The Iliad [Hardcover]

 

 

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The other reviewers have done an excellent job of describing the plot of "The Iliad," so I'll just pass on some tips that have helped me enjoy this amazingly enriching work.

The challenge of reading "The Iliad" is reading it as it was meant to be read. That means you have to let go of our modern notion of accessing literature. This text is not a "book" or a "novel," and was never meant to be. (The notion of printed books and private reading of novels came along more than twenty centuries after Homer finished his poem!)

So you'll have to pretend, as you hold your copy of "The Iliad" in your hand, that you're actually back in Ancient Greece sitting in a small crowd of people on a hillside listening to an orator recite the poem. The reading would have been spread out over several days (or perhaps several nights) and the orator would have been a professional, sort of like a one-man theatre troupe. His performance (perhaps recalled from memory, perhaps read from a parchment script--no one knows for sure) would have had the timing, fire, and precision that the great Shakespearean actors would perfect two millenia later.

In short, pretend you're hearing the text, rather than eye-balling it. As you read each line in this top-notch modern English translation, enjoy it and gnaw on it and savor it as though it were from a short verse poem. If you've got the guts, read each line aloud, and listen to the echo. Don't let the work's complexity intimidate you: "The Iliad" gets better as you go along, as the work itself slowly tutors you how to read it. Understand that Homer meant it to be a challenging, marathon event, so don't be discouraged.

As you advance (take your time!) in your reading, the beauty of the vocabulary, the drama of the situation, and the baseness or nobility of the various characters will slowly emerge. The grandeur of the courage and humanness of the characters builds progressively, and in the end your reading of this masterpiece will leave you exhausted yet enlightened. You will never forget it.

AUDENTES FORTUNA JUVAT!

The Iliad contains all the knowledge you will ever need in human affairs. It imparts wisdom in understanding people and psychology which no other book can. The Iliad is the first book ever written in a European language, and it is also the best. It preserves the essence of Western culture in a capsule from the warrior days of prehistory. The heroic ethos displayed in the Iliad underlies all later warrior codes and societies; medieval knights, viking adventurers, and American cowboys, for example, all can trace their ethos back to this protohistoric 'macho' culture. In the days of Homer, and indeed of all ancient Indo-european societies, one's relationships with others and one's skill in speaking could mark the difference between life and death. In our more comfortable lives today, we cannot reproduce this precarious breeding-ground of cleverly persuasive speech, so we benefit greatly from learning these skills from the best of that period's speakers: Homer, as he puts 'winged words' in the mouths of his heroic men and women. The Iliad is 50% dialogue and vicious debate: it is almost a play more than a book. In this book, it is not the pen that is mightier than the sword, but rather the tongue. It comes to me as no surprise that the Greeks and Romans looked at this book, as they did no other, as their 'soly scriptures', albeit in a non-religious kind of way, to be studied, quoted and memorized for the sake of gaining wisdom and understanding in human affairs.
I have read the Iliad in its original Greek, and I can tell you that the rhythmical enchantment of the original can not in any way be reproduced in English, or in any other language. There is no way to capture the same hilarious moments or grand episodes of bravery with the same music in our language as Homer did with his Greek. An English translation can only be an interpretation. Robert Fagles seems to give the Iliad a slightly darker mood than I felt it has in the Greek, but that could just be my own 'interpretation'. I think there is a great deal of humour in the poem: characters making stupid mistakes, gods behaving like buffoons, and little witty comments from the teller (Homer). These are not lost in Fagles' wonderful work, but are perhaps slightly harder to notice than in the original. Again, this is just my own feeling. I also find the over-the-top excitement in the poem very amusing, such as the build up of the tale to the point where the gods openly join in the war, and among others the god of fire swoops down to do battle with a god of a river, and Achilles in his fury even fights against the water. The Iliad is like the orchestral piece by Edvard Grieg "The Mountain King", which steadily but surely accelerates anxiously to a truly explosive climax. Robert Fagles has captured very much of this, perhaps as much as can be reasonably expected in an English non-chanted translation. Richmond Lattimore's translation is essentially a word for word extremely faithful rendering in Enlglish (even to the point of having the same number of lines of poetry per 'book')and it is wonderful for those who would like to get closer to Homer's actual words, but on the other hand, Robert Fagles' translation is so eminently readable, speakable and memorable in our own language that one can feel the heartbeats of the warriors pulsing in their chests while reading it. "Rage- goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles": so it starts, and Homer's heroes rise, breathing, from the dust.

