Tag Archives: Greek myth

Ancient Curses: The Children of Jocasta

10 Monday Apr 2023

Posted by in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: The Children of Jocasta, by Natalie Haynes
Europa, 2018. 295 pp. $18

In the ancient Greek city-state of Thebes, a young girl is affianced without warning, warmth, or joy to Laius, the king. Jocasta, though wishing to be dutiful, can’t help think that her parents don’t care about her—they favor her much-younger brother, Creon—and have betrayed her for the expected advantages of the marriage.

More bewildering yet, right after the wedding, Laius disappears for weeks in the mountains with his drinking and hunting buddies, leaving his young bride alone with a few attendants. Why did he marry her, then? Wasn’t it to produce heirs that would secure the throne and prevent future conflict in Thebes?

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres,1808, Oedipus and the Sphinx (courtesy Louvre Museum, Paris, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Good luck with that. Thebes is home to the tortured souls already mentioned, later joined by Oedipus and the children he’ll have with Jocasta: Eteocles and Polynices, the quarrelsome princes; and Antigone and Ismene, their devoted sisters. These names live today largely because of Sophocles, who dramatized their tragic ends and the curse that hung over their family.

But Haynes, who writes in her afterword that Sophocles is only one classical source of the Theban myths, has taken them in a different, fascinating direction. Narrating alternately between Jocasta’s point of view and Ismene’s—with an occasional snippet from Oedipus and Creon—Haynes recounts a version of events that has more to do with passion and politics than oracles, messengers, and hubris, though those crucial elements do appear.

The author retells the story from a feminine (and feminist) viewpoint, relying on voices that are traditionally walk-ons (especially Ismene’s), but that’s just the surface. The reader will instantly recognize what lies beneath. First off, Haynes has reimagined Jocasta as a neglected child who would look upon the sudden, unexpected advent of the young Oedipus as the promise of the love she never received.

For his part, he’s the clever, willful operator who’s crushed the Sphinx (here in less mythical guise) and stolen a march on his rivals, which accounts for his instant popularity but has implications for how he’ll behave down the road.

I admire this approach, and if the result seems modern, not Sophoclean, for the most part, it works. As with Joan, Katherine J. Chen’s novel, The Children of Jocasta will strike some readers as revisionist. So what? The treatment here still contains human truth and gives much to think about.

Haynes’s Thebans are less concerned with divine will or their place in the cosmos than their desires, ambitions, political power, morality, and what the people outside the palace will think of them. Some of these mythic figures are more pious than others, but none believe that the gods have sealed their fates and they’re mere puppets. Quite the contrary; The Children of Jocasta involves contests of will for high stakes.

What’s also interesting is how the men in this family, or most of them, love their wives, daughters, and sisters. Fathers want daughters, and nobody talks of exposing girl infants on hillsides. Women have secondary roles to men, but there’s no doubt that queens matter or that they hold power. Ismene’s love for her family helps drive the action, and both her father and uncle care for her, despite what else they do.

As a dramatic critic, Aristotle famously wrote that plot matters above all. Since the ancient playwrights could not change the myths, that makes sense. But here, we have a character-driven novel based on those myths. I find that intriguing.

Haynes’s prose brings Thebes to life, as with this passage, when the newly crowned Jocasta visits the marketplace, amazed at the finery she’s never seen. Nobody recognizes her, and it hasn’t sunk in yet that she can have anything she wants:

On another stall, her eye was caught by piles of clothes in every colour: bright dresses which she longed to touch, every shade of red between orange and pink, every shade of yellow between saffron and unripe lemons. She walked into the thronging aisle and reached out to feel the deep blue fabric of a simple shift dress. It was crisp and unworn and would be the right length without alteration.

However, I wish Haynes tried less hard to make her story and characters “relatable.” She’s created a physician-turned-tutor, Sophon, whom Ismene reveres, and who plays a key role in events. That’s fine. But Sophon’s philosophy, which stresses the influence of others’ choices on one’s own and questions the gods’ power, even their existence, seems a stretch. I like this man and his steadying, kindly influence, yet I wonder if he’s meant to reassure us these people aren’t so different from ourselves. But Haynes’s entire approach has already made that clear, so why does the narrative need that from him?

