s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all]'s Reviews > Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

‘Who is strong enough to escape their fate? Who can avoid what they must become?’

Opening a Jeannette Winterson book is a lot like that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when they open the ark: angelic prose comes pouring out and it melts your face clean off. For real though, Winterson can spin words the way Rumplestiltskin spun straw into gold. In Weight, Winterson puts this poetic magic to the task of spinning the tales of Atlas and Heracles into something beyond a mere myth retelling as it becomes a metafictional examination on the purpose of art and the implications of freedom and fate. While those familiar with Greek mythology won’t find much of a surprise plotwise, Winterson never fails to surprise through philosophical interjections that expand the tales into a larger context of purpose, existential inner struggles of the characters, or simply by managing to bring Russian space dog Laika into the narrative, and this retelling will be just as satisfying regardless of prior knowledge of the myths. ‘These are the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true,’ Winterson writes and through this poetically gorgeous retelling we find an authentically human purpose we can all take to heart.

‘Like my brother Prometheus, I have been punished for overstepping the mark. He stole fire. I fought for freedom.’

Retellings of Greek myths have been a darling of the publishing industry lately, with Madeline Miller leading the charge to popular success, but retellings have always had deep roots in the history of literature. The oral tradition of storytelling told and retold stories for generations, keeping them alive and often adapting them to fit the needs of the times. As Winterson says in the introduction ‘my work is full of Cover Versions,’ and indeed Winterson’s deep love of fairy tales and their literary theories permeate their works so it feels only natural for them to approach Greek mythology head on. I enjoy that Winterson does not bend the myths into something they weren’t—there is a clear, loving and respectful approach to them—but instead retells them to launch our minds into larger conversations.

‘Weight’, Winterson tells us, ‘has a personal story broken against the bigger story of the myth we know and the myth I have re-told,’ and much of the authorial asides that are threaded through the narrative read like a gearing up for the full self-investigation that would occur a few years later in the jaw-droppingly moving memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?. I love when Winterson shows up in their own books, that moment you can spot and say “that’s your life!” though, as always, Winterson insists it isn’t autobiography but a narrative that examines the self:

‘Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.’

Much of Weight becomes a larger message on the purpose of stories and retelling them, though this comes through an investigation of the characters first. Throughout the plot of Weight we grapple with the emotional states of Atlas as well as Heracles when he briefly shoulders the Kosmos during his 12 Labours and through them come to grapple with questions of fate, freedom and purpose. For Heracles we see the question ‘why?’ begin to crack his proud veneer. Witnessing Atlas accept his punishment ‘with such grace and ease, with such gentleness, love almost,’ becomes something that will shake him even further.

‘I find I am become a part of what I must bear. There is no longer Atlas and the world, there is only the World Atlas. Travel me and I am continents. I am the journey you must make.’

This is the familiar Atlas of myth, a titan born between Earth and Poseidon, but one that becomes much more a story of what occurs internally than externally. ‘She loved him because he showed her to herself. He was her moving mirror,’ we are told of Earth’s love for Poseidon, who in turn knows ‘that while he could not cover the whole of her, she underpinned the whole of him.’ The writing is immediately lovely and love is examined in the signature Wintersonian ways that made books like The Passion so breathtaking. But this idea of understanding one’s self in relation to others is a major theme to be explored here. With Heracles, while holding the Kosmos he realizes his strength is contingent on motion or battle with others, and therefore so was his entire being dependent on being in relation to others. With ‘no one to listen to his stories, or to get drunk with, or to praise him,’ his sense of self deteriorates. This is then juxtaposed with Atlas. ‘He had only the punishment of forever,’ Winterson tells us of Atlas, ‘forever to be the same person. Forever to perform the same task,’ Instead of losing himself without others, his solitude becomes one that pulls him so far inward that he hears all of the world and begins to find himself meld with all space and time.

‘ I realise I am carrying not only this world, but all possible worlds. I am carrying the world in time as well as in space. I am carrying the world’s mistakes and its glories. I am carrying its potential as well as what has so far been realised.’

With Winterson, time is always a construct and a narrative (‘Tell me the time’ you say. And what you really say is ‘Tell me a story.’), and we see here a melding of all things that feels akin to the understanding of Time in Sexing the Cherry, such as the quote ‘The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body,’ from that novel.

‘His dreams were always the same; boundaries, desire.’

The gods punishment for Atlas was to trap him under the weight of the world, thus nullifying his strength. ‘They had captured his body, but not this thoughts,’ and in his solitude Atlas begins to consider the meaning of boundaries and freedom. Freedom, he observes, is something that can be best understood in relation to others as well.

‘Why did the gods insist on limits and boundaries when any fool could see that these things were only rules and taboos – customs made to keep people in their place? Rebellion was always punished like this – by taking away what little freedom there was, by encasing the spirit.’

