Cesare Borgia

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Contents

A TRAGEDY IN ONE ACT By ARTHUR SYMONS

THE PERSONS

CESAKE BORGIA, Cardinal of Valencia SANCIA, Princess of Aragon MiCHELOTTO, Ccsarc's Servant LUCREZIA BORGIA, the Pope's Daughter GIOVANNI BORGIA, Dukc of Sandia

SCENE ONE A Room of CESARE in the Vatican Enter cesare and sancia

Why is our flesh more cruel than man's love?

There is no love that can outmeasure love.

I only know I am a tortured thing And none of all the casuists of souls Can set me dancing in the naked air.

I am no Casuit, nor are my nerves tortured As evil spirits are.

An evil spirit

Burns in you, Cesare. See, how it burns in me!

Hate not the Beast, that laughs out of the Flesh! Why do you touch your burning web of hair?

Do I? Sheer nerves, my dear! Rome's hot enough For our blood's heat to be June's heat. I beat My feet on the floor, as if one dances.

What is obscure and inevitable in ourselves

Comes not from dancing nor from dreaming: dreams

Are the mirror of our consciousness; the dance

The rhythm of our being : but our Fate

Entangles us in a net we can't escape from.

This network that knots my hair — why subtilise Beyond it?

To mock mine own illusions.

There's something monstrous in your kind of beauty. Yet Beauty, when accursed, becomes less monstrous, And so more poisonous.

Am I a poison-flower

Grown in a soil only weeds grew in before

Some Satan planted my seed?

Start not, Sancia,

At the shadow the setting sun casts on me — the shadow

Of a mere leaf in the wind.

And if I start?

I tell you, Cesare, there's a wind in my heart

That will not let me rest; there are great wings

Of birds that beat against the winds; storms

Everlasting and the unresting waters; loves

That are more drowsy than the bees at noon

That have trafficked on the heath and sucked the

heather: And I am all of these and none of these.

Find out the dancing measures in our blood And we'll not blush'.

If blushes do become you — Blush.

I am neither sad nor am I sorry We thus have met. Sadness befits not love; But since the moon is far and your strange face No fairer than the moon's, let all the winds Invade our spirits; but, when we have drunk wine, Always the dregs remain.

Of all sad songs

This is the saddest men ever sang. Come now,

There are no ghosts to go along with us; And you that have so many mistresses May tire of me that am your Sancia, Your Sancia of the minute.

CESAKE

There's no jesting-time

From this till midnight and when midnight's over The jests begin: we shall have some wondrous jesting When craft enters your eyes : you have more craft Than the street-girls in Naples.

You think of — what?

Of nothing.

Nay, of Giovanni.

And if I choose to love him? As one tries To love a thing one hates when one's in bed And so turns on his pillow and forgets And, waking, might remember either dream. You might as well ask of a burning flame To turn aside from burning not in love The wood next it on the hearth.

Do you fear God?

I use his name, I neither fear nor love God, more than mine own Sire; who, sick at heart. Fears God; and, with heart at ease after our revels, Loves God. Our flesh must sleep to live. I sweep Certain things to sideways, thus!

He unsheathes his dagger, turns his wrist and

pierces a hole in the wall.

Madness and nerves.

In these I praise you, Cesare; as for Lucrezia,

I honour her; yea, I am honourless,

And yet I love Lucrezia.

One must love her

In her strange tragic beauty; fires of Carthage Burn in her eyes and Matho makes her mad Because she has given him wine, and madness lies Wherever poisoned love is mixed with hate.

There may be treason in you against me, Cesare!

You might think twice before you think to say it And I think thrice before I answer you.

You cannot hurt me much, not much, Cesare, That burn two ways at once.

One mine own way?

Perhaps : but that's no matter. Let it pass As stolen kisses. We are not here for nothing. I swear to you with all body, Cesare ! We are watched, we are watched.

The Devil watches all things,

Waking and sleeping. He outwatches God

Whose heaven is not more lonely than his hell.

Night for the blood of animals, and the day

For men to crush each other; certain hours

For strategy : then the blood-beaten pulses

Of the world — ours, that is — as it reels into night.

Or staggers into day through the red mists.

These shining wings of words as gaudy poppies That flame at noon serve you.

