The fourth of the Ice and Fire books was the first one I didn’t read excitedly, or with any great desire to pick up again once I’d put it down. By this point the series was selling enough to top the New York Times bestsellers list, even without help of the excellent HBO series, but it would be a further six years before book 5 would come out.
And, as I found out at the end of this book, A Dance with Dragons is really this book, part 2. Even though the last one was big enough to need splitting into two for these shores, apparently that idea did not agree with Martin’s plans at all, so he wrote this book to focus on events in King’s Landing – with a few other strands thrown in – while the next will deal with Dany, Stannis, Bran and the rest.
I’m not sure whether it was because once the split happened this book needed padding or because Martin just has plans that require a lot of set-up here, but it really felt as though he decided to just tread water with this book. Far too much is given over to dull new (or previously peripheral) characters like the Krakens and the Dornish, without whom the central story would thus far be no different at all. Neither Jaime nor Cersei interest me all that much, and Samwell’s chapters are always very, very slow. This left only Brienne and a few chapters with the Stark daughters to spice up an otherwise turgid volume. The prose remains slightly painful, and there was one horrible attempt to make Cersei use some British vernacular that Martin got totally wrong – which I don’t believe was a printing error. I don’t mind there being Americanisms in a medieval England-style fantasy world – after all, it is a fantasy world – and the likes of ‘I wrote him’ I can happily let slide, but trying to have an English tone and getting it wrong ('He had bloody well think again') is in the realm of terrible fanfic. At least Martin has moved beyond using ‘merlon’ and ‘whicker’ every few pages, though.
After the fascinating cliffhangers of the last book, this was a real let-down. The hideous figure from the end of A Storm of Swords doesn’t even show up again until near the end of this one, the most interesting characters Tyrion, Bran and Dany are barely mentioned, and to add injury to it all, looking now at the Wikipedia, I see this is where Martin had intended there to be the time-skip I’ve been hoping for since the end of the first book, but he’s put it off because otherwise the next one would be all flashbacks.
It struck me at the end of the book, where Martin all but apologises to his readers for this, that while I’ve seen he can write great characters, great twists and great bits of political machination, I have no evidence at all that he can write a good, solid story with a powerful ending. Now I fear what the rest of the books will give us. Time to read something else for a bit.
Thursday, 8 December 2011
Thursday, 6 October 2011
The Subtle Knife
If I were to be unkind, I could summarise The Subtle Knife really quite adequately by simply saying, ‘Some people go some places – and this boy finds a knife’. Because that is basically all that happens. No wonder I didn’t remember anything about it from the first time I’d read it! Yes, Lyra was very sweet, even if she seemed to be regressing rather than growing up, and yes, it’s good to see a wound that actually bothers someone properly in a children’s book, but it really wasn’t especially interesting.
And to be honest, the links to Paradise Lost and the story of the Fall, as well as almost all the cod-philosophical musings on Dark Matter and puberty are inelegant and really rather arbitrary.
Still, it’s better than almost any children’s literature out there, and I had a pretty enjoyable read. I’m not going to complain.
And to be honest, the links to Paradise Lost and the story of the Fall, as well as almost all the cod-philosophical musings on Dark Matter and puberty are inelegant and really rather arbitrary.
Still, it’s better than almost any children’s literature out there, and I had a pretty enjoyable read. I’m not going to complain.
Lolita
It took far longer than it should have done, but I’ve come to the end of Lolita, truly amongst the best books of all time. Nabokov’s prose is a tour de force throughout, and consistently beautiful – while in many places opaque. The story itself is functional and well-crafted, with only enough actual events for a short story so firmly fixed by foreshadowing, by allusions, by the intricate detail in which such events are unfolded, that the prose and the study of Humbert Humbert’s psychological state take centre-stage – and enchant and mesmerise the audience.
Before I go on, I’d just like to mention as an aside that I know about all the hullabaloo in Europe over a prior Lolita, a short story by a German writer with a plot remarkably similar to Nabokov’s The Enchanter, itself the short story that would later be fleshed out into Lolita. I care not if Nabokov refused to credit his source because he so hated Nazi sympathisers, or if he simply absorbed the story and (buzzword: cryptomnesia) later it trickled out of that vast lake in his head with all the freshness of our own second- (or sixth-) hand water, or even if it was just another work of McFate, which would no doubt appeal to Nabokov greatly. Frankly, it’s the style that is important here, and neither name nor story are great works of original thought.
