Pandion, following the custom, bowed low to Agenor’s wife and she covered his head with the corner of her mantle and then pressed him fondly to her bosom.
The girl gave a little shout of joy and then, with signs of embarrassment, disappeared into the house, followed by her father’s smile.
Agenor sat down by the entrance to his workshop for a quiet rest. A grove of ancient olive-trees grew right outside the house; their huge, angular trunks were intertwined in the most fantastic manner that to the contemplative eye of the artist resembled people and animals. One of the trees was like a kneeling giant whose arms were held wide apart above his head. The rugged irregularities of another tree-trunk formed an ugly body, distorted by suffering. It seemed as though all the trees were bent under the effort to raise upward the heavy weight of their countless branches covered with tiny silvery leaves.
The figure of a woman in a bright blue holiday himation with gold ornaments slipped out of the other side of the house. As she disappeared behind the slope of the hill the sculptor recognized his daughter. Treading softly with her bare feet, Agenor’s wife came and sat down beside her husband.
“Thessa has gone to Pandion in the pine grove again,” said the sculptor and then added: “The children think we don’t know their little secret!”
His wife laughed gaily but turned suddenly serious as she asked: -
“What do you think of Pandion now that he’s been with us a year?”
“I like him more than ever,” answered Agenor and his wife nodded her head in agreement. “But…” The artist paused before choosing his next words.
“He wants too much,” his wife finished the sentence for him.
“Yes, he wants a lot and much has been granted him by the gods. There is nobody to teach him, I cannot give him what he’s seeking,” said the old artist with a note of sorrow in his voice.
“It seems to me that he’s too uncertain, he can’t find his own vocation; he’s not like other lads,” the woman said in a low voice. “I can’t imagine what he wants and sometimes I feel sorry for him.”
“You’re right, my dear; no happiness will be his if he strives to achieve that which nobody else has ever been able to. You are worried… And I know why, you’re afraid for Thessa, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not afraid, my daughter is proud and brave. Still I feel that her love for Pandion may bring her sorrow. It’s a bad thing for a man to be afflicted, like Pandion, with the passion of the seeker — not even love will heal his eternal yearning…”
“As it healed me.” The sculptor smiled fondly at his wife. “I suppose I was like Pandion, once…”
“Oh, no, you were always stronger and more balanced,” said his wife, stroking Agenor’s greying head.
The artist gazed into the distance beyond the pines amidst which Thessa had disappeared.
The girl hurried on to the sea, frequently glancing back, although she knew that so early on the morning of a holiday nobody would go to the sacred grove.
Waves of heat were already surging from the white stones of the barren hills. At first the path led across flat land covered with thorn bushes and Thessa walked warily so as not to tear the skirts of her best chiton of fine, almost transparent material brought from overseas. Farther on, the ground rose in a low, rounded hill covered with brilliant red flowers, blazing in the bright sunlight like a mass of dark flames. Here there were no thorns and the girl took up the folds of her chiton, lifted it high and ran on.
Thessa passed quickly by the isolated trees and soon found herself in the grove. The straight trunks of the pines shone like purple wax, their wide crowns rustled noisily in the wind and their spreading branches, bristling with needles as long as a man’s hand, were turned to golden dust in the sun’s rays.
An odour of hot resin and pine needles mingled with the breath of the sea filled the whole grove.
The girl slackened her pace, unconsciously submitting to the solemn calm of the grove.
To her right a grey rock sprinkled with fallen pine needles rose up amongst the trees.
A shaft of sunlight slanted down into a small glade turning the surrounding trees into columns of red gold. Here the rumbling roar of the sea could be more clearly heard; although it could not be seen the sea made its presence felt by the low, measured chords of its music.
Pandion ran out from behind the rock to meet Thessa, caught her by her outstretched arms and pulled her towards him, then, pushing her a little way back, gazed intently at her as though he were trying to absorb her image to the full.
