Solvitur ambulando, St. Augustine advised the perplexed. It is solved by walking.

Maybe, but the saint’s confidence in the strolling cure surely would have been tested had he blistered his soles on the chalky causses and shrouded peaks of southwestern France. In the alluring region once known as Occitania, ramblers who love stepping back into time are finding a rewarding alternative to Spain’s popular Camino to Santiago de Compostela. Yet many return from their treks across this romantic land of troubadours and the Holy Grail still troubled by the question that drew them in the first place: Why, in the 13th century, did the Roman Catholic Church wage a war of extermination there against a sect of pacifist Christians?

Hoping to benefit from the modern revival of medieval pilgrimages, French tourism officials now encourage hikers to come quest for the answers to this question and the many others that swirl around a vanished group of ascetic vegetarians called Cathars, or the Pure Ones. Condemned as heretics, the Cathars rejected the authority of Rome and believed in reincarnation instead of Hell. They saw the world as a battleground between a benevolent God of Light and an evil Demiurge who conspired with the papacy to imprison souls in flesh.

When the Counts of Toulouse and other Occitan nobles tried to protect these religious dissidents from annihilation, the Church and the kings of France hammered them with a brutal war of terror and stole their domains during the infamous Albigensian Crusade. Today, the fiercely independent descendents of these Occitan martyrs remain proud of their rebellious heritage. Some even keep the memory of the persecution alive by reading on New Year’s Eve from the papal bull that condemned their forefathers to be hunted like wolves.

Backpackers who now hoof it up in increasing numbers to the vertiginous Cathar ruins should be grateful at least that they don’t have to skulk through dangerous forests at night as did starving fugitives eight hundred years ago. Instead, they can enjoy the well-marked Cathar Sentier (“Way”), a maintained artery of trails that stretches 150 miles from the Mediterranean coast to the castle-crowned city of Foix.

This past summer, legendary Camino guide Judy Colaneri invited me to help lead an incursion into the land of heresy for her hiking-tour company, Spanish Steps. I had last traveled to Occitania twelve years ago to research my historical novel about Esclarmonde de Foix, the Cathar Joan of Arc. I approached the homecoming with excitement and not a little trepidation, worried–needlessly, as it turned out–that I’d find the Pays Cathare (Cathar Country) changed for the worse by the passage of time and the increase in tourism.

Our twelve-day walking itinerary combined historical sites with the most scenic of the Sentier trails (marked on stones and trees by red and blue stripes) and the more ubiquitous GR (“grande randonnée”) trails. Many hikers avoid straying from the Sentier to take advantage of the gites and pubs that have sprung up along the way. Colaneri, however, lodges her clients for two or three nights at a time in stunning villages off the beaten path, then transports them by van to the start of the next day’s hike to avoid the constant hassle of repacking. And rather than be hamstrung by unyielding French restaurants hours, Colaneri, an accomplished chef in Aspen during the hiking off-season, serves up delicious picnic lunches on the trails with produce purchased fresh from local markets.

Our group of veteran hikers included three American couples, a lady from Toronto, and a Catholic priest stationed in Mexico. We met up near the Mediterranean coast in Béziers, a city that witnessed the start of the Cathar wars with one of Christianity’s darkest hours. In 1209, a papal army from the north demanded that the local Catholics surrender their heretic neighbors, but the tolerance-loving Biterrois refused. Enraged, the invaders stormed the walls in an orgy of slaughter that historian Stephen O’Shea called “the Guernica of the Middle Ages,” a comparison to the German Luftwaffe bombing of the Basque town in 1937. Ordered to burn the city’s cathedral with its thousands of refugees, even the bloodthirsty Crusaders hesitated, aware that more Catholic than heretic residents cowered inside. Unmoved, the papal legate reportedly insisted, “Kill them all. God will know His own.”

Today, a few stones from the original foundations that witnessed these horrors can be seen in the reconstructed cathedral of Sainte Nazaire. Modern Béziers remains a bit scruffy and singed on the edges, giving the impression of having never fully recovered from Rome’s treachery. So, anxious to get into the countryside, we strapped on our trekking poles and headed west, where the trail of the Crusaders became even more scorched.

