There have been a few times when I’ve stood in front of a statue of some great person in history and felt a strange feeling that’s somewhat difficult to describe. History cascades over you whilst bits of legend and fragments of myth echo from a school lesson or the pages of a book you read years ago, but have since forgotten. Gripped by remembrance it’s almost impossible to discern whether your delight at tracking down the monument is sincere, or born more of the joy granted by remembrance.
You’re equally plagued by the question: what was more memorable the journey? Or the journey’s end? I first felt this in Karabagh. I was travelling off the beaten track through military districts, normally no go areas but we were in an official’s car, what amounted to a short cut. The aim of the journey was to pay a visit to the statue of Monte Melkonian, one of my heroes, in Martuni district.
When I finally reached my destination I realised that the scenery, greens mixed with golds, the people, friendly and hospitable, and the ruins of war overgrown with shoulder high grass and wild pomegranate trees were what really made the trip, not the statue. But then were it not for the statue, there would have been no pilgrimage.
I’ve since convinced myself that it’s the disorganised rambling to find an obscure statue that really makes a journey. As you hunt through tired streets where no tourist ventures or traveller treads, you notice the grime and dirt, the dull thud of the failing heart of a dying city. Fear grips you a little, it’s getting dark, you can’t hear reassuring English words anymore. What you call civilisation retreats into the darkness. But something pulls you towards that statue, something compels you onwards.
Because so and so, the writer, on page two hundred and thirty said it so well when he talked about this or that. Because so and so languished for fifty years in gaol or died freeing the nation and the least you owe them is a kiss on the base of the plinth upon which their memory sits. Or because you’ve just come too far to turn back and miss out on all the social capital to be had when you recount this story in your local pub to a friend or tag yourself in a picture on facebook.
Visiting the statue, being able to actually say ‘I saw it...’, standing beside it, having a photo taken – perhaps touching it, this is what amounts to interacting with what remains a lifeless and cold inanimate object that might bear no more than a passing resemblance to the individual it’s supposed to depict. Then you have to contend with the sense of dissapointment that quickly fills the vacating spot where the longing and sense of numinous are rapidly evaporating.
The statute wasn’t what you expected. It’s too small, too big, too romantic, too modern...then you remember your Pushkin. In Pushkin’s poem The Bronze Horseman the protagonist Yevgenni stands before a statue of Peter the Great and curses him for building St.Petersburg. The statue then comes to life and chases Yevgenni throughout the city.
Confronted by a hero cast in bronze you can’t help but secretly hope some force, some life giving force like the declining half-forgotten sigh of a god will inspire a granule of life in the frozen heart and dead veins of this particular great that you might ask a question of your hero. It never ever happens.
I’ve been chewing on these thoughts for nearly a week after accidentally discovering a statue in my native London. A statue I’ve often walked by past but never really taken the time to look at. This is nothing strange, London is littered with statues.
With a few minutes to go before the end of my lunch break I came across the statue of Queen Boadicea, the legendary leader of the Iceni tribe of Britons who unsuccessfully rebelled against the might of Rome after the empire annexed the Iceni kingdom upon the death of Boadicea’s husband Prasutagus. With her defiance Boadicea (whose name in Celtic means ‘Victory’) set a trend for strong female leaders in British history; Elizabeth the First, Queen Victoria...the loathful Margaret Thatcher.
Her rebellion however was a catastrophic failure - one of the few cases of military defeat in British history. Her army, nearly a quarter of a million strong, was defeated by 10,000 Romans who suffered 400 losses to her 80,000. Queen Boadicea poisoned herself rather than live with the shame of defeat. She died in AD 61 legend has it her grave lies under Platform 10 of King’s Cross Station.
The statue consists of Queen Boadicea herself, who stands upright and defiant. A toga cuts through her cleavage leaving two bare, pert breasts. Beneath Boadicea’s outsplayed arms two bare breasted attendants crouch downwards, unarmed they nevertheless look like Valkyries. These are Boadicea’s daughters who were raped by Roman centurions ahead of the rebellion
Threatening scythes poke out from her wheels whilst a flowing cape drapes behind her and a crown adorns her head. She looks more like a Nordic Britannia than the classical Athena lookalike one finds on a fifty pence piece. Two fiery steeds pull her chariot they look every inch the offspring of St. Mark’s square’s horses. They roar as they rear up on the hind legs ahead of the charge against the Roman lines now notably absent, replaced by the Houses of Parliament. In one of her hands she wields a spear as though preparing a cull of cowering MPs shamefacedly hidden amongst the legions of practical shoe wearing American tourists.
Something stirs deep within me. Something I can’t quite explain. Its respect for a statue that borders on affection for the childhood memory of a half-forgotten history lesson, for the legacy of a Queen who failed to live up to her name. Although Boadicea never ruled me, nor any of my ancestors – though given the wandering nature of Armenians its possible one lived amongst the Iceni, and despite the tenuous connection between her and me, I’m nonetheless proud to be standing at the foot of her statue’s plinth.
Its’ here, a week or so later, I mentally recite the rallying cry of Boadicea to her warriors on the eve of their defeat “in this battle you must conquer or die. This is a woman’s resolve; as for men, they may live and be slaves.”
©Ara Iskanderian
