Christopher Logue (1926-2011) R.I.P.

(c) Jackson, Getty Images

I was saddened to recently learn that the British poet, Christopher Logue, died on December 2, 2011.  On December 10th, The New York Times ran a terrific obituary for Mr. Logue, and I've included a link to it here.  My first encounter with Logue's poetry occurred during my literary exploration of the various translations of Homer's The Iliad.  In fact, since 1959, Christopher Logue has been working on his interpretation or adaptation of significant portions of The Iliad, using his spare, but image-rich poetry to retell this great classic.

If you're looking to acquire all of Mr. Logue's 'Iliad' poetry, here is what you'll need to find--

War Music--An Account of Books 1-4 & 16-19 of Homer's 'Iliad' (1997);
All Day Permanent Red--The First Battle Scenes of Homer's 'Iliad' (2003); and
Cold Calls--War Music Continued (2005)

These three volumes of poetry are shelved with my seven different translations of The Iliad, and with Alice Oswald's Memorial (written about here) and David Malouf's beautiful novel Ransom.  They most certainly do all belong together on the shelf.

If you're interested in learning more about Christopher Logue, his poetry, and his 'Iliad' project, you might be interested in reading my review and assessment of All Day Permanent Red--The First Battle Scenes of Homer's 'Iliad' Rewritten here.  While a mere fifty pages in length, this thin volume holds some amazingly powerful poetry.  It proceeds relentlessly at near breakneck speed, and leaves the reader panting and gasping for air about an hour later as the last page is turned.

Somehow I think recounting Logue's portrayal of the Myrmidon's bearing the dead body of their comrade-in-arms, Patroclus, is appropriate--

"Starred sky. Calm sky.
Only the water's luminosity
Marks the land's end.

A light is moving down the beach.
It wavers. Comes towards the fleet.
The hulls like upturned glasses made of jet.

Is it a god?

No details

Yet.

Now we can hear a drum.

And now we see it:
Six warriors with flaming wands,
Eight veteran bearers, and one prince,
Patroclus, dead, crossed axes on his chest,
Upon a bier.
Gold on the wrists that bear the prince aloft.
Tears on the cheeks of those who lead with wands.
Multiple injuries adorn the corpse.
And we, the army, genuflect in line."

(War Music, pages 196-197)

Requiescat in pace, Mr. Logue, your voice will be missed.

***

Review: "Memorial" by Alice Oswald

Here we are just a few days removed from "Remembrance Day" (UK) and "Veteran's Day" (US), and somehow it seems highly appropriate that I have just finished reading a new book-length poem entitled, Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad, by the British poet, Alice Oswald.  Oswald's poem deeply affected me in a fashion similar to that that has occurred upon each of my visits to the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C.  Now, let me see if I can explain why.

First of all, let me make myself clear, that while war, it seems, is a necessary evil and has been with us since the dawn of Humanity, this post is not about the morality, or immorality, of war.  What I want to briefly focus on is the human cost, and how that cost is recorded and remembered, i.e., memorialized.  Many countries have special days that commemorate their war dead, battles won, or wars fought.  Most countries have physical monuments or memorials too, from the small monuments in village squares or parks, to those grand and elaborate national monuments typically found in capital cities.  There's another type of memorial that some of us encounter through the course of our lives, and that is through the literature we read.  For example, many of us have read Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, or Willa Cather's One of Ours, or Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, just to name a few; and they all, to one degree or another, describe the horrors and futility of war, and memorialize, if you will, its impacts upon the combatants.  Over the ages, poetry has also been effectively utilized in a similar fashion, and one of the very first poems to deal directly with war and its costs is The Iliad by Homer.  This is the subject of Alice Oswald's poem, Memorial.

The poem starts with eight pages of a list of names--214 names--all in uppercase.  This is a listing of each death described by Homer in The Iliad and presented in the chronological order in which it appears in the poem.  It is staggering to slowly come to the realization that Homer has described 214 individual combat deaths through the course of nearly 16,000 lines of poetry.  To see that long list of names, on page after page after page, could not but help instantly transport me to the National Mall to stand in front of the Vietnam Memorial looking at the chronological ordering of the 58,272 names (all in uppercase too) of those who lost their lives during the Vietnam War from 1959 through 1975.  Oswald's listing of these names, one after the other, is an incredibly powerful and visceral mechanism for instantly engaging her reader.  There's none of the bickering between Achilles and Agamemnon here, the speech-making of Odysseus, or even the divine intervention of the gods.  Nope, Oswald instantly starts the reader off with the stark and undeniable cost of that messy little war on the Trojan Plain--in human lives.

PROTESILAUS
ECHEPOLUS
ELEPHENOR
SIMOISIUS
LEUKOS
DEMOCOON
DIORES
PIROUS
PHEGEUS
IDAEUS...

And on and on it goes.  After the list, Ms. Oswald moves straight into her poem, and what she has done is eloquently embrace and adapt Homer's vignettes of information that he provides in the poem about many of the men that are killed.  A poignant example of the grace and sensitivity that Oswald brings to telling the story of these dead men is in the first one--

The first to die was PROTESILAUS
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus  Iton  Pteleus  Antron
He died in mid-air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half-built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Podarcus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He's been in the black earth now for thousands of years

Whew!  In twelve concise lines we see a man with a life in a pastoral land that was his, he had a house (half-built), and a wife, and then he sailed off to war with his men and his brother.  And then he is dead.  Sounds eerily like the story of the men that sailed off and then participated in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day, and now lie in the earth near the Omaha Beachhead.

Oswald's Memorial respectfully, even reverently, yet relentlessly brings the reader front-and-center with each of the deaths in Homer's epic, through the slaughter that Diomedes wreaks upon the Trojans in Book 5; the death of Zeus' beloved son, Sarpedon, at the hands of Patroclus in Book 16, quickly followed by Patroclus' own death; and culminating with the last death, that of the Trojan great, Hector, killed by Achilles in Book 22.  In between these more 'famous' deaths are all of the others, one after the other, after the other.  Also, in an effort to provide a momentary respite or interlude from the carnage of killing and death, Oswald has masterfully utilized her own version of Homer's similes.  These similes, always presented twice consecutively, give the reader a well-needed moment for pause and internal reflection.  At times, Oswald's lines of poetry are humorous, and then others are unbearably sad.  This is, I think, a poem about life at the moment of death--a celebration of the life, and a memorial to the death.  Oswald herself says that the poem is like something "from the Greek tradition of lament poetry", and that her poem presents The Iliad as "a kind of oral cemetery...an antiphonal account of man in his world."  Maybe it is fitting that I close this review with the death of Hector "Breaker of Horses"--

And HECTOR died like everyone else
He was in charge of the Trojans
But a spear found out the little patch of white
Between his collarbone and his throat
Just exactly where a man's soul sits
Waiting for the mouth to open
He always knew it would happen
He who was so boastful and anxious
And used to nip home deafened by weapons
To stand in full armour in the doorway
Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running
All women loved him
His wife was Andromache
One day he looked at her quietly
He said I know what will happen
And an image stared at him of himself dead
And her in Argos weaving for some foreign woman
He blinked and went back to his work
Hector loved Andromache
But in the end he let her face slide from his mind
He came back to her sightless
Strengthless expressionless
Asking only to be washed and burned
And his bones wrapped in soft cloths
And returned to the ground

Just as Homer lovingly describes the intimacy of the feelings between the Trojan husband and wife (Book 6), Oswald's modern verse reinterprets those hopes, desires, and fears within Hector's death scene in a few starkly spare lines in such a fashion that one almost feels as though you are standing there witnessing his last living moments.  It is powerful stuff!  This is experiential poetry in the truest sense, as Oswald forces the reader to confront one of the primary elements of The Iliad--Men killing, and Men dying.

