In which I am interviewed by Louise Rule

Today I was interviewed by Louise Rule for The Review, a blog which also has a Facebook group. The interview can be found at…

http://thereviewgroup.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/louise-e-rule-interviews-richard-abbott.html

The topics covered a lot of ground but interestingly we talked a fair bit about the similarities and differences between my fiction writing and the academic thesis which came out first.

The interview opens with…

Q. You have an obvious passion for the ancient Middle East. Could you tell our readers what drew you to that time, what was it that captivated you?

A. Originally I got intrigued by the chronology of the ancient world, and looked into both mainstream views and some of the more alternative ones. But as I started to read actual ancient sources, initially in translation and then more directly, I abandoned chronology in favour of literature, especially poetry and its various forms. It is so much more fascinating! Plus, of course, it gives much more direct insight into the minds of people in the ancient world, rather than just modern ideas of how best to create an exact timeline…



Then we got into matters like whether researching a novel was the same as researching a thesis, the development of character and structure, ancient writing and its forms – even the Northern Line got a mention!

The Review banner image

Blog hop – Game of Seven

I was recently tagged by Antoine Vanner on his Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/antoine.vanner/posts/313715308791977) in an ongoing blog series called “Game of Seven“. The rules are that you turn to page 7 or 77 of your current work in progress, count down 7 lines, then post the next 7 sentences, interpreting the last two instructions a bit liberally so that the whole thing makes sense.

First off, the extract. A brother and sister who have escaped the fall of Ugarit and have fled to the south are talking, while trying to decide on a course of action:

He waited, watching the dappled light and shade play across her face. She continued.

“I miss the sun rising over the hills ahead of us, and setting into the open sea behind. I miss our house, and our garden. I miss our mother and father terribly. I miss the singing from the temples and the ceremony of the royal processions. I miss the ships coming in to the docks, and the endless flocks of wading birds around the bay to the north. I even miss the fish we used to eat four days out of five, and I never thought I would say that.”

Prototype cover image, The Flame Before Us
Now, whoever made up the rules for this blog hop obviously works in a word processor (which has paged output) rather than straight to Kindle as I do (which is a continuous stream like a web page). So for me, trying to work out where on earth page 77 might be was something of a guess, not to mention the fact that the sequence will almost certainly be chopped and changed before release. But it’s a nice piece of fun and one that I am very happy to have joined in. The above is an educated guess where the extract might live.

Going forward, I asked Teresa Thomlinson (http://www.theresatomlinson.com/authors_blog.html) if she was happy to be tagged next, so look out for her contribution. I have emailed a couple of other people and am waiting to see if they want to join in as well. Links will get posted when available.

Review – The Mystery of the Egyptian Scroll

The Mystery of the Egyptian Scroll, by Scott Peters, is a children’s book set in New Kingdom Egypt, in and around the southern city of Luxor. The pharaoh of the time is deliberately unspecified.

Buy The Mystery of the Egyptian Scroll from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Mystery of the Egyptian Scroll from Amazon.com

Cover image - The Mystery of the Egyptian Scroll
The plot is lively and straightforward; two children who run a market stall selling pottery, witness a neighbour being accused of theft, and take it upon themselves to investigate. In the process they find out that the accusation is false, but that there is a much deeper and more sinister plot behind it. Basically, in adult terms, they have stumbled into the path of a political move aiming at a palace coup – a problem which did indeed face certain pharaohs of that time.

This is a children’s book, so the writing is simple and direct, the characters’ motives are plain and easy to grasp, and the children are supremely competent at solving the problem (albeit at considerable risk to themselves and their family).

But the book is also a fantastic introduction to Egypt for children. Places, people and customs are well explained and engaging, so the book is highly educative as well as fun. Problems are solved by thought, perseverance, q the gathering of evidence, and negotiation with key people. There is no magic, and religion is dealt with as a normal part of everyday life. I would happily use this book as a way to bring something of the reality of ancient Egypt to life for a young audience.

