Jason and Media by Sophocles

Greek audiences would have known the story of the ill-fated marriage between Jason, hero of the Golden Fleece, and Medea, barbarian witch and princess of Colchis. The modern reader, to fully understand the events of Medea, needs to be familiar with the legends and myths on which the play is based.

Medea was of a people at the far edge of the Black Sea; for the Greeks of Euripides' time, this was the edge of the known world. She was a powerful sorceress, princess of Colchis, and a granddaughter of the sun god Helias. Jason, a great Greek hero and captain of the Argonauts, led his crew to Colchis in search of the Golden Fleece. King Aeetes, lord ofColchis and Medea's father, kept the Fleece under guard. A sorcerer himself, he was a formidable opponent. This legend takes place quite early in the chronology of Greek myth. The story is set after the ascent of Zeus, King of the gods, but is still near the beginning of his reign; Helias, the ancient sun god before Apollo's coming, is Medea's grandfather. Jason's voyage with the Argonauts predates the Trojan War, and represents the first naval assault by the Greeks against an Eastern people.

The traps set by Aeetes made the Golden Fleece all but impossible to obtain. By Medea's aid, Jason overcame these obstacles, and Medea herself killed the giant serpent that guarded the Fleece. Then, to buy time during their escape, Medea killed her own brother and tossed the pieces of his corpse behind the Argo as they sailed for Greece. Her father, grief-stricken by his son's death and his daughter's treachery, had to slow his pursuit of the Argo so he could collect the pieces of his son's body for burial.

Medea and Jason returned to his hereditary kingdom of Iolcus. Jason's father had died, and his uncle Pelias sat, without right, on the throne. Medea, to help Jason, convinced Pelias' daughters that she knew a way to restore the old king's youth. He would have to be killed, cut into pieces, and then put together and restored to youth by Medea's magic. The unwitting daughters did as Medea asked, but the sorceress then explained that she couldn't really bring Pelias back to life. Rather than win Jason his throne, this move forced Jason, Medea, and their children into exile. Finally, they settled in Corinth, where Jason eventually took a new bride.

The action of the play begins here, soon after Medea learns of Jason's treachery.

A Nurse enters, speaking of the sorrows facing Medea's family. She is joined by the Tutor and the children; they discuss Jason's betrayal of Medea. The Nurse fears for everyone's safety: she knows the violence of Medea's heart. The Tutor brings the children back into the house. The Chorus of Corinthian women enters, full of sympathy for Medea. They ask the Nurse to bring Medea out so that they might comfort her; the unfortunate woman's cries can be heard even outside the house. The Nurse complies. Medea emerges from her home, bewailing the harshness with which Fate handles women. She announces her intention to seek revenge. She asks the Chorus, as follow women, to aid her by keeping silent. The Chorus vows.

Creon (not to be confused with the Creon of Sophocles' Theban cycle), king of Corinth and Jason's new father-in-law, enters and tells Medea that she is banished. She and her children must leave Corinthimmediately. Medea begs for mercy, and she is granted a reprieve of one day. The old king leaves, and Medea tells the Chorus that one day is all she needs to get her revenge.

Jason enters, condescending and smug. He scolds Medea for her loose tongue, telling her that her exile is her own fault. Husband and wife bicker bitterly, Medea accusing Jason of cowardice, reminding him of all that she has done for him, and condemning him for his faithlessness. Jason rationalizes all of his actions, with neatly enumerated arguments. Although he seems to have convinced himself, to most audience members Jason comes off as smug and spineless. He offers Medea money and aid in her exile, but she proudly refuses. Jason exits.

Aegeus, king of Athens and old friend of Medea's, enters. Aegeus is childless. Medea tells him of her problems, and asks for safe haven inAthens. She offers to help him to have a child; she has thorough knowledge of drugs and medicines. Aegeus eagerly agrees. If Medea can reach Athens, he will protect her. Medea makes the old king vow by all the gods.

With her security certain, Medea tells the Chorus of her plans. She will kill Jason's new bride and father-in-law by the aid of poisoned gifts. To make her revenge complete, she will kill her children to wound Jason and to protect them from counter-revenge by Creon's allies and friends. Many scholars now believe that the murder of Medea's children was Euripides' addition to the myth; in older versions, the children were killed by Creon's friends in revenge for the death of the king and princess. The Chorus begs Medea to reconsider these plans, but Medea insists that her revenge must be complete.

Jason enters again, and Medea adapts a conciliatory tone. She begs him to allow the children to stay in Corinth. She also has the children bring gifts to the Corinthian princess. Jason is pleased by this change of heart.

