Glory and the Lightning (7 page)

She did not tell Maia that mathematics was, to her, the greatest mystery of them all and endlessly interesting. Maia would be aghast, the girl would think, to encounter one who believed that mathematics was in any way mysterious, as mysterious as the One who had ordained it. She was already discerning, if somewhat dimly, that those who dispensed with mysteries, and denied their existence, were dull no matter their learning. Aspasia was beginning to despise the dogmatic. She feared those who believed they had all the answers.

She pondered, forgetting the classroom. All the sciences were based on the “law” of causality. Aspasia doubted that causality governed everything. The mind of man leaped to conclusions without an objective cause on many occasions. As men were often too emotional, and too little ruled by wisdom, it should be considered that concrete causes did not always lead to inevitable results, and were seldom predictable.

The other maidens yawned through the lesson, though some, thinking of their future wealth, were interested in mathematics. But riches were not precise and immutable, Aspasia thought. When governments degraded coin, such as reducing the quantity of gold in coins, or cutting the coins, wealth—the god of merchants—frequently vanished or was worthless. Of one thing man could be truly certain: There was nothing certain in this world. It amused and saddened her that the majority of men stubbornly denied this. One should flow with events, interested in them all but refraining from drawing iron conclusions, the last refuge of fools. Why was it that learning inevitably was the enemy of mystery? Yet none could adequately explain what was a man, or irrefutably prove his origin. Without wonder, learning was dead.

I will never be the mistress of a man devoid of wonder, she vowed. But where was such a man? Thargelia had never spoken of such.

There was one subject which engrossed her whole mind and her joy, and that was art. Following that were history and government. It distracted her that Thargelia did not emphasize these things in the teaching of her maidens, considering them as relevant only when they could teach the hetairai to chatter, with seeming intelligence, on these matters, if the hetairai became the mistresses of men engaged in them. “Even so,” she would remark, “men resent a woman too conversant on the subjects.”

Nevertheless, her teachers were competent. Thargelia despised incompetence.

To Aspasia art was the supreme jeweled crown on the mind of man, and had the only real validity, even though it was subjective. She entered her class with that joyous anticipation which is the attribute of a true scholar. The other girls, with few exceptions, considered art to be truly art only when it enhanced a woman’s charm and made her delectable to men. They preferred the art of cosmetics, and liked dancing and music because they made them desirable and because they had the exuberance of youth.

CHAPTER 4

The artist-teacher, Tmolus—named after a mountain—rejoiced in Aspasia, his best pupil and a docile and eager one. Unlike most Greeks, he did not denigrate the minds of women. Without women, could art exist? No, he would tell himself. Women were the supreme art of the gods. (Even if they also destroyed both gods and men. But, was not beauty in itself the immortal exquisite terror and was it not therefore destructive?) Without art, the gift and the adornment of the gods, there could be no civilization, no justification of life. All else was mundane and prosaic and deadening. Nothing else so engrossed the intellect and joy and wonder of the mind, so exhilarated it and raised it above the flesh. It made man truly man. Tmolus had seen that Aspasia agreed with him. Once she had said to him, “Tmolus, you are truly a philosopher,” and he understood. He had received her comment as an accolade, even though she was only a maiden and he an old man.

He was small and slight of body, and bent and gray, but his eves were vividly alive and filled with unquenched youth and joy in living, for he found, as did Aspasia, all things beautiful, even a warted toad or a lichened stone or a weed. Ugliness did not revolt him, for he believed all things intrinsically lovely. “A withered crone with no teeth, with whitened hair, with crippled hands, has an innate glory,” he would say. “Does she not live and have being? So, she is beautiful. Her life and her thoughts have molded her. Have they been hideous? But—they too have mystery, and therefore their own charm. When we learn that nothing is boring, nothing too mean or despicable, we can have serenity, for serenity is the soul of art.”

“Even if it depicts violence?” Aspasia had once asked.

“Violence is part of living, and often it is a quickening and a drama, child. We can contemplate it for what it is, an aspect of life, and living is an art in itself.” He found only men who would not see as disastrous, and unworthy of being called human. Moreover, they were a threat to other men.

