John Powys - Atlantis

Yes! the field was free for something that had not so far crossed the mind of any living creature, whether that creature were a god or a man or a beast or a bird or a fish or a reptile or a worm or an insect! Yes, the greatest gift the Earth had given to Odysseus at his birth was his power of accepting a crushing disaster and of starting freshly again, as the phrase runs, “from scratch”.

Another great gift from the universal mother of men, who by many among us is called Nature rather than the Earth, of which this old hero was possessed, was the power of detaching himself from the agitations, confusions, emotions, desperations, terrors and exultations that might be absorbing and upsetting his immediate companions and not only of keeping his own spirit in the midst of the craziest hurly-burly and hullabaloo absolutely calm and unmoved, but of being capable under these conditions of so isolating his mind that he could go on coolly planning for the future, and calmly pondering on the future, and amusing himself by imagining what he would like best to happen in the future, with as much serenity as if he’d had nothing but lonely forests and untraversed seas around him for hundreds and hundreds of miles.

It had become clear to everybody now that behind the man who was running so fast, and who now was near enough to be recognizable as no other than our young friend Nisos, there was another man, quite different in appearance, attired in a manner wholly foreign to Ithaca and even to the main-land of Hellas, who clearly was finding it difficult to keep up with the younger man. Suddenly this first runner—“And it is Nisos!” thought Pontopereia, unable to stop herself from squeezing the king’s arm in her excitement, “and he’s coming straight to us!”—turned, saw how far off the other was, and stood still, so as to be overtaken.

It was indeed one of those curious occasions when the innate natures of the spectators at an important event reveal themselves to themselves, if not to anyone else, with what sometimes are quite surprising results.

“Can you see Enorches any longer?” enquired the moth of the fly. “I feel so dreadfully sure that the dear man may be wanting someone like me to make him happy about his beautiful speech and tell him how rich and clear his noble voice sounded.”

“May the Great Hornet sting your confounded Enorches!” responded the fly crossly. “Why can’t you, you little priest worshipper, look at the drama of life from a scientific distance?”

There was something so infinitely unpleasant to the moth, and so blighting and bleaching and blistering and blasting to her whole life-instinct, about this appalling “scientific distance” to which the fly was alluding, that she found it hard to be even polite to him.

“Well, my pretty?” he went on teasingly, for the difference of sex between them put her seriousness into one ballot-box and his into another, “why don’t you answer my plain question about a rational view of life taken from an astronomical scientific distance?”

This was too much for the moth, and she lost every silken flake of her natural sweet and obedient temper. “Why,” she screamed at him, “don’t I look at life from the view-point of the furthest star in the firmament? I’ll tell you why! I’ll tell you why! I’ll tell you why! Because I happen to be a Living Being on the Earth!”

The Fly sighed heavily. “How impossible it is,” he thought, “to exchange rational ideas with a female! And yet they are clever. It would be absurd to deny it. They are extremely clever. They may even be called wise. But their wisdom follows a completely different track from our wisdom. It skips about from point to point, matching things. We look at life as a whole.”

“You know exactly where the world comes to an end then?” shrieked the moth, making the fly feel as though she had read his thoughts. “What if it has trailing edges that lead to completely different ends? What if there’s a jumping-off place, from which a person can leap into another world altogether?”

“Listen, pretty fool!” protested the Fly sternly: and once more there came to their ears the voice of the Sixth Pillar conversing gravely with the club of Herakles; on whose head Odysseus was leaning rather heavily at that moment as he watched Nisos approach with that fantastically attired foreigner.

“The Sage avers that if the difference between one man and another with regard to their bodies is so great that it passeth understanding, considering that all have a head and a neck and shoulders and trunk and arms and legs and hands and feet and eyes and ears, the difference between them in regard to their minds is so great that it bars any approach to an attempt to understand it.”

“You heard that , sweetheart?” commented the Fly with satisfaction. “And if we can say as much as that about the difference in body and mind between creatures of the same species, what about the difference when you consider varieties of species? I tell you, little one, there’s no more good in my hoping that out of the various tribes of Flies one will arise destined to conquer the world than in these people here thinking that some Hellenic or Achaian or Bœotian tribe will conquer the world. I tell you, darling little idiot, no species and no portion of a species will ever conquer the world. It’s one of the tricks of Nature to put such ideas into people’s heads so as to make great wars arise between race and race and between species and species. Such wars between one swarm and another swarm are deliberately worked up by Nature so as to thin out earth’s population. Will you never learn, you lovely little goose-girl, that if a moth of your tribe wants her folks to rule the world there is only one thing for her to do?”

“And what may that be?” responded the moth in a voice so faint with sarcasm that it was hardly audible.

“Tell yourself a story about it happening,” said the fly, “and die before you get to the last chapter.”

“I sometimes think,” whispered the moth, “that that’s what I’ve done.”

When Nisos and his oddly-attired companion reached Odysseus, Pontopereia took care to move aside and to be as inconspicuous a figure in that crowded landscape as was possible for a girl with her strikingly beautiful and intellectual face. Hardly conscious of what she was doing, however, when Nisos did begin to speak she kept on moving nearer and nearer to the old king; but since her reputed mother or at any rate her official guardian, Okyrhöe, also moved nearer, her interest must have seemed to Nisos entirely natural.

One thing about this new encounter of these two young people certainly showed the daughter of Teiresias in a dignified and admirable light, namely the fact that in her excited interest in what Nisos was telling the old King she forgot completely the shame and humiliation she had herself suffered so short a time before. In fact she forgot, as apparently Odysseus himself had forgotten, what a central dramatic part in turning the tide of popular feeling she had been brought there to play. And now it was all over and done with, as utterly as was the life of the old Dryad and her tree, both of them reduced to dust and ashes.

“It was when I had only just left the Cave of the Naiads that I first saw it.” And here Nisos made a rather formal and yet quite a dramatic pause; and Pontopereia couldn’t help noticing that the presence of the ornately-dressed, portentous-looking stranger who so punctiliously kept one of his brocaded knees on the ground while he watched the face of Odysseus with obsequious impassivity, did have the effect of stiffening just a little the unconventional naturalness of speech which the direct frankness of their master usually evoked in those who were closest to him.