Jason and Medeia
John Gardner
A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
John Gardner wrote Jason and Medeia as a book-length poem, complete with line breaks and indents that do not usually occur in works of prose. In keeping with the author’s intentions, this ebook edition has deliberately kept the original formatting.
TO JOAN
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This poem was made possible by financial gifts from my friends Marilyn Burns, Ruby Cohn, and Duncan M. Luke and by grants from Southern Illinois University and the National Endowment for the Arts. I thank William H. Gass for permission to borrow and twist passages from his Fiction and the Figures of Life, and Gary Snyder for permission to borrow and twist two of his translations from the Cold Mountain series. Parts of this poem freely translate sections of Apollonios Rhodios’ Argonautica and Euripides’ Medeia, among other things.
And so the night will come to you: an end of vision;
darkness for you: an end of divination.
The sun will set for the prophets,
the day will go black for them.
Then the seers will be covered with shame,
the diviners with confusion;
they will all cover their lips,
because no answer comes from God.
MICAH 3:6—7
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A Biography of John Gardner
1
I dreamed I awakened in a valley where no life stirred,
no cry
of a fox sparked up out of stillness; a night of ashes.
I was sitting
in a room that seemed a familiar defense against
darkness, but decayed,
the heavy old book I’d been reading still open on my
knees. The lamp
had burned out long ago; at the socket of the bulb,
thick rust.
All around me like weather lay the smell of the
abandoned house,
dampness in every timber, the wallpaper blistered,
dark-seamed,
at the window, the curtains mindlessly groping inward,
and beyond,
gray mist, wet limbs of trees. I seemed to be waiting
for someone.
And then (my eyes had been tricked) I saw her—
a slight, pale figure
standing at the center of the room, present from
the first, forlorn,
around her an earth-smell, silence, the memory of a
death. In fear
I clutched the arms of my chair. I whispered:
“Dream visitor
in a dreaming house, tell me what message you bring
from the grave,
or bring from my childhood, whatever unknown or
forgotten land
you haunt!” So I spoke, bolt-upright, trembling; but the ghost-shape, moonlit figure in mourning, was silent, as if she could neither see nor hear. She
had once
been beautiful, I saw: red hair that streamed like fire, charged like a storm with life. Alive no longer.
She began
to fade, dissolve like a mist. There was only the
moonlight.
Then came
from the night what I thought was the face of a man
familiar with books,
old wines, and royalty—dark head slightly lowered, eyes amused, neither cynical nor fully trusting: cool eyes set for anything—a man who could spin a yarn and if occasion forced him, fight.
Then I saw another shade,
a poet, I thought, his hair like a willow in a light wind, in his arms a golden lyre. He changed the room to sky by the touch of a single string—or the dream-change
rang in the lyre:
no watchfulness could tell which sea-dark power
moved first.
If I closed my eyes, it seemed the song of the man’s harp was the world singing, and the sound that came from
his lips the song
of hills and trees. A man could revive the dead
with a harp
like that, I thought; and the dead would glance back
in anguish at the grave,
torn between beauty’s pain and death’s flat certainties.
(This was a vision stranger than any a man ever saw. I rose and stepped in close. There came a whistling
wind.
My heart quaked. I’d come, God knew, beyond my
depth.
I found a huge old tree, vast oak, and clung to it,
waiting.)
And now still another ghost rose up, pale silent mist: the mightiest mortal who’d ever reached that thestral
shore,
his eyes like a child’s. They seemed remote from me
as stars
on a hushed December night. His whitened lips moved, and I strained forward; but then some wider vision
stirred,
blurring my sight: the swaying shadow of a huge snake, a ship reeling, a room in a palace awash in blood, a woman screaming, afire …
The sea went dark. Then all
grew still. I bided my time, the will of the moon-goddess.
A king stood scowling out over blue-green valleys.
He seemed
half giant, but enfeebled by age, his sinews slackening
to fat.
In the vast white house behind him, chamber rising
out of
chamber, nothing moved. There was no wind, no breeze. In the southwest, great dark towers of cloud were
piled high,
like summercastles thrown up in haste to shield ballistas, archers of ichor and air, antique, ignivomous engines, tottering in for siege, their black escarpments charged like thunderheads in a dream. Light bloomed, inside
the nearest—
there was no sound—and then, at the king’s left side
appeared
a stooped old man in black. He came from nowhere—
leering
sycophant wringing his crooked-knuckled hands, the
skin
as white as his beard, as white as the sun through
whitecaps riding
storm-churned seas. The king stood looking down at
him, casual,
believing he knew him well. “My lord!” the old man said, “good Kreon, noblest of men and most unfortunate!” He snatched at the hem of the king’s robe and kissed it,
smiling.
