AboutEssays2022An Ariadne for Cambridge
‘And suppose I did find those to go with me, and winds, and ship – yet where am I to go? My father’s realm forbids me to approach. Grant I do glide with fortunate keel over peaceful seas, that Aeolus tempers the winds – I still shall be an exile! ’[i]
‘No-one wants us.
No-one hears us.
No-one wants to help.’ [ii]
Naxos is an island in the Cyclades, the famous swirl of Aegean islands between Greece and Asia Minor that have been in-between spaces, staging posts, refuges, and sites of mortal danger from the uncertain timelines of myth to all periods of recorded history. The Eastern Mediterranean is treacherous water, with adverse winds making even short east-west journeys hard going. No wonder the great maritime Greek myths seem to take place within a relatively tiny geographic arena: leaving the Eastern Mediterranean was no easy feat. But go to sea they did because all the earth that was worth knowing could only be reached by water.
What of Theseus and Ariadne, fleeing from Crete under cover of night while the death of the Minotaur remained undiscovered? Land breezes and prevailing northerly winds would have aided their escape, the fugitives taking comfort in the fact that any pursuers would have to wait to give chase until the following night when the sea breeze relented. For ships to resist the pull of the land , sails had to swell. Had Ariadne the smallest inkling that Theseus meant to abandon her at the first opportunity, she would have done well to stay awake through the night until favourable winds changed direction mid-morning.
While sailing ships are now the preserve of leisure sailors and sportspeople, other less seaworthy vessels have made the Eastern Mediterranean once again the arena of dislocation, death, and flight, familiar from myth. Inflatables and small fishing boats ferry those fleeing conflict from as far afield as Afghanistan across the Aegean. At the height of the displacement in 2015-16, brought on by the escalation of conflict in Syria, over 800,000 people crossed into Greece from Turkey, with untold others perishing along the way.[iii] In January 2022, the bodies of a child under three, two pre-teen girls, a man, and a woman were found off Naxos and neighbouring Paros. It is not known whether they were from amongst the seventeen people missing from a boat discovered on 22 December 2021 or the thirty-nine suspected dead from a capsized vessel on Christmas Eve that year.[iv]
Naxos is no longer a desert island (was it ever?), but Ariadne’s ordeal played out for thirty-eight men, women, and children found on an unnamed, uninhabited islet on the Evros River between Turkey and Greece. They had been reported missing for days, but the search was delayed by a dispute between the two neighbours over whether their journey had ended on Greek or Turkish territory. Designated ‘unnavigable’, the Evros nonetheless deposited at least three hundred and ninety-eight bodies of would be migrants on the Greek banks between 2000 and 2019. What of the stranded thirty- eight who were taken to mainland Greece on 16 August 2022? Could the child reported to have died on the islet have been saved by a timely rescue? In the words of Baida, one of the Syrian women in the group, ‘No-one wants us. No-one hears us. No-one wants to help.’
Recast for different audience, Ariadne’s story has survived centuries of retelling,. She is the plucky princess, determined to help Theseus end the Minotaur’s reign of terror. She is the young girl in love, fearlessly abandoning social mores to be with the object of her affections. She is the erotic archetype from a patriarchal age, defenceless in sleep, available to all eyes. In ‘The Soothsayer’s Recompense, the inspiration for Gavin Turk’s “Ariadne Wrapped”, De Chirico made Ariadne into a symbol of loneliness and loss brought on by displacement. Ariadne in the twenty-first century is also Ariadne the refugee, fleeing systemic injustice and dictatorship. Our Ariadne has left behind all that is familiar and feels like home. When our Ariadne awakens to her abandonment, it is not just Theseus she has lost: it is the promise of safety and survival.
The story of Ariadne in transition resonates in Cambridge, a city built on the ebb and flow of populations, be it for education or work. Seventeen per cent of the population are students at the University of Cambridge, for whom the rail station is a portal to and from home. Internal and overseas migration powers the many industries of mind and materials that have enriched the city and expanded its influence. Long-term residents know that their neighbours, their co-workers, will change from one year to the next. In times of conflict, the city, designated a ‘City of Sanctuary’, has a history of stepping forward, finding homes for two thousand children from the Kindertransport and giving refuge to academics, thinkers, and artists who cannot return home. The University of Cambridge provides support to prospective students who are refugees or who have faced forced migration - the students for whom the journey to university is not the first wrench from home.[v] And at The Heong Gallery, we work with artists in exile such as Issam Kourbaj and Ai Weiwei. Those of us who are “In search of Ariadne” might find her in all the hopeful travellers who come to Cambridge from elsewhere, to find sanctuary, betterment, and themselves.
[i] Ovid. The Heroides X, lines 63-66 (G. Showerman ed. and trans., 1914). Loeb Classical Library.
[ii] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62561578
[iii] https://www.unhcr.org/uk/news/latest/2015/12/5683d0b56/million-sea-arrivals-reach-europe-2015.html
[iv] https://apnews.com/article/europe-middle-east-greece-migration-athens-a9d64c229ed14cce2492d5c66d792121
[v] https://www.undergraduate.study.cam.ac.uk/why-cambridge/support/refugees
Prerona Prasad is Curator, The Heong Gallery.