The Beloved of the Dawn
Homer’s Hymn to Aphrodite, 219-239
Eos, goddess of the dawn, once slept with Ares—every Rosy Fingered One sleeps with him once.
Aphrodite surprised them.
The act the two performed was consecrated to her; Ares, however, belonged to her.—She gave Eos a godsend of a curse: to want the love of mortal men so badly that the craving to surrender to them would outweigh that surrender’s disgrace.
The curse was pronounced that very night, and Eos laughed it off.—Her husband was the Titan Astraios, she had borne him the morning star and the four winds who sweep the sea of air, and he sufficed her fully.—Ares was merely the inevitable exception, and that too would have sufficed for quite a while.—But as soon as the hour came for her to wake Day in his cave and show Night the way under the sea, on the way down from her peak she spied a sleeping shepherd under a fig tree in a field. Wrapped in a blanket he lay on his belly, legs drawn up slightly, face nestled in the crook of his elbow.
His helplessness touched her.
She couldn’t resist slipping beneath him.
Calloused hands. Brown skin. Smell of sweat. Oh . . .
He dreamed and spent himself in his dream and woke a happy man in the red glow of the peaks: Eos blushing in the wake of her disgrace.
After rousing Day and ushering out Night, she shut herself in her chamber and bewept the twofold abasement: what had happened felt shameful and what was shameful felt sweet.— That night she goaded Astraios to satisfy her, and in the morning she chose a different path, and there was a different youth.— His parted lips, his defenceless chest.—A hunter; himself quarry; she lay down beside him.—Wine fumes and garlic, dried blood under the nails.—He woke bewildered, the mountains aglow.
Always a different man, morning after morning, a different impurity, a different tenderness.—Entrancingly imperfect beings, and always in a dream.—She avoided her husband, and he did not take it amiss: each found the other to be both cold and tiresomely importunate.—He began running errands to the stars, and on his way home he frequented the nymphs who lurked lustfully in the rushes on the Pineios, the Skamandros, the Nile, everywhere.
She never missed him.
More than once, when shame’s torment grew too great, Eos set out to see Aphrodite and beg her to remove the curse, and each time she faltered and then stopped.—Curse as godsend.—For a long while she succeeded in slipping away as discreetly as she approached, until the morning she lay with Tithonos, one of the fifty Trojan princes born to the strong-loined King Tros.—Each prince dwelt in a chamber of his own; but Tithonos had a favourite brother Ganymede, of later renown, and between their rooms was nothing but a cloth partition.—Some say that they were twins.—When his brother moaned next door, Ganymede awoke with a start and came just in time to seize Eos as she fled.—He would let her go if she came back, next time to him.— What choice did she have?—She made her promise weeping the bitter tears of one caught in flagrante, and then she burned to fulfil it.—The brothers were brothers; without envy or spite they shared Dawn’s desire. They pledged never to be enemies, nor to go near another woman so long as Eos was seeing them, and early each morning Eos slipped into their beds, Ganymede’s today, Tithonos’ tomorrow. Her shame had abated to amiability; she no longer felt like a thief, though she still had to steal about. The other brothers went unaware of her visits, but for the glow of her rosy flesh that gradually suffused the whole house.
The red of dawn at midnight—Astraios, running errands betwixt the spheres of dark firn, stopped in his tracks: there, on Asia’s coast, between the mountains and the sea, was that an earthly star emerging? He reported it to Zeus, who looked down just as Ganymede was crossing the forecourt, doubly handsome in ecstatic expectation.—The god was staggered: there stood his ideal cupbearer!—As we know, he swooped down in the shape of an eagle and with gingerly claws snatched the youth away to the feasting hall of the palace on Olympus.—Painters see it in their own way; perhaps, between the peaks and the clouds, the frightened youth did lose control of his bladder, but surely it is false that he was still a child; he had killed lions and boars, and for half a summer had slaked the desire of the Dawn.
Who was disconsolate. Would that roving life begin anew?— But Tithonos did not disappoint her.—On through the autumn: peace each morning, and with it now the sweetness of the unshared and the prodigious discovery that even one single person can never be fully sounded. But there remained the self-reproach over the addiction to human love. For mortals are unclean creatures; they feed on sinews and blood, and their bodies channel faeces. True, now and then a male god must descend to sire heroes upon the human race, and goes uncompromised, being overcome by mere appetite. Goddesses meanwhile are sullied by mixing with mortals; yet: mortals love more ardently than gods, and their imperfection makes them desirable.—Their impurity too; it is a goad.—The brevity of their wretched lives concentrates their passions and makes them inventive in their enjoyment of the ephemeral: they are more tender than immortals. And they are constantly compelled to make sure of themselves, which is both touching and enchanting. And they find happiness only in that of the other.—No god would have kissed the down of her armpit when the small of her back arched. No immortal could so spend himself that his lust was, at the same time, ultimate surrender. Gods do not sacrifice to gods.
