Letters (127 page)
Hum! Hum! We spent the week hard at it with LILYVAC Months of Apollo’s gestation & of Leto’s flight from Hera’s Python Letters exchanged between Abelard & Héloïse not counting “Calamities of Abelard” Years of 3rd phase of War of Austrian Succession 1756-63 Weeks of Austro-Prussian War 1866 Gasterocheires Consonants of Hawaiian alphabet. We also considered what he’d bid us consider, monitored Regina de Nominatrix so far so good she was able now to do chores between Dustings, and reflected upon Elba & St. Helena, 1st & 2nd Exiles & Returns. For he had also invoked, our (f.) frère, another link between us, which he promised to illumine further on Bloodsworth Island: the heroical efforts of one of his ancestors on behalf of the noblest of ours on the island named for the saint on whose day we conversed. Ought we, we wondered, to consider a 2nd Exile of our own, once LIL was reprogrammed, to re-return at the Phi-point 6 et cet. for the Golden Age?
R.S.V.P.! No reply. Ma! Da!
The events of 8/24 & 25 confirm this prospect. M. le Baron C. assures us that he is more and more confident of funding for our 7-Year Plan, as yet unnamed. We are considering the neutralization of both Todd Andrews and Drew Mack, and preparing Merope for return to Comalot. By way of an exercise in turning our adversaries’ strengths to our RESET He arranged a U.S. Navy aerial target practice against “D.C.,” pointing out to us that we could as readily have used it to eliminate e.g. T.A. & D.M., and might in future. In the same exercise we took advantage of Merope’s disillusionment with obsolescent media and their representatives to approach her confidentially re the prospect of recoming to Comalot as Chief Programmer no sex no housework Bea G. to do all that between Honey-Dustings, and we were pleased to hear in her scream something tentative, a camouflaged Maybe. Finally, at our ( ) brother’s suggestion we took the opportunity to re-rehearse the apotheosis foreshadowed by the Great Magazine Explosion: an entire success. From Merope we proceeded alone into the marsh during the aforementioned night-firing exercise, made a practice lift-off in the Prohibited Area that our ancestor would be proud of, eluded without difficulty the navy search party by mimicking 1 of its members, and surprised M. Casteene himself by appearing in his study next noon i.e. yesterday M 8/25
☽
in perigee Swallows leave North country Kopechne exhumation doubtful as he was himself in mid-metamorphosis ha ha! Dialogue. Ha ha, he ejaculated, caught me there, didn’t you, mon semblable mon RESET Well well things are moving très swiftly indeed Do you think you can wind up LILYVAC’s reprogramming by the autumnal equinox Here are a few more I just thought of Continents Hills of Rome Sleepers of Ephesus Wonders of world Lamps of architecture (Ruskin) Voyages of Sinbad Snow White’s dwarfs. How in the world did you ever et cet. & can you possibly make it to our final rehearsal at Fort McHenry Baltimore Harbor 9/13 sharp. Narrative. His own intention he declared was to issue between now and then an ultimatum to his son:
Appear as my ally or be regarded as mein enemy!
Perhaps we should do likewise with our parents and, faute de reply, look beyond them for our (true) derivation, as he perhaps would be obliged to look past his son to his (unborn) grandchildren as the (true) heirs of the unfinished business of the 2nd Revolution Au revoir &: don’t forget to provide him with a full report on our ascension and evasion tactics out there in the marsh quite a trick et cet. In return he would see to Merope’s recoming at least for a few (trial) shining RESET But keep her off the Honey Dust and Bea on it, d’accord?
Done. Bea/Regina reports that 1 of T.A.‘s operatives came snooping about in my absence but she was between Dustings and able to handle him, no sweat. LILYVAC confirms. Hum! Urge you send Margana soonest so that we can Dust & stash Queen B. till term, complete repair of language circuits, finish reprogramming by equinox.
Last call, Ma, Da!
AF*ØAppear as our ally or
RESET Your loving son 10 2 a.k.a. Rex Numerator cc:MC
Ambrose Mensch to Yours Truly.
His final such letter: the plan of his abandoned Perseus story, conformed to the plan of his own life.
Lord Amherst Motor Hotel
5000 Main Street
Buffalo, New York 14226
Monday 8/4/69
T | Yours Truly |
F | The Once & Future Ambrose Mensch, lately “Arthur Morton King,” Whom It Ceases to Concern |
R | Your letter to me of May 12, 1940 |
Y:
Hello and good-bye. Inasmuch as in the course of
I. My life’s First Cycle
A. On Carl Jung’s 94th birthday (6/26/69) our friend Magda Giulianova underwent uterine surgery. By her own account, a hysterectomy.
