Last
year I spent a good portion of time dedicating myself to Greek in
translation: Greek poets, Greek dramatists, Greek philosophers and
Greek historians, naturally with gaps in-between, which other reading
material filled in, because too much of that would make your mind at
first swell then burst or spin. Even so I wafted around in this Greek
bubble. My mind expanding as well as revelling in the betrayals, the
abductions, the incest, the infants abandoned on hilltops and
mountainous slopes, the slaughter, the prophecies of the oracles and
the petitioning of kings and gods.
This
wasn't the first time I had dipped a toe in and then plunged my whole
body, but on this second baptism I was going deeper, under, even. On
occasion I spluttered and then later came up gasping for air. So
good. So juicy. So political. So rich and powerful, in images and
words.
I
wondered if these Greek waters were an escape from Brexit? Or had I
paved the way to them the year before; in other words, had Homer
opened up a door, which I was now being led through and into the
passage beyond it, and down some steps into deeper waters, until only
my head was above them?
I
don't think it was more one or the other. I was just ready: to make
up lost time and in the same breath - when I permitted myself to
breathe - worry that time would run out before I'd read all I wanted
to read. The age of my eyes played on my mind, too, but now is not
the moment to explain this. I don't know if I could put it in terms
that would be understood, anyway. It just seemed, to me, then, a
factor that needed to be factored in. So many books...which at
moments was a scary and an awesome thought, particularly when I kept
finding more....then more, classic and contemporary, and which all
said: read me.
But
it was to the Greek I kept returning: verse, prose, tragedies,
comedies, dramatic monologues, philosophical dialogues, histories and
political themes and biographies, as well as the myths, retold or
explained. Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Apollonius
of Rhodes, Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Alexander the Great. Natalie
Haynes, Edith Hall, Tom Holland, Stephen Fry, and some renowned
translators. But you can't really do ancient Greece without getting
pulled a little, or a lot, into ancient Rome, which launches you into
waters that are not too unfamiliar but just unfamiliar enough to set
you off on a whole new course of reading.
Words
have long been my drug of choice, but this Greek-speaking pool,
though willingly re-entered, was intoxicating and impregnating, and
all-consuming as if, like Orestes, I was being pursued by the furies,
although I knew not of what wrong I had committed. There was no blood
on my hands, only book-print and ink from the notes made with a leaky
pen. And oh, maybe some beetroot stains because I was in a beetroot
phase then.
All
family members that were alive at that time were, when I checked,
still very much alive, so if they were indeed after me (which the
high incidence of storm clouds and insects in my local area seemed to
testify to), then it was, unusually for them, for something other
than murder but which still, in their view, demanded vengeance or
justice.
I
came to the conclusion that the prime driving force in this pursuit
was Megaera, one of the three sisters as recognised, I think, by
Virgil, the Roman poet, for the madness seemed to descend whenever I
took a breath, a break from Greek and took up non-Greek reading
matter. Megaera, as her name implies, obviously then flew into a
jealous rage and with her sisters, Allecto and Tisiphone, hounded me
until I once again plunged into the Greek-speaking pool. Although
that's not to say these furies then left me; they were soothed that
was all.
Ultimately,
they're always with me, as are their demands that everything should
have a link, even a tenuous one, to ancient or modern Greece; and if
not Greece then Rome. They go so far as to put books in my path and
send heralds with messages of new verse translations and retelling of
myths. Their current behaviour is, you could say, more kindly than
angry, but only as long as I comply will these waters through which I
steer remain calm.
Picture credit: The Return of Ulysses, 1968, Giorgio de Chirico.
This post was penned in 2019.