The Tutor soon returns with the children, telling Medea that the gifts have been received. Medea then waits anxiously for news from the palace. She speaks lovingly to her children, in a scene that is both moving and chilling, even as she steels herself so that she can kill them. She has a moment of hesitation, but she overcomes it. There is no room for compromise.

A messenger comes bringing the awaited news. The poisoned dress and diadem have worked: the princess is dead. When Creon saw his daughter's corpse, he embraced her body. The poison then worked against him. The deaths were brutal and terrifying. Both daughter and father died in excruciating pain, and the bodies were barely recognizable.

Medea now prepares to kill her children. She rushes into the house with a shriek. We hear the children's screams from inside the house; the Chorus considers interfering, but in the end does nothing.

Jason re-enters with soldiers. He fears for the children's safety, because he knows Creon's friends will seek revenge; he has come to take the children under guard. The Chorus sorrowfully informs Jason that his children are dead. Jason now orders his guards to break the doors down, so that he can take his revenge against his wife for these atrocities.

Medea appears above the palace, in a chariot drawn by dragons. She has the children's corpses with her. She mocks Jason pitilessly, foretelling an embarrassing death for him; she also refuses to give him the bodies. Jason bickers with his wife one last time, each blaming the other for what has happened. There is nothing Jason can do; with the aid of her chariot, Medea will escape to Athens. The Chorus closes the play, musing on the terrible unpredictability of fate.

Background Study:

The youngest of the three great tragedians, Euripides was probably born between 485 and 480 BCE, although some classicists propose a later date. Athens was in its Golden Age during his lifetime. The campaigns of 480-79 BCE saw the Athenians destroy the invading force of the powerful Persian Empire, solidifying Athens' position as the leader of the independent Greek city-states. The decisive victory came at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BCE, in which the Athenian navy routed the Persian fleet. Aeschylus, the first-born of the three great tragedians, served as a hoplite at the great battle. Sophocles, second of the three, danced in the victory celebrations afterward. And a popular legend holds that Euripides was born at Salamis, on the very day of the victory. In his own lifetime, he was the least successful of the three men, winning first prize at the Dionysia only four times. Yet more of his plays have survived than those written by Aeschylus and Sophocles combined. As with many brilliant men whose vision is less than comforting, it was only after Euripides' death that his genius was appreciated.

He was not a consistent or tidy artist. His plays sometimes suffer from weak structure, over packed plots, and a wandering focus. But discomfort with his medium can also be seen as one of Euripides' great strengths. And sometimes, his innovation and uniqueness are mistaken for weaknesses. His Orestes can be seen as a brilliant anti-tragedy, a work that questions the aesthetic assumptions of Greek drama. But for the unimaginative reader who uses pat theories to evaluate Greek tragedy, it is far easier to dismiss the play as simply bad. Like Orestes, many of Euripides' plays have suffered at the hands of critics incapable of understanding his vision.

He was undoubtedly the bad boy of Greek tragedy, and he is modern in a way that Aeschylus and Sophocles are not. The vision of Aeschylus' Oresteia, though brilliant and beautiful, can seem more like a hopeful dream than a representation of the world we know. And to modern audiences, Sophocles' heroes often seem removed from flesh-and-blood men and women. But Euripides' characters are always immediately recognizable. He is the father of the psychological drama, and he is an acute observer of human nature. Using the myths of Greece as his source, he transformed epic heroes into men of flesh and blood. Sophocles supposedly said that while he himself depicted men as they ought to be, Euripides depicted them as they really are.

He was a great questioner, and Socrates reputedly was among his most ardent admirers. A characteristically Euripidean move is to take a myth and focus on some problematic element, some event or action that calls the rest of the myth's ideology into question. In Alcestis, he takes a story of a wife's goodness and transforms it into an indictment of her husband, and, by extension, an indictment of the patriarchal values the old legend upheld. In Orestes, he gives the characters the happy ending that myth provides for them, but leaves us knowing that they don't deserve it.

Failure unquestionably hurt him; in Medea, the outcast barbarian sorceress speaks of the hatred people have for the clever. Euripides knew he was a great artist, and in the thousands of years since his death, generations of readers, critics and theatergoers have revered him. But the judges of the Dionysia favored others. Most of the men who beat him are now only footnotes in history. Euripides knew that he was better than they, and the endless defeats must have been maddening. But this frustration became part of his art, and his work would not be the same without the sense of loss and injustice.

