Libretto (excerpts):
©2010 Todd Boss A poetic retelling of Pan by Knut Hamsun, ©1894 Knut Hamsun from the English translation by Sverre Lyngstad, ©1998 Sverre Lyngstad. Some passages used verbatim by permission.
2. It’s nothing. She is
nothing to me. Why
tell of it? Hell, why
bother to recall it
at all? But it passes
the time. I am thirty.
I live contentedly
— but
yesterday the mail
brought two green-
gold feathers— devilishly green-
gold—folded in
paper and sealed
with a royal seal from
someone—oh—
I had a cabin in the Nordland...
For a single braid of seasons,
I was from lieutenant
to hunter promoted, a guest
in a settlement far away...
There night became day
with nary a star. Children
grew up in their sleep. O,
peculiar...! I knew
such peculiar people...!
I remember almost
nothing of them, nearly
nothing
of her. She is
nothing to me—
…
8. Two days I go without
hunting or fishing, just
walking the forest and listening, listening!
High above the sea, a Nordland winter
is melting the mountainsides wet
and black with a
trickling melody, tricking me, lyrically, mimicking
laughter. A quenching balm that
calms me after so many months of
solitude. What a mystery: Here is this
melody, no one to listen, not to mention
the birds returning—chaffinches,
bramblings, I know all the birds
from a thousand ramblings, and
see, now, there: green shoots
of yarrow, bursts of starflower,
greenery, greenery, everywhere
the scenery, ah, how easy it is to love
the green and peaceful world!—so
pitiable, the inchworm like an inch
of green thread, dangling, rearing,
searching—o, pity it with me, won’t
you, somebody, anybody, spring
is coming, the millwheel humming with
the millpond’s thawing—all winter long
it was gnawing for a song! And I’ve been
listening: How lucky this lieutenant is
to hunt sometimes no more than
music, in solitude, that brightly
feathered thing.
I’ll bring it to her,
the solitary melody of spring.
…
