WHY ALL GREEK MYTHS ARE TRAGEDIES

 

Major Richard Blaine is at a loss on how to handle the maelstrom of his own emotions, much less the fearful confusion of his Spartan 300.

WHY ALL GREEK MYTHS ARE TRAGEDIES

“Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?

 - Friedrich Nietzsche

 

People never pay attention to advice. This, I believe, is a constant factor in man’s psychological makeup. It probably stems from an ancient tribal distrust of the shaman.

You want them to be wrong. If they’re right, then they’re somehow superior, and this is even more uncomfortable than getting into trouble … usually.

Irritating fact was that no one was giving me advice, either good or bad. Not even Sentient.

Oh, yes, there was one.

Me.

I was telling myself that I was headed in the wrong direction … towards trouble.

I suddenly realized why all the Greek myths were tragedies: the “hero” walked into Hell with his eyes wide shut by pride.

Of course, we were no longer in myth ….

‘Delude yourself as you would, my champion. You are walking into it as we speak.’

I paid Sentient all the notice she was worth … which was none at all.

Oh, where was I?

The Hellenic world did not view the passage of time as we do. History was considered in an episodic sense, as the struggles of an unchanging mankind against a relentless and unchanging fate.

The slow process of organic evolution had not yet been fancied as fact, and the grandest model for a world view was the seemingly changeless pattern of the stars.

‘Yawn.’

Stew Taylor braved a cuff from Evans and asked, “How far is this spooky village from Omaha Beach, anyhow?”

That he didn’t get his ear whacked meant that Evans was curious too.

“Three hundred and ten miles, give or take a flap of the crow’s wing.”

I received a chorus of “What?” from the Spartans, even from Theo.

“Ant” Vincent gasped, “We can’t walk that far, Major!”

“Speak for yourself, city boy,” snorted Link. “I was raised on a farm. But 310 miles ain’t gonna be done in a day.”

“And we’re deep in enemy territory,” moaned “Kit” Carson. “The Jerries will find us long before we find that village.”

Theo was watching them with drily amused eyes. He had been through all this with them before.

Amos, the ever-tolerant rabbi, shook his head at them. “When did you not know the Major to have a plan?”

He leaned in close to me. “You do have a plan, right?”

This was an old routine with him done more to ease his own doubts than anything else.

I smiled and nodded, speaking to my grumbling Spartans.

“Time, Space are not the linear concepts you’ve been taught. Oberführer Reinhardt König, the wunderkind scientist, played fast and loose with the Natural Order.”

Alfred Kent, the former Harvard archeology professor, scowled, “And this has just what bearing on the 31o miles we have to march?”

“That tunnel we just survived was not a tunnel.”

Again, I was assaulted by a tidal wave of “What?”.

I sighed at Sentient’s mental barrage of things my Spartans could not possibly be expected to understand. Nor would I subject them to such a bombardment.

“Consider it a crosswalks of sorts … between dimensions, realms, planes of existence.”

Their faces all looked like they had bitten into a living, squirming slug. Sentient was right. I was a lousy teacher.

The exotic apricot perfume of Helen’s suddenly filled my head like an invisible, billowing cloud, and in my left ear came her low, tickling murmur,

“You were ever more than you believed, my Richard. Speak to them through their senses, for Man believes what touches him more than mere words that only tickle his ears. Close your eyes. What do you sense?”

I closed my eyes, hearing Cloverfield bark, “Leave the man be for a heartbeat, will you?”

Reese snapped, “You heard the man. Quiet!”

I kept my eyes closed, reaching out with all my senses. It was as if I had been transported to another place. But I knew I had not been.

I was simply becoming aware of a change in the world around me.

I had a sense of being in an actual place instead of merely going through the motions of the world as I expected it be.

I could swear that I heard the crackle and rustle of fallen autumn leaves beneath my feet, 

that I breathed a sharp, crisp, wine-like air heavy with leaf bonfires, of ripened apples hanging on a laden bough, the faint scent of late-blooming flowers and a touch of frost on withering vegetation.

I thought I heard the rustle of a dried patch of corn, the patter of hickory nuts falling from trees, the sudden, far-off whir of partridge wings,

the soft, liquid singing of a lazy brook carrying on its surface its cargo of fallen autumn leaves.

There was color, too.

 Though my eyes were closed, I saw the lush golden color of a walnut tree, the purple of an ash, 

the shouting  yellow of an aspen, the blood of a sugar maple, and the rich red and brown of oak.

Over and above it all was the bittersweet feel of autumn, the glory of the dying year when your work was done, and a quiet season of rest settled upon you.

I felt a strange abiding peace within myself. 

The peace that comes at the blistering end of summer, the peace and quiet before the chill bite of winter.

The brief time of respite, the time for resting and for thought, for binding up old wounds and forgetting them and all the nastiness of life that had inflicted them.

I opened my eyes.

“Gentlemen, close your eyes. Listen and feel with all of your being. Then, you will understand. Trust me. You will understand.”

I watched them. I also watched the surrounding woods. They trusted me. I would not let them down.

Slow minutes passed. 

Then, as one, they opened their eyes. Some of them staggered for a moment but quickly righted themselves. 

Amos looked to me with wet eyes.

“You are like Daniel of old.”

I smiled sadly. “No, more like Ulysses of today.”

I pulled up straight and gave them the bad news.

“Gird your loins, Gentlemen. Around that bend is the hell Oberführer Reinhardt König has made of the once beautiful village of Oradour-sur-Glane.”

The groans they made didn’t come close to my internal ones.

Helen breathed in my left ear. 

“You will not fail. You may let yourself down but never others. Never others. It is not in you.”

I felt the press of invisible lips on mine, and the sense of Helen was gone.

Winter had come.