As she lies beside the senile King, Helen reminisces of her Trojan days, recalls her escapade with the blond gardener, then gazes into her crystal ball and sees herself married to the gardener and living with their son in tents. Odysseus disguises himself, and assisted by Phida, who urges him to join her revolt, visits Helen in the women’s quarters. He mocks Helen for her affair with the gardener, but when she asserts her free will to choose her own destiny, Odysseus rejoices, as always, when anyone shows a will equal to his and takes another road. He unfolds to Helen his plan for the sacking of Knossos, enlists her aid, then leaves for the harbor town. There he finds his friends carousing in a tavern, and tells them of a new god he has seen who is not compassionate, but wrathful and unsated. He then assigns to each his role in the uprising, and informs Captain Clam that he is to remain in the port to assist the incoming barbarians and to fire the arsenal.
As summer passes, Odysseus consults with Phida, Hardihood helps the blond ironsmith forge weapons, and the barbarian ships sail for Crete from the far north. Winter passes, the plot progresses. Odysseus works with a slave, a skilled wood-carver (much like Daedalus) who studies the flights of birds and longs for freedom. When spring comes, Idomeneus has a premonition of his death. Helen, pregnant with the gardener’s child, has forgotten Sparta and Troy, stitches her baby’s swaddling clothes, and dreams of her son. Odysseus tries to rouse the slaves by lying, once more, about his vision of a flaming god, a fierce warrior and ruthless hunter. Although he longs now to help the workers, he is under no illusion, for he knows that slaves want that which their lords already have; yet he feels that God is now working out his liberation through the medium of these oppressed bodies, and that this is the next step toward the purification of spirit in an endless strife to the world’s end.
After a sleepless night before the day of a great holy festival, Idomeneus paces restlessly at dawn, filled with nightmares and premonitions of destruction. Odysseus and his friends are preparing the massacre. Dressed in a mantle adorned with marine figures, the King is symbolically wed in a spring ritual with the sea. As Odysseus walks along the river toward the harbor and a young boy and girl proffer him flowers, he is seized with pity that even such innocents must perish in the general massacre, but when he sees his god hovering near him in the form of a pitiless vulture, he steels his heart. He learns that in the holocaust of old values, many who are innocent and blameless, or simply victims of circumstance, of heredity and environment, must also perish. He plays with Captain Clam on the beach and in the sea, for both feel that the old sea-wolf is fated to perish when he fires the arsenal. Idomeneus is wedded to the sea, and faints. The palace is decorated for the festival, all the conspirators take their allotted stations, the barbarian ships secretly approach the harbor, and the plotters prepare for the massacre.
BOOK VIII
The destruction of Knossos. That night a slave girl, whom the archons had forced to dance until she died, is buried by Odysseus and his friends. Even Orpheus is moved to vows of vengeance. Odysseus tells the ironsmith that the night has come to distribute the iron weapons. In the palace amid great feasting, Idomeneus looks on pregnant Helen with pride, thinking she is bearing his son. Odysseus and his vulture god crouch in darkness by a column and observe the feast at the exact moment when Captain Clam is creeping into the arsenal to set it on fire. Idomeneus, and even the palace walls and adornments, sense with terror the coming destruction. At midnight, when his god nods approval, Odysseus suddenly rises and, to the fluting of Orpheus, sings of unslaked fierceness, of cunning deception, until a messenger enters in haste and shouts that the arsenal is on fire. Odysseus then gives the signal, and the massacre begins. Just as Odysseus is about to slay Idomeneus, Phida intervenes and beheads her father with a double ax, but is in turn killed by one of the Negro guards, and falls on her father’s corpse. Phida’s Rebels and the barbarians sack the palace and set it on fire; the blond gardener makes off with Helen. Through the smoke and flames, Odysseus catches sight of the wood-carver flying away on constructed wings.
