PARTISAN REVIEW
has inhaled them for a certain time, they are already indispensable;
body and mind have formed a taste for this malicious insobriety; outside
of it, reality seems charmless and one no longer has any wish to return
to it. And that, that above all, is what keeps one inside the labyrinth.
Knowing that you want to enter it in order to fight the Minotaur, I
give you fair warning; and
if
I have told you at length of this danger,
it was to put you on your guard. You will never bring it off alone;
Ariadne must go with you. But she must remain on the threshold,
and not so much as sniff the vapors. It is important that she should
keep a clear head, while you are being overcome by drunkenness. But,
even when drunk, you must keep control of yourself; everything depends
on that. Your will alone may not suffice (for, as I told you, these ema–
nations will weaken it) and so I have thought of this plan: to link you
and Ariadne by a thread, the tangible symbol of duty. This thread
will allow, indeed will compel you to rejoin her after you have been some
time away. Be always determined not to break it, no matter what may be
the charms of the labyrinth, the seduction of the unknown, or the head–
long urging of your own courage. Go back to her, or all the rest, and
the best with it, will be lost. This thread will be your link with the past.
Go back to it.
Go
back to yourself. For nothing can begin from nothing,
and it is from your past, and from what you are at this moment, that
what you are going to be must spring.
"I should have spoken more briefly
if
I had not been so interested
in you. But before you go out to meet your destiny, I want you to hear
my son. You will realize more vividly, while listening to him, what
danger you will presently run. Although he was able, thanks to me,
to escape the witchcraft of the maze, his mind is still most pitiably a
slave to its maleficence."
He walked over to a small door, lifted the arras which covered
it, and said very loudly:
"Icarus, my dear son, come and tell us of your distress. Or rather,
go on thinking aloud, as
if
you were still alone. Pay no attention to
me or to my guest. Behave as
if
neither of us was here."
VIII
I saw coming in a young man of about my own age, who seemed
in the half-light to be a great beauty. His fair hair was worn very long,
and fell in ringlets
to
his shoulders. He stared fixedly, but seemed not
to focus his gaze on anything in particular. Naked to the waist, he wore
a tight metal belt and a loincloth, as it seemed to me, of leather and
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