Beniamin M.

Bukowski

THE AMAZING LIMBOURG BROTHERS

Translated by Anna Krajewska-Wieczorek and Michael Hackett

CHARACTERS:

PAUL VAN LIMBOURG—illuminator

JEAN VAN LIMBOURG—younger brother, illuminator
HERMAN VAN LIMBOURG—youngest brother, illuminator
JEAN DE BERRY
PROLOGUE

Standing in a line from left to right: PAUL, JEAN and HERMAN LIMBOURG and the duke
JEAN DE BERRY.

PAUL. There are many distinguished people in the world.

JEAN. Some of them are writers, others saxophonists, or interpreters of the Holy Bible,
or inventors of the atomic bomb.

HERMAN. But the Limbourg Brothers were miniaturists.

PAUL. They illuminated manuscripts. The oldest was Paul.

JEAN. The younger—Jean.

HERMAN. And the youngest—Herman.

PAUL. At first they painted for Philip the Duke of Burgundy but, when he died in 1404,
they moved to the court of his brother Jean de Berry. There they created their most
famous work, The Very Rich Hours, a book illustrated by twelve miniature pictures each
representing a month of the year. In 1416 the brothers died of the plague. De Berry died
soon after. He was an exceptional politician and an extraordinary collector.

DE BERRY. There were seven hundred paintings in my collection. This was at a time
when no one thought of collecting art as an investment. I waged wars, I prevented new
ones through diplomatic action, I signed alliances and plotted intrigues. There was a
time when my brother and I were the most important men the country. I had my own
wealthy duchy. And yet, even having all these privileges and influence, I managed to end
up ruined. At my death, the Berry treasury was empty. If those little paintings managed
to ruin me, a man of such powerful connections and importance, what of those cities of
today’s Europe whose wealthy citizens, in their work and after work, turn on their
computers to stare thoughtlessly at a stream of images that flow from their screens.
Cats, fashion, sports, pornography. I make no comment on the idiocy of the subjects,
but these viewers do not own any of those images. They don’t have them on paper. At
least I can say: “Here is the Prayer Book that has been created for Prince Jean de Valois,
the Duke de Berry.” Dozens of small faces: my subjects, my friends, my courtiers, my
lovers. Images of the seasons, the history of Creation, illustrations of the Gospel, the
lives of the Saints. A man does not need cats when he has bears at his court. He does
not long for foreign fashion when he, himself, dictates the fashion of the world. Nor
does he feel the slightest desire for pornography, when the discreet memories of the
men and

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women who shared the previous night with him are enough. The sport I enjoyed the
most was the blood hunt, but since art completely satisfied my voyeuristic needs, a
woman’s body aroused my desire only when I could feel its warmth on my own.

PAUL. Our father was an artist, our uncle was an artist. From the very beginning it was
obvious we would become illuminators. When Jean and I were still boys we wanted to
start a rock band, but Limbourg Brothers, that’s a good name for a bank. That’s why we
turned to manuscripts.

HERMAN. What does it mean that we’re illuminators?

JEAN. It’s a bit like being freelancers.

PAUL. Or designers.

HERMAN. Insane hours, fixed income, and lots of orders.

JEAN. In our country we would have had to have done apprenticeships in the guilds and
learn our craft for so long that, in the end, we would have become mediocre and lost all
our talent.

PAUL. With God’s help we received a recommendation to the court of the princes of
Burgundy.

HERMAN. On our CVs we stated that we’re creative.

JEAN. On a CV you should always state that you’re creative.

PAUL. And ready for new opportunities.

HERMAN. New disunities.

JEAN. We live in a time when each new opportunity leads to disunity. But luckily that’s
not our business.

PAUL. Illustrations transcend differences.

HERMAN. What do I value most in the work of an illuminator? Independence. Thankfully,

I found a great team to work with.

JEAN. Your father and mother produced this team.

PAUL. Some advice — fuck and procreate as much as you can in order to create a
dynamic creative team with lucrative specialist skills.

HERMAN. If you’re afraid corporations will destroy the family, best make your family
into a corporation.

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DE BERRY. It is easy, is it not, for you to proclaim such banalities when you waste your
days in your comfortable workshop?

PAUL. True. Instead of going corporate, we chose the feudal system. Princes—forgive
me my gracious Lord—princes are greater simpletons than office managers, but they
have superior taste in art.

JEAN. What interest is there in books of hours?

PAUL. Nobody reads the Holy Hours anymore.

HERMAN. Only nuns and old penitents who constantly repeat the same prayers over
and over.

JEAN. And his Highness is not a penitent.

PAUL. His Highness is enlightened.

HERMAN. When a Prince becomes a penitent, it always ends badly.

JEAN. What interest is there in books of hours?

PAUL. The illustrations.

HERMAN. In books of hours only the illustrations are interesting.

JEAN. People like to look at pictures.

PAUL Hundreds of little pictures.

HERMAN. The Duke de Berry likes to look at hundreds of little pictures.

JEAN. Beautifully ornamented pictures that portray everything that can be found in his
kingdom.

PAUL. So the Duke doesn’t even need to leave his palace. He sits with his book and
admires the beauty of nature in Burgundy’s forests, the wealth of the soil that produces
two harvests a year, the splendour of his royal hunts and the greatest moments of his
life, the greatest feasts, the greatest battles.

HERMAN. There are also scenes from the Holy Bible presented with the greatest
consideration for the rigors of Theology, although they are enriched with small details to
delight the eyes of those who admire them.

DE BERRY. Yes, my dear ones. That is all true. My most heartfelt thanks for that.

I have worked long to make my kingdom the kingdom of fiction. There is nothing in this
world that attracts our attention more than amusing pictures. I believe that if we could
produce them in great number, if we could multiply that number every day, so that a

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man sitting before them would never have enough time to view them all, that would
bring a definite end to unrest in this country. No more rebellions, no more wars, no
more political upheavals or religious conflicts. Only that ultimate silence that
accompanies the turning of the pages, only those vacant eyes moving along consecutive
visions of colour and shape, along the wonders of this world.

Let some art lover claim that content is not important, that what attracts him is the
richness of the colours, that he loves the contours, the interplay between straight and
curved lines, that the entire abstract feast entices his eyes with indescribable richness,
transporting him into a realm of pure form, bringing divine respite to his mind. What will
we say to him?

HERMAN. What will we tell him?

JEAN. To go fuc ….

PAUL. No! Shame on you, Jean.

DE BERRY. We will tell him, dear sirs, that there are learned men who have similar
opinions, but ultimately what counts is the anecdotal evidence that people would rather
watch Love Island rather than look at the late paintings of Mark Rothko.

PAUL. But don’t worry.

JEAN. Our play is about pictures.

HERMAN. It’s composed of pictures. Of twelve pictures because there are twelve
months of the year. So we include as many illustrations. Twelve scenes over twelve
years from the time of our arrival in the court of the Duke de Berry in 1404 to our death
in 1416.

DE BERRY. The probability of dying in a theatre is not very great, but it’s not insignificant
either. The exact risk is difficult to calculate. But let us forego mathematics. There have
been heart attacks, there have been strokes, on both sides of the curtain; the audience
is no safer than the actors. And fires. Emergency exits do not always exist. Richard
Wagner, for example, locked the doors of the Bayreuth Opera during the performance
of his tetralogy, The Ring Cycle, to frustrate the early departures of spectators who were
not ready to accept his new art form. Those who could not make it through to the very
end were carried out only when the performance was over.

But let us return to the theme of dying. For it is not completely impossible that terrorists
have planted a bomb here in our place of performance.

