“What I possess far, far away appears,
And only what has vanished now seems real.”
-Faust, Dedication by Goethe
This poet of minor note, composing curiosities among the shadows of an utterly fallen world, has been recently afflicted by greatness. In my search into the rise and fall of the people simply known as the warriors [Aryans], whose women held the most relative moral sway and civic regard among the many folk of antiquity, I have returned to the reading of my youth. Then, as a 15-year-old punk, I read 14 books on Alexander the Great. Later, in about my 50th year, I began to wonder, how is it that the entirely masculine art of war, in which women have NEVER taken a deciding role and rarely acted as meaningful participants, does excellence in the men of war, the Arуans, Sons of Ares, and cousins such as the Mongols, Polynesians, Iroquois, Crow and Blackfeet, so often spring from a society where women have more influence than the far less successful warrior cultures of Africa, most of Asia—near and nether—and Mexico south to Peru?
For a short answer, I appeal to the NFL playoff games a few weeks ago, in which the combative player’s agency continues to reduce, and he is surrounded and out numbered by busy-body non-combatants, to include beautiful women stocking the ever increasing ranks of opinionated commentators? A simpler answer is the cheerleader, a relic of a more sensible time when metaphor was a masculine store, and not a wrist-wilting whip. As yet another bronze beauty comments on the merits of this slavish player or that, I blurted, “this would be worthwhile if that doll was roped to the gold posts and the blond on the other end of the panel was fettered to the opposing goal post.”
My wife chuckled. But alas, brides are now won by the money amassed by a player, merely a muscular cog in an industrial time-management metaphor. The cheerleader offers a sidelined whisper of an honest time when the women of men bettered in combat became the battle brides of the conquerors. The entire Iliad and the Odyssey reflect this ancient truth, now reduced to an obliquely crass purchase of feminine toleration.
The roads of thought left to this struggling inquirer into lost and lie-entombed times have now begun to gather inextricably about the short bright life of the best warrior to ever live. The time I have left, passed January 2027—if any—shall be devoted to the Areid, a series of 8 novels about Alexander through the lens of his single most loyal band of warriors, and also the Seven Volume Son of God. Alexander’s stupendous drive is dragging this myopic inquirer from the Sons of Aryas and Plantation America projects, back to the life most written about in Antiquity, in The Middle Ages, and in Modernity. Even world-burning, cartoon Hitlеr gets less historical attention than Alexander.
Considering Alexander, one sees the most driven warrior, the most successful war leader and the most humane king in one person. More feared than Achilles, more brilliant than Genghis Khan, every bit as humane as Marcus Aurelius, Alexander also had unique civil relationships with women. In an age of sexual license, as a youth, he refused to have sex with the most beautiful and talented woman in the world. He gave more respect to his mother than any known king—none of whom could match him in battle or war council. He was adopted as a son by two queens of Asia, adopted the wife of his slain enemy as a sister, decreed that his warriors might not displace their home wives with prettier darlings they won in Asia…
Alexander seems to have embodied the dichotomy of the Arуan tribes and clans; that the war races who conquered and/or oppressed every single nation on earth, for at least one lifetime each, are also prone to the weakest deference at home among womankind. This writer now intends to conduct the inventory of obscured warrior facts and the litany of twisted warrior truth upon a duality pole of history and fiction, of inquiry and story, in the shadow of Alexander.
As a guiding light I chose a reading of a master of the arts at which this less sure hand strives, in the seminal work of Goethe, Faust, the play. If only Goethe had sent his shade to me like Virgil did for Dante, than perhaps the Norns, or Fates of the Sons of Ares, the nations born of WAR, might have here successfully discharged his duty of finding out why the very best warriors have become money-questing, boot-licking, back-biting, father-shunning, sissies; the sons of Crone rather than of Strength, the whining heralds of death rather than the strident champions of life.
Goethe does offer a clue in his two prologues to Faust. Doctor Faust was said to have been a sorcerer, a wise man, an alchemical polymath of the early 1500s, a man similar in nature to Jon Dee and Isaac Newton, delvers into science and faith, men of the tarnished throne and of fallow faerie. In The Prologue In The Theatre, three figures discuss the upcoming event of story and money: Manager, Dramatic Poet, Comic Person.
Manager:
“I want to please the crowd we get,
Because it lives and lets us live; each seat
Is ready, our booth is up, the stage is set,
And everyone is waiting for a treat.”
Poet:
“Oh speak not of the motley throng!
One glance compels my spirit into flight!
Veil from me the crowd which whirls along
And sucks us in the vortex ‘gainst our will.”
Comic Person:
“Posterity? That word offends my ears!
Suppose I talked of further years,
Who would amuse the world to-day?
They want and ought to have their fun;”
In The Prologue In Heaven, Goethe engages the Book of Job as a launch for his play, as The Almighty, The Heavenly Host, Three Archangels and the devil Mephistopheles agree to permit the latter to test the mortal subject, Faust.
I leave off this investigation here, leaning as did Spengler, upon the shoulder of Goethe, in wonder. One thing is clear, the ancient fear of Infinite Number, of quantity over quality, is embodied by the woe-befallen Poet in the theatre, caught between the Manager dedicated to earning his bread in his narrow booth, and of the Comic blithely eager to compress Fate’s many threads into one gilded knot.
Thank you for following the downward trajectory of this vexing muse.
-James, Denver, Pennsylvania, Thursday, February 5, A.D. 2026
