LUST

II Voice (Satyr) - When the need which has generated us calls out loudly, any resistance on our part is sinful. When our ancestors command the deed to be done, our own personal time becomes the time of total existence and it is then impossible to resist the flood tide which drags us to procreation. It is impossible not to feast at the most sacred and sumptuous of banquets.

I Voice - But this voice is relentless and at times brutal. The voice which generated us becomes an instrument of torture to us.

The voice of reproduction can call at any time. It even calls when the plant is sterile and the flowers fall off at the slightest breath of wind.

The will of reproduction is also the will of its destruction, because it kills the seed which made life craved for:

it controls the birth of innumerable sprouts and then nips them in the bud before the green sap of their stem has time to desire the heat of the sun.

The violent overwhelming suppression of its seed takes place in the bowels of the earth:

the power of suppression is love for life and death of the weak is just. The cruelty of nature is cruel down to extermination.

The will of reproduction which in me is a commandment, overflows. My desire overpowers me, I am thirsty beyond love in useless love: in lust.

Merciless nature demands lust to destroy its creatures.

II Voice - But if this were not so we would immediately be caught unprepared for carrying out its plan. Libidinous lust is necessary and it is pleasing because it is necessary.

I Voice - It is pleasing because it takes you in with flattery. It blinds me with illusions of freedom and does not feel my constriction.

I live my losing battle.

I live the contradiction in every moment of my time.

II Voice - The complaint about abundance is written by ingratitude and given loud voice by falseness.

If nature commands, the complaint always rises from a whitewashed sepulchre.

Lust, indeed, even assails the chaste who complain of temptation, but were the chaste not tempted they would not be chaste but impotent.

The plaintive chaste like you either want chastity served up cold or are hypocrites when lust gets to them.

What should he who has chosen virginity say? He should go and protest in St. Peter’s square. He should insult the Pope and claim he should put an end to the conflict and bring peace between lustful nature and virginity, very different from the trifles of the chaste.

Would you complain if you were impotent? You lustful person, stop complaining about abundance otherwise nature could play you a dirty trick:

And then who would you shout your claims to? Perhaps to God who has fulfilled your wish, or to the devil who insinuated the infamous complaint into you?

I Voice - Wretched poisonous tongue. Let everything have its way. Do not prevent the complaint which consoles. You are cruel with words but everything is already cruel in deeds and so be silent. Why should I honour my weakness?

II Voice - Because you would show strength.

You will end up your days cursing nature.

Denying your weakness is a true weakness. Strength lies in showing your weakness.

And then a lustful person who disowns himself is evil. He transmits a sweet fluid and then stabs you.

On the other hand, the good lustful person offers you his weakness and in doing so acquires the lamb’s strength.

Woman, do not believe a word whispered to you by the wolf who disowns his lust, because he is a weak creature hiding to attack you unawares. He is a false lamb, he is a downright delinquent.

I Voice - Do not listen to him.

Lust is neither good nor evil. It is the tormenting enjoyment of an imagined enjoyment.

II Voice - Is it a torment? ... (smirking)

I Voice - Snigger you villain.

Call for abundance within abundance.

To nourish death and extermination in abundance.

You only lack the help of a test-tube which is lust without punishment, which is pure lust without accidents, without torment, without responsibilities, without risk. Pure desire to dominate, pure anthropomorphic selfishness, pure racial pride.

II Voice - In my mouth I preserve the shape of the breast of a woman who feels tenderly towards me. And so that no-one can take away from me the grace of being the only one to hold such grace, I lie and spit out sanctimonious sentences as you do. If they were to listen to you, reproduction on earth would be by proxy and the manual of rational fertilisation would be used instead of passion.

Who dreams of lust for love does not sin and if lust is not consumed it is praiseworthy.

(pause) When consumed it is praiseworthy.

AVARICE

I Voice (Scholar) - So that lustful freedom can be checked, wisdom teaches prudence.

In the religious law of our history we deny the lustful waste of nature and oppose the measure of thrift to liberty.

This increases our stature as through renouncement we see the assurance of future well-being.

In abstinence and fasting we see limitation of judgement.

II Voice (Satyr) - Far be it from us then any excess. Long live the new measure.

So in the orgy of saving, avarice will live luxuriantly.

I Voice - That is possible, damned worm, because it is impossible to set a limit on saving.

II Voice - And on waste. Because there are no half measures.

