Collected Plays, Volume 4 (Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry & Prose) 8 Read online

  HAEMON:

  Nor should it be. Say everything, that’s you

  And listen to nothing.

  CREON:

  Rid of the brood, and quickly!

  HAEMON:

  And I’ll get rid of me so you need see

  No one upright, and tremble.

  Exit Haemon.

  ELDERS:

  Him leaving in anger, sir, he is your lastborn.

  CREON:

  Still he’ll not save the women from their deaths.

  ELDERS:

  You think of killing both of them now, do you?

  CREON:

  Her who kept out of it, not that one, there you’re right.

  ELDERS:

  Thinking of the other, how will you do the killing?

  CREON:

  Conduct her from the city where my people now

  Are lifting their feet for Bacchus, she however

  The guilty one, be stored where human tracks are lonely

  Alive in a pit of rock with only millet and wine

  The due of the dead, as though buried herself.

  So I decree it

  So that the city will not wholly be disgraced.

  Exit Creon into the city.

  ELDERS:

  But like a mountain of clouds it stands before me now

  That this is the hour when Oedipus’ child in her chamber

  Hears Bacchus in the distance and prepares for her last way.

  For now he summons his own and as ever still thirsting for

  joy

  Our wasted city gives him a joyful answer.

  For victory is great and Bacchus cannot be resisted

  When he approaches our anxious city and hands her the

  drink of forgetting.

  Then the black she was sewing, the mourning black for her

  sons

  She flings it away and hastens to the orgies of Bacchus,

  seeking exhaustion.

  The Elders fetch themselves Bacchic staves.

  Spirit of lusts of the flesh but always

  Winner in any quarrel. Even the tied by blood

  He flings all awry, so strongly he pleads.

  He is never worsted, whoever he comes on

  Are not themselves, they are seized, they rave

  And under the yoke they stir and

  Offer new necks, not fearing

  The breath of the salt mine nor on

  The black waters the thin-walled ship. Skins

  He mixes with others and flings

  Them all together but does not lay waste

  The kingdom of earth with violent hands but is

  From the first for peace and joins in the making

  Of great ends. For in them unwarlike

  Heavenly beauty plays her part too.

  Enter Antigone led by the guard and followed by maids.

  AN ELDER:

  But now myself I lose

  The measure and can no longer stop

  The spring of tears for now

  Antigone must receive the gifts

  Of the dead, the millet and wine.

  ANTIGONE:

  My fellow citizens of home, oh see

  Me going the final way

  And seeing the sun’s

  Last light.

  That never again? For he

  Who will bed us all one day, the god of death

  Is leading me living

  To the banks of Acheron.

  No wedding will be mine

  No bridal song will be sung for me

  I am the bride of Acheron.

  ELDERS:

  But you go famous and accompanied by praise

  Away to that chamber of the dead

  Not carried off by sickness nor given

  The iron wages of iron

  But living the life of your own

  You go down alive

  Into the world of the dead.

  ANTIGONE:

  Oh alas they are mocking me

  Not yet gone below

  Still in the daylight.

  Oh city, oh you my city’s

  Men of plenty! And yet one day

  You must be my witnesses how I

  Unwept by loved ones and in accordance with

  What sort of laws

  Must enter the opening dug for me

  The unheard of grave. I am

  Not joined with mortals

  Nor with the shades

  With life nor death.

  ELDERS:

  Power, when power is the issue

  Never gives. In the angry knowing herself

  She has destroyed herself.

  ANTIGONE:

  Oh my father, oh unhappy mother

  From whom with a darkened mind I came

  To them I am coming cursed

  To live with them without a man.

  Alas, alas my brother

  Sweet to live and fallen

  Me too who was still here

  You drag down with you.

  AN ELDER setting a dish of millet before her:

  But Danaë too she had to have

  On her body instead of the light of the sky

  The iron grid, and bear it. She lay in the dark.

  But, child, her birth was lofty.

  And she counted the strokes of the hours

  The golden strokes, for the author of time.

  ANTIGONE:

  Lamentably, so I have heard, she died

  Who came from Phrygia

  Tantalus’ daughter

  On Sipylus’ peaks

  She is crouched and shrunk

  To a slow stone, they put her in chains

  Of ivy and winter is with her

  Always, people say, and washes her throat

  With snow-bright tears

  From under her lids. Like her exactly

  A ghost brings me to bed.

  AN ELDER setting down a jug of wine before her:

  Named among the holy however, holy

  In her birth, is she but we are earth and born earthly.

  True, you perish, but as one of the great. And not

  Unlike our offerings to the gods.

  ANTIGONE:

  Already, with sighs, you are giving me up.

  You are gazing into the blue and never

  Into my eyes. But all I did was do

  In holiness what is holy.

