Book 1, lines 236-299

[Previous: lines 121-235]

Back in Bethany, Jesus has arrived too late to prevent Lazarus's death.

Iamque emensus iter, multis comitantibus, heros
vera dei soboles, Bethanes moenibus instat.
Cernit ibi moestas crinem laniare sorores,
munera fraterno tumulo suprema ferentes:
expertem thalami Marthan, atque urbis avitae            [240]
Magdali dictam de nomine Magdalenam.
Progreditur, bustumque petit; Moestissima Martha,
hunc simul ac vidit, comites, fratrisque sepulcrum
deserit, ac multo venienti occurrit honore;
insequitur soror inde, oculos ambae imbre madentes,      [245]
foemineis ambae plangoribus indulgentes.

“Ut te post cari germani funera tandem
accipimus venientem! Ut te saepe ille vocabat,
magne hospes, gelidi perfusus frigore leti!
Atque equidem credo, tunc sors te si qua dedisset          [250]
nobis, nunc etiam vitales duceret auras.
Nunc quoque (nil quando clari tibi Rector Olympi
abnuit) haud penitus nobis spes omnis adempta est.”

Talibus orabant: comites simul omnia luctu
miscebant; moestis resonabant cuncta querelis.          [255]
Ast heros tristes dictis solatus amicis
spondet opem, superas rediturum ad luminis auras
actutum fratrem incolumem, quem faucibus haustum
telluris quarto iam sol non viderat ortu.

Diditur haec totam consestim fama per urbem,          [260]
Quae cunctis incredibilisque et mira videri.
Vicinis populi passim de montibus omnes
concurrunt studio visendi atque omnia complent.
Ventum erat ad tumulum: stat circunfusa iuventus.
Ipse autem in medio duplices ad sidera palmas         [265]
iamdudum tendens, oculosque immobilis heros
orabat, tacitusque parentem in vota vocabat.
Orantem observant taciti, intentique tuentur
quid iubeat, quae signa ferat, quo deinde cadat res.
Bis toto color ore abiit; bis pectore anhelo                 [270]
infremuit; nutuque caput concussit honestum.
Ecce autem tumuli tremere ostia visa repente.
Omnibus extemplo subita formidine sanguis
diriguit, penitusque invasit pectora frigus;
cum tandem Deus has effudit ad aethera voces.          [275]
“Summe Parens, quamvis precibus nil abnuis unquam
ipse meis, quaecunque petam; tamen hoc tibi grates
munere semper agam: tua quanta potentia, vidit
circunfusa manus, populi videre frequentes.
Vos autem famuli properate, recludite marmor,          [280]
saxum ingens auferte, viroque exolvite vittas.”

Nec mora praeceptis; patuerunt claustra sepuIcri.
Concursu accedunt magno, attonitique pavore
inspectantque, videntque intus deforme cadaver,
vixque sibi credunt, nullo cogente moveri.                  [285]
Nec mora; clamantis ter voce vocatus amici
erigitur, loquiturque, et coeli vescitur auris.
Obstupuere omnes, nec fat vidisse loquentem,
aut audisse semel, dum cuncta ex ordine narrat
conventu in medio, qua e funere passus in ipso est,      [290]
quanto anima instantis vi leti exclusa dolore,
terrenosque diu eluctata reliquerit artus;
quas facies moriens, quam obscoena aspexerit ora
terrentum iuxta furiarum, irasque, minasque:
ut vix siderea volucres misii arce ministri                   [295]
auxilio possent avidas inhibere rapinis.
His addit scelerum poenas, ac laeta piorum
praemia, quaeve animas miseras subiisse necesse est
arbitria, aeternosque nigris fornacibus ignes.

------------

Finally he and his companions arrived, this hero
true progeny of God, at Bethany’s walls.
He saw two mourning sisters, tearing their hair,
bringing final offerings to a brother’s tomb:
one was Martha, unmarried; the other came from         [240]
Magdala town, and so was called Magdalena.
He approached and Martha in her sorrow ran up
as soon as she saw him, leaving her brother’s tomb
and her fellow mourners, greeting him with reverence;
her sister followed her, eyes brimming with tears.          [245]
both giving way to women’s plangent grief.

“And so you came to our dear brother’s funeral
at last you're here! How often he called for you,
great friend, as death’s cold touch closed upon him!
And I certainly believe, if you could have been here          [250]
sooner, he would still be breathing the living air.
And even now (since the Lord of bright Olympus
denies you nothing) hope has not wholly left us.”

