Bo I. Cavefors : DIE TOTENINSEL / THE ISLAND OF DEATH

Bo I. Cavefors
DIE TOTENINSEL / THE ISLAND OF DEATH

Translation from Swedish by Martin Bladh
Illustrations: Martin Bladh

Stage: Arnold Böcklin’s painting Die Toteninsel (the earliest version, 1880). The painting is projected on a white screen covering the whole backdrop of the stage.

In front of the painting, a figure clad in white with its back turned towards the audience. It’s wearing a thin white cloth which doesn’t cover the front of the body. The audience can’t see that the figure is naked under the cloth and if it’s a man or a woman until the end of the performance. The voice shouldn’t tell if it’s a man or a woman who’s delivering the text. Alternative 1: a naked man with an androgynous appearance; alternative 2: a naked woman with a boyish appearance. If alternative 2 is chosen some minor changes most be done in the text.

During the whole performance the stage floor is covered by naked men and women copulating, caressing, male on male, female on female - now and then these actors will make themselves heard through kisses, moans and sighs - sensual pleasure, cries of pain. The bodies are enclosed in a blue-black-light which gives the impression of water and the ocean. Choreography - the bodies move like waves.

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Sappho, when you died
Everything that was you
Perished.
You were
Dead dead dead.
You are
Death.

Why lie:

Wie froh bin ich,
Das ich weg bin! 1a)

What is a human heart? 1b)
All ends, finally…
No memories
No yearnings…
Left
Off your moist
Cunt
The red lips,
That rose like vampires
Over there on the island
With the impenetrable
Forest of
Black coniferous trees.

But what happens in the shadow
Of the trees?
What I remember is
You as nun,
As frying-pan
And with Greasy frog legs. 2)

There was no
Void to
Penetrate.
There was no
Void to
Dream of
When you left me
For Hades.

I only remember
Your knickers with
White lace. 3)

Of horror at the sight
Of my cock
You hid amongst
Dunes and sails.

Void - a desolate cavern
Your sex - you were nothing
but a huge
Void,
Sappho.

Now, when I am free
From you at last
I wonder:
What did you want?

Herz wie das meine
Zu ängstigen? 4)

Did you want
To make me
Your slave?
Or…

Now, since you are gone,
The shadows awake
From their gloomy
Slumber on the island.

The naked copulating
Bodies are now
Of flesh and blood,
The cocks covered with
Sperm,
And all the
Skeletons that dance
Around the graves
Have been polished
By the wind and the rain
And pecked to splinters by
Ravens.

This destiny lay await for me
When I occupy
Your realm,
When I step ashore
Between your dead white
Quadratic legs to take
The attained reality
Back in my
possession.

Why did you force
Me to suffer
For so long?

Why had I previously
This vain, absurd longing
For you Sappho?

Even then I knew:
The Lord gives each one of us
A death of his own
In the moment of orgasm
The final void
Of painful beatitude.

Even you Sappho
Tasted the treachery
And learned about
The pain of being
Abandoned by
Your own love,
Your own conceit. 5)

Lord, affectionate
Death is neither
Reward nor penance. 6)

I want
To get away from
The reality that I
Earlier perceived with
Your eyes,
That gnawed into
My skin, made
The muscles wither away –
Away from Sappho.

My new life
Waits on that island
You abandoned Sappho.

Or…

Were you forced away,
Were you dethroned?

I see the paintings
From the past,
Past your time, Sappho,
That other customs
Were practiced on the island.

That specific house…
Over there…
To the right…
Was it
Where the Death-boat used
To drop anchor
When it passed
The entrance to
Your sex?

Is it really
A house and not an
Inanimate, dead, ivory-coloured
Skull with empty eye sockets?

And the white, clear-cut,
Almost quadratic
Concrete blocks,
On the right and on the left
Side of the harbour?

Are these the remains
Of your womb, or
Two ancient petrified
Corpses?

Is the villa a marble tomb?
Occupied by
Carcasses surrounded
By medieval weapons
And laurel crowns,
Dead chiselled
Flowers.
Withered leafs moulded
Into withered old
Veined cocks.

No no no!

I know these white, polished
Phalluses are there to
Tempt me away from
My original goal, to
Penetrate you slowly,
To induce the shivers
When I touched your
Clitoris.

My yearning was for
The island to explode
In convulsions,
In an inconceivable
Orgasm that echoes over
The sea, that
Made Death
The reaper of seas,
The waves to rumple
With terrifying force

Towards
other coasts,
Towards
other wombs.

But such fantasies
Didn’t provide me
Anything.

Finally, my
Only true goal are
Arses of men and
Being fucked by these men.

The pleasure increases
As I approach death.

When I stand in front of
Arnold Böcklin’s
Die Toteninsel,
In front of the Island of
Death,
My yearning for pain,
For total submission,
To meet the young naked
Boys in the dusk of the
Black trees, grows stronger.
I want you,
(As a last salute)
To receive me
Under your whip
And flog me to
Death as a final farewell
To the part of my
Youth that was a part of
You Sapfo, and now is
Nothing but memories and
Wounds.
Open wounds
And deep scars
Of old wounds, of branded
Pain and yearning.
The knife cuts
Like fire through
The black coniferous-tress while
I rest in this
Terrestrial green meadow
Free from mourning, from
Anxiety.
And there…
Between the cracks of the whip
The beating of the drums
Faint smoothing trills
From the young shepherd’s
Flute that motions
The childish erect cock
That rests on his left thigh.

