Four Tragedies and Octavia (21 page)

    Bacchus, bright star of heaven, come,

    Come to your chosen city Thebes,

    Come to the worshippers

    Who lift their suppliant hands to you.

    Show us the light of your pure face;

    Break with your starbright eyes the clouds

    That cover us; banish grim death

    And menacing fate.

    We love your hair with spring flowers crowned,

    Your head with Tyrian turban bound,

    Your smooth brow wreathed with ivy berries,

    Loosed be your locks and flying free

    Or in a knot confined.

    This was the guise in which you grew

    To manhood, when you had to hide

    From Juno's wrath, with golden hair

    And yellow girdle at your waist

    In girlish fashion. And you wear it still,

    The loose-draped robe and flowing skirt,

    The garb of gentleness.

    Thus you were known

    To all the countries of the farthest East,

    To those that drink the waters of the Ganges

    And those that break the ice-floes of Araxes,

    Upon a golden chariot riding,

    Over the lion's back

    Your long robes trailing.

    And old Silenus on his humble ass

    Is there to follow you, with ivy garlands

    Crowning his bulging forehead; while a rout

    Of ribald merrymakers dance their secret mysteries.

    In Thrace your revellers follow you,

    Edonian dancers on Pangaeus

    And on the heights of Pindus.

    In Thebes you are Iacchus of Ogygia,
¹

    Your worshippers the Cadmian women,

    Wanton maenads, clad in skins,

    Thyrsus in hand, hair flying free,

    Possessed with madness at your will.

    Pentheus is torn to pieces; then the grip

    Of passion is released, the bacchant throng

    Regard their horrid handiwork

    As if they knew not whose it was.

    A sister of the mother of bright Bacchus

    Is Theban Ino,
¹
mistress of the sea.

    The Nereids dance with her; and young Palaemon,
²

    Kinsman of Bacchus and a great god too,

    Has joined the company of the divinities

    Who rule the waves.

    At sea Tyrrhenian pirates made a prize

    Of our young Bacchus. Nereus calmed

    The angry waves and made the deep blue sea

    Become a meadow. Plane trees rose

    As green as springtime, and the laurel

    Dear to Phoebus; birds sang in the branches.

    Round the oars green ivy sprouted,

    Vines depended from the yard-arms.

    A lion of Ida roared upon the prow,

    An Indian tiger at the stern.

    The pirates panicked; jumped into the sea;

    And as they swam they were transformed;

    They lost their arms, their breasts were doubled down

    Into their bellies; fins like little hands

    Hung from their sides; and through the waves they dived,

    Round-backed, with crescent tails that flipped the water –

    A school of graceful dolphins following

    The flying ship!

    In Lydia you would sail

    Upon the rich Pactolus, flowing golden

    Between its sun-scorched banks;

    Where Massagetan warriors, quaffing cups

    Of blood and milk, at your command

    Unstrung their bows

    And laid their barbarous arrows down.

    Your power was known

    By King Lycurgus,
¹
smiter with the axe.

    Your power was known by savage Zalaces,

    And by the nomad tribes

    Who feel the north wind near,

    The dwellers on Maeotis' frozen shores,

    And those upon whose heads

    The Bear and the two Wains look down.

    Bacchus subdued the sparse Gelonians.

    Bacchus disarmed the women warriors;

    The wild hordes of the Amazons

    Bowed down their faces to the ground,

    Abandoned archery

    And joined the Bacchic dance.

    Upon Cithaeron's holy mount

    The blood of Pentheus flowed.

    The daughters of King Proetus ran away

    To worship Bacchus in the woods of Argos,

    In his stepmother's sight.
²

    In Naxos, the Aegean isle, he found

    A bride, deserted by her former lover;

    Hers was the gain, far greater than her loss.

    And there the juices of the vine,

    Beloved of the night-haunting god,

    Sprang from the barren rock; new rivulets

    Trickled across the fields; the earth drank deeply

    Of whitest milk and the thyme-scented wine of Lesbos.

    And when the bride was led into high heaven,

    Phoebus was there, with radiant hair aflame,

    To sing the nuptial song; two Cupids bore aloft

    The torches; Jupiter laid down

    His fiery darts; he would not touch his thunderbolts

    With Bacchus at his side.

As long as the lights of the everlasting heavens run their course –

As long as the waves of Ocean wrap the world –

As long as the Moon can wane and wax again to the full –

As long as the Star of Day brings promise of the dawn –

As long as the Great Bear never meets the Lord of the deep blue sea –

So long shall we adore the fair face of our lovely Bacchus.

OEDIPUS
: Though there is news of sorrow in your face,

Yet tell it. By whose life must we appease

The jealous gods?

CREON
:                    You order me to tell

That which my fears would urge me to conceal.

OEDIPUS
: Does not the ruin of Thebes urge you to speak?

What of the downfall of the royal house

Of which you are a brother?

CREON
:                                    What you seek

So hastily to know, you will soon wish

Not to have known.

