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

Hephæstus.

What is it?

Eros.

Well … I am not sure that… Perhaps I ought to leave him to explain it.

Heracles.

You would not be able to comprehend me. I am not sure that I myself —

[Two of the Oceanides re-enter, much more seriously than before, and with an eager importance of gesture.]

Amphitrite.

We are not playing now. We have a message from Zeus, Hephæstus. He says that he is waiting impatiently for the sceptre you are making for him.

Doris.

Yes, you must hurry back to your cave. And we are longing to see what ornament you are putting on the sceptre. Let us come with you. We will hold the torches for you as steadily as if we were made of marble.

Hephæstus.

Come, then, come. Let us descend together. I hope that my science has not quitted me. We will see whether even on this rugged shore and with these uncouth instruments, I cannot prove to Zeus that I am still an artist. Come, I am in a hurry to begin. Give me your hands, Amphitrite and Doris.

[Exeunt.

XI

[The glen, through which the stream, slightly flooded by a night's rain, runs faintly turbid. Dionysus, earnestly engaged in angling, does not hear the approach of Æsculapius.]

Æsculapius [in a high, voluble key].

It is not to me but to you, O ruddy son of Semele, that the crowds of invalids will throng, if you cultivate this piscatory art so eagerly, since to do nothing, serenely, in the open air, without becoming fatigued, is to storm the very citadel of ill-health, and —

Dionysus [testily, without turning round].

Hush! hush!.. I felt a nibble.

Æsculapius [in a whisper, flinging himself upon the grass].

It was in such a secluded spot as this that Apollo heard the trout at Aroanius sing like thrushes.

Dionysus.

How these poets exaggerate! The trout sang, I suppose, like the missel-thrush.

Æsculapius.

What song has the missel-thrush?

Dionysus.

It does not sing at all. Nor do trout.

Æsculapius.

You are sententious, Dionysus.

Dionysus.

No, but closely occupied. I am intent on the subtle movements of my rod, round which my thoughts and fancies wind and blossom till they have made a thyrsus of it. Now, however, I shall certainly catch no more fish, and so I may rest and talk to you. Are you searching for simples in this glen?

Æsculapius.

To tell you the plain truth, I am waiting for Nike. She has given me an appointment here.

Dionysus.

I have not seen her since we arrived on this island.

Æsculapius.

You have seen her, but you have not recognised her. She goes about in a perpetual incognito. Poor thing, in our flight from Olympus she lost all her attributes – her wings dropped off, her laurel was burned, she flung her armour away, and her palm-tree obstinately refused to up-root itself.

Dionysus.

No doubt at this moment it is obsequiously rustling over the odious usurper.

Æsculapius.

It was always rather a poor palm-tree. What Nike misses most are her wings. She was excessively dejected when we first arrived, but Pallas very kindly allowed her to take care of the jewel for half an hour. Nike – if still hardly recognisable – is no longer to be taken for Niobe.

Dionysus [rising to his feet].

I shall do well, however, to go before she comes.

Æsculapius.

By no means. I should prefer your staying. Nike will prefer it, too. In the old days she always liked you to be her harbinger.

Dionysus.

Not always; sometimes my panthers turned and bit her. But my panthers and my vines are gone to keep her laurels and her palm-tree company. I think I will not stay, Æsculapius. But what does Nike want with you?

[Slowly and pensively descending from the upper woods, Nike enters.]

Dionysus.

I was excusing myself, Nike, to our learned friend here for not having paid my addresses to you earlier. You must have thought me negligent?

Nike.

Oh! Dionysus, I assure you it is not so. Your temperament is one of violent extremes – you are either sparkling with miraculous rapidity of apprehension, or you are sunken in a heavy doze. These have doubtless been some of your sleepy days. And I … oh! I am very deeply changed.

Dionysus.

No, not at all. Hardly at all. [He scarcely glances at her, but turns to Æsculapius.] But farewell to both of you, for I am going down to the sea-board to watch for dolphins. That long melancholy plunge of the black snout thrills me with pleasure. It always did, and the coast-line here curiously reminds me of Naxos. Be kind to Æsculapius, Nike.

[He descends along the water-course, and exit. Nike smiles sadly, and half holds out her arms towards Æsculapius.]

Nike.

It is for you, O brother of Hermes, to be kind to me. How altered we all are! Dionysus is not himself… As I came here, I passed below the little grey precipice of limestone —

Æsculapius.

