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Some Rosemary Sutcliff Novels
Dec. 29th, 2023 11:56 amAs with Mary Stolz, so with Rosemary Sutcliff: another prolific mid-twentieth-century writer whose books are now unevenly available in public libraries. Of course I had to raid the Indianapolis Public Library for her works, too.
I started with Beowulf, which is - wait for it - a retelling of Beowulf. It’s a straight-up retelling, without twists, simply an attempt to render the story into modern prose. And what beautiful prose it is - like this passage about a man, the last of his once-mighty kin, hiding away in a sea cave the treasures that they gathered in happier days.
And there, little by little, he carried all his treasures and hid them within sounding of the sea, and made a death-song over them as over slain warriors, lamenting for the thanes who would drink from the golden cups and wield the mighty swords no more, for the hearths grown cold and the harps fallen silent and the halls abandoned to the foxes and the ravens.
Then I continued with more retellings! Black Ships Before Troy is a retelling not just of the Iliad, but of a number of stories around the Iliad, including the tale (which I had never heard before) that before the war, Achilles’ mother tried to keep him away from the fighting by disguising him as one of the daughters of King Lycomedes.
I had also never before heard the tale about how Paris died before the end of the Trojan War, and the Trojans STILL didn’t give Helen back to the Greeks. You guys! You guys! WHY. Why not at least TRY to give her back and end the whole thing? It’s inexplicable enough when Paris is still alive to say “But Daddy I love her!”, but once he’s dead you’d think SURELY… But no. Every time I read any version of this story I hope against hope that maybe THIS TIME someone will send Helen right back to Menelaus and avert the whole damn tragedy, but they never do.
Then onward with The Wanderings of Odysseus! This is a pretty straight-up retelling of the Odyssey, so no surprises like cross-dressing Achilles (fascinated that Achilles went along with his mother’s plan on that, to be honest), but a good solid retelling if you feel the need for a bit more Odyssey in your life, as who among us does not at times? (This reminds me that I still haven’t gotten around to Emily Wilson’s Odyssey.) Sutcliff leaves out the bit where Odysseus hangs the twelve maids.
Moving on from retellings, at long last I’ve read Warrior Scarlet. I really enjoyed the Bronze Age setting and Drem’s blood brotherhood with Vortrix (“My brother - oh, my brother - we have hunted the same trails and eaten from the same bowl and slept in the same bed when the hunting was over. How shall I go on or you turn back alone?”), but damn, this book also has one of Sutcliff’s least convincing heterosexual romances.
After an entire book of near-total indifference to Blai, his foster-sister, who is obviously secretly in love with Drem, “Suddenly he was aware of her as he had been only once before, but more strongly and clearly now, out of a new compassion… For a moment it was only compassion, and then quite suddenly and simply he understood that he and Blai belonged together, like to like.”
This is such a Mary Renault move, this movement from compassion to “we belong together,” and here is in Mary Renault it’s the beloved realizing the strength of the lover’s feelings and basically acquiescing to this state of affairs: you adore me, and I love you I guess. I’m not mad keen on this dynamic ever, and I like it even less when the lover is the woman in a heterosexual romance: she’s already so disadvantaged by society, she ought at least to have the advantage of a husband who adores her rather than one who allows himself to be adored.
AND FINALLY we have Heroes and History, a collection of short biographies of heroes in British history, including King Arthur and Robin Hood, notwithstanding that the historical evidence that these two heroes ever existed is a bit rickety. Sutcliff argues that Arthur shows up in enough chronicles to have some basis in historical fact (even if the legends that have accreted around him are largely embroidery), whereas Robin Hood seems far more doubtful… “But in any case, no Book of British Heroes could possibly be complete without Robin Hood.”
This is so delightfully characteristic of an older way of doing history - shades of James Ford Rhodes, who kicked off his 1899 inaugural address to the newly founded American Historical Association by saying, “let us at once agree that it were better that all the histories ever written were burned than for the world to lose Homer and Shakespeare,” then follows with an impassioned paean to Shakespeare-as-historian. Yes, Shakespeare absolutely made up the speeches, but like Thucydides, he captures “the essential—not the literal—truth” of the times!
I first read this speech in my history-of-history class in grad school. Later on, when we got to the postmodernists grumping away about the shackles of attempting “objectivity” in history, I wondered if they realized that they were merely retreading the paths set down by James Ford Rhodes, only tiptoeing timidly where he strode brashly forth. Objectivity shmobjectivity! Burn all the histories and keep your Shakespeare!
