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The Poetic Dramas Of Robinson Jeffers
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The Poetic Dramas Of Robinson Jeffers
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I
THE POETIC DRAMAS OF ROBINSON JEFFERS
by
Ellsworth Lee Redinger
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
June 1971
F
h
72-577
REDINGER, Ellsworth Lee, 1935-
THE POETIC DRAMAS OF ROBINSON JEFFERS.
University of Southern California, Ph.D.,
1971
Language and Literature, modern
University Microfilms, A X ER O X Company , Ann Arbor, M ichigan
Copyright © by
ELLSWORTH LEE REDINGER
1971
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVEDv
UNIVERSITY O F SO UTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
.........
under the direction of his Dissertation C om
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Gradu
ate School, in partial fulfillment of require
ments of the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
D ate l i m e . , . .19. 7. 1 .
FOREWORD
Robinson Jeffers' poetry can be divided into three con
venient categories: the long narratives, the short poems,
and the dramatic poems. His early reputation was estab
lished by a cluster of enthusiastically received long poems
which fascinated both the critic and the general reader.
His shorter poems have been reprinted in scores of antholo
gies and textbooks. It is his dramas, however, which drew
his widest audience, specifically in the New York stage
success of Medea in the mid-nineteen-forties.
This study will not be an attempt, however, to rank
the dramas against Jeffers' long narratives or short poems,
nor will it be an attempt to argue in a complex fashion the
question of the generic assignment of individual poems. It
is intended, rather, as an examination of the eight dramatic
poems (one left incomplete at his death) in which Robinson
Jeffers relied almost entirely upon dialogue rather than
upon narrative or description to tell his stories. In the
dramas the characters, not the author, speak directly to
the audience.
My attention is directed towards an examination of the
progress and the changes made in Jeffers' handling of dra
matic materials, in terms of his development of character,
ii
situation, dialogue, and staging. As a result, the study
has become threefold in nature. First, it is an attempt to
trace Jeffers' growing skill in the writing of dramatic
literature. Second, it includes discussion of the literary
as well as the dramatic values inherent in each work. Fi
nally, it describes the increasing, theatrical workability
of the plays as Jeffers developed his skill in manipulating
his subject matter and the conventions of the stage.
112.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There is no adequate way to thank all those individ
uals who have helped in the preparation of this study. But
it is necessary for me to express gratitude to some of them
for their particular inspiration, interest, and direction.
Unhappily, in the recent past, four of them have died,
and it will be impossible for me to do more than give them
tribute in this brief and unsatisfactory fashion.
First, I owe this study to Professor Olga W. Vickery,
whose scholarship, standards, and discipline were an inspi
ration in the classroom and in the formulation and develop
ment of the major ideas, outlines, and directions of this
study. Her care and strict attention to detail, as well as
her lively discussion of larger issues, have a permanent
place in my mind and are, hopefully, reflected here. My
tribute to her is not only to a remarkably fine scholar,
but to a good friend and to a splendid lady.
Second, to Professors Francis Christensen and Bruce
Mcllderry, Jr., I owe particular thanks for their early in
terest in my work and for the firmness which marked their
continued guidance.
Mrs. Melba Berry Bennett opened her home, her private
correspondence, and her wide-ranging knowledge of Jeffers,
iv _______
the man and the poet, to me at a time when I was first be
ginning a serious study of the dramas. Her generosity and
grace are well-known; I am grateful to have benefited from
both and to have been her friend.
I have obligations to the living, as well. The zest,
intelligence, and taste of Dame Judith Anderson have been
a continued inspiration to me since the day of my first in
terview with her. Her complete willingness to help, and
her lively sharing of her library, correspondence and memo
rabilia of the poet have made an indelible mark on me.
Donnan and Lee Jeffers, in their characteristic-hospi
tality and their respectful guardianship of Robinson Jef
fers' memory, home, and unpublished materials, have been
most kind in allowing me to share in each of those areas.
Their reminiscences, the friendliness they afforded me
during my visits to Tor House, and especially Donnan's per
mission to allow me access to the closed materials at Oc
cidental College, have been unmatched assets in writing
this paper.
I must also thank Tyrus Harmsen and his staff at the
Occidental College Library for the time and interest they
have given during the course of my study. In addition, the
help and encouragement of Robert Brophy, editor of The
Robinson Jeffers Newsletter, have been helpful and steady
ing.
v
I owe special thanks to Michael Myerberg for providing
me with a typescript of his stage version of "Dear Judas."
His aid was prompt, friendly, and invaluable.
Finally, I must thank two men whose help has made com
pletion of this paper possible. Professor Aerol Arnold,
whose awesome, practical, and scholarly interview with me
at the beginning of my graduate studies at the University
of Southern California first attracted me to his classroom
and later to a sustained demand on his time for counseling
and advice. At several critical points Professor Arnold's
encouragement and orderly insights have been the deciding
factors in my continued effort.
Finally, I would like to thank Professor John Nichol
who has given me, unstintingly, the specific aid and sup
port which were required to draw the various loose ends of
this study together. At a moment of rather profound dis
couragement, Professor Nichol's steady and disciplined hand
was of immeasurable value. I thank him for every instance
of his direction from advice and suggestion in the basic
matter of chapter strategy to the placement of an individ
ual comma.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
FOREWORD.............................................. ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS..................................... iv
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION ................................. 1
II. "THE TOWER BEYOND TRAGEDY".................. 21
III. "DEAR JUDAS"................................. 69
IV. "AT THE FALL OF AN AGE" AND "AT THE BIRTH OF
AN A G E " ................................... 117
V. "THE BOWL OF BLOOD"......................... 152
VI. M E D E A ........................................ 169
VII. "THE CRETAN WOMAN"........................... 199
VIII. "MARY AND ELIZABETH" (A FRAGMENT)........... 239
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES CITED ...................... 2 47
vii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Robinson Jeffers wrote seven verse plays and a frag
ment of an eighth during his long career. In only two in
stances, however— Medea and Dear Judas and Other Poems— did
he use the names of the dramatic poems in the titles for
published volumes of his verse. He clearly regarded him
self as something other than a dramatist, certainly never
as a practicing or expert playwright. Whatever interest
the genre held for him, he was not nourished or fortified
by an attraction to the theater or to the practical re
quirements of production. He wrote Medea as a favor for a
friend, and he all but ignored the attempts of his New York
producer to bring "Dear Judas" to the stage. He answered
inquiries concerning the production plans for "The Cretan
Woman" politely but indifferently, and was persuaded only
by the main force of Judith Anderson and by his wife to
work on a stage version of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy." The
matters of problem solving and collaborating with other
creative personalities in the writing of drama not only in
truded upon his privacy, but also distracted him from what
he regarded as more important work, the writing of his long
1
2
narratives and of his short poems. ■ * ■
Ironically, it was Medea, produced in New York in 19 47,
which gave a new life to Jeffers' rapidly declining liter
ary reputation. Not since the sensation which had been
aroused by the appearance of Roan Stallion, Tamar, and
Other Poems twenty years previously had a Jeffers poem re
ceived enthusiastic popular and critical attention. The
long narrative poems, usually printed in single editions,
had become difficult for the general reader to find.^
■*-The history of Jeffers' indifference to the theater
is well known. He preferred the isolation of his life in
Carmel and regarded almost every intrusion of his privacy
as a menace to his primary work. His only genuinely satis
factory relationship with a theatrical personality was with
Dame Judith Anderson. In the Decca Records Album foreword,
he gave credit to both the guidance of Euripides and the
suggestions of Dame Judith for the completion of Medea.
The foreword is reprinted in full in Melba Berry Bennett,
The Stone Mason of Tor House (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie
Press, 196)8) , pp. 216-220.
Further discussion of the particular problems con
nected with the production of individual plays will be in
cluded in the chapters on "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," "Dear
Judas," Medea, and "The Cretan Woman"; but, Jeffers' ex
plicit statement about the matter is printed by Ann Ridge
way in a footnote to The Selected Letters of Robinson Jef
fers (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968),
p. 335. She dates the note tentatively for 1958: "I ad
mire the work of Albert Camus and should be glad to do an
adaptation of one of his plays. But how could it need
adapting? The French and the Anglo-Saxon theaters are not
very far apart. And, as for me, I know nothing of the the
ater. I have seen no more than six or seven plays in my
lifetime, and two were in German, one in French, two were
my own, and one was Shakespeare's. I like to adapt plays
from Greek tragedy, the very few that are interesting
enough— but I doubt very much that I could do anything suc
cessfully for M. Camus."
^With the exception of those which were written before
Although the short poems had been reprinted and were still
appearing in periodicals and in anthologies, wide discus
sion and approval of his work had diminished considerably
during the late thirties and during the war years.^
In spite of his reluctance to associate himself with
the theater, an evolution did occur in his dramas. His
skills as a playwright improved, and a greater control of
the theatrically workable play developed. In his last
plays he almost completely reversed his earlier method of
manipulating large, unwieldy actions and complicated net
works of ideas. Instead, he presented tighter, more uni
fied structures and thematic thrusts. He condensed action,
reduced the size of his casts, and simplified his themes,
making actions, characterizations, and incidents more
1938 and included in The Selected Poems of Robinson Jeffers
(New York: Random House, 1939).
^For whatever reason, Jeffers' reputation had dimmed
among critics. It has been variously argued that the un
congeniality of his verse to the interests of the "new
critics" left him a limited academic audience; that his
verse was simply poor; or that his rigid isolation in Car
mel and his refusal to promote his own interests in lecture
tours or in a participation in the institutionalized poetic
affairs of the times kept him outside of the mainstream of
discussion.
Frederic I. Carpenter offers a reasonable, threefold
theory for the loss of critical enthusiasm and popular ap
peal which may have a bearing upon Jeffers' growing atten
tion to his dramas: the great depression which caused a
sick and troubled nation to reject the violence of trage
dies, a backlash of reaction to the superlatives of his
early critics, and a falling off in the quality of his long
narrative poems. Robinson Jeffers (New York: Twayne,
1962), p. 44.
4
feasible for the stage. A chronological chart illustrates,
in part, the trend towards simplification:
1925 "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," a condensation of
the entire "Oresteia" by Aeschylus, with a
radically altered third section.
(Published as the third long poem in Roan
Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems.)
1929 "Dear Judas," a condensation of the story of
Jesus with multiple references to gospel stories
and a focus upon the betrayal and the suffering
in the garden.
(Published in Dear Judas and Other Poems.)
1931 "At the Fall of an Age," originally titled
"Helen in Exile," dealing with a variant legend
of the death of Helen of Troy.
(Published first in the limited edition of De
scent to the Dead and reprinted in 1933 in Give
Your Heart to the Hawks.)
1935 "At the Birth of an Age," a combination of the
legend of the death of Siegfried's widow, Sigurd,
the campaigns of Attila the Hun, and the emer
gence of Christianity.
(Published in Solstice, a modernization in
narrative form of the Medea legend.)
1941 "The Bowl of Blood," a masque involving Hitler's
agonies and frustrations concerning his cam-
5
paigns and multiple military fronts.
(Published in Be Angry at the Sun.)
1946 Medea
19 48 "The Cretan Woman," a one-act adaptation of
Euripides' "Hippolytus."
(Composed in 1948, published with revisions in
Hunqerfield and Other Poems.)
1949-. "Elizabeth and Mary," a fragment of Frederick
1950
Schiller's "Maria Stuart," abandoned after the
death of Una Jeffers and never published.
Jeffers handled the unities of time, place, and action
loosely, almost negligently, in the early plays. With the
exception of "At the Fall of an Age," all of the plays
written before 1940 contain congested, multiple plot lines
and a complicated series of inter-related action and per
sonality conflicts. The complexities served his thematic
position better than they did his dramaturgy. "At the Fall
of an Age" is unified by the power of the conflict between
Helen of Troy and Achilles'1 widow Polyxo. However, the
basic human clash reverberates almost to the play's de
struction, with profuse allusions to both the ending Hel
lenistic age and to the subsequent age which would modify
and then repeat it. Nevertheless, the number of important
speaking parts is much smaller than the huge casts of "The
Tower Beyond Tragedy" and "At the Birth of an Age." Simi
larly, in "Dear Judas" the almost kaleidoscopic backflashes
6
into the life of Jesus not only illustrate the nuances of
his suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, but compound the
essentially simple final resolution? whereas the telescop
ing of the action of the "Agamemnon," the "Furies," and the
"Choephori" in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" required a devel
opment of the complex personalities and conflicts of Cas
sandra, Electra, and Orestes within the framework of one
play.
In 1941 Jeffers produced a new kind of drama. He had
moved from the management and condensation of complicated
plot structures and the wide-ranging mystic and historic
implications of "Dear Judas," "At the Fall of an Age," and
"At the Birth of an Age" to a more precisely developed for
mal structure. "The Bowl of Blood" employs a number of
masque techniques, has a unified choric section, contains
singleness of setting and time, and relies for its strength
upon one figure, Adolph Hitler. The play is short and
tight. Hitler emerges, confesses his sense of desperation,
struggles with himself, envisions three past military fig
ures, and resolves with the prompting of the last (an ob
scure friend of his youth who contradicts the other phan
toms, Napoleon and Frederick) to continue to pursue his
dream of world domination.
Peculiarly enough, Jeffers' remaining plays were writ
ten upon commission for actresses who were seeking show
cases for their particular talents. His focus was upon the
7
development of single, dramatically interesting figures, so
he exploited the particularly theatrical potentials of
Medea, Phaedra, and Mary Stuart. Either consciously or
unconsciously, Jeffers managed to concentrate his poetic
force upon dramatic matters. He developed unified se
quences of action and single, highly-charged characteriza
tions. His direction was away from explicit argumentation
and towards dramatic condensation. He made the speeches
shorter, his strategy more dependent upon suspense and
character development than it had been, the digressions
into philosophy fewer, and the handling of his minor char
acters and choruses more precisely refined and more care
fully focused upon the action of the play.
What would have evolved with "Mary and Elizabeth" is
impossible to say. It, like Medea, had been asked for by
Judith Anderson.^ The fragment reflects a difficulty Jef
fers was experiencing with the Renaissance material. The
massive and explicit demonstrations of the extremes in hu
man behavior in the Greek dramas had been replaced with the
intricacies and the convolutions of political and ecclesi
astical intrigue. Jeffers' previous successes had been
predicated upon the boldness and the fury of his figures.
What precisely he had in mind with the model he was dealing
with, the sophistication of the original queens, can only
^She was to play the two queens on alternate nights.
8
be conjectured. At the center of the drama existed a cat
alyst of his special powers— extravagant emotion; but the
mechanics and the style of the Schiller drama seem, on the
whole, unlikely and uncongenial to his talents.
Jeffers had been working consistently throughout his
career with the development of his major ideology, the one
he named "inhumanism." Although a great deal has been said
in print about the nature of the philosophic system, Jef
fers made the most concise and yet comprehensive prose
statement about it himself in response to a question asked
him by the American Humanist Association:
The word Humanism refers primarily to the Renaissance
interest in art and literature rather than in theological
doctrine; and personally I am content to leave it there.
"Naturalistic Humanism"— in the modern sense— is no doubt
a better philosophic attitude than many others; but the
emphasis seems wrong; "human naturalism" would seem to me
more satisfactory, with but little accent on the "human."
Man is part of nature, but a very infinitesimal part; the
human race will cease after a while, and leave no trace,
but the splendors of nature will go on. Meanwhile most
of our time and energy are necessarily spent on human
affairs; that can't be prevented, though I think it
should be minimized; but for philosophy, which is an end
less research of truth, and for contemplation, which can
be a sort of worship, I would suggest that the immense
beauty of the earth and the outer universe, the divine
"nature of things," is a more rewarding object. Cer
tainly it is more ennobling. It is a source of strength;
the other of distraction.5
The statement summarizes his attitude at a point when his
5
First published in Warren Allen Smith's article,
"Authors and Humanism," Humanist, 11 (October, 1951), 193-
204. Later reprinted in The Selected Letters, p. 342.
major work had been completed and indicates clearly what
his general world view was and how it complicated the prob
lem of providing a meaningful contribution to literature.
Jeffers1 attitude towards man as a temporary, pollut
ing species affects his treatment of each of his characters
and modifies his evaluation of any incident. Essentially
his hero or protagonist must demonstrate some aspect of
this central theme whether he appears through narration and
description in a long narrative poem or whether he speaks
in a drama. As Jeffers continued to write plays, the phi
losophy became more closely related to the specific context
of the work and less digressive in nature, so that in his
last complete play, "The Cretan Woman," the general issue
of man's free will is treated systematically in the pro
logue and epilogue delivered by the goddess Aphrodite, in
the commentary of the chorus, and in the argumentation of
the main figures, It is made particular in the dramatic
confrontations between the three major characters: Phaedra,
Hippolytus, and Theseus. Jeffers had come a long way tech
nically from the congested, highly stylized argumentation
and digressions of "Dear Judas" in which the intellectual
freight almost outweighed the action and characterizations.
Although his view of human nature is very important,
his consistent point of reference to nature at large is
primary in his dramas. Jeffers' long view of humanity cen
ters on a concept of the cyclical, repetitive nature of
10
history so completely that it is not surprising that myth
/r
and mythic considerations dominate his thinking. He is
explicit about the matter in his "Foreword" to the 1939
Selected Poetry in which he describes his conscious effort
to incorporate mythic material in both his long narratives
and in his early narrative dramas.^
Myth and classical sources allowed Jeffers an appro
priate platform for his dramatic statement. Jeffers char
acteristically wrote the long narrative poems within modern
contexts: "Tamar" is a development of an Old Testament
character in a modern California coastline setting; like-
£
The lengthiest discussion of sources and influences
is provided in Mercedes Monjian, Robinson Jeffers: A Study
in Inhumanism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1958). Radcliffe Squires provides a close reading of the
interest Jeffers had in myth in terms of the real and the
ideal. The Loyalties of Robinson Jeffers (Ann Arbor: Uni
versity of Michigan Press, 1956)^
7n^t the Birth of an Age' had a more calculated ori
gin, I was considering the main sources of our civiliza
tion, and listed them roughly as Hebrew-Christian, Roman,
Greek, Teutonic. Then it occurred to me that I had written
something about the Hebrew-Christian source in 'Dear Judas,
and that 'The Tower Beyond Tragedy' might pass for a recog
nition of the Greek source. About the Roman source I
should probably never write anything, for it is less sym
pathetic to me. Recognition of the Teutonic source might
be an interesting theme for a new poem, I thought . . . and
the Volsung Saga might serve for fable. Only as the poem
progressed did the Teutonic element begin to warp and groan
under the tension of Christian influence. The symbol of
the self-tortured God, that closes the poem, had appeared
to me long before in 'Apology for Bad Dreams' and in 'The
Woman at Point Sur'— Heautonimoroumenos, the self-tormentor
— but it stands most clearly in the self-hanged Odin of
Norse mythology." Selected Poems, "Foreword," p. xviii.
11
wise "The Loving Shepherdess," the twin piece to "Dear
Judas," feminizes and modernizes a Christ figure; and in
his last long poem, "Hungerfield," he makes an aging World
War I veteran, a Carmel rancher, into a modern version of
Hercules in his struggle with death. In contrast, the
dramas are placed in their original settings. These works
are neither analogues nor prototypes of sources, but adap
tations and direct pictorializations. "The Bowl of Blood"
is the single exception. In it, however, Jeffers uses the
mythic powers of a seer to summon up characters who amplify
the immediate position of his central figure with their
historic importance. In a simple overview of the entire
canon, it is obvious that Jeffers1 conscious mind was at
work with the repeating, self-perpetuating patterns of the
mythic past. In his narrative poetry he exploited paral
lels; in his dramas he wrote adaptations and modifications
which suited his philosophic position.
The dramas, in another radical departure from the long
narratives, provide a gallery of strong women. Although
Jeffers1 collection of female characters in the narratives
is formidable (California, Tamar, Clare Walker, Fayne
Fraser, Alcmena Hungerfield), he matched it with an equally
powerful list of male figures (Cawdor, The Reverend Dr.
Barclay, and Hungerfield). In the plays, by contrast, few
really powerful men emerge. Orestes, although the spokes
man of the play, is unquestionably slight in contrast to
12
the Individual and collective power of Clytemnestra, Cas
sandra, and Electra of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy." Jason
and Creon are pale compared to Medea. Phaedra and Aphro
dite overshadow both Theseus and Hippolytus in "The Cretan
Woman." The widows of "At the Fall of an Age" (Helen and
Polyxo) and of "At the Birth of an Age" (Gudrun) dominate
the plays in which they appear. Similarly, Mary and Eliza
beth are the very substance of the Schiller fragment.
Although Jesus and Judas are the major figures of
"Dear Judas," they are constantly responding to Mary:
Jesus in recrimination and Judas in abject fear and terror.
Only with Hitler in "The Bowl of Blood" does Jeffers give
an almost exclusive attention to a male figure.® The dy
namic center of the dramas is a woman, either in the agony
of her predicament or in her usually negative power to af
fect history. For the most part, then, the plays are de
veloped on the lines of emotion proceeding from reaction
rather than action. With the exception of Jesus and Hitler,
the characters are acting defensively or in retribution for
a grievance. The mythic setting expands the conflict be
cause of the prominence of their reverberations in literary
and intellectual consciousness. In Jeffers' terms they
provide historic reference which compounds the agonies of
®Jeffers' concentration upon Hitler's obsession with
his mother's memory repeats, in variation, Jesus' condemna
tion of Mary in "Dear Judas."
13
the futility of the behavior.
Classic sources provide Jeffers with two more particu
larly important features. In his narrative poetry and in
his short poems he uses a language which is consistent with
his modern settings. His allusions are to nature, history,
ranching, and science. His situations and action, however,
are like those of the dramas, spectacular and at times
melodramatic. Against the stern California coast he writes
stories of heightened passion, suffering, and lust. Still,
he is aware of the added possibilities in language which
classical sources give him in his plays. In the dramas,
set in a distant time and location, he escapes the require
ments for realistic, contemporary speech. His characters
perform and talk as believable human beings in a manner
that could be regarded in modern clinical terms as raving
psychopathy, as extravagantly morbid statements which would
certify madness. In the framework of their mythic, tempo
ral, and geographic distance, however, they speak as uni
versal types (heightened by their own greater sensitivities)
rather than as aberrated personalities.9
9What amounted in some cases to an advantage became in
other instances a drawback. Certainly, the psychopathic
Medea figure in "Solstice" with its modern setting and lan
guage is less effective than is the Medea of the drama ver
sion, who with the privilege of a stylized, dramatic con
text, can somehow persuade us that she is sane although her
behavior is monstrous. On the other hand, the realistic
detail and the expanded motivations of Howard Howren in
Such Counsels You Gave Me in his feelings towards his
14
The Greek legends, the Nibelung story, the Gospels,
Hitler's Germany, Elizabeth I's England give Jeffers foun
dations upon which he can build a powerful and soaring
rhetoric and a believable context for spectacular event.
Jeffers extends the advantage by increasing the on-stage
slaughters, the melodramatic intensity, and the number of
shocking events. From the beginning of his writing of
drama, he piles the stage with corpses and gives his char
acters "great” speeches. In "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" the
cold strength of Clytemnestra in confrontation with her
husband's armies and with the people of Mycenae is balanced
by the shrill prophetic speeches of Cassandra speaking
through the dead body of Agamemnon and by the intense de
termination of Electra in her appeals to her brother. The
exquisite life wish of Helen is placed in sharp contrast
with the bitter vindictiveness of Polyxo in "At the Fall of
an Age." The play culminates in the scene in which Helen
is stripped naked and hanged by the neck on stage, and
Polyxo is stabbed by the chief of her own guard. The dou
ble death scene is accompanied by the dance of Achilles'
disinterred soldiers, the Myrmidons, in a ritual of config
uration. In the midst of the bloody actions they announce
the birth of a new age in a sacrifice of the perfect victim,
mother, France, make him more a believable character than
the narrowly drawn Hippolytus in "The Cretan Woman."
15
Helen. Similarly, Medea's lust for vengeance and Phaedra's
alternating lust for gratification and for vengeance are
given great pitch by the explicitness of their statements
and by the awesomeness of their on-stage actions and the
actions which they motivate.
Through the creation of powerful emotions and spectac
ular events in his dramas, Jeffers maintains the same es
sentially direct and clearly understandable language and
imagery which mark his short poems and long narratives.
Unlike his contemporaries in verse drama (T. S. Eliot, Ezra
Pound. W. B. Yeats, and to some extent even Archibald
McLeish and Maxwell Anderson), Jeffers' characters speak
for the most part without the reinforcement of the author's
own erudition or the intrusive texture of his esoteric in
terests. The greatest part of his allusions and references
is to be found in material well known in the mainstream of
current, generally literate consciousness: the Gospels,
Hitler's Germany, nature, Greek and Nordic mythology, Re
naissance England. Although sophisticated in their rever
berations , the imagery and the references are clearly more
obvious than the sources in the medieval hagiography of
"Murder in the Cathedral" or in the nuances of modern psy
chiatry in "The Cocktail Party," the various occult sources
and personal mystic systems in Yeats' dramas, or the ob
scure oriental and western esoteria of Ezra Pound's plays.
Even in his early, most mystical plays of cyclical
16
and historical evolution— "At the Fall of an Age" and "At
the Birth of an Age"— Jeffers' verse is understandable and
evocative without a heavy or oppressive gloss. The plays
effectively operate upon their mythic and elemental expan
sions of universal emotions. For instance, Jeffers' prose
paragraphs introductory to "At the Fall of an Age" provide
a description in very brief terms of the special features
of the tale, giving information that the story derives from
a variant legend concerning the death of Helen of Troy and
the subsequent establishment of tree worship on the island
of Rhodes. Out of the obscurity of the legend, however, he
evolves a basic conflict between the sexuality and fertil
ity of Helen and the chaste yet barren widow Polyxo. The
paraphernalia of the Myrmidons accompanying Helen and the
rich symbolism of Polyxo's guard do not interfere with a
clear understanding of the issue, the substance of the
drama.
Similarly, Jeffers uses a variant story of the death
of Siegfried's widow, Sigurd, in "At the Birth of an Age"
to illustrate his mystical and philosophic understanding of
the cyclical nature of human history. The preponderant ad
mixture of barbaric and post-Christian symbols with animal
and cosmic phenomena outweighs the occasional lapse into
the epic, ponderous-sounding, and obscure proper nouns,
"Acoucagna, Gosainthan, Kuichinjunga," and the isolated
Latin phrase, "— 0 sola beatitude." The basic symbolism
17
and allusions are understandable from context, until the
concluding scene in which the disembodied spirits, the
resurrected god, and the spectral Sigurd offer what amounts
to a paradoxically integrated yet chaotic accumulation of
literary, historical, and scientific references.
Jeffers' usual emphasis upon the patterns of his imag
ery in his poetry provides a further, vitally integrating
technique in the dramas. His repeated, emphatic nature and
animal imagery permeates each of his plays. In some in
stances the patterns are supportive of the action; in oth
ers the movement and the very structure of a play can be
plotted out on a grid of interlaced images. The stone and
moon images, the tree and ocean images of "Dear Judas" do
more than balance the gospel references; they give a the
matic super-structure (by similarity) to the durability and
ever-presence of Mary, the Night Mother, and (by contrast
in their permanence) to the fading, transitory frustrations
and ambitions of Jesus and Judas. The elaborateness of
human emotion and self-exaltation is in sharp contrast to
the mute simplicity of nature. In the same way, fountain
and stream images in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" reinforce
the clusters and threads of reference to weaponry (particu
larly the sword-phallus) and to the combined details of the
fall of Troy and the curse upon the House of Atreus.
Clytemnestra is both fortress and fountain, ultimately a
vulnerable fortress and a polluted fountain. Sigurd ("At
18
the Birth of an Age") is continually described as a cat
stalked by the forces symbolized in the weaponry and in the
military acts of her dead husband, her present husband, and
her brothers, as well as by the omnipresence of the various
images of the hanged god and particularly by the cross of
Jesus. Jeffers was developing definite lines and patterns
with the symbols of Roman Catholicism in his "Mary and
Elizabeth." What would have finally emerged we do not know,
but the fact remains that he was, even at the end of his
career, working with his usual strategies of poetic organi
zation, one of the most important being his use of highly
integrated images.
In the three plays completed in the nineteen-forties,
with the tightening of structure and characterization,
there is a concurrent compacting and simplifying of images
and references. Hitler's apostrophizing of German destiny,
Medea's occult powers, and Phaedra's recollections of an
enlightened Crete are closely intertwined with the epithets
and the metaphors derived from animal and military behavior.
Consistently, Jeffers employs a poetic strategy of analogy,
the literary and the historical detail in close juxtaposi
tion to the permanence of an immutable and silent nature.
Even more obviously connected with a sense of drama
than his verbal maneuvers and patterns, Jeffers' choreogra
phy and staging become simpler. From the beginning, with
"The Tower Beyond Tragedy," Jeffers is working with crowds
19
and group accompaniment to his major characters and to the
action of the drama. Spectacle seems to be the deliberate
motivation. The words and movements of the armies, guards,
and citizens of Mycenae continually motivate or augment the
statements and acts of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Cassan
dra. In "At the Birth of an Age" the retinue of Attila is
in sharp contrast to the small party accompanying Gudrun's
brothers. During the banquet scene, the Christian Bishop
Lupus is surrounded in his subjugation by the massed,
feasting conquerers. At the play's conclusion Jeffers re
quires a procession of singers and dancers to focus upon
Gudrun's epiphany and final submission to the cosmic forces
which surround her.
It is, however, in "At the Fall of an Age" and "Dear
Judas" that Jeffers formally introduces a choreographic
element. The Myrmidons ("At the Fall of an Age") are ex
plicitly directed to dance out a heavily rhythmic accompa
niment to the statements of the characters. The Mutes
("Dear Judas") must move soundlessly through the speeches
of the characters in the Garden of Gethsemane. With the
Mutes, although they are silent, Jeffers closely approxi
mates the movement of the Greek chorus. Stylized movement
is combined with choric speech in each of his following
dramas.^ In "The Bowl of Blood" the masquers provide not
10"Mary and Elizabeth," left incomplete, does not have
20
only comment upon the action and upon the psychology and
stature of Hitler, but they become in their various dis
guises the spirits summoned up by the seer to confront him
concerning his vision of world domination. With Medea and
"The Cretan Woman" Jeffers makes his final transition into
a formal choric unit. The Corinthian Women can only advise
and comfort Medea, can only register their shock at her
final acts. They are, consistent with Greek dramatic tra
dition, mere spectators at the major confrontations. Simi
larly, the begging women of "The Cretan Woman" simply react
to the prophecies of the goddess, the behavior of Phaedra
and Hippolytus, and the wrathful commands and actions of
Theseus.
The growth of Jeffers' skill in turning his material
and philosophic views into workable drama, however, may be
best illustrated in the expanded examination of specific
instances. The remainder of this study will be devoted to
the dramas as they stand separately and as they fit into
the context of his total dramatic product.
a chorus. This may have been a contributing factor to the
difficulty Jeffers had in completing the work.
CHAPTER II
"THE TOWER BEYOND TRAGEDY"
The dramatic poem "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" was writ
ten in the same burst of energy which Jeffers enjoyed in
the twenties and which produced "Roan Stallion" and "Tamar,"
the California based narratives which established his repu
tation. It was his first full-fledged modification of a
Greek dramatic source. Jeffers turned Aeschylus' "Oresteia"
into a three part poem which followed only approximately,
however, the action of the original treatment of the re
ceived, mythic story of the curse of the House of Atreus.
The work went through at least three versions before it was
published in 1925: "The New Oresteia," "The Last Oresteia,"
and "Beyond Tragedy. " • * •
Frederic I. Carpenter mentions the effort and the
versions Jeffers went through in his preparation for the
published text, Robinson Jeffers (New York: Twayne, 1962),
p. 69.
Occidental College has present custody of manuscripts
and typescripts of several of the attempts to adapt the
play for the stage.
The first, an authorized adaptation by Edwin Duerr,
was produced in 1932 at the Little Theater of the Univer
sity of California at Berkeley by a student cast. Further
mention in this paper to this version will be to "Tower,"
Duerr version. No attempt was made to alter either struc
ture, characterizations, or theme. The program notes label
the acts in correspondence with the three plays of the
21
22
As with his other adaptations from Greek sources,
Jeffers allows himself great latitude in applying his spe
cific philosophic point of view, treatment of character,
"Oresteia": Act I, "Agamemnon"; Act II, "The Choephori";
Act III, "The Eumenides." The play was reviewed favorably
both for its writing and production by the drama critic of
the Oakland Tribune. Although Jeffers did not attend, Una
Jeffers did.
The second version was an unsolicited adaptation sent
to Jeffers by Gassner through Random House. Further men
tion of this version in this paper will be "Tower," Gassner
"A." It contained radical alterations of the poem. An old
man speaking to the sentinel of the palace provided the ex
position, along with entirely new lines written for a group
of elders who discuss, after the entrance of Agamemnon and
Clytemnestra, Electra's strength of mind and character and
Orestes' manliness, as well as the sacrifice of Iphigenia
and the conduct of the Trojan War. Generally, Cassandra's
speeches of prophecy are shortened. In Act II Gassner also
cuts Cassandra's speeches, particularly the specific refer
ences to Europe and America (114-116). Most significantly
Gassner refocuses on Electra for the remainder of the play.
In a new speech, four pages of his typescript, he gives her
lines in which she claims Agamemnon's throne, asserts her
power in the support of the mercenary Phocians, rejects the
power of the gods, and refuses categorically to consider
marriage with a member of Menelaus' court as a way to per
petuate Agamemnon's line and to establish present calm in
Mycenae. Again, in Act III, which he later called Act II,
scene iii in deference to Jeffers' concept of the play's
organization, Gassner writes in a considerable amount of
new material giving Electra a scene comparable to Clytem
nestra' s Act I confrontation of the people and soldiers of
Mycenae. In an obvious attempt to bring the play back to
the dramatic pitch of its first part, Gassner writes new
action, the eminent entrance of an opposing army and Elec
tra's inability to bring Orestes to assume military leader
ship. She attempts to present him with his father's crown;
and in the time spent in trying to manipulate her brother,
the military situation deteriorates and the battle is lost.
Orestes, having resisted her attempted sexual and political
seductions, declares his intention to seek "outwards" from
humanity and exits. Una Jeffers wrote across the title
page of the typescript: "This is a spurious (unexplained)
version."
Gassner's second working of the poem resulted in a
23
poetic manner, structure and dramatic organization to "The
Tower Beyond Tragedy." Significantly, he does not provide
any of the machinery which he later added to his dramas
more favorable reaction from the poet's wife. This second
version will be referred to in the remainder of this paper
as "Tower," Gassner "B." In a cover sheet of the type
script version which was used in the first professional
performance of the play (Forest Theater, Carmel, California,
1941), Mrs. Jeffers wrote:
"This is the script as used by Judith Anderson, Hilda
Vaughan, Henry Brandon & others in presenting the play at
the Forest Theatre, Carmel California, Summer 1941. Very
few words or phrases are changed (and then by the author
or with his consent) from the printed text which its au
thor regards as a dramatic poem. But many of the de
scriptive passages are put into the mouth of a Narrator
or are compressed into stage directions or even omitted
entirely. In one or two cases a passage is transferred
from its original setting to another. It is therefore
imperative that the actors be completely familiar with
the original text in order to fulfill the author's in
tention. "
In this version Gassner cut all of his own material and
stayed very close to Jeffers' lines. His contribution was,
as Mrs. Jeffers points out, in writing a narrator into the
play who would provide first an introductory and then con
necting apparatus between the parts of the play.
After the production of Medea on Broadway, Dame Judith
Anderson made a renewed attempt to secure a New York pro
duction for "The Tower Beyond Tragedy." Jeffers terminated
his collaborative agreement with Gassner through a contract
written in 194 8 in which the poet would regain dramatic
rights to the poem if he chose to write his own stage ad
aptation. Subsequently he wrote at least two versions. In
both he stayed extremely close to the action and structure
of the play, concentrating on writing exposition and tran
sition .
In his first rewriting Jeffers wrote the exposition
using a citizen of Mycenae and a Corinthian guest observing
the arrival of Agamemnon. This version will be referred to
in the remainder of this paper as "Tower," Jeffers "A."
He, too, shortened Cassandra's prophetic speeches at the
end of the first part and the beginning of the second. He
revised to open the second part with the almost immediate
appearance of Electra, her arrival on the steps of the
palace. Also, he opened the third part with the epigram-
24
written specifically for the stage. The work is clearly
not designed for performance, and as his earliest dramatic
poem, does not achieve the clean, uncluttered structure and
balance of his later works. It has, however, within it the
elements of what later would become Jeffers' strongest dra
matic tools: stark and exalted personal confrontations, a
soaring rhetoric, and brilliant staging of raw-nerved emo
tion and spiritual revelations. Embedded within its con
gested and complicated structure are the seeds of what
would make Medea the powerful, spare, and economical drama
it became.
This early dramatic poem in its published version is
the most explicit statement of Jeffers' central philosophic
matic and rhymed dialogue of two scrubwomen who were clean
ing the stones upon which Clytemnestra and Cassandra had
been slaughtered the night before.
In a second undated, reworking (to be referred to in
the remainder of this paper as "Tower," Jeffers "B") Jef
fers dropped the minor characterizations as a traditional
and expository device and wrote in a narrator figure whom
he identified as Aeschylus, stressing his role as soldier
and poet. This performed version of the play, then, had
the following differences from the poem as written in 192 5
for publication: Aeschylus is the narrator rather than an
unidentified narrator; speeches (Cassandra's prophecies,
Electra*s seduction attempt, Orestes' recollection of his
vision filled night alone in the forest) are shortened rad
ically; the explicit sexual references in the seduction
scene are all but deleted; and the emphasis upon Electra*s
imminent suicide is provided. Later comment will be made
upon the last item of change.
It is, perhaps, very significant that the specifically
sexual language and imagery in Electra*s attempted seduc
tion of Orestes in the published version was either mini
mized or deleted from each of the reworkings of the play.
25
idea: rejecting the humanistic and traditional defenses of
man's behavior and nature, man can be properly studied only
by rejection of his worth. At the poem's conclusion Ores
tes addresses his sister who is still struggling with her
personal situation and suffering with words which she can
not or will not understand:
What fills men's mouths is nothing; and your threat
is nothing: I have fallen in love outward.
Electra refuses to accept his point of view. She declares:
I can endure even to hate you,
But that's no matter. Strength's good. You are lost.
[I here remember
the honor of the house, and Agamemnon's.
The poem is concluded in three of Jeffers' long lines which
summarize the outcome of the multiple disaster which has
struck the House of Atreus:
She turned and entered the ancient house. Orestes walked
[in the
clear dawn; men say that a serpent
Killed him in high Arcadia. But young or old, few years
[or many,
signified less than nothing
To him who had climbed the tower beyond time, consciously,
and cast humanity, entered the earlier fountain,2
Because of its important part within the Jeffers philo
sophic context— the total rejection of humanity and human
pursuits— the conclusion of the dramatic poem is logically
sound.
Robinson Jeffers, The Selected Poetry of Robinson
Jeffers (New York: Random House, 1939), pp. 139-140. Fur
ther citations in this study to "The Tower Beyond Tragedy"
will be made by parenthetic page number to this edition.
26
In a dramatic sense, however, the emotional slackening
is too profound. Aeschylus had provided the death of Aga
memnon and Clytemnestra1s justification of her act as the
central, highly charged action of "Agamemnon." Jeffers
alters the action to give Clytemnestra the central position,
and her self-defense the major proportion of the dramatic
attention. Jeffers retains the murder of Clytemnestra as
the major action of the second play, the "Choephori," in
the second part of his tragedy; but he also adds the death
of Cassandra and presents both fierce slaughters on stage.^
His most individualistic and important change occurs, how
ever, in the final part, the "Eumenides." Aeschylus pro
vided an over-wrought, emotional and suffering Orestes who
agonized through the trial of the Aereopagus, which was
presided over by Pallas Athene. The central issue of Cly-
temnestra's guilt in committing regicide and Orestes' guilt
in committing matricide was developed in a defense con
ducted by the god Apollo, and the prosecution was led by
the Furies themselves. The Elders of Athens acted as a
human chorus as well as a jury. Jeffers omits all argu
mentation, since it is, for his purposes, philosophically
* 3
-'Jeffers' German translator, Eva Hesse, m a letter to
Melba Berry Bennett explained that she had received Jef
fers' permission to write out Cassandra's death scene for
the play's German production. The letter remains in the
private papers of Mrs. Bennett. I possess a Xeroxed copy
of it.
