Cloud Cuckoo Land

by Naomi Mitchison

Ancient Greek history and politics fascinated Naomi Mitchison, and in particular the long antagonism or rivalry of Athens and Sparta. In this, her second novel, she investigates the two city states through Alxenor, a young man from the tiny island of Poieessa, which changes hands as the balance of power changes. He does not choose his loyalty in a theoretical way, but as he experiences rough treatment from both. By Alxenor's day, Athens had declined from the golden age of Perikles, and the city was prone to bully smaller entities, but he is forced to recognise the much worse reality of Spartan civilisation, with iron discipline, cruelty and loss of individuality. Eventually, Mitchison came to see even the twentieth century in terms of struggles between Athens and Sparta, democracy and totalitarianism. Isobel Murray is Emeritus Professor of Modern Scottish Literature at the University of Aberdeen.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

327 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1925

About the author

Naomi Mitchison, author of over 70 books, died in 1999 at the age of 101. She was born in and lived in Scotland and traveled widely throughout the world. In the 1960s she was adopted as adviser and mother of the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana. Her books include historical fiction, science fiction, poetry, autobiography, and nonfiction, the most popular of which are The Corn King and the Spring Queen, The Conquered, and Memoirs of a Spacewoman.

Mitchison lived in Kintyre for many years and was an active small farmer. She served on Argyll County Council and was a member of the Highlands and Islands Advisory Panel from 1947 to 1965, and the Highlands and Islands Advisory Consultative Council from 1966 to 1974.

Praise for Naomi Mitchison:

"No one knows better how to spin a fairy tale than Naomi Mitchison."
-- The Observer

"Mitchison breathes life into such perennial themes as courage, forgiveness, the search for meaning, and self-sacrifice."
-- Publishers Weekly

"She writes enviably, with the kind of casual precision which ... comes by grace."
-- Times Literary Supplement

"One of the great subversive thinkers and peaceable transgressors of the twentieth century.... We are just catching up to this wise, complex, lucid mind that has for ninety-seven years been a generation or two ahead of her time."
-- Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Gifts

"Her descriptions of ritual and magic are superb; no less lovely are her accounts of simple, natural things -- water-crowfoot flowers, marigolds, and bright-spotted fish. To read her is like looking down into deep warm water, through which the smallest pebble and the most radiant weed shine and are seen most clearly; for her writing is very intimate, almost as a diary, or an autobiography is intimate, and yet it is free from all pose, all straining after effect; she is telling a story so that all may understand, yet it has the still profundity of a nursery rhyme.
-- Hugh Gordon Proteus, New Statesman and Nation

Reviews

[Jack Deighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This contains a dedication which I would have thought to be quite daring for the 1920s, “To my lover.”

The book is set during the Pelopponesian War, starting off on the island of Poieëssa in the Aegean Sea. Here young Alxenor is caught between the wishes of his brother, Euripaides, to support Sparta against the island’s overlord Athens, and those of Chromon, the brother of the girl he likes, Moiro, in favour of the democrats. When the revolt aganist Athens comes, Alxenor is only able to save Moiro with the help of a Spartan, Leon and find she ha smade an enemy of Chromon. He and Moiro flee to Athens where he is taken in by Theramenes, a trader, and marries Moiro. He is only able to make money by enlisting as a rower on one of Theramenes’s triremes but it is never enough and he and Moiro live more or less hand-to-mouth, even when they have a son, Timas. Moiro is pregnant again when Alxenor has to make another sailing trip and he advises her to keep the new child if it’s a boy or else expose it (in the Greek way) if it is a girl. It’s a girl and his wishes are followed by the household. Thereafter things between Moiro and Alxenor are broken and he takes care not to make her pregnant again.

