Many years ago, in a junk shop near Cowan TN, I came upon a
curious item--a small slab of semi-finished hardwood partially wrapped in brittle
Kraft paper on which was written in purple Crayola: “From world’s most famous
apple tree.” This came to mind as I sat
staring at the screen of my iMac looking for a blog topic only to find one
staring me in the face in the form of the familiar Apple logo, which might be
described as the image of a very common fruit in a state of semi-depredation. In smaller print on the Kraft paper was a
claim that it housed a piece of wood from the apple tree at Appomattox near
which R. E. Lee awaited the arrival of U. S. Grant to negotiate the surrender
of the Army of Virginia. For some reason
I resisted a unique opportunity to purchase this valuable relic, which might
have secured my family fortune.
Later, by mere chance, I learned that however shaky the purple
provenance of the sacred Confederate relic might have been, there actually had
been some such tree. Maybe Chaucer’s Pardoner really did have a fragment of the
sail from Saint Peter’s fishing skiff.
A few weeks ago there was a
headline in the business section of the newspaper to this effect: “Apple:
Solution or Problem?” I suddenly
realized that the considerable degree of ambiguity with which our digital
cultures are being assessed everywhere in the press these days pretty well
typifies the history of most metaphorical mythic apples in western culture, of
which, Lord knows, there are plenty, and General Lee’s a mere also-ran. Think of the “laryngeal prominence”—alias the Adam’s apple—so prominent in
most males, including your bloguiste.
Does that refer merely to an anatomical site, a cartilage protrusion
that is simply a feature of human males (adam
in Hebrew) or is it rather specifically and theologically related to the man
“Adam” in the Hebrew Scriptures as interpreted by early Fathers of the Church. Surely the latter.
The Augustinian, or Calvininist
doctrine of total depravity, without which surely John Winthrop would never
have gotten to Massachusetts Bay nor Lindbergh back to Le Bourget, begins with
the fruit tree of the third chapter of Genesis.
The sacred author did not actually identify the species, but everybody
knew it had to be an apple. “Adam lay
ibowndyn, bowndyn in a bond/Fowre thowsand winter thowt he not to long”--so goes
one of our most ancient Christmas songs.
“And al was for an appil, an appil that he tok, / As clerkes fyndyn
wretyn in here book”.
History recapitulates
philology. The bad apple which has
spoiled so many good ones was confirmed by a certain play on words in the Latin
tongue. Malum is the neuter form of the adjective for “injurious,” “bad” or
“wicked.” Mālum with a long vowel is the apple, fruit or tree. As a verb mālo means “I choose” or “I prefer”.
Since the scriptural episode concerning the “tree of the knowledge of
good and evil” involves an evil choice of devastating consequence (“the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree,
whose mortal tast brought Death into the World, and all our woe” in Milton’s
words), one can easily see how theology and philology joined forces. It’s a challenge to make the “Turn of
the Screw” even creepier than Henry James left it, but Benjamin Britten pulled
it off in his operatic version by inventing a Latin lesson for the child Miles consisting of four haunting repetitions of the homophone "malo".
Of course the bad apple of
Judaeo-Christian tradition has its parallel and probable antecedents in gentile
mythology. Like many Greek myths the
tale of the Hesperides has come down in a confusing cascade of versions, but the
main lines are clear. The Hesperides,
daughters of the golden sunset, are three beautiful sisters who look after
Hera’s “garden in the West,” a glorious plantation strikingly similar to
Dante’s Earthly Paradise in its geographical placement and general vibe. In particular these girls guard the tree that
bears the golden apples—the trouble being that they do not guard it well. Zeus threw a big party to celebrate the
marriage of Peleus and Thetis, but he did not include on the guest list Eris,
goddess of Discord. Understandable,
perhaps, but fatal: it is always better, as LBJ knew, to have the camel inside the tent. Eris got her hands on one of the golden
apples and, tossing it like a grenade into the wedding feast, set off a ferocious
rivalry among Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite as to which of them was most
beautiful and therefore most deserving of the prize of the golden fruit.
This led to the mythological
episode generally known as the Judgment of Paris—Paris being the shepherd lad
plucked from obscurity to judge the beauty contest. The contestants did their best to bribe the
judge. Hera offered him great political
power. Athena promised him wisdom. Aphrodite offered him the world’s most
beautiful woman. It is difficult to
explain this myth to modern undergraduates, most of whom are--beneath veneers
of realism, feminism, progressivism, or vegetarianism—hardcore romantics. They are inclined to think that Paris’s
choice of Aphrodite (Venus), generally regarded as disastrous by the western
cultural tradition, is a vindication of the unchanging majesty of the human
heart. The good news was that Paris got
Helen. The bad news, apparently at first
overlooked in the small print on the back page, was that Helen’s friends and
relations back home, who got very steamed up about all this, had a thousand
warships at their disposal. Thus, all
for a golden apple, came the end of a great civilization. It didn’t require much of a reach to
“Christianize” this myth. Note the
serpent curled around the tree in the Burne-Jones.
