The Homecomings: The "Nostoi": The background to The Arrow of Apollo

The Trojan War itself lasted for 10 years. The story of how the siege was eventually won is famous: the horse that was built and left on the shore as a gift; that was dragged into the rejoicing city; and that in fact was a devious trap, full of Greek soldiers, who slipped out at night and caused carnage.

There are many other stories in the Trojan Cycle: such as when Achilles fought Penthesilea, the Queen of the Amazons, and fell in love with her as he killed her; or when Memnon, Prince of the Dawn, arrived from Ethiopia with his army. Achilles himself was killed by an arrow in his ankle, so they say, shot by Paris.

After the siege finished, there were many horrors: Hector's son Astynanax killed; Priam's daughter, Polyxena, was called for as a sacrifice by the hungry ghost of Achilles; Ajax the Greater went mad and slaughtered sheep; the Trojan Women are enslaved. But some Trojans did escape: notably, prince Aeneas, who went on, after many travels, to found a city in Italy.

And then the Greeks went home. Some say that Menelaus, stopping at Egypt, was shocked to discover that Helen had been there all the time, and that the Helen in Troy was simply a phantasm. Others say that was a fiction, made only to save Helen's reputation. But one by one they reached home, and went back to the business of their farms and towns. 

Two homecomings were more famous: Odysseus, whose travels made the matter for another epic poem; and Agamemnon. 

When King Agamemnon returned home, it was not to be greeted joyfully by Clytemnestra. She had been nursing revenge in her heart all this time; and so, she, with the help of Aegisthus, slew her husband and his concubine Cassandra. Agamemnon's son Orestes returned later; and with his sister Electra, they too took revenge on their mother and Aegisthus. 

This is where The Arrow of the Apollo picks up the thread: years later, when Orestes is getting old; he has settled his debt with the Furies, and he has a son, Tisamenos. And Aeneas, too, had a son, Silvius: myth and legend do not record much about them, and so there is a satisfyingly blank space where a writer can fill in a story. 

The stage is then set for The Arrow of Apollo: taking place at the end of an era of gods and heroes, and looking forward to a new age. 

THE ARROW OF APOLLO: HELP FUND THE BOOK ON UNBOUND

The Arrow of Apollo by Philip Womack launches on Unbound

Today is a great day: I have launched The Arrow of Apollo on Unbound, the wonderful crowd-funding publisher. I'm very excited about this - partly because they make such beautiful books, but also because it's a chance for this idea to reach an audience directly. There is a synopsis below, but you can read more here on the Unbound website.

An epic children's adventure set in the legendary past: three friends must find the magical Arrow of Apollo before evil consumes the world

The gods are leaving the earth, tempted by other worlds where they can live in peace. Only a few retain an interest in the mortals left behind, including Hermes, the messenger god, and Apollo, Lord of Light. Other, darker, more ancient forces are wakening, and threatening to take over.
In The Arrow of Apollo three teenagers encounter increasingly perilous situations in order to defeat Python, the most terrible enemy of all. It draws freely on Greek and Roman myth, whilst telling stories that have not been told before in a gripping, fast-flowing tale for boys and girls aged eleven plus, combining literary quality with an absorbing plot.
In The Arrow of Apollo, two opposing houses are forced to come together to face a terrible danger. Silvius, son of Aeneas, of the Italian House of the Wolf, is given a task by a dying centaur. The dark god Python is rising and massing an army of unstoppable force. The only thing that can save the world is the Arrow of Apollo - but it was split into two.
Against his father’s wishes, Silvius and his friend Elissa must travel to the land of their enemies, the Achaeans.
Meanwhile, Tisamenos, the son of Orestes, is facing his own dangers in the kinghouse of Mykenai. A plot is afoot against both him and his father, and he is the only one who can stop it.
When Silvius, Elissa and Tisamenos meet, they enter a final, terrifying race to reunite Arrowhead and Shaft, and destroy the army of the Python.
There’s one more problem: a prophecy tells that one of them will die.

Revenge Tragedy Talk at Harrow

Last week I gave a talk on Revenge Tragedy at Harrow. Happening on the school from the road is rather a wonderful experience: as if, turning a corner, you've left London and slipped into another world.