After the massacre and the burning, Odysseus proclaims Hardihood King of Crete, as he had promised during the storm. At dawn, as the vultures, crows, and dogs eat the corpses, the victors broil meat on the embers of the still-smoldering palace, and fall to carousing, but Odysseus withdraws to a high rock and spurns both food and women. Toward sunset, a delegation of townsmen come with gifts to plead for mercy and peace, but Odysseus again scorns all the virtues that appertain to peace and comfort and instead proclaims war and death. When at last he takes some bread to eat, he spies a green locust perched upon it like a green Death, and for the first time feels fear. He falls asleep and dreams of the ravenous Spirit, eating him whole like an octopus, consuming the flesh in order to live, making man ever discontent and humble before greater deeds to be done. He then joins his companions and tells them they have accomplished nothing. He tells them a fable of how God created the world and all living creatures, then called on all to bow in reverence, but how the human heart refused to bow or surrender its freedom. Ever since then, a war has raged between what God destroys and what the unsated human heart rebuilds. Odysseus dashes to his feet, eager to follow his heart at once to further and higher adventure. He advises Hardihood to begin his rule, but when Hardihood says that he has already sent runners throughout the land, Odysseus rejoices to see that another spirit has proclaimed its freedom from him and formed its own independence. “The sweetest fruit of all that ripened on this day/is that one soul has found its freedom and cast me off!”
Next morning all gather to bury Captain Clam and Phida side by side. Odysseus declares that God is a blind dark power seeking to evolve through nature till human beings give him senses and a soul. Helen then appears with her gardener, and Odysseus begins his farewell. He advises Hardihood to rule with merciless love, with force and patience, to free the slaves, to portion out the land, to be forever unsatisfied, and to break through what may seem to be impossible frontiers, for he fears that Hardihood, like most men, will freeze into the forms of comfortable virtues once he settles down and cultivates his own possessions. He bids Helen farewell, then leaves without looking back.
Taking Diktena with them, the comrades now sail southward, and on the fourth day, as Crete disappears and Odysseus bids Greece farewell forever, he rejoices to leave behind all sureties and to sail toward unknown creations and freedom. Diktena sings of how she had been sent as a twelve-year-old girl to give of her virginity to an unknown Egyptian god. Odysseus tells his crew that he derives his strength and courage from the knowledge that all life is a brief dream, a toy, and when Granite replies that it would be best then to commit suicide, Odysseus retorts that he is the creator of his own dreams, that he both serves and drinks his own blood, that he accepts necessity with joy. At dusk one day, they moor near the mouth of the Nile, and Odysseus tells his crew a fable about a grandfather, a son, and a grandson who rowed all their lives long to find the still unknown source of the Nile, the fountain source that would bequeath immortality, though all died on the way. Odysseus then declares that “Blessed are those eyes that have seen more water than any man,” that the hidden deathless sources may be found in Death only. Rocky objects that the presence of Diktena among them is distracting, that she is useless, and Odysseus agrees to leave her behind.
BOOK IX
The decadent empire of the Egyptians. Next morning the friends all walk down to the harbor town, delighting in a strange new race of men. As they drink in a harbor tavern, Odysseus feels dark, atavistic roots, as though he had sailed these waters in another life long past. An old blind bard sings to them of pain and poverty, but Odysseus refuses him food because he feels that in this land Hunger is the herald that will lead him to his new god, and that to feed one mouth is to feed none. The friends abandon Diktena to her willing fate on the harbor’s docks, and sail down the Nile.
Odysseus urges his crew to row toward Thebes, about which Helen had once spoken. After many days, they anch
or by a ghost town of ruins, tombstones, and gods with animal heads. Odysseus realizes that beast and god have always warred in man, as the spirit sought to evolve into light through dark atavistic roots. He knows now that his ultimate destination is to free God as far as possible from the beast, toward more and more salvation. One day the friends find a huge stone Sphinx, and an old Egyptian trying to free it from the encroaching sand. Accepting the old man’s invitation, they go to his house for a humble meal and are served by his two young daughters who sing to them of love, yearning, a home and children. All feel the strong attraction of hearth and home, Rocky most of all, but they all reject it for the insatiable and faithless heart.
