Jason and Medeia (63 page)

father,

or give firm reasons for avoiding the place. But I've

little heart left

for tedious illusions—not mine, not even some other

man's.

Life is a foolish dream in the mind of the Unnamable. When he wakens, we'll vanish in an instant, squeezed

to our nothingness,

or so we're advised by books. Therefore I devote myself, for all my famous temper, wrecker of my life, to learning to forget this life, drifting, will-less, toward absolute

nothing,

formless land where all paradox, all struggle, melts. A man who's been totally crushed by life should

understand these things,

a man whose loss has proved absolute. All the more,

therefore,

I wonder what reason Jason may have found—

unless, perhaps,

pure rage, after all these years, has still sufficient power to drive him on, forcing him even now to seek revenge. You say that the yard on your mast is a roost

for ravens.

A dangerous sign; I agree with you. For surely the curse Medeia placed on Jason is there confirmed, death on the
Argo.
And yet on that selfsame ship he

follows her.

But that, I think, is by no means the worst of

attendant omens.

In your wake come the groans of unheard-of creatures,

and a smell of fire,

and sounds of a vast, unholy war. I need not say

‘Turn back in time, have nothing to do with this

futureless man,'

for the dullest peasant could give such advice. I ask,

instead,

what brings you here? What can it be you've grasped—

or what

do you hope for? I am anxious to understand.”

   Mad Idas held his hands to the fire, Lynkeus looking sadly through

the walls.

Jason waited, struggling against his restlessness.

Then Idas said:

“All you've told me I've known from the beginning,

though it's taken me years

to grasp the thing that, because I am not like other men, I knew. As my brother sees with his lynx's eyes

more things

than others see, so I, in my madness, am blessed

or cursed

with uncommon sight. In every tree and stone I see the gods warring—not to the death but casually, lightly, to break the eternal tedium. And I see the same in human hearts. It filled me with panic once. Not now. Once, half-asleep with friends who were talking,

telling old stories,

and all signs swore that not a man there could work

up a mood

for quarrelling, I would feel an estrangement in the man

at my side—

fear, mistrust, or some other emotion dividing

his heart—

and I'd know if I let myself look I'd discover the same

in them all,

no stability in any man, no rock to lean on,

all our convictions, all our faith in each other,

an illusion—

reality a pit of vipers squirming, blindly striking, murdering themselves. Cold sweat would rise on

my forehead, and I

would strike out first, their scapegoat; my own. But as

time passed

I got over that; came to accept more calmly the darkness that surrounds and shapes us. I came to accept what you

preach to us now,

the voracious black hole at the core of things. I too

observed

how fine it would be if Herakles were right—some

loving god

attending mankind in every sorrow, demanding merely total devotion, action conformant to His character. Since no such god was there, I let it pass—allowed that Theseus' way was best, faith by despair. But we had stolen the fleece, we on the
Argo,
and Theseus

had not.

That was the difference. We'd done the impossible, and

never again

would Theseus' way suffice. Then Medeia murdered

the sons

of Jason. There's no way up from that. No way, at least, for Jason himself. For no revenge, however dire, could have any shred of meaning. You see how it is.

No man

could guess such love, such rage at betrayal. She emptied

herself.

All the pale colonnades of reason she blew sky-high, like a new volcano hurled through the heart of the city.

So he,

reason's emblem, abandoned reason.” He glanced at

Jason,

furtive and quick, his mad smile flashing in the light

of the fire.

“He abandoned the oldest rule in the world. It's not for

revenge

that he hunts Medeia. Move by move they played out

the game

of love and power, and both of them lost. What

shamelessness,

what majestic madness to claim that it wasn't a game

after all,

that no rules apply—that love is the god at the heart

of things,

dumb to the structured surface—high ruler of the

rumbling dance

behind the Unnamable's dream. And does Jason think,

you ask,

that hell overcome that woman's rage with his maniac

love?

Not for an instant! He thinks nothing, hopeful or

otherwise:

his will is dead, burned to cinders like Koronis' corpse on her funeral pyre, from whence the healer

Asklepios leaped;

or burned like the Theban princess Semele in lightnings

from Zeus,

out of whose ash, like the Phoenix, the god Dionysos

rose,

god who first crushed from the blood-soaked earth

the wine he brings

to the vineyard's clawing roots. He has no fear any more, of total destructions, for only the man destroyed

utterly—

only the palace destroyed to its very foundation grits— is freed to the state of indifferent good: mercy without

hope,

power to be just. No matter any more, that life is

a dream.

Let those who wish back off, seek their virtuous

nothingness;

the man broken by the gods—if he's still alive—is free even of the gods. Dark ships follow us, ghostly armadas baffled by his choice. Sir, do not doubt their reality. I give you the word of a madman, they're there—vast

lumbering fleets,

some sliding, huge as cities, on the surface, some

drifting under us,

some of them groaning and whining in the air. At times

his voice

comes back to him, though not his mind, and he

shouts at them:

‘Fools! You are caught in irrelevant forms: existence

as comedy,

tragedy, epic!'
We let him rave. The end is inevitable. We sail, search on for Erekhtheus, in an endlessly

changing

sea.” So he spoke, and ended.