Euripides is arguably the darkest and most disturbing of the Greek playwrights. He questions authority, and he is fascinated by the oppressed: women, barbarians, and slaves are more than just background on the Euripidean stage. He allows them to speak, and speak well. For his complex representations of "bad women," he earned the censure of critics and judges. He depicts the position of the oppressed without romanticizing them, and his plays make war against the gods of Olympus. The universe in which Euripides believed was not benevolent, or just. Hardship falls on all, the wicked and the good, and the gods are powerful but often capricious and cruel. He questioned social structures and hollow or hypocritical ideals. Needless to say, these positions made Euripides unpopular. He was the unwanted voice of conscience in his age, a man unafraid to point out the lies with which a civilization comforts itself. Sophocles gives us heroes, and Aeschylus gives us a vision of history and teleology; Euripides gives us real men with all-too human weaknesses, and his visions are often nightmares. In the end, the frenzied descent into chaos so often imagined by Euripides was truest to Athens' fate. Infighting and dirty politics compromisedAthens' good name, and Athens fell to her hated enemy, Sparta, just a few years after Euripides' death.

          Possibly because he faced danger at home for his ideas, Euripides left Athens in 408 BCE. He went to the court of King Archelaus of Macedon; it was there that he wrote, among other works, The Bacchae. This play shows Euripides at the height of his genius. The Bacchae is a terrifying, powerful, and complex play, one that leaves its audience with more questions than answers. It is an extremely difficult play to produce well, but when it is performed right, few plays, from any time or place, can hope to match The Bacchae in its capacity to instill terror and awe into its audience. It is arguably Euripides' masterpiece, and it has a secure place as one of the greatest plays ever written. But Euripides never lived to see it performed in Athens. He died in 406 BCE, bitter and unsure of his place in history. Shortly afterward, his son brought Euripides' last three plays, including The Bacchae, back to Athens for production. There, at the same festival where Euripides had lost to now-forgotten playwrights so many times, The Bacchae and its companion pieces won first prize

By Jayson with 33 comments

French Fiction

Moonlight
by Guy de Maupassant

Madame Julie Roubere was expecting her elder sister, Madame Henriette Letore, who had just returned from a trip to Switzerland.

The Letore household had left nearly five weeks before. Madame Henriette had allowed her husband to return alone to their estate in Calvados, where some business required his attention, and had come to spend a few days in Paris with her sister. Night came on. In the quiet parlor Madame Roubere was reading in the twilight in an absent-minded way, raising her eyes whenever she heard a sound.

At last, she heard a ring at the door, and her sister appeared, wrapped in a travelling cloak. And without any formal greeting, they clasped each other in an affectionate embrace, only desisting for a moment to give each other another hug. Then they talked about their health, about their respective families, and a thousand other things, gossiping, jerking out hurried, broken sentences as they followed each other about, while Madame Henriette was removing her hat and veil.

It was now quite dark. Madame Roubere rang for a lamp, and as soon as it was brought in, she scanned her sister's face, and was on the point of embracing her once more. But she held back, scared and astonished at the other's appearance.

On her temples Madame Letore had two large locks of white hair. All the rest of her hair was of a glossy, raven-black hue; but there alone, at each side of her head, ran, as it were, two silvery streams which were immediately lost in the black mass surrounding them. She was, nevertheless, only twenty-four years old, and this change had come on suddenly since her departure forSwitzerland.

Without moving, Madame Roubere gazed at her in amazement, tears rising to her eyes, as she thought that some mysterious and terrible calamity must have befallen her sister. She asked:

"What is the matter with you, Henriette?"

Smiling with a sad face, the smile of one who is heartsick, the other replied:

"Why, nothing, I assure you. Were you noticing my white hair?"

But Madame Roubere impetuously seized her by the shoulders, and with a searching glance at her, repeated:

"What is the matter with you? Tell me what is the matter with you. And if you tell me a falsehood, I'll soon find it out."

They remained face to face, and Madame Henriette, who looked as if she were about to faint, had two pearly tears in the corners of her drooping eyes.

Her sister continued:

"What has happened to you? What is the matter with you? Answer me!"

Then, in a subdued voice, the other murmured:

"I have--I have a lover."

And, hiding her forehead on the shoulder of her younger sister, she sobbed.

Then, when she had grown a little calmer, when the heaving of her breast had subsided, she commenced to unbosom herself, as if to cast forth this secret from herself, to empty this sorrow of hers into a sympathetic heart.

Thereupon, holding each other's hands tightly clasped, the two women went over to a sofa in a dark corner of the room, into which they sank, and the younger sister, passing her arm over the elder one's neck, and drawing her close to her heart, listened.

"Oh! I know that there was no excuse for me; I do not understand myself, and since that day I feel as if I were mad. Be careful, my child, about yourself--be careful! If you only knew how weak we are, how quickly we yield, and fall. It takes so little, so little, so little, a moment of tenderness, one of those sudden fits of melancholy which come over you, one of those longings to open, your arms, to love, to cherish something, which we all have at certain moments.

