Helena

Evelyn Waugh is known for biting caustic satire and misogyny. He thinks nothing of killing small boys or tiny animals while scoring points against the bounders of society. His fiction contains more heartless, designing women then the back catalogs of ELO and Hall & Oates combined."Helena" (1950) is one odd novel from such a man. Satiric quips come thick and fast, but there's a rare and deep sense of emotional investment, too. And the hero is the title character, a woman named Helena who finds herself the victim of a designing husband for a change but shakes off her disappointment in search of something true and eternal, a hunger that eventually leads her to Christianity and sainthood.Catholicism is the other thing Waugh is known for, and his trumping concern as far as "Helena" is concerned, a spiritual novel from the least spiritual of religiously-inclined writers. "The church isn't a cult for a few heroes," Helena is told by Pope Sylvester, advising her on what becomes her quest, to uncover the fragments of the Cross of the Crucifixion and bring them to the European heart of the Empire. "It is the whole of fallen mankind redeemed."While based on the real life of the mother of the first Roman emperor to reputedly embrace Christ, Waugh takes some liberties. Helena starts out here a British princess, horse-mad and lusty, who catches the eye of the Roman royal Constantius. Waugh's treatment of ancient customs isn't too far afield of how he serves up early 20th century London. When Constantius asks Helena's father for his daughter's hand, and mentions he has a chance of becoming emperor, the father isn't all that impressed."Some of the emperors we've had lately, you know, have been nothing to make a song about," Poppa replies. "It's one thing burning incense to them and quite another having them in the family."Waugh employs this sort of anachronistic tension throughout his narrative, presenting Helena's contemporaries as social strivers not at all different from the people of Waugh's own day (and ours.) He also writes some of his most affecting prose this side of "Brideshead Revisited," beautiful visions of nature, the ancient world, and a boy who comes home from fishing "to lay his dripping creel before his mother, proud as a dog with a rat." Readers of Robert Graves' Claudius books will recognize a similar style to Waugh's depictions of court intrigue, romance, and life and death.Like another of Waugh's books, "Handful Of Dust," this is slightly flawed in pace and tone but a riveting read throughout, very different from his other novels yet in tune with Waugh's overall sensibility. Waugh called "Helena" his most successful novel, a verdict few share; yet it certainly represents a worthwhile stretching of his talents and ably communicates the sense of grace and purpose he drew from his faith often lacking even from his more famous works.

