First Draft for First Scene

LILY:
It pains me so, my friend,
To see you wither
In body and soul,
And to see wither with you
The beautiful bond
That bound us together for ten years.
I once looked into your eyes,
And they reflected joy
In all things and beings
Intimate connections.
And your soul captured
In glorious images,
What sun and air
Touching bodies in space
And revealing the mysteries of existence
In fleeting moments.
Your hand was still clumsy,
In rough colors,
To embody what, like a flower,
Floated in your soul.
But we could both believe
That the future would bring you
The art of the hand to the joyful,
In the ground of events
Feeling soul.
And now it is as if extinguished
The once bubbling power of your inner being;
How paralyzed the arm
Which once, fresh with youth,
Guided the brush.

HUMAN:
So sad it is.
I feel as if the earlier fire of the soul
Has been magically taken away.
And only dullly do my eyes see
The splendor of things and beings,
The sunlight spreads over them.
My inner self remains almost numb,
When changing atmospheric conditions
Revealing the secret of being
Present themselves before my mind.
My hand no longer stirs,
In the desire to hold what it has seen;
And to force with the brush,
To make the fleeting present
Part of a solid existence.
The urge to sleep no longer stirs
In my heart,
And dullness spreads
Over all my thoughts.

HUMAN:
It is so.
When you
In the dawn of our friendship
Led me to that revelation of the spirit,
Which spreads light over those darknesses,
Which unknowingly
Every evening enters
The human soul
And into which wanders
Uncertain of human nature,
When the night of death
Seems to sensually cover
The meaning of all life,
Which, rising again, shows
In ever-recurring life,
What seems to have fallen
To insubstantial destruction:
Then I thought that
Giving fire through all my being
Such thoughts would pour forth their power.
And I was certain
That the power of sensual vision
Could only blossom
Through such fire.
And I wanted to sense
That artfully moving
This fire would guide
The dexterity of my hands.
But what was supposed to carry me
Towards realities,
It took from me
What I had,
And the power of the highest life
Became the breath of death within me.
Whether I should doubt,
Whether believe in the
High proclamation—
Even this I can no longer
Think with clarity today.
I see that the world I sensed can live,
For in you it lives before me,
But death came to me,
When I began to warm my soul
To the being that in you
Formed the power of the new word.
And I myself lack the strength
To love you.
1. WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
I spoke untruths,
I wanted to deny,
That such words were comforting
And often spoke to my soul
To itself.
For they justify
That my thinking is
Repelled by
What I nevertheless like.
And as a man
Who has let two decades longer
Of life's stream
Pass him by
Than you, he may well
Attenuate a little
What you have so confidently put forward.
Surely there are moments for your soul, too,
In which it shudders
When a dark figure senses it,
Which, as the origin of its being,
Oppresses it like a nightmare.
And when all thoughts
Morphine promising certain effect
Bounces insubstantially off the dark being
That brought us into existence:
Yes, then we feel:
How meaningless the meaning of certain thinking is,
It proves to be like useless metal,
To enforce the flowing sea of life.

LILY:
I have had to recognize for years,
That my way of living the word,
Has a scorching effect on people,
Who trustingly enter the circles of my life.
I must see how life-giving
It penetrates all strata of humanity,
How differently the paths of existence
People walk,
Each of them understanding in their own way
What speaks fruitfully to their hearts.
But if some want to live by my side
What they otherwise so wonderfully cultivate,
They die of hopes and goals.
And there must be a highest for them
No less than what is highest for me.
In truth, only a terrible counter-image
Is revealed of this.
In you, my friend,
The most terrible is revealed.
I thought in the warmth of my heart
To immerse you in what should carry you,
But my warmth
Became the opposite in you.

1. WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
   So one has
   Spent the long, beautiful years of one's life
   Recognizing
   What, as the fruit of a thousand years
   human thought
   knocks at our innermost being.
   In the fresh vigor of youth
   one grasped what
   through the turning of the times
   people had achieved as ideals.
   And what had been conquered on school benches
   and slowly matured through experience
   And what had slowly matured as experience.
   However, upon closer reflection,
   It became apparent
   That what had been achieved
   Barely touched the heart's longings.
   The most powerful thoughts,
   Which originate from searching human minds,
   Seemed to provide answers
   To many questions,
   But when they wanted to approach
   Feelings, they were weak.
   And when they were supposed to be
   Guiding stars for desires,
   Then their powerlessness became fully apparent;
   And the excessive power of old habits,
   The secret power of tradition First image
   Took humans into custody.
   And now the new proclamation steps before the soul,
   Admittedly didactic,
   But as if with the vitality
   It seems to encompass
   The entire network of thought
   And to shape character,
   Attacking the innermost being of man.
   I have learned to think differently through many things;
   To be able to be different seems to me
   Possible only through such revelation.
   It seems right to me that teachings
   Are shadows against life,
   And that the essence of man
   Remains a shadow itself, if it
   Indulges only in ideas, far removed from deeds.
   But here words themselves seem to be life
   And teachings seem to be a weaving force.
   So it seems to me when I consider
   The effect on some,
   Whom I see standing in the light
   Of what is nothing to me
   Like one worldview among many.
   To us, who have matured
   In a different way of thinking,
   Such an effect seemed explainable only
   Where overheated sectarian spirit
   Lulling the souls
   Poured over the people.
   But here one is far removed from all sectarianism.
   One speaks to reason and spirit.
   But through them one finds
   The noble fire of the heart;
   Even the strongest powers of the will.
   And not in overheated verbiage,
   Which with many words
   Always drips the same self-evident,
   Comfortable things into undemanding souls,
   Such an effect is achieved. —
   I must admit that thoughts
   More subtle and comprehensive at the same time,
   Than we ever find in our philosophies,
   Form the foundations here.
   And that nothing places such demands on thinking and feeling
   As what we see growing up
   On our soil.
   But for me, experience
   Cannot be what it is for so many.
   It throws some off track,
   Gives others joyful hope and security in life.
   Gives joyful hope and security to others.
   But I have learned too much
   Not to know
   That somewhere the crack must gape.
   I see the effect;
   But I cannot
   Believe the cause to be true.
   I want to understand,
   Understand with everything I have brought with me
   From hot striving for clear fruit.
   It is as if, no matter how much I want to surrender myself completely to this labyrinth,
   Everywhere - as if my critical mind
   Were being repelled
   As something that this world
   Cannot bear within itself.
   Cannot bear within itself. First image

2. WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
   I must, in the fullest sense,
   Confess myself
   To what was last said.
   It even seems to me
   As if we must exist more strongly
   On the strictest denial of this way of thinking.
   We should not consider
   Only the value of high ideas and ideals,
   Which the thinking being can give birth to.
   We must examine whether the foundation is solid.
   And the foundation of this edifice
   Is fragile, wherever one grasps it.
   Admittedly, no one knows where the source of thought springs from
   And where the foundation of existence is laid.
   As if from the unknown,
   The nature of things
   And human existence seem to reveal themselves. —
   But we only have certainty in life
   When we trust our senses
   And the reliable revelation of experience.
   Our reason points us in that direction;
   And if we cease
   To follow our reason,
   We sink into uncertainty.
   This teaching denies
   The sure foundation of experience;
   This view confuses
   The firm providence of thought.
   People who, through true support,
   Want to build their way of life,
   Must not allow themselves to be blinded
   By fanciful dreams
   And figments of the imagination.

LILY:
Little is concealed
In the circle of serious thinkers
Of a woman's judgment.
I have seen,
Since I have served for ten years
The lively research,
Which is to be the source
Of future human deeds,
More of bleeding hearts,
More of longing souls,
More of broken souls,
Than in other circumstances
Is even imagined.
But it can hardly be formed into concepts,
As they are now known,
What my soul sees alive.
I appreciate the flight of your high ideals
I appreciate the flight of your high ideals
And the proud certainty of your knowledge.
I know that at your feet
Sits year after year
An exquisite audience,
And that your books
Flow forth for countless souls
The most beautiful news of wonderful people.
And I also know
That if you continue on your path,
You will bring many gifts
From your sanctuary
To suffering humanity.
But neither of you realize
That the demands of new times
Are written in the heavens
In mysterious signs.
New life is needed by the aged
tree of humanity;
And if you live
even in the safest of circumstances
according to old habits
and find only what the old urges you to do,
you will care for the bark of the tree,
but see its living marrow die.

1. WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
   I have seen refreshment flow from my words
   Into the hearts of many a student.
   Many today struggle in the hard fight of existence,
   Pondering from morning to night
   Over difficult calculations,
   And when they have leisure
   In the rush of a useful life,
   He remembers how long ago
   I opened up the poet's soul to him,
   And this is sunshine for him
   In his difficult life.
   Many students have become my friends;
   In them I could see
   How the goal of my striving
   Continues to prove itself.
   I do not believe my life is lost,
   Even if the nature of the new spirit
   Does not fit into my way of thinking.
   So I may hope
   That for times to come
   A part of human destiny
   May be determined unassumingly
   By my kind of work. First picture

LILY:
You need not take anything
From your words,
Even if the flight of the new spirit
Seizes your spirit,
And your part,
Instead of closing itself off
In a narrow circle,
Joined the whole of life,
The light pours over everything,
Because it wants to flow out into the universe.

1. WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
   Uncomfortable seems to me
   The dazzling dream light of your speech.
   In a narrow circle
   Must strive,
   Who wants to strive for the salvation of the whole
   With more certain strength.
   The forces that should add
   The fruit of my labor
   To the whole of humanity's welfare,
   I can leave them untouched.
   The whole has always accepted
   What was useful to the individual.

LILY:
That is just the old habit of thinking,
And the world will have to find itself
In other paths of ideas.

1ST WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
At least to me it seems
One-sided, the spiritual current
That you serve.
I heard a lot about lofty ideas today,
About spirit beings and soul worlds.
You gathered us here,
To be in a world,
So it seems,
That could be worlds away
From the worlds that lie just a few steps
Out there beyond the windows.
So little sounds even
A reflection of it.
And yet how significant
It was just this morning
In the city where we dream here.
After weeks of stormy speeches,
After terrible turmoil
Of endless passions
A law has been passed today,
By which the armies of starving people
Will look forward to Sunday
With happier hearts in the future.
It seems to me that more of life's
Current truly flows
Than in the halls
Where even the most luminous ideas
About ghostly beings and the depths of the soul
About spiritual beings and the depths of the soul resound.

1. WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
   And it seems insubstantial here,
   That one of my teachers
   After years of research
   In a life of renunciation
   Finally found a means
   To alleviate a suffering
   Which has brought certain death
   To thousands so far.
   And finally, if one wants to see
   Where life flourishes and the future shines,
   Then look at the man
   Who dwells here in our midst,
   From whose mouth one hardly hears
   A word during long evenings,
   And who from morning till night
   Stands in the creative space.
   A man of pure will and strength.
   Where others speak, he acts.
   Many spoke over there.
   He remained silent; in his ideas
   The blessed work
   Of tomorrow's day certainly lives on in advance.

1st WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
My young friend
Has just praised your work.
It has long been my desire
To see at your place of work
What is of such benefit
To countless people.

KING OF WILL:
It will be my pleasure
To see you once at my place.

2nd WILL-O'-THE-WISP:
May I also join my friend?
Even though my work follows different paths
Than those shown at your place of work,
I will nevertheless be deeply interested
I will nevertheless be
deeply interested
in seeing a technically perfect
mechanism.

KING OF WILL:
When may I welcome you gentlemen to my home?

The man with the lamp enters, and Lily takes a few steps toward him.

LILY:
I have often heard about you.
And that is why today is important to me,
This, our first encounter.
But so far, I have not heard a word
From your mouth.
And yet I have been told
That there is so much to learn from you.

MAN WITH THE LAMP:
Who told you about me?

LILY:
A man often comes here,
Who has known you for many years;
Only today he is not with us,
He always assured me,
That you are his true teacher.

MAN WITH THE LAMP:
I only know that I myself
Am a completely uneducated man.

LILY:
He told me about it,
How you explained to him
The essence of plants,
As if the spirit of the world itself
Shone from every form.

MAN WITH THE LAMP:
Then surely this spirit must be hidden within me.
For I can only say
What lives in my heart.