As for Giulia,

I never saw such hair in all my life,

Pure red gold hair down to her feet when she undoes it.

Satan my father knows what beauty is.

So Giulia, the adulteress : what else In this so moral Rome?

Why, what else? Giulia

Holds in her little hands the spiritual head

Of the world's Church.

Purple paid for her shame.

It marvels me

You never loved Giovanni's fair bedfellow —

One sleeps with shame — Maria Enriquez.

Love her or like her. Leave the creature alone. Am I not Sancia, Princess of Aragon? And who is she? Some say a household rat, But I say no. Yet I have a mind, I say, To let some honest creature such as her Stumble into a deep grave.

Leave alone honesty.

You make me laugh. Make me a toy. Cesare, I'm a wicked child — such children love strange toys; And mine must be a cruel-featured idol

Made after Artemis who hangs on the horns Of the Crescent moon, mocking her own image As she swung in the wind there.

Satan's child you are not, In spite of what I might be. Satan makes Strange mistakes sometimes; and he gave me gifts God never thought of.

What gifts had he to give you, Cesare?

Mysterious, merciless, monstrous things,

And tales of those who had played chess on many nights.

Waiting and waiting for the stroke of a sword.

SANCIA [^slowly]

You mean, there may be playing of chess to-night. Or next night, to be decided by the sword.?

Nay, I mean nothing. When shall I sleep with you Next?

When the half-moon shines over Rome.

The night after to-morrow.

Enter michelotto I never sent for you.

Pardon me, my lord.

Pardon? You mean you have strangled — what do I

know?

Some lewder rogue than you are.

I have not strangled Anyone. Only His Holiness the Pope Bade me say he desires you come to him. The case being urgent.

Urgent? What do you mean?

My words have no other meaning.

I leave you in the care of — Michelotto !

Exit CESARE

Your name's more terrible than your reputation.

Mere stricken sounds upon a hollow drum A zany plays before a mountebank.

An elevated kind of criminal That has the knavery of evils?

Nearer the mark.

Are you not Cesare's damned soul?

For him I'd dare damnation !

I admire you.

I have some hates that hang about my throat —

No hates that you have strangled.

I strangle no hates

But I am paid to strangle hateful men.

Part of your business, of this trade of yours. And then — assassination !

Assassination ! Princess !

So did Aegisthus, the hateful, helping the hateful Clytemnestra, in the Tale that's on all tongues. A murder says one — a squabble before supper.

These were old wicked mountains in the air

That had the abhorred conscience of some murder.

And, what am I beside these? I exist.

"Naked as brown feet of unburied men,"

Someone said that; it means that burial

May not be needed. Ah, you chafe at this !

I speak of Cesare; yea, even at this time,

This most keen joint of time, when there's confusion

That might turn to worse than ruin, even God's wrath

Might turn not back, spare nothing: I ask of you:

Who knows what Cesare means .f^

I know not.

You know not?

SANCIA [^slowlyJi

Nay: only the benediction that he gave me One night after the wine.

Re-enter cesare

I caught one word. Enough: the Zodiac's changed!

Exit MICHELOTTO

Does God forgive ever?

God never. Do you forgive?

Can I forgive? Nay, in me all my desires Burn up each part and parcel of my life As if my feet trod down the infernal fires. And the Pope tires me.

Enter lucrezia

Does the Pope tire you, Cesare?

You start: your colour runs up like a maid's.

I would I were one; hey, you startled me, As one who has stolen a peach and drops it. The heat's intense.

Give me your fan, Sancia, I dropt mine. You laugh? Thanks. I were fain there were a toneless storm Murmuring, with wind behind it. How my heart beats. I can't keep quiet. Am I not beautiful. Sancia?

Beautiful.

She says it, Cesare,

Between her lips, just like some dainty word

You think might please a caged bird. The bird

Nods its head and hates its cage and you.

I must hate someone. There's no one here to hate.

Where's Giovanni?

He may be here to-night.

I saw him last enter Imperia's house

As I turned a corner. She leaned from a window; vine Crawled on her naked back; and she had seen him And laughed as some man caught her by her arms Behind her in the room. Such are bought kisses.

