PHIDIAS
A DRAMATIC EPISODE

Dungeon in an Athenian prison; a small grated window near the ceiling shows a patch of blue sky. The scene discloses Phidias, prostrate and manacled. In the dusk of the cell lingers the Jailer.

Jailer (curiously). What sayst thou, Phidias, who art accused?
The old plaint, snarling that thou art abused?
Phidias (lifting his head wearily). What do I answer? Yea! what thing thou wilt!
What care I for this legendary guilt?
Who makes or unmakes Unity? Accused?
Why, any fool accuses. It amused
The enemies of Pericles to stab
At him through me. Let gossips spread their blab,
The sea is just as broad, the sky as clear
And I as blameless.
Jailer (persisting). But that brought thee here,
Took thee from royal favor, once the dear
Adviser, friend of Pericles. It seems
Here is the end of all thy mighty dreams;
’Twas Pericles who made thee, and there lurks
His royal patronage about thy works.
Phidias (sullenly). So reason vulgar minds; as well to say
Hephæstus made me, manacled this way,
Hammered to fever, bent to twisted woe.
No, clown! no tyrant brought this overthrow,
Nor my once vivid glory, but the fate
That overtakes the artist; whether late,
Slow, poisoning, by deadly world-born things,
Or early blight of strong imaginings
Too fervent for his frame. Athens is free
From every blame. Not Pericles made me!
Jailer (wagging his head obstinately). ’Twas love of Pericles that cast thee here,
Ungeniused thee, put thee to rot in drear
Murk of this den; and if not he who made
Thee what thou wast—aloof and haughty blade
Fellow I watched in Agora, as one
Treading on air, thy white himation
Streaming like wings back of thy eager form,
As thy swift sandal moved among the swarm
Of merchants, gamesters, thieves; while deep gaze drank
Of something that was neither wealth nor rank—
Why then,—who made thee? for that thou hast fame
’Tis granted, when the rabble speak thy name.
Phidias (moving restlessly, clenches his hands, answering impatiently). I made me, fool, made this unfinished self,
Nourished me as a child, in happy health,
Fostered the thirst my mother gave to me
With her electric milk. Ecstatic tree
Charmides planted, I did grow and thrive,
Adding to that, what Greece alone could give!
Studied cult-statues, studied Xoana, saw
Paralysis in Polygnotus’ law,
Wondered that Hegias and Hageladas wrought
Hardly beyond the cold Egyptian thought.
Out of their almond-eyed archaic things,
New butterfly, my free Athena springs!
My Zeus Olympian came to my prayer
To see a god. I saw, then made him there!
(To jailer.) Poor ragged dolt, clanking thy silly keys,
Did Pericles make me as I made these?
Did Athens tell me what a man must do
Who sees instinctive life, and sees it true?
Jailer (impudently). How now! What saw’st thou that I might not see?
A rosy nymph at bath! Aphrodite
Caught in a net of foam? Hermes’ disguise?
Come now, what is this power within thine eyes?
Phidias (speaking dreamily as if to himself). What is the power? Life! The heroic thing
Streaming magnetic from a sea-gull’s wing,
That light in stars, in waves, in children’s eyes,
In green plane-tree, or in deep, sphinx-like skies
Of unknown countries, where the grasses blow
Unseen of man; where flower-laced streamlets flow
Past mystic herbs, Demeter loves to keep
Secretly growing on the mountain steep.
I saw the curves of fruits, saw Grecian sails
Take fire-blue seas; saw the soft, misty veils
Of maidens wrap their limbs, saw horses, shields,
Victories, warriors, priests, and battlefields;
Each man a poem; women each a jar
Filled with soft, psychic flame, an avatar
Shaped to a noble outline, lofty truth
From some great vital Source—
(The Sculptor breaks off suddenly, scrutinizing the jailer and continuing.)
Rascal, uncouth
As are thy words and gestures, I can see
Some trace of life-light.—Gods! were I but free—
Jailer (interrupting with smug complacency). Which, proper thanks to Theseus, thou art not,
Thou light-fingered; thou dingy-robed sot!
Carving thy way to treason, selling State
For greasy coin, with Hermes as thy mate
Slanting his profile on it. Dreamer,—thou!
“Bronze-worker.” Yea! By Dionysus! How
Thou workedst guilty things for Athens’ shame,
Thinking to hide behind thy Patron’s name!
Athens, the famous city; thou, a worm,
Coiling in earth, no four-eyed marble herm
Will mark. Our furry worms that make the silk
Munch the mulberry; but thy crafty ilk
Munch the fine gold, for sickly marble shapes
Of statues stoned by every Jack-a-napes;
’Twas thou, worm, coiled ’round thy princely friend,
And gained War-Treasure for thy braggart’s end.
Phidias (sadly musing). The fool is glib. His lesson he has got
From Agora and Propylæa, not
The polished utterance of Bema’s Hill.
But that crowd’s word, that bodes or good or ill
From a fierce thirst; sneering pitiless breath,
Freezing a man, or scorching him to death.
Jailer (scratching his head, expectorates knowingly and argues). Why are thy statues costly? with the urns
Of Dipylon Gate, the passer-by discerns
Good lusty statues, made by Such-an-one,
Quite comely, they, and all of porous stone;
Why use Pentelic marble? so much gold?
Thou dreamer-schemer, sculptor overbold?
Phidias (with a moan turns from his tormentor to face the stone wall, muttering). “Dreamer,” he called me. Is it by that name
My curse comes? Verily; I dreamed my shame,
My rich accusings. Dreamed brook-flowing folds
Of draperies, dreamed my young hero-moulds,
Dreamed men who sat their horses, as they rode
Clouds over seas, dreamed Panathenaic ode
In singing-rhythm round the Parthenon;
The frieze and metopes of Theseion;
Dreamed the sweet-bodied girls, whose maiden strength
Poise vase and basket all the Temple length.
Dreamed the slow, garlanded, portentous beasts,
Led by the veiled and sacrificial priests;
Dreamed the young, leaping horseman’s haughty ease
Pediment grouped, or filleted in frieze.
Was it a dream only to-day shall know?
Lives it no longer than this artist’s throe?
If that must be, then butterfly most drear
I sink back to the worm-thing crawling here.
Jailer (having curiously listened, now struts forward and faces the Sculptor. He eyes him stupidly and shakes his finger at him). Why, were it not for Pericles who gave
Thee marble, color, gold for statues brave,—
Poured out his coffers,—we should amply be
Equipped for Persia. Bronze and ivory
Changed back to drachmæ, all the sacred rock
Would stand as staunch, to the barbaric shock,
As when Pisistratus, with hardy race,
Made the Acropolis his fortress place.
And look ye, with that gold Athena wears
(Filched from State monies, for thy stone affairs),
We could plant ships in Piræus, array
Our strength to Corinth, where the Persians may
Once more with envy strike.—But, thou wouldest bring
To a State’s need thy stone imagining!
Fie! but for gold, thy dreams would be as vague
As fat my wife scrapes from altar-dreg,
And boils to stuff to make my chiton white;
Ethereal substance, wind-shaken, alight
With lambent iridescence, very fine,
From the amphora gushing forth like wine.
But look you, in a moment, just a trace
Of foam is all that froths from out the vase,
And nothing’s left but the damp greasy lees;
So knave, with thee, without thy Pericles!
The Sculptor (with scornful amusement to himself).
He mouths that name as if it were a mask,
Through which a stupid actor says his task,
Forgets, mistakes, yet struts around the place
Thinking the mask gives him a certain grace.

