HYPOLYMPIA Or The Gods in the Island An Ironic Fantasy, Edmund Gosse [classic literature list .txt] 📗

immortal, this brawny savage, with hair so curiously coiled and matted over his brain-pan, might kill me; and thirdly, that the whole affair might indirectly lead to his, Zeus', personal inconvenience. Here then is enjoyment by one door quite shut out from me.

APHRODITE.

Are there not deer in these woods, and perhaps wolves and boars? There must be wild duck on the firth, and buzzards in the rocks. Instead of challenging the barbarians to a foolish trial of strength, why not make them your companions, and learn their accomplishments?

ARES.

It is possible that I shall do so. But for the present, anger gushes like an intermittent spring of bitter water in my bosom. I forget for a moment, and the fountain falls; and then, with a rush, memory leaps up in me, a column of poison. I say to myself, It cannot be, it shall not be; but I grow calm again and find that it is.

APHRODITE.

The worst of the old immortality was the carelessness of it. We were utterly unprepared for anything bordering on catastrophe, and behold, without warning, we are swept away in a complete cataclysm of our fortunes. I see, Ares, that it will be long before you can recover serenity, or take advantage of the capabilities of our new existence. They will appeal to you more slowly than to the rest of us, and you will respond more unwillingly, because of your lack--your voluntary and boasted lack--of all intellectual suppleness.

ARES.

It is not the business of a soldier to be supple.

APHRODITE.

So it appears. And you will suffer for it. For, stiff and blank as you may determine to be, circumstances will overpower you. Under their influences you will not be able to avoid becoming softer and more redundant. But you will resist the process, I see, and you will make it as painful as you can.

ARES.

You discuss my case with a cheerful candour, Aphrodite. Are you sure of being happier yourself?

APHRODITE.

Not sure; but I have a reasonable confidence that I shall be fairly contented. For I, at least, am supple, and I court the influences which you think it a point of gallantry to resist.

ARES.

You will continue, I suppose, to make your main business the stimulating and the guiding of the affections? Here I admit that suppleness, as you call it, is in place.

APHRODITE.

Unfortunately, even here, immortality was no convenient prelude to our present state. We did not, indeed, neglect the heart----

ARES.

If I forget all else, there must be events----

APHRODITE.

Alas! we loved so briefly and with so facile a susceptibility, that I am tempted to ask myself whether in Olympus we really loved at all.

ARES [with ardour].

There, at least, memory supplies me with no sort of doubt----

APHRODITE [coldly].

Let us keep to generalities. Looking broadly at our experience, I should say that the misfortune of the gods, as a preparation for their mortality, was that in their deathless state the affections fell at the foot of the tree, like these withered leaves. We should have fastened the branches of life together in long elastic wires of the thin-drawn gold of perdurable sentiment.

ARES.

The rapture, the violence, the hammering pulse, the bursting heart,--I see no resemblance between these and the leaves that flutter at our feet.

APHRODITE.

These leaves had their moment of vitality, when the sap rushed through their veins, when their tissue was like a ripple of sparkling emerald on the face of the smiling sky. But they could not preserve their glow, and they are the more hopelessly dead now, because they burned in their green fire so fiercely.

ARES.

We felt no shadow of coming disability strike across our pleasures.

APHRODITE.

No; but that was precisely what made our immortality such an ill preparation for a brief existence on this island. In Olympus the sentiment of yesterday was forgotten, and we realised the passion of to-day as little as the caprice of to-morrow. Perhaps this fragmentary tenderness was the real chastisement of our implacable prosperity.

ARES [in a very low voice].

Can we not resume in this our exile, and with more prospect of continuity, the emotions which were so agreeable in our former state? So agreeable--although, as you justly say, too ephemeral [coming a little closer]. Can you not teach us to moderate and to prolong the rapture?

APHRODITE [rising to her feet].

It may be. We shall see, Ares. But one thing I have already perceived. In this mortal sphere, the heart needs solitude, it needs silence. It must have its questionings and its despairs. The triumphant supremacy of the old emotions cannot be repeated here. For we have a new enemy to contend with. Even if love should prosecute its conquests here in all the serenity of success, it will not be able to escape from an infliction worse than any which we dreamed of when we were immortals.

ARES.

And what is that, Aphrodite?

APHRODITE.

The blight of indifference.

 

VI

 

[APHRODITE and CIRCE are seated on the grass in a little dell surrounded by beechwoods. Far away a bell is heard.]

CIRCE.

What is that curious distant sound? Is it a bird?

APHRODITE.

Cydippe tells me that there is a temple on the hill beyond these woods. I wonder to whom amongst us it is dedicated?

CIRCE.

I think it must be to you, Aphrodite, for now it is explained that on coming hither I met a throng of men and maidens, sauntering slowly along in twos, exactly as they used to do at Paphos.

APHRODITE.

Were they walking apart, or wound together by garlands?

CIRCE.