27
unimportant, actually irrelevant.^ To Jeffers the acts of
regicide and matricide are equal demonstrations of man's
unending viciousness, man's concern with human emotion and
human purposes: in the first instance Clytemnestra's lust
destroys Agamemnon; and in the second, Electra's desire for
revenge and power leads her to initiate Orestes' mad
slaughter of both his mother and of his father's mistress,
Cassandra. Where it appeared to be Aeschylus' clear inten
tion to show that equilibrium was restored in society,
after a shocking bloodbath, by the reasoned cooperation of
a human agency deliberating calmly under the guidance of a
divine force, Jeffers seems to be equally clear in his in
tention to demonstrate that no human institution nor divine
agency can arbitrate guilt or suggest proper behavior. The
individual, in this case Orestes, must come to grips with
his predicament and come to his own resolution. Jeffers
has Orestes in the course of a single night discover what
to him is a certain truth and resolve irrevocably to reject
humanity for an intense and unrelenting integration into
nature. He is no longer to be tormented by his father's
death, the murder of his mother, nor the present predica
ment of his sister and her attempted seduction. By having
^Jeffers did the same thing in his adaptation of
"Hippolytus" from Euripides for his "The Cretan Woman" when
he dropped the long comments and rationalization between-
Theseus and Hippolytus.
28
purged himself and having made his decision, he gives the
burden of dramatic tension to Electra who still believes
that she can manipulate and alter events. When she fails
to seduce him, the play is over.
Jeffers has condensed the action of three separate
plays into a two part dramatic poem. He has added a con
siderable amount of new material in the prophecies of Cas
sandra. In the "Oresteia" the argument treated the awful
effects of Atreus' actions and the curse which ensued as a
chain of events which interrupted an ordered and lawful
human society. Jeffers, on the other hand, treats the acts
of Clytemnestra, Electra, and Orestes as a series of dire
events which Cassandra points out as unending, as likely to
continue throughout the course of all human history. In
Jeffers’ perspective, looking backwards, general human be
havior has proven his point. The long, Spenglerian, cycli
cal movement downward has been carried out. Orestes in his
singular, eccentric denial of human values does not affect
the general flow of human history which is blood-filled and
devastating. The House of Atreus becomes the metaphor for
humanity; there will be no release from the curse.
The work succeeds as a poem in its dramatic first two
parts and in its essentially non-dramatic third section;
and perhaps fails as a whole drama by providing the highest
emotion early and by resolving itself in a comment on the
futility of its entire action at the conclusion. The stage
29
at first crowded with the force of three remarkably strong
women (Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and Electra) is emptied of
all power and struggle to be only partially filled with the
male figure of Orestes who, identifying himself with the
stones, denies the importance of any struggle or human in
volvement. Jeffers places his hero outside of society and
free from all entanglement. In fact, he isolates Orestes
in a way that his Greek predecessor would never have ap
proved.
In neither Jeffers' nor Aeschylus' version does Ores
tes figure, except prophetically, in the first section. In
the second section Aeschylus provided Orestes with a human
companion, Pylades, who accompanied him to the grave of
Agamemnon where the rather bizarre recognition scene took
place when Electra identified Orestes as her brother by
noticing a lock of his hair and by noting the similarity of
their footprints. In the same section Orestes and Pylades
were accepted, unrecognized, by Clytemnestra and accepted
into the palace. Orestes slew both his mother and her
lover offstage. Electra faded into the background after
her incantations with her brother at the tomb of Agamemnon,
In the final section Aeschylus had Orestes accompanied by
the divine figure of Apollo who acted as his support in
preparation for the trial and as his actual defending at
torney at the confrontation of the Furies before the Aere-
opagus. Jeffers drops both Pylades, a human companion, and
30
Apollo, a divine ally, and dismisses the previously men
tioned weighing of the relative guilt of Clytemnestra and
Orestes. Orestes resolves his predicament by himself. He
has opposed Clytemnestra and Cassandra with violence and
Electra by his unrelenting refusal of her offers. Jeffers
attempts to present Orestes' cure of madness as self-accom
plished in the course of one night, a mystic experience in
which Orestes adopts a pantheistic philosophic point of
view which, Jeffers feels, needs only to be stated without
explanation of reasons for its acceptance or methods of its
achievement.
Within his volume of poetry and within the context of
his general poetic statement, the poem works; but consid
ered as a separated dramatic entity, the action and the
motivation fail basically because of their psychological
over-simplification and, paradoxically, their metaphysical
complication. It is not impossible to accept the over
night conversion, or regression, of a man who has been the
murderer of his own mother and of his father's mistress as
well as having been the object of his sister's sexual appe
tite, if we see him as being fatigued to the point of mak
ing a swift decision, or being psychically as well as phys
ically persuaded to reject all human companionship and to
seek solace in the solitary identification with nature.
Nor, perhaps because of its long and respected tradition,
is it difficult to understand the larger context of a
31
resolution that suggests that human values and human solu
tions are bound to disappoint and that only a complete sub
mission to nature brings any genuine satisfaction. It is,
indeed, possible to see that surrender to a larger, cosmic,
divine will— if not a total pantheism— is consistent with
at least a significantly large part of religious belief
which holds that the total submission of self is the true
liberation of the individual, the way to genuine and eter
nal peace. However, the tradition in the theater has been
to provide clearer immediate motivations for the individual
act than Jeffers provides for Orestes and far more clear-
cut denouements for the entire dramatic poem than Jeffers
provides in “The Tower Beyond Tragedy.
C
Jeffers did attempt to rewrite his conclusion to give
the play a more suitable, theatrical conclusion than his
published, dramatic poem possessed. He dropped the doubt
ful, nebulous speculation concerning Orestes as being per
haps killed by a serpent in his travels or simply dead in
old age. He replaces that ending with Electra's direction,
after Orestes' exit, to the Porter to bring her rope so
that she might follow her brother's advice to hang "some
thing,— a charm to bring peace" (Jeffers "B" 2-2-31) and
adds to Orestes' triumph over himself a triumph over her:
As for the city— let my father's dim ghost
Rule it and make its laws. Waggle, old beard.
Sit on the high throne and speak judgment— but I'll hang
[higher.
Hush! (She checks her laughter as THE PORTER returns,
takes the coiled rope and dismisses him)
(She stands, laughing, knotting a noose in the
rope, and goes into the dark palace)
(Jeffers "B" 2-2-32)
The new ending was first commented upon in an article in the
New York Times, November 26, 1950. The article was printed
32
Jeffers' condensation of the Greek original, then,
makes a reasonable statement within his context of "inhu
manism, " but its action and its organization violate the
again in Horst Franz's American Playwrights on Drama (New
York: Hill and Wang, 19’ 6’ 5T, pp. 9 4-97. But this conclu-
sion, reflecting a great change in Electra's resolution in
the 1925 version to perpetuate and honor Agamemnon's memory,
to scorn Orestes, and to assume the throne and power of her
father, "to endure," still does not give the play a rounded
sense. It, like Orestes' conversion, lacks a dramatically
prepared for and comprehensible motivation. It is not un
believable behavior, but in terms of theatrical presenta
tion, it is unconvincing. If Electra can be considered as
a parallel to Clytemnestra in a dramatic sense, as a coun
terpart to Orestes' development, her rejection by Orestes
needs the heightened effect of a powerful conclusion. But
Jeffers has provided neither the great lines which Clytem
nestra is given in her death scene nor the intervening
years between Clytemnestra1s slaughter of Agamemnon and her
seizure of power and the ensuing weariness with queenhood
which in part leads to her downfall, her submission to
Orestes' assault.
A number of the critics of the production note the
problems of the play's conclusion. William H. Beyer in
"The State of the Theater: ANTA Storms Broadway," School
and Society, 81 (December 23, 1950), 416-419 makes the
point clearly along with other pertinent criticism: "Aban
doning the classical Furies and the Olympian hierarchy as
he does, Jeffers considerably dissipated the tragic signif
icance and climax of the tragedy. True, his poetry soars,
but the 'outward'— aiming bird is an illusory dove, tricked
out of a magician's hat, and fails to ascend so that the
inspiration is deceptive and short lived in its dramatic
impact on us. It is a superimposed theme, artificial and
deciduous dramtically, providing a dissonant conclusion to
the fall of the House of Atreus. For us the classic trag
edy ends with the slaying of Clytemnestra, for she is true
to her tradition, both artistically and ethnologically,
while Orestes is false." Beyer categorizes with consider
able clarity other reasons for the play's failure as a
dramatic production: Orestes' reasons for refusing Elec
tra' s suggestions are inadequately developed; Clytemnestra's
long speeches with the choral interludes of the original
are skipped and her motivations for the murder of Agamemnon
are vastly different from those in the original; Cassandra's
acting as a vehicle for the dead Agamemnon's speeches tests
33
current philosophy of the times and the longer tradition of
the theater. The action and the sequence of events as pos
ited in the narrative are exciting and aesthetically appro
priate. A cursed House becomes the framework of a metaphor,
an analogy of the history of man drenched in the blood
spilled by those who would satisfy their lust for sexual
satisfaction and for political power, or simply for re-
g
venge. Clytemnestra is at the center of the story's de
sign. She is tempted to infanticide and then rejected by
her daughter and finally slaughtered by her son; as mis
tress and sexual partner she is successful, although her
lover is unworthy and ultimately dead because of her son's
the viewer’s credibility. Wolcott Gibbs in "The Theatre,"
New Yorker, 26 (December 9, 1950), 62, sees the Greek trag-
edy in itself as a bit silly and Jeffers' conclusion to
"The Tower Beyond Tragedy" as absurd. He regards Electra's
final lines as little more than cheap gallows humor, "an
unparalleled example of facetiousness on the scaffold."
^Clytemnestra has several reasons for killing Agamem
non. Her classic motivations of revenge for the death of
her favorite daughter Iphigenia and her new love for Aegis-
thus, Agamemnon's cousin, are heightened in Jeffers' ver
sion by her desire for power, best illustrated by the fre
quent references in her defense speech to her insistence
upon her role as Queen. Aeschylus' Clytemnestra described
herself more as priestess and servant of the gods than as
temporal leader. The same tendency to combine sexuality
with a desire for political power evolves in Electra. Hav
ing assumed the power of the throne, she is willing to
abandon her maidenhood to Orestes if it will persuade him
to assume his position as King. Cassandra, daughter of
power, has been punished for her refusal of Apollo's sexual
interest and has subsequently been a victim of multiple
rapes by the conquering Greeks and has been, finally, made
into the concubine of Agamemnon and brought as such to his
court at Mycenae.
34
wrath and desire for revenge. Cassandra, the second most
powerful of the play's female characters, is the war prize
of a brutal king, the embittered and unbelieved prophetess
of horrible acts. She is slain after being a witness to
the endless mutual slaughter of her captors. Electra, the
third woman of the play, is unable to save her father from
death, seizes power after persuading her brother to matri
cide, and fails both as a military leader and as a sexual
seductress. Woman, as wife, lover, and daughter, fails
Agamemnon. She fails as mother, counselor, and sister.
She is politically corrupt and trapped by her sexuality:
Clytemnestra as beloved, Cassandra as object, and Electra
as temptress.
Generally consistent with his later dramas and dra
matic poems [to be written in the future], Jeffers develops
a situation in which the men are either weak or foiled by
7
a woman. "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" is woman-oriented,
woman-focused— as are the other long poems in the 1925 vol
ume, "Tamar" and "Roan Stallion." The compelling figures
are vicious when not victims. Agamemnon, although a
'Orestes escapes finally because he rejects woman com
pletely. Atilla in "At the Birth of an Age" resists the
tendency to feminine domination by regarding woman as sim
ple sex object and aesthetic ornamentation. Possibly,
Hitler in "The Bowl of Blood" could be regarded as another
exception, other than that he is totally mad and may be re
garded as extra-human. Even he, however, curses womanhood
and the womb which bore him.
35
successful leader and a renowned soldier, is ignominiously
killed in his bath. Aegisthus, the lover of Clytemnestra,
is supported by a woman's strength of character and is
crushed in her absence. Orestes can survive only when he
has acted violently to rid himself of his mother and reject
totally the advances of his sister.
"The Tower Beyond Tragedy" is crowded with its three
extremely powerful female characters; it is perhaps over
burdened with its spectacular deaths and certainly it is
handicapped by the mystic, unexplained thematic resolution
which weakens the climax and the denouement. Considered as
Jeffers originally intended it to be, as a poem with dra
matic characteristics, the congestion of characters and the
complexity of its thematic burden are not necessarily hand
icaps to the narrative. But in a dramatic presentation
they almost certainly keep it from being completely suc
cessful.
A dramatic poem need not be perfect, however, to make
it interesting theater; and Jeffers has provided several
elements of drama in his poetic adaptation of the original
Greek play which make it more than interesting— compelling--
if not entirely satisfying. The remainder of this discus
sion will treat the work as a dramatic poem, a seminal work
in the poet's canon which leads directly to some of his
specific experiments with material designed for the stage.
References will be made to the published form of the work
36
as a dramatic poem and to passages as they suggest what
will eventually become in his later works hallmarks of his
compact dramatic style. The language and the imagery soar;
the individual scenes and confrontations of highly emo
tional characters are gripping; the spectacle is exciting;
and the theme is relevant and intelligent.
As in his later dramas, Jeffers uses a verbal medium
which depends in good measure upon starkness and emotional
intensity. In "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," as a dramatic
poem, Jeffers uses a specific technique which he had used
previously in his narratives and would continue to use in
each of his dramas— the imagery of animals. In addition he
develops a whole series of interrelated images of battle,
nets, and swords, alongside of repeated allusions to nature
in terms of stones, forest, and fountains.
The animal imagery is woven into a closely integrated
network of mutually supportive nuances and suggestions.
The terrible bestiality of man is stressed by both his ac
tivities and his tendencies to sexual lust and violent be
havior. The two are often made oneV’ - '"Electra, misreading
Orestes1 dismissal of humanity for a "fairer object," imag
ines her brother as having turned himself into a literal
lover of beasts like "the hill-shepherds who living in
solitude / Turn beast with the ewes."®
g
In his final play version Jeffers alters the line to
the less graphic "some female beast? I knew this coldness /
37
Jeffers is consistent in the dramatic poem in his use
of animals in a negative manner to serve as metaphors for
human behavior. As he uses them, the metaphors have the
dramatic value of invective and expletive. Jeffers uses
animals also for analogy and demonstration of strength,
sensuality, and primary instinct in his characters. The
clarion horns announcing Agamemnon's entrance into Mycenae
issue forth "the wild birds of their metal throats," and
are answered by Cassandra with a "cry / Gull-shrill, blade
sharp." Cassandra cryptically asks the people of Mycenae
"Whether it's an old custom in the Greek country / The cow
goring the bull"; she continues, in her exultation about
the forecoming death of Agamemnon, that her joy at the
sight of any Greek blood causes her to speak and that she
must let "the wild bird fly"; finally, she recounts the
death of Ajax, describing his death in an electrical storm
at sea when "The loud-winged falcon lightening / Came on
him shipwrecked, clapped its wings about him, clung to him.
. . . ." In Clytemnestra*s following speech she tells of
the murder of her husband as sacrificial, as an act in
which she "made the prayer with my own lips, and struck the
bullock / With my own hand." Her appeal to the people to
accept her action depends upon the fact that in the time
Had a sick root" (Jeffers "B" 2-2-29). Jeffers wrote pun
gently and angrily in his first version; he modified, as
did the other adaptors, for his stage version.
38
Agamemnon was gone she had been their faithful shepherdess.
Cassandra interrupts with prophetic remarks upon fu
ture behavior:
The cub of the lion being grown
Will fight with the lion, but neither lion nor wolf
Nor the unclean jackal
Bares tooth against the womb that he dropped out of.
Clytemnestra orders that Cassandra be silenced, and that if
she will not be silent after having been struck with the
hand and that if "the spirit / of the she-wolf in her will
not be quiet," she be struck "with the butt of the spear."
She narrates Agamemnon's sins: she refers to the "Lion-
gate of Mycenae"; recalls that he had slain one of the deer
belonging to the sacred herd of Artemis? describes the god
dess' wrath in sending a storm which never slackened, never
allowed the eagle to slumber; and recalls her daughter
Iphigenia's death:
. . . my Iphigenia, whose throat the knife,
whose delicate soft throat the thing that cuts sheep open
[was
drawn across by a priest's hand. (pp. 91-9 3)
In the following four pages Jeffers fills the lines with
reference to animals and to bestial behavior of men. The
technique is sustained throughout the poem and retained in
the later play. Clytemnestra's references to Agamemnon as
a "bull" sacrificially slaughtered are picked up in Cassan
dra's speech describing her rape by Agamemnon, "the black
haired beast of the bull." Clytemnestra describes Agamem
non as:
39
. . . the snake that come upon me
Naked and bathing, the death that lay with me in bed,
[the death
that has born me children. (pp. 96-99)
Agamemnon then speaks through Cassandra's body calling Cly
temnestra a "she-wolf," "bitch and wolf-bitch," and in a I
!
i i
! final burst, "Beast, beast, beast." In a following speech
i
| Agamemnon picks up Clytemnestra's snake imagery: j
Her envy is like a snake beside him, all his life through,!
| her envy and hatred: Law tames that viper:
! Law dies if the Queen die not: the viper is free then.
i (p. ioi)
Jeffers plays up the futility of the charges and counter-
! charges in which the same images are employed on both sides I
i i
I of a confrontation to serve the individual's purposes in
! making his point graphically.
Clytemnestra refers continually to the lion-gate of
Mycenae and refers to Agamemnon and to Aegisthus as lions,
; and to herself as lioness, "the old lioness lives yet in my j
1 body, 1 have dared." She compounds (or mixes) the metaphor;
by continuing, "I have dared, and a tooth and talon carve a
way through." The bee is industrious and civic in his na-
1ture; his civilization can be disordered by a vicious snake
Q i
of the hive.3 Orestes, in his explanation of his change ofj
heart, compares himself to the lowly "moving lichen / On '
the cheek of the round stone," "the stag drinking," and
' Q
; Jeffers uses the metaphor in the same conventional
I sense that Shakespeare used it in "Troilus and Criseyde"
|and Virgil used it to describe Carthage in the Aeneid.
40
"the freed falcon" (p. 139).
Jeffers makes his characters into beasts; and if the
reader is sympathetic, Jeffers convinces him that truly
imagery .is theme, that words are the echoes of intelligence
reverberating against nature. Jeffers, then, as dramatist
and as poet, organizes the emotional power of allusion into
a network of frightening literary-zoological references
which are accretively, substantially theatrical. Where
Jeffers exalts "The Beauty of Things" in his shorter poems
— characteristically gives high value to hawk, dog and wolf,
fish, stone and mountain, tree and fountain, he compares
man in a negative conventional sense with animals in his
plays.
In fact, Jeffers makes his plays into modern re-inter
pretations of human events in contrast with nature. They
are unflinchingly disturbing and effectively negative in
their evidence. In "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" the fountain
is polluted; in Medea the fidelity of mother to child is
collapsed as an individual reality and as a principle; in
"At the Fall of an Age" Helen's beauty is an item for sac
rifice and to be perpetuated in a bloodbath of which his
•^Obviously, then, Jeffers at times applies his animal
imagery in the conventional manner. For example, the sheep
and the faun are victims, the wolf is rapacious, the lion
is fierce, the snake is insidious and cunning, the dog is
low and without dignity, and the vulture is vile and con
temptible.
41
next poem reminds us in the Siegfried-Atilla story. Jet-*
fers manages to tie the monster he saw in man to the beast
within, befouled because he has reason and does not use it.
In "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" Jeffers integrates the
bestial, mineral, and military imagery by tightening his
references to the individual actions of men and by illus
trating that pathos is irrelevant, a menace. Orestes
chooses an identification ultimately with the stone; Cly
temnestra accepts her role as polluted fountain. Cassandra
dies barren. Electra in the stage version hangs herself.
In the same way that the nature imagery is integrated
into a character's bestiality, the net and the fountain
imagery is closely involved with Jeffers’ tendency to blood
lust and to the military. Human values corrupt the attrac
tive aspects of nature, and Jeffers in his thrust to in
tensely dramatic depiction masses negative allusions. The
tone rises to particular power through the confrontations
of highly emotional characters. By removing himself from
the role of narrator, or storyteller per se, which he as
sumes in the specifically narrative poems, Jeffers creates
exactly, although limited, dramatic values in the sustained
pitch of the speeches and encounters.H In much the same
11
In his later plays written specifically for the
theater, Medea, "The Cretan Woman," and "The Bowl of Blood,"
Jeffers abandons completely the narrator role to give total
theatrical autonomy to his character.
42
way that he shifts the imagery of snakes as epithets for
Agamemnon and Clytemnestra in their counter charges and
uses the repetition of "dog," "hawk," and "lion" imagery
for epithet and invective, he also uses reference to "nets"
in relationship to social involvements, "swords" in ironic
symbolic connection with the procreative and piercing phal
lus, and the "fountain" as both womb and polluted stream.^
In Cassandra's first speech, she introduces a varia
tion upon one of the work's controlling images— the trap or
the net, the reality of human entanglement. She is a cap
tive, a war-prize, and she laments. She recalls having
seen, as a maiden princess, a den of wolves caged in the
mountains. She is filled with the memory of their smell
and compares it to the odor of Mycenae, the city of her
captor. Subsequently, she refers to her personal powers of
■^It is my opinion that the dialogue within a conven
tional narrative— either in prose (the novel or short story,
vignette or biography) or in poetry (the ballad or the
epic)— is essentially dramatic, having the value of visual
ized confrontation whether it is physically staged or not.
When the narrator has been substantially removed from the
action, the remaining statements become those of the char
acter whether in oratorio, dramatic reading, closet drama,
debate, whatever. In the case of those efforts which are
heavily oriented to dialogue— such as "The Tower Beyond
Tragedy," "At the Fall of an Age," "At the Birth of an Age"
— the effect is that of "drama" rather than dramatic, con
frontation rather than narrative, essentially dialogue
rather than "conversation." The individual image takes on
the nuances manufactured by the personality and predicament
of a speaker in conflict or contrast with the psychological
dynamics of his antogonist or confidant.
43
foretelling the future as being like the caged bird which
she must let escape, must let fly out free (pp. 90-91).
Clytemnestra, the murder of Agamemnon accomplished and the
soldiers and the people of Mycenae presenting a real threat
to her safety, describes her act as that of the huntress in
throwing a net over her prey, her husband, while he bathed
and having struck him as one must a vicious beast until he
died (p. 102). Jeffers shifts the meaning of the image of
the trap; he makes it into a horrifying specific instance
of human death. The vicarious suffering of the maiden
princess, Cassandra, becomes the reality of the assertive
queen, Clytemnestra.
Later, in the second act or section, the Porter de
scribes Cassandra as a “mare in a tight stall" unable to
rest for lack of room (p. 118) . It does not argue Jeffers'
consistency to be reminded of the fact that the image of
"mare" is used to describe an unmarried, barren woman.
Cassandra has spent eight restless years standing and
watching at the gate of Mycenae. Her entrapment has para
lyzed her. She has no prophecies left. Clytemnestra, too,
has aged and fearing the failure of her powers when Aegis-
thus has gone out to hunt and Electra has managed to motion
to her mercenaries at the gate, cries out, "Who has laid a
net for me, what fool?" Upon Orestes' arrival, she cries
out that she is indifferent to having been "caught in a
net, netted in by my enemies" now that she sees him alive,
44
contrary to Electra's report of his death (pp. 123-124).
Orestes, in the final section of the poem, like Cas
sandra in the first, speaks of animals captured in a net
and his own ability to escape the meshes (p. 138). In his
first reference he describes the dream vision of humanity
caught up in its multiple desires, writhing "like a full
draught of fishes all matted / In the one mesh" fruitlessly
attempting to gain a perspective or to find an escape. Af
ter Electra charges him with having "dreamed wretchedly,"
Orestes tells her that he warned her that she would be un
likely to understand and then compares himself to the fal
con (a shift in the metaphor) which has escaped the meshes
of the net and by doing so has identified himself with the
total freedom of ancient peaks, patient stone, "the stream/
draining the mountain wood," "the stag," stars, "the dark
ness / Outside the stars, and inexpressible excellence,"
which is "fiercer than any passion." Jeffers has arranged
references to the net in the dramatic poem to encompass the
universal predicament and to reflect the individual situa
tion. Agamemnon is slain, ensnared in his own cloak; Cas
sandra has witnessed caged animals whose stink approximated
that of her captors; Clytemnestra is entrapped by the net
work of her daughter's soldiers and her psychological ma
nipulations of Orestes; Orestes triumphantly releases him
self from the net of chaotically moving human beings and
enters into the excellence of total identification with
45
nature. The image has been given dramatic development in
the exposition, conflict, and resolution of the action and
has been thematically exploited in its revelation of char
acter.
Similarly, Jeffers uses the sword-phallus image and
the polluted fountain image in a dramatic manner. In the
later adaptations for the stage, unlike in the poem version
of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," the shorter lines containing
the same epithets and curses give a pungency, a fore-short
ening immediacy. Essentially the later, streamlined
speeches simplify the denser narrative use of imagery into
a dramatically workable dialogue. Cassandra charges the
spearmen guarding Clytemnestra with having "Violated my
mother with the piercing / That makes no life in the womb"
(p. 91). The dead Agamemnon, speaking through the dead
body of Cassandra, calls for his men, the same spearmen to
whom Cassandra addressed herself, to destroy Clytemnestra,
to "peel her bare and on the pavement for a bride-bed with
a spear-butt for husband / Dig the lewd womb until it
burst" C p . 100). In her turn, Clytemnestra addresses the
spearmen, holding her knife in her h a n d . she calls for
13
Clytemnestra1s threatening behavior to the soldiers
and her specific invitations to them to embrace her sexu
ally and serially are direct challenges to their masculin
ity. The knife she holds hidden and then exposed is at
least in some part for her a substitute phallus. With it
she maintains her safety and her position in the face of a
threatening /destroyer.
46
the spearmen to use their spears in her protection: "They
bungled the job making me a woman." She escapes injury.
Later, in her appeal to Orestes to spare her, Clytem
nestra asks that he have one of his "northern spearmen do
what's needful." Orestes, urged on by Electra asks:
Dip in my sword
Into my own fountain? Did I truly, little and helpless,
Lie in the arms, feed on the breast there? (pp. 124,126)
She tells him that he must, that his father murdered by
Clytemnestra also had lain upon those breasts. He is
goaded on, asking again and again the same question. He
kills Clytemnestra, loses the sword to Electra, retrieves
it to kill Cassandra and hurls it away (p. 129). Having
returned in the morning, he recalls the specifics of his
sword as it sliced his mother's hand before entering her
body (p. 132). He is obsessed with the physical reality of
the weapon. Electra insists that his mind was forged by
her effort into a sword, his action that thrust which was
created by her energy. He rejects her insinuations and her
offers: "... royalty and incest / Run both in the stream
of the blood." Again he rejects Electra and recalling his
incestuous dream answers:
Tonight lying on the hillside, sick
those visions, I remembered
The knife in the stalk of my humanity; I drew and it
[broke:
I entered the life of the brown forest.
Orestes has rejected sexuality (Electra), the memory of his
parents ("The dead are a weak tribe"), and humanity ("having
47
found a fairer object1 ') Cpp. 136-138). Jeffers manages the
sword image specifically as a symbol of both sexuality and
destruction.
With certain elements of imagery Jeffers willingly
sacrificed what was later to become a strength of the plays
written for the stage— economy. In this first dramatic
poem, and even in its subsequent versions for the stage,
the imagery is extremely dense, a quality appropriate to
his narrative and dramatic purpose but perhaps too apparent
for a theatrical presentation. Such is the case with the
polluted fountain imagery which Jeffers assigns directly to
Clytemnestra, extends to Electra, and ultimately replaces
by the purer source identified with primal nature and cos
mic purity which Orestes enters into after his self-purga
tion. The image has its dramatic value in a shifting mean
ing which terminates in the last line of the poem as an
extra-human, divine manifestation. Since each female fig
ure at one point at least during the drama dominates the
stage, the polluted fountain image provides a natural,
often-repeated (perhaps obvious) bridge and connection for
the audience of the author’s intention. Indeed it becomes
a liet motif of woman in general throughout the play.
Placed at the end of the dramatic poem in Orestes’
final remarks, the impact of the irrelevance of the preced
ing agonizing becomes clear in his discoveries:
48
But young or old, few years or many,
signified less than nothing
To him who climbed the tower beyond time, consciously
and cast humanity, entered the earlier fountain.14
Jeffers had made the fountain a cumulative, dramatic symbol
of life source and pollution.
The psychological connotations of water and purifica
tion rites are used throughout the dramatic poem. In the
published version Clytemnestra is compared to her sister
Helen, "the uncontaminable, " "The beautiful sea-flower";
Cassandra fouls herself with the rolling sea in her trans
fer from Troy to Mycenae; she later refers to the befouled
water of Agamemnon's bath (pp. 89-95).-^
Clytemnestra herself refers to the pollution of the
bath and confronts the people with the fact that Agamemnon's
blood itself, rather than the act which produced it, made
l^This ending is preserved in all of the produced
texts with the exception of the final Jeffers "B" version.
•^Jeffers also includes ice images which are used pre
cisely in contrast with vital elements. Clytemnestra re
fers to the nipples of her breasts as having paid a debt
for their warmth and softness by turning into a "wounding
ice" (p. 94). Cassandra prophesies that the world will be
devastated by war and filled with snow, "ice in the pas
ture," "a morsel of ice," "the frost, the old frost" and
calls tragedy
the column of ice that was before on one side flanks
tit,
The columns of the ice to come closes it upon the other:
[audience nor author.
I have never seen yet: I have heard the silence.
(pp. 115-116)
49
the water filthy (p. 102). The focus is abruptly changed
by Agamemnon's reversal of the description of his sea trip
home and his charge that:
Stones that we desired, the steep way of the city and the
sacred doorsteps
Reek and steam with pollution, the accursed vessel
Spills a red flood over the floors.
The fountain of it stands there and calls herself the
[Queen. No
Queen, no Queen, that husband-slayer,
A common murderess.
Clytemnestra's answer is a sustained, contemptuous address
to the followers of Agamemnon who would assault her. In
her taunts she asks them to take her as an adornment and as
a sexual object; and in homely speech she suggests that
they might "teach me to draw water at the fountain," ironi
cally offering the idea that they are clean of the wicked
ness with which her house is familiar. Agamemnon, recog
nizing her words as delaying tactics, calls her "this wide
whore," reducing himself to her level of appeal (pp. 103-
104) .
The entire confrontation is laced with similar refer
ences to water. They are used further in the drama as well.
Agamemnon, attempting to stir his men to action, refers to
his life and power as having "sunk in the drain / And gut
ter of time" (p. 106). Clytemnestra subsequently describes
the desire the soldiers felt for her, when she confronted
them, as an enjoyable bath "from brow to footsole" and her
tears as "animal waters in my eyes." In a following speech
50
Cassandra recalls the destruction of Troy:
I have witnessed all the wars to be; I am not sorrowful
For one drop from the pail of desolation
Spilt on my father's city; they were carrying it forward
To water the world under the latter starlight. (p. 109)
Jeffers contrives to give a dramatic tension to the multi
ple meanings of water and the fountain by the duality of
the speaker's thinking and his situation.
Agamemnon, in his rage, refers to Clytemnestra as the
source of the trouble brought to Mycenae, "the fountain of
it stands there and calls herself the Queeen" (p. 103).
Clytemnestra, encouraging Aegisthus to assume new courage
and to assert his new power, declares that she is willing
to have Orestes dead:
You think I am too much used for a new brood? Ah, lover,
I have fountains in me. (p. 110)
She later refers to herself and to the dead victims of the
sacrifices (Iphigenia and even Agamemnon) and calls the
world "a shoreless lake of flies" (p. 122). The many ref
erences to tears reinforce the image.
It is Orestes, however, who is given the particularly
pointed references to the fountain, as his source and as
his sexual goal. As stated earlier, the phallus-sword im
agery reinforced the interpretation of Clytemnestra as
fountain, as sexual origin and end. "Dip in my sword /
Into my fountain?" (p. 120). Clytemnestra answers him that
he is forbidden, as are all men, one thing. He asks,
"What, enter his fountain?" (p. 127). Urged by Electra to
51
kill Cassandra, he again asks, "Must I dip my wand into my
fountain?" and thinks that Clytemnestra has reincarnated
herself in Cassandra. Later, having been washed in the
rain (p. 130) during his night's wandering, Orestes returns
to the palace steps and sees that they have been scrubbed
clean.He confronts Electra with the details of a vi
sionary dream he has had in which he has loved her, "More
than brotherwise . . . possessed, you call it . . . entered
the fountain— " (p. 132). Electra answers with a growing
sexual awareness of the suffering of her brother,
I can conceive the madness, if you desire too near
The fountain: tell me: I also love you: not that way, but
[enough
to suffer. (p. 135)
Orestes refuses her offer and asks again who has scrubbed
the stones clean of his mother's blood. After a final ref
utation of Electra's way of thinking, he departs and the
poem concludes with the statement that his conscious act of
casting out humanity has permitted him to enter "the ear
lier fountain" (p. 140).
As well as providing unity for the dramatic poem by
using image patterns of animals, nets, swords, and foun
tains, to which the characters rather than a single narra-
16
x In his "A" version Jeffers stressed the cleaning and
scrubbing by writing in the figures of scrubbing women who
spoke cryptically as they worked. The technique was re
peated in the figure of the symbollic sweeper in "At the
Birth of an Age."
52
tor give meaning, Jeffers adds to the work's dramatic
strength through the rhetoric of individual speeches and by
accumulating force in the succession and the pitch of the
confrontations of his characters. The individual speeches
evolve from the energy of both the characters and the theme
in a series of interrelated situations which depend upon
involvement and conflict rather than upon narration.
The major speeches are central to the scene and can be
listed easily: (1) Cassandra's opening description of the
fall of Troy and of her own personal suffering, (2) Clytem
nestra 's description of Agamemnon and the sacrifice of
Iphigenia, (3) Cassandra's possession by the spirit of Aga
memnon, (4) Clytemnestra's challenge to the people and sol
diers of Mycenae, (5) Cassandra's two prophetic speeches
bridging parts one and two of the published version and
shortened in the acting versions, (6) Clytemnestra1s plead
ing the reasons for her actions before Orestes, (7) Elec
tra' s self-defense, and (8) Orestes' description of his vi
sion and his resolution. Interspersed are the speeches of
the guard of Agamemnon, Agamemnon through the body of Cas
sandra, the porter, and the men of Mycenae. Essentially,
however, the action and the dramatic tension resides in the
long speeches and in the spectacle.
The scenes separate conveniently into a pattern of the
play's action and argument and deviate from the Greek
source radically. Where Aeschylus provided ceremonial and
53
ritualistic counterpoint in each, of his three plays with
the use of the chorus and a separate exposition for each
play, Jeffers writes a series of scenes which although they
possess ritual and ceremony, approach sequential, psycho
logical development rather than formal, attic convention.
For example, his drama depends upon the fury of the occa
sion and the psychological tension of his characters rather
than upon the identification of Clytemnestra as priestess,
upon a recognition scene in the second section at the tomb
of Agamemnon, or upon a trial in the third section before
the Aereopagus. He eliminates those scenes and replaces
them, not with reflections, but with frenzied expostulation,
self-defense, and invective. Only at the conclusion of the
play is there a calm and that calm is restricted to Orestes
alone. It is he who has rejected all humanity. He leaves
Electra to struggle in sustained, emotional counterpoint to
his tranquility. She continues to agonize in her identifi
cation with her past, her obsession with power, and her
submission to the importance of human affairs and conduct.
Jeffers1 pattern is simple in its support of his the
sis. The printed play opens with a narrative description
of things past.-^ Cassandra prophesies after Clytemnestra
and Agamemnon exchange their greetings in their first meet
ing in the twelve years since he departed for Troy. The
l^The performed version opens with Aeschylus narrating
and providing exposition.__________________________________
54
initial incident, Agamemnon's murder, takes place offstage.
The rising action reflects the theme of the play in its
illustration of incidents of blood-lust and sexuality, of
power-lust and maniacal self-interest. Clytemnestra defends
herself by the force of her personality, Cassandra prophe
sies without effect, Clytemnestra argues her position as
mother against Electra1s urgent pleas for Orestes to slay
her, Orestes in a mad rage slays both his mother and his
father's mistress on stage. The organization of the action
and the speeches is in precise balance with the growing
horror of human behavior. Upon his last act of blood-let
ting, Orestes leaves the stage to Electra who assumes her
mother's role as queen, as holder of human power. The re
mainder of the play is left to a resolution of the action.
Orestes, on his return, threatens violence if he is not ad
mitted to see Electra. He relates his vision. Electra is
unable to dissuade him from his purpose. Her sexuality re
volts him and he departs. Effectively, Orestes surmounts
the tragic by going beyond its sources: participation in
and response to society, humanity and its desires. The
dramatic pressure is released by the single decision to re
gard the past and the acts of men as essentially irrele
vant.
18
In his "B" version Jeffers dulls the power of his
statement, however, by the emphasis he gives to Electra's
intended suicide. Her decision reflects her inadequacies
55
Within the major, strategic plan of the drama, Jeffers
also provides a series of rhetorical statements which have
their own, internal dynamics as well as a schematic rele
vance, The energy of the theme, although almost diametri
cally opposed in theology, metaphysics, and ethics to its
source, is, like the "Oresteia," carried by its long
speeches, its prolonged statements, Jeffers gives to Cas
sandra, Clytemnestra, and Electra speeches which develop
ideas of personal lust for power and personal advancement
as well as of the general decay of humanity. He loads
Orestes' speeches with the burden of the philosophy of "in-
humanism" which defies both of the Greek exordia of the
Aeschylean original: to honor the gods and to work towards
a balanced and reasonable community of men.
Four speeches from the more than dozen extended state
ments of the dramatic poem illustrate the point: Cassan
dra's prophecies, Clytemnestra's confrontation of the pub
lic, Electra's attempted seduction, and Orestes' concluding
"inhumanism" speech. Each carries thematic weight, struc
tural responsibility, and psychological impact. They are
in context the essential message of the poem. For Clytem
nestra and Electra, the speeches reflect the human tendency
to self-aggrandizement and to power seeking. For Cassandra,
to cope with humanity, her personal weakness, whereas Ores
tes through Sisyphus-like endurance goes on with life in
total identification with nature and reinforces the theme
of nature's available comfort and solace.
56
her message is one of embittered recollection and unrelent
ingly dismal predictions for the future of man. Orestes
provides the summary and rationalization of the theme.
Clytemnestra emerges from the palace where she has
murdered her husband, the King. Cassandra has been making
her predictions of ruin after the spectacular arrival of
Agamemnon and his entrance with his wife into the palace.
Clytemnestra appears with her hair unbound and the brooch
at her shoulder broken. She speaks directly to her audi
ence, "Men of Mycenae," and tells them that she has slain a
bullock in sacrifice to the gods. Over their murmurs that
she is not a priestess, she utters an aphorism and another
cryptic remark in reference to her act:
Too much joy is a message-bearer of misery
A little is good; but come too much and it devours us.
[Therefore
we give of a great harvest
Sheaves to the smiling gods; and therefore out of a
[full cup we
pour the Quarter. (p. 92)
She refers to the gods, to sacrifice, to a harvest, and to
her own restraint. Then in a reference to her role as
their queen she calls herself their shepherdess. Inter
rupted by Cassandra's remarks on Orestes' future acts, she
assumes regal posture and commands that the slave woman be
silenced, by force if necessary, and continues her remarks
switching however to details of the conquest of Troy— re
minding the people that the Trojans' failure to give sacri
fice when Helen arrived lost them the battle. Her language
57
changes as she speaks of "the daughter of Troy," "the Lion-
gate of Mycenae," and "the citadel of Priam." Cautiously
she interjects that she will save her people from "immoder
ate joy" and then mentions Agamemnon by name, "My dear, my
husband, my lord and yours." She proceeds to a direct at
tack upon him. She mentions the pride that led him to kill
a deer of Artemis and the subsequent necessity of sacrific
ing his daughter in retribution. At this point she slips
from her charges against her husband to declare her per
sonal loss, "They knew that of my three there was one that
I loved."