I’ve long wondered about the truth behind theories that Helena, the Roman Emperor Constantine’s mother, was a British princess. As with the legend of King Arthur, we’ll probably never know the truth about her birth, but since I love the Arthurian legend, I like to think it’s true, and even that she is an ancestor to King Arthur himself since King Arthur is often theorized to be Constantine’s descendant.Consequently, I was excited when I found out that one of Britain’s greatest twentieth century novelists, Evelyn Waugh, had written a book about St. Helena. I was even more excited when I read in the book’s preface that the Wandering Jew—a favorite figure from Gothic literature—makes an appearance.Helena, published in 1950, actually was considered by Waugh to be his best work. I’m afraid that most critics, myself included, don’t agree. Otherwise, I’d have heard of the book long ago since I’ve read several of his better known—and better—novels such as A Handful of Dust and Brideshead Revisited. But being Catholic, an Arthurian enthusiast, and a scholar of British literature, I was curious to know how Waugh—a Catholic novelist—would treat the subject of St. Helena.I had really high hopes when I read George Weigl’s introduction to the book (I read the Loyala classics edition; Loyola is a Catholic publisher). I’m not a big fan of modernism and its lack of real meaning and the relativism it often favors. I don’t pretend to be completely traditional in my thinking as a Catholic, but I do appreciate a devoutly written book, and even more, one that is realistic and not sentimental. I’m afraid, however, that the introduction by George Weigel and Waugh’s Preface were the best part of the book for me. Weigel refers to how Waugh was against Gnosticism and the meaninglessness of life that it depicts. I think Weigel misunderstands Gnosticism in this description (or is relying on Waugh’s limited understanding of it in an era when many ancient Gnostic texts were just being rediscovered and would change our understanding of them), but clearly Waugh was against it—he shows Helena thinking it’s all “bosh” and I have to admit that the Gnostic texts I’ve read haven’t made much sense to me either—Waugh’s depiction of their convoluted mysticism is a pretty fair portrait—although I appreciate the recent revival of them and the spiritual message they try to express. I don’t have space here to debate their value, but Waugh should have given them less short shrift.What I liked best about Waugh’s book is that Helena is depicted as a no nonsense person. Whenever she is introduced to any religious ideas, she constantly asks, “How do you know it’s true?” In the end, she decides Christianity must be true because there are eyewitness accounts of Christ’s life, and if Christ lived, there has to have been a cross so when she finds the True Cross, she has proof of the religion’s validity.I also liked that in the Preface, Waugh dismisses the disbelief of so many people about the relics of the True Cross in existence in Europe, stating “We do know [how we know Waugh doesn’t say] that most of the relics of the true cross now venerated in various places have a clear descent from the relic venerated in the first half of the fourth century. It used to be believed by the vulgar that there were enough pieces of this ‘true cross’ to build a battleship. In the last century a French savant, Charles Rohault de Fleury, went to the great trouble of measuring them all. He found a total of 4,000,000 cubic millimeters, whereas the cross on which our Lord suffered would probably comprise some 178,000,000. As far as volume goes, therefore, there is no strain on the credulity of the faithful.”While I appreciated this no nonsense approach, I found the book’s overall tone somewhat tiring. Waugh’s sarcasm and cynicism and straining attempt to be funny do not support the theme or message he’s trying to deliver. The book’s style is that semi-humorous, tongue-in-cheek style of his contemporaries from the first half of the twentieth century, authors like John Erskine and T.H. White, and with all of them, I feel the result is a style that shows it is trying too hard to be funny, perhaps because it doesn’t know what it’s real subject is or how to take it seriously—perhaps afraid to take it too seriously from fear of failing in the attempt.Certainly, there is nothing funny in this book about Helena’s husband cheating on her, her son imposing religion on the empire for political motives, or his murdering his family members. The humor may not be laugh out loud funny, but it could use some toning down.What I enjoyed most about the book was how Waugh played with myths and legends. The Wandering Jew, whose connection to finding the True Cross in the novel is Waugh’s own invention, makes his appearance when Helena is in Jerusalem looking for the cross. Since he was at the event, he is able to guide her in knowing where to find the cross. Waugh has the Jew appear to Helena in a dream to give her the information, perhaps to avoid the novel losing its feel of realism. Waugh doubtless was aware of the Wandering Jew as a standard of Gothic literature, but he in no way depicts the Jew as a Gothic figure.Waugh also plays on the legend that Helena was a British princess and her British family are descendants of Brutus, himself a descendant of Aeneas, and consequently, of the royal family of Troy, another part of British mythology which many have tried to disprove and may well not be true, but makes for a great part of the Arthurian story.In the end, I don’t think Helena is a fabulous book. In fact, the pivotal moment when Helena becomes a Christian is brushed over, and I feel that really detracts from the whole argument Waugh is trying to make. Nor do I think she comes off looking like the kind of saint we would expect—a criticism Waugh would have understood. For Waugh, part of sainthood was about finding and living your vocation—Helena’s vocation was to find the cross. Waugh believed his own was to be a writer. Both served God in their own way through those vocations. Does it matter whether Helena found the True Cross? To some it may have added to their faith. Waugh himself actually comes off sounding uncertain. At the end of the preface he says, “The story is just something to be read; in fact, a legend.” But at the end of the novel itself, he states, “Above all the babble of her age and ours, she makes one blunt assertion. And there alone is hope.” Does the hope Waugh refers to lie in that she found the cross, or that there is hope itself? I guess it’s up to the reader to decide.For readers who want a different take on Helena that again ties her to British myth, they might also enjoy Diana Paxson’s Priestess of Avalon, part of the Marion Zimmer Bradley Avalon series, which takes a less Catholic view of Helena, as the title suggests.

The author does a respectable job of bringing st. Helena to life as a person. While he filled in unknown gaps, He paints a captivating story.

I am a devoted Waugh reader, but his favorite book did not mesmerize me as the others did. Some of the "facts" noted in the book are not really facts; the style vacillates between his delightful cynism and a sort of devotion, which he might or might not have felt; Helen's character remains embedded in fog.This, of course, is merely a personal bias, but to me the development of a character is as important as the plot, but I missed this psychological enlightment in the book. Helen is alternatively swept into situations totally different from those in which she formerly lived, but the reader does not perceive either her confusion nor the process by which she learned to adapt and to accept her new roles. For example historians usually do not accept her noble birth as true-- as a matter of fact in contemporary writings she was referred to as a "good stable maid", yet in due time she took the role of an empress. What did this mean to her? -- Later she was dethroned because Constantinius did not consider her highborn enough to be his consort. This must have been a blow of incredible magnitude, and could have converted a saint to a sinner. Did she ever dream in secret of homocide, or was she saintly enough by that time to be able to forgive the unforgivable? The reader remains clueless. To summarize my original observation: I cannot accept it as a biography, but as a novel I missed the nuances and changes in Helen's character. I read it and was far from hating it, but it certainly did not leave a deep impression, nor added much to my knowledge. As a matter of fact, the very content of the book is slowly disappearing from my memory.