A couple minor tics add to my sense that the author has worried—needlessly—that we won’t see ourselves in these troubled Thebans. She uses nicknames, which sometimes threw me—Ani, Isy, Eteo—and laughed or smiled or other improbable verbs instead of said. I can’t help think of A Thousand Ships, Haynes’s more recent book, and my sense of it, that she lacks confidence in what she’s created. If so, she’s a much better author than she knows.

The Children of Jocasta is a vivid, thought-provoking novel, well worth your time.

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

Outcast Goddess: Circe

21 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: Circe, by Madeline Miller
Little, Brown, 2018. 385 pp. $28

From the earliest age, the sun god Helios’ youngest daughter fits nowhere and has no friends, only detractors; and are they vicious. Circe is stupid, ugly, awkward, has no common sense, and speaks like a mortal, they say. Like any child, she yearns for some sign, however faint, of paternal affection, but Helios can’t bear the sight of her, and her mother jokes at her expense like everyone else in the sun god’s great hall.

In divine eyes, Circe’s flaw is possessing empathy, for which they have no use and regard as weakness. They weigh every moment, every interaction, as a barometer of who’s got more power, more adoration, and more of whatever admirable trait under discussion, whether physical strength, beauty, or cleverness.

What an exhausting, empty way to live, except that gods don’t live, exactly; they simply exist. And Circe sticks out because she’s dissatisfied with that, and the whole narcissistic one-upmanship game that defines the divine presence. In fact, her first act of rebellion is to offer succor to the suffering Prometheus, an outcast.

When she turns to witchcraft, Helios considers her too dangerous to keep on hand, so he banishes her to an island called Aiaia. In case that’s not in your atlas, just sail north from Scylla and Charybdis, fabled pitfalls from the Odyssey. But Odysseus won’t show up for a while. And before he does, Circe will have her hands full with her older sister, Pasiphaë, who births the Minotaur; Daedalus; and Medea, among others. So the novel offers plenty of action, while portraying its protagonist’s growth from unwanted waif to a power that even Helios and Athena must reckon with.

The measure of this novel is not that Circe comes into her own because she concocts the right potions, though she’s skilled at that. Rather, she grows into herself. I’ve never read a coming-of-age novel that unfolds over centuries, but that’s what Circe is. You can see why teenage girls have embraced this book the way they have; the feminist themes, simple, direct language, and absolute clarity of action and intention may be found in good young adult novels. But I don’t mean to limit Circe’s readership, for Miller has invested her narrative with adult themes and conflicts as well.

Circe and Odysseus, circa 490-480 BCE, National Archaeological Museum, Athens (courtesy Marsyas, via Wikimedia Commons)

For one thing, she grapples with the meaning of life, contrasting it with the immortality that, while attractive, remains unfulfilling precisely because it’s predictable and unchanging. The uncertainty that troubles human dealings is also life’s greatest attribute. Further, Miller delves into issues involving marriage and childrearing — only a parent could have written certain passages — weighing what price each exacts and what benefits each confers. Finally, the author considers the thirst for glory and fame, as exemplified by Odysseus, a brilliantly conceived character:

Moment by moment, his vitality had returned. His eyes were bright now, storm-lit. When he talked, he was lawyer and bard and crossroads charlatan at once, arguing his case, entertaining, pulling back the veil to show you the secrets of the world. It was not just his words, though they were clever enough. It was everything together: his face, his gestures, the sliding tones of his voice. I would say it was like a spell he cast, but there was no spell I knew that could equal it. The gift was his alone.

I confess, I avoided reading Circe because I struggled to get through fifty pages of Miller’s previous novel, The Song of Achilles. But Circe feels like a more confident, deeper, more fully fleshed creation, avoiding the pitfalls that plague lesser retellings of Greek myths that I mentioned last week. Miller knows the myths and culture inside and out, has parsed out every detail of thought, action, and physical setting, and invites you to share that intimacy.

