CHARACTERS
HELOISE
ABELARD
SWELL HENRY, a man played by a woman.
PLACE
ACT I: The Dialogues of Heloise & Abelard at the Paraclete
An imaginary lecture/demonstration.
ACT II: Sic et Non
A lecture with interruptions.
ACT III: Indeed words were few
A lonely man at a bar.
TIME
The suspended present.
SYNOPSIS
What does life look like once passion is past? Swell Henry descends from his 21st century mountain height--the top of the Empire State Building--to tell his troubles to an empty bar.
NOTE: Text printed in all caps is excerpted from Mary Radice’s translation of The Letters of Abelard & Heloise (Penguin Classic Edition). Abelard’s parables (*) are extracted from his treatise Sic et Non as translated on the public domain bibliofile site.
***
ACT I
The Dialogues of Heloise & Abelard at the Paraclete
The Dialogues of Heloise & Abelard at the Paraclete
(SWELL HENRY appears to be the Director of this play who for budgetary reasons is also the stagehand.)
(The stage makes some small pretense of being an austere rhetorical school/convent in 12th century France. It is possibly set only with chairs and microphones, in the form of a panel discussion, along with, as example, a garland of fake roses, a small gothic arch resting on a table-top, a color print-out of a religious stained glass window on a folding easel or... etc. ABELARD might enter, ask SWELL HENRY for water. SWELL HENRY might bring two plastic cups on a lunch tray, along with a cheap wine bottle wrapped like a basket. He imagines the bottle is a rustic earthenware jug. It is the best he can do.)
(Etcetera.)
(ACT I’s context might not be understood until ACT II, if then. Not knowing exactly what is going on should be enjoyable for all.)
(The titles of the scenes are important and should be part of the production.)
(The stage makes some small pretense of being an austere rhetorical school/convent in 12th century France. It is possibly set only with chairs and microphones, in the form of a panel discussion, along with, as example, a garland of fake roses, a small gothic arch resting on a table-top, a color print-out of a religious stained glass window on a folding easel or... etc. ABELARD might enter, ask SWELL HENRY for water. SWELL HENRY might bring two plastic cups on a lunch tray, along with a cheap wine bottle wrapped like a basket. He imagines the bottle is a rustic earthenware jug. It is the best he can do.)
(Etcetera.)
(ACT I’s context might not be understood until ACT II, if then. Not knowing exactly what is going on should be enjoyable for all.)
(The titles of the scenes are important and should be part of the production.)
Scene One
HE PLAYS THE LION IN HIS HOUSE
HE PLAYS THE LION IN HIS HOUSE
(ABELARD is alone. HELOISE enters.)
ABELARD
Let us sit facing the sun. I like the sun in my eyes. With the sun in my eyes, the present, now, becomes golden. Like a memory. The sun will not always fall so fully on our faces: forehead, cheeks, collar bones, or, permit me to observe, décolletage. What fine wrists. I like. The way the sun suggests. I sprawl. With indifferent languor. Like a beast.
(HELOISE sits.)
(End of Scene.)
ABELARD
Let us sit facing the sun. I like the sun in my eyes. With the sun in my eyes, the present, now, becomes golden. Like a memory. The sun will not always fall so fully on our faces: forehead, cheeks, collar bones, or, permit me to observe, décolletage. What fine wrists. I like. The way the sun suggests. I sprawl. With indifferent languor. Like a beast.
(HELOISE sits.)
(End of Scene.)
Scene Two
SHE CANNOT BE EQUALLY WITH MEN AND GOD
SHE CANNOT BE EQUALLY WITH MEN AND GOD
(HELOISE speaks to ABELARD without looking at him.)
HELOISE
He says: “A part of you is always alone.” Isolated, immune, removed, distant, alienated, separate, detached. Faraway. Solitary. Cut-off. Deserted, desolate, remote, estranged, at-odds, divided. Uninvolved. Indifferent. Impassive. Shut-down...
ABELARD
Maybe...
(HELOISE looks at ABELARD.)
HELOISE
I’m not alone.
I’m just not with him.
I’m with someone else.
Inside.
(ABELARD nods.)
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
He says: “A part of you is always alone.” Isolated, immune, removed, distant, alienated, separate, detached. Faraway. Solitary. Cut-off. Deserted, desolate, remote, estranged, at-odds, divided. Uninvolved. Indifferent. Impassive. Shut-down...
ABELARD
Maybe...
(HELOISE looks at ABELARD.)
HELOISE
I’m not alone.
I’m just not with him.
I’m with someone else.
Inside.
(ABELARD nods.)
(End of Scene.)
Scene Three
SHE HAS SLIPPED OFF HER DRESS
SHE HAS SLIPPED OFF HER DRESS
(HELOISE speaks to herself. ABELARD is not listening.)
HELOISE
This is where the story begins. Here. In this room. Finding the dust and lost change beneath the mattress, behind the bed. I won’t toss what I find. I will spit on it, murmur a few magic words, and shape it into a beast. A beast with the power of a lion and the grace. Of a winged horse. I will tend her. Lovingly.
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
This is where the story begins. Here. In this room. Finding the dust and lost change beneath the mattress, behind the bed. I won’t toss what I find. I will spit on it, murmur a few magic words, and shape it into a beast. A beast with the power of a lion and the grace. Of a winged horse. I will tend her. Lovingly.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Four
NIGHT AFTER NIGHT ON HER NARROW BED SHE SEEKS TRUE LOVE
(HELOISE and ABELARD speak to each other.)
HELOISE
I feel like a girl who has come to tell her father some thing. The thing is precious to her but as she begins to speak it, she feels ashamed.
ABELARD
Because it is wrong?
HELOISE
Too precious to speak?
(Pause.)
ABELARD
May I ask if you experience problems of a sexual nature?
HELOISE
Yes. Oh yes. But. Not really.
(Pause.)
ABELARD
Would you say you feel incomplete or unfulfilled? Needy or insistent? Empty? Or unsatisfied?
HELOISE
I would say I feel hungry. With a hunger no man has the imagination to fill.
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
I feel like a girl who has come to tell her father some thing. The thing is precious to her but as she begins to speak it, she feels ashamed.
ABELARD
Because it is wrong?
HELOISE
Too precious to speak?
(Pause.)
ABELARD
May I ask if you experience problems of a sexual nature?
HELOISE
Yes. Oh yes. But. Not really.
(Pause.)
ABELARD
Would you say you feel incomplete or unfulfilled? Needy or insistent? Empty? Or unsatisfied?
HELOISE
I would say I feel hungry. With a hunger no man has the imagination to fill.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Five
THE HEAVENLY BRIDEGROOM TORMENTS HER WITH TRIBULATIONS
THE HEAVENLY BRIDEGROOM TORMENTS HER WITH TRIBULATIONS
(HELOISE speaks to SWELL HENRY.)
HELOISE
We don’t discuss it. No. It is simply chained to our legs like a feral dog.
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
We don’t discuss it. No. It is simply chained to our legs like a feral dog.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Six
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PROBLEM IS MATCHED BY THE SUBTLETY OF HIS SOLUTION
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PROBLEM IS MATCHED BY THE SUBTLETY OF HIS SOLUTION
(ABELARD speaks to the audience. HELOISE listens.)
ABELARD
I want to talk about “imagination.” I want to talk about what I imagine at night. I imagine trees. Very old trees. Common trees. Oak trees poplar trees sycamore. I imagine a tree’s life in reverse. I imagine: twigs shriveling into branches into trunk. Filament roots sucked back into the tap. Solar flares, dirt, rain hurl as a century old tree is compressed into a sapling, a sapling standing like an adolescent, arms lifted towards heaven at the still hole in the center of a hurricane—before it is sucked back into the earth.
The winds settles around upheaved ground. Where a seed nestles. A seed nestles in the earth.
Explosive.
(End of Scene.)
ABELARD
I want to talk about “imagination.” I want to talk about what I imagine at night. I imagine trees. Very old trees. Common trees. Oak trees poplar trees sycamore. I imagine a tree’s life in reverse. I imagine: twigs shriveling into branches into trunk. Filament roots sucked back into the tap. Solar flares, dirt, rain hurl as a century old tree is compressed into a sapling, a sapling standing like an adolescent, arms lifted towards heaven at the still hole in the center of a hurricane—before it is sucked back into the earth.
The winds settles around upheaved ground. Where a seed nestles. A seed nestles in the earth.
Explosive.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Seven
FROM THE ENDS OF THE EARTH HE CALLS WHEN HIS HEART IS IN ANGUISH
FROM THE ENDS OF THE EARTH HE CALLS WHEN HIS HEART IS IN ANGUISH
(HELOISE speaks to ABELARD.)
HELOISE
Do you dream about the wind? Do you dream that the wind tears through your hair? Lifts your arms and parts your legs? The wind smears your face against your skull. You look like a satyr with your face smeared against your skull. You are lifted. On your back. The stars whirl nearer, nearer and you laugh. You double over, laughing. Doubled-over, you are too heavy and you fall. You smash against the ground. Then something else. I can’t remember. A departure. A going forth into darkness. Along a path so smooth I think it must be paved with water.
