BOOKS
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and titl e essay, the story of Ajax's efforts to reign over the Myrmidons, is
interrupted and abr uptly suspended by the arrival of Clio, who "just at this
moment... enters the holy grove of myth: a big girl, tall, clumsy, strong as
a horse, and coarse beyond words-the goddess of usurpers, repeating her
worn-out cliches." And so Herbert ends with a warning against the dan–
gers of hi story, whose sacredness breeds complacency and whose
apparen tly unimpeachable facts are so often used to justify what myths
assure us is unjustifiable:"! never believed in the spirit of history / an
invented monster with a murderous look / dialectical beast on a leash led
by slaughterers." Very little evil goes unpunished in mythology. History,
however, is strikingly void of justice.
Let us hope that Herbert, whose recent death seems already to have
begun to recede into history , does not slip into the obscurity from which
he rescued so many o thers.
NICOLE KRAUSS
The Fourth Annual Irving Howe Memorial Lecture
Art and Invention:
How Shakespeare and Pushkin Create Character
Tuesday, November
9, 1999
6
p.m.
CUNY Graduate Center
Proshansky Auditorium
365 Fifth Avenue, NYC
Free and open to the public.
For further information call 817-2005.
Sponsored
by
the Center for the Humanities, CUNY
Graduate Center, with a generous gift from Max Palevsky.
