Paul Claudel
But the third act is a surprise. The scene opens in the great first-floor living-room of a European factory or store in Southern China. It is evening; all is peace within; Ysé is alone in her white tea-gown, her yellow hair loosely plaited for the night; a babe sleeps in its cradle; but without rages the thunder of cannon with the shrieks of a pillaged city, sacked by fanatics. The Boxers in revolt are ravaging the Concession; this sole building, the strongest, still holds out against them.
To Ysé, anxiously watching, enters her protector; and, oh, most dramatic surprise!—it is not Mesa; it is Amalric! And yet we learn the child is Mesa’s. The man of action has carried off the love and the son of the dreamer: all the profits of life are for him. This night the lovers are to die. As club after convent, store after villa, fall into the hands of the screaming insurgents, Amalric (ever the man of action, and even in this tragic hour cheerful, limited, master of his fate) neatly adjusts the mechanism of an infernal machine which, before the Chinese can break down the gates and bolts of the great factory, will blow the house, its inhabitants, and its assailants high in the air, shattered to dust in the twinkling of an eye:—
Ysé: Et cependant il est terrible d’être morte.
(Elle se trouble et lui prend la main.)
... Et, Amalric, est ce que vraiment il n’y a point de Dieu?
Amalric: Pourquoi faire? S’il y en avait un, je te l’aurais dit.
But here comes Mesa; he has a pass from the insurgents which permits him to go where he will; he comes to save Ysé. Amalric furious at the sight of his rival, leaps at him with one bound, wrestles with him, flings him off, broken, unconscious, his shoulder out of joint. And he takes from Mesa the talisman which will save their lives, as he has already taken his love and his child. Then, leaving Mesa still in his deep swoon, he carries Ysé down to the harbour, where a ship is waiting, just under the walls.
While Mesa still stirs and murmurs in his swoon, Ysé returns; Amalric thinks her safe in her cabin. But let Amalric live, let Amalric prosper! She will choose rather to die with Mesa in voluntary expiation. Like Gretchen, in Gœthe’s Faust, Ysé forgoes her chance of life; she will risk the great adventure of Eternity: ‘L’esprit vainqueur dans la transfiguration de Midi.’ And these last words explain the enigmatic title: Midi, Noon, is earthly passion which must be purified by suffering and sacrifice before it content the soul.
The Sharing of Noon, Le Partage de Midi, would make an admirable opera for the music of a Claude Debussy.