Perdita (31 page)

Dear
Garth,

How pleasant it was to speak with you last week, even if only briefly. I meant to put something in the mail days ago, but I have delayed fulfilling my promise. Please excuse this belated package, but needless to say, I'm very glad that you came to me with your questions about
Perdita.

Most people associate Perdita with Robert Greene's
Pandosto
or Shakespeare's
The
Winter's Tale
, but she has much deeper roots in the ancient world and Greek cosmology. I am one of perhaps only a handful of scholars who know this—your father was another. He deeply shared my interest in Perdita. We had great debates about her: wonderful arguments and disagreements that surely would have continued had he not slipped away from us in so untimely a manner. I hope that I do not reopen old sorrows by mentioning this, but there is not a day that goes by that I do not miss my dear friend, esteemed colleague, and generous
mentor.

Now—if I may state my position succinctly—Perdita has been my passion for almost forty years. I am convinced that she plays a vital role in the cosmology of the ancient Greeks and is critical to how they understood destiny and fate. But she is also a terribly elusive figure, even more neglected by classical scholars than Iacchos, one of your father's
favorites.

I first came across a reference to Perdita during one of my stints at the Vatican Library. In fact, I believe that you had just been born, for I seem to remember hearing the news while I was in Rome. Though there were many troubled years that came later, I know you were a source of great joy to your father. I can attest to that firsthand, though I must admit he never complained of the severe trials that ensued as a result of your mother's
health.

My research at the Vatican was on Aeolian dialects in the works of Hesiod, a Greek poet who lived in the eighth century BC. I am sure you must know of his major work—the
Theogony—
and its account of how the world was
created.

Of course it goes without saying that there's no
true
original
of the
Theogony
; we classicists have had to depend on various copies that have been preserved and passed on over the centuries. Much of my research has focused on copies that were made by a Roman poet named Lumenius (c. 100–160 AD). Although Lumenius is not well known among classicists, his poetry is quite important for Hesiod scholars, namely because he had one strange (and for me very lucky) idiosyncrasy: Lumenius frequently inserted lines composed by his favorite writers into his own poems. Sometimes he even reproduced complete stanzas. Again, luckily for me, Lumenius was very fond of Hesiod and frequently inserted lines from the
Theogony
into his own
poetry.

You may wonder at Lumenius's method, but let me clarify that he was no plagiarizer. He was always very careful to distinguish between his own work and that of other authors. He had several different ways of doing this, but in the case of the
Theogony
, his method was to write his own verses in Latin and insert the copied Hesiod excerpts in Greek. This is a most important point to remember. It was this technique that led me to the discovery that Lumenius was working off a version of the
Theogony
that I had never seen. To make a long story short, after reading the Hesiod excerpts reproduced in Lumenius's poetry, I began to suspect there must be a longer version of the
Theogony
, containing pieces of unknown text: a very exciting idea for a
classicist!

It has taken me almost forty years of research, but I am now fully convinced that at one time there was a very different and much longer version of Hesiod's
Theogony
. By piecing together several of Lumenius's excerpts, I discovered fifty-one lines that do not appear in standard versions of the work. More to the point, the missing fifty-one lines relate to the segment where Prometheus steals fire and woman is created—and it is here we find
Perdita.

Now, to use an expression that your father always used with his students:
time
to
fasten
our
seat
belts
and
turn
to
the
text
.

Let us begin with standard versions of the
Theogony
, meaning the kind you can buy in any bookstore. Hesiod's poem recounts Prometheus's many transgressions against Zeus, including how he steals fire from the gods and gives it as a “gift” to mankind. Furious at Prometheus for giving mankind fire, Zeus decides to give a different kind of “gift.” He commands his son, the blacksmith Hephaestus, to fashion a beautiful but wasteful and deceitful maiden: this is none other than Pandora. Once manufactured, the maiden is sent off to Epimetheus—Prometheus's brother—with a “box” as her dowry. Yet, unable to quell her curiosity, Pandora opens up the “box.” Zeus, however, has stocked it with nasty spirits, and thus Pandora carelessly unleashes sickness, pestilence, and misfortunes on mankind. (Note: it is actually not a box but more a clay “vessel” or “jar,” but we can thank Erasmus for the
confusion.)

Now, as mentioned, the above myths of Prometheus's theft of fire and Pandora's creation are included in standard versions of the
Theogony,
but in the fragment I reconstructed, not only does the sequence of events change, but also the substance of the myth
itself.