My lecture was, specifically, on Hamlet and The Duchess of Malfi. Revenge tragedy is such a fascinating concept: two people on a stage; one wrongs the other, and then everything spirals out from there. I looked at the origins of the genre, from the House of Atreus' first crimes to their absolution in Orestes; and at the threads that bind Orestes to Hamlet (with a sideglance at Titus Andronicus - and those poor Goths baked in a pie.) I discussed how Hamlet's attitude to revenge is very much linked to memory, and whether he really wants his revenge; and then looked at how The Duchess of Malfi isn't really a revenge play at all. There was plenty more to discuss, and meat (quite literally) for myriad articles.

I note now the aptness of talking about revenge at Harrow: the school of Lord Byron, whose heroes, moody, implacable and aware of their own villainy, can be seen as logical extensions of the revenger. And his links to vampires make it even more fitting: the vampire as revenant, seeking revenge from beyond the grave. Next time...

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done: review

A man wielding a samurai sword talks to his hick uncle about giant chickens whilst a dwarf stands mutely in the background on top of a giant hewn tree stump: yes, it's what we've all been waiting for - Philip's dream diary! Actually, no, come back - it's what we really have all been waiting for - a collaboration between oneiric aeronauts Werner Herzog and David Lynch. When I heard about this film (from one of those snazzy little New Yorker reviews that make you realise why you shell out five quid for it every now and again) I stuck the review to my board and waited and waited... I got the DVD for Christmas, and watched it last night.

On one level, it is supposedly a true story, about a young man who goes insane and kills his mother in front of their neighbours. On another, it is a retelling of Aeschylus' Oresteia. This is the level I was most interested in (although it would be fascinating to read details of the case). There was no suggestion of a skeleton in the family closet: Brad (played with astonishing, almost automaton-like power by Michael Shannon) was a strange man who lived with his mother in a house inhabited (and decorated) by flamingos. It was his closeness to his mother that provided the necessary motive, (rather than Clytemnestra's killing of Agamemnon.) She was ably played by Grace Zabriskie as a neurotic, gurning control-freak who swanned around in padded dressing gowns and twisted her hands a lot. She reminded me, in fact, of a detail from a performance of the Oresteia I saw about eleven years ago, when a camera was used to focus in on Clytemnestra's twisting hands as she talked to the audience. Brad, perhaps escaping his mother, perhaps seeking something else, goes to Peru with some friends; when they all die, drowned in white water rapids, except him, he believes he has been saved by an 'inner voice'. He starts to obey this voice, which causes him to change his life drastically.

The action takes place from the finding of the body of Brad's mother; a siege of Brad's house begins; it ends with his arrest (unity of time and place). There are suitable flashbacks as narrated by the two people closest to Brad (apart from mummy dearest, of course): his girlfriend (acted with gamine charm by the doe-like Chloe Sevigny), and a theatre director (Udo Kier looking and speaking with a high degree of European camposity.) Willem Defoe plays the (extremely polite) policeman. The diction is often quite high - the title of the film comes from the last words Brad's mother says to him as he kills her.

Brad has taken the lead role in a production of the Oresteia: its themes and resonances begin to obsess him deeply. They fit in with his own increasingly skewed view of the world, in which he must 'razzle them. Dazzle them.' His hallucinations lead him to see God in a can of oatmeal; his uncle provides a disturbingly vivid vision of the apocalpyse (which, despite it concerning giant chickens, is oddly effective. Hence the dwarf and the stump. You'll just have to watch it.)

When the SWAT team swarms over Brad's bright pink house it's as if the Furies have descended upon the house of Atreus - that house, bathed in blood from Tantalus to Orestes, generation after generation of cannibals, killers. (Incidentally, I've often wondered what it would be like to sit in on a gathering of the Atreidae. 'So, Electra, been up to much recently?' 'Well, after Orestes and I killed mum, we thought we'd go and visit our supposedly dead sister - it turned out after all that daddy hadn't killed her, instead Artemis - thank the gods - had substituted a deer! Fancy a chop? I hope that grandfather hasn't gone wild again... talking of which, anyone seen Pelops?')

Whereas the end of Aeschylus' play suppresses the terrible wild justice of the Erinyes, and replaces it with the formal justice of Athena, here there was ambiguity. Would Brad's insanity play a factor? A final image, of a basketball left by Brad in a tree in the hope that a boy would find it, provides a haunting sense of tantalising (ha!) redemption - but compromised. When a boy does pick up the ball, is he merely carrying on the cycle, or is he ending it?

All in all, a psychotically interesting brew, scored with jazz and cellos blazing, and with sudden static moments underscoring the action that are striking when they happen and gain a new layer of meaning at the end. A loopy delight. Now, back to those chickens...

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? [DVD] [2009]