Volare 1.4 alternative endings
april 2018
mcgill’s creative classics journal
volare issue 1.4: alternative endings The Romans invented alternative endings all the time. Playwrights did, certainly (just look at the various endings to Medea!) and so did students. It was a common exercise to write speeches giving advice to historical and mythological characters in their moments of crisis—as if they could hear you, swivel sideways in their story, step into an alternative ending! In this issue of Volare, everything is up in the air.
Meghan O’Donnell Daniel Galef Manuela Galindo Marina Martin Maya Keshav
#2 #3 #4 #8 #9
Odysseus and Polyphemus The Sacrifice at Mekone The Head of Medusa and The Rest of Medusa Medea we are found in translation.
Editor in chief Maya Keshav Cover design Grace Gunning Layout Nadine Pelaez
!
Editorial board Manuela Galindo Marina Martin Sara Merker Meghan O’Donnell Rachel Sutherland
1
2
(Meghan
O’Donnell)
THE SACRIFICE AT MEKONE
(A sonnet caudate after Theogony 530–70) The bad-within-the-good has tempted man Since first he cursed his eyes which lie like mad, Since ever good or bad—or men—began, Foul cloaked in fair surpasses good-in-bad: At Mēkonē, Jove with the Titan stood Who offered Jove two gifts to choose from, then Determine how the fruits of Gaia would Be meted out between the Gods and men. The first was merely bones, wrapped up and pinned Within a handsome skin of calf ’s-hide pursed, The second, flesh—fresh, wholesome, newly skinned, Within a rotting tripe stuffed fit to burst. And Jove, he saw the Titans’ trick, and grinned And picked the first.
Prometheus almost lost his head, like Medusa, or like Hyacinth.
But Titan Forethought thought ahead, instead, As he was wont to do, and so he said: “Great Jove, you have picked wisely, granting to Poor mortal souls far more than is their due.” The god whose mind was like a labyrinth Removed the hated offering from its plinth And, in his pride, Jove from the Titan flew, Accepting but the lesser of the two;
And Old Prometheus kept his head, And kept his liver, too.
3
(Daniel Galef)
Medusa By Manuela Galindo
The Head of Medusa and the Rest of Medusa
Instead of killing the gorgon, Perseus has brought Medusa back to Seriphos as his wife. He grows to regret it. Perseus’ new bride was a monster. Worse, she wasn’t even Greek. Though her name was Greek, her speech was awkward and accented. The people on the island of Seriphos seemed to point that out a lot, she thought, even when she was in earshot; as if they thought the way she spoke the language meant that she didn’t understand it at all. Despite the comments, she wore a firm facade on her face, partly for pride, and partly because it was easy to wear a neutral expression when nobody could see the upper half of your face. You see, Medusa wore a wide blindfold over her eyes to protect bystanders from the curse of her gaze. The blindfold was a gauzy, loose-woven linen affair, slightly denser than cheesecloth. She could see out of it just well enough to walk around through the royal palace without the need for help. She was strolling on the palace terrace alone at the moment. One of her sandals had come undone, and as she stooped down to fix it, an arrow whizzed through where her head had just been, lodging itself between two painted tiles some five paces away. By instinct, Medusa hid herself behind the nearest barrier, which happened to be a statue base. Then, once her pulse had calmed, and when she was sure no more arrows were on their way, she pushed her blindfold up and looked around in the direction the arrow had come from. It was one of those clear, blue Mediterranean days, but there was not a soul in sight. Strange, she thought. Strange that she had to dodge arrows in her own new home. She ought to tell her husband about it. *** She found Perseus on the portico deep in conversation with eight or so of the assemble of Seriphos. She called him aside, and the elders tutted at this. It was not the done thing to interrupt a conversation between assemblymen, and if she was from anywhere decent, they said amongst themselves, she should have known this. Per-
seus seemed embarrassed at their remarks. He asked them not to worry themselves about that again. He gave a signal for them to be quiet and strode over to Medusa. He was handsome, and the afternoon sun made his hair and beard shine. He took both her hands in his. “What is it, sweet wife?” She thought of brushing it off. He looked so uncomfortable about the gazes of his peers and she pitied him. But then again, there had been an attempt on her life. Surely that was important. “Someone shot me.” His brows rose in concern. “Where?” “On the terrace. Shot at me, but did not hit.” He seemed deep in thought for a second, and then asked, “Are you certain it was at you? Who would shoot you? Perhaps it was just the mistake of an inexperienced boy training in the streets.” Medusa shook her head, and her snakes followed suit. “No. It was not from that direction. Someone shot it from inside the palace. I know it.” “I see,” said Perseus, “It seems then the mistake must have been by one of the archers in my guard. I’ll have to speak to them. They really shouldn’t be missing their targets like that. What would I do if they mistakenly hit my w– if they mistakenly hit you?” “You keep saying it was a mistake,” she observed. “Of course, darling, it must be. Who would shoot you?” Medusa didn’t have an answer. “I can’t say. Keep me safe,” she said. He nodded and embraced her, though not too affectionately, since they were in public. “I will keep you as safe as I ought. I swear it.” *** Unconvinced, Medusa stayed inside the rest of the day and kept the shutters closed. It felt rather like being stuck in a fishing cage to her, but she didn’t let anyone know how she felt. She kept her twin boys Chrysaor and Pegasus by her side as she worked on the loom and taught them how to play dice, so they would not get bored. Chrysaor had to roll the dice, he had more human-shaped hands, and his brother had hooves. They both took after their father Poseidon in some ways, but Chrysaor had his face, or at least the seven-year-old version of it. There was some talking outside the door, and Medusa stopped weaving and pressed herself against the doorframe to hear it. One of the voices was Perseus’ and the other, a woman’s voice, took her longer to recognize.
