Descents from Innocence

I like this image of Daphnis and Chloe because it depicts the beauty and innocence of the story's pastoral setting.  The lovers are barely discernible from their setting, and the story's landscape, rather than the love story of  its characters, is the subject of this piece.  I chose this painting because I realized why I liked D&C more than our other two classic Greek romances.  It wasn't so much the characters themselves, or the plot, or the structure.  The setting, or more specifically the dream scape, as I see it is a rendering of that child-like innocence from which we have all descended.  I return to that place from time to time in the bitter-sweet ambivalence of memory, but I would never again wish to reside there. 

In Sexson's Bible as Lit class I was placed into one of the Garden groups, and the interpretation of this mythological trope as put forward by Frye has come to occupy my mind a great deal.  It has become an obsession of sorts, as I have since been trying to unravel the mysterious ramifications of this event.  "In sexual and earth-mother creation myths death does not have to be explained:  death is built in to the whole process.  But an intelligently made world could not have had any death or evil originally in it, so that a myth of fall is needed to complement it" (Frye 112).  This is explained as an artificial myth because it is a myth of deliberate creation rather than a myth of birth.  Frye also writes:  "The artificial myth won out in our tradition, and the lower world became demonized, the usual fate of mythological losers.  But many echoes of a very different feeling about the lower world linger in romance" (112-13).  The cave of the Nymphs in D&C is not a place of demonic descent and torture, nor is it a representation of hell.  In fact it is a place of refuge and quiet beauty.  It is the place where the infant we will come to know as Chloe was abandoned to the protection of the Nymphs by her true father.  He says at the end of the story that he had hoped that she would be found and raised by other parents, but it is reasonable to assume that he knew she very well could have been fated to die there.  The cave then becomes the dual symbol of womb and tomb that is so prevalent in pastoral, earth-goddess mythology.  It is in this cave where Chloe first realizes the implications of Daphnis's naked body, and so a layer of her naivete is shed and a small increment of awakening or knowledge is gained.  It is to this cave where she flees, and although she is taken captive by her pursuers, fate once again steps in to rescue her.  Pan appears in a dream to the general of the Methymneans:   "...you have torn from the alters a virgin whom Love wishes to place at the heart of a story, you showed no shame before the Nymphs as they looked on, nor before me" (167).  In fact dreams are an important plot mechanism in this story:  Dryas and Lamon are sent identical dreams concerning their adopted children from the Nymphs; the Nymphs also speak to Daphnis in a dream, consoling him that Chloe will be returned to him.  There is even a beautiful garden in this story, a garden that is destroyed by jealousy and petty plotting.

According to Frye the Garden symbol is the second level of literary movement; it is one level above our so-called middle earth, the every day world where we currently dwell, and one level below heaven, the cosmos, or whatever one wants to call this plane.  Below middle earth is the demonic underworld (97-98).  "As for the earthly paradise, according to Christian doctrine it was, but it cannot now be; consequently in romance the paradisal is frequently a deceitful illusion that turns out to be demonic, or a destructive vision.  The fourth level, though purely demonic in Christianity, is in romance often a world where great rewards, of wisdom or wealth, may await the explorer" (98).  In D&C I would not argue that their pastoral paradise is deceitful or destructive, but it is illusory.  Neither Daphnis nor Chloe were born into slavery and shepherd's work; these are not their true identities.  When their true identities are revealed they are symbolically descended from their innocence, and even though they choose to live out their lives in the country they are still unable to return to their previous state.  This is sealed by the consummation of their marriage bed and the last lines of the story:  "Daphnis and Chloe lay down naked together and put their arms around each other and kissed, and even as they got less sleep that night than owls, Daphnis did some of the things that Lycaenion taught him, and it was then that Chloe learned, for the first time, that the things they had done earlier in the woods were merely games that shepherds play" (210).

The true tragedy of the Christian's fall of man is, from what I can gather, the loss of innocence incurred with this event.  Man is no longer in his "rightful" place, the place for which God created him; but I have to question whether that artificially mythical place is truly where man was meant to reside.  Did we not fall because we chose knowledge over eternal life?  I would say yes.  And with that answer comes another question:  why?  Why did we make that choice?  The simple answer of free will is not enough for me.  Of course we had free will, otherwise we would still be lounging around naked in an artificial atrium like animals at the zoo.  Maybe we looked down and saw the natural rhythms of earthly life and knew that that was where we truly belonged, with birth and death and all that comes in between.  And this is the natural life pattern, is it not?  I have descended from childhood innocence into adulthood (as have we all) with all of the hard lessons, and scars, and tribulations that are the price of this knowledge.  I do not want to be a child forever, nor do I wish the same dull fate on my own children; and this is a hard thing.  A huge part of me wishes I could lock them away from the cruelties of the world, so that they would never have to be hurt as I have been.  But this would be a huge disservice to them, for they would never be able to experience all the fleeting beauty this world serves up along with the horror. They would never be able to reach backward to find solace in that hazy time of innocence to help them on their own journeys, to propel them to keep looking for whatever it is that they seek.