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He has gone

and is walking among men.

He is taking the road of the valleys,

and stops among the vineyards or by the sea shore.

Sometimes he presses on up to the gates of a city.

No one would say

that he is Lord and Master. I ask myself from time to time

what he wants, what he seeks. After so much struggle to give him

the world - the countryside, the peaks and the clouds - in his hands. He could

sit up there undisturbed. No, sir. He is walking.

Why is that strange? He who is Lord indulges his whims.

Far from the Mount and from us,

do you understand that? And he owes it

to us others, his servants,

that he is Lord.

Let him be content that the world fears him and prays to him.

What do those little men do to him?

They, too, are part of the world,

my dear.

I don't know, something is no longer as it was before.

Our mother said: "He will come like the storm,

and the seasons will change."

This son of the Mount who commands with signs is no longer

like the old lords - the night, the earth, the old sky and chaos.

One would say that the world

is divided. There was a time when things happened.

Everything came to an end and was a whole

that lived.

Now on the contrary there is a law and there is a mind.

He has made himself immortal and with him

us his servants.

Even the little men think of us; they know they must die

and they gaze upon us. And that far I understand them: it is for this

that we fought the Titans.

But that he the Celestial One who on the Mount promises us these gifts

should leave the peaks and go off to indulge his whims at every moment,

and to make himself a man among men,

does not please me. And you, sister?

He would not be Lord if he could not break

the law he made. But is he truly breaking it?

I don't understand him, that is the fact. When we threw ourselves onto the mounts,

he smiled as though he had already won.

He fought with signs and with brief words.

His enemy was already lying on the ground and he

was still smiling.

That is how he crushed Titans and men.

He pleased me then; he had no pity. And he smiled like that one other time:

when he thought of giving men the woman Pandora,

to punish them for the theft of fire.

How is it possible that he now takes pleasure

in vineyards and cities?

Perhaps the woman, Pandora,

is not only a misfortune. Why do you not want

him to take pleasure in her, if she was his gift?

But you know what men are? Wretched things that will have to die,

more wretched than worms or last year's leaves

which died without knowing it.

They on the contrary know it and say so,

and never cease to invoke us, to want to tear a favour

or a look, to light fires for us,

precisely those fires which they stole in the hollow of the reed.

And with women, with offerings,

with songs and beautiful words, they obtained

that we others, the immortals, that one of us

would descend among them, look at them benignly, have children with them.

Do you understand the calculation, the wretched and brazen astuteness?

Are you convinced as to why I am getting heated?

Our mother said and you yourself say that the world

has changed. It is not only today

that the lord of the mounts is descending among men.

You forget that in time past he lived as a fugitive on an island of the sea

and there died and was buried,

as befell the gods then.

These things are known.

But it doesn't follow that his sign has fallen. Those who have fallen

are the lords of Chaos, those who for a time ruled without law. Before,

man, the wild beast and also the rock were god.

Everything happened without a name and without a law.

It needed

the flight of the god, the great impiety of his confinement

among men when he was still a small child and was suckling on a goat,

and then his growing up on the Mount

among the forests, the words of men and the laws of the people

and pain death and regret,

to make the son of Kronos into the Good Judge, the immortal and restless mind.

You think you helped him to crush the Titans?

You said so yourself: he fought

as though he had already won. The reborn child became Lord

by living among men.

And so be it.

The law was worth it. But why does he insist

on returning there

now that he is king of us all?

Brother, brother will you understand

that the world, even if it is no longer divine, precisely for that

is always new and always rich for him

who descends from the Mount?

The word of the man

who knows he is suffering, and is exhausted and possesses the earth

reveals marvels to him who listens to it.

The young gods, who have come after the lords of Chaos,

are all walking on the earth among men.

And if someone nevertheless conserves a love for the mountainous places,

the caves, the wild skies, they do so

because men have now reached there too

and their voices love to violate those silences.

If the son of Kronos were only to wander.

If he only listened and punished according to the law. But how can he resolve

to enjoy them and be enjoyed by them, to rob these mortals of women and sons?

If you had known some of them,

you would understand. They are poor worms but among them everything

is a surprise and a discovery.

