Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - The French Drama - Edmond Rostand - Chantecler
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Chantecler 143
when he comes into the gathering at the guinea
hen s five o clock tea, to meet the pompous, over
bearing cocks representing the various govern
ments. When he arrives in the midst of these
distinguished society people, he is plied with the
query,
"
How do you sing? Do you sing the
Italian school or the French school or the German
school?" Poor Chantecler, in the simplicity of
his idealism, replies,
"
I don t know how I sing,
but I know why I sing." Why need the chante-
clers know how they sing? They represent the
truth, which needs no stylish clothes or expensive
feathers. That is the difference between truth
and falsehood. Falsehood must deck herself out
beyond all semblance of nature and reality.
Chantecler. I say . . . that these resplendent gen
tlemen are manufactured wares, the work of merchants
with highly complex brains, who to fashion a ridiculous
chicken have taken a wing from that one, a topknot from
this. I say that in such Cocks nothing remains of the
true Cock. They are Cocks of shreds and patches, idle
bric-a-brac, fit to figure in a catalogue, not in a barnyard
with its decent dunghill and its dog. I say that those
befrizzled, beruffled, bedeviled Cocks were never stroked
and cherished by Nature s maternal hand. . . . And I
add that the whole duty of a Cock is to be an embodied
crimson cry! And when a Cock is not that, it matters
little that his comb be shaped like a toadstool, or his
quills twisted like a screw, he will soon vanish and be
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
