The Line Begins to Blur

"There's an obstinacy about the hero that obliges him to keep on and on, following just one path and no other."

 - The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, p. 70.

To the hero, ignorance is an obligation.  It's hard to believe, but Calasso presents the idea in a way that seems undeniable.  "Apollo was the first slayer of monsters," says Calasso on page 68, "then came Cadmus, Perseus, Bellerophon, Heracles, Jason, Theseus."  Already he establishes that all heroes serve the same ending - the simple slaying of monsters - but he also establishes that all heroes' endings serve the same purpose, saying on page 69 that "with the monster slain, an impurity lingers on to dog the hero.  There will also be the withered remains of the foe whose power the hero turns to his advantage.  Heracles clothes himself in the skin of the Nemean lion; Perseus brandishes the petrifying face of the Gorgon as he goes into battle.  Leave only emptiness and the chatter of human voices.  The isthmus becomes practicable, people trade, and write poems recalling monsters."

The emptiness Calasso speaks of is the very impurity that would linger on to torment the hero.  The emptiness is the vacuum left by following the same path, to the same end, to the same extermination; the same removal.  The emptiness is what the hero leaves for us, it is his legacy.  With the monster slain, there is no more drama, no more intensity, no more change, and the world is left in silent, stagnant peace.  It is this stagnancy - which is ultimately the physical manifestation of the hero's own ignorant, unchanging ways - that will survive in the hero, torturing his spirit, as if a piece of the monster had been absorbed into he himself.

"It is part of the hero's civilizing work to suppress himself," Calasso asserts on page 70, "because the hero is monstrous.  Immediately after the monsters, die the heroes."  The hero, and thus the land, has become complacent; without change and thus without meaning.  It has become only "emptiness and the chatter of human voices," as Calasso said.  Stagnancy breeds pestilence, as they say, and we see the hero become the very monstrosity he once sought to slay.  It is only in the wake of the hero's destruction that change, and thus purpose, can resume.  "This is done in agreement with the hero," states Calasso on page 70, "betrayal completes the hero's work... brings it to its conclusion and winds up the story."

Along with the heroes' slaying of monsters, betrayal is a form of negation.  However, betrayal is different in that it doesn't punch a hole in existence, leaving the world in a passionless, unexciting void.  Instead, the negation of betrayal rests purely in change and excitement.  As Calasso puts it on page 70, "...betrayal does not alter the elements of space but rearranges them.  The influence of certain pieces on the chessboard are inverted.  White attacks white.  Black attacks black.  The effect is confusing, above all disturbing.  For the first time roles have been reversed."

"And it is always a woman who reverses them."