Time for Greek mythology soon

My readers know that I love Greek mythology, and they may remember that this time of year, in the weeks of Spring leading to (and including) Summer, it is for me the proper time to reconnect with my old passion. My wife knows this too, and she bought me for my birthday The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. You may remember that last year I thoroughly enjoyed her Circe. Her first novel is a rewriting of The Iliad and the relationship between Achilles and his friend (and lover?) Patroclus. I know the story by heart, but I cannot wait to discover Miller's perspective on it, which, judging by her other novel, should be original, knowledgeable and show genuine love for the source material.

Circe, the autobiography

As I have finally finished it, here is today's reading suggestion: Circe by Madeline Miller. An autobiography of the minor goddess and the world's first witch. Veggie Carrie bought it for me on my birthday. I rarely read a novel published in the year if it's not crime fiction but I've always been into Greek mythology. And I was pleasantly surprised with Circe. Modernisation of old myths often end up to be glorified fanfics, but this one has heart. Miller gave Greek gods and heroes character and complexity. I particularly liked her take on Hermes and Odysseus. Less so with Athena, but I am a big fan of the goddess and she is in this novel more antagonistic, so this is a completely subjective criticism. Inn any case, Miller understands the dubious moral nature of Greek mythology and does not fall into cheap Manichean narrative. And she also uses Greek names, not Roman ones. During a summer heatwave, you can't go wrong going Greek.

Greek mythology reads

I receive mailers from Waterstone's from time to time. Recently, there was one advertising Circe by Madeline Miller. The name got my attention and I suggested it to my wife as a birthday present. She saw it at the local bookshop and bought it for me. Since I am a child I have always been a big fan of Greek mythology and especially anything regarding Ulysses, my favourite Greek hero. If the weeks coming to Christmas is time for me to renew with Norse mythology, the weeks after Easter and leading to summer are for the Greek one. So this novel is on my reading list for the upcoming weeks. I know nothing about the novel and its author, except that she has received lots of praises for it and that it is meant to be really good. I am really looking forward to it.

Homère

Le dernier hôtel où mes parents et mon frère PJ sont demeurés lors de leur séjour en Angleterre avait beaucoup de classe et avait bien des tableaux intéressants, dont celui-ci. Je suis à peu près certain que c'est le poète grec Homère. L'auteur de l'Iliade et de l'Odyssée, qui n'a sans doute jamais existé. C'est un tableau un peu sombre pour illustrer la Grèce antique, mais je l'aime bien quand même. Ça fait longtemps que je voulais partager et je me suis dit que c'était le bon temps, parce que Pâques arrive et que j'associe Pâques à la mythologie grecque (voir ce billet). Et puis Ulysse étant mon héros grec préféré, je suis reconnaissant à Homère, même s'il est aussi fictif que ses personnages, de l'avoir popularisé dans deux grandes oeuvres épiques.

A cyclops

I took this picture at the Natural History Museum, in one of the displays showing how the Ancient Greeks may have come up with their ideas for monsters and fantastical creatures observing natural phenomenons. I cannot remember what they were, all I was interested in I must confess was the statues of the mythical creatures. This one is of course a cyclops. While their Medusa was the most impressive, I found the cyclops quite cool too, because it looks so lifelike. I remember them mainly from The Odyssey, my favourite Greek story ever, and this statue is exactly like I pictured them, rustic and nasty. It was like seeing a true cyclops, directly from my imagination.

Mon premier livre de mythologie grecque

Je reviens sur ma fête, enfin sur l'une de mes fêtes, celle de mes huit ans si mes calculs sont bons. J'étais déjà initié un peu à la mythologie grecque parce que je regardais Ulysses 31 et que j'avais vu Clash of the Titans. Mes parents m'avaient donc acheté Dieux & Héros grecs à cause d'une fascination grandissante pour leur mythologie. Avec ce livre, j'avais finalement une ressource pour m'éduquer proprement sur le sujet: j'ai appris qui était qui chez les dieux et leurs attributs respectifs, j'ai appris que le véritable nom d'Hercules était Héraclès (nom que j'utilise encore, d'ailleurs, pour l'identifier), j'ai surtout appris la véritable histoire d'Ulysses. Ce livre demeure l'un de mes cadeaux de fête préférés, à vie.

A Lexicon

I thought I would write here a list of a few expressions of my own invention, to give them to posterity, or cyberposterity. I make it sound very grandiloquent, but when life is monotonous, dramatising the vocabulary to describe it is one small, meaningless pleasure. A biography can turn into an epic saga with the right words. And this blog is called, after all, Vraie Fiction. So here they are, not in alphabetical order (it is a disorganised lexicon):

-The Pit of Hell: The workplace on a bad day. Or a good day.
-To be clinically dead: To be very, very tired.
-To be at death's door: feeling a bit under the weather, but being very dramatic about it. Usually when I have a cold or a shiver.
-An Odyssey: a journey, generally home or to a place I have once called home. Odysseys are by definition, I think, journeys where you seek and find what you have left.
-Ghosts from my past: old friends I meet again, even though it is only through Facebook, or simply acquaintances.
-It's not given: It is expensive. English translation from the French "c'est pas donné".

