Pedro Calderón de la Barca

Segismundo's Speech

translated from the Spanish by

Michael Smith

As you treat me so,
Heaven, I try to understand
what was my crime against you
by being born, while still
I grasp by the very fact
of birth what crime it was.
Your unrelenting justice
has sufficient cause:
Man's greatest crime
is simply to have been born.

This I'd only know
to expend all my cares
(aside, Heaven, from birth itself):
What more offence can I
inflict on you to justify
your further punishment?
Were other men not born?
That being so, what blessings
have they had
that never have been mine?

The bird is born plumaged
in perfect beauty.
Scarcely a feathered bloom,
a winged bouquet,
it cleaves the vaulted sky
and leaves behind, becalmed,
its haven nest.
Then how is it that I
who have more soul
enjoy less liberty?

The beast is born
with skin of dappled beauty.
No sooner constellation
by Nature's skilful brush,
when sheer necessity, unremitting
and cruel, teaches it cruelty,
a monster in its labyrinth.
Then how is it that I,
endowed with better instinct,
enjoy less liberty?

The fish, that draws no breath,
is born, a freak of spawn and slime.
A ship of scales, no sooner
sighted on the waves,
it spins through every quarter,
sounding the immense
coldness of the depths.
Then how is it that I
who have more free will
enjoy less liberty?

The stream is born, a snake
uncoiling in the flowers.
This silver serpent scarcely
breaks through blossoms
but it celebrates their grace
with music, flowing with majesty
to the open plain.
Then how can I
who have greater life
enjoy less liberty?

Hitting this pitch of grief,
a volcano, an Etna,
I'd tear from out my breast
pieces of my heart.
What law, justice, reason,
can deny to man
a privilege so sweet, so tall a grace,
as God gives stream,
fish, beast and bird?

 

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600-1681) was a playwright and poet, the last of the great writers of the siglo de oro (the golden century) and, after the death of Lope de Vega, Spain's greatest dramatist of the period. The speech above is drawn from his most celebrated philosophical drama La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream), which is said to be the most commentated and analysed of all Spanish works of literature, after Don Quijote. Though not so well-known in Britain today, his work was celebrated in the past by poets and dramatists such as Shelley, Goethe and Schlegel.

Go to the Spanish text of this speech at palabravirtual

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