Technically the Kindle copy I downloaded had a number of problems, in particular with incorrect representation of some characters such as apostrophes. This made the book hard to read in places, especially for a younger audience. I understand that this problem is being addressed and should be fixed before long.

Overall a four star book for me – although I prefer adult fiction, I can easily see myself reading The Mystery of the Egyptian Scroll with young people wanting to learn about Egypt.

Review – The Elder Edda, translated by Andy Orchard

I decided to classify The Elder Edda as historical fiction, on the grounds that the tales within it probably served a similar function in Icelandic culture – and general Norse culture – as that genre serves in ours. Certainly the content moves progressively from more obviously mythical, where the main focus is on the doings of gods and supernatural beings, towards history, where specific leaders and their followers are vying for political and military supremacy in a recognisable world. As such, it provides a rationale for particular clan allegiances or rivalries which are active in the authors’ time.

Buy The Elder Edda from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Elder Edda from Amazon.com

Cover - The Elder Edda
Andy’s translation seeks to be fluid but faithful, seeking also to preserve the stylistic differences between the various sections. This does mean that some of the poems read more fluently than others, depending on the style and form chosen by the original author. He also discusses the probable route by which the collection has reached us, via a Christian cleric who preserved it out of respect for his people’s lore. The myth and religion of the Norse world is carefully presented to us, but with the clear message that its day has long gone, and that even at its most noble it was heading unerringly towards its own destruction.

Norse poets, like their Anglo-Saxon contemporaries, took great delight in punning or riddling descriptions and names: Andy has recognised that no single tactic will solve this. Instead he has chosen several routes ranging from leaving names untranslated in some cases, using marginal notes of explanation in others, and converting into an English pun in others. He has also been flexible with issues of form, keeping remnants of the original alliterative style in many places without feeling constrained to maintain it everywhere. As well as very brief marginal comments, there is a much longer notes section at the end which gives contextual explanations into the background and subsequent use of the poems as well as translational points.

Readers even slightly familiar with Wagner’s operas will recognise names and stories here. But in addition, these same stories emerge in slightly changed form in Tolkien’s Silmarillion, especially in the long and tragic account of Turin. It is clear that Tolkien had enormous respect for The Elder Edda, and enough skill and confidence to creatively rework it into his own world.

How can one rate a classic piece of world literature? For me, this is a four star book. I intend to dip into it again, especially a few of the more accessible pieces, and I am very glad to have read it. In a few places I felt that the poetry faltered – translating poetry is extremely hard, especially when, as here, the translator is seeking to faithfully represent a selection of different voices. On balance Andy has done a good job.

The Elder Edda will not be to everyone’s taste, but it certainly is a milestone in the development of northern European culture and identity.

Review – Initiate, by Tara Maya

Initiate, by Tara Maya, is a young adult fantasy book with a difference. It is the first in a series with overall title The Unfinished Song. Unlike some of the standard fantasy settings – such as medieval era swordsmen or contemporary vampires – Tara has placed her story in a Stone Age context. So life is at a tribal subsistence level, and there is no writing, and virtually nothing one would describe as technology. Coming from my own preferred Late Bronze Age setting, this had a refreshing simplicity and directness.

Buy The Unfinished Song – Book 1: Initiate from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Unfinished Song – Book 1: Initiate from Amazon.com

Cover - Initiate by Tara Maya

Tara has deliberately not geographically located the tale, but to me it has a Central American feel, with a mix of arid and fertile land, forest and plain, and transport routes between the tribes often following rivers.

The premise of the magic is not exotic herbs or complex spell-casting, but forms of dance. These are tailored to the situation, and differ between men and women as well as the desired outcome. It is a mixture of sympathetic magic, symbolic power and actual connection with the unseen world. There are distinct echoes of George MacDonald’s flower fairies – not the simple pretty ones of modern poster art, but the darker and more mysterious ones of his fantasy fiction.

As befits a young adult book, the story revolves around a coming of age initiation ceremony. The story follows various groups of initiates as they head towards the traditional holy place, a set of concentric stone circles. Along the way we get insight into back-stories by means of visions or direct recollection.

