The Collected Prose

by Zbigniew Herbert

  Triptolemos’s invariably good opinion of himself was based on a belief that he represented a progressive force in humankind, one that was striding ahead. That’s why the gods who had guarded the mystery of fire so jealously, seeing what was going on, adopted a policy of ‘observe without reacting’. They believed that people would be able to invent and apply a sufficiently harsh punishment themselves. It lay in the very word ‘harvest feast’. The loud celebrations, rites of spring and harvest ended with joyful human sacrifice. The good Triptolemos knew nothing of this. It was a side effect of his worthy mission.

  Triptolemos was consumed by the idea of universalizing agriculture. However, he lacked imagination, so his theoretical lectures on agriculture, on geology, the ones that explained the circulation of nitrogen in the natural world, were illustrated by ideological tables and charts. Triptolemos said that after their sweaty labor peasants could look forward to long months of leisure time, which they could devote to literature, classical and popular music, with politics reserved for the less discriminating among them: for the snail-eaters this was a vision of paradise, a perfect abstraction.

  How could the peace-loving Triptolemos, utter child that he was, imagine that the peasants would develop a taste for warfare and set out to conquer, get caught up in all sorts of Iliads and Egypts, become the subject and object of history? While those on horseback, the had-been aristocracy of humankind, experienced their own deep downfall, and became in turn the peasantry’s favorite prey, mercilessly drawn and quartered, taken in slavery, to the point where their origins were completely erased.

  The coming of Triptolemos was preceded by the fame of his miraculous achievements. His departure was quiet, without goodbyes or ceremonies of thanksgiving. Apostles should never look back. A benefactor should never look over his shoulder. He left a song:

  Triptolemos Triptolemos

  Triptolemos Triptolemos (repeat)

  Today it is still played by rock groups across the world. He himself does not ask for applause. His gentle face fades into the mist, a face marred slightly by the pendulous lower lip of a cooperative fanatic, a missionary of cereals, an evangelist of starch.

  THE KING OF THE ANTS1

  AJAX WAS THE son of Zeus and Aegina, who was a river god’s daughter. He was born on a deserted island. As he grew in years, he had the vague conviction that somehow he was sole ruler of this empty piece of earth in the immensity of waters: both ruler and exile at the same time. Like most foundlings, he had no idea who his father was. But he preserved a hazy memory of his mother, and he baptized the island with her name.

  In the beginning, then, there was a name, a wasteland, and a king.

  Ajax’s only occupation was solemn idleness. This is the privilege of rulers, in the final analysis, even their duty—the manifestation of a frozen existence, a vigilant presence either benevolent or menacing. But for this one needs someone else’s eyes or mirrors, because in emptiness each hieratic fold, each gesture, each lordly look turns into nothing. He was not endowed with the abilities of a Robinson Crusoe (who with such enthusiasm and praiseworthy results remade the entire practical manual of civilization), so Ajax invented an occupation and called it to himself “the royal inspection of the estate.”

  For entire days he wandered across the island in burned grass, rare trees, bushes, and timidly gurgling springs, their waters sinking in stone and disappearing in sand as if it never occurred to them they could at least be the beginning of a meager stream. Vegetation was sparse, there were almost no animals except a few families of frightened hares. On the other hand, there was an abundance of insects: whole swarms of crickets, beetles, and ants, the rustling of wing cases and the noise of their crawling forming an undergrowth of what we call the symphony of creation.

  On clear nights Ajax set out toward a small bay and until dawn stared at the sensational Nereids dancing in somewhat decadent moonlight, at the herds of dolphins and seals coming to shore, all swinging as if they still carried the slippery sphere of the ocean on their backs. He envied them, he even envied the schools of fish because his longing for a community was inconsolable.

  At dawn he returned, even more lonely, to his palace—a violet shadow under an oak—and prayed for the father of the gods to send people to him. He fervently swore he would be understanding and good to them.

