The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Eunuch Who Loved Alexander, or From Culture Shock to Cross-Cultural Intercourse Whereas Fire from Heaven (1969) tells the story of Alexander’s youth via a variety of third-person narration point of view characters, many of whom, like Alexander, Philip, and Hephaistion are martial men of violent action, The Persian Boy (1972) is the first-person story of Bagoas, an aristocratic Persian scion who was sold into slavery and gelded at age ten and then trained in the arts of giving pleasure to serve the Persian king Darius. Needless to say, although he is referred to as “the Persian boy,” his experiences rob him of his boyhood and leave him mature beyond his years. Bagoas follows the rumors and reports about Alexander, who, after his father Philip’s assassination, came to Asia with his army and began conquering the Persian empire. As the story develops, Bagoas, who says that “When we serve the great, they become our destiny,” finds himself serving Alexander. By having a eunuch from the culture the great conqueror is conquering tell Alexander’s story, Renault focuses her novel on cross-cultural intercourse. This is sexual, as in the relationship between Alexander and Bagoas, Alexander and his Bactrian wife Roxane, Alexander’s generals and the Persian noblewomen they married, and Alexander’s soldiers and the Persian (and Sogdian and Indian etc.) women they had kids with, and so on. But it is also general, as in the fusion of Macedonian and Grecian elements with Asian (especially Persian) elements. This was not an easy marriage of differences, as many old school Macedonians scorned the Persians as effete, gawdy barbarians and hated Alexander’s adoption of Persian customs (especially prostrating oneself before the king but also including his relationship with the eunuch Bagoas). Alexander faces more than one assassination attempt or mutiny. For his part, Bagoas at first finds many Macedonian customs barbaric or unseemly (e.g., their casual nudity, their use of rivers to wash bodies and clothes, their privies without privacy, their coarse food and manners, their lack of respect for officers and rulers). Although much of the novel deals with culture shock, however, still more of it deals with cross-cultural communication and mutual influences: “Two good wines blended to make a better.” There are scenes featuring interpreters and language learning, conflation of different cultures’ deities (e.g., Dionysius and Krishna or Zeus and Zoraster), and Alexander modeling his rule on that of the famous former Persian king/conqueror/unifier/hero Cyrus, or adopting Persian royal dress, or recruiting Persians into his bodyguard and even into the elite unit of Companions, or having an army of 30,000 Persian boys trained in Macedonian tactics and weapons, or taking under his wing boys born to Macedonian soldiers and Persian and other Asian women after their fathers returned to Macedonia. Renault’s Alexander is no bigot, saying things like, “To hate excellence is to hate the gods. One must salute it everywhere” (no matter in what person or culture or race it is found). At one point Bagoas thinks to Alexander, “You have brought more life than death into the world,” and for Renault Alexander’s conquests (which did of course result in many deaths, especially when a city or satrap rebelled against him after having surrendered to and allied with him) were not products of blood or power lust or racism, xenophobia, or nationalism, but more of a curiosity to see the whole world and a desire to unify its peoples into a single harmonious culture drawing on their best parts. Though she writes no graphic sex scenes, one strong element of her Alexander trilogy is the way in which Renault depicts natural and deep homosexual love, particularly that between Hephaistion and Alexander in the first book and between Bagoas and Alexander in the second. Bagoas thinks heartfelt things, like “There is nothing like giving joy to the one you love,” and “What can compare to giving comfort to the one you love?” Bagoas is telling the story from decades in the future when he’s living in Alexandria and Alexander is long dead. This recalls Count Belisarius (1938) by Robert Graves, in which a eunuch first-person narrator tells the story of a military man of action. In addition to exploring love and gender, etc., Renault uses the narrative strategy to avoid describing Alexander’s famous battles like Issus in first-hand eye-witness real time, because Bagoas is no soldier and isn’t present at most of them. Instead, he hears what happened from various sources and then relays the information to us. Bagoas happens to be in Babylon when the second big battle between Alexander and Darius is fought nearby, so he is able to tell us first hand about the preparations, the soldiers and armies and support staff and so on, and the post-battle chaos in the city, and much later he describes part of Alexander’s siege of a fortified town in India, but that’s about it. In short, readers who want detailed and exciting accounts of Alexander’s battles in Asia will be disappointed. Readers who want vivid and moving accounts of Alexander in his prime from the point of view of the Persian pleasure eunuch who became his lover will be engrossed. And audiobook reader Brian May's voice and manner enhance the novel. Renault wrote vivid historical novels that transport the reader to the distant past through vivid details and empathetic imagination for how people in any time think and feel. Her descriptive writing is concise and vivid: “The dead lay everywhere, like some strange fruit of the land, darkened with ripeness against the pale withered grass and scrub. A faint sweet stench was starting. It was hot.” “The room smelled of sex and sandalwood, with a tang of salt from the sea.” “Nothing could have made her anything but hideous, yet even a clay lamp is beautiful when its light shines at dusk.” “…smiling and showing teeth like peeled almonds.” There is appalling cruelty in the novel, as when Bagoas’ father’s nose, ears, and then head are cut off, or as when Bagoas is castrated. But Bagoas is a gentle, thoughtful, and empathic person. If, as the magi say, “There is the light and the dark, and all things that live have the power to choose,” Bagoas and his Alexander choose the light (and love and life). Thus, Alexander says, “One must live as if it would be forever and as if each day were the last.” Thus, the last line of the novel reads, “the embalmers filled him with everlasting myrrh.” View all my reviews
2 Comments
Tom Moore
3/1/2024 04:04:07 am
Hi, I just read your review. I love this book, I hadn't read it in many years. Your last line, the last line of the book, was kind of a gut punch. I had forgotten about it. Thanks for the review.
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JP
3/1/2024 04:17:46 am
Thank you for your thank you! It is a great book, isn’t it? I also really liked the other two books in her Alexander trilogy. Yes, the everlasting myrrh is a gut punch…
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