![]() ![]() According to Miller's version, Circe is initially chiefly unhappy and immature, given to thoughtless lashing out that she lives to regret. Secretly kind to Prometheus after he is condemned for giving fire to the humans, she is exiled to Aiaia not for this transgression but for her use of witchcraftto turn the mortal Glaucos, with whom she is in love, into a god and, when Glaucos spurns her for the beautiful but feckless nymph Scylla, for transforming her into the sea monster who will plague sailors for generations. Her unhappy youth is explained, as the eldest and least cherished of Perse's children by Helios, mocked for her unlovely voice (she will learn later, from Hermes, that "you sound like a mortal"). Miller, writing once again in the first person ("The Song of Achilles" was narrated by Patroclus), gives voice to Circe as a multifaceted and evolving character. ![]() In all of these stories, Circe is at once important and liminal just as she is a figure of uncertain powers, a minor immortal, the daughter of Helios, god of the sun and a Titan, and Perse, a lowly naiad. She features, too, in the story of the Minotaur: Pasiphae, wife of King Minos and mother of Phaedra, Ariadne and the Minotaur (fathered, of course, by a sacred bull), is Circe's sister. Others will recall that Circe - Medea's aunt, the sister of her father, Aeetes - cleansed Medea and Jason of their crimes, as they fled Colchis with the Golden Fleece and murdered Medea's brother. Those familiar with the "Odyssey" will of course recall the wanderer's visit to her island Aiaia - she's perhaps best known as the witch who turns the sailors into pigs, and yet who ultimately invites Odysseus to be her lover and to abide with her, along with his men, for a year. Like its predecessor, Miller's new book, "Circe," illuminates known stories from a new perspective. In this newspaper, Daniel Mendelsohn described the book as having "the head of a young adult novel, the body of the 'Iliad' and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland" - ironically a fitting contemporary monster for the task of bringing the "Iliad" to a new readership. Her fresh and contemporary understanding of this ancient story from the "Iliad" thrilled many and unnerved others. In that novel, Miller took on the story of Achilles from the perspective of Patroclus, his intimate and, in Miller's version, his lover. More recently, Madeline Miller, a classicist and teacher, published "The Song of Achilles": Widely acclaimed and translated, it received the Orange Prize for fiction in 2012. Mary Renault stands as the 20th-century exemplar of the fully imagined retelling, most famously with "The King Must Die," in which she granted Theseus his voice and conjured for readers the minute and vivid details of his upbringing and heroic deeds. As familiar as those from the Bible, these stories saturate our literary history, in renditions and translations, allusions and transformations. In all versions, the concision and openness of the accounts were essential: Somehow authoritative rather than vague, they allowed an exhilarating freedom of imagination. ![]() New York Times Review IRECALL WITH intense pleasure my discovery in childhood of the Greek myths and Homer's "Iliad," in various editions, from an early acquaintance with d'Aulaire's to Roger Lancelyn Green's versions and, at the French school I attended for several years, a collection memorably entitled "Mythes et Légendes du Monde Grecque et Barbare." Homer proper came later, in high school, affording both similar and distinct pleasures. ![]() To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love. But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves. But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. ![]()
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