In horror Clytemnestra recalls the death of her daugh
ter and counterposes the sacrifice of Iphigenia as a lamb
and of Agamemnon as a bull. At this point she bares her
breasts to the public telling them that they were cushion
to Agamemnon's lust and source of nourishment for her child
and now are made ice, and that she has balanced the sacri
fice of a child to set the sails going with the sacrifice
of a king for thanks in victory. In a nearly hysterical
challenge she cries out her courage in having personally
provided the victim:
God requires wholeness in the victim. You dare not think
[what
he demands. I dared. I,
Dared.
With that cry she calls upon the public for continued
faithful service. The murmurs continue. Agamemnon appears
as a ghost, and entering the body of Cassandra takes total
58
possession of her (pp. 93-^95) .
Clytemnestra, forced to greater power, speaks directly
to the Captain of the guard, requires him to order his sol
diers to raise their spears in her defense. She asserts,
each time more fiercely, "I am your Queen," first when she
reminds them that she held Mycenae together in Agamemnon's
absence, again when she declares that she is mother to
their next king, again when she requires them to remember
the wolves, vultures, carrion eaters who would storm a
leaderless city. By holding the moment, she can withdraw
to a discussion of the need for an end to the blood-letting.
She promises a warrior's burial for Agamemnon with a hun
dred beeves, sheep, and a ten-day fire in which all of his
captives will be burned with him. Assuming then a role of
grieving queen and wife she calls out,
Weep for me Mycenae I
Widowed of a King!
Agamemnon's body is presented. The Captain requires
the identity of the slayer. Agamemnon speaks through the
body of Cassandra charging Clytemnestra with the crime.
She reverses strategy entirely in rejecting her mournful
posture for a renewed regal bearing. She demands that Cas
sandra be killed. To each of Agamemnon's charges she an
swers with taunts, chiding them for being fearful of the
presence of Cassandra,
Cowards, if the bawling of that bewildered
heifer from Troy fields has frightened you
How did you bear the horns of her brothers?
59
Clytemnestra admits to the slaughter of the King, reveals
the knife she used, asks where Aegisthus is, catalogues
Menelaus' and Agamemnon's atrocities, and recalls the
slaughter of Greeks because of their follies (p. 102). She
continues in a frenzied description of Agamemnon's prepara
tion for the bath, the decay and fattening of his body, the
act of killing him in the net of his own cloak, the stink
of his blood as it issued forth. Challenged by Agamemnon's
guard and by her own men, she plays her last card. Again
she refers to her breasts, offers them, describes them, and
suggests that they throw lots for her, taunts them with the
knife she killed their king with. She compares her beauty
to her sister Helen's and promises herself to all men pres
ent if given time to disrobe. She openly scorns Agamemnon
as having never seen her naked. She is saved from having
to make good on her promises by the long-awaited entrance
of Aegisthus (pp. 97-102).
Jeffers has given Clytemnestra an intensity of passion
and a power of invention in her method of disarming the
soldiers of the king, an intensity and power which fills
the stage, which grows with the tension of the moment and
the consistency of her personality. She has evolved from
priestess to grieving mother to loyal and effective Queen
to huntress to raging and emasculating sexual object. The
effect is spectacular and unquestionably theatrical.
Following this scene of personal challenge and indi
60
vidual assertion, Jeffers writes an interlude in which
Aegisthus is told to destroy the children, Agamemnon leaves
the body of Cassandra, and the people disperse. Upon Cly
temnestra fs exit with her retinue, Cassandra is left in
center-stage, in a position to comment upon the preceding
position and to her prophecies.
Cassandra's speech is interrupted several times by the
Queen who has returned to listen to her. Jeffers alters
the line length of the first part of Cassandra's speech to
contrast with the long, ten beat line he gave to Clytemnes
tra. She begins with a long conditional clause about the
lack of a firm basis for any answer to the present dilemma
and stretches out into a lengthy speech summarizing the
lack of stability of past civilizations (Egypt) , the fail
ure of the sky to provide a steadfast star, Apollo's rape
of her, the bestial couplings of the Greeks in the act of
procreating themselves, and her gifts of prophecy. In the
shorter lines Jeffers provides a preponderance of four beat
19
units with ceasura and alliteration:
0 that I too with the King's children
Might wander northward hand in hand.
Mine are worse wanderings:
They will shelter on Mount Parnassus.
She includes a number of apostrophes— "0 fair roads north,"
"0 stubborn axle of the earth," "0 force of the earth
l^The same technique is noted in the Anglo-Saxon de
vices Jeffers employs in "At the Fall of an Age" and "At
the Birth of an Age."
61
rising/1 "0 fallings of the earth," "0 vulture-pinioned, my
spirit," "0 my spirit"— in almost a litany and incantation
of despair in which she mentions the civilization of Egypt,
Minevah, Greece and Rome; the vibrations of the earth's
mountains, gulfs, and oceans; and the whirlings of the fir
mament.
Cassandra's speech in the dramatic poem bridges Parts
I and IX, even grammatically, since Jeffers places his for
mal division in mid-sentence.20 In Part II he changes back
to a longer metrical line, more consistent with his poetic
technique in the rest of the poem. In these pages— 113,
114, 115, and part of 116, nearly a tenth of the quantity
of the poem— Cassandra speaks of the future. She, as cap
tive both of Greeks and of the gift of prophecy, speaks out
her vision. Like Jeffers' other characters in the drama,
she bemoans her personal predicament, concentrating upon
her own suffering and pain, using the universal predicament
as a metaphor of her dilemma and pain.
Cassandra's first remarks in section II deal with her
observations of the activity at the Lion-gate of Mycenae,
of the traffic which has taken place in the eight years
since Agamemnon's death during which the Queen's people
have worn linen for summer and the "wet spoils of wild
2^It has been pointed out that in his versions for the
theater Jeffers changes this matter in a major trimming of
Cassandra's speeches.
62
beasts" in the winter. Her first observations are upon the
contrasts of her immediate situation. Her visionary arena,
however, is far greater. She speaks of the change of the
stars, the "unprayed to constellations"; of the change of
seasons over the "enduring walls" and of the "unquieted
centuries" pouring over the "walls of the world"; and ulti
mately of the "darkness-heated / Millenium wailing thinly
to be born." In a page long catalogue Cassandra lists
"Race after race of beastlike warriors" who will cover the
world, and she places curses upon them at the same time as
she asks, "what profit / In the wars and the toils."
Athens, Corinth, Syracuse, Rome, Spain, Prance, England,
America are assigned conventional characteristics which ul
timately lead to nothing: Athens, "the joy and the marble";
Syracuse, "the gold and the ships"; Rome, "the coin and the
laws and the javelins, the violence, the threefold / Abomi
nable power"; and America which "has eaten Europe and takes
tribute of Asia." The order and the assignations of the
major characteristics of the civilizations seem unerring.
At this point Jeffers extracts Cassandra from her anxiety
about specific, momentarily important civilizations to a
sure awareness of the awful presence of nature. She shifts
to a positive belief in the omni-presence of the quietness
of nature in its ice, frost, "0 clean, clean, / White and
most clean, colorless quietness" which has no stain of hu
manity. From this point she argues the insipidness of the
lusts of man ("You rock-fleas hopping in the clefts of
Mycenae"): Persian, Emathian, Roman, Mongol, American, In
dian, Syrian. In trivial comparison, in minor importance
she argues from the first to the end. She denigrates trag
edy and reinforces the thesis of the play, that the indi
vidual is significant only when he buries himself in the
eternity of nature. She awakes from her visions to declare
that she actually has no identity, "I am not Cassandra /
But a counter of sunrises, permitted to live because I am
crying to die." Her speech ends with comment on the feast
ing which has been going on during the night in the pal-
21
ace. In the same, quiet way in which she began, having
been exhausted and abandoned by Agamemnon's spirit in Part
I and confronted almost laconically by Clytemnestra, Cas
sandra relinquishes her superhuman power to address the un
successfully disguised Electra.
Jeffers controls the direction of his drama from a
diversity rather than a unity of points of view. Electra,
unlike her mother, is unable to manipulate and to control
in a moment of stress. (She does lose her quest, like her
mother, however, after an initial success.) Having driven
Orestes to matricide, she is unable to sustain his interest
2^-Often the aura of Shakespeare is felt in Jeffers.
Clytemnestra's hasty marriage to Aegisthus reminds us of
Gertrude, and Cassandra's watch on the walls of Mycenae
compares to the guard and the royal visit on the battle
ments at Elsinore by Hamlet.
64
in royalty even though she offers the extra enticement of
her own body. Her observations and angry requirements for
the male to perpetuate the status quo are less powerful
than her mother's. She operates at a less intense level
than did Clytemnestra. She is sister, equal seed, rather
than procreator or genius, as was her mother.
Orestes returns to Mycenae after a traumatic, one-
night's evaluation of self and society. His judgment is
simple: man is not only tiresome, but ugly. He is willing
to sell his heritage for a ship to escape to his new way of
life. Electra, unbelieving, wants and needs his awareness
of the significance of her father's position as king.
Orestes requires Electra to understand the importance and
significance of his vigor, his ability to forego mankind.
She is disgusted:
Are you resolved to understand nothing, Orestes?
! E am not Agamemnon, only his daughter. You are Agamemnon.
Orestes counters with a suggested suicide, a willingness to
speak for her "to the dark ones." In her response she re
jects his intention to die as one of willingness to wander,
to desert duty. Jeffers gives her arguments the strength
of theatrical, if not real, integrity. Electra will live
and persist as a corrupted but enduring individual. She is
willing to submerge that individuality in the vitality of
Kingship:
It is accomplished: my father is
65
avenged: the fates and the body of Electra
Are nothing.
Orestes mocks, at least questions, her reaction as a
"strange martyrdom," a "Madness for sacrifice," and pro
jects himself as above the values which she fights to pre
serve.
Within this context Electra speaks, offering her
brother Mycenae, power, her body. She declares explicitly:
"What you want you shall have." She cannot understand his
motives for refusing and repeats, "Nothing, nothing is de
nied you." She identifies him not only in his role but in
his person as the power-figure, her father, for whom she
has secured vengeance, "You are Agamemnon, you are the
storm of the living presence, the very King." She repeats
again her pledge of her entire being, her maidenhood, her
vital source, her procreative power.
Orestes interrupts her once with the bland remark that
he has patience to hear her out and to endure her explana
tions:
I thought to
be silent was better,
And understand you: afterward I'll speak.
Electra continues her speech as if uninterrupted: she
calls her loneliness "not important" and pain only a "mo
ment." Her feelings are toward permanence in mankind in
maintaining the royal line. She prefers not to blame,
promises not to. She pledges motherhood, fatherhood,
66
sexual partnership to him— "I can conceive the madness"— in
a wild desire to include him in the inheritance of Agamem
non, to perpetuate it. She reviews the facts of the pres
ent situation: his reluctance, her maidenhood, the honor
of their father, his remorse in the murder of his mother,
the horror with which he is reacting to her offer for what
it will unlock in his heart, and finally her immediate
willingness to submit to him sexually (pp. 132-135}.
Electra is rejected out of hand. She is, to Orestes,
a part of the actually dead, the human, enthusiasms.
In Orestes' speech, Jeffers provides the climactic en
thusiasm of a god, a genius who can transcend the horror of
his existence as man by affiliating the living reality of
himself with the larger, non-consciousness of being a part
of "The Beauty of Things." He refuses Electra: "We shall
never ascend this mountain" (p. 135). He regards his sis
ter as a pathetic object of his final human responsibility:
Here is the last labor
To spend on humanity.
His argument is a synthesis of all the anguish which has
preceded it. It is the refutation of responsibility, pa
ternity, patriotism, of all humanity. The answer is a
clear, white light which gathers, in Orestes' mind and
words, into a "clearness":
No honey but ecstacy: nothing wrought nor remembered; no
undertone nor silver second murmur
That rings in love's voice, I and my loved are one; no
[desire but
67
fulfilled: no passion but peace,
The pure-flame and the white, fierier than any passion?
[no time
but spheral eternity. (pp- 135-139)
What Orestes offers is the totality of his experience and
expectation of his future. Jeffers has given the remarks
and the effort of Orestes' refutation the solidity of a
long list of nature and animal images which are positive
and totally extra-human, and intense thematic support as
well as a final dramatic commentary. Orestes receives fi
nal, effective position in the series of dramatically con
ceived, rhetorically evolved arguments on the value of hu
man life. He has opted for non-affiliation as opposed to
his father, the humanistically responsible, although indi
vidually blighted, a champion of his nation's cause; his
mother, believer in the gods and perpetuator of her own
values; and his sister, idealist and martyr to her ideal.
Orestes surrenders. He escapes tragedy by rejecting all
that man values, especially his own identity.
Jeffers has produced a dramatic poem in "The Tower
Beyond Tragedy" which fails at least in part, because of
the nebulousness of the outcome of Orestes' fate, the sim
plification of his motivations, the resolution of the ac
tion, and the congestion of characters and spectacle. He
has, however, succeeded in providing a strategic control of
his imagery, conceived in terms of dramatically multiple
interpretation; a tactical precision in constructing indi
68
vidual speeches, a rhetorical as well as dramatic effec
tiveness ? and a lively development of individual and suc
cessive confrontation. What is lost by the poet's failure
to employ the conventions in devising a theater-piece is
made up for in the intensity of his dramatic consciousness,
made especially vivid by the relative absence of narrator
and rendered powerful by the force and thrust of his char
acters .
CHAPTER III
"DEAR JUDAS"
Because "Dear Judas," Jeffers' second dramatic poem—
published in 1929— received neither critical nor public ac
claim, Robinson Jeffers omitted the poem in his 1939 volume
of Se le c ted Poe try. Instead, he included a longer, narra
tive poem from Dear Judas and Other Poems volume, "The Lov
ing Shepherdess," which contains the story of sacrifice and
martyrdom more closely approximating the traditional view
2
of the free giving of self for the benefit of others.
^Robinson Jeffers, "Foreword" to The Selected Poetry
of Robinson Jeffers (New York: Random House, 1939),
p. xiii: "’Dear Judas' . . . was not liked and is there
fore omitted, though I think it has value, if any of these
poems has." The reasons for the rejection of the work by
the critics have been discussed in Chapter I. In summary,
however, it may be repeated that the rejection was due per
haps more to the unsympathetic manner in which Jeffers
treated the Christ figure than it was to the value the work
has as poetry.
^Robinson Jeffers, Dear Judas and Other Poems (New
York: Horace Liveright, 1929). In the dust jacket blurb
Jeffers described the character of love which the major
figures in each poem possessed: "There is some relation
ship to thought between the two longer poems of the book;
the shepherdess in the one, and Judas and Jesus in the
other, each embodying different aspects of love; nearly
pure, therefore undeluded, but quite inefficient, in the
first; pitying in the second; possessive in the third."
Subsequent references to this volume will be made paren
thetically by page number.
69
70
"Dear Judas" is a strongly worded contradiction of
Christian tradition, just as Jeffers' adaptations from
Greek classic sources were radical departures from their
originals. Jesus' motivations are ultimately selfish;
Mary's identification as the prototype of simplicity and
purity is altered drastically? Judas' reasons for betrayal
become honorable although muddled by pity. In the second
half of the play, the resurrected Lazarus is a cynical ob
server who has been informed in death about the true value
of human life and joy but who returns nightly in re-enact
ment of the passion, the betrayal, and the crucifixion of
Jesus to comment upon the futility of agony and the vanity
of man's search for comfort in human relationships or for
immortality in his own deeds.
Jeffers' strategy in telling the story through dra
matic form gives him an aesthetic distance which permits
his unique treatment and interpretation to speak for itself.
With the exception of the first two lines of the poem,
"Dear Judas" operates solely in terms of dialogue and very
sparing stage directions for the leading characters and for
the muted figures who serve as soldiers, disciples, and
priests. The thematic burden is placed, thereby, upon the
four characters of the drama: Jesus, Judas, Mary, and
Lazarus. Jeffers remains outside the poem far more com
pletely than he does in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," "At the
Fall of an Age," or "At the Birth of an Age" in which the
71
narrator becomes a vital, additional character in the dra
mas. As in his earlier and later dramatic poems, however,
Jeffers selects characters who can, through his manipula
tions, illustrate his central philosophic position of "in
humanism" and anti-Christian and western anthropomorphism.
Jeffers paradoxically is able to simplify his themes
by building around these four richly complex characters.
In "Dear Judas" he clearly moves to a simplified focus.
The action takes place within a carefully limited time, the
dreams of past events are incorporated into the present be
havior of the actors. Most significantly, however, he fo
cuses the attention of his characters upon a particular
dramatic act. He no longer retains the disparate energies
of Clytemnestra, Cassandra, Orestes, and Electra upon their
individual plights and ambitions. Rather, the behavior of
Mary, Lazarus, and Judas depends precisely upon the acts of
Jesus. It is in the diversity of the emotions and the awe
some catalyst of Jesus' agony that Jeffers provides the
dramatic vitality of the poem. He has moved from the mul
tiplicity of the fall of Troy, the rape of Cassandra, the
murder of Agamemnon, the subsequent deaths of Aeghisthus
and of Clytemnestra to the single night of Jesus1 agony in
the garden.
Within "Dear Judas" Jeffers integrates at least four
interlocking aspects of his philosophy. First, he depicts
the necessary decay of obsessive and compulsive personali
72
ties who have turned away from nature; next, he themati
cally organizes the imagery contrasting the sickness of hu
man nature and the wholesomeness of nature at large; third,
he provides a commentary upon social organization; and
finally he presents a treatment of time and history as they
affect human behavior. Primarily, Jeffers does these
things by setting in conflict his world view and the par
ticular emotional and psychological enthusiasms and orien
tations of four distinct personalities. Their dramatic vi
tality derives at least in part from the counter-traditional
treatment Jeffers gives them. Through Jesus, Judas, Mary,
and Lazarus, he weaves a number of images and metaphors
which expand his basic theme of "inhumanism." In particu
lar Jeffers exploits a central metaphor of the "net" in
reference to humanity, to nature, and to God. In addition,
he examines the social organization of individuals into the
family unit, into companionships, and into political move
ments. Finally, he evolves a vague cosmic sense of time
and timelessness in the past, present, and future of human
history and the permanence of nature.
Jesus is the first of the four characters whom Jeffers
uses as pivotal points in this dramatic poem to simplify
the presentation of his complex metaphysical position, so
let us look first at his development of this figure.
Several critics have already briefly examined Jeffers'
73
use of Jesus in the poem. Frederic I. Carpenter, charac
teristically/ makes a deft comment on Jesus' personality
within the poem. He remarks upon the fractionalized qual
ity of Jesus' mind and quotes Jeffers' "Preface to 'Dear
Judas'" in which the author is explicit about his intention
to create a complex figure. Carpenter's point is that
Jesus in his complexity becomes more than a myth but "seems
very human and also very believable."3 Radcliffe Squires
in The Loyalties of Robinson Jeffers regards Jeffers' Jesus
as an ambitious character struggling within the natural,
divine pattern in a dual love, a dual passion for both hu
manity and God.^ Amos Wilder in Theology and Modern Liter
ature, in describing the modern and the historical tendency
among some Christians to emphasize the suffering and cruci
fixion of Christ, believes Jeffers stresses the morbid
rather than the restorative nature of the sacrifice of a
GodHMan. Wilder traces Jeffers' reaction to the theology
of Christianity to the influence of his father's Calvinism.
He sees in Jesus' character a direct repudiation of what
C
his father preached. Carpenter, Squires, and Wilder all
3Frederic I, Carpenter, Robinson Jeffers (New York:
Twayne, 1962), p. 78,
^ CAnn Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956),
p. 12 3.
5 (Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard University Press, 1958),
pp. 93-110.
74
hold to a view that Jesus in the dramatic poem has the vi
talizing characteristic of genuine struggle, a genuine
human passion in the garden and in the crucifixion. In
Jeffers' evaluation, Jesus suffers as man, afflicted by his
desire for immortality; he undergoes the cruelty of the
cross in order to penetrate and to transcend man— as savior
of his soul and conqueror of his imagination.
Jeffers, no doubt, develops his characterization of
Jesus along these lines of duality and ambiguity, but he
also adds clear-cut examples of the corruption of spirit
which is illustrated in all of his hero-leaders with the
exception of Orestes who, in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy,"
gives up all ambition when he discovers how to transcend
tragedy by falling in love "outwards" with nature. At the
center of Jesus' character is a singleness of mind as un
settled as that of Hitler's in "The Bowl of Blood," Atilla
in "At the Birth of an Age," and of Theseus in "The Cretan
Woman," as well as the frantic, vengeance-seeking, single
purposed female characters such as Electra, Polyxo, Gudrun,
Medea, and Phaedra. Jeffers' most compelling figures are
complicated and subtle in the configurations of their per
sonalities yet remain monomanaical and deliberate in their
goals. They are like Hamlet and Ahab in their complica-
^Hitler equates himself with Jesus as an artist, a
fellow sufferer in the quest for the supremacy and domina
tion of man and history.
75
tions and purposeful actions which are ultimately self-
destructive. Jesus is no less cunning than Medea or Phae
dra. He is human, corrupted, single-purposed, and in Jef
fers' terms thereby wrong-headed. His pursuit is involved
with human rather than exclusively divine and cosmic pat
terns. The grandeur of his vision of the encompassing pat-
ern of nature is polluted, as Squires points out, because
"He cannot relinquish His desire for human power."
One of the most striking characteristics of Jesus'
determination, in terms of his willingness to win his cause
by a deliberate manipulation of the emotions and reactions
of others, emerges in the arming of his disciples for a
token battle which will insure his arrest. In the long fi
nal speech before his capture, Jeffers emphasizes the ten
dency in Jesus to work consciously toward the achievement
of his goal even when it requires subterfuge. Judas at
tempts to convince his master that his desire for rebellion
should be controlled so that the lives and the well-being
of his disciples and of the world at large might be free
from the threat of violence. Jesus responds with the ad
vice that scrupulosity is uncalled for in the face of the
fatal control of all of man's actions and reminds him that
faintheartedness has never won the day. Judas leaves,
despairing at the inflexibility of the other's will and
^P age 12 4.
76
revolutionary zeal to see his cause triumphant at any cost.
At this point Jesus admits his private fears and hesita
tions, but only to himself. Jeffers draws firm lines in
his description and development of the successful revolu
tionary leader who speaks without hesitation before his
followers but conceals his hidden reservations and worry.
Publically he is single-minded, assured, and undismayed;
privately he questions and agonizes about the value and the
course of his cause. After Judas has left, Jesus speaks to
himself about his agitation: "Now my heart is faint, even
in the midst of exultation." He, like Hitler in "The Bowl
of Blood," extends his reverie to a metaphor contrasting
the work of the artist and his own predicament as a leader
who molds a new age without a complete concept of its out
lines (pp. 35-36) .
Jeffers increases the impact of the speech by follow
ing it with the entrance of the mutes who represent Jesus'
following. Jesus speaks directly to them, resolutely as
their leader. He is ready with specific directions to as
sure his goal: "did you bring swords as I bade you? Two
hacked old blades— Oh, it's enough. We must always be
ready to offer a form of resistance, for a signal to my
Father, who will send the angels." When he withdraws from
the mutes, he admits again to himself:
For mild submission might appease them
and lose me the cross: without that
The fierce future would never kneel down to slake its
77
lusts at my fountain. Only a crucified
God can fill the wolf bowels of Rome; only a torture high
up in the air, and crossed beams, hang sovereign
When the blond savages exalt their kings; when the north
moves, and the hairy-breasted north is unbound,
And Caesar a mouse under the hooves of the horses . . .
Alas, poor dreamer,
Dreaming wildly because you must die. (p. 37)
Jesus deliberately contrives the circumstances which
will guarantee his crucifixion. He dreams of the future
when his "gaunt pain erected in counterfeit" will control
"The coasts of undreamed of oceans." Shaking himself out
of his thoughts, he approaches the mutes again and in a
direct paraphrase of the Gospels asks them if they are so
unconcerned with his miseries that they can sleep: "Could
you not keep watch for me one hour?" Withdrawing once
again, he ponders the future and tells the absent Judas to
hurry back to the garden and to his appointed task of be
traying him. He wishes an early betrayal before his reso
lution breaks down and he surrenders his vision: "Ere my
heart fail and repent and renounce power." He declares
that "there is none innocent" and that he is fully aware
that power destroys its possessor, that religion is the
greatest of tyrants. In a fierce attempt to reinforce his
intention and to regain his fortitude, he asserts that he
will possess mankind "From inward" and insists that no man
will live "As if had not lived. " In an intense restate
ment of purpose, he declares that he is willing to use any
means to achieve his ends (pp. 37-38).
78
Jesus' ■ goal is single, although his motivations are
complex. He will not leave his desire unfulfilled: "The
hawk of my love is not left hungry." In addition, he be
lieves that mankind is in such a net of confusion that his
actions will be those ultimately of kindness and love. He
is willing to sacrifice lives to achieve his end:
I sacrifice to this end all the hopes
Of these good villagers who've come up from Galilee ex
pecting kingdom; and the woman my mother; and my own
Flesh to be tortured; and my poor Judas, who'll do his
office and break; and dreadful beyond these, unnum
bered
Multitudes of souls from wombs unborn yet; the wasted
valor of ten thousand martyrs.
He will spend the lives and hopes of his disciples, his
mother, his friend, himself, and the uncounted followers of
the remote future as well as those who will be martyred im
mediately. His agony is that the men provide "no foothold
but slippery / Broken hearts and despairs." They may be
inadequate to his purpose and thereby ironically be unde
serving of his sacrifice (p. 38).
Jeffers at this point diminishes the passion of the
assertions of power-lust to provide another aspect of Jesus'
character. Jesus doubts the efficacy of his action: "I
shall go up and die and be presently forgotten." He admits
to being "in the net" which holds all men; and then, seek
ing to reinforce himself in his quest cries out:
this deliberately sought
Torture on the cross is the only real thing.
79
He identifies the torches leading the priests and soldiers
to the garden and addresses the absent Judas, again repeat
ing the appelation "dear," and urging him on, telling him
that "It is not shameful to be duped by God," that the il
lusions of man's struggles are like the particles of the
fire within the torches they carry. His companions join
him and together they are surrounded by the torches. Jesus
returns to his strategy of token resistance and urges them,
Peter in particular, to strike out, to fulfill his demands
that they be captured and that his arrest be insured. Jef
fers echoes again the specific Gospel detail of Peter's
struggles and his cutting off of the ear of one of the sol
diers. Jesus then stops them: "Enough's done / To edge
the required judgment." He speaks to those who surround
him: "Let my friends go. I am the one. Tell them so,
Judas." He has been clever enough to force the hand and
the ultimate decision of the judges. He forces Judas into
the bestowing of the kiss, the specific identification of
him as Jesus, as the one to die (p. 39) .
Jeffers uses several other effective methods of pre
senting a complex personality for the apparently monomanai-
cal Jesus. At the play's opening Jesus attempts to dissuade
Judas from his over-scrupulous attention to the suffering
of man. Jesus is the pragmatic and methodical leader, con
tinually working towards his goal. He urges specifically:
80
To other men I say Be merciful,
to you alone
Be cruel. Life is not to be lived without some balance.
Judas tells him that though he does not grudge others their
pleasure, he is concerned and actually moved only by their
miseries. Jesus answers, "You have then only the night
side of love." He walks with Judas counseling him to give
up and to participate in the joys of mankind. In an aside
to Peter (played by a mute) Jesus echoes again the Gospel
allusion to Judas' ability to take good care of money, of
his fitness to keep a close account (pp. 11-12).
When Jesus is next seen with Judas, he becomes almost
paralyzed by anger when the latter questions him about his
paternity. Specifically Judas has asked him to identify
himself as the son of God or as the son of man. Jesus,
tired and no longer willing to debate, then relents and
suggests that the question is proper and deserves an answer.
He describes his own anguish over the matter and concludes
! with the remark that:
Truly the torment of those days of my ignorance
Never has healed. (p. 14)
In his single confrontation with Mary, Jesus trembles
in anger and fierce emotion over the question of his origin:
"I am either a bastard or the son of God: who was my
father?" he asks. When Mary answers that it was neither
God nor Joseph and is subsequently reduced to weeping,
Jesus dismisses her with the suggestion that he is indif
81
ferent, he has regained his confidence in himself and that
the faith "that is the fountain" of his life will protect
him. He pretends satisfaction in his divinity and dismisses
her with a violent gesture. In his subsequent speech he
describes his trial in the desert and declares his reasons
for his behavior, primarily his uncontrollable lust to dom
inate, though in a special sense:
Not for the power: Oh, more than
power, actual possession. To be with my people,
In their hearts, a part of their being, inseparable
from those that love me, more closely touching them
Than the cloth of the inner garment touches the flesh.
That this is tyrrano.us
I know, that it is love run to lust: but I will possess
them.
Jesus analyzes the nature of man and sees in its core of
love the violence and cruelty which he will feed with the
sacrifice of his body and perpetuate in the figure of the
cross:
The hawk shines like the dove. Oh, power
Bought at the price these hands and feet and all this body
perishing in torture will pay is holy
Their minds love terror, their souls cry to be sacrificed
for: pain's almost the God
Of doubtful men, who tremble expecting to endure it. Their
cruelty sublimes. (pp. 30-33)
Closely aligned with the fierceness with which Jesus
anticipates his own suffering on the cross is the anger
with which he responds to certain situations: Jesus' re
jection of Mary (Jeffers' own invention), his curse upon
the fig tree, his scourging of the money changers at the
temple, and his tacit permission that his disciples struggle
82
physically to effect his escape from the priests and sol
diers in the garden are all highlighted in the poem. By
this emphasis Jeffers creates in Jesus a figure who is suf
ficiently complex to suggest a real person rather than a
stereotyped figure of total gentleness and mercy. Jesus'
willingness to relinquish the idea of a peaceful, bloodless
revolution is the most telling aspect of his monomania.
After promising that the revolution would be bloodless— "I
am making a kingdom not built on blood" (p. 20)— he is dis
appointed by the reactions of the city and declares:
If the people had been united the triumph would have
been bloodless: but now, woe, woe,
The mother city, the great stones on the ancient hill.
The moon shall be blood and the sun darkened
And the stars fall. 0 bring not peace but a sword; the
brother shall hate the brother and the child his
father.
The old walls must be pulled down before the founding
of the new, the field must be broken before the
spring sowing,
The old wood must be cut before the young forest ....
(pp. 2 4-25)
Later, he further comments to Judas, "Oh, I'm not innocent,"
and reveals his own misgivings through his actions and
speeches to the already doubtful and questioning disciple
(p. 36) .
Jeffers was equally precise and definite in his delin
eation of the characteristics of Judas, the second pivotal
figure used to provide a clear-cut structural basis for a
complex philosophical theme. He provided exact outlines of
83
his personality. Judas, too, is consumed with a driving
and compulsive desire to achieve a particular end, to some
how save man from the bloodbath which the action of Jesus
would necessarily initiate. Judas is a realist. He is
aware of the agony which revolution sets in motion:
My soul is.dark
with images, and all are dreadful,
Sword, scourge and javelin, and the Roman gibbet,
Women dying horribly in hopeless birth-pangs, men dying
of thirst and hunger, the miners dying in the mines
Under the stinking torches, in summer by the Red Sea,
consumed with labor in the metal darkness;
And the ankles eaten with rust, and the blood-striped
[backs,
of the oars in a thousand galleys. (p. 17)
He agonizes about the general future of man in the acts of
rebellion and is revolted by Jesus* willingness to curse
the fig tree, to scourge the money changers, and to arm his
disciples. Jeffers makes Judas into the conservative,
scrupulous sufferer who must observe change and ambitious
plans which will necessarily cause human suffering. At the
play's opening Judas calls the shepherd happy, though less
so than the insensate rock. He apostrophizes the rock
which can always be indifferent to the pain of the lamb as
it is slaughtered by the shepherd or to the sight of cruci
fied robbers who strain against their bonds, whistling
their breaths in parched throats. In answer to Jesus' dec
laration that he will give comfort to the over-burdened and
to the wretched, Judas recalls an event of his childhood
when his dog was killed by a butcher who threw a meat
84
cleaver at it while it was wandering through the market
place. He recalls the five days of suffering in which the
dog could neither die nor live.® Jesus listens to the an
ecdote and advises Judas to try to achieve some sort of
balance in his life, to stop being affected by every piti
ful scene which he sees, to reject his obsessive pity.
Judas responds that he knew before he had spoken Jesus
would be unable to help him in his misery and wretchedness
(pp. 10-11).
Subsequently, Judas speaks to Mary, identified at
first only as "The Woman" and later as the "night Mother,"
after he has offered her a coin, thinking that she is a
beggar. He declares his confidence in Jesus as the son of
God.^ But after listening to Mary's prophecies, he reacts
to another person, seen only in his imagination. He calls
out, "No, Peter. NoJ That was too cruel." He describes
the stone hurled by Peter at a hawk, puzzles over the names
of Peter and of Simon "called the Stone," and over the fact
p
°Jeffers used this image a number of times in his po
etry to express the pain which animals suffer at the hands
of men. He used the picture of a hawk still living cruci
fied on the side of a barn to frighten away other hawks in
"Such Counsels You Gave to Me" and the caged and dying hawk
in "Give Your Heart to the Hawks," as well as the dying
hawk in the short lyric, "Hurt Hawks."
q
At another point Judas tells Jesus, "Master, we know
that you are God's son" (p. 14). In the same conversation
he addresses Jesus as "Son of God." In an aside, previously
however, Judas has said, "I know you are neither God nor
God's son. But you are m£ God" (p. 10).
that the wounding of the hawk is the actual salvation of
the sparrows. He tries to separate the suffering of indi
viduals and of groups and concludes that he is incapable of
bearing the suffering of all creatures (p. 17). When Jesus
re-enters to declare that he is "making a kingdom not built
on blood," Judas despairs, knowing that such a thing cannot
be accomplished:
Alas my Master.
Oh listen to me I He cannot hear me.
His ears are full of the foolish cries of these poor
[people.
His eyes are utterly visionary,
His mind wild with its dream. He is leading them up to
sudden bloody destruction. (p. 20)
He continues to describe Jesus' public life especially his
relinquishing of simple, gentle, country ways once he has
entered the city:
The glory is departed.
Oh he has changed and changed. But I, what shall I do?
His mind is dreadfully exalted and bitter,
And divided. I cannot understand what he suffers but I
see what he does.
As evidence of the change, Judas describes Jesus' entrance
into Jerusalem, his behavior at the temple, his willingness
to have his feet bathed with expensive oils, and his accep
tance of the general adulation of the crowds. Finally,
Judas, after recalling the suffering of one old man fallen
in the temple of the money-changers as a result of Jesus'
wrath and beating, wonders:
I cannot tell whether Jesus has gone mad, or has indeed
grown
Too near the power that makes falcons and lions, earth-
86
quakes and Rome, as much as the corn in the fields
And the breasts of mothers, and the happier birds. He is
terrible now.
Mary's questions leads Judas to confess his fears that he
will be the reef upon which Jesus, as the metaphorical ship
in the storm of existence, will wreck, and that Jesus may
have become the catalyst which will rouse "the looting
street people" of Jerusalem. He resolves to see that Jesus
is arrested if it will prevent him from beginning an insur
rection (pp. 22-2 8).
In part, simply by reversing their traditional roles,
Jeffers makes Jesus and Judas into comprehensible, contem
porary psychological figures. Judas, generally identified
with the corrupting influences of civilization, especially
its greed and self-seeking, becomes the seeker after the
simplistic and uncomplicated life of the country and em
bodies the persistent spokesman for peace and restraint.
Continually he seeks to remind his master of his original
message of mercy. In response to Jesus' assertion that
"You have always been without faith, and the sick fool of
your pity," he makes an impassioned plea: "You teach mercy:
be merciful. All I ask is that you come away and not force
destruction. To let the people alone is the mercy: all
stirring is death to them. [He lets go the cloak]," and in
a newly resolved spirit says in an aside, "I know by heart
that agate inflexible look in his eyes. There is no hope
in this merciless man: I must do my office" (p. 34).
87
The traditional interpretation of Judas' motivation
has been that he was acting solely from a greed for money
and that once he had carried out his act of betrayal, he
destroyed himself in shame and despair. The interpretation
is a psychologically sound, but highly simplified one.
Jeffers adds a dimension to the characterization, however,
which enriches and humanizes it through its complexity.
After rejecting Jesus' explanation of his own actions and
his acceptance of what Judas is about to do as a part of
the inflexible pattern, the "net" of God's will, Judas
speaks resolutely of the damage and the sure suffering
Jesus' plans will cause the innocent: "But I am able to
prevent you. It is necessary for one man to be put under
restraint, to save the people. . . . 0 my friend, my once
master, my love forever: forgive me before the act!" (p.
35) .
Judas appears twice more in the play, once when he
silently obeys Jesus and identifies him to the soldiers and
priests with a kiss and, finally, in his deranged meeting
with Mary and Lazarus after the crucifixion. Accompanied
by two of the mutes, he approaches the grieving Mary and
the detached and controlled Lazarus. He offers a series of
mad reasons for his act: "I am Judas running like a snap
ping dog along the streets of Jerusalem, snapping my rea
sons." He speaks to one of the mutes, "Hear me, eyes!" and
confesses that it was to save the city from destruction
88
that he betrayed Christ; to another he declares ironically
that it was for the money and that he regrets that he threw
the coins back to the priests; to another he cries out that
he is innocent/ that he was mistaken as the actual betrayer.
In exhaustion he turns to Mary, whom he addresses as
"Madam," and asks if he has a physical mark on him which
might identify him as the guilty party. But suddenly rec
ognizing Mary for who she is, he falls to kiss the skirt of
her garment. When she strikes at him, he confesses again,
and finally in control of himself, gives his final reason:
it was all for deliverance: I thought
by doing the worst imaginable thing
I should be freed of tormenting pity. Wasn't that . . .
No. No.
Only to relapse once more into an agony of confusion. Laz
arus reminds Mary of Jesus' action and its implications for
the future, for human history. After her exit and Lazarus'
advice for him to accept his fate as the "tool" broken in
the completion of Jesus' plan, Judas reveals the noose hid
den in his cloak and declares that he will buy "an eternal
peace for three minutes of breathlessness" (pp. 45-48).
In Jesus, Jeffers has created a character who, in his
aching desire to be perpetually a part of the very being of
man, has begun a bitter cycle of suffering and destruction.
In Judas, he has modified the simple Gospel suggestion of
greed as motive into a searching study of morbid psychology,
a study of a complex, compelling and interesting man
89
obsessed with pity.
Jeffers not only deviates radically from the Gospel
treatment of the personalities and motivations of Jesus and
Judas in his story of the passion and suffering in the gar
den , but he provides a unique characterization for Mary,
the third figure in the complex poetic drama. She becomes
a composite of earth-mother, repentant adultress, suffering
human mother, and angry Termagant. At points she is obtuse
and at other times she is a great soul, suffering nobly.
In response to her son, she is consistently dominated and
quavering. But she displays both spirit and vitriol in her
confrontations with Judas and Lazarus. In her various pos
tures she becomes a recognizable and believable figure,
shedding the traditional aura of simple purity and quiet
dignity in which she is enveloped in conventional treat
ments .
It is in Mary, even more than in Judas or Jesus, that
Jeffers demonstrates his growing skill in the organization
of a dramatic figure. Although complex in her facets as
the mother of an individual man, as the symbolic earth-
mother, and as the cosmic Night Mother, she is most pre
cisely characterized by her suffering. As opposed to the
several female characters of the earlier dramatic poem "The
Tower Beyond Tragedy"— Clytemnestra, Cassandra and Electra
— who are fractional, disparate, examples of the single
90
emotion of revenge, Mary is a single embodiment of the one
characteristic of suffering which is sometimes muted and
transcendant, sometimes hysterical, and sometimes passive.
She has precisely what her predecessors in "The Tower Be
yond Tragedy" lacked, a fully refined, single dramatic in
tensity as well as other dimensions.