Now, onto the book proper: a real masterpiece of vocabulary, eloquence and cynicism. Our narrator is Humbert Humbert, a monster, true, but a seductive one.
Humbert’s faults are many and extreme: he is a murderer, a wife-beater, a solipsist; he is entirely ignorant of the emotions and desires of other people. He is hideously selfish, for all his protestations. He treats Lo horrifically. I could blame his actions on a society that has backed him into a corner, made him a pariah, but he is simultaneously a hideous human being. He never loves Lolita, because he always puts his own desires first, desperate and ardent as they are.
When Lolita seduces him, almost a game, I would find it difficult to label him a rapist, despite legal terminology. But in continuing to abuse her, paying her like a whore, listening to her cry herself to sleep: his morals are challenged, but he can’t resist. He is weak, and ultimately destroys more lives than Lolita’s. Humbert isn’t a monster because he is a paedophile. Humbert is a monster because he is a selfish, blind fool, and mistakes lust for love. Lolita has her flaws, but she is after all a child, and her primary role-model is just as deceptive as she, and what Humbert does to her is unforgivable. But falling in love with a nymphet, in and of itself, is not.
Horrific, Horrible as he is, I see more of myself in him than I would like to, but then, it is difficult not to look at Hum the Hummer and see Nabokov the trickster staring back at you. This is perhaps the most important thing to note in the book – despite the slight imposed ignorance, Humbert (as well as Quilty, and, I’m increasingly suspecting, ALL Nabokov’s protagonists) simply IS Nabokov. Filtered, perhaps, distorted, maybe – but nonetheless Nabokov. I would have taken objection to Lolita’s dialogue, if not for the certainty that Nabokov spoke in just such a way.
Humbert and Quilty’s games centre impossibly on Nabokov’s literary knowledge (though to an extent, his references are ‘canon’, particularly those that are in French). The allusions are thick and often nigh-on invisible – so how cruel to insert the occasional fabricated quote or imagined reference! Always wanting to appear one step ahead of even the most educated reader, Nabokov never lets us forget it is HE who is writing the novel, HE who inserts Vivian Darkbloom (his anagrammatised alter-ego) and countless other little references, HE whose butterflies, unidentifiable to Humbert, flutter into view where no other writer would have turned their minds. This is my concern: Nabokov is a genius, a master craftsman, a wonderful artist – but he appears limited to himself, his own interests, his own obsessions, which happily coincide with Humbert’s (though I couldn’t say the same of ‘pederosis’; who knows?), and Pnin’s, and Van’s, and Kinbote’s.
An artist must be a chameleon. A writer must be prepared to take risks, to adopt another creature’s skin, even if that creature is a snake, and not just lie inside but amalgamate, assimilate, learn to BE a snake – or a bird – or a butterfly.
Humbert is surrounded by flimsiness, which he observes with an aloof eye and rebukes with a sarcastic tongue. It works beautifully for Lolita, and Humbert, which makes a masterpiece. But whether it can work for an entire body of work I am less sure.
Before I go on, I’d just like to mention as an aside that I know about all the hullabaloo in Europe over a prior Lolita, a short story by a German writer with a plot remarkably similar to Nabokov’s The Enchanter, itself the short story that would later be fleshed out into Lolita. I care not if Nabokov refused to credit his source because he so hated Nazi sympathisers, or if he simply absorbed the story and (buzzword: cryptomnesia) later it trickled out of that vast lake in his head with all the freshness of our own second- (or sixth-) hand water, or even if it was just another work of McFate, which would no doubt appeal to Nabokov greatly. Frankly, it’s the style that is important here, and neither name nor story are great works of original thought.
Now, onto the book proper: a real masterpiece of vocabulary, eloquence and cynicism. Our narrator is Humbert Humbert, a monster, true, but a seductive one.
Humbert’s faults are many and extreme: he is a murderer, a wife-beater, a solipsist; he is entirely ignorant of the emotions and desires of other people. He is hideously selfish, for all his protestations. He treats Lo horrifically. I could blame his actions on a society that has backed him into a corner, made him a pariah, but he is simultaneously a hideous human being. He never loves Lolita, because he always puts his own desires first, desperate and ardent as they are.
