THE DANCE OF DEATH
(_1838_)
"Many words for few things!" "Death ends all; judgment comes to all."
[This work may be called a prose poem. It is impregnated with the spirit of romanticism, which at the time of writing had a temporary but powerful hold on the mind of Gustave Flaubert.]
DEATH SPEAKS.
A]At night, in winter, when the snowflakes fall slowlyfrom heaven like great white tears, I raise my voice; its resonancethrills the cypress trees and makes them bud anew.
I pause an instant in my swift course over earth; throw myself downamong cold tombs; and, while dark-plumaged birds rise suddenly in terrorfrom my side, while the dead slumber peacefully, while cypress branchesdroop low o'er my head, while all around me weeps or lies in deeprepose, my burning eyes rest on the great white clouds, giganticwinding-sheets, unrolling their slow length across the face of heaven.
How many nights, and years, and ages have I journeyed thus! A witness ofthe universal birth and of a like decay! Innumerable are thegenerations I have garnered with my scythe. Like God, I am eternal! Thenurse of Earth, I cradle it each night upon a bed both soft and warm.The same recurring feasts; the same unending toil! Each morning Idepart, each evening I return, bearing within my mantle's ample foldsall that my scythe has gathered. And then I scatter them to the fourwinds of Heaven!
* * * * *
When high the billows run, when the heavens weep, and shrieking windslash ocean into madness, then in the turmoil and the tumult do I flingmyself upon the surging waves, and lo! the tempest softly cradles me, asin her hammock sways a queen. The foaming waters cool my weary feet,burning from bathing in the falling tears of countless generations thathave clung to them in vain endeavour to arrest my steps.
Then, when the storm has ceased, after its roar has calmed me like alullaby, I bow my head: the hurricane, raging in fury but a momentearlier dies instantly. No longer does it live, but neither do the men,the ships, the navies that lately sailed upon the bosom of the waters.
'Mid all that I have seen and known,--peoples and thrones, loves,glories, sorrows, virtues--what have I ever loved? Nothing--except themantling shroud that covers me!
* * * * *
My horse! ah, yes! my horse! I love thee too! How thou rushest o'er theworld! thy hoofs of steel resounding on the heads bruised by thyspeeding feet.
Thy tail is straight and crisp, thine eyes dart flames, the mane uponthy neck flies in the wind, as on we dash upon our maddened course.Never art thou weary! Never do we rest! Never do we sleep! Thy neighingportends war; thy smoking nostrils spread a pestilence that, mist-like,hovers over earth. Where'er my arrows fly, thou overturnest pyramids andempires, trampling crowns beneath thy hoofs! All men respect thee; nay,adore thee! To invoke thy favour, popes offer thee their triple crowns,and kings their sceptres; peoples, their secret sorrows; poets, theirrenown. All cringe and kneel before thee, yet thou rushest on over theirprostrate forms.
Ah, noble steed! Sole gift from heaven! Thy tendons are of iron, thyhead is of bronze. Thou canst pursue thy course for centuries as swiftlyas if borne up by eagle's wings; and when, once in a thousand years,resistless hunger comes, thy food is human flesh, thy drink, men'stears. My steed! I love thee as Pale Death alone can love!
* * * * *
Ah! I have lived so long! How many things I know! How many mysteries ofthe universe are shut within my breast!
Sometimes, after I have hurled a myriad of darts, and, after coursingo'er the world on my pale horse, have gathered many lives, a wearinessassails me, and I long to rest.
But on my work must go; my path I must pursue; it leads through infinitespace and all the worlds. I sweep away men's plans together with theirtriumphs, their loves together with their crimes, their very all.
I rend my winding-sheet; a frightful craving tortures me incessantly, asif some serpent stung continually within.
I throw a backward glance, and see the smoke of fiery ruins left behind;the darkness of the night; the agony of the world. I see the graves thatare the work of these, my hands; I see the background of the past--'tisnothingness! My weary body, heavy head, and tired feet, sink, seekingrest. My eyes turn towards a glowing horizon, boundless, immense,seeming to grow increasingly in height and depth. I shall devour it, asI have devoured all else.
When, O God! shall I sleep in my turn? When wilt Thou cease creating?When may I, digging my own grave, stretch myself out within my tomb,and, swinging thus upon the world, list the last breath, the death-gasp,of expiring nature?
When that time comes, away my darts and shroud I'll hurl. Then shall Ifree my horse, and he shall graze upon the grass that grows upon thePyramids, sleep in the palaces of emperors, drink the last drop of waterfrom the sea, and snuff the odour of the last slow drop of blood! Byday, by night, through the countless ages, he shall roam through fieldseternal as the fancy takes him; shall leap with one great bound fromAtlas to the Himalayas; shall course, in his insolent pride, from heavento earth; disport himself by caracoling in the dust of crumbled empires;shall speed across the beds of dried-up oceans; shall bound o'er ruinsof enormous cities; inhale the void with swelling chest, and roll andstretch at ease.