  Zeus took pity on his abandoned son. In a dream Ajax saw how ants fell like red dew from the leaves and branches of the oak under which he slept, and as they touched the earth they were transformed into human shapes. When he woke the island was teeming with them. Voices drifted in the air, comings and goings, a marvelous confusion.

  So instead of just a single pair salvaged from Noah’s ark, a sizable chunk of humanity was bestowed on Ajax as a gift. There were hard-to-define creatures as well, of both genders, like algae crushed by sterility or the absurdity of life: long-haired youths who stared vacantly into the distance instead of doing anything positive, signifying they were studying the philosophy of the Far East; grown men and women with gentle and expressionless faces, unclassical noses, thick limbs; finally old women suffering from rheumatism who dropped everything from their hands; and old men, some garrulous, some gloomy, for whom the only consolation before death was that the world had gone insane forever. In a word Ajax had humanity just as it should be: incorrigible in an exemplary way, marvelously ordinary.

  The pious king called the new inhabitants of the island Myrmidons3—the people of ants. In this way he wanted to glorify the goodness of the god and his miraculous intervention. How could he know that the name contained a destiny?

  The fundamental duty of a good ruler is to learn the personality of his subjects: their merits and defects, the particular shape of their way of thinking and their yearnings. So Ajax assiduously observed the Myrmidons’ customs. He tried to reach into the hidden nooks and crannies of their collective consciousness with all his sympathy, but sometimes also with carefully concealed anxiety and surprise.

  The Myrmidons possessed an instinctive ability for self-organization rarely encountered in other peoples. They embarked on activities spontaneously, voluntarily, like children beginning a game. The division of labor presented no difficulties, everything was carried out without supervisors, overseers, prompters, the least trace of administration or hierarchy. They simply worked harmoniously from dawn till night, with a certain Protestant exaggeration, inspired, not counting on admiration or praise.

  Historians of civilization, ethnologists, and structuralists carefully avoid the subject of the Myrmidons, because they do not fit their simple tripartite schemes. In the case of this peculiar people, banished from scientific textbooks, doctoral dissertations and international symposia, it was uncertain what was sacred and what profane, what was the top and the bottom, good and evil, or how the thesis—always fiercely fighting the antithesis—could be crowned with a salutary synthesis in the end.

  It is true the Myrmidons were not distinguished by inquisitiveness, or excess of imagination. Their religion, surprisingly monotheistic, was limited to the old Pelasgian cult of the Mother Goat. In the domain of morality they stood in the middle, between the exuberance of virtues and the quagmire of vice. The time-honored custom of settling accounts with one’s neighbor—or brother—by methodically hitting his skull with a rock was alien to them, also theft, false testimony, and calumny. Adultery was committed only by persons suffering from temporary amnesia.

  The Myrmidons firmly rejected all styles of architecture. They built their settlements underground. These consisted of an intricate system of corridors, dark squares, and chambers. The advantages were that a fire department was superfluous, and the natural environment was preserved. Above all they loudly praised the attractions of the underground climate, its pleasant coolness, independence from the capriciousness of weather, and invigorating sleep under the power of roots—sleep without starry prophecies or nightmares, tightly filled with loam, clay, and sand. They were psychologically well balanced. During their long h
istory it is difficult to meet even a single person touched, for instance, by religious mania.

  Science is mute about the Myrmidons’ methods of work, but these are worthy of attention, different from known models and completely their own. The Myrmidons put their entire trust in handicrafts, in the literal sense; they rejected the comfort of tools, the benefit of the wheel, the pulley and simple lever.

  Armed simply with sharpened poles and sticks, they cultivated their poor fields and vegetable gardens as the pitiless sun destroyed the fruits of their labor. They built roads and canals that were constantly buried by sand, they spent laborious months on eternal repairs of underground settlements that collapsed over their heads. The installation of a tiny footbridge (for a beaver with average education, it would be like eating breakfast) was a gigantic enterprise for the Myrmidons that passed from one generation to another.

