The peculiar strength of the Muse lies in her need to bestow love freely and absolutely, without incurring the least contractual obligation: having chosen a poet, she dismisses him in favour of another, whenever she pleases and without warning. He must never count on her con?stancy, on her honour, or on her sympathy with his sufferings, but remain faithful beyond reason. And though deep in her heart she may respect nobody more than himself, he must not presume on this knowledge nor be deceived by her actions. The prophet's love of his God, a metaphor of filial reverence for a stern father, had this in common with poetic love?that the prophet was un?able to count on God's attention to his prayers.
Poetry is a way of thought?non-intellectual, anti- decorative thought at that?rather than an art. Would-be poets today experiment in new loveless Apollonian tech?niques, taking pictorial abstractionism as their model, all working 'objectively'?that being for them a term of praise?and unprepared to accept the poetic trance with its fantastic co-ordination of sound, rhythm and meaning. Poets who serve the Muse wait for the inspired lightning flash of two or three words that initiate composition and dictate the rhythmic norm of their verse.
dance of words
To make them move, you should start from lightning And not forecast the rhythm: rely on chance Or so-called chance, for its bright emergence Once lightning interpenetrates the dance.
Grant them their own traditional steps and postures But see they dance it out again and again Until only lightning is left to puzzle over? The choreography plain, and the theme plain.
There are two distinct, but complementary, orders of women, both of them honoured by poets. First, the ideal woman of patriarchal civilization whom the Greeks deified as the Goddess Hestia, the Latins as Vesta; and who is represented in Christianity by the Virgin Mary? heroine of all old-fashioned songs and stories. Beautiful, tender, true, patient, practical, dependable: the woman whom Solomon described as 'more precious than rubies' ?the guardian of the sacred hearth, the wife-to-be, dreamt of by romantic soldiers in desert bivouacs.
Then the other woman: the multitudinously named White Goddess, a relic of matriarchal civilization or (who knows?) the harbinger of its return. She scorns any claim on her person, or curb on her desires; rejects male tute?lage, hates marriage, and demands utter trust and faith?fulness from her lovers?treating love not as a matter of contract, but as a sudden, unforeseeable miracle. She punishes the pride of any suitor who dares hope that he will one day make her his wife. Here is a poem on the subject, cast in seventeenth-century ballad form:
inkidoo and the queen of babel
When I was a callant, born far hence, You first laid hands on my innocence, But sent your champion into a boar That my fair young body a-pieces tore.
When I was a lapwing, crowned with gold, Your lust and liking for me you told, But plucked my feathers and broke my wing? Wherefore all summer for grief I sing.
When I was a lion of tawny fell,
You stroked my mane and you combed it well,
But pitfalls seven you dug for me
That from one or other I might not flee.
When I was a courser, proud and strong, That like the wind would wallop along, You bated my pride with spur and bit And many a rod on my shoulder split.
When I was a shepherd that for your sake The bread of love at my hearth would bake, A ravening wolf did you make of me To be thrust from home by my brothers three.
When I tended your father's orchard close I brought you plum, pear, apple and rose, But my lusty manhood away you stole And changed me into a grovelling mole.
When I was simple, when I was fond, Thrice and thrice did you wave your wand, But now you vow to be leal and true And softly ask, will I wed with you?
The original of these stanzas was written more than four thousand years ago?the hero Enkidu's address to the Love-goddess Ishtar. I have translated them word for word from the Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic, though omit?ting to name the 'callant born far hence'?in the original, he figured as 'Tammuz'; for the Greeks he was Adonis. Enkidu's refusal to trust Ishtar a seventh and last time, earned him the punishment of death without resur?rection. It is from this order of wild women that the Muse always emerges. The melancholy strain in tradi?tional poetry records the poet's disappointment that she cannot behave like Vesta.
