Monday, May 16, 2011

Book Review

Helen of Troy: Goddess Princess Whore by Bettany Hughes




I have read many a book about world history written by many writers.  Alison Weir, Peter Ackroyd and Antonia Fraser are three of my favorites. They all have their strengths and weaknesses but all in all I really enjoy reading their histories as evidenced by how often these three names turn up on my book shelves. But never have I found an author bring to life the classical world quite like Bettany Hughes.   I recently had the good fortune to acquire her study of Helen of Troy and, boy, was it a treat. I am very interested in the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome and I enjoy learning about it but, although, I don’t consider myself ignorant on the topic and could probably hold my own in conversation, I am by no means an expert. I still feel that I have so much to learn about these amazing civilizations that inspired so much of the Western world and whose legacies we are living with every day. And Bettany Hughes took something academic and prone to dry prose about a people who populated the Mediterranean 3000 years ago and turned it into a living thing that came off the page and transported me to another time and place, a kind of literary time machine combined with a travelogue.  
“Tracing the site of those dancing grounds in Sparta early one summer, along the river-banks of the Eurotas, I lost my way. The Bulrushes here are 3m high-the perfect hiding place for a Theseus, prowling around for young girls. Twisting and turning I ended up in one of the orange groves, hundreds of which now edge the river and carpet the Eurotan plain. In the next-door field, women were lopping olive trees, to allow the top growth all the strength it needed. As they burned the branches, smoke mixed with the smell of Jasmine which wound around the mature boughs. I was investigating the scene of a crime, but the sensuous charge of the place was sweet and overwhelming." --From chapter 6 "The Rape of Fair Helen".
Bettany Hughes is not just there to inform, which she most certainly does, but to evoke. As she writes, I can feel the layers of the present peel away. As she journeys in the book she makes you feel the past is just there beneath the surface, as real as the sand under her feet when she stands on a shore and looks across the waters and imagines Helen and Paris’ journey to Troy.
"As a Bronze Age Helen and Paris sailed along from West to East they would have passed seasonal beach markets and ports pockmarked with colour, pungent with the smells of livestock and spices, their traders standing by ready to tout their wares. Out on the open sea there would be pirates waiting to relieve the ocean traveller of vital supplies and priceless consignments of hippopotamus ivories and the like."--From Chapter 22 "The Seas Foaming Lanes".
Using contemporary archeological findings, classical writings, art and her own voice to tell the story of Helen, she inspires while she teaches. Her words are evocative and fragrantly redolent as she invites us to explore long forgotten shrines, overgrown temples and cramped museums with her.  She relates Helen to history and present, she has become an icon. Helen is also a cypher, who becomes whatever the author wants her to be: goddess, victim or whore. Each era has made a version of Helen their own. Was she a human woman at all? By telling what a woman of her time and place would be, Bettany makes a good case. Maybe Helen was an amalgamation. Troy has been determined to have existed so maybe this creature of immense beauty did too. A beauty so terrible that it brought nothing but death and destruction to all her knew her. Her life as tragic in its own way as poor doomed Cassandra, speaking a truthful prophecy that no one will believe. I don’t know the answer but I enjoyed the journey.
Greece is one of the many places I long to visit. There is so much history there and I want to see it by land and sea. I want to walk the modern streets as well as old paths more traveled by goats than man nowadays, so much to see and experience. To step outside on a sultry evening with nothing but the sound of the rustling of the leaves of olive trees by the warm night breeze and look at the stars that Socrates and Homer looked upon thousands of years in the past and get even a glimpse of what they lived like would be priceless to me. To smell the scents, taste the foods, meet the people and even to just be enveloped by the velvety Mediterranean air would almost be magic. I may never make it there in person but with this book (there is an accompanying PBS show) I feel a little closer to it. I wholeheartedly recommend this excellent book to anyone. And now I can’t wait to read her new book, The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life.

None of the contents of this book or the photo used belong to me.

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