Reading Beneath the Surface

Circe, by Madeline Miller

Lyrical, filled with beautiful images that stand both as metaphors and an impressive décor, Circe enchants you and takes you on her journeys over many thousand years. Circe is a goddess, daughter of Helios, a nymph they first call her - later, though, a witch .

The goddess lures you into her childhood home, where the titans live and feast. In the darkness of those halls - a metaphor for her entire life - she feels unseen, lonely and completely powerless. What will she to be seen, and to feel less alone?

She defies the more important gods in the hierarchy. At first only covertly, then gradually less so until, in the very end, openly, she stands proud before them, defies them in their face.

Circe is born a nymph, but she grows as a witch. The stronger her witchcraft grows, the more she is seen, acknowledged, revered by the mortals, and feared by the higher gods. That is why they send into exile, where she takes you with her, to the lonely island.

Her life is a struggle to improve her craft, so that she can fill the silence and the loneliness that is ever present in her rhythmic voice.

Below the loneliness, the not-being-seen, Circe longs for love and we read about it in its many forms: the parental, the fraternal, the motherly one. Her love within a couple - never formed with her own kind - is never passionate, but within the couple she searches for an equal. She seeks those mortals that could match her witchcraft with their art, whether it is the art of sculpting, or the art of war.

In her eagerness to be seen, to fill the silence, the heavy loneliness, she makes the mistakes - only too humane - which she later regrets. She leaves us just before one last gesture, and I cannot help but wonder: will she regret that too?