Hypolympia; Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy

Maia.

Demeter, of course, never encouraged you to make any observation of the manners and customs of Hades.

Persephone.

Oh, no! that was just it. She always said: "Pray don't let me hear the least thing about the horrid place." You remember that she very strongly disapproved of my going there at all —

Chloris.

Yes; I remember that Arethusa, when she brought me back my daffodils, told me how angry Demeter was —

Persephone.

And yet she was quite nice to my husband when once Zeus had decided that I had better go.

[There is a pause. Maia rises and leans on the parapet, over the woods, now drowned in twilight, to the sea, which still faintly glitters. She turns and comes back to the other two, standing above them.]

Maia.

I, too, might have observed something as I went sailing over the purpureal ocean. But I was always talking to my sisters. The fact is we all of us neglected to learn anything about death.

Chloris.

We thought of it as of something happening in that world of Hades which could never become of the slightest importance to us. Who could have imagined that we should have to take it into practical account?

Maia.

Well, now we shall have to accept it, to be prepared for its tremendous approach.

Chloris [after a pause].

Perhaps this famous "death" may prove after all to be only another kind of life. [Rising and approaching Maia.] Don't you think this is indicated even by the song of these barbarians? Besides, our stay here must be the ante-chamber to something wholly different.

Maia.

We can hardly suppose that it can lead to nothing.

Chloris.

No; surely we shall put off more or less leisurely, with dignity or without it, the garments of our sensuous existence, and discover something underneath all these textures of the body?

Persephone.

One of our priests in Hades, I do remember, sang that silence was a voice, and declared that even in the deserts of immensity the soul was stunned and deafened by the chorus and anti-chorus of nature.

Chloris.

What did he mean? What is the soul?

Maia.

I must confess that in this our humility, our corporeal degradation, instead of feeling crushed, I am curiously conscious of a wider range of sensibility. Perhaps that is the soul? Perhaps, in the suppression of our immortality, something metallic, something hermetical, has been broken down, and already we stand more easily exposed to the influences of the spirit?

Chloris.

In that case, to slough the sheaths of the body, one by one, ought to be to come nearer to the final freedom, and the last coronation and consecration of existence may prove to be this very "death" we dread so much.

Persephone.

I can fancy that such conjectures as these may prove to be one of the chief sources of satisfaction in this new mortality of ours: the variegated play of light and shadow thrown upon it. Well, the less we know and see, the more exciting it ought to be to guess and to peer.

Maia.

And some of us, depend upon it, will be able to persuade ourselves that we alone can use our eyesight in the pitch profundity of darkness, and these will find a peculiar pleasure in tormenting the others who have less confidence in their imagination.

[They seat themselves, and are silent. Far away is once more faintly heard the song, and then it dies away. A long silence. Then, a confused hum of cries and voices is heard, and approaches the terrace from below. The Goddesses start to their feet. From the left appear Silvanus, Alcyone and Fauna, bearing the body of Cydippe, which they place very carefully on the grass in front of the scene.]

Chloris [in an excited whisper].

Is this our first experience of the mystery?

Fauna and Alcyone.

She is dead! She is dead!

Maia.

The first of the immortals to succumb to the burden of mortality!

Silvanus.

Where is Æsculapius? Call him, call him!

Maia.

He cannot bring back the dead.

Persephone.

What has happened? Cydippe is livid, her limbs are stark, her eyes are wide open, and motionless, and unnaturally brilliant.

Silvanus [to Chloris].

She was gathering a little posy of your wild flowers – eyebright, and crane's bills and small blue pansies, when —

Fauna.

There glided out of the intertwisted fibres of the blue-berries a serpent —

Alcyone.

Grey, with black arrows down the spine, and a flat, diabolical head —

Fauna.

And Cydippe never saw it, and stretched out her hand again, and – see —

Silvanus.

The viper fixed his fangs here, in the blue division of the vein, here in her translucent wrist. See, it swells, it darkens!

Fauna.

And with a scream she fell, and swooned away, and died, turning backwards, so that her hair caught in the springy herbage, and her head rolled a little in her pain, so that her hair was loosened and tightened, and look, there are still little tufts of blue-berry leaves in her hair.