(Phidias wearily rises and stretches himself, the jailer meanwhile curiously observing him.)

Phidias (abruptly). Slave, thou art childish, many a name like this
Links close to art, for its own ego-bliss,
To have possession, be the master, who
Owns, keeps, controls, the work we artists do.
Pericles views the height of Athens’ power,
Pomp of Acropolis, where every hour
In golden, crimson, blue, and creamy dye
Ecstatic marble forms sing to the sky,
And hears them sing! (This for his kingly wage:)
“Nikomen, Athens, Pericles, Golden Age!”
Jailer (looking at the prisoner with heavy curiosity). And what, by Hades, is the thing they sing?
Phidias (turns impulsively to answer; then a fierce reticence makes him draw himself up and turn away). Torture me not with thy coarse questioning;
My sorrowing answers, for the ribaldries
Of bath or games: “Thus spluttered Phidias,
Maddened at being walled up.” So the crass
Idling crowd, jostling in brainless mass,
Gapes, sneers, and marvels, at my grim defeat;
Mud covers stately names where rascals meet.
Jailer (with offended dignity). Well, then, good-night. I leave thee to thy prayers.
No friends, no patron, for thy artist-wares,
Unless, indeed (grinning back of his hand)
Zeus showers thee with gold
Like Danaē.
Phidias (steadily and reverently). Yea, most mighty Zeus can hold
Me to my service, to that Ageless Thing
Higher than he, called Beauty.

(He breaks off suddenly, goes eagerly to the now departing jailer, saying authoritatively.)