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
Do you dream about the wind? Do you dream that the wind tears through your hair? Lifts your arms and parts your legs? The wind smears your face against your skull. You look like a satyr with your face smeared against your skull. You are lifted. On your back. The stars whirl nearer, nearer and you laugh. You double over, laughing. Doubled-over, you are too heavy and you fall. You smash against the ground. Then something else. I can’t remember. A departure. A going forth into darkness. Along a path so smooth I think it must be paved with water.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Eight
THE MORE HE POSSESSES THAT WHICH CAN BE LOST
THE GREATER THE FEAR WHICH TORMENTS HIM
THE MORE HE POSSESSES THAT WHICH CAN BE LOST
THE GREATER THE FEAR WHICH TORMENTS HIM
(ABELARD speaks to the audience. HELOISE listens.)
ABELARD
I used to dream of water. Flood. The walls of the oratory rising like cliffs around a lake where the pews are drowned. Fish leaped before the altar of the fisher of men. Drowned birds dredge the alcoves, butting against mold-blackened saints. Boatmen engage in for-profit ferrying up and down the aisles. Rats scramble, snouts poked above the flood. Paddling rats. You don’t think that’s funny? Rats scurrying in water against a torrential flood? The faithful clambering up the bas-relief? Dangling from arches like clusters of grapes? Garlanding the pointed windows like a profane host? I’ll admit I hesitated to love anyone. Whenever love rose in my body, yes, like a flood, I remembered that everyone--especially the everyone that I loved--would die. Love. How do people bear it? Forget “betrayal.” Forget “separation.” Even “the Best Scenario:” a “long-and-happy-life.” Ends tragically.
It was hard, knowing that, to embrace rapture with all-welcoming arms.
(End of Scene.)
ABELARD
I used to dream of water. Flood. The walls of the oratory rising like cliffs around a lake where the pews are drowned. Fish leaped before the altar of the fisher of men. Drowned birds dredge the alcoves, butting against mold-blackened saints. Boatmen engage in for-profit ferrying up and down the aisles. Rats scramble, snouts poked above the flood. Paddling rats. You don’t think that’s funny? Rats scurrying in water against a torrential flood? The faithful clambering up the bas-relief? Dangling from arches like clusters of grapes? Garlanding the pointed windows like a profane host? I’ll admit I hesitated to love anyone. Whenever love rose in my body, yes, like a flood, I remembered that everyone--especially the everyone that I loved--would die. Love. How do people bear it? Forget “betrayal.” Forget “separation.” Even “the Best Scenario:” a “long-and-happy-life.” Ends tragically.
It was hard, knowing that, to embrace rapture with all-welcoming arms.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Nine
THE TONGUE IS A SMALL MEMBER OF THE BODY
BUT HOW VAST A FOREST IT CAN SET ALIGHT
THE TONGUE IS A SMALL MEMBER OF THE BODY
BUT HOW VAST A FOREST IT CAN SET ALIGHT
ABELARD
Tell me about him.
HELOISE
About sleeping with him? I liked it.
ABELARD
Trying to sleep with him?
HELOISE
Yes. I’d like that, too. Yes.
ABELARD
Because it would take a long time.
HELOISE
I’d like his hands on me. Their furiousness. Their increasing furiousness. Their desperation.
ABELARD
What does it feel like.
HELOISE
Stillness in the center of a hurricane.
ABELARD
No it doesn’t.
HELOISE
Yes it does.
ABELARD
A dry wind through blanched grasses.
HELOISE
(Pause.) The rustling wind across open fields.
ABELARD
Like that. Exactly.
(End of Scene.)
Tell me about him.
HELOISE
About sleeping with him? I liked it.
ABELARD
Trying to sleep with him?
HELOISE
Yes. I’d like that, too. Yes.
ABELARD
Because it would take a long time.
HELOISE
I’d like his hands on me. Their furiousness. Their increasing furiousness. Their desperation.
ABELARD
What does it feel like.
HELOISE
Stillness in the center of a hurricane.
ABELARD
No it doesn’t.
HELOISE
Yes it does.
ABELARD
A dry wind through blanched grasses.
HELOISE
(Pause.) The rustling wind across open fields.
ABELARD
Like that. Exactly.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Ten
HE LOOKS ON WINE WHEN IT GLOWS AND SPARKLES IN THE CUP
HE LOOKS ON WINE WHEN IT GLOWS AND SPARKLES IN THE CUP
(HELOISE smokes.)
HELOISE
Would you like one?
ABELARD
I like that your lips don’t leave stains on the cigarette tip.
HELOISE
I don’t rouge my lips.
ABELARD
Yes. That’s why there are no stains.
HELOISE
Why don’t you just say “I like that you don’t rouge your lips”?
ABELARD
Because I wouldn’t mind if you did rouge them. I like that when the cigarette comes out of your mouth, it is unsoiled. Moistened. But white.
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
Would you like one?
ABELARD
I like that your lips don’t leave stains on the cigarette tip.
HELOISE
I don’t rouge my lips.
ABELARD
Yes. That’s why there are no stains.
HELOISE
Why don’t you just say “I like that you don’t rouge your lips”?
ABELARD
Because I wouldn’t mind if you did rouge them. I like that when the cigarette comes out of your mouth, it is unsoiled. Moistened. But white.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Eleven
SHE DISDAINS TO RISE FROM THE BED OF HER CONTEMPLATION
SHE DISDAINS TO RISE FROM THE BED OF HER CONTEMPLATION
(HELOISE speaks out while ABELARD listens.)
HELOISE
Shall I tell you of my only love? Who interrupts my dreams? He interrupts he is gold and husked. I peel the husk. He feels good in my hands. Sun-warmed. Thick. Silked and sticky. Kernels pop between my teeth before he plow tills the field, its ridge in the furrow grind of some god beneath the belly from the slashed stalk splitting its sheathe. I am unsheathed for dawn scattering its kernels of gold from the sky into the bed into the womb.
ABELARD
That bloody animal.
HELOISE
Yes.
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
Shall I tell you of my only love? Who interrupts my dreams? He interrupts he is gold and husked. I peel the husk. He feels good in my hands. Sun-warmed. Thick. Silked and sticky. Kernels pop between my teeth before he plow tills the field, its ridge in the furrow grind of some god beneath the belly from the slashed stalk splitting its sheathe. I am unsheathed for dawn scattering its kernels of gold from the sky into the bed into the womb.
ABELARD
That bloody animal.
HELOISE
Yes.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Twelve
HE GATHERS EACH BLOSSOM AS IT COMES TO MIND AND CREATES A SINGLE BUNCH
HE GATHERS EACH BLOSSOM AS IT COMES TO MIND AND CREATES A SINGLE BUNCH
(ABELARD speaks to the audience. HELOISE is not listening.)
ABELARD
This is where the story begins. Scraping fluff and coinage from my pockets, shaping them with spit and a few magic words into an animal. A magical beast. “This is my life,” I say. The virility of a satyr. The fierceness of a bull. The wise inconstancy of a centaur. Ah Bacchanal! This is the story I tell. This is the myth I make.
(End of Scene.)
ABELARD
This is where the story begins. Scraping fluff and coinage from my pockets, shaping them with spit and a few magic words into an animal. A magical beast. “This is my life,” I say. The virility of a satyr. The fierceness of a bull. The wise inconstancy of a centaur. Ah Bacchanal! This is the story I tell. This is the myth I make.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Thirteen
WHOEVER SITS IN SOLITUDE SHALL HAVE ONLY THE HEART TO FIGHT AGAINST
WHOEVER SITS IN SOLITUDE SHALL HAVE ONLY THE HEART TO FIGHT AGAINST
(HELOISE and ABELARD look out.)
HELOISE
Are you unsatisfied? Discontent? Saddened? Lost on the tumultuous winds? Are you equipped for the journey? Are you without compass? Have you lost your sense of direction? Sex? Life?
ABELARD
At night. Before the sun is set. Twilight.
HELOISE
As the sun is setting.
ABELARD
I wander. Windows illuminated before curtains are drawn. I see the colors of walls. The decoration of rooms. I’ve never once seen two people kissing. Twilight, as the sun sets, don’t you want to sit close with someone dear in your arms? As the day, the whole day, departs? And kiss them? Kiss them as the last glances of light are thrown off interior mirrors like the reflection of passing birds?
HELOISE
You walk the streets.
ABELARD
At night. Curtains drawn. On the streets. I look at the trees. Two hundred years old. Lining the streets. Their girth. The wondrous complexity of their branching. I run my hands along their trunks.
HELOISE
I saw two people kissing. They looked at each other with heavy eyes. His hand was inside her blouse. I could see the cotton crease and stretch and rise.
Her legs parted as if she had forgotten them. Her eyes were as heavy as water. I saw a girl once. She stood before her uncle. She looked at him, then at her knees.
He sat at his desk with his back to her.
ABELARD
Did she want to tell him something?
HELOISE
Was that the day she found blood on her thighs? There are several reasons for that, aren’t there? Some of them a girl wouldn’t tell her father about, would she? What would he think of her?
