This arrived on my doorstep on the second of November last year and I started reading it shortly after. Having enjoyed Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey in 2018, which I wrote about here, I had high expectations. My personal experience enhanced by the many positive reviews of this translation. I could quote from many and have attached them here for future reference.
I follow Emily Wilson on Twitter – she is an enthusiastic user and all my direct quotes come from her posts making her seem very familiar, hence my calling her Emily, not Wilson, throughout this blog.
Why bother to read The Iliad? Because it includes everything that makes us human which is why it remains relevant today – ideas about honour, courage, love, responsibility, belief, reputation, integrity, betrayal, pain, joy, adventure, injury, death, friendship. The whole gamut of human emotions. Daniel Mendelsohn [Waiting for the Barbarians: Essays From the Classics to Pop Culture, 2012] says the question it raises is a modern – indeed existentialist – one: How do we fill our short lives with meaning?
That’s one reason, another is that it includes passages of very beautiful poetry. Emily Wilson is considering releasing extracts from the whole as a book of poetry which would be terrific. Lyrical descriptions of nature, insights into the psychology of characters and highly charged emotional highs ands lows. As well you discover what the ancient world was like; how society was arranged what was culturally valued and so on. All in this one book. A human world surprisingly similar to our own.
Mendelsohn puts it this way, by maintaining its: grip on its single theme, The Iliad manages to suggest the whole range of human action and emotion – of an existence that, unlike that of the gods, has meaning precisely because we, like Achilles, know it will end. He describes it as a: richly detailed work of art that provides an image of every possible extreme of human experience, a reminder of who we are and who we sometimes strive to be. I’m so pleased that with this translation I have been transported into this classic.
Emily on Twitter has described her intentions in her translations of Homer as being: to translate & recreate an experience of ancient literary texts, including poetic sounds and forms as well as semantics; to defamiliarize when the familiar ideas are debatable; to make ancient texts vividly audible and legible. Which she has well and truly achieved.
Reviews of Emily Wilson’s The Iliad
I’ve read lots of reviews that are far better than I at describing the wonders of this translation. The English classical scholar Edith Hall praises Emily’s scholarship: her command of ancient Greek vocabulary, dialects, metres and even the manuscript tradition lends authority to every aesthetic decisions she has made; but notes her learning would count for little if the translation itself didn’t seduce with its crystalline clarity, elegance, sensuality, sometimes breathless pace and above all emotional clout. This review is a great overview of the book and can be found here.
Another review by A.E. Stallings in the Spectator gives a nice overview of the whole thing, including the criticism that Emily’s translation is too woke! You can find it here. As to her translation being a modernization of the original, Emily says what she has done is not: really ‘modernizing’. She says: If you want a Modernist translation of Homer, I suggest Fitzgerald. He uses free verse with a strong imabic undertow, like Eliot’s Wasteland, and like Eliot, he includes a lot of clever allusions to earlier English verse.
Stallings notes, arguably the most radical thing about the translation was that it conveyed the Greek in a strict iambic pentameter (the meter of your average sonnet), not the ‘loose five beat line’ or ‘loose six beat line’ favoured by epic translators for conveying Greek’s unrhymed dactylic hexameter since the mid-20th century. I don’t really understand what all the discussion about different poetic meters means – essentially Emily’s verse is easier for us to read – but, if you’re interested, which I was, it’s explained well in this review.
The other really big thing I liked was her stripping away a lot of the verbiage, if I can call it that – the repetition of the epithets associated with each character, and seemingly rote phrases that appear often. Originally as this was an oral work these were given as pauses in the performance to enable the speaker to contemporaneously compose the next bits.
An American expert on Homer, Daniel Walden, praises this approach of using different descriptors instead of Homer’s formulaic phrases along with Emily’s renditions of another feature of the poem which are the many beautiful similes. Deaths of characters are often likened to incidents in nature or domestic settings. The result according to Walden is: The Homeric characters speak across time and language and seem more real, more elemental than we are. His review is here.