In the first half of the play Jeffers calls Mary sim
ply "The Woman." She enters the stage after Jesus and
Judas have been discussing the nature of Judas' suffering
for the innocent and the downtrodden. In a stage direction
Jeffers describes her as "fifty, tall and lean, with a
passion-worn proud Jewish face." She is oblivious to the
present action of the two men? speaks to her environment,
to the trees which surround her? identifies herself as
"only a poor half-crazed old woman"? speaks of her past and
her present suffering, of the nativity, and of the cruci
fixion? and identifies her lament as a "cracked song."
Once seated, she shifts her address to unidentified fisher
men offstage, speaks of the metaphoric net which entraps
them as they sit on sandy beaches mending the nets which
they use in their work, and continues to speak as Judas and
Jesus re-enter.
As Jeffers presents her, she simply sits as Jesus de
scribes the agony he went through in the questioning of his
mother about his paternity. When Jesus has gone out and
Judas has mistaken her for a beggar and dropped a coin into
91
her lap, she looks up to answer his question about why she
had failed to respond to the presence of her savior. Her
comment is a generalized statement in which she uses the
net metaphor and adds a line of italicized recollection, "I_
have come to save you." She goes on with continued remarks
about the night and about her indifference to the suffering
of others. Almost in a lullaby she croons to a "Wee wanton
brawler," refers to her breasts feeding the child and be
coming slack in the process, and ends by calling herself
the Night, she shakes herself out of her numbed mood to
recognize Judas and to help him in the recreation of the
scene of the betrayal. She recalls that her son had prom
ised mankind a kingdom "Of peace and mercy." Remaining
static, she listens to Judas' speech as he recalls in turn
the anecdote of Peter wounding the hawk and she laughs at
his agonizing, telling him that what Peter did was natural.
She remains silent during Jesus' long speech declaring that
he is doing his father's work, but with Jesus' farewell to
Bethany in which he promises to return as a king, Mary
stands up and speaks. She refers to the heat and to the
fatigue which she is suffering rather than to her son's
ideas (pp. 12-21).
Mary's transformation provides one of Jeffers' major
demonstrations of his growing skill in characterization.
She can operate at the level of a generalized, suffering
earth and night mother; but in dramatic terms it becomes
92
necessary that she have a particular function in the dra
matic context. That function in "Dear Judas" is to provide
a basis for reaction to Jesus and Judas. She does this
effectively in drifting from a slumbering, passive embodi
ment of motherhood to the carefully delineated role of the
suffering mother of a specific man who will presently be
put to death. She speaks of a dream she has just awakened
from and identifies herself as "Mary, the wife of Joseph."
She describes her son with loving praise and a sure con
fidence, mentioning his loyalty to his country, his sweet
ness of smile and demeanor, and his gentleness when he was
a boy. Almost as if she were chatting with people about
her, she talks about visiting him in the city. Just before
leaving, she recognizes one of the people as Lazarus and
asks casually:
And you are Lazarus whom he raised from the dead. Your
face has never changed since. (p. 22)
Mary's identity is established. She is transformed
from the mysterious and mystic Night Mother to simply the
carefully conceived, dramatically interesting mother of a
well-known young man. On her re-entry, after Judas; long
speech of fearful prophecy, she sustains the role, asking
news of her son and showing her annoyance with Judas the
detractor, the unbeliever. She declares herself to be the
mother of Jesus, responds to the bitterness she sees on the
haggard face of Judas, and leaves to warn her son of the
93
real threat which Judas poses to his safety (pp. 25^27).
Jeffers again places Mary in a position where she must
wait and not comment. Judas encounters Jesus and they talk.
When Mary identifies herself and describes her long hard
trip to the city, Jesus advises her that her effort was
worthless and bothersome: - "You have not done wisely." She
attempts to speak to him, to describe her fears and to warn
him. Yet she is treated as if she were unworthy even to be
in his presence. Shortly, Jesus reduces her to tears when
he questions her about her purity and about his conception.
She is unable to confess entirely the circumstances of his
paternity and is dismissed with a violent gesture. In a
stage direction Jeffers describes her exit: "she creeps
away" (pp. 29-31).
Mary's next appearance is after the arrest in the gar
den. Jeffers heightens the dramatic irony of having her
enter the scene this time triumphant. She speaks of God's
wisdom in having made her "secret sin" a glory through the
elevation of her son to prominent position. She proclaims
his great power and the homage which both Herod and Pilate
must render in the face of his growing strength. She has
assumed a new confidence and asks a mute about the news
from the city. Undismayed by his refusal to answer her,
she speaks in near parody of the "Magnificat":
My soul doth magnify
the Lord, who maketh light out of darkness,
Honor out of shame, out of sin a shining.
94
and concludes, "All generations shall call me blessed."
As other mutes pass, she catches the sense of rumor
concerning the fate of her son and cries out a death wish,
covering her eyes as she waits. But seeking more news she
comes to the conclusion that Jesus has actually been ex
alted in the city and declares her restored happiness, the
joy that Lazarus will soon destroy with the facts of Jesus'
crucifixion.
Jeffers describes her pose as "erect" and near "ec-
stacy." She listens to Lazarus but interprets his words as
descriptive of Jesus' great glorification. Unwilling to
consider the real implications of what he is saying, she
praises God and his eternal pattern. To her remark,
The straining crystal spirit and the
broken old mother-body can hold no more
Happiness,
Lazarus, in ironic repetitions of the "Ave," responds,
"Hail Mary, chosen for extremes." Mary refuses to leave
her place on the road leading to Jerusalem, a place where
she might encounter her son on his return. She turns to
question Lazarus about his life after his resurrection from
the dead. He answers with a negative reaction to her sus
tained joy, as Judas had previously when she questioned him
about the success or failure of Jesus' first trip into
Jerusalem. She is bantering and suggests that he advertise
himself as a circus freak to capitalize upon his unique
situation as one who has risen from the dead. She refers
95
to the blue pallor of his skin and to his general figure as
worthy of a sideshow attraction. When she is finally con
fronted by the simple, stark statement that her son has
been crucified, she refuses to accept the fact. She cries
out that she cannot be convinced by a lie, indeed that she
is puzzled that man, by his very nature, is able to lie
(pp. 39-42) .
Jeffers saves most the dramatically different charac
teristic within his interpretation of Mary's personality
for the subsequent confrontation with Judas. As Judas
spills out his frenzied account of the betrayal, she be
comes increasingly aware of the truth. She rejects him as
a "dog" and refers to his slavering as "poisonous." When
she becomes fully conscious of the facts of the situation,
she cries out to Lazarus that he should have warned her,
repeats her death wish: "I wish my mouth had been stopped
with the seas of drowning," and strikes out with her hand
at Judas, repeating in a manner the violent gesture of dis
missal Jesus had used with her.
Once more she looks for Jesus to appear and, disap
pointed, turns back to Judas telling him that she will not
curse him, but that he is more loathsome than any viper or
reptile could be. In a final statement of self-loathing
she turns against herself and against womanhood. She ana
lyzes the death of her son as proceeding from her, from her
position and her function as a woman:
96
The mothers, we do it:
Wolf-driven by love, or out of compliance, or fat
[convenience:
A child for Moloch. I am that woman: the giver of blood
and milk to be sacrificed. I'll never tell you,
Though worse fellows, how else I betrayed again
My blood and milk. I built it up and forced it up and
adored it, and the end's unbearable.
Lazarus advises her to be silent and speaks of her son's
now secure position in history. Her moment of crisis is
over and she accepts her role as outcast and as used-up
vessel. Complacently, she submits to a silent misery to a
self-pity:
It was bitter enough when I was alone:
And now we are put into a pit to be stared at. I will
go and find him. (pp. 46-48)
Mary's full dimension as a character is accomplished
only in her last remarks. She has gone through a complete
cycle from her opening posture as a night mother, to a
lonely wanderer, to a self-assertive mother of a great man,
to a badgered and frightened object of a son's accusation,
to an ecstatic visionary, to a raving and vengeful shrew,
to simple submission and whining bitterness. Jeffers cre
ates in her a recognizably human personality in her pride,
her guilt, her anticipation, and her vulnerability. By
doing so he has effectively communicated, through one com
plex character, a statement of his attitudes toward the
changing and ephemeral foibles of human emotions, hopes and
agonies. In Mary he creates a workable, dramatically con
ceived figure who projects the complexity of human exis-
97
tence in the figure of a solitary suffering mother.
Jeffers gives the fourth character in the play, Laza
rus, unusual prominence and an unorthodox characterization
in the dramatic poem. Jeffers obviously rejected the pos
sible inclusion of the character Peter and his role in per
petuating the church (although he is referred to by name
and by implication in the course of the play), or St. John,
who has been traditionally regarded as the solicitous and
gentle guardian in the years following the crucifixion. It
is significant that, instead of proceeding with the story
of Christ to the Resurrection, Jeffers simply chose to pre
sent the only other resurrected figure of the New Testament,
Lazarus. In his play Jeffers never refers to the moments
following the passion and the crucifixion, to Easter and
its joy. His purpose is to focus on the suffering rather
than those liberating aspects of Christ's death which the
mainstream of Christian worship emphasizes.^0
Frederic I. Carpenter specifies that "The one charac
ter in 'Dear Judas' who has achieved true salvation, ac
cording to Jeffers, is Lazarus; and Lazarus is described
not so much as resurrected from death but as speaking with
the accent of death." The observation is apt in recog-
l^Wilder, p. 93.
11Carpenter, p. 79.
98
nizing that Lazarus not only carries the thematic responsi
bility of rejection of human values, but is the only char
acter in the play who can make a detached evaluation of the
Christ figure, Jesus. His own experience has taught him
the unimportance of aspiration and given him knowledge of
larger patterns which Judas and Mary, as well as Jesus him
self, have not imagined. None of them have experienced
death and a real understanding of the utter tranquility and
removal of emotion which it provides. He is beyond agony
and joy as well as the rational, argumentative notions of
reforming human nature or improving the human condition.
Lazarus becomes the spokesman of the poet as he rejects the
vanity of passion and aspiration. Radcliffe Squires makes
the point succinctly:
Although Jeffers admires the Promethean sacrifice [of
Jesus] in these terms, his personal horror of the suf
fering remains as his argument against Christ's apotheo
sis, and his position as an Inhumanist seems triumphant
in the characterization of Lazarus, who, when Mary asks
him if he is not joyful at the glorification of Jesus,
says: "No, Mary, I am out of that net. I would to God
that you were out of that net."12
In his final speech, concluding the drama, Lazarus
brings together the various arguments of the play, that of
Jesus who would have his Father's will done, of Mary who
would justify herself to her son for her errors and her
sins, and of Judas who would forestall or avoid the reali-
l^Page, 124.
99
ties of suffering. He then suggests that Judas be allowed
to carry out his promise to hang himself, and summarizes
the omnipotence of nature, its value in its permanency:
Let him go. He has done all he was made for; the rest's
[his
own. Let him and the other at the poles of the wood,
Their pain drawn up to burning points and cut off, praise
God after the monstrous manner of mankind.
While the white moon glides from the garden; the glory
of darkness returns a moment, on the cliffs of dawn.
(p. 49)
Lazarus indicates that it is unimportant that Jesus had
visions, that Mary suffered over past sins, that Judas
agonized over the suffering of living individuals and of
civilizations to come. Each of them searched for a commu
nion with God within the framework of human rather than
divine, natural, cosmic patterns, refusing to submit to a
larger metaphysical ethic, turned aside instead by momen
tary enthusiasms, depressions, or ecstatic experiences.
Jeffers uses the miracle of the raising of Lazarus
from the dead as one challenge that Mary offers to Judas in
defense of her son's divinity. She claims the act as sym
bol for Christ's domination of mankind and his rightful
claim to man's loyalty. Ironically, it is Lazarus' func
tion in the last quarter of the play to dismiss the effi
cacy of Jesus except as a historically important figure.
It is only on page forty-one after Jesus has been led away
to his crucifixion and death that Lazarus is introduced.
Jeffers has Lazarus, like Judas and Jesus earlier in
10.Q
the play, at first ignore Mary while he speaks generally.
He introduces himself with a formal, straightforward an
nouncement of his mission and his role in the drama:
I am Lazarus who lay dead four days; and having known
death and the dreams of corruption and lived after
wards
For several years, and again died, and rotted in the rock
tomb, it is not possible for me
To be deluded like others by any of the habits of death.
I also am only a shell and remainder
Like the other three ghosts that haunt the garden; but
never subdued by their dreams, and being incapable
of pity.
Astonishment or fear of any other of the accidents of life,
I am sent every night at this time
To tell this woman not to rejoice; and that her son is
condemned. (pp. 41-42)
He continues with the statement that he is present to de
stroy the dreaming and the fantasizing of the woman sitting
in the garden as well as of the world. He will remain a
brief time longer to slay joy; in a like manner he will
later allow Judas to speak out his misery before announcing
to him his vanity and his obsessive, increasingly tedious
interest in the love of Jesus, the suffering of mankind,
and the other temporary emotions. Lazarus permits Mary to
express her ecstacy, but with a final bluntness, he answers
her question: "He is hanged on a cross on the hill Gol
gotha.” Toward Judas, Lazarus has the reserve and the con
trol of the situation to respond finally, "You were his
tool / And broke to serve him." He functions precisely as
a voice of nature ("I am sent") to make a firm, final
101
commentary on the vanity of man's ambitions and his agoniz
ing (pp. 41-49).
As in his other dramatic poems, Jeffers incorporates a
considerable amount of his theme in a central, controlling
metaphor. This is one of the chief devices he employs to
obtain progressively more unified and simplified impact in
his works. "Dear Judas" is literally dominated by the net
imagery which he introduces in the first speeches and sus
tains to the conclusion. Within that same metaphor Jeffers
manages to contain almost every one of the major abstract
terms he considers in the poem: power, ambition, pity, de
spair, human relationships, divine intervention, and fate.
Mary's first speech is addressed first to the stones
and trees of the garden and then to the fishermen on the
coast as they mend their nets in preparation for the next
day's fishing. She describes a net as invisible and as
mobile: "It flies through the white air and we all are
snapped in it." Without defining the specific quality of
the net as either human nature or divine fate, she insists
on the encompassing quality of its power: "There was never
a man cut himself loose . . . That's true but comfortless."
She continues by saying that the net entraps man even after
death.
Jeffers sustains the metaphor in the following speech
of Jesus who has not heard Mary speak. He describes his
102
suffering in the desert and the knowledge he has gained
there: "I loathed life, I was taken in a net." He sug
gests that the net is the mystery of his paternity. When
Jesus has finished speaking, Judas addresses the reflective
Mary. To his question why she had not responded more ac
tively to the presence of her savior, she replies, "Eh? Do
you still have saviors?” and then comments that Jesus is
wise to walk in the shelter of the darkness of the night,
that he is surely trapped as those men who in the main
stream of life are caught twisting, babbling, and finally
cutting their gills on the cords of the net. What Jesus
describes as a personal trap of self-doubt and hesitation
in the earlier instance, Mary makes into a universal pre
dicament in her comments (pp. 12-13).
In the major scene between Jesus and his mother, he
challenges her specifically on the issue:
Why does your mind flee
My father's name as if it were a trap?
Mary responds:
Oh, oh, is it not a trap?
It is this . . . it is this . . . belief,
Has lifted you up to over-dream nature, and scorn danger
and wisdom. Oh, it is a secret. Be a prophet
But not lay claim . . . Be a king, if you can, but not to
go mad. (p. 30)
What Jesus has recognized as his particular problem and
trap, Mary has called a universal problem. She declares
belief that a system of individual destinies is bound to
lead to disaster.
103
Later, in the speech in which he asserts his communion
with God, Jesus discusses the godhead, the totality of ex
istence , and notes that in the cosmic and greater nature of
things he could recognize "the cruelties and agonies that
my poor Judas / Chokes upon" as being "there in the net,
shining" (p. 32). He sees God's mind as a net in which all
exists. Judas' responses are tied to his compassion for
the suffering individual caught within the net, and Jesus
answers him with a secret:
There is not one creature
Neither yourself nor anyone, nor a fly nor flung stone,
but does exactly and fatally the thing
That it needs must; neither less nor more. This is the
[roots
of forgiveness. This is our secret, Judas.
He echoes the words of his mother, "There was never a man
cut himself loose" (pp. 35-36). Later, when Judas has left
in his self-doubt, Jesus considers the net again, this time
with some regrets and fears:
I am in the net,
and this deliberately sought
Torture on the cross is the only real thing. (p. 39)
Subsequent to Jesus' assertion that torture on the
cross is the means by which he will control the net, Mary
exults, still ignorant of his crucifixion, and cries out to
Lazarus that he must truly have joy in the accomplishment
of her son. He refuses to admit that he has taken pleasure
in Jesus' sacrifice, saying, "No, Mary, I am out of that
net. I would to God that you were out of that net."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
104
In the climax of the net imagery, when Lazarus has in
structed Judas to inhibit his emotions and accept the fact
that Jesus has made himself into a god by his actions and
that Judas might climb to fame with Jesus, the hawk, as do
the lice in the feathers of the climbing bird, Judas looks
up and desperately describes and fondles the moored rope by
means of which he will be able to obtain peace. Ironically,
Judas seeks escape through the tightening of a cord, the
specific image Mary and Jesus have used previously to sig
nify entrapment.
As well as by the metaphor of the net, Jeffers also
gives the poem unity through a secondary system of images,
the nature images, especially in the many references to the
moon. The play opens in the Garden of Gethsemane "under
the round white stone that shines in the gulf of the sky"
and concludes in the tranquility which returns after the
agony of the passion: "while the white moon glides from
this garden; the glory of darkness returns a moment, on the
cliffs of dawn" (pp. 9, 49).
Jeffers uses the framework of the lunar movement to
indicate the unity of time from the setting sun to the mo
ment before its rising. A number of times Jeffers employs
the connotations of the moonlight to reinforce the aura of
eeriness and mysticism. Jesus describes to Judas his fast
ing in the desert by moonlight on a night like the one when
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
105
they later stand looking towards Jerusalem shining in the
hills like a "jewel washed with new milk." Both shadows
and blackness of moving figures are illuminated in the
night, dominated by the presence of the Night Mother figure
of Mary who in her challenge to Judas requires him to stand
against the moon so that she can make out his features
(pp. 14-16). Jesus later speaks to his people with the
light of the moon playing in patches around the trees and
later in his prophecies suggests that all the heavenly
bodies shall be affected by the wrath of his avenging fa
ther: "The moon shall be blood and the sun darkened / And
the stars fall" (pp. 19,24).
In addition to providing a time unity for his poetic
drama by references to the moon, Jeffers seems consistently
to be staging the action in a half-lighted, muted exposure
of the figures as they act out their shadow existence in
order to foreshadow a final tranquility. The moon is used
as the stable light of muted intensity in contrast with the
interruptive images of the destructive light of the sun and
stars, of the torches which lead the priests and soldiers
to the garden, of the sunlit heat of noon in which Jesus
preaches his words. In the final speech of Lazarus, the
point is made most clearly that the functioning of the moon
is to provide a baleful light before "the glory of darkness
returns a moment" to erase all the vain praising of God in
which man indulges according to the "monstrous manner of
106
mankind" (p. 49).
Other nature image occurs throughout the work. Jef
fers sets the poem in a garden, one sheltered by cypresses.
As has been suggested in the description of the moon imag
ery, Jeffers uses as a setting all the beauty which he ob
served in the entire organic organization of the universe.
The sun and the stars also take their place in describing
human events and behavior. Jeffers involves the sea and
its forces in several instances separate from his use of
the net and of fishing. Mary's two explicit death wishes—
I wish the night of
darkness would cover me and I were asleep
Under deep waters, until the sandals of the man bearing
true tidings be heard in the dust,
and later, "I wish my mouth had been stopped with the seas
of drowning," are of the sea and of its powers to solace
and to create peace (pp. 40-41,46) . - * - 3
In "Dear Judas" Jeffers meticulously organizes the ac
tion through images, characterizations, and controls of
time which would compress action and behavior into a tight,
formal unity. Without the requirements of divisions for
■*-^Jeffers turned very frequently to the sea and to the
mountains as an escape and as an example of the permanence
of nature in his early poetry. It remained an influence in
his poetry until his death. Melba Berry Bennett's Robinson
Jeffers and the Sea (San Francisco: Gelber, Lilienthal,
Inc. , 19361 is a full, competent treatment of the matter in
the poet's early career.
107
acts which would be demanded in performance and without the
more diverse potentials of narrative commentary, he relies
heavily upon an interweaving of theme and motif. But be
sides the eccentricity of his major characterizations, his
deft weaving of net and nature imagery, and his religious
allusion, Jeffers integrates the drama through the use of
two organizing, central ideas, each of which is present in
Jeffers' entire canon, exploited to some degree in his
longer works and suggested continuously in the shorter.
These two major ideas concern the nature of civilization as
it is evidenced (1) in the complexity and cyclical quality
of time and history and (2) in the corrupting power of the
city. Certainly the nature of civilizations is reflected
in the early dramatic poem, "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," in
which Electra's and Clytemnestra's desire for control of
Mycenae is emphasized, and in the later work, "The Cretan
Woman," in which the corroding effects of Corinth upon
Phaedra are made an element of character motivation. Jef
fers dealt with the problems of history in all his plays:
Troy, Mycenae, Cassandra's prophecies of world disaster in
"The Tower Beyond Tragedy." His imagination seemed to be
almost controlled by the notion of the repetitiveness of
man's behavior; certainly that interest is indicated in his
dramatic poems dealing precisely with the rise and fall of
ages and in his consciousness of the flaws of the age in
10 8
which he lived. ^
The corrupting power of civilization in the city is
used as an obvious organizing device in "Dear Judas."
Clearly Jeffers sees the city, in this case Jerusalem, as
the focal point of Jesus' downfall. Jesus, ministering as
a gentle preacher to the shepherds and simple villagers of
Bethany, becomes a nearly mad leader in pursuit of his
desire for the perpetuation of his memory in the very fiber
of his followers and in the fabric of history. The
achievement must be made in the city, away from the calm
and the permanence of nature.
Judas, at the opening of the play, is almost suffo
cated in the memory of the throngs of men, the multitudes
who surround Jesus as he leaves the boat on the river. He
cries out, "No, I can never attain to him [Jesus]," and re
jects Jesus when solace is finally offered. Jesus advises
Judas that he is being too scrupulous and requires him to
look out at the beauty of the city of Jerusalem as it
stretches out in the moonlight. Mary has doubts about her
son's endurance as he goes towards the city, "He cannot
l^Lawrence Clark Powell, as late as 196 8, in "Califor
nia Classics Reread, Give Your Hear to the Hawks," Westways,
November 1968, p. 21, comments: "History dealt roughly
with Robinson Jeffers. The Second World War was shattering.
As a strong, young man he survived the shock of the first,
but the conflict that began in 1939 hit him at age 50, and
he never recovered from it. His tragic view of humanity
deepended, as he saw civilization destroying itself. The
atomic bomb was the final blow."
109
bear this progress up to Jerusalem" (pp. 16-17).
Jesus is subsequently overwhelmed by the towers.
Judas, in a near frenzy to escape to regain the simplicity
that once was theirs, begs, "Oh, Master, Master, your face
is sorrowful, you eyes are bitter. Let us go back / To
Galilee where the days were all glad." Jesus responds with
the epithet, "Faint-hearted, Ah brittle-hearted counselor"
and stresses the "towers," "Triumphant occasion," and "pin
nacles" of his spirit filled by his reaction to the city:
I have gone in the past privately up to Jerusalem; but now
My sun has risen, the hour shines and beckons. My day
has come up. (p. 19)
He continues his discussion of his "kingdom" and insists
that his effort is to create a "kingdom not built on blooc^"
"a power weaponed with love not violence; a white / Domin
ion; a smokeless lamp; a pure light." Mary considers his
fame among the villages of his home and refuses to inter
fere now that "Jerusalem is crazy to hear him." Judas de
scribes Jesus in the midst of the crowds of Jerusalem and
in the heat of his anger at the temple. Excited, Jesus
calls out, "Ah, Jerusalem, Jerusalem. " Judas prophesies
great destruction "If Jesus should persist in Jerusalem,"
seeing "all the roadside masted with moaning crucifixions,
from the city to Bethany." Jesus responds with the charge
•^~*0n page 18 Jesus speaks of the "higher tower," be
yond human understanding, in which he was guilty and
stained. It is at this point that he condemns the fig tree.
110
that he will persist and that he will challenge Rome itself.
He refuses to cure the sick and concentrates on the tribute
due Caesar and G o d .16 His rage is intensified by his re
ception into the city: "It is not easy to have seen / Hope
die in rags, and the fool of a city." Mary begs him to
leave and to come home:
From the fierce cowardly city and too many people. I
watched their faces, their eyes are shallow and
whetted
Like the eyes of mice, and they have no faith. Their
fathers murdered the prophets. The lake fishermen
need you,
The kindly villagers need you.
Jesus responds with a refusal to reject his destiny, "The
city is my Father's city." His subsequent speech is filled
with references to the nature of power. He speaks of his
communion with God and concludes with an image of a con
quered city. Caesar sleeps in that "prostrate city" (pp.
18-33).
Like Mary, Judas too tries to dissuade Jesus from his
interest in the city: "Oh, I adjure you, to come away from
this city"; his subsequent pleas have no power over the
mystically aroused Jesus who speaks of his dominion and his
power and his control. In order to force his dream into
reality he is willing to sacrifice all the hopes of the
"good villagers" who have followed him from Galilee (p. 38).
16jeffers again echoes the Gospels almost precisely in
these lines.
Ill
Lazarus' final remarks to Mary include his prophecy that
Jesus will, indeed, be master over Roman Caesar, that his
dominion will be temporal and earthly as well as spiritual,
and that truly he has succeeded in doing what men are not
able to do: "he has chosen and made his own fate." It is
only by managing to secure his reputation in the city that
he has been able to create a historical position and a
carefully noted place in "the yearning innumerable eyes of
many nations and an age of the worldly" (pp. 47-48).
Jeffers' interest in the temporal as well as the geo
graphical position of man in nature plays an important part
in the organization of the dramatic poem. In most of his
long narratives and in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" written
before "Dear Judas," he had used a simple chronology in
which the characters acted out their parts and recalled, in
exposition, the previous events which had initiated or af
fected present behavior.
In "Dear Judas," on the other hand, the action is sim
ple; but the allusions to anterior and subsequent actions
are complex. Jesus is suffering in the garden awaiting his
crucifixion. He responds to the words and actions of Mary,
Judas, and Lazarus. The drama takes place during the
course of one night. The characters recall the events of
the public life of Jesus, re-living and retelling the story
of the coin tribute to Caesar, the violence to the fig tree,
Peter's throwing of the stone, Palm Sunday and the trium-
112
phant march into Jerusalem. At the same time Jesus recalls
a time which is separate from the time of men. He speaks
of the existence he shared with his father and equates that
separate time with the period of trial he spent in the des
ert. In addition, both Jesus and Lazarus refer propheti
cally to the time in which the Roman Empire will fall, that
Herod and Pilate will be destroyed. Finally, they refer to
the accomplishments of the Greek society before them.
Simply, then, Jeffers divides time into six areas:
(1) the present day in which the agony in the garden is
being re-enacted; (2) the Gospel days previous to the cru
cifixion; (3) the night before the crucifixion; (4) cosmic
"time" when Jesus was united with his father; (5) the time
previous to the Roman rule; and (6) the fall of the Roman
empire. With each of the times represented, Jeffers con
trasts a sense of the passage of time with the unrelenting
permanence of nature. Human actions are mere pinpoints of
chronology contrasting against the unending cycles of na
ture, the movement of the moon and of the sea.
Among these pinpoints of time, Jesus recollects the
agony of his youth when he considered the possibility of
his bastardy and the character of his preaching before
coming to Jerusalem. Mary also remembers the awful nature
of Jesus' conception, her "sin," and the days of Jesus'
youth. Judas remembers the gentleness and the ease of his
early life and the specifics of his tortured life in
113
witnessing Jesus' growing arrogance resulting from his in
creasing popularity. Lazarus has the memory of his early
life compounded by his death and resurrection. Hef with
Jesus, also sees a future which is dominated by the exis
tence and the presence of Jesus in the hearts of men.
Later, Mary's ideas are confined to the moment and to the
predicament of her suffering, when she is not speaking as
Night Mother. Her final remarks are pinpointed on the ig
nominy of having to be stared at:
It was bitter enough when I was alone:
And now we are put into a pit to be stared at. I will go
and find him. (p. 48)
She leaves before Lazarus can make his final statements
about Jesus' effect upon history. She is past solace and
comforting in her concentration upon her present misery.
Mary's imagination as a woman and as a mother to a suffer-
ing child is consumed by her personal suffering. As Mother
Night, however, she was able to extend her vision to the
universality of the predicament. It is as a disembodied
and spectral Night Mother that she could respond to Judas'
agony of replacing himself in the past and in the present,
as well as in the future of mankind ("Good God, if one re
members the future . . ."), with the rhetorical question,
"Do you begin to remember the future? Then we must dream
our dreams hastily" (p. 15).
Thus, Jeffers uses temporal units as illustrative con
trasts to the eternity which the play speaks of. Judas
114
refers to the "three minutes of breathlessness" which it
takes to strangle as his means of escape to an "eternal
peace"; the span of Jesus' life affects an age; the day
spent in Jerusalem changes Jesus' peaceful revolution to
one of blood-letting and almost eager destruction; the en
tire passion and crucifixion is presented in the time be-
17
tween sunset and sunrise. Jeffers' constant reminder to
mankind is that these mighty sufferings, even when they
have an effect on an entire age, are, in the larger sense
of nature, only momentary flashes.
In "Dear Judas" Jeffers struggles more directly and
profoundly with the notions of time and history than he
does in any of his other dramatic poems. It is perhaps for
that reason that when produced on the stage, the play re
ceived the least critical approval of all the plays. A
modern dress story of Christ, especially a direct rather
than a symbolic presentation, is immediately in danger of
being resisted and disliked, and in his weaving of net and
nature images with a series of Gospel references, Jeffers
compounds the complexity. Essentially he has taken a re
ceived and still widely believed myth and has given to it
•^The mutes which Jeffers brings on stage add to the
pointlessness of the single act of death and crucifixion in
their failure to respond vocally, to do anything except
that which they did historically.
115
his own special treatment. The characters are counter-
traditional in motivation and personality; the view is an
tagonistic to the notion of Jesus' immortality and divinity;
human history has been exploded and telescoped. There are
so many changes in the basic, traditional story that the
critic might have a right to be confused.
Probably the most disturbing of the things about "Dear
Judas" to modern audiences is the embarrassing requirement .
to feel the suffering of Gethsemane in our time, to see the
death of Jesus as immediate and present. Jeffers requires
his reader and viewer to see Jesus at one and the same time
as both modern and intensely religious. He faces his
reader with the anguish of identifying with Jesus and his
predicament. As Jesus becomes thoroughly modern, he be
comes less than giant in size in spite of the final remarks
of Lazarus about Jesus' worth, his domination of one age
within human history.
If viewed outside of the Christian bias and outside of
the standard stage production criteria, the dramatic poem
is economical and remarkably integrated. The four charac
ters are psychologically convincing as well as interesting.
There is a unity of action, imagery, and tone. And de
pending upon the imagination of the reader, there is con
siderable dramatic interest in the stylized participation
of the mutes, in the resurrected Lazarus, in the conflict
116
between Jesus and Judas, and in the protracted suffering of
each of the leading characters.
CHAPTER IV
"AT THE FALL OF AN AGE"
AND
!
j "AT THE BIRTH OF AN AGE"
The third and fourth of Robinson Jeffers1 dramatic
: poems, "At the Fall of an Age" and "At the Birth of an Age,"
iwere written in the first half of the 1930's. The poet's
i
reputation had been solidly established by the publication
j of his long narratives, and he was writing at a high level
of production. Like "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," the dra-
!
; matic poems would be published as secondary works in vol-
| umes which featured the long narratives and lyric poems.
I
i Jeffers was still concentrating his primary attention on
!
| his contemporary, Carmel subjects and upon his nature lyr-
! ics, even though Dear Judas and Other Poems was the title
work of his 1929 volume.
In each consecutive dramatic poem, nevertheless, Jef-
| fers was making obvious progress towards simplification of
| structure and ideological entanglement. He had managed to
; tighten and to economize in specifically dramatic terms.
; Most significantly, he had dropped entirely the narrative,
i
authorial voice used intermittently as a narrative bridge
117
1X8
in the two previous dramatic poems, "The Tower Beyond Trag
edy" and "Dear Judas." He was thinking strictly in terms
of dialogue, depending exclusively upon dramatic presenta
tion of his ideas rather than upon narrative or descriptive
clarification or amplification. By eliminating the narra
tive, authorial voice, by simplifying plot structure, and
by limiting characterization he was, consciously or uncon-
| sciously, developing a much sharper focus upon dramatic
> pictorialization, theatrical workability. Most clearly, he
■
j was moving in a direct line towards the simplicity and
I
sharply delineated detail and action which would produce
"The Bowl of Blood," Medea, and "The Cretan Woman" a decade
j later.
I
I
i
"At the Fall of an Age"
i
i
Jeffers makes a continuous movement from complexity to
simplicity in his first three dramas in regard to the uni-
; ties of time, place, and action. In "Dear Judas" he adds
i
singleness of time to the unity of place which integrates
i "The Tower Beyond Tragedy." In "At the Fall of an Age" he
!
I
| adds to those unifying elements the singleness of action,
j His focus is directly upon the conflict of two women who
; have come to the climactic moments of their lives. Whereas
he had telescoped the entire legend of the House of Atreus
in his first play and a multiplicity of the parts of the
119
Gospels in his second play, he concentrates specifically on
the involuntary sacrificial act of Helen in a variant leg
end of her death to make his statement in "At the Fall of
an Age."
The action takes place in the course of one day, on
the steps of Polyxo's home in Rhodes. Although the emo
tions and motivations of the minor characters bear upon the
behavior of the main characters, Helen and Polyxo dominate
the attention of the audience. Their individual struggle,
on the simple level of human antagonism, is at the core of
the dramatic relevance of the play. The symbolic reverber
ations and the philosophic texture are expanded through the
speeches and actions of the minor characters and the group
actions.
The uncluttered action is paralleled by an uncompli
cated structure. The various polarities generated by the
major characters are repeated again and again in the struc
ture and minor characterizations. The play divides into
three parts: the introductory pastoral scene in which a
father takes back a pet lamb he has given to his son; the
middle, crucial scene of confrontation between Helen and
Polyxo; and a final scene after Helen's death in which
Polyxo is killed and the Myrmidons chant their final re
marks about the significance of the deaths. The progres
sion is dramatic, pictorial, tight and uncongested. The
characters, rather than a narrative voice, project theme
•120
and philosophy.
The strongly dramatic visualization of this poem may
be best illustrated by a comparison to the other poems in
the volume in which it was published, Give Your Heart to
l
|
| the Hawks. In the long title poem Jeffers also opens with
j a pastoral setting. Fayne Fraser is separating windfalien
apples into pans. Jeffers provides carefully structured,
| !
descriptive details, making the atmosphere simultaneously
paradisal and pastoral. It is morning, apples are piled
; into the dry weeds; the stubble field in which Fayne is
working is enclosed within a broken fence and separated
: i
from the sand of the beach and the unpredictability of the j
1 sea. Fayne's brown eyes, her sunburnt lips, small white !
teeth, white neck, "cinnabar-colored hair," and "long legs j
like a boy's" are listed. She is dressed in blue denim
■pants and a shirt. To gain her attention, Michael, her
| brother-in-law, enters, observes her and mischievously (ob-
' - |
viously in a symbolic manner) slips a snake, a "slender in-|
vader," up her pant leg. Fayne hurls rotten apples at him !
|
and they both finally stop their tussle when she cries,
i "Michael, you beast," and he calls out, "Quits, we're
even."^ Jeffers provides in the narrative and description
i
|
i
1 i
The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers (New York; j
| Random House, 1939), pp. 376-377. Subsequent references to
I this volume in this chapter will be indicated parentheti-
|cally.
121
a scene which, depends considerably upon the poetic cata
logue and upon a narrated series of metaphors and comment
for exposition and scene setting.
The subsequent events of "Give Your Heart to the Hawks;1
!are developed in a like manner. A party is planned, the
i
characters assemble, a murder (fratricide) is committed, an
interlude of madness is described, a sequence of attempted
acts of adjustment are described, and a final confrontation !
1 is provided in which Fayne's husband battles a herd of
I ;
j steers high on a cliff overlooking the sea. He rakes his
i
i
j bare hands on a barbed wire fence and hurls himself down to
; the rocks below. j
Throughout "Give Your Heart to the Hawks" Jeffers pro- I
i
! vides explicit, narrative, descriptive, and didactic com
ment upon the action of the poem. In his drama he makes a
I progressive use of the speeches of the chorus and charac-
; ters to make the same points. In the last line of the
; ^ i
third section of the poem, he speaks directly to Fayne and
to her husband as they bring the body of Lance home to the j
i
; ranch and to his parents. The voice is hortatory, direct.
|The technique is somewhat heavy-handed:
Oh, ignorant penitents, j
For surely the cause is too small for so much anguish. j
To be drunk is folly, to kill may call judgment down, |
But these are not enormous evils, ]
And as for your brother, he has not been hurt. j
For all the delights he has lost, pain has been saved him;
And the balance is strangely perfect,
And why are you pale with misery?
122
Because you have saved him from foolish labors and all the
vain days?
' From desires denied, and desires staled with attaining,
| And from fear of want, and from all diseases, and from
fear of death?
Or because you have kept him from becoming old,
When the teeth drop and the eyes dim and the ears grow
[dull,
And the man is ashamed?
Surely it is nothing to be slain in the overflowing
Than to fall in the emptiness;
And though this moon blisters the night,
Darkness has not died, good darkness will come again;
; Sometimes a cloud will crop all the stars. (pp. 391-392) j
|
In sharp contrast, in "At the Fall of an Age" Jeffers j
■ i
i imparts essentially the same message in the short and dra- j
I |
i !
■matically integrated speech of the Mymridons directed to j
!
!the hysterical Helen:
i
Queen, life and death are not better than two ears of a
; [carrion
Battening dog: there is nothing to choose. (p. 501)
Economy and the forcefulness are achieved through the dra-
matic implications rather than through the narrative tran
sition and intrusion of the poet's direct address in his
? 1
i narrative poem. j
I
In a brief introductory statement to "At the Fall of ' •
;an Age," Jeffers outlines the source of his version of the
:death of Helen of Troy. Following the prose introduction,
i
he adds a further prose statement describing the stage set
ting of the facade of the house, a stone staircase, a back-
2The difference in authorial voice intrusion is appa
rent as well when the economic style of the play is con
trasted to his technique of personal observation in the
short "lyric" poems of the volume.
I 123
I
| ground of a pine forest, and one pine tree with a bough
!
i overhanging the steps. He specifies that the time is
|twenty years after the fall of Troy and in simple terms de-
i
; scribes the entrance of a shepherd, the shepherd's son, and
i
a lamb on a tether. The stage and acting directions sub-
I stitute for the verse narration and description of "Give
|
'Your Heart to the Hawks," preparing the viewer or reader j
! for the symbolic connections which the action and dialogue |
will provide. The lamb prefigures the hanging of the "in
nocent" and flawlessly beautiful Helen at the end of the ;
i
i
play; and the apparently protective, overhanging bough of
j
: the tree and the stairway become her own scaffold. The |
1 opening dialogue is cryptic in its simplicity, anticipating|
the ferocity of the subsequent action by implication. The
I
shepherd advises his son that the lamb must be sacrificed, j
! !
that the gods demand perfection, and that the child through)
his innate skill as a shepherd has unfortunately chosen the j
flock's most perfect lamb for his pet. i
Rather than shifting directly to another scene, as he
does in "Give Your Heart to the Hawks" where he relied upon)
| narrative lines to provide cohesion, Jeffers uses the in-
i
troductory scene between the shepherd and his son as a dra-j
matic confrontation which prepares for the action immedi- j
ately following. With the arrival of the fishermen and the I
| announcement of the appearance of a mysterious ship, the
j
| shepherd and his son exit. The action is direct and
124
chronologically consecutive. Actions and dialogue carry
the burden of the thought and the symbolic intentions and
implications.
j Jeffers' thrust is most powerful, however, in the J
| I
verbal exchanges of his major characters. As in "The Tower j
! Beyond Tragedy," "At the Fall of an Age" contains confron- j
tations between strong, powerfully conceived and dramati- !
