walked briskly toward the street’s corner, across from which stretched the Garden of Luxembourg. I picked up Sullivan’s book, replaced my billfold and passport in my jacket’s inside pockets, pulled it on, and descended the stairs for the park.
Near one corner of the garden, a statue dedicated to Baudelaire had become my private haunt for those inner dialogues with the self, for those quiet moments with the psychosphere, when one requires escape and self-examination. I took a seat on a concrete bench and opened Sullivan’s book to his section on “The Myth of the Minotaur.” I read the following:
The story of the Minotaur is at once transparent and aretetical. Prior to investigating either of these poles, let us relish the myth anew. Having achieved acclaim by the time of his arrival in Athens, and having survived his father’s wife’s treacherous wiles, Theseus turned his attention to the dreadful calamity that annually numbed the city. At that time, the Athenians were compelled to send a tribute of seven maidens and seven youths to King Minos, ruler of Crete. Minos offered them as a sacrifice to the Minotaur: a grizzly monster with a man’s shaggy head and the body of a bull. The Minotaur roamed a vast labyrinth, known for its numerous and terrifying passageways that snaked endlessly beneath the palace. Daedalus, himself, had constructed the maze. Once victims passed through its entrance, none returned or escaped. Theseus convinced his father, Aegeus, to let him go as one of the seven sacrificial youths that he might slay the Minotaur. With a father’s anguish, Aegeus conceded. Theseus promised to change the ship’s sail from black to white, upon his return, if the adventure produced success.
Upon their arrival, the fourteen victims presented themselves to Minos. The king announced his satisfaction and set a date for the sacrifice. His daughter, Ariadne, however, became enamored of Theseus—the manliest of the youths—and he equally fell in love with her. The night before the ordeal, she managed to steal into his chamber and give him a magical sword and a spool of thread, the first with which to kill the monster, the second to retrace his steps to the entrance. Taking the lead as they entered, Theseus cornered the beast, slew it, and, with the help of the thread, saved the maidens and other youths. As Greek myths go, however, victory and prowess, valor and bravery, are inevitably accompanied by treachery and grief. On the return voyage to Athens, Theseus abandoned Ariadne on the Island of Naxos, and, forgetting to raise the white sail, arrived in port under the mournful black canvas. Upon seeing it, Aegeus fell on his sword and died.
I folded an edge of the page down and closed the book. Now would come Sullivan’s reflections on the myth. In his Introduction, he had warned readers of a fondness for a methodology he intended to use ad nausea, if necessary, to ferret out the truth behind and between the lines of the stories. He never followed them in any particular order, but employed them with ingenuity and resourcefulness. Six motifs guided his approach. The first had to do with the transparent, or the historical kernel, to be identified. What was the story’s “setting in life,” or its Sitz im Leben? Could a date be determined on either archeological or historical grounds? A cognitive, or intellectual, thread formed a second concern. What does the story explain? What dimension of life does it elucidate? What intellectual enlightenment does it provide for understanding the self or the world? The aretetical, a third, had to do with value, excellence, or virtue. What insight into life’s conduct does a myth possess? What virtues did it hallow for its ancient audience? What lingering aretetical values might it still convey? A fourth motif, he identified as deontological. Deon means “duty” in Greek. What were the duties to be gleaned from the myth? What further duties might human beings salvage from the story for today? Sullivan argued that a distinction between aretetical and deontological is important, since virtues are often highly winsome and admirable, but difficult to attain, whereas duties are essential to rights and concepts of justice. He proposed that this was as true of the classical period as of our own. At some point, a fifth motif involved catharsis. Sullivan acknowledged his debt to Aristotle for catharsis. Beholding how others have suffered and borne life’s vicissitudes, as well as feeling a shared pity and dread with others, strengthens our own capacity to endure personal tragedies and private sorrows. This is especially so, since our own problems will go unsung and unheralded. To know that some are recorded and memorialized in dramatic epics provides a mantle for our own fleeting existence. They cloak our mortality with the solace of a universal immortality of the human spirit. Finally, but not always, Sullivan would sometimes address the ontological problem. By ontological, he meant something of the metaphysical. What does any myth or story tell us about the mystery of being? As in dreams and repressed fears, does the myth proffer a peek into the troubled subconscious, which, if we could probe and understand it, would bring us closer to the truth of our elusive humanness: that daunting mystery that still exists?
I was about to reopen the book, when a premonition of not being alone began to pulse from synapses to synapses, causing me to look up with a startle. Standing near the edge of the monument, the Viet Cong soldier, whom I had heard the previous evening, was staring at me. He wore a dull, silky green shirt, blue jeans, a Bolshevik cap, and sandals. A leather pouch, with long straps, teetered on his right shoulder. “Bonjour, may I join you?” he said in crisp French.
I knew what he wanted. For the past six months, a small legion of Vietnamese from the North had been in Paris, propagandizing any Americans they could.
“Why not?” I replied. “But it won’t be any use, I fear.”
“Please. Let us be at peace! At least, hear my side.”
He slipped the pouch off his shoulder and produced several printed articles. I had seen them before, sometimes in restaurants where Americans gathered, or along the Seine near the waste bins, or on park benches.
He sat next to me and handed me three folded sheets. They were printed on both sides and contained the “history” of the recent conflict, its sufferings and illegality from the North’s point of view, and the multitude of ills that wars of liberation and revolution spawn. The pages contained the story of Ho Chi Minh, his guerilla activity in support of the US during the Second World War, how Eisenhower had betrayed America’s promise after the war by siding with the French, the burden of the Indo China era under French colonialism, and on and on. No mention of Viet Cong atrocities appeared.
“We are only seeking to liberate our country, to do what you did during your own Revolution.” He studied me with his thin lips, his Asian brow only slightly furled. His dark eyes emanated the seriousness of his mission. “We want to unite our country and bring freedom and dignity to all Vietnamese. The Saigon regime is corrupt, and you know it. It’s merely a puppet power in the hands of ruthless thugs, doing what your government bids because you want to be all powerful. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you let us establish our own form of government, run by ourselves, even if it is a Communist one?” He seemed to relax. Having delivered the memorized essentials of his speech, he smiled widely and awaited my reply
“I guess that last point is why,” I said, without blinking. “We’re afraid of the Soviet Union, its Eastern Block countries, and Red China. Your system promotes insurgencies and wars of revolution, murder, and chaos wherever Communism goes. It forbids freedom of thought and expression. It enslaves poor classes and lowers the standard of living, rather than raising it. Like in Cuba and Central America and East Germany. Or Poland and Hungary.”
A slight twinge of color darkened his high cheekbones. “We are not Cuba, or East Germany. We are Asians. Proud and with a long history and culture of our own. We fear China, ourselves.” There was a touch of remorse in his voice, but no anger. Pride, yes, and perhaps a smidgen of desperation, but not anger. “Vietnamese have a right to determine their own destiny. We wish you no harm. I hate it that we have to kill your soldiers and they kill ours. Already I have lost my wife, my mother, two brothers, and a sister. My two children live with my father in a village north of Hue. They have known nothing but machine gun fire, grenades, mortar rounds, hunger, and, everywhere, death. You can at least understand that.”
He tried to smile, putting the best face forward he could with