Walden also identifies and rebuts many of the criticisms of Emily’s translation, calling out reactions that confuse criticism of taste and criticism of merit. A review by Kristen Patterson covers similar ground, noting Emily has been criticised for introducing this ancient text to too wide an audience who will by fault of being moderns with modern styles of interpretation, misinterpret it … a strange way to talk about art, to insist that it should leave as little room as possible for people to misunderstand, i.e., have a different perspective from yours.
Emily has commented on this on Twitter: I realize there are people who object not to any specific word choice in my Homeric translations, but to the whole project of making Homeric poetry comprehensible in English – as if it’s supposed to be ineffable and opaque, like a magic spell. An interesting form of gate-keeping. And further FWIW, I think opacity, ambiguity and ambivalence can be important elements in a text, which a translator should aim to echo if and when they’re present. But Homer isn’t usually difficult in those ways. Homer isn’t Aeschylus. The Iliad isn’t Finnegans’s Wake.
Patterson goes on to say the Homeric epics invite a lot of ambivalence about the heroic world they portray. While reading it I was firmly on the side of Hector rather than Achilles who is meant to be the hero – I delayed reading the final four books, not wanting to see Hector killed! This because I identified Hector with Eric Bana who played him in the movie – which I actually don’t recall seeing, but I must have. Paterson, stressing the ambivalence Homer shows towards the heroic ideal, notes: Trojan champion Hector – contrary to the sweet, Eric Bana – fied version of him that occupies the popular consciousness – sinks slowly deeper into his own war-madness the longer he fights. Which is true. It’a a great review, and can be found here.
Another great strength of this version is how Wilson includes the many examples of alliteration in the Greek. In this review some are collected: danger was everywhere, pain piled on pain, Hector has the force of fearsome fire, Patroclus rushed ahead through the front line of fighters – like a falcon, and Achilles with his spirit dressed in daring / dashed at the Trojans with a dreadful cry. And the review praises word choices, such as the use of words starting with c to conjure up the sound of battle: the weapons clanged in cacophony, shields smashed together and created great rattling clangs and cracks. All in all Wilson’s poetry gives The Iliad a fresh and lively feel. Indeed it does.
Emily’s not keen on the focus on her being a woman, which has been less this second time round. When my Odyssey translation came out, almost every headline said EMILY WILSON IS A WOMAN!!! I spend the next 5-6 years trying to explain why that might not be the ideal headline, and might not say very much about my work. She says: Nobody has ever told me my translations of Seneca are ‘feminist’ or offer a ‘female perspective’ – because nobody cares about Seneca, haha.
Now she she finds: almost every headline says, EMILY WILSON MODERNIZES (by, er, checks notes, using regular iambic pentameter and words like ‘wrath’). I’m so ready for many years of interesting public conversation about what ‘modernizing ‘might mean.
Walden in the review above praises her word choices which are often familiar. Other reviewers have criticised these choices as being too modern. Emily has taken to Twitter to rebut the allegation, finding: it interesting to see which words and phrases feel “modern”. “Flabbergasted was used in the C28, “windbag” in the C19 and “blabbermouth” in early C20. “Traipse” is C15. “Hanker”, C17. But they’re great, vivid words, which maybe is what “modern” connotes. Further: “Whoop” C14, comes in Piers Plowman. “Dawdle”, C17. “Flirt”, C16 Sleazy, shrivel and chuckle C17 & C18 “The joys of the English language!” She has been criticised for naming one of the sea goddesses Doris – but assures us that is the name in the original!
She has been praised for her handling of all the action in the poem, so that the lengthy battle scenes shine instead of boring the reader. She achieves this by re-organizing and tightening original phrases to create momentum, such as this scene when Hector bursts through the gates of the Greek camp: Then glorious Hector leapt across, his face / like sudden night, his body bright with bronze- / a terrifying sight, and each hand / he held a spear. Once he had jumped across, / no-one could hold him back except a god. / His eyes lit up with fire. He swiveled round amid the crowd and shouted to the Trojans / to cross the wall – and at his call, they came. This is from John Byron Kuhner in the National Review, who, whilst full of praise for Wilson’s Iliad is more sceptical about her Odyssey. Here’s his review
Another interesting review looks in more detail at some of the over sixty ways the deaths of warriors are described in Homer’s Iliad. The review is here.