The story is young adult – intimacy or violence is touched delicately rather than in detail, and characters are clear-cut in motivation and personality. It is also only the first in a series, so ends on something of a cliffhanger. I’m never totally convinced that I like this, and feel better about stories that are closely linked but stand alone. However, this first book in the series is free to download from a number of the usual sites, so you get a chance to see how much you like it before buying in to the series!

Technically the book was well produced. A tiny handful of typos do not in the least detract from the story. The navigation worked well on my Kindle copy.

YA is not really my thing, and on balance I would have preferred the same storyline and setting with more depth and ambiguity in the telling. But so far as I can tell this is a good book of its kind, and I am very happy to give it a solid four stars.

Tara kindly supplied on request a short biography, book blurb, and extract, which now follow:


Bio:
Tara Maya has lived in Africa, Europe and Asia. She’s pounded sorghum with mortar and pestle in a little clay village where the jungle meets the desert, meditated in a Buddhist monastery in the Himalayas and sailed the Volga river to a secret city that was once the heart of the Soviet space program. This first-hand experience, as well as research into the strange and piquant histories of lost civilizations, inspires her writing. Her terrible housekeeping, however, is entirely the fault of pixies.


Blurb:
A DETERMINED GIRL…
Dindi can’t do anything right, maybe because she spends more time dancing with pixies than doing her chores. Her clan hopes to marry her off and settle her down, but she dreams of becoming a Tavaedi, one of the powerful warrior-dancers whose secret magics are revealed only to those who pass a mysterious Test during the Initiation ceremony. The problem? No-one in Dindi’s clan has ever passed the Test. Her grandmother died trying. But Dindi has a plan.

AN EXILED WARRIOR…
Kavio is the most powerful warrior-dancer in Faearth, but when he is exiled from the tribehold for a crime he didn’t commit, he decides to shed his old life. If roving cannibals and hexers don’t kill him first, this is his chance to escape the shadow of his father’s wars and his mother’s curse. But when he rescues a young Initiate girl, he finds himself drawn into as deadly a plot as any he left behind. He must decide whether to walk away or fight for her… assuming she would even accept the help of an exile.


Extract:

Blue-skinned rusalki grappled Dindi under the churning surface of the river. She could feel their claws dig into her arms. Their riverweed-like hair entangled her legs when she tried to kick back to the surface. She only managed to gulp a few breaths of air before they pulled her under again.

She hadn’t appreciated how fast and deep the river was. On her second gasp for air, she saw that the current was already dragging her out of sight of the screaming girls on the bank. A whirlpool of froth and fae roiled between two large rocks in the middle of the river. The rusalka and her sisters tugged Dindi toward it. Other water fae joined the rusalki. Long snouted pookas, turtle-like kappas and hairy-armed gwyllions all swam around her, leading her to the whirlpool, where even more fae swirled in the whitewater.

“Join our circle, Dindi!” the fae voices gurgled under the water. “Dance with us forever!”

“No!” She kicked and swam and stole another gasp for air before they snagged her again. There were so many of them now, all pulling her down, all singing to the tune of the rushing river. She tried to shout, “Dispel!” but swallowed water instead. Her head hit a rock, disorienting her. She sank, this time sure she wouldn’t be coming up again.

“Dispel!” It was a man’s voice.

Strong arms encircled her and lifted her until her arms and head broke the surface. Her rescuer swam with her toward the shore. He overpowered the current, he shrugged aside the hands of the water faeries stroking his hair and arms. When he reached the shallows, he scooped Dindi into his arms and carried her the rest of the way to the grassy bank. He set her down gently.

She coughed out some water while he supported her back.

“Better?” he asked.

She nodded. He was young–only a few years older than she. The aura of confidence and competence he radiated made him seem older. Without knowing quite why, she was certain he was a Tavaedi.

“Good.” He had a gorgeous smile. A wisp of his dark bangs dangled over one eye. He brushed his dripping hair back over his head.