When Lolita seduces him, almost a game, I would find it difficult to label him a rapist, despite legal terminology. But in continuing to abuse her, paying her like a whore, listening to her cry herself to sleep: his morals are challenged, but he can’t resist. He is weak, and ultimately destroys more lives than Lolita’s. Humbert isn’t a monster because he is a paedophile. Humbert is a monster because he is a selfish, blind fool, and mistakes lust for love. Lolita has her flaws, but she is after all a child, and her primary role-model is just as deceptive as she, and what Humbert does to her is unforgivable. But falling in love with a nymphet, in and of itself, is not.
Horrific, Horrible as he is, I see more of myself in him than I would like to, but then, it is difficult not to look at Hum the Hummer and see Nabokov the trickster staring back at you. This is perhaps the most important thing to note in the book – despite the slight imposed ignorance, Humbert (as well as Quilty, and, I’m increasingly suspecting, ALL Nabokov’s protagonists) simply IS Nabokov. Filtered, perhaps, distorted, maybe – but nonetheless Nabokov. I would have taken objection to Lolita’s dialogue, if not for the certainty that Nabokov spoke in just such a way.
Humbert and Quilty’s games centre impossibly on Nabokov’s literary knowledge (though to an extent, his references are ‘canon’, particularly those that are in French). The allusions are thick and often nigh-on invisible – so how cruel to insert the occasional fabricated quote or imagined reference! Always wanting to appear one step ahead of even the most educated reader, Nabokov never lets us forget it is HE who is writing the novel, HE who inserts Vivian Darkbloom (his anagrammatised alter-ego) and countless other little references, HE whose butterflies, unidentifiable to Humbert, flutter into view where no other writer would have turned their minds. This is my concern: Nabokov is a genius, a master craftsman, a wonderful artist – but he appears limited to himself, his own interests, his own obsessions, which happily coincide with Humbert’s (though I couldn’t say the same of ‘pederosis’; who knows?), and Pnin’s, and Van’s, and Kinbote’s.
An artist must be a chameleon. A writer must be prepared to take risks, to adopt another creature’s skin, even if that creature is a snake, and not just lie inside but amalgamate, assimilate, learn to BE a snake – or a bird – or a butterfly.
Humbert is surrounded by flimsiness, which he observes with an aloof eye and rebukes with a sarcastic tongue. It works beautifully for Lolita, and Humbert, which makes a masterpiece. But whether it can work for an entire body of work I am less sure.
Pnin
Nabokov’s Pnin is only a very short book – ideal reading for a rainy, cheerless day…and I would recommend it to anyone, because bringing about smiles of both laughter and wistfulness is a sure sign of success.
Yes, Pnin has greatly impressed me – and because it was such a success, it’s buoyed up my estimation of all the rest of Nabokov’s work, too. To be silly and florid, all I had seen was a flat landscape, with beautiful flora but no undulation, but now I perceive in his talent great hills and valleys, and I am greatly relieved – my faith restored!
Because Pnin is very funny. Nabokov has made me laugh before, of course – I laughed when I read Lolita at 15 or 16 at Humbert’s wicked abuse of sleeping pills on Charlotte (before his far more wicked and chilling planned abuse of them later). It made me giggle to read how Humbert ‘had put the radio at full blast […] had blazed in her face an olisbos-like flashlight […] had pushed her, pinched her, prodded her’ and still she would not wake, until he kisses her, whereupon she ‘awakened at once, as fresh and strong as an octopus (I barely escaped).’ It makes me giggle now. But Pnin’s humour is very different. It is sweet, and endearing, and his character is almost bereft of darkness. As Nabokov himself wrote, writing Pnin was a ‘brief sunny escape from [Lolita’s] intolerable spell’. Indeed, Pnin is strangely interwoven with that work, written at the same time, and both helping to promote its deliciously sensual sister (when Pnin was serialised) and being bourn along in her contrails (after Lolita finally became a great success). They are so different that finally I unreservedly admire Nabokov and his art. This is the chameleonic quality I hoped for, and there is much to admire – and envy – in these two works, especially when side-by-side.
A collection of short stories or sketches more than a novel, Pnin is entirely character-driven. I expected Timofey Pnin (himself) to be a stereotyped, flat character like so many of Nabokov’s comic creations – but he is not. Nabokov puts himself in the story as a narrator (which I don’t think causes any great problems – the narrator-Nabokov is just a character, no different from any other historical figure placed in fiction; he just happens to be being written by himself), but it is clear that however much Pnin is created from observation, he is also created from deep familiarity – and he is by no means stupid; he simply has little English, which makes him seem less intelligent than he is.
