The Iliad: A New Translation by Caroline Alexander by Homer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars “There is nothing so wretched as man” Caroline Alexander’s 2015 English translation of The Iliad reads well: direct, dignified, and natural. She wrote her unrhymed verse while following the original Greek line for line and trying to capture its rhythmic flow. Her translation compares well with others: Yet still the Trojans were not able to make a rout of the Achaeans, but they held on, as a woman careful in her poverty holds her scales, and holding a weight and her wool, one on each side, she raises them to balance equally, so as to gain for her children a meager pittance. (Alexander) Think of an honest cottage spinner balancing weight In one pan of the scales and wool yarn on the other, Trying to earn a pittance for her children. Even so poised as that were these great powers making war. (Fitzgerald) Alexander’s introduction sketches the plot of the poem, as well as its cultural and historical background. She says it depicts war as wretched woe rather than glory, as something everyone wants to end but can’t, blighting everything it touches. The poem demonstrates the fact that we’ll all die and shows the tragic cost of war. Alexander makes at least three other interesting points. First, that the Mycenean Bronze age (when the war of the poem perhaps took place) had writing, though the only surviving texts are lists of possessions (including a Trojan woman), and that perhaps due to a drought the culture lost literacy during a several hundred year-long dark age, after which The Iliad was made. Second, there are many near-east influences in the poem, including from Sanskrit and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Third, the many repeated elements (e.g., heroic epithets like swift-footed Achilles) had not only practical purposes in making an oral poem easier to recite but also dramatic ones in, for instance, making Achilles’ pursuit of Hector around Troy scarier. The audiobook has an accompanying pdf with Alexander’s notes on the mythological, historical, and cultural references in The Iliad, like what the heck is the aegis, who was Ganymede, how long was a cubit, and whether Book Ten is native to The Iliad. The audiobook reader Dominic Keating is fine but tends to read with a single rhythm, lacking much of Dan Stevens’ charisma, panache, and variety reading the excellent, concise translation by Robert Fitzgerald. The story takes place during a couple weeks near the end of the ten-year war in which the Greeks have been trying and failing to sack the great city of Troy. The epic action centers around an argument between Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks, and Achilles, their semi-divine hero, over spoils of war (women). Achilles, in a pique, removes himself and his myrmidons from the war to teach the Greeks his value. This in turn sets in motion the fates of heroes like Sarpedon (favorite son of Zeus), Patroclus (Achilles’ beloved companion), Hector (the Trojan leader), and Achilles himself (though his fate is forecast, not depicted). As Alexander points out, the anger of Achilles is an interesting choice of theme, as Homer ignores the Trojan Horse and fall of the city and other dramatic events that happened before and after the brief period of his poem. The epic begins with a quarrel and ends with a funeral, with LOTS of bloody fighting in between. Like this: And when Meriones, pursuing, caught him, he struck him down through the right buttock; straight through into the bladder under the bone the spear-point passed; he dropped to his knees screaming, and death embraced him. The Greeks and Trojans take turns gaining the upper hand, with spouting blood, gushing entrails, dropping eyeballs, severed tendons, cut throats, struck lungs, impaled chests, shattered skulls, spattered brains, unstrung knees, and more. “Strong-hearted indeed would that man be/ who could rejoice on looking at the battle toil, and not grieve.” Many of the fortunes of war derive from the Olympian gods: giving dreams or plans, inspiring or dampening spirits, deflecting or guiding weapons, assuming the guise of friends, etc. Most such cases of divine intervention may be read as human explanation for morale or its absence or for accidents or good or bad luck and so on. Gods also play a comedy relief role. While about the only humorous things mortals do is insult, rebuke, and vaunt over each other (“Loud-mouthed archer, splendid in your crown of curls, ogler of girls”), the gods do some genuinely funny things, as when Zeus tells Hera how sexy she is by listing in detail all the mortal women and goddesses he’s slept with whom she now surpasses! It’s easy to see why people would rather name a son after Hector (= steadfast) than Achilles (= pain). Hector is human: he loves his wife and prays for his son to be a better man than he is and hectors his feckless brother Paris and takes responsibility for causing many of his people’s deaths due to his recklessness. He runs from Achilles, but after being abandoned by the gods he finally stands before the terrifying hero and even charges him while armed only with a sword. Achilles by contrast becomes “something more than human” in his rageful slaughter, clotting a river with corpses and being, as Menelaus accuses the Trojans earlier, “insatiate for battle.” By becoming more than human Achilles becomes less than human. Although he finally lets his anger against Agamemnon go when Patroclus is killed, he then indulges new anger against Hector and the Trojans. He’d eat Hector’s flesh raw if he could, he says. He finally lets that anger go before Priam, but he is monstrous while it lasts. Despite or because of The Iliad being a war poem, it is also a paean to life, especially via its myriad wonderful similes. Similes comparing the combatants to natural things like wind, snow, fire, dust, waves, mountains, trees, flowers, lions, boar, wolves, horses, eagles, bees, flies, snakes, or fish. Similes comparing the fighting to human activities like reaping, fishing, hunting, woodcutting, shipbuilding, plowing, shepherding, weaving, lard boiling, irrigation ditch digging, discus throwing, sandcastle tumbling, childbirthing, or mothering. Similes comparing people to divine things like Hephaestus’ fire, Zeus’ thunder, or Aphrodite’s beauty. The similes encompass all of life. Another impressive thing about The Iliad is that from the start everyone (Greeks, Trojans, Gods, poet, and reader) knows what is going to happen (e.g., "Your strength will destroy you"), but everyone does their best despite that fated knowledge, and every time you read the poem it moves you. View all my reviews
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