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The Dynasts: An Epic Drama Of The War With Napoleon, a play by Thomas Hardy |
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Part 3 - Act 1 - Scene 9. The Road From Smolensko Into Lithuania |
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_ PART THIRD. ACT FIRST. SCENE IX. [The season is far advanced towards winter. The point of observation is high amongst the clouds, which, opening and shutting fitfully to the wind, reveal the earth as a confused expanse merely.]
Where are we? And why are we where we are?
Above a wild waste garden-plot of mine
The wherefore will unfold. The rolling brume
I notice now
And what see you on the far land-verge there,
An object like a dun-piled caterpillar,
Even the Army
And why such flight?
Recording Angels, say.
The host has turned from Moscow where it lay,
By track of Tarutino first it flits;
Harassed, it treads the trail by which it came,
And so and thus it nears Smolensko's walls, [What has floated down from the sky upon the Army is a flake of snow. Then come another and another, till natural features, hitherto varied with the tints of autumn, are confounded, and all is phantasmal grey and white. The caterpillar shape still creeps laboriously nearer, but instead, increasing in size by the rules of perspective, it gets more attenuated, and there are left upon the ground behind it minute parts of itself, which are speedily flaked over, and remain as white pimples by the wayside.]
These atoms that drop off are snuffed-out souls [Pines rise mournfully on each side of the nearing object; ravens in flocks advance with it overhead, waiting to pick out the eyes of strays who fall. The snowstorm increases, descending in tufts which can hardly be shaken off. The sky seems to join itself to the land. The marching figures drop rapidly, and almost immediately become white grave-mounds. Endowed with enlarged powers of audition as of vision, we are struck by the mournful taciturnity that prevails. Nature is mute. Save for the incessant flogging of the wind-broken and lacerated horses there are no sounds. With growing nearness more is revealed. In the glades of the forest, parallel to the French columns, columns of Russians are seen to be moving. And when the French presently reach Krasnoye they are surrounded by packs of cloaked Cossacks, bearing lances like huge needles a dozen feet long. The fore-part of the French army gets through the town; the rear is assaulted by infantry and artillery.]
The strange, one-eyed, white-shakoed, scarred old man,
Kutuzof he: [NAPOLEON himself can be discerned amid the rest, marching on foot through the snowflakes, in a fur coat and with a stout staff in his hand. Further back NEY is visible with the remains of the rear. There is something behind the regular columns like an articulated tail, and as they draw on, it shows itself to be a disorderly rabble of followers of both sexes. So the whole miscellany arrives at the foreground, where it is checked by a large river across the track. The soldiers themselves, like the rabble, are in motley raiment, some wearing rugs for warmth, some quilts and curtains, some even petticoats and other women's clothing. Many are delirious from hunger and cold. But they set about doing what is a necessity for the least hope of salvation, and throw a bridge across the stream. The point of vision descends to earth, close to the scene of action.] _ |
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