From Yorkshire to here?

This evening, when I left the train after my commute home, I was asked direction by a lady who had left the train. I say a lady, but she was I think a few years younger than me. She looked completely disorientated: she had some address scribbled on a piece of paper, was watching a map on her mobile, etc. She had a British accent, but I couldn't find from where, it was very particular. I couldn't help her as I had no idea which place she was looking for. Thankfully there was another local (read: a genuine local woman who spent her life here) who could help her more. But in this short conversation, I learnt where she was from (once she was reassured someone could help her she seemed eager to tell us): Yorkshire.

I sometimes get fascinated by my fellow train travellers (Miss Clint Eastwood for instance, or a South African ticket inspector, or simply people I see daily). But people who travel so far a distance to end up in a small British town, for whatever reason, are the most interesting. I saw French and Italian tourists here, people coming for conferences, guys from Eastern Europe (I think), a football player from the West Indies, a crowd of strangers. I am not a local myself, I never felt like one, I just happen to live here, so I relate to these people.  Yorkshire is not exactly a foreign land, but in train it is still a very long distance. Often places become more real when you know what distance you need to go through to get there, what odyssey you have to do. This town I live in now, Yorkshire, or where the water is deep. I wonder what my readership thinks about it. Maybe I am just rambling.

Longing for Liverpool

I was reminded of this by my wife tonight: it has been two years today since I have been to Liverpool. Well, not quite, as we were between Liverpool and Manchester at that exact day, for the birthday of a former housemate and friend, but last time I was in Liverpool was about two years ago. Strange, I heard the name today at work and I felt the longing, but did not make the connection to the time that passed.

So this night two years ago, we celebrated my friend's birthday and strangely enough drank relatively little. Then on the 15th I spent the day walking around the city. I blogged about it, if you are curious. Now from time to time, I feel the need to reconnect to Liverpool, to keep in touch with what I lived there and what I left. It is the trivial details I miss: going up a hill to work, down from it back from work, stopping at a pub to try a local ale, the gin and tonic my housemate was making, the wind, the rain... Yes, I mentioned all this before. And even earlier on, when this blog was still young. I discovered that I miss it tonight. I need to go on another Odyssey.

Barbaric milk

I had this post in mind since I blogged about tea recently, and earlier on about unpasterised milk. A member of my wife's family, when I mentioned that their national drink was in essence so foreign (perfumed hot water), mentioned that the only thing the Brits added to it was the dash of milk. And it stayed in my head. I love milk, I drink a lot of it, but I love by itself. I wondered if the Brits had not spoiled tea with that dash of milk, in a way barbarised it. It seems significant that China, a very ancient civilisation, maybe the oldest one, has a high number of lactose intolerant people. Putting milk in tea seems almost philistine.

Because there is something primitive, even barbarous and uncivilised, about milk and dairy products in general (and I say this as a milk drinker). It might not seem like it for Westerners nowadays, what with the French cheese tradition and modern pasteurization, but it is one of the most primal drink. Milk is something you give to babies and toddlers, which they usually grow out of when they grow up and reach adulthood. Ancient traditions have milk as a very positive but primitive icon. Even its whiteness emphasises its simplicity. Milk is earthly, bestial, almost untouched by civilisation, even when turned into cream or cheese.

During my years as an undergraduate, in a course on Greek literature, my teacher had told us that Polyphemus being a shepherd and like other Cyclops a cheese eater might have been a sign of his savage nature, especially since he got vanquished by by getting drunk. Cheese was the stuff Barbarians would eat, the Greeks had wine, olive oil, figs, etc. But there are more modern examples: my favourite writer made Alex a milk drinker. You read this text of Liana Burgess about this particular motif in the novel.

The barbaric nature of milk should not make us forget its appeal. I don't care much about health concerns surrounding it, as I strongly (but maybe subjectively) believe in its virtues. Milk is also and more importantly, as Liana pointed out, a sign of purity and innocence.

Citons du Bellay

"Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage,
Ou comme cestuy-là qui conquit la toison,
Et puis est retourné, plein d'usage et raison,
Vivre entre ses parents le reste de son âge !"

Joachim du Bellay

Je tenais simplement à souligner ici que ce n'est pas Brassens qui a écrit les premiers vers de la chanson mise dans le billet précédent. Le poème complet est ici. Contrairement à Ulysse, je ne suis pas de retour dans ma terre natale, au lieu de cela j'essaie de faire fleurir le lys français (ou québécois? On n'a de lys que sur notre drapeau) en Angleterre, mais les vers touchent l'expatrié que je suis.

Heureux qui comme Ulysse

J'ai déjà pressé le citron de la comparaison entre l'Odyssée et mon récent voyage à Liverpool, mais j'ai pensé mettre cette chanson ici. Liverpool n'est pas mon pays des vertes années, pas plus que la ville ne ressemble au sud de la France, mais ça ne fait jamais de mal de mettre un peu de Brassens sur ce blogue.