Caligula
Savo senąjame HP turėjau šiuos „lines“ - manau kiekvienam būtina perskaityti. Tikrai geras
Lines, act one:
Really, this world of ours, the scheme of things as they
call it, is quite intolerable. That’s why I want the moon,
or happiness, or eternal life - something, in fact, that
may sound crazy, but which isn’t of this world.
Men die; and they are not happy.
Yes, I wanted the moon…If I sleep, who will give me the moon?
I’m exploiting the impossible. Or, more accurately, it’s a question
of making the impossible possible.
This world has no importance; once a man realizes that,
he wins his freedom. And that is why I hate you, you and
your kind; because you are not free. You see in me the one
free man in the whole Roman Empire.
How hard, how cruel it is, this process of becoming a man!
act two:
It has dawned on you that a man needn’t have done anything
for him to die.
Ah, it’s just come to my mind, I have some affairs of state to
settle. But, first, let the imperious desires that nature creates
in us have their way.
Mucius, I return your wife, with may thanks. but excuse me,
I’ve some orders to give.
I repeat; famine begins tomorrow. We all know what famine
means - a national catastrophe. Well, tomorrow there will be a catastrophe,
and I shall end it when I choose.
Answer! If you take an antidote, it follows that you credit me
with the intention of poisoning you.
There’s nothing like hatred for developing the intelligence.
…One is never alone. Always we are attended by the same
load of the future and the past. Those we have killed are
always with us. But they are no great trouble. It’s those
we have loved, those who loved us and whom we did not
love; regrets, desires, bitterness and sweetness, whores
and gods, the celestial gang! Always, always with us!
Solitude? No, Scipio, mine is full of gnashings of teeth,
hideous with jarring sounds and voices. And when I am with
the women I make mine and darkness falls on us and I think,
now my body’s had its fill, that I can feel myself my own at last,
poised between death and life - ah, then my solitude is fouled by the stale
smell of pleasure from the woman sprawling at my side.
act three:
I am venus today.
There’s only one thing for which I might be blamed today - and that’s
this small advance I’ve made upon the path of freedom. For someone
who loves power the rivalry of the gods is rather irksome. Well, I’ve
proved to these imaginary gods that any man, without previous training,
if he applies his mind to it, can play their absurd parts to perfection…
It’s clear-sightedness.
The great mistake you people make is not to take the drama seriously enough.
If you did, you’d know that any man can play lead in the divine comedy
and become a god. All he needs do is to harden is heart.
To come back to the moon - it was a cloudless August night.
She was coy, to begin with. I’d gone to bed. First she was blood-red,
low on the horizon. Then she began rising, quicker and quicker,
growing brighter and brighter all the while. And the higher she climbed,
the paler she grew, till she was like a milky pool in the dark wood rustling
with stars. Slowly, shyly she approached, through the warm night air, soft,
light and gossamer, naked in beauty. She crossed the threshold of my room,
glided to my bed, poured herself into it, and flooded me with her smiles and sheen…
So you see, Helicon, I can say, without boasting, that I’ve had her.
Logic, Caligula; follow where logic leads. Power to the uttermost;
willfulness without end. Ah, I’m the only man on earth to know
the secret - that power can never be complete without a total self-surrender to the dark impulse of one’s destiny.
Security and logic don’t go together.
So let’s wear our masks, and muster up our lies. And we’ll talk as fencers
fight, padded on all the vital parts. Tell me, Cherea, why don’t you like me?
act four:
Other artists create to compensate for their lack of power. I don’t need
to make a work of art; I live it.
How strange! When I don’t kill, I feel alone. The living don’t suffice to people
my world and dispel my boredom. I have an impression of an enormous void
when you and the others are here, and my eyes see nothing but empty air.
No, I’m at ease only in the company of my dead.
No, it’s not the men whose sons or fathers I have killed who’ll murder me.
They, anyhow, have understood. They’re with me, they have the same taste
in their mouths. But the others - those I made a laughingstock of - I’ve no defense
against their wounded vanity.
…This shameful tenderness is the one sincere emotion that my life has given up to now.
Yet who can condemn me in this world where there is no judge,
where nobody is innocent?
Listen! That was a sound of weapons. Innocence arming for the fray-
and innocence will triumph. Why am I not in their place, among them?
And I’m afraid. That’s cruelest of all, after despising others, to find
oneself as cowardly as they. Still, no matter. Fear, too, has an end.
Soon I shall attain that emptiness beyond all understanding, in which
the heart has rest.
If I’d had the moon, if love were enough, all might have been different…
There’s nothing in this world, or in the other, made to my stature…
It’s always you I find, you only, confronting me, and I’ve come to hate you.
I have chosen a wrong path, a path that leads to nothing.
My freedom isn’t the right one.
Author: „CALIGULA“ Albert Camus play, directed by Alvin Epstein, 1971