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    Lucifer -- A Theological Tragedy: A Play
    Lucifer -- A Theological Tragedy: A Play
    Lucifer -- A Theological Tragedy: A Play
    Ebook170 pages1 hour

    Lucifer -- A Theological Tragedy: A Play

    By George Santayana

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    In this play Lucifer sits on a cold desolate planet. There he is the leader of fools and criminals; but Lucifer is very different from that wayward mob. Lucifer’s only crime is that he refuses to bow to any god or spirit. For this crime Lucifer is banished to a desolate rock of a planet. There Lucifer is truly alone; for he has no equal among the fools, common criminals and the wayward. The characters in this play include The Risen Christ, Lucifer, Zeus, Hermes and a dozen others.


    Remarkable for the high level of its thought and its poetical expression as for the magnitude of its plan.—The Harvard Graduates’ Magazine

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlien Ebooks
    Release dateJun 9, 2023
    ISBN9781667625607
    Lucifer -- A Theological Tragedy: A Play
    Author

    George Santayana

    George Santayana, born Jorge Augustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana (1863–1952), was a Spanish-American philosopher, novelist, poet, and essayist. He is best known for his witty aphorisms, especially the phrase, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Santayana was born in Spain, but was raised and educated in the United States. He attended Harvard College and later taught philosophy there. During this time he wrote many of his seminal philosophical works, including The Sense of Beauty, The Life of Reason, and The Realms of Being. In 1912, Santayana moved to Europe, where he devoted his life to writing both fiction and nonfiction.

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      Book preview

      Lucifer -- A Theological Tragedy - George Santayana

      LUCIFER

      A THEOLOGICAL TRAGEDY

      LUCIFER

      A Theological Tragedy

      BY

      GEORGE  SANTAYANA

      COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY

      HERBERT S. STONE & CO

      INVOCATION

      Ye whose lost voices, echoing in this rhyme,

      My tongue usurps, forgive if I have erred.

      Not as ye uttered, but as I have heard,

      I spell your meanings in an evil time.

      Mock not the hope your conference sublime

      Hath in the vigils of an exile stirred,

      But let the music of my woven word

      Waft to your shades the sweetness of your prime.

      For ye have passed beyond the gate of day

      Into the twilight of a paler morn,

      And hidden beauty from the world, and shorn

      The mortal eye of its supernal ray.

      Take, till I come, the homage of my lay,

      Nor hold the pilgrim of your night in scorn.

      DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

      THE RISEN CHRIST

      MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL

      SAINT PETER

      ANGELS AND SAINTS

      LUCIFER

      MEPHISTOPHELES

      AZAZEL

      BELIAL

      TUREL

      DEVILS AND WITCHES

      ZEUS

      HERMES

      ARES

      HERA

      ATHENA

      APHRODITE

      GODS, GODDESSES AND

      ATTENDANTS

      ACT FIRST

      A Mountain Top.   Below, a Cave.   Night.

      HERMES (Alighting)

      What star art thou and by what god beguiled

      To wander in this heaven

      Far from the serene and mild

      Circle of the sisters seven?

      O blasted rock, untenanted and wild,

      By lightnings riven,

      Receive thou me,

      O goddess, if the Pleiad lost thou be,

      Lost too and driven

      By viewless currents of the ethereal sea.

      (Kisses the ground.)

      For Earth, my mother, while her child

      Wings these frozen spaces drear,

      Oh, how otherwise enisled

      In her blue and liquid sphere

      Swims, forgetting grief, and sleeps

      Wrapped in the fleeces of her atmosphere!

      Above Olympus, Phœbe dim

      Patiently shines the while, and keeps

      Still watch in heaven; while below the rim

      Of ocean now her brother’s steeds uprear

      Their fiery manes apace, and dawn is near.

      But here no dawn is, and no morning star;

      The suns that nearest are

      Show like a twinkling host, and peer

      Through the cold night, immeasurably far.

      Here who can dwell? If there be deities

      Whose body stone, whose spirit silence is,

      Here they might slumber frozen. Wrinkled brow

      And cloven sides of mountains, heaped up rocks

      Toys of young giants long since dead, and thou

      Horrid abyss that meteors hot might plough

      From Heaven falling, and ye vales, by shocks

      Of earthquake split in snowy chasms, Oh speak,

      If ye have tongues or any ghostly life!

      The stranger do not wrong,

      A god, though seeming weak,

      Who prays you, with the winds too long at strife,

      For shelter from this night and stinging thong

      Of sleet. Oh, answer me, if any banished soul

      Haunts you, and guards from harm the frozen pole.

      LUCIFER

      (Rising from a rocky pinnacle upon which he has been seated)

      Nay! Not a banished soul. What seems forlorn,

      Hermes, to thee, another loveth best.

