https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07JPK5MCD
Then came a Man
I remember when
at winter solstice,
we danced under
the stars
to propitiate favors by gods!
Then came a Man,
Son of the Only true God!
I still look at skies
when stars assemble in December!
But now I know
who to pray
for humanity's weaknesses
and for the beauty of the world
I have someone to thank!
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CQDFK2JW
First Part
Chapter 1
«I will soon be
back, make yourselves at home, please» said the man going out. We looked at
each other, George and I. It had only been from the morning that we didn’t have
a chance to stay on our own.
«That’s a real story of madness! » he burst out taking a seat in one of the
four wood armchairs that were around a circular table in the center of the
small room. «This man must be crazy! Let's put him off as soon as is back and
let's escape from here, until we are in time», he added while I was taking a seat
in front of him.
«Just a moment, George, maybe it will seem strange to you, but I don't feel
afraid of this man! He inspires a sort of trust in me, despite his strangeness».
«But do you realize what you are talking about? Have you gone out of sense too?
This man must have some extraordinary powers: hasn't he hypnotized us just
slightly before? Have you also heard him talk of super-races and brain's
experiments or have I dreamed of it?», George attacked me nervously.
«Be quiet, please, George», I told him in a calm voice. «First of all, I don't
believe he has hypnotized us, just before. Secondly, if he is really so
powerful as you say, what could be his reaction, when we try to immobilize him?
Make a point on it: when we arrived here, we were both sleepy. If
he wanted therefore to use us as guinea-pigs, two punctures were enough
for him to knock us down! I have not seen yet neither
cats resembling mice, nor men with a square brain!
Who can be sure that the old man is not
inventing everything? It would not surprise me if this story derived from the
imagination of some fantastical writer. I want to go to the end of all these
circumstances. Don’t you also want to know what kind of job's proposal Mr
Winningoes is going to make for us?»
George gazed for a long time into my eyes, thoughtfully. Then, without
answering, he relaxed on the back of the chair, releasing the muscles and
breathing deeply.
He stood with half open eyes crossing at once the feet and the hands softly on
the womb, with the right hand covering the palm of the left one. He seemed to
me almost slept, while only the breath animated his body.
Won by all those unexpected and subsequent emotions, I also imitated him doing
my best on sitting comfortably on the wood ancient chair.
Traveling in space-time with Virgil
A drama in a prologue, three
acts and forty four scenes
by ignazio salvatore basile
Characters
Virgil: a Latin
dead poet
Dante: an
Italian poet still alive
Men
from Hell
Tommaso Cosimo Caccini,
Lodovico delle
Colombe, Niccolò
Lorini,
Claudio
Acquaviva, Benedetto Mandina , Jacopo Aldobrandini
e don Pedro de Vera:
Judges Inquisitors of the Holy
Inquisition in the Galileo’s Trial
Witnesses and Guards at Galileo’s trial
Alberto Tragagliolo: a timeless Florentine
Five Devils of Loudun
Sneezy, Freezy; Slippy, Drippy, Nippy,Showery, Flowery,
Wheezy,
Bowery; Hoppy, Croppy, Poppy: Dwarves of French
revolution;
James
Morton and Lord Digheels: two damned from hell
Ferdinand
Walsin Esterhàzi, Eduard Drumont, Major du Platy de Clam
and
General Mercier and Alphonse Bertillon damned in the Devil’s Island
Harold
Frederick Shipman, Irving Roy Cohn,
Censors and Gunmen: Sinners from the Great Circle
Reverend
Jones Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr, Jim
MCelvane, Judy IJames
and Joyce Touchette: People of the Temple
David
Berg Karen Zerby and Kathleen Maddox: other guests in the Hell
Ealk : Great Beast, guardian of the Ante Hell
Waitress
Eleanor of Sardinia and Brancaleone Doria: good people from Purgatory
T.C.B., J.L., J.H., J.M., J.B., B.M.,S.B., B.J., M.D.,
E.P.,J.R.
and L.H. :
guitar players and other musicians from Purgatory
Angels from Paradise
Beatrice: a beautiful celestial lady.
