Soliloquy for Pan

by Beech, Mark

  She had conjured it all on her own, she had drawn it down from the heavens, and the thunder shook the earth and then the lightning struck a nearby tree and the impact knocked her off her feet. Only then did she realize it had gone wrong, it was too much, its fury was out of control. The shrieking wind ripped branches off trees and flung them down at her. She clung to a tree trunk and called out for them to help her, Pan and the dryads and all the others, but they would not come forth, and still the storm raged.

  She thought she would be sucked into the very sky itself. The ground shook beneath her and the wind tore at her and if she lifted an outstretched hand before her eyes she could not see it through the lashing rain. The storm lasted forever. It was without beginning or end. Her terror turned to exhaustion, to resignation, almost to boredom: the monotony of destruction.

  When its fury was finally spent to nothing but a steady drizzle of rain, she had risen and stumbled home. The house remained still and dark. Somewhere not a quarter of a mile away up on the road her parents were already dead—or so the emergency services said, though they probably told everyone their loved ones “died instantly”—and it seemed like the sort of thing she could have sensed, should have known, but she’d had no inkling. She’d been both exhausted and exhilarated, and she found her notebooks and opened one for the first time in years and wrote the lines of a poem she’d once memorized for school. Pan is dead! Pan is dead! The great god Pan is dead!

  She had not really thought him dead, exactly—did gods die?—but she had sensed that there had been yet another change. She had towelled herself dry, changed clothes, got a Coke out of the fridge and sat on the front porch for a long time, watching the rain, and only then did she begin to notice the lateness of the hour, and that her parents were not yet home. The hand on her watch crawled past eleven-thirty and then midnight and she could no longer tell herself there was nothing to worry about; it wasn’t just that her father had never in her entire memory gone to bed later than ten o’clock, but also that nothing was open this late in her small town even if he’d thrown caution to the winds. And yet she felt almost embarrassed as she dialled the emergency number, because nothing could be wrong. Things like that didn’t just go wrong. She didn’t know what to say when the dispatcher answered: “Um. I know this sounds weird, but, um, I don’t know where my parents are?”

  Was this the very tree she had clung to that night? Had the past walked her back through the years for a reprise? If so, the past was in error. She had not been timid in years, and she had nothing at all to lose.

  Where she could not control the storm she could control herself. Each eruption of thunder and lightning caused the ground to quake. She could not see past the streaming rain. The dead wet leaves slipped beneath her feet and the wind threatened to shove her to her knees and still she pressed on. Yet the storm’s fury was not sustainable. In time its thunder quieted, its great gusts dissipated, and even the rain diminished. Back at the house, they would be worried about her, but they would be safe. This would not be a storm like that one had been.

  They had to be safe, because she could not go to them.

  These woods were more familiar to her than the streets round her apartment back in the city where she had lived for years, as familiar as her own body. Pan’s grove was deep in the heart of the forest. Everything there was so much richer and deeply felt. She could taste the warm, moist soil and the rain and the sunlight it absorbed and the decay it was cycling back into life and would later welcome once again in death, over and over, until the end of everything.

  Softly, she said, “Pan is dead! The great god Pan is dead!”

  But he was not, the great goat-footed beast, the savage child, the carnal youth, and nor was she, in spite of all her efforts to disappear. The world beyond them might be, though, or not; she no longer cared.

  She sank to the earth and for a long time, she simply lay there. When she spoke at last, it was in the languages and the ways that they had taught her, the vocabulary she’d said she’d forgotten or said never was that had lain dormant under her tongue, a language she had always used when she dreamed.

  Home. Home. Home.

  Nothing had changed. The old words and the old rituals and the old ways were all waiting for her to find them again and call them back, just as she remembered them. What could be more reliable than memory, for she would no more have forgotten them than she would have forgotten her own name. They belonged to her now too, and she to them. She would remember them forever, older than the earth, more ancient than the stars, the language that spoke all the beginnings into being.

  Above the rain-drenched grove the sun burst through the clouds and soaked her limbs in warmth, and in the woods beyond were shadows: darkness, and penumbra.