Indeed, I saw a lot of myself in Pnin. I found him a far more sympathetic character than I had expected. His awkward affection towards his ‘son’ (and that awful moment where he thinks he has broken his beautiful gift from him), the way he goes on being utterly devoted to Liza despite knowing that she is only manipulating him, hurting him – that I understand, and for it, and for his countless other hapless, endearing traits, I really warmed to Tim Pnin, and the little world briefly built about him.
Yes, Pnin has greatly impressed me – and because it was such a success, it’s buoyed up my estimation of all the rest of Nabokov’s work, too. To be silly and florid, all I had seen was a flat landscape, with beautiful flora but no undulation, but now I perceive in his talent great hills and valleys, and I am greatly relieved – my faith restored!
Because Pnin is very funny. Nabokov has made me laugh before, of course – I laughed when I read Lolita at 15 or 16 at Humbert’s wicked abuse of sleeping pills on Charlotte (before his far more wicked and chilling planned abuse of them later). It made me giggle to read how Humbert ‘had put the radio at full blast […] had blazed in her face an olisbos-like flashlight […] had pushed her, pinched her, prodded her’ and still she would not wake, until he kisses her, whereupon she ‘awakened at once, as fresh and strong as an octopus (I barely escaped).’ It makes me giggle now. But Pnin’s humour is very different. It is sweet, and endearing, and his character is almost bereft of darkness. As Nabokov himself wrote, writing Pnin was a ‘brief sunny escape from [Lolita’s] intolerable spell’. Indeed, Pnin is strangely interwoven with that work, written at the same time, and both helping to promote its deliciously sensual sister (when Pnin was serialised) and being bourn along in her contrails (after Lolita finally became a great success). They are so different that finally I unreservedly admire Nabokov and his art. This is the chameleonic quality I hoped for, and there is much to admire – and envy – in these two works, especially when side-by-side.
A collection of short stories or sketches more than a novel, Pnin is entirely character-driven. I expected Timofey Pnin (himself) to be a stereotyped, flat character like so many of Nabokov’s comic creations – but he is not. Nabokov puts himself in the story as a narrator (which I don’t think causes any great problems – the narrator-Nabokov is just a character, no different from any other historical figure placed in fiction; he just happens to be being written by himself), but it is clear that however much Pnin is created from observation, he is also created from deep familiarity – and he is by no means stupid; he simply has little English, which makes him seem less intelligent than he is.
Indeed, I saw a lot of myself in Pnin. I found him a far more sympathetic character than I had expected. His awkward affection towards his ‘son’ (and that awful moment where he thinks he has broken his beautiful gift from him), the way he goes on being utterly devoted to Liza despite knowing that she is only manipulating him, hurting him – that I understand, and for it, and for his countless other hapless, endearing traits, I really warmed to Tim Pnin, and the little world briefly built about him.
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
The Da Vinci Code
(P528): Please tell me the Teacher isn’t going to be Teabing…
(P532): Oh god…
(P533): Yes…yes, he is.
Those are the notes I scrawled to myself as I read some of the latter chapters of The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Now that I’ve had a little time to look up some of the references I wasn’t sure about and find out some of the true history behind the organisations described, I think it’s high time to put down some of my thoughts on this minor publishing phenomenon, since I finished it a little while back, now.
It was an entertaining little page-turner, no better or worse written than the average children’s book, and if it inspires some interest in art and religious history (both areas of great fascination for me since I was a small boy – a much smaller boy than I am now, I mean!), then that is surely something positive. However, the book is also an extremely frustrating one.
Firstly, we have to fully accept that the characters are all incredibly stupid. Harvard Professors, Police Chiefs and professional cryptographers alike are idiots. Not only are they incapable of detecting a blindingly obvious anagram like ‘O Draconian Devil’ beside a mimicry of the Vitruvian Man, but they quite fail to notice what is blatantly mirror-writing for several pages. Even worse, a man who keeps the most important secret in the world encodes his ‘cryptex’ with the name of his own granddaughter! That’s not good encryption practice, now, is it? This would all be much more forgivable if Dan Brown did not insist on having his idiotic characters marvelling at how terribly clever all this is at every new revelation.
