Now we begin to stir,
to get ready ourselves in the camp:
that’s what I’ll write down later.
The horses
harnessed—armaments of every description
taken out from the wagons, from storage.
Everybody rushing
wildly about, the baggage put
aside or sent away.
Once the signal is
given we’ll drive down an incline
towards the battle area:
Sometimes war can be
extraordinary
nauseating: just by ones imagination;
especially
its anticipation—such as: being exposed intestines,
or a belly split open, entrails lying on the ground—
this I expect.
One has to become
hardened, broken in to everything,
thus, the thought of death will make a
few young
men vomit—fear has its own sickness.
I’ll tell the second
in command to increase the pace, he’ll
crack his voice like a whip, no one will have time to
think of vulgarization.
The day is drawing to
a close, the sun is low (she looks
up:
so it will be), its rays are weak, heroism, no defeats!
The scene is shrouded
in shadows, so I sense; the bloody
drama which I have enacted in my mind’s
eye, which I
have
a hundred times before: there is already a part
of it written for history…I don’t know
what part though!
Look to your right,
left, I have-not yet been dispirited…
not yet!...
(The young soldier
pulls at the arm of Queen Eurydike towards
her mount — while she was in thought…:
‘Why! I have not yet
killed a man, not one single one in combat!
He has no notion of
the suffering which this causes me.
He does not realize
what this means to me: to run in
defeat, even before a battle has started…
I crave combat with all my soul; it is a
burning passion,
it is a grim reality but I carve it
nonetheless; not for
the glory, not completely, more for
the endeavor!
The old queen, she is
an intolerable, braggart, that’s what she is.
She is never in the
melee; she’s no hero! The mere idea is
ridiculous—yet she stands there like
one.
Now for her son,
Alexander, he was always exposing
himself
to mortal danger: he rejoiced in hand-to-hand
combat for its own sake.
Alexander he killed
with a heart of cold blood, a
systematic slaughter…I
speak—think—hearsay, for
I was too young to have participated in
his campaigns.
I cannot explain my
vexation when I think of what I have
missed, and now what is being taken away
from me.
This only allows me
to be brave, without fighting, but
war and crudity are of the same grain,
one must
grow next to the other to be able to
dominate the field.
Hence, I must endure
it.)
#911/5-25-2012
