SAVVA

A monologue from the play by Leonid Andreyev


  • NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from Savva and The Life of Man: Two Plays by Leonid Andreyev. Trans. Thomas Seltzer. Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1917.
  • KING HEROD: Just you wait, my precious! You'll get what's coming to you, and mighty quick. The devil will come and hurl you into the fiery pit. To hell, to gehenna, with you! How your fat will melt and run! Do you get the smell, monk? Run, fast as your feet can carry you! Ah! but where to? Everywhere is hell, everywhere is fire. You refused to hearken unto me, my pet; now you shall hearken unto the fire. Won't I be glad, won't I rejoice! I'll take off my chains so that I can catch them and present them to the devil -- first one, then the other. Here, take them. And the howl they'll set up, and the weeping and lamentation. "But I'm not guilty!" Not guilty? Who, then, is -- who? To gehenna with you! Burn, you damned hypocrites, until the second Advent. And then we'll build a new fire!

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