The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
Mar. 1st, 2022 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeI simply have to keep reading Mary Renault novels, I said to myself—why, I haven't even tried any of the historicals yet!
I read The Last of the Wine (1956) last week, under eerily similar circumstances to those in which I first read The Charioteer six years ago; and this was appropriate, really, because in some respects The Last of the Wine is rather like what would happen if all the Greek bits in The Charioteer, up to and including the title, declared independence and went off to start their own book in their own setting. It has a lot to say about Greek philosophy and the nature and meaning of love, and those inevitable horses; many of the main characters are real figures from Sokrates's* circle and Plato's writings, now seen as people in their historical context.
But The Last of the Wine is also very different from any of the Renault contemporary novels I've read so far in that its plot, rather than consisting largely of the interactions and relationships of the characters, is formed of quite a few years of real ancient Athenian history as the characters experience it; and the whole thing is much larger in scope as a result. While the ideas and sensibilities are very much Renault's, it felt sometimes as though the plot and setting had wandered in from a Rosemary Sutcliff novel. The various elements of the book sit oddly alongside each other; reading it was a strange experience and I'm still not quite sure what to make of the whole thing.
The story, then, follows our first-person narrator (another major difference from the other Renault books I've read, by the way) Alexias, a young upper-class Athenian living during the Peloponnesian War, from his mid-teens to his late twenties, concentrating especially on: the character of Sokrates and his influence on Alexias and others; Alexias's experiences of war, from being thrust into combat at a young age as the Spartans threaten Athens, to later naval warfare and a horrible famine caused by a siege; and Alexias's relationship with his lover Lysis, as it develops and changes in the context of both philosophy and war. Rather like some Sutcliff novels, much of the general sense at first as I got further through this book was of so much happening, on and on. Perhaps I tried to rush through the book too quickly—something else Renault and Sutcliff have in common is writing styles that are engaging enough to read quickly fairly easily but nonetheless dense enough that this probably isn't a good idea; I felt the same about Sword at Sunset, and perhaps both books would benefit from a slower re-read.
And at first, I felt that all this massive amount of action—the various turns and changes of the war and the different parts Alexias takes in it, the political drama of Athens as democrats and oligarchs fight for control of the polis, the games and the gods and the large cast of philosophers and the complicated family relationships, etc. etc. etc.—was making it difficult for me to feel really engaged with the emotions of the book and the central relationships in the same way I have with all of Renault's contemporary novels so far. (It is also really rather grim in places, and too much grimness in a book tends to lead to me backing off emotionally as a sort of defence mechanism, which probably didn't help). Despite the first-person narration, the characters all felt at much more of a distance. But I'm not sure about that now; I keep thinking about Alexias/Lysis and the Sokratic ideas, and re-reading over bits of the book that struck me the first time, and the more I do the more I find myself caring about them; I was rather emotional typing up that quote above about the horses. I think this book is going to stay with me, after all, and I'm sure it will greatly benefit from re-reading.
One very important feature of the Ancient Greek setting from Renault's point of view is of course that she now gets to write m/m relationships in a setting where they're accepted as a normal part of society; this is quite a dramatic change from The Charioteer and something I was looking forward to about this book, so I was surprised by how much it didn't work for me. I did enjoy the early bits about Alexias's and Lysis's courtship (they get together after impeccably-honourable Lysis helps Alexias with some problems he's having with other, less delicate suitors; then they sit under the trees together and talk for hours about their pasts and philosophy and so on, and you know very well what I think about that kind of thing, Renault, and it's very sweet); but I was not at all happy with how things progress later on. The trouble, I suppose, is that m/m relationships may be socially acceptable in ancient Athens but permanent, primary m/m relationships are not, and the characters still exist in a context where it's expected that the relationship will run its course and they will happily give each other up and get married at the appropriate age; there is a certain amount of rather beautifully-written grief over this but ultimately they accept it and do seem pretty much happy to part, and really, for all the vast difference in social context that was upsetting in more or less the same way something like John Halifax, Gentleman is upsetting, and I don't think the book engaged with it in a way I would have found satisfying. (Also, both characters have multiple less-serious relationships with women while they're together—despite both being jealous of each other's girlfriends!—which rather undermined things for me). I'm also still not sure how much I actually like Lysis; certainly he's kind and very honourable, but there's a streak of taking everything on himself which I did not like so much, although perhaps that's an inevitable part of those Greek lover/beloved relationships. Finally, there's the stuff about the nobility of Platonic (Sokratic?) love and the inevitable debasement of introducing sex into the relationship, which is obviously far less fraught here than it was in the extremely homophobic twentieth century but which is still not exactly a sensible idea, in all its philosophical complexity; it's handled rather ambivalently here and Alexias doesn't seem to agree with it entirely, but it's all very vague. The whole thing is very vague, actually; apart from the sex being even more extremely implicit than in The Charioteer, many of the important scenes between Alexias and Lysis are more summarised than shown, and I'd have liked a bit more focus on them. Anyway...