You would be right in thinking that they prefer movie theatres. For some reason it
seems that a movie theatre is a better place for terrorists. And even if someone wants
to blow up someone, a theatre does not feel like the right place to do it. It is not highly
valued as an art form. But assassination. Think how ennobling it would be for us.

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“During the monologue of the Duke de Berry, the theatre was shaken by four strong
explosions.” At least the attackers, the fundamentalists, would appreciate us in their
twisted way. I think that fundamentalism treats art more seriously. Is it just me? Excuse
me, did someone say something? Oh, yes. Absolutely. Fundamentalists treat everything
more seriously. That’s their main problem.

Our play has a very regular structure that reflects the cyclical order of the year. To you,
it might not seem to be a very convincing narrative concept, but believe me, such things
were very important to people in the Middle Ages. So then: one author, four actors,
twelve scenes which will represent the twelve months, as many as were illustrated by
the Limbourg Brothers in their Very Rich Hours of the Duke de Berry. That cycle, now
complete, was not entirely finished by our protagonists. They died with me during the
plague epidemic of 1416. Art historians, who really never know anything, do, in this case,
admit their ignorance. They are not able to decide which months were illustrated by the
Limbourgs and which were the work of later masters. There are theories, but nothing is
certain. To represent these circumstances in our play, we will introduce an element of
the unknown. Meaning: After each month, we will introduce the possibility that our play
will end because the characters will die. Here is the Wheel of Fortune!

The Wheel of Fortune is revealed as in a game show surrounded by bright coloured neon
lights and divided into 365 sections with one of them black.

When the wheel starts spinning, there is a three hundred and sixty-five to one chance
that it will land on the Black Death. This not a great chance, but it is possible. If this
occurs the performance will be stopped immediately. As meagre as it is, this will be a
small attempt to represent death in the theatre. We will, at least, demonstrate its
inevitability. And also the fact that, against all popular belief, death submits to the rules
of probability and logic. It is just difficult to comprehend those rules from a human
perspective.

The nature of death … Well, let’s stop there because my monologue has become
ridiculously long. Nobody likes long monologues. I will speak more on the nature of
death later, if the plague doesn’t get us first.

NOTE I: The consecutive parts of the play begin by showing the months from The Very
Rich Hours of the Duke de Berry. The text for each painting of the month can be used,
but does not necessarily need to be used, in the performance. This depends on the
decision of the creators of the production.

NOTE II: The Wheel of Fortune is spun after the beginning of each month. If it stops on
the black, DE BERRY announces: “The Black Death.” At that moment the stage lights are
turned off [and the lights come up in the audience. The performance ends without
comment.

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 JANUARY (I)

At the wall
Silent war.
In the hall all is peaceful.
The knives of the Burgundian nobles are pointed at the table
Ready to butter the bread.

A page plays the lute for the greyhound.

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THE ARRIVAL OF THE LIMBOUG BROTHERS

It is the year 1404. After the death of Philip II of Burgundy, the Limbourgs arrive at the
court of his brother the Duke de Berry in search of a protector.

PAUL. Greetings revered Prince.

JEAN. Salutations gracious Prince.

HERMAN. My Lord, we humbly come before your Majesty.

DE BERRY. And greetings—to you.

PAUL. Paul.

JEAN. Jean.

HERMAN. Herman.

DE BERRY. Gentlemen, what brings you here?

JEAN. Your greatness, Majesty.

PAUL. Your wisdom, Majesty.

HERMAN. Your fame, Majesty.

JEAN. Fate

PAUL. The need to make a living.

HERMAN. The plot of this play.

BERRY. No, no. Start again.

The LIMBOURG BROTHERS exit and reenter.

DE BERRY. Gentlemen, what brings you here?

JEAN. Our legs.

PAUL. Jean!

JEAN. The Theory of Probability and the fact that, once we moved from the place where
we were, we had to find another place.

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HERMAN. What my brother is trying to say is that we wish to be of service to your
Majesty.

DE BERRY. What do you have to offer?

JEAN. Clever hands.

DE BERRY. Probably a wise choice, judging by the rest of you.

PAUL. We have heard, My Lord, that you value every kind of beautiful art and, above all,
books.

DE BERRY. Yes, my child. I read from them no less than I read from your common faces.

HERMAN. We are illuminators, your highness. Your brother Prince Philip sent us to you.
He was very pleased with our work.

DE BERRY. Our brother, Prince Philip, is dead.

JEAN. He was pleased with our work, My Lord, when he was still alive. He liked our
prayer books.

DE BERRY. Where do you come from?

PAUL. From the Netherlands, My Lord.

DE BERRY. Our vassals! I have heard that it is a land of grass and weeds!

JEAN. In a sense, My Lord, but very swampy too.

DE BERRY I hope that you can bring me something more stimulating than what was last
brought to me from the Netherlands. I did not get any pleasure from it.

JEAN. Perhaps you didn’t use it properly, My Lord. You should always inhale when you
smoke.

DE BERRY. In the Middle Ages, my child, everything always goes up in smoke. Therefore,
In spite of that, I like manuscripts. I will give you a workshop, assistants and funds for
your first commissions. During this time, consider yourselves guests of the court. If I like
your work, you will be repaid generously and I will give you more commissions. Now
excuse me. I am going to war.

He leaves. JEAN uncovers The Very Rich Hours—the beautifully decorated book.

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JEAN. It’s good, Paul, that we have something we made earlier. We’ll work on the other
orders and when the Duke returns we’ll hand him this book we brought with us.

PAUL. Let me see. (He takes the book from Jean). There’s something missing.

HERMAN. (Takes the book from Paul, looks at it). Let’s add a cat.

JEAN. (Takes the book from Herman). Who wants to look at cats? (Looks at the book).
Let’s add some women.

PAUL. (Takes the book from Jean). Who wants to look at . . . No, that’s in bad taste. After
great consideration I realize that our work is best when we keep it minimal.

JEAN. Here speaks a man a man who’s too lazy to draw a couple of women’s breasts:
“minimal”.

Enter DE BERRY.

DE BERRY. I am back from the war!

PAUL. So soon?

DE BERRY. We did not have many enemies today.

JEAN. My Lord. . . We. . .

Hands the book to the Duke

Here are beautifully decorated Hours for your Majesty.

DE BERRY. Really? For me? Wow, how sweet.

PAUL. We didn’t know if you would like them. We put the Annunciation of Mary in the
middle.

DE BERRY. Oh beautiful. Truly. I already have many Annunciations, but nothing like this
one.

JEAN. It’s the newest trend from the Netherlands.

DE BERRY. Oh, of course. I will certainly read it.

JEAN. It’s better than another sweater under the Christmas tree, right?

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PAUL. Shut up Jean. Tell us directly, My Lord, are you pleased?

DE BERRY. No. It’s boring. Get back to work.

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 FEBRUARY (II)

The peasants are warming up their legs

And defrosting their genitalia
Today it is hard for us to guess
This part of Medieval custom
But this misunderstanding
Would be considered ignorance

There will be many crows

The crows will feed off the harvest
There will be many sheep
The sheep will do nothing
There will be a woodcutter with an axe
The axe will be slung over his shoulder
There will be many trees
In the end they will all be cut down
In the distance there will be a town

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THE VERY RICH HOURS
Year 1410. The Limbourg Brothers in their workshop.

PAUL. We never stop drawing.

[HERMAN]. As long as we draw, we have jobs. As long as we have jobs, we have money.
And as long as we have money, we can draw. It’s a vicious circle. But if you consider all
the rustic farmhands we have managed to immortalize during this time, I’m glad that we
immortalized them and not the other way around.

JEAN. So we’re to create a new book of hours greater and more splendid than any other
before. No matter how costly or how long it takes.

