Читать книгу The Nō Plays of Japan - Arthur Waley - Страница 20

I fear you are not well after your travel.

Oh! horrible!

What witchcraft does he practise, that he hath left

A dead man’s hand here?

And each successive scene of the torture is so vividly mimed that though it exists only in the Protagonist’s brain, it is as real to the audience as if the figure of dead Antonio lay propped upon the stage, or as if the madmen were actually leaping and screaming before them.

Finally she acts the scene of her own execution:

Heaven-gates are not so highly arched

As princes’ palaces; they that enter there

Must go upon their knees. (She kneels.) Come, violent death, Serve for mandragora to make me sleep! Go tell my brothers, when I am laid out, They then may feed in quiet. (She sinks her head and folds her hands.)

The chorus, taking up the word “quiet,” chant a phrase from the Hokkekyō: Sangai Mu-an, “In the Three Worlds there is no quietness or rest.”

But the Pilgrim’s prayers have been answered. Her soul has broken its bonds: is free to depart. The ghost recedes, grows dimmer and dimmer, till at last

use-ni-keri use-ni-keri

it vanishes from sight.