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A review by notwellread
War Music: An Account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer's Iliad by Christopher Logue
2.0
2.5 stars.
I feel I should start out by saying that this book is not for me (in the most literal sense): this isn’t ‘for’ classicists, but is rather a foray into Homer for the uninitiated (though, having said that, I’m not sure whether Christopher Logue intended it for people who have actually read the Iliad or not). As a result, some of my criticisms are probably informed by my classicism, but I can only be myself and review according to my own judgement of the book.
Some issues I had are in comparison to the Iliad itself: I was happy when I could recognise passages that are clearly lifted directly from Homer’s original, but I also feel that some details are misused – I’m fond of Homeric epithets and would rather see them included than excluded, but there are almost none here apart from the odd passing reference to them (‘lake-eyed Hera’ being basically equivalent to ‘ox-eyed Hera’, and references to Zeus as the storm god). Yet, bizarrely, Apollo is referred to as ‘Mouse God’ more or less every time he’s mentioned (from p.10 onwards), when he’s only addressed as such once in the Iliad: I thought this was odd as it’s a pretty obscure reference that even most classicists would not immediately recognise (and not really relevant to Apollo’s more well-recognised theological identity) and seems to make a very commonly known god an oddity. I’m also not sure why Athena talks to her father like a baby (pp.120ff.) – she does sweet-talk Zeus at one point in the original, but with a much more rational tone (more believable since she’s the goddess of wisdom). The book isn’t intended for classicists, and yet there are a lot of references that non-classicists won’t get.
(On top of this, there are some references that I didn’t, and still don’t understand – I have no idea who ‘Thoal’ is supposed to be, though he’s referenced quite a few times and seems to be an important lord of some kind. There’s no character in the Iliad by this name. There are a few other references like this that seem inexplicable, and my searching hasn’t yielded results.)
By extension, the experimental style is what makes this book unique, but some decisions made didn’t quite work for me, though I suppose they keep the reader awake. We also have to deal with very odd ‘blurrings’ and made-up portmanteaus of words (‘Snowcragbackfastnesses’ p.107; ‘smoothdownsideways’, ‘imparadised’ p.115), alongside weird, jarring modern synonyms (we all own a pair of ‘sparkling clogs’, I guess). This gives the poem an engaging and experimental style, but at times the references can ruin immersion. I understand wanting to make the Iliad feel more relevant, but I’ve found Lombardo’s translation achieves this aim without breaking faith with Homer.
Some prize questionable words and phrases:
• “O cheesy Lung” (p.22 – meaning unclear)
• “This womb is now a wife” (p.23 – horrible)
• Not a god’s god, I know. But curved. (p.40) (What is this supposed to mean?)
• It was so quiet in Heaven that you could hear
The north wind pluck a chicken in Australia. (p.41)
• “Do you accept this womb…as your wife?” (p.85 – belabouring the horrible point)
• “Go. You are his. Obey him.” (p.85 – some might argue this is accurate to Iliadic culture, but it’s certainly not phrased this way in the text.)
• “Napoleon’s Murat had 50 hats
And 50 plumes each 50 inches high
And 50 uniforms and many more
Than 50 pots of facial mayonnaise
Appropriate to a man with tender skin” (p.94 – still not sure what ‘facial mayonnaise’ is)
• “Palookaville” (p.95)
• Now dark, now bright, now watch –
As aircrews watch tsunamis send
Ripples across the Iwo Jima Deep,
Or as a schoolgirl makes her velveteen
Go dark, go bright (p.97 – the schoolgirl thing is too jarringly modern)
• “Make sure my pubic jewellery is on top.” (p.126 – again, perverse, and not at all faithful to the Iliad)
• The whole scene where Aphrodite forces Helen into the bath and sends her to Paris is too horribly misogynistic for me to type out (p.127-129)
• The scene where Menelaus’ pubis is injured is also really lewd (p.129ff. – his injury is true to Homer, but not the way it plays out)
• Molo the Dancer from Cymatriax
Tugs at his penis as he squeaks (p.182 – not sure what this is about).
Calling absolutely all the female characters ‘shes’, making no distinction between free women and slave women, and underlining all of this with uncomfortably invasive references to the female characters’ bodies (“The sweat was running down between my breasts”, p.103 [women never say this]; “Her breasts alert and laden with desire”, p.127 [this is just voyeuristic]; “Her breasts so lovely that they envy one another”, p.203 [perverted]) makes for pretty unpleasant reading, and I worry it shows an unhealthy attempt to make the Iliadic culture more ‘barbaric’ than it appears in the text. The important female characters (Helen, Andromache, Briseis), who are not treated insultingly by Homer, have heavily diminished roles. Homer treats the culture as a fact of life, while Logue almost seems to be condoning the misogyny, which is far more pronounced in his interpretation, even though he’s chosen to modernise everything else. This is accompanied by strange attempts to exoticise the Trojans (Priam is never described as ‘indigo skinned’ in the Iliad and this doesn’t make sense in Turkey; saying the Greeks will become ‘Panther meat’ is also inaccurate [if we’re making up words now: ‘anageographic’, like ‘anachronistic’]). I understand that this is a book ‘adaptation’, not a translation, but an adaptation should always be faithful to the general ‘feel’ and tone of the original, and in many aspects this is not.
