John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

mad Thebes.

As we talk, with our usual flippancy, of kingdoms

and powers,

you bring us up short; you recall us to deeper purposes.

If our hearts are disturbed — as surely all sensitive

hearts must be

by much you say — we thank you profoundly

nonetheless.”

So saying, he clapped, bowing to Paidoboron, and

quickly, at the signal,

all those sitting at the tables clapped — and even Jason.

How could I blame them? His rant was, after all,

outrageous—

his presumption flatly intolerable. Step warily even with the noblest of prophets — baldhead Elisha

who once

when his dander was up, had the children who chanted

songs in scorn of him

eaten alive by bears. What can you say to the wild-eyed looney proclaiming on Fillmore Street,

THE END OF THE WORLD

IS AT HAND!

REPENT!?

Throughout the hall, the applause swelled,

and Paidoboron sat fuming, scornfully silent.

At length Koprophoros rose. Those nearest me frowned to hush

my mutterings,

and I hushed. The Asian spoke, great rolls of abdomens and chins, his long-tailed turban of gold and

snow-white samite

splendid as the ruby that glowed on his forehead like

an angry eye.

His tone was gentle, conciliatory. He opened his arms and tipped his head like a puppet, profoundly apologetic but forced by simple integrity to air his disagreement He said:

‘Your Majesties; gentlemen:

“Imagine I approach a stranger on the street and say to him, ‘If you please, sir, I desire to perform an experiment with your aid.’ The stranger is obliging, and I lead him away. In a dark place conveniently by, I strike his head with the broad of an axe and cart him home. I place him, buttered and trussed, in an ample oven. The thermostat reads 450°. Thereupon I go off to play at chess* with friends and forget all about the obliging stranger in the stove. When I return, I realize I have overbaked my specimen, and the experiment, alas, is ruined.” He made himself seem a man unspeakably disappointed. Then, eyes wildly gleaming, he dramatically raised an index finger.

“Something has been done wrong. Or something wrong has been done.”

He smiled. His enormous eyes squeezed shut, relishing the juices of his cunning wit. The sea-kings smiled with him. At last, with a gesture:

“Any ethic that does not roundly condemn my action,

I’m sure you’ll agree, is vicious. It is interesting that none is vicious for this reason. It is also interesting that no more convincing refutation of any ethic could be given than one which reveals that the ethic approves my baking the obliging stranger.” He tipped his head, smiled again.

“That, actually, is all I have to say, but I shall not desist on that account. Indeed, I shall commence anew.

“The geometer”—he gestured—“cannot demonstrate that a line is beautiful. The beauty of lines is not his concern. We do not chide him when he fails to observe uprightness in his verticals, when he discovers no passions between sinuosities. We would not judge it otherwise than foolish to berate him for neglecting to employ the methods successful in biology or botany merely because those methods deal fairly with lichens and fishes. Nor do we despair of him because he cannot give us reasons for doing geometry which will equally well justify our drilling holes in teeth. There is a limit, as ancient philosophers have said, to the questions which we may sensibly put to each man of science; and however much we may desire to find unity in the purposes, methods, and results of every fruitful sort of inquiry, we must not allow that desire to make mush of their necessary differences.

“I need not prove to you by lengthy obs and sols, I hope, that no ethical system conceived by man can explain what is wrong in my treatment of the obliging stranger. It should be sufficient to observe how comic all ethical explanations must sound.

“Consider:” (Here he gestured with both hands.)

“My act produced more pain than pleasure.

“Baking this fellow did not serve the greatest good to the greatest number.

“I acted wrongly because I could not consistently will that the maxim of my action become a universal law.

“God forbade me, but I paid no heed.

“Anyone can apprehend the property of wrongness sticking plainly to the whole affair.

“Decent men remark it and are moved to tears.”

(Everyone was laughing.)

“But surely what I’ve done is just as evil if, for instance, the man I have wronged was tickled to laughter the whole time he cooked.” Koprophoros looked puzzled, slightly panicked in fact. “Yet it cannot be that my baking the stranger is wrong for no reason at all. It would then be inexplicable. I cannot believe this is so, however.”

He pretended to be startled by illumination.

“It is not inexplicable, in fact. It’s transparent!”

He paused and formally shifted his weight as a writer shifts paragraphs. With a gesture, he said: “All this, I confess, must seem an intolerably roundabout approach to the point I would like to make to you. The point is simply this. Our hyperborean friend has put forward two simple assertions: that cities are by nature evil, and that the feelings of men — the feelings responsible for the creation of cities — are to be rejected in favor of the noble attitudes of gods — attitudes we cannot experience, as human beings, except as we are informed of them by visionaries like Paidoboron, men who are, for mysterious reasons, infinitely our superiors.” He bowed solemnly, with an appropriate gesture, in Paidoboron’s direction, then looked straight at me and, for no fathomable reason, winked. He continued:

“You can see, I’m sure, gentlemen, what troubles me — or rather, the many things troubling me. I’ll gladly trust an algorist like Paidoboron to tell me most minutely and precisely of sidereal eclipses, 19-year cycles, storms on the surface of Helios, or the lunar wobble. But even if I could grant in theory (as I’m reluctant to do) that the stars send moral advice to me, I wonder, being a stubborn sort of person, what the stars’ apogees and perigees — stiff and invariable tracings of geometry, if I’m not mistaken — can have to do with my moral behavior. How, that is, does an astral apogee come to know more about upright action than a vertical line or the loudest physically possible thump? Again, I’m puzzled about the mathematics of why I should turn against human nature when every man here in this room condemns me for my manner of dealing with the stranger— whom you hardly knew!” Gesture. “Indeed, I can think of no one who would settle down soberly to cook a man, discounting the benighted anthropophagi, but a zealot of religion.

“I suggest that we may have been somewhat maligned — that cities, in fact, are a complex expression of the very attitudes involved in your hearty condemnation of me for the way I employ my oven. I suggest that the faults in city life, which Paidoboron points out, are the sad, accidental side-effects of a noble attempt — indeed, a magnificent achievement — which ought not to be washed down the gutter with the unwanted baby in impulsive haste.” He slid his eyes up, ironically pious, and delicately tapped his fingertips together.

“Let me assume you agree with me in this. Then our question becomes, ‘What kind of rule is most likely to make man’s noble and social attempt successful, keeping unfortunate side-effects to the barest possible minimum?’ Jason has given us some pointers in this matter. He argues, if I’ve rightly understood him, that the first principle is simply this: Balance a steadfast concern for justice with unfailing common sense, an intelligent use of alliances, a capacity to change as situations change. And his second principle would seem to be: Sternly reject all emotional urges, let the abstract, calcifying mind wrap the wicked blood in chains — if it can. If it can! For all man’s nature, save only his god-given mind, is a fetid and camarine thing, unfit to fish or swim in. So he tells us. Is he right? Is a Philosopher King conceivable who is not an old madman like Amykos?