Silvanus.

But here comes Æsculapius.

[They all greet Æsculapius, who enters from the left, with his basket of remedies.]

Persephone.

Ah! sage master of simples, this is a problem beyond thy solution, a case beyond thy cure.

Æsculapius [to the goddesses].

You think that Cydippe is dead?

Maia.

Unquestionably. The savage viper has slain her.

Æsculapius.

Then prepare to behold what should seem a greater miracle to you than to me. But, first, Silvanus, bind a strip of clothing very tightly round the upper part of her arm, for no more than we can help of those treasonable messengers must fly posting from the wound to Cydippe's heart.

Persephone [sententiously].

It can receive no more such messages.

Æsculapius.

I think you are mistaken. And now, Fauna, a few drops of water in this cup from the trickling spring yonder. That is well. Stand farther away from Cydippe, all of you.

Persephone.

What are those pure white needles you drop into the water? How quickly they dissolve. Ah! he lays the mixture to Cydippe's wound. She sighs; her eyelids close; her heart is beating. What is this magic, Æsculapius?

Æsculapius.

Do not tell your husband, Persephone, or he will complain to Zeus that I am depriving him of his population. But if there is magic in this, there is no miracle. [To the others.] Take her softly into the house and lay her down. She will take a long sleep, and will wake at the end of it with no trace of the poison or recollection of her suffering.

[They carry Cydippe forth. Persephone, Maia, and Æsculapius remain.]

Maia.

Then – she was not dead?

Æsculapius.

No; it was but the poison-swoon, which precedes death, if it be not arrested.

Maia.

How rejoiced I am!

Persephone.

One would say your joy had disappointed you.

Maia.

No, indeed, for I am attached to Cydippe, but oh! Persephone, it is strange to be at the very threshold of the mystery —

Persephone.

And to have the opening door shut in our faces? Perhaps … next time … they may not be able to find Æsculapius.

IX

[The terrace, as in the first scene; Zeus enters from the house, conducted by Hebe and several of the lesser divinities.]

Hebe.

Will your Majesty be pleased to descend to the lower boskage?

Zeus.

No! Place my throne here, out of the wind, in the sun, which seems to have very little fire left in it, but some pleasant light still. The sea down there is bright again to-day; the carrying of our unfortunate person upon its surface was probably the source of immense alarm to it. It quaked and blackened continuously. Now we are removed, it regains something of its normal quiescence. I trust that the land hereabouts is dowered with a less painful susceptibility.

Ganymede.

A priest, sire, the only one who saved his musical instrument through our calamities, stands within. Is your Majesty disposed to be sung to?

Zeus.

No, certainly not. Which is he? [The Priest is pointed out.] What an odd-looking person! Yes, he may give me a specimen of his art – a short one.

[The Priest comes forward; he is dressed in wild Thessalian raiment. He approaches with uncouth gestures, and a mixture of servility and self-consciousness. On receiving a nod from Zeus, he tunes his instrument and sings as follows:]

Wild swans wingingThrough the blue,Spiders springingTo a clue,Till the sparkling drops renewAll that everYouth's endeavourHad determined to undo.White and blue are hoards of treasure,For the panting hands of pleasureTo go dropping, dropping, dropping,Without measureThrough and through.

Zeus.

Very pretty, I must say. Would you repeat it again?

[Priest repeats it again.]

Zeus.

What does it … exactly mean? I think it quite pretty, you understand.

Priest.

Does your Majesty receive any impression from it?

Zeus.

Well, I don't know that I could precisely parse it. But it is very pretty. Yes, I think I gain a certain impression from it.

Priest.

Do you not feel, sire, a peculiar sense of flush, of spring-tide – a direct juvenile ebullience?

Zeus.

Ah, no doubt, no doubt. And a kind of nostalgia, or harking-back to happier days, a sense of their rapid passage, and their irrecoverability. Is that right?

Priest.

It is a positive divination!

Zeus.

I am conscious of the agreeable recollection of an incident —

Priest [with rapture].

Ah! —

Zeus.

A little event? —

Priest.

You make my heart beat so high, sire, that I can hardly speak. Deign, sire, to recall that incident.