Emily has said how hard it was to come up with alternatives to the word spear, which is the primary weapon responsible for the deaths in battle. She also notes that the precise details the deaths described are nonsensical in medical terms!
Here is one quite famous scene of Patroclus killing a Trojan by spearing his right jaw (it’s the details that give authenticity) and driving the spear shaft through his teeth, / to hook and drag him over the chariot rail, / as when a man sits on a jutting rock, / and hooks a holy fish with shining bronze and fishing line, and drags it from the sea … Mendelsohn says: Through the carnage, reminders of peacetime world hover tantalizingly out of reach. Another thing about the deaths is how you get little biographies of the combatants which makes their deaths quite poignant.
Given all these deaths, it’s no surprise that another review looks at the relevance of those descriptions of battles compare to contemporary experiences of war. Soldiers who have fought in recent wars are asked how particular scenes, themes and speeches in the Iliad relate to what they have experienced. Fascinating. It can be found here.
I’m not sure whether readers of this blog will be able to access the podcast from the London Review of Books, hopefully you will because it’s terrific, that is here . If access to the podcast is not available, a written interview with Emily Wilson is here. Another really informative interview with her, talking about how she approached this massive task of translation is here. All these reviews and articles have been tweeted around by Emily Wilson herself, which is why I still love the platform.
How To Read The Iliad
Wilson says she attempted to reduce the lines in English to the same number as in the Greek original – which she achieved in The Odyssey, exactly 12,110 verses – but found this too hard because of all the names in the Iliad. Her aim was to reflect the alliteration, rhythm, energy and clarity ofs the original and to my mind she achieves just that! My really strong advice, if you want to understand why Homer has survived from antiquity to the present, is to read this translation.
In addition to the actual poem you get a 50 page Introduction and 23 pages of Translator’s Notes along with maps and summaries of all of the separate books. Enough reading for a year! It took me three months.
I have a document entitled Notes on the Iliad prepared for a reading group in 2006 by a Homer scholar who was contemplating publishing it as a book – so will remain nameless. I don’t think he ever did. According to him: It is important to read the poem a book at a time … [which] is to read it in a way appropriate to its original nature … It is a transcript of what was originally a live performance, or series of performances, by a poet who is improvising as he sings. And I took that advice.
I did find it required energy to read, so a few times took a break from it. I didn’t attempt read it aloud which is what Emily Wilson recommends! Each book would have taken between one and a half to two hours to recite, which explains why it was copied out in separate books or chapters.
Sometimes it took me a while to get into the rhythm of the work and when I did I occasionally read more that the one book and towards the end there were a couple of longer books that took me more than one sitting to read. So not an easy read, but worth every minute.
For a little while I looked up Emily’s guide on how to pronounce the many names you come across, but I soon gave that up as it interrupts the flow of reading it. And as Emily says it doesn’t really matter how you pronounce the names, but in the interests of democratizing discussion of the Iliad she has provided such a guide here.
My Journey to The Iliad
I’ve wanted to read Homer for a long time. Having previously, and lately, re-read the book by Alberto Manguel pictured below. It provides a terrific, very accessible, overview of the history of the poem. Including where and when it was discovered and the various theories about who and how it was written. Very good background information. That his in the quotation above has been challenged and surprisingly early on!
I have tried different versions of The Iliad over the years. Wilson is very generous about them all. She says it’s hard to say which translation is ‘most poetic’ or ‘most literal’ or ‘best’ – whatever those terms mean; I think they’re often used so vaguely as to be meaningless. I started with the Fagles, pictured below, which was welcomed as the best translation in decades following its publication in 1990. I didn’t get past Book Two which he entitled The Great Gathering of Armies. Others have called it The Catalogue of Ships. Wilson calls it The Multitude – her chapter headings are as succinct as the rest of her translation!
