Auto of Life and Death

by António Aleixo, in Este Livro Que Vos Deixo, Lisboa.1975

Critical poetic translation from the Portuguese

(“Auto” in the Iberian tradition refers to a short moral or religious dramatic play, often allegorical.)

The Play of Life and Death

Critical / Editorial note: In English, the word “Auto” has no direct equivalent. “Play” preserves theatrical immediacy. “Morality” connects to the medieval moral drama tradition closest to the Portuguese auto. António Aleixo’s use of Auto places this text within a long Iberian tradition (Gil Vicente, autos sacramentais), but his tone is unmistakably popular, ironic, and ethical rather than doctrinal. From the title alone, we are warned: this is not metaphysics in abstraction, but life and death staged as voices, confronting one another before the people.

To Mrs. Laura Barreiros, whose generosity made this work come to light;

And to Victor Guimarães, who, writing at the poet’s dictation, patiently gave these words a written body—

this play is offered, with open and rightful gratitude.

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CHARACTERS

THE STEWARD

An elderly man, impeccably dressed in fashions of a bygone century

FUTILE LIFE

A middle-aged woman or man, clothed in luxury and excess

DEATH

A man dressed in tight black garments, his body marked with a painted skeleton

TIME

A symbolic, unmistakable figure

USEFUL LIFE

A young person, sleeves rolled up

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SCENE

A globe of the world stands on stage,

with two doors:

one opens to the tomb,

the other to the cradle,

framed by a curtain.

As the curtain rises, THE STEWARD stands by the cradle door.

FUTILE LIFE enters.

The STEWARD bows repeatedly, then exits.

FUTILE LIFE

(with theatrical flair)

Do you know who I am? I am Life.

The world takes pride in me,

loves me above all others,

for I am human life.

I am Life—the queen

above the lives of beasts;

for among them all, mine alone

knows more, dares more, commands more.

To tell me apart

from lives deemed irrational,

it is enough to say this:

my life is human.

I know how to perfect beauty

with my chosen, cultured art—

to give what nature withheld,

to finish what she left apart.

From a world once crude and grim,

shaped by ancient, clumsy ways,

my progress turned it—bit by bit—

into something dreamlike, almost dazed.

With my cleverness and skill

I forged laws, judges, command;

raised cities, towers of steel,

crowned presidents, kings at hand—

the highest powers in the land.

And if all this were still not enough

to make the world entirely mine,

who tore the atom apart itself?

— Was it not I?

(Startled, as DEATH enters; she speaks with feigned boldness)

O wretched Death! O treachery!

Where do you come from? Who sent you here?

DEATH

(emerging from the door of the tomb, with irony)

I do not come, I never came, nor shall I go—

poor fool. I live only

inside your imagination.

You are the one who gave me birth.

I am nothing but illusion.

Hear me: I make no secret of it.

I am the shadow your own fear casts,

the shape suggestion gives your dread.

FUTILE LIFE

(with violence, retreating)

Out! Out of here at once, you cursed

carcass! Begone from my sight!

Black, grotesque apparition,

no one has need of you—

leech, parasite!

DEATH

Drop that childish fit,

ungrateful creature. Is this how you repay

the servant who sweeps away the refuse

of the lives you lay to waste?

FUTILE LIFE

(with disdain)

Yes, yes—you may be all that

you claim yourself to be,

but not for me. I know this much:

I serve you, and you end me.

DEATH

You think it works that way.

I know something you do not:

without my chasing after you,

you will fall into my arms,

exhausted—tired of yourself.

FUTILE LIFE

I do not know where you live.

If you don’t walk at my side,

rest easy: I assure you

I’ll never come to you.

DEATH

You’re foolish—I’ve said it before.

You understand nothing of this.

I have no house, no refuge.

I’ve told you already:

I do not exist.

FUTILE LIFE

Even your words are counterfeit,

just like the laws you claim.

Who kills off bishops, kings,

whole orders, whole names?

DEATH

Not death.

Life does.

FUTILE LIFE

(outraged)

Then am I killing myself!?

DEATH

You still refuse to see:

fighting only to sustain yourself,

you fall—defeated by your own hand.

FUTILE LIFE

By what you’ve said just now,

one thing becomes quite clear:

what drives me forward is life—

but not my life.

How could that be possible!?

DEATH

That is the truth, stripped bare.

And if life seems beautiful to you,

it’s only because it is not yours—

quite the opposite: you belong to it.

You fall. Life continues.

FUTILE LIFE

(defiantly)

And if I’m not the one

who gives life its force and fire,

tell me, then—who keeps it alive?

DEATH

Pleasure and pain.

They begin the moment life

teaches you how to dream.