4
“Rejoice, Perseus, brother, son of our father Zeus. Olympus sends its greetings. You have overthrown the tyrant Polydectes, I take it?” “Yes, I turned him to stone and freed my mother. I’m king now. But she won’t speak to me, since I didn’t want to go back to Argos with her to kill her father, and she dislikes my wife.” “Hmm,” said the goddess uninterestedly, and Medusa realized it could only be Athena herself, “That is not my affair. The fates will resolve themselves.” Medusa heard her husband open his mouth to say something and stop himself and imagined Athena had given him one of her glares. Athena was seven feet tall with piercing gray eyes, and she had commanded utmost respect and terror from all the maidens of her temple when Medusa had been among them. Even now, the goddess’ voice made her nervous. “You have the things we lent you, yes?” Athena asked. “Hermes’ boots, Hades’ cap, my burnished shield?” “Yes, I kept them in the armory for you to take, as you asked. Have you taken them?” “Yes,” she said, “only I wasn’t sure it was my burnished shield. I asked you to put the head of Medusa on it, and this one is plain. You have her head, don’t you?” “I have the head of Medusa and the rest of Medusa. It seemed like good idea to bring her back with me.” “Why?” Perseus said nothing. “I wanted her head,” Athena insisted. “You can have it, but only after she has lived her life. What is time to the immortal gods? Surely you are patient.” “I suppose,” said Athena with mild annoyance. There was a sound like the beating of eagle wings and she was gone. Medusa wished she could fly off just as easily. *** At night, the king of Seriphos lay beside his wife and did not touch her. She asked him why. “We shouldn’t have children,” he told her. “They might look like horrors. I can’t have a monstrous heir.” “I hear Athens once had a good king who was a serpent,” she reminded him. “Hmm. No, that can’t be right. I’ve never heard of that. It must be some sort of strange rumor from your land. In any case, I won’t take the risk.” “My sons only look ‘like horrors’, because their father was a god,” she said. Perseus bristled at this. “Sorry,” she added quickly. “I didn’t mean that all children of gods are horrors.” “It’s fine,” he said, and fell
asleep. *** Perseus was cheerful the next day and he washed and anointed himself as if for a wedding banquet. He wore his finest robe. “You look good,” Medusa observed, “I wish I could see you more clearly.” “Thanks, I feel good,” he said, and ignored the second bit. “What has you in high spirits, husband?” “Oh,” he said airily, “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s the birdsong, or the springtime scent of flowers and wet earth. There’s a lovely breeze coming up from the sea. Oh!
“Medusa” by Meghan O’Donnell Perhaps you should take the boys out to the beach. They’d like that, wouldn’t they?” Medusa pursed her lips and tried to express herself in her best Greek. “Someone tried to shoot me yesterday, so I do not feel safe on the open beach, where there is nowhere to hide, and no way for me to escape.” “My dear, no one is trying to harm you! Unless one of my archers is disloyal. Tell you what, I’ll investigate that matter and send you out with a guard who I know is
5
loyal. Does that sound good?” *** It was a clear day and Medusa could have seen far out to sea if not for the blindfold. The wind was a bit brisk, but the sun warmed her skin and the dry sand pleasantly. The boys were racing each other by the edge of the waves, and the guard was ten paces behind her. She ought to have felt relaxed, but something was not right. Something kept her on edge. “Mama, look!” said Chrysaor, presenting her with a large, pink, and jagged seashell, which she took. “It’s very pretty,” she said, smiling. He smiled back at her. They both had lovely pointy teeth. Then he stopped smiling, and he screamed, and pointed a pudgy, scaly hand at something right behind her. She tried to turn around, but a thick arm swung around across her neck and seized her shoulder. The other arm was coming for her chest with an iron dagger in its grasp, but she kicked and struggled and bit down on his other arm till there was blood. The assailant yelped and loosened his grip, and Medusa slipped out from under his arm. Medusa ran, and her assailant ran after her. The children fled too, Chrysaor clinging to Pegasus’ back. “Hide!” she shouted at them. “Don’t run in the same direction as me and don’t let anybody find you!” They did so, but there didn’t seem to be any need for it. The man with the dagger didn’t even look at the boys take off. His attention was just on Medusa. She had never been fast. Her calves were thin from lack of exercise during all her years hidden away in the cave. She couldn’t stop to look back at her pursuer, but the sound of his footsteps on the sand showed no signs of flagging. No, he was gaining on her too, and she was already panting, short of breath. A different part of the beach was rocky, but they were large rocks, and she thought perhaps she could outrun him if she clambered up them towards the road and towards the market. She was probably more agile than he was, and this could give her time to undo her blindfold. Once she reached the rocks, Medusa kicked off her sandals and leapt from one rock to another. But halfway up the rocks to the road, the hem of her chiton caught on something. Or, no, someone caught onto the hem of her chiton and caught her off balance. Her head hit a rock with a rather loud crack, and her right knee fallen rather uncomfortably between two rocks. For a second, she was dazed. Medusa tasted her own blood, and time moved like honey. And then, all at once, the man with the dagger was upon