On the other hand, there are also some variations or interpretations that I thought were powerful, not least:
• “If ever she sees Ilium again
She will have empty gums.” (p.11)
• And then,
And then again, but with a higher note, that note
Instantly answered by the snarl of silk
As Asia stands for Laomedon’s son, (p.102)
• They smile. They are the gods.
They have all the time in the world.
What science knows, they know. (p.115)
• “His curls
Bursting around his head like sunlit frost.” (p.133)
• (p.165)
• (p.179)
• (pp.208-209).
It’s a shame that these are so diminished by the bizarre and odd poetic decisions and prejudices that belabour the rest of the book.
I think he wanted to take what’s timeless in the original and apply it to a ‘universalised’ view of the historical timeline (almost like all the events and settings he references are all ‘alive’ at once), and I can appreciate the concept even if it’s sometimes jarring and therefore ineffective. (Again, I feel Lombardo’s subtler approach is more successful.) I was also relieved that he uses this sparingly, and seems to get the key moments towards the end right without too much tampering (particularly the emotional highs that don’t need a historical context). I think the Patrocleia book generally outshines the rest and has few to no questionable phrases and poetic decisions, so it saves the book overall for me.
I realise that the author/poet passed away in 2011, but I feel like he would not have cared much about my criticisms, since he seems strangely dismissive and somewhat derogatory towards classicists in the introduction. (I was surprised to learn that he was reluctant to begin the project because of his lack of Greek.) I also realise that this book is highly praised, but I can’t really see why people are so blown away by it – it has its moments, but anyone can write a bizarro version of a classic work. Despite my issues, though, the book is still preferable to some people to reading a more mundane translated version, and I acknowledge that it was written to put the Iliad in a new light, and perhaps to a new audience. At the very least, for people who are put off by the length or the obscurities of Homer, maybe this will do it.
I feel I should start out by saying that this book is not for me (in the most literal sense): this isn’t ‘for’ classicists, but is rather a foray into Homer for the uninitiated (though, having said that, I’m not sure whether Christopher Logue intended it for people who have actually read the Iliad or not). As a result, some of my criticisms are probably informed by my classicism, but I can only be myself and review according to my own judgement of the book.
Some issues I had are in comparison to the Iliad itself: I was happy when I could recognise passages that are clearly lifted directly from Homer’s original, but I also feel that some details are misused – I’m fond of Homeric epithets and would rather see them included than excluded, but there are almost none here apart from the odd passing reference to them (‘lake-eyed Hera’ being basically equivalent to ‘ox-eyed Hera’, and references to Zeus as the storm god). Yet, bizarrely, Apollo is referred to as ‘Mouse God’ more or less every time he’s mentioned (from p.10 onwards), when he’s only addressed as such once in the Iliad: I thought this was odd as it’s a pretty obscure reference that even most classicists would not immediately recognise (and not really relevant to Apollo’s more well-recognised theological identity) and seems to make a very commonly known god an oddity. I’m also not sure why Athena talks to her father like a baby (pp.120ff.) – she does sweet-talk Zeus at one point in the original, but with a much more rational tone (more believable since she’s the goddess of wisdom). The book isn’t intended for classicists, and yet there are a lot of references that non-classicists won’t get.
(On top of this, there are some references that I didn’t, and still don’t understand – I have no idea who ‘Thoal’ is supposed to be, though he’s referenced quite a few times and seems to be an important lord of some kind. There’s no character in the Iliad by this name. There are a few other references like this that seem inexplicable, and my searching hasn’t yielded results.)
By extension, the experimental style is what makes this book unique, but some decisions made didn’t quite work for me, though I suppose they keep the reader awake. We also have to deal with very odd ‘blurrings’ and made-up portmanteaus of words (‘Snowcragbackfastnesses’ p.107; ‘smoothdownsideways’, ‘imparadised’ p.115), alongside weird, jarring modern synonyms (we all own a pair of ‘sparkling clogs’, I guess
Spoiler
p.127, and no, we don’tSome prize questionable words and phrases:
• “O cheesy Lung” (p.22 – meaning unclear)
• “This womb is now a wife” (p.23 – horrible)
• Not a god’s god, I know. But curved. (p.40) (What is this supposed to mean?)