PAUL . The initial project got the approval of the Duke. He liked it.

JEAN. “Liked it.” We showed him the manuscript. He was totally with it. “Such Hours, so
rich, wow! Many congratulations! HE more than “liked it”.

HERMAN. Look!

PAUL. He looked at us and said, “You have already made a “Rich Hours” for me. And
now—you must make a very Rich Hours for me.

JEAN
I am afraid of what he will ask for next.

HERMAN. Look, please.

JEAN. Hmm?

HERMAN. I’ve invented a new kind of illumination.

JEAN. There are no new kinds of illumination.

PAUL. Each illumination is the flat representation of some form in space. It’s their only
common feature. Beyond this, each one is completely unique.

HERMAN. This one is different.

JEAN. Everything has been invented already, Herman.

PAUL. Nothing changes. Nothing will change.

JEAN. Illumination is an inadequate form of discourse. There can be no illustration after

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Agincourt.

PAUL. The Battle of Agincourt hasn’t happened yet.

JEAN. That’s the reason we’re still drawing. History has ended.

PAUL. God is dead.

JEAN. All the grand narratives have faded away.

PAUL. The High Gothic has been compromised.

HERMAN. This illumination is of a different kind. It differs from other illuminations in a

way that other illuminations do not differ from each other.

JEAN. Panta rhei, Herman, all things flow.

PAUL.You can’t step into the same river twice, Herman.

JEAN. There is an assertion, almost possible to prove logically, that if we gather a large
collection of illustrations of a particular size and divide each illustration into miniature
points which can be filled with any colour, the number of combinations of colours and
shapes leads us to the conclusion all possible images will appear in our collection. Or to
put it more simply, there is a finite set of possible pictures of a particular size and we
can accept that the number of pictures in this set is large.

PAUL. Practically infinite.

JEAN. But let’s remain theorists for a moment

PAUL. Infinite, which means that theoretically you can always create something original.

JEAN. However, in practice, people are surprisingly predictable in the choice of their
themes.

HERMAN. But I’ve invented something original!

PAUL. It’s all about making possible choices. And since the number of choices gets
smaller all the time, people will finally realize that and creating new original images in
standardized sizes will become a purely mathematical job according to the law of
statistics. The original number of combinations was large enough to start with any point.
It was a situation analogous to the one we observe at the establishment of all empirical
sciences. An illusion of freedom. Mais pas plus. Which means—

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HERMAN. I only asked for someone to look at my invention. I thought that you could
place a series of illustrations on one page, without text, in rectangular frames, to be
read from the top left side of the page to the bottom right side of the page. And that
each subsequent illustration would indicate the passage of time.

PAUL. What’s this?

HERMAN. Little balloons

PAUL. Balloons??

HERMAN. Balloons with text. Speech balloons that identify the character who’s
speaking.

PAUL. And this?

HERMAN. A duck.

PAUL. What duck?

HERMAN. Donaldus Duck and his three nephews.

JEAN. Let me see.

PAUL. Is this the way you waste our vellum and our paint?

HERMAN. Too me it’s funny. I’ve come up with another one, more serious, about a bat-
knight, who lost his parents when he was a child.

JEAN. Paul. . .

PAUL. A bat-knight? You’re supposed to be working on the border for our painting of
the Vision of Saint Hildegard and instead you draw a bat-knight? Why would you think
such nonsense would ever interest anyone?

JEAN. Paul, but this really is funny. (Reads.)

Magister Donaldus clamat. . .

PAUL. Show me.

(Reads.)
You know what? Let’s add one balloon to the Hours. But discreetly. In January over the
image of the cupbearer. Let him say, “Approche, approche” Come closer, come!

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 MARCH (III)

In the foreground the peasants are working

And the way that they work should explain
Why the Duke de Berry is always drowning in debt

In the background a dragon flies by

Which is so weird that the viewer’s brain has a hard time absorbing it

That’s the reason that the first thing we see is the middle of the composition
With its dull castle architecture.

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THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF THE LIMBOURG BROTHERS
The Limbourg Brothers stand before the Duke de Berry.

DE BERRY. Ah, my dear Limbourgs. How is your work progressing on my “Hours?”

PAUL. They are getting “Richer,” Sire.

JEAN. You could be destitute, Sire, and they would still enrich you with their splendour.

HERMAN. Jean!

DE BERRY. Dear Limbourgs, forgive me for taking you away from your work, but I want
you to make me some theatre

Silence.

DE BERRY. Yes. You heard correctly.

HERMAN. “Make”

JEAN. “Theatre.”

PAUL. For him.

HERMAN. Of the many things that one person does for another, either to delight them
or the opposite, theatre ranks low on the list of obvious possibilities.

JEAN. Make theatre?

PAUL. Do we, Gracious Lord, look like actors?

DE BERRY. To be honest . . .

PAUL. Your command, Sire, even before it is spoken becomes the object of our desire.
Let us prepare for you a spectacle of a like your eyes have never beheld before. When it
is ready, we will return.

The Brothers exit. After a moment PAUL re-enters.

DE BERRY. Already?

PAUL. Already. After a long and heated discussion on what concept would satisfy the
sophisticated tastes of your Majesty. . .

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HERMAN. From back stage
Commensurate with the sharpness of your mind. . .

JEAN. From back stage

But not to insult your high intellect. . .

PAUL. We have decided to perform instructive Biblical stories, whose moralistic tone
and correct interpretation of the Bible, will put the viewers into an advanced state of
stupefaction.

DE BERRY. If you are preparing a sermon with roles assigned by rank, then I will gladly
perform King Herod and execute the Slaughter of the Innocents

PAUL. Perfection!

HERMAN. From back stage

Never.

JEAN. From back stage

Our concept is about as far from such ideas as the little toe is from the top of the head,
assuming that the person is in a vertical position.

PAUL. We decided to ignite the imagination of our audience, to reach back to the Old
Testament to the history of Creation. Since you know, Sire, of my perversity, I will play
the Narrator and the Serpent, Jean will be Adam, and Herman—a youth with delicate
features, a boy with a girlish face, will play Eve.

They appear: JEAN dressed as Adam and Herman in the costume of Eve.

DE BERRY. Enough, enough. By the Wounds of Christ, ‘I’m not into hard porn

PAUL. It’s soft actually

JEAN. Soft things easily turn into hard things in por – ‘

HERMAN. You are, Sire, as austere as the Creator in Paradise. But even He did not
prohibit nakedness.

PAUL. Herman. . .

HERMAN. You meant to say—Eve

PAUL. Herman…

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HERMAN. All right, fine. We’ll do another story.

The Limbourg Brothers exit. A moment later PAUL returns.

DE BERRY. Already?

PAUL. Already. The story of King Nimrod, the Supreme Emperor of the Earth and the
greatest hunter of wild beasts in the history of the world, before the time of your
Majesty’s birth, of course.

JEAN AND HERMAN enter.

JEAN covered in furs and with a bow

What brisk creature or swift bird can escape my bow?

HERMAN dressed in furs as a wild beast.

Fight with me, O Supreme One.

They hurl themselves at each other and fight.

JEAN. What beast are you, monster?

HERMAN. An animal rights activist! Take off these furs, murderer.

The fight continues with punches, physical assaults and cries.

DE BERRY. I do not remember anything like this in the Bible?

PAUL. Indeed, My Lord, but our religion also comes from an apocryphal tradition that
passes on a variety of stories. . . Dear ones, dear ones, calm down. Let Nimrod triumph.

HERMAN. Over my dead body! Take off those furs, you butcher!

