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PERSEUS THE DELIVERER
Part – I
The Legend of Perseus
ACRISIUS, the Argive king, warned by an oracle that his daughter’s son would be the agent of his death, hoped to escape his doom by shutting her up in a brazen tower. But Zeus, the King of the Gods, descended into her prison in a shower of gold and Danae bore to him a son named Perseus. Danaë and her child were exposed in a boat without sail or oar on the sea, but here too fate and the gods intervened and, guided by a divine protection, the boat bore her safely to the Island of Seriphos. There Danaë was received and honoured by the King. When Perseus had grown to manhood the King, wishing to marry Danae, decided to send him to his death and to that end ordered him to slay the Gorgon Medusa in the wild, unknown and snowy North and bring to him her head the sight of which turned men to stone. Perseus, aided by Athene, the Goddess of Wisdom, who gave him the divine sword Herpe, winged shoes to bear him through the air, her shield or aegis and the cap of invisibility, succeeded in his quest after many adventures. In his returning he came to Syria and found Andromeda, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopea, King and Queen of Syria, chained to the rocks by the people to be devoured by a sea-monster as an atonement for her mother’s impiety against the sea-god, Poseidon. Perseus slew the monster and rescued and wedded Andromeda. In this piece the ancient legend has been divested of its original character of a heroic myth; it is made the nucleus round which there could grow the scenes of a romantic story of human temperament and life-impulses on the Elizabethan model. The country in which the action is located is a Syria of romance, not of history. Indeed a Hellenic legend could not at all be set in the environments of the life of a Semitic people and its early Aramaean civilisation: the town of Cepheus must be looked at as a Greek colony with a blonde Achaean dynasty ruling a Hellenised people who worship an old Mediterranean deity under a Page – 1 Greek name. In a romantic work of imagination of this type these outrages on history do not matter. Time there is more than Einsteinian in its relativity, the creative imagination is its sole disposer and arranger; fantasy reigns sovereign; the names of ancient countries and peoples are brought in only as fringes of a decorative background; anachronisms romp in wherever they can get an easy admittance, ideas and associations from all climes and epochs mingle; myth, romance and realism make up a single whole. For here the stage is the human mind of all times: the subject is an incident in its passage from a semi-primitive temperament surviving in a fairly advanced outward civilisation to a brighter intellectualism and humanism — never quite safe against the resurgence of the dark or violent life-forces which are always there subdued or subordinated or somnolent in the make-up of civilised man — and the first promptings of the deeper and higher psychic and spiritual being which it is his ultimate destiny to become. Page – 2 PERSONS OF THE DRAMA
PALLAS ATHENE. POSEIDON. PERSEUS, son of Zeus and Danaë. CEPHEUS, King of Syria. IOLAUS, son of Cepheus and Cassiopea. POLYDAON, priest of Poseidon. PHINEUS, King of Tyre.
THEROPS, a popular leader. PERISSUS, a citizen butcher. DERCETES, a Syrian captain. NEBASSAR, captain of the Chaldean Guard.
CIREAS, a servant in the temple of Poseidon. MEDES, an usher in the palace. CASSIOPEA, princess of Chaldea, Queen of Syria. ANDROMEDA, daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopea. CYDONE, mistress of Iolaus. PRAXILLA, head of the palace household in the women’s apartments. DIOMEDE, a slave-girl, servant and playmate of Andromeda.
SCENE : The city of Cepheus, the seashore, the temple of Poseidon on the headland and the surrounding country. Page – 3 Prologue
The Ocean in tumult, and the sky in storm: Pallas Athene appears in the heavens, with lightnings playing over her head and under her feet.
ATHENE Error of waters rustling through the world, Vast Ocean, call thy ravenous waves that march With blue fierce nostrils quivering for prey, Back to thy feet. Hush thy impatient surges At my divine command and do my will.
VOICES OF THE SEA Who art thou layest thy serene command Upon the untamed waters ?
ATHENE I am Pallas, Daughter of the Omnipotent.
VOICES What wouldst thou? For we cannot resist thee; our clamorous hearts Are hushed in terror at thy marble feet.
ATHENE Awake your dread Poseidon. Bid him rise And come before me.
VOICES Let thy compelling voice Awake him: for the sea is hushed. Page –
ATHENE Arise, Illimitable Poseidon! let thy blue And streaming tresses mingle with the foam Emerging into light. Poseidon appears upon the waters.
POSEIDON What quiet voice Compels me from my rocky pillow piled Upon the floor of the enormous deep ?
VOICES A whiteness and a strength is in the skies.