  However, they never lost enthusiasm, energy, and a sense of well-being. Progress—that treacherous force that pushes humanity toward risky extravaganzas—suffered. On the other hand, full employment provided a sense of security.

  They always worked together, and it always seemed there were too many of them. They struggled with resistant matter. Although the results were not imposing, one could not take one’s eyes away from those strained muscles, bent backs, and living hands struggling with the soulless mass. The acoustic effects accompanying these efforts were worthy of the highest admiration. Loud youthful calls, songlike mutual encouragement, rhythmic sounds coming from the depths of the lungs, cries of triumph and defeat—all these composed a cantata of rare beauty. Toothless old men always gathered next to those who were working, increasing a confusion already considerable as they commented in a lively way on the exploits of the working teams, giving loud advice and stern reprimands.

  Such were the Myrmidons.

  The fate of Ajax was worthy of envy. He was loved by the gods and by his subjects2. It would seem that the idylls imagined by the dreamer Plato and the dreamer Vladimir Ilych were realized in perfect form. In addition they were based not on theory or conviction—which, after all, are changeable—but on the stable foundation of genetics.

  New, almost revolutionary ideas sprouted in the king’s head. He wanted to give his people autonomy, then slowly to transfer different spheres of power to them, limiting his own functions to representation, to preaching occasional sermons and conjuring rain. Here he met with the Myrmidons’ resistance, passive and decided. They pleaded that they had enough of their own domestic occupations. Nor did they have enthusiasm for the titles (inexpensive things, and generally desired) that he wanted to bestow on certain citizens. These were supposed to lead to the formation of a generic aristocracy, and, in turn, to fruitful social tension. The king continued to reside under the oak tree, so the title of Court Chamberlain meant as much as Chamberlain of a shadow.

  Because of the functions he performed and also because of his temperament, Ajax was a conservative but an enlightened conservative. He realized that an undisturbed harmony between ruler and subjects contradicts the laws of nature, therefore one had to go out and meet halfway those changes that are inevitable, even lure them out of the dark nooks of fate in order to tame them more easily later on.

  He initiated cautious reforms, starting neither with the base nor with the superstructure (according to the genial distinction of the scholar Jotvues4), but with linguistic innovations.

  On a hot July day, a ceremonial meeting of all the inhabitants took place. The king declared that from now to eternity, Aegina would be called Myrmidonia in honor of its brave citizens. In this way he wanted to waken a dormant sense of national pride and uniqueness: to liberate man’s incomprehensible tendency to elevate himself above others for rather insignificant reasons—place of birth, skin pigmentation, the shape of the nose. He also decided that the main road—a path, strictly speaking—running in the middle of the island would bear the name Avenue of Victory.

  The Myrmidons received these ordinances calmly, shaking their heads. But everything remained as it was, the old way. In a quarrel about universals, the meek inhabitants, without realizing it, took the position of those who claim that general concepts are inherent in things and do not float like menacing clouds over objects. Such was their simplicity.

  The education of society, like all education, implies a gradation, passing from easier degrees to the more difficult. After his first defeat, Ajax initiated the next stage of national education. In order to prepare his stubborn provincials to meet other peoples, he announced that an International Trade Fair would soon take place on the island.

  A number of merchants, mostly from Crete, came to Aegina. The Myrmidons exhibited the best they had to offer: sticks for farming, shoes made of bark, homespun jackets, clay pots without decoration, hemp string with knots that passed for jewelry. The guests, however, glittered with the dazzling wealth of their exhibits: their proverbial beads and percales, new automatic models of plows, objects for killing animals and people, pendants, earrings, feather diadems, and merchandise the purpose of which the inhabitants of Aegina could not even guess.

