Appena terminata la lettura di Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia, posso definirlo il migliore libro sulla mitologia greca che abbia mai letto. Con grande grazia, Calasso è riuscito ad unire un romanzo che raccontasse i miti greci e un saggio sul loro significato.

Infatti, la bellezza di questo romanzo (o saggio?) sulla mitologia greca sta nell'aver inglobato nel mito il suo significato, così come presumibilmente veniva percepito in origine. Ma non solo: Calasso ci mostra il filo conduttore che dal mito arriva fino ad oggi. Forse abbiamo dimenticato chi fossero Teseo, Achille o Edipo, ma ciò che questi miti volevano trasmettere è ancora con noi, nella nostra forma mentis, nella nostra letteratura, nella nostra psicologia. Questa è la forza di Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia: far riflettere il lettore di oggi con miti tutt'altro che morti e sepolti.

Da appassionata di mitologia greca, non ho trovato difficile seguire la narrazione dei miti, anche se mi rendo conto che per un neofita potrebbe essere difficoltoso destreggiarsi tra nomi, genealogie e intrecci (il romanzo, tra l'altro, non presenta nessun glossario). In ogni caso, si tratta di un libro impegnativo, vuoi per lo stile alto in cui è scritto, vuoi per la complessità della materia trattata. ( )

"Thus far the stories take us: but for every myth told, there is another, unnameable, that is not told, another which beckons from the shadows, surfacing only through allusions, fragments, coincidences, with nobody ever daring to tell all in a single story."

There might be something here, but this book didn't come to me at the right time.

On Helen (of Troy), my paraphrase:

"Helen was not in troy at the time of the events of the trojan war (homer knew this (perhaps why she is never described)). Helen is in memphis in Egypt at this time." --> “The immense scandal of Homer lies first and foremost in his allowing Helen to survive the fall of Troy.” --> "According to Stesichorus and Euripides, Helen was a phantom. According to Homer, Helen was the phantom, eídōlon. The Homeric vision is by far the more thorny and frightening. Dealing with a phantom while knowing that there is a reality to counter it doesn’t involve the same kind of tension as dealing with a phantom and knowing that it is also a reality. Helen is as gold to other merchandise: gold too is merchandise, but of such a kind that it can represent all the others. The phantom, or image, is precisely that act of representation."

On Athens/Sparta:

“None of the great men of the fifth century B.C. was able to live in Athens without the constant fear of being expelled from the city and condemned to death. Ostracism and the sycophants formed the two prongs of a pincer that held society tightly together. As Jacob Burckhardt was first to recognize, Jacobin pettiness became a powerful force in the pólis. But the truth is that the Spartans had come up with a very different and far more effective way of doing things. They created the image of a virtuous, law-abiding society as a powerful propaganda weapon for external consumption, while the reality inside Sparta was that they cared less for such things than anyone else. They left eloquence to the Athenians, and with a smirk on their faces too, because they knew that that eloquent, indeed talkative nation would be the first to feel nostalgic for the sober virtue of the Spartans, not appreciating that such virtue was nothing more than a useful ploy for confusing and unnerving their enemies."

On Heroes/Monsters:

"Oedipus was the unhappiest of the heroes and the most vulnerable, but he was also the one who took a step beyond the other heroes. The hero’s relationship with the monster is one of contact, skin against skin. Oedipus is the first not to touch the monster. Instead he looks at it and speaks to it. Oedipus kills with words; he tosses mortal words into the air as Medea hurled her magic spells at Talos. After Oedipus’s answer, the Sphinx fell into a chasm. Oedipus didn’t climb down there to skin it, to get those colorful scales that allured travelers like the rich clothes of some Oriental courtesan. Oedipus is the first to feel he can do without contact with the monster. Of all his crimes, the most serious is the one no one reproaches him with: his not having touched the monster. Oedipus goes blind and becomes a beggar because he doesn’t have a Gorgon on his chest to defend him, doesn’t have the skin of a wild beast over his shoulders, doesn’t have a talisman to clutch in his hand. Words grant him a victory that is too clean, that leaves no spoils. And it is precisely in the spoils that power resides. The word may win where every other weapon fails. But it remains naked and solitary after its victory."

Misc:
“I alone among the gods have the keys to the room where the lightning is sealed.” (I am always mis-attributing this to Job)

“Atreus eyes.” ( )

strange sort of stringing together of Greek myths

A "thoughtful romp" through classical mythology: serpentine and cyclical, symmetrical and ornate, equal parts pornographic and gruesome. It is very easy to get lost in this book and then resurface, cresting on a particularly beautiful passage and unsure of quite where you've landed. More than that, the chapters on Pelops, the Oracle at Delphi and others read like some freak Greek blockbuster.

"What are the mysteries? 'The saying of many ridiculous things and many serious things' is the definition Aristophanes offers, and no one has ever bettered it.'"

On "the Greek thing":

"'With a god, you are always crying and laughing,' we read in Sophocles' Ajax. Life as mere vegetative protraction, glazed eyes looking out on the world, the certainty of being oneself without knowing what one is: such a life has no need of a god. It is the realm of the spontaneous atheism of the homme naturel.

But when something undefined and powerful shakes mind and fiber and trembles the cage of our bones, when the person who only a moment before was dull and agnostic is suddenly rocked by laughter and homicidal frenzy, or by the pangs of love, or by the hallucination of form, or finds his face streaming with tears, then the Greek realizes he is not alone. Somebody else stands beside him, and that somebody is a god. He no longer has the calm clarity of a perception he had in his mediocre state of existence. Instead, that clarity has migrated into his divine companion. A sharp profile against the sky, the god is resplendent, while the person who evoked him is left confused and overwhelmed." ( )

Le nozze di Cadmo e Armonia furono l’ultima occasione in cui gli dèi dell’Olimpo si sedettero a tavola con gli uomini, per una festa. Ciò che accadde prima di allora, per anni immemorabili, e dopo di allora, per poche generazioni, forma l’albero immenso del mito greco.
Nelle Nozze di Cadmo e Armonia un soffio di vento torna a muovere le fronde di quell’albero. Come scrisse un antico, «queste cose non avvennero mai, ma sono sempre». Raccontarle, intrecciandole fin nei minimi dettagli, impone alcune domande, che anch’esse «sono sempre»: perché gli dèi dell’Olimpo assunsero figura umana, e perché quella figura? Perché le loro storie sono così scandalose, e misteriose? Che cos’è un simulacro? Perché l’età degli eroi fu breve, convulsa e irripetibile? Da che cosa Zeus si sente minacciato?
Forse il mito è una narrazione che può essere capita solo narrando. Forse il modo più immediato per pensare il mito è quello di raccontarne di nuovo le favole. Una luce radente, netta, qui le investe tutte e le mostra nelle loro molteplici connessioni, come una vasta e leggerissima rete che si posa sul mondo.