; cally drawn female characters. He makes the very substance;
of the play from the conflict, the unrelenting antagonism
j
;between these women. Polyxo, in the simplest terms, wants
j
revenge upon Helen who has unwillingly inspired Achilles' j
1 i
I
love. In Helen, Jeffers presents a beautiful, sexually |
!used, yet still paradoxically almost virginal figure, in
: contest for her life with the ugly, haggard, although I
ichaste wife of Achilles. They meet. Polyxo demands, waits
for, and receives a complete telling of Helen's history
i
; i
since the death of Menelaus, including her rape by Achilles.!
Polyxo resolves immediately to have revenge; against the
will and the desire of her own guard and people, she has j
j
Helen hanged naked on the steps of the house before the j
!public.
^Jeffers wrote a number of his most powerful confron
tations employing the matched wrath of two women: Clytem-
| nestra and Cassandra, Clytemnestra and Electra in "The
|Tower Beyond Tragedy"; Helen and Polyxo in "At the Fall of !
| an Age"; Gudrun and Chrysothemis in "At the Birth of an j
|Age"; Medea and the Nurse in Medea. j
125
The polarities and varieties of man's exaggerated
self-estimate are demonstrated in at least five important,
particular thematic motifs woven into the structure, char- j
i
acterizations and confrontations of the play. (1) The ;
i
i power of physical beauty in the person of Helen is stressed.1
I (2) The intensity of rage in Polyxo is set in stark con- ;
I i
| trast. (3) The perpetual recurrence of war lust and mili- ’
| tary enthusiasm in the ensemble movement and speaking of
1 the Myrmidons contrasts with Polyxo's guard in the latter's
i
■ recollections of the battles of the Trojan war and the spe-
! cific exploits of Achilles. (4) The immortality and the j
permanence of nature in the sea, the animal imagery, and !
' the fisherman figure of Calcho echo the poet's philosophy.
(5) The necessity for sacrificial and ritual death for the
nourishment and the renewal of nature's cycles first in the:
; opening scene involving the planned sacrifice of a lamb and i
; second in the concluding deaths of both Helen and Polyxo
expands the idea of perpetual repetitions in nature.
The various motifs are neither discrete nor indepen-
dent. Each supplements the other, and each crystallizes
'
the dramatic meeting of the major figures of the play. Hu- i
i
man behavior is made graphic through the instances of bru-
; tality and blood-lust in the spectacle of Helen's death, .
! through the ironies of the opening scene, through the
1 i
| choreographically and theatrically arranged movements and j
126
chants of the Myrmidons, and through reference to the
|beauty of Helen and the ugliness of Polyxo.
|
| In one remarkable exchange, when Helen is being brought
I
forth, naked, to be hanged, Jeffers draws the various ele-
I
j
Iments together. Polyxo's militia is seething, agitated.
I The Myrmidons are standing mute. Polyxo is hysterical in
!her near triumph, while Helen is begging for her life: !
Polyxo
Rabble, you
know your boundary: the soldiers
of Telopelemus. Few, but enough. These will not lust
[for a harlot. |
These are the men that saw i
The gods fighting, when the rivers of the plain flowed j
[fire and the |
earth roared like water .... Veterans of Troy: !
, It is mine to avenge your labor and pain and your leader's!
[death;
it is yours to keep these plowboys in awe
And herd those herdsmen.
The Myrmidons j
Old men you ought to have died j
In your good years, not wearily j
Gone home to rust.
If you had died and revived again
Your hair would not be snowed under but brown as ours,
And your eyes as fierce.
i
i
Polyxo (to the slave) !
I said, halter that woman. Between the dead
and the living my hatred stands.
Helen
i
Will you stand and let me be slain, you men of Rhodes?
| Polyxo j
| What is life sweet? Cry out. Weep publicly. Show all j
| [your |
127
mind, make all your grief like your body naked.
Surely it is all as beautiful as your body, and I shall
[be merciful.
The Myrmidons j
It is beautiful to see men die by violence, but to watch j
j [a woman j
Killed is the crown. Oh Queen die boldly. j
I
Helen i
■ ■ ■ ■ i
j !
! I pray you on my knees, Polyxo.
Life is too dear to be spent on pride. I am not afraid, j
[but I j
love life.
Polyxo
| I tell you, kneeling's |
Not half enough. You must act fear, if you feel none. ,
' [Plead;
scream. (p. 500) j
iHelen, whose chain of lovers has stretched from the hero !
Theseus to the ineffectual Menelaus, to the splendid Paris
I and Deiphobus, to the reincarnated and awesome Achilles, !
i
emerges as a pure and appealing figure, a life force; while|
; Polyxo whose love has been single-mindedly preserved for
Achilles even after his death and infidelity, evolves as a
monstrous hag.
In the first of the five thematic motifs, Jeffers em- :
: i
; ploys an economy and power of language in the development j
; !
of a sense of Helen's beauty. Calcho tells Polyxo that the|
yet unidentified woman, just debarked from the long black ;
; ship which has beached itself in the storm, possessed a j
beauty "like the thoughts of God, burning and calm" (p.
4 87). Polyxo recalls in metaphor: __________________ _____
12 8
We knew one like that
Gold and fire and ivory . . .
When Helen obeys Polyxo's command to remove her veil, Polyxo
is moved to catalogue the details of the beauty which have
been preserved against age and against her "wickedness."
In the shock she suffers in her awareness of the contrast
of Helen's luminous beauty with her own natural decay, she
exclaims:
Oh, your beauty is pure,
Young and burning and holy; you are not changed
from the bride Menelaus unveiled or the young wife
The long soft eyes of Paris lustfully lingered on . . . .
(p. 488)
Polyxo again celebrates the beauty of Helen before display
ing her naked to the crowds and hanging her. Her address
to the captive, unwilling sacrificial victim, although
venom filled is an honest appraisal of Helen's beauty. She
subsequently exults in the thought that soon she will see
Helen's "face puffed purple," her breasts turned black, her
neck broken, and her feet either shrivelled up or swollen
by the effects of the hanging. The Myrmidons emphasize the
requirement that Helen possess and transmit, through sacri
fice of her own life, her great beauty for a new age. They
repeat the same images of her breasts and throat which
Polyxo had anticipated as corruptible in death:
Oh perfectly beautiful, pain is brief, endure to be
[sacrificed
This great age falls like water and a new
Age is at birth, but without pain it would never be
[beautiful.
129
The golden fleece of your hair, the straining
Shoulders, the dove-throat, the breasts thrust forward by
[the
strain of bonds'"
Shall yield their beauty to the earth and sky,
The wonderful breasts their soul to all the flushing
[hills of earth,
The long white thighs to the marble mountains. (p. 501)
I In a frenzy of hatred, at the moment before the hanging,
Polyxo reviews again the same details of Helen's beauty as
she considers the pleasure of revenge heightened by the
! I
I
, sheer joy of seeing that perfection destroyed: j
I am glad you are beautiful
| Beyond fault, beyond nature: the ridiculous ugliness of |
i [death
! and corruption look more dreadful to you;
! I am glad you had many lovers, you will lie alone; I am
[glad time
could not touch you nor age deflower you, |
That your beauty is like the African crystal no point can j
[scratch,j
unwoundable, uncontaminable;
For what comes now shall very suddenly unpolish it. Ah,
[ah, Ah,
| I am sick with delight. Call the black ravens, you
: [beautiful
j woman.
Oh Helen, black crows and heavy-beaked ravens be your
lovers, to kiss your eyes. Call the mountains
Of Asia to look at you. (pp. 49 8-499) !
The venom with which Polyxo has reacted against the Myrmi- j
dons and her own guard is suggestive of Clytemnestra1s j
charges against the people of Mycenae and the soldiers of
. !
Agamemnon in the earlier play "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" j
and, in this scene, her sheer joy at the prospect of de- |
■ J
stroying her adversary is a forerunner of Medea's shrill
excitement at the news of Creusa's fearsome death resulting
from her magic. The progression from Clytemnestra to
130
Polyxo to Medea is direct.
Jeffers uses a number of terms to emphasize the divine
quality of the beauty, then, in Calcho's, Polyxo1s, and the
Myrmidons' descriptions. In each instance he stresses the
"burning" and "calm" beauty contained in one figure. j
jHelen's very beauty makes her worthy as a sacrifice for the
' initiation of a new age. The Myrmidons announce the re-
! i
I quirement: j
At the fall of an age men must make sacrifice
i To renew beauty, to restore strength.
| We say that if the perfect beauty were sacrificed,
j The very beauty that makes our death-cleansed eyes !
j Dazzle with tears, would be spread on the sky {
And earth like a banner.
All men would begin to desire again, and value j
Come back to the earth, and splendor walk there.
! There is one perfection to be poured out, one lonely j
[beauty
Left in the world, as lonely as the last eagle.
(pp. 496-497)|
i
Polyxo orders the hanging to be carried out. Without nar- !
1 i
rative intrusion Jeffers adds the objections of the people j
I !
t i
| of Rhodes. Polyxo is adamant, and the Myrmidons dance and j
chant, celebrating the fact that "the daughter of God" has |
died and their human master, Achilles, has been served. j
I
: Polyxo, ready to view the body and to revile it, is star
tled by the beauty that it retains. She, like Achilles who
was disappointed in his sexual union with Helen, is unsat- :
: i
: i
! isfied by her death. Helen's corpse is still lustrously
| beautiful as it continues to swing from the branch of the
i
! tree.
131
In sharp contrast to Helen's beauty, Jeffers creates
a picture of withered physical decay and haggardness, of
human wretchedness, in the face and body of Polyxo. Her
actions are an extension of her physical characteristics.
She is avenger and obsessed demon. In italics he describes
| her "thin gray-white hair, corded throat and wrinkled
cheeks." Both women, once girlhood playmates, are deftly
!
i etched as opposites, a point which Polyxo cannot forget as j
1 1
she recounts her other miseries, her abandonment, her lone-i
: liness. Jeffers repeats the same contrasts and stark dif- j
ferences in Medea's comparisons of herself with Jason's new
bride, Creusa.^
; In contrast to the central dramatic figures in his
: other plays, Helen resists death to the end. But as with
I Cassandra and Electra in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," even
I her royal position does not keep her from death; her affir-
|
; mation of life is futile. She offers a fruitless "life
i i
i f
! I
: wish" which is personal, vigorous, and sustained, as strong;
; as is Polyxo's desire for her death;
i ^There can be little doubt about Jeffers' desire to
establish a specific meaning for physical beauty. He uses
the word "beauty" fifteen times in the twenty page poem,
i "beautiful" nineteen times, as well as employing the con-*
t tinuous specific catalogues of Helen's and nature's mani
fest beauty. It is a facet of the life force, of the vi^
tality in the individual as well as in the age. Conse^-
quently, its ultimate perishability takes on a special
force.
132
I have lived
and seen the great beauty of things, and been loved
[and
honored
If now I must die it is come. Nothing on earth nor in
ocean is hatefuller than death; at least I have not
Wasted my life like this gray murderess, fouling with age,
lying twenty years in the pit of time
Grinding the rust on a knife. (p. 502)
j
| Previously she had knelt to Polyxo begging for her life,
I
| "Life is too dear to be spent on pride. I am not afraid,
i
I but I love life" (p. 500). When her appeal is denied, she
1 makes her speech of affirmation and offers in contrast the
i
I superiority of her way of life to that of her enemy. Not-
i
withstanding, she is hanged.
' In the background of Polyxo's immediate desire for
: revenge is the third of the dramatic motifs in the play,
I the ever-present, generalized blood-lust of mankind em- j
i
I
i bodied in the aging warrior-guard, who surround her house, j
j and the walking, dead Myrmidons killed and reincarnated
I with Achilles and now accompanying Helen. The pastoral
! i
scene which opens the play is interrupted by the announce
ment that armed men are coming ashore from a mysterious j
ship with a beautiful woman. Jeffers manages an immediate
i
sense of the conflict and dramatic urgency in shifting from
; the mild scene between shepherd and son to the emergence of
|the house guard on the steps awaiting the identification of
:the approaching military contingent.^
^Polyxo questions the captain of her own guard about
133
In her challenge to Helen, Polyxo refers to the sol
diers and requires an explanation of their presence. Helen,
in turn, begs the Myrmidons to take her away to Mount Ida
on Crete, and their captain reminds her of their desire to
!
return to the burial hill near Troy. An important image is i
: I
first suggested in this passage in which the soldiers spec-j
I
ify their homelessness: the image that they are seed, now i
wind-tossed, planted in Asia by the fact of their death and'
: i
' burial there. Helen accepts their refusal and defends her-
| self against Polyxo's accusations. First, she praises the
j i
j kind treatment given her by men, even by the offended and j
' distressed elders of Troy, marred only by the harshness of
i !
; the militaristic, essentially beauty-hating Achilles.6 she!
i their identity. He reports that by their sternness and
i their "fierce obedient faces" (p. 4 86) they must have
i served some great man. He then describes Helen's beauty.
■ Polyxo recalls the special features of her beauty and calls
iher "that fountain of death." Jeffers returns to the foun-j
I tain imagery he has used with Helen's sister Clytemnestra |
; in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," with Mary in "Dear Judas,"
and to which he will turn again with Gudrun in "At the
■ Birth of an Age." The metaphor in each case emphasizes thej
: intense paradox of a fertile woman who is source of both
death and continuing life which pours forth alternately *
; fresh and polluted water. Calcho then rejoins the defend- j
| ers of Polyxo's house to confront the machine-like unit of j
; Helen's guard, the Myrmidons. This ensemble has the same j
choreographic, spatial responsibility as do the Mutes of [
i "Dear Judas" and the Maskers of "The Bowl of Blood." In j
! his italicized directions Jeffers arranges the stage so !
that Helen and Polyxo are placed alternately at the focal ;
points before their soldiers or passing between them.
6She specifies that he so hated beautiful human flesh
that he gleefully dragged the heroic body of Hector in the
dust.
134
becomes reticent when Polvxo insists that she continue her
I tale. Jeffers then transfers the dramatic focus to the
Myrmidons who in a "heavy pacing dance" chant their history,
their service to Achilles, their fighting in the Trojan War,
their death, their obedience even in death to their leader,
jand their reason for being present at the moment when
j Our master went in and laid off his armor, and the
queen of Laconia
Screamed once, and then sweetly smiled. |
The wild male power of the world j
; Was mated with the perfect beauty. (p. 493) j
'[Significantly, the mating of the warrior Achilles and Helen j
| i
;was witnessed by his military forces. As at her death, J
i they become a symbolic, priestly accompaniment of a quasi- j
jsacramental act. I
| Jeffers' orchestration of these motifs is a careful
i
|interplaying of Helen's and Polyxo's specific and immediate j
i i
!
|conflicts against the larger framework of the cruel mili- j
i tary behavior of the male. Helen's interruption of the j
Myrmidons' record is halted by Polyxo's parting guard into i
j
her death trap. After Helen has been warned by Calcho of !
; i
her danger, the people of Rhodes recoil at Polyxo's excla- J
i
imation of joy. Helen's guards, the dead soldiers of their
imistress's husband, recount their past deeds of valor. The
^None of Jeffers' students or critics has paid suffi
cient attention to Jeffers' debt to William Butler Yeats,
whom he read and whom his wife idolized. The parallel with
"Leda and the Swan" seems particularly strong in this sec
tion of "At the Fall of an Age.1 '
135
excitement generated in the soldiers is intensified by the
repetition of their awareness of the importance of their
charge, Helen, in instituting a new age.
While Helen is being prepared for her hanging, the
Myrmidons chant again, speaking of the twin issues of their
past heroic deeds and the need for a new sacrificial vic-
| tim. As the twilight comes and they anticipate the ritual
' i
[ hanging, their physical presence (as has already been noted)
I
j gives military as well as sacramental ceremony to the scene.
' They are not only dead warriors, but attendant priests as
! ■ i
j well. In their chant they repeat that seed has been !
| planted in Asia in the burial of Achilles and of themselves
j after battle. The repeated references to seed and to the
: new life are concluded in a comment on the imminent sacri-
i fice, the catalyst for a new age: j
They have planted wild seed in the air who lifted God's
; Daughter on high, wavering aloft, blessing the new
' Age at birth with the beauty of her body. (p. 504) j
The fourth motif, although secondary to the awesome
presence of the military figures and of the leading charac
ters in establishing mood and theme, is important to the
play's total effect and is developed primarily through sea
and animal images. They echo Jeffers' consistent theme of j
■ nature's permanence and its eternity. Helen's and Polyxo'sI
; confrontation, the observation of the Myrmidons upon their
past military exploits, and the unceasing insistence upon
Helen's death (sacrificial for the Myrmidons and revengeful
136
for Polyxo) are given an aesthetic wholeness in the context
of the natural phenomena and surrounding elements.
As well as placing sustained emphasis upon the nearby
sea and ship, the presence of the wind and storm, the cen
tral position on the set of the tree, and the changing !
O
color of the sky in the night's progress to dawn, Jeffers
I
uses several techniques to stress the importance of nature :
; j
; in the drama. Reminding us of the lamb in the first scene,j
| !
' Helen's neck is draped with the noose as the Myrmidons in- ;
t I
j sist on her fitness as a perfect sacrificial victim de-
! i
imanded by the gods. Calcho, Polyxo's guard, carries a tri-
I dent as his symbol of employment. He is a fisherman, a
! i
! provider of food. He uses his trident, symbolically, in !
slaying his mistress at the conclusion of the play. The :
; I
i
: same high wind which had carried the "long black ship" j
| bearing Helen and the Myrmidons had also stopped Calcho j
| from going out to the sea to fish. He assumes his secon- j
dary position as part of the guard, speaking at intervals j
^Jeffers stresses the passage of time precisely in the
! hours between twilight and dawn in five of his plays.
I Orestes struggles with himself and comes to his resolution
in the course of one night; the battle which destroys
: Gudrun and her brothers takes place at night in "At the j
: Birth of an Age"; the moon is a central image of "Dear j
| Judas"; "The Bowl of Blood" is set in the night and Hitler
I resolves to continue with his plans as the sun rises. "The|
| Cretan Woman," Medea, and "Mary and Elizabeth" are excep- \
J tions, although the first two are played in the course of I
one day. Significantly, many of the long narratives are
also set during the night.
137
either in revulsion of what he sees Polyxo planning or in
direct warning to Helen about her danger. He is ignored by
Helen and must drop back to simply observe the sequence of
events. Immediately affected by the sight of Helen even
before reporting her arrival, he is moved to her defense.
I
Impotent in his purpose, he witnesses the hanging. After
Helen's death and Polyxo's exultant speech, he turns on
! i
i her, stabbing her: j
Old Woman,
revenge is a slippery fish. This from Calcho. (p. 503)
i
i He is struck down by the Myrmidons, who without interrupt- j
I i
;ing their ritual dance, apostrophize the storm in an enthu-|
; siasm of the actual achievement of the long-awaited sacri-
j !
fice.
The concluding lines (three pages) of the dramatic I
poem are filled with the nature images which are used fre- j
quently throughout the play. Polyxo refers to Helen as a j
i ;
! hanged panther to be pelted with pine cones and clods of
earth. The Myrmidons address the silent body as "Wild swan,;
i
splendid-bodied," catalogue her physical features, recall |
: their anthill-like burial mound, address the wind, and
speak of the seeds emerging from grass roots, of the "hawks
of Caucasus," of "African lions in the tawny wilderness,"
i
and of the "starved dog" Menelaus. An exultant Polyxo pre-j
' i
| pares to address the wind, commanding "let the tree stand"
!
| from which Helen hangs. Enraged by Helen's sustained
138
beauty even in death, she speaks to the white mountains in
the distance, "ice-helmeted peaks," to observe her triumph.
She combines both military and nature references in her
metaphor. As she moans that the wind has snatched away her
i
triumph through whim, she is stabbed and dies. The lines j
1 are crowded with images of nature and of violence. Jef- j
j fers' technique has been to intermingle these images ;
; throughout the play and to culminate with an intense com-
;pression of all the forces in the denouement.
Finally, the poem contains Jeffers' repeated thematic
motif of the ephemeral nature of man, of his essential bes-j
t
1 I
;tiality and the waste of energy he expends in his self-
jaggrandisement. Man must continually go through the cere
monies and rituals in order to exalt himself and to placate
his own blood lust. In an early comment the Myrmidons men- j
;tion that Achilles has finally rejected all of his human
!ambitions, including his desire for Helen, and has returned;
wearily to death. Their own compelling impulse is to see
Helen sacrificed and to return to death themselves. Both
the life force of Helen and the nihilism of Polyxo, both
the beautiful and the withered, are over. The incarnated i
I
i
soldiers and the aging guard of Polyxo are impotent. Jef- i
;fers does, however, introduce into the play the important
;element of the enthusiasms of the Myrmidons for a new age
|springing from their collective sacrifice. The irony of j
i i
1 i
!the new age is in the fact that it is spoken from the I
139
mouths of dead men, men who view violence as a positive
j force, men who see a new age in which regeneration will
;
lead to new cyclical movements of violence and destruction.
Jeffers concludes with their frenzied speech ending:
Heavily beat, bronze upon bronze.
| Clash, bronze; beat, shields; beauty is new-born.9
| The irony is intense. At this point "The flame is blown
from the torches by the violent wind,1 1 signifying the puni-
i
I ness of man's emotion in contrast with the power of nature.
II
i
"At the Birth of an Age"
I
; A number of the paradoxes suggested by the special
| features of "At the Fall of an Age," especially the spe-
Icific acts of vengeance, are expanded in Jeffers' next
idrama, "At the Birth of an Age," which shifts from Greek
|
subject matter to the Teutonic mythology and Christian ori
gins. Jeffers wrote his largest cast of characters and his
most comprehensive view of the cyclical nature of man's
tendency to cruelty into the second drama. In the bulk and
the intricacy of the drama he developed simultaneous and
contrasting illustrations of the single, hard realities he
believed to be at the core of human existence— blood-lust,
^Those critics who have identified a debt in Jeffers
to Walt Whitman should note the similarity in these lines
to Whitman's Civil War poem, "Beat, Beat, Drums."
140
revenge motivation, inordinate concern for human and per
sonal affairs. In addition, he developed a highly complex
system of interrelated and supportive image patterns.
If Jeffers ever presented a genuine Gestalt for his
1 t I
jphilosophy, it is most clearly particularized in "At the j
i i
Birth of an Age." Within its formal units he has combined, J
almost without exception, all of his basic ideas concerning
the nature of man and man's relationship with external na- j
ture. In part, the size of his cast, with the various sym- ;
| bolic functions of the individual characters, provides the
method of illustration. They articulate the diverse forces j
j
;which create the composite of human behavior. The images j
| through which they describe events and personalities con
stitute in their totality the texture of the author's world
: view. However, it is in the configuration of the drama
itself that Jeffers provides a workable superstructure for j
his ideas. !
| i
In "At the Fall of an Age" Jeffers repeats the organic !
structure of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy." As in the earlier;
drama, although formally different in that he labeled the I
! j
parts or scenes from one through eleven, the first section |
|
deals with the living struggle of the protagonist, and the j
; second with the revelation and epiphany which a submission
' to "inhumanism" makes possible. j
j For clarity's sake, the play can be examined briefly
I
| in three ways, each revealing a facet of Jeffers' total,
I
dramatic concept of action and of his progress toward clar-
i ity and simplicity of structure: the plotting or sequence
of events which parallels that of his earlier dramatic po
ems; the formal structure and enumeration of parts which he
!
; provided for this play and which approximate his method for
writing the narrative poems; and the organic structure
which relates both philosophic and aesthetic counterpoints.
The simple resume of the action illustrates Jeffers' j
i concern with highly charged, melodramatic situations upon
| which he would build his tragic statement. Gudrun, the
i widow of the warrior (Siegfried) Sigurd meets her brothers j
: at a farm outside her present husband's encampment the ' j
■ night before a great battle with the Roman forces. She j
invites them to the camp, plotting to have them killed in
; retribution for their conspiracy in the death of her first j
1 I
j husband, Sigurd. After a banquet at which Lupus, a Chris- j
‘ j
i tian bishop, is mistreated, Gudrun changes her mind and j
goes to visit her brothers in their confinement. They have:
escaped, however, and have been killed in their struggle.
f
Gudrun takes her own life. Her shade ascends a mountain
i i
i ■ :
: where she encounters disembodied spirits and where, after }
a self-examination and renunciation, she eschews her ambi- j
tions and submits to a total identification with nature. ;
Jeffers' formal divisions shed a further light upon
i ;
his concept of the drama, however. In the eleven segments,
| he provides a progression paralleling the chapter-like
142
divisions of his long narrative poems, which have been fre
quently compared to the verse novel in conception and exe
cution.
I. The three brothers meet at a pre-arranged point,
|
near the encamped hordes of Attila the Hun. They
reveal their individual ambitions and personalities.
II. Gudrun confronts them, offering symbolic gifts and
i
persuading them, while withholding her motives, to j
i
i
enter the camp.
III. They await admission to an audience with Gudrun*s |
i
present husband Attila. Each reveals, either di- j
rectly or in asides, more about his basic character- I
j
istics. I
IV. The feast in the ruined atrium of a Roman villa pro- I
i
vides the setting for the conversation between j
Attila, Gudrun, and her brothers; the confrontation
i
between Attila and the Christian Bishop Lupus; the j
i
attempted murder of Gudrun and the wounding of her
I
youngest brother; the announcement of the approach
i
i
of the Roman army; Gudrun*s retraction of her re- '
quest that her brothers be executed, and their exit
under arrest; and a brief conference between Attila j
I
and his military advisers. j
V. In her private apartments Gudrun questions her I
Christian servant on the pragmatic power of submis
sion, patience and religious conviction.
143
VI. The Sweeper (a symbolic figure separate from the
rest of the cast and reminiscent of the Greek chorus)
speaks, against the background of the sounds of
moving armies, concerning the cycles of war.
i
| VII. Gudrun’s youngest brother, Carling, frees himself
j and departs to help his brothers escape. j
| VIII. Gudrun scorns her maid’s reasoning and, in disobedi-j
ence to Attila's explicit orders, goes into the
night unprotected.
IX. Gudrun confronts her brothers, is rejected by each,
and is lost in battle. In the course of the battle i
\ j
I the brothers are all slain. Gudrun rejects Attila i
and stabs herself. She rises as a shade and offers
herself to the wind.
X. The Sweeper speaks from the apron of the stage aboutj
J I
I his never-ending job of keeping order. j
i i
XI. Gudrun, as spirit, ascends a mountain upon which she;
! ' !
examines her motives, identifies with the past, and
upon rejection of self, becomes one with the uni
verse.
I !
i [
Although both the plot synopsis as well as the outline j
of the formal sections of the drama provide insights into
: the work, it is in the larger, organic structure that Jef- j
I fers' dramatic concept can best be illustrated. In "The i
j I
i Tower Beyond Tragedy," the philosophic and aesthetic divi- j
144
sion corresponds to the lest physical act of violence. "At
the Birth of an Age" divides after the climactic battle be
tween the Romans and Attila1s armies and the death of Gud
run. In each play the major characters undergo transforma
tions induced by violent action. They relinquish personal
tidentity and submit completely to nature. However, Ores
tes1 resolution is achieved offstage and simply announced
: rather than dramatized; Gudrun undergoes her "outward" ori
entation through a number of on-stage speeches orchestrated
against the voices of disembodied spirits. The first half
I of the play follows a conventional dramatic contour: expo
sition (formal divisions I-III); rising action, complica
tion and climax (formal divisions IV-first part of IX),
climax and denouement (final part of formal division IX).
The bridge necessary for the transition from human and liv
ing, specific controversy to a universalized statement is
: provided by formal division X in the axiomatic, less than
page long speech of the Sweeper. Jeffers describes him in !
1
an italicized stage direction as "inhumanly remote and tall"!
and engaged "absent-mindedly sweeping." The Sweeper re-
; i
peats the phrases which he uttered in division VI: j
A fair field, as they say, well swept, |
I've labored all night and seen the yellow lions of the j
[day |
Creep on the Argonne hills peering for prey.
Plenty: they're breaking each other's bones already. Go
[it, Goth.
i Sick 'em Hun. Now I can take a few hours off and back
j [to
I work in the afternoon, for —
145
Hun brag and hound bay,
This broom decides the day.
Roman hold and Hun ride,
My broom will decide.
Strictly according to orders: I'll recite them for you.
[First: to
blow Attila back to the Danube. Second: to clear the
[air of
the chittering ghosts of the slain. Third: to pat
[down the
j battle-corpses and gloss over everything.
| So much anger, so much toil,
! All to make soil,
i So much fury to feed grass
Comes to pass.
All the horror, all the pain . . . [
What's horror and pain? If I could understand the words
[I might j
remember the rhyme. (scratching his head) . . . Well,!
[but
| Some day cabbages and vineyards
Will spring out of the warriors' inwards. (p. 546)
' The short, nearly doggerel-like verse picks up the spirit
j
I of the short lines and rhymes which Gudrun's shade utters j
after her suicide (pp. 543-544) and the subsequent short j
J
; I
; lines and verse variations of section XI which are in sharp
contrast to the longer, ten-beat lines of sections I-VIII,
which are more characteristic of the narrative poems. j
It is in section XI that Jeffers leaves behind his
discussion of inter-human conflicts and turns resolutely to}
. Gudrun who in her final changes provides what must be re
garded either as an appendix to the play proper or as an
extended, anti-climactic second part in which the play-
|
wright expands and particularizes the resolution. ;
i The structure, then, depends upon a division between
Jeffers' treatment in conventional terms of a conflict of
146
man versus his fellow-man in sections I-IX and the orato
rio-like final sections, both of which exploit the dramatic
potentials of individuals first in the context of immediate
controversy and then in the larger framework of universal
i
|order and natural organization and mythic treatment, man's
| coming to grips with his own nature as it fits into the
| larger, cosmic arrangement of existence. The considered,
' • I
I determined approach was crystallized in Jeffers' introduc- j
I
ition to the work itself:
j
I The theme of self-contradiction and self-frustration,
! in Gudrun's nature, intends to express a characteristic j
quality of this culture-age, which I think should be
called the Christian age, for it is conditioned by Chris
tianity, and— except a few centuries' lag— concurrent
with it. Its civilization is the greatest, but also the
i most bewildered and self-contradictory, the least inte
grated, in some phases the most ignoble, that has ever
existed. All these qualities, together with the charac- j
I teristic restlessness of the age, its energy, its ex-
; tremes of hope and fear, its passion for discovery, I
think are bred from the tension between its two poles, of
! Western blood and superimposed Oriental religion. This
| is the tension that drew taut the frail arches of Gothic
Cathedrals, as now it spins the frail cosmogonies of !
; recent science and the brittle utopias of economic the
ory. This tension is really the soul of the age, which
will begin to die when it ceases. In modern times the
direction of the tension has shifted a little; the Chris- ;
tian faith is becoming extinct as an influence, compen-
satorily the Christian ethic becomes more powerful and
| conscious, manifesting itself as generalized philanthropy,
| liberalism, socialism, communism, and so forth. But the
tension is weakened by the physical and especially the
spiritual hybridization that civilized life always brings
with it; the Christian pole is undergoing constant attri- j
tion, steadily losing a little more than it gains.
(p. 505) ;
; |
Jeffers continues to discuss the fading away of the influ
ence of the Christian faith and explains that his constant
question during the writing of the play was an attempt to
j explain why Gudrun, who becomes his philosophic and theat
rical spokesman, behaves as she does. Gudrun becomes his
thematic voice, as Orestes was in "The Tower Beyond Trag
edy," separate from the narrative voice he used in the
]
longer, title poem of the volume.
The development of the variations within the two com
peting cultures is focused, obviously, within the conflict
|
of Gudrun, but is also made dramatically clear not only in j
: the action, but in the characterizations of the other fig- j
;ures. The paradoxical union of the barbaric and the civi-
|
: lized is demonstrated not only in the dichotomies within
! the one central character but in the entire sequence of
; actions performed by all parts of society.
On the simplest level, the action of the story evolves
; from Gudrun's desire for vengeance; her self-examination
and determined behavior to achieve revenge; her remorse and j
self-inflicted death; and her discovery in death of an an- ;
: swer to her questioning. The predicament is announced, the j
: I
protagonist struggles in its grip, a purgative action is
j completed, and the protagonist dies. Awareness, however,
comes after death, after a surrender not only of the ambi
tions and lusts of life, but of existence itself. j
j
Imposed upon the struggle and the particularized an- j
|guish of the central character are a series of dramatic
I techniques, not the least of which are dramatic confronta
148
tions and spectacle. Gudrun*s brothers— Gunnar, Hoegni,
and Carling— provide examples of ineffective leadership:
Gunnar is overly pious and relies upon the traditions and
prerogatives of kingship; Hoegni has a surly self-asser
tiveness and a sense of racial superiority; and Carling in
dulges in youthful dreaming and hero-worship. They are
subservient and out of power. In contrast, Gudrun*s hus
band and his court illustrate the vanity of power; although
they are strong, they are still transient. Attila in his
i i
j callousness is at the end of an age, antagonistic to a j
; force greater than himself, one which will in spite of his
present power destroy him. His lieutenants are unquestion-j
I ing in their support and allegiance to his power, his au- j
i thority. Lupus, a Christian bishop, is a weakened old man i
i !
: whose effect is slight in the immediate situation, although
the era which he represents is to become (for its span) the
, dominant one. Similarly, Chrysothemis, Gudrun*s handmaid,
operates as a rather feeble and timid demonstration of what
Jeffers considers only another of man's fantasies, that I
i
i
good comes from good, that submission and conformity to j
human establishments and systems can achieve a rewarding
end.
I
At least five characters operate within an extra- j
i
human context to complicate and to enrich the speculation
and philosophic argument. Sigurd (Siegfried), the murdered
hero and first husband to Gudrun, represents, at least to
149
her, firmness of purpose in love and marriage. To Attila
! he is a non-entity, simply a first husband to an extraordi
narily attractive wife; to Gudrun's brothers he is a part
of the past to be forgotten. Jeffers, fascinated by the
figure of the hanged god, includes and counter-poses four j
I
j of them in the play: the hanged farmer or demi-human at
- the opening of the play who is a combination or precursor !
i |
i of the later officially designated gods; Woden (Odin) with i
whom Siegfried is equated; Prometheus, whose picture hangs
)
; above the feast scene in which Atilla humiliates the Chris-
i
tian bishop Lupus; and Christ who is central to the coming j
! age and who is identified in the last scene as the "young ]
i
' man."
Jeffers organizes the drama by a progression from the
most specifically realistic scenes and the scenes of psy-
i chological and emotional torment at the opening of the play!
! to a protracted cataloguing of natural forces and realities!
with philosophic considerations at the play’s conclusion.
The realistic descriptions contained in the opening
encounters at the meeting of Gudrun and her brothers on a
field beside the camps of the barbarian hordes shift to de-|
tails of decayed opulence in the ruins of a Homan villa. ;
| Jeffers then describes a private moment of Gudrun's self-
I examination and study and shifts to a battle. Finally, he
| presents a larger than life depiction of a cosmic purgation
! and identification with nature on a mountain top. In the
150
final scene, Jeffers manages to include his most sweeping
and inclusive panorama of poetic devices and his most bril
liant control of dramatic contrasts in the volume in which
| the play was published. The singers, as a chorus of com-
i
jmentators, respond to the agonizing Gudrun, who cannot as i
I
yet wholly give up her human wishes and identifications,
i . I
!with short lines of praise to an unidentified god. The |
j :
Young Man answers them with a plea to be forgiven for his
I
'lies about his immortality and divinity upon earth. His
I lines are long and full of despair:
My dream was a fool.
My promises were a love—drunken madness. '
As if deliberately, the singers continue to praise the
young man and to read hope into his words. Jeffers has
switched the attention from Gudrun to the predicament of
the young man god:
I hoped. I am finally betrayed and perfectly fooled to |
[the end. j
It is only my dream of my own death
Hanged on the sky. Blind stars remember.
The skies open on the mountain pinnacle which Gudrun has
ascended as a spirit answers with a long statement about
!his suffering and about his identification with the long- j
ings and desires of mankind, his existence in their minds
! (pp. 548-551).
Jeffers has come full circle in the course of the
jdrama from the rather sordid ambitions of the human charac- i
! i
Iters at the opening of the play to the exalted comments of j
a god-figure at the conclusion. The significance of the
imovement from particularized desires to a generalized suf
fering is clearly that both are ultimately futile and mean-
|ingless in contrast with the significance of nature.
j
| After "At the Fall of an Age" and "At the Birth of an
Age" Jeffers continued to experiment in dramatic literature.
! He moved away from the closet drama, the dramatic poem,
| however. Although certainly he had come a long way from
the congestion and multiplication of event and characteri-
; zation in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," the clear outlines of
j
ja specifically dramatic piece were yet to emerge. What had
; been formulated in the two dramatic poems written in the
twenties was to be refined in the two plays of the thirties
(discussed in this chapter) and made into concrete, theat
rically workable plays in the forties.
CHAPTER V
"THE BOWL OP BLOOD"
When "The Bowl of Blood" appeared with his long narra
tive poem "Mara" in Be Angry at the Sun in 19 41, Robinson |
J
j
iJeffers was fifty-four and his twin sons, Garth and Donnan, \
! j
were in their mid-twenties, draft age. It had been six
years since Jeffers had written his last drama, "At the
! Birth of an Age." In the interim he had traveled in Europe i
! i
I
with his family and Random House had published the six hun-j
dred and twenty-two page Selected Poetry of Robinson Jef-
j ;
fers, his only hard cover book still in print today. In
i the same period, he had written a long non-dramatic narra
tive poem, "Such Counsels You Gave to Me," using the Cali-
2 '
forma coast for his setting. In 1941 Dame Judith Ander-
; son performed "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" in Carmel, and
Jeffers took a long trip with his wife to several eastern i
cities where he lectured and gave readings of his poetry at j
%ew York: Random House. Further references to the I
play will be indicated by parenthetical page citations. j
2"Such Counsels You Gave to Me" has a spiritually ex- !
hausted medical student returned home to his father's Car- '
mel ranch as its main character. It, like other of the |
; long narratives, has a mythic analogue, this time in a '
| modification of the Phaedra-Theseus story.
I
i 152
153
the Library of Congress and at a half dozen university
! campuses.
j
j His life was active and full at this time, but the im-
| mediacy and the horror of the situation in Europe and Amer- j
; j
I ica's movement toward a direct involvement with the Allies j
< ■ i
| weighed very heavily upon him. It caused him to write on
j i
; \
; contemporary matters and ultimately to regret what he I
called an "obsession with contemporary history that pins
many of these pieces to the calendar, like butterflies to
| cardboard."3
Jeffers turned specifically in "The Bowl of Blood" to j
present matters, which he had considered before only briefly!
in Cassandra's prophetic speech in "The Tower Beyond Trag- !
edy." Although Jeffers had previously, and would subse-
quently, publish more short poems on contemporary political;
and military affairs and make use of the same materials in ;
his longer poems, "The Bowl of Blood" is his only drama to ;
contain living men as his central figures and specific mil-'
I
itary strategies as his subject matter.4 The contempora
neity of his subject matter may have in part dictated the
3In the introductory one-page "Note" to Be Angry at
; the Sun. ;
4Attil a, in "At the Birth of an Age," speaks to his '
: advisers about the conduct of his southward seige, but the
j specifics are not developed or extended. Similarly, Cly-
' temnestra, in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," considers the j
| strategy necessary to maintain control of the city of My-
| cenae, but she does not offer details.
154
highly stylized form and structure which he employs in the
play. He makes no attempt, as he did in his long narra
tives which were set in the twentieth century, to present a
realistic or near realistic setting or format. In fact,
with a Medium and the occult fashion by which the Medium
can summon up dead characters from the past after inhaling
the fumes from freshly poured blood, Jeffers uses the only
instance of explicit magic in his plays other than with
Medea's specific acts of magic in Medea.
The simplicity of the play's structure and formal out
lines is in strong contrast with the intricacies and com
plexities of the poetic variations and the historical im
plications. The Leader (Adolph Hitler) goes to a Medium to
discover the future course of the war. With her aid he
successfully communicates with Frederick the Great, Napo
leon Bonaparte, and Ernst Friedenau, a friend of his youth.