Odes to the Vestal Virgin Mary have been written by Catholic poets since her sudden rise to power during the Crusades. None ever charges her with unkindness. Poets call on the Blessed Virgin to stand by them even in essentially male occupations. She will guide a battered barque safe to port; bless a young knight's sword after his all-night vigil, and direct it shrewdly when he takes the field; with a twitch of her blue mantle she will draw a murderous bull from the gored matador. . . . But her facial expression never varies, nor do her simple gestures. She offers no surprises, never jokes, teases, hides. Small furry animals gather around her. With lion, fox, lynx, hawk or osprey she has no dealings. She will watch at the sick-bed, drudge in the houses of the poor, wear the plainest clothes, and instruct the men of her household by example only, never by harsh words or deception. The difference between these complementary characters is presented in:
ruby and amethyst
Two women: one as good as bread, Bound to a sturdy husband.
Two women: one as rare as myrrh Bound only to herself.
Two women: one as good as bread, Faithful to every promise.
Two women: one as rare as myrrh, Who never pledges faith.
The one a flawless ruby wears But with such innocent pleasure
A stranger's eye might think it glass And take no closer look.
Two women: one as good as bread, The noblest of the city.
Two women: one as rare as myrrh, Who needs no public praise.
The pale rose-amethyst on her breast Has such a garden in it
Your eye could trespass there for hours, And wonder, and be lost.
About her head a swallow wheels Nor ever breaks the circuit:
Glory and awe of womanhood Still undeclared to man.
Two women: one as good as bread, Resistant to all weathers.
Two women: one as rare as myrrh, Her weather still her own.
The Muse and Vesta rule different worlds. Yet few rubies are unflawed. The sacred hearth fire is often left unattended, and to marry even the Virgin Mary herself did not make a poet of St Joseph. ... In fact, more poems spring from a realization that domestic love has cooled or died than from resolute praises of domesticity; and the Muse, the perpetual Other Woman, always inspires them. Nevertheless, there are settled marriages over which the White Goddess has no power. She will smile if the husband writes his faithful wife a well-turned ode on their silver wedding anniversary, and pass on with a disdainful shrug.
On consulting the Oxford English Dictionary, to discover from its dated quotations what English poet had first written of an inspiratory Muse possessing a particular woman, I was surprised to find no such concept men?tioned, though it has lately become a literary common?place. Occasional women?such as the Mexican prodigy Juana de Asbaje?have indeed been hailed as 'The Tenth Muse'; but as poets themselves, not as patronesses or guardians of poets. . . . Though I have believed in a personal Muse for so long that I cannot recall her first entry into my heart, I would feel far happier to know that some other poet?Raleigh or Coleridge or Keats, for instance, all of whom record their visions of the Muse- goddess?had anticipated me in this usage.
Only during the past three years have I ventured to dramatize, truthfully and factually, the vicissitudes of a poet's dealings with the White Goddess, the Muse, the perpetual Other Woman. Whatever may be said against her, she at least gives him an honest warning of what to
expect?as it were, tying a poison label around her neck:
lyceia
All the wolves of the forest Howl for Lyceia, Crowding together In a close circle, Tongues a-loll.
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A silver serpent Coiled at her waist And a quiver at knee, She combs fine tresses With a fine comb:
Wolf-like, woman-like, Gazing about her, Greeting the wolves; Partial to many, Yet masked in pride.
The young wolves snarl, They snap at one another Under the moon. 'Beasts, be reasonable, My beauty is my own!'
Lyceia has a light foot For a weaving walk. Her archer muscles Warn them how tightly She can stretch the string.
I question Lyceia, Whom I find posted Under the pine trees One early morning: 'What do the wolves learn?''They learn only envy,' Lyceia answers, 'Envy and hope, Hope and chagrin. Would you howl too In that wolfish circle?' She laughs as she speaks.
The poet listens to her warning:
the dangerous gift
Were I to cut my hand
On the sharp knife you gave me (That dangerous knife, your beauty), I should know what to do:
Bandage the wound myself And hide the blood from you.
A murderous knife it is,
As often you have warned me: And if I looked for pity Or tried a wheedling note Either I must restore it Or turn it on my throat.
The Muse shows a childish delight at being recognized by her poet, and may at first profess grateful love, though never giving him the least assurance of her continuous accessibility:
seldom, yet now
Seldom, yet now: the quality Of this fierce love between us? Seldom the encounter, The presence always, Free of oath or promise.
