© 1998
In a little town on the beautiful Aegean Sea there once lived a young man with a very delicate soul.
So sensitive was he, so refined of thought, so exquisite in his nuances of feeling, that the mere sight of hearty and wholesome ugliness caused him to burst into tears. The purple and wine-like sunsets had the power to petrify him into prolonged immobility; the dawns moved him to ineffable sadness, at once sweet and bitter. The sound of a lyre, softly smitten under the stars, filled him with a strange and half-mad ecstasy. His face was the face of a fair woman; his hands were white, slender and very small. His garments were always daintily arranged, and faintly fragrant. In short, he was a poet.
The lot of a poet is always a hard one. And it is excessively hard to be a poet aird to be born the son of a strong-faced and brown-handed peasants, who are obliged to wrench a hard living from singularly obstinate soil. It is a painful ordeal to be such a son, to live in a humble house without even one slave; to drink sweet-foaming milk from an earthen pitcher, and break bread that was served without a silver platter. It is even more painful to raise one's eyes from such coarse fare, and observe the faces of one's parents opposite. They are simple and honest faces, it is true, and full of gentle piety, but they are broad, and stained by sun and wind. Their garments are uncouth, and the hands, by reason of decent toil, are thickened and dark and fumbling. Looking at these faces, our delicate poet would be sickened. His exquisite soul, that longed so ardently for long colonnades of motionless pillars under a silver sky, would clamor in despair.
And then, there were the deep and pungent smells of the opulent fields, and the strong odor of cattle. These things are also revolting to the pure poetry of lofty souls, and our poet would lift his beautiful white garments, and, suffering passionately, would retire into a cool grotto near by. There he would sit for hours, strumming gently on his lyre, and likening himself to Apollo. He would transport himself to marble stairways, broad and shallow, moving majestically down into transparent green waters; he would envision mountains of black and silver and jade, or sunsets like the deep heart of a rose. There he would remain in his grotto until his mother called him to the foaming milk and opaline grapes and the sweet cheese and the coarse bread.
The parents of Celer, the fair poet, were very simple souls, and they were at a na:fve loss to explain the presence of this white and gentle calf in the odoriferous stable of their lives. So, as do all simple people, they attributed this anomaly to the will of the gods, and rejoiced, in their simplicity, that these gods had given them so beautiful and talented a son. So Celer did no work, and strummed only his lyre and composed much poetry that was very bad poetry indeed. But it is not absolutely necessary to compose good poetry to be a poet; one needs only a very delicate soul and a distaste for toil and wholesome ugliness. It is especially essential to loathe soiling one's hands.
However the parents of Celer could not live forever. First the old mother died. Then, as though he could not bear her absence, the old father died. Celer was left alone with a few acres of stony earth, a tiny vineyard, three cows, his hut, one lyre, three white robes, and one cock and ten hens. He looked upon his possessions with much despair and hopelessness.
Nearby there lived a peasant, who had two beautiful daughters. One of the daughters, Iona, was sensitive and poetic, and loathed toil and ugliness. Her hands were white and dainty. ne other daughter was Diada, a brown-eyed, black-haired wench with ruddy cheeks, full bosom and laughing red lips. Diada, a merry soul, could milk cows faster that any other maid. Her feet were swift with health, and she could bake bread that tasted like the ambrosia of the gods.
It so happened that both these damsels had fallen in love with Celer, and both had decided to marry him. However, marriage had always seemed unesthetic to Celer, who loved to worship abstract female deities without approaching them in the naked heat of the bed chamber. Of the two sisters, he preferred Iona, and had spent many hours with her, dreaming over sunsets and discussing his soul, and sighing over ugliness. Diada was her father's favorite. One day she came to him, smelling strongly of the cows she had recently milked. There was a red rose in her black hair, and her brown eyes were full of golden lights. "Father," said she, "I wish to marry Celer. His little farm is approaching a state of ruin, and he is in despair."
After much bitter complaint, and many urgent suggestions from the poor father that Iona be offered to Celer as his bride; the loving parent went to the young poet and offered him his daughter Diada to be his wife. As he spoke, the father looked with contempt at the delicate poet who sat in the midst of the dirty hut and the unwashed table, lyre in hand.
Celer refused Diada, but as he glanced sighingly about his neglected home, he offered to take Iona, who, in the intervals of breadbaking and milking, might discuss his soul with him. But the father refused him Iona, though his heart broke at the prospect of losing Diada. Celer was forced to take Diada as his wife, though with many sighs and light shivers.
Though Diada, a warm-blooded young woman, soon found Celer sadly lacking in some of the ardor and essentials necessary for a satisfactory husband, she made him a good wife. The cattle became sleek and round, and giving much milk and many calves. Eggs were very plentiful, and the garden and vineyard opulent with vegetables and fruit. The little hut soon shone bright and clean, and the board was scrubbed to whiteness. Everywhere about the premises could be heard the merry songs of Diada, and everywhere was the echo of her dancing and energetic feet. The singing of her loom made the noonday drowsy; the clucking of her fat hens was a somnolent sound.
Celer's soul was soon saddened and cast down for Diada was too healthy to be aesthetic, and her brown hands too stained, and her voice too loud and hearty. Moreover, her breasts were too large, and she covered them but meagerly, which pained Celer's sensitive and artistic soul.
