Imaginary Worlds - Reimagining the Gods

Episode Date: January 10, 2019

Madeline Miller received critical acclaim for her novels The Song of Achilles and Circe – which reimagine The Iliad and The Odyssey told from the perspective of minor characters in the original texts by Homer. As someone who grew up loving Greek myths, she wanted to capture the sense of wonder she felt about them, and the raw emotional truth inside those very human tales of immortal beings. But she struggled for years to find a modern voice for these classical characters, and rewriting Homer was daunting task. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky, and this is the actress Robin Kerr reading from the novel The Song of Achilles. He yawned, his eyes heavy-lidded. What's your name? His kingdom was half, a quarter, an eighth the size of my father's, and I had killed a boy and been exiled, and still he did not know me.

I ground my jaw shut and would not speak. He asked again, louder. What's your name? Patroclus. It was the name my father had given me, hopefully but injudiciously at my birth, and it tasted of bitterness on my tongue. Honor of the father, it meant. I waited for him to make a joke out of it, some witty jape about my disgrace. He did not. Perhaps I thought he is too stupid to. He rolled onto his side to face me. A stray lock of gold fell half into his eyes.

He blew it away. My name is Achilles. In The Song of Achilles, the novelist Madeline Miller reimagined the Iliad, told from the point of view of a secondary character called Patroclus. In her latest novel, Madeline also reimagined another work by Homer. This time it was the Odyssey from the point of view of a minor character called Circe. Now I binged on both novels because her writing is so vivid. It's like the words disappear and you're just there in your mind seeing what the characters see.

And both of her novels have been huge bestsellers. They've won a bunch of awards. It was actually challenging to get a hold of Madeline Miller because she's been on this huge book tour for Circe. When we finally talked, I asked her, how does it feel to be in such high demand? Completely surreal. I mean, it's really hard to absorb it. I'm incredibly grateful for it. I still kind of have the impulse

when I see someone with my book to give them my kidney. It really feels like this total shock. So tell me about your first encounter with Greek mythology as a kid, as far back as you can remember. So my earliest memory goes all the way back to when I was five or six. My mom used to read me pieces of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I think I felt like I was getting a view into

an adult world as well as sort of the excitement of the adventures. I mean, you know, there's the Cyclops and, you know, six headed monsters and the sirens, and there's all that kind of stuff, which is exciting. But I think the thing that most appealed to me was, wow, this is real. This feels real. Why do you think it felt real? You know, in some ways, I think it's the same reason it feels real to me today, which is that these stories are fundamentally, you know, which is that these stories are fundamentally, you know, six-headed monsters and gods aside. They're fundamentally about people and human nature. And though our culture has changed, I think human nature hasn't changed.

And so it felt like I was seeing something that was true, even though it was so old and fantastical. By the way, this episode is going to be full of spoilers, if you're not familiar with the Iliad or the Odyssey. So like a lot of people, Madeline first became interested in Greek mythology as a little kid, and then her interest picked up again when she studied homework in college. That's actually when she got the spark of an idea that led to her first novel,

The Song of Achilles. And this aha moment that she had actually touches on a debate that's been going on in literature for years. Who gets to tell their story? I mean, a story is powerful, and the power comes from the question of why. Like, why does the main character do what they do? If the narrative is crafted in a way for us to understand their motivations, they get our empathy and our understanding. But traditionally, that kind of identification has been reserved for straight, white male characters,

going all the way back to the beginnings of Western literature, the Iliad and the Odyssey. And for Madeline, this question of who gets to tell their story really struck her when she came across the character of Patroclus, who is a close companion of Achilles during the Trojan War. Patroclus is killed and his body is brought to Achilles. And Achilles just completely loses it. It's as if a bomb goes off in his life. He wants to kill himself. That's his first thought. The other Greeks stop him. And then he immediately wants to go and get vengeance on the person who took Patroclus from him. And even once he has killed that person, who is Hector, the great prince of Troy, that's not enough. He has to keep, you know, dragging the body around the walls of