ABELARD
He would feel sad for her. He would feel sad because he would feel the pain of the whole world rushing towards her like thousands of sharp knives.
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
Are you unsatisfied? Discontent? Saddened? Lost on the tumultuous winds? Are you equipped for the journey? Are you without compass? Have you lost your sense of direction? Sex? Life?
ABELARD
At night. Before the sun is set. Twilight.
HELOISE
As the sun is setting.
ABELARD
I wander. Windows illuminated before curtains are drawn. I see the colors of walls. The decoration of rooms. I’ve never once seen two people kissing. Twilight, as the sun sets, don’t you want to sit close with someone dear in your arms? As the day, the whole day, departs? And kiss them? Kiss them as the last glances of light are thrown off interior mirrors like the reflection of passing birds?
HELOISE
You walk the streets.
ABELARD
At night. Curtains drawn. On the streets. I look at the trees. Two hundred years old. Lining the streets. Their girth. The wondrous complexity of their branching. I run my hands along their trunks.
HELOISE
I saw two people kissing. They looked at each other with heavy eyes. His hand was inside her blouse. I could see the cotton crease and stretch and rise.
Her legs parted as if she had forgotten them. Her eyes were as heavy as water. I saw a girl once. She stood before her uncle. She looked at him, then at her knees.
He sat at his desk with his back to her.
ABELARD
Did she want to tell him something?
HELOISE
Was that the day she found blood on her thighs? There are several reasons for that, aren’t there? Some of them a girl wouldn’t tell her father about, would she? What would he think of her?
ABELARD
He would feel sad for her. He would feel sad because he would feel the pain of the whole world rushing towards her like thousands of sharp knives.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Fourteen
ALTHOUGH HER BODY IS CLOISTERED HER MIND STILL LOVES THINGS OUTSIDE AND PURSUES THEM
ALTHOUGH HER BODY IS CLOISTERED HER MIND STILL LOVES THINGS OUTSIDE AND PURSUES THEM
(HELOISE speaks to the audience. ABELARD is not listening.)
HELOISE
What do I like?
A resonant voice. Sounding like the drum of hands on hollowed wood.
Strong hands. The hands that could hollow a boat or a drum out of wood. Hands that can do delicate work with simple tools.
The look on a man’s face when he’s doing delicate work. When he’s concentrating.
I like a man who is sure in the water. I like to see arms, chest, breaking the surface of the water. The line of the water at his hip, at his thighs. His body, surfacing. The light breaks off his body. He shakes his head. Glass is thrown. I weep. Oh penetrating beauty. How can I ever hold you? I will never hold you. I weep for such temporaries. Glass in my skin. In my eyes.
What do I like?
A man who can stand at a threshold. Step over that threshold without hesitation. As necessary. As it became inevitable. Not without sorrow. With dignity. I like the man who, when he hovers at a threshold, looks back, for only the fraction needed to sign, beyond all words: Good bye. Fare well.
My only love.
(HELOISE looks at ABELARD.)
(End of Scene.)
HELOISE
What do I like?
A resonant voice. Sounding like the drum of hands on hollowed wood.
Strong hands. The hands that could hollow a boat or a drum out of wood. Hands that can do delicate work with simple tools.
The look on a man’s face when he’s doing delicate work. When he’s concentrating.
I like a man who is sure in the water. I like to see arms, chest, breaking the surface of the water. The line of the water at his hip, at his thighs. His body, surfacing. The light breaks off his body. He shakes his head. Glass is thrown. I weep. Oh penetrating beauty. How can I ever hold you? I will never hold you. I weep for such temporaries. Glass in my skin. In my eyes.
What do I like?
A man who can stand at a threshold. Step over that threshold without hesitation. As necessary. As it became inevitable. Not without sorrow. With dignity. I like the man who, when he hovers at a threshold, looks back, for only the fraction needed to sign, beyond all words: Good bye. Fare well.
My only love.
(HELOISE looks at ABELARD.)
(End of Scene.)
Scene Fifteen
ALWAYS THEY SEEK THE FORBIDDEN AND DESIRE WHAT IS DENIED
ALWAYS THEY SEEK THE FORBIDDEN AND DESIRE WHAT IS DENIED
ABELARD
Tell me about your friend.
HELOISE
The nun and the philosopher obscure themselves in robes of night.
ABELARD
(Furious.) This is where the story begins. Where we take the fluff, lint, coinage of our days and make of them some kind of myth.
(End of Scene.)
Tell me about your friend.
HELOISE
The nun and the philosopher obscure themselves in robes of night.
ABELARD
(Furious.) This is where the story begins. Where we take the fluff, lint, coinage of our days and make of them some kind of myth.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Sixteen
SHE WOULD RATHER BE EXPERIENCED IN BED THAN SEEN AT TABLE
SHE WOULD RATHER BE EXPERIENCED IN BED THAN SEEN AT TABLE
(HELOISE and ABELARD face off.)
ABELARD
Ravish me.
HELOISE
A fantasy.
ABELARD
If you will.
HELOISE
A man in a garden. I can tell a lot about a man from his manner in a garden. Does he stroll purposefully, or meander? When a flower is fragrant, in what way do his hands lift a bud to his mouth? The way he asks if I’d like to sit. Does he lead me, or merely offer? Is he assured? Does he try to please? His command of the situation.
ABELARD
Shall I tell you what I am like?
HELOISE
What you yourself are like?
ABELARD
Of course. The woman with me. This makes a difference. Imagine, for instance, it is you. It is late afternoon. Autumn. The light is gold at the edges of your hair. It is warm and you wear clothes like that. That fall open. I am aware of the bare skin beneath your throat. Perhaps I do not notice the roses. Their fragrance. I am a man of intention. I watch you. You cross your arms. You smile, generously. Such a generous smile. I say “Will you sit on this bench for a moment, where the last light falls?” You answer…what do you answer?
HELOISE
Yes.
ABELARD
And you sit, right in the middle of the bench, and I do not know where I should sit. So I sit in front of you, positioned to look out, into the cool, gold light, and also at you, surreptitiously. I speak concisely but my attention, really, remains on you. The distance between us. It is not so large because I am tall when I sit. If you will but stay, leaned forward, with your elbows on your knees, I think I would like to touch two fingers to your chin, lean in, and kiss you. I intend it gently but, alas, I kiss you and. My body. Suspends. It is as if a stone hits the pool of my body, here, at my solar plexus, and from that here I ripple out. Suspense. Suspend. Exquisitely. I kiss you. Your ankles uncross and my knee slips between yours. Such languor in your body. Your body falling open. Softening. The languor of breezes in meadows. A woman being kissed. You. Kissed.
HELOISE
Your eyes. Gold-edged in the light.
ABELARD
Your skin, beneath the lines of your clothes, cream.
HELOISE
Stay with me. Stay.
(End of Scene.)
ABELARD
Ravish me.
HELOISE
A fantasy.
ABELARD
If you will.
HELOISE
A man in a garden. I can tell a lot about a man from his manner in a garden. Does he stroll purposefully, or meander? When a flower is fragrant, in what way do his hands lift a bud to his mouth? The way he asks if I’d like to sit. Does he lead me, or merely offer? Is he assured? Does he try to please? His command of the situation.
ABELARD
Shall I tell you what I am like?
HELOISE
What you yourself are like?
ABELARD
Of course. The woman with me. This makes a difference. Imagine, for instance, it is you. It is late afternoon. Autumn. The light is gold at the edges of your hair. It is warm and you wear clothes like that. That fall open. I am aware of the bare skin beneath your throat. Perhaps I do not notice the roses. Their fragrance. I am a man of intention. I watch you. You cross your arms. You smile, generously. Such a generous smile. I say “Will you sit on this bench for a moment, where the last light falls?” You answer…what do you answer?
HELOISE
Yes.
ABELARD
And you sit, right in the middle of the bench, and I do not know where I should sit. So I sit in front of you, positioned to look out, into the cool, gold light, and also at you, surreptitiously. I speak concisely but my attention, really, remains on you. The distance between us. It is not so large because I am tall when I sit. If you will but stay, leaned forward, with your elbows on your knees, I think I would like to touch two fingers to your chin, lean in, and kiss you. I intend it gently but, alas, I kiss you and. My body. Suspends. It is as if a stone hits the pool of my body, here, at my solar plexus, and from that here I ripple out. Suspense. Suspend. Exquisitely. I kiss you. Your ankles uncross and my knee slips between yours. Such languor in your body. Your body falling open. Softening. The languor of breezes in meadows. A woman being kissed. You. Kissed.
HELOISE
Your eyes. Gold-edged in the light.
ABELARD
Your skin, beneath the lines of your clothes, cream.
HELOISE
Stay with me. Stay.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Seventeen
ALL MIRACLES ARE PERFORMED EITHER IN LONELY OR IN HIDDEN PLACES
ALL MIRACLES ARE PERFORMED EITHER IN LONELY OR IN HIDDEN PLACES
HELOISE
If only.
Your mouth...
ABELARD
Shhhh.
HELOISE
...here.
ABELARD
It is time to go.
(End of Scene.)
If only.
Your mouth...
ABELARD
Shhhh.
