GOD
I am not the stark power who chained you here.
I am softened by what you endured, while my laws
have made you a hard reflection of the tyrant I once was.
It cannot be right to enthrone
a killing revenge the world should have outgrown,
or if right, then right will make greater wrong.
PROMETHEUS
It is right to give back what you stole — liberty.
You see me as I am. You cannot see
who I will become when I am free.
Why do you think I will kill?
GOD
Your every glance threatens me terrible ill.
PROMETHEUS
I am in pain! My illness, the illness you dread, is yours, is you!
GOD
Then endure my terrible nature!
I must endure it too.
(God has lost his temper. Prometheus laughs bitterly.)
PROMETHEUS
At last you unmask, old man
and show what you are again:
the ruler of a kingdom kept by pain.
All history has added nothing to you
but a mad wish to be pitied for what you do.
I paused. My woman said, “What happens then?” I said, “I cannot imagine.”
She started laughing. I said, “To end happily my play needs a new character, someone we have already seen, without much interest, in the chorus, or even audience. The action until now is between a man, a big woman, and another man. To strike a balance the fourth character must be a woman. She is a new wisdom who will unite our imprisoned intelligence with the productive earth, reducing government from a form of mastery to a form of service. She is sensuous, for both governments and rebels keep asking us to crush our senses in order to gain an ultimate victory which never arrives. But she is not disorderly, not a beatnik, not careless. She is living proof that when our senses are freed from fear our main desire is to make the world a good home for everyone. I cannot conceive such a heroine. Can you conceive her? Could we conceive her together?” My woman looked thoughtful then said slowly, “I am qualified to assist you. I have been a daughter and a mother, a victim and a tyrant. I saw my father torment his wife into her grave. I have driven a man to suicide, or very nearly. I know how love heats and warps us, but I feel there is still hope for me, and the world.”
I said, “That indicates a kind of balance.” “I have climbed mountains in Scotland and Germany. I have swum underground rivers in the Auvergne.”
I said, “That also indicates balance, but a balance of extremes. The tension you feel must be nearly unbearable. We must connect the extremes where you squander so much energy with the centre where my knowledge lies chained and stagnant.”
Her mouth and eyes opened wide, she raised her chin and gazed upward like the Pythoness on the tripod when Apollo enters her. For nearly a minute she became pure priestess. Then her gaze shrank, descended and focussed on the table where my great, droll, attentive head rested sideways on my folded arms. A look of incredulity came upon her face. I had never before seemed to her so improbably grotesque. She pretended to glance at her wristwatch, saying, “Excuse me, I must go.”
“May I write to you, madam? A literary collaboration is perhaps best prosecuted by letter.”
“Yes.”
“Your address?”
“I don’t know — I am moving elsewhere, I don’t know where yet. I have many arrangements to make. Leave your letters with the management here. I will find a way to collect them.”
I said, “Good,” and achieved a smile. She arose, came to my side and hesitated. I signalled by a small headshake that condescension would be unwelcome. She turned and hurried out. I sat perfectly still, attending to the beaks of the vultures tearing at my liver. They had never felt so sharp. The manageress came over and asked if I felt well? I grinned at her and nodded repeatedly until she went away.
After that I waited. I could do almost nothing else. Study was impossible, sleep difficult. I addressed to her a parcel of worknotes for Prometheus Unbound and it lay on the zinc beside the till, but I was always sitting nearby for I wanted not to leave the only place where I might see her again. I waited a day, a week, three weeks. I was dozing over my book and glass one afternoon when I grew conscious of her talking to the manageress. She seemed to have been doing it for some time. They frowned, nodded, glanced towards me, shrugged and smiled. I was very confused and prayed God that when she sat facing me I would be calm and firm. She patted the manageress’s arm and walked straight out through the door. I screamed her name, scrambled down from the chair, charged into the crowded street and ran screaming to the right, banging against knees, treading on feet and sometimes trodden on. Not seeing her I turned and ran to the left. As I passed the café door I was seized and lifted, yes, lifted up by one who held her face to mine so that our noses touched, and whispered, “Mister Pollard, this conduct does you no good. I have a letter.”
I became very icy and hissed, “Put me down, madam.”
I should have asked to be taken home. I could suddenly hardly walk. I got to my table and opened the letter, noticing that my parcel lay uncollected beside the till.
My dear friend,
I no longer wish to be a poet. It requires an obsessional balancing of tiny phrases and meanings, an immersion in language which seems to me a kind of cowardice. As a man and poet I can respect you but only because you are also a dwarf For people of ordinary health and height, with a clear view of the world and a wish to do well, it is a waste of time making signboards pointing to the good and bad things in life. If we do not personally struggle towards good and fight the bad, people will merely praise or denounce our signs and go on living as usual. I must make my own life the book where people read what I believe. I decided this years ago when I became a socialist, but I still grasped, like a cuddly toy, my wish to be a poet. That wish came from the dwarfish part of me, the frightened lonely child who hoped that a DECLARATION would bring the love of mother earth, the respect of daddy god, the admiration of the million sisters and brothers who normally do not care if I live or die. Your critical letter had an effect you did not intend. It showed me that my declarations are futile. It has taken a while for the message to sink in. I am grateful to you, but also very bitter. I cannot be completely logical.
My sweet, you are the cleverest, most deluded man I ever met. Rewriting PROMETHEUS UNBOUND is like rewriting GENESIS, it can be done but who needs it? It is just another effort to put good wine in a filthy old bottle. I was touched when you poured over me your adolescent enthusiasm for ancient Athens but I also wanted to laugh or vomit. I am educated. I have been to Greece. I have stood on the Acropolis facing the Erichtheon and can tell you that Greece represents:
men against women war „peace business, play intellect, emotions authority, anarchy hierarchy, equality discipline, sensuality property-inheritance, sexuality patriarchy, everything