After his encounter with Friedenau, he decides upon his
method for controlling Norway and upon an offensive strat-
egy for dealing with England.
Although unique in his dramatic canon in its contempo
rary subject matter, "The Bowl of Blood" is consistent with
the major thesis of Jeffers' other plays. It is an ex
plicit statement of the poet's contempt for man's dreams of
glory, of empire, and of power. Written between the dra
matic poems, "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" and "Dear Judas,"
and the works written specifically for the stage, Medea and
155
"The Cretan Woman," it is experimental and pivotal in tech-
I
inique. Ultimately, Jeffers is writing a modification of
j
j the masque and maintains several of the masque conventions.
j
I One radical departure from the immediately previous
! j
Jplay is a great reduction in the number of the players. I
• i
l
iThe Leader, two aides (named members of his general staff), ;
! j
an old woman, and three "maskers" make up the cast. The
!shift from a numerically full stage to a tight and limited
cast is a marked one. Jeffers moves away from the crowds
of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," "At the Fall of an Age,"
:and "At the Birth of an Age" and back to the economy of j
j
i characterization of "Dear Judas" which relies upon four !
major characters and a chorus of mutes. Jeffers removes
the physical presence of the armies of Agamemnon and Cly-
temnestra, of the guards of Helen and Polyxo, and the
"hordes" of Attila and replaces them with small ensemble
groups which dance and chant the accompaniment which the
supernumerary characters had provided earlier.
In three of his dramas, Jeffers requires dancers. In
"At the Fall of an Age" the Myrmidons, Helen's guards, com- ;
posed of dead soldiers, move rhythmically in support of the
verbal tensions developed by the major figures. In the
|adaptation for the stage, the Mutes of "Dear Judas" are
given choreographic movement to Bach chorales; and in "The
!Bowl of Blood" Jeffers specifies dancing to the playing of j
i |
jthe "Totentanz." The strategy may have at least three j
possible explanations. He may simply be composing a set
ting consistent with the "masque" tradition of using danc
ers. The predisposition to Greek tragedy may have decided
him upon a semi-choric movement; certainly he uses dancers
directly as such in his later dramas. Or, it may be a
!
simple, intuited sense of the effectiveness of total the
ater in which dance plays a part. |
Consistent with a tendency to economy of characters,
Jeffers returns to "Dear Judas" in another way, to the
unity of time and event. In "Dear Judas," however, Jeffers|
telescoped Jesus'1 public life, suffering in the desert and j
garden, and crucifixion into the sequence of related anec- |
dotes recalled in a single night. The action of "The Bowl
of Blood" takes place in the hour in which it would require
to perform the play. Hitler undergoes a brief and intense j
psychological crisis which begins in a mood of great de- j
pression. He dismisses Steinfurth, his aide: i
Leave me alone a moment to gather my mind,
And wash it in the North Sea, under the Wagnerian
Ruins of that sunfall.
He speaks of the "gambling with German lives" and attempts j
to reinforce his own faith in German destiny. Terribly
confused and lost in despair, he attempts to reinforce him
self:
I believe. I believe. I will believe.
I believe . . .
The Maskers appear and, acting like a separate unit much in
j 157
jthe fashion and function of a classic chorus, comment.
jThey catalogue the Leader's conquests and articulate his
I
I ambitions, concluding with an ironically intended statement
!
; about his belief in his personal infallibility which he as-
! 5
iserts, in their view, with "sleepwalker certitude" (p. 71),
Significantly, Jeffers uses short lines and a variety,
i
!of metrical units early in this play. He makes his most
:striking innovation in his dramas to this point by doing so.
1 In all of his plays to this time he had used the metrical
line more typical of his narrative poems, deviating only at
^ the end of the plays or in interludes within the longer j
;units. i
• I
Under the influence of the Medium1s power, Hitler in
terviews Napoleon, whom he dismisses as an incompetent in
;his dealings with England. Next he is regarded by Freder
ick the Great with the contempt he gave Napoleon. Jeffers !
has Hitler agonize, and in an outburst identify himself ex- j
plicitly with Christ in his concern as to whether he should
continue his quest for world domination, "... only to
great artists / Come these dark hours" (p. 78). Christ
I
agonizes in similar language in "Dear Judas" when he, too, j
i
->The epithet "sleepwalker" is used again in the final
lines of the play when the Leader's self-confidence is
restored:
■ We must not wake him. Sleepwalker, dream. j
While the storm roars in the tree. (p. 94)
15 8
compares himself to an artist who must work with unknown
shapes. Both Jesus and Hitler go on to perform the actions
which bring about a sustained bloodbath based upon an idea:
Jesus with his own crucifixion and the subsequent martyr
doms and the religious wars dedicated to his cause; Hitler
with his invasion of Eastern Europe and the subsequent
world war.
The Leader remains in his coma while the Maskers as
sume central positions. They talk together of the madness
of all men which Hitler makes dramatically graphic. Al
though they operate as an ensemble, Jeffers provides them
(as he does in the choruses of Medea and "The Cretan Woman")
with individual personalities. They are played against
each other in a remarkable, musically balanced verse and
prose statement:
First Masker.
It is necessary from time to time
To turn the eyes away from mankind,
Frederick the Great's "verdammte Rasse,"
Or be choked with pity and laughter.
Second.
The posturings, not the wickedness;
The poverty, not the excess,
Whoever thinks that this man is more wicked
Than other men knows not himself.
Third.
If man must always have man in his eyes and nostrils,
Mass-suicide might be best.
Jeffers picks up his repeated thesis of the death wish when
j 159
the Third Masker's declaration that he will contemplate the
j high mountains, that "Each mountain is more massive than a
nation of men," and the second comes after the Second Mask
er's declaration that he will contemplate the high ocean
I
I where "There is not one man / Nor work of man to be seen in
1 j
j all this rich world." In the first instance the Third
| I
iMasker alters his second line to "Mass-suicide would be his!
i best savior" (p. 8Q).^
Part of Jeffers' dramatic technique is to embed gener
alities in the context of the slightly etched personalities:
r of the individual maskers. In contrast, he establishes a j
: more fully developed personality in his central figure. j
The Leader emerges from his sense of defeat, and the Second
Masker speaks in prose of Wagner, the Berchtesgaden, and
j the romance of racial memories. Recalling something of the;
; poet-boy-warrior, Carling, of "At' the Birth of an Age," the!
First Masker states, "You mean that he [the Leader] is
slightly a poet." Also speaking in prose, the Third Masker
summarizes the connection of the poet and the political-
military dreamer in their definitions of democracy— "the
clay-life belt that sank France,"— and Freedom— the indefi-j
nite word which is comparative," half-prose: abstract but ;
noble" and, pertain to the histories of the German,
i
In the manner of the incremental repetitions of the j
| refrain in balladry. j
160
Englishman, and the Russian, "a word that poetry can accept
and men can fight for" (p. 79).
| In this brief interlude or philosophic exchange, Jef-
l
I
; fers crystallizes several points of his thesis. If man can
i
j
! do no better either as poet or leader than to fill up his
: i
j j
i senses with the aura of man, then mass-suicide is the solu-j
|
tion for his agonizing over the condition in which he finds
himself. Alternating with assertions of the possibility j
: and the attractiveness of suicide, the First and Second
Maskers "contemplate" the beauty of man-free mountains and ,
seas. Finally, the focus of discussion is pulled away fromj
! the larger, philosophic issue of man suffering to a prose j
! comment upon the semantic tricks man (poet and warrior)
plays upon himself.
I
; Almost in exasperation, the First Masker demands that I
i they all "Proceed with the poem." The particular man, the j
Leader, is summoned out of a reverie and asked to recall a i
friend of his days as a foot soldier in the First World
War. He needs to be prodded to the recollection of his
dead companion's name, "Ernst." Hitler summons up the mem-;
ory of his "dear comrade's" blondness, braveness, and sense
of truth. He recalls that he was the poet and prophet who ;
fed his imagination, inspired him to a sense of Germany's
destiny, and then died. The Third Masker reveals himself
as Ernst Friedenau of 1917, and Hitler confides in him,
tells him of having crushed Poland and asks advice on the
161
conquering of Denmark and Norway. He describes his armies
as an eagle with arms outspread over the two nations, one
j
(that over Norway) as torn. Ernst encourages him to sus
tained war and self-confidence. He specifies the fall of
!
Holland, Flanders, and France, the seige of North Africa |
! I
j :
j and the rout at Dinkirk and finally announces a specific j
j
September date for striking out at England.
Jeffers refocuses the attention of the audience away I
from this particularizing of war strategy to a second com
mentary of the First and Second Maskers in which they won-
| ;
der at the "lies" told by the Third Masker, Friedenau.
They scorn the possibility of an easy or swift conclusion j
j to the war: "The war must grind on, and grind small . . . |
God is less humane than Hitler, and has larger views."
; Jeffers substitutes the word "civilization" for democracy
; and continues his discussion of freedom, cataloguing the !
1 |
slave-holding of Rome, Spain, and Britain and the defensive;
armaments of the Greeks and the bloody eagerness of all men
to protect territorial rights (pp. 86-87).
In an almost frenzied paroxysm of recognition of man's!
folly, the Maskers throw off their cloaks and masks at the j
|
declaration of the First Masker that "Death is that thing, j
/ Death is the great argument that keeps my mind / Wild in
the wind." They show themselves as skeletal death figures ;
! (p. 88). In this interlude of dance to the "clack-clack j
I |
| rhythm, of the old Toltentanz," the Maskers are given lines
162
employing aphoristic and terse poetic mannerisms very much
like those the Sweeper uses in "At the Birth of an Age."
! At one point the Second Masker even repeats the Sweeper's
query as to how he might remember or construct suitable [
; rhymes: ". . . how do you rhyme these things?" In other i
| words, Jeffers returns to the verse patterns and mannerisms!
I ' !
! of Anglo-Saxon verse: the kenning, alliteration, and the
four-beat line. In addition, he employs a modification of
ithe classic alternation of lines for the speakers in a
:swift interplay, stichomythia. A brief chart of the tech-
!mques will illustrate the compression achieved by the
; |
method. '
The kenning: "sea-lanes" for the submarine-free
passages
"fire-hall" for the bombings j
j
Alliteration: "wander in Warsaw"
"Lordly and 3.oud"
"Leap over London"
"papering in Coventry, calling our j
comrades ..."
!
"Sea-slug slimy I swim the sea-lanes^
Swift as_ a shark, shearing the sky."
Alternating: "Diving through 01ouds death 0eeps
0arnival j
I.
II.
I
16 3
"Kie0 and Kieff, Naples and Helsinki
• • *
Give me Europe."
"Misery to millions, 0aptivity,
massacre . . .
How many years?"
III. The quadrameter with the caesura:
A. Second (Masker) Then wander in Warsaw.
I'll walk in Rotterdam.
Lordly and loud.
Leap over London.
Capering in Coventry, calling
our comrades . . .
Sea-slug slimy I swim the sea-
lanes ,
Swift as a shark, shearing the
sky.
Hunger and horror hosting behind
him . . . (pp. 88-89)
One of the play's strengths is the variety of the pat
terns of meter and poetic technique, following the masque
i tradition of providing a virtuoso control of meter and di-
jversity of forms. Certainly, Jeffers does not need a
First
B. Second
First
C. First
D. First
E. First
164
defense of his metrical skill nor a general peroration on
his prosody. This work, however, does provide a remarkable
display of his virtuosity, many times neglected by his
critics. Jeffers lends strength to this section of his
drama not only by the intensity of the content, an angry
reassertion of man's folly in his grand pre-occupations
with himself, but by creating a new series of poetic ten
sions through introducing the variation in meter and in
line length.
The Leader, having heard the voices of the Maskers, is
terrified. He cries out, "I did not want this war. [An
guished gesture of washing hands.] Innocent. Innocent."
He insists that his drive east was his only military inten
tion and that Munich was a time of failure of faith by the
"jealous" British and the fearful French and occult pres
sures of "Jewry." He hurls epithets at the leaders of the
Allies: Chamberlain, "the smiling moneyed man"; Daladier,
"The scared career man"; Churchill, "the bloody-minded ama
teur"; and Roosevelt with "his playboy envoys whispering
them on." He concludes, enraged, by apostrophizing and in-
canting,
Lord God! Lord God!
Bring down my enemies, the wreckers of Europe.
Friedenau reinforces the Leader by warning against any fur
ther listening to the Maskers and insists that his future
thoughts must be only on victory.
165
Returning to the short line again Jeffers has the
Maskers dance once more and assert that man's blood-lust is
a historical phenomenon of man's nature. The First Masker
refers to the blood, tears, and Oil slicks from bombed
ships which have polluted the sea. The Second Masker uni
versalizes the guilt of man by emphasizing through repeti
tion of the absolute "all" three times in eight words. He
insists that "the long course will run." The momentum of
disgust for human history is carried further by the chanted,
direct address to the Leader, "My Leader, play out the
tragedy" and the historical reference to the polluted air
escaping "the split rock under the Sibyl's roost," an air
whispering and lifting like autumn leaves
Or desert dust or spray blown from high seas?
Hatred, pain and despair,
Valid curses, vain prayers,
Revolt and torture and the wailing of women.
Unrelentingly, the Masker requires the Leader to carry out
his destiny, to perpetuate the evil which is characteristic
of all times and places. The dance is concluded when the
Maskers, wearied, resume their cloaks and hoods and resolve
to ascend into the mountains and to escape man's degrada
tion.
In a fit of great despair the Leader makes his death
wish explicit:
I curse that night. I curse the bed and the lust. I
[wish my
mother had died in that night
When she conceived me. (p. 92)
16 6
The remaining Masker, Friedenau, annoyed, calls upon him to
| stop his self-pity and to concentrate only on victory. He
lists specific future achievements, and the Leader is re
inspired and cries out, "I believe. I believe. I will be-
i
lieve. " In a climactic frenzy the Medium, struggling back
I I
i to consciousness, spills the bowl of blood on the floor.
j
• The denouement is contained in seventeen lines in which the
i j
Leader recoils from the spilled blood, regains his control,j
i 1
' offers payment, and leaves the hut while the First Masker
! j
: directs the audience to
Watch this man, half-conscious of the future
Pass to his tragic destiny.
I The play ends in five aphoristic couplets, each commenting |
i
cryptically upon man's vanity.
"The Bowl of Blood," then, as has been previously
i
noted, is pivotal. It marks the point at which Jeffers !
! |
seems to be consciously visualizing for the stage. He for-I
malizes his use of choreographic units and reduces his |
separate, narrative voice to an absolute minimum in his
j sparse stage and actors' directions. He places the sug-
; testions of the occult and the mystic powers of the Medium ;
in frankly stylized terms, identifiable in the conventions j
of theater in the maskers. He adds a structural unity to
: a unity of character and predicament, providing an individ-;
i ual struggle within the dramatic limits of an hour. j
! i
| In each of the unproduced dramas, Jeffers wrote pro- |
167
gressively more simply developed stories relying in part
upon the techniques of providing single conflicts and sus
tained unities of time and place: "The Tower Beyond Trag
edy, " "Dear Judas," "At the Fall of an Age," and "At the
Birth of an Age." By the time that he turned to "The Bowl j
i :
i ;
of Blood," he had developed a skill in writing drama which j
|
required little continued or extensive revision for the I
I stage. "The Bowl of Blood," as with two other plays of the I
! forties, Medea and "The Cretan Woman," contains the charac-!
teristics of having direction without narrative, verse in-
i troductions, or transitions. Jeffers, after the thirties, j
I
was conceptualizing in his dramas strictly in terms of dia-!
| logue, depending exclusively upon dramatic presentation of :
his ideas rather than upon narrative or descriptive clari
fication or amplification. Whether he was working on ad- j
: aptation from mythic sources or on inspiration from legend,|
: Jeffers was continuing throughout his plays to create i
sharply delineated characters in stark and cataclysmic cir
cumstances, The changes were in the elimination of a nar-
I I
rative voice, in the simplification of plotting, and in
; limitation of characterization, thereby narrowing his gen- j
eral view of world history to a sharper focus upon specific!
! individual behavior.
; Five years after the composition of "The Bowl of ■
! Blood" Jeffers was sufficiently in control of the dramatic
168
mode to accept Dame Judith Anderson's request to write a
play for her to perform directly on the New York stage.7
7Ellsworth L. Redinger. "An Interview with Dame Judith!
Anderson," Drama and Theatre, 7 (Winter 1968-69), 9 3.
CHAPTER VI
MEDEA
| In Medea-*- Robinson Jeffers exercises the same economy !
I i
i which he evidenced in his condensation of the "Oresteia" j
1 !
|into a single, unified dramatic poem, "The Tower Beyond j
|
iTragedy," and would practice later in his shortening and
i
|altering of "Hippolytus" into a one act play, "The Cretan
:Woman." The result of the trimming and the compacting of
^Since the Samuel French acting edition of Medea (New
I York: Samuel French, 1948) is still in print and more
easily available to the reader than the 19 46 hard-cover,
Random House edition, references in this chapter will be
imade to the former parenthetically by page number,
i Critical discussion of Medea has been relatively
I slight. Two of Jeffers' major critics, Radcliffe Squires
i and Frederic I. Carpenter, mention the work almost in pass- !
!ing and give their major attention to the long narrative
|poems, the dramatic poems and the short lyrics. Lawrence
Clark Powell is frankly not interested in the dramas as
such and focuses his major attention upon the long narra
tives as well. The play was reviewed at large because of
its success on Broadway, but the reviewers were as much in- ,
|terested in production matters and the stellar casting and
directing (Dame Judith Anderson and Sir John Gielgud) as
they were in the play as it was written. Though Gilbert j
Highet in The Classical Tradition (New York: Oxford Uni- |
:versity Press, 1957), p. 527 discusses the play as a part ;
of his chapter on "The Reinterpretation of the Myths," he '
concentrates mainly on the particular nature of Medea's
|character. His tribute to Jeffers is a high one in which
;he makes a general comment on the power of the adaptation
iand upon the fact that Jeffers is a "shamefully neglected
Ipoet." The fact remains, though, that no major critic has
I as yet examined Medea in detail.
j -
! 169
170
Medea is a tightly constructed, short work which places its
primary focus upon one character and upon one situation.
In his earlier adaptation from Aeschylus, he had written a
long dramatic poem with three dominantly imposing women
: (Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and Electra) and a male character
(Orestes) who has the burden of carrying out the thematic
| intention. In addition, there are two murders on-stage,
one offstage, and the promise of a suicide at the final
i j
curtain to complicate the plot of "The Tower Beyond Trag-
j edy." At the other extreme is "The Cretan Woman" in which ;
[ j
; Jeffers trims well over half of Euripides' original play to|
! i
I j
give emphasis to the single highly charged and developed j
! character of Phaedra and her acts of vengeance upon two i
relatively uncomplicated, although intense, male figures.
I
l
With Medea Jeffers more closely approximates the |
| structure of his original source than he does in either of j
: j
| his other Greek plays. The tightening is a matter of con- j
tinuous shortening and cutting throughout rather than a
I
matter of changing, adding to, or eliminating parts as he
I
2
does in his other adaptations. There are no long and
2 i
■ ‘ 'The point has been made in Chapter II that Jeffers I
dropped Orestes' trial before the Aereopagus in the Eumini-j
des section of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" and cut to bare I
bone the long confrontation between Theseus and Hippolytus !
I in Euripides' original version of Hippolytus. Jeffers' j
; depiction of Phaedra as barren and Hippolytus as a homo-
| sexual, as well as his focusing attention on Phaedra
| rather than Hippolytus will be noted in "The Cretan Woman"
171
arduous considerations of the Euripidean subject matter in
the writing of Medea as there had been in the constant re
visions and reworkings which preceded his treatment of the
Aeschylus material in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy."^ With
j j
j this work, Jeffers is writing specifically for the theater i
!
and is able to adapt his material to his theme without
wrenching either the basic structure or the pattern of the
i :
original.
1 ;
1 As with Phaedra in "The Cretan Woman," Jeffers makes
Medea's personality and predicament the core, the integrat- I
1 j
jing force of the play. She is the center of the audience's !
' I
i attention even before she appears upon the stage. Jeffers ;
|follows exactly Euripides' method of providing exposition
by giving the Nurse an opening monologue. In it she de-
;scribes the flight of her mistress from Colchis on the
: i
;"Argo," the first happy years of her marriage in Corinth, j
I i
|and the desperate fury into which Jason's desertion has \
thrown her. She intimates the lengths to which Medea's
wrath might carry her and introduces the very real threat
’against the children. Also imitating Euripides' manner,
i
;Jeffers has Medea's voice heard offstage in her agony of j
chapter.
I Jeffers had treated the Medea legend once before in a
narrative poem in his 1935 volume Solstice (New York: Ran- ;
Idom House), using a modern California coast ranch as his j
j setting. j
! T
I JCf. note 2, Chapter II.
172
loathing and bitterness. Instead of Euripides' long
speeches, however, she has only repeated groans and expos
tulations, "Ai," as well as her chants:
Death, Death is my wish. For myself, my enemies, my
children. j
Destruction. I
j That's the word. Grind, crush, burn. Destruction.
Ai — Ai —
If any god hears me: let me die.
Ah, rotten, rotten, rotten: death is the only
Water to wash this dirt. (p. 13)
|
| Jeffers is providing Medea with the growling snarls of a
caged animal. Her outbursts are expostulations, epithets,
i repetitions. She cries out for bloody, harsh vengeance.
J 1
Within the syntax of her statements is a wild, panting in
tensity. The sentences are short, brittle, repetitive in
j
construction and in idea. Even when her statements become
; longer they are highly punctuated with heavy pauses and
j
1 near stops:
Hear me, God, let me
die. What I need: all dead, all dead, all dead
Under the great cold stone. For a year and a thousand
years and another thousand: cold as stones, cold,
But noble again, proud, straight and silent, crimson-
cloaked
In the blood of our wounds.
i
All but seven of the words are mono-syllabic. The sounds
reinforce the very meaning and power of the emotions. Jef
fers uses alliteration in a particularly effective manner
; in the clipped dentals of the first two lines— ". . . God,
I let me die. What I need: all dead, all dead, all dead"— j
| and in the spat out sibilants of "Straight and silent, |
173
crimson-cloaked," the image of the bloody, wounded bodies.
Jeffers describes the feeling he wants in Medea: 1 1 The
rise and fall of her voice indicate that she is prowling
back and forth beyond the main doorway, like a caged ani- j
mal." Her remaining offstage speeches carry on the same !
i
i almost bestial cries. She screams out in eight rapid sen- I
j |
tences using the first person, emphasizing the exclusive-
! ■
ness of her emotion, the ego-mania of her attitude:
i I know poisons. I know the bright teeth of steel. I
know fire.
But I will not be mocked by my enemies. . . .
And I will not endure pity. Pity and contempt are |
sister and brother, twin born. I will not die ;
tamely. i
i I will not allow blubber-eyed pity, nor contempt
either, to snivel over the stones of my tomb.
| I am not a Greek woman.
And after the statements of the Chorus she cries out again,
"Poisons. Death-magic. The sharp sword. The hemp rope.
Death-magic," in angry cries of grief and outrage. Signif-|
icantly, in her offstage speeches Jeffers leaves out the
details of Medea's motivation, delaying them for her on
stage remarks. In Euripides, Medea specifies her woes be
fore her entrance. Jeffers' speeches for the Nurse and the
i
Chorus are used as sharp emphasis to her fury in their ex- j
hortations for her to exercise calm and restraint. Their
i sentences are longer and the references much more diverse
than hers: Medea's beauty, the beauty of the sky and earth,!
I death's inevitability and the foolishness of wishing for
i
|
| it, barbarian Colchis and the Black Sea, the need for
174
companionship in times of great emotion (pp. 14-16).
i
The compression is remarkable in the moments before
jMedea’s entrance. The force of her personality assumes an
j animal frenzy by virtue of the contrast to the Nurse's and
! the Chorus' solicitousness and their explanation of the |
; i
causes of her grief. She quiets all comment when she ap
pears uttering her death wish in one sentence which ends in
■ a groan. Jeffers then directs her to assume "full self-
control" and keep her voice "cautious" and "insincere."
! Again he follows the original in letting Medea comment on j
I i
her predicament, a restatement of the exposition; but he j
■ shortens it drastically focusing on Medea's utter rejection!
1 of the principle of justice operating on earth; on her re-
■ gret at her having given aid to Jason; on her condemnation
of her exile in Greece from all that she was familiar with; I
i
: and on a concluding contemptuous description of Jason's |
< kissing of the "young mouth" of Creusa. Jeffers gives Me- ;
dea, in fifteen or so lines, a tour de force, a capsulized
opportunity to show the profundity of her grief and her
awe-inspiring capabilities: the opening death wish becomes |
I I
I a bridge to her complete dismissal of human values, disap- j
pears into a brief chronicle of what she has done for Jason j
in the past, and concludes in an imagined disgusting kiss
between Jason and his new bride (pp. 17-18).
| Rather than move abruptly to Creon's entrance, as
| Euripides does, Jeffers gives his Chorus lines of commentary
175
upon Medea's condition. In short horrified statements
they describe her: "She is terrible. Stone with stone
eyes"; "Look: the foam-flake on her lip, that flickers
with her breathing"; "She is pitiable: she is under great
injuries" (p. 19). Jeffers consistently uses the Chorus to
reinforce by their short, terse observations the quality of
Medea's suffering and its manifestations. The difference
i ;
|in the treatment of the function of the Chorus as important !
1 |
!observers in Jeffers and in Euripides becomes a quantita
tive one. Part of Jeffers' strategy is to minimize commen- I
i
i j
| tary and to emphasize action and emotion. I
! I
At three critical points, at least, Jeffers uses the j
|chorus for a controlled, limited expansion of the alterna- ]
tive action or emotion which Medea might assume. After
iJason and Medea's first confrontation, the women comment on j
j i
I the nature of love and pray to be saved from its furies: J
i First Woman: |
| j
Save me from the hateful sea and the jagged lightning, !
And the violence of love. 1
Second Woman:
| A little love is a joy in the house, j
! A little fire is a jewel against frost and darkness. j
1 !
First Woman:
A great love is a fire
; That burns the beams of the roof,
j The doorposts are flaming and the house falls.
[ i
j Third Woman:
| A great love is a lion in the cattle-pen,
176
The herd goes mad. The heifers run bawling
And the claws are in their flanks.
Answering in much the same manner as in the classical an
tistrophe, the Second Woman responds:
And now X see the black end,
The end of great love, and God save me from it;
The unburied horror, the unbridled hatred,
The vultures tearing a corpse 1 ;
j God keep me clean of those evil beaks. (p. 38)
The repetition of the beast imagery reinforces continually
|
the larger metaphor of Medea's animal fury and rage, and
i
:generalizes upon it as the product of a too great, a too
\intense emotion of love.
I j
Similarly, the Chorus speaking after the departure of |
i i
i 1
|Aegeus, comments on Medea's state of mind. The Second
i
Woman compares her to a beseiged city "Sharpening its wea
pons" (p. 41) and receiving heads of state in making her
;plans. The Chorus members compare briefly the merits of
i |
;civilization: Athens, Corinth, Mycenae, Sparta, and Thebes.;
|
I In amazement they wonder why Medea is unable to see the
harmony and the beauty of civilization and why she desires !
to die rather than to participate in the life of a splendid I
i
:city (p. 48). Jeffers uses their comments in this instance I
; !
to reinforce Medea's determination to exact vengeance in '
spite of all that tradition and civilization has instructed
i
;concerning a peaceful and an ordered existence. Finally,
;Jeffers uses the Chorus for commentary when Jason has left
| I
Iwith the children to present gifts to Creon and to Creusa.
— 177
Before her children come home to her hands, Medea has
wished for death, for universal annihilation, so that she
will not be able to carry out the last step of her plan.
Jeffers adds to the beat imagery-'-"She-bear," "lioness,"
|"lean wolf-bitch," "the yellow-eyes, / Scythe-beaked and
! i
storm-shouldered Eagle"— references to the larger elements j
of nature. The First Woman declares that it would be bet- i
j ter for Medea if the earth itself would open its jaws and
t i
! !
! swallow her in its darkness; the Third Woman speaks of a
!
| universal terror which has caused Medea to be sick and an-
: i
I j
, swers Medea's assertion that what she is doing is consis- j
I
j tent with her nature by saying that evil answers evil like|
the thunder answers the lightning in a "great waste voice
in the hollow sky" (pp. 61-62).
In each case in which the Chorus speaks more than a
single line or reacts to a universal predicament, Jeffers '
; gives the members of the chorus speeches which are specifi-■
cally directed to a dramatic purpose rather than to an in
terlude or intrusive philosophical comment. They speak in
brief statement after the crisis of Medea's plotting with
| Aegeus and after the children are taken to the palace. j
Just before the children return, they speak out their vi-
i sion of Medea as a whirlwind descended from Colchis; they
| describe her flight as one of a "blood-storm," its effects
J
causing the "man-wolf on the snow hill" to howl and a demon
I
i
I to enter a sleeping child's room to strangle it; they
178
describe the crimson-footed harvesters of the seed of blood
j ("Blood is the seed of blood") following the storm, and the
! whirlwind itself, hanging from the sky "Like a twisted j
|rope; / Like an erect serpent, its tail tears the earth, / I
i j
J 1
| It is braided of dust and lightning" (p. 64). In each in- j
:stance Medea's predicament is made more explicit, and the
|terrible effects of her solution are made graphic.
Jeffers' economy is not restricted, however, to expo- 1
! sition. With each of the major characters he abbreviates
and condenses speeches. In each case the cutting provides
’ Medea with a greater intensification of her basic emotion, i
i |
Unlike Euripides who uses the Tutor to describe the death |
of Creon and Creusa, Jeffers keeps the Nurse in the second j
act to provide a bridge from early to later action by her ,
solicitous concern for Medea. Creon maintains Euripides'
; role as a strong leader whose tragic failure to be firm in j
; his resolution brings destruction down upon himself and his;
house. Jason's fatuous quality of self-concern and self
justification are retained as well. Aegeus is essentially
the Euripides character, although in one earlier version
Jeffers had made him into a radically different personal
ity. ^ Jeffers cuts a considerable amount of each charac- i
i ter's speeches and provides Medea a greater number of
i
: [
^Discussed at greater length in Chapter I. The vari-
| ant, unpublished versions are kept in the closed and sealed
| collection at Occidental College, Highland Park, California.
179
opportunities to respond end to react to their statements.
Jeffers' method in the organization of the drama is
!
!
! similar to Euripides' in the sense that he writes a series
of "big" scenes for each character with Medea as a centrif-
| ugal force. He follows the sequence of those earlier dra-
!matic confrontations exactly. Once the exposition and tone I
j i
I of the drama are set by the Nurse, the Chorus, and Medea's !
.first speeches, Jeffers brings on Creon, then Jason, Aegeus,j
'Jason again, the Nurse, and finally Jason, in each case
j Medea demonstrates a facet of her personality.
Creon is the first characterization in which we see j
! )
' ■ f
j
;Jeffers using his skill as a dramatic artist to cut, sira- !
iplify, and focus his sources toward a powerful and clear
statement of his own theme. As mentioned previously, he
uses a bridge of the Chorus's warning before bringing Creon i
|on stage. He also has the Nurse advise Medea to bend j
1 |
rather than be broken in the struggle with the king. The ■
method is helpful to the modern audience precisely because
of its fluidity, replacing the ritualistic, stylized Greek
method of moving from scene to scene abruptly, which was
j
dependent upon the audience's familiarity with the story. j
Once on stage, however, Creon is as abrupt as he is in the 1
ioriginal. He announces that Medea is banished immediately
and that he will not return to his home until she is gone.
i :
|She questions him, prays to her gods, and finally begs him j
i s
!for one day's respite. I
180
Unlike Euripides, Jeffers summons up a considerable
number of images in support of her plea. She describes the
condition of her children, emphasizing that they are Jason's
as well as hers, and her plight in exile as being "a little
lower than the scavenger dogs, kicked, scorned, slaved"
(p. 21). She wheedles him, saying that the antagonism of
the public toward her knowledge of sorcery is a common and
an unworthy attitude of the ignorant. Jeffers broadens
Medea's theatrical interest by having her cry out in Creon's
face that she will not endure his pity:
I will endure a dog's pity or a wart-grown toad's. May
God who hears me — We shall see in the end
Who's to be pitied. (p. 23)
Her outburst would seem to reduce her chance to convince
him to change his mind. Jeffers continues, however, to
give her lines which Creon calls "honey." She flatters him
by describing his will as a "granite mountain" and extends
the metaphor to suggest that on the hardest mountain there
grows the occasional flower of mercy. Later she declares
that "There are no flowers on this mountain: not one violet,
not one anemone." She describes his face as made of flint,
switches her image to describe mercy as the "jewel of
kings," and collapses into tears. Then in a final effort
she refers to the gentle beauty of Creusa in an attempt to
convince him to offer his help, the mercy of providing one
day of respite. She promises to disappear from Corinth in
the morning just as surely as does the dew which faithfully
181
leaves the stones at daybreak. He relents, grants her the
day and departs (p. 25).
By including the imagery of flowers, granite, the
beauty of a young girl, the dew, Medea has been given be
lievable ammunition for winning her battle and for gaining
j her goal, Jeffers thereby provides a further dimension to
| her character which makes her dramatically interesting. !
i
But immediately upon Creon1s departure Medea hurls a
i :
; curse at him which is filled with four references to a dog::
■ — --- This man — this barking dog
i ----- This gulled fool —
i gods of my father's country, !
You saw me low on my knees before the great dog of !
Corinth; humble, holding my heart in my hands j
For a dog to bite — break this dog's teeth!
She has come full circle from her hostility towards Creon
before his entrance, through a humiliating encounter in
; !
which she exploited her cunning and her eloquence, to a I
|
i bitterly enraged threat colored by a choice of images and I
; references with which she feels more comfortable. Trium
phant in achieving this first step of her plan, Medea devi-
j ates from her specific anger to talk about the general vul-I
nerability of woman. She declares that it is a "bitter
thing to be a woman," weak in warfare and dependent upon
; her wits. She insists, however, that the pain of child-
i ,
, bearing is a far more grueling experience than a battle,
j On the other hand, she also asserts that even if woman can j
do no good other than to produce children, "She can do !
182
evil." Jeffers gives her a continuously fluctuating abil
ity to cope with her situation as well as to surrender to
her rage. She again calls Creon a dog, "That tall dog,"
and begins to see a means to his destruction and delights
in the conviction that if she is to die as an animal it
will not be as the pigeon or lamb but as "some yellow-eyed
beast that has killed its hunters" (pp. 2 7-2 8).
When we come to the characterization of Jason, we i
again see Jeffers' process of simplification— indeed, al-
I most of oversimplification— but for the dramatic purpose of ■
! heightening the stature of Medea, his central concern. If j
i
there is any touch of humor in the drama, it is in this j
i . ;
| figure with whom Medea must next contend. Jason is a war
rior, a full-grown man, the chosen bridegroom for the prin- ,
i
|cess of Corinth, and dangerously close to being a pompous
|fool. His fatuousness and lack of finesse make it diffi-
I
I
cult to accept the fact that Medea could have loved him or |
that she could be made to feel wretched by having lost him. I
Medea's complete, present contempt for him, however, adds
i j
some plausibility.
Jason's first remark is to the Chorus which he regards j
as a group of busy-bodies, and then he calls for his sons j
I to be brought forward. He ignores Medea's question "Is
there another dog here?" to upbraid her for the foolishness ;
{which has led her to alienate a king. Jason rather cal
lously tells her that her reactions towards him have had
183
little effect, that she has been rash in not being "just a
little decently respectful toward those in power," and that
she has acted "like a madwoman," "like a possessed imbe-
1 cile" towards Creon who like all rulers is "sensitive."
i
| When Jason continues to berate her, she listens quietly un
til he declares his interest in the children. Jeffers j
keeps a control upon Medea's passion, having her ask simply!
| :
jwhether he considered their fate when he "betrayed this
| j
’house." Jason's composure also remains intact. Only after
■ he has announced that he is to become Creon1s heir and ul- !
; timately Dynast of Corinth, a man who must look forward to j
new sons now that the boys belonging to him and Medea have
I been banished, does she expose her wrath totally. Jeffers
provides an acting direction at the opening of Medea's re- ;
i sponse that she tremble, that she show signs of her passion.;
I She first intimates that harm might come to the bride.
; Jason counters by stating that he will guard against the
possibility.
I
Where Jeffers has to this point imbued Medea with cun
ning and restraint in her confrontation with Creon, he now
gives her full expression for her vitriol and her intense j
loathing of Jason. She asks him if he is finished and then;
: directs her remarks to the stunned Chorus, referring to
; Jason first as if he were a Tyrian trader displaying his
| fabrics at the marketplace; then, repeating the dog imagery
j she used for Creon, she refers to Jason in the third person,
184
"It is the / Dog's daughter's husband." Her condemnation,
however, is timed to demonstrate the range of her passion.
She speaks directly to him regretting that he has caused
her to talk like a common woman, and recalls the beauty of
the day on which they sailed through the Hellespont into
Greek waters. Jeffers then manipulates the tone to produce
|Medea's shift from regret, to reverie, to epithet and curse.
|She catalogues her bloody acts which have benefited Jason j
i and have caused her to be an exile and a hated figure in
i j
her native land. At the same time, she defends her magic, '
I i
i !
;her "rapid and tricky wisdom" which is now feared in i
| f
J Corinth: I
i You it has served well:
here are five times, If I counted
right — and all's not counted —
iAgain she ends with a contemptuous snarl about his dog-like j
!viciousness and ingratitude: j
It is a bit of a dog, isn't it, j
women? It is well qualified ;
To sleep with the dog's daughter.
To his gesture of angry dismissal, she questions him where
i
she might flee now that she has been forced into exile by
I
his "prudent kindness" (pp. 32-34). j
J
Jeffers shifts to Jason's reaction in what amounts to
i an almost deliberate intention to make him seem totally
'without sense. Instead of Creon's hauteur and regal bear-
!ing, Jason's posture is one of pompous self-containment. !
j
jHe again refers to her exaggerated behavior and "jealous
185
madness" and repeats that his actions were deliberate and
political rather than emotional. As she sits listening, he
tells her bluntly that she has been a pawn in a destiny
larger than she could control:
As to those acts of service you so loudly boast — whom j
do I thank for hem? I thank divine Venus, the j
goddess
j Who makes girls fall in love. You did them because J
j you had to do them? Venus compelled you; I !
Enjoyed her favor. . . .
| A man dares things, you know; he
| makes his adventure
l In the cold eye of death; and if the gods care for him
; They appoint an instrument to save him; if not, he dies.
You were the instrument.
| Jeffers effectively controls Medea's response by having her |
i i
;answer in restrained loathing, again having her refer to j
|Jason in the third person. She breathes out:
Here it is: the lowest.
The obscene dregs; the slime and the loathing? the muddy
bottom of a mouthed cup: when a scoundrel begins !
■ To invoke the gods.
! !
I She threatens to spit upon him, declaring that his vulgar- j
i ;
I ity is contagious and contaminating her house. Almost stu- j
pidly he asks to see his sons. She answers in two words,
"Go, quickly." Once Jason has gone, Jeffers has Medea move j
i ;
in a frenzied repulsion and self-disgust. In a stage di-
; i
rection he has her move her arms and body "as if she were !
i ;
scraping off slime." She speaks to her body, recalling its ;
|services to Jason and speculates,
j If I could peel off
t The flesh, the children, the memory. j
f
She speaks of the shapeliness of her limbs and body and in
186
agony calls out:
If I could tear off the flesh and be bones; naked bones;
Salt-scoured bones on the shore
j At home in Colchis. (pp. 36-37)
Part of Jeffers' dramatic strategy, certainly, is in his
; emphasis upon the terrible alienation and the exile of a I
| j
j suffering character. Medea's isolation from Colchis is i
i
!
: repeated in "The Cretan Woman" and Phaedra's separation at
| Troezene from Crete, in "At the Fall of an Age" with Helen's!
! from Greece at Rhodes, in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" with
Cassandra's at Mycenae from Troy, and in "At the Birth of
j I
! an Age" with Gudrun's at the Italian battlefields from her i
: northern home with Sigurd. Only to Medea, however, does !
