Tag Archives: anachronisms

Dante and Derring-Do: The Master of Verona

26 Monday Jul 2021

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Review: The Master of Verona, by David Blixt
St. Martin’s, 2007. 561 pp. $28

In 1314, Verona’s master, Cangrande della Scala, extends patronage to Dante Alighieri, who has been banished from Florence, and his two surviving sons, Pietro, seventeen, and Jacopo, fourteen. The poet has recently published Inferno, to great renown and no little fear of heresy or impiety. But della Scala quickly realizes that Dante’s not the only gifted member of the family, nor the most useful.

Rather, he fixes on Pietro, who longs to escape his father’s shadow (while hoping pater will actually notice him one day and approve). And when Pietro falls in with two other youths — one noble, one from a merchant family pretending nobility — military adventure offers. Della Scala, a twenty-three-year-old wunderkind, dreams of uniting Italy under his banner. His approach to war, diplomacy, and familial politics has much to do with an ancient prophecy that says a figure called the Greyhound will realize that far-fetched scheme. He’s magnetic, generous, and apparently scrupulous, a rare combination. Pietro’s enthralled, and his passion takes him places, often alongside his new friends, the first he’s ever had in his life.

Equestrian statue, no date, of Cangrande della Scala, Museo di Castelvecchio,
Verona (courtesy Eggbread, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Between the derring-do, battle scenes, court intrigue, and the question of occupying many thinkers on the cusp of the Renaissance — do the stars foretell fate, or does free will have influence? — The Master of Verona makes for epic adventure. The thrumming plot, larger-than-life characters and perilous twists and turns evoke an approach like that of Dumas. The pages turn rapidly, numerous though they are. Astrology, poetry, chivalry, prophecy, and love figure here, all entertaining subjects, and I enjoy many of the characters, who take them seriously.

Besides Pietro and della Scala’s sister, Katerina, I particularly like Dante himself, who unfortunately drops out of the narrative. Blixt portrays him as a self-absorbed narcissist conscious of his genius who has little time for his children, except when they disappoint him. The exception? His daughter, Antonia, who, at thirteen, keeps the booksellers in line and acts as self-appointed caretaker of her father’s career. In letters, he calls her Beatrice, which she treasures. Katerina and Antonia are women ahead of their time, seeking power and influence denied them because of their gender.

Otherwise, the novel has wars, a horse race through the streets, trysts, duels, and every action conceivable. Not all are credible, and Pietro’s powers can test belief, especially as he’s received little schooling in the martial arts; but never mind. As an added conceit, Shakespearean characters and situations waft through the narrative, whether the plays belong to Vienna (Romeo and Juliet), or not (Othello, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing). Note that Blixt is an actor and director, and you can tell: His approach is theatrical, to say the least.

As a storyteller, he offers brio, panache, and a command of historical detail:

Inside the city walls, the streets were all but impassable. Spectators, gamblers, merchants, peasants, petitioners — all had traveled for days to vie for what lodging they could find. The decent rooms were already rented out to triple or quadruple capacity.… Many visitors, even noble ones, were forced to sleep on dirty floors, or in stables, where the beds were somewhat more comfortable. But fully half the people in the city were not sleeping. Other attractions called — treats and spectacles and mythical beasts, lights and sounds and smells.

However, as this passage suggests, Blixt sometimes trowels on the detail, drawing back the authorial focus and distancing the reader. This narrative technique, which can seem static, undermines the drive he achieves with the storyline and makes you work to stay connected. The author also indulges in information dumps, swelling the dialogue with facts and background, at which the reader’s eye grows impatient. Or this reader’s does. If these facts matter to the story, and I’m not sure they always do, better to show them through action, rather than have people explain them to each other.

I doubt fourteenth-century people, or those anytime, would speak the way Blixt has it, unless they’re all pedants. Then again, these folk often think like moderns, however intently they hew to the philosophical framework of their era. Present-day vocabulary dots the dialogue, and when characters discourse on various subjects, they occasionally refer to knowledge that lies in the future. They also speak incorrect French, admittedly a minor quibble, though indicative of carelessness of writer or editor that emerges elsewhere.

