The Collected Prose

by Zbigniew Herbert

  Time pressed. One had to act, and act energetically. To bestow immortality on Endymion was out of the question. At that moment Zeus remembered a young scholar, who several times had rendered small but valuable services. Hypnos5, yes Hypnos, no one else, only Hypnos could bar the path to raging anarchy.

  He was a modest, taciturn young man who studied the phenomenon of sleep. Much later, in the period of decline, he was turned into the brother of death, and a major part in this was played by poets who thought their task was to comfort and tame what ought to remain wild, contradictory, and inconceivable. Equipped with a precise, analytical mind, Hypnos studied dreams as a sickness of the body. This is why he must be strictly distinguished from that gang of imposters, those peeping toms of dreams who subject their helpless followers to horrible exercises and tortures only to leave them in the end without a soul, and in the tatters of the subconscious.

  Hypnos understood his task in a flash. Endymion had to be put into a state of hibernation: not so deep that he could not feel external stimuli, and he had to be maintained in this state for as long as possible. Hypnos was an anesthesiologist.

  He explained to Zeus—for whom subtle scientific distinctions were foreign—that the mechanics of the sky would be restored to their usual accuracy by immobilizing Selene’s lover on the mountain slope so she could continue meeting him at the same spot. The father of the gods was delighted. Selene was ecstatic. No one asked the patient his opinion.

  This is what happened. The honeymoon and the following months passed like a dream, in undisturbed harmony, to the joy of both the universe and the lovers. Selene recovered her old equilibrium. She was only a bit more taciturn and pensive.

  The fruit of Endymion’s and Selene’s love was an astronomical number of progeny: fifty girls and as many boys coming into the world regularly every moon-lit month.

  And here a gap. Even more, a scandal, criminal negligence of the mythographers. No one knows what happened to the children. Human memory has not even transmitted their names. Yet we are justifiably concerned about the fate of creatures lightheartedly brought to life when we consider that their father was a great sleeper, and their mother roamed at night.

  It is easy to imagine this lost centuriate, this abandoned flock—they go by twos, holding each other’s hands, always frozen, always rough in the blue-gray uniforms of an orphanage, and with a flaw of injury on their pale faces. The destiny of such creatures is sterile hopelessness. The girls become servants for rich and vulgar bourgeois, and after a full day’s drudgery fall asleep in narrow iron beds in a stuffy room without any window or hope. The boys, hungry, cursed and beaten, take any job, and if they are overcome by a moment of rebellion inevitably end in prison. Thus they go in their bluish-gray uniforms, one after another disappearing in a cloud of forgetfulness.

  The whole story is full of shadows. What did Endymion feel, granted a luminous love and condemned to misty consciousness? Perhaps he even felt Selene’s changes as she approached him: girlish, slender and trembling in the new moon, warm, maternal, insistent in the full moon. One thing is certain: he was attached.

  Selene was truly in love. She would whisper magic incantations of love into Endymion’s half-open mouth, and was answered by an echo. She was satisfied by the charm of perfect passivity, by the monologue of her own transports and lazy assent.

  No one knows exactly when it happened. Selene stopped visiting Endymion. Not a single scene of parting, reproach, or tears. Nothing that shows profound passion: broken china, pumping out the stomach, or at least a slight neurosis. The worst of all possible finales: a sudden attack of strangeness. Like a doll fallen from a carriage, Endymion remains alone on the green slope of Mount Latmos. His open arms embrace no one. On his face, the smile of a country boy who got dead drunk before conscription into the army and fell asleep in the hay. A smile that is intellectually trivial and expressively vapid—simply foolish.

  Even his smell that seduced Selene has left him. Now he smells of rain, damp feathers, and artificial sleep.

  But he continues to be beautiful. That is, completely useless.

  THE OLYMPIAN GENERAL

  ARES WAS THE son of Zeus and Hera. He was one of the twelve Olympian gods, but it is not clear if this was because of an inexplicable worship of the number “twelve,” or some other important reason. He was a second-rate god, auxiliary and generally despised.