One can know a beast, one can know a god, but no one,

not even we others, knows the bottom of those hearts.

There are even, among them,

some who dare set themselves against fate.

Only in living with them and for them does one relish the flavour of the world.

Or of the women, the daughters of Pandora,

those beasts?

Women or beasts,

it's all the same. What do you think you are saying?

They are the richest fruit of mortal life.

But does Zeus

approach them as a beast or as a god?

Fool,

he approaches them as a man. That is all.

These mortals

are truly amusing. We know things

and they do them. Without them

I wonder what the days would be like. What we Olympians would be like.

They call to us with their little voices and give us names.

I was before them, and can tell you

that we were lonely. The earth was forest, snakes, tortoises.

We were the earth, the air, the water.

What could we do?

It was then that we became accustomed to being eternal.

With men that never happens.

That's true. Everything they touch becomes time, becomes action.

Waiting and hope.

Even their dying is something.

They have a way of naming themselves and things

and us others

that enriches life. Like the vineyards they have learned to plant on these hills.

When I brought the vine shoots to Eleusis

I did not think that out of these ugly rocky slopes they would have made

such a sweet country.

It is the same with the corn, the same with the gardens. Wherever

they expend labour and words

there arises a rhythm, a meaning, a repose.

And the stories they can tell about us?

I wonder sometimes if I am truly

Gaia, Rhea, Cybele,

the Great Mother, as they say I am.

They can give us names

that reveal us to ourselves, Iacchus, and tear us away

from the heavy eternity of fate

to give us the colours of the days and the countries where we are.

For us

you are always Deo.

Who would have said that in their wretchedness

they have such riches? For them

I am a wooded and ferocious mount,

I am cloud and cave, I am

lady of the lions, of the grain and the bulls,

of the walled fortresses,

cradle and tomb, the mother of Kore. Everything,

I owe to them.

They are always talking about me, too.

And should we not, Iacchus,

help them more, compensate them in some way,

be by their side during the brief day they enjoy?

You gave them the grain, I

the vine, Deo. Let them be.

What else do they need?

I don't know how, but what comes out of our hands

is always ambiguous. It is an axe with two blades. My Triptolemus

nearly had his throat slit

by the Scythian host to whom he brought the wheat. And you too,

I hear, cause innocent blood to flow.

They would not be men

if they were not sad. Their life

has to die, nevertheless. Their whole richness is death, which constrains them

to be industrious, to remember and to foresee.

And don't think, Deo, that their blood

is worth more than the wheat or the wine with which we feed them.

Blood is vile, dirty, shabby.

You are young, Iacchus, and you don't know that

it is in blood that they found us.

You hurry restlessly through the world and death

for you is like stimulating wine. But you don't think

that the mortals have suffered everything

they recount about us. How many mortal mothers have lost their Kore

and have never seen her again.

Still today the richest homage they can make to us

is to shed blood.

But is it a homage, Deo?

You know better than me that in killing the victim

they believed for a while that they were killing us.

And can you hold it against them?

It is for this that I tell you they found us in blood. If for them

death is the end and the beginning,

they had to kill us to see us be reborn.

They are very unhappy, Iacchus.

Do you think so?

To me they seem clumsy. Or perhaps not.

Since they are mortal anyway,

they give meaning to life by killing themselves. Their stories,

they have to live them and die them. Take the case of Icarius...

That poor Erigone...

But Icarius got himself killed because he wanted to.

Perhaps he thought his blood

was wine. He harvested and pressed the grapes and drew wine like a madman.

It was the first time that on a threshing-floor they saw

wine-must foaming. They spattered the hedges, the walls, the spades with it.

Even Erigone immersed her hands in it.

Then why does this clumsy old man go into the fields, among the shepherds,

to make them drink? They,

drunk, poisoned, enraged,

tore him to pieces on the hedge like a goat,

and then they buried him so that there would be more wine.

He knew it and wanted it.

Should it have surprised his daughter,

who had tasted this wine? She, too, knew it.

What else could she do, to finish this story,

but hang herself in the sun like a bunch of grapes?

That's nothing sad. The mortals tell stories with blood.

And does it seem to you that this is worthy of us?

Have you even wondered

what would become of us without them, you know that one day

they could grow tired of us gods.

