#1 -Mary Renault, *The Praise Singer* (1978)

Mary Renault is one of my favourite authors. I can safely say that everything I know about classical Greece I learned from her historical novels.

A quick biography for those who don’t know her life - She was a nurse in the 1940s, and wrote a series of doctor-nurse romances, then a contemporary lesbian novel and a contemporary gay novel, before switching to historical fiction often about gay male heroes’ romances and adventures. She moved to South Africa with her life-long partner, Julie Mullard.

*The Praise Singer* (1978) is about a poet working at the time of transition from oral to written composition and transmission of work. *The Praise Singer* was published just prior to Walter Ong’s *Orality and Literacy* came out (1982) or I would have said it was influenced by it. There is a very powerful passage describing Homer’s work being written down for the first time.

This is not one of her romances. Simonides, the protagonist, has his chief relationships with his family, his patrons, his protege and his peers. Nonetheless, she describes a world with a very different view of sexuality. Some of the free adult men prefer sex with women; others prefer ephebes.

I really enjoy the creation of this different, quite alien world, though I must say that I do find the underlying strands of misogyny disturbing. Of course I’m not suggesting that this comes from Renault - it’s built into classical Greek culture. The most valued relationships are between two free men because they are the most worthy men. (Men may like women but they cannot be peers). As the Greeks said, men have their friends, women their families, and animals their own kind.

In short, Renault is a great historical novelist, really bringing the details of classical Greece to life. She shows a world which is very different - in *The Praise Singer* she focuses on differences in oral performance of literature and written appreciation, and she explores, in the background, a quite different view of love and relationships.

#2 Oscar Wilde, *De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Goal, and Other Writings*

This work is a collection of Wilde’s work - three critical essays on art, *The Ballad of Reading Goal* (1898), and his cri de coeur *De Profundis* (1897).

Wilde is a consumate wordsmith and each of these works is, of course, beautifully crafted. However, they don’t fit together well.

*The Decay of Lying* (1889), *The Critic as Artist* (1890) and *The Soul of Man under Socialism* (1891) represent Wilde’s polished thoughts on art. What I found most interesting was his overview of contemporary, late 19th-century writers. Some I knew - Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James. Others I have heard of - Mrs Oliphant. Some have sunk to obscurity - who has read William Black or Marion Crawford? The tone of these works is cool, disengaged, full of epigrammatic wit.

This tone does not fit well with the other major work in this collection. *De Profundis* was written to Lord Alfred Douglas while Wilde was imprisoned. It is actually difficult to read as it is so open, so anguished. It is essentially 70 pages of Wilde saying, ‘You ruined my life, I hate you, I love you.’

Plenty of people write this kind of letter. Very few write it from prison, having been bankrupted by their lover, having lost access to their children, cut off from all good society, and in words so seering. Very few people then have an edited version of the letter printed, have their lover disavow them publicly,* and have the Ur-text of the letter preserved by the British Museum on the condition that its incendiary contents not be fully published for fifty years.

*De Profundis* is a really gruelling read and one to be read in an entirely different way to the other essays in this collection.

* Douglas, the lousy worm, spent the rest of his life distancing himself from the scandal and even wrote a review of the edited version in which he pretended he had no idea that he was the original recipient of the letter.

John Herz lunch

I've booked a table at the Halo Restaurant at 12:30 on Tuesday 24th (next week!).

It's on Barrack St Jetty, with a great view of the river. Hope to see you there!