Zeus [with extreme affability].

It was hardly an incident… I merely happened, while you were reciting your song, to remember an occasion on which – on which Iris, at the rampart of our golden wall, bending back, was caught by the wind, and – and the contours were delicious.

Priest.

Oh! the word, the word!

Zeus [with slight hauteur].

I do not follow you. Her rainbow —

Priest.

Ah! yes, sire, the rainbow, the rainbow! O what an art of incontestable divination!

Zeus [much animated].

But you did not say anything about a rainbow, nor describe one, nor ever mention the elements of such a bow.

Priest.

Ah! no, sire. That is the art of the New Poetry. It names nothing, it describes nothing. All that it designs to do is to place the mind of the listener – of the august and perspicacious listener – in such an attitude as that the unnamed, the undescribed object rises full in vision. The poet flings forth his melody, and to the gross ear it seems a mere tinkle of inanity. That is simply because the crowd who worship at the shrine of the Sminthean Apollo have been accustomed by an old-fashioned and ridiculously incompetent priesthood to look for an instant and mechanical relation between sound and sense. I would not exaggerate, sire; but the kind of poetry lately cultivated, not only at Delphi, but in Delos also, is simply obsolete.

Zeus [suspiciously].

Again I am not sure that I quite follow you.

Priest.

To your Majesty, at least, the New Poetry opens its casket as widely as the rose-bud does to the zephyr.

Zeus.

I can follow that – but it rather reminds me of the Old Poetry.

Priest.

It was intended to do so. What promptitude of mind! What divine penetration!

Zeus [affably].

I have always believed that if I had enjoyed leisure from public life, I should have excelled in my judgment of the fine arts. [To the Priest, with gravity.] You are a gifted young man. Be sure that you employ your talents with discretion. Such an intellect as yours carries responsibility with it. I shall be quite pleased to permit you to recite "The Rainbow" to me again. [The Priest prepares to recite it.]

Zeus.

Oh, not now! Some other time! [Graciously dismisses the Priest.]

Zeus [after a long pause].

The attitude of my family, in these ambiguous circumstances, is everything that could be desired. My original feeling of irritability has passed away. I should have supposed it to be what Pallas calls "fatigue," a confusion or discord of the nerve-centres, which she tells me is incident to mortality. What Pallas can possibly know about it is more than I can guess, especially, as there were not infrequent occasions on Olympus itself on which my Supreme Godhead was disturbed by flashes of what I should be forced to describe as exasperation, states of mind in which I formed – and indeed executed – the sudden project of breaking something. These were, I believe, simply the result of an excessive sense of responsibility. I am not one of those who conceive that the duty of deity is to sit passive beside the cup of nectar. Here on this island, in the permanent absence of that refreshment, I reflect (I perceive that I shall have very frequent opportunities for reflection) that I was perhaps only too anxious to preserve the harmony of heaven. My sense of decorum – may it not have been excessive? From below, as I imagine, from the stations occupied – I will not say by the inanimate or half-animate creation, such as insects, or men, or minerals – but by the demi-gods, I take it that the dignity and orbic beauty of our court appeared sublimely immaculate. In the inner circle, alas! no one knows better than I do that there were – well, dissensions. I will go further, in candour to myself, and admit that these occasionally led to excesses. I cannot charge my recollection with my having done anything to excuse or encourage these. The personal conduct of the Sovereign was always, I cannot but believe, above reproach. But the eccentricities – if I may style them so – of certain of my children were sometimes regrettable. I wonder that they did not age me; they would do so immediately in my present condition. But in this island, where we are to swarm like animalcules in a drop of water, I shall be relieved of all responsibility. Where there is no one to notice that errors are committed, no errors are committed. As the person of most experience in the whole world, I do not mind stating my ripe opinion that a fault which has no effect upon political conditions is in no sensible degree a fault at all. Pallas would contend the point, I suppose, but I am at ease. I shall not allow the conduct of my children, except as it shall regard myself, to affect my good-humour in the slightest degree.

[Phœbus enters, slowly pacing across the terrace.]

Zeus.

Your planet seems to have recovered something of its tone, Phœbus.