OEDIPUS
:                    Evil cannot be cured

By ignorance. To smother every clue

To the solution of our country's plight –

Is that your wish?

CREON
:                    When medicine is foul,

The cure may be unpleasant.
¹

OEDIPUS
:                                   What have you heard?

Tell me, or you shall learn at heavy cost

What force an angered monarch can command.

CREON
: What he has ordered to be said, a king

May hate to hear.

OEDIPUS
:                Your miserable life

Will be the one dispatched to Erebus

For all our sakes, if you refuse to tell

The hidden meaning of our sacrifice.

CREON
: Is there no right of silence? Is not that

The smallest privilege a king could grant?

OEDIPUS
: The right of silence often holds more danger

To king and kingdom than the right of speech.

CREON
: If silence is not free, what freedom is there?

OEDIPUS
: He that is silent when required to speak

Shakes the stability of government.

CREON
: What I am forced to say, please hear with patience.

OEDIPUS
: There is no penalty for forced disclosure.

CREON
: Outside the city, a dark ilex-grove

Stands near the waters of the Vale of Dirce.

Above the rest a cypress, evergreen,

Lifts its tall head and seems to hold the grove

Sheltered in its embrace; two ancient oaks

Spread out a tangle of half-rotted boughs,

One partly crumbled by consuming age,

The other falling from its withered roots

And leaning on its neighbour for support.

The bitter-berried laurel grows there too,

And Paphian myrtle, and smooth lime, and alder

(Wood that may soon be speeding under oars

Across the boundless sea); a lofty pine

Stands in the eye of the sun, its straight-grained limbs

Braced firm against the winds. One massive tree

Stands in the centre, overshadowing

The lesser trunks, and seems to guard the grove

With its vast span of spreading foliage.

Beneath it drips a dark and sombre spring;

Ice-cold – because it never sees the sun –

Its sluggish waters creep into a swamp.

    To this place came the aged priest, and soon

(There was no need to wait for night to fall,

The darkness of the grove was dark as night)

A pit was dug and brands from funeral pyres

Thrown into it. Tiresias put on

A sable robe, and waved a spray of leaves.

His step was solemn and his aspect grim,

Robed head to foot in the funereal garb,

His white hair wreathed with yew, symbol of death.

Into the pit black oxen and black sheep

Were led; the flames devoured the offering,

A feast of living flesh that leapt in pain

Upon the fire of death. The priest invoked

The souls of the departed, and their king,

And him who guards the gate to Lethe's lake.

In awful tones he spoke the magic words

And incantations, those which can placate

And those which can command the shadowy ghosts.

He poured blood on the hearth, saw that the flames

Consumed the beasts entire, and drenched the pit

With their spilt gore. Libations then, of milk

Snow-white, and wine with his left hand, he poured

Upon the fire, and uttered prayers again.

Then in a louder and more awful voice,

His eyes fixed on the ground, he summoned forth

The spirits of the dead. Loud bayed the hounds

Of Hecate, the valley boomed three times,

A tremor shook the ground beneath our feet.

‘They hear me,' said the priest; ‘my words had power;

The black void opens and the citizens

Of hell are given a passage to our world.'

The trees bowed down, their foliage bristling;

Trunks split apart and the whole forest quaked.

The earth reeled backwards and groaned inwardly.

Was Acheron enraged at this assault

Upon its secrets – or was this the noise

Of earth bursting its prison gates to give

A passage to the dead? Or Cerberus

The triple-headed hound in anger shaking

His heavy chains? Soon after this, earth gaped

And a vast chasm was revealed. I saw

Down in the darkness the unmoving lake;

I saw the colourless divinities;

I saw the quintessential night. My blood

Froze in my body and my heart stopped beating.

    Out of the pit came forth an angry brood;

They stood before us armed, the viper's brood,

The children of the dragon's teeth, and with them

Plague, the devouring spoiler of our people.

Then came the sound of the grim fiend Erinys,

Of Horror and blind Fury and all things

Created and concealed in the dark womb

Of everlasting night. There Sorrow stood

Clutching her hair, there drooped the heavy head

Of Sickness, Age bowed down with her own burden,

And menacing Fear. No life was left in us;

Manto herself, no stranger to the arts

And rites her father practised, stood amazed.

He showed no fear; his blindness lent him courage;

He called into our sight the lifeless hosts

Of the inexorable king of death,

And there the insubstantial shapes appeared,

Floating like clouds and feeding on the air

Of open sky. Numberless multitudes

Answered the prophet's summons – more than all

The leaves that grow and fall upon Mount Eryx,

The flowers that bloom in the high spring of Hybla

When bees hang in dense swarms, or all the waves

That break across the Ionian sea, the birds

That fleeing winter and the frozen bite

Of Strymon cross the sky from Arctic snows

To the warm valley of the Nile; so, fearful

And shivering, the ghosts came crowding in

To shelter in the grove. First to appear

Was Zethus, wrestling with an angry bull;

Amphion followed, with the tortoise-shell

In his left hand, whose music charmed the stones.