So you see that blood,

this shabby blood,

is important to you.

But what do you want us to give them?

Whatever it is, they will always turn it into blood.

There is only one single way and you know it.

To give meaning to their dying.

To teach them the blessed life.

But that is tempting fate, Deo. They are mortals.

Listen to me. The day will come

when they'll think about it themselves. And they will do so without us,

with a story. They will tell of men who have vanquished death.

Already someone among them,

has been placed in heaven,

someone

goes down into hell every six months.

One of them has fought with Death

and has torn a creature from it.

Understand me, Iacchus. They will do it alone.

And then we will go back to what we were:

air, water and earth.

They will not live longer because of that.

Foolish boy, what do you think? But to die will have meaning. They'll die

to be born again, and they will no longer need us others.

What do you want to do, Deo?

To teach them that they can

equal us beyond pain and death.

But to tell them ourselves.

Just as the corn and the grape go down to Hades to be born,

so to teach them that death, too, is new to them.

To give them this story. To lead them through this story. To teach them

a destiny that is intertwined with ours.

They will die all the same.

They will die and they will have vanquished death.

They will see something beyond blood.

They will see the two of us. They will no longer fear death,

and they will no longer need to placate it by shedding other blood.

It can be done, Deo. It will be the story of eternal life.

I almost envy them. They will know nothing of destiny and will be immortal.

But don't hope that the blood will be staunched:

They will think only of eternity.

At worst,

there is the danger that they will neglect these rich regions.

For a while.

But once the corn and the vine have the meaning of eternal life,

do you know what men will see in bread and in wine?

Flesh and blood, like now, like always.

And flesh and blood will flow,

no longer to placate death,

but to attain the eternity that awaits them.

One might say you see the future. How can you say that?

It is enough to have seen the past, Deo, believe me.

But I agree with you. It will always be a story.

I wonder what they say about this water,

the mortals.

What do they know about it? They take it.

Perhaps someone even hopes for a better harvest from it.

At this hour the swollen rivers have begun to uproot the trees.

From now on it is raining on the water everywhere.

They are huddled in the caves and in the huts on the mounts.

They listen to it raining. They think of those in the valleys fighting the water,

and they delude themselves.

As long as night lasts

they delude themselves. But tomorrow in the frightening light

when they see a single sea as far as the sky

and the mountains shrunk,

they will not go back into the caves. They will look.

They will throw a sack on their heads and will look.

You are confusing them with the beasts of the forest.

No mortal can understand that he is dying

and look at death. He needs to run, to think, to speak,

to talk to those who remain.

But this time

no one will remain. What will they do then?

I expect them here: when they know

that they are all condemned, all of them,

they will begin to celebrate, you'll see.

Perhaps they will come looking for us others.

Oh us,

what has that to do with us?

It has to do with us, yes. We are the celebration,

we are life for them. They will seek life from us

to the very end.

I don't understand what life we can give them. We don't even know

how to die. All we know is

how to look. To look and to know. But you say that they

don't look and don't know how to resign themselves.

What else can they ask of us?

So many things, little goat.

For them we are like the beasts of the forest. Beasts

are born and die like leaves.

They catch sight of us disappearing among the branches and then

they believe us to be somehow divine ,

so that when we flee to hide ourselves

we are the life that endures in the woods - a life

like theirs but everlasting, richer.

They will seek us, I tell you. It will be the last hope they have.

With this water?

And what will they do?

Do you not know what hope is?

They will believe that a wood where we are too

cannot come to be flooded. They will tell themselves

that all, absolutely all men cannot disappear,

otherwise what meaning is there

in having been born and having known us?

They will know that the great ones, the Olympians,

want them dead, but that we,

like them, like the small beasts,

are in the end life, the earth, the true thing that matters.

Their seasons are reduced to celebrations,

and we are the celebrations.

That's convenient. For them hope, for us destiny.

But it's foolish.

Not that much.

They'll save something.

Yes, but who provoked the great gods? Who caused all this disorder

so that even the sun veiled its face? They did, it seems to me.

It serves them right.

Come, little goat, do you really believe these things? Don't you think that

if they had truly violated life,

life would have sufficed to punish them

without the need for Olympus to bother with a deluge?