The Iliad is a story of passion. In its sweep lies war and death, honor and pettiness, mortality, domesticity, gods and men.

In his excellent introduction to this edition, Bernard Knox tells us that the Iliad probably was written down between 725 and 675 B.C. It tells a story that was archaic even for its time that is set around 1200 B.C. The story of the Iliad covers a matter of days in the tenth and final year of the Trojan War. It is allusive to the entire mythology of that ancient struggle. The tale is deliberately mythical, with characters and emotions that, Homer tells us many times, are larger than those of men today. For too many, the Iliad comes encrusted as a "classic". People read it, or portions of it, in high school or college and inevitably miss much of the grandeur and wisdom of the work.

When I came back to the Iliad recently (after not having read the work in many years) in Fagles' translation, I was swept away. I accompanied my reading of the Iliad with an excellent series of lecture tapes on the poem and its background. I thought the translation, written in a modern colloquial free verse helped me to understand and read the poem. The translation, for me, gives the reader a sense of the repetitions, formulas and phraseology of the original. It has a sweep to it, and the style and translation does not get in the way of understanding the work. This is important in a modern translation of an ancient work. The translation was easy to follow and got me involved in the tale. I am sure the poem works differently in the ancient Greek than in this translation. But this is largely irrelevant to the virtue of Fagles's work which makes the Iliad come alive and roar in a manner which encourages the nonclassicist modern reader to approach it.

There are a mulitude of themes in the Iliad. At the beginning of the work, Homer invokes his muse and announces that the work will deal with the "rage of Achilles." The work is about human anger and rage on a grand scale and about the waste, but strange grandeur of war. In his introduction, Bernard Knox quotes approvingly from Simone Weil, writing in France during World War II, who described the Iliad as the West's leading work on the use and nature of Force. The Iliad speaks deeply about the human condition, about the tragedy and heroism that human mortality makes possible, and about how people may learn to change and to understand others.

I found Bernard Knox' introduction and notes helpful in understanding the controversies surrounding the writing of the Iliad and in giving the reader some of the basic tools to think about the work. Whether the reader is approaching the Iliad for the first time or after many times, there is much to be gained from reading this basic text of the West. Fagles translation will help bring the reader to the Iliad.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Story
I have to start by saying that I absolutely LOVE The Iliad. I have a passion for Greek mythology and studied Classics in university and Homer is definitely one of my... Read more

Published 11 months ago by Coreena

5.0 out of 5 stars Lived up to expectations
Whether Homer really existed as sole poet or whether the story of Troy is an oral tale passed down through generations before anyone wrote it down (and really, the mystery behind... Read more

Published on May 10 2008 by The Rogue Ninja

5.0 out of 5 stars The ground is dark with blood
With many books, translations are negligible, with two obvious exceptions, one is the Bible, and surprisingly the other is The Iliad. Read more

Published on Oct 23 2007 by bernie

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Illiad Translation There Is!
Robert Fagles translation of the Illiad is supurb! It's very easy to read and yet still retains its essence which has captivated readers for 2800 years!! Read more

Published on Aug 25 2006 by Aaron Donnelly

1.0 out of 5 stars worthless
this book leads to two things:

a waste of time

a waste of money

Published on Jun 25 2004 by derek

3.0 out of 5 stars Something in excess.....
Admittedly, the Fagles translation of The Iliad is not the version I am reviewing. Mine was a prose translation, by Samuel Butler, of 'The Way of All Flesh' fame..... Read more

Published on Jun 21 2004 by B. Morse

5.0 out of 5 stars The Iliad of Homer in it's best Incarnation
Have you ever wanted to go back in time, to an era where powerful gods mingled with humans and great wars were fought, to an era of mythology? Read more

Published on Jun 7 2004

5.0 out of 5 stars It's just incredible
Some things just never go out of style. It can be said of some old works that they're 'as relevant today' as they were when they were written, but even the aesthetic of the Illiad... Read more

Published on Jun 4 2004 by Henry Platte

5.0 out of 5 stars Blood, guts & trash talking--ancient Greek-style
I recently read Homer's epic poem "The Iliad" for the first time. There are three reasons why I did:

#1: I saw the movie "Troy" (which was entertaining;... Read more

Published on Jun 1 2004 by Continental Op

3.0 out of 5 stars Lattimore is still the best.
Fagles is a distinguished translator and I have enjoyed his work on Aeschylus and Sophocles, but compared with Richmond Lattimore's Iliad, Fagles language is rather banal and... Read more

Published on May 30 2004

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