As you can tell from my little notes, I figured out who the ‘bad guy’ was going to be a few pages before he was revealed. I hoped it wouldn’t be him, and the French accent threw me off the scent for a while, but his pulling rank, and his blatant ‘last-person-you’d-suspect’ status made it inevitable – and rather underwhelming. Not only this, but I wish Brown had bothered to do some research into English speech. Sure, he throws in some todgers, some crisps, but really – no Brit refers to university as ‘school’, and these Anglophile French would be very unlikely to say anyone has got ‘mad’ instead of ‘angry’. Add to this a tea obsession and some very melodramatic bad-guy ‘monologuing’ (as they put it in ‘The Incredibles’) and we have a very British bad guy. Seems very old-fashioned in such an à la mode piece, full of exophoric references to Smart Cars and suchlike. Perfect for the zeitgeist; I doubt it will endure.
What kind of name is ‘Teabing’, anyway? That’s NOT a good anagram for ‘Baigent’!
The countless inaccuracies in the background to the story are barely worth mentioning. It’s a work of fiction, after all. But when Brown begins the novel with a big heading, ‘FACTS’, and then brings up the Priory of Sion, his taking ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ as apparently his only source makes him look like a fool. It’s not hard to find out who Pierre Plantard really was, or what an easily-dismissed piece of esoteric fluff his Priory really is. Worse than that, though, is his treatment of Da Vinci and the story of Christ.
I was surprised, in a book called ‘The Da Vinci Code’, to see so few mentions of Da Vinci himself, and so little reflection on his paintings. And to say that Paul in The Last Supper must be Magdelene because he’s got no beard is nonsense. After all, Paul was often painted as quite feminine and beardless by contemporary artists – as in The Last Supper of Ghirlandaio.
Brown also seems to neglect to mention that Gnosticism, while supporting his ideas on Christ as an ordinary human in many texts, also contain far more evidence for Christ being seen as a super-powered deity than the canonical Gospels do – as in The Acts of Thomas, which I remember reading in part in year 10 at school. His claims that the Counsel of Nicene heavy-handedly censored everything that they disliked in writings about Jesus, on values that were totally new, are also easily dismissed when we see how similar the Muratorian Fragment’s list of gospels is to the one established at Nicene, which it predates by a century or more, if I remember correctly.
Still, the book is a fun one, a good momentary distraction. I would just hate to think that some gullible people might believe what they read there. It reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s fanciful The Portrait of Mr. W.H., where fabricated evidence is playfully used to identify Shakespeare’s male lover, only not so charming and having rather more ideas above its station. Brown’s work is entertaining, but a frustration.
(P532): Oh god…
(P533): Yes…yes, he is.
Those are the notes I scrawled to myself as I read some of the latter chapters of The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Now that I’ve had a little time to look up some of the references I wasn’t sure about and find out some of the true history behind the organisations described, I think it’s high time to put down some of my thoughts on this minor publishing phenomenon, since I finished it a little while back, now.
It was an entertaining little page-turner, no better or worse written than the average children’s book, and if it inspires some interest in art and religious history (both areas of great fascination for me since I was a small boy – a much smaller boy than I am now, I mean!), then that is surely something positive. However, the book is also an extremely frustrating one.
Firstly, we have to fully accept that the characters are all incredibly stupid. Harvard Professors, Police Chiefs and professional cryptographers alike are idiots. Not only are they incapable of detecting a blindingly obvious anagram like ‘O Draconian Devil’ beside a mimicry of the Vitruvian Man, but they quite fail to notice what is blatantly mirror-writing for several pages. Even worse, a man who keeps the most important secret in the world encodes his ‘cryptex’ with the name of his own granddaughter! That’s not good encryption practice, now, is it? This would all be much more forgivable if Dan Brown did not insist on having his idiotic characters marvelling at how terribly clever all this is at every new revelation.