• It was so quiet in Heaven that you could hear
The north wind pluck a chicken in Australia. (p.41)
• “Do you accept this womb…as your wife?” (p.85 – belabouring the horrible point)
• “Go. You are his. Obey him.” (p.85 – some might argue this is accurate to Iliadic culture, but it’s certainly not phrased this way in the text.)
• “Napoleon’s Murat had 50 hats
And 50 plumes each 50 inches high
And 50 uniforms and many more
Than 50 pots of facial mayonnaise
Appropriate to a man with tender skin” (p.94 – still not sure what ‘facial mayonnaise’ is)
• “Palookaville” (p.95)
• Now dark, now bright, now watch –
As aircrews watch tsunamis send
Ripples across the Iwo Jima Deep,
Or as a schoolgirl makes her velveteen
Go dark, go bright (p.97 – the schoolgirl thing is too jarringly modern)
• “Make sure my pubic jewellery is on top.” (p.126 – again, perverse, and not at all faithful to the Iliad)
• The whole scene where Aphrodite forces Helen into the bath and sends her to Paris is too horribly misogynistic for me to type out (p.127-129)
• The scene where Menelaus’ pubis is injured is also really lewd (p.129ff. – his injury is true to Homer, but not the way it plays out)
• Molo the Dancer from Cymatriax
Tugs at his penis as he squeaks (p.182 – not sure what this is about).
Calling absolutely all the female characters ‘shes’, making no distinction between free women and slave women, and underlining all of this with uncomfortably invasive references to the female characters’ bodies (“The sweat was running down between my breasts”, p.103 [women never say this]; “Her breasts alert and laden with desire”, p.127 [this is just voyeuristic]; “Her breasts so lovely that they envy one another”, p.203 [perverted]) makes for pretty unpleasant reading, and I worry it shows an unhealthy attempt to make the Iliadic culture more ‘barbaric’ than it appears in the text. The important female characters (Helen, Andromache, Briseis), who are not treated insultingly by Homer, have heavily diminished roles. Homer treats the culture as a fact of life, while Logue almost seems to be condoning the misogyny, which is far more pronounced in his interpretation, even though he’s chosen to modernise everything else. This is accompanied by strange attempts to exoticise the Trojans (Priam is never described as ‘indigo skinned’ in the Iliad and this doesn’t make sense in Turkey; saying the Greeks will become ‘Panther meat’ is also inaccurate [if we’re making up words now: ‘anageographic’, like ‘anachronistic’]). I understand that this is a book ‘adaptation’, not a translation, but an adaptation should always be faithful to the general ‘feel’ and tone of the original, and in many aspects this is not.
On the other hand, there are also some variations or interpretations that I thought were powerful, not least:
• “If ever she sees Ilium again
She will have empty gums.” (p.11)
• And then,
And then again, but with a higher note, that note
Instantly answered by the snarl of silk
As Asia stands for Laomedon’s son, (p.102)
• They smile. They are the gods.
They have all the time in the world.
What science knows, they know. (p.115)
• “His curls
Bursting around his head like sunlit frost.” (p.133)
•
Spoiler
Patroclus’ death scene, which I won’t de-contextualise•
Spoiler
your death is nearer than your nose•
Spoiler
The final scene when the immortal horses remind Achilles of his own mortality, and that he will not be there to call them negligent when they leave his body behind; “I know I will not make old bones.”It’s a shame that these are so diminished by the bizarre and odd poetic decisions and prejudices that belabour the rest of the book.
I think he wanted to take what’s timeless in the original and apply it to a ‘universalised’ view of the historical timeline (almost like all the events and settings he references are all ‘alive’ at once), and I can appreciate the concept even if it’s sometimes jarring and therefore ineffective. (Again, I feel Lombardo’s subtler approach is more successful.) I was also relieved that he uses this sparingly, and seems to get the key moments towards the end right without too much tampering (particularly the emotional highs
Spoiler
of Patroclus’ death and burialI realise that the author/poet passed away in 2011, but I feel like he would not have cared much about my criticisms, since he seems strangely dismissive and somewhat derogatory towards classicists in the introduction. (I was surprised to learn that he was reluctant to begin the project because of his lack of Greek.) I also realise that this book is highly praised, but I can’t really see why people are so blown away by it – it has its moments, but anyone can write a bizarro version of a classic work. Despite my issues, though, the book is still preferable to some people to reading a more mundane translated version, and I acknowledge that it was written to put the Iliad in a new light, and perhaps to a new audience. At the very least, for people who are put off by the length or the obscurities of Homer, maybe this will do it.