LILY:
But my friend recognized
The meaning of many deep mysteries
Only after your heart
Interpreted them for him.
LILY:
The deeper meaning of the law is fulfilled in your fate.
You still have only to learn
What your life should be.
You are deceived by the appearance of error.
You must recognize
That there is a higher meaning
To a human destiny than the everyday.
If you only recognize the latter,
Karma is not yet what it should be to you.
Countless others may judge as you do
At this moment;
But you must not.
If our insights
Only change our views,
They would be nothing.
They are only something
When life reshapes them.
When suffering becomes
A healing essence
And joys spring forth
From entirely new sources.

MAN WITH THE LAMP:
It may be that in his wisdom he sees
What I dream
And speak as if I myself did not know.

LILY:
He told me how he
Accompanied you on your walks,
Where you gathered herbs
And roots,
Which you procure for the druggists.
And he told me
How you led him
To forbidden places,
Where on hard rock slabs
In the ground, barely covered by soil,
Strange plant forms sprouted;
And how in wild storms
Thunder and lightning
Discharged themselves there,
But differently than
People usually see them.
Like the secret revelation of the elements
Resounded in distant rocky heights.
And many other things...
............

MAN WITH THE LAMP:...
Oh, it sounded
So different from what your friend
Spoke to me of these things,
When I myself saw them
Again and again on my quiet wanderings.
But I hardly speak to myself,
When what I have seen
Lives in my soul.
But I have often found
That what I have seen
Gives power to my words,
To comfort those who are deeply afflicted,
To solve riddles,
Which were never riddles to me myself.

KING OF FEELING:
What you say is so clear to me.
Many words make some people
Grasp the meaning of the world's mystery.
But thinking, they will never grasp it.
In feeling lies the light
That shines into the depths.
The outer world may search
And penetrate the mind,
But only deep feeling
Can sense what lives within.

MAN WITH THE LAMP:
I have often found people of your kind,
Who had open hearts and minds
For my visions,
But if I wanted to be like them,
My soul would remain empty.

LILY:
Through you, a glorious image appears before me.
The warmth of one feeling
flows through the other's
revelation and shines
in the power of his words.

KING OF WILL:
It lives in both
The same primal force of being,
In things it is creative essence,
In people clarifying wisdom.
The light of knowledge
Is itself a creative force,
As it has created
Through the ages
Being after being,
So it reflects the reasons of things
In many ways in human souls.
The wise man sees it in ideas,
The artist in colors and forms,
The worker lets it
Reign in his limbs
Creative will,

SNAKE:
Such speech could never
spring from my own soul,
But when I hear it,
It runs through all my veins.
I know its power.
I hardly desire it myself.
But it gives me strength,
As I need it,
When my path leads me
Through life's heavy misery,
Which strikes me everywhere
In my varied profession.

LILY:
I know your noble soul
And know how you live only
For others. Hundreds
Have you cared for in their hour of suffering,
To thousands you were an angel of comfort.

SNAKE:
It would deeply shame me,
Should I hear such things elsewhere
From another's mouth.
For it has always been clear to me,
I only succeed in what I
Do not speak of myself,
What remains unknown to the world.

WIFE OF THE MAN WITH THE LAMP to the lily:
That one can enter
At any hour
And in any presence
Of my bright friend, I know.
I seek my husband
With deepest sorrow in my heart.
I have experienced many blows of fate.
But today, the heaviest weighs on me.
Our son was the light
that carried our hope into the future.
He was a golden child from the very first day,
and even when we tormented ourselves
with hard, worrisome work
Through the weary days,
Our hearts were allowed to beat joyfully,
As we thought of our child's future.
And then he came home
As if paralyzed in all his limbs,
Broken in body and soul;
He stood before his stern examiners,
They had fed him for many years
From their deceptive source of wisdom
And when he was supposed to answer,
His answers seemed to them
Only madness

LILY:
My friend, your son is
Made of different metal
Than that which melts in the crucibles
Of those who reject him.
Dead wisdom killed him;
He is one of the souls
That will be warmed
By the wisdom that appears only as a dream
Appears today to those
Who want to proclaim errant wisdom
To hungry hearts.
I know the time will come
When people of the sort
That your child is
Will receive the stream of life
From our fountain.