Even these things might have been endured by him with that philosophy which great souls know, but Diada was extremely irreverent. She laughed at Kis poetry, and once thrust the damp muzzle of a young calf right in his face as he was on the verge of completing a sonorous hexameter. She had a gay wit, and often read his poetry and paraded it to his agony. She had a most disconcerting and indelicate habit of flinging herself into his arms and pressing her sumptuous young body against him. Her red lips were moist and demanding, which is decidedly not refined.
However, he did not fare so badly. There was a hint about him now of approaching corpulency, and often there was a flush on his pale cheek like the flush of one who had dined recently and well. He slept a great deal, and spent much of his waking moments in the grotto, composing poetry and strumming his lyre. And as usual he did nothing.
One day Iona, pale, exquisitely robed in white, wearing upon her yellow hair a wreath of spring flowers, came to visit her sister and Celer. Her blue eyes misted with dreams, and she sighed frequently and deeply, looking at Celer with sad soulfulness. And he, gazing at this ethereal female, felt his blood stir and his crushed soul rise.
Frequently, thereafter, did Iona visit her sister; and after they had dined heavily of the fine meal prepared by Diada's brown hands, Celer and Iona would repair to the grotto. There they would sigh in concert over the evils and ugliness of life, and gaze at the sunset with majestic expressions. And in the hut Diada sang and scrubbed her table and baked fresh bread and gathered eggs.
"Poor Diada," sighed Iona, who always sighed. "She is the noblest of women, but she has no soul."
"No soul," sighed the poet, gazing into Iona's pale blue eyes. Then he took her hand and spoke to her of shadowless seas and crystal skies and dark purple islands.
After this had continued for a long time, Iona and Celer came to Diada with dignified faces. They announced that they loved each other, and that Celer had decided to divorce Diada and marry her sister.
Now Diada was a clever young woman. She merely gazed at them for a long moment, her black hair curling about her sweat-moistened red cheeks, her brown eyes twinkling. In her hand she held and earthen Pitcher of new milk, and its fragrance enwrapped her.
"No," she said, with much thoughtfulness, "I shall not give up my husband. But this I shall do, I shall return to my father, and thou, Iona, mayest remain here with Celer for one month. At the end of that time, if thou dost still desire to marry him, I shall be divorced meekly and without protest."
So Diada gathered up her garments, singing, and repaired to the house of her father. None saw her tears nor heard her cries of grief.
'Men happy was Celer, and happy was Iona. Day after day they wandered, hand in hand over the hills, and they sat in the grotto and sang, and composed poetry and talked of their souls, and of the inscrutability of the gods.
At length there came a day when the bread that Diada had baked was gone; and as Iona milked cows but poorly, the cattle were distressed. Some of them wandered away, and could not be found. The garden sickened with weeds, and the fowl died in the burning sun. But Celer resolutely turned his eyes from these things. He and looked at Iona, and they resumed their poetry and their discussions about the hidden nuances of their spirits.
Finally Celer began to experience a strange feeling in his solar plexus, and it came to him like a thunderbolt that he was hungry. He urged Iona to bake bread, and so she did so, weeping over the ugliness of the task and the suffering her soul experienced in doing it. The bread she made could not be eaten, and as the eggs had lain neglected in their beds of straw for many days, they were putrid. And as only one sorrowful cow could be captured and milked, the milk was poor and thin.
Iona loathed the ugliness of washing, and Celer saw that his erstwhile white garments were becoming dark with soil and nasty of odor. The dirty floor crackled under his fastidious feet, and insects ran over the stained table. And in the midst of this decay and odor sat Iona, drowsing, her eyes fixed soulfully on the sky beyond the door, and her lips parted in ineffable dreams. As the sluggish hours went by, Iona sighed deeply from the sad ecstasy of her visions, while the burning heat dried up the gardens, and the mournful lowing of cattle filled the air.
Forgotten was Celer's poetry, and his wrath mounted. He threw a pitcher at some marauding rats, then rose up and cursed deeply and healthily. Iona's brows drew together delicately, and she gave an exquisite shudder.
"Go home to thy father, thou paling fool!" shouted Celer. "And learn how to bake bread and milk cows before thou dost presume to take a husband!"
Before Iona could reply to this coarse tirade, a shadow darkened in the doorway, and Diada stood there, smiling, the sun on her ruddy young cheeks, and her brown clean hands full of grapes. Celer fell upon her with tears of rejoicing, and kissed her sweet, moist lips, and pressed her warm young breasts. Iona rose with dignity and departed with her dreams and her soul and her soiled garments.
Diada sang and swept and baked, and milked the cows. Celer sat down to a godlike dinner and ate as no delicate poet should eat. And in the warm and purple twilight he watched Diada scrub the table and feed the grateful hens and pat the pleased cattle. The great pale stars came out and a blissful peace fell over the hot earth. Then it was that Celer placed his arm strongly about his wife, and kissed her as only vulgar men kissed women.
"0 my beloved," said he, "let us go to bed."
How much of a fool can a man be when he looks only for beauty or a sexual attraction. There is a fantasy world. Soon he finds the ugliness in his attraction had become a fantasy world. And yet, some men have the capacity to see more than the surface in a woman, and they are happy with their judgments.