  Faun and Flora: A Garden for the Goat-God Pan

  Sheryl Humphrey

  As an ancient Greek god of Nature, specifically the rustic and varied terrain of Arcadia, Pan has long been celebrated in art and literature. But it is fitting that the landscape itself, or enclosure of sacred aspects of it, served as his first temples. Worship of Pan occurred in situ, at the mountains and remote caves, grottoes, and groves dedicated to him. Later in the classical period, herms and other statues honoring Pan were sometimes placed within sacred forests or situated next to important individual holy trees such as oaks or pines. In modern times, outdoor sculptures of fauns playing panpipes have often been used to evoke or acknowledge the spirit of Pan in both public parks and private gardens throughout the Western world.

  But how might a Pan garden be created today? What is Pan’s relevance to us now? Why would a contemporary gardener (if s/he is so inclined) pay homage to Pan, whose spirit has persisted for millennia? This essay will suggest ways in which to plan a garden or landscape that honors Pan more consciously, with more dedication and meaning, going beyond a simple ornamental focal-point. Perhaps some of the pastoral pleasures and sweet melancholy of an idealized ancient Arcadia can be rediscovered in the modern backyard.

  First, a workable definition of Pan is needed. Even within the complexities of Greek mythology, he is a challenging subject, with many layers of meaning, differing genealogical details, and varying stories. Add to these ancient layers the associations that have accrued from the wealth of art and literature in more recent times, and Pan becomes an unwieldy, complicated figure. Similarly, in regard to Pan, his homeland of Arcadia is a complicated subject, combining the concrete realities of a geographical place in Greece with the idealized and romantic attributes of a paradise imagined by poets and painters.

  A brief description from the earliest sources is simply that Pan was the god of woodlands and shepherds (his name is believed now to have been derived from the ancient Greek word paeitiy ‘to pasture, to graze;’ also ‘rustic’). Arcadia was where Pan was first worshipped. His appearance is that of a half-man, halfgoat. He has the legs and cloven hooves of a goat; his upper body is that of a man, except for goatish horns on his head. As his worship spread into other parts of Greece and to Rome, he acquired many more attributes. He became the god of all flocks and herd animals, especially goats, and was their supreme shepherd, responsible for their safety, well-being, and fertility. He was famous for roaming the land in his hunts for wild game and in his lustful pursuit of the nymphs who populated the deep forests and mountainous terrain. He played eerie but beautiful music on the panpipes he had invented. He was believed to be the cause of the extreme fear—the madness of panic terror—one may feel in the dark of night in a desolate place.

  During the Renaissance, on through the Romantic movement in the 18th and 19th centuries, and into the Neo-Pagan movements of the 20th and 21st centuries, new aspects of Pan accumulated from depictions of him in art and literature. Pan was seen as the god of all Nature, not just of parts of it. Poets and painters chose to emphasize this or that facet of the god, to suit their purposes.

  The ancient Arcadian district, surrounded by mountains, had been somewhat isolated from the progress occurrin
g in other parts of Greece. Its inhabitants were viewed as leading simple lives in a quiet, rustic setting, away from the turmoil of the metropolis. This interpretation of Arcadia later evolved into an idealized symbol of a lost paradise. The bucolic pursuits of the Arcadian shepherds came to represent a utopian peace and idyllic contentment that humans had lost long ago. The Arcadian ideal was viewed with melancholy and nostalgia, and sometimes with a hope of returning to a paradise on earth by way of resuscitating the cult of Pan.

  This essay’s suggestions for a Pan garden are based on aspects of both classical Pan and modern Pan. And because Pan’s qualities are so inclusive and complex, I feel I must acknowledge my personal interpretation of their meaning and implications. I first encountered Pan in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, one of my favorite books as a child. Chapter VII, ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,’ is a strange, thrilling, dreamlike interlude, a description of mystical experience that both interrupts and enriches the charming tale of anthropomorphic animals in the English countryside. Grahame’s account of Pan’s effect on little Rat and Mole captures intense emotions of spirituality. To me, Pan represents the ineffable, overwhelming sense of a Presence that is the power of Nature in all its beauty and grandeur.

