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PARTISAN REVIEW
The mythological essays in
King of the Ants,
wri tten between 1980 and
1995, are Herbert's most extended meditations on the classical myths he
often returned to in his poetry. A true myth is unfinished, prone to meta–
morphosis. It evolves as is necessary, for most important to a myth's
survival is its relevance to our lives. It is possible that there is, like a pea
under a towering stack of mattresses, an ingot of historical truth on which
each myth is based. But in order to become a myth it must outgrow this
early and unglamorous realism, for a myth is by defini tion unverifiable.
Myths are exempt from the interrogations of historians, defenders of truth
that adhere tenaciously to pristine facts. They are, for the most part, uncrit–
ically accepted. Of unknown origin, they are authorless despite the fact
that they are endlessly rewritten. Herbert is one of the most gifted tailors
of the myths of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Ovid, Virgil, Horace. This is per–
haps due to a sense of the humility of the task, or the necessary disregard
for the authorities of inflexible morality and governing beliefs, or an acute
sense of irony without which myths would slump into fairy tales. In the
eleven essays in
King
of
the Ants
Herbert conjures some of the more obscure
mythological beings, displaying characteristic tenderness for minor gods
and neglected heroes , those fated to playa supporting role. Herbert has
always been attracted to prose poems, and in these essays that are part nar–
rative, part rumination, he invents a new form he calls "apocryphas."
Aligning himself with a genre defined by dubious authorship and author–
ity, Herbert, as usual, divorces himself from the ranks of the self-righteous,
of heralds and preachers, "the babble of the speaker's platform."
For Herbert, the classical is not something to be placed behind glass
like a museum artifact: what makes an idea or story classical (and differen–
tiates it from the simply ancient or arcane) is its continuous use. Herbert's
myths aren't timeless; rather, they are marked by time. Heracles lectures
Cerberus about the Latin names of plants (who could resist the irony?),
photosynthesis, the philosophy of Kant. Ares discovers "an overwhelming
predilection for conspiracies, gangs, and terrorist organizations," and drinks
a cup of coffee while waiting for the bomb he planted to explode. Herbert
is most often attracted to the other side of a well-known story. His interest
is in the opinions of witnesses, those who reside in the shadows of famous
protagonists. In Herbert's version of the famous ascent from the under–
world, Eurydice asks Hermes, while following Orpheus uphill, "Do we
have to?" Atlas, the Titan who holds up the world and who has been sen–
tenced to literary obscurity, is brought to our attention by Herbert, who
nominates him as a possible "patron of those who are terminally ill, patron
of those condemned to life in prison, those who are hungry from birth to
death, the humiliated, all those who are deprived of rights, whose only
virtue is mute, helpless, and immovable-up to a point-anger." The last