In the extra fifty-one lines, Hephaestus unexpectedly falls in love with Pandora as he is making her. At first the blacksmith feels affection and friendship (
philia
) for Pandora, then passion (
eros
), and eventually unconditional love (
agape
). Day after day, Zeus comes to see if the maiden is finished and ready to be sent off to Epimetheus, but Hephaestus puts him off, always saying that he has more work to
do.

Hephaestus eventually lies with Pandora, and they have a child. Hephaestus names his child Emmenona: a variation of
emme/mona
, a Greek term meaning “to be lost in a passion.” (It is the poet Lumenius who later translates Emmenona into Perdita, from the Latin for “lost,” i.e.,
perditus
.)

Hephaestus and Pandora's connubial happiness soon ends. Zeus sends a messenger announcing that the maiden must be ready by the next day. Deeply attached to Pandora but fearful of Zeus's disapproval, Hephaestus hatches a plan. He tells Pandora that they must part, but he promises that it will only be a temporary separation, for Hephaestus plans to secretly abduct her and put the blame for her disappearance on mankind. As a precaution, he convinces Pandora to preserve their three loves—
philia
,
eros,
and
agape
—by tying them up in a bundle and giving them to their child, Emmenona/Perdita, whom he hides away in his forge. Hephaestus, however (and unbeknownst to Pandora), adds a fourth love to Perdita's bundle:
biophilia
.

The missing fragment tells us that
biophilia
is a powerful but secret form of love that connects all living things. It is rather risky for Hephaestus to hide it with Perdita, because it is a love that is known only to the gods. Yet Hephaestus plans to give
biophilia
to Pandora once he is reunited with her because he believes that it will complete their love and render it eternal. Hephaestus then hides Perdita in his forge. Zeus arrives and the beautiful but object-like Pandora (now bereft of
agape
,
eros,
and
philia
) is taken away from
him.

Pandora, however, is tricked by Zeus and unwittingly tells him of Perdita's existence. Zeus wrathfully claims that the child is his rightful possession and demands that she be handed over to him. Fortunately, Hephaestus gets wind of Zeus's outrage and quickly takes Perdita out of his forge and tries to hide
her.

The blacksmith goes to the first of the three Fates, Clotho—the sister who spins the thread of life—and begs her to take Perdita. Clotho promptly consults with her two sister Fates: Lachesis, who gives each man a portion of the thread (a destiny), and Atropos, who, with her shears, severs the thread at death. The sisters agree to take Perdita, for it seems that in exchange for sanctuary she can perform the Fates a
service.

We now come to a section in the extra fifty-one lines that deeply fascinates me. The fragment describes the Fates as sisters who do not always perform their tasks in an orderly fashion. Sometimes Clotho spins the thread of life too quickly or too slowly, thus creating both an excess or a dearth of thread. Atropos at times wearies of holding her heavy shears, and so she fails to sever the thread properly, and sometimes she even cuts it in the wrong place. Thus it is poor Lachesis, the sister in charge of allotments, who is left to deal with all these “mistakes of fate,” or what in contemporary terms might be called “loose
ends.”

The three sister Fates hide Perdita among these “extra threads,” and she is given the task of concealing them under Lachesis's robe. The excess threads, however, eventually become so voluminous that they begin to push out from under the edges of Lachesis's robe, and the sisters decide they must hide Perdita elsewhere. The Fates appeal to their mother, Themis, and she wisely advises them to give both Perdita and the extra threads to Prometheus. Prometheus consents, announcing his plan to steal fire from the gods and promising to reunite Perdita with Pandora (thus reconstituting woman as a “vessel” of love). This is probably the original meaning of Pandora and her box: obviously her role in classical mythology was drastically changed after Hesiod, but I will leave that argument to another
time.

Prometheus cleverly conceals Perdita in the folds of his cloak and procures a fiery coal. He gives the forbidden ember to mortals, but also places Perdita under their care. Yet mankind, seeing fire as a useful tool, but not the least interested in the child Perdita, quickly abandons her by the sea. Fortunately, Perdita is rescued by the Okeanides—water nymphs—and is adopted by
them.