Bought kisses from a painted creature? There's

No symbol of the vine nor of the wine

But of the window and her naked back.

And then you hear her cry on God: "O hell!

What's left but hell, when I am but a name,

Who had such beauty, to be whirled with wind.

Hot wind in hell's intense heat? And all my spices

And all my vices gone ! And I that loved

Men's kisses more than life; to have come to shame.

And so die shamed." Cesare, you hear her cry!

So might Imperia when death comes on her And she lies wasted, and her beauty's vain As her face seen in her mirror.

I say to you, poured

On the ground like untasted water, after the wine Is tasted, such beauty might be, when desire Desires desire and that desire's denied.

Hopeless, estranged, unchanged.

What do you mean?

Nay, I mean nothing; any more than sleep Tells ever what it means.

To be estranged

Is what I want, who want so little else.

So Uttle else?

Do you think I want the world?

I want — I know not what; for all I have

Is given me : life and youth and health and beauty —

And riches and jewels and rings; these clothes I wear

This fan, not mine, I take from Sancia. Nay,

One's beauty is one's beauty.

Do you love, Lucrezia, Giovanni?

How you startle me, Sancia dear ! My blood stirs not at his name; only this fan Trembles a little : or is it the wind in the room That stirs it? In so much heat, how hot the wind, June's wind. Giovanni? Shameless you are, Sancia, Who ought to know —

Who ought to know too much?

Giovanni sacrifices to the rebellious angels.

How this heat tires me ! There are nets to weave Out of soft sleep and subtler scents to snare Youth that is so much younger than the world.

"Rebellious angels?" So, one sacrifices, Still, to the fallen gods?

Shed blood, my Sancia, May still be sacrificed.

In some cunning way, As look you, out of this my sinful soul. On those my sinful lips when, being vexed, They bite the blood?

A goodly bait to men.

God send me a better bait ! These Spaniards, now. Where are they?

They live with me.

They keep me waiting. An evil genius

Presided at my tragic birth, yet am I

Evil? My life shall be tragic; Spanish blood

Runs ever hotly in us, Cesare !

I know I shall be a mockery in men's ears

In women's mouths a scorn; a windy laughter,

A fire that flamed, a sail in a grey rain :

And this shall be my Dirge.

"Of what is't fools make such vain keeping?

Sin, their conception, their birth, weeping?

Their life, a general mist of error.

Their death, a hideous storm of terror."

Enter Giovanni

GIOVANNI [^sings mockingly]

"Their death, a hideous storm of terror!" I came light-hearted; now you dash my mirth As from Gian the jester might have in Verone At Can La Scala's Court, where Dante turned The fool's jest to a witty pun on words.

These are but senseless cries out of your mouth. Only, I seem to see a shadow slanting. That lengthens, and is thrusting out a foot That might be yours. Come you, aside with me.

Exeunt

SCENE TWO In the Vatican Enter pope Alexander and cesare borgia

There is a monstrous error in the world: Who shall deliver us from too much love Save the sunderer of hearts? This is not love. But some horrible conspiracy of things That casts one's days out like departing guests.

If there is anyone you love with rage, Who but Giulia Farnese? Her eyes and mouth Deny and invite. They say she is Christ's Bride, But when she dances she lures one: when she laughs She is the image of one who stands at the door Of a Tavern giving on a den of thieves.

I would that I were moral, Cesare,

That know myself abnormal; know that vice

Is simply vice, and, if there exists virtue

Here in these hot streets where the wanton women —

Go painted like the idolatrous images

That worship only the clang of metal; those

Have but brief lives, and thieve the lives of men.

Thieves that steal forth at night: none shall requite them. We are dramatic; poised on a point of time Not even poisonous. Last night that hot feast-room When Lucrezia was so pale, so strangely pale, And Sancia flushed with wine and lust of the flesh Stared down Giovanni with her treacherous eyes Where Vannozza was not, strike on all my senses As if the door of a furnace had been suddenly Opened in that brief, speechless minute, showing Glimpses of hell, and then as suddenly shut. And yet the feast went on.

The feast went on.

I had no fever, thought of no such things;

A conjuror might juggle in his hands

And so deceive you; there's no such deception

Left to us now.