Phœbus.

If, father, you regard – as you have every right to do – your venerable person as the centre of my interests, I rejoice to allow that this seems to be the case.

Zeus [with a touch of reserve].

I meant that the sun shows a tendency to return to its forgotten orbit. It is quite warm here out of the wind. [More genially.] But as to myself, I admit a great recovery in my spirits. I have given up fretting for Iris, who was certainly lost on our way here, and Pallas has been showing me a curious little jewel she brought with her, which has created in me a kind of wistful cheeriness. I do not remember to have experienced anything of the kind before.

Phœbus.

I declare I believe that you will adapt yourself as well as the rest of us to this anomalous existence.

Zeus.

We shall see; and I shall have so much time now, that I may even – what I am sure ought to gratify you, Phœbus, – be able to give my attention to the fine arts. A fallen monarch can always defy adversity by forming a collection of curiosities.

Phœbus.

If you make the gem of which Pallas is so proud the nucleus of your cabinet, I feel convinced that it will give you lasting satisfaction. And we are so poor now that it can never be complete, and therefore never become tiresome. But what was it that the oracle of Nemea amused and puzzled us by saying, "To form a collection is well, yet to take a walk is better"? I will attend your Majesty to your apartments, and then wander in these extensive woods.

[Exeunt.

X

[A dell below the house, with a white poplar-tree growing alone. Under it Heracles sits, in an attitude of deep dejection, his club fallen at his feet, a horn empty at his side. To him enters Eros.]

Eros.

I have been congratulating our friends on their surpassing cheerfulness. Even Zeus is displaying a marvellous longanimity in his adverse state, and Pallas is positively frivolous. We must have disembarked, however, upon the island of Paradox, for everything goes by contraries; here I find you, Heracles, commonly so serene and uplifted, sunken in the pit of depression. You should squeeze the breath out of your melancholy, as you did out of Hera's snakes so long ago.

Heracles.

That was a foolish tale. Do you not recollect that I am not as the rest of you?

Eros.

Come, man, brighten up! You look as sulky as you did when I broke your bow and arrows, and set Aphrodite laughing at you. But I have learned manners, and the goddesses only smile now. Cheer up! How is your destiny a whit different from ours?

Heracles.

That rude old story about Alcmena, Eros – it is impossible that you can be the dupe of that? When I hunted lions on Cithaeron – that really was a gentlemanlike sport, my friend – when I hunted lions I was not a god. Gods don't hunt lions, Eros; I have not gone a-hunting since that curious affair on Mount Œta. You remember it?

Eros.

I have preferred to forget it.

Heracles.

Only an immortal can afford wilfully to forget, and I – well, you know as well as I do that I am only a mortal canonised. I never understood the incident, I confess. I lay down among the ferns to sleep, after an unusually heavy day's bag of monsters. It was sultry weather; I woke to an oppressive sense of singeing, I found myself enveloped in a blaze of leaves and brushwood… But I bore you, and what does it matter now? What does anything matter?

Eros.

No, no; pray continue! I am excessively interested. You throw a light on something that has always puzzled me, something that —

Heracles.

A dense black smoke blinded and numbed me. The next moment, as it seemed – perhaps it was the next day – I was hustled up through the æther to Olympus, and dumped down at the foot of Zeus' throne. Perhaps you remember?

Eros.

Yes, for I was there.

Heracles.

All of you were there. And Zeus came down and took me by the wrist. Olympus rang with shouts and the clapping of hands. I was hailed with unanimity as an immortal; the ambrosia melted between my charred lips; I rose up amongst you all, immaculate and fresh. But when, or how, or wherefore I have never known. And now I shall never care to know.

Eros.

You are a strange mixture, Heracles; strangely contradictory. You never quailed before any scaly horror, you never spared a truculent robber or a noisome beast, nor avoided a laborious act —

Heracles.

These might be quoted, I should have thought, as instances of my consistency.

Eros.

Yes, but then (you must really forgive me) your weakness in the matter of Omphale did seem, to those who knew you not, like want of self-respect. I have the reputation of shrinking, in the pursuit of pleasure, from no fantastic disguise, but I never sat spinning in the garments of a servant-maid. You must have looked a strange daughter of the plough, Heracles. I blush for you to think of it.