As you can tell from my little notes, I figured out who the ‘bad guy’ was going to be a few pages before he was revealed. I hoped it wouldn’t be him, and the French accent threw me off the scent for a while, but his pulling rank, and his blatant ‘last-person-you’d-suspect’ status made it inevitable – and rather underwhelming. Not only this, but I wish Brown had bothered to do some research into English speech. Sure, he throws in some todgers, some crisps, but really – no Brit refers to university as ‘school’, and these Anglophile French would be very unlikely to say anyone has got ‘mad’ instead of ‘angry’. Add to this a tea obsession and some very melodramatic bad-guy ‘monologuing’ (as they put it in ‘The Incredibles’) and we have a very British bad guy. Seems very old-fashioned in such an à la mode piece, full of exophoric references to Smart Cars and suchlike. Perfect for the zeitgeist; I doubt it will endure.
What kind of name is ‘Teabing’, anyway? That’s NOT a good anagram for ‘Baigent’!
The countless inaccuracies in the background to the story are barely worth mentioning. It’s a work of fiction, after all. But when Brown begins the novel with a big heading, ‘FACTS’, and then brings up the Priory of Sion, his taking ‘Holy Blood, Holy Grail’ as apparently his only source makes him look like a fool. It’s not hard to find out who Pierre Plantard really was, or what an easily-dismissed piece of esoteric fluff his Priory really is. Worse than that, though, is his treatment of Da Vinci and the story of Christ.
I was surprised, in a book called ‘The Da Vinci Code’, to see so few mentions of Da Vinci himself, and so little reflection on his paintings. And to say that Paul in The Last Supper must be Magdelene because he’s got no beard is nonsense. After all, Paul was often painted as quite feminine and beardless by contemporary artists – as in The Last Supper of Ghirlandaio.
Brown also seems to neglect to mention that Gnosticism, while supporting his ideas on Christ as an ordinary human in many texts, also contain far more evidence for Christ being seen as a super-powered deity than the canonical Gospels do – as in The Acts of Thomas, which I remember reading in part in year 10 at school. His claims that the Counsel of Nicene heavy-handedly censored everything that they disliked in writings about Jesus, on values that were totally new, are also easily dismissed when we see how similar the Muratorian Fragment’s list of gospels is to the one established at Nicene, which it predates by a century or more, if I remember correctly.
Still, the book is a fun one, a good momentary distraction. I would just hate to think that some gullible people might believe what they read there. It reminded me of Oscar Wilde’s fanciful The Portrait of Mr. W.H., where fabricated evidence is playfully used to identify Shakespeare’s male lover, only not so charming and having rather more ideas above its station. Brown’s work is entertaining, but a frustration.
Persians
Aeschylus’ Persians is not a famous play, with no great, memorable archetypes, and is unusual in having subject matter concerning recent events rather than mythology, but it’s one of the best Greek plays I’ve yet read. Around two and a half thousand years ago (astonishing to think of texts surviving so very long), Aeschylus fought in a battle against the Persians at Salamis (no, AT Salamis, not with salamis!), where according to popular legend, young Sophocles was in the chorus for the victory song, and Euripides was being born.
The play concerns not the victorious Greeks but the defeated Persians. A messenger brings news of King Xerxes’ crushing defeat, his mother weeps and summons the spirit of her husband, who warns against going against Greece, for it is protected by gods, and also cautions mortals not to be vain or proud. Xerxes appears in tatters, and with the chorus, weeps for his dead countrymen.
For a soldier who fought against these people, writing for an audience who must have lost family and friends in the battle, the sympathy and respect for the enemy is astonishing. In an age where we are so used to propaganda and the dehumanising of enemies, such respect and empathy for enemies seems remarkably noble and admirable.
Wilfred Owen’s sympathy for his foe in ‘Strange Meeting’ is powerful for it seeming to be a great exception. But for such an attitude to be the norm, and for a popular play to be written expressing the sadness of the enemy’s situation, with no possible way that the writing could be interpreted as mocking, or designed to make the audience jeer at the defeated mourners, really appeals to me. There is much to learn from ancient attitudes.
The play concerns not the victorious Greeks but the defeated Persians. A messenger brings news of King Xerxes’ crushing defeat, his mother weeps and summons the spirit of her husband, who warns against going against Greece, for it is protected by gods, and also cautions mortals not to be vain or proud. Xerxes appears in tatters, and with the chorus, weeps for his dead countrymen.
For a soldier who fought against these people, writing for an audience who must have lost family and friends in the battle, the sympathy and respect for the enemy is astonishing. In an age where we are so used to propaganda and the dehumanising of enemies, such respect and empathy for enemies seems remarkably noble and admirable.