HELOISE
...here.
ABELARD
It is time to go.
(End of Scene.)
Scene Eighteen
AN EMBRACE IN THE ARMS OF FAITH FOR HE WHO ACTS DIVINELY IN THE GLORIOUS FLESH OF A VIRGIN WHICH HE ASSUMED FROM THE PARACLETE
AN EMBRACE IN THE ARMS OF FAITH FOR HE WHO ACTS DIVINELY IN THE GLORIOUS FLESH OF A VIRGIN WHICH HE ASSUMED FROM THE PARACLETE
(Silence.)
(The distance between HELOISE and ABELARD and.)
(The space between their bodies.)
(The shape of the space between their bodies.)
(More present than they are.)
(HELOISE exits.)
(End of Scene.)
(The distance between HELOISE and ABELARD and.)
(The space between their bodies.)
(The shape of the space between their bodies.)
(More present than they are.)
(HELOISE exits.)
(End of Scene.)
Scene Nineteen
DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT YOUR BODY IS A SHRINE OF THE IN-DWELLING HOLY SPIRIT?
DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT YOUR BODY IS A SHRINE OF THE IN-DWELLING HOLY SPIRIT?
(ABELARD, in HELOISE’s absence, speaks to the audience.)
ABELARD
Love without language. I will tell you about her body. I will tell you about her body as I lay her on the bed. Softly. As if she were a girl. I lowered her to the bed. The sheets were gold. Her body was white. The color of milk. Her hair. All over her body. Dark. The white rocks of the river dark with algae. No. Love without language. The long shapes of her legs. As they opened. Opening. Parting. I parted them. My hands gentle at her knees, along the inside of her thighs. Yes. Love without language. I will tell you about her body. I will tell you how her hips lifted, her back arched. I will tell you about her breasts pushing upwards as her head fell back. I will tell you about her hair between my fingers on my tongue in my mouth. I will tell you about her eyes when she was lost. How deep. The depth of her eyes as her mind died and she was only aware of her body. The depth of her eyes, dark, bottomless, instinctual. Let no man go there. Let no man. But we plunge in. We cannot help ourselves. We plunge inside. And I held her to me. I pulled her close into my chest. These are the mysteries. These are the mysteries. Love without language. I will tell you. I will tell you about the dark places. The dark places when the soul inhabits the body. The deep places, then, in our eyes. When her eyes close, she sleeps. What is it dies? Endlessly? Endless? What is it? Inside?
(End of Scene.)
ABELARD
Love without language. I will tell you about her body. I will tell you about her body as I lay her on the bed. Softly. As if she were a girl. I lowered her to the bed. The sheets were gold. Her body was white. The color of milk. Her hair. All over her body. Dark. The white rocks of the river dark with algae. No. Love without language. The long shapes of her legs. As they opened. Opening. Parting. I parted them. My hands gentle at her knees, along the inside of her thighs. Yes. Love without language. I will tell you about her body. I will tell you how her hips lifted, her back arched. I will tell you about her breasts pushing upwards as her head fell back. I will tell you about her hair between my fingers on my tongue in my mouth. I will tell you about her eyes when she was lost. How deep. The depth of her eyes as her mind died and she was only aware of her body. The depth of her eyes, dark, bottomless, instinctual. Let no man go there. Let no man. But we plunge in. We cannot help ourselves. We plunge inside. And I held her to me. I pulled her close into my chest. These are the mysteries. These are the mysteries. Love without language. I will tell you. I will tell you about the dark places. The dark places when the soul inhabits the body. The deep places, then, in our eyes. When her eyes close, she sleeps. What is it dies? Endlessly? Endless? What is it? Inside?
(End of Scene.)
Scene Twenty
THIS IS NOT OFFERING A KISS BUT PROFFERING A CUP
THIS IS NOT OFFERING A KISS BUT PROFFERING A CUP
(ABELARD re-lights HELOISE’s cigarette from before.)
(Smokes.)
(Stubs out.)
(Exits.)
(Ash in a dish on an empty stage.)
(From which smoke rises.)
(For a long time.)
(End of Scene.)
(Smokes.)
(Stubs out.)
(Exits.)
(Ash in a dish on an empty stage.)
(From which smoke rises.)
(For a long time.)
(End of Scene.)
END OF ACT I
***
ACT II
SIC ET NON
SIC ET NON
(SWELL HENRY lectures. ABELARD listens. HELOISE is not present.)
(SWELL HENRY displays supporting exhibits on a screen. The exhibits will become less and less relevant. The Empire State Building should eventually appear. See Act III.)
SWELL HENRY
Abelard and Heloise lived in Medieval France. He was the greatest logician/philosopher of the 12th century. She was renowned in her own time for her knowledge and understanding of classical literature. Abelard seduced Heloise when hired by her Uncle as her tutor. When she became pregnant, he secretly married her and stashed her in a convent, where they continued to have passionate rendez-vous. When Heloise’s Uncle discovered he had been deceived by the formerly celibate scholar in his own house, he hired henchmen to castrate Abelard in his sleep. There ended Eros between Heloise & Abelard. He became a monk, she, a nun. Their letters begin some ten years later, after Abelard spent a brief time serving as the Father Confessor to Heloise and her nuns at the Paraclete--the school he founded and later gave to Heloise for her convent. The letters begin with a letter from Heloise to Abelard full of longing, anger, and betrayal. She claims Abelard had not spoken personally to her the entire time they co-habited at the Paraclete.
ABELARD
In love you will float. In a small boat. Over unfathomable depths. A lake silver brimmed to the horizon. But allow. Allow yourself to rise. From the lake’s surface. Its shore will become apparent. Its silvery surface will grow smaller and smaller, until it is resolved into a coin. Engraved with a boat. In which two people are vaguely supposed. To sit.
(SWELL HENRY displays supporting exhibits on a screen. The exhibits will become less and less relevant. The Empire State Building should eventually appear. See Act III.)
SWELL HENRY
Abelard and Heloise lived in Medieval France. He was the greatest logician/philosopher of the 12th century. She was renowned in her own time for her knowledge and understanding of classical literature. Abelard seduced Heloise when hired by her Uncle as her tutor. When she became pregnant, he secretly married her and stashed her in a convent, where they continued to have passionate rendez-vous. When Heloise’s Uncle discovered he had been deceived by the formerly celibate scholar in his own house, he hired henchmen to castrate Abelard in his sleep. There ended Eros between Heloise & Abelard. He became a monk, she, a nun. Their letters begin some ten years later, after Abelard spent a brief time serving as the Father Confessor to Heloise and her nuns at the Paraclete--the school he founded and later gave to Heloise for her convent. The letters begin with a letter from Heloise to Abelard full of longing, anger, and betrayal. She claims Abelard had not spoken personally to her the entire time they co-habited at the Paraclete.
ABELARD
In love you will float. In a small boat. Over unfathomable depths. A lake silver brimmed to the horizon. But allow. Allow yourself to rise. From the lake’s surface. Its shore will become apparent. Its silvery surface will grow smaller and smaller, until it is resolved into a coin. Engraved with a boat. In which two people are vaguely supposed. To sit.
SWELL HENRY
In love you will float. In a small boat. Over unfathomable depths. A lake silver brimmed to the horizon. But allow. Allow yourself to rise. From the lake’s surface. Its shore will become apparent. Its silvery surface will grow smaller and smaller, until it is resolved into a coin. Engraved with a boat. In which two people are vaguely supposed. To sit. |
ABELARD
I WOULD WRITE MORE THINGS TO YOU BUT A FEW WORDS INSTRUCT A WISE MAN. INTENTION IS ALL AND INTENTION IS LACKING. INDIFFERENTER (INDIFFERENTLY) SCIBILITAS (KNOWABILITY). SIC ET NON. WHAT MORE? LOGIC HAS MADE ME HATED BY THE WORLD. THE STORM MAY RAGE BUT I AM UNSHAKEN THOUGH THE WINDS MAY BLOW THEY LEAVE ME UNMOVED; FOR THE ROCK OF MY FOUNDATION STANDS FIRM. |
SWELL HENRY
The coin can be treasured, pocketed, stolen, lost, or spent. It is evident that love must be drowned in or resolved with this perspective. It is impossible to float tranquilly upon it for long.
Afterwards, what? Dive back into the deception with someone new? What “real thing” remains once passion has died, the lake is demoted to coin? In his letters to Heloise, Abelard says “God”. I can’t blame Heloise for her frustration with him. It is possible she had seen Abelard only once after her Uncle’s henchmen castrated him in his sleep. When he signed her into a convent. Imagine that: Heloise, the abbess and a sister or two, meet Abelard in a small receiving chamber. Abelard is in a state of shock. Heloise represents his humiliation and shame. She is “she-who-I-can-no-longer-fuck.” He thinks, at this time, that a eunuch befouls the eyes of God. His humiliation and self-disgust must be extreme. Any glance between Heloise & Abelard is as intense and as forsaken as the glance between Orpheus and Eurydice. As I imagine it, Heloise is both Orpheus & Eurydice, Abelard the mirror in which she glances at herself. The act of being seen by her beloved as no-longer-beloved is violent for her. It is the moment that her life is severed, her
passion dismembered. Abelard’s dismemberment preexists his meeting Heloise. The loss of Heloise is merely a symptom of the violence. His inner turmoil obliterates any other emotion. He is not really in the moment, the last moment, with her. He cannot be. He is in shock. She sees, through him, herself drawn into the underworld. Heloise, looking back at her beloved who no longer sees her as beloved, sees herself, sinking from the earth through soil into the land of shades. She takes her vows. Before him, because he did not trust her to go through with it.