I have a shelf that contains seven different translations of Homer's The Iliad, as well as the three thin volumes of Christopher Logue's brilliant poetic reinterpretation (discussed here), and David Malouf's gorgeous little novel Ransom (reviewed here).  Alice Oswald's beautifully moving poem, Memorial, will be joining that company, as a monument to those 214 men who died on the Scamander Plain nearly 4,000 years ago.  Somehow, I think Homer would see this as quite fitting.

Memorial
By Alice Oswald
Faber and Faber Limited, 2011.
84 pages.

***

Veteran's Day--11/11/11

On July 28, 2014, it will have been exactly one-hundred years since the beginning of the First World War.  This great war--"The War to End All Wars"--ended on the 'eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month' of 1918, and of the 70 million combatants involved in the four years of conflict, more than 9 million were killed!  My grandfather, a young U.S. Army officer, served with General Pershing's army in France in 1918, and I can remember him telling me stories about watching aerial dogfights between German and Allied airplanes.  He didn't talk much about any of the on-the-ground fighting that he experienced though.  I served in the United States Coast Guard from 1973 through 1977, and my oldest stepson is currently a Sergeant First-Class in the United States Army, and has done tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  On this Veteran's Day, I ask you to remember the millions who've served their country, and especially those who've paid the ultimate price.  In turn, I salute and honor your family members and friends who have served, or are now serving our country in our nation's armed forces.

Great Britain paid a particularly high price during the First World War.  Virtually an entire generation of young Englishmen were killed, maimed, or were psychologically damaged during the four years of that horrific great war.  Many young British writers and poets were among those who enlisted and served their country, and many did not return.  For example, Hector Hugh Munro, better known as the author, 'Saki', an acknowledged master of the short story genre, was killed in action on November 13, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme.  Another young British officer, Charles Sorley, was killed in action at the Battle of Loos, in France, on October 13, 1915.  Found among Sorley's personal possessions following his death was the following poem that he had written--

When you see millions of the mouthless dead'
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, 'They are dead.' Then add thereto,
'Yet many a better one has died before.'
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Poignant to the point of being almost painful and hauntingly beautiful, this sonnet seems to me to be written in Homeric style.  Toward this end, have another look at the poem's Line 10--'Yet many a better one has died before.'  This is a direct allusion to a line in Book 21 of Homer's The Iliad when Priam's son, Lycaon, begs Achilles for mercy on the battlefield, and Achilles replies, Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you (Translation by Robert Fagles, Book 21, Line 120).

Charles Sorley may have been brutally killed on the battlefield, but his words live on in his eloquent poem, and his poem makes us recall all of those killed on the field of battle over the ages--even back as far 4,000 years to Homer's descriptions of the combat deaths of Patroclus and the young Trojan Prince, Lycaon.

***

Attending a Reading & Book-Signing with Stephen Mitchell and "The Iliad"

My wife, Susan, and I spent a lovely day in downtown Pasadena yesterday.  The weather was gorgeous with temperatures in the mid-60s.  Much of the afternoon was spent in Christmas shopping for our grandchildren in the many shops and stores along Colorado Boulevard.  As much fun as the shopping was (actually, it was kind of fun ;-), the high point of the day was attending a reading and book-signing at Vroman's Bookstore featuring Stephen Mitchell and his new translation of The Iliad.  It started at 6:00 p.m. and concluded about 7:30 p.m.  Counting Susan and I, there were probably 20 of us in attendance for the reading and discussion.

Photo by John D. Fellers

Mitchell started off with three readings from his translation.  His first reading was from Book 6 (Lines 394-502), and is the beautiful passage recounting the meeting between Hector and his wife, Andromache, and their little baby son, Astyanax.  This intimate marital interlude covers the full range of human emotion, including: love, grief, fear, sorrow, and even hope for the future for their little son.  Mitchell pointed out that what makes these 100 lines, or so, so extraordinarily amazing is that this poignant passage is about the enemy.  Homer is very careful to make his reader conscious of the fact that the cost of this war is a heavy burden for both Greek and Trojan, and that the Trojans are human beings with lives and loves just like the Greeks and even the readers themselves.

The second reading was an interesting choice, and came from Book 18 (Lines 455-597).  This section describes the god of Fire, Hephaestus, crafting the new shield for Achilles.  These nearly 150 lines are what Mitchell interestingly refers to as the "world's first movie", as the crippled blacksmith god lovingly tells the whole saga of human life in minute detail in the bronze, gold, tin, and silver as he fashions the shield.  To hear Mitchell read these lines aloud really brought home to me the poetic beauty of The Iliad, these lines, and especially the musicality of Mitchell's wonderful translation.

The final selection that Mitchell read was from Book 24 (Lines 458-522), and is arguably one of my favorite passages in the entire poem.  This scene describes the meeting between the Trojan king, Priam, and Achilles.  This occurs late at night when Priam comes to the Greek camp in an effort to ransom the corpse of his dead son, Hector.  These sixty-four lines are truly some of the most emotionally powerful lines in the history of poetry and document the state of grace that both men are finally able to attain whilst surrounded by the savagery and brutality of a war of absolute destruction.  I find myself shedding tears each and every time I read this section of the poem, and it was no different when listening to Stephen Mitchell reading it aloud to all us.  Even though these lines are loaded with the pathos of profound grief and no hope for the future of either man, there is the salvific quality of the two men--enemies in this war--being able to find the humanity in one another and reaching that state of grace together.  This is truly amazingly beautiful poetry.

Mitchell entertained questions and answers about his translation for half-an-hour, or so.  Even 'your's truly' piped up with a couple of questions.  I asked if he would tell us a bit more about the process he utilized in translating from the Greek text, and how he made decisions on not including sections of the text that were believed to have been added much, much later in the history of The Iliad.  I also asked Mitchell about his choice of the 'five-beat' meter that he used in constructing his English translation.  He talked about how other translations just didn't sound right to his ear, and that he wanted to see if he could come up with a meter and rhythm that could effectively tell Homer's story, but would still work poetically and musically in English.  It was his experience, and I believe to our long-term literary benefit, that his pentameter lines satisfy on both counts.

I must confess that even though I already had a copy of Mitchell's The Iliad sitting on my bookshelf at home, I purchased another and had Stephen Mitchell inscribe the title page to me.  It has become an instant treasure, and one that I hope to pass on someday to one of my children in the hope that they too will come to love this poem as much as I do.  Also, I will probably try and find some deserving soul to pass on my other copy of Mitchell's beautiful translation.  It seems to me that there's something fitting about sharing Homer with friends and family.

