THE EMERALD: MYSTERIOUS AND MENACING,
ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
I learned
the following poem from my husband Gerry, who can still recite large segments from over fifty years ago, when he memorized it in junior high. He was inspired by looking through an old notebook belonging to his Grandfather Harry and discovering that Harry had written out the entire poem, longhand. Gerry cannot recall his grandfather ever reciting or reading the poem aloud; and, sadly, Harry (1891 - 1967) had already died a few years before Gerry found the notebook, so Gerry was never able to learn more about whatever special connection it was that Harry felt to "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God." Perhaps it was just a personal favorite, and he enjoyed the discipline of writing it out word for word.
The Green Eye Of The Little Yellow God
There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.
He was known as "Mad Carew" by the subs at Khatmandu,
He was hotter than they felt inclined to tell;
But for all his foolish pranks, he was worshipped in the ranks,
And the Colonel's daughter smiled on him as well.
He had loved her all along, with a passion of the strong,
The fact that she loved him was plain to all.
She was nearly twenty-one and arrangements had begun
To celebrate her birthday with a ball.
He wrote to ask what present she would like from Mad Carew;
They met next day as he dismissed a squad;
And jestingly she told him then that nothing else would do
But the green eye of the little Yellow God.
On the night before the dance, Mad Carew seemed in a trance,
And they chaffed him as they puffed at their cigars:
But for once he failed to smile, and he sat alone awhile,
Then went out into the night beneath the stars.
He returned before the dawn, with his shirt and tunic torn,
And a gash across his temple dripping red;
He was patched up right away, and he slept through all the day,
And the Colonel's daughter watched beside his bed.
He woke at last and asked if they could send his tunic through;
She brought it, and he thanked her with a nod;
He bade her search the pocket saying "That's from Mad Carew,"
And she found the little green eye of the god.
She upbraided poor Carew in the way that women do,
Though both her eyes were strangely hot and wet;
But she wouldn't take the stone and Mad Carew was left alone
With the jewel that he'd chanced his life to get.
When the ball was at its height, on that still and tropic night,
She thought of him and hurried to his room;
As she crossed the barrack square she could hear the dreamy air
Of a waltz tune softly stealing thro' the gloom.
His door was open wide, with silver moonlight shining through;
The place was wet and slipp'ry where she trod;
An ugly knife lay buried in the heart of Mad Carew,
'Twas the "Vengeance of the Little Yellow God."
There's a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of Khatmandu,
There's a little marble cross below the town;
There's a broken-hearted woman tends the grave of Mad Carew,
And the Yellow God forever gazes down.
by J. Milton Hayes (1884 – 1940)
Speaking of green eyes, this poem reminds me of the ancient accounts of Nero looking at the world through a green gemstone.
"According to the records of Pliny the Elder, Roman Emperor Nero during gladiatorial fights looked at the arena through a concave emerald. In this way, he eliminated the glare of the sun and his nearsightedness . . . [perhaps] the first sunglasses in history. Ancient Romans valued emeralds (smaragdus) . . . [and] generally called all green beautiful stones emeralds. . . . Although ancient sources do mention Nero’s emerald, today the opinion is that Nero actually used another transparent stone with a beautiful green colour, such as olivine. . . . Thus, the word 'emerald' used by Pliny to refer to Nero’s 'eyepiece' cannot be read strictly according to our present-day criteria, but rather broadly – simply as a transparent green stone."
If you've ever watched the 1951 epic film
Quo Vadis, you might have seen Nero ogling women through his emerald eyepiece. As described in the
full text of the screenplay, "Nero grabs his emerald monocle, puts it up to his eye," and leers at Lygia from across the room, making crude sexist remarks to Petronius and Tigellinus. In the novel, after a split second of eye contact with Nero, Lygia is "straitened with terror" and suddenly re-possessed by a childhood fear of dragons:
" . . . it seemed to her now that all at once
the greenish eye of such a monster was gazing at her." (47 / 79)
Even as his wife, Poppea, makes a grand entrance, Nero, continues to stare at Lygia, turning his "emerald monocle around in front of his eye like a prism." Poppea is so angered that she snatches the monocle out of his hand, demanding that he look at her instead.
In retaliation, Nero tears a ruby from Poppea's neck, twirling the stone in front of his eye until its facets, kaleidoscope - style, reveal a vision of Poppea with five heads. Nero threatens to "get rid of at least four of them," and angry Poppea warns him to "watch for your own head, Nero."
In the novel, Poppea's misgivings are revealed:
"Wounded vanity quivered in Poppea, alarm seized her, and various fears shot through her head":
"Perhaps Nero has not seen the girl, or, seeing her through the emerald, has not appreciated her. But what would happen should he meet such a marvel in the daytime, in sunlight?" (65 / 101)
Petronius also has his doubts. When he views the dissolute assemblage of party guests through Nero's emerald monocle. Rather than softening the view, the eerie green light heightens the harshness of their intemperance. Petronius returns the jewel to Nero, along with these poetic words of warning:
"Close your ears, Nero,
lest the words of fools hurt them.
Your world is like an emerald.
Rare and fragile."
Nero's emerald eyepiece appears throughout the story (both film & book) as a symbol of his evil vision. He peers into it to enhance his view of carnage and public torture. It enables him to focus his attention on lions and gladiators, otherwise too far for his view across the amphitheater. He takes a gleeful delight in the magnification of every sinister detail.
Quo Vadis, the movie, is based on
the novel (1895 - 96) by
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846 – 1916), a saga of early Roman Christian times, standing alongside such historical fiction as
Ben Hur and
The Robe. The strongest connection for me, however, was the imagery of Nero's gemstone, so similar to the colored beads described by Ralph Waldo Emerson; and the windowpanes described by Gustave Flaubert, and Philippa Pearce.
In his 1844 essay "Experience,"
Emerson compares life to "a string of beads, and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus." We hold beads of experience to the light, watching them become prisms, deciding which of the many colors we feel most moved by, which bead, which color we will choose. To choose but one hue is to choose a dream, an illusion, but such is our inability to perceive experience in more than one way at a time.
Writing in France a few years later (1857), in a section sadly omitted from the final version of
Madame Bovary,
Flaubert pictures
Emma looking out at the countryside through the variously colored window panes of a guest cottage: yellow, blue, green, red, each color altering her impression of the experience. Like Nero's emerald, through the green pane, everything appears leaden and frozen; like his ruby, through the red pane, the landscape is so frightening that Emma averts her gaze back to a clear pane of glass.
Writing a century later, British author
Philippa Pearce described an incredibly similar scene, from a child's perspective, in her mystical young adult novel
Tom's Midnight Garden (1958):
Tom and Hatty looked through "the coloured panes that bordered the glass panelling of the upper half [of the doorway of the greenhouse]. Through each colour of pane, you could see a different garden outside. Through the green pane, Tom saw a garden with green flowers under a green sky; even the geraniums were green-black. Through the red pane lay a garden as he might have seen it through the redness of shut eyelids. The purple glass filled the garden with thunderous shadow and with oncoming night. The yellow glass seemed to drench it in lemonade."
Which vision will it be: yellow, red, purple, green?
The Four Jewels ~ 1900
~ Topaz, Ruby, Amethyst, Emerald ~
Also of interest: The Four Seasons
[In three series:
1896, 1897, 1900]
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, February 14th
Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com
Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~ Summer Books: I Did It
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com
As the samaras dried out:
Still Life with Book
