by Celina Summers
Then, the show made a departure from the glam and the hype to something much closer to my heart.
No, not Mr. Bean's homage to Chariots of Fire.
The great stories in children's literature written by British authors—J.M. Barrie with Peter Pan, P.L. Travers with Mary Poppins, Dodie Smith with 101 Dalmations, and Harry Potter with J.K. Rowling—were center stage during England's welcome to the world's athletes. Literature? At the Olympics? Not quite as strange as it might sound—the original Olympics in ancient Greece held competitions in athletics and the arts. The original Olympics were held every four years from 776 BC to 394 AD, when the Roman Emperor finally put an end to the festival held in honor of the king of the gods, Zeus. The winners of each category were immortalized at Olympia, the site of the games, their names and visages left for posterity in the ring of champions
In fact, literary works had to be at least twenty thousand words in length, in dramatic, epic, or lyric categories. What an opportunity we missed! When I was a kid, I dreamed of being an Olympic swimmer, just like everyone else on my swim team. I grew up less than an hour from the home pool of Tracy Caulkins, who at 14 was the best female swimmer in the world. Tracy got cheated out of her best shot at the Olympics when the Americans boycotted the Moscow games. The gold medals she earned four years later in the Soviet-boycotted Los Angeles games didn't have quite the luster that she deserved. But regardless, as a swimmer a few years younger than Tracy, the Olympics were my dream—and I could imagine myself on the starting blocks, swimming the race, looking up for the score…accepting my medal while The Star Spangled Banner plays…
So much for that. Obviously, even as a kid my imagination was running rampant.
But if the modern Olympics still had literature competitions? Music? Art? There are rumors that the 2016 games will have a ballroom dancing category added, which is a step in the right direction. And it seems only fitting that the modern games, based as they are on a ritual religious observance, should honor art as well as athletics—something I think the British organizers gave a nod to with their inclusion of the great British writers in the opening ceremonies. After all, if it weren't for writers, our knowledge of the ancient games would be significantly smaller. For example, the funerary games for Hector in the Iliad give us, the modern reader, a glimpse at what the Olympics must have been like. Even in the centuries before the birth of Christ, winning the Olympic Games was a source of pride for the competitors as well as their countries or city/states—and that was for discus and sculptors, wrestlers and singers, runners and poets.
In 1952, an art exhibition was substituted for the contests at the Helsinki games, and the art competitions never returned to the Olympics. The International Olympic committee instead voted to include a cultural program at all Olympic Games, to promote understanding of the myriad cultures represented in the countries who participate. And so we, the modern writers of speculative fiction, lost our chance to compete for the medals in our chosen field. We can only watch as athletes are crowned with the laurel wreaths of the victors, can only applaud as they lower their heads for their gold medals, and tear up when, above the stadium or pool or field, our national anthem plays high and sweet in the summer air.
But we, as writers, have other rewards. We have the joy of seeing our stories being published, the warm glow of good reviews, the innate satisfaction in the hundreds or thousands of silent readers who love the stories we gave them. We have the long nights at our desks when the rest of the house is quiet, immersed in the characters and plot lines that populate our minds. And some authors, who climb the highest pinnacles in our craft, have the ultimate honor—just like an Olympic champion in any sport—of giving back to the people who love what they've done.
I doubt that many people are aware that Peter Pan creator J.M. Barrie left all the royalties from his works to Great Ormond Street's children's hospital for the duration of the copyright. As a result of the amazing popularity of the Harry Potter franchise, J.K. Rowling has made incredibly generous contributions to literary programs, programs for single mothers, and the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Who needs medals against a legacy like that?
Barrie's bequest to the sick children of London was a gift of such genuine love, given back to the readers who looked upon his story of the boy who could fly with magic and wonder in their eyes. But even before that, a gold medal already hung around his neck. The timelessness of his characters, the passion and delight of his stories—all this brought a measure of escape to countless children, lighting the way through the darkness and horror of the long nights when German fighters were bombing London.
When the world is literally exploding around you, sometimes imagination is the only thing that can free you.
So modern writers may not have a medal to display proudly over the mantel and when we finish a story, the national anthem might not play. But no matter what genre we write or the age of the readership for whom our stories are intended, we all reach a moment when we, too, feel like we're on the podium. Our stories are inspiring those people who, for a moment, joined with our characters on a journey through our imaginations. Our books are our legacies. And while I may never accrue a readership that would permit me to be as personally generous as J.M. Barrie or J.K. Rowling, I can still look back at some moments of my career and know that I once made a difference in someone's life. You don't need money or a gold medal to create a legacy, in much the same way that generosity isn't measured in the number of zeroes on the checks you write to charity.
A writer's generosity is measured with the stories she or he shares with the world.
The tradition of arts and the Olympics stretches back to ancient times, when the greatest poets and sculptors once competed just like the athletes under the grueling heat of the Greek skies. The opening ceremony for the thirtieth Olympic Games of the modern era harkened back to that relationship—a reminder to us all that the arts—and in our case, literature—has a place in Olympic lore. There's no better time to remember that than now, as we cheer on our athletes in the London games.
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