Of course, I couldn't walk out of one of the Los Angeles area's finest independent bookstores without buying some other books!  I bought myself a beautiful edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets and Poems (the Folger Shakespeare Library edition, and annotated as well).  I also bought an edition of Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream (the Royal Shakespeare Company edition published by The Modern Library).  All in all, a perfectly lovely day and evening!


***

Review: "The Iliad" by Homer, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Maybe Stephen Mitchell answers the question of "Why we should read the Iliad?" best in the 'Introduction' to his new translation of this epic poem--

We return to the Iliad because it is one of the monuments of our own magnificence.  Its poetry lifts even the most devastating human events into the realm of the beautiful, and it shows us how vast and serene the mind can be even when it contemplates the horrors of war.

Frankly, I'm not sure that I've ever before encountered such an eloquent or concise description of the relevance and true value of this great literary work to Humankind.

Some might say, "Do we really need another translation of the Iliad?"  I think the pertinent response to the question should be, "If the new translation advances our appreciation for Homer and deepens our understanding of the story he was attempting to tell and its impact on our lives today--then bring it on!"  This is, in my opinion, precisely what Stephen Mitchell has done with his new translation of The Iliad.

Mitchell's translation is based upon a re-working of the original Greek text by the scholar, Martin L. West.  West identified sections in the text that he classified as "probable interpolations by other rhapsodes" that were spliced into the poem over the decades and centuries after it was written down.  A "rhapsode" is the term for the classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry, i.e., kind of like a bard of the middle ages, and they were apparently common in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E., and perhaps even earlier.  West and other scholars believe that what happened was that as the poem was recounted, time and time again, modifications and adaptations were made, and that some of these were ultimately transcribed and included in the Greek text that has been handed down over the ages.  That this likely occurred is not particularly surprising to me, given that the Homeric tradition really was an oral tradition.  Stories told over time and by different story-tellers are quite likely to end up being somewhat different.

So, based upon West's work, Mitchell decided to omit these interpolated sections from his translation.  This has resulted in a translation that excludes something like 1,200-1,300 lines from a poem of approximately 16,000 lines, or just under ten-percent! The most noticeable deletion is Book 10 ("The Doloneia") which recounts the night-time raid by Odysseus and Diomedes into the Trojan camp.  The great majority of scholars confidently acknowledge that Book 10 was a later addition to the poem.  About his translation, Mitchell says--

I am under no illusion that I have translated the original text of the Iliad, as written or dictated by the anonymous poet called Homer--just the most intelligent attempt we have at getting back to an original, and a text that I could use as the basis for the most intense possible poetic experience in English.

Personally, I think Mitchell has succeeded in creating a beautifully spare, but powerfully compelling poem that seems to sing to the reader as though it had been originally composed in English.

Mitchell has generally utilized an iambic five-beat line as his meter.  In contrast with the earlier translations of Lattimore (six-beat), or Fagles (six- or seven-beat lines), Mitchell's poetry seems rhythmically cleaner and more lyrical.  In many respects, I think that what Mitchell has achieved is somewhat akin to the translation of Stanley Lombardo that endeavors to restore the Iliad to its proper place in the oral tradition.  In other words, Mitchell's translation, like Lombardo's, begs to be read aloud.  I am not saying that Mitchell's translation is better than those of Fagles, Lattimore, or Fitzgerald.  No, I am simply saying that it is noticeably different, and that I believe that this will aesthetically appeal to some readers.  Toward this end, I am going to provide an example by comparing a passage from the translation by Robert Fagles (1990), and then the same passage from Mitchell's translation, and you can be the judge of which you prefer.  The section I have selected is from the latter portion of Book 24, the last book of the Iliad, and describes the return to Troy of Priam as he accompanies the body of his slain son, Hector.  First, the Fagles' translation--

"Once they reached the ford where the river runs clear,
the strong, whirling Xanthus sprung of immortal Zeus,
Hermes went his way to the steep heights of Olympus
as Dawn flung out her golden robe across the earth,
and the two men, weeping, groaning, drove the team
toward Troy and the mules brought on the body.
No one saw them at first, neither man nor woman,
none before Cassandra, golden as goddess Aphrodite.
She had climbed to Pergamus heights and from that point
she saw her beloved father swaying tall in the chariot,
flanked by the herald, whose cry could rouse the city.
And Cassandra saw him too...
drawn by the mules and stretched out on his bier.
She screamed and her scream rang out through all Troy:
"Come, look down, you men of Troy, you Trojan women!
Behold Hector now--if you ever once rejoiced
to see him striding home, home alive from battle!
He was the greatest joy of Troy and all our people!"

(Fagles, Book 24, Lines 813-830)

And now the same passage from Mitchell's translation--

"And when they came to the ford of the swirling Xanthus,
Hermes left them and went to Olympus, as dawn
was spreading its saffron glow over all the earth.
With groaning and lamentation they drove the horses
on toward Troy, and the mule cart carried the body.
No one saw them at first, neither man nor woman.
But Cassandra, who was as lovely as Aphrodite,
from the top of Pergamus caught sight of her father
coming to Troy in the chariot...then the herald...
and then she saw him, on a pallet inside the mule cart.
She let out a scream and shouted to the whole city,
'Come and see Hector, you men and women of Troy,
if you ever were glad to see him return from the war,
so great a joy he was to our city and people.'"

(Mitchell, Book 24, Lines 686-699)

Personally, I think Mitchell's crafting of those lines is the more poetic--at any rate, it is poetry that has been structurally organized that very much appeals to me on an emotional and intellectual level.  For example, Fagles describes the coming dawn of the morning with--

Dawn flung out her golden robe across the earth

which, while a wonderful metaphor, is perhaps a bit formal and somewhat abstract.  In contrast, Mitchell keeps it simple and natural with--

as dawn was spreading its saffron glow over all the earth.

Now that is a sunrise that I can see in my mind's eye--the 'saffron-colored' low angled light of the rising sun.  This makes me think of beautiful sunrises that I've actually seen, and then I realize that this beautiful early morning light is actually illuminating and coloring a scene of profound sadness and grief--a father bringing his dead son home.  That is the power of great poetry, in my humble opinion.

In conclusion, this was a powerful and very impressive interpretation, and one that I look forward to carefully reading again and doing more side-by-side comparisons with the other translations that I own and cherish.  For me, I guess what it comes down to is that I'm not sure that there is any such thing as a bad translation of The Iliad, it is just that some are better than others.  Stephen Mitchell's translation is one of the better ones. It gets a solid five stars from me, and I highly recommend reading it.

By the bye, I am going to attend a reading and book-signing featuring Stephen Mitchell being held at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California on November 5th.  I'm very excited to hear more about his experiences with The Iliad over the past few years.  I may even have to buy another copy just to have one signed just for me! ;-)

Bonus Feature

If you're looking for some interesting and well-written fiction to follow your reading of Homer's The Iliad, I might suggest the following--

Helen of Troy by Margaret George (Viking, 2006) tells the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of Helen of Sparta who leaves her husband, Menelaus, and runs off with Paris to Troy.  George does a wonderful job of placing her reader in the Bronze Age of the Greeks and Trojans, and an even better job of creating and exploring the personalities of the various characters involved in the war. An easy and fun read.