Where the marchantias grow? Yes?

Nike.

And three girls in white dresses, with wreaths of flowers on their shoulders, were laughing and chatting there in the shade of the great yew-tree. Who do you suppose they were, these laughing girls in white?

Æsculapius.

Perhaps three of the Oceanides, bright as the pure foam of the wave?

Nike.

Æsculapius, they were not girls. They were the terrible and ancient Eumenides, black with the curdled blood of Uranus. They were the inexorable Furies, who were wont to fawn about my feet, with the adders quivering in their tresses, tormenting me for the spoils of victory. What does it mean? Why are they in white? As we came hither in the dreadful vessel, they were huddled together at the prow, and their long black raiment hung overboard and touched the brine. They were mumbling and crooning hate-songs, and pointing with skinny fingers to the portents in the sky. What is it that has changed their mood? What is it that can have turned the robes of the Eumenides white, and enamelled their wrinkled flesh with youth?

Æsculapius.

Is it not because a like strange metamorphosis has invaded your own nature that you have come to meet me here?

Nike [after a pause].

I am bewildered, but I am not unhappy. I come because the secrets of life are known to you. I come because it was you whom Zeus sent to watch over Cadmus and Harmonia when their dread and comfortable change came over them. They were weary with grief and defeat, tired of being for ever overwhelmed by the ever-mounting wave of mortal fate. I am weary —

Æsculapius [slowly].

Of what, Nike? Be true to yourself. Of what are you weary?

Nike.

I come to you that you may tell. I know no better than the snake knows when his skin withers and bloats. I feel distress, apprehension, no pain, a little fear.

Æsculapius.

You speak of Cadmus and Harmonia; but is not your case the opposite of theirs? They were saved from defeat; is it not your unspoken hope to be saved from victory, saved from what was your essential self?

Nike.

Can it be so? I find, it is true, that I look back upon my rush and blaze of battle with no real regret. What a vain thing it was, the perpetual clash and resonance of a victory that no one could withstand; the mockery that conquest must be to an immortal whom no one can ever really oppose; – no veritable difficulty to overcome, no genuine resistance to meet, nothing positively tussled with and thrown, nothing but ghostly armies shrinking and melting a little way in front of my advancing eagles! That can never happen again, and even through the pang of losing my laurel and my wings, I did not genuinely deplore it. Nothing but the sheer intoxication of my immortality had kept me at the pitch. And now that it is gone, oh wisest of the gods, it is for you to tell me how, in this mortal state, I can remain happy and yet be me.

Æsculapius.

You are on the high road to happiness; you see its towers over the dust, for you dare to know yourself.

Nike.

Myself, Æsculapius?

Æsculapius.

Yes; you have that signal, that culminating courage.

Nike.

But it is because I do not know my way that I come to you.

Æsculapius.

To recognise the way is one thing, it is much; but to recognise yourself is infinitely more, and includes the way.

Nike.

Ah! I see. I think I partly see. The element of real victory was absent where no defeat could be.

Æsculapius [eagerly].

Dismal, sooty, raven-coloured robes of the Eumenides!

Nike.

And it may be present even where no final conquest can ensue?

Æsculapius.

Ah! how white they grow! How the serpents drop out of their tresses.

Nike.

I am feeling forward with my finger-tips, like a blind woman searching… And the real splendour of victory may consist in the helpless mortal state; may blossom there, while it only budded in our immortality?

Æsculapius.

May consist, really, of the effort, the desire, the act of gathering up the will to make the plunge. This will be victory now, it will be the drawing of the bow-string and not the mere cessation of the arrow-flight.

XII

[The main terrace, soon after dawn. In the centre Zeus sits alone, throned and silent. One by one the Gods come out of the house, and arrange themselves in a semicircle, to the left and right, each as he passes making obeisance to Zeus. It is a perfectly still morning, and a dense white mist hangs over the woods, completely hiding the sea and the farther shore. When all are seated.]

Zeus [in a very slow voice].

My children, since we came here I have not been visited until to-night by even a shadow of those forebodings which, in the form of divine prescience, illuminated my plans and your fortunes in Olympus. [A pause, while the gods lean towards him in deepest attention.] But a dream came close to my pillow last night and whispered to me strange, disquieting words… I have no longer the art of clairvoyance, but I find I am not wholly dark. Still can I faintly divine the forms of the future, as we may all divine the roll of the woods before us, and the cleft which leads down to the shore, although this impalpable vapour shrouds our world… And, from the dream, or from my faint perceptions, I am made aware that another mighty change is approaching us.