From that point of view, I also thought the shape of the ending was a bit odd. See, early on in the book I thought Lysis was going to die at the end, because that would be the obvious way of resolving the conflict otherwise caused by that inevitability that the relationship won't be permanent; the book even opens with what looks very much like foreshadowing involving the uncle after whom Alexias was named and his own beloved. Later on, as the relationship changes and also the history gets more pointed, I went, ohhh no, I see, it's going to end with Sokrates's death, isn't it??? But, no—Lysis does die and Sokrates is still alive at the end, although there's a bit of foreshadowing of what's going to happen to him not very long afterwards. And so I felt that Lysis's death was neither one thing nor the other, emotionally; it comes far too late to be the noble, tragic dramatically-satisfying alternative to the change and loss of his former relationship with Alexias, which is already firmly lost by that point, and while they are still close and it is very sad, I felt it didn't really achieve very much narratively, and wasn't nearly as upset as I really ought to be when Mary Renault kills off one of the main characters at the end of a novel. She doesn't even do that in The Charioteer, the ending of which is a thousand times more heartbreaking.
Oh, and there's also the Oedipus complex kink, of course! Alexias's mother died when he was very young, but he has a stepmother; unlike e.g. Mrs Fleming she's really a pretty nice person, and I liked her, but unfortunately Alexias is more or less explicitly in love with her, and this causes problems. At one point Alexias's father (who is an incredible piece of work) accuses him of having a relationship with her and fathering his own actual half-sister, and Alexias runs away into the mountains (he's a runner; you've got to put that carefully-practised ideal Athenian athleticism to good use...!) and is torn with anguish because it's not true but it might as well be!!!, and then he meets a statue of an impossibly-attractive god which turns out to have been modelled on his father. It's always good to know that some things in Renault novels don't change.
The book also has a rather enjoyable sting in the very last paragraph, which wraps up the framing device of Alexias's narration; and confirmed me in my decision to read this book first of the historical novels, because I think it will be a very interesting experience going on to Fire From Heaven next...
*Renault is pedantic about Greek spelling and pronunciation, hence Sokrates. I was quite glad of this, if only because Lysis sounds silly if you try to pronounce it in English, being merely a piece of cell biology jargon. She does allow Plato rather than Platon, however. Anyway...
I thought, "Change is the sum of the universe, and what is of nature ought not to be feared. But one gives it hostages, and lays one's grief upon the gods. Sokrates is free, and would have taught me freedom. But I have yoked the immortal horse that draws the chariot with a horse of earth; and when the one falls, both are entangled in the traces."
I read The Last of the Wine (1956) last week, under eerily similar circumstances to those in which I first read The Charioteer six years ago; and this was appropriate, really, because in some respects The Last of the Wine is rather like what would happen if all the Greek bits in The Charioteer, up to and including the title, declared independence and went off to start their own book in their own setting. It has a lot to say about Greek philosophy and the nature and meaning of love, and those inevitable horses; many of the main characters are real figures from Sokrates's* circle and Plato's writings, now seen as people in their historical context.
But The Last of the Wine is also very different from any of the Renault contemporary novels I've read so far in that its plot, rather than consisting largely of the interactions and relationships of the characters, is formed of quite a few years of real ancient Athenian history as the characters experience it; and the whole thing is much larger in scope as a result. While the ideas and sensibilities are very much Renault's, it felt sometimes as though the plot and setting had wandered in from a Rosemary Sutcliff novel. The various elements of the book sit oddly alongside each other; reading it was a strange experience and I'm still not quite sure what to make of the whole thing.
The story, then, follows our first-person narrator (another major difference from the other Renault books I've read, by the way) Alexias, a young upper-class Athenian living during the Peloponnesian War, from his mid-teens to his late twenties, concentrating especially on: the character of Sokrates and his influence on Alexias and others; Alexias's experiences of war, from being thrust into combat at a young age as the Spartans threaten Athens, to later naval warfare and a horrible famine caused by a siege; and Alexias's relationship with his lover Lysis, as it develops and changes in the context of both philosophy and war. Rather like some Sutcliff novels, much of the general sense at first as I got further through this book was of so much happening, on and on. Perhaps I tried to rush through the book too quickly—something else Renault and Sutcliff have in common is writing styles that are engaging enough to read quickly fairly easily but nonetheless dense enough that this probably isn't a good idea; I felt the same about Sword at Sunset, and perhaps both books would benefit from a slower re-read.
