John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

I concentrated, clarifying what I saw by explaining to the stranger as I looked. And now suddenly things

grew much plainer.

I now understood things never before expressed—

inexpressible—

though everywhere boldly hinted, so plain, so absurdly

simple

that a fool if he learned the secret would laugh aloud.

I saw

three radiant ladies like pure forms gloriously bright—

three ladies

and one, as separate roads may wind toward one

same city,

or one same highway be known by separate names.

The floor

of the chariot extended to the rims of the universe,

wheeling away

like a rush of silver spokes devised by the finest of a

rich king’s

silversmiths, a man so devoted that he never looks up, and never considers the value of his work, but with

every stroke

proclaims the majesty of silver as the wings of an eagle

praise wind.

There the three ladies danced like dreams in the

limitless skull

of the Unnamable. And the first held a book with great

square pages.

Her name was Vision, and her tightly woven robe

was Light.

The second lady held a wineglass to me and smiled

at my shyness,

and when I saw her smile I remembered I’d met her

a thousand times,

in a thousand unprepossessing shapes, and my heart

was as glad

as the heart of a lonely old man when he sees his son.

Her name

was Love, and her robe was Gentleness. The third

bright dancer,

nearer than the rest and so plain of face that I laughed

when I saw her,

was lady Life, and her attire was Work. They danced,

and their music—

one with the dancers as a miser’s mind grows one

with his guineas

or the soul of a man on the mountain and the soul of

the mountain are one,

subject and object in careful minuet — was Selflessness. I stared dumbfounded at the universal simplicity and the man at my side stared with me, unconvinced.

The whole wide vault

of the galaxies choired, rumbling with the thunder,

what Life sang (Give),

and Love (Sympathize), and Vision (Control).

I laughed, and the sound was a quake that banged through the bed of Olympos

(the stranger vanished

like a shadow at the coming of a torch), and Love

was transformed to Aphrodite,

Vision to Athena, and Life to Queen Hera in an

undulant cloak

of snakes. I shrank in dismay — all around me to the

ends of the vision,

the numberless, goggle-eyed gods. Beside me in the

palace, a voice said,

“Calm yourself!” and a hand touched me. “Goddess!”

I whispered,

for though she remained no clearer to my sight than

the morning memory

of a dream, I knew her, and at once I was filled with

an eerie calm

as gentle as the calm of sleeping lovers or the solemn

stillness

of wrecked and abandoned towns. The goddess said,

“Listen!” and raised

her shadowy arm to point.

On his high throne Zeus sat motionless, cold and remote as the Matterhorn, his right fist raised to his bearded chin. His left hand rested on the hand

of the queen

on the throne beside him. The beams of his eyes shot

calmly to the heart

of the universe, and he did not shift his gaze when

the goddess

of love came forward and kneeled at his feet,

surrounded by her host

of suivants — gasping old men still crooked with lust,

drooling,

winking obscenely, their flies unbuttoned; middle-aged

women

with plucked eyebrows, smiling serenely past

cocktail glasses,

with eyes artificially eyelashed and slanted, and

propped-up bosoms

exuding the ghostly remains of whole nations of

civet cats;

young lovers crushed-to-one-creature as they staggered

down crowded streets

lunging through fish-smells and sorrow, from bed to bed.

Aphrodite lifted her hands, dramatic, and cried, “O mighty Lord, hear the prayer of your sorrowful Aphrodite! I’ve waited, faithful as a child, remembering your promise. In this

same hall

you swore that Jason and Medeia would be known

forever as the truest,

most pitiful of lovers, saints of Aphrodite. Yet

every hour

their once-fierce love grows feebler, turning toward hate.

Queen Hera

revels in my shame, egging him on toward betrayal

in the hall

of Kreon, and Athena bends all her wit to dredging

up excuses

in his fickle heart for trading Medeia for Pyripta. If all you promised you now withdraw, you know I’m

powerless to stop you;

but understand well: fool though you think me—

all of you—

you’ll never fool me twice with your flipflop

gudgeon-lures.”

The love goddess closed her lovely fists at her sides,

half rising,

and with bright tears rushing down her cheeks,

exclaimed:

“I’ll throw myself in the sea! Take warning! We gods

may be

indestructible, but still we can steal death’s outer

semblance,

stretched out rigid and useless in the droppings of

whales.” At the thought

of dark desolation at the slimy bottom of the world,

the goddess

was so moved she could speak no more, but sobbed into

her fingers, shaking,

and her worshippers bleated in chorus till the floor of

the palace was slick

with tears. But Zeus, like an old quartz mountain, was

visibly unmoved.

“I’ve promised you what I’ve promised,” he said.

“Be satisfied.”

“But that’s not all,” she said, eyes wide, a bright

blush rising

in her plump cheeks. “I find I’m mocked not only

by Hera

and Athena, but even by Artemis — she who claims to be so pure! I begged her, like a suppliant, to charge

the spirit

of Kreon’s daughter with a fiery love of chastity. And what did the cruel and malicious thing do? Went

straight to Medeia

to stir up strife in marriage I Let Artemis explain to

the gods

her purpose in this, and by what right she behaves

so horribly.”

Zeus said, “If Artemis wishes to speak let her speak.”

But the goddess

at my side said nothing. ‘Then I will speak,” said

Zeus crossly,

disdaining to shift his glance to tearful Aphrodite.

“The fire

of zeal has never had a purpose. It is what it is, simply, and any ends it may stumble to it’s indifferent to. As for Medeia, make no mistake, nothing on earth is more pure — more raised from self to selfless

absolute—

than a woman betrayed. For all their esteem,

immortal gods

follow like foaming rivers the channels available

to them.

Enough. Annoy us no more, Goddess.” She backed off,

curtsying,

glancing furtively around to see who might be snickering

at her.

And now gray-eyed Athena spoke, the goddess of cities and goddess of works of mind. In her shadow professors

crouched,

stern and rebuking, with swollen red faces and

pedantic hearts;

lawyers at the edge of apoplexy from righteous

indignation;

poets and painters with their pockets crammed full of

sharp scissors and knives;

and ministers cunning in Hebrew. With a smile

disarming and humorous—

but I knew her heart was troubled — she said, “Father

of the Gods,

no one has firmer faith than I in your power to keep all promises — complex and contradictory

as at times they seem.” She glanced at the goddess

of love and smiled,

then added, her tone too casual, I thought, and her teeth