Dindi’s hand touched skin–he was not wearing any shirt. Both of them were sopping wet. On him, that meant trickles of water coursed over a bedrock of muscle. As for her, the thin white wrap clung transparently to her body like a wet leaf. She blushed.

“It might have been easier to swim if you had let go of that,” he teased. He touched her hand, which was closed around something. “What were you holding onto so tightly that it mattered more than drowning?”

An extract from The Flame Before Us

Today I thought I would post an extract from the in-progress novel The Flame Before Us. Before that, though, some review news. I am now signed up on the Indie section of the UK Historical Novel Society review group. So look out for some of these at the HNS site http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/. The deal is that reviews must appear there first before being posted anywhere else (like here, for example). They should also be of a standard length and have a mixture of plot summary, personal response and comments on the physical production. From now on a small fraction – by no means all – of my reviews will be posted there first.

Back to the extract. The scene here is the fall of Ugarit (Ikaret). The city walls have been breached and small groups of people are cut off from each other and trying to escape. Anilat is the wife of one of the king’s envoys, and successfully hid in her house during the initial attack.

The Flame Before Us - Working Cover

They moved outside. The lead soldier turned to her.
“Where to next, lady? Your honoured husband told me to set towards the shepherds’ huts on the hill road, but now you’re here the choice is yours.”
She nodded. “He said as much to me.” She looked around vaguely. “Which way should we go?”
One of the three shook his head. “Bugger that. I’m not going to any shepherd’s hut. I should never have come this far with you. I’ll take my chances somewhere else.”
Before any of them could say anything he had run off down a side street. She looked at the two remaining soldiers.
“What now? Will you leave us too?”
“No, lady. I gave my word to your honoured husband and I’ll see it through. Out to the huts at least, we’ll see you safe out to there. He’ll know what to do once we meet up, I’m sure.”
The younger man nodded as well. They went on a cautious way through the maze of narrow streets. Here and there in the distance they could hear and see the sounds of the city’s rape. Anilat followed the lead without thinking, not recognising any of the paths or buildings. It was one of the poorer regions, emptied already of its occupants. The houses pressed close together, and refuse and waste lay thickly in the corners and ruts. There had been little enough here to attract the invaders, but even so the shadow of their passage lay heavily on it.
Bodies of men and women, old and young, were scattered in and out of the buildings. Anilat’s own children trotted past the corpses with blank eyes, and Anilat herself was soon beyond noticing the marks of violence. Once, while they hurried across an open source near the top of a hill, they caught sight of a great mass of people pressed together along the main city artery, leading towards the great gates down from the palace and temple. There was a noise of confusion and inchoate pain, and the struggling crowd was illuminated only by the flames of burning buildings to either side. From time to time packs of men, like jackals, harried the edges of the crowd and snatched victims away.
Down by the docks the fires seemed to be settling into a steady blaze, while nearer buildings, more recently set alight, rushed up in sudden flurries of sparks. Anilat stopped to catch her breath at the highest point of the ridge and turned, trying to catch sight of her own house, but it was lost in the confusion. One of the soldiers urged her on.
They reached the open space in front of the middle gate. One of the soldiers eased his way slowly forwards to check that nobody was around, then waved the others on from where they had crouched behind some wreckage. The gate stood wide open, with its bolts and bars forced back. Two or three guards lay dead nearby, along with some other fighting men that none of them recognised.
The group slipped out through the gate. The path heading towards the ridge of hills to the east was clear and open. Apparently the city occupants were trying to escape away down the coast rather than inland.
They continued past a few bends in the track, keeping going until the city wall had slipped from sight and the way began to rise up from the coastal plain. The leading soldier looked at the women and children and called a halt. They turned to one side and settled among some stones, hidden by a screen of bushes from anyone moving along the road.
They shared out some food and passed around a skin of weak wine. Nobody spoke for a long time. Finally the younger soldier shook his head.
“I heard someone in the palace say that some of our own men opened the gates to them.”
Anilat looked at him in disbelief, but he persevered.
“And they rushed the walls like animals. With most of the army away north serving with the great king there were just not enough of us.”
The leader shook his head and took another swill of the wine.
“Seems to me they landed from those ships of theirs. The first fighting was down by the docks. Then some of them got through to the north gate and opened it up for the rest. When they defeated the few ships we had in home waters there was nothing to stop them.”
Auntie nodded. “The first fires we saw were down that way. Then it spread wider.”
Haleyna looked around as though she was only just realising where they were. “Where’s father?”