And at first, I felt that all this massive amount of action—the various turns and changes of the war and the different parts Alexias takes in it, the political drama of Athens as democrats and oligarchs fight for control of the polis, the games and the gods and the large cast of philosophers and the complicated family relationships, etc. etc. etc.—was making it difficult for me to feel really engaged with the emotions of the book and the central relationships in the same way I have with all of Renault's contemporary novels so far. (It is also really rather grim in places, and too much grimness in a book tends to lead to me backing off emotionally as a sort of defence mechanism, which probably didn't help). Despite the first-person narration, the characters all felt at much more of a distance. But I'm not sure about that now; I keep thinking about Alexias/Lysis and the Sokratic ideas, and re-reading over bits of the book that struck me the first time, and the more I do the more I find myself caring about them; I was rather emotional typing up that quote above about the horses. I think this book is going to stay with me, after all, and I'm sure it will greatly benefit from re-reading.
One very important feature of the Ancient Greek setting from Renault's point of view is of course that she now gets to write m/m relationships in a setting where they're accepted as a normal part of society; this is quite a dramatic change from The Charioteer and something I was looking forward to about this book, so I was surprised by how much it didn't work for me. I did enjoy the early bits about Alexias's and Lysis's courtship (they get together after impeccably-honourable Lysis helps Alexias with some problems he's having with other, less delicate suitors; then they sit under the trees together and talk for hours about their pasts and philosophy and so on, and you know very well what I think about that kind of thing, Renault, and it's very sweet); but I was not at all happy with how things progress later on. The trouble, I suppose, is that m/m relationships may be socially acceptable in ancient Athens but permanent, primary m/m relationships are not, and the characters still exist in a context where it's expected that the relationship will run its course and they will happily give each other up and get married at the appropriate age; there is a certain amount of rather beautifully-written grief over this but ultimately they accept it and do seem pretty much happy to part, and really, for all the vast difference in social context that was upsetting in more or less the same way something like John Halifax, Gentleman is upsetting, and I don't think the book engaged with it in a way I would have found satisfying. (Also, both characters have multiple less-serious relationships with women while they're together—despite both being jealous of each other's girlfriends!—which rather undermined things for me). I'm also still not sure how much I actually like Lysis; certainly he's kind and very honourable, but there's a streak of taking everything on himself which I did not like so much, although perhaps that's an inevitable part of those Greek lover/beloved relationships. Finally, there's the stuff about the nobility of Platonic (Sokratic?) love and the inevitable debasement of introducing sex into the relationship, which is obviously far less fraught here than it was in the extremely homophobic twentieth century but which is still not exactly a sensible idea, in all its philosophical complexity; it's handled rather ambivalently here and Alexias doesn't seem to agree with it entirely, but it's all very vague. The whole thing is very vague, actually; apart from the sex being even more extremely implicit than in The Charioteer, many of the important scenes between Alexias and Lysis are more summarised than shown, and I'd have liked a bit more focus on them. Anyway...
From that point of view, I also thought the shape of the ending was a bit odd. See, early on in the book I thought Lysis was going to die at the end, because that would be the obvious way of resolving the conflict otherwise caused by that inevitability that the relationship won't be permanent; the book even opens with what looks very much like foreshadowing involving the uncle after whom Alexias was named and his own beloved. Later on, as the relationship changes and also the history gets more pointed, I went, ohhh no, I see, it's going to end with Sokrates's death, isn't it??? But, no—Lysis does die and Sokrates is still alive at the end, although there's a bit of foreshadowing of what's going to happen to him not very long afterwards. And so I felt that Lysis's death was neither one thing nor the other, emotionally; it comes far too late to be the noble, tragic dramatically-satisfying alternative to the change and loss of his former relationship with Alexias, which is already firmly lost by that point, and while they are still close and it is very sad, I felt it didn't really achieve very much narratively, and wasn't nearly as upset as I really ought to be when Mary Renault kills off one of the main characters at the end of a novel. She doesn't even do that in The Charioteer, the ending of which is a thousand times more heartbreaking.
Oh, and there's also the Oedipus complex kink, of course! Alexias's mother died when he was very young, but he has a stepmother; unlike e.g. Mrs Fleming she's really a pretty nice person, and I liked her, but unfortunately Alexias is more or less explicitly in love with her, and this causes problems. At one point Alexias's father (who is an incredible piece of work) accuses him of having a relationship with her and fathering his own actual half-sister, and Alexias runs away into the mountains (he's a runner; you've got to put that carefully-practised ideal Athenian athleticism to good use...!) and is torn with anguish because it's not true but it might as well be!!!, and then he meets a statue of an impossibly-attractive god which turns out to have been modelled on his father. It's always good to know that some things in Renault novels don't change.
