Great little stories for eager little ears
"Lyrical humanity, mischievous scholarship and an exquisite delight in words"
I have always wondered what tales Homer might have dreamily listened to as a child; what stories his wife would have told their children and grandchildren when they were little and sitting by her side in front of a fireplace in the winter, or under a leafy mulberry tree in the summer.
I don’t think Homer’s wife would have told their children and grandchildren the Iliad or the Odyssey, as he would sing them before young princes and princesses, elderly noblemen and their ladies, or stately Kings and Queens. The Iliad and the Odyssey are stories for grown men and women, they require a celebration, a grand public feast, performance, ritual, a greater and longer experience of life.
Homer’s wife would have told her growing children and grandchildren different stories and in a different voice, sharing them intimately and in private, teaching softly both wisdom and pain, history and legend, god and man, the gentleness and the hardness of life in the safety of her own motherly and grandmotherly embrace.
She would have marvelled them perhaps with her own version of her husband’s “winged words”, and The Adventures of Hermes, God of Thieves might well have been her story.
New writing and old words
The Adventures of Hermes, God of Thieves is not another prop to recount the myths of the ancient Greeks. This tale of Hermes’ adventures and misadventures, of his own godly passage from childhood to youth and to adulthood, possesses lyrical humanity, mischievous scholarship and an exquisite delight in words and in the enchantment of stories. Each “episode” has delicate simplicity and deep moral weight: in true Platonic manner, Myth is used as the best, most spellbinding and irresistibly gripping teaching tool for young minds and hearts.
Myths in Szac’s hands become eloquent and discreet counsellors; they have dignity, brilliance, a lust for life and creation. They offer an original vision as well as an old source of essential wisdom; they promise powerful serenity, nobility, beauty, eternity, and certainly the most thrilling adventure and sparkling excitement.
The Adventures of Hermes, God of Thieves should be read aloud together: fondly, wisely, with great drama and panache; or on one’s own: indulgingly, joyfully, ecstatically, under a dreamlike blanket. And always with an impish sense of growing complicity and curious amazement.
Mika Provata-Carlone
London October 2014