“Not everything that walks in the form of a man is human,” he would explain. “Many there are who do not have full humanity, or any humanity at all. Aspect is not all. There is the soul. I have heard that some birds create charming and delicate bowers for their females, choosing between colors and texture of flowers, and completing a haven of symmetry and fragrance. Are they not more human, in the full sense of the word, than a man who considers mere stone and wood and brick an adequate shelter? The gift of humanness is not confined to mankind. I have heard that many animals display the virtues of compassion and justice and law and tenderness and love. They are more human than the men who do not possess these.”

He loved the gods, though reputed that they were often debauched and capricious and often too human. For, were they not beautiful, even the lame Vulcan? Zeus had violated Leda, and out of her eggs had come the Gemini and Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. “But the story of Leda and the swan is immortally beautiful,” he would say. “Consider the delightful young maiden in all her wondrous loveliness and the white-winged swan beating against her breast.”

The girls had giggled at this, archly. But Aspasia had dubiously understood. Out of tumultuous violence had come beauteous Helen and the Gemini; out of lustful love had come the forms of gods and the unforgettable face and lure of Helen of Troy. But one did not condone senseless violence, which was despicable, but only that violence which produced beauty, Aspasia thought.

Tmolus excused everything which resulted in loveliness. But sometimes the recalcitrant Aspasia wondered. However, she loved Tmolus and forgave him.

Beautiful male and female slaves posed for the hetairai for their lessons in painting and sculpture and mosaics. The bodies were carefully chosen for their grace and youth. Though Thargelia instructed the teacher that he should emphasize the attributes of alluring sexual differences, and expose the male slaves to the utmost scrutiny of her virgins, and discourse on their attributes and endowments, Tmolus preferred that these matters be discussed in the frame of artistry. “There is no coyness or libidinous aspects to Art,” he would say. “That which is exquisite is above tittering and filthiness. The evil is not in the object but in the viewer. We bring to art all our falsities and degradation, but in themselves the objects are neither lewd nor meretricious. In short, what we view can be interpreted innocently and with admiration, or debauched. It is in ourselves.”

The majority of the maidens preferred to peek and giggle, which outraged Tmolus. “You are fools!” he would cry. “Did not the gods create man and woman? Did they find either licentious, in their bodies, or obscene? These things are in your own minds, and that is sad. But I have discerned that youth is innately gross and is born impure. That is the curse of mankind.”

Once Aspasia had said to him, “But does not the belief that certain things are evil and disgusting enhance their value in human minds?”

Tmolus considered this. Then he said, “Alas, it is true.”

But still he struggled with the young girls assigned to him. Art, he would tell them, is above good and evil. He knew that in this he defied the purse-lipped Ecclesia who found evil in everything, and even denounced naked athletes, and, of a certainty, beauty itself. “No doubt they would destroy bees, who fertilize the flowers, if they dared,” Tmolus complained bitterly.

Aspasia put this into her mind and pondered on it, and knew it was true. Like Tmolus she deplored the fact that sculptors painted the noble white majesty of marble statues. “Let there be innocence,” Tmolus endlessly repeated. “Why must mankind inflict its meanness and mediocrity on that which is natively simple and complete? If there is any evil at all it is in the complicated intricacy of the deformed human soul, which must daub and smear its offal on that which is pure.”

From Tmolus she learned more of true glory and reverence than she did from her teachers of theology.

She had known since childhood that she was not capable of creating great sculpture nor was she adept at painting, for all her efforts. Tmolus consoled her. “It is not necessary to create beauty to appreciate it, my child. For what do sculptors and painters labor? For the joy of those who view. We cannot all be artists. But is the viewer who loves and reverences less than he who also loves and creates and reverences? Do the gods demand that we be gods also? No. It is enough for us to rejoice in them and in those they have gifted.”

Aspasia would hold cool marble in her hands and often she became ecstatic over it. Her heart lifted when she touched mosaics and gazed on pictures. This reproduction of nature exalted her. Her taste was immaculate and sure. She, like her teacher, hated mediocrity. “Excellence,” said Tmolus, “is the utter goal of a true artist. It is not relevant that all who love excellence in art be artists themselves. It is enough to appreciate it. That appreciation is the accolade and the contentment of all artists. Without an understanding of excellence a man is an animal.”

