Area in the forest. The entire scene, second act

(It sounds from springs and rocks):

O man, recognize yourself.

JOHANNES: I have been hearing them for years,
The words heavy with meaning.
They sound to me from air and water,
They resound from the depths of the earth.
Like the growth of the mighty oak
Into the small seed
Crowded together,
So finally rolls in
Into this cruelly high word,
What seemed comprehensible to my thinking
About the weaving of the elements,
About spirits and souls,
About the passage of time and eternity:
It lives in these sounds
O man, know thyself. (Echo)
And now — it becomes
Terribly alive within.
Around me, within me, there is nothing.
It is all just this one word:
O man, know thyself. (Echo)
It shatters me into a thousand beings.
I follow the day
And transform myself into night.
I must follow the earth,
As it revolves around the sun.
I roll in the thunder,
I flinch in the lightning,
I am — I am already no more.
The shell of my own body,
It is far away from me.
But I live as another being.
"He brought me bitter hardship;
I trusted him so completely.
He left me alone in my grief.
The cold earth shall have me,
Since he robs me of the warmth of life."
Oh, I am she whom I left behind.
I must suffer her torment.
Knowledge has given me strength,
To carry my self into another self.
Oh, terrible word! Ever new horrors
Resound to me from you:
Oh, human, recognize yourself. (Echo)
But how, in my own body,
Do I recognize myself again?
The human form has been taken from me.
Devoured by lust and greed,
A demon-like creature.
It is I — all doubt vanishes.
It is the hour
When I greedily crave
All the pleasures of all worlds.
I must be devoured:
By the wildness of my own being.
In my veins are consuming fires
The words of suns and of earths;
They live in my pulse,
They beat in my heart.
And even in my own thoughts,
I feel the weaving of strange worlds.
These are the fruits of the word:
O man, recognize yourself. (Echo)
But from the abyss —
What creature looks at me.
It stares at me gruesomely.
I feel chains
That bind me to you.
Prometheus was not so firmly
Chained to the rocks of the Caucasus
As I am to you.
Who are you, terrifying creature?
O man, know thyself. (Echo)
O — it is I myself.
Knowledge, it binds
Me to you, monster.
I wanted to escape you.
The worlds blinded me,
Into which my folly fled;
And so blinded am I again
In my blind soul. (Maria enters.)
O man, recognize yourself. (Echo) —
My friend, you here!

MARIA: I was looking for you.
Although I know
How much you love solitude,
After so many people's opinions
Flooded your soul,
As they assailed you today,
My heart still urges me
To find you now,
Since Benedictus' words
Have wrung such heavy words from you.

JOHANNES: How dear to me is solitude!
O friend, that too is now over.
It was painful to me,
What sociability first did to me;
But it was a shadow,
When I compare it to that storm,
That solitude then brought me.
Until now, being lonely was the cure,
When life's turmoil disturbed me,
But now even this
Has been taken from me.
Just now I could see
How loneliness drives me
Into all worlds, all beings;
How it snatches me away from myself,
To plunge me back into myself.
I have lost humanity's last refuge,
I have lost solitude.

MARIA: I must repeat the words to you,
Only Benedictus can help you.
We must listen to his wisdom.
And should we lose
All other supports,
His word will
Rebuild them all. —

JOHANNES: Mary, do you know
What was going on inside me
Before I saw you here.
It has become a heavy burden
For you too, noble friend.
But it is far from your nature
To grasp through experience
What has shattered me so completely.
You can ascend to luminous heights,
Sink into the most painful darkness,
You will always be yourself.
I would have to be able to believe
That nothing is the origin of beings,
If I could cherish the hope
That out of nothingness,
Which I experience within myself,
A human being should ever become.
I myself am nothing anymore.
I heard in our circle today
One and the other speak.
In each I saw my own being.
I had to stammer with one
Prayers in the monk's cell
And transform myself with him.
I heard in the other's soul
The fairy tale words of Felicia.
In every moment
The power of my own being died,
To reappear in a foreign life.
Thus I expand into worldly existence
The power of my own soul,
Always dying to myself.
O leave me, Maria.
I often called you.
You were my life
And the meaning of life,
And now I beg
As a favor from you:
Leave me, oh leave me.

MARIA: I will, but
You must promise me
That in the next hour
We will meet again at Benedictus.

JOHANNES: What says within me
That I could not see her?
It was not myself.
It is the demon,
To whom I am bound.
He speaks through me.

THE ECHO: He speaks through you:
O man, recognize yourself.