Old Occitania is dotted with villages ravaged by Simon de Montfort, the Catholic knight most devoted to killing in God’s honor. Modern inhabitants of the Languedoc still curse the memory of this ruthless commander who gouged out the eyes of prisoners and threw women into wells. A fellow novelist told me she once made the mistake of remarking to a taxi driver in Carcassonne that her favorite historical character was the son of Montfort, Simon IV, who became a champion of England’s Parliament. The driver was so indignant that he braked to a stop and ordered the woman to get out.

Tiny Minerve in the Hérault region suffered Montfort’s wrath with particular severity. Its population now dwindled to just over a hundred, this sleepy cluster of sun-baked houses is now recognized by Les Plus Beaux Villages de France as one of the country’s most beautiful locales. Hikers can approach it from a surrounding gorge and stare up at what remains of the tower that held out against the Crusaders for six weeks. A modern monument carved with a dove, a Cathar symbol, overlooks the spot where 140 heretics were burned.

Sobered by Minerve’s fate, we headed south to the Cistercian Abbey of Fontfroide, which served as headquarters for the monastic campaign against the heretics. Both St. Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Dominic preached in the vineyard-laced plains that surround this 12th century enclave of ochre sandstone. Now privately owned and installed with a winery, Fontfroide held a surprise for us that afternoon: a French television company was filming a documentary about the Inquisition, and the cloisters were filled with tonsured monks and menacing soldiers in bowl-shaped helmets. During shooting breaks, the actors lit cigarettes and mingled with ogling tourists. One of my most jarring memories is of a beady-eyed Inquisitor strolling past me while puffing rings of smoke from his death stick.

The next morning, we ventured out past a looming turret that overlooks the spot where the last known Cathar holy man was sent to the stake. Eight miles later, at the castle of Termes, we emerged from a mud-slicked forest into a sunny pasture guarded by sheep dogs more vicious than Crusader mastiffs. Each segment of the Sentier has its own quirks and character; depending on the weather and the condition of one’s feet, a day’s worth of ground covered can cast one into a state of bliss, or bring understanding why the Cathars deemed the world to be a vale of suffering.

Farther west up the trail, a cylinder of stone called Queribus reaches for the heavens like a space capsule about to be launched. Across the valley stands its sister castle, Peyrepetruse, which tests the visitor with an ascent of slippery footstones diabolically slanted to cast intruders into the abyss. Those tired of craning their necks skyward can find relief a few miles south in the Galamus Gorge, a plummeting gash once inhabited by Christian hermits. A single car lane through the rocks with its hairpin turns instructs even the most ardent of atheist car drivers on the purpose of prayer.

As the days of walking hurried by too quickly, each with its own fascinating tale of medieval woe and mystery, we veered northeast to spend two nights shadowed by the tallest peak in the area. Bugarach has long been associated with UFO sightings and underground colonies; the science-fiction writer Jules Verne was said to have based Journey to the Center of the Earth on his experiences here. The village at the foot of the heights has even become a haven for those convinced that the world will end in 2012.

There must be something in the water of the many underground streams around Bugarach. Another local village, a mere eight-mile jaunt through grazing cattle and kissing gates, is not about to relinquish its title as conspiracy capital of the world. Rennes le Chateau became a tourist magnet with the exploding popularity of The Da Vinci Code. When a local 19th century parish priest began throwing large sums of money around, the Church attributed his sudden wealth to the unlawful sale of masses. But others suspect the priest found something of incalculable value—perhaps the Ark of the Covenant, a Cathar treasure, buried Visigoth gold, or even the remains of Mary Magdalene.

A wet June snow reminded us that we were gaining altitude as we trudged northwest toward Tarascon-sur-Ariege and the white peaks of the Pyrenees. Our next destination was Niaux cave of prehistoric fame, one of the many natural underground cathedrals in the Ariege that gave refuge to heretics. Local historians have claimed that ancient hermetic teachings, hinted at in the Holy Grail legends, were preserved by the Cathars in these haunting caverns.

“From the dawn of time, early humans were drawn to Occitania for its powerful natural energies,” explained popular guide and author, Anneke Koremans, whose newly published thriller, White Lie, revolves around the mysteries of the land. “The entire region is sacred.”

