The colonel's Mede is Miss Renault's Persian
Auberon Waugh
The Persian Boy Mary Renault (Longman £2.50) Four hundred and ten pages, with forty lines a page, well bound and stitched, properly , printed on clean, reasonably expensive paper must be reckoned a good buy at fifty shillings nowadays, but the length is bound to frighten reviewers in the pre-Christmas rush. I justified my behaviour in ignoring Miss Renault's last book when it came out by a halfremembered pronouncement of my English master at school to the effect that historical novels could never aspire to be considered as High Art, although I forget his reasons now. W'hat convinced me that I may, on this occasion, have betrayed the trust reposed in me by readers of The Spectator was, in fact, a study of the other reviews. A novel must have exceptional quality if it can emerge as something worth reading from it reviews, nearly all written by wretched, underpaid people who hate novels and resent the indignity of having to pretend that they have read w'hat they can at best have only skimmed through. Miss Renault's tale of the homosexual love between Bagoas, the beautiful Persian eunuch, and Alexander the Great is excellent in almost every particular, and I cannot recommend it too highly to anyone who is prepared to countenance the idea that novels can be written about such a subject.
Even if they are written, of course, there are those who feel they should not be reviewed in magazines like The Spectator. An acrimonious letter-writer called Lt-Col Skinner, from Cheltenham, recently took me to task for mentioning what was to be found between the covers of Simon Raven's latest novel. He was supported by M. R. Quartley, of Bath, Alderman Cecil Baker, of Eastbourne, and various others.
In fact, Miss Renault's methods of describing the horrors which befall her hero are extremely tasteful. There is no lubricious gloating over the details of the homosexual acts which inevitably occur from time to time between the eunuch Bagoas and other parties — I must warn those who are curious about how these things are managed that their curiosity is unlikely to be satisfied — and nothing, in fact, to bring the blush of shame to Col Skinner's manly cheek. M. R. Quartley of Bath announces that he has given up The Spectator after reading of the horrors contained in Captain Raven's last novel. Others may wish to give up wearing socks in protest against widespread hunger in the Hindu Kush. But I think I should give a Government Health Warning that Miss Renault's book may not appeal to those who like to think of sex the straightforward, British way, if at all.
Bagoas, a boy of extraordinary beauty, is the son of a mountain baron near Susa. Enemies infiltrate the castle, rape and murder his sisters, take the boy to be castrated and sold into slavery and cut off the ears and nose of his father before taking his head to the wicked Grand Vizier. However, between losing his nose and his head, the father shouts to the boy that Orxines has betrayed them. His mother throws herself out of a window and that ends that unsavoury episode.
One hears that such scenes were by no means uncommon in days gone by. I hope that Lt-Col Skinner was never called upon to witness anything like it in the course of his military career. Certainly, by the time I joined the British army they were a thing of the past, thank God, although there were rumours of strange goings-on in the Grenadiers. At any rate, in Persia of the fourth century BC, it was quite normal to murder, rape and castrate your enemies if you got the chance. Naturally, I am sorry that this should have been so, but there is nothing we can do about it now.
After a period as a prostitute, Bagoas is taken into the service of King Darius, who treats him kindly, after training in the erotic arts (never described) by a former favourite. After the murder of Darius, one of the murderers takes him to Alexander, who befriends him. Eventually, they becoine lovers and the story continues as the narrative of Alexander's conquests seen through the eyes of the Persian eunuch who loves him.
If one has to say why the novel is so effective one must admit that part of the reason is to be found in the perversity of its theme: not only the perversity of love between a eunuch and a hero, but also the idea of Alexander's story being told through Persian eyes. This is obviously a device which historical novelists are going to employ more and more. Last year we had John Gardner's excellent novel Grendel which told the story of Beowulf (who slew the monster Grendel) from the monster's point of view. Miss Renault's use of this device is not so extreme as that, but it is stimulating enough for those who have been brought up to see the austere, democratic life-style of the Macedonians as the embodiment of every robust virtue, and Persians as effete voluptuaries, suddenly to see the Greeks as barbarian invaders.
Undoubtedly, the best part of the book describes the conflict of these two cultures. Miss Renault is at pains to show the faults of both — the cruelty and corruption of the Persians as well as the boorishness of the Greeks. Alexander is the personification of everything that is best in both, except for an unfortunate tendency to burn down Persepolis and spear old friends to death when drunk, but this only shows him to be human. Whether or not her evocation of life in Babylon is accurate or not, it is quite good enough for me:
Soon we had settled in, the days turning as smoothly as the water wheels below the Hanging Gardens. That beautiful man-made hill, with its shady trees and the cool groves within its terraces, needs a deal of watering, and it's a high haul to the top. Often amid its bird-song you can hear, if you listen, the cracking of the whips below.
Much of the novel turns on Alexander's efforts to make the Macedonians with their uncouth Australian bush-whacker manners, prostrate themselves in the Persian way when coming into his presence. As a schoolboy, I was taught that this was a sign of incipient megalomania, but Miss Renault points out that he was only showing respect for the conventions of the area.
It is an excellent book which lives on in the imagination long after one has put it down. Towards the end, Bagoas finds and hangs the villain, Orxines, who has betrayed his father, and my only criticism of the book is that this episode is rather thrown away. The novel takes the form of Bagoas's recollections as an old man in Ptolemy's Egypt, but the recollections are introduced too seldom to supply thematic unity. The other theme — of Alexander's and Bagoas's love for each other — loses all dramatic suspense after they become lovers on page 132. Any narrative account of Alexander's adventures is bound to be episodic, and Miss Renault could have avoided this by bringing the Orxines revenge forward as a major theme. Never mind. The book is easily in the gold medal class, and belatedly wins a handsome porcelain flower vase as the best historical novel of 1972.
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