Perhaps an even better written and more interesting novel is Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley (Simon and Schuster, 1987).  This is a decidedly intriguing and feminist perspective of the Trojan Prophetess, Kassandra (Cassandra).  Kassandra has always fascinated me, with her story in Greek mythology, and later treatment by the great dramatists, Aeschylus and Euripides.  Bradley expertly continues telling her story masterfully in Firebrand.

***

Review: "The War That Killed Achilles" by Caroline Alexander

Caroline Alexander says in her Preface to The War That Killed Achilles that "this book is about what the Iliad is about; this book is about what the Iliad says of war."

I loved this book!  It is extraordinarily well-written, and to the point at 225 pages in length (plus another nearly 50 pages of end-notes).  While scholarly, it reads very well.  Alexander takes us through the Trojan War's cast of characters in chapters that cover topics like "Chain of Command", the "Terms of Engagement", "In God We Trust", "Man Down", "No Hostages", "The Death of Hektor", and the last chapter "Everlasting Glory".  Alexander's book hones in on the seven or eight months that are covered in Homer's Iliad, and while it speaks to the historical context of Troy, Mycenaean Greece, and the Trojan War itself, I think the real message of her book is the psychology of the War and the psychology of the humans involved in it.

It is perhaps easy to come to the conclusion that the Iliad is really the story of the "rage" of Achilles.  I don't know if it is that simple though, and I don't think Alexander does either.  She spends a lot of the book discussing why Achilles is 'angry' with Agamemnon, and it is much more complicated than Agamemnon having forcibly taken Achilles' concubine, Briseis, from him.  She postulates that Achilles had reached the conclusion that Agamemnon is an inept and incompetent military commander, and that this war between the Trojans and Achaeans was unjust, and that he--Achilles--really 'doesn't have an axe to grind' in this fight.  All of this was very thought-provoking for me, and caused me to carefully reread the Iliad and rethink my feelings about Achilles' actions (or, inaction, as the case may be).

Alexander makes a strong case too, that both sides in this nasty little war were just plain worn out.  The Greeks and the Trojans had been fighting for nearly ten years, with little in the way of tangible results other than seeing hundreds of their comrades killed or maimed.  That can't be good for your overall mental health.  The psychological toll of losing friends in combat must have been huge, and anger and guilt (i.e., 'survivor's guilt'), and post-traumatic stress disorder must have, by this time, affected all of the combatants.  When Achilles' best-loved friend, Patroclus, is killed by Hektor, one can begin to understand how Achilles could have simply 'snapped' and just gone berserk with 'rage'.  Particularly as one knows from Homer that Achilles, in essence, facilitated Patroclus' death at the hands of Hektor (i.e., Achilles let Patroclus borrow his armor and lead the Myrmidons into combat against the Trojans).  Combat is violent, combat is horrific--whether it is in the Bronze Age on the Plain of Troy, or in 2011 in the Korangal River Valley in Afghanistan--and the human cost is always incalculably high.

Finally, Alexander finishes her book with a discussion about Achilles coming to terms with his own role in the Trojan War, and his acceptance of his own destiny and what Fate ultimately had in store for him, and the choices involved.  Could Achilles have really packed up his 2,500 Myrmidon warriors and sailed back home in his 50 'black-hulled' ships to a peaceful and quiet obscurity?  Could he have left without avenging the death of his beloved friend, Patroclus?  Alexander is compelling as she lays out the case that Achilles was able to, as Homer alludes to in the poem, sort through the pros and cons of what faced him, and was able to 'make peace' with himself.  Alexander, I think, believes that it was through Achilles reaching a resolution to these issues that freed him to fully embrace the warrior ethos of his time and meet his destiny and fate with honor and integrity--on the battlefield, or late at night in the parley with the Trojan king, Priam.  Maybe the great Lycian warrior, Sarpedon, a Trojan ally said it best in describing the warrior's code when he tells his friend, Glaukos--

"Man, supposing you and I, escaping this battle,
would be able to live on forever, ageless, immortal,
so neither would I myself go on fighting in the foremost
nor would I urge you into fighting where men win glory.
But now, seeing that the spirits of death stand close about us
in their thousands, no man can turn aside nor escape them,
let us go on and win glory for ourselves, or yield it to others."

That's powerful stuff, and this is a very powerful book that Caroline Alexander has written.  She's right too.  This book is about "...what the Iliad is about; this book is about what the Iliad says of war."  The War That Killed Achilles is a wonderful complement to a reading of Homer's The Iliad, and gets a solid 4/5 stars from me.

The War That Killed Achilles
By Caroline Alexander
Viking, 296 pp., 2009.

 ***

"The Iliad" Redux--Which Translation?

I know, I know, you're probably getting mighty tired of my postings on The Iliad by now.  I'm almost done, I promise.  I only have one major translation left to read, and I'm not getting to it until early next week while I'm on a three-day business trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Having said that though, I thought I'd spend some time putting together a posting that compares and contrasts the translations that I have read, and also provide some suggestions for some pleasurable side reading.  This information may prove useful to readers who want to tackle Homer's epic poem, and are wondering which translation to read.  It may also be interesting to those who've read The Iliad and are considering reading a different translation at some point in time.  I am going to list the translations that I've read organized by date of translation and/or publication.

Richmond Lattimore (1951)--

This is, of the modern translations, probably the most classical, formal, and elegant rendition.  Lattimore uses what he calls a "free six-beat line" in his verse translation of Homer's dactylic hexameter verse of the original Greek.  Based upon all that I've read about these translations, Lattimore was ruthlessly faithful to the Greek spellings of places and names, and utilization of the formal epithets (e.g., "grey-eyed" for Athena, or "father of gods" for Zeus, etc.) when describing the cast-of-characters.  It is colorful and incredibly descriptive stuff to read.  If you love Homer, and specifically The Iliad, Lattimore's poetic interpretation is one that you should eventually read.  It is the 'Elder Big Brother' of modern 20th century Iliads.

Robert Fitzgerald (1974)--

Fitzgerald's translation reads easier, in my opinion, than Lattimore's.  This is a qualitative statement on my part, and is probably more a function of the kind of reader that I am these days.  Fitzgerald also doesn't include all of the repetition that the original Greek text has, as this is really a relict of The Iliad's oral tradition.  Fitzgerald chose blank verse as the meter for his translation, and it really does seem to correspond better to the dactylic hexameter of the Greek than using English hexameter or rhymed verse.  While Fitzgerald's blank verse reads very, very well, it still manages to sound traditional and is not flamboyant at all--it is simply good poetry.  I have to say that 'at the end of the day' I really enjoyed the Fitzgerald translation.


Robert Fagles (1990)--

The translation of The Iliad by Robert Fagles was the first one that I read cover-to-cover, and it really was a life-altering experience, and the beginning of my love-affair with Homer and all-things 'Iliadic'.  Fagles believed in the performance-driven aspects of The Iliad, and he did his very best to emphasize this element with his translation.  Fagles did a terrific job at translating the Greek into his lines of verse that maintain a lyrical and rhythmic five or six beats per line while maintaining a very sensible and readable text.  As I read his translation I found myself completely caught up in the beauty of the mythology, and fully able to experience the pathos, drama, and tragedy of this great story.  I have to say that by the time I was finished with this translation, my overall reading experience was something approaching the sublime.  I guess I'll probably always be partial to Fagles' translation as 'it was my first'.  Finally, I should note that the Introduction to the Fagles translation was written by Bernard Knox and is simply magnificent in its own right and a 'must-read' for any reader of Homer and The Iliad.