As they continue to sail down the Nile, they plunder and steal in order to live, for everywhere they find drought, hunger, and extreme poverty. One night they anchor in the ruined Sun City, Heliopolis, where Odysseus dreams of a tomb and of a king and queen (Ikhnaton and Nefertiti) who beg him to unearth them. They dig at midnight, find a tomb of a king and queen laden with treasure, strip it, then load their skiff until it almost sinks with gold and jewels, and continue their journey. But their hearts are heavily laden, for now all long to settle down in comfort and pleasure, until Odysseus suddenly grasps fistfuls of the treasure and begins to fling it overboard. All follow suit until not even Orpheus’ ivory flute is spared.
They sail now with free hearts, but hear everywhere laments of hunger and starvation. As Orpheus wonders how Helen is faring, we see her in Crete, maternal and content with her newborn son. Kentaur pities the starving Egyptians, especially the children, but Odysseus replies that Hunger and War are two powerful drives which force men to push further on in their exploration of the world’s limits: “If I could choose what gods to carry on all my ships, I’d choose both War and Hunger, that fierce, fruitful pair!” After many days, they anchor toward nightfall at Thebes, a bustling crowded fortress smelling of evil. The Pharaoh is a world-weary, timid youth overshadowed by the remembrance of his grandfather, a great warrior. He has no other ambition than to finish a lyric which he writes and rewrites laboriously. The friends roam the streets all night, gazing on the pampered lords and the seductive ladies until at dawn they fall asleep on their deck and dream of food. When they awake, they all disperse to seek food, but only Kentaur succeeds somewhat, for he finds a young whore who invites him to share her scanty meal. Next dawn, when they are all still hungry, Odysseus reminds them that he had never promised them either women or food, “but only Hunger, Thirst, and God, these three great joys.” Then he tells his comrades that he will leave by himself to seek some kind of solution, and that if he does not return in three days, they are to shift for themselves.
BOOK X
Rebellion in Egypt. Led by Rala, a young Jewess, the people rise in revolt against the decadent priests and their crocodile god and storm the temple. Odysseus, swept by the onrush, tries to save Rala, but suffers a severe head wound. They are both thrown in Pharaoh’s dungeon, and there Rala and three other revolutionaries—Scarab, Nile, and Hawkeye—tend him anxiously for three days. (Meanwhile, Rocky and Granite have abandoned their skiff, Rocky going south and Granite north, but Kentaur and Orpheus remain.) In a coma, Odysseus sees his son, Telemachus, out hunting, and Nausicaä on her terrace eating figs. After six days he finally opens his eyes, and Rala faints from weariness. The three revolutionaries try to question him, but when they elicit no information, curse the exploited man who will not rise in revolt. Hawkeye is lean and volatile, as restless as fire; Scarab is somber, suspicious, a peasant close to earth; Nile is intelligent and reasonable, like smokeless light. Hawkeye invites Odysseus to join them in their revolt against hunger and exploitation. Odysseus recognizes in Rala the type of dedicated idealist who sacrifices dreams of husband and home for an abstract cause. Then the three revolutionaries quarrel about Odysseus; Scarab believes he is an opportunist, a cunning shipowner who longs for profits only; Hawkeye believes he is a Cretan of hidden powers; and Nile believes they are both right, that Odysseus is probably one who comes from the upper classes but who likes to play with fire, and advises his two comrades to accept him for what he is.
Next day Nile reveals to Odysseus how the workers in Egypt have been organized, and how they are all awaiting reinforcements by ship from the armed barbarians, the Dorians. Odysseus replies that he does not know whether he loves the bestial peasant or whether he simply no longer wants to side with the decadent nobles, but that a cry in his heart urges him to join the revolutionaries. This he will do, although he deeply feels that he belongs to neither side. His ambivalence disturbs the revolutionary leaders, but Nile tells him they will accept him on his own terms, no matter if he joins “from love or raging fury or search for God.” Odysseus then dreams of God as a general recruiting an army, who, when he recognizes the dangerous ambivalence, the double-faced betrayal of Odysseus, advises him to act as purveyor for both sides.