Troy. And so that level of sort of having Achilles' life overturned was so interesting because it felt like a real mystery. Why did it feel like such a mystery? Well, Patroclus is not a major character in the Iliad. In fact, right before his death, the story has been mainly focused on the conflict between Achilles and his commander, Agamemnon. Achilles is the greatest warrior in the ancient world, but he refuses to fight

because he thinks that Agamemnon has disrespected him, which for Achilles is not a trivial matter. The backstory to the Iliad is that Achilles has made this choice to die young and be famous forever. And so he has literally given up his life for his reputation. So when Agamemnon threatens that, he has to kind of hit the nuclear button, say, I'm not going to fight for you. And in the background, the whole time, there's this character Patroclus. We hear he's the most beloved companion of Achilles, but he's always, he's there, but he doesn't really talk. He doesn't have a lot of, you know, stage time. And then it comes to this moment where the Greeks are losing. Please, Achilles, won't you fight? No,

he won't. And into this moment steps this character, Patroclus. And he says, I'll put on your armor, Achilles, and I will go out and I will fight. And the Trojans will think it is you, and they will run away. And that is, in fact, what happens. But in the course of this very courageous thing that Patroclus does, he is killed. So it was Achilles' grief reaction, sort of the mystery of who is this person who is so important to Achilles that even though Achilles has been saying nothing can make me fight again, as soon as Patroclus is dead, all that is out the window. And then it's also some of the descriptions of Patroclus and the Iliad are really unusual. Achilles is not the only person who mourns

for Patroclus. He's also mourned by Briseis, a slave woman who is partially part of the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon. And she describes him as being always gentle, which is a really, as if you know the ancient Greek myth, that is a really unusual description for an ancient hero. You know, it's strong or brave or fast or beautiful, but not gentle. So it sort of felt to me like Homer is telling the end of their story. What's the beginning of their story? How do we get to that moment in the Iliad when Achilles' life is completely broken open? And I wanted it to be a love story. That was really important to me. I felt that

the tradition of Achilles and Patroclus being lovers is a very, very old tradition. It goes back to Plato and Aeschylus. But it had kind of dropped out when I was studying classics. I think it's coming back more now, which is nice. But it had basically dropped out as an interpretation. And I was incredibly frustrated by that. So I wanted it to come from that perspective, too. So she had a great idea for a novel, but that's when the self-doubt kicked in, because she had never written a novel before. And for her first book, she was going to rewrite Homer. And she struggled for years with this book.

I mean, she wrote draft after draft, kept throwing them out. It also didn't help that an ex-boyfriend was teasing her at the time that I was working on it. I didn't tell really anybody in my life, other than, you know, close family and friends who had nothing to do with classics, because I was so concerned about that. You know, I was, I felt blasphemous, it felt presumptuous, who am I to do this? Really, I didn't tell people for the whole 10 years I was working on it. I didn't tell my mentor until I had the finished final, the Song of Achilles hardback in my hand. And I called up my mentor and I said, so I wrote this novel. Can I send it to you? It's about Achilles and Patroclus. And he said, well, I certainly hope you made them lovers. And I was like, oh, I did. I think you're going to

like it. Maybe you'll like it. And so I sent it to him and he was very gracious. And, you know, I think it was a big revelation for it to come out because I kept sort of waiting for the classics police to come and, you know, say that I had been bad. But I think most classicists and classic departments were very supportive. And what I kind of realized, which I should have realized earlier if I had been thinking about it, is that, you know, these stories have been retold from the very first. In fact, the most famous thing we know about Achilles, that his main vulnerability was in his heel, because his mother, the goddess Thetis, had dipped him in the river Styx when he was a baby by holding his heel. That whole story is not in the Iliad.

That was in another retelling of the Iliad, a fan fiction version, if you will, written centuries after Homer had died. In Homer, in fact, I think it's actually a much more realistic version in Homer, which is just that he's an extraordinary warrior. The whole dipping by the heel, invulnerable, all that stuff comes later. And I like to write very close to Homer, because I like to kind of be in conversation with Homer, and to be responding to specific moments in Homer. But that said, there were times when I really needed to change something, or I wanted to change something. And, you know, it was, it kind of was instinctive. It was,

something. And, you know, it was, it kind of was instinctive. It was, in theater, they always say, go where the heat is. I felt like I wanted to go where the heat was. For instance, after Patroclus has died and Achilles is dragging Hector's body through the city, Madeline felt like the heat of the story is still on Patroclus, even though he's just a lifeless corpse. So his restless spirit keeps telling the story of Achilles. He rises at dawn to drag Hector's body around the walls of the city for all of Troy to see. He does it again at midday and again at evening. He does not see the Greeks begin to avert their eyes from him. He does not see their lips thin to avert their eyes from him He does not see their lips thinning in disapproval as he passes

How long can this go on? Thetis is waiting for him in the tent Tall and straight as a flame What do you want? He drops Hector's body by the door Her cheeks have spots of colour, like blood spilled on marble. You must stop this. Apollo is angry.