PAUL louder, over the voices of his brothers

King Nimrod, once he had settled in the fertile valley of the Euphrates, gathered people
from all the four corners of the earth to build the highest tower. . .

DE BERRY. Enough, enough! Engineering is even more boring than porn. And I have
enough of the Bible, attending Mass, receiving instruction from our bishop, reading our
theologians and looking at your illuminated hours. I think. . . I would like. . . I want a
theatre that is closer to life.

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 APRIL (IV)

No poet will write

A good word about April
What more can be said
Except that Castle Dourdan is shown here
And fishermen, noble lords and ladies

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THE CREATION OF THE WORLD
It happens in the workshop of the Limbourg Brothers

JEAN. What are you doing Paul?

PAUL. I’m working on a preliminary sketch for an illustration. Sometimes when I draw, I
feel I’m creating an entirely new world.

JEAN. A smaller one.

HERMAN. And a flatter one.

JEAN. A flat world is a disappointing world.

PAUL. Give me a break! It’s about. . . finding shape, searching for form, embodying the
Cosmos within the frame of one illustration.

JEAN. That Cosmos is boring.

HERMAN. It’s not that ours would be more exciting.

PAUL. Jean, Herman! Just think! An artist searches for the most appropriate form for his
work. He tries various combinations, he makes sketches, creates many different
variations of composition. And when he determines that he has found the most fitting,
he gets to work. Don’t you think this is how the World must have been created?

JEAN. A more comforting thought, than the thought that the world wasn’t created at all.
That it’s infinite and unending. Eternity terrifies me.

HERMAN. Paul?

PAUL. Hm?

HERMAN. Paul?

PAUL. I’m drawing. You’re going to make me mess up a very promising leg.

HERMAN. Paul, I was thinking. . .

JEAN. Paul, he was thinking.

PAUL. Go to hell. I messed it up.

HERMAN. Paul, that’s what it’s all about.

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JEAN. Paul, don’t get upset. He was thinking!

PAUL. If it had happened more often, perhaps it wouldn’t stress me out so much
because I’d already be used to it. A stag with a bent leg. . .

HERMAN. An imperfection. A detail in the final rendering that cannot be fixed and so it
remains as it is for the sake of the entire composition.

PAUL. He could have been a really beautiful stag, now the poor fucker will have to limp
to the end of the world.

JEAN. Or, as long as the vellum survives or until someone rubs off your work to make
room for a new painting.

HERMAN. What you said about the Creator, Paul, you’re right. Isn’t our world imperfect
even though its Creator apparently displays unquestionable perfection?

PAUL. It could have been the most beautiful stag of my life. There’ve not been many,
but right now I don’t have the heart to start on another .

JEAN. Let’s get a drink, before I go out of my mind.

HERMAN. It’s all about the big picture. If you create a great work of art and you realize
that one of its elements doesn’t fit, you don’t sacrifice the total work to get rid of that
one imperfection. You try, instead, to disguise it, to preserve the whole.

JEAN. There’s a lot of those imperfections around if you are speaking about our world.

PAUL. That stag would be flawless if you didn’t blabber so much.

JEAN. Do you think that someone distracted our Creator?

HERMAN. It’s not about Platonic ideas. Perhaps our world, with all its imperfections, is
the most perfect of all possible worlds.

JEAN. I’m afraid to think about the other ones.

HERMAN. Let’s assume that the universe splits into two separate ones every time an
alternative appears anywhere in the universe

PAUL. Have you seen my pocketknife?

HERMAN. Assuming that the alternate world is binary and that the cosmos can only

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divide into two parts . . .

JEAN. Here. (Gives the knife to Paul.) Gentlemen, give me a break!

PAUL. Maybe I could. . . he starts to rub off the part of the vellum with the drawing of
the stag.

HERMAN. Then the question is: which world do we live in?

PAUL. Damn!

HERMAN. It could be that our self exists in all those worlds at once, but that we only
recognize the world where we live the longest.

PAUL. I ripped a hole in the damn vellum.

JEAN. You wasted ‘three pounds’ worth of gold’.

HERMAN. In that sense, we all live in the most perfect world, perfect, because we live in
the world in which our own life’s duration is the longest. At every moment there is a
chance that we will live one more moment and by necessity our brain lives just in that
world where that chance occurs. Perhaps we are even immortal.

PAUL. Jean, stick your eloquence up the same body part common to men and stags. I
don’t need to illustrate.

JEAN. Whoa, little brother, that’s a bit rude.

HERMAN. From this perspective, if a Creator exists, he is a total Creator—which means

he’s is a prodigious analyst who takes every possible option into consideration. A cold
and terrifying bastard who keeps splitting his own creation into more and more
branches without any end ….

PAUL. It’s your fault that I ripped a hole in the vellum, Jean!

He throws himself on Jean and pushes him down.

JEAN. (While fighting). And what about the dimension of space?

HERMAN. Hm? Comes to Paul’s table and takes the vellum. A hole!

JEAN. Breathing hard. I said what about the dimension of space.

PAUL. Hits him. I’ll give you “what about the dimension of space”

23
JEAN. If in each place in the Cosmos, there is an alternate world of some kind, it
means—correct me if I am wrong Herman—it means that the cosmos expands in all
directions at once— so what are the ramifications for the dimension of time . . .

HERMAN puts the vellum away

Paul! Paul, stop hitting him!

JEAN. Wait! This is fascinating.

HERMAN. Paul, what the hell has got into you? He pushes Paul off Jean. To Jean:
What were you saying, Jean? Paul, did you really waste three pounds of gold?

24
 MAY (V)

I was born on the twentieth of May in the year one thousand nine hundred and ninety-one
Small dogs in paintings by the Old Masters always made me laugh
And the skill of the Old Masters was tested by the bad part of my nature.
If the dogs looked animated
I wanted to kick them
In May as imagined by the Limbourg Brothers
Apart from the noble lords and ladies adorned with laurels
There are two small dogs of an unknown breed
I would happily pull their ears.

25
THE SECOND PERFORMANCE OF THE LIMBOURG BROTHERS
PAUL stands before the DUKE DE BERRY

PAUL. Our gracious Lord and exalted Duke! Revered members of the audience! In THE
hope that a story from the olden days might be instructive for us today, it is with
indescribable joy and modest humility, that we present to your eminent countenance
one more biblical story, entitled:

‘WHAT IS HOLOPHERNES?’

HERMAN enters as JUDITH, a Jewish woman. He pushes a wheeled table covered with a
cloth. On the table is a silver tray with a rounded dome.

PAUL. Before you stands Judith. The most beautiful of Israel’s daughters! She will tell
you of things past, present, and future, and all of which she has envisioned thanks to the
wisdom of King Solomon and the magic of the Queen of Sheba. Some of the heroes of
her stories have not yet seen the world, but the world is ready to see them and hear
about them.

HERMAN/JUDITH. Men, what pests! It’s so easy to lose your head because of them. And
they, for sure, lose their heads because of me. Yes, in every church reading. In every
baroque painting, In every Illustrated Bible. I can’t take it any longer! If only there could
be one Holofernes. But no, every time I meet him, he’s got a different face. Usually a
large bearded face of a random large bearded guy who failed to live up to the
expectations of some woman painter, which is why she decided to paint me beheading
them as a sharp stream of blood spurts out of their massive necks. If we look at it this
way, I am the first female killer for hire working in the iconography market. You hate
your ex-boyfriend, paint Judith slaughtering him. And can I just say, the spurts of blood
they're always the worst part of the picture, the least convincing, the most kitsch. When
we succumb to our most vulgar instincts, we lose taste. Or our head. That’s what
happened to Holofernes.

