The Mighty Magician E-Book

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

• Herausgeber: Interactive Media
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

In an ancient grove near Antioch, Cipriano debates faith with a mysterious stranger, Lucifer. Meanwhile, noble rivals seek guidance on love from Lisandro for Justina's affections, amidst a city in turmoil. Love and faith entwine in a profound tale.

Leseprobe

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

The Mighty Magician

Published by Sovereign

This edition first published in 2023

Copyright © 2023 Sovereign

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 9781787367500

Contents

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

ACT I

Scene I.—A retired Grove near Antioch.

Enter Cipriano, Eusebio, and Julian, with books.

Cipr. This is the place, this the sequester’d spot

Where, in the flower about and leaf above,

I find the shade and quiet that I love,

And oft resort to rest a wearied wing;

And here, good lads, leave me alone, but not

Lonely, companion’d with the books you bring:

That while the city from all open doors

Abroad her gaping population pours,

To swell the triumph of the pomp divine

That with procession, sacrifice, and song

Convoys her tutelary Zeus along

For installation in his splendid shrine;

I, flying from the hubbub of the throng

That overflows her thoroughfares and streets,

And here but faintly touches and retreats,

In solitary meditation may

Discount at ease my summer holiday.

You to the city back, and take your fill

Of festival, and all that with the time’s,

And your own youth’s, triumphant temper chimes;

Leaving me here alone to mine; until

Yon golden idol reaching overhead,

Dragg’d from his height, and bleeding out his fires

Along the threshold of the west, expires,

And drops into the sea’s sepulchral lead.

Eusebio. Nay, sir, think once again, and go with us,

Or, if you will, without us; only, go;

Lest Antioch herself as well as we

Cry out upon a maim’d solemnity.

Julian. Oh, how I wish I had not brought the books,

Which you have ever at command—indeed,

Without them, all within them carry—here—

Garner’d—aloft—

Euseb. In truth, if stay you will,

I scarcely care to go myself.

Cipr. Nay, nay,

Good lads, good boys, all thanks, and all the more,

If you but leave it simply as I say.

You have been somewhat over-tax’d of late,

And want some holiday.

Julian. Well, sir, and you?

Cipr. Oh, I am of that tougher age and stuff

Whose relaxation is its work. Besides,

Think you the poor Professor needs no time

For solitary tillage of his brains,

Before such shrewd ingatherers as you

Come on him for their harvest unawares?

Away, away! and like good citizens

Help swell the general joy with two such faces

As such as mine would only help to cloud.

Euseb. Nay, sir—

Cipr. But I say, Yea, sir! and my scholars

By yea and nay as I would have them do.

Euseb. Well, then, farewell, sir.

Cipr. Farewell, both of you.

[Exeunt Eusebio and Julian.

Away with them, light heart and wingèd heel,

Soon leaving drowsy Pallas and her dull

Professor out of sight, and out of mind.

And yet not so perhaps; and, were it so,

Why, better with the frolic herd forgetting

All in the youth and sunshine of the day

Than ruminating in the shade apart.

Well, each his way and humour; some to lie

Like Nature’s sickly children in her lap,

While all the stronger brethren are at play;

When ev’n the mighty Mother’s self would seem

Drest out in all her festival attire

In honour of the universal Sire

Whom Antioch as for her own to-day

Propitiates. Hark, the music!—Speed, good lads,

Or you will be too late. Ah, needless caution!

Ev’n now already half way down the hill,

Spurr’d by the very blood within their veins,

They catch up others, who catching from them

The fire they re-inflame, the flying troop

Consuming fast to distance in a cloud

Of dust themselves have kindled, whirls away

Where the shrill music blown above the walls

Tells of the solemn work begun within.

Why, ev’n the shrieking pipe that pierces here,

Shows me enough of all the long procession

Of white-robed priest and chanting chorister,

The milkwhite victim crown’d, and high aloft

The chariot of the nodding deity,

Whose brazen eyes that, as their sockets see,

Stare at his loyal votaries. Ah, me!—

Well, here too happier, if not wiser, those

Who, with the heart of unsuspicious youth,

Take up tradition from their fathers’ hands

To pass it on to others in their turn;

But leaving me behind them in the race

With less indeed than little appetite

For ceremonies, and to gods, like these,

That, let the rabble shout for as they please,

Another sort begin to shake their heads at,

And heaven to rumble with uneasily

As flinging out some antiquated gear.

So wide, since subtle Greece the pebble flung

Into the sleeping pool of superstition,

Its undulation spreads to other shores,

And saps at the foundation of our schools.

—Why, this last Roman, Caius Plinius—

Who drawing nature’s growth and history

Down to her root and first cause—What says he?—

Ev’n at the very threshold of his book

A definition laying, over which

The clumsy mimic idols of our shrines

Stumble and break to pieces—oh, here it is—

‘Quapropter effigiem Dei formamque quærere,

Imbecillitatis humanæ reor’—

‘All visible effigies of God

But types of human imbecility.’—

But what has Antioch to say to that,

Who at such cost of marble and of gold

Has built the very temple into which

She drags her tutelary Zeus to-day?—

Zeus veritable God, this effigy

Is none of him at all! But then, alas!

This same Quapropter follows a premiss

That elbows out Zeus with his effigy.

For—as I gather from his foreign word—

Wherever, or Whatever, Deity—

Si modo est alius—if distinct at all

From universal Nature—it must be

One all-informing, individual Whole,

All eye, all ear, all self, all sense, all soul—

Whereas this Zeus of ours, though Chief indeed—

Nay, because chief of other gods than he,

Comes from this Roman’s hand no God at all!—

This is a knotty question.

Lucifer (without). Nor while I

Tangle, for you, good doctor, to untie.

Cipr. What! The poor bird scarce settled on the bough,

Before the fowler after him! How now?

Who’s there?

Lucifer (entering habited as a Merchant). A stranger; therefore pardon him,

Who somehow parted from his company,

And lost in his own thoughts (a company

You know one cannot lose so easily)

Has lost his way to Antioch.

Cipr. Antioch!

Whose high white towers and temples ev’n from here

Challenge the sight, and scarce a random line

Traced by a wandering foot along the grass

But thither leads for centre.

Luc. The old story,

Of losing what one should have found on earth

By staring after something in the clouds—

Is it not so?

Cipr. To-day too, when so many

Are flocking thither to the festival,

Whose current might have told—and taken—you

The way you wish’d to go.

Luc. To say the truth,

My lagging here behind as much I think

From a distaste for that same festival

(Of which they told us as we came along)

As inadvertency—my way of life

Busied enough, if not too much, with men

To care for them in crowd on holidays,