With our journey nearing its end, we circled back down the Ariege valley toward the ruins of Montsegur castle, the ultimate goal for many pilgrims to Occitania. On this fortified peak that became the Cathar Masada, the heretics maintained a seminary and doled out blessings and what donations of food could be spared. Hundreds of believers came here to die, carried to the top by mules at the night to avoid capture. Only a few skeletons have been found on the mount, leading some to speculate that an undiscovered necropolis may lie deep within its bowels.

A heavy rain on the evening we arrived had turned the switchback path up the mount into a treacherous stream of mud. My fellow hikers decided to postpone their climb until the next morning, but I slogged on up the western face alone. A half-hour later, I stood three thousand feet above the valley and leaned against Montsegur’s ancient wall to catch my breath. The sun broke through dark clouds to welcome me with a hug of warmth. Maybe, I thought, the legends about mystical occurrences here were not so far-fetched

Thousands come to Montsegur each year to remember the 220 Cathars—including a grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter—who were burned here in 1244 after a brutal nine-month siege. Terraces excavated on its slope reveal where the malnourished refugees huddled in huts while praying for a good death. Surrendering Occitan soldiers were allowed to avoid execution by offering their allegiance to Rome, but several chose to die in the fires with those whose courage they had come to admire. Legend has it that on the night before the burnings, four defenders escaped down the mount with a mysterious treasure.

On our last morning in Occitania, we walked into the reconstructed medieval city of Carcassonne, once heralded as the Paris of the South. I meandered through the old basilica of Sainte-Nazaire and was greeted by a sign announcing that the church had been home to the “Roman Catholic Cult” since 1096. Was this a clumsy English translation, I wondered, or had some unbowed Occitan docent insisted on having the last word?

On a wall of the nave, I found the famous slab that had once been part of Simon de Montfort’s tomb there, before his remains were removed north to more hospitable surroundings. No epitaph marks the spot, so I whispered one of my own, a line from Shakespeare in The Winter’s Tale that best summed up my feelings about this magical land seared by tragedy: “It is a heretic that makes the fire, not she which burns in it.”

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If You Go: Southwestern France can be reached from Paris, London, or Barcelona. From Charles de Gaulle Airport, take the TGV train to Toulouse or Avignon and transfer to Béziers or Carcassonne. From London, Ryanair has direct flights to Carcassonne. Those preferring a southern approach can take the train up the coast from Barcelona to Perpigan or Beziers.

Spanish Steps (www.spanishsteps.com) and Camino guide Judy Colaneri offer an escorted “Cathars, Castles and Cassoulet” hiking tour with small groups. Support vans, lodging and most meals are included.

Barinka Travel (www.barinca.fr). Local guide and author Anneke Koremans provides a variety of services to English-speaking travelers in old Occitania.

Glen Craney is the author of The Fire and the Light: A Novel of the Cathars and the Lost Teachings of Christ.

According to a Sept. 30 review by Alexandra Alter in The Wall Street Journal, readers of Mitchell’s updated rendition of the classic will no longer be met by “swift-footed” Achilles, “bright-eyed” Athena, or “crafty” Odysseus.

Instead, Mitchell has relied upon, selectively and judiciously, modern descriptions of these characters to make the text more accessible.

In the WSJ review, Mitchell offered an explanation for his decision to update the traditional understanding of the Greek used by Homer with what Alter described as movie-style dialogue: “If you translate literally, the English may sound stilted or phony.”

Historical novelists and translators of classical texts thus confront a similar problem: How to make a story ring both authentic and understandable to the contemporary ear.

To this end, as Mitchell demonstrates, the translator must from time to time move from the archaic to the modern. In contrast, the historical novelist must often retreat from the modern toward the archaic.

Somewhere in the middle lies the elusive sweet spot.

Yet perhaps the more profound inquiry should turn the question on its head and ask: How will my historical novel shape the “reality” of history?

In a contribution for The Stone, a series of discussions on philosophy moderated by The New York Times, literary theorist William Egginton, the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at John Hopkins University, has written a thought-provoking essay that explores the effect of fiction on the collective perception of reality.

