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 | DEMOPHON by FORREST REID Price: £14.99 ISBN-13: 978-1-908274-05-2 Book Dimensions: 210 × 148 mm Hardback with dustjacket Publication: February 2012
‘Beyond the grave of laurels sacred to Artemis
lay a blue, crinkled sea. It glittered dazzlingly in the hot sunshine; and far
out in the bay where water and sky met, the dark rocks of Salamis rose like a
dream-island, because a God had dropped a haze about them.’
So begins this magical odyssey of ancient Greece, a tale of enchanted seas and islands, where all the world was young; a romance of wonder and adventure, of Gods and men and beasts, of the strange and familiar. Admired, amongst others, by E.M. Forster and Walter de la Mare, Forrest Reid brought to literature something new, creating a world unlike any world that has been created before, a vision and a perception of beauty, previously unexpressed. |  | ||||||||||||||
From the opening line of Demophon,
the reader is transported to Greece; and, for the duration of one
year, he never once leaves the "golden isles": "Beyond the grove
of laurels sacred to Artemis lay a blue, crinkled sea. It glittered dazzingly
in the hot sunshine; and far out in the bay where water and sky met, the dark
rocks of Salarnis rose like a dream-land, because a God had dropped a haze
about them." Details drawn from the everyday life of an agricultural people
give an earthiness to this imaginative tale. Keleos, Demophon's father, on the
threshold of old age, seems like a figure of Father Time as he walks home with
his daughter, who "rubbed a dirty hand" across a "very dirty
face." His "beard was grizzled, his skin tanned like leather, and the
sweat ran in beads from the roots of his matted hair." Reid captures with
this figure of venerable old age with a child by the hand the simplicity of a
rustic character who takes his nobility from the earth itself. Again, in an
image of fields "yellow with ripened corn" until "the spirit of
the great earth mother passed over them changing their color," Reid paints
a description of earth's fertility and bounty. Within Demophon's educational odyssey, Reid thematically structures a search for spiritual meaning as a search for a divine friend. Like each of Reid's imaginative, exceptional boy heroes, Demophon is marked by "a touch of the divine" that makes him different from ordinary boys. Demeter, the goddess earth mother, saved him from death by anointing his body in fire which purged grossness and sensuality from it. Because his mother Metanira interrupted the deification process, Demophon feels incomplete and lonely; and, when his cosmic and personal loneliness cries for companionship, his desire brings Hermes from the woods. Hermes, a boy of Demophon's age, is first called brother and later friend; he appears whenever Demophon needs him; and by the end of the story Hermes promises to remain forever with him. To Demophon, Hermes is "the most wonderful person in the world. He could make toys out of wood or clay or pomegranate skin; he made a pipe of hemlock stalks (binding the hollow stems with white wax), and when it was finished he showed Demophon how to blow out of it musical sounds, He taught him how to throw a spinning quoit; he taught him how to run and leap and wrestle and box and swim; he turned the sylvan glade into a green gymnasium and Demophon himself into the smallest of small athletes."  Forrest Reid (b. 24 June 1875, Belfast, Ireland; d. 4 January 1947, Warrenpoint, County Down) was an Irish novelist, literary critic and translator. He was, along with Hugh Walpole and J.M. Barrie, a leading pre-war British novelist of boyhood. He is still acclaimed as the greatest of Ulster novelists and was recognised with the award of the 1944 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel Young Tom. Faber Finds have recently
reissued Apostate (1926), Private Road (1940) and Peter
Waring (1937) while Valencourt Books have just published Reid’s magnum
opus, the Tom Barber Trilogy — Uncle Stephen (1931), The
Retreat; or, The Machinations of Henry (1936), and Young Tom; or, Very
Mixed Company (1944) — in tandem with a companion volume; a study of
Forrest Reid and explanatory notes for the trilogy by Michael Matthew Kaylor who
also edited, with notes, The Garden God
(1905). | ||||||||||||||||
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DEMOPHON Back, Spine & Front cover * * * * * | ||||||||||||||||
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| The Sundial Press
Sundial House, Sherborne, Dorset January 2012 Contact |
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