more images from my ‘soldier’s tale’ notebook

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At the end of The Soldier’s Tale I made for a concert in Washington DC last year, the hapless Soldier was blown about like a leaf before disappearing down the Devil’s maw. This time around he’s to be reduced to a skeleton with a fiery blast of Old Nick’s breath before going the same way. Lots of animation possibilities in this scenario. And of course, when finished, the Devil will spit out what he no longer needs: the Soldier’s old violin.

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Having just read back over that, I realise it sounds callous and cruel. But then the story is too, and the end needs to reflect that. I should explain. I love The Soldier’s Tale. I have from the first time I heard it when I was a child. But it’s Faustian pact of a particularly cruel type, because the Soldier is not ambitious for himself in any way. He isn’t out for gain. Here he is at the beginning of the story, weary from duty and on his way home to be reunited with his mother and his fiancé. He stops to sort through his backpack, takes out and begins to play his violin. You can tell it’s a comfort to him, this ability to scratch a tune at the wayside and lift the spirits. An old man approaches, and quicksticks offers to purchase the fiddle. The Soldier declines the offer. The instrument is old, he explains, not up to pitch and hardly worth having. But the old man presses, wheedles, insists, and offers in exchange a magic book, though the deal doesn’t seem to signify much to the Soldier, who doesn’t read. Nevertheless he gives in and agrees, not out of avarice, but because he’s basically rather sweet-natured and is trying to oblige the old fellow. And he obliges him further, when pressed, by agreeing to teach the old man how to play, even though it means going out of his way to do so.

All unwittingly the Soldier has entered into a pact, and from that moment on his fate is sealed. He’s a simple soul and had been heading for a simple life when the Devil tripped him up. You can’t say that he was lured by promises of wealth and ease, because those things seem genuinely not to interest him. His weakness is that he he is too easily turned aside from his path, and too easily persuaded by the old man that his mother won’t mind if she has to wait a little longer for him.

In the more usual Faustian pacts there’s an exchange the participants negotiate and agree on. Faust signs a contract with the Devil, believing at heart that he’ll later be clever enough to wriggle out of it. But the Soldier signs nothing, because he wants nothing in exchange. The contract is ‘non-verbal’, but like one of those telephone scams where salespeople elicit binding agreements from the unwary even though no signatures have been given, the Soldier has fallen into the Devil’s trap.

The Soldier’s Tale is a wonderful creation on multiple levels, and I find its potency all the greater because as so often happens in life itself, the misfortune falls on one who has done little to deserve it.