[A silence.]

Heracles.

Can you indicate to us the nature of this change? [Looking round the semicircle.] If it is permitted to us to do so we would repudiate it. [The gods in silence signify their assent.]

Zeus [not replying to Heracles].

When we fled hither from the consuming malignity of the traitor, it was communicated to me that this island on the very uttermost border of the world was left us as a home from which we should never be dislodged. Here we were to dwell in peace, and here … to grow old, and … die. Here, in the meantime, new interests, humble wishes, cheerful curiosities have already twined about us, and we have gazed upon Pandora's jewel, and are no more the same.

Persephone.

Are we to be driven hence still farther towards the confines of immensity, father?

Zeus.

I know not.

Kronos.

More journeys, more weary, weary journeys?

Zeus.

I know but what I tell you … that I foresee a change. [A silence.] How breathless is the air. Not the outline of a leaf is shaken against the sky.

Phœbus.

But the mist grows thinner, and high up in it I see a faint blueness.

Zeus.

I do not – nothing but the bewildering woolly whiteness, that chills my eyeballs… [With a sudden vivacity.] Ah! yes … it is the sea! Is Poseidon here?

Poseidon.

I went down to the shore very early indeed this morning, before there was an atom of mist in the air. I called upon the glassy, oily sea, and I could not but fancy that, although there was little motion in the wave, it did roll faintly to my foot, and fawn at me in its reply. To me also, father, it seemed as though my element was burdened with a secret which it knew not how to convey to me.

[A silence.]

Aphrodite [aside to Pallas].

If we must be driven forth again, let us at least cling to such new gifts as we have secured here.

Pallas [in an eager whisper].

I should like to know what you consider them to be. Do you hold introspection as one of them?

Aphrodite.

I certainly do. The analysis of one's own feelings, and the sense of watching the fluctuating symptoms of one's individuality, form one of the principal consolations of our mortal state.

Pallas.

I think I should give it another name.

Hermes [who has come up behind them, and bending forward has overheard the conversation].

My name for it would be the indulgence of personal vanity.

Aphrodite [speaks louder, while the conversation becomes general, except that Zeus takes no part in it].

You may call it so, if you please, but it is a source of genuine pleasure to us.

Phœbus.

Ignorance is doubtless another of these consolations – ignorance chemically modified by a few drops of the desire for knowledge… [Enthusiastically.] And all the chastened forms of recollection, how delightful they are, and how they add to our satisfaction here!

Nike.

It would be interesting to me to understand what you mean by chastened forms of recollection. I don't think that is my experience.

Pallas.

I conceive memory as a pure, unbiased emotion, an image of past life cast upon an unflawed mirror. Why do you say "chastened"?

Phœbus.

That memory which is nothing but a plain reproduction on the mirror of the mind is a tame concern, Pallas. It transfers, without modification, all that is dull, and squalid, and unessential. The only memory which is worthy of those who have tasted immortality is that which has in some degree been fortified. To recollect with enjoyment is to select certain salient facts from an experience and to be oblivious of the rest; or else it is to heighten the exciting elements of an event out of all proportion with historic fact; or it even is to place what should be in the seat of what precisely was… But this must be done firmly, logically, with no timidity in reminiscence, so that the mind shall rest in a perfectly artistic conviction that what it recollects is all the truth and nothing but the truth. This is chastened, or, if you prefer it, civilised memory. But Zeus is about to speak.

[The Gods resume their seats in silence. Zeus rises from his throne, and the Gods perceive that the mist has now almost entirely evaporated around them, and that the entire scene is luminous with morning radiance. All the Gods lean forward to gaze on Zeus, who gazes over and beyond them to the sea.]

Zeus.

The whole bay heaves in one vast wave of unbroken pearl… And in the east something flashes … something moves … approaches.

[All the Gods, except Kronos and Rhea, rise and follow with their gaze the extended hand of Zeus. Poseidon steps forward to the front of the scene and shouts.]

Poseidon.

See! Three huge white ships are coming out of the east, and the waves glide away at their wake in widening glassy hues. How they speed! How they speed, without oar or sail!

Kronos.

No rest, no sleep for us. Leave us here behind you, Zeus. We never have any rest.

Rhea.

Yes; do not drag us farther in the wearisome train of your misfortunes.

Zeus [benignly, turning to them.]