Then haply, faithful one, weary as I, thou finally shalt seek someprecipice from which to cast thyself; shalt halt, panting before themysterious ocean of infinity; and then, with foaming mouth, dilatednostrils, and extended neck turned towards the horizon, thou shalt, asI, pray for eternal sleep; for repose for thy
fiery feet; for a bed of green leaves, whereon reclining thou canstclose thy burning eyes forever. There, waiting motionless upon thebrink, thou shalt desire a power stronger than thyself to kill thee at asingle blow--shalt pray for union with the dying storm, the fadedflower, the shrunken corpse. Thou shalt seek sleep, because eternal lifeis torture, and the tomb is peace.
Why are we here? What hurricane has hurled us into this abyss? Whattempest soon shall bear us away towards the forgotten planets whence wecame?
Till then, my glorious steed, thou shalt run thy course; thou maystplease thine ear with the crunching of the heads crushed under thy feet.Thy course is long, but courage! Long time hast thou carried me: butlonger time still must elapse, and yet we shall not age.
Stars may be quenched, the mountains crumble, the earth finally wearaway its diamond axis; but we two, we alone are immortal, for theimpalpable lives forever!
But to-day thou canst lie at my feet, and polish thy teeth against themoss-grown tombs, for Satan has abandoned me, and a power unknowncompels me to obey his will. Lo! the dead seek to rise from theirgraves.
* * * * *
Satan, I love thee! Thou alone canst comprehend my joys and mydeliriums. But, more fortunate than I, thou wilt some day, when earthshall be no more, recline and sleep within the realms of space.
But I, who have lived so long, have worked so ceaselessly, with onlyvirtuous loves and solemn thoughts,--I must endure immortality. Man hashis tomb, and glory its oblivion; the day dies into night, but I--!
And I am doomed to lasting solitude upon my way, strewn with the bonesof men and marked by ruins. Angels have fellow-angels; demons theircompanions of darkness; but I hear only sounds of a clanking scythe, mywhistling arrows, and my speeding horse. Always the echo of the surgingbillows that sweep over and engulf mankind!
SATAN.
Dost thou complain,--thou, the most fortunate creature under heaven? Theonly, splendid, great, unchangeable, eternal one--like God, who is theonly Being that equals thee! Dost thou repine, who some day in thy turnshalt disappear forever, after thou hast crushed the universe beneaththy horse's feet?
When God's work of creating has ceased; when the heavens havedisappeared and the stars are quenched; when spirits rise from theirretreats and wander in the depths with sighs and groans; then, whatunpicturable delight for thee! Then shalt thou sit on the eterna
lthrones of heaven and of hell--shalt overthrow the planets, stars, andworlds--shalt loose thy steed in fields of emeralds and diamonds--shaltmake his litter of the wings torn from the angels,--shalt cover him withthe robe of righteousness! Thy saddle shall be broidered with the starsof the empyrean,--and then thou wilt destroy it! After thou hastannihilated everything,--when naught remains but empty space,--thycoffin shattered and thine arrows broken, then make thyself a crown ofstone from heaven's highest mount, and cast thyself into the abyss ofoblivion. Thy fall may last a million aeons, but thou shalt die at last.Because the world must end; all, all must die,--except Satan! Immortalmore than God! I live to bring chaos into other worlds!
DEATH.
But thou hast not, as I, this vista of eternal nothingness before thee;thou dost not suffer with this death-like cold, as I.
SATAN.
Nay, but I quiver under fierce and unrelaxing heats of molten lava,which burn the doomed and which e'en I cannot escape.
For thou, at least, hast only to destroy. But I bring birth and I givelife. I direct empires and govern the affairs of States and of hearts.
I must be everywhere. The precious metals flow, the diamonds glitter,and men's names resound at my command. I whisper in the ears of women,of poets, and of statesmen, words of love, of glory, of ambition. WithMessalina and Nero, at Paris and at Babylon, within the self-same momentdo I dwell. Let a new island be discovered, I fly to it ere man can setfoot there; though it be but a rock encircled by the sea, I am there inadvance of men who will dispute for its possession. I lounge, at thesame instant, on a courtesan's couch and on the perfumed beds ofemperors. Hatred and envy, pride and wrath, pour from my lips insimultaneous utterance. By night and day I work. While men are burningChristians, I luxuriate voluptuously in baths perfumed with roses; Irace in chariots; yield to deep despair; or boast aloud in pride.
At times I have believed that I embodied the whole world, and all that Ihave seen took place, in verity, within my being.
Sometimes I weary, lose my reason, and indulge in such mad follies thatthe most worthless of my minions ridicule me while they pity me.
No creature cares for me; nowhere am I loved,--neither in heaven, ofwhich I am a son, nor yet in hell, where I am lord, nor upon earth,where men deem me a god. Naught do I see but paroxysms of rage, riversof blood, or maddened frenzy. Ne'er shall my eyelids close in slumber,never my spirit find repose, whilst thou, at least, canst rest thy headupon the cool, green freshness of the grave. Yea, I must ever dwell amidthe glare of palaces, must listen to the curses of the starving, orinhale the stench of crimes that cry aloud to heaven.