The novel as a whole follows the fortunes of several different groups of people caught up in the destructive migration that the Egyptians attributed to The Sea Peoples. It is about a decade later than Scenes from a Life. The historical events described here are a key landmark in the collapse of the Late Bronze Age cultures. Homer’s Iliad recollects the start of this wave of destruction: The Flame Before Us follows it on as it swept south through the Levant.

Repetition and historical writing 2

Well, a post on repetition simply had to have a follow-up… Actually though some really interesting ideas have come out of conversations around this blog post, so a second one seemed called for. And maybe a third?

Statues at Delos, Cyclades, Greece
Some of the connections which emerged were:

  • Links to Mesopotamian writing, especially in the areas of magic and medicine
  • The fact that much ancient writing was intended to be read aloud rather than silently
  • The Egyptian Tale of the Eloquent Peasant
  • A human tendency to use repetition as a calming influence over disturbance: “there, there”
  • Mantras which are specifically intended to be repeated many times

A couple of things before going back to another ancient source. Firstly, the William Wordsworth link can be found in later editions of Lyrical Ballads in his notes to The Thorn. Among many other things, he says:

There is a numerous class of readers who imagine that the same words cannot be repeated without tautology: this is a great error: virtual tautology is much oftener produced by using different words when the meaning is exactly the same… There are also various other reasons why repetition and apparent tautology are frequently beauties of the highest kind. Among the chief of these reasons is the interest which the mind attaches to words, not only as symbols of the passion, but as things, active and efficient, which are of themselves part of the passion. And further, from a spirit of fondness, exultation, and gratitude, the mind luxuriates in the repetition of words which appear successfully to communicate its feelings…

(See http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wordsworth/william/lyrical/poem9.html)

Secondly, I have been reading a book set in the Punjab area of what was then north-west India, now Pakistan, in which the author deliberately mirrors the Hindi/Urdu pattern of repeating words for emphasis, for example “good-good, nice-nice” or similar. Many languages in the Semitic family do the same. This is a level of reflecting a source language which I have not attempted in my own writing.

So, back to the ancient world, and in particular the mythic poetry from the city of Ugarit (on the coast of modern Syria). There is a very common pattern used here where a series of lines is repeated several times over – for example they might appear first in a dream, then in the morning when the dreamer recounts the dream to another, then a days later when the action itself occurs. For example, in the Tale of King Keret we have this pattern:

  1. The chief god El appears in a dream to Keret and after a brief series of questions gives him a series of instructions for obtaining a wife
  2. Keret wakes up and carries out the first stages of the required actions
  3. He goes to the required city and issues demands which recapitulate the dream again and gets the ride he wants (Hurriy)

But… in the second stage there is a crucial change where Keret goes beyond the requirements El set up, and while en route to the city makes a rash vow to the goddess Athirat if the quest turns out well – rash firstly because the scale of the vow would probably have bankrupted a real king of Ugarit, and secondly because it shows a certain lack of faith in El’s declarations!

By the time Keret comes back successfully from the final stage with Hurriy, either he has forgotten the vow, or else he decides that since things turned out well it was not necessary to fulfil it. Either way, the departure from strict repetition is noted by the gods and things start to go wrong.

This sort of pattern, where departures from exact repetition signal looming disaster for the party concerned, can be found in a wide variety of ancient literature. One can easily imagine an eager audience listening out for the crucial action left out or put in, and being alerted to expect some serious consequences. The basic principle can be found in a number of fairy tales and folk stories, often where the third time of asking brings about the change.