They were wound together by the arm of the boy coiled about the waist of the girl, or resting upon it, a symbol, no doubt, of your cestus.

APHRODITE [eagerly].

With any animation of gesture, Circe?

CIRCE.

With absolutely none. The maidens were dressed--but not all of them--in robes of that very distressing electric blue that bites into the eye, that blue which never was on sky or sea, and which was absolutely banished from every colour-combination in Olympus. It was employed in Hades as a form of punishment, if you recollect.

APHRODITE.

No doubt, then, this procession was a penitential one, and its object to appease my offended deity. But what a mistake, poor things! No one ever regained my favour by making a frump of herself.

CIRCE.

After these couples, came, in a very slow but formless moving group, figures of a sombre and spectral kind, draped, both males and females, in dull black, with little ornaments of gold in their hands. It was with the utmost amazement that, on their coming closer, I recognised some of the faces as those of the ruddy, gentle barbarians to whom we owe our existence here. You cannot think how painful it was to see them thus travestied. In their well-fitting daily dress they look very attractive in a rustic mode; there is one large one that labours in the barn, who reminds me, when his sleeves are turned up, of Ulysses. But, oh! Aphrodite, you must contrive to let them know that you pardon their shortcomings, and relieve them from the horrors of this remorseful costume. I know not which is more depressing to the heart, the blue of the young or the black of the aged.

APHRODITE.

I expect that at this distance from the centre of things, all manner of misconception has crept into my ritual. Of course, I cannot now demand any rites, and that the dear good people should pay them at all is very touching.

CIRCE.

Don't you think that it would be delightful to introduce here a purer form of liturgy? It is very sad to see your spirit so little understood.

APHRODITE.

Well, I hardly know. It is kind of you, Circe, to suggest such a thing. No doubt it would be very pleasant. But I feel, of course, the hollowness of the whole concern. We must be careful not to deceive the barbarians.

CIRCE.

Certainly ... oh! yes, certainly. But ... I am sure it would be so good for them to have a ritual to follow. We should not absolutely assert to them that you still exist as an immortal, but I do not see why we should insist on tearing every illusion away from them. Suppose I could persuade them that you were no longer displeased with them, and that you were quite willing to let them wear pink and white robes again, and plenty of flowers in their hair; and suppose I encouraged them to sacrifice turtle-doves on your altar, and arrange garlands of wild roses in the proper way, don't you think you could bring yourself to make a concession?

APHRODITE.

What do you mean by a "concession"?

CIRCE.

Well, for instance, when they were all assembled in the temple, and had sung a hymn, and the priest had gone up to the altar, could you not suddenly make an appearance, voluminous and splendid, and smile upon them? Could you not shower a few champak-blossoms over the congregation?

APHRODITE.

It is very ingenious of you to think of these things. But I suppose it would not be right to attempt to do it. In the first place it would encourage them to believe in my immortality----

CIRCE.

Oh! but to believe is such a salutary discipline to the lower classes. That is the whole principle of religion, surely, Aphrodite? It is not for people like ourselves. You know how indolent Dionysus is, but he always attended the temple when he was hunting upon Nysa.

APHRODITE.

There is a great deal in that argument, no doubt. Only, what will be the result when they discover that it is all a mistake, and that I am a mortal like themselves?

CIRCE.

You never can be a mortal like the barbarians, for you have been a force ruling the sea, and the flowers, and the winds, and twisting the blood of man and woman in your fingers like a living skein of soft red silk. They will always worship you. It may not be in temples any longer, not with a studied liturgy, but wherever the sap rises in a flower, or the joy of life swims up in the morning through the broken film of dreams, or a young man perceives for the first time that the girl he meets is comely, you will be worshipped, Aphrodite, for the essence of your immortality is the cumulative glow of its recurrent mortality.

HERMES [entering abruptly].

You will be disappointed----

CIRCE.

Ah! you followed the youths and maidens to the little temple of our friend. Is it not beautiful?

HERMES.

It is hideous.

CIRCE.

Are you sure that it is a temple at all?

HERMES.

I confess that I was for a long time uncertain, but on the whole I believe that it is.

APHRODITE.

But is it dedicated to me?

HERMES.

That is the disappointment.... It is best to tell you at once that I see no evidence whatever that it is.

CIRCE.

I am very much disappointed.

APHRODITE.

I am very much relieved. But could you not gather from the decoration of the interior to whom of us it is inscribed?

HERMES.

It is not decorated at all: whitewashed walls, wooden benches, naked floors.

CIRCE.

But what is the nature of the sculpture?

HERMES.

I could see no sculpture, except a sort of black tablet, with names upon it, and at the sides two of the youthful attendants of Eros--those that have wings, indeed, but cannot rest. These were exceedingly ill-carven in a kind of limestone. And I hardly like to tell you what I found behind the altar----

APHRODITE.

I am not easily shocked. My poor worshippers sometimes demand a very considerable