In the last four lines of the missing fragment, Zeus furiously demands that the water nymphs hand all the extra threads of fate (as well as Perdita) over to him. The Okeanides, however, are one step ahead. They have already bundled the threads into a succession of forms (child nymphs) and distributed them throughout the seas, oceans, and freshwaters, so that Zeus might never possess all of them at one time. Themis, mother to the Fates, tells Zeus that he can only have the child “reassembled thread by thread” through acts of
clemency.

At this point, the fragment abruptly ends. It is not clear if Pandora ever returns to Hephaestus, and we do not learn what becomes of Perdita and her threads. I think it must have been longer, but I have only been able to piece fifty-one lines together thus
far.

As you can see, it is an extraordinary fragment of text. At some point, virtually all of it must have been excised from the
Theogony—
why and by whom remains a great mystery! But we certainly owe a debt to Lumenius for preserving Perdita. (Had I not stuck it out with his torturous prose writing, she might have been lost to us
forever!)

Moreover, Lumenius gives us an interesting interpretation of how Perdita fits into classical mythology. He describes the child as “the keeper” of the “lost threads” (
fila
perdita
) that connect all living things. He suggests that the
fila
perdita
of love relationships—more than any other kind—are Perdita's special province. (Lumenius might have had personal motives for doing this, as there is evidence to suggest he had a passionate but unrequited love for a married
woman.)

I should mention there is only one other scholar who has written on Hesiod's missing fragment. He is the Canadian-born scholar Victor Latham, who taught at St. Edmund's College in Toronto and then later at Trinity College until his death in 1935. (If you like, I can send you what I have on him, but I warn you, it's pretty
thin.)

Now for a confession. I have kept my discoveries about Hesiod's
Theogony
and Perdita largely to myself—sharing them only with your father. A few years before his death, I convinced Edward to coauthor a manuscript exploring the cosmological significance of Perdita, but it is now an unfinished and perhaps unfinishable work without
him.

As you can imagine, Perdita was a source of much discussion between us. Your father and I attempted through lexical proofs to establish that the fifty-one extra lines do indeed belong to Hesiod and that the missing fragment represents a foundational aspect of the ancients' understanding of fate, the nature of love, and the connections among all living things. Edward contested every argument I made; he died before I could fully convince him to go to press—though I still feel in my heart that his reservations were not of an intellectual cast, but related more to deep ambivalences within
himself.

So here, ultimately, is my loose end—and perhaps his. Nevertheless, Perdita is someone who belonged to the two of us. I believe she links us to one another, but there it is: an unaccountable
thread.

I hope you will pardon me, Garth, if I have gone on too long here. I am almost inclined to tear up this letter! I cannot justify to myself why I might send you this strange epistle; and yet I feel that at seventy-five years of age, some allowance might be made for my verbosity and candor. Perhaps I am sending this because you and I, though barely known to each other, share a thread in your wonderful and beloved
father.

Warm
regards,

Muriel Hampstead

“Well!” Clare raised a
glass of water to her lips. “That was quite the
letter.”

“Did Muriel say Victor Latham?” I
asked.

“Yes, here it is: ‘the Canadian-born scholar Victor Latham, who taught at St. Edmund's College in Toronto and then later at Trinity College until his death in 1935.' Why do you
ask?”

“I believe he was Marged Brice's classics professor, but I'll have to double-check.”

I placed a grilled fillet of whitefish on her plate. “What did you mean by ‘quite the letter'?” I
asked.

She smiled mysteriously and sliced the fish in half, transferring the larger piece to my plate. “I only meant that it's
quite
an amazing discovery. I can see how the Perdita myth must have influenced Shakespeare, can't you? But what's really amazing is how it changes the Prometheus
myth.”

I must have looked a little
puzzled.

“Prometheus doesn't bring just fire to humankind—you know, just technology, so to speak. Through Perdita he also brings love,” she
explained.

“Why is that so
significant?”

“For one thing, it represents a completely different take on the idea of Prometheus as the bringer of fire and technology to
humankind.”

“I think I see. You mean because Prometheus also brings Perdita along with the four loves she
carries?”

“Exactly! And that fourth kind of love in Perdita's bundle—
biophilia
—isn't it rather intriguing? You know there's a Harvard scientist who's written about it. He thinks that all living things have an instinctive orientation toward one another.
Biophilia
is supposed to be deep in our biological makeup. But if Muriel's right, the Ancient Greeks thought of it more as a kind of
love.”

Clare looked out toward the Bay, her expression growing thoughtful. “You know, Garth, Muriel's discovery could be something quite important. I mean, in terms of the history of
ideas.”