To spend eternity with Tithonos—but he was mortal.
To die with him—she was a goddess.—She desired this boon of Zeus: to fall asleep in Tithonos’ arms and never wake again!— The lord over gods and men knit his brows in displeasure: that was beyond his power, and she knew it!—She knew: the Moirai themselves had decreed that immortality could not be revoked.
Then give him eternal life, that’s a thing the gracious sisters allow!—She saw Ganymede in the ruler’s chamber; he gazed past her, but she thought she saw him smile.—The moment passed.— She knelt before Zeus: Let me feed him ambrosia. Take from me the shame of loving mortals. Grant us what you have granted others!
Eternal life?
Yes: eternal life!
Let it be so . . .
And Zeus did one more thing: he sent Astraios far afield through the vault of the sky, thrice twelve years by human measure.— Eos took Tithonos into her home.—They were made for each other: thrice twelve human years of bliss.—In this space of time Helen was abducted, Troy fell, Agamemnon was slain, Odysseus returned to Penelope.—One of the sons whom Eos bore to Tithonos—Memnon, King of Aithiopia, lord of Susa’s castle—fought for Troy, and Achilles sliced him open at the hip.—Tithonos, though a prince of Troy, had no part in the fighting. He never even learnt of his city’s destruction, nor did he ever inquire about its fate. He lived with Eos, in her home beneath the roots of the sea. Nor did he weep for his son. He loved Dawn; that was work enough.
No mortal man; no trace of self-reproach, despite a few lingering imperfections. All the sweeter; and she too grew imper- fect, sometimes letting her beloved distract her from her duties.—Some grumbled; Zeus indulged her.—On such a morning Day, abruptly blazing, would lurch straight up into Night, and mortals would stagger up out of their sleep; those were the hours of miscarriages and savage atrocities. On such a day the horses dragged Hektor behind them, Tithonos’ nephew. Tithonos never knew.
Days without Dawn; and so too after that first midnight of frantic questions: What ailed him? What did he lack? What did he desire? Was he weary of her? Did he have eyes for another?— A siren? Hecate? A Nereid?—Dismal night, dismal morning, dismal day: What had faded his hair? What had wrinkled his skin? What had dimmed his eye?—A fact long since impalpably present, and long since impalpably sensed, abruptly revealed itself, and Eos understood: Tithonos had grown old. She had forgotten to obtain eternal youth to go with his eternal life.
And Zeus never grants a boon more than once in one matter.
Tithonos reached the age when mortals die. He did not die.— Astraios returned, journeyed off, returned.—Now she showed him Tithonos.
It was a funny little thing, she explained, she’d found it lying helpless on the shore, washed up by the sea, and taken it into her care. It had what seemed a sort of language, but no one could understand it: the squeaking of a mouse and the croaking of a raven. She commanded: Speak!—And Tithonos croaked-squeaked that he loved no one but Dawn.—She understood his cawing, Astraios did not. He laughed; Tithonos was allowed to stay on in a shed between the bedroom and the stall. And they, lovers again after such a long time, were vastly entertained at first.—Each morning Eos said: Dance! And Tithonos turned round and round. Astraios said: Show you’re a man! And Tithonos exposed himself.
Sometimes she’d take him on her knee and scratch his bristly chin.
Time trickled on, a second Troy, a third, a fourth, a fifth, a sixth, and Tithonos lived on, shrivelled, gout-knotted, bleary-eyed, wizened, and each morning his impotent craving awoke. By night he lay nearly sleepless, waiting for stirrings next door; then he listened, his ear pressed to the thin wood: Dawn was getting out of bed.—She was walking to and fro.—She was washing, combing her hair, fastening her girdle, kissing Astraios.—He smelt her scent, he heard her voice, he felt her warmth, and he croaked-squeaked out his yearning: A kiss to start the day, he could still kiss, after all!—Astraios brought his food, ambrosia still.—Sometimes Eos came with him, and Tithonos would fall at her feet, sprawling across her rosy toes, and she would kick him away, and wouldn’t come back until his morning whimpering became too much to bear.