Stanley Lombardo (1997)--

Lombardo's translation was fun to read!  Apparently, Lombardo is very interested in restoring the oral tradition associated with people experiencing Homer and The Iliad and The Odyssey.  His translations very much lend themselves to being read aloud and hearing (and even feeling) the lyricism and rhythms of the words and verse.  In fact, it is my understanding that Lombardo does performances of various books of The Iliad on the stage for audiences (would I ever love to attend one of these!).  Frankly, Lombardo's translation begs to be read aloud and shared with others.  Trust me, it works in a similar fashion for the reader reading it alone too--it is a performance on every page!

I also really liked how Lombardo inset and italicized the similes in the poem (and there's gobs of 'em).  It makes it so much easier for the reader to relate each simile to section of the poem it applies to.  It was really quite clever (and makes it ever so much easier when reading aloud).  Lombardo is a firm believer that The Iliad is a living poem (after all, it has been translated into English approximately 150 times since the 17th century!), and that "living poetry means living speech".  I completely agree.  For new readers, or readers who might be unsure of whether they'd like The Iliad, this might be a great translation to start with.  If you're an Iliad junkie, like me, you ought to read it too.  Lombardo's translation is powerful and relevant.

Stephen Mitchell (2011)--

Stay tuned!  I do plan to provide a review of Mitchell's new translation (October 2011) some time in the next couple of weeks.  I have it sitting on the TBR shelf right now, and I plan on starting it early next week while on my business trip.  Apparently, Mitchell has utilized a relatively recent reworking of the Greek text by the scholar, Martin West.  If you're interested in this new translation by Stephen Mitchell, you can read about it in an earlier posting of mine here.  I'm pretty excited to read this and compare and contrast it with the other versions I've read.  It should be really interesting.

Bonus Material--

If you read The Iliad, any of the translations referenced above, or others, I also strongly recommend that you consider picking up the following books.  I think they'll add significantly to your overall experience with Homer and his epic poem.

The Odyssey--Obviously, if you've read The Iliad, you probably ought to go ahead and read The Odyssey.  All of the translators referenced above have translations of The Odyssey, with exception of Stephen Mitchell, and he's working on his rendition even as I write.

Ransom--This little book by Australian writer, David Malouf, is seriously one of the most gorgeous works of fiction I've ever encountered.  It focuses and expands upon events occurring in the last three or four books of The Iliad.  It is hauntingly beautiful and powerful prose that borders on poetic for much of the time.  If you're interested in Malouf's novel, you can check out my review here.

War Music, All Day Permanent Red, and Cold Calls--These little books of poetry by British poet, Christopher Logue, are his retelling of significant portions of The Iliad and are not to be missed.  Once you've read The Iliad, dip into War Music and prepare to be 'gobsmacked' up side the head!  If you're interested in Logue's poetry, have a look at my posting here.

The War That Killed Achilles--This non-fiction book by Caroline Alexander (2009) is superb, and places Homer's epic poem in historical context.  It is just over 200 pages, and is extremely well written.  I am so glad that I read this as it really shed a lot of light on the events associated with the Trojan War, as well as the psychology of the major players.

A Brief Iliadic Glossary--

Some interesting words and definitions that I've encountered during my reads:

androktasia = combat death description (these abound within The Iliad)

aristeia = display of martial prowess (e.g., Book 5 is the aristeia of Diomedes)

eris = refers to 'strife between heroes' (mortal or immortal)

teichoskopia = viewing from the walls (refers to Helen and Priam up on the walls of Troy looking down on the Greek commanders)

***

Inquiring Minds Want to Know--Your Current Top-Ten Greatest Works of Literature?

A couple of times a year I make a list in my journal.  I ask myself the following question--

"If I had to list my top-ten greatest works of literature of all time right now, what would they be?"

Obviously, this list morphs and changes over time as I continue to discover and read books that are new to me.  Interestingly enough though, there are a couple of stalwart hangers-on that have continued to occupy spots on my list.  So, what's on my list at this particular moment?  Well, here 'tis--

The Iliad, by Homer
The Oresteia, by Aeschylus
Beowulf, by Anonymous
Complete Poems, John Keats
Villette, by Charlotte Bronte
Middlemarch, by George Eliot
Complete Poems, Emily Dickinson
The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier

Okay, there's my list.  I'll even share a little 'blurb' about each book telling you why it made my list, and why I hope you'll pick it up and give it a go sometime yourself.

The Iliad--More than three-thousand years old, these sixteen-thousand lines of poetry lyrically tell the greatest story ever told; and, at the same time, it is also quite possibly the greatest anti-war testament to be found in the canon of the world's greatest literature.  Spell-binding and compelling from start-to-finish, this epic poem by the itinerant bard, Homer, is a 'must-read' for any serious reader.  I highly recommend the translations of Robert Fagles (1990), Robert Fitzgerald (1974), and Richmond Lattimore (1951).  I am reading a translation by Stanley Lombardo (1997) that completely lends itself to the oral tradition of Homer, as Lombardo has created an interpretation that is meant to be recited aloud and listened to.  I have Stephen Mitchell's brand-new translation sitting on the shelf waiting for me too.  Stay tuned! 

The Oresteia--This trilogy of tragic plays by Aeschylus was first performed over 2,500 years ago in an outdoor amphitheater near Athens.  While it is something bordering on near-miraculous that it has survived nearly three millenia--the only surviving trilogy from antiquity--what is of even more import is what these plays say and what they document and may have set in motion for all of civilization.  These plays recount the grim and dark tragedy of the ancient Greek House of Atreus, and the shift from the "Code of Blood Vendetta, or Vengeance" to the "Rule of Law," introducing the new concept of a trial by jury and pronouncement of judgment and justice.  This is nothing short of monumental, and simply must be experienced.  I highly recommend the translations of The Oresteia by Robert Fagles (1977), Ted Hughes (1999), and Alan Shapiro and Peter Burian (2003), and while I've not yet read it, I hear that the translation by Peter Meineck (1997) is superb as well.

Beowulf--This was incredible!  Beowulf is an epic poem of nearly 3,200 lines that was first written down in old Anglo-Saxon--the 'Mother-Tongue' of English--about 1,300 years ago.  I have only read the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney's, translation (2000) and it is spare, sparse, and gritty, and is presented side-by-side with Anglo-Saxon original.  The plot of this elegiac poem was absolutely epic.  The horror of Grendel and his Dam was palpable; and the heroism of Beowulf and his spear-fellows timeless.  Finally, the ability to carefully study Heaney's translation, alliteration, and interpretation of the poem and then to be able to compare it to the old Anglo-Saxon bordered on surrealistic.