Although I was interested enough to buy Robert Fitzgerald’s 1974 translation, pictured below, to compare bits and pieces. Probably because it was referred to in reviews. It uses different spelling – e.g. Akhilleus for Achilles, Akhaians for Greeks – which I didn’t like. I’m interested that Emily says of this translation it is the one best regarded as a modernization of the original.
What really got me interested in the poem was a re-imagining – not translation – by Christopher Logue published in a series of small poetry books, starting with 1984’s War Music, pictured below, I saw the actor John Stanton perform – that is declaim – a section of it in October 1986 at Ormond College which was breathtaking. Stanton had such a wonderful voice; indeed it was like music!
Thereafter I bought all of the Logue books when I came upon them. Kings, pictured below is the second in the series. Logue describes it thus: I have concocted a storyline based, in this case, on the main incidents of the Iliad’s first two books, added a scene of two of my own, and then, knowing no Greek but having got from the translations made in the accepted sense of the word the gist of what this or that character said, attempted to make their voices come alive, and to keep the action on the move. Imagine the howls from classical scholars. What chutzpah!
This was followed by these two pictured below. Remember this was before internet and social media, so I was dependent on our local booksellers. I missed the third one.
I also discovered on my bookshelves a copy of Samuel Butler’s translation, published by the University of Chicago in 1952; but first published by Butler in 1888. I’ve never attempted to read it really. It’s in prose rather than poetry. But reading bits of it for this blog, I quite liked it. Butler contended that The Odyssey was written by a woman!
You can see my interest in The Iliad has been longstanding. I’m delighted that I have finally read it in full. Comparing translations I think you can see why I found this version easier to read.
All wonderful. The author of my Notes was correct, this is best read slowly so you can savour it all.
Comparisons of Different Translations of The Iliad.
I’m concluding this blog with comparisons of some of the different translations – those not interested can skip this part. I find it fascinating. Apparently Matthew Arnold in 1861 identified four cardinal qualities in Homeric verse: rapidity, plainness of syntax and diction, plainness of thought, and nobility.
According to Mendelsohn English translators have generally had to choose one or two at the expense of the others; apart from Alexander Pope which he says is the best translation of anything ever. According to him, Lattimore has nobility but not rapidity, Fagles has a gratifying plainness but not the grandeur. Emily says Fitzgerald’s is the most modern. Her translation has been accused of losing the nobility, but I thought it was noble enough. Interpreters go their own way!
It’s very interesting to read a literal translation of key bits. Everyone agrees this is a poem about wrath, anger, rage. The rage of Achilles at being dishonoured by Agamemnon drives the whole narrative. A literal translation of the opening words is: Wrath sing goddess of Peleus’ son Achilles / destructive. Certainly sounds odd in English. Here is the whole opening verse according to the three translations I have to hand.
Wilson: Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath / of great Achilles, son of Peleus, / which caused the Greeks immeasurable pain / and sent so many noble souls of heroes / to Hades, and made men the spoils of dogs, / a banquet for the birds, and so the plan / of Zeus unfolded – starting with the conflict / between great Agamemnon, lord of men, / and glorious Achilles.
Fagles: Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, / murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses, / hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls, / great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion, / feasts for the dogs and birds, / and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end. / Begin Muse, when the two first broke and clashed / Agamemnon lord of men and brilliant Achilles.
Fitzgerald: Anger be now your song, immortal one, / Akhillelus’ anger, doomed and ruinous, / that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss / and crowded brave souls into the undergloom, / leaving so many dead men – carrion / for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done. / Begin it when the two men first contending / broke with one another – / the Lord Marshal / Agamémnon, Atreus’ son, and Prince Akhilleus.
Butler: Sing, O Goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achæans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, King of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.
You see how much shorter and straightforward the Wilson translation is.
And here are two of the earliest English translations. Chapman: Achilles’ fatal Wrath, whence Discord rose/ That brought the Sons of Greece unnumber’d Woes, / O Goddess sing. [Since reading Keats’ poem I’ve often wondered about Looking into Chapman’s Homer, the poem is written out below – I don’t think reading this would have me wanting more!]
Alexander Pope: Achilles wrath, to Greece the direful spring / Of woes unnumber’d heavenly goddess, sing!”