  The origin of his name was an adjective. Is it possible to imagine a more proletarian provenance?

  On a fragment of a ceramic vase from Berlin, we see Ares sitting at the end of a table. He has a perfect resemblance to that unfortunate member of the Buddenbrooks family whose nerves were shorter on one side. Ares was the only neurasthenic among the Olympian gods.

  Homer is not kind to him. In the Iliad he is a thoughtless fighter, more of a demon for battle. Homer endows him with two distinctive traits: strong legs and a powerful voice. He was unequaled in attack but also in flight. Injured by Diomedes, he screamed like ten thousand men.

  The Greek gods were immortal but exposed to wounds, illnesses, and humiliations. Ares received mostly the latter. During the Rebellion of the Giants, he was knocked down by the terrible long-haired sons of Aloeus1 and put in a bronze chest. After thirteen months he escaped, barely alive, his morale completely broken.

  Ares killed the son of Poseidon but refused to admit the murder. He was, therefore, a liar, and this character trait is closely related to cowardice.

  Heracles forced him to flee Olympus.

  In military science Ares relied mostly on strategy, and the one principle he recognized was the furious attack, followed by an equally furious retreat. In this respect he resembles Napoleon. His opponent was the deliberate Athena, a superb strategist and tactician. She meticulously weighed the odds and never engaged in a chaotic brawl.

  Ares would get involved in a war without any ideological motivation. He betrayed often and willingly. He preferred to kill with his own hands. This predilection indicates his barbarian origins. Only the young recruits loved him; they went to war deeply convinced it would be great fun, but never returned to confirm that delusion.

  It has been rightly observed that many myths refer to Ares, which means that people liked to say bad things about him behind his back. But Ares had no cult; the temples in his name are rare and meager. Among the Greek gods who possessed academic training and social polish, Ares was indeed a barbarian.

  This is how Herodotus described2 the cult of Ares among the Scythians:

  In each district of the three kingdoms, Ares has his temple. It is of a peculiar kind and consists of an immense heap of brushwood, three furlongs each way, somewhat less in height.

  The heap is leveled off on top like a platform, accessible on one side but rising sheer on the other three.

  Every year a hundred and fifty wagonloads of sticks are added to the pile, to make up for constant settling caused by rains. In each district an ancient iron sword is planted on top of it, and this is the holy image of Ares.

  Annual sacrifices of horses and cattle are made to the sword, which indeed claims a greater number of victims than any other god. Prisoners of war are also sacrificed to Ares, but in this case the ceremony is different from that of the sacrifice of animals. One man is chosen out of every hundred; wine is poured on his head, and his throat cut over a bowl. The bowl is then carried to the platform on top of the woodpile, and the blood poured over the sword.

  While this goes on above another ceremony is enacted below, close to the holy spot. It consists of cutting off the right hands and arms of the prisoners who have been slaughtered, and tossing them into the air. When this is done and the rest of the ceremony is finished, the worshippers go away.

  The victims’ arms and hands are left to lie where they fall, separate from the trunks.

  Later, when war became the domain of politics, shabby counselors, and cynical capitalists, Ares lost his standing. He was demoted. The apostle of chaos no longer had the wind in his sails; he
aged. But still he made threats—that he was strong, that he could beat anyone in arm wrestling. He drank. He cursed as before.

  In the unbearable quiet called peaceful coexistence, what is left for former generals to do? Conquests in bed. Like anyone who has been denied creative capabilities—or at least, industriousness—he contents himself with cheap eroticism. Tintoretto has represented it exquisitely in a painting, Aphrodite and Ares Caught by Hephaistos. Naked Aphrodite, a menacing Hephaistos, and Ares under the bed entangled with slippers and a urinal.

  At present, Ares has discovered an overwhelming predilection for conspiracies, gangs, and terrorist organizations. His life up to now, and his modest education, have found an outlet in treacherous assassinations and the construction of primitive bombs.

