The hero sails to far exotic shores, returns in triumph with a princess and a prize. This is the archetypal European Quest whose classic formulation is the Myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece. The theme has minor variations—as when the fleece becomes a Holy Grail—but the center remains: despite the setbacks and the losses he may suffer on the way, the hero brings his treasure-laden Argo back to port. The quest succeeds. Thus when the Renaissance explorers left to seek great riches in the lands beyond horizons on the west, their ultimate success seemed foreordained. And when America was found, it simply was historical fulfillment of an archetypal myth. To certain eyes the continent was El Dorado. Others saw it paradise regained, the locus aetas aurea that medieval exegetes had learned of in their "Christian Ovid." Either view envisioned realms of gold.
The notion that a brave new world awaited its discoverer, appears as early as the Roman Seneca. The chorus in Medea prophesies a second Argo sailing past "the ocean's chains" and into novos orbes of majestic size. By this analogy Columbus was to be a second Jason. Ferdinand Columbus was convinced that Seneca had meant his father—as we know from markings in his Latin text. Those who saw America as Eden rediscovered could adduce a better proof: Columbus said so. And the theme persisted. Montaigne in his famous essay viewed "Americans" as prelapsorian bons sauvages. And though Montaigne found Eden in Brazil, the eye of Europe subsequently focused on the north. In 1734, Voltaire could specify (without irony) which of the United States contained the earthly paradise: "the golden age of which we speak so much . . . has never very like been reality—except in Pennsylvania."
But herein lies the paradox. The dream we call "American" is actually a European fantasy, inspired by the Golden Fleece tradition in the fabric of their culture. This is not at all America's ur-myth. Success is Jason's fate. Columbus, on the other hand, died poor and in disgrace— and hack in Europe.
The American quest is profoundly tragic, its Golden Fleece a winding sheet for Jason drowned. The paradigm is Moby Dick. Why does Ahab so relentlessly pursue what is both metaphysically and literally elusive, something far transcending any European sense of "prize"? His crew has harvested the wealth of many whales; but still he perseveres to get the White One. And what are we to understand in Melville's message that the quarry kills the quester? He clearly understood how flagrantly he violated Europe's myth. We know how closely and how often Melville read the Odyssey, whose sailor hero voyages past every limit and returns paragonally happy. "Heureux qui comme Ulysse . . . " begins the famous sonnet which then cites a second model of success: "that man who won the fleece." And Melville actually suggests that Ahab's ship is something of an anti-Argo. In a book whereevery character is named portentously, can we ignore the fact the Pequod's cook is called "old Fleece"?
Auden's poem to Melville limns the man no less than his mythology:
... il was the gale had blown him
Past the Cape Horn of sensible success
Which cries: "this rock is Eden.
Shipwreck here.
Not even paradise lost, a theme familiar to the European mind—which could conceive of temps perdu as either Christian or Proustian. But rather paradise as tragedy. Shipwreck in Eden.
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