God, whom I hate, has punished me indeed! But my soul is greater eventhan His wrath; in one deep sigh I could the whole world draw into mybreast, where it would burn eternally, even as I.
When, Lord, shall thy great trumpet sound? Then a great harmony shallhover over sea and hill. Ah! would that I could suffer with humanity;their cries and sobs should drown the sound of mine!
[_Innumerable skeletons, riding in chariots, advance at a rapid pace,with cries of joy and triumph. They drag broken branches and crowns oflaurel, from which the dried and yellow leaves fall continually in thewind and the dust._]
Lo, a triumphal throng from Rome, the Eternal City! Her Coliseum and herCapitol are now two grains of sand that served once as a pedestal; butDeath has swung his scythe: the monuments have fallen. Behold! At theirhead comes Nero, pride of my heart, the greatest poet earth has known!
[_Nero advances in a chariot drawn by twelve skeleton horses. With thesceptre in his hand, he strikes the bony backs of his steeds. He standserect, his shroud flapping behind him in billowy folds. He turns, as ifupon a race-course; his eyes are flaming and he cries loudly_:]
NERO.
Quick! Quick! And faster still, until your feet dash fire from theflinty stones and your nostrils fleck your breasts with foam. What! donot the wheels smoke yet? Hear ye the fanfares, whose sound reached evento Ostia; the clapping of the hands, the cries of joy? See how thepopulace shower saffron on my head! See how my pathway is already dampwith sprayed perfume! My chariot whirls on; the pace is swifter than thewind as I shake the golden reins! Faster and faster! The dust cloudsrise; my mantle floats upon the breeze, which in my ears sings "Triumph!triumph!" Faster and faster! Hearken to the shouts of joy, list to thestamping feet and the plaudits of the multitude. Jupiter himself looksdown on us from heaven. Faster! yea, faster still!
[_Nero's chariot now seems to be drawn by demons; a black cloud of dustand smoke envelops him; in his erratic course he crashes into tombs,and the re-awakened corpses are crushed under the wheels of the chariot,which now turns, comes forward, and stops._]
NERO.
Now let six hundred of my women dance the Grecian Dances silently beforeme, the while I lave myself with roses in a bath of porphyry. Then letthem circle me, with interlacing arms, that I may see on all sidesalabaster forms in graceful evolution, swaying like tall reeds bendingover an amorous pool.
And I will give the empire and the sea, the Senate, and Olympus, theCapitol, to her who shall embrace me the most ardently; to her whoseheart shall throb beneath my own; to her who shall enmesh me in herflowing hair, smile on me sweetest, and enfold me in the warmest clasp;to her who soothing me with songs of love shall waken me to joy andheights of rapture!
Rome shall be still this night; no barque shall cleave the waters of theTiber, since 'tis my wish to see the mirrored moon on its untroubledface and hear the voice of woman floating over it. Let perfumed breezespass through all my draperies! Ah, I would die, voluptuouslyintoxicated.
Then, while I eat of some rare meat, that only I may taste, let some onesing, while damsels, lightly draped, serve me from plates of gold andwatch my rest. One slave shall cut her sister's throat, because it is mypleasure--a favourite with the gods--to mingle the perfume of blood withthat of food, and cries of victims soothe my nerves.
This night I shall burn Rome. The flames shall light up heaven, andTiber shall roll in waves of fire!
Then, I shall build of aloes wood a stage to float upon the Italian sea,and the Roman populace shall throng thereto chanting my praise. Itsdraperies shall be of purple, and on it I shall have a bed of eagles'plumage. There I shall sit, and at my side shall be the loveliest womanin the empire, while all the universe applauds the achievements of agod! And though the tempest roar around me, its rage shall beextinguished 'neath my feet, and sounds of music shall o'ercome theclamor of the waves!
* * * * *
What didst thou say? Vindex revolts, my legions fly, my women flee interror? Silence and tears alone remain, and I hear naught but therolling of thunder. Must I die, now?
DEATH.
Instantly!
NERO.
Must I give up my days of feasting and delight, my spectacles, mytriumphs, my chariots and the applause of multitudes?
DEATH.
All! All!
SATAN.
Haste, Master of the World! One comes--One who will put thee to thesword. An emperor knows how to die!
NERO.
Die! I have scarce begun to live! Oh, what great deeds I shouldaccomplish--deeds that should make Olympus tremble! I would fill up thebed of hoary ocean and speed across it in a triumphal car. I would stilllive--would see the sun once more, the Tiber, the Campagna, the Circuson the golden sands. Ah! let me live!
DEATH.
I will give thee a mantle for the tomb, and an eternal bed that shall besofter and more peaceful than the Imperial couch.
NERO.
Yet, I am loth to die.
DEATH.
Die, then!
[_He gathers up the shroud, lying beside him on the ground, and bearsaway Nero, wrapped in its folds._]