Twitter as a Greek chorus?
The Greek classics come with baggage: When writers update them, they’re not just rewriting stories, but taking on a whole tradition. Here’s how novelists Kamila Shamsie ( Home Fire), David Vann ( Bright Air Black) and Colm Toibin ( House of Names), and critic/ memoirist Daniel Mendelsohn ( An Odyssey) reimagine and comment on ancient literary conventions.
Catharsis
“Closure is a word I’ve come to hate,” Mendelsohn says — because it isn’t earned. It usually involves skirting difficult emotions, as opposed to the ancient Greek concept of catharsis, which means working through them to cleanse oneself. Mendelsohn points out that Odysseus’s name translates literally as “the man of pain,” and in An Odyssey, he works through unresolved issues in his own relationship with his stoic father. A mythic tale acquires a personal resonance. “There’s a lot of sadness in the epic,” Mendelsohn says, “and I think that accurately reflects a certain sadness of human existence.”
Greek chorus
In Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie reimagines the chorus, which comments on the action in ancient Greek drama, for the present day: Her characters are alternately attacked and lionized online and in the press, via tweets and tabloid headlines. “The Greek chorus was very fickle too,” she notes. “If you read Antigone, Creon is saying, ‘I’m going to do this and be strong,’ and they say, ‘Yes, yes, be strong.’ And then Antigone walks by looking beautiful and weeping, and they say, ‘Oh, our heart is going out to her.’ So the Greek chorus actually might as well be social media.”
The Gods
The gods are ever-present in Greek classics, whether front and centre or looming in the background, but in House of Names, they have slid into irrelevance — at least for the ruling class. Clytemnestra, the book’s first narrator, reflects: “They have departed, those who oversaw death.” So her husband Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter to obtain favourable winds for his ships seems not only horrific, but ultimately backward and pointless. Toíbín writes about the time when superstition fades and gives way to politics (and politicians) — where prayers to the divine are replaced by the cynical alliances of strange bedfellows. One scary age gives way to another.
The Unities
Aristotle is often understood to have insisted that plays should be focused and compact — in other words, “united” in time, action, and setting. Vann, who calls himself a “neoclassical” writer, creates a novelistic equivalent with Bright Air Black, which sticks tightly to Medea’s consciousness, “showing every moment in real time through gesture and dialogue.” Easier said than done: “It’s hard to do continuous action and have it not feel slack.” To avoid boring his readers, he draws out tension and uses an attention-seizing, fragmented style that looks back to an earlier, more direct way of seeing the world: “It’s the clearest way that I could step back in time.”