her. She rolled out of the way of certain death, but his dagger cut deep across her lower rib. A cry of pain escaped her mouth as she got to her feet and braced herself against a rock. She was afraid, but she was also very, very angry. All of her snakes were hissing. Her hands shot to her head and she tore at her blindfold so hard it fell to the ground in pieces. Her eyes were blazing, but the guard’s eyes were closed, and as long as they were closed, he was safe. But he couldn’t fight blind for long. He stuck one arm out to feel for her, in vain, and she seized it, spinning him off balance with all her might. He fell face-up into the sand, but the fall wasn’t high enough to do much damage. For a while, he lay there, listening for her, but all he could hear was the gentle roar of the waves breaking themselves against the beach, and the caws of seagulls. He thought to himself that perhaps she had died too. He could not hear groaning or footsteps or even breathing. A drop of something hit his forehead, and then he opened his eyes to see a woman’s hideous, bleeding mouth, and then, in a flash, he saw no more, and all softness and color finally left his flesh. *** The reason why Perseus had groomed and dressed as if for a banquet was because there was a banquet. On the middle of the table, there was a massive sow glazed in honey. Smaller plates of seedcakes, fruit, and fish surrounded it. Perseus was seated at the head of the table with a lovely blushing maiden by his side, and the elders seated around them, raising approving toasts to the couple. In the middle of a toast, Medusa walked in. All sound left the air. The soles of her feet were full of open cuts from walking all the way to the palace barefoot, the hem of her chiton was torn, and one of her arms was pressed tightly to her side to stop the bleeding. Blood and dirt were caked under her nails. Her other arm shielded the room from her eyes. She was a shocking sight to behold, but Perseus pretended not to be surprised to see her. “Wonderful!” he said, “You’re just in time to join us for my birthday feast.” “It looks like a wedding feast.” Perseus laughed, a little too loudly. “Come sit,” he said. “No,” said Medusa. “I need to go to our room to clean myself up. I’ve been injured, obviously.” “Of course,” he said. Then, after she had left, he suggested to one of his men,
6
“Perhaps you should go check on her.” *** It was past nightfall when Perseus grew impatient. Neither the man nor the gorgon had come back. Their room was empty, but a trail of blood led up to the terrace, and a severed snake lay on the ground. All seemed well. A statue near the edge of the terrace seemed unfamiliar, and then, in a panic, he realized what had happened. He saw a living person’s silhouette in the shadows. “You brought me out of my cave and back to your stupid island for this?” asked a woman’s voice. “I thought it was a good idea to bring you back,” he said. “I thought together, we could be powerful. I didn’t think of what people would say, and then there was no graceful way out, and I–” “I don’t care,” she said, and stepped forward into the moonlight. Perseus began to take a step back but froze, for good. His stone body tipped over the edge of the terrace and smashed into rubble on the ground.
7
(Manuela
Galindo)
8
we are found
in translation
around our well-benched ship the sea is kind, and unkind, and most of all obscure. we reach around aorists, middle-passives, genitive absolutes for comprehension,
which leaps elusive through spread fingers like a stout man clinging to the belly of a violet dark ram. there are ambiguities: —a length of rope, a depth of sea, a measure of olive-wood hewed from the cylops’ cudgel , and specificities: —the silky wool of the well-tressed sheep is white as unmixed milk. there are moments when across two and a half millennia we are all human morsels. ὀυ µονον for the blood, the marrowed bones, the brain that ἐκflows in present continuous across the floor of the cave, και ἀλλα for the swelling rage that rises to push Odysseus, like the after-ripple of a mountain-top hurled into the sea will move a ship. my companions restrained me, some from here and some from there, warning me of the wild man’s strength, but my great-hearted heart was not persuaded. I called to the cyclops, who had turned away, hurling taunts and stinging words from my heart, which had been angered.
… and I called him again, and I called him again. and we have stolen all your sheep. even your gentle-pet, your honey-ram, who was always and every day πρωτος to greet you in the morning, πρωτος to trundle homewards in the eve. here on another well-benched ship I found my faithful ἑταιροι. steering in spurts, in turns, reversing often, veering sideways into conversation but drawing back, and always, to translation before all together now we heave ourselves to mainland. It isn’t so bad when we’re together. In fact, it’s rather Do my friends know something I don’t? They are clinging to me as if something is ending— but Tuesday, and early-born ῥοδοδακτυλος Dawn appears.
(Maya
Keshav) Opposite page: “Medea” (Marina Martin)
9
volare.mcgill@gmail.com volaremcgill.wordpress.com