THE LIFE OF MAN: PROLOGUE
SOMEONE IN GRAY CALLED HE, SPEAKING OF THE LIFE OF MAN
A large, rectangular space resembling
a room without doors or windows and quite empty.
Everything is gray, monocolored, drab the
watts gray, and the ceiling, and the floor. A
feeble, even light enters from some invisible source.
It too is gray, monotonous, spectral, producing neither
lights nor shadows.
Someone in Gray moves noiselessly
away from the wall, close against which He has been
standing. He wears a broad, gray, formless smock,
vaguely outlining the contours of His body; and a hat
of the same gray throws the upper part of His face
into heavy shadow. His eyes are invisible.
All that is seen are His cheekbones, His nose, and
His chin, which is massive, heavy, and blunt, as if
hewn out of rock. His lips are pressed tight
together. Raising His head slightly, He begins
to speak in a firm, cold, unemotional, unimpassioned
voice, like a reader hired by the hour reading the
Book of Fate with brutal indifference._
SOMEONE IN GRAY
Look and listen, you who have come
here to laugh and be amused. There will pass
before you the whole life of Man, from his dark beginning
to his dark ending. Previously non-existant,
mysteriously hidden in the infiniteness of time, neither
feeling nor thinking and known to no one, he will
mysteriously break through the prison of non-being
and with a cry announce the beginning of his brief
life. In the night of non-existence a light will
go up, kindled by an unseen hand. It is the life
of Man. Behold the flame it is the
life of Man.
Being born, he will take the form
and the name of Man, and in all things will become
like other men already living. And their hard
lot will be his lot, and his hard lot will be the
lot of all human beings. Inexorably impelled
by time, he will, with inavertible necessity, pass
through all the stages of human life, from the bottom
to the top, from the top to the bottom. Limited
in vision, he will never see the next step which his
unsteady foot, poised in the air, is in the very act
of taking. Limited in knowledge, he will never
know what the coming day will bring, or the coming
hour, or the coming minute. In his unseeing blindness,
troubled by premonitions, agitated by hope and fear,
he will submissively complete the iron-traced circle
foreordained.
Behold him a happy youth. See
how brightly the candle burns. From boundless
stretches of space the icy wind blows, circling, careering,
and tossing the flame. In vain. Bright and
clear the candle burns. Yet the wax is dwindling,
consumed by the fire. Yet the wax is dwindling.
Behold him a happy husband and father.
But see how strangely dim and faint the candle burns,
as if the yellowing flame were wrinkling, as if it
were shivering with cold and were creeping into concealment.
The wax is melting, consumed by the fire. The
wax is melting.
Behold him, an old man, ill and feeble.
The stages of life are already ended. In their
stead nothing but a black void. Yet he drags on
with palsied limbs. The flame, now turned blue,
bends to the ground and crawls along, trembling and
falling, trembling and falling. Then it goes
out quietly.
Thus Man will die. Coming from
the night, he will return to the night and go out,
leaving no trace behind. He will pass into the
infinity of time, neither thinking nor feeling, and
known to no one. And I, whom all call He, shall
remain the faithful companion of Man throughout his
life, on all his pathways. Unseen by him, I shall
be constantly at hand when he wakes and when he sleeps,
when he prays and when he curses. In his hours
of joy, when his spirit, free and bold, rises aloft;
in his hours of grief and despair, when his soul clouds
over with mortal pain and sorrow, and the blood congeals
in his heart; in the hours of victory and defeat;
in the hours of great strife with the immutable, I
shall be with him I shall be with him.
And you who have come here to be amused,
you who are consecrated to death, look and listen.
There will pass before you, like a distant phantom
echo, the fleet-moving life of Man with its sorrows
and its joys.
[Someone in Gray turns silent.
The light goes out, and He and the gray, empty room
are enveloped in darkness.