  Pan, as an all-encompassing symbol, displays many dichotomies and dualities. He is both a goat and a god. In his relationship with animals he is both a hunter and a shepherd, a slayer and a nurturer. He incites merrymaking and joyful music in the sunny glade, but at night he brings panic and fear of the unknown, of the unseen terrors that may lurk in the dark of woods and caverns. He wantonly and selfishly indulges in the pleasures of the flesh but also experiences sorrows, often the heartbreak of lost or ill-fated love. In post-classical times, he has been equated with both Christ and Satan. In essence, Pan charms us with the beauties of Nature at the same time that he makes us cognizant of its awful powers, which are the ultimate dichotomy of life and death.

  Nature and Pan reflect each other not only in the physical landscape but in the human psyche. Pan the nimble-footed goat-god teeters at the edges found in Nature. He dwells at the intersections of light and darkness; he is most active at dawn and dusk, but he rests at noon. His favorite haunts include caves (the intersection of aboveground/belowground); springs and shores, where earth meets water; and mountains, where earth meets sky. Spiritually and psychologically, he is situated at the borderlines between human/god/animal and madness/sanity.

  The cultivated garden ultimately manifests these contrasts, serving as a common meeting place, the equator, between the wild and the tame. The garden is the theater where we citizens of modern civilization can make contact with Pan and wildness. A garden captures the essence of life and death, displaying cycles of growth and decay, increase and decrease, bloom and rot.

  So, how can these abstract ideas and qualities that make up Pan be translated into, or evoked by, the physical realities of a garden? Inspiration comes in several ways: by looking to the geography and native plants of the actual Arcadia; by including plants that historically were associated directly with Pan; by including plants whose names (whether common or scientific) and/or habits evoke the particular myths, nymphs, animals, and activities of Pan’s domain; and by choosing specific garden design features that subtly make reference to some of the aspects of Pan discussed above.

  [Disclaimer: Please note that the plants named herein are theoretical suggestions only. The listed plants represent a wide range of environments and climates. When choosing a plant variety, please investigate its suitability for your garden’s planting zone and microclimate.]

  The ancient Greeks considered the Arcadian people to have been the original, indigenous inhabitants of their land. Arcadians had never migrated, as many other Greeks had. Therefore, it would be appropriate that a modern Pan garden consist of native plants to as great a degree as possible. And after choosing plants native to one’s area, it would then be appropriate to supplement them with plants native to Pan’s homeland.

  Arcadia (Arkadía in Modern Greek) is a mountainous area located in the central and eastern part of Greece’s Peloponnese peninsula. Its present-day capital is Tripoli. Within the region’s 4,400 sq. km of area are many variations in terrain. The different elevations support the typical Mediterranean vegetation found in the forest, garigue, maquis, and steppe (grassland) areas. Among these plants are those that Pan likely would have encountered as he roamed his land.

  Deciduous trees of the forests of the Mediterranean mountains include Ash, Chestnut, Elm, and Hornbeam. Oaks are plentiful, and especially symbolic for Arcadia. The earliest Arcadians subsisted largely on acorns before the development of agriculture, and the Greeks referred to Arcadians as “acorn-eaters” and “oak-born” long afterward. Beech trees also are numerous; beechnuts were a favorite food of the herds of wild swine under Pan’s protection.

  Coniferous forest trees at higher elevations include Cedar, Juniper, and Silver Fir. Very prevalent are Corsican Pine (Pinus nigra laricio), Stone Pine (Pinus pinea), and Turkish Pine (Pin us brutià). The forests are interspersed with open meadows. In stony locations, the garigue or rock heath supports many low-growing, sturdy herbs such as Basil, Garlic, Hyssop, Lavender, Oregano, Rue, Sage, Savory, and Thyme.

  Mediterranean plants prevalent in the extreme conditions of the steppe or grassland include Asphodel, Buttercup, Lily, Mint, Mullein, Mustard, Parsley, Rose, Sea Squill, Thistle, and many grasses and legumes.

  Plants of the shrubby, brushy, sometimes impenetrable maquis include hardy bushes and small trees such as Arbutus, Broom, Laurel, Mastic (Pistacia lentiscus), Myrtle, Oaks (specifically the evergreen Quercus ilex and the Kermes Oak [Quercus coccifera]), Rock-rose (Cistaceae), Rosemary, and Tree Heath (Erica arborea). Interestingly, this brushy cover would be a haven for hares, which are closely associated with Pan.

