.JNDRE GIDE AND COMMUNISM
None, not God himself, shall elude his Fate.
And that thous mayest forget thy compassion,
Drink of Lethe's cup,
Hell's offering to thee, with all earth's treasure.
The doctrine, and the remedy, is too familiar for commentary.
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It is the pomegranate, that "memento of the light," representing
"pleasure's forgotten hue," which gives back "the lost earth's taste"-the
taste of that earth which, with all its earthy joys, belongs of right to him
who works it. Persephone may turn to the narcissus once more; but
what is the vision it gives her now? "Winter."-"None but dead objects
. a regret for laughing seasons gone." ...
From everything, a long, slow moaning flows,
A world hopes vainly for the return of spring.
Demeter, the Earth-Mother, goes groping blindly through a bramble–
strewn world in search of her lost daughter, who "dwells in Hell." The
Chorus may be despairing; but Eumolpus, the Singer, he who spreads
the Earth-Mother's rites,-Eumolpus is reproving:
Y e poor despairing shades,
Neither can winter everlasting be.
This is the answer to all proletarian defeatism.
Triptolemus then is born, Demophoon, "light of the peopk" lfis 1s,
significantly, a "cradle of flames and embers." He is a sturdy infant,
he, the newborn (newborn in consciousness) Worker.
It is he who is to teach to mortals "labor's lesson" and cause the earth to
reblossom. Thanks to him, Persephone is to "live and see the day" and
" escape from this dark pit." She is to be no longer "Queen of Hell,"
but of "the earthly springtime:" The gates of death are forced, and she
looks forward to a mating with her "earthly spouse," the "radiant Tripto–
lemus," Triptolemus the Worker. "The gloomy Pluto shall not hold
us back:." Triptolemus is already snatching the "mantle of woe" from
the Earth-Mother.
Persephone, none the less, is "still the dark Pluto's bride," in the
sense that she must always eocape to go "To that dark world where I
know suffering is."
Dost thou think it with impunity that one bends over
Hell's sorrowing pit a heart that is drunk with love?