Complete Poems of John Keats--In my opinion, Keats was the "Bright Star" among all of the poets of the Ages.  I weep when I think of what the world lost when John Keats died of tuberculosis at the age of 26 on February 23, 1821, in Rome.  This poetic giant left humanity with a treasure of the likes of Hyperion, The Eve of St. Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Ode to Psyche, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Lamia, Endymion, and The Fall of Hyperion, and a significant number of other breathtakingly beautiful poems .  It somehow comforts me to imagine Keats, even now, scribbling away in poetic fervor, in the "western halls of gold" with Apollo, his voice joined with that of the nine Muses, and "We listen here on earth:/The dying tones that fill the air,/And charm the ear of evening fair."  Read Keats, and prepare to be left breathless, but, oh, ever so alive!

Villette--My short letter to Miss Charlotte Bronte upon finishing my first reading of her profoundly powerful last novel, Villette:

'This novel, this Villette, like an arrow fletched fair, flew true, oh so true, and pierced your beating heart; and from that mortal wound poured the secrets of your soul, your inner-most being; laid bare for all to see.  The incalculable loss of your older sisters, then Branwell, your dearest Emily, and finally quiet little Anne.  This towering testament to loneliness, to sorrow, swept me, your Reader, relentlessly through the unimagined torrent of your human emotions—your grief, your fears, your reserved passion, your quiet grace, steadfast loyalty, and your resolute strength and faith.

I felt guilty as I read, Miss Charlotte, looking over my shoulder at every pause; afraid that you should somehow find me picking the lock of your secret diary; spellbound as I turned the pages, one after the other, reading your most intimate, personal, and painful thoughts and the passionate feelings that poured forth onto the page. Intensely captivated by the dialog between your Passion and your Reason, the conversations between your Imagination and your Matter; but I read on. Until it simply became too much; I averted my eyes, and I wept.'

With each re-read, I find that this novel still affects me on a personal and an emotional level like no other work of fiction I've encountered to date.  Read Villette.

Middlemarch--At first blush, one has this sense of simply being immersed in a rather quiet and pastoral story, but there's really very much more going on here as one turns the pages.It is a story of rural England during the period of great reforms in politics, religion, agriculture, manufacturing, medicine, and even transportation.  Mostly though, it is the story of human beings, and what it means to be human.

This is a stately, sedate, sophisticated, and complexly elegant novel.  It really does demand the reader's full dedication and attention as it is read too, much like I found when I read her last novel Daniel Deronda.  Boy, was it ever worth the extra effort though.  When I finished reading this novel, for the first time  earlier this fall, I realized that I had arrived at a point in my reading and comprehension that I finally understood what Virginia Woolf meant as she described Middlemarch as "...one of the few English novels written for grown-up people."

Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson--My description of Dickinson and her work that I used in an earlier blog post (here) is still pretty much spot-on.  Emily Dickinson, the 'Belle of Amherst,' may have been quiet and even painfully shy, but there was a nuclear reactor's worth of power contained within this woman's genius that was able, through her brilliant use of a few simple joined and arranged words, to create a body of work of nearly 1,800 poems that perfectly pulsate and throb with the essence of Life.  As a companion to Dickinson's The Complete Poems, I highly recommend Helen Vendler's Dickinson: Selected Poems and Commentaries (2010), in which she showcases Dickinson's "...startling imagination and the ingenuity of her linguistic invention."  All I can say is that Dickinson's poetry has resonated and stayed with me my entire life!

The Return of the Native--As many of you know, I love the novels and poetry of Thomas Hardy, and one of my very favorite Hardy novels is The Return of the Native.  The novel contains more than a superficial nod to the great choric scenes of the Greek tragedies, as well as the gatherings of commoners like many of Shakespeare's dramas.  The novel's primary characters are locked together in a tale of passion, drama, pathos, and tragedy where, in typical Hardyan fashion, only Fate, Chance, and Irony exert any control whatsoever.  Like a moth is drawn to a flame, the reader is inexorably drawn into the tale, and recognizes with growing horror that full release can only be attained through reaching and experiencing the novel's shocking climax.  The lyrical descriptions of the environment, the role of the humans in it, and the interactions between the characters quite reminds me of the great modern American novelist, Cormac McCarthy (the next author on my list!).  The Return of the Native is Hardy's Naturalism at its finest; and becomes an almost poetic homage to the interaction of the human species with one another as well as with the Earth Mother herself.

Blood Meridian--This ain't an easy book to read.  This is an uber-violent novel that paints a picture of the west like something done by Hieronymus Bosch.  I think Harold Bloom got it exactly right when he said,

"The violence is the book. The Judge [Holden] is the book, and the Judge is, short of Moby-Dick, the most monstrous apparition in all of American literature. The Judge is violence incarnate. The Judge stands for incessant warfare for its own sake."

All I can tell you is that I have read this novel several times, and each time I find myself somewhat ensorcelled, and in an almost evil or grimly terrifying sort of way, as I turn the pages.  It may be the bildungsroman of 'The Kid' and his adventures, but there is absolutely nothing nostalgic or romantic about the American West that McCarthy paints in this novel.  Somehow though, I think this novel is incredibly important, and only Cormac McCarthy could have written it.

Cold Mountain--With this novel I have come full circle with my list and return to Homer, if you will.  I completely agree with the widely held opinion that Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain is the American Odyssey. This is an extraordinarily beautifully written novel that tells the story of Inman, a Confederate soldier, who is physically and psychologically worn out from the horrific combat of the American Civil War, and undertakes a trek back to his home in the Appalachian Mountains of western North Carolina.  Frazier's ability to connect the reader with Inman, the people he encounters, and the environment through which he travels is amazing, and it is accomplished through some of the most poetic and lyrical prose I've read in a long, long time.  Simply put, this is just a gorgeous novel to read, and it fully deserved the National Book Award for Fiction that it received in 1997.

Well, there it is.  My current list of my top-ten favorite works of literature, and why I chose them.  Have you read any, or all, of these books?  If so, what did you think of them?  Also, the bibliophile (and 'list-maker') in me is very interested in your top-ten list.  I'd love for you to leave me a comment with the list of your top-ten favorite great books.

A Poem for the Day: An Excerpt from "All Day Permanent Red" by Christopher Logue

Whoo-Whee!  I have something new and definitely very, very different to share with all of my readers.  As all of you know, I am still working my way through many of the classics of ancient Greece.  The more I have read, the more I have discovered and realized that these ancient poems and plays are truly the foundation and building blocks of much of the great works of literature that we all read today.

These are some of the oldest recorded works in what we call the western canon, and the connections, themes, and ideas from these early works are clearly evident in subsequent literary works from antiquity all the way to the present.  Authors and poets, over the centuries, have reached back to these classics as they tell their own tales.  It never fails but to amaze me when I find these connections in whatever novel or poem I happen to be reading, or as I'm reading one of the Greek tragedies, I realize that I've seen the plot spun out as a poem by Keats, or a satirical novella by Margaret Atwood.

Well, what I have for you now is a bit of an epic modern poem that bridges the span of nearly 2,500 years back to Homer's The Iliad.  Since 1959, a British poet, Christopher Logue has been slowly but steadily working on his own interpretation of The Iliad.  He has carefully studied most, if not all, of the English-language translations, and has crafted his version, and published it in bits and pieces over the past nearly fifty years.  Of the 24 books in The Iliad, I think he has retold about a dozen so far.  I don't know if he plans to retell each and every book, but I believe he does intend upon publishing a combined, or unified, interpretation of his vision of The Iliad for our time.

