And I, who had not wept since I was a baby, shed passionate tears. I felt her grip my hand across the tabletop and though I had never before felt such pure grief for abused humanity, I have never felt such happiness and peace. It was a while before I could continue.
“But one day France, madam, yes our own France declared that democracy must return; that liberty, equality, fraternity are indivisible; that what the Athenians started, we will achieve. We have not achieved it yet, but the world will never know peace until we have done so. The main task of poetry today is to show the modern state the way to liberty and peace by remaking the lost verse-drama, Prometheus Unbound. I have completed half of it.”
She stared at me. I hoped she was fascinated. I described my play.
It starts with the supreme God (spelt with a capital G to separate him from lesser gods) standing on a mountaintop after the defeat of the titans. The sky behind him is a deep dark blue, his face and physique are as Michelangelo painted him, only younger — he looks about thirty. Round his feet flows a milky cloud and under the cloud, on a curving ridge, stands the committee of Olympus: Juno, Mars, Venus etcetera. These are the chorus. On two hills lower down sit Pan and Bacchus among the small agents of fertility and harvest: nymphs, fauns, satyrs and bacchantes with fiddles, drums, bagpipes and flutes. This orchestra makes music for the scene-changes. A dark vertical cleft divides the two hills. At the base of it is spread out a great tribe of common people who may as well be played by the audience. Their task is to enhance the play with their attention and applause until, at the end, the release of Prometheus releases them too. But at the start God’s gravely jubilant voice addresses the universe while the sky grows light behind him.
He speaks like any politician who has just come to power after a struggle. Together (he tells us) we have destroyed chaos and oppression. Prosperity and peace are dawning under new rules which will make everybody happy. Even the wildest districts are now well-governed. My brother Neptune commands the sea, storms and earthquake. My brother Pluto rules the dead. Let us praise the cyclops! The powers of reason would have been defeated without the weapons they made. They have been sent back to hell, but to an improved, useful hell managed by my son Vulcan. He is employing them to make the thunderbolts I need to coerce law-breakers. For alas, law-breakers exist, hot-heads who protest because my new state is not equally good to everyone. It is true that, just now, some must have very little so that, eventually, everyone has more; but those who rage at this are prolonging sufferings which I can only cure with the help of time … God is interrupted here by a voice from the ridge below him. Minerva-Athene, his minister of education, or else Cupid his popular clown, point out that the recent war was fought to destroy old time yet now God says he needs time to let him do good. Yes! (cries God) for time is no longer your tyrant, he is my slave. Time will eventually show how kind I am, how good my laws are, how well I have made everything.
Throughout this speech God’s nature is clearly changing. From sounding like the spokesman of a renewed people he has used the language of a lawmaker, dictator, and finally creator. At his last words the cloud under him divides and floats left and right uncovering the shining black face of the earthmother. It is calm and unlined, with slanting eyes under arched brows like a Buddha, and flat negro lips like the Sphinx. The white cloud is her hair, the ridge where the gods stand is her collarbone, the orchestra sits on her breasts, the audience in her lap. God, erect on top of her head, with one foot slightly advanced and arms firmly folded, looks slightly ridiculous but perfectly at home. When she parts her lips a soft voice fills the air with melodious grumbling. She knows that God’s claim to be a creator is false but she is endlessly tolerant and merely complains instead of shaking him off. Her grammar is difficult. She is twisting a huge statement into a question and does not divide what she knows into separate sentences and tenses.
EARTH
Who was before I am dark
without limbs, dancing, spinning
space without heat who
was before I am alight
without body, blazing, dividing
continents on rocking mud who
was before I am breathing
without eyes, floating, rooted
bloody with outcry who
was before I am a singing
ground, wormy-dark, alight
aloud with leaves, eyes and
gardeners, the last plants I grew who
uplifted you who
was before I am?
GOD
Who is before you now!
I grasp all ground, mother.
The gardeners you grew were common men, a brood
too silly and shapeless to be any good
outside my state, which has made them new.
They cannot remember being born by you.
They are my image now. I am who
they all want to obey, or if not obey, be.
EARTH
Not Prometheus.
GOD
Yes, Prometheus! Punishment is changing him into a cracked mirror of me.
There is a sudden terrible cry of pain. Two great birds with dripping beaks fly out of the cleft between the earth’s breasts. Light enters it and shows the crucified Prometheus, a strong man of middle age with a bleeding wound in his side. Though smaller than his mother he is a giant to the God who stands high above him and declares that this is the end of the titan who made men, and made them hard to govern, by giving them hope of better life. The great mother, with a touch of passion, tells God that though he is supreme he is also very new, and his state will perish one day, like all states, and only Prometheus knows how. God does not deny this. He says he has a lot of work to do and will reconsider the case of Prometheus when he has more time. He turns and goes down behind the earth’s head. The cloud closes over her. Prometheus, twisting his face up, asks the gods on the ridge to tell him the present state of mankind. They sing a chorus describing the passage of over two thousand years. Men combine into rich empires by many submitting to a few. They discover the world is vaster than they thought, and add new realms to tyranny. Liberators are born who create new religions and states, and the rulers of the world take these over and continue to tighten their grip. At last human cunning grasps, not just the world but the moon and the adjacent planets, yet half mankind dies young from bad feeding, and young courage and talent is still warped and killed by warfare. The controllers of the world fear the people under them as much as each other, and are prepared to defend their position by destroying mankind and the earth which bore them. This is the final state to which we have been brought by cunning without foresight. Prometheus cries out, “This cannot last!” From the middle of her cloud this cry is repeated by the great mother, then by the chorus and orchestra, and then (the cloud clearing) by God himself, who stands on the height with his arms flung sideways in a gesture which resembles the crucified Prometheus. God is also now a middle-aged man. He walks down from the height, sits on the edge of the cleft and tries to engage Prometheus in friendly conversation. He is sorry he punished Prometheus so harshly and promises not to set vultures on him again. When he came to power he had to be harsh, to keep control. People needed strong government, in those days, to drag them out of the idiocy of rural life. But the whole world now belongs to the city states. He is sure Prometheus knows that neither of them is completely good or completely bad, and have a lot to give each other. If they cooperate they can save mankind. He asks Prometheus for the secret of the force which will destroy him. Prometheus asks to be released first. God is sorry, but he cannot release Prometheus. If he did Prometheus would seize power.