None, none ! Are we not too naked

In all men's sight? Yea, God hath fashioned us

For other uses than these, for other means.

Do we not play into each other's hands.'*

I have no rival.

Nay, you have no rival.

So far you hold all your vices well in hand:

So far. I say no more. We have had content Content with our own selves. I say to you We shall soon move pity and terror.

One must act, Cesare.

And, after having mimed and acted, God's to be reckoned with.

Sublime you are not;

Shall God have ever pity of us, Cesare?

Site, if I see not as God or Satan might Myself, I find you, godless on your throne, A splendid strangling serpent of strange cunning Image of the pride, defiance, revolt and sin That makes the axles of the live earth turn — Coiling around some semblances of good, And venomously round semblances of evil.

So it might be, Cesare, so it might be.

I am I, yet I know not what I am

Some say of me — they may be right or wrong —

That in mine own self I possess the ignoblest

Vices whose heads have risen since Satan fell —

Crowned serpent of the nether clefts of Hell —

Out of the heaven he hated.

A word in your ear,

Sire. Pardon me, but has not Giovanni Accused you, accused me, with strange menaces Of incest with Lucrezia — hes more damnable Than truths on a Uar's tongue?

I curse not him

Yet. Such menaces are the DeviFs own

Inventions for the credulous ears of those

Whose tongues do lick up poison. It has been known

The pavement sinks under a woman's feet;

It has been known that limbs are easily

Contaminated; and that some, being foully tortured

Have eaten strange flesh. Such prodigious things

Breed more prodigious mixtures.

More prodigious

Than these there shall not be. Mere menaces Shall make us more merciless. Sweet Christ of mine, What shall I do for your sake.^* Some smell of blood Some dust that hurts me, some wind's thunderstorm. Some puddled rain-shallows : more teasing things Than these that bite and sting one : just for her Sake, Lucrezia's. Sire, her life's too flame-like And her desires consume her.

In you and me Lives a live cloud and a more living flame. Which flame shall rise, rise, to consume the cloud? Which cloud, which flame, shall beat the other back?

Let flesh and blood make answer. I have none.

Men shall cast hard stones at me, drag me alive

Before they think to slay me, in God's sight

These being shameless; they have eaten poisonous

words And are not choked withal. Nay, I may drink Be made drink, the Lord's cup of derision. Yet shall

not I Die by these means. For having made me man He shall not slay me utterly, being his Pope, And His anointed.

Look you between your feet,

Lest a snare take them though the ground be good. Death will have nought of altar and altar-song Although a man go cloaked up to the chin.

Verily I may be smitten by other gods That are to me most alien.

I bid you hold Keen danger by the skirt, grip hands with him.

Yea, one Creed chokes another as gross weeds That hate the flowers they mix with, hideously.

CESAKE BORGIA

To move men's minds to travail: that's the word I want. Might I but have the Spirit of God!

Yea, the Almighty. Soon shall come the time When we shall stand, naked, and face to face Before no throne, nor Satan's throne nor God's.

Then shall the Vatican tremble, filled with clouds Contagious.

Time comes not on leaden wings.

Yet on a certain night, when no sun shines And moonlight's pale, and we shall only hear Men stir uneasily as in sleep that pace The Piazza, and there enter, insolently. The Wind and air of night (the air we breathe. The wind bat-like) and every corner of our souls. Corner and coign and cranny shall be filled With an ominous sense of deeds that have been done And undone deeds, and find no way to grope Anywhere out of the nets of guilt and sin. Of crime and blood-shedding: then shall the Wheel of

Fortune Turn in the void, and, on one turning wheel. No Christ fall off his Crucifix, but the image Of the Temptress of our Sins, pale as in Naples, Sancia, with painted cheeks, ripe for hell's fire.

Exeunt

SCENE THREE The Appartamento Borgia in the Vatican Enter cesake and lucrezia

If God exists, then I exist; my Sire Also, with length of years, unnatural nights, Dreams abominable, fleshly desires that make His very limbs ache; for with blood like his — Hot as the African sun that burns on Spain Over Elche and Valencia — Arab blood That makes one mad; I ask you, Lucrezia, What more can any desire in any father Than we who have Christ's Vicar for our Sire?