Locks of her shining black hair quivered on her smooth forehead, her thin eyebrows, slightly arched, rose towards her temples; the shape of her brows gave her big dark blue eyes an elusive expression of mocking pride.
With a gentle movement Thessa escaped the youth.
“Make haste, people will be coming here soon!’’ she said, looking fondly at Pandion.
“I’m ready,” he said, going towards the rock in which was a narrow vertical crevice.
On a block of limestone stood an unfinished statue of kneaded clay about three feet high. Beside it the sculptor’s wooden tools were laid out — curved saws, knives and trowels.
The girl threw off her himation and slowly raised her hands to the brooch which fastened the folds of the flimsy chiton on her shoulder.
Pandion watched her, smiling and selecting his tools, but when he turned towards the statue the triumphant smile gradually vanished. That crude figure was still far from possessing Thessa’s ravishing beauty. Still the clay had already assumed the proportions of her body. Today must decide everything. At long last he would give the piece of dead clay the charm of living lines.
With a frown of determination Pandion turned towards Thessa. She glanced sideways at him and nodded her head. With downcast eyes the girl leaned against the trunk of a pine-tree with one arm behind her head. Immersed in his work Pandion did not speak. The youth’s penetrating gaze shifted from the body of his model to the clay and back again, changing, measuring, comparing. This struggle between the dead clay, indifferent to the form it was given, and the creative hands of the artist who strove to give it the beauty of the living girl, had been going on for many days.
Time passed and the youth’s attentive ear had on several occasions caught the suppressed sighs of the tired girl.
Pandion stopped work, stepped back from the statue and Thessa gave an involuntary shudder as she heard the bitter groan of disappointment that escaped him. The clay figure had grown much worse. There had been life in it, hinted at by scarcely perceptible lines, but now that these had been made prominent the statue was dead. It had become nothing more than a crude semblance of Thessa’s swarthy body standing before the trunk of a huge pine-tree the colour of old gold.
Biting his lips the youth compared the statue with Thessa, making a desperate effort to find out what was wrong. Actually there was nothing that could be called wrong, it was simply his failure to breathe life into his work, to catch the changing forms of the living body. He had thought that the strength of his love, his frank admiration of Thessa’s beauty would enable him to rise to great heights, to a tremendous feat of creation that would give the world a statue such as it had never before seen… He had thought so yesterday, half an hour ago, even!… But he could not, he had not the ability, it was beyond his powers… Not even for Thessa, whom he loved so well! What should he do? The whole world had grown dark to Pandion, the tools fell from his hands, the blood rushed to his head. In despair at the realization of his impotence, the youth rushed to the girl and fell on his knees before her.
The girl, embarrassed and perplexed, placed her hands on Pandion’s hot, upturned face.
With the intuition of a woman she suddenly realized the struggle that was going on in the soul of the artist. With maternal love she bent over the youth, whispered consoling words to him, pressed his head to her bosom and ran her fingers through his short curls.
The youth’s burst of despair was s
lowly ebbing away.
Voices came from the distance. Pandion looked round; his passion had gone and with it went his proud hopes. He felt that his youthful dreams would never come true. The sculptor went up to his statue and stood before it wrapped in thought. Thessa laid her tiny hand on the crook of his arm.
“Don’t you dare, you foolish boy,” whispered the girl.
“I can’t, I dare not, Thessa,” agreed Pandion, never once taking his eyes off the statue. “If that. .” the youth stammered, “if that had not been modelled from you, if it were not you, I would destroy it on the spot. The thing is so crude-and ugly that it has no right to exist and somehow resemble you.” With those words the youth pushed the block of stone together with the statue back into the crevice in the rock and closed the narrow entrance with stones and a few handfuls of dry pine needles.
