We hope we might also have realised part at least of that other aim: to provide such a telling of them as will, for young readers of our time, make them of that order of sources of imaginative understanding of life that they were for us, long ago. There is no hope that we today can feel of the myths what the Greeks themselves must have felt of them: we cannot call to our aid that degree (and spontaneity and innocence) of belief in Olympus and in the possibility of divine participation in human affairs. But it would be odd if we, and especially the young, had ever lost our power to respond to the magical transformations and the marvellous uncertainty as to what is real that, while it is at the heart of the myths, seems unlikely ever to be far from the heart of man, whatever distance he travels. And what we have ourselves become aware of, as we have worked through our story, is the eternal modernity of the myths. To feel the force of what they have to say about human passions and about the tragedy and comedy and violence and tenderness of the existence of Prometheus’s creatures, we do not have to be ancient Greeks. Charles Keeping, when he came to make his own contribution to this book, felt this so strongly that he set out to avoid any suggestion of a definite period: he felt he wanted to rescue the myths from illustration based on Greek vase paintings as we wanted to rescue them from a style based on Victorian translation. He was moved, as we were, by a sense of the enormous violent energy that underlies the myths – by a power so great that, he has said, it would seem a mistake to illustrate particular incidents. A world of immense, dissolving shapes –though it is through very exact and exciting tales that this world, in the myths, makes itself evident, it is in the end with the mysteries of creation and destruction (when, like Sisyphus in the wood near Corinth, we hardly know what we are seeing) that this story is concerned.
LEON GARFIELD
EDWARD BLISHEN
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Leon Garfield was the acclaimed author of more than thirty novels for children and adults. He received many accolades during his career, including the inaugural Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Literary Award.
Edward Blishen was a writer and broadcaster. He co-wrote two novels based on Greek mythology with Leon Garfield: The God Beneath the Sea, which won the 1970 Carnegie Medal, and The Golden Shadow (1973). He is also known for a series of autobiographical books such as A Cack-Handed War and Roaring Boys, and as the presenter of Radio 4 programmes such as A Good Read and Stop the Week.
Charles Keeping was the illustrator and author of many books for children. He won two Kate Greenaway Medals for his own story, Charley, Charlotte and the Golden Canary (1967), and an edition of Alfred Noyes’s poem The Highwayman (1981), and illustrated many books for the historical author Rosemary Sutcliff.
THE GOD BENEATH THE SEA
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 448 17384 6
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2014
Text copyright © Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen, 1970
Illustrations copyright © Charles Keeping, 1970
First Published in Great Britain
Doubleday Childrens 9780857533111 1970
The right of Leon Garfield and Edward Blishen to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
RANDOM HOUSE CHILDREN’S PUBLISHERS UK
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA
www.randomhousechildrens.co.uk
www.totallyrandombooks.co.uk
www.randomhouse.co.uk
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk/offices.htm
THE RANDOM HOUSE GROUP Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The God Beneath the Sea Page 16
