Hérodiade-Fragmente (Matthias Pintscher)
Mallarmé once referred to his draft for Hérodiade as a fragment of a stage study, but later he abandoned that subtitle. I have chosen from the middle section of this three-part poem a number of fragments of the dialogue between Hérodiade and her Nurse and turned it into a monologue, a kind of scène intermédiaire. Hérodiade, who yearns for the brilliance of stellar depths and diamonds, and is torn between the opposing forces of her own sensuality and austere asceticism, is for me a character almost surrealistically artificial.
An operatic character.
Totally synthetic (today she would appear to us as a virtual cybergirl). Caught in a gesture between passion and defiant lewdness. Subject to the dualist principle: on one hand, the desire to immerse herself in the depth of her passion, on the other – concern for her virtue, as fragile as glass. Mallarmé’s language has an abundant richness of gloomy symbols, which keep returning like leitmotifs (windows with curtains drawn, a black swan, candles nearly burnt out, daybreak, sunset, abandoned gardens…)
I associate this language with an oppressive sound mass, which is churned up by the clarity of the words. The text appears in this mass as an engraving, the contours of which continuously seem to blur, only to regain shape through verbal impulses. I tried to compose from the perspective of the text and not to illustrate its affect. My Jardins des êtres (Gardens of beings), where the incorporeal and fabulously beautiful virginity of Hérodiade wanders listening to her own screams, are seen as if through a glass: a play of shadows, signs of impending misfortune.
Matthias Pintscher
Hérodiade-Fragmente
Assez! Tiens devant moi ce miroir. O miroir!
Eau froide par l’ennui dans ton cadre gelée
Que de fois et pendant des heures, désolée
Des songes et cherchant mes souvenirs qui sont
Comme des feuilles sous ta glace au trou profond,
Je m’apparus en toi comme une ombre lointaine,
Mais, horreur! des soirs, dans ta sévère fontaine,
J’ai de mon rêve épars connu la nudité!
Oui, c’est pour moi, pour moi, que je fleuris, déserte!
Vous le savez, jardins d’améthyste, enfouis
Sans fin dans de savants abîmes éblouis,
Ors ignorés, gardant votre antique lumière
Sous le somber sommeil d’une terre première,
Vous, pierres où mes yeux comme de purs bijoux
Empruntent leur clarté mélodieuse, et vous
Métaux qui donnez à ma jeune chevelure
Une splendeur fatale et sa massive allure!
Quant à toi, femme née en des siècles malins
Pour la méchanceté des antres sibyllins,
Qui parles d’un mortel! selon qui, des calices
De mes robes, arôme aux farouches délices,
Sortirait le frisson blanc de ma nudité,
Prophétises que si le tiède azur d’été,
Vers lui nativement la femme se dévoile,
Me voit dans ma pudeur grelottante d’étoile,
Je meurs!
J’aime l’horreur d’etre vierge et je veux
Vivre parmi l’effroi que me font mes cheveux
Pour, le soir, retirée en ma couche, reptile
Inviolé sentir en la chair inutile
Le froid scintillement de ta pâle clarté,
Toi qui te meurs, toi qui brûles de chasteté,
Nuit blanche de glaçons et de neige cruelle!
Et ta soeur solitaire, ô ma soeur éternelle
Mon rêve montera vers toi: telle déjà,
Rare limpidité d’un coeur qui le songea,
Je me crois seule en ma monotone patrie
Et tout, autour de moi, vit dans l’idolâtrie
D’un miroir qui reflète en son calme dormant
Hérodiade au clair regard de diamant...
O charme dernier, oui! Je le sens, je suis seule.
J’attends und chose inconnue
Ou peut-être, ignorant le mystère et vos cris,
Jetez-vous les sanglots suprêmes et meurtris
D’une enfance sentant parmi les reveries
Se séparer enfin ses froides pierreries.
Hérodiade Fragments
Enough! Hold before me this mirror. O mirror!
Cold water by weariness frozen in your frame,
How many times and during many hours, desolate
By dreams and seeking my memories which are
Like leaves beneath the deep hollow of your ice,
I saw myself in you like a distant shadow,
But, horror! Some evenings, in your harsh pool,
From my scattered dreams I have known nakedness!
Yes, it’s for me, for me that I flourish, deserted!
You know this, gardens of amethyst, kept secret
Endlessly in some knowing abysses bedazzled,
Gold concealed, keeping your ancient light
Beneath the somber sleep of a primeval night,
You, stones in which my eyes like purest jewels
Borrow their melodious brightness, and you,
Metals that give to my youthful hair
A fatal splendor and its massive appearance!
As for you, woman born in an evil age
To do the wickedness of sibylline caverns,
Who speaks of a mortal! Who knew that, from the folds
Of my robes, scent of fierce delights,
Would come from the pale shiver of my nakedness,
Foretold that if the calm azure of summer,
Before which woman by nature is revealed,
Looks upon my modesty trembling like a star,
I die!
I love the horror of being virginal and I want
To live in the terror my hair makes me feel,
At night, lying in my bed, serpentine,
Unviolated, feeling in my useless flesh
The cold sparkling of your pallid lightness,
You who die, you who burn with chastity,
Pale night of icicles and cruel snow!
And your lonely sister, o my eternal sister,
My dream will rise toward you: as it has already,
Rare lightness of a heart that dreamed it once,
I feel alone in my dreary country
And everything around me lives in the idolatry
Of a mirror reflecting in its sleeping stillness
Herodias, whose bright gaze is a diamond...
O final enchantment, yes! I feel it, I am alone.
I wait for something unknown
Or perhaps, knowing not the mystery of your cries,
You utter the final and wounded sobs
Of a childhood that feels, among its dreams,
Its frigid gems drop away at last.
translated by Darrin T. Britting