And if we were not so,
But birds of similar plumage caged
In the peace of everyday,
Could we still conjure wildfire up
From common earth, as now?
Soon the Muse will multiply her evasions and broken promises, while still demanding the poet's absolute trust; take gifts as her right, rule him with a whim of iron, and subject him to almost insufferable ordeals. ... If he remains faithful, she will choose a new lover from among his friends; as in the Anatha-Ishtar myth, she always betrayed and murdered him for the sake of his twin, the anti-poet:
horizon
On a clear day how thin the horizon Drawn between sea and sky, Between sea-love and sky-love; And after sunset how debatable Even for an honest eye.
'Do as you will tonight,'
Said she, and so he did
By moonlight, candlelight,
Candlelight and moonlight,
While pillowed clouds the horizon hid.
Knowing-not-knowing that such deeds must end
In a curse which lovers long past weeping for
Had heaped upon him: she would be gone one night
With his familiar friend,
Granting him leave her beauty to explore
By moonlight, candlelight,
Candlelight and moonlight.
Yet the Muse can exercise no power without her poet, and he is aware of this; but dares not disclose her dependence on his love. Enhidu and the Queen of Babel is to the point here:
When I was a lion of tawny fell,
You stroked my mane and you combed it well,
But pitfalls seven you dug for me
That from one or other I might not flee. . . .
Ishtar, Queen of Babylon, was the original Virgin of the Zodiac, who appears on steles, naked and riding a lion, the poet's zodiacal sign:
lion lover
You chose a lion to be your lover? Me, who in joy such doom greeting Dared jealously undertake Cruel ordeals long foreseen and known, Springing a trap baited with flesh: my own.
Nor would I now exchange this lion heart
For a less furious other,
Though by the Moon possessed
I gnaw at dry bones in a lost lair
And, when clouds cover her, roar my despair.
Gratitude and affection I disdain
As cheap in any market:
Your naked feet upon my scarred shoulders,
Your eyes naked with love,
Are all the gifts my beasthood can approve.
Though the poet's friends may descry his Muse as a vixen, a bitch, a bird of prey, he is pledged to accept what he would refuse from any other woman; and suffers most when she uses the light of glory with which he invests her, to shine in an anti-poetic and even criminal world. Is she, in truth, his Muse, his love? Or is she acting a part with sardonic humour? His test will be: which gives the greater pain?belief or disbelief? Many poets break under the strain:
to beguile and betray
To beguile and betray, though pardonable in women,
Slowly quenches the divine need-fire
By true love kindled in them. Have you not watched
The immanent Goddess fade from their brows
When they make private to their mysteries
Some whip-scarred rogue from the hulks, some painted clown
From the pantomime?and afterwards accuse you
Of jealous hankering for the mandalot
Rather than horror and sick foreboding
That she will never return to the same house?
Convinced of her need for his love, the obsessed poet refuses to break under the strain; though at last realizing that Lyceia meant all she said at their first encounter: her beauty is her own, and she offers nothing but envy, hope and chagrin. Unlike Enkidu, he does not reproach the Goddess with her treacheries, but reads them as just criticism of his desire to possess her, and continues to love her selflessly:
expect nothing
Give, ask for nothing, hope for nothing, Subsist on crumbs, though scattered casually Not for you (she smiles) but for the birds. Though only a thief's diet, it staves off Dire starvation, nor does she grow fat On the bread she crumbles, while the lonely truth Of love is honoured, and her pledged word.
Satisfied by this fresh evidence of her power, she softens towards him for awhile; though her eventual function and fate is to betray him, and thus forfeit the glory with which he enshrined her:
in her praise
This they know well: the Goddess yet abides. Though each new lovely woman whom she rides, Straddling her neck a year or two or three, Should sink beneath such weight of majesty And, groping back to humankind, gainsay The healing power that whitened all her way With a broad track of trefoil?leaving you, Her chosen lover, ever again thrust through With daggers, your purse rifled, your rings gone? Nevertheless they call you to live on To parley with the pure, oracular dead, To hear the wild pack whimpering overhead, To watch the moon tugging at her cold tides. Woman is mortal woman. She abides.
