Copyright Ross F. Lockridge, Jr., 1947, 1948 / All rights reserved Selected Writings From Raintree County --The world is still full of divinity and strangeness, Mr. Shawnessy said. Ross Lockridge, Jr.,
Raintree County, 1948
(Passage from the Day Section, pp. 914-7)
--The wisdom of the mythmakers
is still with us, Professor. The profoundest mystery in the world
is the existence of Another. Erotic love is the intense awareness
of this Other, a Sacred Place. The lover bears the golden bough
of godlike appetite and mysterious power and passes through the
dismal wood that lies at the portals of Tartarus. Among the gibbering
shades, he presses in with mortal thrust, making the boat of
Charon heavy with his unusual weight. He bears the golden bough
to the inmost shrine of the earth-goddess where he repeats the
ancient frenzy. As you say, this rite is not unconnected with
blood and death, for the renewal of form is possible only by
the destruction of form. Love is a sweet death. A million die
that one may reach the mark.
He beheld the fading beauty of
the day over Waycross. Now the roofs of the town were drenched
in a last red bath of fire. A few rays thrust through to paint
the green body of a nymph and touch the pooled and spouting fountain
with golden light. The children were little blind swimmers in
the valley of the day's receding brightness. Corn filled the
earth with blind roots. All things were bathed in light and longing.
--We'll never go any farther than
those broken stones beside the inland ocean, the Perfessor said.
The corn god is gone, and we have --behold!--only the corn.
He took a long pull at his bottle,
coughed, and sighed.
--The world is still full of divinity
and strangeness, Mr. Shawnessy said. The scientist stops, where
all men do, at the doors of birth and death. He knows no more
than you and I why a seed remembers the oak of twenty million
years ago, why dust acquires the form of a woman, why we behold
the earth in space and time. He hasn't yet solved the secret
of a single name upon the earth. We may pluck the nymph from
the river, but we won't pluck the river from ourselves: this
coiled divinity is still all murmurous and strange. There are
sacred places everywhere. The world is still man's druid grove,
where he wanders hunting for the Tree of Life.
--This conversation is hard on
an excitable old man, the Perfessor said. Just look at little
Evelina out there! I wish you could persuade her to do her duty
as a vestal. And isn't it a ritual day that we've been having?
The Perfessor moved his head in
quick darts to an odd rhythm. Under his breath, he was reciting,
--Io Hymen Hymenaee!
Io Hymen Hymenaee! On the
day of the birth of the Republic, after the runners had gone
down the lane of faces to a distant string and the women had
made a music of laughter and applause with their red mouths,
in the young afternoon, by a curious and curving pathway, the
hero made his way unto the place.
And the waters of the lake slept
in the solitude of the encircling hills, the stream of the serpent
river came down by shore and shallow, through tarn and tangling
swamp, the murmur of its waters was beautiful in dense reeds.
And according to a legend, there
was a grove near that lake and in the midst thereof a sacred
tree, from which the earth there had taken its name of music
and of strangeness.
In distant and dark woodlands,
in the attitude of one listening, the young hunter stood and
waited for a sign. And this was in the time before the fall and
death of so many woodland deities, when the earth was young,
and the goddess still lived on earth in the person of a woman
with bright hair and gracious limbs. It had also been said in
the legend that she might be known by a curious and curving mark
on the bare flesh of her body.
And the tall oaks of the wood were
filled with a living sound, the barky lips were calling to him
through the dim forest, saying:
Io Hymen Hymenaee! 0, fleet
of foot, the goddess is waiting by the tree. 0, impetuous young
man!
In distant and dark woodlands,
in the attitude of one listening, he waited for a sign, and the
voices of the woodland deities were saying:
Io Hymen Hymenaee! 0, sun-beloved!
For you, the golden bough, all heavy with seed. For you the talismanic
branch. For you a prize, dangerous and sweet. 0, mortal more
than mortal, o, young man more beloved than a god, hunt deep
and far and do not be prevented.
Come, come, the voices said, come
unto these woods with dark hair glancing. Come and join our revels.
But first drink deep the blood-exciting potion. We will imprison
you in ropes of flowers. Io Hymen Hymenaee! 0, strong
young bull! 0, young prizewinner!
Victorious boy, feed on the flesh
of apples smitten by the sun. It is the season when the corn
is green beside the river and the sacred juice of life is rising
in the stalk. Let there be rains and golden warmth for many days.
0, brave young man, be tender but compulsive. Lo! you were chosen
from among thousands to make the goddess fruitful.
The vestals are jealous--all afternoon
they plunge their fevered bodies into the lake without relief.
The corn is as tall as the knee
of a goddess. Let the corn be high and the seedshock stiff to
bursting. Fling seed and make the earth tremble from delirious
feet.
Come, come, and bring the hero
to the shrine, sweet sisters, unclothe his body, let his limbs
be laved in the cold waters of the sacred pool, and bring him,
bring him, jealous sisters, into the presence of the goddess
July 4-- BARE --1859 EXCEPT FOR A CHAPLET OF OAKLEAVES, JOHNNY SHAWNESSY'S HEAD
was dizzy from the noonday sun and other,
more worldly causes. . . . .
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