THE CONV,ERSATION OF THE DANCERS
503
us to and fro and makes our limbs fly. And when I, as Bacchante,
fling my feet, and my anus and hair fly towards the stars, do you
think it is pleasure? Don't you see that it is fear that makes me leap?
Hymnis;
Are you so much shaken by fear?
Laidion:
It does not always show its skinny leopard's arms. Some–
times it holds a mask before its face and disguises its voice: then it
is called Hope. Sometimes I believe that
to
hope is more dreadful
than to fear. Utterly emptied out you lie there after a night of hope.
There's nothing like
is
to suck the soul out of your body. A happy man
knows no hope. They are unspeakably happy when they dance before
their men and before their gods, and know nothing more about one
another and all are together and each one alone.
H ymnis:
Are you talking about the barbarian women on the island
again?
Laidion:
Yes, I'm talking of those on the island. They are unspeak–
ably happy during this hour, more than all their life long. Before
that, they sat on clean mats for seven days and seven nights filled with
fear and anguish. Can you imagine how one sits on a clean mat?
H ymnis:
It doesn't take much to imagine that! Do you think I
don't know how to keep myself clean?
Laidion:
I tell you, if I would pour all the water from my well,
all the water of the world over this mat here, and
if
I would rinse
the floor around it, that would still not make it clean. Is the air, by
any chance, clean? Does clean air blow anywhere beneath the stars?
Isn't there everywhere yearning and fear, desire and depravity?
Doesn't everything, everything lie between a death and a lust,
troubled and soiled? I tell you, if something really clean, really pure
would come along, the sea would foam up and fonu a lane and our
hearts would leap out of us and roll along and come to rest for ever
on this purity. Just to think of a clean mat makes me tremble. Perhaps
they are really lying on clean mats. Then they would be animals or
gods or both at once, and we ought to worship them. I don't believe
I have ever seen anything pure. I have never seen anything on which
I would like to lay my heart.
Hymnis:
So you have never been in love, Laidion?
Laidion:
If
I were drunk and made my bed in the gutter, I wouldn't
want to have it talked about afterwards when I've sobered up.
(They are silent)
