In deep-brow'd Homer's demesne

By Jamie James

April 13, 2003 12 AM PT

Jamie James is a critic and the author of the novel "Andrew and Joey."

The literature of war begins with literature itself, with “The Iliad.” Homer’s epic about the Greek siege of Troy, composed perhaps 2,800 years ago, still stands unexcelled as an expression of the devastating power of war, the tragedy it begets and the emotions it unleashes -- its glamour as well as its horror. Although “The Odyssey,” the other epic poem by Homer (whoever he was, or they, but almost certainly not she), has a sexier storyline and more sensational supernatural effects, among connoisseurs of classical poetry “The Iliad” retains a position of unassailable paramountcy, for its greater antiquity and its profound insights into the human condition.

No work of art has ever done a better job of explaining why men go to war, and it does so not with explanations but by a succession of compelling, unforgettable images. The challenge of rendering “The Iliad” into a modern idiom remains the same now as it was 400 years ago, when George Chapman produced the first English version: how to express those images in a way that speaks to the contemporary reader directly, as the Greek text did.

The problem has always been Homer’s antiquity. Poet and poem were already ancient and encrusted with legend by the time Herodotus, the first historian, began compiling the fanciful tales and theories that had grown up around them. It’s easy to forget that “The Iliad” was as remote in time to Herodotus, and to the Athenian tragedians such as Sophocles and Euripides who mined the poem for stories, as Chapman’s translation is to us.

There are many excellent versions of “The Iliad” in modern English, in verse and prose, but even the best of them are, paradoxically, to some extent limited, one might almost say held captive, by the translator’s erudition: The scholar knows far more than he can squeeze into the English rendering. Yet many of the poem’s major images, drawn from the simple, pastoral life of the early Greeks, now require explanation to make any sense at all. Even straightforward tropes are likely to be misunderstood. For example, Homer often describes goddesses with the epithet “ox-eyed,” which conveyed to an audience of cowherds a vivid impression of beauty and serenity but to most modern readers sounds simply weird.

The most successful version of “The Iliad” in our own time is based upon the radical proposition that a good poet with no Greek is better equipped to capture the essence of the work than the best classical scholar, however gifted as a writer. Biographies of the British poet Christopher Logue describe him variously as a screenwriter, an actor, a former soldier in the elite Black Watch regiment (who spent 16 months in the brig) and the author of a pornographic novel in addition to his books of poetry: not exactly the tweedy classicist parsing away in an ivory tower.

Logue’s “Iliad” began life in 1959 as an assignment to work on a radio script for the BBC. He had never studied Greek, so he worked entirely from translations, ranging from Chapman’s to E.V. Rieu’s sturdy prose version, published in 1950 (but surprisingly, it seems, without consulting Richmond Lattimore’s widely praised rendering). His work on the project was desultory; the first volume, “War Music,” didn’t appear until 1984. Three more volumes have followed: “Kings” (1991), “The Husbands” (1994) and now “All Day Permanent Red.” (Although Logue has never, as far as I know, stated an intention to create a full version of “The Iliad” -- and having covered less than half of it thus far, it’s unlikely that the 77-year-old poet will do so unless he picks up the pace significantly -- he has produced a considerable body of verse.)

The result is, above all, brilliantly original, consummately crafted English verse, dominated but by no means constrained by iambic pentameter and, secondarily, fabulous Homer. Here is how Logue himself describes his method, from his introduction to a collection of the first three volumes, which carries the title of the first, “War Music”: “I concocted a new story line; and then, knowing the gist of what this or that character said, tried to make their voices come alive and to keep the action on the move.”

He succeeded brilliantly, following the same method Homer used, by creating an array of striking images, some simple, others complex, that span the breadth of his readers’ experience. The wound an arrow inflicts on a soldier’s neck is “a tunnel the width of a lipstick,” a metaphor that graphically conveys the size of the wound and the ghastly scarlet of gore. The thrilling moment of the goddess Aphrodite’s arrival on the scene is compared to the moment when a symphony orchestra conductor’s stick comes down, “And a wall of singers hits their opening note / And the hair on the back of your neck stands up.” To convey the imperturbable tranquillity of Hera’s gaze, Logue ditches the ox and coins his own epithet, calling her “God’s lake-eyed queen.”

