Dido - Adele Geras

Adele Geras very kindly sent me a copy of the above book and I enjoyed it just as much as the other two with Greek settings, Ithaka and Troy.   What I like about these titles is the way the Gods just stroll in and out and round about talking to the characters and either cheering them up, if they are Aprhrodite, making them giggle (Wings on his head and feet and she most distinctly saw greenish feathers edged with gold, flapping gently at his heels) and upsetting them if they are Hades, the God of Death. 

Aeneas who has fled from the burning city of Troy seeks refuge in Carthage,the city founded by Dido, who takes one look at this glorious warrior and falls in love with him. ".....his voice was beautiful, deep and true like a note of music made by a golden instrument. Although he was ragged, unkempt and dirty after a long sea voyage, he towered over the harbour master and it was hard not to admire his muscled, sun browned arms".

It is, of course, a doomed love as all readers of Greek literature will know and even more so in this story as the reader is presented with Dido and Aeneas as ordinary human beings who can get bad tempered and quarrel with each other as well as being in love.  However, Aeneas has his eye on Dido's favourite handmaiden, Elissa, who is deeply in love with him as well and the betrayal is inevitable.

Comes the day when Aeneas has to leave to fulfil his destiny "It's hard to explain only I've always known that I was spared during the war in Troy because there was something else I had to do before I died. And now it's clear.  I am to found a new city across the sea"  He cannot stay in Carthage as he knows Dido would be reluctant to share her power and nor would she come with him and leave her home behind.

So he goes and then Elissa discovers she is pregnant with his child.  She has to keep this hidden from the distraught queen who is almost mad with grief at the departure of Aeneas, but her secret is betrayed by the poet, Iopas, also in love with Elissa who is jealous and determined to hurt her.  It is all a very modern love triangle, but there is nothing new under the sun and this is why these books are so immediate and why the reader forgets they are set in ancient Greece.  The dilemmas and emotions are exactly the same as those we suffer now.

So we have Dido, betrayed by Elissa, who she loved as a daughter and abandoned by Aeneas. "I can't bear it. Whispers everywhere I went....the pity on everyone's face.  Elissa - why should you be punished when I myself lost what little sense I had in Aeneas' presence?  .....even worse, more wounding than the voices of the living will be the voices of the dead.  What will historians and poets says about me? What will they write?.......I know exactly how the story will be presented.....the great leader Aeneas, stopped in Carthage on his way to found a powerful nation and fell in love, briefly, with the queen whose name was Dido.  That's what they will say unless I make the story mine and I have the power to do that.  And I will do it...."

And the great bed in which she and Aeneas slept is taken to the courtyard and piled high with furniture, clothes and jewels, anything that reminds her of him and she lies upon it and sets fire to her funeral pyre.

"....the bed and everything that was on it blazed and roared and she heard someone speaking and the words sounded cool and sweet 'I have come Dido, I will take your soul to the Elysian fields, rest now - there will be no more pain, never again"

These three books with Greek settings are not marketed for adult readers, yet I think that they cross the barrier of age and anybody can read and enjoy them.  I have found them all funny, witty, sad, moving and beautifully written with real characters and real feelings and it was rather hard to read the last few pages of Dido without remembering Dido's farewell from the opera by Purcell.  The Queen's lament is extraordinarily beautiful and the long drawn out notes of the words 'remember me' are some of the most sublime ever written, imbued with grief and sadness.

  

When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs create

No trouble, no trouble in thy breast;

Remember me, remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

Remember me, but ah! forget my fate

 And we do....