His offering is essential reading for the historical novelist, if for no other reason than it opens the Pandora’s box of what in reality constitutes “reality.”

In a response to an earlier essay in the series by Professor Alex Rosenberg on the superiority of naturalism and science over literature in the search for knowledge, Egginton argues that:

In fact, the common notion of objective reality that most of us would recognize today and the one on which Professor Rosenberg’s defense of naturalism rests — as that which persists independent of our subjective perspectives — is mutually dependent on the multiple perspectives cultivated by the fictional worldview. It is not a coincidence that the English term “reality” and its cognates in the other European languages only entered into usage between the mid-16th and early-17th century, depending on the language.

Egginton submits that Cervantes’ Don Quixote changed forever how the Western World understood itself. And only with the arrival of Descartes and his Meditations at the end of the 1630s did there come to exist “a rigorous distinction between how things appear to me and how they are independent of my perspective entered the philosophical lexicon.”

Egginton explains this basis for this transformation as follows:

The fictional worldview, then, is one in which we are able to divide our selves to assume simultaneously opposing consciousnesses, and to enter and leave different realities at will, all the while voluntarily suspending judgments concerning their relation to an ultimate reality.

Interestingly, Egginton does not differentiate among the various genres of fiction. I would argue that the willing suspension of judgment is not always present for historical fiction; the perceptive reader is almost always judging whether the narrative informs what he thinks he knows about so-called reality-based history.

When vexed by this tension between fiction and reality, I always take comfort from my two favorite sources on the subject.

Jane Austen understood the difficult and potentially subversive task of the historical novelist when she had her heroine in Northanger Abbey remark about history, “I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. . . ”

And then there is the insight of author Tim O’Brien, who wrote about the Vietnam War in his “How to Tell a True Story”: “A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth.”

According to the District Court for the District of Massachusetts, “factual realities that exist independently of any photo” are not subsumed into a photographer’s “original, copyrightable expression” and thus do not preclude other depictions of the events giving rise to the taking of the photographs.

The decision was rendered last May in the case of Harney v. Sony Pictures Television, in which photographer Donald Harney brought an infringement suit for a 2010 Lifetime channel movie about a man who falsely claimed to have been born into the Rockefeller family and was convicted for abducting his own daughter from his estranged wife in 2007. Harney’s photograph of the father and daughter leaving a Boston church was featured in local newspapers and on FBI wanted posters.

Judge Zobel, writing the decision, stated that the movie’s recreation of the scene, while including the poses and similar clothing, did not create an identical image.

In the September 7, 2011, issue of Script Magazine, Boston copyright attorney Mark Fischer and law student Alicia Parmentier penned a thoughtful analysis of the decision and the prior case law on the issue. According to Fisher and Parmentier, the new Massachusetts decision further weakens copyright protection for “documentary renditions” of history, and that even in those rare instances where an unauthorized use of a copyrighted photograph is found, “it remains likely that an unauthorized recreation of that content will constitute a fair use under the Copyright Act’s exemption.”

Reviewing the decision’s impact on other areas involving creative expression and copyright protection, Fischer and Parmentier noted that courts have deemed the line between facts and content, on one hand, and their unique expression to be “elusive” and “an inexact science.” They also noted that historical interpretations and theories are generally not protected, either.

“Historical facts, no matter how hunted or gathered, whether true or made up,” the authors of the article wrote, “belong to all of us.”

Once upon a time, I would have wasted valuable time driving to the library to search gazetteers with rulers and pore through guidebooks for photos of the southern Ayrshire coast. But after attending a demonstration on the capabilities of Google Earth by fellow author Paul Madison at a recent Los Angeles Chapter meeting of the Historical Novel Society, I accomplished the task in just minutes while sitting at my computer at home.

Most of us have played with Google Earth to zoom in on overhead shots of houses for fun. But as Paul demonstrated to our amazement, the uses of the program have expanded dramatically. Offering two examples—the ruins at Pompeii and a Roman battlefield in Syria–he dropped our jaws by flying us like a bird through and around several three-dimensional reconstructions of the sites.