He would add, “Alas, no artist ever attains, in his work, the perfection for which he strives. Perfection is beyond humanity, but that does not mean we should abandon it as a goal.”

To Aspasia, who desired to be excellent in all things, this was a consolation. So she cultivated her adoration of beauty and her understanding of it. She fervently hoped that some day she would be able to influence a powerful man to become a patron of the arts. It would not be possible to endure a man who would revel in her own loveliness and not be aware of its greater meaning. Sensuality was not enough. Physical beauty was transient. That which was graven in stone and was painted in luminous colors and written eloquently in books endured. Helen of Troy was dead, but the memory of her beauteousness remained to inspire poets and artists. Legend was eternal, and never grew old and ugly. That was why the gods continued to be magnificent, beyond human pollution.

Today, Tmolus had a new model for his maidens.

The young girl, nude and gleaming like amber, was of some twelve years, innocently unaware of her nakedness. Her long black hair touched breasts still budlike and she had little pubic hair. She looked with curiosity at the maidens who trooped in, but it was a childlike curiosity, vacant and only vaguely aware. She stood with one elbow leaning on a half pedestal of marble and moved restlessly. Her name was Cleo. Slender and delicate, she was being considered by Thargelia as a candidate for the hetairai, for she was quick of thought and beguiling, when it concerned herself. Thargelia had recently received her as a handmaiden, and she was reputed not only to be the child of a beautiful courtesan but of a man of some importance in Miletus.

Cleo looked more closely at the maidens who assembled at their stations for clay molding and painting and mosaics, considering them somewhat elderly. Then her eyes fixed themselves on Aspasia, who seemed to bring a lambent light into the room. Immediately, she was filled with childish adoration, as one is transfixed at the sight of a nymph. Drawn by the girl’s intent gaze, Aspasia looked intently at her and she was touched with admiration. She was like a statue of the young Eros, and resembled spring. As always, Aspasia felt sadness and frustration that she was unable to mold in an exceptional manner and that never could she recreate in perfection what she saw. One of the maidens was adept at painting, and Aspasia went to the girl’s easel and saw, again with a lurch of envy, that the maiden was already delineating Cleo’s head with swift strokes of a piece of charcoal and had even sketched in that perfect young body. Aspasia went to one of the other maidens who was patiently matching small stones for her mosaic. I do not have the patience, she thought. My mind leaps too much. However, she found a small blue stone for which the maiden was searching. When it fitted exactly she was almost overcome with gratification. My eye is good, she thought, though, alas, my hands will not obey me.

She looked at Cleo again. Sunlight touched the form of the child and seemed to glimmer through it, as through honey. Aspasia sighed. She understood now what Tmolus meant when he had said that no one could reproduce nature in her living radiance, no matter how he dreamt and worked and sighed, and why he was never satisfied with what he had created.

Tmolus, who loved Aspasia, saw her longing face and he thought: Why cannot she understand that one cannot be excellent in all things? But he understood that it is the nature of genius to desire nothing but perfection, so he did not rebuke Aspasia for her air of desperation when she attempted to mold in clay or chisel in marble, or when she dashed a brush to the floor when working at her easel. She despised herself in this room. Yet she could not have enough of being in it.

The next class was in rhetoric, in which Aspasia excelled. Here she could forget her humiliation in Tmolus’ room. Her voice, resonant and firm and exceedingly musical, moved her teacher to wonder and tears. It was a voice without the coyness of a woman’s. The other maidens would listen, enthralled, even if they barely understood the subject. Aspasia’s eyes would take on an unusual brilliance and her gestures had more than grace. When she quoted a passage from Homer the room seemed filled with the glory of the Gemini and Achilles and Apollo and Hercules and Odysseus. She has a Syren’s voice, the teacher would think. She will be able to lure men to good and evil. Helen of Troy must have possessed such, for beauty is not enough to enthrall men.