Perdita

by Hilary Scharper

  The missing fragment tells us that biophilia is a powerful but secret form of love that connects all living things. It is rather risky for Hephaestus to hide it with Perdita, because it is a love that is known only to the gods. Yet Hephaestus plans to give biophilia to Pandora once he is reunited with her because he believes that it will complete their love and render it eternal. Hephaestus then hides Perdita in his forge. Zeus arrives and the beautiful but object-like Pandora (now bereft of agape, eros, and philia) is taken away from him.

  Pandora, however, is tricked by Zeus and unwittingly tells him of Perdita’s existence. Zeus wrathfully claims that the child is his rightful possession and demands that she be handed over to him. Fortunately, Hephaestus gets wind of Zeus’s outrage and quickly takes Perdita out of his forge and tries to hide her.

  The blacksmith goes to the first of the three Fates, Clotho—the sister who spins the thread of life—and begs her to take Perdita. Clotho promptly consults with her two sister Fates: Lachesis, who gives each man a portion of the thread (a destiny), and Atropos, who, with her shears, severs the thread at death. The sisters agree to take Perdita, for it seems that in exchange for sanctuary she can perform the Fates a service.

  We now come to a section in the extra fifty-one lines that deeply fascinates me. The fragment describes the Fates as sisters who do not always perform their tasks in an orderly fashion. Sometimes Clotho spins the thread of life too quickly or too slowly, thus creating both an excess or a dearth of thread. Atropos at times wearies of holding her heavy shears, and so she fails to sever the thread properly, and sometimes she even cuts it in the wrong place. Thus it is poor Lachesis, the sister in charge of allotments, who is left to deal with all these “mistakes of fate,” or what in contemporary terms might be called “loose ends.”

  The three sister Fates hide Perdita among these “extra threads,” and she is given the task of concealing them under Lachesis’s robe. The excess threads, however, eventually become so voluminous that they begin to push out from under the edges of Lachesis’s robe, and the sisters decide they must hide Perdita elsewhere. The Fates appeal to their mother, Themis, and she wisely advises them to give both Perdita and the extra threads to Prometheus. Prometheus consents, announcing his plan to steal fire from the gods and promising to reunite Perdita with Pandora (thus reconstituting woman as a “vessel” of love). This is probably the original meaning of Pandora and her box: obviously her role in classical mythology was drastically changed after Hesiod, but I will leave that argument to another time.

  Prometheus cleverly conceals Perdita in the folds of his cloak and procures a fiery coal. He gives the forbidden ember to mortals, but also places Perdita under their care. Yet mankind, seeing fire as a useful tool, but not the least interested in the child Perdita, quickly abandons her by the sea. Fortunately, Perdita is rescued by the Okeanides—water nymphs—and is adopted by them.

  In the last four lines of the missing fragment, Zeus furiously demands that the water nymphs hand all the extra threads of fate (as well as Perdita) over to him. The Okeanides, however, are one step ahead. They have already bundled the threads into a succession of forms (child nymphs) and distributed them throughout the seas, oceans, and freshwaters, so that Zeus might never possess all of them at one time. Themis, mother to the Fates, tells Zeus that he can only have the child “reassembled thread by thread” through acts of clemency.

  At this point, the fragment abruptly ends. It is not clear if Pandora ever returns to Hephaestus, and we do not learn what becomes of Perdita and her threads. I think it must have been longer, but I have only been able to piece fifty-one lines together thus far.

  As you can see, it is an extraordinary fragment of text. At some point, virtually all of it must have been excised from the Theogony—why and by whom remains a great mystery! But we certainly owe a debt to Lumenius for preserving Perdita. (Had I not stuck it out with his torturous prose writing, she might have been lost to us forever!)

  Moreover, Lumenius gives us an interesting interpretation of how Perdita fits into classical mythology. He describes the child as “the keeper” of the “lost threads” (fila perdita) that connect all living things. He suggests that the fila perdita of love relationships—more than any other kind—are Perdita’s special province. (Lumenius might have had personal motives for doing this, as there is evidence to suggest he had a passionate but unrequited love for a married woman.)

  I should mention there is only one other scholar who has written on Hesiod’s missing fragment. He is the Canadian-born scholar Victor Latham, who taught at St. Edmund’s College in Toronto and then later at Trinity College until his death in 1935. (If you like, I can send you what I have on him, but I warn you, it’s pretty thin.)

  Now for a confession. I have kept my discoveries about Hesiod’s Theogony and Perdita largely to myself—sharing them only with your father. A few years before his death, I convinced Edward to coauthor a manuscript exploring the cosmological significance of Perdita, but it is now an unfinished and perhaps unfinishable work without him.

  As you can imagine, Perdita was a source of much discussion between us. Your father and I attempted through lexical proofs to establish that the fifty-one extra lines do indeed belong to Hesiod and that the missing fragment represents a foundational aspect of the ancients’ understanding of fate, the nature of love, and the connections among all living things. Edward contested every argument I made; he died before I could fully convince him to go to press—though I still feel in my heart that his reservations were not of an intellectual cast, but related more to deep ambivalences within himself.