By our freely elevating to this purpose moderation of abundance, we take moderation to its abundance falling into the misery of avarice.

I Voice - Freedom does sometimes demean.

II Voice - And it’s certainly true that thrift is the mother of avarice. And then it always disowns its mother, making her appear imperfect.

I Voice - In fact, thrift in others seems like avarice to us, it seems like abundant thrift, which is nothing but avarice or imperfect thrift.

II Voice - But it is also true that a miser hides his avarice by making it look like thrift. In fact, where can you find a thrifty person who admits to having been degraded into avarice?

Every miser thinks that without his thrift the world would be ruined. No miser believes that what he does not eat out of avarice is converted into the most stinking excrement even without passing through the stomach. The miser saves to impoverish. He hoards to putrefy. Thinking of the future, he anguishes in the past.

I Voice - And so whoever from thrift does not fall into avarice shall be sanctified.

II Voice - But the Law is incomplete in any case. In fact, it does not fix a limit to our saving nor a limit which separates guilty destitution from blameless destitution.

The law knows that the small miser becomes destitute due to the avarice of the great miser and what is a lot for the former is but little for the latter.

The law knows that the weak person will be exploited by another who is not so weak, but given that the weakest, or rather that the last of the weak is but one, all the others are exploiters.

I Voice - According to your rebellious madness we are all humiliated by the thrift of others.

II Voice - Even those poorer than us humiliate us with their thrift because they humiliate those poorer than themselves.

Thrift of the poor is true avarice for those who are even poorer.

I Voice - Thrift and avarice are therefore one and the same thing.

II Voice - Yes, due to their interaction. Because all our lives are lived in disparity.

We are all miserly except for the poorest of the poor, as I’ve told you.

The latter, not being able to humiliate anyone poorer than himself, is forced not to be miserly, and by being forced becomes as miserly as the others.

Being condemned for avarice is hypocrisy of the law.

To save the miser’s soul, the law pretends that he is thrifty but in this way, just as the miser’s soul is saved, in truth it is already damned.

I Voice - For us all to be saved then, we should all be destitute.

II Voice - All destitute or all rich. What counts is equality.

I Voice - But if everything were equal and the shares identical, if there were no right or left nor top or bottom, no rich or poor, then there would be no world. Only differences make the world.

II Voice - Do not fly too close to the sun or your wings will melt. You fall, you break your neck and only then does the world lose its differences.

Hidden avarice blessed as thrift is damned because of its being saved.

I Voice - Certainly, avarice disguised as thrift is the worst type and the miser using that trick is the worst enemy of men and the most damned.

II Voice - Just look at him: the blessed miser, or rather the perfect damned person, has a special look about him since in possessing he is himself possessed. He washes continually but becomes increasingly dirty because a miser cleans himself in dirt.

In any case, the masseter muscle of the perfect miser is hard and sticks out as if he were chewing a stone. His eye is frightened and his lip drawn back. His pale green pallor due to continual pain in his belly makes him meditate, but not over much.

The perfect miser has chronic colitis; the intestinal spasms and frequent defecation make his thirst unquenchable but he cannot drink, or his pallor would become deadly. He gulps down an imaginary drink, certainly of a golden yellow colour. He lives as a poor man and dies rich, but his wealth does not earn him an honourable funeral as his heirs have usually learnt their lesson from their teacher. At the funeral the only thing in abundance is wrath since avarice spreads diffidence and rancour in life and an outburst of liberating hate on the death of the miser.

WRATH

I Voice (Scholar) - Sublime wrath, beside you everything else pales into nothing.

When, in indignation, wrath grasps hold of me everything is flattened in front of me. All interests vanish. The need for justice rises above everything.

Justice! Justice I demand in return for my life, which at that moment seems a small instrument, an awkward presence.

Were I to give up my wrath I would forfeit my dignity.

II Voice (Satyr) - But if wrath is your dignity, you are unworthy of forgiveness and the others should only beat you down.

Wrath prevents you from just indignation and blurs your sight.

Who can say when you are justified by wrath. Perhaps when thrift justifies avarice.

I Voice - And so wrath is never just, even though it is just for wrath to grasp me during indignation.

II Voice - Indignation gives itself up to forgiveness. Wrath is purely hellish.

I Voice - But without wrath who can carry out justice? A machine, perhaps. A computer, perhaps.

II Voice - When justice is done, for others a crime may be committed. Even if this is a computer crime.