The knife’s cut, for Heloise, is not clean. Passion was full in her mouth. Fried her jaw open and snatched it away. Unlike Abelard, she is hungry.
When Abelard replies to Heloise’s first letter to address her “old perpetual complaint against God concerning the manner of our entry into religious life” he uses erotic metaphors to describe the nobility of her cloistered life. Heloise’s lover is no longer Abelard, it is the Lord. How blessed is she! A chunk of Letter 5 analyzes a Canticle about a European King’s Ethiopian wife. Her black skin looks less lovely, but is soft, subtle, and loveliest to experience in bed. The Ethiopian bride--Heloise’s soul cloaked in the outwardly unattractive life of a nun--is the superior consort, most pleasing in the bed of the Lord. Heloise has entered a sacred chamber where she is sublimely embraced by the Lord. Abelard humbly addresses his Lord’s bride. The eunuch serves his master’s queen.
I laugh when I read Heloise’s response. She nobly agrees to restrain herself from continuing complaint. She instead humbly petitions Abelard for advice on convent “Rules”: what clothing and underwear should sisters wear suitable to their fragile bodies and menstrual cycle? Should sisters offer Christian hospitality to men and eat at table with them or is that inviting temptation? She asks, too, if sisters should drink wine given it “encourages sensuality”. Yes, I project my preferred subtext: I don’t want Heloise & Abelard to slip too easily into cloister banter. He responds to her plea for personal discourse with lofty sexual metaphors about “knowing” God? She asks him to consider what she wears under her habit, her volatile libido. Knowing, as we do from his letter, what his “uncontrollable desire did” with her in the “corner of the refectory” dedicated to the “the most holy virgin” while Heloise was disguised as a nun, (“I, repeat, you know how shamelessly we behaved on that occasion in so hallowed a place,” writes Abelard), her questions are sharp.
Nevertheless, it isn’t titillation I look for in the Letters of Abelard & Heloise. I read to know what they meant each to the other when passion was lost to them. Abelard addresses Heloise as his “beloved”, “once dearest to me in the world, now dearest to me in Christ.” Is this deep-seated feeling or proper style? Letters of the period (according to the introduction) were always written in a grandiose, literary style. What do his addresses signify? I am alarmed by what reads as estrangement. What comfort does Abelard draw knowing Heloise prays for him as he endures heresy charges, book-burnings, and assassination attempts? “I can find nowhere to rest or even to live; a fugitive and wanderer I carry everywhere the curse of Cain, forever tormented...” he writes. When accusations against him peak, when “logic” makes him “hated by the world,” he writes a confession of faith to her. It feels urgent, almost personal. Abelard trades erotic Heloise for Heloise-the-sacred-bride. He expects her to intercede on his behalf on judgment day. “A man’s wrongdoing will be wiped out by the entreaties of his wife.”
Heloise? Did Abelard’s presence always dwell quietly beneath or above or within her practical and scholarly work? Did her love diminish in intensity? I imagine that it did, that time brought perspective. The lake, if not a coin, became a pond that her life flowed into, then out of, on its way to the sea. Perhaps she found quietude after his death, when news of him, words from him, or even his arrival were no longer possible. Her heart, full of longing towards nothing of this earth, slowly emptied itself of worldly passion.
It is desirable to imagine that for both Heloise and Abelard, a meta-reality co-existed with the trials and details of their daily lives, and that each could retreat to it. This meta-reality undoubtedly contained a presence they called God, but it also contained an image of the other as soul’s mate traveling parallel towards a single vanishing point, a familiar to be finally met in the here-beyond. It is tempting, necessary, to imagine this.
I read Heloise and Abelard to learn how the soul loves beyond Eros. My edition notes that both were familiar with Cicero’s De Amicitia, a treatise which founded an ideal relationship of “disinterested love”. Both Heloise & Abelard believed in an ideal love of devotion, “disinterestedness” that transcended marriage and eroticism. Reading that, I am irritated. When the erotic element is lost, their relationship drastically changes! I want these great lovers to instruct, not on how the ideal is lived abstractly across time and space sublimated in the fantastical bliss of eternal union, but humanly, viscerally, embedded in the everyday real. I wish Heloise & Abelard had lived more intimately or written more often. I am disappointed that they do not teach me how the soul’s love, after passion, dwells humbly, deeply, and contentedly, in our common world. They do not tell me that love of the soul dwells humbly, contentedly, in our world.
ABELARD*
I will open my mouth in parables.
It is a noteworthy quality to love the truth in the words, not the words themselves. For what use is a golden key if it cannot unlock what we desire? And what is wrong with a wooden key, if it can unlock what we desire, when we wish nothing but to open what is closed?
Although there is no place in the entire universe that is entirely empty and not filled either with air or some other body, still we say that a box in which we perceive nothing by sight is empty.
If there be anything left, you shall burn it with fire.
A sentence is true if things stand in the way it says, and things make sentences true or false in virtue of the way they are, and nothing further is required.
(SWELL HENRY turns off his projector. While he puts on his coat, these words appear on the exhibit screen. They are cast by a projector held by HELOISE, standing in the audience. SWELL HENRY does not see HELOISE or the words.)
The coin can be treasured, pocketed, stolen, lost, or spent. It is evident that love must be drowned in or resolved with this perspective. It is impossible to float tranquilly upon it for long.
Afterwards, what? Dive back into the deception with someone new? What “real thing” remains once passion has died, the lake is demoted to coin? In his letters to Heloise, Abelard says “God”. I can’t blame Heloise for her frustration with him. It is possible she had seen Abelard only once after her Uncle’s henchmen castrated him in his sleep. When he signed her into a convent. Imagine that: Heloise, the abbess and a sister or two, meet Abelard in a small receiving chamber. Abelard is in a state of shock. Heloise represents his humiliation and shame. She is “she-who-I-can-no-longer-fuck.” He thinks, at this time, that a eunuch befouls the eyes of God. His humiliation and self-disgust must be extreme. Any glance between Heloise & Abelard is as intense and as forsaken as the glance between Orpheus and Eurydice. As I imagine it, Heloise is both Orpheus & Eurydice, Abelard the mirror in which she glances at herself. The act of being seen by her beloved as no-longer-beloved is violent for her. It is the moment that her life is severed, her
passion dismembered. Abelard’s dismemberment preexists his meeting Heloise. The loss of Heloise is merely a symptom of the violence. His inner turmoil obliterates any other emotion. He is not really in the moment, the last moment, with her. He cannot be. He is in shock. She sees, through him, herself drawn into the underworld. Heloise, looking back at her beloved who no longer sees her as beloved, sees herself, sinking from the earth through soil into the land of shades. She takes her vows. Before him, because he did not trust her to go through with it.
The knife’s cut, for Heloise, is not clean. Passion was full in her mouth. Fried her jaw open and snatched it away. Unlike Abelard, she is hungry.
When Abelard replies to Heloise’s first letter to address her “old perpetual complaint against God concerning the manner of our entry into religious life” he uses erotic metaphors to describe the nobility of her cloistered life. Heloise’s lover is no longer Abelard, it is the Lord. How blessed is she! A chunk of Letter 5 analyzes a Canticle about a European King’s Ethiopian wife. Her black skin looks less lovely, but is soft, subtle, and loveliest to experience in bed. The Ethiopian bride--Heloise’s soul cloaked in the outwardly unattractive life of a nun--is the superior consort, most pleasing in the bed of the Lord. Heloise has entered a sacred chamber where she is sublimely embraced by the Lord. Abelard humbly addresses his Lord’s bride. The eunuch serves his master’s queen.
I laugh when I read Heloise’s response. She nobly agrees to restrain herself from continuing complaint. She instead humbly petitions Abelard for advice on convent “Rules”: what clothing and underwear should sisters wear suitable to their fragile bodies and menstrual cycle? Should sisters offer Christian hospitality to men and eat at table with them or is that inviting temptation? She asks, too, if sisters should drink wine given it “encourages sensuality”. Yes, I project my preferred subtext: I don’t want Heloise & Abelard to slip too easily into cloister banter. He responds to her plea for personal discourse with lofty sexual metaphors about “knowing” God? She asks him to consider what she wears under her habit, her volatile libido. Knowing, as we do from his letter, what his “uncontrollable desire did” with her in the “corner of the refectory” dedicated to the “the most holy virgin” while Heloise was disguised as a nun, (“I, repeat, you know how shamelessly we behaved on that occasion in so hallowed a place,” writes Abelard), her questions are sharp.
