Bereczky Erzsébet (szerk.): Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man. Essays about the ideas and the directing of the Drama (Budapest, 1985)

Imre Madách: The Tragedy of Man - full text of the drama - Translated by Joseph Grosz

So many joys and worries, you shall sink Into a few handfuls of dust; your other Parts which just now rejoice and blossom red Will alter to be waning air and water And then, with me, dissolve within a cloud. My every word, each reflex of my mind Depletes a little fraction of myself —

I burn! Perhaps a mystic spirit fans That danger-bringing fire to warm itself Beside my glowing ashes. Let this vision Now disappear, lest I become insane! Dreadful; dreadful to battle here among These many elements and feel the pain Of loneliness! Why did I cast away That providence which my keen instinct had Perceived, but I did not appreciate,

And now my knowledge longs for it in vain?

EVE

It is true; I also feel that way.

When you are fighting with wild animals And I, exhausted, toil my garden plot,

I look around me at this mighty world And cannot find a friend or kin on earth Or on the skies to guard and comfort me. Such was not so in former joyous days!

LUCIFER (scornfully)

If both of you possess such paltry souls That you feel weak without a nursing hand And need a god on whom you can depend, I’ll conjure up a god for you who will Be kindlier than the grouchy Old One —

I knew him well inside the choir of heaven, The spirit of the earth - a handsome boy!

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