If you can watch this video of NARAL’s Nancy Keenan firing up the crowd yesterday at the DNC’s abortion love-fest without thinking of this towering operatic moment, then you’re a better feminist than I am. First, Ms. Keenan:
In Boito’s great, non-Shakespearean Act II interpolation:
Credo in un Dio crudel che m’ha creato
simile a sè e che nell’ira io nomo.
Dalla viltà d’un germe o d’un atòmo
vile son nato.
Son scellerato
perchè son uomo;
e sento il fango originario in me.
Sì! questa è la mia fe’!
Credo con fermo cuor, siccome crede
la vedovella al tempio,
che il mal ch’io penso e che da me procede,
per il mio destino adempio.
Credo che il guisto è un istrion beffardo,
e nel viso e nel cuor,
che tutto è in lui bugiardo:
lagrima, bacio, sguardo,
sacrificio ed onor.
E credo l’uom gioco d’iniqua sorte
dal germe della culla
al verme dell’avel.
Vien dopo tanta irrision la Morte.
E poi? E poi? La Morte è il Nulla.
è vecchia fola il Ciel.
Or, to put it another way (in the Gwyn Morris/Andrew Porter translation):
I believe in a cruel God who has created me
in his image and whom, in hate, I call upon.
me like himself; cruel and vile he made me.
From some vile germ or base atom
was I born.
I am evil
because I am a man;
and I feel the primeval slime in me.
Yes! This is my creed!
I believe with a firm heart,
just as does the young widow in church,
that the evil I think and which from me proceeds
was decreed for me by fate.
I believe that the honest man is a mocking buffoon,
and in his face and in his heart,
everything in him is a lie:
tears, kisses, glances,
sacrifice and honor.
And I believe man to be
the sport of a wicked fate,
from the germ of the cradle
to the worm of the grave.
And after this derision comes Death.
And then? And then?
Death is nothingness.
Heaven is an old wives’ tale.
“La Morte e il Nulla,” indeed. It should be the organization’s motto.