Pandion and Thessa set off in the direction of the sea. For a long time they walked on in silence. Then Pandion spoke, he wanted his beloved to share his grief and disappointment. The girl tried to persuade Pandion not to give up trying, she told him how confident she was of him and of his ability to carry out his plans. Pandion, however, was implacable. For the first time that day he had realized how far he was from real virtuosity, that the road to real art lay through many years of dogged toil.
“No, Thessa, only now have I at last understood that I can’t embody you in a statue!’’’ he exclaimed passionately. “I’m too poor here and here,” he touched his heart and his eyes, “to be able to depict your beauty.”
“Is it not all yours, Pandion?” The girl threw her arms impetuously round the artist’s neck.
“Yes, Thessa, but how I sometimes suffer on account of it! I’ll never cease to adore you, Thessa, and at the same time I can’t make a statue of you. I must embody you in clay, in stone. I must understand why it’s so difficult to depict life; if I cannot understand this myself how can I ever hope to make my creations live?”
Thessa was all attention as she listened to the youth, feeling that now Pandion was opening up his heart to her in full although the realization that she was unable to help him made her sad. The artist’s grief was hers, too, and there arose in her heart a still unformed alarm.
Pandion suddenly smiled and before Thessa could realize what was happening his strong arms lifted her off her feet. Pandion ran lightly to the beach, sat the girl down on the sand and disappeared behind a round hill.
A second later the girl saw Pandion’s head rise above the crest of an incoming wave. Soon the youth returned to her. Muscles that played and flexed shook the drops of water from his skin and not a trace of his recent sorrow was left. It seemed to Thessa that nothing serious had happened in the grove. She laughed softly as she recalled her pitiful clay image and the woeful countenance of its creator.
Pandion also made fun of himself and boasted boyishly of his strength and prowess before the girl. Then slowly and with frequent halts on the way, they returned to the house. But deep down at the bottom of Thessa’s heart the faint alarm still made itself felt.
Agenor placed his hand on Pandion’s knee.
“Our people are still young and poor, my son. Hundreds of years must we live in plenty before a few hundred people will be able to devote themselves to the lofty calling of the artist, before hundreds of people will be able to devote themselves to the study of the beauty of man and of the world. The time is not long past when we depicted our gods by hewing them from a stone or a tree trunk. But I can tell you, who are striving to penetrate the laws of beauty, that our people will go further and will transcend all others in depicting the beautiful. Today, however, the artists of the older and richer lands are more skilled than ours…”
The old artist got up and brought from the corner of the room a box of yellow wood from which he took something wrapped in red cloth. He removed the wrapper and with great care placed before Pandion a statuette of ivory, about a cubit (Cubit — the length of the arm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger — 18 inches.) in height. Time had given the ivory a pink tinge and its polished surface was covered with a network of tiny black cracks.
The carving depicted a woman holding snakes in her outstretched hands, with the reptiles coiled round her arms as far as the elbow joints. A tight belt with raised edges encircled her slender waist, supporting a long skirt that reached to her heels and was ornamented by five transverse stripes of gold. The back, shoulders, sides and upper parts of the arms were covered by a light veil leaving the breast undraped.
The heavy tresses of waving hair were not caught up in a knot on the nape of the neck as was the custom with the women of Hellas, but were gathered on the crown. From this knot heavy locks fell on the neck and back of the woman.
Pandion had never seen anything like it. He could feel that the statuette was the work of a great master. His attention was focussed on the strangely listless face; it was flat and broad, the cheek-bones very well defined with the lower jaw slightly protruding.
The straight, thick brows augmented the impression of listlessness on the woman’s face, but the bosom was heaving as though with a sigh of impatience.
Pandion was dumbfounded. If only he had the skill of the unknown artist! If only his chisel could depict with such precision and beauty the form that lived under the rosy-yellow surface of that old ivory!
Agenor was pleased with the impression he had produced; he watched the youth closely, stroking his cheek with the tips of his fingers.
At last Pandion broke off his silent meditation and placed the carving at some distance from him. He did not take his eyes off the dully gleaming work of the old master.