Another example, put on Twitter by Emily is at the end of Book Eight. The day’s fighting has finished and the Trojans, believing they are on the cusp of victory (erroneously as it happens), have retired to their campsites on the plain in between Troy and the Greeks by their ships.
Chapman: … The winds transferr’d into the friendly sky / Their supper’s savour; to the which they sat delightfully, / And spent all night in open field; fires round about them shin’d / As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind, / And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams, high prospects and the brows / Of all steep hills and pinnacles, thrust up themselves for shows, / And ev’n the lowly valleys joy to glitter in their sight, / When the unmeasure’d firmament bursts to disclose her light, / And all the signs in heav’n are seen, that glad the shepherd’s heart; / So many fires disclos’d their beams, made by the Trojan part, / Before the face of Ilion, and her bright turrets show’d.
Alexander Pope: The troops exulting sat in order round, / And beaming fires illumined all the ground. / As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, / O’er heaven’s clear azure spreads her sacred light / When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, / And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene; / Around her throne the vivid planets roll, / And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, / O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, / And tip with silver every mountain’s head; / Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, / A flood of glory bursts from all the skies: / The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, / / Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light. / So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, / And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays: ….
Lattimore: So with hearts made high these sat night-long by the outworks / of battle, and their watchfires blazed numerous about them. / As when in the sky the stars about the moon’s shining are seen in all their glory, when the air has fallen to stillness, / and all the high places of the hills are clear, and the shoulders out-jutting / and the deep ravines, as endless bright air spills from the heavens and all the stars are seen, to make glad the heart of the shepherd; / such in their numbers blazed the watchfires the Trojans were burning / between the waters of Xanthos and the ships, before Ilion.
Fagles: And so their spirits soared / as they took positions down the passageways of battle / all night long, and the watchfires blazed among them. / Hundreds strong, as stars in the night sky glittering / round the moon’s brilliance balze in all their glory / when the air falls to a sudden, windless calm … / all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs / and the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts / the boundless bright air and all the stars shine clear / and the shepherd’s heart exults – so many fires burned between the ships and the Xanthus’ whirling rapids.
Caroline Alexander (who Emily notes tries to echo Greek word order which can be weird in English): And they in high confidence between the lines of battle / set down the night long, and their many fires blazed. / As when in heaven stars about the bright moon / shine conspicuous, when the upper air turns windless, / and all the peaks and jutting cliffs are shown, / and valleys, and from heaven above the boundless bright air is rent with light / and all the stars are seen, and the shepherd’s heart rejoices, / so between the ships and streams of Xanthos / in such multitude shone the watchfires of the Trojan’s burning, before Ilion.
Wilson: Hearts high, they sat in lines arranged for war / all night and burned a multitude of fires, / as when around a dazzling moon, bright stars / shine in the sky when no wind moves the air – / all the high lookout points and tall clifftops / and valleys suddenly were visible – / the vast expanse of upper air breaks open, / and all the stars are seen – the shepherd’s heart / is glad – so many were the gleaming fires / burned by the Trojans on the plain of Troy / between the ships and streams of River Xanthus.
Emily says: This passage, like so many, is marvelous in the original, and great in all these translations and many more. … You don’t have to think mine is the best. I’m proud of it. I worked really hard on it for many years. .. I hope more people will love Homer through my work. But many others are good too. … I want to showcase beauty, and let many bright stars shine.
I’ll now show what Logue does to a key scene in the poem – at least one of the many key scenes! This is the death of Patroclus in War Music by Logue: … you fell, / Not noticing the pain, and tried to crawl / Towards the Fleet, and – even now – feeling / for Thackta’s ankle that you got, / But Hector’s. / Standing above you, / His bronze mask smiling down into your face, / Putting his spear through … ach, and saying: / “Why tears, Patroclus?” / Did you hope to melt Troy down / And make our women fetch the ingots home? / I can imagine it! / You and your marvellous Achilles; / Him with an upright finger, saying: / Don’t show your face again, Patroclus, / Unless it’s red with Hector’s blood” / And Patroclus, / Shaking the voice out of his body, says: / “Big mouth. / Remember it took three of you to kill me / A God, a boy, and last and least, a hero. / I can hear Death pronounce my name, and yet / Somehow it sounds like Hector. / And as I close my eyes I see Achilles’ face / With Death’s voice coming out of it.” / Saying these things Patroclus died. / And as his soul went through the sand / Hector withdrew his spear and said: “Perhaps”. That last word is a wonderful translation of the bigger speech given to Hector below.