   Then Oidipus rose from the fire and tapped with his cane to the mouth of the cave. He

stood a long while

in sad meditation, then pointed the way, as well as

he knew how.

The winds had brought them far, far north. It would

take them months

to row the
Argo
to warmer seas and the kingdom

of Aigeus.

“Go with my blessing,” the blind king said. “May the

goddess of love

bend down in awe. The idea of desire is changed, made

holy.”

They thanked him, and Jason seized his hand and

struggled to speak.

But Oidipus raised his fingers to Jason's lips and said, “No matter.” Jason bowed, and so they parted. In haste they mounted the
Argo,
and Idas signalled the rowers.

The blades

dug in, backing water, and the black ship groaned,

dragging off the shore,

drawing away into darkness and smoke. The night

was filled

with explosions and lights, what might have been some

great celebration

or might have been some final, maniacal war.

Then came

wind out of space, and the island vanished. I was

falling, clinging

to my hat. But the tree was falling with me, its huge

gnarled roots

reaching toward the abyss. I hung on, cried, “Goddess,

goddess!”

In the thick dark beams of the tree above me,

ravens sat watching

with unblinking eyes. I heard all at once, from end

to end

of the universe, Medeia's laugh, full of rage and sorrow, the anger of all who were ever betrayed, their hearts

understood

too late. At once—creation
ex nihilo,
bold leap of Art, my childhood's hope—the base of the tree shot infinitely

downward

and the top upward, and the central branches shot

infinitely left

and right, to the ends of darkness, and everything

was firm again,

everything still. A voice that filled all the depth

and breadth

of the universe said:
Nothing is impossible!

Nothing is definite!

Be calm! Be brave!
But I knew the voice: Jason's,

full of woe.

A rope snapped, close at hand, and I heard the sailyard

fall,

and ravens flew up in the night, screeching, and Idas

cried out.

Oidipus, sitting alone in his cave, put a stick on the fire. “Nothing is impossible, nothing is definite. Be still,”

he whispered.

The Moirai, three old sisters, solemnly nodded in

the night.

In a distant time I saw these things, and in all our times, when angry Medeia was still on earth, and the

mind of Jason

struggled to undo disaster, defiant of destiny, crushed:

I saw these things in a world of old graves where

winecups waited,

and King Dionysos-Christ refused to die, though

forgotten—

drinking and dancing toward birth—and Artemis,

with empty eyes,

sang life's final despair, proud scorn of hope, in a room gone strange, decaying … a sleeping planet adrift

and drugged …

while deep in the night old snakes were coupling with

murderous intent.

A Biography of John Gardner

John Gardner (1933–1982) was a bestselling and award-winning novelist and essayist, and one of the twentieth century's most controversial literary authors. Gardner produced more than thirty works of fiction and nonfiction, consisting of novels, children's stories, literary criticism, and a book of poetry. His books, which include the celebrated novels
Grendel
,
The Sunlight Dialogues
, and
October Light
, are noted for their intellectual depth and penetrating insight into human nature.

Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father, a preacher and dairy farmer, and mother, an English teacher, both possessed a love of literature and often recited Shakespeare during his childhood. When he was eleven years old, Gardner was involved in a tractor accident that resulted in the death of his younger brother, Gilbert. He carried the guilt from this accident with him for the rest of his life, and would incorporate this theme into a number of his works, among them the short story “Redemption” (1977). After graduating from high school, Gardner earned his undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and he married his first wife, Joan Louise Patterson, in 1953. He earned his Master's and Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa in 1958, after which he entered into a career in academia that would last for the remainder of his life, including a period at Chico State College, where he taught writing to a young Raymond Carver.

Following the births of his son, Joel, in 1959 and daughter, Lucy, in 1962, Gardner published his first novel,
The Resurrection
(1966), followed by
The Wreckage of Agathon
(1970). It wasn't until the release of
Grendel
(1971), however, that Gardner's work began attracting significant attention. Critical praise for
Grendel
was universal and the book won Gardner a devoted following. His reputation as a preeminent figure in modern American literature was cemented upon the release of his
New York Times
bestselling novel
The Sunlight Dialogues
(1972). Throughout the 1970s, Gardner completed about two books per year, including
October Light
(1976), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the controversial
On Moral Fiction
(1978), in which he argued that “true art is by its nature moral” and criticized such contemporaries as John Updike and John Barth. Backlash over
On Moral Fiction
continued for years after the book's publication, though his subsequent books, including
Freddy's Book
(1980) and
Mickelsson's Ghosts
(1982), were largely praised by critics. He also wrote four successful children's books, among them
Dragon
,
Dragon and Other Tales
(1975), which was named Outstanding Book of the Year by the
New York Times
.

In 1980, Gardner married his second wife, a former student of his named Liz Rosenberg. The couple divorced in 1982, and that same year he became engaged to Susan Thornton, another former student. One week before they were to be married, Gardner died in a motorcycle crash in Pennsylvania. He was forty-nine years old.