#christopher logue

I don’t even know how to start this because since my last entry I have managed to complete another year at university, become unforgivably more pretentious, and also more sleep deprived than I thought humanly possible. I hope you’ve all been well though!

In all honesty I had no intention of posting this today, but recently I wrote a review of one of my absolute favourite transitions/ iterations of the Iliad (more specifically the Patrocleia) and I thought it might be worth sharing if it encourages any of you to read it. It is the translation by Christopher Logue and it is visceral and raw and erotic in all the ways I think Homer meant it to be. Seriously, I cannot recommend reading it strongly enough.

“War Music- Christopher Logue

Patrocleia

There are many reasons I regard this translation of Homer’s Iliad, more specifically the excerpt of the Patrocleia, to be one of my favourite. When I purchased this book (translations of B16-19) the young lady who sold it to me had read Classics at Oxford and RHUL and, it being the day before my first Greek midterm exam, was trying to boost my morale. Before reading this translation the only thing I knew of Logue (courtesy of the book-seller) was that he had authored many pornographic novels- a writing style that is echoed subtly and seamlessly in this translation.

The idea of him being an erotic author contributes heavily to the- still ongoing- debate over whether Homer sought to glorify war or demonstrate its horrors. Although modern scholarship frequently debated over this, it seems to me that whatever the correct answer Homer deliberately writes his heroes in a way that shows them as lustful for war. Perhaps then there is no better author than Logue to write this.

I want to dispel any such notions or retaliation that for Logue to write about war in such a lustful way suggests that Homer sought to glorify it. I think the fact that we have this argument at all is due, mostly, to the linguistic choices of individual translators. Before discussing Logues own context and choices further I would like firstly to explore his translation with the only preconception before reading (that of his previous erotic works).

Constantly Logue is deliberation and tender with his words- referring constantly to each half of our famed duo as ‘love’ and ‘darling’. He writes about conflict with a fluidity that can only be born of intimacy. Whether that is his intimacy with the text or his perceived intimacy between characters is to be discussed.

There are certain word choices that stood out to me as immediately erotic and seductive- ‘pink smoke’, ‘lolling tongues’, ‘begging’- the list goes on and in truth I think it is different for each reader. However, the clear lust for blood and war describes in such a way gives way to the aforementioned moral argument- is this Homer’s pacifism or bloodlust?

I think, though it might come as a disappointment, we really cannot say. But that is the beauty of this translation. Undoubtedly the erotic undertones illustrate a desire in the loins of men for war and sweat and the sickly sweet saccharine of blood and hormones- intoxicating in the Trojan heat. But there is a tenderness and aching for brotherhood and companionship and a clear warning against lust and intoxication that shows war as only the harbinger of an eternal death.

In demonstrating the deliberate nature of this choice, there are two lines in particular that stand out to me and the way that they contrast with the first translation I ever read (that of E.V. Rieu)— “And so he begged for death”, and “O love// I am so gutted with resentment that I ache”. Rieu translates these lines with far less gusto, not giving them the space to breathe on their own. He writes, “he was simple invoking his own own destiny and a dreadful death”, and “that really hurts me”.

Whilst Rieu’s translations are undoubtedly fantastic in their own right, it lacks the tender intimacy of two souls at war, faced with the inevitability of a separating death.

I said that I wanted to talk about whatI learnt about Logue and his own context after reading War Music. Logue himself was a pacifist and war stationed in Palestine before spending 16 months in a military prison. Is is then no wonder that he should write in such a a way, having a deeply profound understanding of the bloodlust, and indeed lust, of men in heat and war, but perhaps an even more profound understanding of the tenderness of the two-soul intimacy of war and the act of taking a life.

The other thing about Logue I find utterly fascinating was that he had no knowledge of Greek. Although, there is certainly room to argue that his translation (being pieced together from readings of other Classicists) does not understand Homer’s intentions. I, however, rather think it is the opposite. It shows that for Logue to be able to write such a vivid and tedner account, one that places the reader in a series of odds about the nature of war, shows that one does not need an understanding of Greek to have an understanding of Homer. Homer’s Iliad is profound and age-defying and is no less a diary of common humanity and universal feeling today than it was 3000 years ago.

I think therefore, that Logue’s translation is a testament to both his and Homer’s linguistic genius and understanding of war and grief and emotion.

Perhaps my new favourite translation.”

This was just one of my random mid afternoon ramblings and is completely unrefined, but I hope that my unfiltered thoughts might convince at least one person to read War Music. I would love to say see you next week, but lets be honest my track record of updating this thing at university has proven to be abysmal thus far. Instead I shall wish you all the best and see you the next time I randomly remember my password! Until then, all my love

~Z

Sunset.

Greece to its ships to eat and sleep.

But Achilles could not sleep

Because he could not stop himself

Thinking about Patroclus.

How in this war or that

They saved each other's lives a dozen times a day,

Or how rash words died in him at Patroclus' glance.

He tried this side, then that.

Then he got up and went down to the beach,

Refettered Hector's ankles to his chariot's step,

And galloped the cadaver - kept from harm by visitant hands -

Round and around the embers of his true heart's pyre.

Crying his eyes out.