The magic, in a nutshell, works like this: Modern visitors to the locations download their photos to Google Earth, and the program extrapolates these offerings into a realistic depiction of the selected place. Various angles are then made available, including street level, ground level, and touring-movement mode.

The program can even spur new historical interpretations. In his demonstration, Paul explained how, after measuring the terrain on the Google Earth download, he discovered that an account of a Roman retreat could not have followed the route described in accounts left from that time.

In addition to measurements, other uses for the new tools in the Google Earth program are legion. The historian or novelist can now zoom in on specific areas of a battlefield and find the outlines of lost bridges, ruins, or encampments. The “dials” on the program can also be manipulated and set to follow, on the computer screen, the routes across the terrain that armies would have taken on charges or retreats. Parallelograms and other figures can be drawn over the screen shot of the location to indicate troop or camp locations.

This ability to make a real-time visitation of historical sites has exciting potential for digital books. Imagine yourself reading a description of the siege of Constantinople or the slow climb up the slope of Cemetery Ridge during Pickett’s Charge. With a quick click of a hyperlink, you may soon be able to toggle back and forth from the written description to the real-time movement over the reconstructed terrain.

Watching the recent GOP presidential debates, I was reminded of the many times through the centuries that nations in crisis–driven, apparently, by a primitive masochistic urge lodged deep in the DNA of the human collective unconsciousness–have embraced the same knaves and dark forces that hurled them to perdition in the first place.

Regrettably, many desperate Americans who have lost their jobs, health insurance, and homes are now turning to opportunistic politicians and media hucksters who promise that the cure for their disease lies in more medieval bloodletting: dog-eat-dog capitalism; slashed regulation; survival of the fittest and casting the weak aside to succumb to their own stupidities; and a Prosperity Christianity that rewards evangelical fervor with economic fortune. The latter, of course, can never be refuted; if a person, or even a nation, falls upon hard times, this affliction is cited as evidence of a lack of faith or a punishment for turning away from God’s commandments.

This sad but all-too-predictable scenario has played out before in the history of the United States. In his memoirs of the Thirties, historian and former Wall Street broker Matthew Josephson, who saw the collapse of 1929 from the inside, described this how this self-sabotaging phenomenon manifested during the Great Depression and its aftermath. Here is a sobering excerpt from his cautionary tale:

While busily propagating something known as the New Conservatism, they slated the liberals and radicals of the prewar era for their errors, follies, and even alleged “treasons.” . . . A Revisionist School of historians also appeared while the hunt for “un-American” persons and ideas was in full cry. Though the Revisionists were in no way associated with the McCarthian furor, they girded against the historical school of the thirties whose members had shown a strongly critical attitude toward the old establishment, with its “economic royalists” or “robber barons.” Such works, it was urged, should be rewritten so that the old moneymen and industrial captains might be represented, not as men who had helped bring us to grief and depression, but as the true “saviors” of our country. The story of our business society, one of the Revisionists proclaimed, was to be given a new treatment, no longer in an apologetic tone, but one of “pride” . . . in our dollars, our race to wealth, and our . . . materialism.

Infidel In The Temple, 1967

Be vigilant, those of you slumbering in the ranks of the Best. These days, there is an overflow of passionate intensity in the Wasteland. The Revisionists of the Great Recession of 2007-2011 are in full campaign mode.

]]> http://historyintofiction.com/2011/09/feeding-the-hand-that-bit-you-the-historical-revisionists-of-the-great-recession/feed/ 0 http://historyintofiction.com/2011/08/remembering-napoleons-defeat-of-kubrick/ http://historyintofiction.com/2011/08/remembering-napoleons-defeat-of-kubrick/#comments Sat, 13 Aug 2011 06:12:23 +0000 Glen http://historyintofiction.com/?p=513 One of the challenges for a historical novelist or screenwriter is knowing when it’s time to move from research to the blank page.

Determined to tell the story of Napoleon, the late director Stanley Kubrick spent two years gathering background information for what he believed would be “the greatest movie ever made.” Yet the more he delved into his subject, the more he became swallowed up by the sheer vastness and enigma of the French general and emperor. As a result, Kubrick’s obsession never made it to the screen, but the surviving relics of his Sisyphean labors have now been collected for our benefit.