He seeks vengeance upon you. Let him. He kneels, smooths back the hair on my forehead. I am wrapped in blankets to muffle the smell. Achilles! She strides to him, seizes his chin. Listen to me. You go too far in this. I will not be able to protect you from him. He jerks his head from her and bares his teeth. I do not need you to. Her skin is whiter than I have ever seen it. Do not be a fool. It is only my power that... What does it matter? He cuts her off, snarling. He is dead. Can your power bring him back? No, she says. Nothing can. He stands. Do you think I cannot see your rejoicing?

I know how you hated him. You have always hated him. If you had not gone to Zeus, he would be alive. He is a mortal, she says. And mortals die. I am a mortal! He screams. What good is Godhead if it cannot do this? What good are you?

I know you are mortal, she says. She places each cold word as a tile in a mosaic. I know it better than anyone. I left you too long on Pelion. It has ruined you. She gestures a flick at his torn clothing, his tear-stained face. This is not my son. His chest heaves.

Then who is it, mother? Am I not famous enough? I killed Hector. And who else? Send them before me. I will kill them all. But the Trojan warrant turned out to be just the opening act, because Madeline knew there was a bigger story she wanted to tell,

one that would shift her perspective beyond anything she could imagine. Madeline had to learn to think like a god. While Madeline was writing The Song of Achilles, she knew her next book was going to take on the Odyssey. And while she was not going to focus on Odysseus, he was still going to be a big part of the story. Now, Odysseus was in her first novel because he's in the Iliad. But in shifting the focus towards him for her second novel, she wanted to rethink how we understand this character,

particularly because of his actions at the end of the Odyssey. Because when Odysseus finally gets back to Ithaca, after all of his adventures, he discovers that all of these men have been trying to court his wife Penelope. So he slaughters them. In fact, he kills anyone who in any way enabled these courtships to happen. And in her second novel, Circe, we hear about that incident from Odysseus' teenage son, Telemachus. but it was lies. When he was back on Ithaca, he was never content, always looking to the horizon. Once we were his again, he wanted something else. What is that if not a bad life? Luring others to you, then turning from them. The PTSD aspect was really important to me and I sort of feel like there's kind of two things going on

with that in my imagination. One is that, you know, he has been through 10 years of a brutal war, and then 10 years of trying to get home. And particularly in the 10 years of him trying to get home, he sees all of his men brutally killed in front of his face. He is the only survivor out of 12 ships worth of men. So, you know, the losses keep going after the war and like really gruesome deaths of, you know, the Cyclops eating one of his crew. And then here he is back home on Ithaca, just sort of expected to kind of pick up his old life. But Odysseus is not the narrator of this novel, nor is Telemachus. The narrator of the novel Circe is Circe, who is a character that only

shows up in two chapters of the Odyssey. She is a minor deity who turns Odysseus' men into pigs after they land on her island. But then Odysseus wins her over, and she becomes his lover. And without hearing Circe's point of view in the Odyssey, Madeline always had trouble making sense of this character. And no, at no point does anyone say, Circe, why are you turning men to pigs? How did you start doing that? What is up with that? And I think the interpretation over the years has often been, oh, because she's evil. You know, she's just an irrational woman. I think that is such an uninteresting answer. I feel like, you know, people do things for psychological reasons.

And that's part of what I love doing with these myths is Homer, I think, suggests psychology often, but doesn't, you know, he doesn't give us the Shakespearean inner monologue. Homer, I think, suggests psychology often, but he doesn't give us the Shakespearean inner monologue. And so I love drawing that psychology out. Yeah, you've said that another reason why you really want to take on Circe is that she's considered the first witch in Western literature. And I was wondering, in terms of the way that she's portrayed as a witch in the Odyssey, does that in any way sort of set up a template for witches to come? Definitely. So you can see some witchy attributes kind of already emerging in Cersei. So first of all, she has a connection to animals. And then there's also her work with sort of