Heracles.

It was odd, certainly. Yet if you cannot comprehend it, Eros, I despair of explaining it to anybody. I should never do it again. You must admit I showed no want of firmness afterwards in dealing with Hebe, but then, she never interested me. Is she here? But do not reply, I am not anxious to learn.

Eros.

Your dejection passes beyond all bounds. You cannot have been shown the singularly cheerful little jewel which Pallas has brought with her? It raises every one's spirits.

Heracles.

It will not raise mine; for all of you, Eros, have been immortals from the beginning, and your mortality is a new and pungent flavour on the moral palate. But the taste of it was known of old to me, and I am not its dupe. It simply carries me back to the ancient weary round of ceaseless struggle, unending battle, incessant renascence of the sprouting heads of Hydra; to all that from which the windless Olympus was a refuge. Hope is presented – to one who has tasted it and who knows that it is futile – without reawakening, under such new conditions as we have here, any zest of adventure. The jewel of Pandora may be exhilarating to fallen immortality; it has no lustre whatever for a backsliding mortal.

[Sounds of laughter are heard, and steps ascending from the shore.]

Eros [to Heracles].

Draw your lion's skin about you less negligently, Heracles; I hear visitants approaching. You are not in the woodways of Œta.

[The Oceanides rush in from the lower woodlands. They are carrying torches, and arrive in a condition of the highest exhilaration. Eros proceeds a step or two to meet them, with a smile and a mock reverence. Heracles, brooding over his knees, does not even raise his eyes at their clamorous entry.]

Eros.

Are you proceeding to set our Father Zeus on fire, or do you intend to repeat on our unwilling Heracles the rites of canonisation? Have a care with those absurd flambeaux; you will put all the underwood aflame. What are you doing with torches?

Amphitrite.

It was Hephæstus who gave them to us to hold. He is in a cave down there by the sea, making the most ingenious things in the darkness. He called us in to hold these lights —

Doris.

And oh, Eros, we had such fun, teasing him —

Pitho.

He was quite angry at last —

Amphitrite.

And threatened to nail us to the cliff —

Pitho.

And off we ran, and left him in the dark.

Doris.

He is coming after us. I never felt so frightened.

Amphitrite.

I never enjoyed myself anywhere so much.

Pitho.

Come away, come away! If he is going to pursue, let us give him a long chase, and leave him panting at last!

[The Oceanides escape, in a tumult of laughter, through the upper woods, as Hephæstus, limping heavily, and much out of breath, appears from below.]

Hephæstus.

The rogues, the rogues!

Eros.

What a cataract of animal spirits! I am afraid, Hephæstus, that you do not escape, even here, from the echoes of the laughter of heaven.

Heracles [savagely].

Follow them, and strike them down. Take my club, Hephæstus, if you have lost your hammer.

Hephæstus.

Strike them! Strike the darling rogues? I would as soon wrap your too-celebrated tunic about a little playful marmozet. What is the matter with you, Heracles?

Heracles.

What change, indeed, has come over you, you sulky artificer? Time was when your pincers would have met in the flesh of maid or man who disturbed you in your work. Have you left your forge to cool for the mere pleasure of clambering after these ridiculous children! Go back to it, Hephæstus, go back and be ashamed.

Hephæstus.

You do not seem deeply engaged yourself. You look sourer and idler than the lion's head that dangles at your shoulder. The days are long here, though not too long. My handicraft will spare me for half an hour to sport with these exquisite and affable fragilities. I rather enjoy being laughed at. On Olympus I was rarely troubled by such teasing attentions. The little ones seem to enjoy themselves in their exile, and, to say true, so do I. My work was carried on, I admit, much more smoothly and surely than it can be here, and my hand, I am afraid, in crossing the sea, has lost much of its infallible cunning. But I enjoy the exercise, and I look onward to the art as I never did before, and I seem to have more leisure. Can you explain it, Eros?

Eros.

I do not attempt to do so, but I feel a similar and equally surprising serenity. Heracles is insensible to it, it seems, and he gives me a sort of reason.