"You know my husband, and you know how fond I am of him; but he is mature and sensible, and cannot even comprehend the tender vibrations of a woman's heart. He is always the same, always good, always smiling, always kind, always perfect. Oh! how I sometimes have wished that he would clasp me roughly in his arms, that he would embrace me with those slow, sweet kisses which make two beings intermingle, which are like mute confidences! How I have wished that he were foolish, even weak, so that he should have need of me, of my caresses, of my tears!

"This all seems very silly; but we women are made like that. How can we help it?

"And yet the thought of deceiving him never entered my mind. Now it has happened, without love, without reason, without anything, simply because the moon shone one night on the Lake ofLucerne.

"During the month when we were travelling together, my husband, with his calm indifference, paralyzed my enthusiasm, extinguished my poetic ardor. When we were descending the mountain paths at sunrise, when as the four horses galloped along with the diligence, we saw, in the transparent morning haze, valleys, woods, streams, and villages, I clasped my hands with delight, and said to him: 'How beautiful it is, dear! Give me a kiss! Kiss me now!' He only answered, with a smile of chilling kindliness: 'There is no reason why we should kiss each other because you like the landscape.'

"And his words froze me to the heart. It seems to me that when people love each other, they ought to feel more moved by love than ever, in the presence of beautiful scenes.

"In fact, I was brimming over with poetry which he kept me from expressing. I was almost like a boiler filled with steam and hermetically sealed.

"One evening (we had for four days been staying in a hotel at Fluelen) Robert, having one of his sick headaches, went to bed immediately after dinner, and I went to take a walk all alone along the edge of the lake.

"It was a night such as one reads of in fairy tales. The full moon showed itself in the middle of the sky; the tall mountains, with their snowy crests, seemed to wear silver crowns; the waters of the lake glittered with tiny shining ripples. The air was mild, with that kind of penetrating warmth which enervates us till we are ready to faint, to be deeply affected without any apparent cause. But how sensitive, how vibrating the heart is at such moments! how quickly it beats, and how intense is its emotion!

"I sat down on the grass, and gazed at that vast, melancholy, and fascinating lake, and a strange feeling arose in me; I was seized with an insatiable need of love, a revolt against the gloomy dullness of my life. What! would it never be my fate to wander, arm in arm, with a man I loved, along a moon-kissed bank like this? Was I never to feel on my lips those kisses so deep, delicious, and intoxicating which lovers exchange on nights that seem to have been made by God for tenderness? Was I never to know ardent, feverish love in the moonlit shadows of a summer's night?

"And I burst out weeping like a crazy woman. I heard something stirring behind me. A man stood there, gazing at me. When I turned my head round, he recognized me, and, advancing, said:

"'You are weeping, madame?'

"It was a young barrister who was travelling with his mother, and whom we had often met. His eyes had frequently followed me.

"I was so confused that I did not know what answer to give or what to think of the situation. I told him I felt ill.

"He walked on by my side in a natural and respectful manner, and began talking to me about what we had seen during our trip. All that I had felt he translated into words; everything that made me thrill he understood perfectly, better than I did myself. And all of a sudden he repeated some verses of Alfred de Musset. I felt myself choking, seized with indescribable emotion. It seemed to me that the mountains themselves, the lake, the moonlight, were singing to me about things ineffably sweet.

"And it happened, I don't know how, I don't know why, in a sort of hallucination.

"As for him, I did not see him again till the morning of his departure.

"He gave me his card!"

And, sinking into her sister's arms, Madame Letore broke into groans-- almost into shrieks.

Then, Madame Roubere, with a self-contained and serious air, said very gently:

"You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love itself. And your real lover that night was the moonlight."

Background Information:

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), the son of a minor aristocrat was born in Normandy on August 5, 1850. Guy de Maupassant (born Henri Rene Albert), at sixteen was expelled from a Rouenseminary and finished his education in a public high school. He grew up overshadowed by his parents' unhappy marriage. After serving in the Franco-Prussian War, he was for ten years a government clerk in Paris.. A protegee of Gustave Flaubert, a family friend who became the writer's mentor and who exerted the most significant influence on his literary career and who read his first efforts and introduced him to important novelists such as Emile Zola and Henry James, De Maupassant is one of the world's most celebrated masters of the short story and the most widely translated French author. It was in Zola's naturalist group that Maupassant made his name with the publicatiqn in 1880 of his first short story, Boule de Suif, which was a literary sensation.