I smiled ruefully. “I don't know, it all seems pretty speculative. Even my father seems to have had his
reservations.”

“What do you think his reservations were about?” she asked
quietly.

I stood up. “Shall we continue this out on the deck? I think the storm is pretty much over, and we should be fine out under the
awning.”

Clare managed our plates while I fetched a towel and wiped off two deck
chairs.

The air was fresh and cool, and every few minutes we could hear the wind swishing through the treetops. Clare ducked back inside for a few minutes and reemerged carrying my father's
Collected
Works
of
Hesiod
.

“I'm just checking, Garth, but it looks like those extra fifty-one lines aren't
here.”

I let her read for a few moments. “Clare, you still haven't told me what you meant by it being quite the
letter.”

She put Hesiod down and looked over at me. “But I've already told
you.”

“Come on, out with it,” I said firmly. “That stuff about Prometheus and
biophilia
wasn't really it. Not entirely anyway. Am I
right?”

“Partly right. I was thinking of something else.” She was watching me carefully. “But first I want to know a bit more about
Muriel.”

I shrugged my shoulders. “She was one of my father's graduate students—a star student. Very brilliant. She often came over to the house when I was little. And then later, she became a colleague in his
department.”

“Did you see much of her when you were older? As an adult, I
mean?”

“No, not much. I lost track of her when I was at university. My visits home were much less frequent by that time. I guess I saw her most recently at my father's funeral. I remember because she was so distraught, I had to take her home
myself.”

“And your mother, did
she
like
Muriel?”

“Hmm…now that you mention it, she definitely wasn't keen about Muriel being
around.”

“What's Muriel
like?”

“Muriel is—in a word—
eccentric
. She used to wear one of those dead foxes around her neck: you know, with a big bushy tail and the eyes sewn shut. I was pretty fascinated by it as a kid.” I began to uncork a bottle of wine. “Now, for the third time: quite the
letter?”

“Well, this is totally reading between the lines, but…” She hesitated. “I'm just going to say it. I think Muriel might have been in love with your
father.”

I stared at her. “How did you get
that
from her
letter?”

“I'm sorry if I'm shocking you, Garth.” I could see a faint smile playing about the corners of her
mouth.

“My father was pretty liberal, but when it came to marriage…” I began. “I can't imagine
that—”

“Oh, no,” Clare interrupted. “I don't mean
that
. It obviously was an unrequited love.” She held her glass while I poured. “I hope you won't take this the wrong way,” she said after a pause. “But for Muriel's sake, I hope your father might have returned her affections, even just a
little.”

“Why?”

“Well, it would be very terrible to be deeply in love with someone who
didn't
love you back. Don't you think it would be easier to accept that the person just
couldn't
love you back: that circumstances prevented it. His marriage, for
example.”

“I'm not sure I understand you.” I was a bit bewildered about where she was
heading.

“I knew your father wasn't happily married, and I used to wonder if he might have had a long-lost sweetheart or something along those
lines.”

“If he did, it was a well-kept secret. That's all I can
say.”

“Well of course it would be! And then Muriel might take some comfort in knowing that he—owing to circumstances beyond his control—just couldn't return her affections. Not explicitly anyway. It would be a sort of unrequited romance or what the Victorians used to call an
unlawful
passion
.”

The wind sent a few drops of water splattering across the awning above
me.

“I can't speculate on the secrets of my father's heart,” I said lightly, “but from his end of things, unrequited love for someone like Muriel didn't appear to be his biggest
problem.”

“Oh?” She took a sip of wine, looking up at me over the rim of her
glass.

“No. To put it bluntly, I think my father's love troubles fell well within the bounds of a lawful passion. He simply fell out of love with my mother. I suppose it happened gradually, but the experience left him pretty washed up. He married as an older man, and I really don't know that there was much left in him for
Muriel.”

“Hmm—one never knows the full story, though.”

I went inside to pour myself a scotch. “Well, if my father harbored a secret passion for Muriel,” I called out through the screen, “I'd probably be the last person to see it. But I certainly had a front-row seat for his disillusionment with my
mother.”

Clare's eyes followed me as I returned to my chair. “I wonder if those kinds of love are part of Perdita's bundle?” she mused. “Of course some of her threads must be those wonderful and beautiful kinds of love. But I suppose they might also include the terrible kinds, too. You know: Lumenius's unrequited love and your father's disillusioned love.” Then she laughed. “In a way, Perdita is a bundle of
love.”