In translation this section is much longer even pared down somewhat here is Wilson: ... But Hector saw brave Patroclus wounded and retreating. / He muscled through the crowd, got near Patroclus / and speared him underneath the ribs, and drove / the bronze point through his body. With a thud / he fell. The army of the Greeks lamented. / Just as the lion bests a tireless boar, / when on the mountainside they fight together, / both spirited, majestic warriors, / because both want to drink from a small stream – / the boar pants hard, defeated by the lion – so Hector son of Priam, standing close, / stabbed with his spear and took away the life / of brave Patroclus, who had killed so many. / Then Hector boasted and his words took wing. / “Patroclus, I suppose you thought you would / destroy my city and enslave the women / of Troy and rob them of their freedom, / and take them in your ships to your own homeland. / Fool! Hector’s horses galloped to protect them. … I am the finest of the valiant fighters / of Troy, and I defend the Trojan women / from slavery … You are a weakling, and your great Achilles / did you no good at all. He stayed behind. / I bet he told you, when you left for battle, / ‘Patroclus, do not drive your chariot back here to the hollow ships until you slice / right through the bloody tunic to the chest of murderous Hector.’ So he spoke, I think, / and you, poor fool, attempted to obey him.” / Though little strength remained to you, Patroclus, / you answered, “Hector, you make big boasts now. / Zeus, son of Cronus and Apollo gave you / victory, and with ease the gods have crushed me. … But I will tell you this – take it to heart. / You surely have not long to live. Your death / and overwhelming fate, stand near you now. / The hands of great Achilles will defeat you.” / His death wrapped round him as he spoke. His spirit / flew from his limbs to Hades, and she mourned / his fate, and left his manhood and his youth. / Great Hector spoke to him though he was dead- / “Patroclus, why do you foretell for me / a bitter end? Who knows if great Achilles, / the son of Thetis with the braided hair, may fall beneath my spear and lose his life?”
Here is Patróklos, dying, to Hektor in Fitzgerald, : I’ll tell you one thing more; take it to heart. / No long life is ahead for you. This day / your death stands near, and your immutable end, / at Prince Akhilleus’ hands. / His own death / came on him as he spoke, and soul from body, / bemoaning severance from youth and manhood, / slipped to be wafted to the underworld. / Even in death Prince Hektor still addressed him: “Why prophesy my sudden death Patróklos? / Who knows, Akhilleus, son of bright-haired Thetis, might be hit first; he might be killed by me.”
And the same in Fagles: One more thing – take it to heart, I urge you – / you too, you won’t live long yourself, I swear. / Already I see them looming up beside you – death / and the strong force of fate, to bring you down / at the hands of Aeacus’ great royal son … / Achilles!” / Death cut him short. The end closed in around him. / Flying free of his limbs / his soul went winging down to the House of Death / wailing his fate, leaving his manhood far behind, / his young and supple strength. But glorious Hector taunted Patroclus’ body, dead as he was, “Why, Patroclus – / why prophesy my doom, my sudden death? Who knows?- / Achilles the son of sleek-haired Thetis may outrace me – / struck by my spear first – and gasp away his life!”
It is so interesting comparing these translations. I do much prefer Emily Wilson’s. The story telling is much clearer. And shorter – some reviews say that by doing this she loses some of the grandeur, but to my mind it still reads beautifully. I could go on sharing her renditions of the most famous scenes; Hector’s farewell to Andromache, Helen explaining to Priam who is who amongst the Greeks, Priam and Achilles final encounter. There’s so much beautiful poetry. Also the many beautiful descriptions of nature are marvelous.