So let’s see what comes out of this particular repeat – nothing disastrous, I hope…

Repetition and historical writing

There is a very interesting shift which has happened in writing in recent years. At many times in the past, word repetition has been recognised as a deliberate rhetorical device. Repeated words, or word roots, have been used to signal something important to the reader or listener. Nowadays, in contrast, editors or reviewers often fasten on repetition as a sign of poor vocabulary, or poor proofreading. About the only sphere we regularly encounter repetition now is in political speeches. Winston Churchill’s wartime speeches were full of repetition – “we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight… we shall fight…“. But even the vastly less nationally stirring backwash from the UK’s recent council and euro elections has had its share, contributed by several of the major speakers, such as “too big, too bossy, too interfering” or “little pearls, little announcements, but the pearls weren’t connected“.

Statues at Delos, Cyclades, Greece

Back in the world of ancient literature, such repetition was used a great deal, in many different contexts. Several of the New Kingdom Egyptian love poems are constructed around repeated word roots. For example the first poem in the papyrus Chester Beatty song cycle 1 is built around various forms of nefer, which has the basic meaning of “beautiful” but in English could also mean “splendid“, “brave“, “outstanding“, and a whole mix of other similar ascriptions of quality. In my own translation of this I have tried to reflect this by using the cluster of words “resplendent“, “splendid“, “splendour“.

Biblical Hebrew has similar examples. When King David’s former enemy Abner comes to him to sue for peace, David is minded to grant it to him (2 Samuel ch.3). There is a friendly encounter in which the phrase “and he went in peace” is repeated verbatim three times within a few verses. Then David’s sidekick Joab returns – a rather vicious man driven by a thirst for revenge. He is outraged that his king has done this, and demands “why did you send him off, and he went?“. The absence of “in peace” stands in stark contrast to all of the previous repetitions. Sure enough, Joab goes in pursuit and murders Abner. The repetition of the phrase, and the textual signal provided by its omission, are both crucial parts of the story. David never forgives this act, and on his deathbed commissions his son Solomon to ensure the death of Joab himself.

What do modern translations do? The Message has “sent off with David’s blessing… dismissed with David’s blessing… sent off with David’s blessing… walk away scot-free“, which at least preserves some sense of repetition. The Living Bible has “return in safety… sent away in peace… [one instance omitted]… letting him get away” which leaves almost nothing of the rhetorical delicacy of the original (though of course the basic story is the same). Most recent translations keep the repetition of “in peace” but vary the verb in different ways; again this preserves some of the sense but not all.

But examples are not limited to the ancient world. There was keen interest in and acceptance of repetition as a device through until the 19th century at least. I am reliably informed that William Wordsworth explored its use in connection with Deborah’s Song (Judges ch.5), which is indeed one of the most striking examples to be found in the Hebrew Bible. He is just one of a long line of writers – for example D.H. Lawrence used repetition a great deal.

So, what should modern writers of historical fiction do? Should they avoid repetition or stick with it? The first choice is apparently favoured by editors and reviewers, but the second might be a more authentic mirror of an older style. And, moreover, careful use of repetition places the writing much more in the centre of the broader literary stream. The problem, of course, is that repetition is also easy to do accidentally, by overlooking options and failing to clean up after edits. That kind of repetition is well worth rooting out, but the deliberate kind, in my view at least, has a great future still.

Review – The Tribute Bride, by Theresa Tomlinson

Almost exactly a year ago I read and reviewed Theresa’s book A Swarming of Bees on Erin Eymard’s Bookworms Fancy blog site. I was thrilled to get a free review copy of her latest book, which I finished earlier today and have immediately set fingers to keyboard.