Nevertheless, it isn’t titillation I look for in the Letters of Abelard & Heloise. I read to know what they meant each to the other when passion was lost to them. Abelard addresses Heloise as his “beloved”, “once dearest to me in the world, now dearest to me in Christ.” Is this deep-seated feeling or proper style? Letters of the period (according to the introduction) were always written in a grandiose, literary style. What do his addresses signify? I am alarmed by what reads as estrangement. What comfort does Abelard draw knowing Heloise prays for him as he endures heresy charges, book-burnings, and assassination attempts? “I can find nowhere to rest or even to live; a fugitive and wanderer I carry everywhere the curse of Cain, forever tormented...” he writes. When accusations against him peak, when “logic” makes him “hated by the world,” he writes a confession of faith to her. It feels urgent, almost personal. Abelard trades erotic Heloise for Heloise-the-sacred-bride. He expects her to intercede on his behalf on judgment day. “A man’s wrongdoing will be wiped out by the entreaties of his wife.”
Heloise? Did Abelard’s presence always dwell quietly beneath or above or within her practical and scholarly work? Did her love diminish in intensity? I imagine that it did, that time brought perspective. The lake, if not a coin, became a pond that her life flowed into, then out of, on its way to the sea. Perhaps she found quietude after his death, when news of him, words from him, or even his arrival were no longer possible. Her heart, full of longing towards nothing of this earth, slowly emptied itself of worldly passion.
It is desirable to imagine that for both Heloise and Abelard, a meta-reality co-existed with the trials and details of their daily lives, and that each could retreat to it. This meta-reality undoubtedly contained a presence they called God, but it also contained an image of the other as soul’s mate traveling parallel towards a single vanishing point, a familiar to be finally met in the here-beyond. It is tempting, necessary, to imagine this.
I read Heloise and Abelard to learn how the soul loves beyond Eros. My edition notes that both were familiar with Cicero’s De Amicitia, a treatise which founded an ideal relationship of “disinterested love”. Both Heloise & Abelard believed in an ideal love of devotion, “disinterestedness” that transcended marriage and eroticism. Reading that, I am irritated. When the erotic element is lost, their relationship drastically changes! I want these great lovers to instruct, not on how the ideal is lived abstractly across time and space sublimated in the fantastical bliss of eternal union, but humanly, viscerally, embedded in the everyday real. I wish Heloise & Abelard had lived more intimately or written more often. I am disappointed that they do not teach me how the soul’s love, after passion, dwells humbly, deeply, and contentedly, in our common world. They do not tell me that love of the soul dwells humbly, contentedly, in our world.
ABELARD*
I will open my mouth in parables.
It is a noteworthy quality to love the truth in the words, not the words themselves. For what use is a golden key if it cannot unlock what we desire? And what is wrong with a wooden key, if it can unlock what we desire, when we wish nothing but to open what is closed?
Although there is no place in the entire universe that is entirely empty and not filled either with air or some other body, still we say that a box in which we perceive nothing by sight is empty.
If there be anything left, you shall burn it with fire.
A sentence is true if things stand in the way it says, and things make sentences true or false in virtue of the way they are, and nothing further is required.
(SWELL HENRY turns off his projector. While he puts on his coat, these words appear on the exhibit screen. They are cast by a projector held by HELOISE, standing in the audience. SWELL HENRY does not see HELOISE or the words.)
(Projected words, one line at a time:)
A TRICKLING FONT.
BASIN SMOOTH AND UNADORNED.
HELOISE (GARDEN) SPLASHED UPON.
WHOLE, GLISTENING, SPLASHED UPON.
HER CALF, CROOKED OVER RIM, SWINGS.
LIKE A CENSER.
ATTAR OF ROSE. WORMWOOD.
LISTEN AGAIN PLEASE: THE TRICKLING FONT.
STUTTERING SPILLAGE AS.
SHE EMERGES.
HELOISE.
HEAD BOWED.
SHE EMERGES (BASIN)
HANDS CLUTCH RIM
BACK ARCH REVEALS
WINGS
(HERS)
FEATHERED WITH STONES
TREMORING. MONSTROUS AND IDLE.
BASIN SMOOTH AND UNADORNED.
HELOISE (GARDEN) SPLASHED UPON.
WHOLE, GLISTENING, SPLASHED UPON.
HER CALF, CROOKED OVER RIM, SWINGS.
LIKE A CENSER.
ATTAR OF ROSE. WORMWOOD.
LISTEN AGAIN PLEASE: THE TRICKLING FONT.
STUTTERING SPILLAGE AS.
SHE EMERGES.
HELOISE.
HEAD BOWED.
SHE EMERGES (BASIN)
HANDS CLUTCH RIM
BACK ARCH REVEALS
WINGS
(HERS)
FEATHERED WITH STONES
TREMORING. MONSTROUS AND IDLE.
ABELARD
(Calm.) Hand towards hat plumed with swords. Draw. Advancing.
HELOISE’S SONG
(Singing:) Nominatissima,
choose shoes soled thin as eyelids
I implore you to the chapel at dawn.
Then will bed reveal what my heart now hides.
Let the sweet fountain of yourself bubble forward
Who can deny you are buried in me?
(SWELL HENRY exits in his coat.)
(ABELARD, on stage, looks out at HELOISE, in the audience, holding a projector of light.)
ABELARD
LO I ESCAPED FAR AWAY AND FOUND A REFUGE IN THE WILDERNESS. I TOOK MYSELF OFF TO A LONELY SPOT I HAD KNOWN BEFORE. A tree pierced the sky like a ragged thorn. Memory is the most treacherous tempter, reverie mangling austere practice. Purity is allotted only to our bones.
(Calm.) Hand towards hat plumed with swords. Draw. Advancing.
HELOISE’S SONG
(Singing:) Nominatissima,
choose shoes soled thin as eyelids
I implore you to the chapel at dawn.
Then will bed reveal what my heart now hides.
Let the sweet fountain of yourself bubble forward
Who can deny you are buried in me?
(SWELL HENRY exits in his coat.)
(ABELARD, on stage, looks out at HELOISE, in the audience, holding a projector of light.)
ABELARD
LO I ESCAPED FAR AWAY AND FOUND A REFUGE IN THE WILDERNESS. I TOOK MYSELF OFF TO A LONELY SPOT I HAD KNOWN BEFORE. A tree pierced the sky like a ragged thorn. Memory is the most treacherous tempter, reverie mangling austere practice. Purity is allotted only to our bones.
ABELARD
(Calm:) MY LOVE, WHICH BROUGHT US BOTH TO SIN, SHOULD BE CALLED LUST, NOT LOVE. I TOOK MY FILL OF MY WRETCHED PLEASURES IN YOU, AND THIS WAS THE SUM TOTAL OF MY LOVE. MOURN FOR YOUR SAVIOR AND REDEEMER, NOT FOR YOUR CORRUPTER AND FORNICATOR. IT WAS HE WHO TRULY LOVED YOU, NOT I. FAREWELL IN CHRIST IN CHRIST FARE WELL AND LIVE IN CHRIST. |
HELOISE
(Blank shouting:) MY LOVE, WHICH BROUGHT US BOTH TO SIN, SHOULD BE CALLED LUST, NOT LOVE? I TOOK MY FILL OF MY WRETCHED PLEASURES IN YOU, AND THIS WAS THE SUM TOTAL OF MY LOVE? MOURN FOR YOUR SAVIOR AND REDEEMER, NOT FOR YOUR CORRUPTER AND FORNICATOR? IT WAS HE WHO TRULY LOVED YOU, NOT I? FAREWELL IN CHRIST IN CHRIST FARE WELL AND LIVE IN CHRIST? |
HELOISE
Love is a black river that runs towards death. The waters are cold and dark. Only a beast could cross such a river. We are not delicate, strong enough. The water is too cold. Too swift.
Love is a black river that runs towards death. The waters are cold and dark. Only a beast could cross such a river. We are not delicate, strong enough. The water is too cold. Too swift.
END OF ACT II
***
ACT III
INDEED WORDS WERE FEW
INDEED WORDS WERE FEW
(SWELL HENRY enters a bar near the Empire State Building.)
(SWELL HENRY removes his coat.)
(He selects a bottle and a glass from the bar, then sits.)
SWELL HENRY
(A toast:) Oh my radiant sunrise oh my radiant sun. She has four thorns. Four thorns radial from the wheel of her mind. They crown her like rays emanating from a Madonna. She is not a Madonna. The thorns are her own. Her hair as red as blood. From the four thorns? No. She has placed the thorns carefully. She does not bleed. Her smile is sad but her eyes are as calm as oceans.
(A toast:) Oceans.
(Soliloquy:) I hear the wind. Not swiftly. Not in gusts. Continuously. It does not let up. The wind tosses tin airplanes and boats. It tosses bits of paper and sea froth. It crosses vast distances. I hear it because I am born-in-air. I am born-in-air and I hear the wind blowing, not just around this building, through these streets, but high in the stratosphere. Because I am born-in-air, my heart is an aircraft with a small, straight beacon light, navigating up there. In the winds. I am that insignificant. That insignificant and that free. Tied to nothing. Tossed in turbulence. Blown through sky. What a joyous thing is man! Buckled in his little tin can, tossed in the unnavigable, indifferent wind. On his way. Somewhere.