More Beautiful Bits of the Wilson Translation
I want to include in this blog a couple of other quotes from the Wilson translation which are very beautiful. Here is Hector’s farewell to Andromache, emphasising the belief in fate that comes so strongly through the poem: “Come on now, / you must not be too sad on my account. No man can send me to the house of Hades / before my time. No man can get away / from destiny, first set for us at birth, / however cowardly or brave he is. / Go home and do the things you have to do. / Work on your loom and spindle and instruct / the slaves to do their household work as well. / War is a task for men – for every man / born here in Troy, but most especially, me.”
Hera speaking to Poseidon and Athena who are all supporting the Greeks, says they will ensure: that Achilles will be safe / among the Trojans for today. / Thereafter, he has to suffer the allotted thread / that Destiny first spun for him at birth / the day his mother bore him …
And here is Glaucus responding to Diomedes:… why do you ask about my ancestry? The generations / of men are like the growth and fall of leaves. The wind shakes some to earth. The forest sprouts / new foliage, and springtime comes. So too, / one human generation comes to be, / another ends….
Until this translation I haven’t really understood the role of the gods in Homer. I really liked the way Athena was depicted helping Odysseus in Emily Wilson’s Odyssey. It’s said you have to really understand that to the audiences listening to the oral reading of these poems really believed in the gods. It seems to me they are a little like the way potions are used in Wagner’s Ring Cycle – there to reflect characters’ innermost desires. Like when Ares the God of War is said to fill Hector with the rage of war before he attacks the Greek camp.
They are also used to predict the future, like in this very lovely passage at the start of Book Twelve: One day, the wide wall of the Greeks would fall. / … The wall was built without divine consent against the wishes of the deathless gods, / and therefore would not stay standing long / … after all the finest Trojan fighters / were dead, and many of the Greeks were killed, / though some survived, when in the war’s tenth year / the city of King Priam was destroyed, / after the Greeks had sailed back in their ships / to their dear fatherland – that was the time / Apollo and Poseidon formed their plans /to wipe the wall away by flooding it / with all the energy of all the rivers / that flow down from Mount Ida to the sea – / … where so many / helmets and oxhide shields and demigods / fell in the dust. Apollo moved the mouths / of all these rivers so they flowed together /… [Poseidon] flattened the land and coated the long shore / with sand once more, and so wiped out the wall, / then turned the rivers back round again. / Their streams flowed smoothly down their former courses. / Poseidon and Apollo would do this / one day. …
And so it came to be that archeologists laboured long and hard to find the site of a city matching the description of Troy. Which they finally did. The search is described in the Alberto Manguel book referred to above.
Treatment of Women in Wilson Translations
One last thing to mention regarding the different translations and that is Emily Wilson’s treatment of Helen. As with the maids in The Odyssey who she described, accurately as slaves, so here she takes away any sexual slurs traditionally associated with Helen. Helen’s self description, speaking to Hector, Wilson: I am a source of fear / and source of evil strategy – a dog. Dogface is the same slur that Achilles casts on Agamemnon during their furious dispute at the start of the poem. It has no sexual connotation.
Here is the same scene by Fagles: My dear brother dear to me, bitch that I am … And Fitzgerald: in low tones / enticing Helen murmured: / dear to a whore, a nightmare of a woman.
Some of this is described in the Daniel Walden review above; he didn’t like how Emily did this in the Odyssey but likes what she’s done here in the Iliad. There are lots of other examples of how she takes away sexist connotations in the way the women in the Iliad are described, but this blog is already too long! Well done Emily Wilson I say!
Associated Reading
Two final things. First, if you want the back stories to the figures – there are so many of them! – the book Troy by Stephen Fry, pictured below is terrific. They’re short, to the point and written in an engaging, conversational style.
And if you want a much shorter version of the story, this beautiful poetic version by the poet Simon Armitage, The Last Days of Troy, is terrific too. It’s in the form of a play being performed by modern players, starting with Agamemnon as a performance artist pretending to be a statue. Odd, but it works.