MAN:
Stay with me a while longer;
I am anxious—so anxious.

LILY:
Such is life.
There is truly no need to eavesdrop
On the changing of the day;
Souls lie open
In every word,
And to the bottom of the heart
One looks when they flow together
The types, which only repeat themselves
In the individuals who walk outside.

HUMAN:
My soul was divided,
While all this was going on here.
I grasped only a dull fragment of life.
In between, images of my own past
Came to mind.
I thought of the times
When I came to you. First image
Before that, I lived in my parents' house;
Pride filled my father
Every time a friend
Told him what a promising son
I was growing up to be.
And when I then
Came to art school,
People always waited impatiently For the holidays
To see how far their darling had come.
Mother and siblings spoke
With grandiose words
In their circles about my talent.
I myself was full of hope.
Day after day, I felt my powers growing.
And the blossoming of artistry
Lived in my luminous dreams.
Then, as if by chance, I heard
Of the lofty teachings,
Which seemed to me to sound from the depths of the spirit.
I could no longer escape them.
I sought their source.
For a moment, I thought of fertilizing my creative power
With the life
That seemed to give me life.
I found you.
You lived in my painter's dreams;
You guided my hand with your words
Of enthusiasm,
And my heart beat fast,
Could I think
That in my forms, my colors
Would speak in another way
The lessons of life that I heard every day.
I followed the advice of my guide.
In the silence of my soul
I sought to awaken
The source of slumbering powers.
And as I hoped,
The power became ever weaker;
My hand ever more uncertain.
But I hoped—I was told
Told—so it must be.
After three years had passed
At your side,
My mother died;
And I traveled to my homeland.
I did not recognize my parents' house again;
What was once familiar to me was now strange;
The people were foreign
And their whole existence was foreign.

LILY:
Why, O friend, do you now burden
Your soul
With memories that you often
Told me about.
I always told you,
When the black power of such memories
Rises in your heart,
That a point of being
On our path is still unconquered
By you
Despite your beautiful striving.
Your soul was at the point
Of its development
Where it must be completely grasped
By the luminous forces
Creative power.
In your inner center
Only it may live first.
And only when it illuminates
All other members of your being,
Do they glow with new life.
Otherwise, they die within you
More and more each day
In this life.
You will have everything again,
If only that one thing
Does not become powerless within you.

HUMAN:
I have often spoken to you
Of everything that separated me
From people and things
That I loved and that loved me.
But there is one thing I have not told you.
And it is precisely this that
Filled my nights with fear,
That filled my quietest hours with terror.
I have left my homeland,
But those who loved me
Have, after years of heavy sorrow,
Been reconciled to my path.
And without sorrow I can think
Of the place I left behind;
Of the hopes I disappointed.
But what I have not yet told you
Is that I poured my expectations
Into a second heart,
Which eagerly awaited the hour
When I should return.
It wanted to hold me back
When I came to my mother's funeral.
The cause of unspeakable suffering
Was my new path in life.
And every tear that I
Saw shed at that time
Burned in my soul
And creeps like an evil demon
Into the thoughts through which
I search for the bright heights.
Often I have said to myself:
I will bear my own fate with serenity,
But that this has dragged a second person
Into the abyss with me,
Brings horror into my striving,
It turns everything into a consuming fire;
It makes my innermost being tremble in terror
When I am supposed to be calm.

And now go in peace to the one
Who shall guide you on the path of light.
Today, he will have important things
To sink into the depths of your soul.

1st GIRL:
It seems to me as if my soul
Has always known what this realm of ideas
Has shown me as the meaning of the past
And the goal for the future.
Doubts never tormented my soul,
Which lives in others, consuming them;
But infinitely blissful
Is the new life,
That comes to me from these worlds.

2nd GIRL:
Nor does it seem new to me,
What is so doubtful to many;
As if I had always thought it,
So it seems to me that everything
lies in the words of this teaching of life.

3rd GIRL:
I owe my strength
to the messenger who speaks to me,
as if other teachings were impossible.
I would be incapable of anything
if what flows from
this life were not true.