  In the alpine tundra of the highest mountains are lichens and dwarf plants. At the other extreme, plants found in the Mediterranean desert include Anabasis, Astragalus, Convolvulus, Ephedra, Halogeton, Holoxylon, Retama, Sagebrush (Artemisia), Saltbush (Atriplex), Saltcedar or Tamarisk (Tamarix), Stachys, Varthemia, and Zygophyllum.

  Note that many of the above-named Mediterranean native plants are rich with mythological associations. Although Pan did not dwell with the gods at Olympus, he was often called a favorite of theirs. So the plants of Greek myth in general are appropriate for Pan’s garden.

  Certain plants were associated directly with Pan, most famously the pine tree, so-called fennel, reeds, and squill. Nonnus’s Dionysiaca (42. 257 ff, translated by W. H. D. Rouse) mentions the Oreiade nymph Pitys, whose name means ‘pine’ in Greek. Pitys “fled fast as the wind over the mountains to escape the unlawful wooing of Pan”; the gods came to her aid by changing her into a pine tree. Pan is sometimes depicted wearing a wreath of pine boughs on his head, perhaps in memory of Pitys.

  A large pinecone topped the thyrsus, a wand or staff that Pan would sometimes hold. The main part of the thyrsus consisted of a stalk of Ferula communis (the so-called Giant Fennel), to which might be added ivy vines and leaves. The thyrsus was associated with Dionysus and his crew of revelers, of which Pan was occasionally a member.

  An exceptionally vivid Pan myth (one that has long inspired artists and poets) concerns the Arcadian nymph Syrinx, whose name means water-reed’ and ‘panpipes’ in Greek. Ovid tells one version of the story in his Metamorphoses. Like Pitys, Syrinx guarded her chastity and ran desperately from Pan’s sexual aggression. When her escape was barred at the River Ladon, she cried out for the water nymphs to help her. She was changed into the tall, slender river-reeds. Pan heard the sound the wind made among the reeds, and was inspired to fashion the first panpipes. The instrument was made with reeds of different lengths bound together by beeswax. Through the music he played, Pan felt united with Syrinx. Some reeds for a Pan garden are Reed Grass (Calamagrostis arundinacea), Reed Palm (Chamaedorea seifrizii), and Bamboo. Pan’s music is pervasive; reed flutes and panpipes have b
een played by cultures globally and throughout history.

  One of the strangest of the Pan plant associations is a ritual involving Squill (Drimia marhima [formerly classified as Scilla maritime]; or possibly Scilla hyacinthoides). If ancient Arcadians returned home from a hunt empty-handed, or if shepherds had suffered a shortage of livestock, they would beat a statue of Pan with squills. It seems that this was a kind of scapegoating ritual of blaming Pan for failing to provide game or food; he was responsible for the flourishing of herds, flocks, and wild game. Maybe squill was used because it was considered to be a base, lowly plant (although its tall flowering stalks are attractive), and it could cause pain like that of stinging nettles.

  Animal associations yield many plant suggestions for a Pan garden. The animal most sacred to Pan the Goat-God is obviously the goat. To symbolize goats in a Pan garden, one might choose some of the plants favored by them when they would graze in the thickets and mountain meadows of rustic Arcadia. Macrobius’s Saturnalia (7.5-9) from the early 5th century A.D. includes a passage from a play by the comic poet Eupolis in which a bleating chorus of goats describes what they love to eat:

  We feed on all manner of shrubs, browsing on the tender shoots

  Of pine, ilex, and arbutus, and on spurge, clover, and fragrant

  Sage, and many-leaved bindweed as well, wild olive, and lentisk,

  And ash, fir, sea oak, ivy, and heather, willow, thorn, mullein,

  And asphodel, cistus, oak, thyme, and savory.

  A Pan garden may also evoke the god’s beloved goats if it includes plants with ‘goat’ in their common names, such as Goat’s Beard (Aruncus dioicus) and Goatgrass (Aegilops). Goat Willow’s history as an important high-growing food for goats is reflected in its scientific name, Salix caprea (from Latin caper, ‘goat’). The little Horned Violet (Viola cornuta) can represent the horns of both Pan and goat. Horny Goat Weed (also known as Rowdy Lamb Herb) (Epimedium) has a reputation for being an aphrodisiac, which makes it doubly appropriate for lustful Pan’s garden. Climbing plants and vines could be encouraged; they scramble over obstacles like the climbing goats do.