They pleaded, their mourning cries throwing all
into confusion, and the air resounded with lamentation.          [255]
But the hero consoled their sorrow with kindness
promising help, that their brother would soon
rise again to light and air, though the tight earth
had kept him from the sun's light for four long days.

Quickly the rumour of this spread through the town,          [260]
and folk thought it incredible, miraculous.
People hurried down from the surrounding mountains
everyone gathering eagerly to see what would happen.
They crowded the tomb, a standing circle of the young.
For a time the hero stood in the middle, his hands               [265]
raised high, still, his eyes lifted towards heaven
he was praying, silently petitioning his father.
The people there watched him in silence, wondering
what he was planning, what signs would follow.
Twice his face blanched; twice his chest heaved deeply         [270]
and he gasped; his handsome head sagged forward.
There! Now, suddenly, the doors of the tomb shook.
Everyone felt their blood chilling with fear, cold
invading the very depths of their hearts.
The son of God addressed these words to the sky.                   [275]
“Great Father, until now you have never denied
my prayers, no matter what I asked; but this time
my thanks will be endless: this crowd will have seen
your vast power, let the wider populace see it too.
Come, attendants, lift away this marble lid,                      [280]
remove this huge stone, strip away that man’s shroud!”

Straight away the doors of the tomb were opened.
The crowd surged forward, fearfully peering
within, seeing with their own eyes that ghastly cadaver,
hardly able to believe it was moving on its own.          [285]
His Friend, without pausing, called three time
and the body stood, and spoke, and breathed fresh air.
All there were astonished: they could not get enough,
listening over and over, as he told them
standing in their midst, all he'd seen in death,          [290]
how painful it had been, the sorrow of his soul
shut-out from life, struggling to quit his earthly body;
the faces he had seen as he died, how obscene
furies pressed him, wrathful, punishing: so eager
even the winged messengers sent down from the          [295]
starry city could barely hold-back their rapine.
He spoke of the punishments for sin, and goodness’s
joyful reward, what miseries wicked souls must
endure, how black the flames of the eternal furnace.

As it does in the gospels, this episode stands as a prefiguration of, and ratio inferior to, the greater resurrection to come. Vida's treatment is interesting: the build-up slips, with a rather awkward abruptness, to the aftermath: Christ readies himself to rouse Lazarus and then ... Lazarus is in the midst of the crowd, regailing them with the horrors of dying. It's tempting to read this as a deliberately wrongfooting disjunction. Maybe it's even artful, in a way.

Line 260 (‘Diditur haec totam consestim fama per urbem’) is modelled on Aeneid 12:608: ‘hinc totam infelix volgatur fama per urbem’, ‘from here unhappy rumour spreads throughout the town’. In the Aeneid the town is Ardea and the rumour is that the Italic hero Turnus has been slain in battle, although in fact he's not dead, but alive. Something not a million miles away from the rumour that goes through Bethany.  Although, that said, by the end of Aeneid book 12 (only a few hundred lines away) Turnus does die at Aeneas's hand. Turnus' ‘resurrection’ is a kind of misunderstanding, and only temporary. Of course, howsoever miraculous, Lazarus's resurrection is temporary too. He's still a mortal. Christ has postponed, not reversed, the inevitable. Deformis in line 284 means, primarily, deformed or misshapen; but that seems like an odd way to describe Lazarus’s revitalised person. Since the word can also mean ugly, hideous, I’ve translated it that way.

Schubert, it seems, never finished his oratorio about Lazarus. Indeed it's hard to think of a really effective or powerful artistic representation of this story, perhaps because the whole point of the tale is to unpick narrative ending, to dissolve the closure upon which storytelling fundamentally depends. One exception is Browning's 1855 dramatic monologue ‘An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician’. Karshish examines the resurrected Lazarus, refuses (as a good scientist) to believe the miracle-story and ponders whether the man's time in the tomb was the result of some kind of coma or epilepsy. But in Browning's version resurrection has changed Lazarus:

Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
This grown man eyes the world now like a child.
Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,
Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep,
To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,
Now sharply, now with sorrow,—told the case,—
He listened not except I spoke to him,
But folded his two hands and let them talk,
Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool. [Browning, ‘Karshish’, lines 116-24]

Browning's Lazarus can't stop gazing in amazement at life, even in its humblest forms, flourishing all around him. Vida's is backward looking, struck by the horror of death. I know which one I prefer.

The image at the top of the post is a pane of stained glass, presently in the collection of the V&A: the Raising of Lazarus (originally 1525, Lower Rhine). Artist/Maker: Master of St Severi.

[Next: lines 300-367]