Giving Voice to Nature in Greek Mythology
Dr Lorna Robinson, Iris Project director, reflects on how she was inspired to write about the Asphodel Fields in her new book Underworld Tales.
As a young child of maybe seven or eight, I remember thinking that one of the most haunting pages of my Usborne Book of Greek Myths was the one about the Asphodel Fields. I wasn’t particularly drawn to the fiery punishments of Tartarus or the ethereal Elysian paradise. The eternity of ghostly wandering in twilit fields of pale flowers felt far more interesting. It might well have been because, even at an early age, I had a bit of a penchant for gloomy landscapes and wistful characters! But I think it was also because the stories of voices of the “ordinary mortals” who spent their afterlife there were implied but never told.
We heard a lot about the individuals who had done things which offended the gods, and were punished in inventively horrifying ways, from fiery wheels to being eaten alive. We heard about the heroes, loved by the gods, who found their ways to the sun-filled plains of perpetual pleasure. But I wanted to know about the people in that grey gloaming of the afterlife.
It was many years later when I read The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, who by then was my favourite writer, and many years later still, during the enforced stillness of the first Covid lockdown, that I returned to the Asphodel Fields in my mind, and started to think a bit more about that strange landscape.
The first thing I wanted to explore was the flowers themselves. I was interested to discover some very earthly things about the flower, that it is used to make something as vital and staple and ordinary as bread. In some ways, it felt fitting that this hardy plant was used for daily bread in the here and now. It felt as if the flowers had been overlooked and forgotten.
I began to work on a project which would involve telling the stories of the plants in Greek mythology in the Underworld. As well as giving voice to the silent characters from Greek mythology, a central aspect of the project of the Telling Tales in Nature series was to give a voice to nature itself. In each of the stories, the voice of the plant itself (often also imagined as a nymph or nature spirit in the original story) tells a myth from her or his perspective.
Increasingly in the modern western world, human society has become removed from the patterns and connections with nature which used to deeply shape our lives and communities. Smartphones have to some extent replaced time that might have been spent just sitting around in woods with friends to pass the time, or even noticing the blossom on the trees on the walk or bus home from school or work. There are of course enormous gains from the changes technology has made to our lives, but I wondered if a deep rootedness in nature was one of the losses.
After a lot of exploring, I still could not find any myth which told the story of the asphodel flower. In Underworld Tales I try to give a voice of the asphodel herself and through that, a backstory. In the story, I imagine the creation of the Asphodel Fields before the Underworld was even ‘open for business’, what it might have been like before those first ghosts arrived and took up residence.
Illustration by Lydia Hall, from Telling Tales in Nature: Underworld Tales
In each of the stories in Underworld Tales, as well as the three other editions which followed, the stories are told through the eyes of the spirit of the plant, and therefore, to a great extent, with the often unheard voice of nature around us.
The presence of the Asphodel Fields in my life has not stopped there, however. It has been a sheer delight to have been invited to involve The Iris Project and our GCSE students in Penelope’s Web project this spring. My seven year old self, pouring over those ghostly illustrations all those years ago would scarcely have believed the story would continue to be shaping her world!
Our students have had the wonderful opportunity to read The Penelopiad, to flesh out the Underworld in their minds, to meet very talented professional academics, singers, composers and directors, and to engage themselves in the process of classical reception.
Reading the creative and artistic responses produced by our Year Nine and Ten students as they each imagined the Underworld, the asphodel flowers, and the characters who might reside there, reminds me powerfully of how each generation continues to be inspired by these wonderful ancient stories, and to re-imagine them in diverse and unexpected ways.
You can purchase Underworld Tales here and a Compendium of all the Telling Tales in Nature editions here.