I have three of Logue's books of poetry retelling portions of The Iliad, including the following:

War Music--An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer's Iliad (University of Chicago Press, 1997);
All Day Permanent Red--The First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003); and
Cold Calls--War Music Continued (Faber & Faber, 2005).

All I can tell you is that this is some of the most visceral and shockingly intense poetry that I've read in a long, long time.  It is poetry that is elegant, beautiful, biting, emotionally gut-wrenching, painful, humorous, lyrical, cinematic, and extraordinarily powerful.  It screams to be read aloud, and it screams to be shared with everybody.  On my train home from work tonight, I had an uncontrollable urge to stand up in the car and just begin reading out loud--I didn't, but maybe I should have.

I'm going to dip into Logue's second book, All Day Permanent Red--The First Battle Scenes of Homer's Iliad for the bit of his work I'm sharing here.  The material covered by Logue in this volume is that generally contained in Books 4 and 5 of The Iliad.  What a great title too--"All Day Permanent Red"--to describe the vicious and desperate hand-to-hand combat between the Achaean and Trojan warriors; but Logue apparently took the title for this slim volume from an old Revlon lipstick advertisement!  It reminds me very much of the statement a veteran of the American Civil War made as he recalled the combat at the Battle of Antietam (September 17, 1862), "...that for a moment in his mind's eye the landscape around him turned red."

Without further ado, here is an excerpt from this brilliant poem--

All Day Permanent Red--The First Battle Scenes from Homer's Iliad

"Headlock. Body slam. Hands that do not reach back. Low dust.
Stormed by Chylabborak, driven in by Abassee
The light above his circle hatched with spears
Odysseus to Sheepgrove:

'Get lord Idomeneo from the ridge.'

Then prays:

'Brainchild Athena, Holy Girl,
As one you made
As calm and cool as water in a well.
I know that you have cares enough
Other than those of me and mine.
Yet, Daughter of God, without your help
We cannot last.'

Setting down her topaz saucer heaped with nectarine jelly
Emptying her blood-red mouth set in her ice-white face
Teenaged Athena jumped up and shrieked:
'Kill! Kill for me!
Better to die than to live without killing!'

Who says prayer does no good?

Seeing Athena's cry raise fight and fire in lord Odysseus,
Hera, Heaven's creamy Queen, told Diomed
(Still near the strip, content amid the crackle of snapped spears):

'Odysseus needs you. Go.'

Beneath a rise
300 paces downslope from
Chylabborak and Abassee
A party of 500 wandering Greeks
See Hector parked and praying:

'Lord of Light...'

While Lutie fills a bucket from the well
Where the Skean road that runs from Troy
Straight up the slope to the ridge
Crosses the track.

'...I shall be busy until dark.
If I forget you, do not you, me.'

Out from the wanderers the Teucer boys
Iolo, 16, from a wife, and Parthenos
Bred from a she Teucer inherited
Come crouch-down hurrying convinced that this
Their chance for fame Prince Hector dead etc. has come.
Parthenos set to plant his spear by Hector's spine,
Iolo, well...

Boy Lutie is astonished by their impudence
But not enough to not, in one,
Put down the bucket thrash his whip, its crack
Recalling Hector to his fate, its tip--as Parthenos
Jumped for the chariot's tailgate
And Hector's mittened hand snaffled his wispy beard--
Circling Iolo's wrist.

Parthenos kisses Hector's wrist.
His eyes are full of words.

'Take a deep breath before you speak, Greek boy.'

He does.

'Please, Prince of the Gate, take us alive.
We did not want to come to Troy.
We could not disobey our father's words.
His mother was your aunt Hesione.
He has a wall of swords--'
'With silver hilts,' Iolo says--
'And gold--a chest of gold.
Please. Please. Please. Please.'

The wanderers edge in.

Hector steps down.
The Teucer boys may not have been the brightest on the slope
But they are bright enough to know death when they see it.
'Keep your lives,' he said. 'A gift from Troy.'
And as they ran, made
'Go' to Lutie with his head,
Studied the wanderers,
Lifted the bucket, doused himself
And charged.

See an East African lion
Nose tip to tail tuft ten, eleven feet
Slouching towards you
Swaying its head from side to side
Doubling its pace, its gold-black mane
That stretches down its belly to its groin
Catching the sunlight as it hits
Twice its own length a beat, then leaps
Great forepaws high great claws disclosed
The scarlet insides of its mouth
Parting a roar as loud as sail-sized flames
And lands, slam-scattering the herd.

'That is how Hector came on us.'

Despite the few who ran
Out from the rest to get at him and died
Or ducked and dodged his restless spear
And came away covered with blood and died,
Like shoppers trapped by a calamity
The rest pressed back onto the rest.
And he, partly to please his comet's tail,
Took sideways jumps--one foot up to the other in the air--
Chattering his spear along their front.

The ridge.

Sheepgrove (as asked).

Idomeneo does not wait.

Dustlight.  Far off
A woman with an infant on her back
Is picking fruit."

(Pages 16-21)

***

Holy Cow!  Can you believe this stuff?  Every time I read these lines I am simply gobsmacked, and I need to reach down and pick my jaw up off of the floor.  Logue forces you to recall your mythology--Zeus' "brainchild," Athena--the petulant, teenaged, ice-white faced Athena.  This is great stuff!  The description of Hector charging into battle was awesome and flat-out terrifying--the simile simply could not be better--equating Hector to a ferocious male African lion!  And the perspective of young Lutie, Hector's nephew and chariot driver, sort of overlays the entire scene.  The ending of this section of the poem is such a juxtaposition too, an almost jarring contrast from the shocking combat to this pastoral moment of a woman off in the distance up on the side-slope of the hill with her child on her back quietly picking fruit. In other words, even in the midst of all of this drama and pathos, life goes on.  Trust me, all three of these books of poetry are like this.  Your eyes are wide, wide open as you read each page, your brain is a sponge just taking in Logue's metaphors, his use of simile and allegory, and his just plain masterful use of language in turning phrase after phrase.

I also think it is important for me to add that I want you to know that I don't think that this is Homer modernized.  No, this is a version--an interpretation--of Homer squarely landed in the oral tradition from whence it came, and somehow I think that Homer, and all of those who've translated The Iliad over centuries, would thoroughly approve of what Christopher Logue has done (and is continuing to do) and embrace his work wholeheartedly.

I plan to share more from Christopher Logue's volumes of interpretations of the books of The Iliad in the coming days, and I also plan to compare and contrast his poetry with my upcoming evaluation of Stephen Mitchell's new translation of The Iliad that is being released on October 12, 2011 (see my posting here).  Stay tuned!

The Challenge--What Translation to Choose and Read?