When both of them run dry,

life no longer has desire.

FUTILE LIFE

You almost make me laugh—

nothing is mine, by what you claim.

DEATH

(pointing to her skeleton)

Not even this—

which life puts on

only to take off again.

See this mechanism?

Life invented it,

shaped it from dead matter—

just as humans shaped the plane,

the car that carries them forward.

You are young, you are beautiful—

life walks with you,

uses you until you break.

Then you are what you always were,

and life moves on,

lending force and motion to other beings.

FUTILE LIFE

Death, you do not understand.

Fury blinds you—anger clouds your sight.

Have you lost your mind,

or do you mean to make me swallow a lie?

If you deny the place I’ve won

through effort and through knowledge,

you deny History itself,

all that I have created—

my existence, my very being.

You strip all value from me—

to you, everything is small,

colorless, weightless,

all that humanity has made.

If I accepted your belief,

Death, I’d no longer tell apart

the servant from the king,

nor measure their distance.

I would cry out to the future:

there are no great, no small.

I end—no more, no less—

exactly where I began.

And the world wouldn’t be shocked

if, armed with that authority,

I called truth a lie

and crowned the lie as truth.

DEATH

You’re mad—so obsessed

you forget the fall,

even as you try to rise

on wings made of fantasy.

Vanity—nothing but vanity.

Paint upon paint,

lies trying to recolor

what truth already is.

Reality will never allow

them to be the same.

Look at humanity:

when illusion and pride dissolve,

what remains is me—nothing else.

FUTILE LIFE

Yet surely you must admit:

this world would be magnificent

without sadness, grief,

martyrdom, pain…

Why can’t it be all beauty?

DEATH

Have you still not seen

that perfect good,

without evil to oppose it,

would be neither good nor evil at all?

What would night be without day?

What light without its shadow?

Contrast alone gives meaning—

that’s how we learn to judge.

Take this as the true measure:

all things move toward one end.

Even you, life itself,

would be nothing without me.

FUTILE LIFE

So your law is simply

to undo whatever I do?

DEATH

No. Nothing is undone.

Everything transforms—nothing is ever lost.

FUTILE LIFE

(mocking)

And what would you say

if I laughed at this hollow talk?

DEATH

I expected that kind of folly

From your version of wisdom.

Go on—laugh freely,

without shame or dignity,

but remember this:

every laugh has its mirror in tears.

FUTILE LIFE

From what you keep insisting,

I gather you find me foolish—

nothing I do is clean or true.

DEATH

I point out your error

because you stare only at the now,

and at stories already told,

never preparing what comes next.

FUTILE LIFE

(as Time crosses the stage, slow, unceasing)

Death… who is that?

DEATH

Time.

FUTILE LIFE

(impressed)

Time? That’s rich.

I’ll ask what business he has here.

DEATH

Be cautious—

he is a judge who never pardons,

never excuses anyone.

FUTILE LIFE

So you are Time, old wanderer,

with no beginning and no end?

To me you race by,

yet to yourself you crawl.

TIME

(measured, unhurried)

Yes—it is I.

Have you already forgotten

how many times I have pointed out

the errors you made

across generations past?

FUTILE LIFE 

(subdued)

I thought I had learned

what you tried to teach me.

TIME

You gained so little

from the path you’ve walked

that you’ve already repeated

the very errors you once made.

What did you learn from wars?

What good is memory

if—even reading your own History—

you never correct your faults?

DEATH 

(aside, to Life)

Do you hear him now?

Isn’t this what I said?

Your wisdom is that

of the poorest apprentice.

FUTILE LIFE 

(angrily)

Silence. Close your mouth.

Don’t tell me Time is what passed.

You’re more mad

than you say I am.

TIME 

(turning toward Life)

Yes—I am Time. Within space

I shape your evolution.

I build, I undo,

only to build again.

My purpose is to bring

this world toward perfection.

Know this: in the slow work

of making and unmaking,

I patiently uncover

what true progress is—and there I also find

the reason for your existence.

FUTILE LIFE

So nothing moved forward?

Was it all wasted—the nations I civilized,

the wars I fought?

If this is not progress,

what was all my effort for?

TIME

Only what the earth lends you

survives the aftermath of war,

so you may refill the world

with what of it still remains in you.

DEATH 

(to Time)

Will that warning ever suffice

to make her purer, more whole,

when she loves laughter so deeply

she has no sense left

to think about tomorrow?

TIME 

(to Life)

Within your intelligence

there is much that is good and clean.

Seek it patiently—and you will shape a better future

for those who come after you.

FUTILE LIFE

You, who command yourself:

when you met me in celebration

you passed me by,

stopping only in my pain.