Prologue
Somewhere in the space the Latin
poet Virgil and the Italian poet Dante meet again, after almost seven hundred
years, for starting a new journey on the universe of human vices and virtues.
Virgil will lead Dante Alighieri, as a guide, across the space-time, through
as many different levels of the human
vices, as many centuries have passed by from their first journey.
They will travel together through the hell of desperation up to the hope of repentance of
purgatory. At the third level Dante eventually meets Beatrice who will lead him
to the true love shore of Paradise.
Scene 1
Dante and Virgil
An aseptic room. On the left a
door communicates outside. On the right a spiral staircase leads upside where
the spaceship awaits for Virgil and Dante to go. In a total darkness the creak
of an opening door. Dante will desperately call for his master Virgil.
Dante (a frightened voice in the darkness): May I come in? Is anyone
there…? Schoolmaster!!! Are you there? Please answer me… for God’s sake…
(After a short but heavy silence’s time, a scrubbing sound of a lighting
match will be heard in the darkness. Then a candle will light an old man sit
down at a table covered by piles of books, papers and maps.
Virgil (after reawakening, he
lights the candle ): I must have fallen asleep…Who is in there???
Dante (still trembling): Is it you, master?
Virgil: (going to meet Dante, hardly recognizes his friend, lighting his
face) Dante…? My son!!! Why are you so shattered and distraught??? What
happened to you???
Dante (getting closer to his master, almost crying in a mixture of joy and relief ) Oh, Virgil, masterly
teacher of my trembling soul… if you only knew what I have gone through…
Virgil (placing his candle on the table, embracing him with protective
affection): It’s all right now, my son…
Dante (falling on his arms, starts crying and sobbing): It has been
really very hard outside there, in the darkness… I saw death in the face…
Virgil (l.b.): Please, take a sit, my son… It’s all over now…
Dante(reacquiring some trust): Thanks to God I’m with you now…
Virgil (l.b. pouring a glass of water from a jar on the table) Of
course… It will be all right now… Please have some water…
Dante (drinking with desire the water): I have escaped three horrible
beasts…
Virgil: Have you?
Dante (trembling again and looking afraid at the door): Yes… A tiger, a
serpent and a monkey persecuted me up to here…
Virgil: Be calm now… they can’t surely get inside here…
Dante (reassured he looks gratefully at Virgil): I know they can’t my
sweet master…
Virgil (with a gesture of affection): Forget about everything now…Are
you still determined to take over our journey?
Dante (with a sigh of relief): More than ever master! With you by my
side I can face anything fearless!!!
Virgil: (pointing out the spiral staircase) Don’t you fear to face a long and risky journey
through the Universe with that
spaceship?
Dante: Not at all, master!!! I told you: I’m ready to go anywhere with
you by my side!!!
Virgil (taking a map on his hands): Let’s talk about it then! Everything
is ready… I’ll show you…Do you know what is this?
Dante (bending on the map): Well … I see two cones turned upside down …
Virgil: Come on! It’s an astronomic figure!!!
Dante: I’m sorry…It might be a double cone diagram …
Virgil: That’s better. The bottom cone represents the past and the light cone, instead, is future! The point
where the apices meet is the present; so we are here now , can you see it?
Dante (pointing the map): Yes master, I surely can! But what is this
kind of spiral down here ?
Virgil: The Great Spiral contains all the human’s history, since our
brain can retain trace of it…Every concentric circle corresponds to a century
time… the inner you go to the center, the nearer you get closer to our
ancestral roots, do you get me?
Dante (with a thrill of excitement): That’s makes me feel a bit lost…It’s
all so stately… so magnificent…
Virgil: Of course it is! We are talking about the space-time…That’s what
the spiral really represents…
Dante (like lost in the clouds): That’s would be fantastic…
Virgil (preventing and reassuring him ): It’s out of our route to travel
the warped direction… we’ll walk the expanding
direction instead… with our spaceship we’ll intersect the space
time right here (he points up with a finger the map)… at the beginning of the
fourteenth century and from there we’ll continue towards the present;
Dante (surprised and excited): But that’s the anniversary of my exile from Florence!!!
