I think you are right about those two novels having less or none of that.
They are the most like one another and the least like her other novels, classical or not: they are about making art and living in the world. The Mask of Apollo has the structure of the tragedy whose principals never meet, which is so beautifully constructed that it also took me years to catch on; The Praise Singer is more of a lens on a window of time; but neither of them is as strictly Platonic as The Last of the Wine or, the stinger of The Mask of Apollo notwithstanding, really part of the Alexander cycle. And they aren't romances. They are about serving the god.
The Mask of Apollo is far and away my favorite Renault book; it is so amazing in all ways great and small, such a complete tour de force structurally, thematically, with the utterly persuasive small details of working in the theater at that time even though I think she had to invent most of them. Every time I read it I forgive her for everything.
I discovered it in high school. My first of her novels must have been The King Must Die because I remember it as far back as elementary school, but I picked up The Last of the Wine in ninth grade specifically and then The Charioteer and then The Mask of Apollo and I loved it from start to finish. For a long time it was among the books kept like talismans by the head of my bed. (It didn't lose its place: I no longer live somewhere with a bookcase by the head of my bed. This is an oversight and I intend to correct it in the next apartment.) Its epigraph is technically the first real piece of classical Greek I read on my own, because within a semester I knew the translation she had chosen was not faithful and as soon as I had the grammar for it I made sure for myself. The last line is better: ὦ ἐμὸν ἐκμήνας θυμὸν ἔρωτι Δίων. "O my heart you drove mad with love, Dion."
But I think it doesn't devolve into gender essentialism because Simonides is not queer and can stay where he is. There's a tragic queer romance in it, for sure, but he just takes it for granted and is not in nor of it.
And it's not unkind about women, which didn't strike me as strange the first time I read it. There's that passage where Simonides after being deceived in love reflects that at least he didn't let it make him into another Hipponax, blaming all women for the failings of one; there's his first meeting with Lyra, where it offends him on her behalf that her services were bought for him without asking her first; there's their friendship, which endures whether they are lovers or not. "Often, still, I find myself thinking, I must tell Lyra that." And then she wrote Funeral Games. It's thematically appropriate that it should have been her last book, but it's her bitterest novel, even worse than The Bull from the Sea. At least I managed not to read it last, but The Praise Singer would have been a better sendoff.
I've come to appreciate that book far more over the years, though it lacks the depth and numinous quality of The Mask of Apollo. Also I became very fond of Simonides, but he is just not Nikeratos.
Nikeratos is my favorite of her characters also. I have opinions about the Bacchae because of his performance.
Her Anakreon got into a poem of mine. My memory is that I met him a year or so before I read the original.
Axiothea is also in a poem, which I can't link, but it's in this chapbook.
I am entirely with you on the actual durability of that relationship. There is very good stuff in it.
And very useful for my development as a reader to be able to disagree so strongly with an author based on internal evidence of her own book.
I'm perpetually miffed at the undercutting of Hilary's experience, expertise, and general skill level; at first I liked the acknowledgement that even if one is second-rate at one's dream, it's better to have it, but I very much disliked the strong implication that David got the job because he was just better at being a doctor because he was a man. I mean, what even.
Renault's third-person narration is so tightly meshed with her authorial voice that I am never sure what we're meant to take as the character's subjective assessments and what is supposed to be the book telling us the truth. But I also kind of want to drown David in a bucket for some of the things he said to her, which affects my opinion of him as a superior being.
But the actual romance, and the way that Christy, who is conceived of in a particular way by Renault but just continually escapes the bounds of her definition to be amazing, keep me coming back. There is a strong unregulated poly component to the plot, and while Renault wants to decry it she can't really manage because Christy has gotten away from her.
Okay, that is attractive and interesting to me; some of the best effects in the modern novels are when they get away from Renault. If I am ever in a used book store again and see a copy, I will pick it up.
no subject
They are the most like one another and the least like her other novels, classical or not: they are about making art and living in the world. The Mask of Apollo has the structure of the tragedy whose principals never meet, which is so beautifully constructed that it also took me years to catch on; The Praise Singer is more of a lens on a window of time; but neither of them is as strictly Platonic as The Last of the Wine or, the stinger of The Mask of Apollo notwithstanding, really part of the Alexander cycle. And they aren't romances. They are about serving the god.
The Mask of Apollo is far and away my favorite Renault book; it is so amazing in all ways great and small, such a complete tour de force structurally, thematically, with the utterly persuasive small details of working in the theater at that time even though I think she had to invent most of them. Every time I read it I forgive her for everything.
I discovered it in high school. My first of her novels must have been The King Must Die because I remember it as far back as elementary school, but I picked up The Last of the Wine in ninth grade specifically and then The Charioteer and then The Mask of Apollo and I loved it from start to finish. For a long time it was among the books kept like talismans by the head of my bed. (It didn't lose its place: I no longer live somewhere with a bookcase by the head of my bed. This is an oversight and I intend to correct it in the next apartment.) Its epigraph is technically the first real piece of classical Greek I read on my own, because within a semester I knew the translation she had chosen was not faithful and as soon as I had the grammar for it I made sure for myself. The last line is better: ὦ ἐμὸν ἐκμήνας θυμὸν ἔρωτι Δίων. "O my heart you drove mad with love, Dion."
But I think it doesn't devolve into gender essentialism because Simonides is not queer and can stay where he is. There's a tragic queer romance in it, for sure, but he just takes it for granted and is not in nor of it.
And it's not unkind about women, which didn't strike me as strange the first time I read it. There's that passage where Simonides after being deceived in love reflects that at least he didn't let it make him into another Hipponax, blaming all women for the failings of one; there's his first meeting with Lyra, where it offends him on her behalf that her services were bought for him without asking her first; there's their friendship, which endures whether they are lovers or not. "Often, still, I find myself thinking, I must tell Lyra that." And then she wrote Funeral Games. It's thematically appropriate that it should have been her last book, but it's her bitterest novel, even worse than The Bull from the Sea. At least I managed not to read it last, but The Praise Singer would have been a better sendoff.
I've come to appreciate that book far more over the years, though it lacks the depth and numinous quality of The Mask of Apollo. Also I became very fond of Simonides, but he is just not Nikeratos.
Nikeratos is my favorite of her characters also. I have opinions about the Bacchae because of his performance.
Her Anakreon got into a poem of mine. My memory is that I met him a year or so before I read the original.
Axiothea is also in a poem, which I can't link, but it's in this chapbook.
I am entirely with you on the actual durability of that relationship. There is very good stuff in it.
And very useful for my development as a reader to be able to disagree so strongly with an author based on internal evidence of her own book.
I'm perpetually miffed at the undercutting of Hilary's experience, expertise, and general skill level; at first I liked the acknowledgement that even if one is second-rate at one's dream, it's better to have it, but I very much disliked the strong implication that David got the job because he was just better at being a doctor because he was a man. I mean, what even.
Renault's third-person narration is so tightly meshed with her authorial voice that I am never sure what we're meant to take as the character's subjective assessments and what is supposed to be the book telling us the truth. But I also kind of want to drown David in a bucket for some of the things he said to her, which affects my opinion of him as a superior being.
But the actual romance, and the way that Christy, who is conceived of in a particular way by Renault but just continually escapes the bounds of her definition to be amazing, keep me coming back. There is a strong unregulated poly component to the plot, and while Renault wants to decry it she can't really manage because Christy has gotten away from her.
Okay, that is attractive and interesting to me; some of the best effects in the modern novels are when they get away from Renault. If I am ever in a used book store again and see a copy, I will pick it up.