Buy The Tribute Bride from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Tribute Bride from Amazon.com

The Tribute Bride is set a little earlier, and is almost entirely set in the two kingdoms Deira and Bernicia which together made up the old kingdom of Northumbria – basically the area from modern Hull up to Edinburgh, so a rather larger region than modern Northumberland. The book traces the fortunes of Acha, a princess of Deira (the southern half) from her marriage as a secondary wife to Aethelfrith, king of Bernicia. The marriage is a political necessity for Deira, and an opportunity for male heirs for Bernicia. Acha is caught in the middle of the royal male political games being played out north of the Humber. However, she proves herself well able to manage the situation, forging alliances and friendships with key women – including Aethelfrith’s principal wife Bebba – and men – including senior priests of Woden and Christ. It is a difficult path to tread, and Acha faces considerable suffering and disappointment over the years before finally achieving a form of resolution.

Lindisfarne Bay with the much later fortified house
The period Theresa has chosen to write about here is one that I find fascinating, and as synchronicity would have it I have had a lot to do with key locations in the book this year. Northumberland is a county I have loved for many years, and I have recently returned from visiting there. In the time that Theresa writes about, however, the old names such as Metcalfe (Medcaut) and Dun Guardi were being used rather than Lindisfarne or Bamburgh. At that time already, Lindisfarne was recognised as a sacred, liminal space, alternately joined and separated to the mainland. Earlier in the year, I saw Radwald’s former home at Sutton Hoo, as well as the associated exhibits at the British Museum. Radwald makes a brief but significant appearance towards the end of The Tribute Bride.

The bay looking north from Seahouses towards Bamburgh
Theresa successfully blends detailed characterisation of the main characters with a credible retelling of the social and political context they move in. An additional ingredient in the mix is the vivid flow of religious activity as the newcomer Christianity starts to displace the older religions. Aethelfrith himself is memorable, along with both of his official wives as well as the bed partner he takes campaigning. The remnant of the royal house of Deira is present, and the cast is rounded off with a fair number of supporting characters up and down the land. That list sounds as though the book could be confusing, but in fact the near-consistency of focus through Acha’s eyes resolves the world into a comprehensible – if painful – whole.

One of the Sutton Hoo mounds
The documentary sources recounting this era are few, and often, because of the interests of the chroniclers, scanty on details other than battles and the rise of Christianity. Theresa is clearly familiar with these sources, as well as the growing store of archaeological material which is slowly filling out a more rounded picture of the age.

A few minor comments which do not detract from the quality of the book as a whole. As mentioned, most of the book is from Acha’s viewpoint. However, there are occasional interjections where we jump to another viewpoint – for example we suddenly switch at one point to Aethelfrith musing on his future cunning plans – and for me these were rather intrusive into the main flow. On occasion, these also served to defuse narrative tension by giving away too much information about a coming crisis.

These, however, are very minor points, and I have no hesitation in seeing this as a five-star book. The technical production of the soft-back book is good, the storyline and the people that populate it are credible and fascinating, and for a time you can feel yourself thoroughly immersed in northern England around the start of the seventh century. HIghly recommended if you like this setting.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

Historical writing and translation

A couple of posts ago I wrote about the problems of historical dialogue and translation. Today I want to have a brief look at the particular problems of poetry in historical works, and how these are translated. Some of the same issues about translation arise here – for example the question of whether you go for a modern equivalent to an ancient word, or stick with a less familiar but more accurate concept.

Speaking area, Santorini (Thira), Greece
First, an example from Egyptian poetry. Ezra Pound prepared translations quite a few years of some of the New Kingdom Egyptian love poems. These have been generally regarded as lively and engaging, but have had a less favourable response from Egyptologists. In one poem he uses the word “bathing suit“:

My bathing suit of the best material,
The finest sheer,
Now that it’s wet,
Notice the transparency,
How it clings

Now, the word that Pound renders “bathing suit” in its original sense means something more like a robe – in some contexts a soldier’s protective garment, even, though that would probably not be a good choice here! An Egyptologist’s translation of these lines reads:

in a robe of finest royal linen,
permeated with camphor oil.
[… this line unreadable…]

Although the introduction to Pound’s book claims that the text is “based on literal renderings of the hieroglyphic texts into Italian“, very few students of ancient Egyptian would agree that the final result is a literal rendering! Pound is quite obviously presenting a modern re-presentation of an ancient text. The illustrations chosen to go alongside the words blend men and women in modern dress (well, modern for the late 1950s) together with drawings much more like Egyptian wall paintings. Should Pound have done this? Was he right to use a word here that suggests beach relaxation and sensuous bodily enjoyment, or was he wrong to bring in to the poem a word quite alien to its original culture?