Of course the tin can has wings. That’s why one can laugh, one can go-with-the-flow, so to speak, having wings.
Tonight I’m a real cloud stopper. Did I say that? Did I say cloud? Crowd? Crowd pleaser. I’m a real pleaser of crowds. Here’s the bottle. And the glass. And the bar.
Have you noticed that no one’s tending the bar?
(Calling out:)
There is no one tending the bar!
(To Audience:)
If you come up here I am not going to make your drink.
SWELL HENRY (CONT.)
No. I do not golish plasses or drix minks.
(To self:)
Did I say that?
(To Audience:)
I do not do those things, I’m saying. I sit here. At the bar. With a whole bottle to myself. So I don’t really need a bartender. I’m a pleaser of clouds. A real cloud pleaser. Clouds cross vast distances, oceans, on the great winds, to hover over me. The winds. Hear them?
(Pause to listen.)
They are very high. You can hear them particularly at the top of a tall building. The Empire State Building, for example, which, I believe, is still standing. Right over there. Is it still standing? Yes. I believe it is. It is standing. And—as I was saying—if YOU stand at the top of it and if it is not too crowded and if you aren’t too tired or. If you are. Very, very tired. You can stand very still on the top of it and feel it moving, every so slightly. Swaying like a woman imagining a dance from a long, long time ago.
No. That’s not how it sways. It is not introverted, it does not sway inside itself. It sways against an outside force. Yes. The Empire State Building sways—as I was saying—against the wind. You can hear the wind there, if you are still and tired or not very tired and there are no clouds. I mean crowds. You can feel the subterranean hydraulic shifts balancing one thousand four hundred and fifty-four feet of steel, glass, duct work, office furniture, plumbing and wire, against the force of air. You can feel the shifting under your feet. You can see the view—the pan-o-rama, so to speak, move. An engineering feat. Vertiginous. And—as I was saying—you can hear the force it adjusts to. You can hear the wind. Constant. A wordless breath. Not menacing. Just indifferent. Just terribly terribly forceful and indifferent. You hear it and you are apt to feel, surely, that you have miss-stepped. That you have tread on inhuman, therefore sacred, ground. You were not meant to stand here. To be this high. You are a mere man, meant to stand, awestruck, beneath the altar of the cathedral, looking up
SWELL HENRY (CONT.)
in wonder at its nether reaches. Only great men—Master Builders, Michelangelo—are meant to stand at the tops of cathedrals. Because God—or whatever—is supposed to dwell Up There. But here you are, higher than any cathedral, with a touch of vertigo, watching.
The clouds swiftly pass.
The sun, that ancient clock, arc.
The city sprawl over three states.
The Atlantic crash over the horizon.
And you don’t hear God. No. You hear the wind. Do you hear it?
(Pause for listening.)
You know what’s worst? No one’s painted the ceiling for you. When you stand at the top of the Empire State Building and look up, the beauty of the archangels does not take your breath away. No. Your breath is punched out of your gut. If you fall to your knees it is out of sheer dizziness, not awe. Survival instinct yanks your gaze out of the wild blue yonder before you are lost. Forever.
Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that. It is a phrase, a phrase out of Gone with the Wind. Or something. It is a ridiculous, melodramatic phrase. Can you be lost, forever? Wouldn’t you eventually stumble upon some place you’d been before? Or your soul. Your spirit. Can it be lost forever? No. I do not think so. If it lasts forever. If that, then it will find its home there. It will find its home somewhere in forever. Or it will be where it is and not want to be anywhere else and so it won’t be lost anymore because it won’t want to go anywhere. Or.
(SWELL HENRY looks up, falters, and falls to his knees.)
Ver-ti-gi-nous.
(He clambers back up.)
SWELL HENRY (CONT.)
And now, ladies and gentleman, a real cloud stopper: The Staircase Genius. Who has a pair of dice. He is flanked to left and right by winged, radiant Madonnas offering safety nets like chalices to the sky. Beneath him there is ocean, and above him, the sun circles and falls, agelessly. Above him, high, high above him, the sound of the wind.
The sound of the wind not speaking, not calling to him.
No. The wind:
born out of pressure and solar flares
pulled pole to pole, magnetic north to south
cooled over fissured ice fields
run rampant over the unhindered plains
pushing eastward across great lakes, mountain ranges
to the eastern seaboard
the wind, I say, whipping towards the Atlantic
snags its hem on the nails of New York where loose threads of it gust through the street corridors. This is where the Staircase Genius begins his climb. The Staircase Genius staggers back. But he is not discouraged. Yes.
No. The silliness. Wind. Cloth. Let the wind be as it is. Irreducible. Unrestricted by metaphor, cathedrals, skyscrapers. Hear it.
(Pause for listening. SWELL HENRY regroups.)
The Staircase Genius hears the wind. Bracing himself, he casts two dice on the stair. The number: three. He leaps three sheets to the Three steps into the wind. He picks up the dice. He casts them. His life is a baffling dream.
The stairs go up up up insurmountably. The sky is radiant and then it is dark, in quick succession. Sometimes he is blinded, and sometimes, in darkness, he is blind.
The genius of the Staircase Genius is that he does not despair, he does not fret, as he climbs this kind of stair. The Staircase Genius looks up up up straight into the sky and when he does so he does not fall to his knees and he does not suffer from vertigo. He sees the sun, crossing. He notes its position. His eyes blink with the modesty of straightforward calculation. He looks at the stair immediately before him and casts his dice. With the efficacy of an engineer. He leaps forward.
(Fierce, to self:)
SWELL HENRY (CONT.)
But I, I am born-in-air. I cast my dice against the wind and leap after them. Perhaps I will fall to the ocean. Perhaps, I will ascend, toes pointed like a saint’s, face radiant like an idiot’s, into the yild blue wonder.
Did I say that?
(Cold resolve:)
Then what will now happen is: the liquid I have drunk from this glass will, as I tilt my head back to drink… flow, in slow motion, from my mouth back into the glass. When I lower the glass to the table (as if lifting it in reverse) I will already be holding the bottle directly over the glass. The liquid will waft, like a genii, up from the glass into the bottle. When I set the bottle down, it will be full. A miracle. The evening will go backwards. Oh my radiant sunrise oh my radiant sun she has four thorns four thorns radial from the wheel of her mind…and so forth, in reverse. Everything. Backwards. Backwards. Until…
Until?
Were I saint this bottle will be full. Were I idiot it will full, though you might only see the fool, dribbling spit down his chin. But in truth? Though born-in-air, if I leap after the dice, the wind will blot me against the sun like an apparition for an instant only. Then, I will fall, a clot of earth, out of the sky. The bottle will be empty.
(Toasts:) She has four thorns four thorns radial from the wheel of her mind. They crown her like rays emanating from a Madonna. She is not a Madonna. The thorns are her own. Her hair as red as blood. She has placed the thorns carefully. She does not bleed. She does not bleed. Her smile is sad but her eyes are as calm as oceans.
(A toast:) WHATEVER A LOVER GIVES TO A LOVER, WHAT MORE?
(A toast:) INDEED, WORDS WERE FEW.
(To self:) BUT I MADE THEM MANY BY RE-READING THEM.
(He is going to toast again, but the bottle is empty.)
(He considers the bottle.)
(He tries it...going backwards: he lifts the empty glass to his mouth. He lowers the glass to the table, lifting the bottle back over it—the gesture of drinking/pouring in absolute reverse. When the bottle is again poised over the glass he stares intently at the space between them with excruciating hopefulness: for a moment he believes liquid will rise back into the bottle.)
(Speaking the following is arduous at first, but builds in speed and eloquence, making some kind of sense:)
SWELL HENRY
By many them made I but few were words indeed.
More what lover a to gives lover a whatever.
Oceans as calm as are eyes her but sad is smile her bleed not does she bleed not does she.
Carefully.
Thorns the placed has she blood as red as hair
her own her are thorns the Madonna a not is she
Madonna a from emanating rays like her crown
Mind her
Wheel radial thorns four thorns four has she
sun radiant my
oh rise sun radiant my
oh
(Stillness.)
Love is a black river that runs towards death, that black tree charring the sky as if lightening slashed out of the earth. Purity is allotted only to our bones.
(SWELL HENRY removes his coat.)
(He selects a bottle and a glass from the bar, then sits.)
SWELL HENRY
(A toast:) Oh my radiant sunrise oh my radiant sun. She has four thorns. Four thorns radial from the wheel of her mind. They crown her like rays emanating from a Madonna. She is not a Madonna. The thorns are her own. Her hair as red as blood. From the four thorns? No. She has placed the thorns carefully. She does not bleed. Her smile is sad but her eyes are as calm as oceans.
(A toast:) Oceans.
(Soliloquy:) I hear the wind. Not swiftly. Not in gusts. Continuously. It does not let up. The wind tosses tin airplanes and boats. It tosses bits of paper and sea froth. It crosses vast distances. I hear it because I am born-in-air. I am born-in-air and I hear the wind blowing, not just around this building, through these streets, but high in the stratosphere. Because I am born-in-air, my heart is an aircraft with a small, straight beacon light, navigating up there. In the winds. I am that insignificant. That insignificant and that free. Tied to nothing. Tossed in turbulence. Blown through sky. What a joyous thing is man! Buckled in his little tin can, tossed in the unnavigable, indifferent wind. On his way. Somewhere.
