7
That is to say, I began to envision the possibility of a new work, hopefully surpassing, in any case completing, what I’d done theretofore, my labor’s fulfillment and vindication. I was obliged to plan with more than usual care: not only was there but one jug to sustain my inspiration and bear forth its vintage; there remained also, I found to my dismay, but one goat in the land to skin for writing material. An aging nan she was, lone survivor of the original herd, which I’d slaughtered reckless in my early enthusiasm, supposing them inexhaustible, and only later begun to conserve, until in my late dumps I’d let husbandry go by the board with the rest. That she had no mate, and so I no future vellum, appalled me now; I’d’ve bred her myself hadn’t bigot Nature made love between the species fruitless, for my work in mind was no brief one. But of coming to terms with circumstance I was grown a master: very well, I soon said to myself, it must be managed by the three of us, survivors alclass="underline" one old goat, one old jug, one old minstrel, we’d expend ourselves in one new song, and then an end to us!
First, however, the doe had to be caught; it was no accident she’d outlived the others. I set about constructing snares, pitfalls, blind mazes, at the same time laying ground-plans for the masterwork in my head. For a long time both eluded me, though vouchsafing distant glimpses of themselves. I’d named the doe Helen, so epic fair she seemed to me in my need, and cause of so great vain toil, but her namesake had never been so hard to get: Artemis had fit her cold fleetness better; Iphigenia my grim plans for her, to launch with her life the expedition of my fancy. Tragedy and satire both deriving, in the lexicon of my inventions, from goat, like the horns from Helen’s head, I came to understand that the new work would combine the two, which I had so to speak kept thitherto in their separate amphorae. For when I reviewed in my imagination the goings-on in Mycenae, Lacedemon, Troy, the circumstances of my life and what they had disclosed to me of capacity and defect, I saw too much of pity and terror merely to laugh; yet about the largest hero, gravest catastrophe, sordidest deed there was too much comic, one way or another, to sustain the epical strut or tragic frown. In the same way, the piece must be no Orphic celebration of the unknowable; time had taught me too much respect for men’s intelligence and resourcefulness, not least my own, and too much doubt of things transcendent, to make a mystic hymnist of me. Yet neither would it be a mere discourse or logic preachment; I was too sensible of the great shadow that surrounds our little lights, like the sea my island shore. Whimsic fantasy, grub fact, pure senseless music — none in itself would do; to embody all and rise above each, in a work neither longfaced nor idiotly grinning, but adventuresome, passionately humored, merry with the pain of insight, wise and smiling in the terror of our life — that was my calm ambition.
And to get it all out of and back into one jug, on a single skin! Every detail would need be right, if I was to achieve the effects of epic amplitude and lyric terseness, the energy of innocence and experience’s restraint. Adversity generates guileful art: months I spent considering and rejecting forms, subjects, viewpoints, and the rest, while I fashioned trap after trap for Helen and sang bait-songs of my plans — both in vain. Always she danced and bleated out of reach, sometimes so far away I confused her with the perchèd gulls or light-glints on the rock, sometimes so near I saw her black eyes’ sparkle and the gray-pink cartography of her udder. Now and then she’d vanish for days together; I’d imagine her devoured by birds, fallen to the fishes, or merely uncapturable, and sink into despondencies more sore than any I’d known. My “Anonymiad,” too, I would reflect then (so I began to think of it, as lacking a subject and thus a name), was probably impossible, or, what was worse, beyond my talent. Perhaps, I’d tell myself bitterly, it had been written already, even more than once; for all I knew the waters were clogged with its like, a menace to navigation and obstruction on the wide world’s littoral.
I myself may already have written it; cast it forth, put it out of mind, and then picked it up where it washed back to me, having circuited Earth’s countries or my mere island. I yearned to be relieved of myself: by heart failure, bolt from Zeus, voice from heaven. None forthcoming, I’d relapse into numbness, as if, having abandoned song for speech, I meant now to give up language altogether and float voiceless in the wash of time like an amphora in the sea, my vision bottled. This anesthesia proved my physician, gradually curing me of self-pity. Anon Helen’s distant call would put off my torpor; I resumed the pursuit, intently, thoughtfully — but more and more detached from final concern for its success.
For just this reason, maybe, I came at last one evening to my first certainty about the projected work: that it would be written from my only valid point of view, first person anonymous. At that moment Anonymiad became its proper name. At that moment also, singing delightedly my news, I stumbled into one of the holes I’d dug for Helen. With the curiosity of her species she returned at once down the path wherealong I’d stalked her, to see why I’d abandoned the hunt. Indeed, as if to verify that I was trapped or dead, she peered into my pit. But I was only smiling, and turning on my finger Merope’s ring; when she came to the edge I seized her by the pastern, pulled her in. A shard of deceasèd Thalia, long carried on me, ended her distress, which whooped deaf-heavenward like glee.
TAILPIECE
It had been my plan, while the elements cured her hide, to banquet on Helen’s carcass and drink my fill of long-preserved Calliope. And indeed, for some days after my capture I sated every hunger and slaked every thirst, got drunk and glutted, even, as this work’s headpiece attests. But it was not as it would have been in callower days. My futile seed had soured Calliope, and long pursuit so toughened Helen I’d as well made a meal of my writing-hand. Were it not too late for doubts — and I not flayed and cured myself, by sun, salt, and solitude, past all but the memory of tenderness — I’d wonder whether I should after all have skinned and eaten her, whom too I saw I had misnamed. We could perhaps have been friends, once she overcame her fright; I’d have had someone to talk to when Calliope goes, and with whom to face the unwritable postscript, fast approaching, of my Anonymiad.
Whereto, as I forewarned, there’s no dénouement, only a termination or ironical coda. My scribbling has reached the end of Helen; I’ve emptied Calliope upon the sand. It was my wish to elevate maroonment into a minstrel masterpiece; instead, I see now, I’ve spent my last resources contrariwise, reducing the masterpiece to a chronicle of minstrel misery. Even so, much is left unsaid, much must be blank.
No matter. It is finished, Apollo be praised; there remains but to seal and launch Calliope. Long since I’ve ceased to care whether this is found and read or lost in the belly of a whale. I have no doubt that by the time any translating eyes fall on it I’ll be dust, along with Clytemnestra, Aegisthus, Agamemnon … and Merope, if that was your name, if I haven’t invented you as myself. I could do well by you now, my sweet, to whom this and all its predecessors are a continuing, strange love letter. I wish you were here. The water’s fine; in the intervals of this composition I’ve taught myself to swim, and if some night your voice recalls me, by a new name, I’ll commit myself to it, paddling and resting, drifting like my amphorae, to attain you or to drown.