Plan for cinema (1936)

142 PLAN FOR CINEMA him to try to imagine for himself how a composer, choreographer, and scene-designer respectively might formalize the following dumb show from Part III of The Dynasts. It is Scene 2, which describes the last remnants of Napoleon's dying army on the retreat from Moscow. The Open Country between Smorgoni and Wilna The winter is more merciless, and snow continues to fall upon a deserted expanse of unenclosed land in Lithuania. Some scattered birch bushes merge in a forest in the back-ground. It is growing dark, though nothing distinguishes where the sun sets. There is no sound except that of a shuffling of feet in the direction of a bivouac. Here are gathered tattered men like skeletons. Their noses and ears are frost-bitten, and pus is oozing from their eyes. These stricken shades in a limbo of gloom are among the last survivors of the French army. Few of them carry arms. One squad, ploughing through snow above their knees, and with icicles dangling from their hair that clink like glass-lustres as they walk, go into the birch wood, and are heard chopping. They bring back boughs, with which they make a screen on the windward side, and contrive to light a fire. With their swords they cut rashers from a dead horse, and grill them in the flames, using gunpowder for salt to eat them with. Two others return from a search with a dead rat and some candle-ends. Their meal shared, some try to repair their gaping shoes and to tie up their feet, that are chilblained to the bone. A straggler enters who whispers to one or two soldiers of the group. A shudder runs through them at his words. . . . [The soldier reports that Napoleon has left them to their fate.] . . . Other soldiers spring up as they realize the news, and stamp hither and thither, impotent with rage, grief, and despair, many in their physical weakness sobbing like children. . . .