Saint-Émilion: A Place to Imagine the Middle Ages

Saint-Émilion

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If you know red wines, you know Saint-Émilion. It is among the top-rated wines in the Bordeaux appellation (region), which has over 9,000 châteaux. There are 84 vineyards and producers in the village of Saint-Émilion. Given that the entire village has fewer than 1,700 residents, it’s easy to imagine that, aside from some shopkeepers and the ordained, everyone else must be a vintner.

 

I used to think that there is no such thing as a bad Saint-Émilion wine. That’s still a near 100% case, but we visited an organic vineyard whose wine we disliked. The workers were enthusiastic and idealistic, but the three wines of ascending price we tasted were so uninspiring that I’ve seldom seen so many trips to the dump bucket. Organic wines seldom use sulfur dioxide (SO2), which kills foul-smelling microbes, so many people (me included) think organic wine tastes sour. It’s also often cloudy and unless decanted and swirled can be like drinking unpasteurized milk. Organic foods are often preferrable and safer, but that’s not always the case. We smiled politely to our hosts, set out to explore the village, and felt envious of all the non-organic vineyards we walked by. (Organic wine also tastes sour because grapes are usually harvested earlier and their sugar content is lower.)

 

Our imbibing disappointment was more than compensated by the fascinating village. Like so many small towns in France its very name of Saint-Émilion indicates it was once a pilgrimage site on the Compostela Trail. It is a medieval village if you overlook modern touches like electricity. (It is more authentically so by observing parts of the original walls and buildings that have crumbled.) Émilion fled his hometown of Vannes because some of his views were tinged with beliefs from one of the many 8th century heresies. Bad on the church! He hid out in one of the many underground caves–we toured one–and miracles were attributed to the refugee monk. One occurred when Émilion was stopped by officials who accused him of feeding heretics and rebels. He was and had loaves of bread hiding under his robe. When asked what was under his robe, our good saint fibbed and said it was wood to heat the homes of poor villagers. When officials opened his robe, piles of wood fell out. Got it? Jesus turned water to wine and Saint-Émilion turned bread into wood!

 

We wish he had turned the weather to sunshine, as Saint-Émilion was the only place it rained during our entire trip, though it’s a charming place in any weather. Émilion was originally a baker and the village is known for its macaroons, which are more cakey than macarons. There are a good number of shops, cafes, and (of course) wine sellers. Most of the ambiance, though, comes from the sheer age of Saint-Émilion. You can squint and imagine it as it might have been in the 12^th century when its church was (probably) built. The village is relatively flat, but the church sits on higher ground and is nearly dead center of the village. It has undergone renovations, but you can see remnants of its original paint, frescos, and stonework. As is the case of many medieval churches, the one in Saint-Émilion contains relics of its patron saint.

 

Relics were a big deal in the Middle Ages. Believers thought that being prayerful in the presence of them could lead the saint to be an intercessor with God and grant their wishes. The problem–one Martin Luther sized upon during the Protestant Reformation–was that many of the relics were fakes and few can be authenticated. It was said there were enough pieces of the “True Cross” of Jesus to build a fleet of ships and a bridge as well. One church claimed to have some of Jesus’ teeth, which contradicted the belief in his bodily resurrection and ascension into Heaven. When that point was argued with the bishop, he quickly asserted they were Christ’s baby teeth! The relics mess was “rectified” during the Catholic Counter Reformation by saying that even if a relic was fradulent, grace came from the fervency with which the petitioner believed them to be true!

 

Excuse my discursion, but places like Saint-Émilion give us insight into earlier times and beliefs. I later communed with a glass of decent Saint-Émilion, organics be damned!

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clean: Slow for a Reason

 

 

 

Clean (2024)

By Alia Trabucco Zerán

Riverhead Books, 264 pages, Translated by Sophie Hughes.

★★★

 

Reading books from other cultures often requires patience. We cannot assume that North American values, ways of life, modes of expression, and storytelling mirror those of other lands.

 

Clean, a novel from Alia Trabucco Zerán delves into class construction and conflict within Chile. It is told from the perspective of Estela, a maid inside the home of Don Juan Cristóbal Jensen and Doña Mara López, both of whom work in the medical profession. Eventually a daughter named Julia comes into the home. Pay attention to their names because for most the novel the family is referenced as “the señor,” “the señora,” and “the girl,” or “the child.” It is Estela’s way of socially distancing herself from the family for whom she toils everyday in Santiago, Chile’s capitol. Estella is from poor peasant stock in the south of Chile, presumably of an indigenous background. She is nearly 40 when she becomes a maid, a status that highlights the enormous economic and social gaps between employer and employee.

 

On the surface, things don’t look so bad for Estela. She has her own room–off the kitchen of course–with a small TV and a radio. She is paid regularly and no one yells at her. Dr. Jensen pretty much ignores what happens in the household and the señora isn’t openly a tyrant. But, if you ever wondered what a microaggression is, note the myriad ways the señora never lets Estela forget that she is a servant and socially inferior. She corrects Estela’s grammar: “We don’t say armpit…. We say underarm.” You can imagine the señora’s swallowed disgust when Estela said, “they was” rather than they were. Once, the señora showed Estela a beautiful new dress and hung it in her closet. Estela surrendered to temptation and tried it on when she thought the señora was gone. When discovered, the señora responded with the ultimate microaggression: “You’d better wash it.” Estela did, as well as iron away ever wrinkle. It was again hung in the closet, but the señora never wore it. Perhaps the biggest microaggression was that Estela told the couple at her interview that she knew nothing of childrearing and did not wish to take care of an infant. They, of course, promptly had Julia and guess who changed the diapers, heated the bottles, played with the child, and took over every time the infant cried. Julia’s first word was “mama,” by which she meant Estela not Mara, but Estela could tell that the señora was miffed.