I like to kill men because I know they will never, never, ever die completely. Perhaps it’s
vanity speaking, but in these paintings, I’m always the one who remains beautiful,
unmoved, selfless. The man playing Holofernes always has a stupid and terrified face.
And that particular kind of exaggerated expression always attracts attention. It is
probably the only painting where a man’s face attracts more attention than a woman’s
naked body. Because of this, although I’m painted, I don’t feel like an object. And it
would be fine.

It would be fine, if not for the fact that I’m the author of ritual violence. And a poetic
symbol to boot. It doesn’t matter whether I’ve been hired by the Israelites to defeat a
dangerous enemy or being used by the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi to tell the
story of her dishonour and revenge, I always remain the hand that separates the torso

26
of Holofernes from the head of Holofernes, that creates the clear division between the
face of that most hateful man and a classical torso copied by the artist from one of the
ancient statues. Holofernes is made up of two parts: one torso and a thousand faces.
While I, whether I’m Artemisia Gentileschi, whether I’m Gustav Klimt’s lover, a brunette
by Giorgione or a blond by Veronese, I’m always fundamentally myself.

It’s true. I’m not the only one who cuts off men’s heads. There’s also Salome and you
can ask in what way I am morally better. I could respond that I killed the vile man in
God’s name, while Salome raised her hand against a sanctified man, but that’s not a
good excuse. My essential and legitimate superiority is expressed in the fact that I
decapitated Holofernes because he wanted to submit to me, while Salome killed John
the Baptist because he did not want to submit to her. It’s not true that passion only
messes up men’s heads. Perhaps one of Holofernes’ heads should be the head of a
hermaphrodite, one that only the divine Leonardo would be capable of painting.

HERMAN/JUDYTH uncovers the tray. On it is the head of JEAN/HOLOFERNES.

THE HEAD. When we entered the tent, I was happy as never before. Now, years after my
tragic death, I know one thing for sure — women can forgive men many things. In fact ,
they can forgive them almost anything - except one thing: falling in love with them.

JUDITH. I admit it. It wasn’t just about politics. When Holofernes sat close to me on our
wedding bed, I knew that I would wake up the next morning to see the body of a man
next to mine.

HEAD. A living body

JUDITH. A dead body is at least so abstract as to draw one’s attention away from the
abstractness of the situation in which a woman has to look at one. A severed head is in
some ways like a flowerpot, or a carafe, or a coat hanger. It becomes an object and
women manage objects with much more grace than men.

You must know that game where you repeat the same word over and over again for a
long period of time—for like five minutes, or a dozen minutes or even a few hours—
although that’s hard to imagine—until the word separates from its original meaning and
becomes a horrifying, empty sound that strikes us suddenly with all its absurdity. And
perhaps you’ve experienced those rare moments, in which the same thing happens
without repetition, when a word becomes a chasm of meaninglessness all on its own
and we are helpless to do anything about it. And perhaps you’ve encountered those
situations—the most alarming of all—in which words become completely detached
from reality — when you look at things and you don’t know what you're looking at. It
might only be for a split second, at least if it’s not aphasia or amnesia. There is no more
terrifying experience. Trees stop being trees and become huge neurons that grow out of
the surface of the earth. A dog, which has stopped being a dog, turns into a pulsating

27
mass of nerves and muscles swirling around our feet. And our feet do not exist
anymore, just two cylindrical tubes, that’s all we see when we look down. In this state of
detachment, there are only shapes.

Nothing frightens me more in this world than the idea that this might happen to me
when I am with a man. That I might wake up next to a living, breathing body, but that
the word Holofernes will be detached from that body. That I will wake up next to an
abstraction—an abstraction that moves, that breathless up and down in rhythm with
the movement of the air. That it will be something so foreign to me. That it will be
someone so completely foreign. And in this split second, when I will not know
Holofernes, I will lose my mind.

DE BERRY. Enough. Enough. Did I not tell you that the only story that will please me is
one directly taken from life.

JUDITH/HERMAN. It was taken from life, My Lord.

DE BERRY. In a sense, any story you can tell me is taken from life, because telling the
stories is part of life. But I expected a story based on your own personal life experience.

HERMAN. It was My Lord.

HEAD/JEAN. I can assure you, Sire, that Herman wrote it with this intention.

DE BERRY. Then tell me about it.

HERMAN. Your majesty, it’s a bit complicated because I was drawing my life-story from
two separate planes.

DE BERRY. If this is the reason you are hesitating to tell me, you must either think that I
lack the intelligence or the time to comprehend the complexity of your explanations. In
the first case, you offend your Prince and, in the second— you waste his precious time
by making such an excuse.

HERMAN. Majesty. . .

JEAN. Paul, our little brother blushes prettily when he minces around in that woman’s
costume.

HERMAN. My Lord, the first plane of my experience comes from the fact that I was once
with a certain woman.

DE BERRY. And?

28
HERMAN. And I am not with her anymore. One night, when we were together, I wanted
to kiss her but she started to cry. When I asked her the reason, she told me that I was
acting like a stranger.

DE BERRY. What’s the second plane?

HERMAN. The capacity to embody the heroine. The ability to empathise with her.
Sometimes I think that I’d like to be a woman—or at least that I have something of a
woman in me. In such moments, I wonder how it feel to be a woman. I try to create a
believable monologue, although it’s a mysterious thing. Sometimes I even have dreams,
but afterwards I am left with a yearning that is impossible to satisfy. Perhaps because of
this desire, my relationships with women never work. Although I need to add that there
this is nothing sinful in this and I have never had sex with my own sex. I think that men
are like dogs and women like cats. For men, it’s easier to follow their urges, but also
they become attached more easily; while women—

DE BERRY. Enough dear Mr. Limbourg, I think it would be best for you to quit the stage.
Go back to manuscripts.

PAUL and HERMAN bow and exit. JEAN stays imprisoned in the table.

JEAN. Forgive me, My Lord, but it won’t be so easy for me to escape my role.

29
 JUNE (VI)

In the fields three farmers tap with scythes

Bob Fosse must have been their choreographer
Yet each of them reminds us of Death
As for the women
One holds a pitchfork and the other holds a rake
They seem to have studied with Pina Bausch
In the background a crowd is coming to the city
Apparently a performance will be given
But with less sophisticated movement.

30
ON DYING—IN THEORY.
The Limbourg Brothers are wherever they want.

HERMAN. We live in the Middle Ages.

PAUL. So what about it?

JEAN. We live when?

HERMAN. In the Middle Ages. It means that the modern era hasn’t begn yet, let alone
the postmodern era. All the benefits of the industrial revolution have escaped us.

JEAN. Paul?

PAUL. Herman?

HERMAN. No, it’s not important. What matters is that we live in the Middle Ages. And,
as we know, it’s an epoch with a high mortality rate.

JEAN. In every epoch the mortality rate is the same, Herman.

PAUL. It’s always high, Herman.

JEAN. Strictly speaking, with the advantage of hindsight, the morality rate for every era
is 100%. In every era every person dies.

PAUL. Unless one of them dies in the next era.

JEAN. Of course, I meant that if we wait long enough, all the people who live in a
particular epoch, will die.

HERMAN But I meant. . .

PAUL. It’s funny.

HERMAN. I meant. . .

JEAN. What?

HERMAN. I’m trying to say.

JEAN. I asked Paul, what’s funny.

HERMAN. I wanted to say. . .

31
PAUL. The only epoch, where we cannot have any certainty that all the people of that
epoch will die, is the epoch we live in, because we have no certain data on that subject.

JEAN. It’s not funny. It’s ridiculous.

PAUL. The epoch of the Middle Ages.

