had not.
That was the difference. We’d done the impossible, and
never again
would Theseus’ way suffice. Then Medeia murdered
the sons
of Jason. There’s no way up from that. No way, at least, for Jason himself. For no revenge, however dire, could have any shred of meaning. You see how it is.
No man
could guess such love, such rage at betrayal. She emptied
herself.
All the pale colonnades of reason she blew sky-high, like a new volcano hurled through the heart of the city.
So he,
reason’s emblem, abandoned reason.” He glanced at
Jason,
furtive and quick, his mad smile flashing in the light
of the fire.
“He abandoned the oldest rule in the world. It’s not for
revenge
that he hunts Medeia. Move by move they played out
the game
of love and power, and both of them lost. What
shamelessness,
what majestic madness to claim that it wasn’t a game
after all,
that no rules apply — that love is the god at the heart
of things,
dumb to the structured surface — high ruler of the
rumbling dance
behind the Unnamable’s dream. And does Jason think,
you ask,
that hell overcome that woman’s rage with his maniac
love?
Not for an instant! He thinks nothing, hopeful or
otherwise:
his will is dead, burned to cinders like Koronis’ corpse on her funeral pyre, from whence the healer
Asklepios leaped;
or burned like the Theban princess Semele in lightnings
from Zeus,
out of whose ash, like the Phoenix, the god Dionysos
rose,
god who first crushed from the blood-soaked earth
the wine he brings
to the vineyard’s clawing roots. He has no fear any more, of total destructions, for only the man destroyed
utterly—
only the palace destroyed to its very foundation grits— is freed to the state of indifferent good: mercy without
hope,
power to be just. No matter any more, that life is
a dream.
Let those who wish back off, seek their virtuous
nothingness;
the man broken by the gods — if he’s still alive — is free even of the gods. Dark ships follow us, ghostly armadas baffled by his choice. Sir, do not doubt their reality. I give you the word of a madman, they’re there — vast
lumbering fleets,
some sliding, huge as cities, on the surface, some
drifting under us,
some of them groaning and whining in the air. At times
his voice
comes back to him, though not his mind, and he
shouts at them:
‘Fools! You are caught in irrelevant forms: existence
as comedy,
tragedy, epic!’ We let him rave. The end is inevitable. We sail, search on for Erekhtheus, in an endlessly
changing
sea.” So he spoke, and ended.
Then Oidipus rose from the fire and tapped with his cane to the mouth of the cave. He
stood a long while
in sad meditation, then pointed the way, as well as
he knew how.
The winds had brought them far, far north. It would
take them months
to row the Argo to warmer seas and the kingdom
of Aigeus.
“Go with my blessing,” the blind king said. “May the
goddess of love
bend down in awe. The idea of desire is changed, made
holy.”
They thanked him, and Jason seized his hand and
struggled to speak.
But Oidipus raised his fingers to Jason’s lips and said, “No matter.” Jason bowed, and so they parted. In haste they mounted the Argo, and Idas signalled the rowers.
The blades
dug in, backing water, and the black ship groaned,
dragging off the shore,
drawing away into darkness and smoke. The night
was filled
with explosions and lights, what might have been some
great celebration
or might have been some final, maniacal war.
Then came
wind out of space, and the island vanished. I was
falling, clinging
to my hat. But the tree was falling with me, its huge
gnarled roots
reaching toward the abyss. I hung on, cried, “Goddess,
goddess!”
In the thick dark beams of the tree above me,
ravens sat watching
with unblinking eyes. I heard all at once, from end
to end
of the universe, Medeia’s laugh, full of rage and sorrow, the anger of all who were ever betrayed, their hearts
understood
too late. At once — creation ex nihilo, bold leap of Art, my childhood’s hope — the base of the tree shot infinitely
downward
and the top upward, and the central branches shot
infinitely left
and right, to the ends of darkness, and everything
was firm again,
everything still. A voice that filled all the depth
and breadth
of the universe said: Nothing is impossible!
Nothing is definite!
Be calm! Be brave! But I knew the voice: Jason’s,
full of woe.
A rope snapped, close at hand, and I heard the sailyard
fall,
and ravens flew up in the night, screeching, and Idas
cried out.
Oidipus, sitting alone in his cave, put a stick on the fire. “Nothing is impossible, nothing is definite. Be still,”
he whispered.
The Moirai, three old sisters, solemnly nodded in
the night.
In a distant time I saw these things, and in all our times, when angry Medeia was still on earth, and the
mind of Jason
struggled to undo disaster, defiant of destiny, crushed:
I saw these things in a world of old graves where
winecups waited,
and King Dionysos-Christ refused to die, though
forgotten—
drinking and dancing toward birth — and Artemis,
with empty eyes,
sang life’s final despair, proud scorn of hope, in a room gone strange, decaying … a sleeping planet adrift
and drugged …
while deep in the night old snakes were coupling with
murderous intent.