You gave me moments of love,

peace, delight, joy.

Then—without mercy—

in sorrow and in agony,

you stretched into eternity.

FUTILE LIFE 

(to Time, as he exits)

Don’t go—

please, grant my wish,

I’d be grateful beyond words.

Wait—have mercy on me!

Can’t you see how I age,

how you kill me by passing?

Why won’t you stop—

why are you leaving now?

DEATH 

(cynically laughing)

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Yes—yes! Beg him now

not to go, not to move.

Let him go at every hour—

your dear friend is still here.

FUTILE LIFE 

(outraged)

My friend? You—coward—

mocking me while I suffer!

You’ll pay for this, one day…

(suddenly afraid)

Forgive me—forgive me! I’m going mad!

DEATH

Stop this madness.

Resign yourself—lost soul.

Don’t strike me; if you do,

you strike the shadow of nothing.

Only now do you rage,

because you finally met the old man?

You suffer now because you once indulged,

because pleasure came with fault.

FUTILE LIFE 

(broken)

All you do is accuse me…

DEATH

When you lived among feasts,

drunk on noise and motion,

you never noticed Time—

you never wanted to.

You committed so many excesses

while you were entertaining yourself

that he passed unnoticed before you.

You always treated him with disdain.

DEATH

And if he never took revenge

for the way you scorned him,

it was because he watched you

spend yourself on luxuries and dance.

FUTILE LIFE

Time—who ages me

so you may take me sooner—

would not allow me to do

what truly matters in life.

DEATH

You are the accused—

and you have confessed.

FUTILE LIFE 

(enraged)

Guilty, in the end, all of you!

Thief! Thieves! Can’t you see

that the faults you lay on meare not mine—

they are yours!

DEATH

Ha! How entertaining.

So you’re right after all?

Death is to blame

for the life you lived?

FUTILE LIFE 

(thinking aloud)

But wait—I do have one defense:

in my earliest state

I was like the animals;

the difference was slight,

we were almost the same.

DEATH

And that is your reward:

you ran from nature’s laws.

FUTILE LIFE 

(defiant)

Cursed one! I am still strong.

I have not died—listen well:

neither Time nor Death

will defeat me in this fight.

DEATH

Don’t hide behind

fortresses made of foam—

air builds them

only to erase them,

leaving nothing behind.

FUTILE LIFE 

(threatening)

Black wretch! I’ll consume you—

you’ll see what I’m capable of.

DEATH

You do what smoke does

when it vanishes into space.

FUTILE LIFE 

(frenzied)

You’ll pay! You fraud!

You’ll learn how I respond:

all power is mine—

I am not weak as you think.

I will win; you will lose.

And Time—so proud of its wisdom—

will share your fate.

I will conquer

the world, time, death!

DEATH

Transform yourself—if you can.

This is as far as you go.

You will never defeat me

unless you first defeat yourself.

(Life collapses, dead. The Butler enters through the cradle-door and bows before the tomb as Death drags Life away and exits.)

DEATH

See how futile projects collapse—

those you boasted of building in vanity.

They lack foundations, empty grandeurs;

they fall on their own. I merely collect them.

(Death drags Life through the tomb. Both vanish. The Butler moves to the cradle-door and, with repeated bows, introduces Useful Life.)

USEFUL LIFE

I am the true life—

clear, without hypocrisy,

stripped bare

of sophistry and illusion,

which once prevented me

from making our days better.

(noticing the Butler)

USEFUL LIFE

What exactly are you doing here?

BUTLER 

(firm, formal)

Greetings—bows and proper courtesies.

According to rank and category,

I deliver my respect.

USEFUL LIFE

And who are you? Waiting for someone?

BUTLER

I am Prejudice.

USEFUL LIFE 

(cutting him off)

Then go. You’re dead too.

No one needs you anymore.

Follow the life that just died.

(The Butler tries to leave through the cradle-door, but Useful Life blocks him, pointing instead to the tomb.)

Go out through that door—

you, too, are no longer needed.

(The Butler exits through the tomb, crushed.)

Did you see how it fell?

The life of artifice,

illusion, and vice—

false to its core—collapsed.

It will fall again and again

until it learns to regenerate,

until it becomes

what the future requires.

I am the life that follows,

the school of humanity.

I am what vanity

could never destroy.

I am life, moving forward

with will and persistence,

passing on to those to come

every good that science

can offer to the world.

CURTAIN

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“Auto da Vida e da Morte is not a play about dying, but about learning how not to waste life. António Aleixo reminds us that what collapses is not existence itself, but vanity; what survives is usefulness, responsibility, and transmission.”