Moving on to the Hebrew Bible, here is a single verse from David’s Lament, found in 2 Samuel 1. First, here is a fairly literal translation of verse 20:

Neither declare it in Gath
nor bear news to the market-places of Ashkelon
lest they rejoice – the daughters of the Philistines
lest they exult – the daughters of the uncircumcised.

It is clear that the verse consists of two pairs of parallel lines. The first pair names two Philistine cities, with each line starting with a command not to publish the news of the Israelite defeat there. The second pair uses two parallel expressions for the Philistine women, with each line starting with a warning about the delight they would feel concerning the news.

By way of contrast, here are four recent translations:

New International Version
Tell it not in Gath,
proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon,
lest the daughters of the Philistines be glad,
lest the daughters of the uncircumcised rejoice.

Good News Version
Do not announce it in Gath
or in the streets of Ashkelon.
Do not make the women of Philistia glad;
do not let the daughters of pagans rejoice.

The Message
Don’t announce it in the city of Gath,
don’t post the news in the streets of Ashkelon.
Don’t give those coarse Philistine girls
one more excuse for a drunken party!

New Living Translation
Don’t announce the news in Gath,
or the Philistines will rejoice.
Don’t proclaim it in the streets of Ashkelon,
or the pagans will laugh in triumph.

Clearly the New International and Good News versions stick quite closely to the word order and meaning of the original, with only minor changes. The Good News version chooses simpler vocabulary and sentence structure, in keeping with the translators’ goals, but keeps the pattern given by the Hebrew text. Both versions preserve the parallelism within each pair of lines, between the two town names on the one hand, and the two descriptions of rejoicing women on the other. “Pagan” in the Good News version perhaps suggests a value judgement about Philistine religion which the descriptive term “uncircumcised” avoids (though to be fair this word increasingly came to have a pejorative value in Hebrew thought).

Moving on, The Message keeps the town names parallel, but completely disrupts any sense that the second pair of lines had parallel descriptions at all. It also speculates on the nature of the celebrations – that they involve drunkenness – considerably beyond anything the text has to say. The effect is to paint for the reader a rather blacker picture of the Philistines than the original author chose to write – indeed one with slightly racist overtones.

The New Living Translation makes a fascinating choice. The two pairs of parallel lines are kept, but have been rearranged. The new organisation was presumably reckoned to be simpler for a reader to grasp, as the instructions “don’t tell…” are directly linked to the consequences “or else…”. Moreover, the celebrations are no longer the province of women but will apparently be carried out by the whole population of these towns. From a historical point of view, victory celebrations in this era typically were in fact led by women – a gender difference which, perhaps, the translators did not wish to highlight. In the interest of presenting a simple, clear verbal image, both the specific words of the text and the results of historical investigation are set to one side.

What do we make of this? Bible readers in many churches are often encouraged by speakers to compare several translations in order to get an overall sense of the meaning of a passage, even if a single version is routinely used within services. Generally speaking this is good advice, but the example from David’s Lament shows that actually doing this in the case of poems can be confusing. Faced with this diversity of presenting material, what is the non-specialist reader to do?

For my own part, I would rather grapple with something closer to the original. If an original author has taken the trouble to use a particular word, pattern, or overall form, I want to engage with that rather than be offered someone else’s opinion of what the author might have said if they were living today. But other readers might disagree, and feel that a modern “upgrade” helps them get the point. At very least, as readers we need to be aware how much modern filtering is going on between us today and the original design of the author.

Writing, both historical and speculative