Even so, she never persuades me, even for an instant, that her characters will diverge from the path ordained from them, an illusion I look for and treasure in these retellings, as I also wrote last week. Circe appears to hew pretty closely to the myths I know, though I don’t pretend to be an expert. Also, as I said, the narrative is simple and direct, so, though I see artistry here, I wouldn’t call it subtle. Moreover, it’s an episodic tale rather than a unified story building to a climax, and though the episodes hold my interest and are often tense, as with many biographical novels, I want more cohesion and force.

Nevertheless, Circe is a wonderful book, and I recommend it.

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

Homeric Vignettes: A Thousand Ships

14 Monday Feb 2022

Posted by in Reviews and Columns

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: A Thousand Ships, by Natalie Haynes
Harper, 2021. 340 pp. $28

Rereading Homer with fresh eyes is like rereading Genesis or Exodus; keep your mind open, and you’ll see something you never considered before. How satisfying that is, even exciting.

But so many publishers these days issue retellings of Greek myths, the trend du jour that everyone’s rushing to capitalize on, that I approached A Thousand Ships with wariness. I’ve tried a few trend-followers du jour, only to put them aside, because the twenty-first-century tone or perspective seems inauthentic, or the writing falls short. If a historical novel attempts to superimpose a modern viewpoint, it’s not a historical novel; and if the narrative employs tropes to express feelings in generic prose, I don’t care what kind of novel it is. I’m not interested.

Even had the famous poet been sighted, he wouldn’t have seen his female characters as heroic (courtesy British Missing via Wikimedia Commons)

I prefer retellings that delve deeply enough into the characters’ inner lives so that I can imagine, however briefly, that the foreordained tragedy will not take place. For instance, in Songs of the Kings, Barry Unsworth somehow lets you hope that Agamemnon won’t sacrifice his daughter. In The War at Troy (unfortunately out of print), for a few pages, Lindsey Clarke encourages you to believe that Paris will give the golden apple to Athena and accept the wisdom he desperately needs, rather than bestow the gift on Aphrodite and carry off Helen as his prize. I like how these novelists let their characters, not a political or moral agenda, call the tune.

A Thousand Ships, though a valiant attempt to avoid these pitfalls, doesn’t always succeed, perhaps because the premise overshadows the execution. Granted, it’s an intriguing concept, retelling the Trojan War and its aftermath through women’s voices only, and a story whose time has come. Further, Haynes forthrightly argues that the women are heroic too, not just the men. No argument from me; I’m enrolled.

The first voice we hear belongs to Calliope, muse of epic poetry, presumably being invoked by Homer to sing the same old, same old story about men, as though she has nothing better to do. What a hoot. Following, among others, in no particular order, come Hecabe, Briseis, Chryseis, Cassandra, Penelope, Thetis, Clytemnestra, and several I hadn’t heard of. Many scenes grip me, despite their familiarity. I particularly like the ones involving Briseis and Chryseis, and the part where Clytemnestra welcomes home Agamemnon, the latter a brilliant take on a woman plotting revenge.

I admire Haynes’s knowledge of and grasp of the original texts, and it’s clear that she loves them for themselves, not merely as a stepping-stone for a theme. And when she rethinks the characters in psychological depth, with vivid physical detail, the narrative sings, as with this scene involving Cassandra:

She spoke of one terrible thing after another, one disaster to befall them and then one more and one more.… But soon the slaves would not wait on her, not even under threat of being flogged. Cassandra would tell them of their own impending deaths, and those of their parents or children. And even though it was nonsense — no one believed a word the deranged girl said — it disquieted them. One day, Cassandra was screaming and crying… The details scarcely mattered — and Hecabe had reached across and slapped her hard, across the face. Cassandra had grabbed her hand and held it, shrieking. And Hecabe had slapped her with her left hand until there were bright red finger marks on both of her daughter’s cheeks, with deeper indentations on the right side, from Hecabe’s thick gold rings.

I also love the back story to the Apple of Discord myth, entirely new to me, which involves not only the goddesses’ rivalry, but Zeus’ desire to thin the world’s population with a long war. Why? Because Gaia’s weary of the ever-increasing human despoliation of the planet — an environmental warning that reaches across the centuries, yet fits entirely within its ancient context. All of this feels fresh and compelling.

