'Lives of Alexander. Two fabulous stories': biography of a legend

At

kilometer zero

of literature is the purest heritage narrative, with popular roots, which takes shape in late Antiquity in some precious relics of pioneering novels.

The last of the genres that the Greeks invented, based on certain post-classical themes - the adventures of pilgrim lovers, trips to fantastic countries and the legendary lives of extraordinary characters - intertwined in the form of a frame story and its small framed narratives, It has

one of its most unique examples

in the fabulous

Life of Alexander.

Thus was born this “genre without a name” that goes from the Greek novel to the medieval romance and, from there, to modernity in a long adventure of which the editor of this volume, Carlos García Gual, is very knowledgeable.

Beyond history, the Macedonian monarch, famous for his fleeting feat in the history of Hellenism, starred in unparalleled adventures in which, to explore the unknown, he descended into the depths of the ocean or soared through the sky carried by animals. fantastic.

At other times he conversed with ascetic Brahmins or with talking trees and birds, and met monstrous beings whom he then had to confine behind a wall beyond the civilized world.

The compilation that García Gual presents to us in this wonderful volume is made up of two emblematic examples of the popular tradition about Alexander: on the one hand, there is the very origin of this tradition, the so-called “Novel of Alexander”, falsely attributed to Callisthenes, historian of the time of the Macedonian king.

This Greek novel by Pseudo-Callisthenes, with its various ancient recensions, between the 3rd and 5th centuries, is the source of subsequent translations (especially influential the intermediate Latin, Armenian and Syriac versions into very diverse languages ​​in the East and West, from the French to Persian. Here we are presented with a very different Alexander from the historical one, son of the magical pharaoh Nectanebo thanks to an entanglement between erotic and supernatural, who runs ineffable adventures following the already known historical scheme - yes, with his battles and his campaigns - but filled with fantastical adventures and with a composition and structure that recalls a kind of Alexandrian “gospel”—in fact, it will be the book most translated after the Bible—, with its hero, its traitor, its deeds, its sayings and its death.

The second

Life

presented in this careful edition is an even more fanciful epigone than Pseudo-Callisthenes and, curiously, after a long oral tradition, is the first novel printed in modern Greek (Venice, 1750).

It is a popular variant of those late antique recensions, augmented with extravagant adventures, in what Professor García Gual calls Alejandro's "folletín", which "accentuates the dramatic and fantastic tone of the original story, reworked in simple, picturesque, and of strong popular color.”

This prose book is curious, which in the neo-Greek reception coexists with a versified version, called the

Rimada

, which dates back just over a century: both were read and transmitted in domestic circles in a time of low literacy.

Its exoticism is interesting on a geographical level, since Turkmen towns are mentioned, there is talk of Morea, the medieval name of the Peloponnese, entire kingdoms are invented, and characters from biblical tradition and exaggerated episodes appear.

But it is not just literature, since these legends have survived to this day in folklore: if in the Slavic and Eastern world Alexander is outlined as the guardian of the doors that contain the evil of Gog and Magog, in the north of Greece and The islands have spread the fable of the Nereid or Gorgon, sister or widow of the king, who appears among the waters of the sea asking the sailors if "King Alexander lives": we must answer yes, that "he lives and reigns." ”, or it will sink the ship without remission.

Long, then, is the shadow of the myth of Alexander.

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