Pharaoh, laboriously composing his lyric at his bath, commands that Rala and Odysseus are to be brought before him for amusement, then mocks Rala as a representative of a cursed race, whines that he is a man of peace who simply wants to keep the status quo, and that God has created some rich and others poor, but Rala declares she acknowledges one God only: man’s free mind. Odysseus warns Pharaoh that a new race of barbarians is inundating his land, announces the doom of Egypt’s ruling classes, then as a sign of war places on the king’s knee a dwarfish god he had shaped in prison out of bread, blood, and sweat. This is now Odysseus’ image of God, the god born of Hunger and Oppression. In terror, Pharaoh directs that Rala and Odysseus be set free.
Rala takes Odysseus to a secret meeting of revolutionaries where they hear news of approaching barbarian reinforcements. Rala advises an immediate attack, but Odysseus cautions against hope and says that he fights best who fights without either gods or hope. Returning to his skiff, Odysseus finds Kentaur and Orpheus still awaiting him, but he admires Rocky and Granite who have asserted their freedom and gone off to shape their own fates. When he tells his friends of his adventures and of his desire now to join the revolutionaries, Orpheus mocks him for sentimentally swerving from his determination to find the source of the Nile.
Meanwhile, the barbarians have landed and begun to plunder the land. Pharaoh sends them emissaries who try ineffectually to frighten them off with words, magic, and their bestial gods, but the barbarians answer with a savage dance and song about a king who gets drunk, smashes an image of God, and then drinks from the hollow skull. The three leaders escape from jail, and Rala, tormented by her love for Odysseus because she feels she has thus betrayed her cause, bathes, puts on her best garment, then waits by the crossroads where the Egyptian army is to pass, determined to commit suicide. Odysseus tells his two crew companions that his mind and heart are opposed, for his mind wants to build an ivory tower of retreat, and his heart wants to knock on every door and share in every suffering; he prevents them from killing each other by making his mind a court fool to mock his heart, and by giving his heart the restrained freedom of a falcon. This ambivalance and tension in Odysseus between two opposites is the central key to his character.
BOOK XI
Revolution and defeat in Egypt Both sides prepare tumultuously for war on Egypt’s sands. On the morning of the battle, Granite appears with some barbarian hordes whom he had joined as they landed in Egypt, but he tells Odysseus they have been weakened by excessive plundering and carousing. Odysseus sees in the barbarians the new blood that will revive the rotted culture of the Egyptians, and he knows now that his purpose is to give direction to their savage onrush. As the Egyptian army passes, Rala hurls herself before the horses and is trampled to death. When Odysseus sees the endless Egyptian host, he realizes that there is no hope of winning, but elects to fight exactly because of this.
The barbarians and revolutionaries attack at midnight, but before dawn they are entirely routed, and the four friends lie on the battlefield, seriously wounded. At noon the king’s herald passes among the dead a
nd wounded to fetch the mightiest chiefs for the king’s amusement and sacrifice, and by several ruses Odysseus manages to have all his friends carted away. They lie in dungeons till past springtime. To amuse his friends, Odysseus carves out the twelve Olympian gods into marionettes pulled by strings. Nile retorts that the mind which mocks at gods is a god’s slave still. But Odysseus has slowly been creating a new image of God, one who has nothing to do with justice or virtue, but is best represented by a hungry flame, an arrow constantly mounting upward. He dreams of a shape, either man or beast, which slowly tries to raise the pressing sky from earth, helped by animals, birds, insects, and by himself. For three days and nights he tries to carve out the features of his new god, but to his disgust carves only a replica of his own features, for God is always created in the present image and evolutionary development of man. Nile mocks, but Odysseus declares against those who seek economic comforts only, and declares that he serves an inhuman flame which burns within him and which he has named God. After a third dreamless night, Odysseus carves a savage mask of his new god which his friends immediately recognize as War and the barbarians as their own fierce god. Odysseus names him the God of Vengeance.