If someone has violated something, believe me,

it's not them.

Meanwhile it befalls them to die. How will they feel tomorrow

when they know what is happening?

Listen to the torrent, little one. Tomorrow we too will be under water.

You will see some ugly things,

you who like to look. Luckily we cannot die.

Sometimes I don't know. I wonder what it would be like

to die. That's the only thing

that we really miss. We know everything

and we don't know this simple thing. I should like to try

and then wake up, of course.

Listen to her!

But to die is precisely this - no longer to know that you are dead.

And this is what the deluge is:

to die in such numbers that no one remains any longer to know about it.

So they will come looking for us others and will tell us to save them,

and they will want to be like us, like the trees, like the stones,

like insensible things that are mere fate. In them

they'll be saved. When the water recedes stones and tree-trunks will emerge,

as before. And the mortals only ask for that "as before".

Strange people. They treat fate and the future

as though it were a past.

That is the meaning of

hope. To give fate the name of a memory.

And do you believe they'll truly turn themselves into tree-trunks and stones?

They know how to recount fables,

these mortals.

They'll live in the future according to what the terror of tonight and tomorrow

will have made them fantasise. They will be wild beasts and rocks and trees.

They will be gods.

They will dare to kill the gods,

to see them reborn. They will give themselves a past to escape from death.

There are only these two things:

hope or fate.

If that is so, I can't pity them. It must be beautiful

to be self-made

in that way

according to your whim.

It's beautiful, yes. But don't think

that they know they are acting according to their whim.

The most extraordinary rescues

they find blindly,

when they're already caught and crushed by fate. They don't have time

to enjoy their whims. They know only

that they pay in person. That, yes.

At least let this deluge serve to teach them

what games and celebrations are.

Whim

is imposed on us immortals by fate and we know it:

why don't they learn to live it

like an eternal moment in their wretchedness?

Why don't they understand

that it's their very frailty that makes them precious?

One can't have everything, little one. We who know,

don't have preferences. And they who live unexpected, unique instants

don't know their value. They would like to have our eternity.

Such is the world.

Tomorrow they too will know something.

And the rocks and the lands which will one day return to the light

will not live by hope alone or by anguish.

You will see that the new world

will have something divine in its most frail mortals.

God willing, little goat. It would please me too.

In conclusion, you're not content.

I tell you

that if I think about a thing in the past, about seasons already concluded,

it seems to me that I have been. But during the days

it's different. I feel weary of things

and of work as a drunkard does.

Then I stop

and climb up here on the mountain. But now in thinking back

it seems to me again that I have been content.

That's how it will always be.

You who know all names, what is

the name for this state of mine?

You can call it by my name or yours.

My name as a man,

Melete, is nothing. But you,

what do you want to be called?

Each time the word that invokes you is different.

You are like a mother whose name

is lost in the years.

In the houses and on the paths from which you can glimpse the mountain

there is much talk of you. They say there was a time when

you were on more inaccessible mounts,

where there are snow, black trees and monsters,

in Thrace or in Thessally, and they called you

the Muse. Another says Calliope or Clio.

Which is the true name?

In fact I come from there. And I have many names.

Others

I will have when I descend further. Aglaia, Hegemony, Phaenna,

according to the whim of places.

Does weariness drive you through the world, too? Are you then not

a goddess?

Neither weariness nor goddess, my dear.

Today I like

this Mount Helicon,

perhaps because you frequent it. I love being where men are,

but a little apart. I don't seek anyone,

and I converse with those who know how to talk.

O Melete,

I don't know how to talk. And it seems to me that I know something

only with you. In your voice and in your names

there is the past, every season that I remember.

In Thessaly my name was Mneme.

Some who talk about you

say you are as old as the tortoise,

decrepit and hard. Others make you a sour nymph

like a bud or a cloud.

What do you say?

I don't know.

You are Calliope and you are Mneme. Your voice and your look are immortal.

You are like a hill or a watercourse whom one doesn't ask

if they are young or old because for them there is no time.

They exist. Nothing else is known.

But you too, dear, exist, and for you existence

means weariness and discontent.

How do you imagine the life of us others, the immortals?

