Something Old

Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year ago. 

“THE DOUBLE TONGUE” by William Golding (published in 1999)

William Golding died in June 1993. A Publishers’ Note (by Faber and Faber) tells us that Golding had written two drafts of his last novel and he was about to write a third draft when he died. The title The Double Tongue was chosen by the publishers out of many titles that Golding had considered. Inevitably there are some things missing in the text we now have, especially in Chapter 4 where much of an important conversation between two major characters is apparently missing. Surprisingly though, I found this novel to be one of the clearest and most readable of his novels. Golding is, as he had been many times before, wrestling with either the idea of God [or gods] or the idea of atheism.

Golding was always interested in Classics [i.e. Ancient Greece and Rome]. The Double Tongue is set in ancient Greece, but it is Greece in its declining era. Rome is gradually becoming the dominant force in the Mediterranean countries, perhaps about 300 BC. Arieka is a young peasant Grecian girl. Her father wants to get her married and is willing to pay the dowry. A young man is willing to marry her, but she will have none of it and runs away. She is forced back… but the young man has lost interest in her. Arieka does not like boys and young men. So, after much anger from her father, she is put in front of Ionidies, who is in charge of finding young women  who will be assistants to the Pythia of Delphi – that is, the Oracle or soothsayer at Delphi who is supposed to answer difficult questions put to her by troubled people. The Pythia has long been revered at Delphi, although academics in Athens are now very sceptical about her powers, although country people still rely on her.

So Arieka is taken to Delphi by Ionidies, who on the journey gives her some points about all the parts of Greece that are now being taken over by Romans – such as Sicily. When they get to Delphi,  Ionidies introduces her to the library that is held in the Pythia’s domain. Arieka is quickly interested in reading and is gradually immersed in reading... so much that over the years she herself becomes a true scholar. Perhaps more importantly, she is first introduced to the Pythia, a fat, old and blind woman. There is always a young woman who will become the next Pythia after the current Pythia dies. The Pythia tells Arieka that there is a woman waiting to be Pythia; and then after that woman Arieka will be Pythia – so she is in effect Number Three, at first admired for what they think is her country simplicity.

Areika, female, not interested in men, is [as William Golding frames her] almost like a nun, but she is very inquisitive. Ionidies is a high priest in charge of giving prayers to the god Apollo . But he says his aim is to revive the glory of Athens… the Athens that used to be of philosophers… and Ionidies admits that, like many philosophers, he is really an atheist. He does not believe in the gods. He explains that in older times, the Pythia would answer questions in clasic lordly hexameters for important people who had real problems to solve. Now, in a Delphi that is decaying, the only people who come to the Pythia for advice are simple farmers and peasants who ask about trivial things… and more and more, the people most likely to come to Delphi are tourists who are there only out of curiosity.

The old Pythia dies. There is a new Pythia. So Areika is second in turn. For all her piety, she is beginning to loose her faith after all of Ionidies’ talk about the charlatan oracles there now are. [And it is at this point that  - in Chapter 4 - we do not get what was probably going to be an important conversation between Ionidies and Areika about gods or no gods. My guess is that this was going to be the most difficult for Golding to write, it being such a formidable topic.]

The next Pythia dies… and so Areika is now the Pythia. But more than ever, Roman rule is taking over. Certainly many still cling to the old gods and Greeks still speak Greek [in their many dialects], but many are also learning Latin. And while Areika goes through all the ceremonies that she is obliged to undertake, she finds that only a few come for worship. There are three days when  the Pythia can be the Oracle giving advice. Many ask pointless questions and on the last day hardly anybody comes. Later, Areika has a long conversation with many of the visitors – mainly tourists – including Phoenicians, Macedonains,  Romans and others and is aware that there are many gods she has never heard of.  In conversation, many say that Greece had never been united and has always been a collection of cities bickering with one another. How feeble a thing it now is.

There is a festival – a sort of carnival – and the Pythia becomes less and less important. One of her subordinates suggest to her that they could make a lot of money by trickery…. And she is distressed.

Now at last, she has come to believe that “the trouble with the old gods is that if you put them together they fight… You can’t get anywhere with a bunch of gods because you are looking in two directions at once and stuck.” She now comes to believe that there must be only one definitive god. The Pythion [the home of the Pythia] is literally falling apart. The roof will soon fall down. So she goes to Athens [now a free city under Roman protection] seeking for money to repair the roof; but in Athens she is seen merely as an oddity even if a very few still worship her; and in Athens there is much decadence. She returns to Delphi. The roof has fallen down. Only some of it has been fixed. She is now even more sure that the gods are not real and she no longer communicates with the gods. When, in later years, she is about to die, she asks that her headstone have carved on the stone only four words – "To the Unknown God". 

What is Golding doing here? Most obviously he is reminding us that cultures, societies and whole nations can come and go over hundreds of years. The Greece he depicts is dying, despite all the glory of its past. At the same time he is, as always, being ambiguous about God or gods or atheism. Arieka in the end hopes for the unknown god – only one God. Is this a matter of faith or a hope for universal acknowledgment of the one true god… or, as an atheist would say, is this all wishful thinking?  Certainly there is chartlatan-ism in many religious communities, but then at the same time this is true of many atheists. Who can really be sure there is [or isn’t] a one true God? Yet, like it or not, religions and gods of many sorts have existed since human beings had began to think. A force greater than us rules the universe.  We look up to it. Meanwhile, Arieka’s hope is heartfelt. She has gone from belief to scepticism to hope… like any thinking person.

Foot Note: What does the given title The Double Tongue mean? It could mean many things, but I interpret it as referring to a habit the old Oracles had. When asked really thorny questions, they would deliberately give incredibly ambiguous answers.