POSEIDON How art thou white and beautiful and calm, Yet clothed in tumult! Heaven above thee shakes Wounded with lightnings, goddess, and the sea Flees from thy dreadful tranquil feet. Thy calm Troubles me: who art thou, dweller in the light?
ATHENE I am Athene.
POSEIDON Virgin formidable In beauty, disturber of the ancient world! Ever thou seekest to enslave to man The eternal Universe, and our huge motions That shake the mountains and upheave the seas Wouldst with the glancing visions of thy brain Coerce and bridle.
ATHENE Me the Omnipotent Made from His being to lead and discipline Page – 6 The immortal spirit of man, till it attain To order and magnificent mastery Of all his outward world.
POSEIDON What wouldst thou of me ?
ATHENE The powers of the earth have kissed my feet In deep submission, and they yield me tribute, Olives and corn and all fruit-bearing trees, And silver from the bowels of the hills, Marble and iron ore. Fire is my servant. But thou, Poseidon, with thy kindred gods And the wild wings of air resist me. I come To set my feet upon thy azure locks, O shaker of the cliffs. Adore thy sovereign.
POSEIDON The anarchy of the enormous seas Is mine, O terrible Athene: I sway Their billows with my nod. Man’s feeble feet Leave there no traces, nor his destiny Has any hold upon the shifting waves.
ATHENE Thou severest him with thy unmeasured wastes Whom I would weld in one. But I will lead him Over thy waters, thou wild thunderer, Spurning thy tops in hollowed fragile trees. He shall be confident in me and dare The immeasurable oceans till the West Mingles with India, and reach the northern isles That dwell beneath my dancing aegis bright, Snow-weary. He shall, armed with clamorous fire, Rush o’er the angry waters when the whale Is stunned between two waves and slay his foe Page – 7 Betwixt the thunders. Therefore I bid thee not, O azure strong Poseidon, to abate Thy savage tumults: rather his march oppose. For through the shocks of difficulty and death Man shall attain his godhead.
POSEIDON What then desir’st thou. Athene?
ATHENE On yonder inhospitable coast Far-venturing merchants from the East, or those Who put from Tyre towards Atlantic gains, Are by thy trident fiercely shaken forth Upon the jagged rocks, and who escape, The gay and savage Syrians on their altars Massacre hideously, thee to propitiate, Moloch-Poseidon of the Syrian coasts, Dagon of Gaza, lord of many names And many natures, many forms of power Who rulest from Philistia to the north, A terror and a woe. O iron King, Desist from blood, be glad of kindlier gifts And suffer men to live.
POSEIDON Behold, Athene, My waters! see them lift their foam-white tops Charging from sky to sky in rapid tumult: Admire their force, admire their thunderous speed. With green hooves and white manes they trample onwards. My mighty voices fill the world, Athene. Shall I permit the grand anarchic seas To be a road and the imperious Ocean A means of merchandise ? Shall the frail keels Of thy ephemeral mortals score its back Page – 8 With servile furrows and petty souls of men Triumphing tame the illimitable sea? I am not of the mild and later gods, But of that elder world; Lemuria And old Atlantis raised me crimson altars, And my huge nostrils keep that scent of blood For which they quiver. Return into thy heavens, Pallas Athene, I into my deep.
ATHENE Dash then thy billows up against my aegis In battle! think not to hide in thy deep oceans; For I will drive thy waters from the world And leave thee naked to the light.
POSEIDON Dread virgin! I will not war with thee, armipotent.
ATHENE Then send thy champion forth to meet my champion, And let their conflict govern ours, Poseidon.
POSEIDON Who is thy champion ?
ATHENE Perseus, the Olympian’s son, Whom Danae in her strong brazen tower, Acrisius’ daughter, bore, by heavenly gold Lapped into slumber: for of that shining rain He is the beautiful offspring.
POSEIDON The parricide That is to be ? But my sea-monster’s fangs And fiery breathings shall prevent that murder. Page – 9 Farewell, Athene.
ATHENE Farewell, until I press My feet upon thy blue enormous mane And add thy Ocean to my growing empire. Poseidon disappears into the sea. He dives into the deep and with a din The thunderous divided waters meet Above his grisly head. Thou wingest, Perseus, From northern snows to this fair sunny land, Not knowing in the night what way thou wendest; But the dawn comes and over earth’s far rim The round sun rises, as thyself shalt rise On Syria and thy rosy Andromeda, A thing of light. Rejoice, thou famous hero! Be glad of love, be glad of life, whose bosom Harbours the quiet strength of pure Athene. She disappears into light. Page – 10 |
