Back to the Soldiers of House 6/1

This tiny house, at the crook of the Volga River, which is shortly to be the apex of the Russian spear into the iron-clad German forces besieging Stalingrad, has, of course, an indomitable leader. His name is Grekov, and he is quite an ordinary man, never shouts, never raises his voice, but he must be quite something if a young soldier named Seryoza Shaposhnikov, taken to Division Headquarters to make report, can’t wait to get back to that house!

There is also a very young woman named Katya, who has volunteered to be a radio operator, who is of course the object of all the soldiers’ romantic dreams, but who the indomitable leader Grekov has made clear belongs to him. Of course, this being wartime, there are long stretches of boredom between the shelling attacks. The men occupy themselves by listing which men in the house Katya likes most. At the bottom of the list is the young, inexperienced Seryoza. No one thinks a young, inexperienced woman would go for an equally inexperienced man. But of course, since this is a Russian novel, it’s Seryoza that Katya loves.

She’s hiding in the rubble of the nearly ruined house (next to the corpse of a dead cat), when she hears a voice:

“Don’t be afraid,” said the darkness. “It’s me.”

Who do you think it is?

The commander finds them asleep in each other’s arms the next morning. He spends a long time just staring at them. The boy has “his head on the girl’s shoulder and his arm round her back; it looked as though he were afraid of losing her. Their sleep was so quiet and so still they might have been dead.”

At dawn, somebody woke them up: Hey, you two! The commander wants to see you!

All this happens in Part II, Chapter 17 of Life and Fate, on the eve of the Battle of Stalingrad.

House 6/I, on the Approach to Stalingrad

The sweep of Life and Fate is simply amazing. There are dozens of characters, self reads with one finger inserted in the List of Chief Characters at the back of the book. The mains are the Shaposhnikov Family. But there are a dozen characters in a German concentration camp, 15 in a Russian labour camp, a dozen in a cattle car on the way to the gas chambers, a handful in the Lubyanka Prison, another handful in the Stalingrad power station, members of a fighter squadron of the Russian air force, members of a Russian Tank Corps, Officers of the Soviet Army in Stalingrad, and finally Soldiers in House 6/I, which became the axis of attack for the Germans as they began the siege of Stalingrad.

In this house are: a captain, several sappers, a young girl (the radio operator), a gunner, several “observers” (lookouts), a “plotter”, a scout, a mortar crew, and several soldiers.

Major General Krylov orders the captain to make daily reports at twelve-hundred hours, but the captain ignores the order, he is too busy fighting.

Finally, orders are sent to have one of the soldiers at House 6/I report in person to the General, and update him on the situation.

They send a very young boy (Shaposhnikov is the boy’s name), who very reluctantly accepts his mission (he wants to stay and help his captain). The boy keeps trying to turn back, explaining to everyone at Divisional Headquarters that his captain needs him. But he is ordered to stay at headquarters until he has delivered his report, and unfortunately General Krylov is very busy, and the boy has to hang around for two full days.

Every time the chief of staff came into the bunker, he felt Shaposhnikov looking at him. Sometimes he said: “Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten,” but at other times the boy’s constant look of entreaty really got under his skin. “Anyway,” he demanded, “what are you complaining about? It’s nice and warm here and you get lots of food. There’ll be time enough to get yourself killed back at the front.”

— life and fate, p. 255

Automedon, the Charioteer

Here we go, the climactic battle where, if self remembers her Greek mythology correctly (of course it’s nowhere near Madeline Miller’s level of expertise), Patroclus dies.

It’s so weird: this entire novel is told from his point of view. So if Patroclus dies, that will be the biggest, sappiest death scene in the history of all Greek mythology death scenes.

Anyhoo, self really wants to know how Madeline Miller pulls this one off. There’s only about 20 pages left, and she still doesn’t know if this will end with Patroclus dying and Achilles killing Hector and someone throwing a spear that hits Achilles in the heel (that part, she is 100% sure of)!

This novel, which left self rather unmoved for its first half, really kicked into gear when the Myrmidons got to Troy (a character in one of her favorite reads of 2022, Shards of Earth, is named Myrmidon Solace. Coincidence? Self thinks not!)

