I'm sure there are plenty of people who, like me, are not crazy about Greek myths. All these crazy gods falling indiscriminately in love with anyone, including themselves, their indiscriminate liaisons, leading mostly to the death of the object of lust due to the jealousy of the other gods, turning the mass of mortal people into animate and inanimate objects... Their selfishness. And what's more, in their kinship alone it's hard to tell who's a son or a brother to whom, who came out of the foam and who came out of the head.
Madeline Miller was born in Boston and grew up in New York City and Philadelphia. She attended Brown University, where she earned her BA and MA in Classics. For the last ten years she has been teaching and tutoring Latin, Greek and Shakespeare to high school students. She has also studied at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, and in the Dramaturgy department at Yale School of Drama, where she focused on the adaptation of classical texts to modern forms. She currently lives in Cambridge, MA, where she teaches and writes. The Song of Achilles is her first novel.
Madeleine Miller's book, Circe, will definitely help me understand the relationship between gods, demigods, titans, and heroes. At least now I won't confuse Circe and Medea. After Circe, I even wanted to read the Iliad and the Odyssey in their entirety, not in parts, as I did at school and at school. Because now I will have a slightly different perspective on these works.
No, my view of the gods and titans has not changed one bit. Miller has only reinforced them, confirming that my personal feelings about this whole sleuth were not mistaken - debauchery, narcissism, indifference, boredom, and the cruel entertainment that ensues. But to try to understand the characters of these books, the premise of their actions, to rethink what is happening in the mythical stories wanted.
However, that is not the main thing in the book. The reader sees the life of one of the heroines of the myths - the nymph Circe (to remember who she was I surfed the Internet... in general, reading this book, I often surfed the Internet, mostly to make sure that a particular character won't die young, or die not right now, or his death will not be very painful). And it must be said, despite the fact that this is an immortal entity, few women can not associate themselves with the heroine, because, despite her abilities and properties, she, just like most women, hotly in love, wildly jealous, terribly disappointed, suffering from loneliness, deprived of any kind of support. No, really, reading about the nymph's obsession with her young lover, I fiddled with my heart, remembering my emotions during the first love that came to me.
And the hard given to the heroine of the book motherhood - how to remember, so shudder! Indeed, the whole sky should be held on your shoulders to protect your child from the hostile world, and the child will not feel a bit gratitude to you and will run away from you like the wind at the first opportunity, not even trying to understand what burden a mother carries all his life on her shoulders.
And the disempowerment of women in a man's world? Whether you are mortal or immortal, anyone will come and take what he wants, because you are a woman, and he, mortal or immortal, is a man. "Poets, I think, only write about humiliated women. As if if we don't cry and crawl on our feet, there's nothing to tell." Any, even the humblest maiden, if she had a modicum of witchcraft power, would turn these smug mooks into pigs. By the way, it would be interesting to read about the Gorgon Medusa, who turned her enemies into stones.
However, not only the fate of the protagonist falls into the lens of the author's attention. Other heroes of ancient mythology are also revealed not quite normal side. Minotaur born monster, frightening the whole world around him, "He will never be anyone's friend or lover. Never shall he see the sun or take a step of his own free will. He will never have anything, only darkness and hatred and sharp teeth." And the glorious Odysseus appears to the reader not quite the way he appeared before, with his vanity, under the eternal scrutiny of the tutelary goddess, whose favor is more evil than good.
There is much more to say about this book. You can get a lot of questions raised by the author. But in my opinion, it is better to take it and read it, because, I think, everyone will discover something different. I'm not going to lie and admit that this book, in spite of the easy verse, was difficult for me to read. I could not read more than one or two chapters at a time. Each turn in the fate of the heroine forced me to think, each chapter gave reason to think. However, if that doesn't happen to you, the story itself already deserves to be read, to remember its origins and, perhaps, like me, it will awaken a desire to read primary sources.
This article was sponsored by lehr legal
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