Fabulae: How It Begins by Isabella Streffen

An exciting and interesting exploration of reading and re-reading Greek myth via a book I’d never previously heard of, Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony by Roberto Calasso.

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For me, I felt like it felt like an ambitious project in the style of, in the vein of, with allusions to the work of, Anne Carson, which is absolutely a great thing to be aiming towards!

Maybe this wasn’t aiming for Anne Carson, though, and I’m just showing my ignorance and seeing contemporary intellectual explorations of ancient myth in poetry as more niche than it is…

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Either way, Streffen – with clear understanding of multiple texts (philosophy, poetry as well as the classic myths) – left me and my tiny intellect back in the readerly dust… But I wasn’t crying there, back in the dust. Honestly I wasn’t crying. And I would tell you if I was.

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A little after halfway through Fabulae, Streffen writes the following: “We’re assumed to know, here. We’re assumed / to have a fluency and comfort with / all these stories, all these ideas. / It’s a state of privilege.” (p. 116)

I don’t know these stories. I didn’t know them… I’d never seen the name Roberto Calasso before.

And that’s fine.

The book still works. (And I will read some Calasso soon, as if someone like Streffen thinks it’s worth paying attention to, it probably is…

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It’s not a publisher I’d heard of before, but this is from MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE and it’s very beautiful.

Their other books look good too.

Check out MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE

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Below are some of my responses to the book; some lines I liked… Some lines that provoked some thoughts and opinions…

All below

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“it is reckless to seek self-knowledge / self-destructive” (p.13)

Yes. I can speak to this.

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Some images/phrases I liked:

“at the solstice, we catch the curve / of the golden swing in the sky.” (p. 39)

“the gods burst forth like wild horses / from cracks in the ground.” (p. 55)

“We replace the names of gods / with awkward names for power” (p. 66)

“the same sleight of hand / that substitutes a girdle for a net.” (p. 76)

“Helen was Zeus’s only daughter / on an earth swarming with his bastards.” (p. 103) – I particularly like the second half of this, the “swarming with his bastards” has a great rolling sibilance. Swarming with his bastards.

Image of people sacrificing to Zeus “on top of the highest mountain, as though / he was the whole blue sky.” (p. 152) Not just omniscience here, but but but but but everything being the god figure… Not just everything the light touches, but everything the light……. is……..

On bad societies (like ancient Sparta, like us): “It can only respond to violence / not persuasion.” (p. 157)

“Ghosts drinking blood.” (p. 165) I love the vampiric, sometimes (like my best friend Sookie Stackhouse).

“the point out at sea where essences meet” (p. 185)

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On Zeus and other gods as abusers, rapists, assaulters, and on the real life people who behave the same: “The want of a thing, / the possession of a thing, were the same.” (p. 47)

This echoes the Matthew 5:28 verse that I’ve written about elsewhere before, the idea that to want to do something is as if equal to the sin of enacting it…

It is the desire, not the act, that is the shameful thing, the sign of an impure mind (or soul) and thus the enactment is irrelevant. It’s a highly destructive idea and one deeply implanted in our society and the cause of many problems and many horrors. Once you’ve thought it, you’re already lost. What absolute bullshit.

Something that Streffen does excellently throughout here is draw attention to the total inconsistency and hypocrisy of the canon: we permit behaviours in the gods and the heroes of old that would never be sanctioned today… Zeus’ legacy isn’t overshadowed by the rapes: he was, and remains, the King of the Gods, the Head of Olympus… He shouldn’t be, but he is…

It is still spoken of as mischief, as misbehaving, rather than as unforgiveable and defining. Most of the time, anyway…

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On royalty/godhood and sex and succession: “Every time he fucks a woman / he risks his life. / Well, he risks his sovereignty / which amounts to the same thing.” (p. 65)

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On reading, on re-reading more explicitly than (imo) other moments…

“The text changes / the text changes / the text simply is change.” (p. 68)

I often think of how who and what we are affects what and how we read… The same text in different places, at different times, can mean so much more… Or so much less …

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On sacrifice and the importance of valuing that which we give up: “If the imperfect is sacrificed / it is meaningless / wasted / not useful.” (p. 78)

I don’t know what I have sacrificed. If I’ve sacrificed anything except my own instincts… I can’t think of anything… Or can I? I don’t know.

What is sacrifice? I’m miserable. I’m in misery. Does that count? Though are the things I don’t have things I ever had? Things I chose to lose? Choose to lose? Is it sacrifice or is it just… apathy… entropy… blankness and emptiness and and and and and—

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“Does it matter who the Father is / or is it only ever symbolic?” (p. 128) – an intriguing comment on paternity in ancient myth, something that is often considered of supreme importance yet is also not ever something that can be checked (until DNA innit) except through similarities of visage…

Does it actually matter in these stories, Streffen asks, or does it just matter that it seems like it matters?

In these myths, she writes elsewhere, a lot of these gods and heroes have OBD style super sperm… They are just fonts of fecundity, spewing forth guaranteed conceptions with every ejaculation… When they’re all like this, does it matter who the genetic daddies are when everyone’s a “Daddy Christmas” type???

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“Sometimes we only understand / the narrative of events from a great distance.” (p. 154). Sometimes we don’t, though… Sometimes we pretend this is the case when it really really isn’t. Sometimes we can see and understand and witness yet we deny deny deny. I don’t know why we allow ourselves to do it…

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“The word for sacrifice also means to fumigate.” (p. 173) More here about sacrifice as useful, sacrifice as essential, sacrifice as a thing demanded by life, by living…

Is an absence of meaningful sacrifice a genuine lack? Who and what and where and when should we (you?) be sacrificing???

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“they will kill anyone / who tries to stop the circle turning.” (p. 181)

That’s how it feels a lot. There’s no way out.

There was no way out for the ancients and there’s no way out for us…

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There’s more I’ve highlighted (in pencil) elsewhere…

Longer passages, denser sections…

There’s great material discussing Helen of Troy as early metaphor for money and capital, as GOLD, there’s lots of material about trauma and sexuality and aggression…

It’s about power, it’s about storytelling, it’s about storytelling about power…

Gods and their “lovers”

Gods and their victims…

It’s a great, dense, book, probably even better and more enjoyable to someone who knows the myths better than I do and knows Calasso at all.

Worth a read.

And it’s a beautiful book, physically, which matters.

Thank you!!!!

Order Fabulae: How It Begins direct from MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE via this link