Here is Patroclus dressed in Achilles’ armor to try and trick the Trojans into retreating. Patroclus, unlike Achilles, is a very slender man. All he’s supposed to do is wear Achilles’s armor and let the Trojans see him. That is IT.

And off they go: Patroclus in the chariot, Automedon steering (After this, self swears she will name a character in one of her stories Automedon)

Madeline Miller really takes us into the moment:

• “I’m ready,” I told him. The chariot began to roll, Automedon guiding it towards the packed sand nearer the surf. I felt when we reached it, the wheels catching, the car smoothing out. We turned towards the ships, picking up speed. I felt the wind snatch at my crest, and I knew that the horsehair was streaming behind me. I lifted my spears. Automedon crouched down low so that I would be seen first.

Patroclus does this weird scream, and “a thousand faces, Trojan and Greek,” turn to him in shock. YIIIIIKES, self almost can’t look! That scream was a bit much, Patroclus. She is sure Achilles has a much manlier screaming voice.

Stay tuned.

The Greatest Warrior of his Generation (Achilles)

The high comedy of seeing Achilles pretend to be a dancing woman (His mother forced him, to hide him from the Greeks who were assembling an army to lay siege to Troy) is behind. The Greeks send Odysseus to find him, and find him Odysseus does.

Now, Achilles prepares for battle.

pp. 188 – 189 of The Song of Achilles:

Peleus (Achilles’s father) pays for “a small fortune in armor”: “hammered bronze breastplates . . . horsehair plumed helms, a silver-forged sword . . . and two-light-wheeled chariots. With this came a four-horse team, including the pair given to Peleus by the gods at his wedding: Xanthos and Balios . . . and their eyes rolled white with impatience whenever they were not free to run . . . ” as well as “a charioteer, a boy younger than we were, but sturdily built and said to be skilled with headstrong horses. Automedon, his name was. Finally, last of all: a long spear, ash sapling peeled of bark and polished until it glowed like gray flame. From Chiron, Peleus said, handing it to his son.”

Self was not that engaged by this novel’s beginning, but the novel has continued to chip away at her expectations and now that battle is soon to be joined (self knows Achilles will have a very heroic death, but self is very much looking forward to reading Madeline Miller’s take), she is ALL IN.

Stay tuned.

Book VII, The Peloponnesian War

Just as self predicted after reading about Athenian victories in Book I and Book II, the Athenians are now losing. The war is in its seventeenth year. Have to hand it to those Peloponnesians for sheer tenacity.

She fell to skimming Book VIII because, when a book turns out exactly as self predicted, she tends to lose interest. And she sort of liked the Athenians, for no particular reason other than the fact that they were Masters of the Universe! At least they were in the beginning. Later, they are complete boobs, losing to minor states.

Demosthenes, who was an Athenian general, is still directing battles in Book VII (Wow! After 17 years), but there is no mention of Sophocles (the philosopher?) who, in Book II was placed in charge of an army. He was either defeated in battle and killed, or died of natural causes. It seems natural to assume a philosopher would not make a good battle leader. Hmm, she should google Socrates.

There was a Pericles, but he must have died earlier in the war, because he does not linger in her memory (It’s got to be that Pericles, right? There is only one)

There are more massacres of innocents (every time a town was taken, all the inhabitants, whether children or adults, were slain without mercy), more great naval battles, more speeches.

She has to hand it to the Greeks: despite the ongoing war, they still kept holding their games, with the same ceremony. At least, Thucydides makes it appear that they did.

Stay tuned.

Book V, The Peloponnesian War

Summer was now over. The winter following, a battle took place between the Heracleots in Trachis and the Aenianians, Dolopians, Malians, and certain of the Thessalians, all tribes bordering on and hostile to the Heracleots’ town, which directly menaced their country.

Still Reading Book II of The Pelopponesian War

At this point in the narrative (Book II of a total of VIII, self will probably speed up the pace the closer she gets to the end), Athens is still the Master of the Universe, and all the other city-states are just upstarts. But something happens in the fifth year of the war that shakes Athens’ complacency, and it has to do with an ally, Corcyra.