HERMAN. When I spoke about the high death rate, I meant that a great number of
people die from the Black Plague, or from infections, or in wars, in riots, or from hunger.

JEAN. I’m dying of hunger.

PAUL. You just ate a breakfast.

HERMAN. The Black Plague could take us at any time

PAUL
I’m not a fan of the Black Plague.

HERMAN. Or of the foul air.

JEAN. Don’t you think it’s a bit abstract to say that someone is carried off by “air?” Help!
Help! Foul air. My brother’s been carried off. I don’t know where.

PAUL
It’s the language, John. That’s how it’s said.

JEAN. And that’s exactly why I’ve always preferred drawing.

32
 JULY (VII)

Geometry is the theme of this work

Geometry is the theme of the Poitiers Castle
Geometry is the theme of the sheep
Of the trees
Swans
Willows
And bridges
Two peasants are extracting their square root of wool from the sheep
While two others calculate the area
While they level the field with their sickles

33
WHAT IS AN ARTIST?

THE LIMBOURG BROTHERS are wherever they want again.

HERMAN. What is an artist?

PAUL. You can’t define an artist. (but sounds like ‘you cunt, define an artist’)

JEAN. Paul!

PAUL. Yes?

JEAN. You ….? (can’t say cunt so indicates it in a way that could be mistaken for ‘you
can’t’)

PAUL. Exactly.

HERMAN. This is really disturbing.

PAUL. Like I said, it’s difficult to define an artist.

JEAN. That’s not what you said . . . You said. . . Your second word wasn’t ‘can’t’.

HERMAN and PAUL. Yes it was.

JEAN. No, it wasn’t.

PAUL. So what was it?

JEAN. Your second word wasn’t ‘can’t’ Say it again, what was your second word?

HERMAN. What’s the matter with you?

JEAN. He didn’t say “can’t”, what he said was a word which is widely considered rude
and offensive.

PAUL. I said ‘can’t’. ‘Can’t’, ‘can’t’, ‘can’t’, ‘can’t’, ‘can’t’.

JEAN is silent.

HERMAN. That would be a pretty good definition of an artist?

PAUL. I didn’t say anything.

34
JEAN. You did.

PAUL . I said “can’t”

JEAN. That’s right. And it’s rude.

PAUL. You’re thinking of something else.

JEAN. Me? You’re the person who said it.

PAUL. God have mercy! When I said ‘can’t’, I meant ‘can’t’. I didn’t mean the word you
said I said that I ‘can’t’ say. And now you just want me to say it and I won’t

JEAN. Would it really be that bad if you did say it?

HERMAN. Brothers, we are not children for God’s sake.

PAUL. So why are you behaving like children?

JEAN. You’re behaving like a child if you refuse to say the word you’ve already said but
supposedly didn’t say.

PAUL. If that’s how you’re going to be, I’m going to peel a pear.

Exit.

HERMAN. Jean?

JEAN. Hm?

HERMAN. What about this artist?

JEAN. With a writer it’s simple. A writer creates a stream of words. A writer makes
words.

HERMAN. We make pictures.

JEAN. Perhaps. I’ll go boil some water.

HERMAN. You know fuck all about being an artist.

35
 AUGUST (VIII)

The lords and ladies whom we met in May

Return from the hunt with their falcons
The men in the fields work by the sweat of their brow
Others bathe in the greyish water
There are fewer lords and ladies than before
But they occupy the road
As though several pages of vellum
Did not represent a huge effort
The passing of time is visible
Only with the two dogs

36
THE LOVE OF PAUL LIMBOURG

Part I:
The Limbourg Brothers kneel in a church pew.

JEAN. Do you see that angel there at the altar? Standing with his back to us?

PAUL. Jean, be quiet!

HERMAN. That’s not an angel. That’s the pastor! Are you going blind?

JEAN. Higher up. There’s a statue on a pedestal to the right.

PAUL. Be quiet!

HERMAN. I see it.

JEAN. If you look at his wings, at the top of his wings—there are two bulging semi-circles
touching each other—they remind me of women’s breasts.

PAUL. Christ!

HERMAN
You’re getting near-sighted, Jean, you’re going blind from work.

JEAN. I forgive you, Herman, because you have not actually seen angels’ wings or
women’s breasts. Just close your eyes a bit and the image will start to blur.

Herman closes his eyes.

HERMAN. They look more like two lions standing back to back with giant manes.

PAUL. Stop, both of you. This is inappropriate.

JEAN. What’s going on with him? Paul, are you in love?

PAUL. We’re in a church.

JEAN. You’re in love

Paul stands up, makes the sign of the cross, and exits.

JEAN
Well I’ll be damned, that’s what’s going on!

37
Part II:
JEAN and HERMAN get up. PAUL returns. From the opposite side, the Duke de Berry
arrives enthroned. The court of de Berry.

PAUL . Your Majesty, I wish to marry one of the ladies of your court, the Lady Gillette la
Mercière.

DE BERRY. So what is the problem, my child?

PAUL. She doesn’t want to marry me. Her parents refused me her hand.

DE BERRY. There is no greater pleasure that comes with power than the sanction by Law
of the romantic feeling between two young people—especially when the young man is
my friend and the young lady—about half his age.

JEAN. Sire!

DE BERRY. I command the Lady Gillette la Mercière and her family be thrown into
prison. They will be freed when Lady Gillette la Mercière falls in love and then we will
have a sumptuous wedding for them.

Part III:
The brothers bow. They exit. PAUL returns with his bride in a veil—it is Herman in
disguise. At the house of Herman Limbourg.

HERMAN. My husband, he stays home every day.

PAUL. Herman, stop it.

HERMAN. He claims that he can’t see too much of the world at once because it will
block his creativity.

PAUL. Herman!

HERMAN. Don’t be angry Love! My husband gets angry so easily. He claims that seeing
everything and watching everything ultimately kills the imagination. If he had been a
theatre director, his credo would have been: “Don’t go to the theatre!” Perhaps that’s
why he’s so frightened to get into bed with me and when he did finally get there he
insisted I turn off the lights.

PAUL. Herman, I’m working.

HERMAN. You don’t like me, my golden one? Didn’t you marry me out of blind love?

38
PAUL. Herman, you are not my wife!

HERMAN. How do you know, if you only ever see your wife with the lights off? What if I
am your wife? That would explain why you still haven’t had any children. That would be
a good explanation.

PAUL . Give me a break, stop mocking me.

HERMAN. I’ll tell you something. This is the kind of man who covers his ears when he
hears the same melody for a second time. He claims he does it to keep the music fresh,
so that it won’t lose its beauty. Happily, Jean de Berry loves Paul more than Paul is loved
by his wife, mademoiselle Gillette la Mercière, and perhaps no less than Paul loves her.
The Duke’s love, in contrast to the love of the married couple, remains platonic although
it has given birth to children. Since our dear Paul gets bored after drawing something
twice and never returns to the same theme - unlike to some poets who are always
writing about Bacchus and Tuscany - the Duke de Berry builds a new castle every year so
that Paul can draw it. Am I right, Paul?

PAUL. No, Herman. But I think I’ll go to bed now.

HERMAN
Very well my love. And don’t wait up for me. Tonight I’m hanging out with my
girlfriends, but please don’t worry about me.

PAUL. Herman?

HERMAN. Yes Paul?

PAUL. Why are you my wife?

HERMAN. Why are you Paul Limbourg? Both of us need masks so that no one will
recognize us. In the theatre a name has to be given to the words.

PAUL. I am Paul Limbourg.

HERMAN
You carry this name for the same reason that you turn off the lights in your own
bedroom. Good night, my love.

HERMAN kisses PAUL on the cheek and leaves.