Wilfred Owen’s sympathy for his foe in ‘Strange Meeting’ is powerful for it seeming to be a great exception. But for such an attitude to be the norm, and for a popular play to be written expressing the sadness of the enemy’s situation, with no possible way that the writing could be interpreted as mocking, or designed to make the audience jeer at the defeated mourners, really appeals to me. There is much to learn from ancient attitudes.
Prometheus Unbound
Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound is a very exciting and fast-paced play, for one within the confines of Greek theatrical tradition. Hephaestus, with Zeus’ pushy mouthpiece Might, chain Prometheus to a rock in the mountains of Scythia at the edge of the world. When they leave, Prometheus rages about the injustice of his situation. The first of many visitors in this barren land arrives – in fact, a whole group of them (the chorus): the Daughters of Ocean. Prometheus tells them about his situation – a powerful Titan who helped Zeus gain power by telling him to topple Kronos by guile and not strength, he (like Eve) has been punished for disobeying orders and giving knowledge to mankind. He is proud and defiant, and it is later hinted that this has been exacerbated by his belligerence, and that submitting to Zeus would mean an end to his suffering. However, he will not hear of it, no matter how Ocean reasons with him. Zeus is a selfish tyrant and Prometheus will never acquiesce – and besides, he can see what will happen, and knows the secret of Zeus’ downfall.
After Ocean leaves, Io wanders on, still in the form of a cow, tortured by a Gadfly. She is another victim of cruel Zeus – he tried to seduce her, she refused, Hera was jealous anyway and transformed her. She and psychic Prometheus tell her story, Prometheus foretelling her journey to the Nile, where Zeus will swoop on her and she will bear his child. One of this child’s descendents will be Heracles, who of course is the one to finally free Prometheus. Io exits with a brilliantly unhinged final expression of the woe of the toil ahead of her. Prometheus’ next guest is Hermes, who comes with an ultimatum from Zeus – tell him the secret of his downfall or have his eagle peck at his innards every day.
Proud Prometheus patronises the sarcastic Hermes and sends him back to Olympus. The chorus, despite knowing that if they stay, they will get caught up in the splitting of the mountain that will signal the beginning of Prometheus’ punishment, stand by Prometheus’ side, supporting his decision and signalling their agreement that Zeus is a tyrant, his downfall much to be wished for.
Coo, try rearranging THAT sentence so that it doesn’t end with a preposition!
I believe that in mythology, Io WAS the lover of Zeus, and bore his child willingly when she was turned back into a human in Egypt. I believe that it was Zeus who turned her into a cow, trying to hide her from Hera, who wasn’t fooled. Hermes was the one who killed her guardian, many-eyed giant Argus (Nabokov’s favourite). Although of course all myths are malleable, I expect Aeschylus skimmed over the first details of Io’s story in order to make Zeus more culpable, and Io purer, therefore more of a victim.
After Ocean leaves, Io wanders on, still in the form of a cow, tortured by a Gadfly. She is another victim of cruel Zeus – he tried to seduce her, she refused, Hera was jealous anyway and transformed her. She and psychic Prometheus tell her story, Prometheus foretelling her journey to the Nile, where Zeus will swoop on her and she will bear his child. One of this child’s descendents will be Heracles, who of course is the one to finally free Prometheus. Io exits with a brilliantly unhinged final expression of the woe of the toil ahead of her. Prometheus’ next guest is Hermes, who comes with an ultimatum from Zeus – tell him the secret of his downfall or have his eagle peck at his innards every day.
Proud Prometheus patronises the sarcastic Hermes and sends him back to Olympus. The chorus, despite knowing that if they stay, they will get caught up in the splitting of the mountain that will signal the beginning of Prometheus’ punishment, stand by Prometheus’ side, supporting his decision and signalling their agreement that Zeus is a tyrant, his downfall much to be wished for.
Coo, try rearranging THAT sentence so that it doesn’t end with a preposition!
I believe that in mythology, Io WAS the lover of Zeus, and bore his child willingly when she was turned back into a human in Egypt. I believe that it was Zeus who turned her into a cow, trying to hide her from Hera, who wasn’t fooled. Hermes was the one who killed her guardian, many-eyed giant Argus (Nabokov’s favourite). Although of course all myths are malleable, I expect Aeschylus skimmed over the first details of Io’s story in order to make Zeus more culpable, and Io purer, therefore more of a victim.
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