I live and die
By these instruments.

Sappho.
To me you are dead.
I am dead to you.

You hid that flail
That introduced me to
The harem of boys, carefully…
But I saw it gleaming between
The black hairs that
Grows between your
Thighs.

Cunt cunt cunt,
Cunt cunt cunt.
Girly-cunt
And white wine poured down
Your thighs, down my face,
Into my mouth.
It was death.

Cita mors ruit… 7)

You let my tongue
Lick you,
Suck the life out of you,
That death could
Force his way into you
Through the biting Jaws
That spewed
Fire between your
Thighs.

I felt
For the last time
Your scabrous hairs against
My lips when the juices
Flooded my mouth and
I was reborn with the sea
That washed over me
That now washes over me
That eternally will wash over me
And transform my
Dying yearning for you
Into a yearning for
Something that you can’t
Provide me with,

The boy’s soft body,
The softness of a boy’s
Cock, the young man’s
Hard cock, his
Muscular thighs and
Firm behind.

The red-black hole between
The boy’s buttocks,
The sharp and
Beautifully drawn
Shoulder blades,
The skin which stretches
Like a canvas
Of flayed hide
When he bends over and inserts
His member into my
Anus.

The navel…
Navel navel… and the black
Strand of hair from the cock up
Towards the navel…
And his chest
And nipples…
Nipples. Let me bite
His nipples bloody.

Sapfo, you gave me
What you never could
Give me off your self.

You fetched the boys
And gave them to me
On your dead island.

You gave me
All that is immortal,
The boy’s innocent
Exaltation, his
Will to submission
That gives birth to
Death,
His longing to
Thrash life into
Death,
Relentlessly, in
Eternal orgasm,
The continuously throbbing
Spermatic flow into my
Mouth.

Sappho…
Who am I,
Who begs you for
That which you can’t
Give me of yourself?

Who am I
That know to titillate
Your clitoris,
To suck the juice
Off your cunt,
To persuade you to
Open the gates to
The Island of Death
And release the beautiful boys
You confined when they
Became a threat to your own yearning,
Your own longing for
Hard cock.
No plants in your garden
May sooth against this yearning
For death between a boy’s soft loins,
Against these yearning to kiss away
The quivering drops from his
Blue-black
Cock-head.

Non est medicamen in hortis. 8)

Flog me, tie my hands,
Chain my feet,
Make me your
Slave!

Not your slave but the boys’ slave.

Make my mouth,
My arse and my cock
Ready to receive the boys
When you deliver them,
Deliver them from
Death.

If not…
Then fetter me to this dungeon,
And I will rejoice with these,
My own reflections,
All these Homo Despaeratus. 9)

As Persefone I will rule the kingdom
Of the dead together with these boys,
Lets turn the island into a
Dionysian ceremonial ground
Of ancient customs and
times…

Quae vita, qui mores fuerint, 10)

A world of pain and suffering,
Of black masses and altars of sacrifice.

Let me be a sacrificial-victim
For the boys to violate,
Cover me with your fragrant and flavoured
Semen.

Sappho, can’t you see,
that I am ready,
I am naked and prepared
To invade your black and greedy sheath,
Transform the dark poplars
Into a forest of erected
Members.

All the lifeless phalluses? Yes,

Rosa de spinis Floret, 11)

The rose and the thorn.

I will transform all of this
Into pleasure, ecstasy,
Expression –
Transgressive exaltation,
The final marriage with
Death.

The boys bathing in
Heliogabalus’ blue-black sea
Of roses,
An orgy where bodies can’t be separated,
Where all the members,
The mouths and the
Kisses,
Thighs and ribcages,
Every bruised nipple
Is a part of one single
Body.

(Turns towards the audience - very quickly – sporting an erection)


I have slept for far to long.
But I have been awakened and
I can see the young man that woke me up, 12)
At this very moment he lights
The final fire at the entrance to the harbour. 13)

Death will purge us all.

Here we are, scourged
On this island of death,
But we may rejoice
Here!

To die surrounded by
Handsome young boys
Is no difficulty.

Flog me
Flog me
Flog me…
Silence.

Flog me to silence.

What is left…

Silence.

Sapfo,
what award should I give to you?

Silence.

My will and my goal are
These young bodies once
Flushed out of your
Womb.

To die, to sleep…

Maybe I am dreaming,
But the dream is the reality
Turning the thorn into sweet-scented
Roses.


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Notes.
1) Goethe/Werther
2) Goethe/Werther
3) Arrabal
4) Rimbaud
5) Rilke
6) Schiller
7) Horatius “The Death comes…”
8) Regimen sanitatis Salerni / In the garden the death is unconquered…
9) Madcaps, terrorists
10) Livius
11) Hieronymus
12) Wagner / Brünnhilde
13) Wagner / Siegfried



Copyright©Bo I. Cavefors & Martin Bladh, 2010