Young Ofeg's Ditties/Ditty 23
XXIII.
In a valley encircled by hills dwelt men. The sun shone, and it was summer. And as evening drew near, and I began to ascend the mountain side, some were holding hands and dancing in rings, others were drinking coffee on the green grass, and others teaching the children their ABC.
The next day I had accomplished the first spiral of my mountain ascent, and I stood on a projecting crag, from which I had a view over the valley below me. Nothing seemed to have changed from the yesterday: men danced, drank coffee, and taught the children their ABC, just as when I had quitted them. I called to them to follow me in my journey up towards a higher point of view, but no one answered, no one seemed to have heard my voice.
On the next day, towards eventide, I had again ascended the mountain in a new spiral, and stood upon a jutting crag right above the one from which I had gazed on the valley the day before. The depths below me presented exactly the same spectacle, with this sole difference, that all objects seemed smaller. But when the people caught sight of me it was evident that they grew annoyed: one laughed mockingly, the second shrieked in scoffing terms, and the third flung stones. Then I continued my journey, and my soul was filled with pity; I mentally added many commentaries to the text—to understand all is to forgive all—and I set the new religion of human suffering into rhyme and verse.
Toward the evening of the third day I had completed a new spiral of the ascent. I stood once more on a projecting ledge that jutted over the depths, just above the two ledges on which I had stood the preceding days. I took up a stone and hurled it with all my strength in front of me, but although the incline of the mountain seemed to me to be almost perpendicular, it struck the crags. I saw that people moved about in the bottom of the valley, and fancied I could detect by their attitudes that they had observed me. But whether they waved a greeting or a threat I could not be sure, they were as small as if they were seen through the wrong end of a glass. One of them crawled up the mountain's side, up the same path as I had come, and he seemed to me no bigger than an ant. But whether it was a greeting or a threat, or whether the climber intended to follow me, or drag me down again, I heeded not. My chest grew light in the mountain air, and my head was clear. Clouds glided over the depths of the valley and all that it held, and my gaze rested upon the sun-tipped snow peak of the mountain, thither where the path led.
Fourth day towards evening. . . .