Then he would lie at her feet again, small as a gnome, with a dry shrunken head.
Once Ganymede came to Astraios on some errand from Zeus, and when he saw his favourite brother, he took fright, and then he wept.
Tithonos no longer knew him.
Ganymede stood before Zeus again, eyes still damp: Take away his immortality! Though he knew it was impossible.—The Moirai allow mortals to take the step to turn immortal, but there is no turning back: one does not step away from immortality.
Eos ached with pity for Tithonos, but she too begged in vain.—Place him among the stars! she pleaded. Zeus gazed down, and said merely: That thing?
He did not ask whether she still loved him; that was not a question that arose among the gods.
No constellation, but a portent: from time to time, amid the gods’ merriest mirth, or when they threatened to forget themselves, Zeus would show them Tithonos: This is the immortal mortal! Some of them shuddered, and some of them laughed, most brightly Apollo, purest of the gods.—His sister, Artemis, shrank from the sight.—And Tithonos, scabrous, claws digging into the wood, ears pressed to the wood, nose pressed to the wood, impotent sex pressed to the wood, croaked out his unquenchable yearning.
After a while they ceased to be amused.
The seventh Troy.
The eighth Troy.
They denied him food.
Tithonos dried up from within; the only moisture remaining was his spittle. As he clung to the wood it seeped from the corner of his mouth.—All that kept growing was his nails, and the howling of his hunger.—Now and then, through a hastily built hatch, Astraios shoved a dish of nectar into his shed.
Then his spittle began to stink, and the stench filtered through the wooden wall until at last it clung to Eos. Expose him on the hillside? Hades objected: He did not belong among the shades.—Move him to the palace? Unthinkable!—On the earth, in the sea: no place would endure him, no rocky island, no mountain slope would take him.
Cast him into the water? The waves rebelled.
Putrid mornings; it grew unbearable. The stinking daybreak brought fever and plagues and, worse, confusion: mothers betrayed their children, brothers slaughtered each other, the host struck down his guest. Even among the gods pestilence began to spread.
At that Zeus went to see the Moirai.
They must alter their pronouncement, he begged, or fate would become snarled up in itself.—And the terrible, merciful sisters conceded: Tithonos could die; however, he would have to desire it.
But Tithonos was unwilling.
His voice was but a sigh, a mere sigh of immortality: He lived, it said. He loved Dawn. She would see: he still could kiss. And he would give her pleasure yet, if only she’d embrace him. All his trembling was only because she was avoiding him. Didn’t she remember what he had been? His strength, his sweetness? Did she think all that could be over and done with?—And he invoked Aphrodite.
She appeared, she who alone never shuddered at Tithonos, nor laughed at him. She bent down and spoke to him, and he listened to her, and understood. And at last he consented: to lie once with Dawn, and, come morning, to perish in her kiss.
Stinking spittle; Eos shuddered. She turned away. She couldn’t do it. And besides, it was time for Night to be escorted.
At that Aphrodite renewed her curse.
What Zeus did now was also forbidden, and yet the sisters condoned it.—He transformed Tithonos, the immortal, into a cicada, that gnomish race that each morning rubs together twig-thin thighs in ruttish bliss. And the cicada finds fulfilment: Eos every morning, the wafting of her saffron robe, her scent, her dew, her rosy fingers. And what had to happen, happened: Tithonos’ voice turned sweet again, his body supple, his eyes gleaming golden, his heart full, his strength inexhaustible.
The ninth Troy, the tenth Troy, and cicada-song atop the rubble.
Up in the palace they like to listen too, Ganymede especially, and sometimes even the Moirai hear him. Then their grey faces brighten, and they move their icy hands.
There is just one who never hears him, and that is Dawn.— Aphrodite’s curse hounds her, leaving her aware of one thing only: the body of a sleeping mortal. She lost all shame long ago, that heavenly whore, despised by all, in heat, indiscriminate sleeper with all, spurning not even half-grown boys. Each morning she slips into another’s bed and flees again before he wakes. He dreams the rosiest dream of his life.—It is the hour when wishes come true, but let him beware immortality.
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“The Beloved of the Dawn” appears in The Beloved of the Dawn by Franz Fühmann, translated by Isabel Fargo Cole, with illustrations by Sunandini Banerjee. Published by Seagull Books on June 9, 2022. You may acquire the book from Bookshop.org by clicking here.
© Hinstorff Verlag Rostock, 1993 (Franz Fühmann: Gesammelte Werke, Band 4); 1st edition Hinstorff Verlag, 1978