39
 SEPTEMBER (IX)

Only someone who has never watched Gummi Bears

Is prepared to think that there is a wine harvest

In front of Saumur castle

40
THE DREAM OF HERMAN LIMBOURG

HERMAN and JEAN are in the workshop.

HERMAN. I had a dream last night.

I dreamt that I was looking at an old codex, beautifully adorned by Greek masters, when
suddenly I felt someone watching me. Someone was standing at the door — the door of
our workshop — first I thought that it was you, Jean, or perhaps Paul. So I called out:
“Jean?”

JEAN. Yes?

HERMAN. “Jean?” I called out in my dream.

JEAN. Aha. And what did I say?

HERMAN. Not you, him. He said: “It’s me.” But it wasn’t you. He sat next to me, looked
at my work, then said: “Herman, act as if nothing has happened.”

JEAN. As if nothing has happened?

HERMAN. Exactly.

JEAN. And what had happened?

HERMAN. Nothing! Later he smiled and added: “Everything you make from now on,
make it like you would normally. Jean?

JEAN: He said “Jean”?

HERMAN. No, not him. Jean?

JEAN. Herman?

HERMAN. Since then I can’t stop thinking about it. In the codex, the one in the dream,
this man’s face was in it. What does it mean, “make it like you would normally?”

JEAN. Naturally.

HERMAN. Like now?

JEAN. Herman, you’re not behaving in a normal way now.

HERMAN. Jean, from the moment this happened in my dream, I’ve felt as if I’m just
pretending to be myself.

JEAN. I’ve felt that way for twenty-five years. What’s the problem?

41
HERMAN. This is the problem. . . What does Herman Limbourg do normally? How does
he behave? What does he feel, what does he think? I keep analysing everything instead
of doing things. But I can only do things, if I’ve analysed them. Don’t you think it’s
paradoxical? To reflect intellectually on the behaviour of the youngest of the court
illuminators of the Duke de Berry. It’s like copying your own work but having the feeling
that the result is a cheap fake. It’s unbearable!

JEAN. But Herman, you behave really normally.

HERMAN, Really?

JEAN. Yes. And that’s what’s so scary.

42
 OCTOBER (X)

The local economy is not what it used to be

The architecture and the scarecrows
Stand firmer than the farmers
Dogs fight
Magpies feed
Men sow grain
All the while the Limbourg Brothers
Endlessly illustrate

43
NIGHT OF FAITH
THE LIMBOURG BROTHERS lie down.

JEAN. Acedia.

HERMAN. A state of spiritual submission described by theologians and Church Fathers

especially amongst the monks who live in the desert.

JEAN. Apatia.

HERMAN. Inner peace, dispassion, imperviousness to emotion. An attitude promoted by

a number of ancient philosophical schools.

JEAN. Ataraxia.

HERMAN. Imperturbability. Resistance to omnipresent chaos. Release from an excess of

impulses that come from suffering as well as from physical pleasure. An ideal of Stoic
philosophy.

JEAN. Inertia.

HERMAN. Torpor.

JEAN. Lethargia.

HERMAN. Lethargy.

JEAN. Akinesia.

PAUL. Stop it! I have a headache!

A long silence.

HERMAN. A state of immobility in living organisms. Paralysis caused by damage to the

extrapyramidal system.

JEAN. Good, very good.

Silence.

JEAN. Narkolepsy.

Silence.

JEAN. Herman?

44
HERMAN. (Sits on his bed). I don’t do anything because I’m depressed. And I’m
depressed because I don’t do anything.

JEAN. That’s is not a good definition. You lose.

PAUL. Can you stop talking?

HERMAN. Although if it was really depression, than saying it wouldn’t be so easy.

JEAN. It’s been three months, we’ve been sitting here, locked in. No matter how we look
at it, it’s a long time.

PAUL. Not sitting here. Lying here. Let’s be precise.

HERMAN. I just sat a minute ago.

JEAN. (looking at him) You see. We’re done with depression.

45
 NOVEMBER (IX)

In November an old peasant

With an excess of emotion
Feeds the wild boar
Some ungrateful ones
Position their rears in the face of the viewer

An old peasant feeding boar

Is this not a perfect feudal arrangement?

46
ON DEATH—IN PRACTICE. JEAN LIMBOURG DIES

The Limbourg Brothers and the Duke de Berry together

JEAN. They say the foul air is in the country.

PAUL. People breathe and die breathing.

HERMAN. But who says it’s the fault of the air?

JEAN. Breathing and dying are regular characteristics of all living beings.

PAUL. But at the moment we’re dealing with a temporary concentration of these
deaths: more people are dying than being born.

HERMAN. Many more, I think.

JEAN. So many that they are taken out of the city in wheelbarrows. At least until the one
pushing the wheelbarrow also dies from the plague.

PAUL. And Your Grace? Do you believe in life after death?

DE BERRY. I would rather not have any. Well, my dear children! I promised some time
ago that I would return to the theme of death. I did not forget that promise. No one
believes in death in the theatre. But theatre is not exempted in this case. Jean?

JEAN. Your Grace?

DE BERRY. Die, my dear old friend.

JEAN falls on the floor.

DE BERRY. Jean? (Silence). Jean, get up. (Silence). Jean, do you hear what I am saying to
you?

Silence.

He’s obviously taken all this dying to heart. Such a dedicated actor. After all, we have to
admit that dying is one of those rare things that everyone discovers they have a talent
for, sooner or later. You can’t put it off forever.

Really, the issue is that a death onstage is no more false than the ones we would
witness in reality if we did not send our bedridden and infirm relatives off to nursing
homes, preferring the dying of our Limbourg Brothers to the deaths of our own relatives.
Or perhaps as we’re on the way to the theatre, we turn to look at some dishevelled
homeless guy who’s has clearly had too much to drink — and we have complete
confidence that he’ll get up again, after a while, he’ll get up again, as will Jean, hopefully.
Jean?

47
Silence.

Nothing. Please do not take my words too seriously, I’m just generalizing. Not everyone
is guilty. What I mean is that from the point of view of the audience. . . yes, Jean, from
the point of view of a person who looks at another person’s death like a picture, such a
death is nothing else than the definite separation of that person from the form that we
have previously known them in. It’s like breaking up with someone and never seeing
them ever again, even if they live on for years and years and years. Thanks to the limits
of our cognition, that moment, that last goodbye, is for us, the moment of their death.
That’s why in ancient tragedies, all the characters have to die at the end; to let the
audience know the story is over. Our own lives are a bit more like a soap opra.
Everything depends on cast turnover. Some characters die-off, others replace them. And
sometimes it terrifies us there is not a single character left from the original cast, no one
who has accompanied us from the beginning. And since we cannot experience our own
death, each death we come across in life is only a representation. A picture.

Paul? Herman?

PAUL. Yes, My Lord?

HERMAN. We’re listening, sir.

DE BERRY. Would it not be proper for us to perform a holy service for the soul of this
Jean Limbourg, celebrated illuminator, my greatest friend, and your deeply lamented
brother?

PAUL. Yes it would, Sire.

HERMAN. It would make a beautiful miniature, my lord.

PAUL. It’s funny, but I knew he’d die. I wrote an epitaph for him, Sire.

DE BERRY. Please read it, my child.

PAUL.
Lord, Iconoclast, Breaker of old norms,
Lord, Creator, Maker of new forms!
Transformed by you who drew letters in the sand.
Your holy name is multiplicand.
Transformed into color, shape and line,
Contour and dimension crystalline.
Lord Jesus, look with love on our brother Jean
Let his last words be our performance antiphon.
His etching point let FIAT be.
May it happen!

DE BERRY. I agree, children. I will be your Christ.