Control is the name of the game here, such as Prometheus punished for giving fire to mortals (Heracles later frees Prometheus after understanding the unbearable weight of an endless punishment). Atlas considers how often we put up walls or restrict freedoms under the guise of ‘safety’—such as his own walled garden where the Golden Apples are kept—or engage in a creation of boundaries to curb desire. ‘Demarcation, check-points, border controls. And all in the name of freedom. Freedom for me means curbing you,’ he thinks, a passage that seemingly folds time to be a direct criticism of modern day politics. When Atlas asks Hera why the gods cannot grant his gift of knowledge of past, present and future to the mortals, she replies ‘Humankind continues in ignorance because knowledge destroys them. Everything that man invents he soon turns to his own destruction.’ For her, freedom is dangerous, something that must be controlled. ‘If I seem like fate to you,’ Hera says to Heracles, ‘it is because you have no power of your own,’ and we begin to observe Fate as the gods curbing our freedom.

‘How can I escape my fate?’
‘You must choose your destiny.’

In contrast to ‘the manner of infinite gentleness with which Atlas had resumed the impossible burden of the world,’ Heracles exists trying to dodge fate. His arc is one that is bent towards that fate, and no matter how hard he tries to escape it he finds himself redirecting himself straight for it.

‘The ancients believed in Fate because they recognised how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behaviour. The burden is intolerable.’

As David Foster Wallace said, ‘although of course you end up becoming yourself.’ In this, can we find a sense of freedom under the constraints of fate by instead choosing to see it as destiny? Do we find a fresh perspective on the hinge of connotations?

‘No hero can be destroyed by the world. His reward is to destroy himself. Not what you meet on the way, but what you are, will destroy you, Heracles.’

Honestly, I love Winterson’s depiction of Heracles as this sad, lonesome road warrior joylessly completing his tasks. ‘Is he a joke or a god?’ Atlas wonders, ‘his doubleness is his strength and his downfall. He is a joke and a god.’ Heracles is not depicted very flatteringly, prone of violence and sexual assault, and it is a delight to see him put in his place by Hera (Zeus being protective giving shrugs ‘as if to say, Women, what can you do with them?’ is comedic gold as well). The toxic aspects of him are writ large, though it doesn’t feel as pointedly critical like in Madeline Miller and instead assumes you’ll draw the conclusions on your own. Which is something I love about Winterson because Winterson believes in you, the reader, to connect dots that come across as heavy handed when other authors do it for you. But anyways, the portrait of him is one that observes how ‘Heracles’s strength was a cover for his weakness,’ and that even with all the strength in the world he cannot escape his fate. I adore the Heracles story as one of existential crisis, which is honestly more engaging than the Atlas story here if only because of how laced it is with a perfect blend of comedy and tragedy.

‘Fate reads like the polar opposite of decision, and so much of life reads like fate.’

What the gods they didn’t expect with Atlas was, while strict boundaries were enforced on his body, his mind would take flight towards freedom. This becomes a metaphor for the creative spirit and endurance of the artist and is also where Winterson does what I love best about Winterson novels: launch into philosophical discussions that launch us into the stratosphere of prose and thought. And in this we discover why the retelling is not just chronicling the journey of heroes, but the actual act of retelling becomes our own journey. ‘I thought that if I could only keep on telling the story,’ Winterson writes, ‘if the story would not end, I could invent my way out of the world.: This is a clear reference to the autobiographical details threaded through their novels, most notably the incredible Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit but they also crop up in almost every novel. The more you read the more you’ll recognize them.

‘That’s why I write fiction – so that I can keep telling the story. I return to problems I can’t solve, not because I’m an idiot, but because the real problems can’t be solved. The universe is expanding. The more we see, the more we discover there is to see.
Always a new beginning, a different end.’

With each retelling a different stone can be turned over and examined, something new can be gleaned, and we hope that with each re-examination we are moving closer to some kind of truth that could set us free. Knowing we won’t reach it but believing anyways. This is one one of the most enduring beauties of literature. It’s why some of us read more and more, enjoying the release when an author hits a high note that reverberates through us so strongly we think we can feel our bones humming to the tune of the universe. It is how we try to escape fate and fumble to form a narrative that—we hope—is the pathway through the forest of life on a quest towards our destiny. Winterson discusses how when we are young we are rereading the narrative of our parents, but must inevitably set out on our own to write the stories of ourselves. It’s why the old myths matter: they are the lessons we use as a compass but we must write our own north star into the heavens of the Self to pursue our own sense of meaning. ‘Having no one to carry me, I learned to carry myself. My girlfriend says I have an Atlas complex,’ Winterson writes, and suddenly the reason for this specific retelling becomes clear.

The phrase ‘I want to tell the story again’ repeats like a mantra across the novella Weight, a book that is short in length but deceptively so as it is deep in emotional resonance and meaning. While retellings are a popular topic, Winterson manages to do the original myths justice while still making them their own in a way that feels so unique and personal, I can’t help but gush enthusiasm for it. It traverses to a fitting end that becomes a modern myth all of its own. Sure, this is the first 4 star I’ve given Winterson, which isn’t a slight against it as I did enjoy this thoroughly but it doesn’t connect with the same power as the bigger titles. Still, Weight is a gorgeous achievement of prose and philosophical musings that examine fate, freedom, and the freeing power of storytelling.

⅘

‘Now he was carrying something he wanted to keep, and that changed everything.’