Ancient Greeks - and Louis de Bernieres - by the Lake

Landing stages at Theatre by the Lake, Keswick, March 2014

Words by the Water (a festival of Words and Ideas, staged by Ways with Words) (#WBTW14) finished today at Theatre by the Lake in Keswick, Cumbria.

This year I volunteered to chair three talks with connections to Greece and/or Greek, and was granted all three. This post is about Louis de Bernieres, who spoke to a large audience on March 7th, Day 1 of the festival.

Louis read some of the poems in Imagining Alexandria, his first book of poetry, published last year. He says the style of the poems in this book follows that of Constantine Cavafy, who lived in Alexandria and wrote poems in Greek from about 1900 to 1933. 

I sometimes read Cavafy's poems to keep my modern Greek alive, and my children studied a few of them at school. Some of them are about love between men (both ancient and modern) and some take moments in Ancient Greece and look at them through the eyes of an unexpected participant - a battle viewed by a poet*, or a pedlar confused by a phoney victory parade**. 

Some of Louis' poems are similar. One particularly poignant one is imagined as by the jailor of Socrates***.

In my introduction, I quoted Louis as writing about the British: 
"We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough... Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree."
He told us that this was an extension of the opinion of a Frenchman who said, "Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum".

Louis read other unpublished poems. One of them was about his lively young daughter who woke up saying "I dreamed I was flying." Another was about rooks wheeling and riding the wind over the valley near where he lives. Louis told us he rescues baby rooks that fall out of nests and keeps them as pets (see the introduction page to his website). He is convinced they are more intelligent than dogs. In my opinion, Louis is not quite in the loincloth-up-a-tree class, but he's much more entertainingly eccentric. 




* Darius by C. P. Cavafy
** In Alexandria, 31 B.C. by C. P. Cavafy
*** The Jailer by Louis de Bernieres

Those Ancient Greeks are still following me ...

Hello again!

Further to my previous post about those Ancient Greeks following me everywhere, they've been appearing in the oddest places in London ...

Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living".

On the underground ...

at 350 Euston Road, London

... and on the street! 

Hermes at Olympia

I couldn't find any reference to the sculptor of these two naked men facing each other through the glass, but I'm sure there was at least some influence  from statues such as the Hermes in the museum at Ancient Olympia. If you know who made the two men, please contact me. 

At present I am reading The Gods of Olympus: A History by Professor Barbara Graziosi. She traces people's attitudes to the twelve gods from their origins before Homer to the Middle Ages, a period of more than 2000 years. In the preface she says, "Like many migrants, they adapted to their new circumstances, while retaining a sense of their distant origins". That seems an appropriate comment on their appearances in our lives today.

artist's representation of Phidias' statue of
Zeus at Olympia, by Sian Frances

And they are still here - with me, at least - as kaleidoscopic and mutable as the human characteristics they represent. They fire my imagination and augment my stories. In fact, today is the second anniversary of the publication of The Boy with Two Heads in which Zeus features so strongly. I have a copy of Sian Frances' painting of him on my noticeboard. 

So now it's more a case of my following the Ancient Greeks, I suppose...

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All photos ©Julia M Newsome except Sian Frances' painting (permission to use non-commercially granted)

Those Ancient Greeks follow me everywhere!

Reproduction in the Royal Ontario Museum
of Phidias' statue of Athena,
finished 438 BC for inside the Parthenon in Athens.

Not long ago, I was in Toronto, Canada, spending holiday time with family. They had asked me to stop thinking about writing for a few days, as we don't see each other very often. 'No problem,' I said. 'No writing.'

We decided to go to the Royal Ontario Museum as a worth-while afternoon occupation during a snowy weekend. Once there, I walked round a corner into the Greek gallery, and look who I found!

I have seen photographs of this reproduction of Phidias' statue of Athena in the Parthenon again and again. In my ignorance, I thought it was in New York or somewhere, and 12 metres tall like the original (and the reproduction in Nashville). But it's in a small alcove protected from people who would like to touch (like me) by a sheet of glass. Athena is only about two and a half feet (70cms) tall. 