The book also has a rather enjoyable sting in the very last paragraph, which wraps up the framing device of Alexias's narration; and confirmed me in my decision to read this book first of the historical novels, because I think it will be a very interesting experience going on to Fire From Heaven next...
*Renault is pedantic about Greek spelling and pronunciation, hence Sokrates. I was quite glad of this, if only because Lysis sounds silly if you try to pronounce it in English, being merely a piece of cell biology jargon. She does allow Plato rather than Platon, however. Anyway...
no subject
Date: Mar. 1st, 2022 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 2nd, 2022 07:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 2nd, 2022 10:31 pm (UTC)My only previous Renault is The Charioteer, and of course this is quite different. I confess I didn't finish this--I abandoned it after fifty pages. The writing was lovely, but in the end I just didn't care about all the political machinations in Athens. I did like all the daily life stuff, though. Should I have kept on? Like, does it change after that?
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Date: Mar. 3rd, 2022 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 5th, 2022 09:58 pm (UTC)Did you know Sutcliff was a Renault fan? I recently read a great interview where she mentions reading The Last of the Wine and being just aghast that Renault could DO that to poor Lysis.
My impression is that Renault loves to write relationship tangles where people have deeply complicated romantic lives involving multiple lovers and also, for some reason, their (step)mothers. She was probably cackling with mad joy when she gave Alexias and Lysis both girlfriends (I'll never get over the dinner party the four of them have that MYSTERIOUSLY doesn't work out. I WONDER WHY), and then Lysis gets married, and also Alexias falls in love with a beloved of his own but the young man is in love with Plato... and then of course there's the whole "in love with his stepmother" thing.
(The only book of hers I've read that DOESN'T have an Oedipal subplot is The Friendly Young Ladies. Although maybe it's there and I just wasn't looking hard enough.)
no subject
Date: Mar. 6th, 2022 10:04 am (UTC)I'm inclined to agree—but on the other hand the ending of Last of the Wine, while unsatisfying in some ways, is not at all the complete bizarre disaster that e.g. the ending of The Friendly Young Ladies is, and I wonder if having the plot guided by history helps structurally in some ways.
I love the bit with Alexias and Lysis by the sea, or the aftermath of the boar hunt
Yes, two of my favourite moments as well :D (The bit by the sea reminded me a little of the scene in the cave with Hilary and Julian, in the sudden intense emotional moment described in a kind of weirdly mystical way happening amidst unusual and dramatic scenery, but I thought it was much more effective and less silly).
I don't think I did know about Sutcliff, though it makes perfect sense that she would be. Aww, it's always nice to hear about favourite authors reading and getting emotional about the books of other favourite authors :D (now I just need to know if either of them read Broster...)
Yes, I think you're right about the deeply complicated tangles—that was something that put me off with Leo/Helen, which I really wanted to like, also. Ah well.
no subject
Date: Mar. 6th, 2022 06:18 pm (UTC)I think I read somewhere that there's proof Sutcliff read Broster, but I can no longer remember where I read that, so take it with a grain of salt. (However, here is the interview where Sutcliff talks about The Last of the Wine, as well as the homoerotic subtext in her own books.)
We also get so little characterization for Helen! It's hard to ship a ship when one half of it is in many ways a cipher... I was so ready for it, too. They live on a houseboat! Shipping catnip right there!
no subject
Date: Mar. 6th, 2022 06:44 pm (UTC)We also get so little characterization for Helen! It's hard to ship a ship when one half of it is in many ways a cipher... I was so ready for it, too. They live on a houseboat! Shipping catnip right there!
Argh, I know! Such a missed opportunity.
no subject
Date: Mar. 7th, 2022 12:47 am (UTC)Since Leo doesn't actually leave the houseboat before the book ends, I like to believe that she eventually stops packing to have a good cry, and after her cry she comes to her senses, realizes that she doesn't want to leave her happy houseboat life for Joe (who has apparently received a personality transplant now that they're lovers!), and stays after all.
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Date: Mar. 7th, 2022 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Mar. 7th, 2022 10:45 pm (UTC)One of the things the book club notes said was that she was reproducing Ancient Greek patterns of speech in her English dialogue, which I though was pretty interesting; I thought it was just her using a random archaic mode of speech but no, it was much more focussed than that.
no subject
Date: Mar. 8th, 2022 05:41 pm (UTC)