Final Final
This blog is already too long but here is the ending from War Music , describing Achilles, devastated by the death of Patroclus, putting on his armour. Logue: And for his head a welded cortex; yes,/ Though it is noon, the helmet screams against the light; / Scratches the eye; so violent it can be seen / Across three thousand years. and lets the world turn fractionally beneath his feet, / Achilles stands; he stretches; turns on his heel; / Punches the sunlight, bends, then jumps! … / Noon. In the foothills / Melons emerge from their green hidings. / Heat. / He walks towards the chariot. / Greece waits. / Over the walls of Troy mosquitoes hover. [Mounting the chariot he tells his immortal horse] “Fast as you are,” Achilles says, / “When twilight makes the armistice, / Take care you don’t leave me behind / As you left my Patroclus.” [And the horse replies] “Prince, / This time we will, this time we can, but this time cannot last. / And when we leave you, not for dead- but dear, / God will not call us negligent as you have done.” / And Achilles, shaken says: / “I know I will not make old bones.” / And laid his scourge against their racing flanks. / Someone has left a spear stuck in the sand.”
The same scene is much longer in translation, but here is Wilson: … In their midst, Achilles / put on his armor. And his teeth were clenched, / his eyes shone bright as blazing fire, his heart / was full of intolerable grief. / … [he] lifted up the massive, heavy shield, whose brightness shone / into the distance like the moon … / he picked the heavy helmet up / and put it on his head. It shone like starlight, / …Achilles mounted, shining in his armor / as brightly as Hyperion the sun. [and Bay the horse says in answer to the taunt about leaving Patroclus on the plain] “Certainly we shall save you for the moment, / mighty Achilles. But your day of death / is near you now. And we are not to blame. / Blame the great god and mighty Destiny”.
The Iliad itself ends with the funeral for Hector, before which Andromache, Wilson: began the keening, cradling in her arms / the head of murderous Hector. / “you died young, / husband, and left me in your house a widow. / Your boy is still a little child, a son / born from unlucky parents – you and me – and I do not believe he will grow up. / Before that time, this town will be destroyed / from top to bottom, because you are dead, / the one who guarded and watched over Troy, / and kept the wives and little children safe. / In hollow ships the women will be soon / taken as slaves, and I along with them. / And you, my child, will either come with me, / and do humiliating work, enslaved to some harsh overlord, or else a Greek / will grab your arm and hurl you from the wall – / a dreadful death – in anger because Hector / had killed perhaps his brother, son, or father... you piled grief and sorrow on your parents, / Hector, and left me the worst pain of all. / In death, you did not reach your arms from bed / to me, or leave me with some final words / that I could have forever kept in mind / while crying night and day.”
Addendum
[On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, John Keats. Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, / And many goodly states & kingdoms seen: / Round many western islands have I been / Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold / Oft of one wide expanse had I been told / That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne; / Yet did I never breathe its pure serene / Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: / Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken; / Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes / He star’d at the Pacific – and all his men / Look’d at each other with a wild surmise – Silent, upon a peak in Darien.]
Meredith says
Wow that’s a fabulous review Jenny. You may recall I have a major in Modern (not ancient) Greek in my arts degree and am quite familiar with some of the characters from the Iliad. I think it would be great to hear some of Wilson’s translation read aloud having had these tasters in your blog. I would love to read some more of the background too before I jump into that though. Do you think Stephen Fry’s book would be a good place to start?
Jenny Doran says
Fry is good but Wilson also provides back stories. If you can access the LRB site I’ve linked to you will hear her translation read by actors. I’ve seen a clip of Wilson I’m declaiming it in Greek – so maybe via google you’d get it.
Meredith says
Thanks JD. Will have a look.
Fran says
Jen
I’ve been meaning to tell you or fill this in. As I forgot on Saturday here it is.
I agree with Meridith- it’s so good.
Beautifully written, accessible and wearing its leaning very lightly.
I’m inspired to read in the area as I have intended to do for years but never have. The Claudes and Poussains mostly remained a mystery to me at Uni.
You should send it to the Australian book review Peter Rose will publish it I’m sure. It’s as good as a lot of stuff in the LRB . F