His six novels, three travel books, and about 360 short stories were written in the decade before his untimely death in 1893 due to syphilis. He became wealthy and internationally famous from hiswork making him lead a luxurious but often dissipated life. Maupassant not only ranks as French's greatest writer of short fiction, he is also one of the key inventors of the modern short story. Concise, clear and often ironic, his stories present well-plotted and engaging incidents without imposing moral judgments on the characters. He has influenced most of the major short story writers of the next two generations after him, notably Anton Chekhov, Henry James, W. Somerset Maugham, and Ernest Hemingway. (Beaty and Hunter, 1998)

By Jayson with 22 comments

European Fiction: Clarice Lespector

Better than to Burn

Clarice Lispector (1925-1977)

1    She was tall, strong and hairy.   Mother Clara had a dark stubble and deep black eyes.

2    She had entered the convent at the will of her family: they wished to see her sheltered in the bosom of God. She obeyed.

3    She fulfilled her obligations without complaint. She had many obligations. And then there were prayers. She prayed with fervor.

4    And she went to confession everyday. Everyday the white host that crumbled apart in one's mouth.

5    But she began to get tired of living only among women. Women, women, women. She chose a friend as a confidante. She told her that she couldn't stand it any more. Her friend counseled her. "Mortify the body."

6    So she began to sleep on cold flagstones. And whipped herself with a scourge. It was useless. She just caught
terrible colds and got all covered with welts.

7    She confessed to the priest. He ordered her to continue to mortify herself. She continued.

8    But at the moment in which the priest touched her mouth to give her the host, she had to control herself in order not
to bite his hand. He noticed this, but said nothing. There was a silent pact between them. Both mortified themselves.

9    " She could no longer look at the almost naked body of Christ.

10  Mother Clara was of Portuguese descent, and, in secret, she shaved her hairy legs. If they found out, would she get
it! She told the priest. He turned pale. He guessed that her legs were strong, well-shaped.

11  On day at mealtime she began to cry. She didn't tell anybody why. She herself didn't know why she was crying.

12  And from then on she lived a life of weeping. In spite
of eating little, she got fat. She had dark shadows under
her eyes. Her voice, when she sang in church, was that of a contralto.

13  Until finally she said to the priest in the confessional, "I
can't stand it any longer, I swear I can't stand it any longer."

14  He said meditatively, "It is better not to marry. But it is better to marry than to burn."

15  She asked for an audience with her superior. Her
superior reprimanded her severely. But Mother Clara was firm: she wanted to leave the convent, she wanted to find a man, she wanted to get married. Her superior asked her to wait one year. She answered that she couldn't, that it had to be now.

16  She packed what little she had and made her get-away. She went to live in a pension for girls.

17  Her black hair grew opulent. And she seemed all up in
the air and dreamy. She paid for her room and board with the money her family sent her. The family didn't accept what she had done. But they couldn't let her die of hunger.

18  She made her own little dresses of cheap material on a sewing machine that a young girl at the pension lent her. Dresses with long sleeves, modestly cut, below the knees.

19  And nothing happened. She prayed a great deal that
something good would come to her. In the form of a man.

20  And it really did.

21  She went to the snack bar to buy a bottle of mineral
water. The owner was a dapper Portuguese who had
become enchanted by Clara's discreet manners. He didn't
want her to pay for the mineral water. She blushed.

22  But she came back the next day to buy some coconut
sweets. Again she didn't pay. The Portuguese, Antonio by name,

              called forth his courage and invited her to the movies. She refused.

23  The next day she returned to have a cup of coffee. Antonio promised her that he wouldn't touch her if they
went to the movies together. She accepted.

24  They went to see a movie, but they didn't pay any
attention to it. At the end of the movie they were holding hands.

25  Soon they were meeting for long walks. She with her
black hair. He in a suit and tie.

26  Then one night he said to her, "I'm rich, the snack bar earns enough for us to get married. Do you want to?"

27  "I want to," she answered gravely.

28  They got married in church and also had a civil ceremony. At the church the priest who had told her it was better to marry than to burn was the one who united them. They went to spend their passionate honeymoon in Lisbon.
Antonio left his snack bar in the care of his brother.

29  She came back pregnant, satisfied, happy.

30  They had four children, all of them boys, all of them hairy.

Background Information:

Clarice Lispector (1925-1977) was born of Russian parents in the Ukraine, but two months after her birth, her family moved to Brazil. As a teenager growing up in Rio de Janeiro, she began to write stories and plays while embarking on an ambitious study of contemporary Brazilian and European literature, particularly the fiction of Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf, with whom she felt a special affinity, and the existentialist philosophy of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. In 1944 she graduated from the National Faculty of Law and worked as one of Brazil's first woman journalist. Shortly afterward Lispector married a diplomat and published her first novel, Close to the Savage Heart(1944).

