Hyperion to Diotima
The volcano’s erupting. In Coron and Modon the Turks are under siege and we're pushing onwards with our mountain folk up the Peloponnese.
Now all melancholy’s at an end, Diotima, and my spirit is firmer and quicker since I’ve been engaged in living labour, and see! I now even have a daily schedule.
I begin with the sun. Then I go out to where my warrior-folk lie in the forest shade, and greet the thousand bright eyes that now open up before me with wild affection. An awakening army! I know nothing like it, and all life in towns and villages is a swarm of bees by comparison.
Man cannot deny that once he was happy, like the deer of the forest, and after untold years there still glimmers in us a yearning for the days of the primal world when each roamed the earth like a god, before who knows what? made man tame, and instead of walls and dead wood the soul of the world, the all-pervasive holy air enveloped him still.
Diotima! I’m often filled with wonder when I walk amongst my carefree folk and, as if sprung from the earth, one after another rises and stretches towards the morning light, and among the troops of men the crackling flame leaps up where the mother sits with the shivering babe, where the quickening food cooks, whilst the horses, scenting the day, snort and whinny, and the forest resounds with all-shaking war music, and all around shimmers and rustles with weapons — but these are words, and the special delight of such a life is beyond telling.
Then my company gathers eagerly round me, and it’s wonderful how even the oldest and thrawnest honour me in all my youth. We’ve come to confide in each other, and there’s many a man will tell how he’s been treated by life, and my heart often swells at this fate or that. Then I begin to talk of better days, and their eyes open wide and light up when they think of the covenant that shall join us and the proud image of the budding free state looms before them.
‘All for each and each for all!’ There’s a joyful spirit in the words, and it always grips my men like a commandment from the gods. O Diotima! thus to see then how with hopes the hardened nature mellows and all its pulses beat higher and the grand designs smooth and clear the darkened brow, to stand thus in a sphere of human beings, surrounded by faith and joy, that’s more than beholding earth and heaven and sea in all their glory.
Then I drill them in weapons and marching until noon. Their good cheer makes them willing pupils, and me it makes a master. Now they stand close-ranked in Macedonian phalanx and only move their arms,
now they fly apart like rays of light to bolder strife in separate squads where supple force varies in every position and each man is his own commander, and then they assemble again at a point of safety — and always, wherever they move or stand in such a dance of weapons, there floats before their eyes and mine the image of the slaves of tyranny and the real battlefield.
Afterwards, when the sun shines hotter, council is held in the inner forest, and it’s a joy to sway with quiet mind over our great future. Well take away from chance its power, we shall master fate. We'll let resistance come on our terms, we'll goad the enemy into action for which we’re well prepared. Or we'll look on, seemingly daunted, and let him come nearer till he offers his neck for the blow, we'll also confound him with our speed and that’s my panacea. But more seasoned physicians think nothing of such cure-alls.
How good I then feel in the evenings with my Alabanda when for pleasure we roam the sun-red hills on sprightly steeds, and on the peaks where we linger the breeze plays in the manes of our mounts, and its friendly whispering mingles with our talk whilst we gaze out into the distances of Sparta that are to be our battle prize! and when we're returned and sit together in the lovely coolness of the night, and the wine cup wafts its fragrance, and the moonlight shines on our frugal meal, and in the midst of our smiling stillness the history of the ancients rises like a cloud from the sacred soil that bears us, how blissful is it then to grasp each other’s hands in such a moment!
Then it may be that Alabanda speaks of many another tormented by the tedium of the age, of many a crooked path forged by life since its direct course has been blocked, and then my Adamas also comes to mind, with his journeyings, that longing of his which lured him into the depths of Asia — ‘those are mere makeshifts, dear old man!’ Td like to call to him then, ‘come! and build your world! with us! for our world is also yours.’
And your world too, Diotima, for it is a copy of you. O you, with your Elysian stillness, could we only create what you are!