Waugh tells us in his Preface that his story of the Empress Helena, the mother of Constantine the Great, is legend - and among the various legends he could draw on was the one prevalent in Britain, popularized by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that Helena was the daughter of an English kinglet, a vassal of Rome, whose court was at Colchester. (Other stories have her born in Asia Minor.) It is not a legend, however, that she was married for a time to the Roman general Constantius, and Constantine was their son. Constantius was politically ambitious, and eventually, in 293, became Caesar to Maximian, Diocletian's co-Emperor in the West. To achieve this position, he had divorced Helena in 289 and married Maximian's daughter. Helena and her son were sent to the court of Diocletian. In due course Constantius became Emperor, and on his death, his troops proclaimed Constantine as Emperor in 306. His rival and co-Emperor Maxentius was defeated and killed at a battle in 312, prior to which, so legend has it, Constantine had a dream to say he would conquer under the sign of the Cross. After his victory he issued an edict tolerating Christianity which had been savagely persecuted by Diocletian. In 324 he made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, but himself is believed to have been baptized only on his death-bed in 337. Helena, however, had been baptized at some unspecified earlier time. In 325 Constantine bestowed the title of Empress on his mother, and in the following year the old lady, now in her late seventies, went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and, again so a famous legend has it, miraculously discovered the True Cross, a part of which she brought back with her to Rome.Waugh builds his story around these part-legendary, part historical events. Most of the book reads easily, as one would expect of this great stylist. The dialogue often has colloquialisms of the 1950s. But the relationship between all the members of a very complicated family are hard to follow, let alone to remember: even though this is a novel, an appendix giving a family tree would have been welcome.The portrait of Constantine as Emperor is half farcical, half terrifying - a picture of a moody, paranoid and unpredictable dictator who has several of his close relatives murdered. The book was first published in 1950 - did Waugh have the parallels with Stalin in mind?Waugh gives to the young Helena a somewhat tomboyish but also an educated British girlhood. She married Constantius out of love, but is portrayed as accepting the waning of Constantius' initial affection, his secretiveness about his political activities, and then the divorce in a pretty matter-of-fact way: while Waugh lets himself go in expressive descriptions of the countryside and of the then shabby city of Rome, his emotional tone is cool. His portrayal of Helena as a young woman is much more vivid than that of the older one - until in the last two chapters, dealing with Helena's pilgrimage, the ironical tone of the rest of the novel dies away, and Waugh paints a touching picture of Helena's sincere devotion and of her spirituality. The legends surrounding the finding of the True Cross - including one Waugh has invented himself - are not mocked. Waugh was after all a devout convert to Roman Catholicism.

Evelyn Waugh's only historical novel is a convincing, although necessarily reconstructed picture of court life in the third and fourth century of the Roman Empire. It gives a chronologigal account of the life of Helena, mother of Constantine, as she moves at the whim of powerful men from Colchester through Gaul and Dalmatia to settle in Treves after her husband casts her aside in order to advance his career. She is depicted as even-tempered, practical and generous, but also as a seeker of spiritual truth. After the dreary speculations of Gnosticism, she finds the serene conviction of Lactantius intriguing. In particular she is attracted by the fact that the Christian God was a real person and the Crucifixion an historical event. Waugh asks, "Did she merely conform to the prevailing fashion, or lie open unresisting to Divine Grace and so without design become its brimming vehicle?" He concludes, "We do not know. She was one seed in a vast germination." She is past seventy when she makes her first visit to Rome for Constantine's Jubilee. Suddenly she is close to treachery and insane ambition at the pinnacle of power. Waugh's portrait of Constantine as drunk with success and on the brink of madness is witty but also edifying. How else does one explain the murder of his own son, Crispus? There is the pious suggestion that Helena and Pope Sylvester between them steer Constantine towards Christianity and some kind of self-discipline, although in fact he was only baptised at the end of his life, many years after his mother's death. Helena's visit to Jerusalem to discover the True Cross, the act with which she is forever associated and the reason she was canonised, provides a graceful coda to the book. The novel is learned, humorous, entertaining and at times poetic. That the subjects of Christian faith and personal sanctity are of central importance to Waugh is not in doubt, but he is too fine an artist to allow his writing to marred by anything as awkward as proselytising. Waugh felt this to be his finest novel. I agree.

This is one of the best biographies ever written. Slim on historical validity, but then at this times difference, who know? But Waugh is a tremendous story teller

Very unusual for Waugh , a historical novel .

It is a work of fiction but usefully illuminates the mysterious mother of Constantine