I don't imagine it, Melete, I venerate it, as I can,

with a pure heart.

Go on, I like you.

I have said everything.

I know you men,

you talk through your teeth.

In front of the gods we can do nothing

but bow down.

Leave the gods be. I existed when there were no gods.

You can talk to me. Men tell me everything.

Adore us if you want to, but tell me

how you imagine I live.

How can I know? No goddess

has deemed me worthy of her bed.

Fool, the world has seasons, and that time

is finished.

I know only the land that I have worked.

You are proud,

shepherd. You have the pride of a mortal. But it will be your destiny

to know other things. Tell me

why when you talk to me you believe yourself contented?

I can answer that. The things you say

don't have that weariness of what happens every day.

You give names to things

which make them different, unheard of, and yet dear and familiar

like a voice that has been silent for a long time. Or like

seeing yourself unexpectedly in a mirror of water,

which makes you say "Who is this man?"

My dear, has it never

happened that you saw a tree, a rock, a gesture, and felt the same passion?

It has happened to me.

And did you find out why?

It is only an instant, Melete. How can I grasp it?

Have you not asked yourself why an instant,

similar to so many from the past

should at a stroke make you happy, happy as a god?

You looked at the olive-tree, the olive-tree on the path

you followed every day for years, and comes the day

when weariness leaves you,

you caress the old trunk with a look,

as though it were a friend found again and it were to tell you the one word

your heart was waiting for.

At other times

it is the glance of some passer-by.

At other times the rain

that has insisted for days.

Or the piercing cry of a bird. Or a cloud

which you would say you had seen before.

For an instant time stops, and the banal thing

you feel it in your heart as if the before and the after

did not exist any more.

Have you not asked yourself why?

You yourself are saying it. That instant

has made the thing a memory, a model.

Can you not think

of an existence entirely made up of these instants?

I can think of it, yes.

Then you know how I live.

I believe you, Melete, because

you carry everything in your eyes. And the name of Euterpe, that many give you,

can no longer surprise me. But mortal moments

are not a life. If I wanted to repeat them

they would lose their bloom. Weariness always returns.

And yet you said that that instant

is a memory. And what is memory

if not passion repeated? Understand me well.

What do you mean?

I mean

that you know what immortal life is.

When I talk with you it is difficult for me to resist you. You saw

things at the beginning. You are the olive-tree, the glance and the cloud.

You say a name,

and the thing is forever.

Hesiod, every day I find you up here. Others before you

have I found on these mounts,

on the barren rivers of Thrace and Pieria. I like you

more than them. You know

you have immortal things close at hand.

It isn't difficult to know that. To touch them

is difficult.

You have to live for them, Hesiod. That is

what a pure heart means.

Listening to you, certainly. But man's life

goes on down there,

among the houses, in the fields.

In front of the fire and in a bed. Every day that dawns

confronts you with the same labour and the same failures.

In the end, it is wearying, Melete.

There is a storm that renews the countryside.

Neither death nor great pains discourage.

But the interminable labour,

the effort to stay alive from hour to hour, the news of the illness of others,

of shabby illness, as wearying as summer flies - that is a life

that cripples you, Melete.

I come from more barren places,

from misty and inhuman ravines, where life has nevertheless opened up.

Among these olive-trees and beneath the sky

you don't know that fate. Ever heard

of the swamp of Boibeis?

A foggy moor of mud and reeds,

as it was at the beginning of time,

in a gurgling silence.

It begot monsters and gods

of excrement and blood. Still today,

the Thessalians hardly speak of it.

Neither time nor seasons change it. No voice reaches there.

But meanwhile you speak of it, Melete, and have made it a divine fate.

Your voice has reached it. Now

it is a terrible and sacred place.

The olive-trees and the sky of Helicon are not the whole of life.

But nor are weariness, or the return to the houses.

You don't understand that man, every man,

is born in that swamp of blood, and that the sacred and the divine

accompany you, too, in bed, in the fields,

in front of the fire. Every gesture you make

repeats a divine model. Day and night,

you don't have an instant, not even the most futile,

that does not spring from the silence of the origins.

You talk, Melete, and I cannot resist you. Were it enough

at least to venerate you.

