AN INSURRECTION OF GODS: IANTO’S REDEMPTION

(The Graeco-Catholic Meta-Narrative Redux)

John Russell Herbert

Apollo woke,

                And all things aesthetic and subtle woke with him.

Across the world,

                Deep in Scythia,

     Prometheus stood,

                Chained,

                                Innards torn in agony,

                                                Because he’d given two gifts,

                                                                Blind hopes, and fire,

                                                                                To creatures of a day.

Zeus had thundered against his children,

                                Always,

And had had no mercy on the race of tyrants which had spawned Him,

     But never before,

                In smiles or tears,

Had he avenged on a God in grace below,

    Anything half that which Prometheus suffered,

Pain now nearing ten thousand years.

That long-past “stealing of fire”,

                For “creatures of a day”,

     Had been a gift of Light, to Man,

                Punished by a God’s agony.

Hephaestus had wrought the chains,

                Since he was the Smith,

     Since the fire had been His,

                And since He’d been commanded.

These events had never pleased Apollo,

                But the Sun had risen and set, through millennia, just the/

same.

                These went the words of the Oracle,

                                                                                His own,

                                                                                                To Apollo;

“Men and Gods, like animals, come from seed, forgotten.  Your true Father, Brilliant Apollon, is not Zeus, the Spoiled Thunderer, the forgetter of debts owed*, grown old in arrogance and power, but Telos, itself.”

                  Apollo sat long in Counsel, brooding, and knew the rashness of Zeus.

                Then he went to Scythia, to visit Prometheus.

                He next visited Dionysos, who was drinking, and smiled.

Dionysos:  Yes; I drink, while you rest, oh Noble One, and focus,

    Readying to bring Light to all Mankind.

Apollo:      Tonight,

                    I may rest,

                  But tomorrow I do not drive my chariot;

                   Tomorrow I strike my Father,

                   Old Deceiver,

                                Letch,

                                Crude Autocrat,

                                Betrayer of Allies.

Tomorrow I strike my Father.

                But the Thundering One laughs at arrows, and at swords and spears, though they be Divine ones, so,

                That next day the Sun merely did not rise.

                After three days of darkness, Apollo heard thunder, Thunder, saw flashes in the distant sky, and abandoned His Horses, His Chariot.

                Ares slew servants, and priests, of Apollo, Hephaestos, Iron Worker, pried and melted locks and chains, and the Sun was taken.

                So Day, of a sort, chaotic and rash, resumed without our Brilliant Apollon.

                And the Gods of aesthetic refinement, and Those of aesthetic indulgence, lined leagued together with Apollo in brilliant revolt against the Great Father and His Legion of the loyal.

Fleet-footed Hermes,

                Winged sandals wettened by all the world’s seas,

     Remained the Messenger of Zeus.

Glowing Aphrodite,

                Naturally, in her heart of hearts,

     Leaned toward the Rebellious League of aesthetic decadents,

                Though she still toyed with wretched Hephaestus,

                                And couldn’t stay long from Ares’ bed.

Jilted Hephaestus,

                Bitter at Love,

     Stayed loyal to Zeus,

                And stood behind Ares,

                As he did in all things.

                The total world is the darling of no one God, and was therefore never destroyed.  There were men and nations that did fall, of course, and suffering poured onto them like rain.  The chaos of Nature was second only to the arbitrary chaos wrought by Man upon himself.

                Nature could not end, but She went askew.

                Among men, the spawn of the Muses stood vulnerable to, but against, the spawn of Moira, Necessity, She and Her ten million ugly children.

                Ten thousand poets died with their songs, though ten thousand armies found men enough to continue.

                Of Ceres, and of Her plows and plowman, little was heard or seen  during this epoch of trouble.

When the grapes withered on the vines,

                So withered too all joy in Dionysos.

                As the chemical’s flow had transported his imagination to a point beyond matter, its ceasing reduced his spirit to

                Nothing but chemistry,

                                And despair.

                Such was his disillusionment, and he was only one of many.

                This revolt of the “aesthetic gods” favored that which was generated over that which was imposed.  Theirs seemed to be a cry against the dream of Will, over Nature; it was a cry for the dream of Nature, itself, checked only by Grace.

                Regarding Prometheus, chains and suffering, as always, made a Tarturus for Him out of that which was sunlit day.

                “I will come unchained,” He thought, “when another God willingly takes my place,”

                “And it is now nearing onto ten thousand years.”*

                But Ianto was not Prometheus, and neither was he Apollo.

   As upon the ancient punishment of Prometheus,

                And as upon the semi-fated death of Phaeton his own son,

                Ten thousand times in ten thousand years

                                Had Apollo been angered at Zeus,

                And ten thousand times had Apollo forsought defiance,

                                Channeling his anger onto his Chariot’s Steeds;

                Ten thousand times had he channeled rage against destiny

                                Itself into the manifestation of destiny.

                Now from the Steppe’s edge, not far from Prometheus’ suffering place, Apollo sat, looking southwestward, surveying the troubled world, as Night began to fall.

                The Fallen Dove, his half-sister, Love, touched ground, and touched his shoulder.

                “Come, Brother,” she said,

                                “Let nothing of this epoch trouble you.

O Brother, forget Prometheus,

The daring, the enduring,

                And come.  Forethought is beyond helping.

                                Come and lay with me on milder, greener hills.”

And he did go with her.

                Beautiful, she smelled of Hephaestos and Ares.

                                Her cheekbones were like marble, or ivory.

                                                She was Pleasure.

Her body was Matter, and Lies, more perfect than Mind, and Truth.

                She smelled of Hephaestos and Ares.

Aphrodite continued,

“Let nothing of this epoch trouble you,

                                For You will prevail.

                                                You are the purer Sky God,

                Higher,

                                My Eloquent Pheobus, Perfection, Light;

                                                You are a better Parent than your Father.”

                Thus went the words of Love, during hours we may call morning, and Brilliant Apollon thought of mortal women finer than that Goddess Without Shame.  He thought of Daphne, turned into a tree to escape him, and he knew that she had been finer.  He thought of Clytie, spurned, having died longing, staring in the rays of His departing Light, and he knew that she too had been finer.

                He thought that all those women, mortal, who’d come and gone, from him, from life, were . . . high, and that this thing, this Goddess, who was everlasting, timeless, recurring, universal, was . . . low.

                But a God can have no regret.

                And Mankind still suffered, under heavens and forces ordered no more nobly than the rash impulses of their own animal hearts.

And Prometheus was still chained, tortured, still undergoing the sentence of Zeus, bound in shackles forged by the Loyal One, the Humble One, the Lame One, limping servant of the Rash Father, the Thundering Lord, . . . Zeus.

The punishment of Prometheus, by the way, had lasted nigh onto ten millennia, and now, as said before, during this Rebellion led by our Brilliant Apollon,

War drove the Sun, and Zeus didn’t care.

                Ares took the chariot this way, and that, its course and timing dictated by his sundry whims of conquest.

                During slower seasons, within that epoch of trouble, he’d visit Love, and her Blacksmith husband.  He’d set the Smith to fixing the dented Chariot, then find his way indoors.

                One land might grow scorched, and another spend weeks in darkness, and the Rude Father of Olympus would barely know.

(tous droits réservée par l’auteur en 2008)