Justice can be abuse for others.

I Voice - Nobody is just to the point where wrath is justified, but without a judge the crime is nourished and prospers in indifference.

Certainly wrath passes from me and is taken up by others to be turned against me as revenge.

If what is right for me is wrong for others, the wrath of others is just against me.

So wrath against wrath confirms its triumph even if it is nourished by reflection.

II Voice - You mean cherished by revenge.

I Voice - Could the wrathful person ever turn into executioner if he had not already suffered injustice?

Wrath is the instrument of irrevocable execution of a sentence against the crime. Wrath feeds on endurance, hides within the victim, strengthens in the peaceful person, becomes defined in the patient person. It is perfected in courage.

Justice of wrath is a work of art: it is brought about by impulse but is scientific in its objective. Wrath is the result of a trial where the prosecutor and the defence of the evil-doer are equal. But when sentence is passed, wrath drags the judge to summary execution because it is rapid by nature.

II Voice - But in executing the sentence, wrath degrades the sentence.

It becomes hysterical, confused and at times comatose. It can even be fatal when it is true, visceral, diabolic wrath.

I Voice - The judge is certainly not suited to executing the sentence. The law condemns the wrath not the sentence and even less so the trial against the evil-doer. It condemns the method of execution of the sentence.

It condemns the executioner-judge who, as executioner, is at fault due to wrath and is tried by his executed man.

So wrath has no characteristic feature; neither that of the executioner nor of the executed. Wrath only produces visceral struggles and both the executioner and the executed call on God for support.

II Voice - Whereas the devil is their assistant.

In wrath the face of a dog becomes the muzzle of a man. I mean that in wrath dog and man are twins. In wrath the human beast is truly a beast to the point that a beast can be human.

The eye protruding from the orbit seems to see round three hundred and sixty degrees but it does not see anything since, as is in fact said, the eye of wrath is blind. And this is said because it is known. The wrathful person may at first sight arouse respect because he has allegedly been wronged. But that cow-like and glassy eye leads to pity.

The veins in his neck swell, the heat which goes to his head freezes his feet. He gets up off the ground. He seems to leap into the sky, but falls back down and like a spring gains his distance again.

There: he is neither in heaven nor on earth.

He looks like a god but is but a poor devil.

 SLOTH

I Voice (Scholar) - Perhaps sloth could moderate our ardour and save us from wrath but sloth is the worst of sins and, contrary to the other sins, lives in the absence of sins. It lives on constant and ever-present death. And so how could a sin like this moderate another when it is so passive?

If one could moderate one sin with another sin, the latter would not be a sin.

II Voice (Satyr) - Moderation can make even the sinful virtuous. Who, on the other hand, is visceral in sin is also visceral in judgement. He always overdoes it. Can you imagine a visceral slothful person? What judgement will he pass on the fatigue of others! And this puzzles me : what judgement will he give to those who have sins? The slothful will never be able to grasp how someone can possibly be lustful or mean or wrathful or envious, greedy or proud.

No sin touches him since a slothful person is beneath any sin. For the slothful person nothing else exists, he lives for himself and does not cause any harm to himself but only to others.

Not only does sloth not know the reason for any other sin but also for any virtue. So without knowledge the slothful person is also ignorant by nature.

I Voice - Sloth is the worst of sins as, by nature, it is without nature: it is so despicable as to be nothing and the mother of nothing.

II Voice - When sloth takes hold, it lets everything go.

Each slothful look lasts the same length of time. The slothful person looks at his friends as he looks at his enemies, in exactly the same way. Love and hate are habits, not sentiments.

If you do not make him a meal he does not eat, if you make him one he does not eat.

If you meet him for half an hour he is yours, if you do not meet him for half an hour he is of those who meet him for half an hour.

He is neither thief nor liar, but lives on theft and untruths. How he manages this trick I will tell you now. He does not speak: with modesty he whispers what might be true. And so he is believed and showing his poverty with dignity he brings forth incredible help from others and so does not steal openly. You will say that he is very sly. Well, yes and no. Because his false truths are immediately uncovered and little does he care as he had indeed said what could have been true, but above all having freely told the lie he shows that he wanted to tell the truth only without checking first that that particular truth might be a lie.

The slothful person has no interests but makes all others give to him disinterestedly to imitate him nobly.