Be not afraid, Rhea and Kronos. But we must not abandon you. For the old sakes' sake we will hold together to the end.

Ares.

Shall we not collect our forces in unison, mortal as they are, and die together in resisting this invasion?

Dionysus.

The kind barbarians are with us. They will fight at our side.

Hephæstus.

Yes, let us fight and die.

Zeus.

You have no forces to collect, my sons. We cannot take toll of the blood of the barbarians. We cannot resist, we can but submit and withdraw… The ships fleet closer. They are like monstrous fishes of living silver. I confess this is not what I anticipated. This is not what my faint dream seemed to indicate. What inspires the implacable destroyer to pursue us, and with this imposing and miraculous navy, to the shore of that harmless exile in which we were endeavouring to forget his existence, I know not. But let us at least preserve that dignity which has survived our deity. Whatever may be now in store for us – if the worst of all things be now hurrying to complete our annihilation – let us meet it with simplicity. Let us meet it with an even mind.

Circe.

Oh, see! what are those filaments of blue and violet and grassy green which flutter in the cordage of the three ships?

Phœbus.

They leap forward, though no wind is blowing.

Circe.

They are arranged in order, and they bend upwards and now outwards.

Hera.

The colours of them are those which adorn my bird.

Pallas.

Ah! wonder of wonders! These have joined one another, see, and now they shoot forward together in a vibrating ribband of delicious lustre, and now it is arched to our shore, and descends at the lowest of these our woodland stairs.

Zeus.

A vast rainbow from the three white vessels to this island!.. And behold, a figure steps from it. She is robed to the feet in palest watchet blue, and her face is like a rosy star, and she waves her violet wings in the incommunicable speed of her ascent. My children, it is Iris, our lost daughter, our ineffable messenger. Let us await in silence the tidings which she brings.

[Zeus seats himself, and the Gods take their places as before. The air is now translucent, the sky cloudless, while the beechwoods flash with the lustre of dew, and the sea beyond the white ships is like a floor of turquoise. Iris is seen to rise from the shore, through the gorge in the woods. She approaches, half flying, half climbing, with incredible velocity. She appears, in her splendour, at the top of the stairs, and looks round upon the Gods. Without exception, in the magnificence of her presence they look grey and old and dim. She hesitates a moment, and then kneels before the throne of Zeus.]

Iris.

Father and lawgiver! Imperial Master of Heaven! The rebellion in Olympus is over. The usurper has fallen under the weight of his own presumption, lower than the lowest chasms of Hades, chained for all eternity by the fetters of his own insolence and madness. It is not needful for you, Zeus, to punish or to be clement. Under the inevitable rebound of his impious frenzy, himself has sealed his doom for ever and ever. It is now for the Father of Heaven, and these his children, to resume their immortality and to regain their incomparable abodes. Be it my reward for the joyous labour of bringing the good news, to be the first to kiss these awful and eternal feet.

[Iris flings herself before Zeus in adoration, and folds her wings about her face. As she touches him, his deity blazes forth from him. When Iris rises again, she glances round at the Gods with gratified astonishment, for all of them have become brilliant and young.]

Zeus.

Lead the way, Iris. This is no longer a place for us. Lead on and we will follow. Lead on, that we may resume our immortality.

[Iris flies down to the sea, and Zeus descends the steps. He is followed by all the other deities.]

Circe.

Were we really happy among these trees? I can scarcely credit it, they seem so common and so frail.

Nike.

Ha, my palm and my laurel and my wings. How can I have breathed without them for an hour?

Aphrodite [to Eros].

Shall we recollect this little episode when we walk up the golden street presently to our houses?

Eros.

I cannot think so, mother. That refinement of memory of which Phœbus was speaking will seem the most ridiculous of illusions there.

Phœbus.

Yes; to cultivate illusion, to live in the past, to resuscitate experience, may be the amusements of mortality, but they mean nothing now to us. When Selene re-enters her orb, she will not disquiet herself about the disorders of its interregnum.

Pallas [hastily reascending].

I have left Pandora's jewel behind me. I must fetch it.

Hermes [the last to descend].

Let me confess that I took it from you. One of the barbarians was weeping, and I wished, I cannot tell why, to see her smile. I gave your jewel to her.

Pallas.

It is of no moment. It would be an inconspicuous ornament in that blaze of the heart's beauty to which the white ships are about to carry us.

Hermes.

Come, then, Pallas, and let us linger here no more.

[They descend and disappear.]

THE END