Jeffers give a measure of escape, one which the confronta
tion with Aegeus, subsequent to Jason's departure, provides.:
As Jeffers moves from powerful scene to powerful scene,
I he provides a remarkable integrity through the Chorus and j
l
: through Medea's repeated groans and short, sharp curses.
The three women view Medea again caught in the fury of her
I
passion. The first woman prays to the gods to keep her
1 l
j i
from "the violence of love," and speaks of the horror of a
■ i
; great love; the second speaks of the jewel-like quality of
a "little love." Medea is concentrating upon her means fori
: revenge, summoning up the audience's memory of her first,
I offstage cries. She utters the word, "Annihilation," call-|
i ;
! ing the word "pure music" and declaring that it would be
j
i
| agony constantly to look into the eyes of her children and
187
be reminded of Jason; she considers setting fire to the
I bridal chamber of Jason and Creusa, but fears that she will
be unsuccessful. Finally, she declares that she will re-
j sort to her black arts, to her powers of sorcery, and prays
j to Hecate:
Not for nothing I have
worshipped the wild gray goddess that walks in
the dark, the wise one, j
The terrible one, the sweet huntress, flower of night, j
! Hecate, j
In my house at my hearth. (pp. 37-39) j
; She is profoundly in thought when Aegeus enters. In
I . I
i i
j Aegeus, Jeffers provides a third, contrasting male person- j
; I
' ality. He is preoccupied with the announcement of the Ora-!
cle at Delphi which has given him a cryptic remedy for his !
| i
! sterility, but he is a state guest and he cannot act :
; against his host, Creon. Medea must act independently of j
each of the men in the drama. She has through her cunning,j
persuaded Creon to allow her a day before exile and caused j
: him to act against his better judgment in the defense of
his daughter and the safety and tranquility of his kingdom.j
She has totally dominated Jason through the power of her j
personality and the effectiveness of her threats to use her
; occult powers against him. She has been so strong in her
r
presence and invective that she has deflected Jason from
insuring that his sons are secure. But finally, she must
i
j deal with Aegeus, who can give her sanctuary. Her task j
with him is simpler than those she had to carry out pre
188
viously with. Creon and Jason in that she already has Aegeus*
confidence and needs only to secure his promise to provide
her a safe refuge after she has completed her revenge.
Jeffers writes a,, short tight scene between Medea and
Aegeus. He cuts down on the richness of imagery in the
; i
previous speeches and concentrates upon direct action. I
I |
I Aegeus announces that his reason for being away from Athens i
i j
i • [
' is to seek a cure for his sterility. Medea assures him
!that she can interpret the Oracle's remarks and can and
i
jwill effect a cure. But she requires him to repeat an oath
i i
ito provide her a safe refuge. When he does so, Jeffers |
\ provides his first instance of explicit spectacle in the |
i 1
; thunderclap which Medea declares is the voice of the gods
witnessing the sealed bargain. From this point, Medea has
| the full authority and bearing of her powers. Defeated and j
! frustrated in her marriage, and aided by her extra-human j
| i
i resources, she now sets in motion her revenge— which in
cludes the killing of her own children— and she is resolved j
to have the revenge at whatever cost. Significantly, Medea!
hesitates only at the moment in which she comes into con-
!
;tact with and fondles her children. A greater urge grips |
: t
her, however, and she continues to be driven by what is an
• i
'inflexible desire for vengeance on their father, her be-
; trayer. Hecate, whom she has worshipped in her own house
j
I
i
189
and at her hearth, is her resource.5
Following Aegeus' departure, the women of Corinth, the
Chorus, first apostrophize the gods who make rules and es
tablish patterns. They then turn to a description of the
traditions of civilization in its cities and organized liv
ing. In the dramatic poems of the 1920's and the 19 30's
Jeffers seized similar opportunities in the moments between j
! |
jdramatic actions to expand certain of his philosophic posi- ;
jtions. Cassandra's lengthy description of the highly de- i
: veloped civilization of Troy destroyed by the Greeks ("The
i i
I i
; Tower Beyond Tragedy") and Gudrun's extended reference to I
I !
: the angry bustling of her husband Attila's armies ("At the j
iBirth of an Age") are designed to provide Jeffers a plat- i
form for his observations upon the vanity of man's ambi-
: tions and his manipulations of individual lives and of the
, destinies of nations. With Medea, however, Jeffers has j
i i
! developed his skill as playwright to the point that the
pauses in the action are used economically to reinforce a
C 1
3The Medea legend is a long one and implies more than
her involvement with Jason and the volatile reactions in
Corinth. Priestess to Hecate and Asiatic princess, she had!
immense power before she met Jason. Her acts in aid and in i
destruction of Jason were another aspect of her mythic i
1 power. In her negotiations with Aegeus she begins another ;
part of her history, one which ends in her attempted murderi
jof his son, the hero Theseus, and her subsequent banishment
j from Athens. Although Jeffers was working specifically ,
I with the story of Medea at Corinth, the reverberations of j
i Medea's entire career permeate the immediate predicament of!
j a woman profoundly tormented, temporarily afflicted by a
j stupid man's betrayal and ambition.
190
rhythm which advances the immediate, dramatic purpose
rather than to afford a narrative or hortatory bridge.
Jeffers concludes the first act of the drama with the
hysteria and flurry of Medea's commands to send news of her
decision to the royal family. He opens the second act with
i 1
|a resolved, controlled Medea who describes the gifts she is j
|sending as respectfully offered, opulent tributes. The :
irony and restraint are in direct contrast with the opening I
i :
i of the play. Medea gloats over the luminous beauty of the
| jewels and cloak which she is sending to the young princess:'
See, it is almost alive. Gold is a living thing: such j
! pure gold.
But when her body has warmed it, how it will shine. !
|At the same time she is impatient for Jason to arrive and
to claim the gifts:
I It is intolerable
! To sit and wait.
j |
:Jeffers reverses the order of the opening scene of the play j
by giving to the Chorus and to the Nurse lines and images
of destruction. They recall the events of the day, contra
dictions to the natural order. Medea has the Nurse repeat
the story of a mare attacking a stallion and so tearing his |
I
skin that he bleeds from the throat to the fetlocks. One
of the women of the Chorus is explicit:
Frightening irrational things
Have happened lately; the face of nature is flawed with j
! omens. I
I
! t
j
| Medea exults in the news. Her reaction is anticipatory of
191
the blood-drenched details she will hear in the description
of the deaths of Creon and Creusa and in her own "unnatu
ral" slaughter of her own children. When Jason returns to
accept the gifts Medea has offered, he continues in his
obtuse manner to suggest that the children be given to some
I
:of his friends in another city, and later lets slip the
' fact that Creon has denied his request to safeguard the !
j children. For a moment Medea's masquerade as a penitent '
i
; and reconciled exile slips. She is quick, however, to re-
i
| sume her pose and send the children with Jason, cautioning ;
! i
i them ominously not to touch the presents. Before they j
; |
; leave, Medea questions Jason about his love for the chil-
' dren. He declares that he would slaughter anyone who
harmed them (pp. 52-60).
By continually equipping Medea with variations upon
her cunning and her resolution, Jeffers provides a dramati-I
; cally interesting figure rather than an intense, unvarying !
melodramatic monster or undeviating psychopath. In the mo
ments in which the members of the Chorus advise her of the
unnatural character of destroying one's own children, she
unceremoniously demands that they be silent. As she lets j
the little ones go to their father, however, she is reduced!
| to weeping and to tender words concerning them. When Jason;
leaves, he tells Medea, "I'm sorry for you. Parting is :
i hard," Medea reverts immediately, rejecting her attitude
i
I of pity for one of almost cynical irony in a short, tight
192
response: "I can bear it" (p. 59).
i
Upon the children's departure, Medea reveals yet an
other facet of her suffering. She declares her intention
to destroy them and wishes for death, answering the women's
j
iprotests with a simple declaration, "I do according to
[nature what I have to do." She declares that she is a bar-
i I
t j
:barian and that only a madman gives good for evil. She j
waits for the announcement of the effects of her magic !
gifts upon the receivers (pp. 62-63).
The news comes in three parts. The tutor exudes plea-i
sure in the news that both the children and the gifts have j
i
been well-received at the palace, while Medea responds with!
j
.the assurance that "There's more, however. It will come
soon." When the happy children return to her side, Medea
is reduced to tears. The second part of the news is de
livered by a nearly hysterical slave who urges her to take j
flight immediately, for the effects of her actions have !
|
been extreme. She calmly asserts, "I did it." The slave
i
runs away in fear. Medea receives the last part of the
news from the breathless, almost paralyzed Nurse who has |
f
been a witness to the fire which has resulted from Medea's
magical gifts and has destroyed her enemies. Jeffers has
|
Medea question the Nurse slowly and deliberately: "Nurse:
I am very happy: go slowly." The Nurse obeys and describes I
I
the death scene in detail ranging from the innocent, guile
less pleasure of the young princess in receiving the gifts
to the first shudders of pain as the magic took effect.
Medea insists that she continue the story:
You are not suffering.
You saw it, you did not feel it. Speak plainly.
I The Nurse continues, describing Creon's attempt to quench
j
i the fire and being caught in it himself, his ignoring his
I
| daughter's pain and attempting to pull away, separating
I
huge pieces of their bodies welded together in the flames
j and falling to the ground. She concludes that Jason stood
helpless tearing at his hair as their dehydrated, yet still
: alive, bodies breathed air, whistling "in the black mouths.1 1 i
i
Medea congratulates the Nurse on her ability to give news: !
"You have told good news well." Jeffers has her turn imme- 1
j
diately to her boys" "My little falcons." She compares
herself to a lion and momentarily loses her resolution to
I destroy them. The women warn her that Jason is on his way. ‘
i !
iShe asserts:
No, Loathing is endless.
Hate is a bottomless cup, I will pour and pour.
She promises to protect them all with a sword she has hid
den in the house, looks toward her boys and tells them that
i they must rest: j
Evening brings all things home. It brings *
The bird to the bough and the lamb to the fold -
And the child to the mother.
i
!The Women and the Nurse are left outside as Medea takes the >
|children into the house and to their deaths (pp. 6 9-74). !
j
J Jeffers includes one final scene of anger and of
194
intense passion in the play— Medea's meeting with Jason
after the death of the children. The roles of the two have
been reversed since their first confrontation. The pompous
and inflated Jason has been reduced to an impotent and
I
I crushed shell of a man. Medea, whose first appearance was I
1 i
i filled with woe mixed with wrath, now presents herself tri— i
i I
|umphant and self-possessed. Jason demands his children,
believes that Medea is incapable of such an act, and fi- |
nally accepts the fact that their mother has killed them.
He is kept from taking their bodies for burial, forbidden
■ j
even to give them a farewell caress. Medea is given the j
: i
complete victory she has plotted. Jeffers switches Medea's |
imagery and reference to Jason from "dog" to "Feeble night-
bird overcome by misfortune coming to beat at her door"
(p. 77) . She heaps insults upon him, taunting him with de- j
;tails of Creusa's burnt body and threatening him with the j
;fire snakes which guard her doorway if he dare attempt to
attack her. She opens the door to reveal the bodies of the
children, declaring:
I have
done it: because I loathed you more
than I loved them. I
I
i
Jason accepts his fate, he is completely crushed. Jeffers
changes the imagery again, this time to the picture of the
"Argo"— mentioned in her first speech and connected in leg- I
i I
lend to Jason's career as rotting and stranded on the beach.
Jshe suggests that if he is lucky, one of the decaying beams
will fall on his head and will kill him. In a terrifying
final threat she leaves the stage with the remark:
Now I go forth
Under the wild eyes of heaven — Those weakness-
despising stars: — not me they scorn. (pp. 75-79)
| Throughout the play Jeffers has worked specifically to
I !
| a supercharged statement of the force of a primal urge, a
| revenge-seeking compulsion which overwhelms and extinguishes
I the traditionally most honored characteristic of womanhood !
i i
I— the inflexibly, fiercely-guarded integrity of her maternal;
instinct. In other works he has presented uxoricide and
jmatricide ("The Tower Beyond Tragedy"), fratricide ("At the j
|Birth of an Age") , a father's murder of his son ("The Cretanj
|Woman") . Only in Medea, however, does the murderer, go un
punished. To be sure, Jeffers did not invent the situation
i
since he was writing from a classic source, but the vehicle I
is consistent with his major thesis in his dramas— that man j
in his lusts is capable of any act. In Medea's case, she j
can with guile leave Corinth in triumph.
The simplicity of the structure of the play, as Jef
fers retains it from his Greek original, obviously aids the ;
dramatic~"and theatrical effectiveness. In one act Jeffers j
i
puts Medea in direct confrontation with three male charac- j
ters whom she must manipulate psychologically to carry out
i ' ■
:her purpose in seeking vengeance. Jeffers controls the di- !
i !
!
jmension of their personalities to give his major focus to
|
|the dynamics and energy of his enraged female character.
196
Creon is given a regal posture, Jason is a somewhat dull-
witted opportunist, and Aegeus is a monarch preoccupied
with his sterility and the continuation of his line. Medea
is an alien, a political exile, a rejected and scorned wife,
a priestess, and a barbarian. She has a history of fratri
cide, betrayal of country, and blood-drenched treachery.
She is capable of cajoling Creon, degrading Jason, and in
sinuating herself into the good graces of Aegeus. Signifi
cantly, Jeffers as well as Euripides concentrates in the
first part of the drama on giving Medea opportunity to dem
onstrate her human, psychological power over her antago
nists, and in the second half, on giving her opportunity to
employ her extra-human knowledge and occult power to con
trol them completely. The spectacle of the first part is
provided by the presence of the two monarchs and the war
rior in contrast with the emotion and struggle of a scorned
woman plotting to extricate herself from what she regards
as a totally untenable position of disgrace. Once resolved
to venture anything, however, and having by her human cun
ning gained time and opportunity to destroy, Medea is given
the spectacular focus of the play through the use of the
unnatural acts of infanticide and magic. She destroys
Creon and his daughter through her magic powers. She pro
tects herself from Jason by the fire-dragons which guard
the door of her house. Finally, she departs with the sure
safety of a refuge with Aegeus in Athens where she will use
197
her magic to make it possible for him to have children and
thereby continue his obligation to protect her.
Without question, Medea is Jeffers' most completely
developed dramatic figure. Obsessed and compulsive, she
!still has an immense variety of emotions to demonstrate.
|She reacts with a great range of emotion throughout her
! contacts with powerful men; she acts with solicitous inter-j
I est towards her children until her final slaughter of them;
1 and she maintains a hauteur and regal posture before the
j Chorus. Jeffers gives her a vital and dynamic personality
i J
i * !
; within her passion. j
In Medea Jeffers also demonstrates the power of his !
| poetic skill with a brilliant thrust. The language is j
varied, hyper-charged, and meticulously appropriate to the j
; character and to the situation. Jeffers adds to the Greek j
I original in providing a rich variety of images ranging fromj
the angry animal imagery in Medea's epithets to the pro- I
phetic animal imagery in the speeches of the Chorus. He |
adds as well the comments on civilization and divine wisdom'
i
I
which permeate the short, terse speeches of the Chorus. Ini
his shortening of Euripides' speeches from discursive
statements about the predicament to passionate, short ut
terances, charges, and counter-charges, Jeffers has prob- j
ably shown most clearly his poetic control of the play's j
subject matter as he saw it, tying the language closely to
the thematic insight. The sheer fury of the animalistic
19
behavior of the wounded and enraged Medea as well as the
statements of the impotent and frightened Chorus are crys
tallized in the verse.
i
CHAPTER VII
"THE CRETAN WOMAN"
"The Cretan Woman" was the second play by Jeffers to s
i
I be adapted directly from Euripides for the stage.'*' Unlike j
| i
his Medea, written five years earlier, this work diverges |
i j
; radically from its source. Indeed, Jeffers alters the
original material to such an extent that he gives predomi-
:nance and attention to his female lead, Phaedra, rather j
than to the comparatively less dramatically compelling fig-i
ure of Hippolytus. Jeffers’ economy in shortening speeches
and in organizing exposition, confrontation, and denouement
is remarkable. With Medea it is his most tightly compressed
and controlled drama, depending entirely upon characteriza- i
•*-It should be emphasized that Jeffers was now writing
specifically for the stage; he was no longer, since Medea
writing "dramatic poems" as he had done in "The Tower Be
yond Tragedy" or in "Dear Judas."
As with Medea, "The Cretan Woman" has been given very
little attention by Jeffers' critics. His major critics
(Powell, Squires, and Carpenter) have all but ignored the
work, commenting more upon the title work and the short po- !
ems of the volume in which it was published; Hungerfield j
and Other Poems (New York; Random House, 1954j^ The Re- j
views and criticism of the play, when it was staged, dealt
substantially with production and performances.
References to the text in this chapter will be to the
1954 Random House volume and will be made parenthetically
by page number. j
199 |
200
tiorx and highly charged action to achieve its cohesiveness
| and integrity rather than upon the philosophic, mythic, and
technological freight which "Dear Judas" and "The Tower Be-
;yond Tragedy" carry.
I |
; Like Medea, Euripides' Phaedra possesses the potential |
j I
fire and power which Jeffers could transfer into urgent, !
1 |
:modern dramatic situations. Significantly, of the four
j
plays which were produced on the professional stage, three
i of them were successful in the theater because of the sta-
I
;ture and the strength of the leading female parts. Jeffers'
Electra, Cassandra, and Clytemnestra dominate "The Tower J
'Beyond Tragedy," in spite of Orestes' position as spokesman!
:of the play's thesis. Unquestionably, Medea is the center
,of the drama bearing her name. In "The Cretan Woman" Jef-
fers uses new material with which he can match his particu
lar strength in creating dramatic characters. Euripides' j
Phaedra is rich in possibilities, an embittered, maddened
animal who lashes out at everyone around her in her frenzy
of lust and who is at the same time a pitiful, tortured
victim of a curse, an innocent pawn used by a goddess re
venging herself for an insult. She carries none of the ;
guilt of Clytemnestra who has been an adultress in her hus- :
band's absence; nor has she the gory history of fratricide
and of treachery of a Medea. She is simply a young prin-
; f
;cess brought from a civilized background to be the queen of
|Athens, wife to the aging, hero-king Theseus; she is iso-___
201
lated in Athens, removed from the support of her familiar
surroundings, as is Medea in Corinth. But Jeffers seems to
be most comfortable creating the character of a woman who
is consumed by a burning lust which destroys her conven-
itional qualities of femininity and submission. Thus, his
!Phaedra becomes a believable and compelling contradiction
!in traits. Her vitality derives (as does Medea's in the
' i
i . i
:tension of her mother love and her compulsion to destroy i
land punish her husband) from the powerful, conflicting de-
i
sires of preserving her purity and seducing her husband's
. i
son. |
i
As Jeffers develops the character, Phaedra possesses j
! far more dramatic interest for a modern audience than does
the juvenile lead, Hippolytus, of the original play. In
I i
| his version, Euripides focuses his attention on Phaedra
i only in the first half of the play. In the second half, j
; Theseus and Hippolytus discuss the ramifications of lust,
leadership, tradition, and respect. The burden is upon a
ceremonial argumentation rather than upon immediate action
or passionate suffering. Hippolytus, who has rejected the ' ■
love of women for the pursuit of the hunt and the companion
ship of his friends, is cursed by Aphrodite, and falsely '
i accused by his step-mother. When he denies her charges , he
I is killed, according to the wish of his father, by the god i
| Poseidon. Having refused to carry out even the token j
I
jpraises demanded by the goddess of love, he is struck down.
202
His fate, that of the conventional argumentative, almost
i
callow young man, is trivial except for its effect upon the
more mature lives which he touches. Ironically, he is a
modification of Jeffers’ admired individual who seeks na
ture and rejects human involvement, though he does continue
to place a value upon his relationship with his friends and.
upon the good opinion of his father. Phaedra, on the other
; !
| hand, is driven by her love for her stepson and forced by j
i !
■ her pride to play out the role of faithful wife and submis-
! '
I sive queen to a proud, aging warrior. The essential waste
i [
■ of her life (in Jeffers1 version she is barren) is com
pounded by her revulsion at her husband's record of bloody !
I conquests. Innocently suffering for the action of Hippoly- :
tus, she completes her fate by dragging down her husband's
entire house. Like Medea she destroys Theseus' only chance !
I (however remote) for posterity by being the instrument of j
his son's death. Her predicament and her manner of con
fronting it is matter for potent, dramatic presentation,
whereas Hippolytus' obtuseness and comparative lack of ;
; I
imagination require the power of both Phaedra's and Theseus'
i
suffering to make him interesting even as a simple catalyst |
i
of action. In both Euripides' and Jeffers' plays Hippoly- I
i tus is largely an instrument for the argument and the plot. |
I By concentrating upon Phaedra, Jeffers creates a highly
!
! volatile set of interlocking passions and reactions set in
jaction by her heightened emotions.
203
Since "The Cretan Woman" is a one-act play, it is ob
vious that Jeffers necessarily cuts and shortens as well as
translates and adapts in his version. His play ultimately
becomes a study of Phaedra's predicament and for the most
part dismisses the on-stage involvement of Theseus and Hip-
I i
polytus; but his deletions involve more than a simple omis-I
sion of exposition and argumentation: they are the product
: I
;of a concentration upon the suffering, individual Phaedra.
[ :
The enclosing speeches of Aphrodite, the lamentations of
■the Nurse, the vitriolic attacks of Hippolytus, the obser-
I
I
ivations of the begging women, and the direct confrontations j
between Theseus and Hippolytus, as well as Phaedra's final j
:speech in which she alternates between defeated ego and en
ergized libido— all give Phaedra center stage. Her suffer
ing is the compelling part of the play.
| In Medea Jeffers confined the supernatural influences j
I and the workings of the gods to Medea's occult powers. By
substituting Aegeus for Euripides' "deus ex machina," the
magic chariot, Jeffers gave the play an almost exclusively
human point of reference in both motivation and present be-
! havior. He drops this method, however, in "The Cretan j
:Woman" to include the long speeches of the goddess Aphro-
jdite at the opening and closing of the play. Aphrodite ap
pears to set the scene and to provide exposition before the |
i
!entrance of Phaedra. She reappears after the death of Hip- j
jpolytus and Phaedra1s anti-climactic exit to provide a j
final commentary. The technique is economical in its con
densation of the long choral observations of the original
version and is efficient in presenting Jeffers1 concepts of
the nature of man and the fates which control him. [
|
Another economy which helps make this next to last of ;
his poetic dramas one of his most spare and stark is in the ;
j
structure. Taken upon its simplest terms a drama usually j
contains a direct exposition, an initial action, rising ac
tion, a climax, and a denouement. Jeffers does little to
deviate from this simplistic pattern in "The Cretan Woman." :
Indeed, in its proportions and conformity the play is al- j
i
!
most a textbook exercise. But these mechanics of the play j
illustrate the means by which Jeffers gives a further unity ]
to the play by focusing upon one central action, the decay
of Phaedra as she is swept to destruction by the will of j
Aphrodite. Jeffers opens with the speeches of three beg- |
ging women who have come to the palace early in the morning i
seeking charity. Their talk is homely, plain, and humble.
They sense a divine presence, are interrupted by Selene,
Phaedra's nurse, and are told of Phaedra's suffering with
out being informed of its origin or its specific nature. j
i
Jeffers next brings Phaedra on stage. She, like a servant, j
alternates between fatigue, delirium, and humility. With
the chorus, she recognizes a presence at the altar of Aph
rodite, a divine aura. Her speech varies between promises j
|
of self-control, revulsion for her own passion, confession I
205
of her love, and recollection of her entrance into Athens
as a bride. She concludes by asking comfort and solace
from the women and, in a state of euphoria induced by the
fever of her emotion, re-enters the palace. Her exit is
followed by the appearance of Aphrodite who speaks of the
|nature of divine will and of her particular powers, the na~j
ture of Hippolytus' offense and irreligious attitude and |
i J
: its subsequent penalties, and the resoluteness of her own J
will. She completes the exposition which Jeffers began in
the human generalizing of the begging women and the suffer-
!ing of Phaedra and of the Nurse. She universalizes the I
i
ipredicament of her commentary that all men share in being j
|subservient to the will of the gods (pp. 90-91). Whereas
:Jeffers had spent considerable time in his earlier plays in j
discussion of the fatal circumstances surrounding human j
ievents (such as in the long speeches of Cassandra in "The |
i Tower Beyond Tragedy"), he is now willing to condense and j
compress the essence of the philosophic idea in a shorter
transitional speech.
Jeffers builds a bridge from the speech of the goddess j
to the appearance of the human actions of Hippolytus by the
speeches of the begging women, who awaken as if from a
dream. The first woman recalls the advances of a "white
j
hot column of fire" drawn from the altar, the second de-
; j
j scribes the movement upon the altar of a "great white cat—
j
|a snow leopard," and the third reverses the direction of
206
the imagery to describe her dream of a dove bearing a spray
of white apple blossom in its beak. Jeffers next directs
attention to the entrance of Hippolytus and his two friends
who are about to go to the hunt. Their banter is robust
and youthful; they ironically ignore the warnings of the
jthree women. Moreover, Hippolytus denigrates the worship j
jof Aphrodite. In answer to his companion Andros' recommen- |
i
; dation he responds: j
I? No. I will worship the Great Goddess of Love
( . . . At a great distance. [He makes a gay gesture of
salutation.]
All hail! Hail, Aphrodite I — The truth is:
| I am a little cold toward the divinities i
That are worshipped at night, with grotesque antics; !
the Goddess of Witchcraft and the Goddess of
Love . . .
| Such a pair I Seriously, Andros:
The world is full of breeders: a couple in every
bush: disgusting.
As for me, I'll spend my passion
j On wild boars and wild horses. (pp. 39-43)
Aphrodite has been specifically and categorically insulted.|
Her function has been equated with Hecate's, the goddess of:
the night and witchcraft.
Jeffers subsequently develops the movement of the play;
through a series of tense confrontations: Hippolytus with ;
Selene, in which Selene describes Phaedra's depression and j
restlessness; Phaedra with Hippolytus, in which Phaedra be-
| gins cryptically to describe her love for him and concludes
2
The animal imagery echoes exactly the presence of the
j predatory cat in "At the Birth of an Age" when Gudrun is
I described as a snow-leopard.
207
with a direct offer of her body and an attempted seduction
which includes physical embraces and actual fondling.
Phaedra finally curses him and collapses in the arms of
Selene, At this point in the action Jeffers, in imitation
of the Greek chorus, interrupts with choral speeches which
j generalize and make universal the specific actions of the !
! present drama. The women talk of the necessity for domes- !
i
; tic tranquility and for religious submission. Jeffers j
' gives Phaedra short lines which she can spit out in her re-
1 ;
j fusal to accept their warnings. The chorus repeats its
j generalizations after the most intense argumentation in the I
j I
i play, that between Phaedra and Theseus. Jeffers uses the
j begging women as interruptions of the tragic movement, in- '
i
terruptions which intensify and bring suspense, however,
: rather than offer diffuse, discursive commentary. The beg- !
i ging women are given short, terse speeches which urge calm !
I i
: and restraint in the face of immediate disaster. i
In Phaedra's meeting with her aging husband, Jeffers
allows her the greatest range in her emotions. She begins
i
in submission, proceeds to accusation, rages, withdraws in
: |
| cynical laughter, employs cunning, and finally taunts the
■ old king with his record of bloody actions. With reserve
iand hauteur she observes the first exchanges between her
husband and her stepson. Jeffers reveals the venom which j
| • i
j is in Phaedra as she grows more infuriated. She offers j
j |
| herself for death and finally goads Theseus into the murder {
208
of Hippolytus. In the speeches following the slaughter,
both Theseus and Phaedra comment upon the act and upon
their now totally deteriorated relationship. Jeffers then
reverses his strategy of dramatizing through argumentation:
he writes Phaedra's final speech of agonized epiphany by
the desolate Theseus, and the play's concluding speech by
the laughing, amused Aphrodite. As the light at her altar
dims out, the day and the drama conclude.
Jeffers, in this late play, compresses his thematic
commentary predominately into the speeches of Aphrodite and
his chorus; Hippolytus, Theseus, and Phaedra as individuals
particularize the suffering which all men must endure as a
matter of their human nature and as pawns of a fatal will,
a supernatural power and pattern. One of the virtues of
dividing the exposition and commentary between Aphrodite
and the chorus of begging women is that Jeffers gives both
a human (submissive) and a divine (dominating) point of
view. The three women of the chorus have distinct person
alities. The first has pride in herself and her husband;
she is young and religious. The second is bawdy and prac
tical; she berates the first woman about her complaining
and her youth and the very real marketability of her flesh;
she later hopes that if the house of Theseus falls, her son
might be in on the looting. The third woman is timid and
easily frightened; she is the wife of a drunkard and is the
one who, unlike the others, dreams of calm and happiness,
209
even during the terrible dream when Aphrodite appears on
the altar. Jeffers deviates from his original source, in
iwhich the chorus is made up of Troezenian women who are
|
jsymbols of the general population, by placing his begging
! i
iwomen in the lower, serving class. They approach the pal- j
j ace humbly and react to the presence of the altar with dx zr- !
■ ziness at the heart, dazzled eyes, and trembling knees.
They are intimidated in the face of human power and wealth i
[
i and in the closeness of a divine being. They literally
‘groan at the mention of Phaedra's refusal to eat. Jeffers !
: adds to the realism of the opening scene through the spe- j
' j
cific agency of these believable women. j
As the play progresses, the begging women despite their
timidity and fearfulness continue to comment on the action
of the play and upon their role as citizens of Troezene and j
as women of their own households, and to provide contrasts j
j
to the noble figures who dominate the stage. After Hippol- !
ytus hurls his insult at Aphrodite, one declares that she
has seen an apple-blossom spray move; another sees glaring
eyes; and the last sees the fire of anger (p. 43). Later, |
like the Corinthian women who attempt to comfort Medea, j
i
i
they approach Phaedra who is challenging Hippolytus with ;
the fact of her love. They are witnesses of the attempted
seduction. Jeffers has them listen with sympathy to his
|rejection and to her disappointment. Each comments on the
i
jbitterness of being scorned and upon the vulnerability of
210
women (pp. 55,56). When Phaedra strips off her jewelry and
hurls a bracelet at their feet, they revert to their role
as beggars— avaricious, deprived animals. Since they are
continually motivated by the actions of their superiors,
| they are almost immediately frozen into silence and immo-
|bility at the announcement of Theseus' approaching return.
i
:They swear to be silent about what they have heard and ut-
i
ter platitudes: "For time, that eats up our pleasures, / j
'Also mends pain" (p. 59); "Silence is God's best gift" !
I (p. 62). Forced by Theseus to speak, they lie to support
j j
I Phaedra's charges against Hippolytus. Jeffers exploits the;
i dramatic moment and gives to the aristocrat and conquering
i hero Theseus a semblance of the control which is slipping !
out of his hands by allowing him to make a magisterial,
| executive requirement: he demands that the women sing. ;
!
; Their subsequent speeches are again aphoristic and cryptic: j
Second Woman j
|
I am terrified . . . !
(She sings — or rather speaks, but with consciousness
of the music) What is best for a man?
For our human half-darkness under the stars i
Is full of evil; grief after grief comes in, i
Like wolves leaping the fold-wall . . . !
|
First Woman
j
Silence is best.
Second Woman
| Grief after grief,
Like waves flooding the sea-wall: but wealth could stop j
them. j
A golden dyke: a rich man can buy security . . . j
211
First Woman
Then why do great kings die by violence?
Second Woman
Pure love is best.
Let pure love be my heaven, and fair love my fortress . . .
; |
First Woman
i
| But if you love someone, death comes and takes him.
! i
Third Woman
(Striking the zither strings with her hand, breaking
off the music)
I Then death is best!
First Woman
: !
Death is good in his time. j
i Silence is best. j
Third Woman
| ;
An old old song, my lord. It doesn't make sense —
And I can't help it.
They again support Phaedra in her charges against Hippoly-
i tus; and after Theseus has slain his son, they stand almost I
i
: frozen while they observe and describe his fondling of the
dead body and his lamentation of his wretchedness (pp. 71-
72) . |
Consistently throughout the play, Jeffers keeps the ;
!
i
speeches of the chorus short and terse. When the women are j
not acting specifically as beggars, they offer homilies; an;
i ;
example, in the bridge between the soliloquy spoken by
i i
Theseus over the dead body of Hippolytus and the curtain
speech delivered by the laughing Aphrodite, they comment:
212
A mighty man, like a beaten dog or a shot bird,
Crawls in the dust.
The worst wounds that we suffer we inflict on ourselves.
And the contradictory:
Hippolytus was happy.
He had his youth, he did no evil, suddenly he died.
The pity of these things has broken my heart. (p. 90)
| The women operate on the dual bases of their human, spe-
i I
[ cific fears and biases and upon their folk wisdom and com- !
Jmon sense. I
j
I Aphrodite, on the other hand, who is the other agency
through which Jeffers provides exposition and a framework
i i
for the action, speaks as a divine figure. Characteristi- |
j j
cally, Jeffers provides the goddess with an atypical, non- i
i
|traditional quality. She is cynical, laughingly sophisti
cated, powerful, disdainful, and weary of people. She is
.also an egotist, as evidenced by one of her speeches where, j
I in thirty lines, she used the first person pronoun thirty- j
I j
eight times. In this opening, expository speech she also j
describes herself as "not the least clever of the powers of ;
heaven," "The goddess of Love," "a great goddess." In his
j
stage directions, Jeffers describes her as playing with a i
i
i
i
:spray of fruit-blossoms and speaking out her thoughts as if j
; i
;alone, reflecting. Identifying herself through her Greek j
jand Roman names, she lists her powers which include the
|ability to cause the orchards to flower and eventually to
i :
i
ibear fruit, the birds to mate, men and women to be attractedj
j
■ towards each other. As a goddess she can and does take j
213
further credit for enforcing the obedience of the tides to
the moon, and finally the entire organization of the sky.
When she moves from the macrocosm of the universe to the
microcosm of the atomic organization into molecules, she
declares emphatically that it is through her "saving power"
of love that she holds them in concert, and preserves them
from chaos. In this play Jeffers posits love as the source
of organization and pattern and personalizes it in the fig
ure of a beautiful and disdainful goddess. She asserts
that at her altar, on occasion, the prayers of her worship
pers are answered; but she also adds that in every instance
in which she is scorned, there will be punishment. At this
point she specifies one who has rejected her, Hippolytus,
whom she describes bitterly as a "chaste young athlete."
Jeffers explicitly directs her to speak "bitterly" and
then directs his actress to smile and to admire her blossom
spray:
Well . . . I shall have my will of him. The young man
Will be taken care of. It is not right — nor safe —
to be insolent
To a great goddess.
Referring to the disaster that this insult will cause for
both Phaedra and Theseus as unfortunate, she adds that "to
suffer is man's fate, and they have to bear it." She goes
on to describe herself and the other gods as "forces of
nature, vast and inflexible," incapable of being moved by
fear or compassion. Departing from her haughty self con-
214
tainment, but still smiling, she addresses the audience di
rectly to assert that her specific act will be carried out
| "This day" in the lives of Theseus, Phaedra, and Hippolytus
i in "the sudden accomplishment / Of my planned purpose"
i
(pp. 37-38).
|
Similarly, Aphrodite concludes the play with her mock-
l .
| m g laughter. "We are not extremely sorry for the woes of
I
; men. We laugh in heaven." She asserts flatly, "What we
i !
I desire, we do. I am the power of love." In her final re- '
; i
! marks she warns those men who in the future will seem to I
l i
j i
; control the heavens and the earth through an ionderstanding [
\ !
j of the stars and of science that will always feel the per- j
manence and vital presence of her power.
Within the framework of Aphrodite's and the chorus's
I commentary, Jeffers illustrates his basic theme of man's j
| feebleness in contrast with nature. In each of his human j
! I
icharacters, Jeffers exposes a powerful trait which illus— |
trates the tendency of man, whether motivated from within
or without, to seek obsessively a path which must ulti-
|
mately lead to his destruction. In the case of Hippolytus j
and Theseus, Jeffers develops characterizations which carry
iwithin themselves the seeds of their own downfall. In j
i j
:Phaedra he presents a victim, an innocent, whose sexuality
is exaggerated to lust and to animality by a vengeful pri-
i
jmal force which is using her to penalize a third individual
i
i
|who has been guilty of offensive behavior. Significantly,
215
however, Jeffers does not present Phaedra as totally inno
cent, as a virgin offered in sacrifice or appeasement for a
general wrong of mankind. instead, she is a person who,
when afflicted through a divine wrath with an impossible
love for the homosexual Hippolytus, lashes out with every
j weapon at her disposal. It is her own resolution to seek j
j vengeance once she has found that she cannot persuade the !
j i
; one that she loves to reciprocate her feelings; to this |
j ;
! extent she is a responsible individual. In her desire for ;
i :
; Hippolytus, Phaedra is a simple victim, forced into the at-
i i
i |
itraction by a goddess; but when she reacts to his rejection,!
: she is as vindictive as is the goddess and duplicates Aph- |
rodite's awareness of the irony of the immediate events.
!She says to the still suffering Theseus who is crooning
jover the dead body of his son:
' As for you Theseus — (She smiles brightly at him, j
speaks slowly and lovingly) j
Come soon, dear. What else can you do? Weep, and then
come. (p. 85)
i
But where Aphrodite returns to Olympus as a life force,
■^Jeffers does not develop Phaedra as he does Cassandra
of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy," or Helen of "At the Fall of
an Age," both of whom in their gifts of prophecy or beauty
make a contribution to history or to an age. Phaedra is
:memorable but not profoundly important in human affairs,
!other than those which touch upon the immediate business of
: Athens and Theseus. Since Theseus is the last of his line
|and the reins of government will necessarily be handed to
jsomeone new, Phaedra's acts are not as compelling as are
|Medea's or Helen's. The effect is terminal rather than
reverberating.
216
Phaedra exits as a single human being who can only take her
own life, die and become a moment in history, her fate
accomplished.
Unlike Aphrodite who is sustained as a vital, continu-
;ing primal source of love, Theseus and Hippolytus share
with Phaedra the doom of mortality. Jeffers creates in his
three leading human characters a combination of enflamed
|but temporary emotions. Theseus in his bloody history as a
iwarrior is reduced to wretchedness. His payment for his
acts of war is, at least in his own and Phaedra's estimate,
i
jthe cold corpse of his slain son. Hippolytus, the son who
j
jcould perpetuate his line, dies barren after a brief and
4
jundistinguished life. Phaedra, as Jeffers develops her,
!
!is without a child. She, too, dies without hope, without a
I
;future.
i
Hippolytus is, no doubt, the least fully drawn of
these three characters. Jeffers makes him undeviatingly
immature, robust, physically attractive, and naive almost
to the point of being simple-minded. In his first appear-
jance in the play he is exulting in the freshness of the
morning: "How beautiful the early light is; when the mist
^Jeffers, writing upon the hint in Euripides that Hip-
jpolytus could be and probably was a homosexual, created a
jfigure whose destiny must be, if not negative, at least
| non-productive.
217
rises from the mountain and the larks sing high." He urges
his companion to call him by his first name. While teasing
Andros about his carousing, he ends by insulting Aphrodite
and turning his back on her worship. Unaware of the god-
des' presence, he receives Selene’s news of Phaedra’s ill
ness and raving with a brief comment, "Certainly / But what |
jean I do?" (pp. 40,45). |
; In each of Hippolytus’ responses to Phaedra, Jeffers
Ihas him answer almost dully. On her announcement that she 1
is ill and controlled by the gods, he answers pompously
• i
I that one need not submit entirely to the gods: j
1 !
; Not entirely, Phaedra. I
We have to suffer what they choose: but we control our own!
■ will and acts
For good or evil.
Phaedra openly states her love for him and describes the j
; i
pain that his coldness causes her. He insists that although!
he is not demonstrative, he is "glad that my father chose / j
|So good and beautiful . . ." she interrupts him and cries ;
out in a frightened suggestion that he there and now take i
her. He answers, "I am bound to honor you: I cannot under- I
stand you clearly." When she once again offers herself to
him, Hippolytus explains that his emotions and actions are !
j
controlled by his will, and that he is not ". . . inclined ;
toward love." The remainder of the meeting between them is |
imade up of Hippolytus1 advice that she speak softly so that ■
■she might not reveal her feelings to the women; and when
218
that fails, he addresses the women directly suggesting that
her tainted, royal Cretan blood explains her actions.