  At this moment he is sitting at the terrace of a café, overlooking a quiet city.

  He looks at his watch. He pretends to be calm.

  Exactly at the designated time, a huge, disgusting rose blossoms in the center of the city. It lasts for a moment. Then one hears commotion and the howling of sirens. Over the spot—the place of execution of innocent people—a black curtain of smoke rises into the air.

  Never again will the city be as it was before the explosion.

  Ares pays for his coffee, and slowly goes down the steps of infamy.

  SECURITAS1

  To Ryszard Przybylski

  AT THE BEGINNING of the Empire the Romans introduced a new deity to their pantheon. It happened almost furtively, after hesitation and without any theological preparations.

  Securitas—this is how she was called—was elevated to the altars and watched over the Emperor’s security. But attaching her to a single person, though an important one, deprived the goddess of the indispensable trait of universality.

  The sober Romans noticed a contradiction in the nature of the new goddess of Security that was difficult to disentangle, even a seed of conflict. A guarantee of protection by the supernatural powers might lead the Emperor into a state of exaggerated self-confidence, pride, and arrogance. As a rule this is disastrous for the security of the citizens.

  A compromise had to be invented. The Romans decided to put another, parallel Securitas for citizens in the heavens. But there were more complications: they had to decide whether it would be one deity with two protective branches, or two separate deities with different spheres of power. If there were two separate deities, what would be their relationship? Hierarchy and division of competence are matters of fundamental importance in any administration, including the heavenly one.

  The appearance of the new goddess provoked passionate discussion and a split in popular opinion. The advocates of strong power were delighted by the discovery of the new deity. They thought it was necessary, timely, and at last purely Roman—it put an end to the shameful custom of copying decadent Hellenistic models. They loudly demanded an end to subtle religious disputes, so people’s minds wouldn’t be confused and their hearts could unite around the new cult.

  The republicans—or rather their pitiful survivors—declared they were decidedly (though timidly) in favor of one Securitas for all citizens. They argued that the Emperor was, after all, a citizen too, and it wouldn’t hurt to remind him of this at every occasion.

  Finally, the fortune-tellers and priests exercised the far-reaching restraint characteristic of conservatives. They limited themselves to elaborating a complicated document and sent it to the Senate. The Senate, in keeping with its tradition, could not reach a decision. It deliberated at length, exhaustively considered all the pros and cons, and after many months postponed answering the important question of one or two protectors of Security sine die2. No one noticed that on the heavenly field, only the Emperor’s Securitas remained.

  We do not know the face of Securitas, whether gentle or cruel. Nor do we know her intricate or simple symbols, the ritual, cult, even a single prayer or invocation of her followers. Securitas had the privilege of expressions that were unmarked and unrecorded, of unmeasurable values hovering between zero and infinity. Because of this quality Securitas could penetrate all things, and a moment of inattention was enough for her to become the tissue of our flesh, the backbone of a landscape with a rainbow, the natural order of things.

  Only on coins, the oldest dating from the time of Nero, can we see her worn figure: a woman in a chiton holding a spear. Her banal posture and stately immobility are there only to lull our attention. On a small piece of metal it is difficult to express her essence: dog-like vigilance, and furious pursuit.

  The victims of Securitas—more precisely, the half-eaten victims—avoided speaking about her. Why should they? The few who had the courage to make their revelations public met with disbelief and a sense of distaste. The conviction is very strong that the misfortune of another reduces, in a way empties, the reservoir of bad fate—that another’s bad luck protects us and increases our chances of survival. This salutary illusion always wins over the simple logic of facts. It will be this way forever.

  It would be a mistake to think that the constant presence of the goddess was maintained by prophets, priestly councils, and the inspired. Securitas avoided pomp, ostentation, even publicity. She was severe, and content to have faceless executors.