He gives nothing and is a sponge soaking everything up but to no avail. Without trouble he learns a moral lesson and takes it in without fatigue. Then he sells it as his own, but this does not bring him praise. Rather, everyone is surprised that something other than that only whispered hiss should be uttered from his mouth. He speaks clearly for once when he is insulting. But he does it in a knowing tone, disinterestedly, for the good of the person insulted. As long as it lasts, it lasts, then he gets slapped and admits that he deserved it, renewing in the others the respect he had lost.

And so on, as time is endless and there is no day of reckoning.

I Voice - From this point of view the slothful person has one merit: that of having understood that everything passes and, in relation to eternity, by passing it is as if what has passed never existed. Existence is finite time, sloth infinite, and infinite is known: it is everything, whereas existence is a dream, perhaps it is nothing.

II Voice - Don’t tell Hegelian lies: the slothful person sleeps and does not dream. When he tires of sleeping he comes to life and in reawakening he desires not to sleep - he wants to become tired.

But since the desire to become tired takes away sloth, this desire vanishes immediately and he desires not to become tired, at which point he becomes tired due to the fatigue of having wanted not to become tired and then he needs sleep. But the idea of rest tires him and he finds himself back right where he started. He starts off again only to find himself endlessly back at the beginning.

PRIDE

I Voice (Scholar) - I find the origin of our pride in this low opinion we have of sloth and our total disdain of common sins.

II Voice (Satyr) - You mean that the sin of pride consists in having a low opinion of the other sins.

I Voice - I mean that pride, too, like the other sins, is worthy of study and comprehension since its reason lies in its cause; it exists from necessity.

Only what one would like to be given by chance is unworthy of interest. Since chance, were chance ever to exist, does not have to exist. Chance has no need to exist. And therefore even the worst of the sins must be worthy of the world and of our consideration, otherwise pride can cultivate its field.

Pride judges from on high and for this reason everything seems insignificant. But what makes the other insignificant, is in itself insignificant.

II Voice - The proud person finds everything insignificant because of his insignificance.

Every day you see the idiot acting as a genius, of the poor in the shoes of the wealthy.

I Voice - Every day one receives a lesson in wisdom from the ignorant.

II Voice - In honesty from a thief.

I Voice - In elegance from an awkward person, in logic from an inconclusive person, in ethics from the man-in-the-street.

II Voice - You meant from a politician.

In art, from somebody who defecates in a box, seals it, puts a label on it in French because that is chic in the drawing rooms of the parasites. And then in the end he explains that everything is crap and his is the representative, or rather, artistic symbol of all the crap in the world. The bastard has been shrewd but pride plays an atrocious trick in the end. It makes you think you are learned to reduce you to ignorance.

The proud person digs his own grave believing he is going to put others in it.

And this grave is also physical, not only metaphorical. In fact, who has ever seen pride in a healthy ruddy face?

The proud person has a chilly even glacial face. The cold freezes him and makes him look like a corpse. He lives in the grave. A small grave worthy of the greatness of the pride laid out in it.

Only humility acquires greatness and ever more lowly is he who raises himself up.

Ever more lowly is he from the upright to the horizontal stature under the level of the road surface.

I Voice - Even so, without pride our identity would be in doubt.

Even the weakest living being may not die of fright before great strength, but only because over and above his acknowledgement of being weak he has certainty and dignity.

II Voice - He is overshadowed by the pride of being himself over and above the strength of others.

Even the smallest and weakest being goes to war without knowing that he will be crushed and at this point he is driven by pride.

So for everyone pride is the backbone of life and at the same time the scythe of death.

I Voice - In the cup of life the poison of pride is poured for everyone. And according to the amount given, causes unhappiness and loneliness.

II Voice - The proud person is always squeamish. The dishes of others always seem disgusting to him and so he eats himself as a delicacy and above all prefers his stools, as seen before, so in the end the bill is paid.

ENVY

I Voice (Scholar) - In the end it is paid, since if you had to pay in advance, none of us would be alive. Every sin is paid for in the end.

And that is why sins are appealing - because they are not paid for when they are consumed. Seeing others enjoying themselves without paying a price, we give birth to pride and make it grow.

II Voice (Satyr) - The Master gives us credit and puts off payment as he hopes in conversion which, in all truth, always arrives in time even if at the last minute, but there and then when we receive with generosity we are, because of that, moved by envy. The more generous the credit terms are the more humiliated we feel about the debt. Then, if the debt is made in money and the master is someone like you: envy breeds hate.

