gnashed his teeth,
watching them eat through the wealth of his pastures
and smile obscenely
at his pale-cheeked, ever more beautiful wife; and
his hands were tied.
She seemed not to know him (though his dear old dog
had died of joy
at sight of him). Yet she it was who suggested the test of the bow, and placed in Odysseus’ hands the
one weapon
with which he might make his play. And play he did!
Such slaughter
was never seen, not even on the Trojan plains. When
it ended,
and the house was cleansed of the stench of blood
by sulphur fumes,
his disloyal servants hanged and those proved loyal
rewarded,
Odysseus, deserving or not, had his kingdom and
wise good wife
and best of sons. Whatever a man could dare to ask if the world were just and orderly, and the gods kind, all that and more, he was given.
“So it is that the lives of men confute each other, and nothing is stable, nothing—nay,
not even misery—sure.
For that reason I abandoned rule,
and abandoned all giving of advice. If I liked, I could
point your ship
in the direction of Aigeus’ land, the kingdom of Theseus’
father,
or give firm reasons for avoiding the place. But I’ve
little heart left
for tedious illusions—not mine, not even some other
man’s.
Life is a foolish dream in the mind of the Unnamable. When he wakens, we’ll vanish in an instant, squeezed
to our nothingness,
or so we’re advised by books. Therefore I devote myself, for all my famous temper, wrecker of my life, to learning to forget this life, drifting, will-less, toward absolute
nothing,
formless land where all paradox, all struggle, melts. A man who’s been totally crushed by life should
understand these things,
a man whose loss has proved absolute. All the more,
therefore,
I wonder what reason Jason may have found—
unless, perhaps,
pure rage, after all these years, has still sufficient power to drive him on, forcing him even now to seek revenge. You say that the yard on your mast is a roost
for ravens.
A dangerous sign; I agree with you. For surely the curse Medeia placed on Jason is there confirmed, death on the Argo. And yet on that selfsame ship he
follows her.
But that, I think, is by no means the worst of
attendant omens.
In your wake come the groans of unheard-of creatures,
and a smell of fire,
and sounds of a vast, unholy war. I need not say
‘Turn back in time, have nothing to do with this
futureless man,’
for the dullest peasant could give such advice. I ask,
instead,
what brings you here? What can it be you’ve grasped—
or what
do you hope for? I am anxious to understand.”
Mad Idas held his hands to the fire, Lynkeus looking sadly through
the walls.
Jason waited, struggling against his restlessness.
Then Idas said:
“All you’ve told me I’ve known from the beginning,
though it’s taken me years
to grasp the thing that, because I am not like other men, I knew. As my brother sees with his lynx’s eyes
more things
than others see, so I, in my madness, am blessed
or cursed
with uncommon sight. In every tree and stone I see the gods warring—not to the death but casually, lightly, to break the eternal tedium. And I see the same in human hearts. It filled me with panic once. Not now. Once, half-asleep with friends who were talking,
telling old stories,
and all signs swore that not a man there could work
up a mood
for quarrelling, I would feel an estrangement in the man
at my side—
fear, mistrust, or some other emotion dividing
his heart—
and I’d know if I let myself look I’d discover the same
in them all,
no stability in any man, no rock to lean on,
all our convictions, all our faith in each other,
an illusion—
reality a pit of vipers squirming, blindly striking, murdering themselves. Cold sweat would rise on
my forehead, and I
would strike out first, their scapegoat; my own. But as
time passed
I got over that; came to accept more calmly the darkness that surrounds and shapes us. I came to accept what you
preach to us now,
the voracious black hole at the core of things. I too
observed
how fine it would be if Herakles were right—some
loving god
attending mankind in every sorrow, demanding merely total devotion, action conformant to His character. Since no such god was there, I let it pass—allowed that Theseus’ way was best, faith by despair. But we had stolen the fleece, we on the Argo, and Theseus
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 fol
low 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.
A Biography of John Gardner
John Gardner (1933–1982) was a bestselling and award-winning novelist and essayist, and one of the twentieth century’s most controversial literary authors. Gardner produced more than thirty works of fiction and nonfiction, consisting of novels, children’s stories, literary criticism, and a book of poetry. His books, which include the celebrated novels Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and October Light, are noted for their intellectual depth and penetrating insight into human nature.
Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father, a preacher and dairy farmer, and mother, an English teacher, both possessed a love of literature and often recited Shakespeare during his childhood. When he was eleven years old, Gardner was involved in a tractor accident that resulted in the death of his younger brother, Gilbert. He carried the guilt from this accident with him for the rest of his life, and would incorporate this theme into a number of his works, among them the short story “Redemption” (1977). After graduating from high school, Gardner earned his undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and he married his first wife, Joan Louise Patterson, in 1953. He earned his Master’s and Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa in 1958, after which he entered into a career in academia that would last for the remainder of his life, including a period at Chico State College, where he taught writing to a young Raymond Carver.
Following the births of his son, Joel, in 1959 and daughter, Lucy, in 1962, Gardner published his first novel, The Resurrection (1966), followed by The Wreckage of Agathon (1970). It wasn’t until the release of Grendel (1971), however, that Gardner’s work began attracting significant attention. Critical praise for Grendel was universal and the book won Gardner a devoted following. His reputation as a preeminent figure in modern American literature was cemented upon the release of his New York Times bestselling novel The Sunlight Dialogues (1972). Throughout the 1970s, Gardner completed about two books per year, including October Light (1976), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the controversial On Moral Fiction (1978), in which he argued that “true art is by its nature moral” and criticized such contemporaries as John Updike and John Barth. Backlash over On Moral Fiction continued for years after the book’s publication, though his subsequent books, including Freddy’s Book (1980) and Mickelsson’s Ghosts (1982), were largely praised by critics. He also wrote four successful children’s books, among them Dragon, Dragon and Other Tales (1975), which was named Outstanding Book of the Year by the New York Times.
In 1980, Gardner married his second wife, a former student of his named Liz Rosenberg. The couple divorced in 1982, and that same year he became engaged to Susan Thornton, another former student. One week before they were to be married, Gardner died in a motorcycle crash in Pennsylvania. He was forty-nine years old.
A two-year-old Gardner, shown here, in 1935. He went by the nickname “Buddy” throughout his childhood.
Gardner on a motorcycle in 1948, when he was about fifteen years old. He was a lifelong enthusiast of motorcycle and horseback riding, hobbies that resulted in multiple broken bones and other injuries throughout his life.
Gardner’s senior photo from Batavia High School, taken in 1950. Though he found most of his classes boring, he particularly enjoyed chemistry. One day in class, Gardner and some friends disbursed a malodorous concoction through the school’s ventilation system, causing the whole building to reek and classes to be dismissed early.
Gardner and Joan Patterson, his first wife, in the early 1950s. The couple were high school sweethearts and attended senior prom together in 1951.
John and Joan’s wedding photograph, taken on June 6, 1953.
A Gardner family photograph from 1957. From left to right: John Gardner, Priscilla (mother), John Sr. (father), Jim (brother), and Sandy (sister). John Sr. and Priscilla took in thirteen foster children after John and his siblings grew up and moved away.
Gardner at the University of Detroit in 1970. He was a distinguished visiting professor at the university.
Gardner’s children, Joel and Lucy, circa 1975. Joel is the founder of Camp Gardner Films, and Lucy works in publishing. Both currently live in Massachusetts.
Gardner playing the French horn around 1979. He began playing in high school and played in the Batavia Civic Orchestra.
Gardner and Liz Rosenberg at their wedding on Valentine’s Day, 1980. Liz’s dress was a wedding gift from John, who had it made in Kansas City by a woman he had met at a reading there. Liz later remembered that instead of following her specifications, the dressmaker made her “Cleopatra’s shroud.”
Gardner in the early 1980s. In the last years before his death, he had become much more interested in politics than in literature, declaring at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 1982 that “if you’re not writing politically, you’re not writing.”
Selected images from The John Gardner Papers, Department of Rare Books/Special Collections, University of Rochester.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1973 by John Gardner
cover design by Robin Bilardello
ISBN: 978-1-4532-0330-9
This 2010 edition distributed by Open Road Integrated Media
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