(The darkened chapel of the convent at Argenteuil. Heloise, in white bridal gown and veil, kneels before the lighted crucifix high above the main altar.)
CHORUS OF NUNS (off-stage)
Teach me to love is all she asks!
Her naked body sheathed in white,
Her gaunt face pale as winter light,
A crown of roses on her head,
Her eyes all tears and galled red,
Our little sister, innocence profaned,
Suffers through the soul's dark night;
Cloistered in this holy house
By that self-same wounded earthly spouse
To whom this night she weeps good bye.
For at the coming of the dawn,
As from a chrysalis reborn,
Into the arms of light she'll fly,
And wed--O consummate flame--
Eternity.
HELOISE
God knows, great husband,
As the whole world does,
How much I lost in thee.
That knife of flagrant treachery,
Of my very soul robbed me,
In robbing me of thee.
(As Heloise prays, the specter of Abelard appears before her in monkish robes.)
My love of thee rises to such maddening heights,
It robs itself of what it most desires.
For at thy bidding come the dawn,
I change my clothing, not my heart,
To prove thee sole possessor of my body and my will.
For even now, as always in the past,
God knows, I fear offending only thee,
And try to please thy every whim.
For it is thy command, my lord, not love of God,
Which makes me marry Him.
O teach me to love was all I asked!
ABELARD
O teach her to love was all she asked!
ABELARD AND HELOISE
And from that day forth we read no more.
Our books lying open on our desks,
More words of love than learning bruised our lips.
Kisses, not philosophy consoled us.
Our hands more often found each others breasts
Than the pages of Boethius.
Our eyes read more in passion's depths
Than in illumined script,
Inflicting wounds b'yond every ointment sweet,
Bitterness b'yond any balm.
ABELARD
O say no more, I beg of thee;
But cease this blasphemous complaint.
Blame not our Lord for this our entry into grace;
But glorify Him as thou justly should.
Why bitterness of heart,
Wearing out both body and soul alike,
At what's so clear an act of good?
HELOISE
Not God! But thou alone, my only lord,
Sole cause of my great grief,
Thou alone had power to make me sad,
Thou alone can grant relief.
Powerless to oppose thee, now as then,
Whose orders I implicitly obeyed,
At thy command find strength, alas,
My worldly life to end.
ABELARD
Were thou wont to please me as thou profests,
Thou must rid thyself of this.
For should complaint persist,
Thou canst neither please me as my wife,
Nor attain with me to bliss.
Couldst thou bear to see me come to bliss alone,
Whom thou declared to follow to the fires of hell?
Seek piety in this at least, lest thou unheeding sever
From me, who hastens--may it be--towards God,
Thyself forever .
HELOISE
God knows I never sought ought of thee
But thyself.
Wanted only thee, nothing of thine.
Sought no marriage bond. Nay! Never!
Nay! Nor any pleasure, as thou well knowst,
But thine, forever .
And though the name of wife's
More sacred and more binding,
Let God be my witness,
Sweeter yet for me shall always be
The name of mistress.
Yea, should great Augustus,
Emperor of all the world,
Think fit to lead me to his marriage bower,
Conferring all the earth on me and all his power ,
It would be dearer still and more honorable to me,
Than Empress,
To be called thy whore.
ABELARD
No more! No more! I beg of thee.
Thou art my true and honorable wife.
Say not, whore!
HELOISE
For what philosopher or king could match thy fame?
What distant town or village did not thee long to see?
When thou appeared in public,
Who did not run to catch a glimpse of thee?
Why every wife and every maid
Did in thy absence thee desire,
And in thy presence was on fire.
Queens and great ladies envied me my joys.
And my bed.
ABELARD
Enough!
God knows to what depths of shame
Unbridled lust our bodies did consign,
Till no reverence for decency nor God
Could halt our wallow in the mire.