B. Fitzroy Richard Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan, mythologist and descendant of the Crimean War field marshal after whom the raglan sleeve, analyzed the biography of the typical mythic hero into 22 several events or features, to wit:
1. The hero’s mother is a royal virgin;
2. His father is a king, and
3. Often a near relative of his mother, but
4. The circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. He is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or his maternal grandfather, to kill him, but
7. He is spirited away, and
8. Reared by foster parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or a giant, dragon, or wild beast,
12. He marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor, and
13. Becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully, and
15. Prescribes laws, but
16. Later he loses favor with the gods and/or his subjects, and
17. Is driven from the throne and the city, after which
18. He meets with a mysterious death,
19. Often at the top of a hill.
20. His children, if any, do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. He has one or more holy sepulchers.
*
C. Joseph Campbell, mythologist and comparative religionist, drawing upon Lord Raglan’s analysis and the theories of Carl Jung, arranged these events into a cycle of 9 (or 23) several events or features, thus:
†
D. I, whom these matters have long and obsessively concerned, find such divisions, while illuminating, as finally arguable as the measurement of an irregular coastline (Bertrand Russell’s example). Is the perimeter of Bloodsworth Island 10 miles? 100 miles? 1,000 miles? The answer depends upon how much particularity one ignores: the larger and smaller coves (Okahanikan, Tigs, Pone); the larger and smaller creeks (Long, Muddy, Fin); the bights and bends; the several points and spits that grow and shrink with the tide; the individual tussocks, hummocks, and fingers of each of these; the separate spartina stalks, oyster shells, and sand grains that comprise them, themselves irregular down past their molecules to the limits of definition. The coastline of Bloodsworth Island is infinite!
Likewise the itemization of, say, Perseus’s career, which I can as reasonably divide into 2, 8, 28, or 49 coordinate parts as into Campbell’s 9 or Raglan’s 22. Many of the 49, even, in my tidy 7x7 diagram thereof (which never mind), could be separated further or combined with their neighbors. Ought its items C5, C6, and C7, for example (Espial of Andromeda on Cliff at Joppa, Slaying of Sea Monster, Marriage to Andromeda), to be a single item (Rescue and Marriage)? Or ought its C7 to be divided into Rivalry with Phineus, Wedding Feast, Battle in the Banquet Hall, etc.?
All which considerations are but homely reminders of what mystics and logicians know (and mythic heroes at the Axis Mundi): that our concepts, categories, and classifications are ours, not the World’s, and are as finally arbitrary as they are provisionally useful. Including, to be sure, the distinction between
ours
and
the World’s.
E. If therefore, for formal elegance, I divide the story of Perseus the Golden Destroyer first into 2 “cycles” (e.g., I:
The official myth;
II:
My projected fiction about his later adventures: his midlife crisis and its resolution);
and if I further divide each of those cycles into, say, 7 parts or stages, of which the 6th in each case is the climax; and if I still further divide each of those climactic 6th stages into 7 parts, of which ditto, my division will be about as defensible as those of Lord R. & Co.
F. Such an analysis might give us, for example,
1. In the First Cycle, like scenes in a mural,
I. The official myth
A. Perseus’s conception in Argos upon virgin Danaë in the brass contraceptive tower, by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold.
B. His rescue, with Mother Danaë, from the brassbound box in which his maternal grandfather has set them adrift in order to escape the usual oracle: grand-infanticide or grand-parricide.
C. After an otherwise eventless childhood-in-exile on the island of Seriphos, his advisement by Athena on ways & means to accomplish the task laid on him by King Polydectes (i.e., the slaying of Medusa the Gorgon), who wants Perseus dead so that he can have Danaë. Athena’s further equipping him with Hermes’s curved sword and her own mirror-bright shield.
D. His outwitting of the 3 Gray Ladies, who alone know where the Styx-Nymphs live, who alone can give him the other equipment he needs to kill Medusa. His theft of the Graeae’s single eye as surety, and subsequent loss of it into Lake Triton.
E. His acquisition from the odorous Styx-Nymphs of Hermes’s winged sandals, Hades’s helmet of invisibility, and the petrifactionproof sack to carry the Gorgon’s head in.
F. 1. His successful decapitation of sleeping Medusa and escape from her sister Gorgons.
2. His petrifaction, with Medusa’s head, of inhospitable Atlas into an African mountain, as he tries to navigate his way back onto the map.
3. His espial of Andromeda chained to the Joppan cliff, and his rescue of her from the sea-beast Cetus.
4. His marriage to her despite the protests of his rival Phineus, and his recitation to the wedding guests of his story thus far.
5. The battle in the banquet hall when Phineus
&”
Co. disrupt his recitation; their petrifaction by Medusa’s head.
6. His honeymoon return with Andromeda to Seriphos, where he rescues Danaë by petrifying Polydectes. I.e., the termination of his tasks by the extermination of his taskmaster.
7. His triumphal further return to Argos with wife and mother, his accession to the throne, and his accidental slaying of Grandfather Acrisius (his prenatal and postpartum adversary) with a mispitched discus.
G. His 8-year reign and establishment of the Perseid dynasty.
2. And if this mural exfoliated upon a wall not flat like Dido’s Carthaginian frescoes (in which Aeneas sees his own story thus far, even his own face), nor circular like Campbell’s diagram, but logarithmically spiraling out as in a snail-shaped temple, then the Second-Cycle scenes, each positioned behind the original it echoes, might well depict
II. My projected fiction etc.
A. Perseus’s fall from favor with the gods, the decline of his marriage, and the general stagnation or petrifaction of his career; his hope to be “reborn,” at least rejuvenated, by a revisit to the scenes of his initial triumphs.