Why not? We have all we want; but wanting means

More than we want. Our birth's enravelling

We must leave to Nature. Why is it I don't love Rome?

Because I hate not to be wholly Spanish,

Not to have been born in Spain, and not to have had

Such as they dip in a fountain in Cordova —

Josef a, Dolores; and they sit in the sun there

And drink the fierce sky in.

You ask me why?

Because our flaming hearts burn inward, burn not Outward, to escape the intolerable pain Of their reclusion.

We are like stormy sunsets That have no sunrises. Have we not seen in visions Christ's blood stream in the firmament?

And God's wrath

In painted pictures. Yet we were born in April.

I love lilies more than the roses; roses

Burn in my cheeks, my skin is white as lilies.

And yet I sigh for Venus and Adonis,

He the sweet Knight she loved, and she the wanton

That let him perish; I sigh more for Atalanta,

That strange pure virgin, stainless save for the wild

blood She shed — the boar's — for whose sake Meleager Perished, Althea's virginal son, in Calydon.

Will you pray for me, Lucrezia, if I am suddenly Slain?

Pray for your soul, I might; as for your body, No.

How your eyes are upon me! Stir not madness In this hot blood that aches for loveliness, Yours more than other's.

I cannot love you more Than I have always loved you, Cesare. And, now I love you as you love me: yet All my love is not wholly yours.

You love?

Vanozzal.

And the Pope?

No more nor less.

If I think well of the manner of my loving To him-ward: and I would the winds and waters Washed me as clean in certain men's reports As I am pure in nature.

Heed nothing now!

We have drunk the wine of love as lovers have Ever since love itself created love. This drunk. We never are the same. Shame be to me If ever I forget you or forgive you!

Why, you suspect me?

If I do suspect you, Why not?

Why not? Have I done you wrong?

Much wrong.

More than Giovanni?

O, much less, much less.

You know that I am evil?

Evil and cruel : one None ever fathomed; you are unfathomable. Deep as the sea in storms. In wronging me You wrong yourself.

How wonderful you are Lucrezia ! I could kiss these feet of yours Now — if it were worth kneeling.

So you say.

Who have knelt often to Sancia.

Sancia?

Sancia.

You are most fair and fearful, feminine,

Not faultless, but you breathe warm heights of the air.

And the extreme heavens find favour in your sight.

Feminine I am, not fearful; fair, not fierce; And when I breathe the warm air things ruinous Pass in my vision: I see the realms of the Dead — Not the extreme heavens — where Faustina dances With Helen, and the dark gods of Hades laugh.

Were I in Hades I would dance with them!

You mean with Sancia?

With Faustina.

I see: With living beauty in hell rather than with living Beauty on earth. We spoke of wine. Drink this.

She offers him wine It might be, for all I know, made of hell's fire.

Why do you turn so pale? As if some stupor Had fallen on you, and hell lay just beneath The Vatican, and a dead man's face stared up Out of the depths?

CESARE dashes the glass of wine on the floor with a nervous gesture; the wine stains the floor like blood,

CESARE [^slowly2

Out of some stupor? Lucrezia?

I have seen no dead man's face; we are not in hell;

I know that I am pale and you are not.

There lies the blood of the wine that I have spilt,

And there it shines between us; blood turned wine:

Wine that no man shall drink; blood that no man

Shall ever taste.

This is most strange in you.

Forgive me for what I have said.

Of me? To me?

Against me?

Against you, never; of you, perhaps; To you, too often.

Nay, not often enough.

Listen ! I think I hear the Pope's footsteps.

Let's share him. Some are of the Devil's crew And none from the Ghetto steered them.

The POPE enters

I catch your word.

You know for certain what one says in Spain Sounds in Rome just as jarring in one's ears As someone coughing when one hangs him up.

There's much more evil here Than one supposes.

Evil, why not evil? This insolent heat

Is over; but I have a quickened sense

In my imagination; some hollow heat

Of hell returning makes this room turn red.

Now to supplant some evil: as when the Tiber

Turns hideous with dead drifting things upon it.

There is between its banks a troublous tide — A tide tongued with windless words, that takes None of the laughing colours of our streets.

"Dead drifting things": that makes me shudder;

somehow This day has been most evil; women's praise Is lost on me : I am thrown into some humour.