  All this was looked at without great interest; the consumer’s instinct didn’t even budge. A scandal was caused by their total lack of understanding for articles that everywhere else enjoyed great popularity: namely pitchers, amphoras, and mixing bowls on which the best painters of the period depicted gods, animals, and people in intimate situations, representing them with minute, detailed realism.

  Soon after the merchants’ visit that ended in a fiasco, rich deposits of silver were accidentally discovered on the island. Ajax immediately understood that this was a gift from the gods: it might lift Aegina out of its backwardness, permit a leap from a primitive barter economy to the exchange of money, and awaken the desire to possess. Finally, it could divide the monotonously homogeneous inhabitants into the fat and the lean, the rich and the poor. But the incorrigible Myrmidons broke the precious metal against rocks, changing it into powder which they scattered on the corridors of their underground dwellings.

  The king was not discouraged by setbacks. When someone firmly sets his mind to make humanity happy, it is difficult, unfortunately, to dissuade him. Ajax knew that happiness implies movement, striving, climbing upward. But he did not know that progress, to use this ominous word, was only an image, neither better nor worse than other figments of the imagination. On the other hand the Myrmidons, who were deprived of imagination and never expressed their thoughts (their convictions were stronger because of it), knew as a certainty that life is a circle bound by death. It is closed rather than open, individual rather than general, contained exactly within the limits of every separate body: of men, of insects, of trees. This is why naked feet walking in a circle are more natural than a march following in the steps of a dreadful giant who triumphantly strides toward goals hidden behind the horizon, along a straight line that comes from nothing and leads to a better, radiant nothing.

  After his unsuccessful experiments in base and language, Ajax decided to attack the problem of the embarrassing apathy of his subjects from the direction of superstructure. To be sure, the intellectual standard of an average Myrmidon left much to be desired. No one was attracted by learning, or even theology. They took the world as it was (naive realism) and considered questioning it a waste of time.

  Ajax started to bring to the island the most eminent philosophers from the continent. They were to speak about everything that came into their heads, exactly like the present practice in universities of the Western hemisphere. The undertaking was planned on a huge scale and was to last for years; the participation of citizens was obligatory and included women, children, even infants.

  This time the ruler’s initiative met with a response that surpassed all expectations, filling the royal heart with boundless joy. The Myrmidons went to the lectures in crowds, even without special incentives. They sat in a large semicircle around the speaker, closing their eyes, some opening their mouths, while others rested their h
eads on their hands, filled with metaphysical revery. Silence reigned, interrupted only by an occasional deep sigh.

  Until one day it exploded. When a speaker finished his lecture with a fundamental statement expressing the ontological principle of identity5—“it is necessary to say and to think that what is exists, because existence is, and nonexistence is not”—a burst of laughter as powerful as thunder could be heard.

  It was not at all a scoffing laughter but an explosion of spontaneous, unrestrained joy. The Myrmidons rolled on the ground, bellowed, chuckled, those who lost their breath made whining squeaks and yelps like a dog. They beat their heads with their hands, and tears of pure happiness flowed from their eyes.

  After this incident, philosophers stopped visiting Aegina. What is more, the name Myrmidons became—how unjustly—synonymous with spiritual coarseness. Yet no one but they made the momentous discovery that every intellectual labor is a peculiar degeneration, and its results contain a powerful dose of the comic. Invented problems, intellectual constructions, categories and concepts—if one looks at them closely—are irresistibly funny. Of all the wisdom bestowed on the Myrmidons, they accepted in their colloquial language only the word apeiron6. For philosophers, it designates infinity. The Myrmidons endowed it with their own meaning that designated all superfluous things such as trash, bones licked clean, and tornadoes.

  One can evaluate Ajax’s attempts at reform in many different ways, but they created a new situation. Aegina took leave of its weightless state and finally entered Greek topography. This is probably why it started to attract peculiar visitors.

  These were young people whose business, to speak in the most general way, was transportation: the transportation of ideas, by sea and by land.