According to Plutarch, Phidias* had a lot of trouble with that statue of Athena, culminating in two court cases. Apart from his obviously supreme talents, Phidias was a close friend of the powerful politician Perikles, and so he was a target for the jealousy of lesser mortals. 

One court case accused him of stealing some of the gold Athena was covered in. That fact became part of the plot of my novel The Boy with Two Heads. In my story Phidias and Themis' father had had to invest their own gold when they discovered that indeed some gold and jewels were missing from the Athena. They had never got their money back, but the oracle had told them, 'When the boy with two heads ... wins without a fight, Athena will pay her dues.' 

You can see why Phidias and statues of Athena are quite important to me as I research the sequel to The Boy.

left to right: Amazon, ?Perikles, ?Phidias, ?Greek soldier
from the reproduction shield of Athena
in the Royal Ontario Museum.

And evidence for Phidias' other court case is there in the Royal Ontario Museum, too. They have made a reproduction of the shield of this Athena, where Phidias is supposed to have incorporated a self portrait (and one of Perikles) among the fighters in the battle between Greeks and Amazons depicted there. These portraits constituted a punishable offence in the Athens of the 430s BC, and led to a court case that saw Phidias supposedly imprisoned.

Athena Lemnias
Roman copy of bronze
by Phidias in circa 450 BC

Zeus
Roman copy of bronze
by circle of Phidias

However, he then went on to make the huge statue of Zeus that features so strongly in The Boy with Two Heads, which became one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. He made many statues, and, in the museum hall adjacent, there are two marble heads, alleged copies of bronzes also by Phidias or his circle. Again I had seen pictures of them. but never expected to find them unprotected and at eye level. 

For me this was an afternoon of treasure trove. 

As for my companions, they just rolled their eyes and went off to see the bat cave and the dinosaur fossils. Much more fun, they said! 


*Phidias in Greek is spelled Pheidias, but he is pronounced simply Phidias, so I use this spelling.


All photos ©Julia M Newsome. Please credit me if you borrow them. 

Just one head ... on the loose in London

Dear Reader,

Today has been wonderful for this writer on the loose!

Inside the Guardian!

I spent the morning and afternoon at seminars about blogging (twitter #bloglikeapro) in the Guardian building near Kings Cross. I learned a whole raft of ways in which your experience of my blog can be made more pleasant and useful. You will see some (gradual) changes as the months go by and I learn how to put them into practice. I also talked to other interested writers about The Boy with Two Heads and Trifolium Books. And I handed out some flyers. This always feels good!

Once the seminars finished, I set off into London via Kings Cross Station - my first visit since it was renovated. How could I resist taking photos?

And I found Platform Nine and Three-Quarters ...  It has a shop, too. I hadn't realised it was a permanent fixture.

Later, over a Greek meal near Regents Park, I read part of Louis de Bernieres' ImaginingAlexandria. ‘To the Scandal of Poets’ made me laugh out loud (which disconcerted the Greek waiter – older woman on her own enjoying herself?) and ‘The Man who Travelled the World’ made me want to cry. De Bernieres says his poems are a tribute to the Alexandrian Greek poet, C P Cavafy, but they have other dimensions, too.

On the way home I once again enjoyed the view of the London Eye from Charing Cross. 

So for me this day had all the elements of the perfect writer's day – lots of research, other writers for company, beautiful things to see and be inspired by, good food for stomach and mind, and a glass of good wine.

Just one thing: I didn't write anything!

But I have re-organised the blog a bit. Please let me know what you think – addresses below.

Oxford Street at sunset, Dec 31st 2013

P. S.

Sorry if my title led you to expect tales of debauchery and forbidden pleasures (and/or shopping?). You might find more excitement (though I doubt debauchery) on the Time Out in London blog run by our midday speaker today, Sonya Barber. The whole city is there!

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All photos my own (sorry about the Platform Nine and Three-Quarters quality) except the cover of Imagining Alexandria, which is from Amazon's relevant page.