I saw that the old man’s eyes and mouth were pits. I
tried
to shout, struggle toward them. I could neither move
nor speak.
Kreon, distressed, reached down with his spotted,
dimpled hands
to the man he took for his servant, oft-times proven
friend,
and urged him up to his feet. “Come, come,” the king
said, half-
embarrassed, half-alarmed. “Do I look like a priest?”
He laughed,
his heart shaken by the sudden worship of a household
familiar.
He quickly put it out of mind. “But yes; yes it’s true,
we’ve seen
some times, true enough! Disaster after disaster!”
He laughed
&nb
sp; more firmly, calming. His bleared eyes took in the river winding below, as smooth and clean as new-cut brass, past dark trees, shaded rocks, bright wheat. In the
soft light
of late afternoon it seemed a place the gods had
blessed,
had set aside for the comfort of his old age. Dark walls, vine-locked, hinted some older city’s fall.
He tipped
his head, considered the sky, put on a crafty look. They say, ‘Count no man happy until he’s dead, beyond all change of Fortune.’” He smiled again, like a
merchant closing
his money box. “Quite so, quite so! But the axiom has its converse: ‘Set down no man’s life as tragedy till the day he’s howled his way to his bitter grave.’ ”
He chuckled,
a sound automatic as an old-man actor’s laugh, or
a raven’s.
He’d ruled long, presiding, persuading. Each blink,
each nod
was politics, the role and the man grown together
like two old trees.
Then, solemn, he squeezed one eye tight shut, his head drawn back. He scowled like a jeweller of thirty
centuries hence
studying the delicate springs and coils of a strange
timepiece,
one he intended to master. He touched the old slave’s
arm.
“The gods may test their creatures to the rim of
endurance—not
beyond. So I’ve always maintained. What man could
believe in the gods
or worship them, if it were otherwise?” He chuckled
again,
apologetic, as if dismissing his tendency toward bombast. “In any case,” he said, “our luck’s
changing.
I give you my word.” He nodded, frowning, hardly glancing at the husk from which the god peeked
out
as the rim of a winecup peeks from the grave of the
world’s first age.
The spying, black-robed power leered on, wringing his hands in acid mockery of the old servant’s love.
Whatever shadows had crossed
the king’s mind, he stepped out free of them. Tentatively, he smiled once more, his lips like a
woman’s,
faintly rouged, like his cheeks. His bald head glowed like polished stone in the failing light. A breeze, advancing ahead of the storm, tugged at his heavy skirts and picked at his beard. “It’s difficult, God knows,”
he said,
“to put those times behind us: Oidipus blind and wild, Jokasta dead, Antigone dead, high-chambered Thebes yawning down like a ship in flames… Don’t think
I haven’t
brooded aplenty on that. A cursed house, men say; a line fated to the last leaf on the last enfeebled branch. It’s a dreadful thought,
Ipnolebes.
I’m only human. I frighten as easy as the next man. I won’t deny that I’ve sat up in bed with a start,
sometimes,
shaking like a leaf, peering with terrified, weeping eyes at the night and filling the room with a frantic rush
of prayers—
‘Dear gods, dear precious-holy-gods …’ —Nevertheless, I can’t believe it. A man would be raving mad to think the luculent powers above us would doom us willy-nilly, whether we’re wicked or virtuous, proud or not. No, no! With all due respect, with all due love for Oidipus and the rest, such thoughts are the sickness of faulty
metaphysics.”
The king stared at the darkening sky, his soft hands folded, resting on his belly. Again he closed one eye and reached for the old slave’s arm. “I do not mean
to malign
the dead, you understand. But working it through in
my mind
I’ve concluded this: the so-called curse has burned
itself out.”
He paused, thought it over, then added, as if with a
touch of guilt,
“No curse in the first place, actually. They were tested
by the gods
and failed. Much as I loved them all, I’m forced to
say it.”
He shook his head. They were stubborn. So they went
down raging to the grave
as Oidipus rages yet, they tell me, stalking the rocks of his barren island, groping ahead of himself with
a stick,
answering cries of gulls, returning the viper’s hiss, tearing his hair, and the rest. Well, I’m a different breed of cat. Not as clever, I grant—and not as noble,
either—
but fit to survive. I’ve asked far less than those did. I ask for nothing! I do my duty as a king not out of pride in kingship, pleasure in the awesome power
I wield,
but of necessity. Someone must rule, and the bad luck’s
mine.