  What to call them? The problem appears insignificant but in fact is an important matter, an attempt to define what is the only material proof of the existence of the invisible Securitas. Popular tradition passed on dozens of euphemistic, funny, vulgar descriptions and a whole mine of anecdotes, but this surplus makes the choice difficult. So how should they be called? Functionaries—this sounds very general. Guards—this is full of pathos. Agents—too policelike. We select an emotionally neutral term: Attendants.

  The Attendants wait in vain for their Proust. Great art is slow in paying them due justice or crowning their labors. These were countless. Rapt attention, speeding up or slowing down of the pace, sudden turns and pirouettes in a metropolitan ballet, floors, corridors, straining of memory, patient standing at street corners, empty hours in a café with a newspaper read many times over, fitting proofs of guilt together from overheard whispers, bits and snatches of conversation, papers, even from the flies on the ceiling. But these were not reflected, with a hundredfold echo, in any long roman fleuve, figurative painting, or opera.

  The struggle of the Attendants. Not an obvious one against the enemies of security but a spiritual one, brushing asceticism and even self-abnegation. An inhuman effort of will to erase personal traits, to discard one’s own physiognomy—on which the profession left its stamp like smallpox—and to achieve the pure face of a passerby. Only at the moment of attack and boarding, which consists in a delicate or brutal nudge, apologies, entering a conversation about some supposed common acquaintance, vacations in the mountains, participation in an illegal organization—only then will an experienced eye notice how the good-natured face melts away, and the frozen, real face of the Attendant is peering out from under the water. This is all prehistory. In the beginning idyllic, clumsy and awkward, the Attendants move with the spirit of the times and advances in science, carried by the high wave of electronics.

  The sadness of the Attendants. Securitas does not lavish warmth on them. Those who have given their entire lives to her ought to abandon any hope of reward. She is a cold and technical goddess whose potestas relies on the laws of nature, not the laws of man. Securitas has created a closed system, drawing energy from itself: the old dream of a perpetuum mobile. In this system she has introduced numerous bodies which, like planets, circle in marked orbits around a motionless center of power. Changing the system seems as impossible as changing the laws of gravity. The Attendants sense it, and at the same time know they are perfectly interchangeable. A single frown on the goddess’s brow and they fall into non-existence. Despite this—or precisely because of this—they serve her faithfully. Indeed, there are many who prefer inexorable necessity to deceptive, dangerous freedom.

  Researchers in mythology have devoted far too litt
le attention to the goddess Securitas. Some have maintained she is only a pale personification, but they are profoundly mistaken. What other ancient deity has survived to our own times and enjoys such robust health? This fact alone should be an incentive for deeper studies and for scholarly reflection.

  We know that each god ruled over a specific sphere of reality, had his own zealously guarded hunting district and favorite human game. The domain of Securitas is murky, determined by an unclear threat. Her entire inventiveness consists in devising ever-new dangers. She skillfully gives these out in doses, for she knows the art of gradation. Sometimes she is satisfied with a rioting suburb, then she embraces a frenzied city, wanders from one continent to another like the plague, captures land, water, air. Her borders are elastic. Who sets them? Most likely fear.

  She does not need temples, sacrificial smoke, processions, or sacred orgies. She is satisfied with a profession of faith in our own miserable physiology. A flutter of the heart, sudden paralysis of the legs, cold sweat, shrieking in a dream—it is not us but our bodies that sing a daily antiphony to her glory.

  Securitas belongs to the species of monsters. Compared to her, what are all these childish monster-giants, dragons, half-men and half-animals, hybrids haphazardly sewn together? Securitas is very much like us. She is a monster with a human face.

  Like every deity, Securitas draws vital forces from our hopes and fears. She possesses a vast amount of psychological knowledge. She does not lavishly give away eternal youth because this is a charlatan’s stock-in-trade. She does not promise other worlds, nor does she deceive us with notions of justice, because when all is said and done each of us—in the depths of the heart—counts only on a final act of mercy. Securitas puts us face to face with the cruel alternative: either security or freedom. TERTIUM NON DATUR3.