John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

Nature

steadfast faith is an illusion of fools. So Theseus

claimed,

and scorned her, despite all she’d done for him. But

later, seeing

how deep that emptiness runs — how the center of the

universe

is Hades’ realm, where the absence of meaning lies

bitter on the tongue

as a taste of alum — he changed his opinion. He fought

his way back

to the kingdom of the living and made his own heart a

law contrary

to the world’s. And at last he subdued that passionate

Amazon

by laying plain the deadness at the core, the all-out

battle

of dark gods seething, each against all, like atoms.

Like you,

a metaphysician to the bone, he knew, that scorner of

vows,

the smell of mortality in promises. Without that

knowledge

nothing of importance can begin, though knowledge, if

it goes no further …

The rest is murky. So I saw myself — I, who answered the Sphinx’s riddle and swore by unflagging intelligence to keep Thebes firm. I was shown soon enough the

absurdity

of hopes so overweening. The ground underneath me

shifted,

and all I perceived and reasoned about was a mirror

trick.

I learned that the way of the universe is dim,

unnamable,

shape without shape, image without substance, a dark

implication

from silence….

“And yet it is also true that Herakles was right— with Herakles too I passed a day — who believed his

father

was loving and always near, assuaging torments. (In a

world

confused and contradictory, everything is right, and all potential is real possibility.) By the character of Zeus as he understood it, he judged all things. When he seized

the initiative,

judging for himself, as if Zeus were not there, he was

filled with darkness,

loneliness, sorrow, and fear. Many times he fell, by his

standard,

and many times climbed back, bellowing, striking all

around him

with his wild-man’s club. He was wrong, of course, in

believing his father

was there, or that Zeus felt concern — one more blind,

feelingless power—

but the sorrow and joy in redemption were real enough.

So the Trojan

Aeneas thought, who abandoned the woman he loved

for duty

and sailed out of Carthage, take it as she might. His

voice grew wild,

telling me the story: ‘What pure serenity I felt,’ he

said.

‘ “Let nobody fool you,” I said to the sailors around me

in the ship,

“though the mind yaw this way and that, anchorless,

the heart can be sure

what’s right and wrong, what the gods require. I’ve

proved it myself,

when I turned sternly on selfish desire for that loveliest

of queens

who lulled my noble and difficult purpose to sleep,

seduced

my lion-ambition with presents and comforts, till I’d

half-forgotten

my people’s destiny, my arms grown flabby, the back

that once

easily carried my father from burning Troy grown frail and flimsy as a girl’s, my mind once keen grown soft

with love

and wine and poetry. ‘Who can say what’s best?’ I

sighed,

sunk in the softness of Dido’s scented bed. But a voice outside my life and larger than life came urging me

onward,

peremptorily ordering ‘Up! To Italy!’ And now that my

legs

stand balanced on the deck of the ship again, I know

the truth,

know it by the salt’s sharp bite in the spray, by the

soul-reviving

pressure of the wind. There is no personal pleasure—

none!—

that touches the joy of duty! The man who claims the

gods

are remote, indifferent — the man who feels no presence

of the gods

in all he does — is a man half dead. They exist; they

reveal

their character and will in every leaf and flower. Woe to the fool who closes his heart to them! His heart will

be dark,

his deeds puny and ridiculous!” So I spoke on the ship, ploughing north toward Italy,’ he said. ‘But that was

before.’

He laughed, furious, when he spoke with me now of his

former opinions.

‘Stark madness,’ he said, and gnashed his teeth, pacing

back and forth.

‘I could hardly know that as soon as I left her she’d

killed herself,

though we saw, three nights out of Carthage, the glow

of her funeral pyre.

Not all the magnificent kingdoms on earth are worth

the death

of a single beautiful woman — nay, the death of even a sick old man. When I met her shade I came to my

senses,

but understood too late. And with nothing remaining

but duty,

I followed duty — followed what once I’d known by

feeling,

I thought, as the gods’ command. Came no such feelings

now.

Turnus dead, my better, but a man in my destiny’s way; Lavinia my wife, a useful ally — her bed no Dido’s. Loveless, friendless. A compromiser for the good of the

state,

selfless servant of the gods as a burning stick is servant to the chilly, indifferent shepherd. Such is the sorrow

of things.’

So he spoke, full of anger, longing for death. Nor was

it much better

for Ticius, or Lombard, or Brutus, or the others

dispersed but of Troy,

obedient to what they imagined the high gods’ will.

But each,

sick with betrayals, too cynic for love such as Orpheus

had,

made his peace, built up weary battlements — for all his

scorn

of pride, made his stand of proud banners. And rightly

enough. No worse

than Akhilles’ way — if Odysseus told me, in that much,

the truth.

He would not bend for the pompous bray of civilities,

that one!

Would let all Akhaia go down for one woman, his prize

of war

whom dog-eyed Agamemnon stole, supported by

lordlings,

Akhaians gathered from far and near for a high moral

purpose,

they pretended — lying in their teeth. They did not fool

the son

of Peleus, raging in his tent and cursing their whole

corrupt

establishment. He set his pure and absolute passion beyond the value of all their chatter of community effort till Patroklos died, and Akhilles’ passion made him hate

all Illium

and battle for Akhaia in spite of himself. He wagered

his soul

on love and hate, and let duty be damned. But Priam, bending in sorrow for his headless, mutilated son,

made Akhilles

shudder at last with sanity, crying aloud to the gods. He too, the gentle and courageous Hektor, was a lover—

loved

both justice and the people of his city and house.

Constrained to fight

for an evil cause or abandon loved ones, he wiped

the lines

from his forehead, gave up on metaphysics, played

for an hour

with his son, then put on his armor. So goes the universe, disaster on this side, shame on that … Yet not

even these

are trustworthy.

“For ten long years Odysseus debated, tossed like a chip by the lunatic gods — not the least

of them

the gods in his sly, unsteadfast brain. Defend him as

you will,

Odysseus couldn’t be certain himself that he truly

intended

to make his way back to Penelope. He bounced from wall to wall down the long dark corridor of chance to that

moment of panic

when Alkinoös’ daughter found him by the sea and fell

in love with him. Then swiftly that quick brain lied:

told tales

of battle with the Cyclops, the terror of Sirens,

debasement on the isle

of Circe — fashioned adventures, each stranger than

the last, to prove