Someone named Peithias, a volunteer proxenus of Athens, had convened a meeting of the city council of Corcyra when a band of citizens, “armed with daggers,” suddenly burst “into the council chamber” and “killed Peithias and sixty others.”

WHAAAAT?!!!

There was an Athenian galley sitting in the harbor, luckily, because the survivors of the massacre were able to take refuge there.

Fearing the wrath of Athens, the conspirators “sent envoys to Athens to justify what had been done” but “upon the arrival of the Embassy the Athenians arrested the envoys.”

Self would like to point out that the conspirators were not just some troublesome riff-raff opportunists, but were the richest citizens of Corcyra. They saw an advantage to themselves, and implemented their plan, which placed them in direct opposition to “the commons” or common people.

“The next day the Athenian general, Nicostratus, son of Diitrephes, came up from Naupactus with twelve ships and five hundred Messenian heavy infantry.” So Athens was not going to take this rebellion lightly. Besides, murder is murder. And sixty people is no trifling number. And the sixty were murdered in council chambers yet!

This is such a fascinating book.

Stay tuned.

The Oracle to the Lacedaemonians

A Dorian war shall come and with it death.

— Book II, The Peloponnesian War

The Start of the Peloponnesian War

Sorry, you’re just going to have to put up with self going on about ancient Greece and the Athenians and the Peloponnesians for a while because self is only on Book II (out of eight)

Can you believe summer’s over? And she didn’t even get to go to Cal Shakes. Not once.

Anyhoo, the Peloponnesian advance is extremely slow. So slow that the Athenians have plenty of time to have its people evacuate to the city (and they managed to take a lot of their property with them) The Peloponnesians got stuck at a border town called Oenoe which, being a border town, was of course walled. They were led by a man named Archidamus.

. . . after he had assaulted Oenoe, and every possible attempt to take it had failed, as no herald came from Athens, he at last broke up his camp and invaded Attica. This was about eighty days after the Theban attempt upon Plataea, just in the middle of summer, when the corn was ripe and Archimadus son of Zeuxidamus, king of Lacedaemon, was in command.

— the peloponnesian war, book II

Self just loves this sentence: “This was about eighty days after the Theban attempt upon Plataea, just in the middle of summer, when the corn was ripe . . .”

SWOON!

Night-time Attack Against the Thebans: Book II of The Peloponnesian War

Self found Book I quite a yawn, frankly (aside from the part about how everyone decided to go nekkid during wrestling competitions, a practice begun by the Lacaedemonians, who were enemies of Athens. Why this is even in Book I is a mystery, but let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth)

Anyhoo, Book II begins with the beginning of hostilities between Athens and the Peloponnesians. It’s a very exciting tale. The Thebans decided to take the city of Potidaea, which was an ally of Athens. They were aided in their plot by traitors, who opened the gates to the invaders at night, when most of the citizens were asleep. Anyhoo, the citizens roused soon enough, and realized the enemy was in their midst. They might have said, “All is up with us” and decided to surrender, but (and self finds this believable only because of Ukraine), they decided to fight.

It was still night, though daybreak was at hand: in daylight it was thought that their attack would be met by men full of courage and on equal terms with their assailants, while in darkness it would fall upon troops panic-stricken, who would also be at a disadvantage from their enemy’s knowledge of the locality. So they made their assault at once, and came to close quarters as quickly as they could.

Twice or thrice the Thebans beat back their assailants. But the men shouted and charged them, the women and slaves screamed and yelled from the houses and pelted them with stones and tiles — and besides, it had been raining hard all night — and so at last their courage gave way, and they turned and fled through the town. Most of the fugitives were quite ignorant of the right ways out, and this, together with the mud, and the darkness caused by the moon being in her last quarter, and the fact that their pursuers knew their way about and could easily stop their escape, proved fatal to many. The only gate open was the one by which they had entered, and this was shut by one of the Plataeans driving the spike of a javelin into the bar instead of the bolt; so even here there was no longer any means of exit.

— the peloponnesian war, book 11: beginning of the peloponnesian war, first invasion of attica