June 18, 2005
Creation by Gore Vidal
If a historical novel could place itself anywhere, the 5th century B.C. would be the most ambitious. It was a time when Socrates, Pericles, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Herodotus, Anaxagoras were alive in Greece. In Persia, Zarathustra (Zoroaster, to the Greeks) had only recently passed away, Darius I ruled at the height of the Persian Empire initiating the Greek Wars and after Darius it was Xerxes who continued the war. In China, Lao Tzu had perhaps only recently died and Master K'ung or Confucius was at still teaching wherever he could. In India, the Buddha had attained enlightenment and was teaching his first congregation, while elsewhere many different kingdoms were forming along the River Ganga and the beginnings of the caste system were being established. And this book is that ambitious. All of these historical figures and events appear in its pages.
The stories of ancient Greece, Persia, India and China are told through the life of a remarkable man made up by Gore Vidal just for this purpose. Cyrus Spitama, 75 years old, is the Persian ambassador to Athens. He is irked by a particularly embellished reading by Herodotus and recites his life to his nephew and 18-year old protege, Democritus. The same Democritus who later in life advanced the atomist theory of Leucippus and who seems to be one of the earliest philosophers of science. The arc of the story follows Cyrus Spitama from his childhood and teaching in the Persian court, to his mission of opening trade with the various kingdoms in India, and a subsequent mission to China to open a Silk Road to Persia. The story of this life ends with Cyrus Spitama's impressions, at the end of his life, of Athens in the time of Pericles.
Cyrus Spitama is half-Persian and half-Greek. He is a Median and the grandson of the Persian prophet Zoroaster. At an early age, he is a witness to the death of Zoroaster and hears Zoroaster's final revelation. This gives him access to the court of Darius I as a child, and he is taught with Xerxes, the likely successor to Darius.
Due to various intrigues at the Persian court, Cyrus Spitama as an adult travels to India and in a subsequent trip to China. His travels lead him to meet all the great thinkers of his time. The descriptions are muted however, probably because Gore Vidal is reluctant at times to embellish beyond known historical details. Many visceral details are left to the reader's imagination. Despite such omissions, the novel weighs in at almost 600 pages.
In the part set in China, rather than concentrating on dialogues with Daoist thinkers and conversations with Confucius, Gore Vidal spends more time than necessary on the violent struggles between the various provincial warlords in a politically fractured China. This was the only part of the book where I felt I was being forced to take a detour.
Gore Vidal also hides behind the ambiguity of opinions that are forwarded through Cyrus Spitama. For example, when Cyrus states that he thinks Confucius is an atheist it is entirely unclear whether this comment comes from the ancient perspective of a devout Zoroastrian or whether this is a statement by the author.
In order to make the premise of the story workable, Gore Vidal takes full advantages of the lack of knowledge currently possessed about when many of these historical figures were actually alive. The death of Zoroaster in placed in this book early in the 5th century B.C., but Zoroaster could have been alive at any time since 1000 B.C. (a more likely date given the linguistic analysis of the Old Avestan documents presumably composed by Zoroaster). There are other such permissible liberties taken with the dates, but concentrating on this point would miss the reason for reading this book.
This book is a work of counter-history rather than a historical novel. It seems to be reacting against the conventional attitudes of intellectuals at least those raised in the Western tradition. Gore Vidal makes it a point to make his protagonist be a person who would ridicule the Greeks, but still point out the merits of living in Athens in the fifth century B.C. I think this is why there is no prominent rabbi talking about Judaism or a Gentile talking about pagan philosophy in this book.
When Gore Vidal picked his favorite books published after the Second World War (Gore Vidal at salon.com), he picked "Creation" as one of them. It is clearly an enjoyable read although a bit excessive in scope (Paul Theroux's review of Creation in the New York Times calls it a great book).
For further reading into the history behind this novel, here are some sources: "From Aristotle to Zoroaster: An A-To-Z Companion to the Classical World" by Arthur Cotterell. "The Oxford Classical Dictionary" by Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth (Eds.).
%T Creation %A Gore Vidal %I Ballantine Books %D 1981 %G ISBN: 0345340205 (pb) %P 593 %K historical fiction, religion
Review written: 2000/12/31
Posted by anoop at June 18, 2005 09:55 AM