But it’s the discursive, lecturing quality that hampers the novel most. The final chapters are particularly striking for that, as the narrative struggles to wrap up convolutions and contradictions through speechmaking. It’s an unsatisfying, melodramatic conclusion.

For a wild, evocative ride, in which action carries the day, The Master of Verona makes for entertaining reading. Less would have achieved more.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Her Story: The Silence of the Girls

10 Monday Dec 2018

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Review: The Silence of the Girls, by Pat Barker
Doubleday, 2018. 291 pp. $28

Readers familiar with the Trojan War myths will recognize the name Briseis as belonging to the woman captured by Achilles and taken by Agamemnon, an insult that results in a fateful quarrel. Achilles sulks, and in his absence from the battlefield, the Greeks suffer reversals, the most serious of which is Patroclus’s death. In the traditional telling, the woman herself is a thing, a bauble to be claimed, hardly worth mentioning except the trouble she causes.

But in this beautifully imagined, finely wrought novel, Briseis has her say. And when she does, she speaks for all women, those of Troy and elsewhere, of queens like herself and commoners. As she remarks with incisive bitterness, when bards craft the songs of great deeds and heroes, they don’t mention the truth of conquest, “the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls.” Needless to say, neither Briseis nor her sisters in captivity cause any trouble, but even the presumption that they do suggests the tremendous power that men have — to tell the story of their battles, as though those were the only ones fought, or theirs the only story.

Achilles surrenders Briseis to Agamemnon, first-century fresco from Pompeii (courtesy Naples National Archeological Museum, via Wikimedia Commons)

Utterly engrossing from its first words, The Silence of the Girls begins with Achilles laying siege to Briseis’s home city, Lyrnessus. She hears his voice, his war cry, before she even sees him, and what will happen is never in doubt. After the battle comes the looting:

Gangs of men were dragging heavy loads out of the buildings – carved furniture, bales of rich cloth, tapestries, armour, tripods, cooking cauldrons, barrels of wine and grain. Now and then, the men would sit down and rest, some on the ground, some on the chairs and beds they’d been carrying. They were all swigging wine straight from the jug, wiping their mouths on the backs of their bloodstained hands, getting steadily and determinedly drunk. And more and more often, as the sky started to fade, they gazed up at the slit windows of the citadel where they knew the women would be hiding.. . . For hours, I watched them strip houses and temples of wealth that generations of my people had worked hard to create, and they were so good at it, so practised. . . . And then they turned their attention to us.

As this description suggests, Barker writes as if she’s actually seen everything that goes on, known all these mythical characters from personal experience. Achilles, a killing machine of great physical beauty but no heart save for love of Patroclus, his childhood friend, makes a disturbingly believable portrait. He’s difficult to sympathize with, considering his ego, merciless outlook, and selfishness, yet you also understand how he’s never grown up — and even realizes it, a little. Barker astutely wonders what it must have been like for Achilles to have a goddess for a mother, and what that must have done to his psyche. Patroclus is much kinder; he almost sees Briseis as a person — almost. Agamemnon’s a loser, a bully said not to risk his skin in battle, and as such, fears that others will see his weakness.

The protagonist, meanwhile, refuses to accept her fate, as Patroclus counsels her to do in her first hours as a slave. Her struggles to cope with how it feels to be unseen, unheard, raped nightly by the man who killed her brothers, knowing that however bad her life is, it could be worse — Achilles could tire of her and hand her to his men — speak loudly. It’s her story, all right, and she makes the most of it. Barker does follow the myth, but there are so many unexpected moments within that framework that nothing feels predictable.

In that, I’m reminded of my favorite Trojan War novels, The War at Troy, by Lindsay Clarke, and The Songs of the Kings, by Barry Unsworth. But I think Barker goes one better; it’s my favorite of hers since Regeneration. Neither Clarke nor Unsworth would have allowed the few anachronisms in which Barker indulges — a fist pump, Briseis’s knowledge that rats and plague go together, and, most important (and pervasive), modern British slang. Some readers will be put off by that, and at first, it pushes you out of the narrative — a definite no-no — but these soldiers talk like soldiers, and they seem entirely credible.

The Silence of the Girls may not be perfect, but it’s pretty damn close.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.