primary law
of Time and Space is that nothing is merely what it is.
The seed
of the flower harbors the poison of the flower. I’ve
watched old lions
pause, befuddled by warring instincts, surrounded by
huntsmen.
I’ve watched my own soul — strange drives forcing me
higher and higher
to goals I can barely discern, and one of them is
beauty of mind,
true majesty; and one of them is death. I am, I’ve found a rhythm, merely: a summer and winter of creation
and guilt.
I’m the phoenix; the world. Thanatos and Eros in
all-out war,
the chariot drawn by sphinxes, one of them black,
one white:
one pulls toward joy, the other toward total eclipse of
pain.
With all that, too, I’ve made my peace. I’ve fallen out
of Time.
I stumble, a blind man guided by a stick. After all
this — sick,
meaningless, old — I’ve lost my reason at last: gone
sane.”
I said nothing, humbled by the wisdom Oidipus had
won — and not by
gift: by violence and grief. I could have expanded
what he knew.
I did for others. But I bowed, retired in silence. I have
said
to kings that their hope is ridiculous — the hope that
someday
kingdoms, heroes, philosophers, laws, may end forever the natural state — the jungle of the gods in all-out
war—
the secret whispers of the buried man, the violence
of seas,
benthal stirrings of the blind, pythonic corpse of
Atlantis,
the earth in upheaval, thundershouts, whirlwinds, foxes
snapping
at the rooster’s heels, or the silent victories of termites,
spiders,
ants. I have said to other men that the natural state is final. The forces that crack the efficient crust of mind crack nations: no hunger, no evil wish to seduce or kill is lost in the sky god’s brain. This darkling plain we flee toward love is the darkling plain toward which we flee.
But why
say all these things to him? I left him groping,
stumbling
stone to stone, as we all move stone to stone, each step catching the balance from the last, or failing to catch
it, tumbling us
humbly home to the dust. Don’t ask of a man like
Oidipus
programs, plans for improvement, praise of nobility.
(What are,
to him, great deeds of heroism? A matter of glands, nerves, old patterns of reaction: —a slight deficiency of iodine in the thyroid [I speak things long-forgotten], a sadistic aunt, a bump on the back of the head, and
the hero’s
a coward.) Every tragedy is fragmentary, a cut of Time in the cosmic whole, the veil without
which
nothing. A man’s inability to flee his father’s guilt, his city’s, his god’s. A man’s coming to grips with his
own
unalterable road to death. Don’t look to the gods for help in that. For the purpose you ask of them, they were
never there.
Earthquakes, fires, fathers, floods make no distinctions: the good survive and suffer, discover their truths and
die,
like the wicked. Indeed, if anyone has the advantage,
it seems
the violent, crafty, unprincipled, who seize earth’s goods while the pious stretch out their arms in prayer, and
leave empty-handed.
I could tell you, Argonauts … Dark, unfeeling,
unloving powers
determine our human destiny. The splendid rewards, the ghastly punishments your priests are forever
preaching of,
have no real home but the shores of their violent brains.
Learn all
your poisons! There’s man’s peace!’ The old seer smiled
and sighed,
gentle as a kindly grandmother. The firelight flickered soft on his forehead and cheeks as he leaned toward
it, stretching
his hands to it. We studied him, polite.
“At last I said:
Phineus, these are strange words of yours. You tell us
tales
of doom, inescapable senselessness, yet all the while you smile, stretching your hands to the comfort of the
fire.’
“ ‘That’s true;
no doubt it’s a trifle absurd.’ But he nodded, smiling on. ‘I was sick to the heart, fighting reality tooth and nail, staggering, striking — and, behold! you’ve made me well.
My mind
made monsters up, and all the self-understanding in
the world
could no more turn them back than weir down history.’ He paused; then, abruptly, ‘I must muse no more on
that.’ He turned
his head, listening to the darkness in the room behind.
We began
to smell something. His face went pale. And then, once
more,
he smiled, remembered our presence, remembered the
fire. He said:
‘Life is sweet, Argonauts! Behold us, each of us
drinking down
his own unique sweet poison! May each see the bottom
of the cup!
As for myself, I can say this much with good assurance:
I will not
last much longer, now that the Harpies have left me.
The balance
is gone. Death’s not far hence, the death I carry within
me.
One grants one’s limits at last — one’s special strength.
One sinks
and drowns there, tranquil, no more at war with the
universe,
and therefore dying, like poison sumac become too
much
itself, unstriving, released at last into anorexy. — No, no! No alarm, dear friends! No distress! It was
a great service!
There is no greater joy, no greater peace, my friends, than dying one’s own inherent death, no other. The
truth!’
He paused, looked back at the darkness again with his
blind eyes.
He smiled. His smile came forward like a spear. ‘I will
tell you more:
You ask me: How can you smile, reach out to the
warmth, knowing all
you know? Let me tell you another thing about Oidipus. He knows where he is — where humanity is: in the tragic
moment,
locked in the skull of the sky: the eternal, intemporal
moment
which lasts to the last pale flash of the world. There
tragic man,
alone, doomed to be misunderstood by slumbering
minds,
exposed to the idiot anger of hidden and absent forces, nevertheless stands balanced. In his very loneliness, his meaningless pain, he finds the few last values his
soul
can still maintain, drive home, construct his grandeur by: the absolute and rigorous nature of its own awareness, its ethical demands, its futile quest for justice, absolute truth — dead-set refusal to accept some compromise, choose some sugared illusion!’ His face was radiant. He wrung his hands; his voice was unsteady. He was
deeply moved.
What could I say? It was not for me to pose the
question.
We were guests. He might be of use to us. I was glad,
however,
when Idas asked it. Sweat drops glistened on his ebony
forehead
like firelit jewels.
“ ‘Why? — Why soul? Why values? Why greatness?
Why not “Not love: just fuck”?’
“Old Phineus turned his face,
with a startled look, toward Idas. ‘I will tell you more,’
he said.
“ ‘We should sleep,” I broke in. ‘It’s a long trip, and