Fellow, bring
Here to my cell, some wax, a tool or two,
Some clay, a lump, stuck in thy cap will do—
A hand’s length of the white, Pentelic stone,
From where it sleeps within the mountain, grown
Pregnant by streams and flowers, for some birth
Of wingéd dream, out of hypnotic earth.
Jailer (backing mockingly away, mimics coarsely).
A jewel, a star, a little bit of wax!
Some tiny thing this mighty genius lacks!
That pearl, perchance, Aspasia’s bosom decks,
Or blood-red stones hung round Hetairæ-necks!
Phidias (beseechingly). Only some clay, man, in the dark my touch
Will fashion thee a goddess-image, such
As still they place in niches, who obey
“Sea-wards, oh! Mystæ,” on Eleusis-Way.
I’ll mould thee woman’s hand, or horse’s head,
A dreaming faun, Marsyas as he bled;
A babe’s round, dimpled, saucy little back;
A vine-wreathed satyr, with his grape-filled sack.
Jailer (pompously drawing aloof). By Dionysus! that were illy done.
Artist is one thing. State another. Shun
Thee and punish thee, doth Will of State,
Who art no artist more, but he who late
Sculptor to Pericles, now is a knave,
Who sits and twists his thumbs in prison-cave!

(The Jailer finishes by an insulting gesture and departs. Phidias going to the heavy door listens to his retreating footsteps. He draws a long sigh and, standing with his back to the door, looks up at the patch of blue sky, in silence. At last he speaks.)

Thus they leave Phidias, worker in the bronze,
Breather of life! breaker of chisel-bonds!
He is, they think, a man, a common thing—
All yellow, freckled, thin-blooded; they wring
His soul, because of policies.
Make him a sacrifice to fallacies;
“Drop him,” they say, in any dungeon now;
“Gods, grant in time his traitor’s neck shall bow
To death, for that he trifled with the State!
Strike his face from the shield where he dared mate
That face with Pericles,”—Oh! lofty Hill
High Sacred Rock, where sun-bathed columns thrill;
Proud statue-gleaming, gold Acropolis;
Dreamed I so high, to fall as low as—this?
Athens, I made thee out of my heart’s blood;
Rising by ages, from Time’s ’whelming flood.
Deucalion-fashion, soar my stones that sing
The beauty of this age’s visioning.
Out of Iktinos’ soul the Parthenon grew—
Those glorious Doric shafts, that taper through
The blaze of morn or eve. Athena’s shrine,
Lodging her ivory maidenhood, is mine!
’Twas I who gave the Lemnian her life,
Knew god-like action whether peace or strife.
Knew how a god would stand, breathe, smile, or frown,
And by that knowledge, deities’ renown,
I was a god-creator. Yet I lie
Here in befoulèd darkness, with the sky
Still burning blue upon the mountain tops
Surrounding Athens; where the Sun-God stops
Of evening, all his golden fingers laid
On marble chords of rhythmic colonnade,
And plays so strange, so Delphic-high a strain,
That hopes ethereal fill men’s hearts again.
Oh! Athens, marble glory, is it naught
Phidias lived, and dreamed, and planned, and taught?

(In his agony the Sculptor buries his head in his hands. There is a long silence, suddenly broken by the alighting of a Cricket upon the small grated window; the Cricket keeps up a steady trilling and is not at first noticed by the Sculptor.)

THE CRICKET

Greet, greet, greet,
Pan with hymning sweet.
Wine and corn are here,
Grapes and honey clear;
Olives, purple-black,
Burst from tawny sack.
Through Olympian night
Temples glimmer white
Stars their tangled vines
Wreathe around the shrines.
Shepherds all alone
Under mountain tree,
By the midnight sea,
Shall pipe songs of thee
Singer in the stone!

(Phidias listening intently, passes his hand over his eyes, creeps nearer under the grating, straining his gaze upward.)

Prometheus! but I think this minstrel wrings
Wise melody from gauzy zither-wings,
A healing balm, like to the lustral wave
At Delphi, comes my broken soul to lave.
For, as he perches with his roundelay,
Methinks he counsels me; not for to-day
Only is artist-pride and feverish bliss—
Perchance my spirit still may suffer this
Infamy, yet go singing down the years!

(The Sculptor pauses doubtfully. Still looking upward, he presses closer beneath the little window.)

Answer me, Cricket, are my stricken tears,
My empty hands, proof of a thing to be,
That I dreamed true? If Beauty nourished me,
Mothered and saved; shall I in ages more
Stand firm and proud, telling what guise she wore
These days? For with young Myron I would hold
There is a law of Beauty, which, controlled
By men’s stern truth, becomes a sacred thing,
Expanded from our holy cherishing.
It is not static, cold, but lives and grows
Out of the All of Life, the artist knows.