The person who helps, uses his power and shows the weakness of the person helped. So the person receiving does not give anything, except rancour.

I Voice - Refusing help is less offensive than giving out a lot of charity. This satisfies the immediate need but wipes out personality for ever.

II Voice - And this is how envy is nourished, but the lack of charity nourishes envy, too.

I Voice - The process is a circle: from envy to envy due to solitary poverty. But sometimes the circle is broken. Envy, which by nature is passive, becomes active in emulation.

II Voice - Then envy is beaten by its own nature and changes face becoming positive, but the envious person almost never emulates, but slanders and hides the value of the person envied, playing down his importance.

You can see the two sides of envy in an audience. If you see someone unshaven, lean and pale; with a shifty look; hands in pockets; ascetic air; you can be sure; that person is passively envious.

You see: the sturdy person, but always with a green pallor to his skin: he wallows in obsequiousness, he brags about those who are worthy, especially if they are not in his line of business.

He helps the young to grow up so that they will not become his competitors in the future.

A true philanthropist, as long as a plaque flattering him while he is still living is legally erected.

At the end of the performance the former shakes his head from left to right, the latter up and down. Both with deep self-esteem.

All the others clap their hands, but they stamp their feet because they are in a hurry to get away from their glory as actors who, out of courtesy, thank everybody, both those active and passive touched by the misfortune of envy.

At the restaurant after the theatre, the former swallows slowly, the latter rapidly but for both the effect is continual hunger. The former is mean. The latter liberal. One hides the other shows off. One is silent, the other chatters.

Both think that their poor health is due to their integrity. But if he could, the envious person would take the chewed mouthful from the mouth of others.

The thin envious person envies the fat man and the fat man the thin man.

The envious person would even like the sexual satisfaction of others for himself. But envying the pleasure of his spouse and in wanting it for himself alone alienates him from his spouse and so the pleasure lost by his spouse is also lost to him.

So love does violence because of envy.

The envious person would like to see everyone without any clothes on in the streets, but he would envy them the just same for their courage in going around nude and would believe his despicable feeling to be disinterested appreciation of the moral strength of others.

GREED

I Voice (Scholar) - The greater the greed, the greater the loss of what one is greedy for.

II Voice (Satyr) - Greed steals time from pleasure, it shortens life and so the time of enjoyment, too. The greedy person is a born materialist but does not maintain the death of God as some philosophers touched by the greatness of the spirit do.

I Voice - Greed denies all future projects because it believes it has reached all its objectives in its current greed.

II Voice - And poetic rhythm is the frequent rhythm of greed itself.

The rhyming couplets are the blending of flavours and smells which alternate, following a rhythm in each recipe.

At every gulp the greedy person forgets the previous one and so the past does not teach him any lessons and the future is overshadowed by the present, so time, for a greedy person, is not the beginning and end of things which happen, but simply does not exist: greed is time without a sequence of events, it is the event that occurs from the mouth to the pylorus.

I Voice - Its origin lies in the old hunger of all living beings. Hunger becomes greed when hunger is satisfied, and this is the reason for its being thrown into the world of sins even though it is blameless.

II Voice - The greedy persons justifies himself without being asked to, as he sees in others the pity which he should have for himself. On the day of reckoning he does not ask anyone for help because his misfortune is pleasant. So the greedy person explodes and dies happy and those who die happy go to heaven.

The death throes of the greedy person are poetic. Those who are present at the greedy person’s death are exempt from wailing. Those who are in at the end of the greedy person look upwards from where the grace of glorious peace came, which, in truth, was never lacking during life.

With a heavy and succulent pot on his paunch the greedy person lives as friskily as a lamb, suspended in air. In fact, when greed takes holds of you, everything else is accidental even if the object of your desire is a salty anchovy. At that moment even a banquet put off for an hour at the court of Spain falls into contempt. The music of a cherub or the song of mermaids let’s be quite clear - really those that sang for Ulysses - do not reach the ear of those listening to their belly and this confirms that our senses immediately perceive only what we think of for gain. A poet listening to Homer does not see the anchovy even if it is dangled before his eyes and a greedy person only hears Homer through the taste of the anchovy.

I Voice - Gentlemen, sins do not suffer loneliness, they are loved even though condemned.

II Voice - Because when they are moderated they are virtues. (An evil chortle).