This is a good book. It's about the Pizarros and the end of the Incan rulers. A real page-turner without any academic vices (footnotes, obscurity, point-scoring off other academics in your field). You can get it at the Wellington Public Library.
In order to make history real I think you have to fictionalise it. As living, breathing humans we are aware that existence is very much to do with the little things, and the basic sensations of being alive. Whenever I have been at an important event I have always noticed how banal it is.
I went to the burial of the unknown soldier at the cenotaph a few (?) years ago. It was a big deal. Important people were there and it was covered live by TV ONE. What do I remember? I remember Rodney Hide stopping photgraphers without the proper passes from entering certain enclosures, I remember worrying about getting sunburned... that kind of stuff. Probably the same for people who were 123 rows back at the "I have a dream" speech. This is why the "Sermon on the Mount" sketch is so f**king funny in Life of Brian. When you're in row 123 at gig a lot of the moment is lost.
There's a bit of making stuff up in this book about the Incans, but it's a better book for it.
As the sky began tuning red from the setting sun, several Spaniards fastened around Atahualpa’s neck a garrotte – a loop of rope attached to a stick that could be turned like a wheel, thus tightening the loop until the blood supply though the carotid arteries was cut off to the brain. As the friar began intoning the last rites – Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death – one of the Spaniards began to twist the stick, the rope slowly tightening around Atahualpa’s neck – I will fear no evil, for thou art with me – until the emperor’s eyes began to bulge and the solitary vein on his forehead rose distended and illumed by the final rays of sun – and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.
Saturday 26 July, 1533
I suppose some of the Spaniards watching the death of the Incan emperor were moved, and I suppose others were batting away mosquitos, or were wishing they had been kinder to their lover, or had thoughts about dinner.
What is for dinner?
2 comments:
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
I quite often quote Yeats at my students. He has dated quite a bit, but his best stuff is still fantastic.
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