These days I'm reading a lot of great literature that was not originally written in English, and as I really don't speak or read any other language other than English, choosing a good translation would seem to be a very important step if I'm to fully experience these novels, plays, or poems.  Until a few years ago, I never really gave much thought to what translator or translation that I was reading.  I just purchased a copy of the book and started reading.  For the past few years I've maintained my on-line library on both Goodreads and Shelfari, and I've begun encountering a lot of information about literary translators and various translations of the books that I've read, I'm reading, or want to read.  Intuitively, at least to me, it would seem to make sense that a translation that is well-done and presented in a such a fashion as to make the author's work relevant can only improve the overall experience we readers can then have with the author and his/her book.  Consequently, I thought that it might be fun, and maybe even useful, to share with all of you my thoughts and observations about the various translations of some of the foreign language works I've read.  I'd also like to hear from you about translators and translations that you've encountered and liked or disliked.  So, let's get started--

I'm going to start in Russia with Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and War and Peace, and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  I first read Anna Karenina some 25+ years ago, about the time Masterpiece Theater was running a multi-part adaptation on television.  I was house-sitting for friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and I just got completely lost in the novel over several weeks.  The translation that I read was by Constance Garnett (1861-1946), and I loved the book.  I followed that up several years later with my first reading of Tolstoy's War and Peace, also a Garnett translation.  In 2005, I ran across an article in The New Yorker that opened up my eyes to the value of a solid translation and the enormous amount of work involved in translating a great work of literature.  This article was entitled "The Translation Wars" and tells the story of how the husband and wife team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have tackled the translation of many of the great Russian novels into English (if you're interested, I've provided a link to the article here).  I've since read the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations of Anna Karenina and War and Peace, and have their translation of The Brothers Karamazov sitting on my to-be-read shelf.  I very highly recommend their translations of Tolstoy. Are Pevear/Volokhonsky translations better than the Garnett translations?  Far be it from me to adequately critique or judge one versus the other, but I do know that having read both translations, I can say that I personally prefer the Pevear/Volokhonsky translations--they just felt a little 'earthier' and more Russian.

Okay, let's move on to Beowulf.  I had tried reading this epic, book-length, poem several times over the course of my life and failed miserably, usually only getting a few pages into it before chucking it.  Whilst visiting my younger brother a few years ago, I encountered a battered copy of Seamus Heaney's translation (2001) of this poem on his bookshelf.  My brother raved about it.  I bought a copy, and the rest is as they say, "History!"  This started my love affair with all things Heaney.  Beowulf was incredible! First of all, the story was told in the spare, sparse, and gritty language of Heaney's bilingual translation of the Anglo-Saxon original that is something like 1,000 years old. Second, the plot of this elegiac poem was absolutely epic. The horror of Grendel and his Dam was palpable; and the heroism of Beowulf and his spear-fellows timeless. Finally, the ability to carefully study Heaney's translation, alliteration, and interpretation and then compare it to the Anglo-Saxon was almost surrealistic. It was an amazing experience to have the ability to look at and study the root language of modern English.  As a side-note, when you finished reading the Heaney translation, go out and find yourself a copy of the late John Gardner's slim volume entitled, Grendel (1971).  This existential little book tells the tale from the 'monster's' point of view, and is profoundly thought-provoking on many levels.

Now, let's go further back in time and look at the translations of the itinerant bard and poet, Homer, and two of the great literary works of humankind--The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Apparently, these two Homeric epics may have been first transcribed in Greek in the 8th Century BCE.  Prior to that I have to believe that traveling bards and storytellers around the Mediterranean region would have adapted and told elements of these tales in the villages and towns they visited (i.e., an oral form of translation).   From the perspective of translation and adaptation into English it even gets crazier.  Go on-line, or to your public library, and you'll see that these epic poems have been translated by just about anyone with a passing classical education.  If you look at the Wikipedia entry for "English Translations of Homer" there are, from the 16th century on, nearly 120 different translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey.  Some of the more prominent translations include those done by George Chapman (1611-15), Alexander Pope (1715), Richmond Lattimore (1951, and 1965), Robert Fitzgerald (1961, and 1974), and Robert Fagles (1990, and 1996) .  

I have read the translations by both Lattimore and Fagles, and have the Fitzgerald translation coming to me even as I write this.  I would have to say that my favorite, so far, is the Fagles translation.  It was just magical and the poem seemed alive with richness in a contemporary framework that I could readily understand. Fagles' translation is quite lyrical and loosely maintains a meter of five- and six-beats per line throughout. I encourage you to read it aloud, it just rolls off of the tongue, and becomes even more enchanting.  I also enjoyed the older translation by Richmond Lattimore.  It is elegant and feels more classical.  Again, I am certainly not qualified to judge the quality of one translation versus another, but I am able to judge my responses to each, and I would say that I related better to Fagles' translation.  Finally, I have recently become aware of a brand new translation that is being released in early October 2011, by Stephen Mitchell.  For more on the new Mitchell translation of The Iliad see my blog posting of September 21st.  I guarantee that I will certainly review Mitchell's translation of The Iliad as soon as I am done reading it. [And doesn't it just have the coolest dust-cover artwork?]

I have quite a robust collection of ancient Greek tragedies.  I think have at least one copy of all of the plays by the Greek classicists.  I have several translations of my favorites.  For example, I have four different translations of Aeschylus' trilogy The Oresteia (Thomson, Lattimore, Fagles, and Ted Hughes), with the Fagles and Hughes translations being my favorites.  The Fagles translation is probably the most faithful to the original Greek (and the Introduction by W.B. Stanford is worth the 'price-of-admission' alone), but the Hughes translation and/or adaptation is even more poetic and emotionally powerful.

Another ancient Greek playwright that I adore is Sophocles, and I have several wonderful translations of his plays.  For the three Theban plays (i.e., Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone) it is hard to beat the relatively recent translations by Robert Fagles.  Although, I have to say that the translations of Antigone by Seamus Heaney (The Burial at Thebes, 2005) and Diane Rayor (Antigone, 2011) are beyond sublime.  I also just finished reading a new translation of all seven of Sophocles' plays by Robert Bagg and James Scully, and their Antigone was hard-hitting as well.  I very much enjoyed their translations of Aias (Ajax) and Women of Trakhis too.  I have posted a more in-depth review of the Bagg/Scully translation collaboration here if you're interested.

Finally, I am in the midst of re-reading Victor Hugo's monumental novel, Les Miserables for the first time in some 20 years or so.  I read the Fahnestock/MacAfee translation (1987) shortly after it came out and loved it.  During the big Les Mis craze, I saw several musical adaptations on the stage and a television movie or two as well.  I received a lovely gift certificate for Barnes and Noble for my birthday (or Christmas?) and decided to splurge and buy myself the hardcover Modern Library edition of Julie Rose's new translation of Les Miserables.  I am only about one-quarter of the way through this massive tome, but I am loving and savoring every word.  I had forgotten how much I love this story, and how Hugo lays bare the soul of his characters, and I think Julie Rose has very capably preserved this aspect.  Again, I promise to post a comprehensive review of her translation when I am finished.


Well, have I definitively answered the question, "Which translation is the best?"  Heck no!  I am not even going down that road, as I'm sure that each of us has our own opinions and 'tried-and-true' favorites.  All I've tried to do with this posting is convey the notion that for many of these great works that we read that, in some cases, the translation selected and read can mean the difference between a memorable experience, or one that ends up being just 'ho-hum.'  Please, please take my recommendations with a grain of salt and recognize that these translations are ones that I personally enjoyed and appreciated.  I'm sure that you may have your favorite translations, and for equally valid reasons at that.  I'd love to hear from you about the translators and translations of books and poetry that you've encountered and that have made a positive impression on you.


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