Living in Europe and the United States with her husband from 1945 to 1969, Lispector wrote many stories and novels in which she explored her preoccupation with existential themes. Literary critics singled out the stories in Family 77es(1960), from this story. Lispector created a world both miraculous and familiar, dramatizing the instinct for survival that directs the thoughts and actions of every living creature. As the critic Giovanni Pontiero has observed, Lispector's stories are " free from psychological conflicts, they show a greater participation in what is real - the greater space that includes all spaces", (http://www.goggle.com)

Literary Concepts:

Existentialism: It is a movement in the 20^th century emphasizing the active participation of the will, rather than the reason, in confronting the problems of a non-moral or absurd universe.

Conflict: The struggle or encounter within the plot of two opposing forces that serves to create reader interest and suspense. Conflict maybe external, between two characters (say, the protagonist and antagonist) or between one character and some aspect of his environment; internal, between two opposing ideas, feelings, or tendencies struggling within a single character, or a combination of both

By Jayson with 1 comment

Poetry: Psalms

Psalm 23

The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want:
 He maketh me down to lie
In pastures green; he leadeth me
 The quiet waters by.

My soul He doth restore again,
 And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
 E'en for His own Name's sake.

Yea, though I walk in Death's dark vale,
 Yet will I fear none ill;
For Thou art with me; and Thy rod
 And staff me comfort still.

My table Thou hast furnishèd
 In presence of my foes;
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
 And my cup overflows.

Goodness and mercy all my life
 Shall surely follow me;
And in God's house for evermore
 My dwelling-place shall be.

– Psalmus 23

Dominus pascit me, et nihil mihi deerit;
 in pascuis virentibus me collocavit,
 super aquas quietis eduxit me.
Animam meam refecit.
 Deduxit me super semitas iustitiae propter nomen suum.
Nam et si ambulavero in valle umbrae Mortis,
 non timebo mala, quoniam Tu mecum es,
 virga Tua et baculus Tuus,
 ipsa me consolata sunt.
Parasti in conspectu meo mensam
 adversus eos, qui tribulant me;
 impinguasti in oleo caput meum,
 et calix meus redundat.
Etenim benignitas et misericordia subsequentur me
 omnibus diebus vitae meae,
 et inhabitabo in domo Domini
 in longitudinem dierum.

By Jayson with No comments

Philippine Literature: Jose Garcia Villa

Footnote to Youth

By Jose Garcia Villa

The sun was salmon and hazy in the west. Dodong thought to himself he would tell his father about Teang when he got home, after he had unhitched the carabao from the plow, and let it to its shed and fed it. He was hesitant about saying it, but he wanted his father to know. What he had to say was of serious import as it would mark a climacteric in his life. Dodong finally decided to tell it, at a thought came to him his father might refuse to consider it. His father was silent hard-working farmer who chewed areca nut, which he had learned to do from his mother, Dodong's grandmother. 

I will tell it to him. I will tell it to him. 

The ground was broken up into many fresh wounds and fragrant with a sweetish earthy smell. Many slender soft worms emerged from the furrows and then burrowed again deeper into the soil. A short colorless worm marched blindly to Dodong's foot and crawled calmly over it. Dodong go tickled and jerked his foot, flinging the worm into the air. Dodong did not bother to look where it fell, but thought of his age, seventeen, and he said to himself he was not young any more. 

Dodong unhitched the carabao leisurely and gave it a healthy tap on the hip. The beast turned its head to look at him with dumb faithful eyes. Dodong gave it a slight push and the animal walked alongside him to its shed. He placed bundles of grass before it land the carabao began to eat. Dodong looked at it without interests. 

Dodong started homeward, thinking how he would break his news to his father. He wanted to marry, Dodong did. He was seventeen, he had pimples on his face, the down on his upper lip already was dark--these meant he was no longer a boy. He was growing into a man--he was a man. Dodong felt insolent and big at the thought of it although he was by nature low in statue. Thinking himself a man grown, Dodong felt he could do anything. 

He walked faster, prodded by the thought of his virility. A small angled stone bled his foot, but he dismissed it cursorily. He lifted his leg and looked at the hurt toe and then went on walking. In the cool sundown he thought wild you dreams of himself and Teang. Teang, his girl. She had a small brown face and small black eyes and straight glossy hair. How desirable she was to him. She made him dream even during the day. 

Dodong tensed with desire and looked at the muscles of his arms. Dirty. This field work was healthy, invigorating but it begrimed you, smudged you terribly. He turned back the way he had come, then he marched obliquely to a creek. 