 

Estela came to resent the way the couple tried to imprint their values onto their daughter. They put Julia on a diet before she was three, made her take piano lessons, and tried to map out the toddler’s future road to success. When Julia resisted, they resorted to bribery, a pathway that made her into a spoiled brat. Julia also acts as the catalyst for Estela to recall her own childhood and become homesick for her mother. Estela can’t away for a long visit, but that doesn’t prevent relatives from hitting her up for money.

 

 The biggest problem is reflected in the novel’s slow pacing. Several terrible things will happen, but the very tedium and repetition of her life begins to sour Estela to the point where she becomes angry and perhaps is going slowly crazy. Most of her days are exactly alike;  prepare breakfast, clean, watch Julia, clean some more, make the beds, iron, make sure there is no dirt of mold anywhere, cook dinner, wash the dishes, shower, and perhaps watch some TV. Rinse and repeat. Not surprisingly, Estela’s optimism and spirit slowly come undone.

 

Aside from several deaths–one of which is non-human–very little actually “happens” in Clean. That too is by design, as is Zerán’s tactic of breaking the barrier between the narrator and the reader by having Estela speak to us as if we are in her room or thoughts. The novel ends with the words, “Hello? Can you hear me? Is anybody there?”  It’s uncertain where Estela is when she utters those words or why, but it’s not hard for us to imagine ourselves tongueless in the same mental cell as Estela.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Katabasis: Brilliant or...?

 

 

 

Katabasis (2025)

By R. F. Kuang

Harper, 541 pages.

★★★

 

Can a novelist be too clever for her own good? On one level, Katabasis is a stunning novel; on another, it is dense and tedious. Author R. F. Kuang is a very talented and intelligent. She might even be the first genius of the grew-up-on-Harry Potter generation.Or....

 

Katabasis means a descent into the underworld. Kuang’s latest novel takes us to hell, but it’s nothing like Western society's worldview. To grasp the details of Katabasis, brush up on what Aristotle, Buddhism, Dante, Daoism, Jainism, Hinduism, Orpheus, Manichaeism, Plato, Pythagoras, and Sikhism have to say about the underworld. Maybe break out your old geometry and calculus notes as well. You could read the novel just for the story within, but a deeper dive is warranted.

 

Journeys to the underworld are not unknown in Western culture–Orpheus and Eurydice, Hercules, Metamorphoses, The Odyssey, Theseus and Persephone, Jesus–but Kuang writes, “When it comes to death, the Christians are right about the immortality of the soul, but wrong about everything else.” And to think that such speculations and a journey most would not wish to take begins at England’s Cambridge University, a place that’s probably harder to get into than hell.

 

Alice Law is an American from humble circumstances whose ambition, hard work, and sharp intellect has gotten her into Cambridge. Her goal is become a magician and professor at a prestigious universe. To that end she takes the hardest road possible by becoming an advisee of Dr. Jacob Grimes, considered the world’s expert in Alice’s field of analytical magic.* Her first obstacle is that though everyone is in awe of Grimes, they despise him. Some, including much of the faculty, wishes he was dead. Grimes is abusive, steals research from his grad students, solicits favors of questionable legality, works students into a stupor (or suicide), and pits them against each other. Yet, a Grimes recommendation is the ticket to success. Gangling Peter Murdoch is more than Law’s equal. He is also popular, won a prestigious prize that eluded Alice, is late to his classes, has a carefree attitude, and becomes Law’s second obstacle.  Alice finds Peter an annoying interruption to her round-the-clock studies.

 

 As it turns out, neither wins Grimes’ favor. Alice drew a pentagram that she failed to enclose. When Grimes is blown to smithereens, Alice believes that she killed him and resolves to go to hell to bring him back, lest her career be ruined. Ironically, Peter wishes to join her as he thinks he killed Grimes. What we have next is Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey pas de deux in hell. Dante had nine descending layers of hell with Satan at the bottom; Kuang has eight ascending levels–pride, desire, greed, wrath, violence, cruelty, tyranny, Dis–with the Lethe River either winding around (Peter’s view) or running parallel to them (Alice). The City of Dis is a calm realm that terrifies Alice and is where King Yama judges souls.

 

Hell is easy to get into; making it out is harder. It also exacts a payment; if you make it through, you forfeit half of your remaining life. Moreover, any living creature who dies in hell remains and can’t be redeemed. Alice and Peter are armed with a Perpetual Flask of water, Lembas Bread that renews itself, books, chalk for drawing pentagrams, and their magical skills. Ahh, but does hell conform to the laws of physics, logic, or magic? All that is certain is that it changes. In Campbell’s hero’s journey helpers appear at key moments, but in hell how does one distinguish between a helper and a trickster? Shades are all around, some of whom benign and others who are not. Vicious bone creatures might tear you apart, Weaver Girl is definitely a trickster, the Kripkes are hunter magicians subsisting on blood, deities are unreliable, there are Shades of Grimes’ students who killed themselves, and conundrums like the Escher Trap to overcome. There are also living creatures that wandered in, including Grimes’ cat Archimedes. Is Grimes worth it? If either of them makes it to King Yama, for what should they ask?

 

Ultimately, Katabasis is one part Joseph Campbell, one part Alice in Wonderland, a few life lessons, and a large slice of syncretic religion. I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether Kuang has written a coherent novel or an obfuscation in fancy dress at a fast food diner.

 

Rob Weir