Of course the tin can has wings. That’s why one can laugh, one can go-with-the-flow, so to speak, having wings.
Tonight I’m a real cloud stopper. Did I say that? Did I say cloud? Crowd? Crowd pleaser. I’m a real pleaser of crowds. Here’s the bottle. And the glass. And the bar.
Have you noticed that no one’s tending the bar?
(Calling out:)
There is no one tending the bar!
(To Audience:)
If you come up here I am not going to make your drink.
SWELL HENRY (CONT.)
No. I do not golish plasses or drix minks.
(To self:)
Did I say that?
(To Audience:)
I do not do those things, I’m saying. I sit here. At the bar. With a whole bottle to myself. So I don’t really need a bartender. I’m a pleaser of clouds. A real cloud pleaser. Clouds cross vast distances, oceans, on the great winds, to hover over me. The winds. Hear them?
(Pause to listen.)
They are very high. You can hear them particularly at the top of a tall building. The Empire State Building, for example, which, I believe, is still standing. Right over there. Is it still standing? Yes. I believe it is. It is standing. And—as I was saying—if YOU stand at the top of it and if it is not too crowded and if you aren’t too tired or. If you are. Very, very tired. You can stand very still on the top of it and feel it moving, every so slightly. Swaying like a woman imagining a dance from a long, long time ago.
No. That’s not how it sways. It is not introverted, it does not sway inside itself. It sways against an outside force. Yes. The Empire State Building sways—as I was saying—against the wind. You can hear the wind there, if you are still and tired or not very tired and there are no clouds. I mean crowds. You can feel the subterranean hydraulic shifts balancing one thousand four hundred and fifty-four feet of steel, glass, duct work, office furniture, plumbing and wire, against the force of air. You can feel the shifting under your feet. You can see the view—the pan-o-rama, so to speak, move. An engineering feat. Vertiginous. And—as I was saying—you can hear the force it adjusts to. You can hear the wind. Constant. A wordless breath. Not menacing. Just indifferent. Just terribly terribly forceful and indifferent. You hear it and you are apt to feel, surely, that you have miss-stepped. That you have tread on inhuman, therefore sacred, ground. You were not meant to stand here. To be this high. You are a mere man, meant to stand, awestruck, beneath the altar of the cathedral, looking up
SWELL HENRY (CONT.)
in wonder at its nether reaches. Only great men—Master Builders, Michelangelo—are meant to stand at the tops of cathedrals. Because God—or whatever—is supposed to dwell Up There. But here you are, higher than any cathedral, with a touch of vertigo, watching.
The clouds swiftly pass.
The sun, that ancient clock, arc.
The city sprawl over three states.
The Atlantic crash over the horizon.
And you don’t hear God. No. You hear the wind. Do you hear it?
(Pause for listening.)
You know what’s worst? No one’s painted the ceiling for you. When you stand at the top of the Empire State Building and look up, the beauty of the archangels does not take your breath away. No. Your breath is punched out of your gut. If you fall to your knees it is out of sheer dizziness, not awe. Survival instinct yanks your gaze out of the wild blue yonder before you are lost. Forever.
Did I say that? I can’t believe I said that. It is a phrase, a phrase out of Gone with the Wind. Or something. It is a ridiculous, melodramatic phrase. Can you be lost, forever? Wouldn’t you eventually stumble upon some place you’d been before? Or your soul. Your spirit. Can it be lost forever? No. I do not think so. If it lasts forever. If that, then it will find its home there. It will find its home somewhere in forever. Or it will be where it is and not want to be anywhere else and so it won’t be lost anymore because it won’t want to go anywhere. Or.
(SWELL HENRY looks up, falters, and falls to his knees.)
Ver-ti-gi-nous.
(He clambers back up.)
SWELL HENRY (CONT.)
And now, ladies and gentleman, a real cloud stopper: The Staircase Genius. Who has a pair of dice. He is flanked to left and right by winged, radiant Madonnas offering safety nets like chalices to the sky. Beneath him there is ocean, and above him, the sun circles and falls, agelessly. Above him, high, high above him, the sound of the wind.
The sound of the wind not speaking, not calling to him.
No. The wind:
born out of pressure and solar flares
pulled pole to pole, magnetic north to south
cooled over fissured ice fields
run rampant over the unhindered plains
pushing eastward across great lakes, mountain ranges
to the eastern seaboard
the wind, I say, whipping towards the Atlantic
snags its hem on the nails of New York where loose threads of it gust through the street corridors. This is where the Staircase Genius begins his climb. The Staircase Genius staggers back. But he is not discouraged. Yes.
No. The silliness. Wind. Cloth. Let the wind be as it is. Irreducible. Unrestricted by metaphor, cathedrals, skyscrapers. Hear it.
(Pause for listening. SWELL HENRY regroups.)
The Staircase Genius hears the wind. Bracing himself, he casts two dice on the stair. The number: three. He leaps three sheets to the Three steps into the wind. He picks up the dice. He casts them. His life is a baffling dream.
The stairs go up up up insurmountably. The sky is radiant and then it is dark, in quick succession. Sometimes he is blinded, and sometimes, in darkness, he is blind.
The genius of the Staircase Genius is that he does not despair, he does not fret, as he climbs this kind of stair. The Staircase Genius looks up up up straight into the sky and when he does so he does not fall to his knees and he does not suffer from vertigo. He sees the sun, crossing. He notes its position. His eyes blink with the modesty of straightforward calculation. He looks at the stair immediately before him and casts his dice. With the efficacy of an engineer. He leaps forward.
(Fierce, to self:)
SWELL HENRY (CONT.)
But I, I am born-in-air. I cast my dice against the wind and leap after them. Perhaps I will fall to the ocean. Perhaps, I will ascend, toes pointed like a saint’s, face radiant like an idiot’s, into the yild blue wonder.
Did I say that?
(Cold resolve:)
Then what will now happen is: the liquid I have drunk from this glass will, as I tilt my head back to drink… flow, in slow motion, from my mouth back into the glass. When I lower the glass to the table (as if lifting it in reverse) I will already be holding the bottle directly over the glass. The liquid will waft, like a genii, up from the glass into the bottle. When I set the bottle down, it will be full. A miracle. The evening will go backwards. Oh my radiant sunrise oh my radiant sun she has four thorns four thorns radial from the wheel of her mind…and so forth, in reverse. Everything. Backwards. Backwards. Until…
Until?
Were I saint this bottle will be full. Were I idiot it will full, though you might only see the fool, dribbling spit down his chin. But in truth? Though born-in-air, if I leap after the dice, the wind will blot me against the sun like an apparition for an instant only. Then, I will fall, a clot of earth, out of the sky. The bottle will be empty.
(Toasts:) She has four thorns four thorns radial from the wheel of her mind. They crown her like rays emanating from a Madonna. She is not a Madonna. The thorns are her own. Her hair as red as blood. She has placed the thorns carefully. She does not bleed. She does not bleed. Her smile is sad but her eyes are as calm as oceans.
(A toast:) WHATEVER A LOVER GIVES TO A LOVER, WHAT MORE?
(A toast:) INDEED, WORDS WERE FEW.
(To self:) BUT I MADE THEM MANY BY RE-READING THEM.
(He is going to toast again, but the bottle is empty.)
(He considers the bottle.)
(He tries it...going backwards: he lifts the empty glass to his mouth. He lowers the glass to the table, lifting the bottle back over it—the gesture of drinking/pouring in absolute reverse. When the bottle is again poised over the glass he stares intently at the space between them with excruciating hopefulness: for a moment he believes liquid will rise back into the bottle.)
(Speaking the following is arduous at first, but builds in speed and eloquence, making some kind of sense:)
SWELL HENRY
By many them made I but few were words indeed.
More what lover a to gives lover a whatever.
Oceans as calm as are eyes her but sad is smile her bleed not does she bleed not does she.
Carefully.
Thorns the placed has she blood as red as hair
her own her are thorns the Madonna a not is she
Madonna a from emanating rays like her crown
Mind her
Wheel radial thorns four thorns four has she
sun radiant my
oh rise sun radiant my
oh
(Stillness.)
Love is a black river that runs towards death, that black tree charring the sky as if lightening slashed out of the earth. Purity is allotted only to our bones.
END
Laylage Courie is a writer and maker of things from words. Her latest big "thing" is the radio-play/concept album these fountains rare here about a woman's quest for deep, peculiar springs. It's available on Spotify, Youtube, Amazon, Apple Music, Google Play...and as a CD. Her work has appeared on stages all over New York, in Fence, The Exposition Review, Adbusters, international performance journals, as a finalist for the Jane Chambers award for feminist performance text, and more. To experience the next strange and poetic thing she makes (a climate-crisis video-poem with polar-bear-unicorns and marching trees?), join her mail list at luminouswork.org, or follow @laylage on instagram.