On one of Alxenor’s trips he receives news that Sparta’s navy has defeated that of Athens at Aegospotami and the fall of the city becomes a foregone conclusion. Thus it is that Alxenor and his family end up in Sparta at the household of Leon’s cousin where Moiro has an affair with Leon and the inevitable happens. Her loyal slave attempts to get rid of the child but it goes wrong and Moiro dies. Here the Spartans offer to bring up Timas as one of their own. Alxenor is willing at first but another non-Spartan who is undergoing the same training as intended for Timas secretly warns him not to allow it. He and Timas make their escape and head for Poieëssa.

This is another illustration of Mitchison’s clear love for ancient times as in The Corn King and the Spring Queen and Travel Light (and also Blood of the Martyrs.) Her knowledge of the times and customs shines through but I would perhaps have enjoyed this more if I’d had a wider knowledge of the Pelopponesian war than merely that it was a contest between Athens and Sparta.

As a novel, though, this has a peculiar ending in that it doesn’t seem to have a conclusion. It just stops. And I still can’t quite see in what context the title Cloud Cuckoo Land is apposite.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished recently Mitchison's short story collection Black Sparta and really enjoyed it so bought this novel. It's a prequel to one of the stories in that collection: "Epiphany of Poieësa".

In the last years of the Peloponnesian War, a young man, Alxenor, lives on the island of Poieëssa: a vassal of Athens; [the island is a fiction of the author's]. He has a serious falling out with both his older brother about politics and with his best friend, Chromon, about the friend's sister, Moiro, whom Alxenor wishes to marry. His oligarchic brother is amenable to selling out to Sparta and Chromon is a fervent democrat; however Alxenor would like to find a middle way. Alxenor and Moiro escape the island to Athens, are befriended by a ship's captain, who becomes Alxenor's patron, and in whose house the couple marry. A son, Timas, is born to them. We see the democratic post-Pericles Athenian society at that time; Athens bullies her dependencies.

Because the couple falls into penury, they go to Sparta where a Spartan friend from years before takes them in and gives Alxenor a job--rowing for the Spartans! There they witness a completely sadistic fascist State with everyone a slave to It. Moiro dies suddenly; Alxenor is nearly convinced to put his son into Spartan military training, but is disabused of that when a 'foreigner' [non-Spartan] in the program comes by night and tells him of the harshness and cruelty awaiting his son. Secretly, father and son make a desperate escape from Sparta. If they reach Poieëssa, what sort of reception will they get after Alxenor's five years away? Are there any residual ill feelings?

This very entertaining novel compared and contrasted two diametrically opposed political systems. Written in the 1920s, this novel in a way warned of the rise of a certain totalitarian State. I feel this is an underrated gem. In a sense, it was a Bildungsroman of Alxenor's psychological maturation. It is certainly worth reading and rereading. In other books, the author, a sort of proto-Mary Renault, with the same interest in classical Greece, pursued her theme of these classical government systems, relating them to those of modern days. The 'Introduction' is very insightful; I read it both before and after reading the novel.

[Francis Jarman · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading several other books by Naomi Mitchison, I was looking forward to this one, especially as the period (the end of the Peloponnesian War) is a fascinating one. But I found it disappointing. True, the physical feel of Greece is beautifully conveyed - as Rosemary Sutcliff rightly points out in her Introduction to the 1967 edition - and Mitchison's influence on later writers like Mary Renault seems obvious. However, the narration is "all over the place", with irritating changes of focaliser (i.e., third-person narrative perspective) within individual chapters. And the main character ("hero" is hardly the right word), Alxenor, is a wuss. The absence of a likeable major character is a serious weakness. So, OK, two stars, but only two.

[Caleb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naomi Mitchison is antecedent to fellow ancient-and-mythical-greek story-retellers Mary Renault, Ursula Leguin, and more recently, Katherine Beutner (Alcestis) and Madeline Miller (Song of Achilles).

In the last years of the Peloponnesian War, Alxenor has no home unless he chooses a side to stand with. Published in 1926, Mitchison's theme is timeless: Mitchison could be writing about Ireland in her day, or the cold war later on, today's politics, or simply about ancient Greece.

I found the language a bit too full of contemporary idiom, but the story was woven masterfully.