(The Cricket after another silence, again chirps. This time the rhythm is feebler and grows fainter and fainter, as the Sculptor, face upwards, eagerly listens.)

THE CRICKET

Sweet, sweet, sweet,
Praise is full and meet;
O’er the architrave,
Beautiful and brave,
Strong and good and fair,
Poise in hallowed air.
In the violet clime,
In the winter rime,
On the poppied steep,
In the passes deep,
All the temples know
Paths that Greece shall go
Toward posterities
Far beyond the seas!
Far as man is known,
Thou shalt speak to men
Far beyond thy ken,
Beyond tongue or pen,
Singer in the stone!

(Phidias at the close of the lilt lifts both arms appealingly. The Cricket is silent a moment.)

Phidias. Hist!—the green minstrel, god-of-little-things,
Thinketh perchance he strums his lyric wings
On dark Hymettus, where bees sip so long,
They lose their way in all the flower throng,
And many a little waxy dot of fuzz
Is caught in honey-prison. (Whimsically.) Thou dost buzz
Cricket, as loud as I, encased
In this hard prison, bitter to my taste.

(The Cricket after a long pause trills for the last time.)

Fleet, fleet, fleet,
The ways of fame are sweet.
A marble head of dreams
Conquers the world, meseems.
Beautiful vases tell
How happy peoples dwell.
Beautiful bodies speak
New message to the weak.
Greece adown the years
Is the song of Seers.
Kora still intones
Nike still responds:
“Wielder of the wands.”
“Worker in the Bronze.”
“Singer in the Stones.”
Sculptor (suddenly and rapturously). Xaire! thou little herald, Xaire! thou
Hast cheered me, saved me! See my courage now!
What foul, damp cell can ever hold me here?
What slander stain my work of yester-year?
Upon the Hill my glowing children call
To the unborn of Artists; to the All,
Great Fusion of the races, who
Shall yet unite, some holy thing to do,
Before this strange world on its journey far
In trackless space shall move an empty star.
For portico and frieze and vase and fane.
Fountain and stele, that our utmost main
Our utterest patience brought to perfect whole
Will cast strange, spellful seed, and where the soul
Of art is known, its free, broad, ardent wing,
“Greece,” will be whispered like a sacred thing!
(To the Cricket.) Yea, Yea! thou little herald, “wingèd pipe,”
So I’ll indite thee in thy wisdom ripe—
Now will I write my comrade young and lithe
Pæonius, how I imprisoned writhe.
Yet for his comfort will I softly tell
The cricket message to my dreary cell.
Luck! that I hid the chalk lump in my sleeve!
Joy that I have the parchment! Who’ll believe
That this is all he hath, who was the friend
Of Pericles brought to this bitter end!

(The Sculptor with the parchment on his knee, busies himself in writing. Occasionally he pauses and reads aloud what he has written.)

Pæonius, good comrade, merry Greek,
Walking Olympian groves, watching the freak
Of scarlet-flowered pomegranate vine
Tasting the cool jugs filled with pine-tree wine,
Fruits like warm bowls of amber nectar hung
And figs from branches o’er the streamlets flung—
Read and reflect, and if thou com’st to see
Some supple scheme to set thy brother free,
Act on it swiftly; only be advised
Pericles’ day is over. What he prized
Was proud display, but what the people want
Is arms and ships that they may proudly vaunt.
(Since Marathon no Greek knows how to smile
Passing the Soros’ valiant hero-pile,
And still they say in Sparta, athletes wait
To teach barbarians how Greece is great.)
I, the poor Sculptor, lived too near the throne,
Therefore, I lie now on the dungeon stone!

(Phidias’s gaze wanders, he becomes absorbed, intense, then once more he applies himself to the letter.)

Last summer, passing Sunion, my sail
Red-burning down the stormy silver trail
O’er clouded blue, I humbly turned my sight
Up to that white fane, on the bronzèd height,
All its upspringing columns touched with sun
As the slow golden clouds walked high upon
Wave buttressed paths, to purple Cyclades
Those mystic islands of Saronic seas.
And as the molten sapphire round me sprayed
O’er the eye-painted prow, I humbly prayed
Poseidon, that Piræus I might gain;
Offered no cock, no vase, oil to contain,
But vowed a frieze from my young pupil’s skill,
New, daring sculpture for the Sea-God’s Hill
In Parian marble, calm and haughty white,
To gleam for sailors passing in the night.
How I was timid then! who after dared
Dispute with Pericles, and proudly shared
His vast ambitions for that golden realm—
That Athens, which the vulgar overwhelm.
That I did promise, wilt thou execute?
So will these singing stones, out of the mute
Parian marble, form immortal choir
Chanting “Poseidon” to the ocean’s lyre.

