Prologue
In the play Blue Bird, each person is said to be born with a gift from their previous life. A pair of lovers are unwilling to be separated from each other when their life comes to an end. Before they embark on the journey for next life, they are anxious to know how they can recognize each other in afterlife. The woman says, “I’ll take the gift of ‘sadness’to my next life so that you can recognize me easily.” So, from generation to generation, “sadness” becomes a distinguishing mark of lovers. The couple without true love have no such privilege! And happy is the man who can do without love all his life, for he carries no such gift as “sadness” from his previous life.
Hunchbacked and stammering on the outside
He had lost all sense of human warmth and coldness
Since childhood when his loving mother
Departed for Heaven and left him
To an unfeeling stepmother
With hard blows struck on his naughty head
Tenderness had become as foreign to him as enmity
Joy as strange as despair
He did not grieve over those that died
His father, step-mother and son-in-law
Nor rejoice over those that remained
His wife, son and daughter
The only sensation that he feels now is
The discomfort at the sight of his family
Otherwise
This callous man feels nothing
Blessed is this numbness
That protects him from
The seizure of Pain and Pleasure
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