“‘Bundle of love'? Isn't that a Motown
hit?”

She grimaced. “I know it sounds sappy. But even so, I think that's what Muriel was trying to get at in her
letter.”

Both of us sat quietly looking at the stars begin to pierce through the night sky, a cool breeze stirring the cedars above
us.

“I'm glad Muriel's Perdita keeps those threads,” Clare murmured softly, as if speaking her thoughts out loud. “I think I might feel something like
biophilia
for this place. Don't you, Garth? I suppose I'm an incorrigible romantic, but I'm drawn to the whole
idea.”

I liked her term—
incorrigible romantic.
It suited her. “What
idea?”

“The idea that it's love in all its varieties that really connects living things. Perdita offers us the possibility of understanding our connections, including our broken or ill-fated connections.” She reached down for her shawl and drew it up over her shoulders. “Maybe she even represents the chance to pick up a lost thread. What did Muriel call them:
fila
perdita
?”

We were both silent after
that.

I took a sip of scotch. “Clare,” I said suddenly. “Why didn't you ever tell me it was you who caught that
fish?”

“Fish? What
fish?”

“The one in the photograph: the big whitefish you gave me for my
birthday.”

She looked away, laughing. “Oh, Garth, it can hardly matter
now.”

“Well, you've put me in a very bad light, you
know.”

“What do you
mean?”

“All these years and I've never thanked you for my birthday
present.”

She smiled. “You're
forgiven.”

“You're sure?” I was surprised at how serious I
sounded.

“Of course, Garth. Completely
forgiven.”

“And forgiven for the photograph? The one of—of all of
us…?”

She gave me a puzzled look. “But you didn't have anything to do with that. And besides, now I'm freed from captivity, aren't I? Or at least I'm freed from the anonymity of being placed off
frame.”

“You were right, you know. I couldn't find you in any of the photographs my mother put up. I'd like to believe it was just a
coincidence.”

“Oh, indeed! Just a coincidence,” she replied a little
drily.

“Have you ever taken a look at how Davey Sullivan is eyeing you in that
photograph?”

“No. Why do you
ask?”

“Whatever happened to him?” I continued. “Did you keep up with him? Doug and I never
did.”

“I always thought he was sweet on Evienne,” she said a little evasively. “I mean, wasn't
everyone?”

I took another slow sip of scotch. “Clare, I've probably no right to ask you, but you never liked Evi, did
you?”

“Not very much. I know it sounds like a cliché, but I don't like to speak ill of the
dead.”

“You know Evienne was—she was very prone to jealousy,” I ventured cautiously. “Especially around other beautiful
women.”

Clare got up and walked restlessly to the edge of the
deck.

“I always thought Evienne was such an unusual name,” she said after a few moments. “Did you know—well, do you know about that
name?”

I shook my head. “Is there something special about
it?”

“I suppose it's a bit obscure, but Evienne is a derivation of Nimue: the Lady of the Lake. Nimue is the enchantress who beguiles Merlin and puts him to
sleep.”

I was surprised. “Did you ever tell Evi
that?”

“Oh, no—of course not. It was your father who told me. It was after you and Evienne announced your
engagement.”

“How long does Merlin sleep?” I asked, watching her
closely.

She turned and fastened her blue eyes on mine. “A long time—a very long time. In most accounts, he sleeps forever, but your father told me that in a very few versions, he
awakens.”

I laughed awkwardly. “It's been quite a literary evening, hasn't it? We've covered Hesiod, Shakespeare, and now we're getting into the Knights of the Round
Table.”

The wind was picking up, and Clare pulled her shawl tightly around her body, shivering slightly. I jumped up, exclaiming that she must be getting chilly, and asked if she wanted to go in by the fire. But she turned away slowly and called to Mars, saying that she had better get back to
Douglas.

I followed her down the stairs to the beach and found myself thinking that she would have to go back in the dark, across all those stones and then up the
embankment.

I asked her if she was all right to go back by
herself.

“Of course, I've got the stars to light my way.” And then she was gone, with Mars following at her
heels.

A few seconds later, it was only her voice floating back to me from out of the
darkness.

“Thanks so much for dinner, Garth. You'll probably be up all night reading that next diary, won't
you?”

“Yes,” I called back out into the darkness. “Yes—I probably
will.”