There is another way, my dear.

And which?

Try to tell the mortals these things you know.

The Mount is uncultivated, friend. On last winter's red grass

there are patches of snow. It looks like the centaur's coat.

These heights are all like this. A mere nothing is enough for the countryside

to return to the same as when these things happened.

I wonder

if it's true that they saw them.

Who can say? But yes,

they saw them. They told their names and nothing more -

in this lies

the whole difference between fables and the truth. "It was this one or that one."

"He did this, he said that." Whoever is truthful

is content with that. He doesn't even suspect that they might not believe him.

The liars are us,

who have never seen these things, and yet know in complete detail

what the centaur's coat was like

or the colour of the bunches of grapes on Icarius's threshing-floor.

All it needs is a hill, a peak, a slope.

For it to be a lonely place

and for your eyes lifting up from it to stop in the sky.

The incredible prominence of things in the air

touches the heart still today. I for my part believe

that a tree, a rock outlined against the sky

were gods right from the beginning.

It is not always

that things have been thus on the mounts.

Of course. First there were the voices of the earth -

the springs the roots the snakes. If the daemon conjoins the earth

with the sky,

he has to come out into the light from the darkness of the soil.

I don't know.

Those people knew too many things. With a simple name they recounted

the cloud, the wood, the fates. Certainly, they saw

what we hardly know.

They had neither the time nor the liking for losing themselves in dreams.

They saw terrible, unbelievable things,

and they weren't even surprised. One knew what it was.

If they were lying, then you, too,

when you say "it's morning" or "it's going to rain"

have lost your head.

They spoke names, yes. So much that at times I wonder

whether it was the things or those names that came first.

They came together, believe me. And it was here,

in these uncultivated and solitary lands.

Is it surprising

that they came up here? What else could those people have sought

if not an encounter with the gods?

Who can say why

they stopped here? But in every abandoned place

there remains an emptiness, an expectation.

Nothing else

can be thought of up here. These places

have names forever. There remains only the grass beneath the sky,

and yet in the memory the breath of the wind

makes more of a roar than a storm in the woods.

There is neither emptiness nor expectation. What has been

is forever.

But they are dead and buried.

Now the places are as they were before them.

I'm willing to concede

that what they said was true. What else remains? You will admit

that on the path one no longer encounters gods.

When I say "it's morning" or "it's going to rain"

I am not talking about them.

Tonight we have talked about them. Yesterday you talked about the summer,

and the desire you feel to breathe the warm air in the evening.

At other times you converse about man, about people who have been with you,

about your past likes, about unexpected encounters. All things

that once were.

For me, I assure you, I have listened to you

like I listen within myself again to those ancient names.

When you recount what you know,

I don't ask "what else remains?"

or whether words or things came first.

I live with you and I feel alive.

It's not easy to live as though what happened

in other times were true. Yesterday when

we were overtaken by fog on the uncultivated lands

and some rock rolled down the hill to our feet, we didn't think

about divine things or some unbelievable encounter but only

about the night and the hares running away.

Who we are and what we believe in

comes into the open when faced with hardship in the hour of risk.

About last night and the hares

it will be nice to talk again with friends when we are in our houses.

And yet this fear

should make us smile

if we think of the anguish of the people from times past

for whom everything that befell them was mortal. People for whom

the air was full of nocturnal terrors,

of mysterious threats, of frightening memories.

Just think of the bad weather or of the earthquakes.

And if this hardship was true, as is indisputable,

then also true were courage and hope,

the happy discovery of powers of promises of encounters.

For myself, I never tire

of hearing them talk about their nocturnal terrors

and about the things in which they hope.

And you believe in monsters,

you believe in bestialised bodies, in living rocks,

in divine smiles, in words that annihilated?

I believe

in what every man has hoped and suffered.

If they once climbed up onto these rocky heights

or looked for mortal swamps beneath the sky,

it was because they found there

something which we don't know. It was neither

bread nor pleasure nor precious health. One knows where those things

are. Not here.

And we who live far away along the sea or in the fields, the other thing,

we have lost it.

Say it then,

the thing.

You know it already.

Those encounters of theirs.

Translation: Misha Donat/Danièle Huillet