass it wouldn’t hurt!
But he buries his nose in every piece of dirt. #stillness
- And all the near and all the far,
Fails to release his throbbing heart.
God:
- And when you must, then stand, amazed!
A good man, in his darkest yearning,
Is still aware of virtue’s ways.
SCENE I: NIGHT