  So here, ultimately, is my loose end—and perhaps his. Nevertheless, Perdita is someone who belonged to the two of us. I believe she links us to one another, but there it is: an unaccountable thread.

  I hope you will pardon me, Garth, if I have gone on too long here. I am almost inclined to tear up this letter! I cannot justify to myself why I might send you this strange epistle; and yet I feel that at seventy-five years of age, some allowance might be made for my verbosity and candor. Perhaps I am sending this because you and I, though barely known to each other, share a thread in your wonderful and beloved father.

  Warm regards,

  Muriel Hampstead

  Thirteen

  “Well!” Clare raised a glass of water to her lips. “That was quite the letter.”

  “Did Muriel say Victor Latham?” I asked.

  “Yes, here it is: ‘the Canadian-born scholar Victor Latham, who taught at St. Edmund’s College in Toronto and then later at Trinity College until his death in 1935.’ Why do you ask?”

  “I believe he was Marged Brice’s classics professor, but I’ll have to double-check.”

  I placed a grilled fillet of whitefish on her plate. “What did you mean by ‘quite the letter’?” I asked.

  She smiled mysteriously and sliced the fish in half, transferring the larger piece to my plate. “I only meant that it’s quite an amazing discovery. I can see how the Perdita myth must have influenced Shakespeare, can’t you? But what’s really amazing is how it changes the Prometheus myth.”

  I must have looked a little puzzled.

  “Prometheus doesn’t bring just fire to humankind—you know, just technology, so to speak. Through Perdita he also brings love,” she explained.

  “Why is that so significant?”

  “For one thing, it represents a completely different take on the idea of Prometheus as the bringer of fire and technology to humankind.”

  “I think I see. You mean because Prometheus also brings Perdita along with the four loves she carries?”

  “Exactly! And that fourth kind of love in Perdita’s bundle—biophilia—isn’t it rather intriguing? You know there’s a Harvard scientist who’s written about it. He thinks that all living things have an instinctive orientation toward one another. Biophilia is supposed to be deep in our biological make
up. But if Muriel’s right, the Ancient Greeks thought of it more as a kind of love.”

  Clare looked out toward the Bay, her expression growing thoughtful. “You know, Garth, Muriel’s discovery could be something quite important. I mean, in terms of the history of ideas.”

  I smiled ruefully. “I don’t know, it all seems pretty speculative. Even my father seems to have had his reservations.”

  “What do you think his reservations were about?” she asked quietly.

  I stood up. “Shall we continue this out on the deck? I think the storm is pretty much over, and we should be fine out under the awning.”

  Clare managed our plates while I fetched a towel and wiped off two deck chairs.

  The air was fresh and cool, and every few minutes we could hear the wind swishing through the treetops. Clare ducked back inside for a few minutes and reemerged carrying my father’s Collected Works of Hesiod.

  “I’m just checking, Garth, but it looks like those extra fifty-one lines aren’t here.”

  I let her read for a few moments. “Clare, you still haven’t told me what you meant by it being quite the letter.”

  She put Hesiod down and looked over at me. “But I’ve already told you.”

  “Come on, out with it,” I said firmly. “That stuff about Prometheus and biophilia wasn’t really it. Not entirely anyway. Am I right?”

  “Partly right. I was thinking of something else.” She was watching me carefully. “But first I want to know a bit more about Muriel.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “She was one of my father’s graduate students—a star student. Very brilliant. She often came over to the house when I was little. And then later, she became a colleague in his department.”

  “Did you see much of her when you were older? As an adult, I mean?”

  “No, not much. I lost track of her when I was at university. My visits home were much less frequent by that time. I guess I saw her most recently at my father’s funeral. I remember because she was so distraught, I had to take her home myself.”

  “And your mother, did she like Muriel?”

  “Hmm…now that you mention it, she definitely wasn’t keen about Muriel being around.”

  “What’s Muriel like?”

  “Muriel is—in a word—eccentric. She used to wear one of those dead foxes around her neck: you know, with a big bushy tail and the eyes sewn shut. I was pretty fascinated by it as a kid.” I began to uncork a bottle of wine. “Now, for the third time: quite the letter?”

  “Well, this is totally reading between the lines, but…” She hesitated. “I’m just going to say it. I think Muriel might have been in love with your father.”

  I stared at her. “How did you get that from her letter?”

  “I’m sorry if I’m shocking you, Garth.” I could see a faint smile playing about the corners of her mouth.

  “My father was pretty liberal, but when it came to marriage…” I began. “I can’t imagine that—”

  “Oh, no,” Clare interrupted. “I don’t mean that. It obviously was an unrequited love.” She held her glass while I poured. “I hope you won’t take this the wrong way,” she said after a pause. “But for Muriel’s sake, I hope your father might have returned her affections, even just a little.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it would be very terrible to be deeply in love with someone who didn’t love you back. Don’t you think it would be easier to accept that the person just couldn’t love you back: that circumstances prevented it. His marriage, for example.”

  “I’m not sure I understand you.” I was a bit bewildered about where she was heading.