E'en when thou wast most unwilling,
Resisting to the utmost of thy power,
Those fires within burned so intense,
With threats and blows I forced
Thy weaker nature to consent.
Setting those wretched obscene pleasures,
Virtue blushed even to name,
Above my God, as o're my universal fame.
HELOISE
Fame indeed!
For thy manhood was adorned with every grace,
Of body as well as soul and mind.
Thy gifts were such to win at once all womankind.
The gift of song--
For thee more recreation from philosophy than art--
Wrote Heloise on every lover's lips and heart.
So that every street and house of Paris
Echoed with my name,
Made women sigh with love of thee,
And all men envious of thy fame.
ABELARD
For shame! For shame!
I beg of thee,
Speak no more of worldly things,
Of worldly songs that fan lust's flame.
'Tis naught but fitting that His will divine,
Should forbid me, rid me, of desire,
Harbinger of Hell's unholy fire.
'Tis wholly just and merciful
That by thine uncle's treacherous art
I be reduced in that very part--
The seat of lust, sole cause of all desire.
HELOISE
Sole Cause? Sole cause of all desire?
Lust? Wallowing in mire?
Is that all it meant to thee, my lord?
To me?
Nay! The joys of love we shared have been too sweet,
And can ne'er displease me as they do thee.
Why, scarcely can I banish them from thought.
Where e'er I turn they preen before my eyes--
Longings awakened,
Fantasies ne'er long forsaken.
E'en during the celebration of the mass,
When our prayers should be the purer ,
Lewd visions of these pleasures take such hold
Upon my most incontinent soul,
My thoughts are all on wantonness, not prayer .
ABELARD
Peace, my child.
Ne'er doubt, that though in lust I did conspire
To cheat thy unsuspecting uncle of his niece,
That fateful day I married thee indifferent to his ire,
It was my pleasure to keep thee,
Whom I loved beyond all measure,
For my self alone--
Love's most priceless treasure.
But God had already made His plan
To use my plot to join us to Himself.
And in truth, this punishment we undergo,
Yours in spiritual and mine in bodily woe,
Is momentary only, not eternal,
'Tis but to purify, not to damn.
HELOISE
Instead of groaning o'er sins committed,
I only sigh for what is not.
All things we did, all times and places,
Are stamped beside thine image
Here upon my heart.
So that I live it all again with thee,
And know no respite, e'en in sleep,
Where movements of my limbs betray my deeds,
Which break out--Ah! Oh!--in unguarded words and sighs,
As above me, once again,
Love's ecstasy turns back thy rapturous eyes.
ABELARD
Nay! Blush for shame to thus commend
The vileness of our former ways.
Accept in patience what us mercifully befalls.
'Tis but the father's rod, not the persecutor's sword.
See thyself as the chosen bride of Christ.
Know that in surmounting bodily suffering
Thou canst win a martyr's crown,
Which never can be mine;
For where no battle is, no victory is found.
HELOISE
This grace indeed, my dearest, fell on thee unsought.
A single wound of body,
By freeing thee of torments I endure,
Has healed all wounds upon thy soul.
Where He had seemed the Adversary,
He had indeed proved kind.
The heavenly physician shrinks not from giving pain
To cure the ailing mind.
ABELARD
Then grieve not, my wife,
To be the cause of so great a good,
For which thou must not doubt
He had especially created thee,
Who by holy presage of his name
Had marked thee out especially for Him,
Naming thee our Heloise,
After His own holy Elohim.
HELOISE
Yea, in my utter wretchedness, my love,
That cry of suffering souls could well be mine:
"Miserable creature that I am,
Who is there to rescue me out of the body doomed to this death?"
Would in truth that "By the grace of God,
Through Jesus Christ Our Lord."
I might this crown desire..
CHORUS OF NUNS (off-stage)
Teach me to love is all she asks.
ABELARD (starting like a guilty ghost at the crowing of a cock.)
Farewell in Christ, bride of Christ!