Orpheus, in the Greek myth, was taught by the Triple Muse not only to enchant men and wild beasts with his lyre, but to make rocks and trees move and follow him in a dance. According to a later myth, his wife Eurydice (whom he had married after a visit to Egypt) was assaulted by the pastoral god Aristaeus, trod on a serpent as she fled, and died of its venomous bite. Orpheus then boldly harrowed Hell, intent on fetching her back. There, with his lyre, he charmed the Dog Cerberus, the ferry?man Charon and the three Judges of the Dead, tem?porarily suspended the tortures of the damned, and even persuaded Hades, God of Tartarus, to set Eurydice free. Hades made one condition: that Orpheus must not look behind him until she was safely home under the light of the sun. . . . Eurydice followed him up through the dark passages of Tartarus, guided by his lyre; and it was only on reaching the sunlight that he turned to reassure him?self of her presence?and lost her for ever.
This same Orpheus is said, by the mythographers, to have denounced human sacrifice and preached that the
Sun was a nobler deity than the Moon?for which blasphemy a group of Moon-worshipping, cannibalistic Maenads tore him in pieces. The Triple Muse collected his mangled limbs and buried them at Leibethra, where nightingales afterwards sang more sweetly than any?where else in the world. . . . His head, tho
ugh attacked by a jealous serpent, continued singing and was laid up in a cave at Antissa, sacred to Dionysus, God of Enlighten?ment. There it prophesied so clearly and constantly that at last Apollo, finding his own oracles at Delphi, Gry- neium and Clarus deserted by visitants, stood over the head, crying: 'Cease to interfere in my business! I have suffered you long enough.' At this, we are told, the head fell silent.
It may well be that, sometime during the second millennium b.c., a Libyo-Thracian (afterwards identi?fied with Orpheus) visited Egypt and brought back a mystic Sun-cult which local Moon-worshippers opposed. Yet there is more to this myth than a kernel of history: Eurydice ('Wide Rule') was, in fact, not Orpheus's wife, but the Triple Muse herself?Diana in the leaves green, Luna who so bright doth sheen, Proserpina in Hell, as John Skelton calls her.
Proserpina, or Persephone ('Voice of Destruction'), is the Muse in her most implacable aspect; and we know from the Demeter myth that Persephone, although carried off with a great show of unwillingness by Hades, a Serpent-god, soon broke her hunger strike in Tartarus by eating food of the dead, namely seven pomegranate seeds. As a result, she was ordered by Almighty Zeus to spend seven months of the year (or, some say, three) in Hades's company, but the remainder on earth. This can, of course, be read as a simple nature myth of winter's inclemency?pomegranates being the last fruit to ripen in Greece?and the return of spring, when Persephone's Anthesterion, or Flower Festival, was annually cele?brated. Yet it yields a different sense when related to the Orpheus story.
Orpheus recognized and glorified the Muse; in grati?tude, she lent him her own magical powers, so that he made trees dance?'trees', in ancient Europe, being a widely used metaphor of the poetic craft. Later, in Egypt, he learned a new solar perfectionism, which she rejected as foreign to her nature. How could Orpheus hope to keep her always beside him in the bright upper air of love and truth? Had she not a secret passion for serpents, a delight in murder, a secret craving for corpse flesh, a need to spend seven months of the year con?sorting with the sly, the barren, the damned? She might cherish Orpheus while still on earth, even calling him beautiful?since his beauty reflected her own?and mourn him when he was murdered. . . . Yet she could not be bound by his hopes for her perfectibility. Eurydice never trod accidentally on a serpent while avoiding Aristaeus's lustful embraces: she surely chose to couple with a serpent?as Mother Eurynome ('Wide Order'), her ancestress, herself had coupled with the world-snake Ophion. Simple-minded Orpheus flattered her pride by challenging death in his descent to Hell, and she pre?tended to follow him up into the sunlight. . . . But soon retired. He waited awhile at the entrance of the Taenaran Cave, keeping his back to it; then turned about and saw himself deceived once more: