COMMENT
15
F. Scott Fitzgerald was a hero and nothing less than everything
can have been the cause of his tragic suffering. He embraced the
myths of American life with a love, a daring, and a gaiety which
now make his own life a tragic myth, a fate which he himself must
have sensed when he said: "Show me a hero and I'll show you a
tragedy." The elegy which John Peale Bishop wrote about Fitzgerald's
death declares his tragic heroism:
None had such promise then, and none
Your scapegrace wit or your disarming grace;
For you were bold as was Danae's son,
Conceived like Perseus in a dream of gold.
And there was none when you were young, not one,
So prompt in the reflecting shield to trace
The glittering aspect of a Gorgon age.
To think of the future is to think of a myth, a myth in which
we can all believe. And the past is spellbound by myths like bad
dreams, myths which link a modern American novelist with the in–
exhaustible stories of the ancients. When the author of
The Great
Gatsby
and
The Last Tycoon
is compared to Perseus, we remember
that Perseus was commanded to be a hero and to prove himself one
by destroying the Gorgon, Medusa. Anyone who looked at the face
of the Medusa was instantly turned to stone. But with his curved
sword, with the brazen shield Hermes had given him and guided by
Athena, Perseus stood with his back to the monstrous being, caugh t
her image in
his
shining shield and cut off her head, immediately
after which a winged horse, Pegasus, sprang from her headless body.
If
Perseus had not succeeded in beheading the Medusa, he would
have failed to be a hero.
If
he had not gazed at her indirectly, he
would have turned to stone. It is still necessary to stare at the Medusa
before we tum to stone.
Delmore Schwartz
