Some months ago, when I was half-way through Emily Wilson’s new translation of The Iliad, I had to set it aside. This is not a criticism of her work but a tribute to its effectiveness. The accumulated violence and grief appalled me as it had never done before. I was sharply aware of the individuality of so many dying men, of the agony they suffered and the anguish their families would endure. I might attribute this in part to the accumulation of contemporary violence brought to our daily attention via TV, computers and smartphones, but I do not believe any previous translation would have had the immediacy that Wilson’s iambic pentameters offer.
When I first read Homer, it was in E.V . Rieu’s prose translation published by Penguin – a decent and accessible enough account. But I was not particularly moved by his account of the prince Asius, whose death is one of many recorded in Book 12: "He was a fool. He was not destined to evade his evil fate and drive back his chariot and pair in triumph from the ships to windy Ilium. In the spear of the sublime Idomeneus, Deucalion’s son, abominable doom was waiting to engulf him."
By contrast, Wilson offers:
his own black doom or ever leave the ships
or ride back home again to windy Troy,
proud of his horses and his chariot.
The spear of splendid Idomeneus,
Deucalion’s fine son, would bring him down
and shadow him with death that dims men’s names.
The combination of the metre with clear language drew me far closer to the battle than Rieu managed. Through instances like this – and often more painful and much gorier – Homer takes us close to the details of war. Meanwhile the warriors exult in killing, crave loot as proof of merit, and long for a victory which will involve massacre, wholesale destruction and the enslavement of those few allowed to survive.
At times, as when the gods decide to involve themselves in battle or quarrel over the conduct of the war, The Iliad can seem very distant from our own time – until suddenly a river which is also a god enters the battle and becomes a great flood with effects familiar from reports of current ecological disasters. Meanwhile the macho boasting and posturing of the warriors who often take women as trophies has uncomfortable echoes today. Yet there are moments when a warrior might recognise and almost understand the horror in which he is involved, In Book 18, mourning the death of the man he loves most, Achilles says to his mother:
from gods and human beings! I wish anger
did not exist. Even the wisest people
are roused to rage, which trickles into you
sweeter than honey, and inside your body
it swells like smoke …
Inevitably in a translation this long – the book with introduction and notes runs to 750 pages – there are occasional phrases and words which jar slightly. However, I have never read a translation of The Iliad that gripped and moved me so much. I was also delighted by the insights offered in Emily Wilson’s introduction and wished I had found something as clear and illuminating as this when, as an undergraduate, I studied Book 1 of the Iliad for one of my first-year exams.
Kathleen Bell’s most recent poetry collections are the chapbook Do you know how kind I am? from Leafe Press and the collection Disappearances published by Shoestring (both 2021). She is currently preparing a manuscript that might be another collection while continuing to research and write poems about the engineer James Watt and his times.
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