Мир желаний: Повесть об Одиссее и Елене Троянской.

1890 novel by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang

The World's Desire is a fantasy novel first published in 1890 and written by H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang. It was published in paperback by Ballantine Books as the fortieth volume of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in January 1972. The World's Desire is the story of the hero Odysseus, mainly referred to as "the Wanderer" for the bulk of the novel. Odysseus returns home to Ithaca after his second, unsung journey. He is hoping to find a "home at peace, wife dear and true and his son worthy of him". He does not find any of the three; instead his home is ravaged by a plague and his wife Penelope has been slain. As he grieves, he is visited by an old flame, Helen of Troy, for whom the novel is named. Helen leads him to equip himself with the Bow of Eurytus and embark on his last journey. This is an exhausting journey in which he encounters a Pharaoh who is wed to a murderess beauty, a holy and helpful priest, and his own fate. The novel features the Biblical Exodus from Egypt as a subplot.

Odysseus, sometimes addressed as Ulysses or simply "the Wanderer", is returning home from his unsung, second wandering. The son of Laertes was required to wander until he reached the land of men who have never tasted salt. Odysseus had endured the curse, fulfilled the prophecy and wanted only to return to a "home at peace, wife dear and true and his son worthy of him" The World's Desire picks up the Odyssey where Homer left off and shows a widowed Odysseus voyaging to find his heart's desire, Helen of Troy. Andrew Lang is perhaps known more for his translations of The Odyssey and The Iliad than for anything else, except maybe his input in Grimm fairytales. His translations have been called the "most influential English translations of Homer in the nineteenth century". It is Lang's extensive background in the translations of Homer's work that enabled the tone and wording of the novel to so effortlessly capture the essence of the previous works on which it was based. To compose The World's Desire, first they returned to the Helen theme Lang had used in his long poem Helen of Troy, published five years earlier. From there, they decided that The World's Desire was to be about Helen and Odysseus in Egypt, where Haggard had previously set two romances – She and Cleopatra. It was Lang's noncollaborative contribution in the first four chapters, as well as his input throughout the rest of the novel, that gives the novel an allegorical level that makes it nearly as strong as any folklore in the Grimm's tales.

The World's Desire was not the first time collaboration between Haggard and Lang. During their collaboration, Lang helped Haggard plan and revise She, Allan's Wife, Beatrice, Eric Brighteyes, Nada the Lily and also added poems to Cleopatra. Wendy Katz says that the most significant conclusion to be drawn from the examination of romance at the time this novel was published, is that romance as a genre is immune to the ties of actuality. This means that it is a literary form characterised by freedom and expansiveness. These two attributes of romance mean that romance characters can be set free from time, place and history. Especially in Haggard's writings, the restraints of time are subverted by any number of rebirths, doubles, reincarnations, or returns to former lives. While Odysseus is not fortunate enough to experience this type of freedom from time and place, in The World's Desire the ability to surpass such restrictions is illustrated in the end when Helen and Meriamun both vow that Odysseus will see each of them again.

The age of British imperialism extends from about 1870 to 1914. Bounding one end of the period is the Franco Prussian War, the conclusion of which, in 1873, gave French and German manufacturing interests the opportunity to launch an attack on Britain's commercial monopoly. In this way a new era of national soon to be imperial rivalry among nations began. The meshing of ideas and attitudes in Haggard reflects in miniature the conjunction of ideas and attitudes of the imperial age. Although it is impossible to present a perfect picture of imperialism and its mirror image in Haggard's writings, some awareness of how imperialism drew together the sundry elements of class conflict, domestic policy, party politics, and all manner of socio economic phenomena within the sphere of foreign policy is crucial to understanding Haggard's fiction in the imperial context. One imperial idea demonstrated clearly in The World's Desire is the imperial hero. Many romance heroes of the late nineteenth century have no explicit links to Empire. Haggard was too busy to mind the criticism; however, Lang was infuriated by it. Marshall B. Tymn, Kenneth J. Zahorski and Robert H. Boyer praised The World's Desire, stating that "this book combines an entertaining adventure story with a complex psychological theological theme. It added "reading this book is definitely an entertaining and mind stretching experience." E. F. Bleiler described the novel as "all contrived and without much fictional conviction".

Light and dark female rivals, Helen and Queen Meriamun, both cause men's deaths; Odysseus is "beguiled" by the snake of Meriamun, as was Eve, and the Argive Helen dwells with death, yet she is "beauty's self." These characters represent abstractions, rather than individuals. The hero is the ideal to which the reader is meant to aspire, but Haggard and Lane fuse together in their depiction of the fierce Meriamun. Meriamun is an embodiment of the independent New Woman they strongly disliked, however they cannot help their attachment to the character.