  ELDERS:

  And the son of Dryas, when his mouth ran over

  Scolding the wrong, by Dionysus

  He was swiftly seized and buried under chutes of stone

  And groping in madness, with a scolding tongue

  He got to know the god.

  ANTIGONE:

  And better it would be if you

  Collected together all the scolding of wrong and dried

  It of tears for me and put it to use. You are not

  Farseeing.

  ELDERS:

  But on chalky rocks

  Where at both ends sea is, on the Bosporus shores

  Close to the city, there the god of battle

  Watched while the eyes of the sons of Phineus

  For seeing too far, the eagle eyes

  Were stabbed with spears and it grew dark

  In the brave orbs of their eyes.

  For the force of fate is terrible.

  Not wealth nor the god of battle

  Or tower escapes it.

  ANTIGONE:

  Do not, I beg you, speak of fate.

  I know it. Speak of him

  Who lays me out, innocent, for death. Knit him

  A fate! For do not think

  Unhappy souls, you will be saved.

  Other bodies, hacked

  Will lie in heaps unburied around

  That one unburied. You having dragged the war

  For Creon over zones beyond our homeland

  However many battles he is lucky in, the last

  Will swallow you up. Calling for spoils

  It won’t be chariots
full you see coming but

  Empty. I weep for you, the living

  What you will see

  When my eyes are already filled with dust. Sweet Thebes

  My native city! And oh, you springs of Dirce

  And all around Thebes, where the chariots

  Parade, oh you groves of trees! It tightens my throat

  To think what will happen to you. Inhuman

  Human beings have come forth from you and so

  You must come to dust. Tell

  Whoever asks for Antigone we

  Saw her flee to the grave.

  Exit Antigone with the guard and the maids.

  ELDERS:

  Turned and with long strides walked as though she

  Were leading her guard. Over the square

  She went where the victory columns

  Are raised already, brazen. There she walked faster;

  Vanished.

  But she also once

  Ate of the bread that was baked

  In the stony dark. And while unhappiness

  Harboured in the towers

  In their shadow she sat at ease until

  The deadly things that went forth from Labdacus’ home

  Returned deadly. The bloody hand

  Dealt them among its own and they

  Did more than receive, they grabbed at it.

  Only after that did she

  Lie angrily in the open air and was also

  Flung into the good!

  The cold woke her.

  Not until the last

  Patience was consumed and measured out the last

  Criminal act, did the child of unseeing Oedipus

  Remove the long since threadbare blindfold from her eyes

  To look into the abyss.

  Now just as unseeing

  Thebes lifts her heels and staggering tastes

  The drink of victory that is mixed

  Of many herbs in the dark

  And gulps it down and exults.

  Tiresias is coming, the blind man, the seer, impelled

  For sure by the stench of waxing discord

  And revolt boiling below.

  Enter Tiresias led by a child and followed by Creon.

  TIRESIAS:

  Easy, child, go always and steadily

  Unshaken by the dancing, you

  Are the leader. The leader

  Must not follow Bacchus.

  A fall is certain for anyone lifting

  His heels too high from the ground.

  And don’t hit against

  The victory columns. In the town

  They are shrieking victory

  In the town full of fools

  And the blind man

  Follows the sighted child but after the blind man

  Comes one blinder still.

  CREON who has followed him mockingly:

  What’s that you’re mumbling

  Moaner, about the war?

  TIRESIAS:

  This, that you are dancing

  Fool, before the victory.

  CREON:

  Old and troublesome

  Seer of things that are not but you do not see

  Columns set up all around

  And towering high.

  TIRESIAS:

  I do not. And my wits

  Are not addled. And therefore I have come

  Dear friends. For even the leaves

  Of the laurel when they are fleshy I rarely know them

  But only when dry, when they rustle for me

  Or I bite them and taste

  Bitterness in them and know: that is laurel.

  CREON:

  You dislike festivities. Then at once

  Your mouth’s more terrible when you speak to us.

  TIRESIAS:

  I have seen terrible things. Hear what the birds

  Mean for Thebes so drunk

  With early victory and deaf

  With the droning din of the Bacchic dancing: I sat

  In the ancient chair and had before me a haven of all the

  birds.

  I heard a stirring in the air then, murderous

  And came a raging, tearing with claws at one another

  And slaughter among the winged creatures. In fear

  I tried the altars that were swiftly lit. And

  In no place did I come upon a good fire. Only smoke

  Writhed upwards thickly and the thighs

  Of the sacrifices looked open from the fat that covered

  them.

  ELDERS:

  A very bad sign on the victory day

  And news that cankers our enjoyment.