Would Kreon have hanged himself, like poor Jokasta?
She was
unfortunate, granted. But there have been cases, here
and there,
of incest by accident. She set her sights too high,
it seems.
An idealist. Couldn’t bend, you know. And Antigone
the same.
All that—great God!—for a corpse, a few maggots, a passing flock of crows! Well, let us learn from their
sad
mistakes. Accept the world as it is. Manipulate the possible. “
Strange…
“I’ve wondered sometimes if the gods were aware
at all of those terrible, noble deeds, those fiery
orations—
Oidipus blind on the steps, Antigone in the tomb,
Jokasta
claiming her final, foolish right to dignity.”
He covered his mouth with his hand and squinted.
He said, voice low:
“Compare the story of the perfect bliss of ancient
Kadmos,
founder of the line, with Harmonia, whose marriage
Zeus
himself came down to attend. King Kadmos—
Kosmos, rightly—
loved so well, old legends claim, that after his perfect joy in life—his faultless rule of soaring Thebes, great golden city where for many
centuries
nothing had stirred but the monstrous serpent
Kadmos slew—
the gods awarded him power and Joy after life,
Zeus filled
his palace with lightning-bolts, and the well-matched
pair was changed
to two majestic serpents, now Lady and Lord of all the Dead. So, surely, all who are good get recompense. If Oidipus did not—hot-tempered and vain—or
haughty Jokasta …
—But let it be. I don’t mean to judge them, you
understand.
They behaved according to their natures. Too good for
the world.” He nodded.
The wind came up. The sky overhead was as
dark-robed
as the god. Old Kreon pursed his lips as if the storm had taken him unawares. A spatter of rainfall came, warm drops, and the king hiked up his skirts and ran,
his servant
close behind, for shelter under the portico. The trees bent low, twisting and writhing, their
parched leaves
swaying like graygreen witches in a solemn dance.
The sky
flashed white. A peal of thunder shook the columned
house,
the stamping hoof of Poseidon’s violent horse above, and rain came down with a hiss, splashing the
flagstones. The king
breathed deep, a sigh, stretched out his arms. “Rain!” It was as if the gods had sent down rain for his
pleasure. “God
bless rain!” The king and his servant laughed and
hugged themselves,
watching it fall and listening, breathing the charged air.
&nbs
p; Inside the king’s vast house a hundred servants
padded
softly from room to room, busy at trivial chores, scrubbing, polishing, repairing—the unimportant lives reamed out of time by the names of kings. Slaves, the children of far-famed palaces broken by war, moved through the halls of Kreon’s palace carrying
flowers,
filling the smoke-black vases that darkened the royal
chambers,
driving away the unpleasant scents of humanness— sweat, the king’s old age, the stink of beloved dogs, stale wine, chamberpots, cooking. Eyes on the floor,
young men
of fallen houses from Africa to Asia moved silently opening doors to admit the lightning smell—
then,
eyes on the floor, soundless as jungle birds, moved on. The rumble of thunder, the dark murmur of rain,
came in.
A young blond slave with eyes as gray as the
North Sea
paused in the grillwork shadow of columns, his head
lowered,
peering intently, furtively, out toward distant hills where shafts of sunlight burst, serene, mysterious, through deep blue glodes; the shafts lit up the far-off
trees,
the rims of the hills, like silver threads in a tapestry. He stood unmoving except for one hand reaching out, as if for support, to a great white marble chair afire with figures—goddesses, nymphs, dryads, unicorns, heroes of ancient tales whose names were clouded in
mists
long before the sculptor carved the stone. The figures burgeoned from one another—arms, legs, wings, limp
horns—
as if the stone were diseased, as if some evil force inside it meant to consume the high-beamed room with
shapes,
fat-bellied, simpering, mindless—shapes to satisfy a Civilization hip-deep in the flattery of wealth and influence, power to the edges of the
world. The slave
moved his hand, as if in pain, infinite disgust, on fat breasts sweetly nippled, polished buttockses, the dwarf-pear little penises of smiling boys.
The distant shafts of sunlight dimmed, died out; the
hills
went dark. In the gray garden, rain drummed steadily on the rude, unadorned coffin carved from gray-black
rock
to house a dead king’s bones, forgotten founder of a city, ancient pessimist locked away safe in the earth’s stiff
heart.
No rune revealed the monarch’s name; no gravid wordshape hinted which god he trusted in.
The old slave dressed in black, Ipnolebes, dear to