Even Niobē Remembered to Eat
It is only fitting tradition would have us pray before a meal, as the act of eating is in a way also a prayer to life.
I visit K. in his office on the top floor. When I knock on the open door, he’s looking out of his window at the expanse of bare trees stretching across the grounds, bending like some great ocean in their longing for lands unseen. He is a saint in a cloister, a sage in his dusty ashram above the tree line, hidden away and untapped in his knowledge of things lost since the foundation of the world. He turns when he hears me at the door and his face lights up the way it does. He is some sort of grandfather to me, I think. He moves slowly towards his desk and his dark hands reach out to signal I should sit down next to him.
We speak first of personal news, work, and then finally and most importantly, literature. This is the way it is between us. I sometimes think the first two topics are merely a pretense to the third, a formality in a way that serves to establish grounds for the deep love we share before the castle of books piled up in the room. We sit around them, as if to warm our bones before a fiery hearth, and I watch as K. carefully draws from their pages, his eyes glowing from behind his glasses.
If, before we reach this third stage, there is some unpleasant news shared from the time since our last meeting, say that one of us is challenged with some trialing matter, or the state of the world seems particularly dismal, K. will repeat a phrase to me:
“Even Niobē remembered to eat.” 1
This, he says, is his favorite line in the whole of The Iliad, and it deserves some explaining in the form of today’s letter:
In The Iliad, the story of Niobē is referenced by Achilles, who has just received King Priam into his dwelling in the midst of war. This is no sweet gathering of friends, as King Priam of Troy is received to pay ransom for the return of his deceased son, Hector, whom Achilles has slain in revenge for his companion, Patroklos. It is during this meeting, after the ransom has been paid, that Achilles says:
“Now you and I must remember our supper.
For even Niobē, she of the lovely tresses, remembered
to eat, whose twelve children were destroyed in her palace”
(24.601-603)
Achilles and Priam break bread; men at war, recipients of great tragedy, together at odds, but together at the table. Achilles’ decision to sit down for a proper meal can be based in the pangs of simple hunger, but for K., this meal between mortal enemies is a ceremony to the ‘lived’ life. Achilles’ reference to Niobē is a declaration steeped in the resilience of the human spirit. To sit down for a meal is to proclaim “YES” to life despite its trials and tribulations.
Thousands of years later, another Greek would come to symbolize this “YES” spirit. In Nikos Kazantzakis’, Zorba the Greek, we see a character intoxicated with a Dionysian zest, a character unafraid to dirty himself with life. There will be more letters on Zorba, but for now he is a man who loves to eat and drink, a man who does not deny himself simple pleasures.
Through Zorba, Kazantzakis illustrates the meal as spiritual ceremony; meat, bread and wine as spirit manifested. It is through a meal that we transubstantiate matter into spirit:
“Tell me what you do with the meal you eat, and I’ll tell you who you are. Some covert it into lard and dung, some into work and good spirits, some, apparently, so I’ve heard, into God. So, people are of three types. I am neither one of the worst nor one of the best. I stand in the middle, Boss. The meals I eat I turn into work and good spirits. Not bad, eh!”
Simply put, most of us eat so that we can better operate, so that we can raise the spirit and commit to work. This is the spiritual power of food, this is the Manna provided by God to the Israelites as they travelled the desert. This is the beautiful, resliant power of the human spirit at work in its most basic facet.
Life can conduct a great many storms for us. To set out a tablecloth and pull up a chair in the midst of it all; to not deny yourself the pleasures of satiation and good company, is to let yourself fully commit to a role in the great drama. King Priam sits at his meal with the demise of his son, the future demise of himself, made flesh. Achilles sits across the table, his own great tragedy in many ways staring back at him. Yet, they eat to spirit themselves onward, they eat and commune with life itself.
As Zorba says, “One thing at a time in proper order. Right now we’ve got pilaf in front of us; let our minds be pilaf.” Like this, we may wish, the minds of Achilles and Priam, if only for a moment, cease to be suffering and instead transubstantiate the meal before them into burgeoning spirit.
No matter what may lay ahead, when we sit down to eat, we inherently say “yes” to another day. It is only fitting tradition would have us pray before a meal, as the act of eating is in a way also a prayer to life.
So, as K. says, “even Niobē remembered to eat.” Try to remember even on days when the scales of the world seem to tilt toward suffering.
“For Zorba not all of our food turns to dung…he proclaims that some of it is resurrected into life, good humor, dancing, and even prayer.” (Dombrowski 30)
Keep Diving,
A.J.
From the Library:
If you are interested in the story of King Priam from The Iliad, I highly suggest the modern re-working by David Malouf, who gives flesh to bone in his book Ransom.
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis. If you haven’t given it a read, please do. I’ll have many more letters referencing this masterpiece.
(TDJ receives a small portion from your purchase)
In Homeric tradition, Niobē mothers six sons and six daughters, and in her great pride, compares herself to the Titan Leto. The offended Titan asks her son and daughter, Apollo and Artemis, to avenge her, and the two deities slaughter the twelve children of Niobē. A cautionary tale of pride.