“I did not feel towards erudition all the fervour it deserves. Marcel Schwob's astonishing conversation won me over through its own charm rather than through its sources. I drank it in for as long as it lasted. I enjoyed the pleasure without the labour. But eventually I came to my senses; my indolence rebelled against the thought of disheartening readings, endless critical examinations, scrupulous methods that guard against certainty. I told my friend that learned men run far greater risks than others, since they make wagers while we remain outside the game; and that they have two ways of being mistaken: ours, which is easy, and theirs, which is laborious. And if they are fortunate enough to restore a few events to us, the very number of material truths thus re-established endangers the reality we are seeking. Truth in its raw state is falser than falsehood.
Documents inform us at random about the rule and the exception. A chronicler, too, prefers to preserve for us the singularities of his age. But not everything that is true of an age or of a person necessarily helps us to know them better.”
Paul Valéry, Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci (Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci).
Where, as we saw in the previous episode, what took place did not quite happen where, in circumstances as astonishing as they were unbelievable, Don Carotte and Sang Chaud believed themselves to be. Pursuing a mysterious riddle in the heart of this theatre, they press on with iron determination, beyond all ordinary measure, facing no other peril than that of being simply and utterly erased from memory.
Continued from page 254
SANG CHAUD
(slowly, but with fervour… almost regretfully)
You stand, my Lord, at the very heart of things,
Where he who walks knows not the bounds his being brings.
For he who gives you your name, and he who replies,
May one day find their names confused before their eyes.
And if some writer, in a fevered hour,
Had placed these words upon your lips by his own power,
Would you be any less alive for having received them,
Or more alive still if you had lost them?
DON CAROTTE
(stopping abruptly, struck with astonishment)
A writer! Dark heavens! What spectre of the night
Would dare command my famous deeds by some imagined right?
What knave, what tyrant, lurking in his den,
Would turn my day of glory to the clamour of his pen?
I, who strike down evil, who battle all that's vile,
Become the plaything of a soulless pen the while?
A character, then? A phantom drawn
Upon some parchment, to be erased and gone?
Nay! A thousand times, nay! I'm flesh and bone!
I bear my sword, my sufferings are my own!
My pain belongs to me! My courage is my deed!
No scribe shall make me captive to his scheme!
SANG CHAUD
(with an almost painful gentleness)
I take nothing, Lord, from what you call your life;
I speak of what is true, not heresy or strife.
Yet he who deems himself his own sovereign
Sometimes knows not who first held out a hand to him.
DON CAROTTE
(with mounting indignation)
Enough of these detours! Enough of these illusions!
A handful of your words shakes earth to its foundations!
I thought I saw a donkey; an abyss appears,
And my own thought falls prey to all its fears!
Yet one thing, squire, fills me with surprise:
The more I grasp myself, the more my being flies.
I say I am, alas! And that sovereign word
Returns from some elsewhere of which I've never heard.
SANG CHAUD
(looking at his master with renewed attention)
Perhaps, my Lord, we should observe, without deciding,
What becomes of the I through its repeating.
For he who speaks it is no longer quite the same
As he who heard it when the word first came.
DON CAROTTE
(raising his sword, as though challenging the invisible)
By Heaven! I understand it all! Or nothing, by my soul!
And therein lies the sorcerer's trick, the secret of his role!
A single word leads me into a boundless maze;
I think I've reached the end, and all begins again!
But I shall see it through! By Heaven and by Hell!
I'll face this I as I would face a blade of steel!
Be it double or triple, spirit, mask, or lie,
I'll conquer this demon that haunts my dreams by night!
SANG CHAUD
(with quiet gravity)
Beware, my Lord, lest in seeking its defeat,
You make more powerful what comes your soul to meet.
For he whom you drive away along the winding track
May be that very self to whom you reach a hand.
DON CAROTTE
(after a silence, in a muffled voice)
Then, if I pursue the one I'm meant to be,
Am I the knight, the servant, or the master of me?
And if the other follows, believing he follows my pace,
Who leads the march, and who remains in place?
SANG CHAUD
(his eyes turned towards the upper branches)
To disentangle this, my Lord, we first must know
Who makes us walk the path that bids us go.
For he who thinks another leads him on ahead
May one day find himself pursued instead.
DON CAROTTE
(turning abruptly towards the invisible donkey)
And that accursed jackass! What was he doing then,
While we unlocked these labyrinths of death again?
Did he know that silently, around some branching bend,
He made my clearest reason falter and descend?
SANG CHAUD
(with the faintest of smiles)
He said not a word, sire, and perhaps thought no more
Than those who claim to know what all our thoughts are for.
He simply walked, demanding neither prize nor due,
And here we stand, both wondering who follows whom.
DON CAROTTE
(his gaze lost in the distance, slowly lowering his sword)
Thus he who walks knows not what draws him on,
He who believes he reigns bears another crown;
And he who names himself, proclaiming loud his name,
May prove at last an echo of another's voice?
But what of that? I am! And if I still exist,
I must know why this I devours me like a beast!
For if I am the one who says that he is he
Who hears himself say I am in the night so deep,
By all the saints, tell me, Sang Chaud, I implore:
Who is this I am that pursues me evermore?