poisons, drugs, potions, you know, that's very witchy, double, double toil and trouble. And then she has a staff as well that she uses sort of at the moment she casts her spell. But more importantly, she is a figure who is a woman who is a source of anxiety, that she is clearly this kind of incarnation of male anxiety about female power. And I think that's witches through the centuries. But Circe is also a goddess. The lifespan of a human being is like a mayfly to her. It took me seven years to write Circe,

and the first five years was really me just trying to develop her voice and how the voice of an immortal being who had lived for centuries would sound and how she would approach time. I think I also was just, you know, I just wasn't going deep enough that I was sort of writing about this stuff, but in a superficial way. And I always think in those drafts, I'm just sort of like, no, go deeper. No, go deeper. You know, that the scenes don't have the kind of underpinning. I have to kind of learn her interior as I go. Well, the years that Madeline spent honing Cersei's voice definitely paid off. I mean, I got sucked in right from the beginning.

And Cersei remembers how much her father, the titan named Helios, used to adore her when she was a child. At my father's feet, the whole world was made of gold. named Helios used to adore her when she was a child. His flesh was hot as a brassiere, and I pressed as close as he would let me, like a lizard to noonday rocks. My aunt had said that some of the lesser gods could scarcely bear to look at him, but I was his daughter in blood, and I stared at his face so long that when I looked away, it was pressed upon my vision still. What would happen, I said, if a mortal saw you in your fullest glory? He would be burned to ash in a second. What if a mortal saw me? My father smiled. The mortal would count himself fortunate. I would not burn him.

Of course not, he said. But my eyes are like yours. No, he said. Look. His gaze fell upon a log at the fireplace's side. It glowed, then flamed, then fell as ash to the ground. And that is the least of my powers. Can you do as much?

All night I stared at those logs. I could not. What really helped Madeline develop Circe's voice was recognizing her lack of agency among the gods. Circe is technically a nymph. And in terms of the power structure of Mount Olympus, nymphs are at the very bottom. They are constantly being assaulted, given away, used as pawns, treated as prey.

And so part of what Cersei does in becoming a witch is basically refuse that and say, I refuse that life. I'm going to literally invent my own power to get around that. Witchcraft is a power that can be used against the gods. That's why Cersei is often portrayed as a frightening character in a lot of ancient literature. And looking at different sources on Cersei beyond just Homer, Madeline was intrigued by a story that was written by the Roman poet Ovid. Ovid Circe is very interesting. It's a much more pathetic figure.

She's constantly falling in love with the wrong guy and then she gets angry and she lashes out. But the part of Ovid that I found really interesting is, so Ovid is the one who tells the story of her turning Scylla, who is originally a nymph, into the six-headed whore that we see in the Odyssey. That, again, that does not come from Homer. That's from Ovid. In Ovid's poem, Metamorphosis, Circe and Scylla are basically rivals for the same man. And when Circe realizes he's not in

love with her, she takes out her revenge by turning Scylla, who was a beautiful nymph, into a six-headed sea monster. But instead of this being kind of this flat story about, you know, oh, women, they're so irrational, you know, a woman scorned, etc. What are some psychological reasons for why she might do that? And I also wanted to dig into the consequences, which is something Avid doesn't go into at all, which is, okay, now you've done this. Now you have to live with it, you know, and you have to live with what it means that you've created this monster, you've done this to another person. And now they're going off and killing people. And all that's on you. they're going off and killing people and all that's on you. In Madeline's version of the story, Cersei is still young and naive when she's in competition with Scylla. This is also Cersei's first love. And she doesn't realize the true power of her witchcraft. She thinks she's just being mischievous, adding a potion to Scylla's bathwater that will take away her beauty and reveal the true ugliness inside. When Cersei discovers how radically she's transformed Scylla, she's shocked and horrified. And the gods, who used to think of

Cersei as a joke, now realize that she's a threat that needs to be banished. Years later, Circe finally sees with her own eyes what she did to Scylla. I strained my eyes upwards, and she came. She was grey as the air, as the cliff itself. I had always imagined she would look like something, a snake, or an octopus, a shark. But the truth of her was overwhelming, an immensity that my mind fought to take in. Her necks were longer than shipmasts. Her six heads gaped, hideously lumpen, like melted lava stone.

