The Memoirs Of Helen Of Troy - Couverture rigide

Elyot, Amanda

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0307209989 ISBN 13 : 9780307209986

Editeur : Crown Pub, 2005

Synopsis

Book by Elyot Amanda

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Chapter 1

I learned that I was different when I was a very small girl: when the golden curls, which barely reached my shoulders at the time, began to turn the color of burnished vermeil. Your grandmother Leda, whom you never knew, told me that I was a child of Zeus. Since I thought my father’s name was Tyndareus, her words upset me. Seeing my pink cheeks marred by tears of confusion, my mother handed me a mirror of polished bronze and asked me to study my reflection. “Do you look like me?” she asked.

I nodded, noting in my own skin the exquisite fairness of her complexion, and her hair the same shade as mine that tumbled like flowing honey past the hollow of her back.

“And do you resemble my husband Tyndareus?” she said to me.

I looked in the mirror and then looked again. For several minutes I remember expecting the mirror to show me my father’s face, but Tyndareus was olive complected where I was not, his nose like the beak of a falcon where my own was straight and fine-boned, and his cheekbones were hollow and slack where, even then, beneath a child’s rosy plumpness, mine were high and prominent.

“It’s time for me to tell you everything,” my mother said, and without another word, she clasped my hand and led me along the corridor of the gynaeceum, the women’s quarters of the palace that overlooked a pretty courtyard inlaid with colored tile. I remember running my little finger along the polychrome frescoes that were painted on the courtyard walls, tracing the crests of the cerulean waves that depicted tales of Spartan sea voyages to Cyprus, Ithaca, and Crete, places whose names I’d heard, but which were no more than exotic sounds to me at the time. Even rendered in artists’ colors, the Great Sea held an allure that I could not then explain. As a child, my favorite part of the painted waves was the spray that tipped each one; I was certain it was real enough to evaporate like soap bubbles on my fingertip. My mother told me that Aphrodite, our goddess of love and beauty, was born of the seafoam. She was the most beautiful goddess in the world, Leda said, and one of the oldest—as old as Zeus, although men had forgotten that, preferring to honor the newer, warrior goddesses— sexless Athena and Artemis the chaste. I had seen only five summers then, but on that day, my mother told me that I was old enough to learn the story of Aphrodite’s extraordinary conception.

“Long ago,” my mother began, “there was a tremendous battle in the heavens. Zeus’s father, Kronos, who was the son of earth and sky, quarreled with his own father, Uranus; with a sharpened flint, Kronos destroyed his father’s fertile manhood, severing it from Uranus’s body and flinging it into the sea below. As it plunged into the hungry waves, the winedark water boiled up into a white froth—seafoam—from which emerged the goddess Cypris, who we call Aphrodite; she was accompanied by Eros—Lust,and Himeros—Desire.”

“I don’t understand,” I said to her, focusing I suppose on the grotesque act of dismemberment and wondering how someone so beautiful could end up being born through such a disgusting exploit. “Love and Beauty, Lust and Desire are almost as old as the world,” my mother answered. They were part of an old religion, she said, long before Zeus became king of the gods. “Come, I’ll show you.”

Her decision seemed a sudden one. My mother had always considered me too young to initiate into the mysteries of the old ways, when men and women alike saw wisdom in plants, divinity in trees and streams. That was before they devised gods in their own image and assigned each one a separate sphere of influence, diminishing the power of the earth goddess with the invention of each new deity.

I’m remembering now that she wouldn’t let go of my hand, even when I whined that her nails were digging into the soft pink flesh of my palms. “I’m sorry,” she said, and gripped me tighter. She was walking too fast for me, and I had to take two steps to every one of hers to keep up with her. I was practically skipping. Past the palace gate, we descended the terraced hills to the valley below, then traversed the entire length of the grassy plain that lay just beyond a small structure of sundried brick and hardened clay, a dun-colored farmhouse situated at the farthest edge of the city.

I’d wanted to slow our pace so I could pick a sprig or two of wild columbine to wear in my hair. “Are we in a hurry?” I asked my mother. She stopped for a moment and turned to me, still gripping my hand. She studied my face as though she wanted to weave my image into one of her tapestries to hang forever behind her deep green eyes.

“No, I suppose we’re not,” she said, and slowed our trot to a more leisurely walk. At the far end of the plain was a grove of trees.

“Where are we going?” I asked her.

“The altar,” she said.

“But we already passed the altar,” I insisted, turning and pointing back toward the palace. We sacrificed animals there on holidays and festivals, to bless a birth or honor a death, or to ask the gods for better weather. I always covered my eyes when Tyndareus or the priests slit the beasts’ throats. Their blood, smelling of metal, issuing from the still-pulsing veins, would flow in a crimson stream onto the stones of the pergamos where we gathered to witness the ritual. It always made my stomach rise up to meet my throat. I never got used to it. Even today, I need to look away and hold my breath to avoid the sight and stench of hot entrails freshly spilt.