In Christ fare well, and live in Christ!
HELOISE
Nay! Do not flee!
I am not worthy! Stay!
For though my sisters call me chaste,
They know not my hypocrisy.
The purity of the flesh they sing,
To me is body's virtue, not the soul's.
For me, alas, youth and passion
And experiences of pleasures so delightful
Intensify the torments of the flesh--
Those longings sharp and stark.
Men can praise the light, my love;
But God doth search our hearts and loins
And sees the inner dark.
CHORUS OF NUNS (off-stage)
Teach me to love is all she asks.
ABELARD
Farewell in Christ, bride of Christ!
In Christ farewell, and live in Christ!
HELOISE
Oh, teach me to love was all I asked.
ABELARD
And I fell on thee, and ravished thee,
And nailed thee naked and bleeding to our marriage bed.
HELOISE
But yet again, once more, my love
Here, with eyes turned back in ecstasy,
Drunk on the honey of our coupling,
Our foreheads touching, and loins still intertwined,
Drink up my tears, my love!
Feed on my lips and tongue!
For tear-sweet are my kisses.
My lips burnt offerings dripping from the bone.
My tongue choice meat and soft as butter .
My tangled hair--one ringlet straying on my neck--
Is whiter than any wimple,
Clearer than mothers milk blossoming my girlish breasts.
And see how my firm young belly fattens with calf.
ABELARD
But I have supped full, my wife,
Supped full, supped full.
All passion spent.
The rest is fast, and liberating Rule.
HELOISE
Then wipe thy mouth upon my hair, my life,
Pillow your cheek upon my breasts,
And whispering across the unhatched shell
Of my burgeoning belly--
ABELARD
The past, our love song, singing in our ears,
And the future raining like a passionate promise
Out of our eyes--
HELOISE
Even as we lie here to the ends of the world,
Sing once more to me of love, my love.
Of our unborn innocent calf, my love.
ABELARD
And of his little mother, innocence profaned.
HELOISE
And of his father, my love,
Who rose like a comet out of my belly,
ABELARD
And in that bright brief flight
Before my final descent into flame,
HELOISE
Blazed above me like the morning star .
(Heloise falls prostrate on the altar steps, and the specter of Abelard, like a falling star, brightens for a moment and disappears.)
CHORUS OF NUNS (off-stage)
Teach me to love is all she asked!
Oh teach me to love, teach me to love
Is all she asks!
(Enter chorus of black-robed nuns bearing books and candles, followed by the Bishop of Paris in sumptuous vestments.)
CHORUS OF NUNS
Her naked body sheathed in white,
Her gaunt face pale as winter light,
A crown of roses on her head,
Her eyes all tears and galled red,
(Advancing to the altar, they raise Heloise gently to her feet, as the Bishop takes his place on the altar steps.)
Our little sister, innocence profaned,
Suffers through the soul's dark night;
Cloistered in this holy house
By that self-same wounded earthly spouse
To whom this night she weeps good bye.
(At a sign from the Bishop, her sisters begin to remove Heloise 's crown of roses and her white bridal garments.)
For at the coming of the dawn,
As from a Chrysalis reborn,
Into the arms of light she'll fly,
And wed--O Consummate flame--Eternity.
(They allow the bridal garments to fall at Heloise's feet. For a moment she stands naked before the altar of God.)
HELOISE
Come enter into me, my chosen spouse.
For I have been intimate with thee from all eternity.
And all the pain of my days,
Is but the bursting of the hymen of my spirit,
The anguish and the pain of our coupling!
(Heloise takes the black nun's habit. which the Bishop blesses and hands
to her. Her sisters dress her in it, and she kneels.
As she bows her head and the Bishop makes the sign of the cross over
her, dawn breaks and the entire chapel is refulgent
with light.)
CHORUS OF NUNS
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia !
(Darkness falls. Only Heloise and the crucifix remain visible. And curtain.)
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