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He gets up.

HERMAN. Paul, that was a very interesting text.

PAUL. Jean is dead.

HERMAN. Maybe forty years ago, it would have been considered a good poem.

PAUL. He’s dead, Herman.

HERMAN. But not nowadays. To be honest, it sounds pretentious, but I won’t hold it
against you.

DE BERRY. Alright, Jean. You can get up

HERMAN. Jean?

JEAN (lifts his head.) Forgive me, but at the moment, I’m busy with my passing.

PAUL. Why?

JEAN. I’m not faking. I’m probably dying from the plague.

He dies.

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 DECEMBER (XII)

As for December

Killing is a tiresome job.

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DE ILLUSTRIBUS

Each remains in his earlier place.

DE BERRY. Finally I can tell you—I don’t like the illustrations made by the Limbourg
Brothers. They’re not to my taste. I don’t think they inspire other artists. They are cold.
Soulless. Lacking in clarity, grace and a talent for detailed observation. They are
perfectly trivial in the worst possible way. They represent a type of art that manages to
be more ordinary than the life that inspired it. Everything is grey, blue, gold, random and
simplistic. Look.

The Duke gets out a tablet.

These are images, truly rich images. Millions of them. Daily. A countless stream of
simultaneous images. And you can add filters to them, make them look older than they
are in reality. You can adjust and edit them any way you want.

Personally, I observe this world with an aversion that grows from the belief that we
deserve nothing better. It is not popular to speak of our life here in categories of
fairness, justice and guilt. Not unless, one wants to associated with the distasteful and
suspicious perspectives of certain specific worldviews. But isn’t it the ultimate failure of
mankind, that a civilized person has just one thing left to do? To look. We gave up
judging because we know how unimportant our judgements are. We gave up our
language because we learned to distrust it. We gave up action because doing something
is nothing but a masquerade. We sit hiding in the comfortable interiors of our homes
despairing of fairness, of justice, of punishment and guilt. We sit in front of televisions,
computers, mobile phones and we look at pictures. People continue to be born and to
die, and inbetween we still tend to our affairs. But more lazily. More slowly. Lately,
we’ve discarded many words from our dictionaries. They were empty words. Lately, we
read fewer and fewer books because books are full of the empty words we’ve already
discarded. Lately, we’ve thrown out many things from our homes. They were not
irreplaceable. Lately we’ve taken fewer holidays. Not because we make less money, but
because when we get to a place, we don’t know what to do there. Lately we have less
time. The pictures devour our time.

Lately, we have become Adam and Eve. Lately our keyboards have become our Garden
of Paradise. Lately we name things and believe that we will find any image we want by
typing the right word on our keyboard. Lately, we have abandoned many words and lost
many images we could have found by using these words. Lately, we finding only the
pictures we can name. Lately all the pictures have come to resemble one another. Lately
we create through the image a likeness of ourselves and the likeness becomes the
image and everything except for that the image becomes an unlikeness. Lately, we have
become like the ancient Stoics, though they could never have predicted that. Lately, we
have reached a state of apatheia, ataraxia, akinesia, acedia, apatia. Lately, we have done
many terrible things. Lately, we have murdered people. Lately we have turned people
into things, but in this there lingers some feeling of disgust. Lately, we have decided that

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people can be treated as things just as they already are. We have created ‘human
resources’, lately, and I like this term very much. That’s how enterprising we are. Lately,
we brought peace to Europe and didn’t know what to do with ourselves during the
dozen or so years of opulence we had, and didn’t even bother to pretend to care about
the problems of the rest of the world. Lately, we have a chance to look back at our past.
But what do we have to say at the sight of what we have left behind? “Sorry?” We
decided this would be laughable. Lately, we are afraid to look to the future. So, my
friends, we looked at pictures. We looked at billions of tiny images. It was the kind of
selfless contemplation which Aristotle linked to philosophical contemplation and
Immanuel Kant considered the core of aesthetics. Welcome to the philosophers’
paradise. Comfortable, isn’t it? Lately, we announced the end of many things and
agreed they would never return. But we wait for them. I know it, you know it, we all
know it. Don’t we? So what exactly are we waiting for? God kno... beg my pardon. In
our play we use the metaphor of the plague, not the metaphor of God. Black death. As
black as the night which comes after the day. But for you, just as for me, this metaphor
is empty. For me, just as for you, everything is empty.

(Pointing at the images displayed at his screen) Have a look. The Limbourg brothers are
also here. On Instragram their names do not get many matches. They may be popular
among art historians, but their images aren’t attractive enough. They get some shares,
not many likes. Instagram verifies which images are the most attractive.

PAUL. In the Middle Ages, we got used to dying. And we created many images related to
dying. Maybe that’s why it seemed to us, that like a moment fixed in one of our pictures,
dying is just a point.

HERMAN. In modern times, the part of the population that has died, as a result of the
actions of the other part, is no larger than in any other era. Why are the crimes from
seventy years ago more terrifying to us than those much older crimes? Is ancient Assyria,
ancient Rome too abstract for us? Is the slaughter of Indians nothing but a fairy tale? Do
we lack illustrations? Perhaps we can no longer trust the miniatures we included in our
books, not when we compare them to modern photography. Our Saint Mark, the one
from “The Martyrdom of Saint Mark,” was not an apostle. I was drawing the death of a
man that I had once seen. If I’m guilty of anything, it’s that I dressed him up in the garb
of an apostle and added a halo. It made it easier for me. If the Limbourg Brothers are
finally forgotten one day, it will be because we lost out to modern photography.

PAUL. In the postmodern era, death, like many words from former times, has been
compromised. That doesn’t mean that we’re immortal, but rather that dying is not a
topic we can talk about in any serious way unless it’s in the press or on a formal
document. In the postmodern era, the image of a skeleton with a scythe looks
inappropriate, even in a humorous context. And what about photos in this postmodern
era? Like the ones from the World Press Photo of the Year, where even death seems
almost rosily appealing. Or the ones from Instagram, with instant filters, which make
your photos look more realistic by making them more artificial?

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HERMAN. If you are asking yourself what this play was about, you should be aware that
it wasn’t about Herman, Paul or Jean Limbourg, the court illuminators of the Duke de
Berry. It was a play about what will come later. It was a play about things to come. It
was about the end of the world.

The stage darkens. Only the Duke de Berry is visible.

DE BERRY. “If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee,” says the Bible.
I will tell you the truth. If we didn’t treat this holy call seriously when we were young’ if
the first things we looked at didn’t make us blind, then we will always be looking but we
will never see. This isn’t the tragedy the Limbourg Brothers would like it to be. I don’t
know how to properly describe this feeling. We live in times of constant comebacks. But
we return to points that we never even started from. We live in times of repetition, but
we don’t remember the originals. Do you remember the feast the Limbourgs painted for
me? I remember it better than the real feasts I actually went to, even though it only
exists on paper. Since we can’t find a better word, we would like to believe we live in
the era of nostalgia. But neither you nor I have anything to long for. We are too young
to know what that word means.

Excuse me? You say that our civilization is old? Did you really say that? But how would a
civilization remember anything? It’s memory was torn apart by tanks, it’s past burned by
fire and covered by highways. No, my friends. No, my late children. It’s all nothing but
an illusion made up of words. It’s not longing that leads us to the pictures. Not desire,
not curiosity, not hope. Then—what?

I will answer by way of an anecdote. When a composer was asked the meaning of one of
his works, he played it again and said “this.” Why do we look at the pictures? Have a
look, have a look.

Blackout. Once more the audience watches the cycle of the twelve months, then the
lights come up. If the audience starts clapping, the actors do not appear.

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