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Arsippe tells the story of Pyramus and
Thisbe Deaths:
"Pyramus and Thisbe, he the loveliest youth, and
she the most sought after girl, the East held, lived in neighbouring
houses, in the towering city of Babylon, that Semiramis is said to
have enclosed with walls of brick. Their nearness and their first
childhood steps made them acquainted and in time love appeared. They
would have agreed to swear the marriage oath as well, but their
parents prevented it. They were both on fire, with hearts equally
captivated, something no parent can prevent. They had no one to
confide all this to: nods and signs were their speech, and the more
they kept the fire hidden, the more it burned.
There was a fissure, a thin split, in the shared wall between
their houses, which traced back to when it was built. No one had
discovered the flaw in all those years - but what can love not
detect? - You lovers saw it first, and made it a path for your
voices. Your endearments passed that way, in safety, in the gentlest
of murmurs. Often, when they were in place, Thisbe here, and Pyramus
there, and they had each caught the sound of the other's breath,
they said "Unfriendly wall, why do you hinder lovers? How hard would
it be for you to let our whole bodies meet, or if that is too much
perhaps, to open to the kisses we give each other? Not that we are
not grateful. We confess that we owe it to you that words are
allowed to pass to loving ears' So they talked, hopelessly, sitting
opposite, saying, as night fell, "Farewell', each touching the wall
with kisses that could not reach the other side.
One morning when Aurora had quenched the fires of night, and
the sun's rays had thawed the frosty grass, they came to their usual
places. Then they decided, first with a little murmur of their great
sorrows, to try, in the silence of night, to deceive the guards, and
vanish outside. Once out of the house they would leave the city as well, and they agreed, in case they went
astray crossing the open country, to meet by the grave of Ninus, and
hide in the shelter of a tree. There was a tall mulberry tree there,
dense with white berries, bordering a cool fountain. They were
satisfied with their plan, and the light, slow to lose its strength,
was drowned in the waters, and out of the same waters the night
emerged."
The Death of Pyramus:
"Carefully opening the door, Thisbe, slipped out,
deceiving her people, and came to the tomb, her face veiled, and
seated herself under the tree they had agreed on. Love made her
brave. But a lioness fresh from the kill, her jaws foaming, smeared
with the blood of cattle, came to slake her thirst at the nearby
spring. In the moonlight, Babylonian Thisbe sees her some way off,
and flees in fear to a dark cave, and as she flees, she leaves
behind her fallen veil. When the fierce lioness has drunk deeply,
returning towards the trees, she chances to find the flimsy fabric,
without its owner, and rips it in her bloodstained jaws.
Leaving the city a little later, Pyramus sees the
creature's tracks in the thick dust, and his face is drained of
colour. When he also discovers the veil stained with blood, he
cries, "Two lovers will be lost in one night. She was the more
deserving of a long life. I am the guilty spirit. I have killed you,
poor girl, who told you to come by night to this place filled with
danger, and did not reach it first. O, all you lions, that live
amongst these rocks, tear my body to pieces, and devour my sinful
flesh in your fierce jaws! Though it is cowardly to ask for death"
He picks up Thisbe's veil, and carries it with him to the
shadow of the tree they had chosen. Kissing the token, and wetting
it with tears, he cries, "Now, be soaked in my blood too." Having
spoken he drove the sword he had been wearing into his side, and,
dying, pulled it, warm, from the wound. As he lay back again on the
ground, the blood spurted out, like a pipe fracturing at a weak spot
in the lead, and sending long bursts of water hissing through the
split, cutting through the air, beat by beat. Sprinkled with blood,
the tree's fruit turned a deep blackish-red, and the roots, soaked
through, also imbued the same overhanging mulberries with the dark
purplish colour."
The Death of Thisbe:
"Now Thisbe returns, not yet free of fear, lest
she disappoint her lover, and she calls for him with her eyes and in
her mind, eager to tell him about the great danger she has escaped.
Though she recognizes the place and the shape of the familiar tree,
the colour of the berries puzzles her. She waits there: perhaps this
is it. Hesitating, she sees quivering limbs writhing on the
bloodstained earth, and starts back, terrified, like the sea, that
trembles when the slightest breeze touches its surface, her face
showing whiter than boxwood. But when, staying a moment longer, she
recognizes her lover, she cries out loud with grief, striking at her
innocent arms, and tearing at her hair. Cradling the beloved body,
she bathes his wounds with tears, mingling their drops with blood.
Planting kisses on his cold face, she cries out "Pyramus, what
misfortune has robbed me of you? Pyramus, answer me! Your dearest
Thisbe calls to you: obey me, lift your fallen head!"
At Thisbe's name, Pyramus raised his eyes,
darkening with death, and having looked at her, buried them again in
darkness.
"When she recognized her veil and saw the ivory
scabbard without its sword, she said, "Unhappy boy, your own hand,
and your love, have destroyed you! I too have a firm enough hand for
once, and I, too, love. It will give me strength in my misfortune. I
will follow you to destruction, and they will say I was a most
pitiful friend and companion to you. He, who could only be removed
from me by death, death cannot remove. Nevertheless I ask this for
both of us, in uttering these words, O our poor parents, mine and
his, do not deny us the right to be laid in one tomb, we whom
certain love, and the strangest hour have joined. And you, the tree,
that now covers the one poor body with your branches, and soon will
cover two, retain the emblems of our death, and always carry your
fruit darkened in mourning, a remembrance of the blood of us both."
Saying this, and placing the point under her heart, she fell forward
onto the blade, still warm with his blood. Then her prayer moved the
gods, and stirred her parents' feelings, for the colour of the berry
is blackish-red, when fully ripened, and what was left from the
funeral pyres rests in a single urn." |