House of War, House of Death

Two days ago I finished reading the Iliad, as translated by Robert Fagles. Over all it was very good, and much more accessible than I was expecting.

Now I'm keying notes from the book's introduction by Bernard Knox and from its end-notes.

One thing that's striking about the Iliad is its unapologetic and graphic violence. Picking one example at random (there are many to choose from) from Book 17, "Menelaus' Finest Hour", the warrior Hippothous is trying to drag the corpse of Patroclus away from the battle-front:

Hippothous out for fame...Pelasgian Lethus' son,
lashing a shield-strap round the ankle tendons,
was hauling Patroclus footfirst through the melee,
hoping to please Prince Hector and all the Trojans,
Hippothous rushing on but death came just as fast.
No Trojans could save him now, strain as they might--
Ajax son of Telamon charging quickly into the carnage
speared him at close range through the bronze-cheeked helmet,
the horsehair crest cracked wide open around the point,
smashed by the massive spear and hand that drove it.
His brains burst from the wound in sprays of blood,
soaking the weapon's socket--
his strength dissolved on the spot, his grip loosed
and he dropped the foot of brave Patroclus' corpse.
There on the ground it lay--he rushed to join it,
pitching over the dead man's body face-to-face,
a world away from Larissa's dark rich soil...
Never would he repay his loving parents now
for the gift of rearing--his life cut short so soon,
brought down by the spear of lionhearted Ajax.

The poem contains much mayhem of this sort. I would not say that it particularly glorifies violence so much as looks it unflinchingly in the face. In Homer the warriors are mostly brave, but subject to fear and even terror. They fight and kill, but they don't want to die, and when they do they claw at the dirt and clutch their entrails, whimpering their last as the darkness swirls down over their eyes (a common image in the Iliad) and they descend unwillingly to the hated House of Death.

The killing in the Iliad is up close and personal: the result of arduous hand-to-hand combat. I think about another book I'm reading, House of War by James Carroll, a history of the Pentagon. The book's subtitle suggests Carroll's viewpoint: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power. The 20th century saw great "advances" in the technology of killing. Weapons became more mechanized even as the institutions using them became more impersonal and bureaucratized, with the soldier becoming subsumed in the growing fungus of The Organization Man as described in William H. Whyte's 1956 classic. The result in World War II was the deliberate slaughter, especially of civilians, by aircraft flying far overhead, launched not so much by individuals as by committees and teams of bureaucrats.

The darkness swirling over the eyes of all those women and children, though, was just as real. When Dresden was fire-bombed people leaped into the rivers to escape the gigantic walls of flames, only to be boiled alive there. They descended reluctantly to the hated House of Death.

People who claimed the mystique of the warrior had in fact become functionaries of the slaughterhouse, not different from the illegal immigrants who work at meatpacking plants, killing animals in an efficient, high-volume process worked out by industrial engineers. What do you do with all that blood? All those intestines and brains? It's all been worked out. The math has been done, the drawings rendered on drafting-tables.

Yes, we live in a sniper's world: a place of killing the defenseless from positions of impregnable safety.

In Homer's world, violence was still dangerous to the perpetrators. But the mystery remains of its mystique, its fascination, the whirlpool-like attraction of it for us primates (for chimpanzees commit murder too). It's a somber puzzle.

continuing ed

Up again in the cold and dark of predawn: I could feel the colder air here in the house when I set about the morning routine of turning on heat and lights and putting on the kettle for coffee. Kimmie advised me that it was –4° C outside when I took her coffee and crackers up to her.

We were both tired after a restless night. In my case, I found that some of my concerns about life were weighing on my mind. But eventually I started drifting into dream, back awake, into dream, and back awake.

Over the weekend I underwent a spasm of book-buying: five online and two at a bookstore.

The bookstore buys were translations of the Iliad and the Aeneid by Robert Fagles, intended as part of my ongoing education in the epic genre.

I first read the Iliad back in 1975, when I was in English 10. It was among a small collection of alternative books that the teacher, Mr. Ryan, offered me in lieu of reading what the rest of the class was reading, since (as I recall) I had already read that book. I chose the Iliad because I was aware that it was supposed to be a great classic, and I wanted to have read it.

Even though the translation by W. H. D. Rouse was in prose, not verse, I found the book heavy going: lists of difficult Greek names and places, and a, for me, hard-to-follow story. I don't think I finished it. Indeed, I never returned the old, peeling paperback--I may even still have it: one of two thefts-by-carelessness that I can recall perpetrating in my school career. (The other theft was at the end of grade 7, when I hung on to a social-studies text, The Ancient and Medieval World. Come to think of it, that theft may not have been carelessness, but a more willful desire to keep the book, again, I think, so I could finish reading it--although I don't believe I ever did.)

Now that I'm studying the epic genre, the Iliad and the Odyssey are indispensable. I recently read that Tolstoy read the Iliad through five times consecutively before embarking on War and Peace. If Tolstoy could do it five times, Vitols can do it once.

I bought my copy new at the Chapters-Indigo store at Park Royal. I wasn't going to buy any books there, since I am one of the many Canadians who resents the fact that bookstores here are still charging "Canadian" prices for new books: prices much higher than the "American" prices printed on the cover, even though the Canadian dollar is now at par with the U.S. dollar. This copy of the Iliad is a good example: $24.00 Canadian vs. $15.95 U.S. That's a premium of 50%.

For this reason I've been resisting buying in bookstores, and choosing to buy online instead, paying in U.S. dollars. But I made an exception, and was also encouraged by Kimmie, who wanted to make these books part of my package of birthday presents, since we had just returned one of the presents she had given me--a fleece that was not quite the right color. She was happy to get a substitute that I genuinely wanted.

And yes, I was happy too. I decided on getting this version simply by opening the book up and reading some of Fagles's verse translation. The opener:

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.

I found it vivid and vigorous--very readable. Right away I felt myself drawn to Fagles's direct, simple way of expressing the thoughts. I glanced at one or two other verses, but had already made up my mind that I was happy to try this translation. It was a bonus that Virgil's Aeneid was also available in his translation, also as a Penguin Classic.

So more books wing their way toward me. I feel anxious about it: I know I won't be able to finish the ones I've got going; I'll put some or all of them aside to start the new ones as they arrive. I've already started the Iliad--that is, I'm reading Bernard Knox's 64-page introduction. I'm thrilled to think that a book written 2,700 years ago is still being printed and read today--that I can acquaint myself with people from that remote time.

I enjoy reading with purpose. And the more definite and important the purpose, the more I enjoy the reading. As a writer in the epic tradition, I continue my education. It seemed to work for Tolstoy.