I started with Beowulf, which is - wait for it - a retelling of Beowulf. It’s a straight-up retelling, without twists, simply an attempt to render the story into modern prose. And what beautiful prose it is - like this passage about a man, the last of his once-mighty kin, hiding away in a sea cave the treasures that they gathered in happier days.
And there, little by little, he carried all his treasures and hid them within sounding of the sea, and made a death-song over them as over slain warriors, lamenting for the thanes who would drink from the golden cups and wield the mighty swords no more, for the hearths grown cold and the harps fallen silent and the halls abandoned to the foxes and the ravens.
Then I continued with more retellings! Black Ships Before Troy is a retelling not just of the Iliad, but of a number of stories around the Iliad, including the tale (which I had never heard before) that before the war, Achilles’ mother tried to keep him away from the fighting by disguising him as one of the daughters of King Lycomedes.
I had also never before heard the tale about how Paris died before the end of the Trojan War, and the Trojans STILL didn’t give Helen back to the Greeks. You guys! You guys! WHY. Why not at least TRY to give her back and end the whole thing? It’s inexplicable enough when Paris is still alive to say “But Daddy I love her!”, but once he’s dead you’d think SURELY… But no. Every time I read any version of this story I hope against hope that maybe THIS TIME someone will send Helen right back to Menelaus and avert the whole damn tragedy, but they never do.
Then onward with The Wanderings of Odysseus! This is a pretty straight-up retelling of the Odyssey, so no surprises like cross-dressing Achilles (fascinated that Achilles went along with his mother’s plan on that, to be honest), but a good solid retelling if you feel the need for a bit more Odyssey in your life, as who among us does not at times? (This reminds me that I still haven’t gotten around to Emily Wilson’s Odyssey.) Sutcliff leaves out the bit where Odysseus hangs the twelve maids.
Moving on from retellings, at long last I’ve read Warrior Scarlet. I really enjoyed the Bronze Age setting and Drem’s blood brotherhood with Vortrix (“My brother - oh, my brother - we have hunted the same trails and eaten from the same bowl and slept in the same bed when the hunting was over. How shall I go on or you turn back alone?”), but damn, this book also has one of Sutcliff’s least convincing heterosexual romances.
After an entire book of near-total indifference to Blai, his foster-sister, who is obviously secretly in love with Drem, “Suddenly he was aware of her as he had been only once before, but more strongly and clearly now, out of a new compassion… For a moment it was only compassion, and then quite suddenly and simply he understood that he and Blai belonged together, like to like.”
This is such a Mary Renault move, this movement from compassion to “we belong together,” and here is in Mary Renault it’s the beloved realizing the strength of the lover’s feelings and basically acquiescing to this state of affairs: you adore me, and I love you I guess. I’m not mad keen on this dynamic ever, and I like it even less when the lover is the woman in a heterosexual romance: she’s already so disadvantaged by society, she ought at least to have the advantage of a husband who adores her rather than one who allows himself to be adored.
AND FINALLY we have Heroes and History, a collection of short biographies of heroes in British history, including King Arthur and Robin Hood, notwithstanding that the historical evidence that these two heroes ever existed is a bit rickety. Sutcliff argues that Arthur shows up in enough chronicles to have some basis in historical fact (even if the legends that have accreted around him are largely embroidery), whereas Robin Hood seems far more doubtful… “But in any case, no Book of British Heroes could possibly be complete without Robin Hood.”
This is so delightfully characteristic of an older way of doing history - shades of James Ford Rhodes, who kicked off his 1899 inaugural address to the newly founded American Historical Association by saying, “let us at once agree that it were better that all the histories ever written were burned than for the world to lose Homer and Shakespeare,” then follows with an impassioned paean to Shakespeare-as-historian. Yes, Shakespeare absolutely made up the speeches, but like Thucydides, he captures “the essential—not the literal—truth” of the times!
I first read this speech in my history-of-history class in grad school. Later on, when we got to the postmodernists grumping away about the shackles of attempting “objectivity” in history, I wondered if they realized that they were merely retreading the paths set down by James Ford Rhodes, only tiptoeing timidly where he strode brashly forth. Objectivity shmobjectivity! Burn all the histories and keep your Shakespeare!