Kubrick expert Frederic Raphael, a prolific novelist and screenwriter, has applauded this effort in his review in The Wall Street Journal (August 13, 2011) of Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made, a collection of the director’s notes and files edited by Alison Castle.

According to Taschen–the publisher of this massive undertaking of ten books totaling 2874 pages–film buffs had long waited for Kubrick’s film on Napoleon, which was slated to go into production after the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Enlisting dozens of assistants and an Oxford don, the director accumulated nearly 15,000 location scouting photographs and 17,000 slides of Napoleonic imagery.

Both M.G.M. and United Artists, however, decided at the time that historical epics were no longer marketable, and Kubrick never realized his dream.

“The more material [Kubrick] perused, the more he thought he needed,” said Raphael in his review. He also observed that “Kubrick exhibited an appetite for learning that smacks of neurotic postponement.”

Kubrick agonized over many of the conundrums that plague writers of historical fiction, including how to depict 19th century French characters speaking in English without making them sound apocryphal or anachronistic.

Raphael concluded that “it was always going to be impossible to cram everything onto the screen. But why did he bother creating from whole cloth when, for instance, Vincent Cronin’s one-volume life of Napoleon offered quite enough material on which to build an imaginative script?”

Historical novelists who become immersed in their subject know all too well the answer to that question.

The controversial miniseries about the famous political family was dropped by the History Channel in January amid reports that members of the Kennedys had tried to halt it. ReelzChannel, another cable network, picked up the series and will run it starting April 3.

In the interview, producer Joel Surnow and writer Stephen Kronish–both veterans of the popular television show “24″–explore the usual flash points that arise in any artistic endeavor that seeks to recreate history, particular of events still relatively recent: Political and ideological leanings of the creators; the use of composite characters and imagined dialogue; the compression and rearrangement of time to accommodate the demands of the mythic structure an audience subconsciously expects.

Kronish rejects the notion that a liberal should not be allowed to write about conservative icons, and vice versa.

Both Kronish and Surnow agree that biopics by necessity have to use some reconstruction for gaps in the historical annals. But they insist that the scenes created for their series had links to documented incidents, even if the exact words used and reactions of the participants were not recorded verbatim.

Surnow denies the History Channel’s assertion that the “dramatic interpretation” of the miniseries ultimately delivered “is not a fit for the History brand.” He said that all eight scripts for the series were approved by the historian hired by the network to consult on the project.

The Itzkoff interview with Surnow and Kronish is sobering reading for any historical novelist or screenwriter who hopes to recreate an event from American history that is still charged with political overtones.

The UK-produced film tells the story of Prince Albert, the Duke of York’s struggle to overcome his speech impediment in preparation for taking the throne during the those tense days leading up to World War II.

The principal duelists this time are the movie’s screenwriter, David Seidler, and journalist-essayist Christopher Hitchens.

Hitchens takes issue with what he considers the movie’s whitewashing of Winston Churchill’s early vacillation in confronting the Nazi threat in an effort to keep King Edward VIII on the throne.

The thrusts and parries in this argument are fascinating and instructive on the inevitable tensions and competing demands when filmmakers take on the challenge of portraying historical figures. In order, the briefs are as follows:

1) Christopher Hitchens’s review of the film at Slate.com;

2) David Seidler’s defense of his treatment of history in an interview with
Huffington Post blogger Patricia Zohn; and

3) Hitchens’s rebuttal to Seidler.

In a previous post, I noted that a French historical novel written over fifty years ago is still influencing American military policy.

Now comes the news that one of Congress’s most controversial members underwent a political conversion in college after taking umbrage at how several of America’s early icons were portrayed in a work of historical fiction.

Gail Collins reveals in her New York Times op-ed column on Jan. 28 that GOP Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota was a Democrat until she read Gore Vidal’s Burr during her senior year at Winona State University.

Rep. Bachmann, the founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, apparently doesn’t care for nuanced or iconoclastic interpretations of American history.

Mr. Vidal, who predicted in 2009 that the United States was careening toward a dictatorship, must be curling one of his rueful and prophetic smiles.