Niobe, reunited with her children,

Held up her head in happy pride, content

With all her dead around her. Next to come

Was a more heartless mother, mad Agave,

Followed by all that company of women

Who tore the body of their king to pieces;

Pentheus was with them too, a mangled wreck,

But arrogant as ever. Last of all,

After the priest had called him many times,

Came one, who seemed ashamed to raise his head,

Tried to remain unseen, and shrank away

From all the other ghosts; the priest insisted,

With oft repeated prayers to the dark powers,

Until he had drawn forth into full view

The hidden face – and there stood Laius!

    How can I tell you – how forlorn he looked

As he stood there, blood streaming down his limbs,

His hair disordered and begrimed. He spoke,

As one deranged, and this is what he said:

‘O you wild women of the house of Cadmus,

Lusting for kindred blood, go shake the thyrsus,

But in your orgies let it be your sons

You mutilate; away with mother-love,

It is the cardinal sin of Thebes. O Thebes,

By sin, not by the anger of the gods,

You are destroyed. Your plague has not been brought

By the dry breath of the rain-thirsty earth,

Nor by the south wind's scourge; but by a king

With blood upon his hands, who claimed a throne

As his reward for murder and defiled

His father's marriage-bed: unnatural son,

And yet more infamous a father he,

Who by incestuous rape did violate

The womb which gave him birth, against all law –

A thing scarce any animal will do –

Begat from his own mother sons of shame,

Children to be his brothers! Vile confusion,

Monstrous complexity of sin, more subtle

Than that shrewd Sphinx he boasts of. Murderer!

Whose blood-stained hand now grasps the sceptre, thee

I shall pursue, thy father unavenged;

I and all Thebes shall hunt thee, and shall bring

The Fury who attended on thy marriage

With whips to scourge thy guilt; shall overthrow

Thy house of shame, destroy with civil war

Thy hearth and home. People, expel your king!

Drive him immediately from your land;

Soon as your soil is rid of his curs'd feet,

Its springtime will return, its grass be green,

The beauty of the woods will bloom again,

And pure air fill you with the breath of life.

With him, as his fit company, shall go

Death and Corruption, Sickness, Suffering,

Plague, and Despair. Nay, it shall even be

That he himself would gladly quit our land

As fast as feet can carry him; but I

Shall halt those feet; I shall retard his flight;

He shall go creeping, groping, stick in hand,

Feeling his way like one infirm with age.

While you deprive him of your earth, his father

Will banish him for ever from the sky.'

OEDIPUS
: Fear chills my body, every bone and limb.

Of every act that I have feared to do

I am accused. And yet against the charge

Of sinful marriage Merope defends me,

For she is still the wife of Polybus.

And Polybus still lives; my hands are clean

Of that offence. One parent witnesses

My innocence of murder, by the other

I am acquitted of inchastity.

How else can I be guilty? Laius?

His death was mourned at Thebes before I came,

Ay, long before I touched Boeotian soil.

Is the old prophet wrong – or is some god

An enemy of Thebes?… Yes, here I have it!

The treacherous conspirators are here!

The priest devised this lie, using the gods

As screen for his deception, and to
you

He means to give my sceptre.

CREON
:                                       Would I want

To see my sister ousted from her throne?

No, if my solemn duty to my house

And to my family were not enough

To keep me in my proper place, the fear

Of greater, and more dangerous, eminence

Would hold me back. Perhaps you would do well

To shed your burden while you safely can,

Rather than wait for it to fall and crush you

When you attempt to shake it off. Step down,

Now, while you can, into a humbler place.

OEDIPUS
: Are you advising me to abdicate

My crown and all its cares?

CREON
:                                   I
would
advise it

To anyone who had the choice; for you

No choice remains but to endure your fate.

OEDIPUS
: There is the power-seeker's surest card!

To cry up moderation, to extol

Peace and contentment! The pretence of peace

Is the sharp practice of the malcontent.

CREON
: Does my long loyalty not speak for me?

OEDIPUS
: Through loyalty lies the traitor's way to mischief.

CREON
: Already I enjoy, without its cares,

All the advantages of royal rank.

My house is blessed with multitudes of friends;

With every day that dawns, remunerations

Of my connexion with the royal house

Flow to my door; rich living, choicest fare,

And the ability to save the lives

Of many men by my good offices.

What more could Fortune give me?

OEDIPUS
:                                            That much more

That still you lack. Good fortune knows no limits.

CREON
: Am I condemned, found guilty without trial?

OEDIPUS
: Have I been given a trial? Has my life

Been put in the balance? Has Tiresias heard me?

Yet I have been condemned already. You

Set the example, I but follow it.

CREON
: Is it not possible that I am guiltless?

OEDIPUS
: A king must guard against the possible

As against certain danger.

CREON
:                                He that fears

Imaginary dangers should be made

To face the real ones.

OEDIPUS
:                     He that once accused

Escapes conviction, harbours hate thereafter.