Leviathan

"The mid-Mediterranean. . . Sunrise after a night of storm, with the sea swaying
prodigiously. . ."

A mermaid is surprised to find a shipwrecked prince adrift on soggy pillows on the sea. The Prince is no less surprised! Is she an illusion born of dreams or songs or fevers? He offers to trade some of his great treasure for his safety. She will only be satisfied to if he pays with something she has heard about-- a soul. He claims to have one but he cannot show it to her. Does she save him, or does she relegate him to the clutches of the Leviathan, the great sea serpent who now swims into the scene?

PROGRAM NOTE: Written in his junior year at Yale and first published in the Yale Literary Magazine in April 1919 under the title Not for Leviathan, this drama plays with cosmic questions: What is a soul? Where is it kept? Can it be stolen or given away? And deeper still, what is truth and what is illusion?