Andrea Marcolongo is a writer possessed of a lively intellectual curiosity and her two most recent books have startlingly different subject matters while sharing a fervent attachment to the world of ancient Greece.
Sean Sheehan
“Shifting the moon from its orbit” arises from Marcolongo securing permission from the Acropolis Museum in Athens to spend a night, 28 May 2022, in the museum. She chooses to put down her camping bed, sleeping bag and torch close to the sculptures commissioned by Pericles to decorate the Parthenon, built in the fifth century BCE to celebrate the Greek victory over the invading forces of the mighty Persian Empire.
She spends the night in the room which is the size (160 metres) of the band of sculpted and painted decorations that formed the Parthenon’s frieze. The room displays the square spaces, the metopes, that were filled with sculpted marble figures. Not even fragments survive for some thirty metres of the frieze and these metopes are left blank, with images reproduced in their corners of what they once depicted. Another fifty metres are made up of plaster copies of the originals that still remain in the British Museum.
Despite ongoing negotiations between Athens and London, no date has been settled for the return of the so-called Elgin Marbles. The British Museum is concerned over the precedent that would be set by returning them for there are other treasures in the museum – the Benin bronzes in particular – looted from abroad. It wants to retain ownership of the marbles despite, as Marcolongo makes crystal clear, lacking any ethical claim to keep the stolen goods in London. She makes the point that over 90% of traditional African art resides outside the continent of its origins.
“The art of running” is also set in Athens but chiefly because that city’s marathon is the one Marcolongo is preparing to join. She trains for her first marathon in Paris. Unsure of why she or anyone else wants to subject the body to running some 26 miles for no obvious gain, she thinks it may have something to do with fear of dying: I run, therefore I am. She is not alone; France alone has over 7000 marathons a year.
The short chapters in the book specifically concerned with running are in italics and readers not enamoured with the subject can skim or skip them.
The real appeal of “The art of running”, for the present reader at least, lies with her ruminations over topics and ideas associated with her preparation for the marathon.
Clocking the kilometres as she pounds pavements along the Seine, she thinks about time and women, health and the enigma that is the human body, about winning and losing and what is worth gaining.
The two books make an unlikely pair were it not for their shared Intelligence and love of ancient Greek culture.
“Shifting the moon from its orbit” and “The art of running” and by Andrea Marcolongo, are is published by Europa Editions.
(Photos supplied by the publisher)
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