The cumulative effect is to bring the ethos of Homer to life for English speakers with a vigor and immediacy that surpasses every available modern translation. Logue’s Homer satisfies the first requirement of a classic: It is a work completely unlike any that came before it. It solves one of the thorniest problems of translation, faithfulness to the original, simply by ignoring it -- by being not a translation but rather an imaginative re-creation. And perhaps the greatest testament to the success of Logue’s poetical enterprise is the enthusiastic following he has attracted among classical scholars.

Logue’s greatest gift, for setting the scene with sensational, throat-grabbing immediacy, must have been shaped in part by his career in film, particularly by his association with Ken Russell, for whom he worked as actor and screenwriter in films such as “The Devils” and “Savage Messiah.” Logue uses cinematic terminology and technique, often employing the imperative mood and terse constructions of a screenplay: “Go close,” “Go left along the ridge,” “Enter the Childe.” One battle scene begins, “Raise your binoculars,” a line that forces the reader to shoot a mental close-up, even as it creates a military mood.

“The Iliad” was the national epic of the Greeks, but it has little in the way of patriotic chauvinism, at least in any recognizable modern sense. Indeed, many key scenes in the poem are told from the Trojan perspective. Homer’s primary point of view might be best described as human: The warriors’ most daunting adversaries are the gods, whose troublesome meddling in the war is depicted throughout the poem.

The Greek poet is profoundly ambivalent: As much as he is forever praising the heroes of war, Homer also places a strong emphasis on the bitter suffering it inflicts. The most famous passage of “The Iliad” isn’t a battle scene but rather a domestic drama, the Trojan champion Hector taking leave of his wife, Andromache, before going off to battle. She bitterly laments that the war against the Greeks has already claimed her family and declares to Hector that he is mother, father and brother to her, as well as a husband. When Hector leans down to pick up his young son, the boy shrinks from him, frightened by his bronze armor. For Homer’s audience, who knew that Hector would soon die, it was a scene of heartbreaking pathos.

Logue has written a strikingly different scene for Hector and Andromache, which can be found in “War Music.” She makes a plea for peace, but it is a muted expression of general principles: “Courage can kill as well as cowardice, Glorious warrior.” Their son is mentioned, but he does not appear in the scene. Homer’s Andromache weeps; Logue’s does not. For her, Hector is husband and lover. She tells him, “I hear your step -- I smile behind my veil,” and the reader knows why.

Logue’s Andromache is a vibrant, delicately rendered creation, even if her Homeric function, as a counterbalance to the evocations of martial glory, is diminished. However, with the publication of “All Day Permanent Red,” which is composed entirely of battle scenes, that vision shifts in the direction of an exaltation of war that verges on the uncritical -- and which may even be un-Homeric.

On a few occasions, the language in the new volume takes on an adolescent swagger. “Porsche-fine chariot,” to my ear, strikes an obvious note, not deeply considered; while the taunt “Greekoid scum” falls short of its humorous intent. More objectionable are some lines of almost grotesque flippancy about war’s toll of suffering: “Blood? Blood like a car-wash: ‘But it keeps the dust down.’ ” The death of a hero named Diomed inspires a wisecrack out of a second-rate action movie: “Not your day, Dio, not your day.”

Yet the new volume also contains passages of primal power on a par with the best of its predecessors. Logue is at his most successfully Homeric in several extended similes, such as this one, describing Hector falling upon the enemy:

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.

Even if the balance in Logue’s emerging revelation of Homer now seems slightly out of kilter, nonetheless the overall effect of his undertaking is itself epic, in a new and entirely modern sense. From Chapman to the present day, the scholars and poets who have rendered “The Iliad” into English have abased themselves before Homer, attempting what may be impossible, to capture the essence of the Greek poetry in their own idiom. Yet Logue, with unfaltering confidence, sets his own poetic vision supreme and treats the original text as a continuously flowing river of source material, parallel but subordinate.

The Greeks had a word for it: hubris. The result is flawed, and sometimes ugly, but it is poetry that shines with greatness.

From ‘All Day Permanent Red’

Think of the moment when far from the land

Molested by a mile-a-minute wind

The ocean starts to roll, then rear, then roar

Over itself in rank on rank of waves

Their sides so steep their smoky crests so high

300,000 plunging tons of aircraft carrier

Dare not sport its beam.

But Troy, afraid, yet more afraid

Lest any lord of theirs should notice any one of them

Flinching behind his mask