Black tongues licked her sword-length teeth. Her eyes were fixed on the men, oblivious in their sweating fear. She crept closer, slipping over the rocks. A reptilian stench struck me, foul as squirming nests underground. Her necks wove a little in the air, and from one of her mouths I saw a gleaming strand of saliva stretch and fall. Her body was not visible. It was hidden back in the mist with her legs.

Those hideous, boneless things that Selene had spoken of so long ago. Hermes had told me how they clung inside her cave like the curled ends of hermit crabs when she lowered herself to feed. I mean, the imagery that I could knock out of my head was Scylla, all the sections about Scylla as a monster and the Minotaur. And I think you even have a line there about how the gods talk about how people love their, the mortals love their monsters.

Did writing those sections give you any insight into why we love monsters or what is so fascinating about them? You know, I think in some sense, they are the realization of those fears of being out of control. And it's a really arresting moment in the Odyssey. And it's a really arresting moment in the Odyssey. Odysseus says, well, I'm going to put on my armor so maybe I can fight Scylla. Because Cersei says to him, you're going to have to pass by Scylla in Charybdis. You want to stay on the side where Scylla is. So she'll take six of your men because if you go on the Charyb Caribbean side, she'll take the whole ship. So you have to take the hit. And he's like, well, I'm going to put on my armor and try and kill Scylla. And then I'll be able to save my men. She said, you can't, there's nothing you can do. You can't kill her. She cannot be killed. And then it comes to that moment in the Straits, where, you know, he's about to pass Scylla and he puts on his armor anyway. And he takes up his

sword anyway, even though he knows that he can't do anything about it. And he is going to lose six men. And I feel like that that is so human, this sort of longing for control and fears of being out of control. And how much control do we really have in this world? There must be some way to prevent her, he said. Some weapon I might use. It was one of my favorite things about him, how he always fought for his chance. I turned away, so I would not have to face him when I said, no, there is nothing, not even for such a mortal as you. I faced her once, long ago, and escaped only through magic and godhead but the sirens there you may use your tricks

fill your men's ears with wax and leave your own free if you tie yourself to the mast you may be the first man to ever hear their song and tell the tale would that not make a good story for your wife and son? It would. But his voice was dull as a ruined blade. Whenever a writer decides to take on a classic narrative, what often stands out is the difference between then and now. The Song of Achilles feels modern in its expression of love. Although it is still a Greek tragedy about the struggle between fate and free will. Circe feels even more contemporary.

I mean, her character arc is all about empowerment. She rises above her circumstances and becomes the best version of herself that she can be. But this time, Madeline was not worried that the classics police were going to come get her. Because a lot of scholars believe these tales may not have been Homer's to begin with. He may have just been the person who told them the most vividly and memorably. And good stories have the power to captivate us, but in their DNA is also the power of reinvention. They give us permission to retell them in any way that speaks to us. That's how the stories can live forever, like the gods. I think the thing that most speaks to me, actually, is a way that I wanted the story to parallel the Odyssey.

So the Odyssey is animated by Odysseus' longing for homecoming. The Greek word is nostos, it's where we get the word nostalgia. And I wanted Circe to also be longing for homecoming. The Greek word is nostos. It's where we get the word nostalgia. And I wanted Circe to also be longing for homecoming, except she doesn't have an Ithaca. She has to kind of create her own home. And she has to look for a family, friends, a group of people that feel like home to her. I think that really sort of finding out who she is and finding her people is something I identified with. You felt like you in that time were also searching for home and searching for your people, so to speak? Yeah. I mean, thank goodness my family is not like Cersei's family. I'm very grateful for that.

Very few people are. But I grew up, you know, I was kind of the typical writer kid. I was extremely bookish, very withdrawn, very shy, very imaginative, very weird. And, you know, I didn't have I had some lovely friends, but they didn't really understand me. And so it was it was sort of nice to to find some some people who understood where I was coming from and sort of appreciated some of those weirdnesses. Madeline is done with Greek mythology for now. And she said for her third novel, she's thinking she might like to take on another titan of Western literature, Shakespeare, specifically The Tempest. And given how long it took for her to find the right voice for her previous characters, it might be a while before her third novel comes out. But I'm sure it'll be worth the wait.

That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Madeline Miller and Robin Kerr, who did the readings. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook. I tweet at emulinski and Imagine Worlds Pod. And my website is imaginaryworldspodcast.org.