Phaedra's attempts to show that her emotion is past her
control give him pause to pity her briefly; but that reac
tion shifts swiftly to contempt and disgust. He degrades
! !
i her, angry that he has been publicly embarrassed: "Uncoil /I
! j
Your madwoman: she wearies me," and in a shudder of revul- j
i
!
jsion, "There is nothing so unclean as madness." Upon Phae-j
l |
I dra's collapse, Hippolytus admits to Andros that he is
sorry for Phaedra, and then he turns to the business of the I
imorning's hunt. His responses have been very curt, almost |
■ i
ismug. Jeffers leaves the final comment to one of the beg- !
i ging women: "This is the worst thing that can happen to a
woman: when love meets contempt" (pp. 47-55).
j
Jeffers maintains this simplicity and single-minded- |
:ness in Hippolytus in the later meeting between father and |
I son. In a stage direction he requires Hippolytus to move j
; I
"freely and with confidence," although he is being brought
under guard to his father. The young man ignores Phaedra
j
and speaks,
You have come home, Father: I am glad of that. j
But why in anger? j
iHis response to the charge that he has raped Phaedra is
1 j
;simple disbelief: "Are you raving mad, Father!" Through- i
i I
jout, he is condescending and inflexibly haughty. He states
!
|that he has never been interested in women and requires the
219
the begging women to tell the truth. When they support
Phaedra's charges, he says quietly, "They're making a fool
I of you, Father. - — It is bitter to be killed innocent of a
; woman's lies." In his dying, he once again calls his fa-
| ther a fool and answers Phaedra's question as to whether he
■ still despises her with, "Yes! I despise you!" In an un- j
i usual expression of tenderness he then addresses Theseus as I
i ;
| "My poor father" and dies (pp. 74-81).
The death scene echoes the impotence and pathos of the;
! death scene of the young poet-warrior Carling in "At the
! ;
; Birth of an Age." Jeffers seemed unable to give much di- |
i
I mension to the struggles or psychology of a young man in i
j
| his dramas, although he was able in his narratives to draw
successful young people, both male and female.^ Even with
: Orestes in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" Jeffers seemed to be
struggling to make his motivation and actions believable. j
In Theseus, Jeffers develops a more rounded and com
plete character, but the play is Phaedra's, and Theseus has
1 less importance than she. He is an old man returning to
his home and to his young wife after receiving a disturbing j
answer from the oracle that his house was burning. He is '
l • :
1 ^
• Tamar and Lee Cauldwell of "Tamar," California of
! "Roan Stallion," Clare of "The Loving Shepherdess," and
| Fayne and Lance of "Give Your Heart to the Hawks" are only
I a few of many strong examples.
220
weary from the trip, and Jeffers has him enter already sus
picious that he has in some way been tricked or betrayed.
After dismounting and approaching his house, he demands an
explanation for the gloom which has appeared to have set-
i
| tied upon it. Selene attempts to keep emotions settled.
i
|She is shut off first by Phaedra and then by the shout of
|Theseus:
j I am not a patient man. I hate the female herdj
| that chatters like monkeys
And never speaks.
!Phaedra declares that she has been raped. Theseus asks in
short, tight phrases for the details: "Go on. Speak," i
1 |
|"Go on. Speak more," "So you say. They all say that. — j
I Who was the man?" "I do not see them. Who?" "Presently
perhaps. Who was it? Who?" Driven nearly out of control, i
I Theseus turns upon Phaedra calling her a "cheap toy —
;
jbroken trinket ^ — mud-trampled rose petal," and upon her j
i identification of Hippolytus as the assailant, "You dirty ;
leavings." In an attempt to control himself, he admits, "I i
i
want to go stabbing, stabbing, stabbing." Theseus calls
i
her a liar, is contradicted, and then accuses her of seduc- ■
: I
jing and enticing his son. Jeffers draws the lines of The- j
:seus1 personality darkly in these spat out questions and |
'charges (pp. 64-69).
t
f :
In possibly the weakest point of the drama's structure,
iJeffers has the enraged Theseus order the chorus to play
I their instruments and to sing as they wait for Hippolytus
221
to be brought forward for accusation. He smolders in his
anger and twice tells Phaedra that she has only moments to
live. At one point he answers her baiting with a disgusted
"what a harlot's face you have!" (pp. 69-73).
Upon Hippolytus' entrance Theseus is still raging at
Phaedrar unsoothed by the songs of the begging women, but
calms himself sufficiently to question his son: "Do they
say I am not a patient man? Fools! Cold as stone." His
interrogation is raw and brutal as he tells Hippolytus that
the only cure for the crime he is charged with is "iron-in-
the-guts." He rages and hurls out epithets and curses:
"Oh, Oh . . . You . . . blond pillar of righteousness!
Filth: filth: filth! God strike you dead!" and silences
Phaedra when she interrupts with "Shut your mouth." He
seizes his sword, threatening the begging women, "You gaudy
dummies, who bribed you?" Listening to them, however, he
sentences Hippolytus, "You have heard your death sung, Hip
polytus," and in a final bitter curse, slays him, "You
model of chastity!" Jeffers, obviously intent upon the
spectacular nature of the slaughter, stage-directs Theseus
to carry out the act consistently with his past as a war
rior in battle: "He shifts his sword with skilled sudden
ness, drives it under the breastbone, from below upward"
(pp. 76-81). After the murder, Jeffers abruptly shifts the
reactions of Theseus to a drugged, traumatized daze. He
has drawn the attention of the audience briefly to Phaedra,
222
and Theseus answers her vaguely, "Pray you, be quiet," and
after more of her taunting, "You yap at me like a sick
hound, and I cannot hear you." He blames the gods for hav
ing driven him to the act, adding, "The woman makes a great
noise / And it means nothing." In his last three speeches !
| the crushed old man first insists that Hippolytus is not
i i
! dead and can be nursed back to health; second he prays to
Poseidon to restore the dead body to life; and finally, in
I
his only long speech, he summarizes his history of blood,
i ;
wishes for death, regrets his failure to help Phaedra, and
bewails his present grief (pp. 83-87). |
In Theseus, Jeffers offers a more fully developed }
character than he has in Hippolytus who is a stereotype of
!
' the callowness of youth. In his stature as a king and in :
his predicament as a betrayed husband, Jeffers is able to
ipresent a changing, although briefly sketched figure most j
I fully realized in his final speech. In the opening lines
; of the speech, Theseus reacts predictably, hurling an epi
thet at the wailing and frightened women:
i
be silent, yelpers. !
You howlers in the doorways — (Shouting) be silent!
He insists that he is not as stupid as they would make him
i
out to be and then proceeds with a wish for death that he
had been strangled at birth or poisoned by the very nipples j
i of the mother who suckled him. He describes himself as a j
| |
i "slayer of men" and a "Woman's fool," a peasant swindled atj
223
market. He then reverts to a puzzled recollection of Phae
dra warning him that he would not dare to draw his sword
again; he wishes for death and contemplates the dead body
of his son. Theseus sees his life without succession and
then particularizes on the corruption his son's flesh will
j suffer. While he again wishes explicitly for his death, he ;
recalls Phaedra. He is struck by his own callousness to
i Phaedra in her problem and to the similarity in age of his
I son and his wife. Shocked into an awareness of the futil-
j ity of his actions— "And all this noise was nothing— froth
: j
I and a noise— a little noise in the night,"— declares that j
: I
: there will be nothing but suffering for him now; that since ;
he lived in blood, he will go down in blood to death bit
terly alone and mocked: "My north is grief and my south is
wailing and the children laugh at me." As in most of Jef-
j ;
; fers* poetry, the configurations and allusions are clear i
: and direct. Jeffers rarely draws upon esoteric or hazy
reference. His metaphor and figurative language is consis
tently understandable without a gloss or special informa-
■ i
1tion. The poetry summarizes the action without cryptic or
obscure allusion and it crystallizes the personality of the
!character pronouncing it. I
[ ;
| There is no doubt, however, that Jeffers' greatest
I strength and accomplishment in "The Cretan Woman" is Phae- j
i j
| dra. She is the most completely and compellingly developed j
224
figure in the tragedy. She is victim and predator, loyal
wife and corrupted mate; she is noble and fouled, awesome
and pathetic. Jeffers gives her the.play's most beautiful
poetry and the most remarkable imagery. She has a gentle
femininity which the cynical goddess lacks and the regal
! j
]bearing which Selene and the begging women are incapable j
I
of. Although as young as Hippolytus, Phaedra possesses a j
.larger wisdom than he even imagines. In her manipulation
of Theseus, she demonstrates a strength which matches, if
not in kind at least in degree, his own.
i
| In adapting the play to one act, Jeffers necessarily
ineeded to eliminate details of her character as well as to
|compress them. By revising Phaedra's role as mother to
Theseus' children and making her barren, Jeffers is able to ;
concentrate specifically upon her role as an afflicted, j
,alienated, and suffering creature. She is totally without
isolace, as is Theseus in Jeffers' version, in that he too, j
i
i {
at the end of the play, is childless. Learning, perhaps, i
from his success with Medea, Jeffers manages to clear away !
a considerable amount of the details and the multiplica-
;tion of motivating causes for behavior which surrounded his
earlier dramatic figures. Phaedra has a past (both Theseus !
land Phaedra comment upon the corruption of the royal family j
: i
at Crete, especially upon Phaedra's mother's mating with
' I
|
{the bull), but it is minimized in the drama. Jeffers has
|
|been able to trim away the extensive character analysis
225
which marked Cassandra of "The Tower Beyond Tragedy" and
Gudrun of "At the Birth of an Age" to concentrate more di
rectly upon present action, upon the immediately and dra
matically interesting behavior of a suffering individual.
Like Medea, Phaedra is a complex figure, but Jeffers has
I
I
managed to focus directly upon a single, immediate situa
tion.
: * !
| In Euripides' play, Phaedra is temporarily inhibited |
j i
1 in her lust not only by the horror of the act itself but by j
'the inevitable damage it would do to her reputation in
j
|Athens and in Corinth and to the safety and well-being of j
i
!her children. In Jeffers' play, however, Phaedra— as with {
Clytemnestra, Electra, Cassandra, Medea, Polyxo, Helen,
Gudrun, Mary in "Dear Judas," and Mary and Elizabeth in the!
i
I
unfinished fragment— dies without a surviving child. She j
iis also, early in the play, willing to sacrifice her per-
i sonal reputation which she considers a worthless object. !
Phaedra's first line in the play is "I will not shame j
i
myself. I will not defile this house." She is in a delir- |
1
i r
!ium of lust and fatigue. The nurse has announced to the
!begging women that her mistress has not eaten for three
days. Phaedra haughtily dismisses Selene's questions with
i j
!the remark that she is a queen and then slips into a vague
i , j
I questioning herself; she mistakes the begging women as "the i
i
{queens of the East," and after swearing to tear out the
lust for Hippolytus from her flesh "like a barbed spear-
226
head," she wanders like a sleepwalker to the altar of Aph-
i rodite. She struggles with the notion that her crime of
longing is not great if she refuses to submit to it: "I_
I
want. I_ want . . . X will never yield to it." She de
scribes her emotion as a disease and cunningly admits that i
| she recognized the begging women for what they were from
i
| the beginning. In an almost schizophrenic refusal to sta-
| bilize her emotions, she commends Hippolytus for being i
! homosexual and for being resistant to her feeling which she j
• declares "is worse then evil; it is ridiculous" (pp. 32-35).
| |
Having restored herself to her identification as queen|
! of Athens and mistress of her own passions, she orders !
Selene once more to be silent and declares her love for
Theseus. In her speech she recalls her fearfulness upon
arriving in Athens to be bride to Theseus and recollects
i the details of the dirt of the harbor and the sailors. She j
: lapses into an attempted reinforcement of her fidelity:
"For I love him, you know! Theseus I love. I have been |
i
fighting myself . . . ." She refers specifically to his
j
vulnerability in old age and insists that she will not
; force him into a hatred of the world as a result of her be-
i trayal. But subsequently, she begs a crust of bread from j
; the begging women and prays for death, rejecting Love,
r |
j Light, Fortune in preference for Death and for Forgetful- j
i ness (pp. 35-36).
| Jeffers brings her back on stage in relative calm and
227
tranquility to confront Hippolytus. Clothed as a queen,
she dismisses the servants and answers his inquiry about
her health with control and reserve:
I have been patient,
Hippolytus.
I think we must bear our fates, and accept
j What the gods send. They send sickness or health,
evil or good, passionate longing
Or the power to resist it. We have to do
What the gods choose.
I
Within her remark is the tentative suggestion that she is
' i
i an obedient servant of the gods and that in her strength, j
| not her weakness, she will accept their will. Almost imme-j
diately, however, she dismisses theorizing: "What a bore i
i |
these philosophies are, my dear! Good and Evil! We're notj
I
! school-children." She teases him for not noticing her j
; i
beauty, recalls her childhood games in Crete of "hide-'n-
seek" in the labyrinth, then begs that he "hunt" her since I
j that is his pleasure to hunt. Having lost her composure as
: queen, she becomes more explicit. She refers to herself as
"the spotted lynx" seeking kindness. Once more rebuffed, j
I
she denigrates him, mocks his bastardy as the product of
: the rape by his father of a breastless woman. She goes j
| further to speak derisively of the warlike and puny efforts
i of the Greek city states in contrast with the beauty and |
! !
life-loving Crete where she was born. She exalts love and I
|
attempts to intrigue him: "Ours could be. Our love could
be." At his demand that she keep still to keep the women
from hearing, she responds with a dazed declaration: "Why
228
— who cares?-^Not I?" Crushed into submission by his
charge that she is mad, she reverts to animal imagery in
sisting that she is not mad like a rabid dog nor like her
slavering mother for the love of a bull, but like a "young
doe'1 carrying the burden of a leopard whose claws are i
! j
;clamped into her soft skin (pp. 47-50). j
j !
j Jeffers skillfully handles the fluctuating rage which
|consumes Phaedra by depicting it at its extremes. Again j
i
i ;
'rebuffed, she returns to her earlier queenly posture and
;threatens him with the consequences of denying her her de- i
| i
j
jmands. She refers to her power to destroy him as a "black
1 thought" crossing her mind like a "vulture / across a win- j
|dow" and insists, j
I have degraded myself already
Beyond all bounds,
jBut her strength to resist her lust is inadequate to its |
j force, and she becomes almost grotesquely explicit in re-
i ferring to the lance he is carrying for the hunt:
You have a good lance there: j
That boar—spear with the great metal head, your toy that
you play with: will you do me a kindness, fellow?
You say you are not unfriendly to me — Stick it into
me! (She kneels, tears at the cloth on her breast) j
Here! Here I say. Slake your hate and my love. i
i
Hippolytus1 pitying reaction drives her to describe her
I body and to praise her own beauty, forces her to embrace
'his knees, imploring to take her sexually or to kill her
i f
I
j (pp. 52—53) .
i
! In a final, degrading charge that she is making a
229
ridiculous figure of herself, Hippolytus orders her to be
dragged off. He calls her a madwoman who is becoming a
nuisance to him. At this point Jeffers provides the final
shift in Phaedra's personality. She stands, ordering her
servants away: "I've played my life and lost." She deri
sively dismisses him to his boyish enjoyments of the hunt
with his "laughing boys" and "fleet horses," warning him
that he may become the hunted rather than the hunter. From
this point to the conclusion of the play, Phaedra is in
control of her actions, almost as if her struggle with Hip
polytus has provided her with a cleansing, purgative sub
stitute orgasm. Failing to seduce him, she will deliber
ately destroy him:
He will not last long! — What are you? Spirits tor
menting me?
There was a kind of hypocrisy about my passion before.
I could see through it more or less.
Now it's deep, thick . . . I have quite lost myself.
(Looks down at herself. Feels herself with her hands.)
This thing: this pitiful flesh: is this Phaedra,
The daughter of the wise ruler of famous Crete?
Or a scorned whore? (pp. 54-56)
She has survived the passion for sexual fulfillment and its
denial. From this point on she will be cunning, unrelent
ing, and self-possessed.
Upon the messenger's announcement of Theseus' return,
she is calm in her reaction to Theseus' reported distur
bance over the nature of the oracle's message. She utters,
"You needn't tell me, Messenger. My lord will tell me,"
and then reflects blackly upon Hippolytus' treatment of her:
230
A scorned importunate whore: refused
And despised: kneeling, hugging his thighs: let her
be hanged.
— And how his young men will laugh1
Between the minstrel's song, and the juggler's tricks,
Over the wine.
j She threatens to see that the fire mentioned by the oracle
| will truly burn down the house of Theseus. She dismisses
j
j the hope of Selene that the present storm will blow over
jwith the single epithet, "Fool." She asserts categorically
■ that she will have vengeance: "I do not think: I know/
i !
That death is here at hand: but not a clean death.” She
j i
i continues after the second woman's vision of flower filled
! plains, "I am preparing a thing that will not be joyful,"
! and after the First Woman's descriptions of fields and
| j
vineyards, "The woman sees happiness. / But as for me. I
see shame, I see corpses." Carefully she ostensibly ac-
| i
cepts the advice of the women and of Selene to be quiet and|
I refers to her "folly" and to the necessity for maintaining |
her good name. Immediately upon her husband's return, how-j
ever, she declares that she has been raped, that if she i
bears a child it will not be his, that she wishes death, j
; ■ I
that revealing the name of the attacker would drive him mad,
and then, forcing his hand, she asks him to take her life.
! She describes in graphic terms her bed, her nakedness, her [
; attacker's armed threat as he entered her chamber, and her ;
■ [
| own tears as she cried out, i
| Though my life and honor are nothing to you,
| Will you dishonor your Father Theseus, whose wife I am?
231
She describes Hippolytus as a wild beast and then insists
that she has not uttered his name to the raging Theseus:
I will not send the father against the son.
I never named him. (pp. 57-6 7)
Jeffers abruptly shifts the attitude of Phaedra to one
iof the cruelest aspects of her character. She twists the
j
knife in Theseus. In a stage direction Jeffers has her
|speak "Almost brightly," questioning her husband on the
number of men he has slain in the past. She suggests that j
it must have been at least three hundred and in ironic in- |
|tensity states, j
; j
That's what they call a hero. That's what they call a |
great man. j
Kill, kill, and kill! j
i They put up statues. j
She begs him to spare his son but reinforces his intention
to murder Hippolytus as a vicious beast, "An evil beast," j
■ i
.whose name Theseus has twisted out of her. She responds to |
jhis writhing and comments upon his tense reaction to the j
| !
music he has ordered to be played. She calls the music in- ;
adequate to his needs:
j
It will not heal your wound, Theseus.
Only blood heals . . . Your wounds.
|
Once the music has been played, she again lashes out, noting
his beard, blood-lined, "Black-red on the grim gray," j
stained where he has in his agony bitten through his lips, j
i
|She compares his aspect to the "gnashing muzzle of a wild j
j boar” and reminds him that she has given previous warning
232
that the music could not help him. She again begs to be
killed, reminds Theseus of his son's homosexuality: "Hip
polytus is that sex — higher or lower, I know not, but
strange — That loves its own ..." and explains that she
would not have been so foolish as to have tempted him in
i
the face of that fact, and so his behavior in raping her j
i
was another of his inexplainable quirks. When Theseus at- !
tempts to regain his composure and asserts, "I know my son |
; i
Hippolytus / Is pure and true," she takes another direction;
and mocks him for his failure to clear his now muddied
i [
| name. Again she offers her own life: "I am not a coward" j
! (pp. 70-73). S
: i
, Jeffers manipulates Phaedra with the same skill he
; demonstrated in his development of Medea, However, where
I Medea's resoluteness in her decision is only briefly inter-I
i !
i !
j rupted by her maternal love for her children, Phaedra's j
; vacillations are more frequent and more varied. She re-
; sponds to both Theseus and Hippolytus with some traces of
compassion. She is deliberate and ultimately unrelenting,
]
but she can feel some compassion for her victims. Her full
I dimensions are more obviously drawn than Medea’s, although j
i j
her character traits are not allowed to become muddied or j
; unclear.
Unlike Medea, Phaedra must rely exclusively upon her
i
human powers to win her way. After Theseus' enraged dec
laration of his love for her, of his pride in his leader-
233
ship, of his vulnerability to her beauty, and of his belief
in his son, Hippolytus enters and she asks (in the stage
I
direction "clearly and brightly"), "Do you still despise me,
Hippolytus?" When this brief moment of indecision and pos-
i
i
|sible retraction is ignored by the obdurate Hippolytus, she |
; j
j denies that Hippolytus was her attacker, declaring, j
l
| I have some nerves of decency still: though you don't
think so. j
| I will not talk your sword j
i Into the belly of your son.
iAt this point Jeffers develops a high degree of suspense
: for his audience as he manages the feasible alternative
I
|
courses Phaedra might take. She is under pressure, her
j
I reason has been jarred, and her physical condition has been
I
affected by her long fasting, sleeplessness, and rage. The;
j variations and the fleeting retractions and sustained emo
tional maneuvers have made Phaedra volatile and unpredict- j
! [
! able, thereby heightening the audience's interest. It is |
i
significant that Jeffers has reached the point in his con
trol of the craft that he can manage this remarkable build-
1 ing of dramatic tension and excitement in a one-act play. j
Jeffers has provided Phaedra with a passing moment in which j
he allows Hippolytus to free himself from his fate and then j
has her (."Calmly") change to assert that she was a coward
i :
; not to cry out and incriminate him at the moment of the
I assault. She then, achieving her purpose of enflaming The-
] seus, names Hippolytus as the assailant. She says, again
234
calmly, "It is right for a violent man to be very careful /
Before he acts" (pp. 75-77).
When Hippolytus addresses her directly, the only time
during her charges, with his realization of the meeting of
i
j love and hate in the extremes of her emotion, Phaedra mo-
: mentarily admits, "(Quietly and sadly) I loved you once,
I
I Hippolytus." When he accuses her, she immediately asks
1
; Theseus to kill her and to spare Hippolytus, asserting, "He
' is your son, remember." Jeffers is unrelenting in his de-
| piction of a woman so consumed by her projection of herself
i
■ that in most frightened moments she can manage to recover
i
: by guile from each temporary lapse from attaining her pur-
! pose. When Phaedra sees that Theseus is diverted from his
rage by the force of his paternal love, she is restored and
: vengeful and turns him back once again to his anger over
| having been disgraced. She utters,
! He was right, then. He said,
1 "My father is an old man and hardly will care."
Phaedra's only remaining method of forcing the death of
Hippolytus is to ask Selene to testify in her defense. Se
lene's response is enough to rekindle the old man's rage
and to force him to exact revenge. Almost as a war cry,
Theseus screams out, "You model of chastity," and stabs his
I son (p. 78) .
Phaedra, in control of herself, asks again of her dy-
j ing stepson, "Do you still despise me, Hippolytus?" At his
235
answer, in a "gasping shout" of "YesI I despise you," she
falls back into the confused, fragmented personality that
characterized her in the moments of her lust in which she
attempted to seduce Hippolytus. Jeffers directs her to
speak, to address her husband "Like a bewildered child,
quietly, her hand to her mouth," in an intensely pathetic
confession, "But I love him, Theseus." She goes on, "But
I'd have died for you, Hippolytus! Gladly have died for
you," and in the same speech to her husband,
It was you I hated, Theseus: an old gray manslayer;
an old gray wolf, stinking of blood, destroyer
Of generations. For fifty years you have been killing
the sons of men — and now your own son.
She is unrelenting at this point, forcing Theseus to take
full responsibility, reversing her earlier position in ar
guing that the gods control the actions of men. She adds a
final egocentric barb, giving herself credit for his acts,
borrowing something from the arrogance of Aphrodite, the
goddess of love, whose mortal instrument she is:
How cowardly it is in men, to say
That a god did it! You did it. (A pause) And I . . .
deluded you.
(A pause)
Surely you can do it again? For me? {She comes
near him, pulling open the clothing at
her breast.)
This is the second instance of Phaedra's offering of her
breast for slaughter. Her first was to Hippolytus. Jef
fers repeats the agony of Phaedra's obvious inability to
seduce Hippolytus into a sexual union by the disappointment
236
she must suffer for having his father refuse to take her
life. Again she wishes for death, wishing that she had
been drowned in her voyage as a bride to Athens. She speaks
to the dead body of Hippolytus and then to the grieving
figure of Theseus:
j Are you beginning at last to understand?
| Are you beginning
j To feel now Theseus?
i
jShe does not relent at his agonized declaration, "I loved
|
ihim." Her response, however, is one of pity since she now •
|realizes that she was not the only one to suffer:
i
| (Pityingly) I know. I counted on it:
How wretched I should be if I alone went.
! " I
|She direpts Selene to look after the broken old man, to
i !
listen to his grief, and admits that she has come to
the Greek opinion: that there is nothing
Nobler than a great man in his mortal grief. Or . . . j
(She begins to weep) a loved beautiful youth . . .
Suddenly slain.
!In her last words she speaks "proudly" (Jeffers' direction)
that she is indifferent to future judgment, and (again in
j
Jeffers' stage direction) she invites Theseus "slowly and
; |
lovingly" to join her, "Come soon dear." Her final state- |
ment is one of gentleness and tender, solicitous care, a
wifely exhortation to rest. But after it, she departs to
i i
|hang herself (pp. 84-85). \
\ Within the structure of a one-act play, Jeffers con-
i
denses the powerful story of his Greek source. His methods,
as in Medea, were simple. He shortens individual speeches
| 237
and he cuts out a considerable amount of the discursive
commentary. He is able to accomplish this effectively by
i
concentrating upon one rather than upon all three of his
central figures. In Phaedra, Jeffers presents a psycholog-
j ically convincing character, a woman of considerable dimen
sion, a suffering vengeance seeking victim. When suffering,
she speaks of the insurmountability of the pressures and j
! I
influences of the gods; when she is exulting over her ven- j
i |
: geance, she insists that man has possession of his own will.!
:Finally, however, after her emotions have cooled, she makes i
i !
| the statement that the entire fury was pointless and de- j
|parts to perform the action which emphatically concludes j
j her despair. She kills herself. i
Jeffers' strategy in developing such a character is
i
dual: in Phaedra he creates a believable figure of con- j
: I
| flicting emotion, and in those with whom she comes into j
contact he creates dramatically efficient, simple personal-j
ities. Her complexity evolves at least in part from the
contrast with the simple solicitousness of her nurse, the
near obtuseness of Hippolytus, and the angry rashness of
! Theseus. In addition, she is given dramatic stature in the
parallels Jeffers draws between her and Aphrodite, the hu- !
i
man and the divine, the instrument and the cause within the |
universal pattern. They both possess great beauty, femi-
t I
j nine guile, and intense pride. Like Aphrodite, who has an
!
| omniscient awareness of the cosmic pattern, Phaedra also at
238
the conclusion, has a sense of the larger forces of exis
tence and the puniness of the individual struggle.
Further, Jeffers exploits the Greek method of present
ing suffering in the figure of a person capable of high
emotion and contrasts it with the mundane worries of the
I
realistically portrayed chorus of begging women. j
i
The final achievement is a compact, furious, and melo-]
I I
idramatic restatement of Jeffers' ever-repeated thesis that j
■ man becomes at moments tremendously aroused by the feelings
I and emotions which lead him to specific actions, actions j
• i
| that are in fact pathetically unimportant within a larger
! framework of nature and of "the beauty of things." i
CHAPTER VIII
"MARY AND ELIZABETH" (A FRAGMENT)
Jeffers was in his sixties when he began work on the
adaptation from Schiller's "Maria Stuart." He had returned
from an extended trip with his family in Europe and Ire- j
i
land. Medea had, a few years previous, given him his one
unqualified success in the theater. He had completed a
one-act adaptation from Euripides' "Hippolytus" ("The Cre
tan Woman"). His finances were solid. His greatest con- j
cerns were matters of taxes on the valuable real estate i
upon which he had built Tor House, and a Carmel city as- ;
i
sessment for a new sewage system. Dame Judith Anderson had j
asked him for a new vehicle, a new adaptation to bring to
Broadway. They had discussed Electra, Salome (Wilde), and '
Maria Stuart.^ !
His wife, Una, however, was stricken with cancer, and |
i
I
Jeffers' literary work was all but set aside in the series j
of trips and arrangements which had to be made for her !
j
treatment. Urged both by his daughter-in-law, Lee Jeffers, I
■^•Ellsworth L. Redinger, "An Interview with Dame Judith;
Anderson," Drama and Theatre, 8 (Winter 1968-69), 93.
239
240
and by Dame Judith, Jeffers continued to work on the play
somewhat as a therapy against the draining and traumatic
reality of his wife's illness and only secondarily as a
task that intrigued him. He had never before attempted to
work, in drama, on as recent a source as the Schiller sub
ject matter (with the exception of "The Bowl of Blood"),
and a number of his unpublished letters indicate the spe
cial demands it would make.^
The fragment of the play offers some atypical aspects
in his dramatic work. It is in no way a finished product.
3
Jeffers regarded it as the roughest kind of beginning.
The product is an interesting, if not complete, statement
of the author's philosophic position and his personal prob
lems at the time of composition. Death was a daily reality
in Tor House.
Although the Elizabethan subject matter is certainly
unusual for Jeffers, the basic story line is not at all ec
centric. The confrontation of two powerful women in mortal
2
When Jeffers finally decided to abandon the project
completely, the manuscript and a typescript were placed in
a closed file and subsequently sealed with the rest of his
papers and manuscripts still belonging to the Jeffers
family and literary estate in the Jeffers collection now
held at Occidental College.
Two letters belonging to Dame Judith Anderson, with
the University of California at Berkeley Medical School
letterhead, substantiate Jeffers' reticence at calling his
work or even the first act as in any way polished.
241
conflict follows the same direction as Jeffers had taken
with Electra and Clytemnestra in "The Tower Beyond Tragedy"
and with Helen and Polyxo in "At the Fall of an Age." The
characters are of royal stature, their backgrounds are
marked by the force of their personalities and by the
strength of their wills. Mary's beauty, indeed, is a close
approximation of Helen's in both its power to serve her and
| to destroy her; Elizabeth's awareness of her position as a !
i threatened monarch and her fierce will to dominate paral
lels Clytemnestra's,
1 j
Jeffers was interested in creating a play which would j
I
I demonstrate simply and clearly, with equal power, the two j
I aspects of the conflict. In its initial planning the no- !
tion was to have Dame Judith perform Mary and Elizabeth on
;alternate nights. j
: i
In his usual manner in adaptations, Jeffers works de- j
I liberately to shorten and tighten speeches, scenes, and j
character motivations. He reduces most of Schiller's long
!
speeches and soliloquies radically, telescoping scenes into!
! half their length and cutting out a considerable amount of
i '
! the baroque intrigue of the original play. The opening !
1
i
scene in which Paulet, Mary's custodian at Fortheringay ;
j i
iCastle, and one of his men are opening the desk of the
Queen in search of jewelry and any treasures which may be
I S
j of help to Mary either in planning an escape or bribing
guards, is cut to a short violent scene of exposition. In
242
making this abbreviation, Jeffers leaves out what Schiller
must have regarded as important in Paulet's recapitulation
of Mary's crimes and of the historical background of the
imprisonment.
Jeffers follows the original to the extent that he has
Kennedy, Mary's attendant and nurse during her imprisonment,
enter and remonstrate about the invasion of her mistress' j
jprivacy, but the speeches are short and angry. Mary's en- j
| !
! trance is almost immediate. She possesses the same unques- 1
; tionably regal quality Jeffers' other figures evidence.
! 1
i j
! She is in a vulnerable position as were Clytemnestra, Medea,
| Phaedra, and Gudrun, She has, in part because of her own
| behavior , become a captive of masculine dominated events. 1
; She is, however, like Helen, in immediate peril because of j
i the wrath of a woman. Like Helen, also, she has a child- j
t
l
! hood connection with her oppressor, Elizabeth. But, in
i
| spite of the emotion-fraught situation, Jeffers cuts her j
speeches considerably. She is regal, her genuine emotions
I
are hidden. She is above spending much time with what to ■
i
her is an unworthy jailer. Her speeches are clipped and to j
: the point.
Similarly, Jeffers cuts radically the scene in which
; i
; Mortimer confesses to Mary his reconversion to Catholicism I
i and his devotion to her cause. He drops the long speeches
I j
| in which Schiller describes the international intrigue in-
i
[ volving the various European royal families and the Papal
243
authority, particularly the manipulations and maneuvers
occurring between the Spanish court and the courts of the
continent. Instead, he concentrates on the psychological
and emotional conversion of the hot-headed young man who
has come to her aid. Significantly, Jeffers alters the ma
chinery of Elizabeth's political maneuvering and delicate j
position in her arrangements for a marriage which will af-
j feet her control of the throne and the destiny of England, j
i ;
| At the conclusion of the fragment, rather than being moti- j
j i
| vated by the distant intrigue of foreign courts, Elizabeth
I
makes her plans on the basis of what her sea captains are
1 !
i
|doing, specifically in Cadiz, where they are forcing her |
| hand in military matters. Thus Jeffers' Elizabeth, as the [
:first outlines of her personality emerge, has a more marked .
: authority and masculine personality than does Schiller's. j
!Although capable of intrigue and cunning, she declares her- |
iself as fit as any man, her father included, to conduct her |
affairs with strong measures, particularly at critical mo
ments. She plans to meet Mary, accepts her letter from 1
|
Mortimer, placates her advisers, and controls her lover.
What Jeffers appears to want to do is to bring the
play around to what has become his own concept of the the- ]
1ater, of "big" scenes with relatively little complication j
;of the plot. The task is ultimately to simplify the moti- {
|vations of Mary, Elizabeth, Mortimer, Paulet, and Leicester,
| as well as to reduce the ramifications of the religious and
244
political overtones and the historical implications. As
with his adaptations of Greek sources, Jeffers seems to be
exploiting the special, identifying characteristics of the
times; but his major interest is in universalizing the con-
i
flict, in demonstrating the ever-repeated willingness of
i
j man to act upon his impulses and his lusts.
What Jeffers does offer which is new to his work in
I i
J the drama is dictated in part by the material. In the play;
; he has to work with a character who is profoundly committed;
| religiously. Mary’s sense of her position as the savior of!
i
! I
j Roman Catholicism in the British Isles is a motivating part
I
| of her character. Jeffers retains the aura of her devotion
| by keeping Schiller's description of her as in frequent
prayer and in constant possession of her rosary. Her first:
! appearance on stage is with the rosary clutched in her hand.;
The only instance in which Jeffers uses phrases from a !
| I
foreign language, other than the very brief utterances in
i I
German in "The Bowl of Blood," occurs when Mary prays, j
using Latin. Her remorse is genuine, as in Schiller. She
\
: f
is possessed by a feeling of guilt and, although in much !
i
I fewer words than in Schiller, she tells Kennedy of her pastj
■ and of her regrets for her behavior. Jeffers drops, or j
; |
; holds in reserve, the issue of Mary’s rejection of the tri-l
i bunal which Elizabeth had devised to try to convict her.
Aware of her role as a queen and the legitimacy of her j
claims over those of the heretical and schismatic Elizabeth,
245
Mary is in Jeffers' version more interested in the state of
her soul and in her redemption. In her last scene in the
fragment she prays not only for herself but for Elizabeth.
The fragment includes Jeffers' only use of dialect as well.
Kennedy's language is marked by the Scottish dialect, in j
I pronunciations, idiom and choice of words. (Jeffers' ar- j
i !
j tistic diction had been affected once before in a trip to |
i |
!Ireland and Scotland preceding publication of the short |
j poems of Descent to the Dead. His trip with his family in
| 1948 may have had a similar effect in this instance.)
What might have come from a completed adaptation is, i
; I
|of course, sheer speculation. If, however, Jeffers had j
[been consistent in his treatment of dramatic materials, the!
play would likely have moved even more closely to elimina
tion of long speeches, secondary motivations, and manipula-j
■tion in plot. If the method of the original playwright in j
\ i
' j
j presenting a complicated structure is not congenial to the j
techniques Jeffers generally uses, certainly the heightened!
and intense controversy of two powerful women is. When he
i
stopped working on the play Jeffers still had left to him !
the confrontation between the two queens and the confronta-j
i
tion between Mortimer and Mary, as well as Mary's death j
!scene. The possibilities were immense. Whether Jeffers
i ;
I i
;would have pursued the examination of a formally religious j
I
|woman with the same vigor with which he had previously de-
I
j veloped Medea in her character as barbarian priestess or
246
Clytemnestra in her character as avenging and relentless
queen is an intriguing question. What does remain in the
fragment, however, to be viewed objectively is the last ex
ample of his dramatic interest in the nature of man as dem
onstrated in heightened conflict, and of his skill and
economy of style in presenting remarkably interesting dra- I
I
matic portraits of women in positions of power and with j
| dispositions to exploit that power.
!
| Written at a time which Jeffers was exhausted physi-
I cally and spiritually, "Mary and Elizabeth" remained a
I •
| fragment. Although he had acquired considerable expertise j
' i
; I
| in writing for the theater, in controlling dramatic organi-j
| zation and construction, in achieving economy and workable i
theatrical characterization, Jeffers was unable to finish
this arduous work on the Schiller text set in a time alien |
i
!
to his usual subject matter. Ultimately, perhaps, if he j
i |
| had had the energy and the will, the project would have j
truly tested his skill as a playwright. As it stands, how
ever, it possesses the outlined, unpolished beginnings of
an interesting, vastly exciting theater piece containing
: j
: the promise of being the most compactly powerful poetic j
i
drama of his career.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES CITED
247
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF SOURCES CITED
Bennett, Melba B. Robinson Jeffers and the Sea. San Fran
cisco: Gelber, Lilienthal, Inc., 1936.
_________________. Stone Mason of Tor House. Los Angeles:
Ward Ritchie Press, 1968.
Beyer, William H. "The State of the Theater: ANTA Storms
Broadway," School and Society, December 23, 1950,
pp. 416-419.
Carpenter, Frederic I. Robinson Jeffers. New York:
Twayne Publishers, Inc., 1962.
Frenz, Horst. American Playwrights on Drama. New York:
Hill and Wang, 1965.
Gibbs, Wolcott. "The Theatre," New Yorker, September 9,
1950, p. 60.
Highet, Gilbert. The Classical Tradition. New York: Ox
ford University Press, 1957.
Jeffers, Robinson. Be Angry at the Sun. New York: Random
House, 1941.
______________ . Dear Judas and Other Poems. New York:
Liveright, 1929.
__________________. "Elizabeth and Mary." Unpublished
manuscript held in sealed collection at Occidental
College, Highland Park, California.
__________________. Give Your Heart to the Hawks and Other
Poems. New York: Random House, 1933.
__________________. Hungerfield and Other Poems. New York:
Random House, 1954.
________________. Medea. (acting edition) New York:
Samuel French, 1946.
__________________. Roan Stallion, Tamar, and Other Poems.
New York: Boni and Liveright, 1925.
248
249
!Jeffers, Robinson. Solstice and Other Poems. New York:
j Rmdom House, 1935.
i
;__________________ . Such Counsels You Gave to Me and Other
Poems. New York: Random House, 1937.
_. The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers.'
| New York: Random House, 1939. j
[Monjian, Mercedes C. Robinson Jeffers: A Study in In- i
! humanism. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,:
| 1958.
Powell, Lawrence Clark. “California Classics Reread: Give
Your Hearts to the Hawks." Westways, November 1968,
! pp. 18-21.
I ________ . Robinson Jeffers, the Man and the
| Work. Pasadena, Calif.: San Pasqual Press, 1940.
i ;
j Redinger, Ellsworth L. "An Interview with Dame Judith
Anderson." Drama and Theatre, 7 (Winter 1968-69), !
1 93-101.
I Ridgeway, Ann.' The Selected Letters of Robinson Jeffers.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1968.
Smith, Warren Allen. "Authors and Humanism.1 1 Humanist,
j 11 (October, 1951), 193-204.
Squires, Radcliffe. The Loyalties of Robinson Jeffers. j
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956.
1 Wilder, Amos. Theology in Modern Literature. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1958.
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Redinger, Ellsworth Lee
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The Poetic Dramas Of Robinson Jeffers
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