Virgil (with an accomplishing smile): Of course! Right the 1302… Don’t
you want to know what happened after your left the town???
Dante (enthusiastically): So I’ll be able to see my beloved wife???
Virgil (beating him dear on his head): Have you forgotten we are going
to visit the Hell??? You’ll see her in Paradise!!! Or at least in the Purgatory
realms…
Dante (disappointed but thoughtful): I’m sorry master… I didn’t forget
it but for a while I thought it might me
a sort of passageway in the way to hell… ‘you know?
Virgil: Not at all, my son. Look! All along the spiral’s arms we’ll find
the different circles of Hell; in its last part we’ll be in the so called Ante
Hell; but here (he points the map again),
where the final part of the spiral almost touches the present’s point we’ll aim
the peaks of Purgatory…
Dante (with lively curiosity): so I may argue that the Hell is in the
same dimension of past life?
Virgil (complying with satisfaction): That’s right my dear learner. As a
matter of fact the right established punishment for the sinners is to stay in
the unhappy condition of human life forever, without evolving in a better life
like we’ll see for the Purgatory and, above all, for the praised of Paradise!
Dante: I see…
Virgil: Don’t be disappointed. Can’t
you imagine a worse punishment than sharing your own time only with the
evil without any good at all?
Dante (positively thoughtful): Of course you’re right…
Virgil: Put it this way: you’ll be able to see your enemies… those who
exiled you… lost forever in their thirst of power, in the vacuity of their nothingness… and those who betrayed you…
Dante: I’m not sure to want such a revenge…
Virgil: That goes to your praise and merit…Aren’t you curious about the
destiny of the big priest Boniface? Charles landless Valois? And what about
Raniero Zaccaria?
Dante: (sadly) I would prefer to forget them!
Virgil: You don’t have to stop forcedly with them…We can decide the
first stop in advance by the on board controls…
Dante: Do you mean we can land anywhere in the spiral lines of space-time?
Virgil: That’s exactly what I mean!
Dante: I fear to face events too close to my own story…
Virgil: There’s no problem, my son. We can go straight way to any of the
circles of any century!!!
Dante : As far as I know something about some good guys I could really go
further..Can I know only a few names before we go?
Virgil: Go ahead with the names please!
Dante: (thirstily) Giovanni
Boccaccio, Cino da Pistoia, Pieraccio
Tebaldi, Bosone da Gubbio, Geoffrey Chaucer, Johannes Gutenberg and his pupil Johann
Numeister!
Virgil: You’ll find them all in the Purgatory or maybe in the eternal joy of Paradise!
Dante (with a sigh of relief): I think they deserve it, don’t you
master?
Virgil: It’s not up to me to decide, not even to discuss such matters…
Dante: I’m sorry master…
Virgil (overflying any argument): Have you got any other name?
Dante: Can you just tell me something about a certain Francesco, the son
of my friend, the notary Ser Petracco?
Virgil: Despite everything he has deserved to play another chance to
reach Paradise..at least for literary merits… Don’t you think so?
Dante (bewildered,
pedantly listing ): Well, I surely prefer
Rinaldo Cavalchini, Menghino Mezzani, Manuello Romano, Giovanni Quirini,
Angelo Poliziano, Luigi Pulci, Lorenzo di Pietro, Giovanni di Paolo, Cristoforo
Landino, Franco Sacchetti, Leonardo Bruni, Francesco da Barberino and …
Virgil: (cutting him straight) That’s ok, my son! I have got your point
of view!!! May be you would like to make our first stop further in the fifteenth or in the sixteenth
century…
Dante (changing attitude, almost apologizing): Oh, the sixteenth is my favorite one..so full of
art…discoveries…new ideas…
Virgil: I’m with you… you can start from there our journey… if you want
to…
Dante: Well, it depends from the people we might find over there…in the
lines of the infernal spiral I mean…
Virgil: You can make some names, if you want…
Dante: I have a great number in mind…
Virgil: Make ten of them… just to start…
Dante: Let me see… I would start with… Martin Luther, Nicolaus Copernicus, Leonardo Da Vinci, Niccolò
Machiavelli, Michelangelo Buonarroti, William Barker, John Calvin, Sandro Botticcelli,
Tintoretto, Luca Marenzio…
Virgil: All in Paradise!!!