“Is that from the ancient eastern cities?” the youth asked his teacher in a low, sad voice.
(The eastern cities: Pandion is referring to the cities of Eastern Greece (Hellas) where the Mycenaean civilization flourished from 1600–1200 B.C. This civilization was the direct descendant of the Aegean or Cretan civilization, a pre-Hellenic culture that is still little known. Mycenae, Tirinthus and Orchomenus were the cultural centres of the Mycenaean period.)
“Oh, no,” answered Agenor. “That statuette is older than the ancient towns of Mycenae, Tirinthus and Orchomenus with all their gold. I took it from Chrisaor to show you. When his father was a young man he sailed to Crete with a raiding party and found this statuette amidst the remains of an ancient palace some twenty stadia from the ruins of Cnossus, the City of the Sea Kings that was destroyed by terrible earthquakes.”
“Father,” said the youth with suppressed excitement, touching the beard of his master as a sign of request, “you know so much. Could you not, if you wanted to, copy the art of the old masters, teach us and take us to those places where these wonderful creations are still stored? Is1 it possible that you have never seen these palaces that the legends tell of? When I listened to my grandfather’s songs I often thought of them!”
Agenor lowered his eyes and a dark shadow marred his calm and pleasant face.
“I can’t explain it to you,” he began after a moment’s thought, “but soon you’ll feel it yourself: that which is dead and gone cannot be brought back. It doesn’t belong to our world, to our souls… it is beautiful but hopeless… it charms but it — doesn’t live.”
“I understand, father!” the youth exclaimed passionately. “We should only be slaves to dead wisdom, even though we imitate it to perfection. We have to become the equals of the old masters or even better than they, and then… Oh, then…” Pandion stopped, unable to find words to express his thoughts.
Agenor’s eyes gleamed as he looked at his apprentice and his hard, old hand pressed the lad’s elbow in approbation.
“You said that well, Pandion, I could not express it so well myself. The art of the ancients must be a measure and an example for us but certainly nothing more. We must go our own way. To make that way shorter we must learn from the ancients and from life… you are clever, Pandion…”
Pandion suddenly dropped to the earthen floor and embr
aced the knees of the artist.
“My father and teacher, let me go to see the ancient cities… I must, by all the gods, I must see it all for myself. I feel that I have the power to achieve great things… I must learn to know the countries that gave birth to those rare things which are met with amongst our people and which astonish them so greatly. Perhaps I…” The youth stopped, he blushed to his very ears but still his bold, direct glance sought that of Agenor.
With knitted brows the latter stared away from him in concentration but did not speak.
“Get up, Pandion,” said the old man at last. “I’ve been expecting this for a long time. You are no longer a boy and I can’t detain you even though I should like to. You’re free to go wherever you will, but I tell you, as a son and as an apprentice, more than that, I tell you as my friend and equal, that your wish is fatal. It promises you nothing but dire catastrophe.”
“Father, I fear nothing!” Pandion threw back his head, his nostrils dilated.
“Then I was mistaken — you are still a boy,” objected Agenor in calm tones. “Listen to me with an open heart if you really love me.”
Agenor began to tell Pandion his story in a loud, tense voice: “In the eastern cities the old customs are still observed and there are many ancient works of art there. Women dress today as they did a thousand years ago in Crete — in long stiff skirts extremely richly ornamented, with bared breasts and the shoulders and back covered. The men wear short, sleeveless tunics, have long hair and are armed with short bronze swords.
“The city of Tirinthus is surrounded by a gigantic wall fifty cubits in height. The wall is built of huge blocks of dressed stone decorated with bronze and gold ornaments that reflect the sunlight so that from a distance they look like fires dotting the wall.
“Mycenae is still more magnificent. The city is built on the summit of a high hill, gateways made of huge blocks of stone are closed with bronze grilles. The city’s buildings can be seen from a great distance on the surrounding plain.
The Land of Foam Page 3