But A Thousand Ships lacks a coherent narrative, being a collection of vignettes. Whether that makes a novel is open to debate, but, either way, the voices must be distinct. Sometimes, I hear the author rather than individual characters; or the voices fluctuate, as with Penelope’s, at times a woman struggling to remain patient and loving in Odysseus’s absence, and at times, a chorus, a literary device.

In emphasizing female characters in an authentic light, A Thousand Ships has its points. But I hope Haynes’s next effort focuses on a single episode or tale in depth, and that she concentrates more on the presentation than the literary premise. Her afterword suggests that she worries readers won’t accept women as heroes; I say that’s their problem. Let her storytelling carry the day.

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

The Restless Hero: The Bull from the Sea

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Reviews and Columns

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Review: The Bull from the Sea, by Mary Renault
Vintage/Random, 1990. 343 pp. $16

Toward the end of his life, the hero warrior-king Theseus tries to come to terms with the destruction of what he loves most. At first, he asks a string of what-ifs, only to dismiss them: “Fate and will, will and fate, like earth and sky bringing forth the grain together; and which the bread tastes of, no man knows.”

What a striking metaphor, elegant in its simplicity, much like this novel itself. And what a brave, resigned outlook, one to which many might aspire when their turn comes, but which it takes a special character to embrace. To me, this is what makes Theseus a hero, not the storied deeds or countless adventures. Rather than blame the gods or other men for what has happened, he grasps the essence of himself and accepts the responsibility for it. Would that we had leaders who could do the same.

Theseus slaying the Minotaur (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the U.S.)

Theseus slaying the Minotaur (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the U.S.)

The story picks up from The King Must Die, Renault’s prior tale of Theseus’ adventures on Crete, where he led his cohort of Athenian youth to survive the bull ring of King Minos–an unheard-of achievement–and help topple the bloody king from the throne. Tragedy marks the young prince’s triumphant return to Athens, however, for his father has thrown himself from a cliff, believing the son to have died. The ensuing narrative follows King Theseus as he attempts to unite Attica through war and diplomacy, goes a-roving for plunder, brings back an Amazon bride, Hippolyta, and sets in motion a string of consequences that fulfill his destiny.

Readers who know the myths will find a familiar plot, but it’s how Renault tells the story that matters. Theseus is the most renowned warrior of his time, and he receives his due in these pages, but the author chooses to focus on the reasons he goes to war so often, all of which have to do with his character. The king has made a deep study of power, sensing when to ignore or deflect an insult, when to meet a threat head-on, and when to thwart it indirectly by massaging egos and building alliances. His life becomes a political manifesto on the virtues of forbearance and of faith in the rule of law (part of his legacy is that he supports the weak against unjust, excessive burdens, which arouses anger among the aristocracy).

But he’s also a man of his time, and violence is the means to adventure and pursuit of wealth. Theseus is one of those who believes that the great never sit still when they could be out chasing something, and therein lies his trouble and his glory. As he says after befriending King Pirithoos of the Lapiths, whose lust for piracy leads Theseus to take risks for good and ill,

I knew, as one sometimes may, that I had met a daimon of my fate. Whether he came for good or ill to me, I could not tell; nor, it may be, could a god have told me plainly. But good in himself he was, as a lion is good for beauty and for valor though he eats one’s herds. He roars at the spears upon the dike-top, while the torchlight strikes forth fire from his golden eyes; and one’s heart must love him, whether one will or no.

It’s that acceptance of the dual nature of humankind, in himself and others, that makes Theseus so compelling for me. As a king with priestly functions, he seldom forgets that despite his power, he’s a mote in the universe, and when he does, he quickly realizes that the gods rebuke such hubris with a vengeance. Even a legendary ruler and warrior may strive for humility.

There are other authors who write engaging fiction about the ancient world. But Mary Renault is still my favorite, arguably a writer who put historical fiction on the literary map fifty years ago.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from an independent bookstore.