Dante: That’s good!!!
Virgil: Any more names?
Dante: Oh, I’ve a great copy… Why don’t you tell me, master, some names worth to be heard? I would
be so grateful…
Virgil: (surprised): Well, there are really plenty. What do you think of
Hernan Cortes?
Dante: Do you mean the Spanish conquistador?
Virgil: That’s him, my son…
Dante (a bit upset): Speaking about Spanish people I would prefer to talk
with Diego Guillén de Avila, Pedro
Fernandes de Villegas or with Pedro de Padilla, ‘you see?
Virgil: Well, of course I see, but they are all guys of Paradise…
Dante (quite mortified): I’m really sorry, master…
Virgil (with resolution): Never mind! Do you have any other names?
Dante: if I were assured about some other figures I would ask you to
start straight to the beginning of the seventeenth century…
Virgil: Whom would you like to know of?
Dante: Raffaello Sanzio, Giorgio Vasari, Sir Francis Drake, Amerigo
Vespucci, Giovanni Bellini, Adriano Bancheri, Anne Boleyn, John Calvin,
Catherine de Medici, Mary Queen of Scots, Charles the Fifth, Nostradamus, Ivan
the Terrible, GianPierLuigi da Palestrina, Michel de Montaigne…
Virgil: All of them out of the Great Spiral except for Francis Drake,
Nostradamus and Ivan the Terrible!!!
Dante: (very thoughtful) I’m in two minds… I’m not sure I want to stop
just for three names…May I ask for any others?
Virgil: Come on with your last names then!!!
Dante (in one breath): Oliver Cromwell, Johannes Keplero, William
Shakespeare, Cervantes, John Donne,
Francis Bacon, Renè Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Walter Releigh, Mazarino and
Richelieu…
Virgil: Only Richelieu and Mazarino have got trapped on the Infernal
spiral! But all these names lead us straight to the seventeenth century!!!!
Dante: Very well! I’m ready for the 17th century now!!!
Virgil: Let’s go then!!!
(while they go towards to the staircase which leads to the spaceship the
lights will be off)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BYVJ67QW
The last moon
Act Unique in six scenes
in Sardinian Language
By Ignazio Salvatore
Basile
Translaction in to
English by the same author
General index
the last moon
drama in one act and six
scenes
pages 1-20
Structure and Framework
page 21
Description of the
Protagonists
page 22
The presentation of the
author: where does the idea come from?
page 24
Director's Notes
Page 26
Acknowledgments and
Contributions
page 27
Characters
Itzocar
Tribe’s Chief of Nure
Irìsa
His
Wife
Damasu
Son to Itzocar and Irìsa
Gula
Daughter to Itzocar and Irìsa
Alàshia
Sister to Gonario
Aristea
Daughter to king Gonario’s
Nakigia Gonario ‘s Widow
Rumisu
Nakigia’s Son –Throne’s pretender
Bithia
Nakigia’s Sister - Priestess of Nure
Iolao
Bithia’s Son
Anù
High Priest at Nure
Elki
Anù’s Son and Soldier’s Chief
Soldiers and People
King
Gonario
His Phantom
THE PLOT
On the tribe
of Nure reigns Itzocar, who rose in command twenty years before,
when his brother Gonario, suddenly died.
In so doing
Itzocar has however willfully ignored the rules regarding the succession
imposed by ancient tradition , who foresaw the Regency of Gonario’s
widow, Nakigia, at least until the grown age of his son Rumisu, still a child
at the time of death of the king Gonario.
Trying to
legitimize and strengthen the usurped power Itzocar and authoritative Anù,
Member of the Council of elders of Nure, combine a double marriage: Damasu,
designed by his father Itzocar to succeed him on the throne, will marry Aristea
(who is daughter to deceased King's sister, Alàshia), while Elki, son of
Anù will marry Gula (daughter of Itzocar).