(Phidias pauses once more. He draws a long sigh, then continues writing.)

Well, brother-artist, here I agonized,
Until a cricket, by great Zeus apprised,
Perched on the window-bar and chirped a thing
Wise as Athena, took away the sting
Of the world’s serpent-sayings. Friend, I give
Faith to the cricket message while I live.

(The Sculptor, head in hands ponders deeply then again resumes writing.)

He trilled, Pæonius, a theme like this:
What we do lives, though after all the bliss
Of our own living, must our bodies pass!
Hast ever caught the perfume of sweet grass
Dying beneath the sickle? Our breath goes
Thus to the gods indifferent, ’mid the snows
High on Parnassos’ or Kiona’s crest,
Where mountain after mountain heaves a breast,
Black, billow-deep, sky-ranging, in a chain
Tumultuously, serene around the plain.
But what we make of beauty keeps its power
Down the long years, from the conception’s hour.
For mark ye, lad, I never sensed my work,
But did it all unconscious; now in murk,
In prison black, I see it flying forth,
The strong wings of my friezes! All the worth
Of Laurion silver in Colossi paid
And proud Athena, ivory o’er laid.
Gold-sandalled, springing, mellow-marble feet,
Olive-crowned heads in pensive bending, sweet
Backs, limbs, and bosoms! Noble eye and tress,
Caught in the dream of their own loveliness—
I see it all, so calm! “Nothing too much,”
Tunics in solemn folds, majesty such
As comes with purity; things strong and free;
White to the sky and naked to the sea.
Women and men that move adown the days
Out of the forest deep, through shimmering maize,
In fructifying suns, in cooling dews,—
All tranquil, noble, filled with God, or Muse
Of deathless Greece.—Yea, all my strife,
My will, my soul, was this portrayal—Life!

(Moved by what he has written, the Sculptor gets to his feet and paces feverishly his narrow cell. He goes on writing as he walks and reading aloud.)

I now see by prophetic cricket-voice
That Life is deathless, that my works rejoice
For all rejoicing. Brother mine
We carve for worlds to come. Beyond the line
Of horizons, untravelled, rise the lands
Hungry of spirit, waiting at our hands
Bread of True Vision. Yea, where rusty wars,
Hot blood of nation-struggle, stain these shores,
Women and men shall bleed with sacrifice
To a dead god, called Progress, and the Vice
Of chance-worship, on sickly, pampered knees
And counting gold in languors of disease.
Can’st picture these, coming to look upon
My glorious horsemen of the Parthenon?
Seeing your Nikes tread triumphant air?
Our marble dreams forever beauty-clean
And dark heroic bronzes stained with green,
By fire and sword and water all unspoiled,
Their perfect limbs’ clear candor unassoiled?
Mark ye, those stranger eyes shall take and take,
Still the thirst grow and still the joy to slake
From Old-World beauty. Till we sculptors stand
Supreme World-life within our pulseless hand!
Think, lad, when father’s little ones shall tell
How Greeks saw, felt, and struggled, conquered, fell!
Fear not, Pæonius, our spirits win
Out of this age to call all ages kin.

(Phidias, sighing as one relieved of a burden, pauses awhile, then writes a few more lines.)

Smile not upon this, friend—All fancy—Yea!
But, by the Etruscans, gone but yesterday
To Italy, and now established there;
By Dorians, building temples by the fair
Purple Tyrennian, so I think
Greek soul o’erflows, as over fountain-brink,
And that we circle out and out, our creed
Begetting world-dream for an unborn breed,
Ardent posterities!—Thus do I then
Bid now farewell to my own race of men!
And for a future permanence, new clime,
Lift statues in the peristyles of Time
And trust my message, where that message seeks
Its own fulfillment. Hail to the happy Greeks
Hail to that Race; keen, wistful, passionate,
That shall know Greece, Athens, the gods, the State!

(The paper hangs listlessly in the hand of Phidias, who sits in revery, lost to all around him.)

Jailer (entering). Rise! thou infamous sculptor! A decree!
Follow! Thy haughty judges have demanded thee!

(Phidias wearily rising, stares stupidly at him, then looks up to the little window where the Cricket perched and makes a slight gesture of salute and farewell.)

Phidias. “So be it.”
(Hastily aside.) See this coin? Of all good fees
The best, with head of high Themistocles—
Thine—if thy hand this simple scroll wilt bear
To the great sculptor at Olympia.
To give to him my farewell words and tears,
(The Sculptor pauses, looking unseeingly at the Jailer and adding softly.) As I pass outward—down the faithful years!