Dodong stripped himself and laid his clothes, a gray undershirt and red kundiman shorts, on the grass. The he went into the water, wet his body over, and rubbed at it vigorously. He was not long in bathing, then he marched homeward again. The bath made him feel cool. 

It was dusk when he reached home. The petroleum lamp on the ceiling already was lighted and the low unvarnished square table was set for supper. His parents and he sat down on the floor around the table to eat. They had fried fresh-water fish, rice, bananas, and caked sugar. 

Dodong ate fish and rice, but did not partake of the fruit. The bananas were overripe and when one held them they felt more fluid than solid. Dodong broke off a piece of the cakes sugar, dipped it in his glass of water and ate it. He got another piece and wanted some more, but he thought of leaving the remainder for his parents. 

Dodong's mother removed the dishes when they were through and went out to the batalan to wash them. She walked with slow careful steps and Dodong wanted to help her carry the dishes out, but he was tired and now felt lazy. He wished as he looked at her that he had a sister who could help his mother in the housework. He pitied her, doing all the housework alone. 

His father remained in the room, sucking a diseased tooth. It was paining him again, Dodong knew. Dodong had told him often and again to let the town dentist pull it out, but he was afraid, his father was. He did not tell that to Dodong, but Dodong guessed it. Afterward Dodong himself thought that if he had a decayed tooth he would be afraid to go to the dentist; he would not be any bolder than his father. 

Dodong said while his mother was out that he was going to marry Teang. There it was out, what he had to say, and over which he had done so much thinking. He had said it without any effort at all and without self-consciousness. Dodong felt relieved and looked at his father expectantly. A decrescent moon outside shed its feeble light into the window, graying the still black temples of his father. His father looked old now. 

"I am going to marry Teang," Dodong said.

His father looked at him silently and stopped sucking the broken tooth. The silence became intense and cruel, and Dodong wished his father would suck that troublous tooth again. Dodong was uncomfortable and then became angry because his father kept looking at him without uttering anything. 

"I will marry Teang," Dodong repeated. "I will marry Teang." 

His father kept gazing at him in inflexible silence and Dodong fidgeted on his seat. 

"I asked her last night to marry me and she said...yes. I want your permission. I... want... it...." There was impatient clamor in his voice, an exacting protest at this coldness, this indifference. Dodong looked at his father sourly. He cracked his knuckles one by one, and the little sounds it made broke dully the night stillness. 

"Must you marry, Dodong?" 

Dodong resented his father's questions; his father himself had married. Dodong made a quick impassioned easy in his mind about selfishness, but later he got confused. 

"You are very young, Dodong." 

"I'm... seventeen." 

"That's very young to get married at." 

"I... I want to marry...Teang's a good girl." 

"Tell your mother," his father said. 

"You tell her, tatay." 

"Dodong, you tell your inay." 

"You tell her." 

"All right, Dodong." 

"You will let me marry Teang?"

"Son, if that is your wish... of course..." There was a strange helpless light in his father's eyes. Dodong did not read it, so absorbed was he in himself. 

Dodong was immensely glad he had asserted himself. He lost his resentment for his father. For a while he even felt sorry for him about the diseased tooth. Then he confined his mind to dreaming of Teang and himself. Sweet young dream.... 

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Dodong stood in the sweltering noon heat, sweating profusely, so that his camiseta was damp. He was still as a tree and his thoughts were confused. His mother had told him not to leave the house, but he had left. He had wanted to get out of it without clear reason at all. He was afraid, he felt. Afraid of the house. It had seemed to cage him, to compares his thoughts with severe tyranny. Afraid also of Teang. Teang was giving birth in the house; she gave screams that chilled his blood. He did not want her to scream like that, he seemed to be rebuking him. He began to wonder madly if the process of childbirth was really painful. Some women, when they gave birth, did not cry. 

In a few moments he would be a father. "Father, father," he whispered the word with awe, with strangeness. He was young, he realized now, contradicting himself of nine months comfortable... "Your son," people would soon be telling him. "Your son, Dodong." 

Dodong felt tired standing. He sat down on a saw-horse with his feet close together. He looked at his callused toes. Suppose he had ten children... What made him think that? What was the matter with him? God!

He heard his mother's voice from the house:

"Come up, Dodong. It is over." 

Suddenly he felt terribly embarrassed as he looked at her. Somehow he was ashamed to his mother of his youthful paternity. It made him feel guilty, as if he had taken something no properly his. He dropped his eyes and pretended to dust dirt off his kundiman shorts.

"Dodong," his mother called again. "Dodong." 

