I’m still not quite ready to
do what I promised a few postings ago, namely to discuss “Hercules in a strange
place.” This current posting will, however, do what I promised in the previous
one, namely to continue looking at the relevance of Hercules for my topic.
Since that previous posting, of Thursday of last week, just before the easter
weekend, I’ve been thinking more about Lisa Maurice’s article in Hercules in children’s
literature. I’ve also been mulling further over Alastair Blanshard’s
exploration of the figure of Hercules in Western culture, and how far Hercules
has been used by a range of receivers to express certain things about that
culture. I’ve also been thinking further about Emma Stafford’s work into receptions
of Hercules and their ongoing relevance.
Just over a year ago, Emma and
her team at Leeds ran an event where people were invited to make postcards
updating the Labours of Hercules to show the hero vying with contemporary
problems. On resulting cards, the participants came up with depictions of Hercules
battling such issues as climate change, corruption in politics and Brexit –
indeed above all I think Brexit. As I looked at the postcards included on
the Hercules Project site, I wondered whether, a year on, a key issue might be
in relation to the current coronavirus pandemic. I took a break from looking at
the website to check the BBC News. The first headline phrased the problem over getting enough
personal protective equipment to NHS staff as “Herculean.”
So: Hercules continues to be
relevant, or, at least, the labours
of Hercules continue to resonate. I am going to run a little during this posting
with the labours, and how and why they continue to “speak” and what the fit is –
and is not… – with my project.
When I’ve been talking about
the activities I’m developing, I’m often asked why I’ve specifically opted for
Hercules as the focus. And one thing that’s been asked is whether I chosen Hercules
because he is always overcoming hardships: have I picked Hercules because he is
the great doer of deeds - always coming against some hardship or other?
My answer is – “yes, in part”,
and there is potential in Hercules’s labours in relations to the hardships that
autistic people encounter and, but with a message of Hope: that they can be overcome. But this isn’t
really where I am starting from with Hercules. But before getting to where I am starting from, I have been thinking
about why the labours of Hercules should be the first thing that comes to
people’s mind. And one reason is just how much the labours have been used to
express different issues, and to show how it is possible to battle some issue
in question – and to ty to vanquish it.
 |
| The labouring hero: Herakles and Lion wrestle on an Attic oinochoe in the British Museum (E 621) of circa 520-500 BCE from Vulci. |
In the pubic engagement
event just over a year ago in Leeds, as I’ve said, it was the Labours and how
they can speak to contemporary concerns that were the focus. The participants –
both children and adults – enabled to become active receivers of classical
myth, created postcards
where Hercules deals with particular modern problems. The cards included
Hercules facing a Hydra whose six heads were labelled B-R-E-X-I-T. For one
participant, Hercules was “Remain” seeking to stop Brexit. For another, Hercules
was managing to achieve Brexit. For one child, Hercules tries to save the world
from its leaders, depicted as monsters. On another card, the Augean stables are
the world, which Hercules’s tasks is to clean up. For one other, it is the
daily labours of being a twenty-first century person that is the focus, and
Hercules sits reading a long list of Terms and Conditions.
An exercise where children
draw Hercules dealing with some challenge or danger or problem that speaks to
them as autistic people might have potential. It could be something ‘huge’ or
more ‘everyday’, like the Terms and Conditions-reading Hercules. After all,
everything can be hard when you are autistic.
Plus, what about an activity
from the point of view of the Hydra, the Lion, the stables even, where some
feature of the natural world or the wilds is resisting the invasion of a hero intent
on harness it, or defeating it? At a time when, during the coronavirus
pandemic, pollution levels are dropping and dolphins are returning to the Venetian
lagoon, this might be all the more timely.
But what I am especially
interested in is not the labours but an episode that is less well-known, less
well known now that is. I’ll say what the episode is in the next posting, when
I will finally get to the strange place, and what Hercules is doing in this
place and why what happens here – rather than the labours - will be my main focus.
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