But Nakigia, widow
to Gonario, who is contrary to weddings, invited to depose the gifts on
behalf of Anù, invites the nobles, priests and the people waiting for the
awakening of Bithia Priestess ( mother of Iolaus), who has been doing the rite
of incubation, waiting for a forseen dream, to refuse the wedding at
least until Bithia’s reveil.
Rumisu, son to deceased
King Gonario and to Nakigia , aims to remove Uncle Itzocar in the command ,
feeling empowered.
While Nakigia
exposes his call to wait, Bithia awakens and describes his dream of doom: a Sun
swallowed by the Moon(Song of Bitia).
Immediately
after bursts on the scene Rumisu accusing Uncle Itzocar to have usurped the
command (song of Rumisu).
At the end
of Rumisu’s song, Damasu enters in defense of his father Itzocar.
The two men fight
hand-to-hand.
The winner will be
Rumisu. The loser Damasu abandons the village.
Rumisu, ripped the
stick and the mantle from his uncle Itzocar, that will follow with his wife
Irìsa the defeated son, sits on the throne and invites Aristea to join him at
his side.
But Iolaus
and Aristea announce their love. And while the people and the guards, let the
two lovers pass by, sadly Rumisu will leave the scene defeated by his own lust
for power.
The ghost of King
Gonario appears to underline the right rules with the song of Akinta
Kamar.
When Gonario goes
out of scene, all the people will dance, celebrating the Last Moon, before the
sun takes over the power for ever.
FIRST SCENE
(the scene opens to the central square of the nuragic village of
Nure. In the background, a sacred well of nuragic period and in the
distance the towers of the village; the half moon shines in the
blue sky; a mixed group are dancing a nuragic appropriate dance of
good luck wishing at the double promise of marriage between Damasu and Aristea
and between Elki and Gula.
The choir will be singing the following air)
Come on, come on, lights from the sky
Come on, bright and pregnant
Come to the aiming water
Come on, come on, lights from the sky
Itzocar (standing up and beating the sheep’s stick for thrice, calling
for silence)
- People of Shardana!
Listen to me! I, Itzocar, King of Nure, today I promise by the present
announcement the wedding of my son Damasu with the nice princess
Aristea ((Aristea, will cover her face with the veil; later on this
sign, soon interpreted as shyness, will be revealed a gesture of
refusing !)
And when the Moon is sank in the sacred well, nobody will be
able to deny this promise I’m doing in front of you; I call everybody as
witnesses as I confirm the promise with the gifts that my wife
Irìsa will pose hereafter in the well;
Irìsa (she stands solemnly up and goes to put the presents by the sacred
well; then one ancill will give her a veil whom with she will tie one the
couples)
- You will be tied
together for all your life, in luckiness and sadness! For ever and ever!
Anù (leaving the priest’s assembly will repeat the same Itzocar’s words,
inviting Nakigia, being him a widower, to deal the bribes)
- And I, Anù, Mayor
between the Mayors of Nure, announcing and pronouncing the weddings
of my son Elki with the beloved king’s Itzocar daughter , the nice
Gula(he will stare at Gula who according to tradition will hide her
own face with the veil) and because I’m a widower it’s up to the first
Priestess Nakigia to present the gifts in front of the people!
Nakigia ( she will solemnly occupy the center stage, which will be
promptly released, but without taking any the gifts of Anù
and leaving drop off the veil brought to her for tieing the other couple ).
- Is not that the way
we used to present our weddings in the sacred well of Garlo in this country!
Not even for the ancient habits and not really while our priestess
Bithia is still consulting our Gods! (everybody will turn towards
the sacred tub of prediction where Bithia is staying, while the heads and the
priests shall lift buzz of discontent and protests; but the protest stops while
leaping from the sacred cavern from which Bithia, cataplexy, comes,
sustained by the vestals to occupy the center stage and
begins to sing)
to be continued...