He turned to look again and this time saw his father beside his mother. 

"It is a boy," his father said. He beckoned Dodong to come up. 

Dodong felt more embarrassed and did not move. What a moment for him. His parents' eyes seemed to pierce him through and he felt limp. 

He wanted to hide from them, to run away. 

"Dodong, you come up. You come up," he mother said. 

Dodong did not want to come up and stayed in the sun. 

"Dodong. Dodong." 

"I'll... come up." 

Dodong traced tremulous steps on the dry parched yard. He ascended the bamboo steps slowly. His heart pounded mercilessly in him. Within, he avoided his parents eyes. He walked ahead of them so that they should not see his face. He felt guilty and untrue. He felt like crying. His eyes smarted and his chest wanted to burst. He wanted to turn back, to go back to the yard. He wanted somebody to punish him. 

His father thrust his hand in his and gripped it gently. 

"Son," his father said. 

And his mother: "Dodong..." 

How kind were their voices. They flowed into him, making him strong. 

"Teang?" Dodong said. 

"She's sleeping. But you go on..." 

His father led him into the small sawali room. Dodong saw Teang, his girl-wife, asleep on the papag with her black hair soft around her face. He did not want her to look that pale.

Dodong wanted to touch her, to push away that stray wisp of hair that touched her lips, but again that feeling of embarrassment came over him and before his parents he did not want to be demonstrative. 

The hilot was wrapping the child, Dodong heard it cry. The thin voice pierced him queerly. He could not control the swelling of happiness in him. 

“You give him to me. You give him to me," Dodong said.

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Blas was not Dodong's only child. Many more children came. For six successive years a new child came along. Dodong did not want any more children, but they came. It seemed the coming of children could not be helped. Dodong got angry with himself sometimes. 

Teang did not complain, but the bearing of children told on her. She was shapeless and thin now, even if she was young. There was interminable work to be done. Cooking. Laundering. The house. The children. She cried sometimes, wishing she had not married. She did not tell Dodong this, not wishing him to dislike her. Yet she wished she had not married. Not even Dodong, whom she loved. There has been another suitor, Lucio, older than Dodong by nine years, and that was why she had chosen Dodong. Young Dodong. Seventeen. Lucio had married another after her marriage to Dodong, but he was childless until now. She wondered if she had married Lucio, would she have borne him children. Maybe not, either. That was a better lot. But she loved Dodong... 

Dodong whom life had made ugly. 

One night, as he lay beside his wife, he rose and went out of the house. He stood in the moonlight, tired and querulous. He wanted to ask questions and somebody to answer him. He w anted to be wise about many things. 

One of them was why life did not fulfill all of Youth's dreams. Why it must be so. Why one was forsaken... after Love. 

Dodong would not find the answer. Maybe the question was not to be answered. It must be so to make youth Youth. Youth must be dreamfully sweet. Dreamfully sweet. Dodong returned to the house humiliated by himself. He had wanted to know a little wisdom but was denied it. 

When Blas was eighteen he came home one night very flustered and happy. It was late at night and Teang and the other children were asleep. Dodong heard Blas's steps, for he could not sleep well of nights. He watched Blas undress in the dark and lie down softly. Blas was restless on his mat and could not sleep. Dodong called him name and asked why he did not sleep. Blas said he could not sleep. 

"You better go to sleep. It is late," Dodong said. 

Blas raised himself on his elbow and muttered something in a low fluttering voice. 

Dodong did not answer and tried to sleep. 

"Itay ...," Blas called softly. 

Dodong stirred and asked him what it was. 

"I am going to marry Tona. She accepted me tonight." 

Dodong lay on the red pillow without moving. 

"Itay, you think it over." 

Dodong lay silent. 

"I love Tona and... I want her." 

Dodong rose from his mat and told Blas to follow him. They descended to the yard, where everything was still and quiet. The moonlight was cold and white. 

"You want to marry Tona," Dodong said. He did not want Blas to marry yet. Blas was very young. The life that would follow marriage would be hard... 

"Yes." 

"Must you marry?" 

Blas's voice stilled with resentment. "I will marry Tona." 

Dodong kept silent, hurt. 

"You have objections, Itay?" Blas asked acridly. 

"Son... n-none..." (But truly, God, I don't want Blas to marry yet... not yet. I don't want Blas to marry yet....) 

But he was helpless. He could not do anything. Youth must triumph... now. Love must triumph... now. Afterwards... it will be life. 

As long ago Youth and Love did triumph for Dodong... and then Life. 

Dodong looked wistfully at his young son in the moonlight. He felt extremely sad and sorry for him.

By Jayson with No comments