Is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and the saga and the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer’s bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish? But the difficulty lies not in understanding that the Greek arts and epic are bound up with certain forms of social development. The difficulty is that they still afford us artistic pleasure and that in a certain respect they count as a norm and as an unattainable model. ~ Marx, The Grundrisse
This is one of a handful of quotes from Marx that lives in my head, not because it’s some kind of credo that I live by or something, but because it succinctly frames some ideas and questions that have stuck with me over the years. I’m on the record as being skeptical of a deterministic, or even an overly strong, connection between specific art forms and particular modes of social development — on the one hand, yes, it is of course true that certain literary forms are more typical of one historical moment than another. But on the other hand, you might say that The Perfect Nine proves that epic poetry does not end, because here it is! But, you might also say, well sure, but it’s a self-consciously belated version, not the same as the “real” thing, etc. But you might also say, no way! The fact that the author chose to rewrite this epic poem as an epic poem, but with a feminist sensibility, demonstrates that there is a continued need for this specific form, rather than, say, a graphic novel version. One can argue either side! And then, of course, there’s the separate question of pleasure.
Anyways, I found this book very pleasurable. It feels like you are being told a story, in that folkloric kind of way, but it was vivid enough that I was drawn in more than is often the case with folktales, for me anyway. The characters were just rounded enough, the world and its laws had a sense of concrete specificity. Yet, in the fashion of parables, there was a sense of depth in the symbolism, and larger cosmic drama rendered allegorically. (I feel like I’m being vague here, and that’s probably because I read the book a month ago, and have just fallen woefully behind on blogging… Sigh. So I’ll just end this post here, without trying to wrap it up in tidy fashion, because that’s what this blog is, after all — a continuous draft).
Kasia Reads 