One afternoon in the early sixties of the last century, while I was convalescing from a tonsil operation, a friend of my mother’s came to visit me, bringing me some books as a consolation. These objects that shone on the shelves of the house were not new, but until I had the use of reason I considered them foreign, while these were the beginning of my own library. Among them was one who would be fundamental in my life. So much so that I keep it as a talisman. It was a youthful edition, heavily illustrated in color, of Heinrich Schliemann’s book, In search of Troy. I was fascinated with what was told there, both about the history of the city, the war and the excavations that were carried out throughout the 19th century by this rich German. Two of my great loves emerged from reading this book: literature and archaeology. On these pages was the photo of Sophia Engastromenos wearing Helena’s supposed jewels.
From that hypnotic reading I was pulling the thread of other books such as the iliad, the odyssey or the Aeneid. No other volume, among the thousands that I have read in my already accumulated decades of existence, could surpass these because, in reality, all subsequent literature revolves around them without being able to break away from their protective shadow. Oh, one exception! The Song of Songs! Schliemann wanted to pass off his wife Sophia as Helena, but to me, even then, it never seemed to me that she had the characteristics that the aforementioned books provided. What would be her true face? The face for which thousands of people died.
A short time later I attended the premiere, at the Avenida cinema in my city, La Coruña, of the film directed by Robert Wise, Helena of Troy. Helena was played by Rossana Podestá, while Paris was represented by Jack Sernas. I have framed the big original Italian poster of the North American film shot in Cinecittà. Podestá perfectly embodied my model of Helena: intelligent look and, above all, mysterious; Dark-eyed blonde, touched with golden braids and wrapped in diadems and jewels that could only shine by protecting her body. Her sensuality overcame sexuality. Helen herself resembled the city of Troy: she always wanted to take it, but always resistant to the gods and heroes, whose only chance was her sacrifice. Rossana, like Helena herself, had been the winner of a contest in which her competitors were Ava Gardner, Liz Taylor or Lana Turner.
I was eighteen years old. Her film career was very uneven, but what did it matter. I tried to interview her several times, in Rome, but it was impossible. It took me a while to forgive him, but today I know it was better that way. Helena, at the end of the tape, Troy already burned and lost, embarked on Agamemnon’s ship, responds to her ex-husband when he tells her that she has to wash her hands stained with the blood of Paris: “Never! ”. And then the music of Max Steiner moves us.
Only seven students had chosen letters from the fourth year of my high school. Greek and Latin authors flowed like contemporaries. We went from Homer to Xenophon and from Caesar to Virgil. One day our Greek teacher told us that we would take a break from the classics and introduce us to others closer to us such as: Palamas, Sikelianós, Solomós, Casantsakis, Cavafis, Richos, Elitis or Seferis. The latter had been Nobel Prize Winner in 1963, and Elitis (whom I treated) would be years later. The fact is that these readings meant for me the definitive entry into poetry.
At the age of fourteen or fifteen, listening to these verses was lucky and a treasure. I was impressed by the apparent clarity of Cavafis, but who I consider one of my teachers is Seferis. Professor Riesco sang the poem “Helena”: “… In Troy, nothing – a fiction./ This is how the gods wanted it./ And Paris lay with a shadow as if he were a living creature./ And for Helena we were slitting our throats for ten years! !/… is not predestined to listen/messengers who come to tell him/that so much pain and so many lives/went to the abyss/for an empty tunic, for a Helena”. Seferis rescued the Helena of Euripides. She said: “I never went to Troy, there was only my shadow.” The messenger answered: “What do you say? / Just for a shadow we have suffered so much?”.
Yes, our teacher introduced doubt as one of the essential resources of poetry. At first he worried me, but then I thought I would tell the messenger that even for that shadow it was worth it. After all, Helena has always been an ideal, a fiction, a fundamental illusion to live.
Troy’s characters continue to travel the world through literature, theater, music, cinema, plastic arts… They have always accompanied me. And Helena metamorphosed into Rossana (like Cirano’s). “The sea! The sea!/ Whenever I think of the sea/ it comes to mind The Iliad and Helena’s famous slip that gave rise to it./ Had it not been for that there would have been no poem and the world,/ if it were to remember those crimson petals/ scattered on the rocks/ would call them simply homicide…”, writes the American poet William Charles William. And he adds in “Asphodels, that greenish flower”: “…Not all women are Helena, I know,/ but Helena lives in their hearts./ Dear: in yours too, that’s why I love you,/ and I couldn’t do otherwise mode…”.
Podestá, separated from the film director Marco Vicario, answered in an interview that she would take the mountaineer Walter Bonatti to a deserted island. They did not know each other personally, and they did. They died in the same house, he in 2011 and she two years later. All my books, mainly those of poetry, go out in search of it. In search of Helena. It’s a pity that, instead of being a writer, I hadn’t dedicated myself to mountaineering in the Alps.
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*César Antonio Molina is one of the most prominent writers and intellectuals in Europe today. Director of the Cervantes Institute (2004-2007), Minister of Culture of Spain (2007-2009). He is also a Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters of France, a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Carlos III, among other decorations. He is the author of more than 30 books of essays, prose and poetry.