  “I knew your father wasn’t happily married, and I used to wonder if he might have had a long-lost sweetheart or something along those lines.”

  “If he did, it was a well-kept secret. That’s all I can say.”

  “Well of course it would be! And then Muriel might take some comfort in knowing that he—owing to circumstances beyond his control—just couldn’t return her affections. Not explicitly anyway. It would be a sort of unrequited romance or what the Victorians used to call an unlawful passion.”

  The wind sent a few drops of water splattering across the awning above me.

  “I can’t speculate on the secrets of my father’s heart,” I said lightly, “but from his end of things, unrequited love for someone like Muriel didn’t appear to be his biggest problem.”

  “Oh?” She took a sip of wine, looking up at me over the rim of her glass.

  “No. To put it bluntly, I think my father’s love troubles fell well within the bounds of a lawful passion. He simply fell out of love with my mother. I suppose it happened gradually, but the experience left him pretty washed up. He married as an older man, and I really don’t know that there was much left in him for Muriel.”

  “Hmm—one never knows the full story, though.”

  I went inside to pour myself a scotch. “Well, if my father harbored a secret passion for Muriel,” I called out through the screen, “I’d probably be the last person to see it. But I certainly had a front-row seat for his disillusionment with my mother.”

  Clare’s eyes followed me as I returned to my chair. “I wonder if those kinds of love are part of Perdita’s bundle?” she mused. “Of course some of her threads must be those wonderful and beautiful kinds of love. But I suppose they might also include the terrible kinds, too. You know: Lumenius’s unrequited love and your father’s disillusioned love.” Then she laughed. “In a way, Perdita is a bundle of love.”

  “‘Bundle of love’? Isn’t that a Motown hit?”

  She grimaced. “I know it sounds sappy. But even so, I think that’s what Muriel was trying to get at in her letter.”

  Both of us sat quietly looking at the stars begin to pierce through the night sky, a cool breeze stirring the cedars above us.

  “I’m glad Muriel’s Perdita keeps those threads,” Clare murmured softly, as if speaking her thoughts out loud. “I think I might feel something like biophilia for this place. Don’t you, Garth? I suppose I’m an incorrigible romantic, but I’m drawn to the whole idea.”

  I liked her term—incorrigible romantic. It suited her. “What idea?”

  “The idea that it’s love in all its varieties that really connects living things. Perdita offers us the possibility of understanding our connections, including our broken or ill-fated connections.” She reached down for her shawl and drew it up over her shoulders. “Maybe she even represents the chance to pick up a lost thread. What did Muriel call them: fila perdita?”

  We were both silent after that.

  I took a sip of scotch. “Clare,” I said suddenly. “Why didn’t you ever tell me it was you who caught that fish?”

  “Fish? What fish?”

  “The one in the photograph: the big whitefish you gave me for my birthday.”

  She looked away, laughing. “Oh, Garth, it can hardly matter now.”

  “Well, you’ve put me in a very bad light, you know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All these years and I’ve never thanked you for my birthday present.”

  She smiled. “You’re forgiven.”

  “You’re sure?” I was surprised at how serious I sounded.

  “Of course, Garth. Completely forgiven.”

  “And forgiven for the photograph? The one of—of all of us…?”

  She gave me a puzzled look. “But you didn’t have anything to do with that. And besides, now I’m freed from captivity, aren’t I? Or at least I’m freed from the anonymity of being placed off frame.”

  “You were right, you know. I couldn’t find you in any of the photographs my mother put up. I’d like to believe it was just a coincidence.”

  “Oh, indeed! Just a coincidence,” she replied a little drily.

  “Have you ever take
n a look at how Davey Sullivan is eyeing you in that photograph?”

  “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Whatever happened to him?” I continued. “Did you keep up with him? Doug and I never did.”

  “I always thought he was sweet on Evienne,” she said a little evasively. “I mean, wasn’t everyone?”

  I took another slow sip of scotch. “Clare, I’ve probably no right to ask you, but you never liked Evi, did you?”

  “Not very much. I know it sounds like a cliché, but I don’t like to speak ill of the dead.”

  “You know Evienne was—she was very prone to jealousy,” I ventured cautiously. “Especially around other beautiful women.”

  Clare got up and walked restlessly to the edge of the deck.

  “I always thought Evienne was such an unusual name,” she said after a few moments. “Did you know—well, do you know about that name?”

  I shook my head. “Is there something special about it?”

  “I suppose it’s a bit obscure, but Evienne is a derivation of Nimue: the Lady of the Lake. Nimue is the enchantress who beguiles Merlin and puts him to sleep.”

  I was surprised. “Did you ever tell Evi that?”

  “Oh, no—of course not. It was your father who told me. It was after you and Evienne announced your engagement.”

  “How long does Merlin sleep?” I asked, watching her closely.

  She turned and fastened her blue eyes on mine. “A long time—a very long time. In most accounts, he sleeps forever, but your father told me that in a very few versions, he awakens.”

  I laughed awkwardly. “It’s been quite a literary evening, hasn’t it? We’ve covered Hesiod, Shakespeare, and now we’re getting into the Knights of the Round Table.”