A poet among the barbarians
Peter Vansittart
TAMGAR by Flora Fraser
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £13, pp.256
Historical novels carry no great critical esteem, though to sneer is easier than to achieve. Actually, considerable imagina- tive insights are needed to think oneself back into the past, particularly into eras tribal, usually illiterate, dominated by the invisible, the inanimate, animals, the dead. Periods when shadows contained shadows, clouds could be dragons, lunatics sacred, and colours, numbers, bodily parts, exude astral magic. There are, of course, con- siderable technical hazards, notably in dialogue. Also, often condemned as humourless, the genre may provoke un- intended smiles; even plain statement risks this. In an intelligent novel, Stefan Heym once wrote: "I understand you." Engels poured off the dirty water, refilled the basin from a pitcher, and invited Marx to have a drink.' Sober, unpretentious, fac- tual, yet somehow jarring, even ludicrous. Flora Fraser's first novel has similar in- stants. "If the priests make sacrifice to Apollo at six, does that leave enough time for breakfast?"
Her story concerns the famous Greek poet, Pindar, c.522-442 sc. He sails to Syracuse at the behest of its despot, Heiron, to compose and present a Festival Ode. On arrival, he is soon abducted by Sikels, island aboriginals overcome but still resisting, who have abandoned their gods and bloodily raid the Greek plains for a secret camp. Pindar falls in love with Tamgar, a Sikel princess, and eventually joins her warrior brother in seeking a deal with Heiron. A melodramatic outcome does not invalidate the serious theme, that of the tensions between sophisticated Hel- las and its 'barbarian' victims, tensions that divide Pindar himself.
For a moment he had confusedly wished to be part of the wild community who lived in this peaceful valley. He had for one horrify- ing moment felt his allegiance to his own country and people slipping. He wanted to stay here in this strange solitude, compose calm odes without need of gain or fear of displeased patrons. Like Paris the shepherd boy, with his pipes and lyre under the clear green shade of an oak trunk, he could lie at ease with a wineskin and writing tools. And perhaps some woman lying relaxed at his side. If the need for activity seized him, up into the desert regions which lay behind this smooth wall of rock he would climb and walk for miles into the unknown, up and down the smooth sides of green and yellow hills, up arduous brown mountains, ever farther from what might exist distasteful on the earth below.
Vivid descriptions abound: Heiron's court with its powerless grotesques, effete, tittering parasites, enigmatic officials: a public recital of Pindar's Ode, Pindar himself at work with stylus and papyrus: 'It says that their fax machine is temporarily out of order.' and comically sardonic glimpses of rival poets, Bacchylides and his uncle Simon- ides, Mary Renault's hero. Also some period information, though this can ob- struct. The novelist is not a schoolteacher, research can crush vision and vision is crucial.
Here is the rub. The novel is simul- taneously ambitious and not ambitious enough. Fraser has not minted a language to evoke the pre-Christian, pre-Roman atmosphere, modern in its political and military sordidness, yet numinous with gods and fates, demons and rituals. 'Road hogs', `War Ministry', `Sentry Box', 'Ba- lance of trade figures and the gross nation- al income' lack such atmosphere. Tamgar mentions life insurance. Theron, Tyrant of Akragos, though deftly observed, ex- claims, 'Oh, you will be the death of me!' The old Sikel king reflects, 'You will need strong arms to implement your decisions.'
Words are at odds with the speakers' circumstances and appearance. Careful to avoid archaic fustian, Miss Fraser reaches for the other extreme.
There is a further hazard, the attempt to enter a renowned poet's mind. Anthony Burgess ventured Shakespeare, Peter Green tried Sappho, with some success: Broch's Virgil was a literary triumph. But the challenge is exceptional. Traditionally, the poet mediated between lore and mem- ory techniques, his curse could maim, his praise enchant. Fate seemed in his grip. By Pindar's time his scope still retained ves- tiges of religious and social authority as he addressed or spoke for the state or dynas- ty. That Fraser's Pindar mostly utters commonplaces may not much matter. He might be anticipating Talleyrand's belief that man is given speech to conceal his thought. The historical Pindar was no profound thinker though, in his work, acclaimed for richness of phrase and imag- ery. 'Humanity is a shadow in a dream.'
Great writers can in company be great bores, if only to preserve their best thoughts from grabbers. But the few poetic lines supplied here for Pindar's Ode are not memorable: 'The boy's eyes were popping out of his head as Zeus bore him effortlessly foward.' He could as well have been a merchant, teacher, palace official, soldier, leisured gentleman. Really, he is a hero of a briskly told romantic adventure. His courage and decency are more believ able than his literary fame.
Erich Heller has distinguished between 'mythologies', which reach beyond stories into symbols, archetypes, metamorphoses, of which Mann's Joseph sequence and Broch's The Death of Virgil are supreme examples — and 'Interesting Stories', time- bound and mortal. In this context the distinction is important, for, to reach the mind of a poet, some element of 'mytholo- gy' is needed. Like most of us, Flora Fraser has opted for an 'Interesting Story' which, though it can provoke these reservations, does throughout remain interesting.
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