B. His quarrelsome voyage with Andromeda, who scoffs at his project; their shipwreck and rescue by a descendant of old King Polydectes: handsome Prince Danaus of Seriphos, who flirts with Andromeda.
C. His resolve to continue the reenactment alone, leaving Andromeda to her affair with Danaus. His reconsultation of veiled “Athena” for advice and equipment. She lends him the winged horse Pegasus but is otherwise equivocal, even skeptical of his project. The truth is, she is not Athena but Medusa in disguise! Moreover, she
loves
Perseus; has loved him all along! Athena, her original punisher, has recapitated her and restored her maiden beauty, but with certain hard conditions, to be disclosed in IIF1.
D. His reencounter with the Graeae, who want their eye back. But P. has dropped it accidentally into Lake Triton in the 1st Cycle (ID). He promises to retrieve it.
E. His deep dive into that lake for that eye; his near drowning and rescue by Medusa, disguised as a Styx-Nymph.
F. 1. His lakeshore idyll with this veiled and odorless nymph, who reveals herself to be Medusa, but won’t lift her veil. For Athena has told her that if her true lover unveils her, they will be immortalized together like Keats’s lovers on the Grecian Urn; but if anyone else does, she will be re-Gorgonized and he
a fortiori
petrified.
She’s
willing to risk it, but is he?
2. His decision that he is not, yet. He slips off, attempts to fly over the desert as in his youth, loses his way, crash-lands, loses his consciousness, awakes in a spiral temple muraled with all the foregoing scenes and ministered over, as is he, by a pretty young priestess, who becomes his lover. He believes himself dead and in heaven, learns that he’s alive and in Egypt (where he’d paused for refreshment in the 1st Cycle) and that his new hero-worshiping lover, a student of mythology, is the artist responsible for the story of his life thus far, complete to IIF2.
3. His gratefully kissing her… good-bye. He departs from the temple, returns down the Nile, and secretly enters Joppa, where he learns that Andromeda is established in the palace with her new lover.
4. His confrontation with her there, among the petrified host from IF4, their original wedding guests. Danaus’s live warriors step armed from behind the “statues”; it is a trap.
5. The
second
Banquet-Hall Battle, a reenactment of the first, but without Medusa’s aid. Perseus’s slaying of young Danaus, arduous general victory, and sparing of Andromeda. Their final rejection of each other.
6.
His unveiling and open-eyed embrace of ambiguous Medusa, let come what may.
7.
Their transfiguration (along with Andromeda, her mother Cassiopeia, her father Cepheus, the monster Cetus, the horse Pegasus, and the remarkable artist-priestess of IIF2, who will by now have added these scenes to the unwinding mural) into constellations.
G. Their “posthumous” dialogue in the sky, in which, as every night, certain questions are raised (e.g., Has Medusa been truly restored, and is Perseus her true lover? Or was his kiss a mere desperate hope, and she thus a Gorgon after all?) and at least equivocally answered; the stars set until the next nightly reenactment of their story.
3. If my story were so partitioned, and further arranged in its telling so that the First Cycle is rehearsed retrospectively in course of the Second—which itself begins
in medias res,
in the Egyptian temple of
IIF2
—then the “panel”
IIF6,
Perseus’s open-eyed embrace of his new Medusa, would be the climax of the climax, intimated in IE (not
IE)
above.
4. Such a pattern might even be discovered in one’s own, unheroical life. In the stages of one’s professional career, for example, or the succession of one’s love affairs.
5. If one imagines an artist less enamored of the world than of the language we signify it with, yet less enamored of the language than of the signifying narration, and yet less enamored of the narration than of its formal arrangement, one need
not
necessarily imagine that artist therefore forsaking the world for language, language for the processes of narration, and those processes for the abstract possibilities of form.
6.
Might he/she not as readily, at least as possibly, be imagined as thereby (if only thereby) enabled to love the narrative through the form, the language through the narrative, even the world through the language?
Which, like narratives and their forms, is after all among the contents of the world.
7. And, thus imagined, might not such an artist, such an amateur of the world, aspire at least to expert amateurship? To an honorary degree of humanity?
G. And if—by a curriculum of dispensations, advisements, armings, trials, losses, and gains, isomorphic with a Perseus’s or a Bellerophon’s—this artist contrived somehow to attain that degree, might he not then find himself liberated to be (as he has after all always been, but is enabled now more truly, freely, efficaciously to be) in the world? Just as the Hero (at
IF6)
finally terminates his tasks by exterminating his taskmaster and
(IIF6)
discovers in what had been his chiefest adversary his truest ally, so such an “artist,” at the Axis Mundi or Navel of the World, might find himself liberated—Old self! Old Other! Yours Truly!—from such painful, essential correspondences as ours. Which I now end, and with it the career of “Arthur Morton King.” In order to begin
II. My life’s Second Cycle