Basso Profundo

Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (2010)

In 2008’s The Elephant’s Journey, Nobel Prize winner José Saramago recounts the 1552 handing-over of adult Asian elephant Solomon (or Suleiman or Solimon), from Dom João III, the king of Portugal, to Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Told with tongue firmly in cheek, it leaves no social stratum un-hoisted on the petard of our clever author’s sense of irony. It’s funny cover to cover; it strictly maintains a 21st Century point of view, and doesn’t let latter-day foolishness go unpunished, either. I can’t remember laughing out loud so often while reading a semi-serious work of fiction.

Dom João III, mighty king of the vast Portuguese trading and military empire, puzzles at the outset, wondering what kind of gift he can give his friend and ally Austrian Archduke Maximilian to further cement their relations. It would be difficult to name two more august royals in Europe at the time — Portugal nearly at the height of its global power, and the Holy Roman Empire that epoch’s European colossus.

However, Saramago portrays these august personages as insecure, petty, self-aggrandizing and sometimes downright silly. However, the author reserves his most barbed observations for the two military contingents, one from each empire. The way they torture themselves over minute details, and whose pride will be damaged by whom, is simply beyond the pale — in the hands of this world-renowned author, it’s gorgeous, and gorgeously funny. in this Saramago imagines they turn the simplest of transactions into trouble over trifles about who will stand where, and who will be allowed into the Portuguese outpost for the transfer. Spoiler: NOT the Austrians!

Our Nobelist author saves his most open-hearted passages for the two characters at the center of his narrative: the elephant and his mahout, or handler. The elephant is cooperative and rather quick to learn; and Subhro, the handler, learns about European rivalries, Catholic hypocrisy and showmanship during the bloody Lutheran Reformation and its religious wars, and tries to monetize his main asset by selling elephant hair as a cure for baldness.

Needless to say, I’m recommending this tour de force comic novel in the highest terms possible. Take and enjoy.

Dr. Eric H. Cline’s second book on the Late Bronze Age Collapse, called “After 1177 BC,” follows up his popular 2014 chronicle of the Late Bronze Age Collapse, “1177 BC.” In the previous volume he adopted an arbitrary date for the well-known calamity that brought several ancient civilizations to their knees, and others to the dustbin of history. In his new compendium Dr. Kline picks eight flourishing, civilized Eastern Mediterranean cultures and provides serious, nuanced accounts of which these civilizations adapted and thrived, which survived but barely, and which simply disappeared. It is a highly illuminating read.

As you might expect in an academic treatise, he lays out the facts of dates, regimes, industrial and trade practices, migration, and warfare methodically. He always couches his facts in terms of reliable sources, and where his sources lead to doubt, Dr. Cline faithfully reports the reasons for and the extent of the uncertainty. The result is a closely reasoned, well-organized recounting, that gains credibility as we go along.

At volume’s end, he presents a table to list the ancient civilizations and the fate of each in the wake of the Late Bronze Age Collapse. He presupposes that the reader is aware of the episode, but in case you need a refresher: early in the 12th Century BCE some combination of unanticipated forces: a spate of powerful earthquakes, climate change leading to drought and famine, and/or multiple waves of mysterious invaders from faraway lands, resulted in the simultaneous collapse of trade, economic depression, war, revolution, the splintering of populations, and the retrogression of technological standards. It was the end of the world as the well-established cultures of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean knew it.

But Professor Cline’s mission is to provide a closer, more nuanced look at the effects of the calamity, and his combination of rigorous analysis and careful filling-in-the-blanks works superbly. His ultimate recap, a carefully laid-out table featuring the cultures of the time and how each weathered, or failed to weather, the Collapse, adds to the general public’s understanding, and provides a nexus for the professional archeological and historical work which will follow. (I will quibble with the professor’s use of the term BC instead of the more current BCE to describe the time period. Presumably the title of the initial volume of 11 years ago led to the practice, but it’s too bad.)

In the end, Professor Cline urges the general public to drop the idea that the period led to an early Dark Age, and simply refer to the emerging epoch as the Iron Age. His book is at once encyclopedic and daringly speculative. A terrific effort from a foremost expert.