  TIRESIAS:

  Creon, the signless orgies’ deadly interpretation

  Would be that you are why the town is sick

  Because the altars are and fire places

  Defiled by dogs and birds who have fed full

  On the unseemly fallen son of Oedipus.

  Therefore the birds’ wellmeaning cry no longer

  Comes rushing here for it has eaten of

  A dead man’s fat. But the gods

  Can’t stomach smoke like that. Therefore

  Yield to the dead man, do not persecute

  One who has gone.

  CREON:

  Old man, your birds

  Fly how you like. I know that. Haven’t they

  Flown for me too? I am not that unschooled

  In dealing and the arts of prophecy

  Never having stinted. So pocket

  Electrum from Sardis and gold from India

  But don’t think I will let the coward be buried.

  I’m not afraid of sicknesses from heaven.

  No human moves the gods. I know that much.

  But among mortal men

  Old man, even some very mighty fall

  A very grievous fall if they speak sweetly

  Words that desolate, for their own profit.

  TIRESIAS:

  I am too old to place myself to gain

  A small time more.

  CREON:

  No one is so old

  He would not like to live longer.

  TIRESIAS:

  I know.

  But I know more besides.

  ELDERS:

  Say it, Tiresias.

  Sir, let the seer be heard.

  CREON:

  Say it however you like. But leave off haggling.

  All the clan of seers love silver, as we know.

  TIRESIAS:

  And tyrants offer it, so I have heard.

  CREON:

  And a blind man

  Bites into the coin and knows

  That’s silver.

  TIRESIAS:

  And I’d rather you offered me none.

  For no one knows in war what he’ll hold on to.

  Be it silver, be it sons, or be it power.

  CREON:

  The war is over.

  TIRESIAS:

  Is it?

  I asked you something?

  Since I, as you have said, know nothing

  Our kind must ask. Since I, as you have said

  Can’t see into the future

  I have to look into the present and the past and so

  Maintain my art and am a seer. True, I see

  Only what any child can see. That the bronze

  On the victory columns is very thin. I say: because

  Spears are being made still, many spears. That for the army

  Fleeces are being sewn. I say: as though autumn were

  coming.

  And fish being dried, as though for winter quarters.

  ELDERS:

  I thought that was before the victory in battle

  And cancelled now? And booty coming

  With bronze and fish from Argos now?

  TIRESIAS:

  And there are guards in plenty but whether it’s much

  Or little they guard, nobody knows. But there is great

  Loggerheads in your home
and no forgetting

  As there is usually after happy business. And it is said

  That your son Haemon went from you distressed

  Because you flung Antigone, betrothed to him

  Into a pit of stone when for her brother

  For Polynices, she wished to open a grave

  Because you struck him down and left him graveless

  When he rose up opposing you because

  Your war lost him his brother Eteocles.

  So I know you to be cruelly entwined in cruelty

  And since my wits have not been spoiled by silver

  I ask the second question. Why are you cruel

  Creon, Menoeceus’ son? I’ll make it easier:

  Is it because you want bronze for your war?

  What is it you’ve done, what foolish thing or evil

  That now in evil things you must go on and foolish?

  CREON:

  You two-tongued villain!

  TIRESIAS:

  Worse would be half a tongue.

  But I’ve my twofold answer which is: none.

  And I knit nothing with nothing and I say:

  Misrule cries out for great men and finds none.

  War goes forth from itself and breaks a leg.

  From pillage pillage comes and harshness needs harshness

  And more needs more and comes in the end to nothing.

  And now I have looked back and all around me

  You: look ahead, in terror.

  Lead me from here, child.

  Exit Tiresias, led by the child.

  ELDERS:

  Sir, had my hair

  Just now been black still, now

  It would be white. The man in anger

  Said bad things

  And worse things did not say.

  CREON:

  So I say what

  Has not been said, why utter it?

  ELDERS:

  Creon, son of Menoeceus, when

  Are the young men coming home

  To the city empty of men and how

  Fares your war, Creon, son of Menoeceus?

  CREON:

  Since he malevolently has directed

  The gaze at this, I’ll tell you: the war

  Treacherous Argos made against us, the end

  Of it is not yet now nor is

  It going very well. When I decreed the peace

  Only a little was still wanting and that

  Because of Polynices’ treachery.

  But he lies chastised

  And with him she who wept for him.

  ELDERS:

  And this too is not

  Yet at an end, for he

  Has turned himself away from you who leads

  The storms of spears for you here, the younger born

  Son, Haemon.

  CREON:

  Nor do I want him any more

  At all. Out of my sight and yours

  With him who abandoned me

  For the petty bother of his bed.

  Megareus still fights for me

  My son incessantly pitching

  In waves against the tottering walls of Argos

  The bronze-clad youth of Thebes.

  ELDERS:

  Which is not inexhaustible.