Some fever in the blood, a girl's mere malady

That leaves her, laughing; something under the girdle

Perhaps too warm.

Now he jests cruelly Yea, but blood slain shall not be healed again Nor heat the forsaken flesh.

Enter giovanni

You jibe at flesh?

Nay, at forsaken flesh; and blood unhealed.

You are too keen on blood.

Giovanni mine, There's little love between you.

Was there ever?

Was there ever?

You ring the echo like unchristened, bells On a Cathedral that some demon pulls. Giovanni, there was laughter on your lips When your lips smote on Cesare's.

He checked mine,

Lucrezia, lie checks mine always now.

CESAKE

Now,

Now, more than ever?

GIOVANNI [with irony'] More than ever, Cesare.

Cease, cease your words, O my evil sons ! Certainly mine, as certainly not of God's Begetting, why do you tear at each other so, Not literally, but with more hateful words Than hate might utter? Satan, had he had sons. His might have fought no less, for less just reasons, Than you, my Giovanni, than you, my Cesare.

We may be of Satan's seed, we are seed of our sire. Seed of Vannozza.

I think there is a menace in the air; I feel it in every fibre of my being.

In heU are beds of perfume and sad sound. And there with nerve and bone one multiplies Extreme pleasure out of an extreme pain; And aU the gateways smoke with fumes of flames And all the serpents hiss and lift their heads.

Giovanni, you must know one has been in hell — Take you deep note of this — where are shaken sighs In that uncertain state where women walk Along the streets with loosened hair and girdles Unbound and eyes that frighten you: the Sun Ceases and the stars wonder, and all Hell Is filled from end to end with endless shame.

There is a terror in the roots of my hair And a certain seething fire beneath my head And all my flesh grows faint and feverish And there's an anguish in my very bones. What God, what Devil, shall deliver me Out of the hands of these mine enemies .^^

Shall Gods bear bit and bridle, fool, of men? Can any fool baffle Satan and God? For all these rest now as lots that yet undrawn Lie in the lap of the unknown hour.

Cry not so much, Giovanni,

Words far too feverish. On this Crucifix

I have upon me I bid you cease your raving!

Do I grovel? Am I a thing made to spit on, A thing for shame to spit on?

CESARE [^aside]

This night hell's lips Shall open and shut once.

Giovanni, why This monstrous mockery that has no name: No name, say I? as if our very name Were rent as carrion by the vulturous beaks That feed on fame and soil it.

Will you hear me, Giovanni?

Were but Vannozza here that she might hear me

Last night I dreamed — God help me! — that I climbed

Infinite spirals that touched not hell nor heaven

But changed to ladders, every rung of them

Dropt away from me as my feet felt them, then

I fell, I fell, sucked under a slimy floor

Where serpents crawled, coiled, curdled; and then down

Into annihilation. Yet I heard over me

The moon's evil laugh, the sea-waves' hiss;

Then soul and body parted at the stroke

And out of an infinitely sharp suspense

I woke.

God's mercy! May I never dream The like of that! Such dreams forebode much evil.

God's mercy, say you? Ask not that of Him. I shall not tell you the evil dream I had

For if three dream bad dreams one of us three Has life's hand on his left, death's on his right.

Death's on his right, you say? I take no heed. This night, of life nor death. I sleep not here To-night.

In the Trastavere?

Why do you ask Me? Where I go is not far from the Ghetto, Where stands a hideous palace whose huge stone walls Exude the slime of an embodied crime.

The Cenci Palace. Opening of stealthy doors There have I heard; near by stand villainous houses; And, on a certain night, being alone, Giovanni, I heard scrape on a window-pane What certainly was the sharpening of a knife.

Exit GIOVANNI THE POPE

He bade me not good-night!

The corpse-like bride That leads in endless night, awaits him there.

A corpse-like curse.

I would this night were over!

I would it were not over. A brideless bride.

Whose eyes have sucked in the noon's heat, whose

perfumed Body is odorous as the Orient, her heavy Eyes masking a pool that has no depth Save unseen nakedness, her subtle hands Mesmeric, her pure breath that slays a man. Awaits him, pale before her mirror, whose fair flesh Lures a man's steps more than a snake a bird.