Louis de Bernières

[liadnan]

Birds without Wings.

Well, it's a fairly weighty tome, coming in at 625 pages (almost a hundred over Captain Corelli's Mandolin).

The book deals with similar ideas to, and is in fact a prequel to Captain Corelli although this isn't particularly emphasised: one of the minor characters and narrators turns out to be the mother of the tragic antihero of the earlier novel, Mandras. Where Captain Corelli deals with the devastating effects of the Second World War and the appalling Greek Civil War that followed it on a small community on Cephallonia, this deals with the First War, and the ensuing Greek-Turkish war, ending in disaster for the Greeks and the uprooting of millions of Greeks and Turks from their ancestral homes, on an equally small and somewhat idealised village in south-western Anatolia.

The plot may not be entirely easy to understand if you don't know a little about the history before you start. The following is full of spoilers, but only of the plot's historical framework, I've tried to avoid giving away anything more. In any case, as with his other work, in my view, this is a character-driven novel, or rather, this is a novel about characters tossed about by actual historical events happening around them, and their individual reactions to those events.

As with Captain Corelli, and indeed de Bernières other main work, the Latin American trilogy, he uses a variety of narrational voices to tell his story. Again, like the earlier work, it's the story of ordinary lives disrupted and destroyed by Big Ideas (and like Captain Corelli, it may well not go down well in Greece: the earlier book was certainly treading on thin ice with its condemnation of the conduct of the Greek communists, the KKE, during and after WWII, the ghosts of the civil war not being entirely laid to rest; this novel's depiction of at least the political leaders of the Kingdom of Greece attacks equally cherished national myths, not least that of Eleftherios Venizelos, in my own opinion with rather less justification). It's set in a mixed community of Karamanli Greeks and Turks, with assorted minor minorities including Armenians (although their end is graphically and horrifically described de Bernières is curiously lacking in condemnation of Ataturk, who bears responsibility for the second round if not the first. Throughout he treats Ataturk with rather more respect than I think he deserves, and Venizelos, who is far more off-stage, with rather less.)

The voices are almost all those of the natives of this small community told either through direct narration or POV, and the emphasis is very much on the links which bind it together: if the novel has a point it is that there and then Christians and Moslems lived happily entwined together until it was all torn apart in the name of nationalism. Again and again we are told of friendships across the community divide, even between the priest and the imam: obviously the author intends us to take a message for our own immediate times from this. In essence it is an attack on the whole grand notion of nationalistic self-determination promoted, entirely honourably, by President Wilson in particular after the First War. Interspersed is de Bernières own voice telling us the story of Kema Ataturk, far removed from the people of this village yet to have such a massive effect upon them. One particularly telling point is the confusion of the young boy conscripted and sent to the hell that was Gallipoli, whose POV forms the centre of the novel (intriguingly: I've read more than one account of Gallipoli, both fictional and factual but never one that tried to tell it from the Turkish side). He is utterly bemused to find that in this war, proclaimed a jihad against "the Franks" by the Sultan, the orders actually seem to be coming from a group of Franks called Germans, while in the opposing trenches are what at first he takes to be co-religionists of his. (Actually Sikh's: surprisingly, this is quite true. Meanwhile, Muslim and Hindu Indians were, I seem to remember reading somewhere, fighting on the Somme).

As with Captain Corelli (the parallels are rather dinned home, there is even an Italian garrison with a friendly and civilised commander after the war, which is to be fair just possible but a tad obvious) at the heart of the novel is a personal, individual, tragedy. Unlike the other novel though, this one leaves me somewhat cold. I think this must be deliberate: in the story it's lost in the middle of chaos and almost no one ever knows the truth of it. Far sadder is the departure of the Greek community, led away carrying with them the bones of their ancestors dug up from the cemetery (I have read of this happening in the upheaval elsewhere, Kazantzakis certainly refers to it in The Fratricides).

The saddest thing of all is that so many stories have no ends. The last we hear for sure of all the Greeks, save for Mandras' mother who makes her own exit with her husband and infant son is that departure, we never hear for sure of their fate. The forced marches, first of Armenians then of Greeks are an abiding theme of the novel: birds without wings they cannot escape and are forced to do as they are ordered. Again and again the horrors, of Gallipoli, of the actions of Greek bandits around Smyrna, of the retaliatory massacre of Smyrnans by Turks, are hammered home: the little lives destroyed by Big Ideas. The best summing-up of the historical argument comes in the long death-thoughts of a Smyrna merchant, drowning in the horrifying carnage at the dockside on 13th-14th September 1922, oddly one of the funniest parts of the novel:

"I am, so to speak, neck-deep in the proverbial excrement only in a most metaphorical sense, as I am in reality considerably over my head in brine... What bothers me is that I am dying.. because of the most gigantic fuckup, brought about by the domnoddies, nincompoops and ninnyhammers of the first order who happened to find themselves in charge of fucking everything up.... Here are some of the lackbrains in random order: the Greek people for electing to office a romantic, His Romantic Adventureness Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos, who honestly thought he could annex the nicest half of Turkey.... Biggest fuckwit of all... the Right Honourable Jobbernowl David Lloyd George..."

It's a novel about how horrible humans can be to humans when in the grip of great ideas, and how generous and loving they can be when they see one another as humans, and for that alone it deserves to be read. It isn't, except in a few small vignettes, a funny novel, unlike the Latin American trilogy, nor does it have any note of the 'magic realism' (a fairly vacuous term but I don't know of a better one for "novels that inject fantasy elements without being fantasy") that characterised those. Its style, like its theme is that of Captain Corelli, but more confident, more elgant, and at times far more beautifully written. The historical argument I don't entirely agree with, particularly not the somewhat idealistic portrayal of life in the dying days of a frankly despotic empire, though to be fair it did have an admirable line in religious freedom, the formally "lesser" status of Christians and Jews largely being confined to such dubious dishonours as being ineligible for military service. I should admit bias though: I fell in love with modern Greece and its people more than 20 years ago and I'm also a former student of Byzantine history.

A last thought: two images recur throughout the novel: the birds, and, far less explicably (at least, I'm still confused about it) the mysterious poppies that one day began to come up pink, until the end of the novel. If anyone knows what that's about, do tell.

Comments

[ksta.livejournal.com]

I thought Captain Corelli was a fantastic book, until about two thirds through, where it suddenyl got extremely dull and I had to skip many pages in order just to make it through to the end.

which was a shame.

[liadnan]

Better on a second reading I think.

I love it, though I love the Latin American trilogy more.