      In this crag, the throne of scorn,

      Hath a bolder spirit rest.

      HERMES

      Thou who callest me by name,

      Large spectre plumèd for the eagle’s flight,

      Let me be thy guest this night

      If kindness move thy breast, or any flame

      Leap on thy hearth, that henceforth, ever bright,

      On this hoarse and angry coast,

      May gleam the beacon of its sacred light

      Where a god, by fortune hurled,

      Found an altar and a host

      High on the utmost headland of the world.

      LUCIFER (Advancing)

      Stranger, look upon this face,

      Look long, nor let thy fond heart rashly speak.

      Seest thou mortal blood within this cheek?

      Do not think thy brother’s grace

      Befits all spirits. Some there be too high

      To wear outward glory still;

      For it passes nature’s skill

      To paint reason to the eye

      Or cast in mould indomitable will.

      My hand drew yon starry girth

      About the middle of the hollow sky;

      I have stood a witness by

      At the founding of the earth;

      I have seen the twelve gods’ birth,

      Alas! and I wait to see them die.

      HERMES

      Imperious spirit, I would not offend.

      Thy heart knows if this be truth,

      And mine eyes, on thee gazing, comprehend

      That thou art a god in sooth.

      Be then gracious, and befriend

      The stranger, and beside thee grant me rest,

      That I gain strength unto my journey’s end,

      And see again Olympus’ gleaming crest

      And the brothers that I love.

      (Embraces the knees of Lucifer)

      LUCIFER

      But what error brought the dove

      To the eagle’s wintry nest?

      HERMES

      I wandered long upon an idle quest

      And found no other isle in all the deep.

      LUCIFER

      Luckless for the child of Jove

      To set his wingèd foot upon this steep.

      No vines upon so wild a ruin creep,

      No Nereid sports in such an icy cove.

      But, come. There is a cavern in the hill.

      HERMES

      ’Twill be a covert from this piercing air.

      LUCIFER

      My servant’s fire shall medicine thy chill.

      Perhaps thy hunger will not scorn our fare.

      This way. ’Tis dark along the icy stair.

      (Gives Hermes his hand)

      HERMES

      Art thou a serpent, that thy flesh is cold?

      LUCIFER

      They call me so. My blood was hot of old.

      HERMES

      But froze from breathing long this cruel storm?

      LUCIFER

      Nay, gentle Hermes. It was not the wind

      Which only bites because the heart is warm.

      Mine cannot suffer. In my youth I sinned

      And loved the soft caresses of the world.

      Now I am free. I have forsworn delight

      Which makes us slaves.

      HERMES

      Which makes us slaves.The chill of wintry night

      Keeps germs from budding; with no leaf unfurled

      Dies the imprisoned deity within.

      How, then, shouldst thou be free beneath the blight

      Of this sharp flaw?

      LUCIFER

      Of this sharp flaw?I can be free from sin.

      (They reach the cave)

      HERMES

      O welcome glow! My brother’s nimble spirit

      Even to this region creeps, ingenious fire,

      And leaps to meet me, conscious that I came.

      But who is he I see in silence near it?

      LUCIFER

      An angel once, now guardian of this flame,

      Still studious, as thou seest, of the lyre.

      He mixed the draught and heaped the driftwood up

      That we have light and comfort while we sup.

      (They sit down)

      HERMES

      A subtle servitor, that serves desire.

      So watching for the dawn before the fight

      Soldiers might bivouac.

      LUCIFER

      Soldiers might bivouac.Stranger, fill thy cup

      And wrap thee in this cloak, if coarse attire

      Can please thee, being warm, on such a night.

      Guests come not often hither, for the sky

      Grudges me chance of hospitality

      Lest that small virtue in me wound its sight.

      HERMES

      But is the sky thine enemy?

      LUCIFER

      But is the sky thine enemy?Thou seest

      It doth not flatter. Yet ’tis the ally

      Of one that wrongs us both.

      HERMES

      Of one that wrongs us both.Why, if thou fleest

      Into the tempest, on thee it must blow.

      LUCIFER

      Ah, if thou knewest!

      HERMES

      Ah, if thou knewest!Art thou here confined?

      LUCIFER

      By a great sorrow and a tameless mind.

      HERMES

      A sorrow?

      LUCIFER

      A sorrow?Listen, if thou needs must know.

      There is among the stars one greatest star

      Which showeth dark, and none may see it shine.

      Men know it by their hope; a hand divine

      Must darkly lead them thither from afar.

      But once within its bounds eternal light

      Streams on their ampler souls, and there they are

      What upon earth they would be. Of this realm

      An ancient God is king, majestic, wise,

      Of triple form and all-beholding eyes.

      The terror of his glance can overwhelm

      The sense, as lightning when

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