I’m remembering now that during the sacrifices, our mother made my older sister Clytemnestra hold my hand so I wouldn’t run away and disgrace the family. And Clytemnestra would snicker beneath her veil and laugh at me for my folly, for my squeamishness. “Spartan women don’t cringe at the sight of a little blood,” she said. After that, when I shielded my eyes from the sacrifices, I turned them on Clytemnestra’s face instead. As the life of a goat or lamb or calf was ended with a single sweep of the knife, my sister’s expression grew oddly serene, although her eyes would shine like those of a woman in love. Clytemnestra liked blood. Clytemnestra . . . who always wore red from the time she was only ten summers old. . . .

“A different altar,” my mother said. “Here, in the grove.” I never knew there was any other. She led me from the sunlit plain into the cool blue-greenness between the poplars. I whined that my legs were tired and that I couldn’t see anything except trees and asked if we could go home; but she begged a few more minutes of my patience, bringing me deeper into the grove until we came upon the ruins of a temple, at the center of which was a stone as high as I was tall. “This is the altar I spoke of,” my mother said. “And there,” she added, pointing at one of the taller trees, “was where we worshipped the Goddess. Her mask hung like an effigy from that tree. There, see? The one where the mother bird is building her nest. Birds are sacred to the Goddess.”

I must have looked at her in utter confusion because we didn’t worship just one unnamed goddess. In fact, there were so many gods that I couldn’t remember all of their names. We offered tributes to Demeter at sowing time to ensure a bountiful harvest, and we brought her its gifts at reaping time to thank her. We poured libations to Dionysus at the advent of the grape harvest, made sacrifices to Zeus and Poseidon and Athena for victory in battle and safe passage on the high seas, to Artemis for a bountiful hunt, and even to Aphrodite to grant us success in affairs of the heart, but I’d not heard of “the Goddess.”

“She is the center of the old religion,” my mother explained impatiently, having fully expected her five-year-old daughter to comprehend this complicated theology. “I told you that Aphrodite was old, but the Goddess is even older. She has many names; in nearby Mycenae, for example, she is called Potnia—but she is the same being, the giver and sustainer of life. In the days of my mother, Eurythemis, and in her mother’s, and in her mother’s before her, stretching back for longer than any living man or woman can remember, there was a festival sacred to the Goddess that was held every spring in this grove. Only the women of Laconia were permitted to participate. The men knew enough then to keep away, respecting our celebration. There was music and there was dancing and there was wine.”

My mother told me that my grandmother and all the women of her line were priestesses devoted to the Goddess just as she was, although Tyndareus had tried to put an end to the old ways a few years ago by destroying the temple, telling my mother that we would worship only the new gods from then on and that there was no room for the Goddess in Sparta.

I didn’t see what difference it made which gods people worshipped as long as believing in different ones didn’t make them fight the way I would hear my mother argue with Tyndareus. “And it’s so pretty here,” I said, dropping my voice to a whisper. My words disappeared in the rustling of leaves. The grove was deliciously fragrant, though I couldn’t identify the aroma. Not pine, not lemon, not olive. The breeze bore the scent like a gift to my nostrils.

My mother placed her right hand on the altar. I reached up and did the same. I’m amazed that I can still recall how cool the stone felt against my ski...

Présentation de l'éditeur

History’s Greatest BeautyTells the Story of Her Life

Gossips began whispering about Princess Helen from the moment of her birth. A daughter of the royal house of Sparta, she was not the progeny of King Tyndareus, they murmured, but of Zeus, king of the gods. Her mother, Queen Leda, a powerful priestess, was branded an adulteress, with tragic consequences. As Helen grew to adulthood her beauty was so breathtaking it overshadowed that of every woman in Sparta. When she was kidnapped by Theseus, king of Athens, in a gambit to replenish his kingdom’s coffers, she was relieved to get away from the place where she had been so unhappy.

Helen fell in love with the much older Theseus, and to his surprise, he returned the feelings. But soon Helen was forced to return to Sparta and was hastily married off to the tepid Menelaus for the sake of an advantageous political alliance. After years of marriage, the spirited, passionate Helen was not the docile wife King Menelaus desired, and when she fell in love with another man—Paris Alexandros, the prodigal son of King Priam of Troy—Helen unwittingly set the stage for the ultimate conflict: a war that would destroy nearly all she held dear.

In this lush, compelling novel of passion and loss, Helen of Troy, a true survivor, tells the truth about her life, her lovers, and the Trojan War. This is the memoir that she has written—her legendary beauty still undimmed by age.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Crown Pub
• Date d'édition: 2005
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0307209989
• ISBN 13: 9780307209986
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 308
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: MUSIC STORE professional GmbH; 022188841282; Lars.Mueller@musicstore.de; ; Istanbulstr. 22-26; Köln; 51103; Allemagne