I believe we all have been waiting for June, a delightful time of the year. Annette Wynne welcomes it with a poem, June’s Picture:
Let me paint June’s picture—first I take some gold,
Fill the picture full of sun, all that it can hold,
Save some for the butterflies, darting all around,
And some more for buttercups here upon the ground;
(Read the full version here.)
But where does this month take its name? June is named after Juno, the Roman goddess of youth and protection, Jupiter’s wife. Her name (Latin Iūnō) comes from the root word for “young” (Iuuen) and goes back to the idea of vital energy and fertility. No wonder this time of the year brings fresh energy, rebirth and sunlight, even in the midst of crisis and war.
The complexities of the world live in art, and as Stephanie Raffelock, editor of an upcoming anthology*, Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis: Women Writers Respond to the Call writes, “Art keeps good alive in the worst of times. In the face of ugliness, pain, and death, it’s art that has the power to open us all to a healing imagining of new possibility; it’s art that whispers to the collective that even in the ashes of loss, life always grows again. That’s why right now, in this tumultuous time of war and pandemic, we need poets more than we need politicians."
As much as greener landscapes and blooming flowers set a cheery mood in our days and our readings, so does a culture where the action takes place in a book. Writers are influenced and often describe the culture/s they are exposed to. It is natural to be influenced by the collective experiences of the people that surround us. So in a sense, books become bridges that deliver stories, pictures and plots of life in another location, be it country, continent or imagined world.
As a reader, I look for clues and learn about everyday life, customs and values as I watch a plot unfold. Often beliefs, customs, values, and activities of a society are revealed, and literature becomes an expression of culture, whether that is in the past, present, or future. After reading books that enlighten us about different settings, we, too, can proclaim we have increased our understanding: “Veni, vidi, vici”—“I came, I saw, I conquered,” Julius Caesar’s famous brag for its brevity and economy of expression.
Since my own experience primarily revolves around Greece and the Pacific Northwest, I find myself drawn to fictional and non-fictional stories, set in other parts of the world. Especially in memoirs, the author documents lived personal stories at a certain location and a particular time, and true depictions of life and history add to history one story at a time.
