Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles
Jeanette Winterson
Language: English
Pages: 50
ISBN: 1841957992
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
With wit and verve, the prize-winning author of Sexing the Cherry and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit brings the mythical figure of Atlas into the space age and sets him free at last. In her retelling of the story of a god tricked into holding the world on his shoulders and his brief reprieve, she sets difficult questions about the nature of choice and coercion, how we choose our own destiny and at the same time can liberate ourselves from our seeming fate. Finally in paperback, Weight is a daring, seductive addition to Canongate’s ambitious series of myths by the world’s most acclaimed authors.
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much younger than she. Iole was in love with Heracles, or thought she was. Heracles was besotted with his new toy. Life would be intolerable for Deianeira, and if she complained, well, Heracles would ignore her or leave her. Message came that Heracles wanted to sacrifice to Zeus before returning home. He asked Deianeira to send him a new shirt to wear for the sacrifice. This was her moment. She remembered the words of Nessus, and locking the door to her room, she took his potion out of her
far away, smiled her ironical smile. He had killed himself after all. She knew he would. Woof! Atlas heard of the death of Heracles. It was the last thing he heard from Olympus. No one told him the old gods had vanished or that the world had changed through a pale saviour on a dark cross. Time had become meaningless to Atlas. He was in a black hole. He was under the event horizon. He was a singularity. He was alone. The planet Mercury takes only eighty-eight days to orbit the sun,
the sun in days, Saturn took nearly twenty-nine years. And there were other planets now, unknown to the Greeks. Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto made time a watchword for mortals only. A single year on Pluto counted up two hundred and forty eight of the earth’s. Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, was in no hurry. Atlas did not know how long he had been here. Then the dog came. She was a good dog, a faithful dog, a trusting dog, who loved her master and obeyed him when he put her inside a tiny
didn’t know that worlds are on the Planck scale – infinitesimally tiny, exploding to grow. It grew. It utilised free energy from the sun. It learned to break the oxygen-carbon compounds. It started a life of its own. I used my world like a crystal ball, gazing into it, looking for clues. I loved its independence, the unknownness of it, but like everything you birth, it gradually becomes too big to carry. It’s on my back now, vast and expanding. I hardly recognise it. I love it. I hate it. It’s
Apples No Way Out… But Through Leaning on the Limits of Myself Private Mars Hero of the World Woof! Boundaries Desire I want to tell the story again Introduction Choice of subject, like choice of lover, is an intimate decision. Decision, the moment of saying yes, is prompted by something deeper; recognition. I recognise you; I know you again, from a dream or another life, or perhaps even from a chance sighting in a café, years ago. These chance sightings, these portents,
