The Iliad

Allow me to give credit where credit is due. I am currently enrolled in St. John's graduate program in Santa Fe. The graduate program is unique in this country in that it does not increasingly focus one's mind on a specific topic, but rather it forces the mind to expand, to reach, to go further than it ever has. It is a 'great books' program, meaning that we read the 'great books' of our cultural inheritance and then discuss them in small groups at length. It allows for conversations with intelligent and passionate fellows about a portion of the greatest thoughts and ideas ever put forth. It's kindof perfect.

I currently toil amidst the literature segment (every semester provides a different topic: Philosophy/Theology, History, Mathematics/Natural Science, Poltics and Society, and Lit), and am now reading The Odyssey and The Canturbury Tales. But last week we finished another book, one of the world's greatest pieces of literature: The Iliad, or literally 'the story of Ilium (Troy)'.

The Iliad's essential theme is what war makes of men. It should not be read as a simplistic reflection of the 13th Century B.C. Greek culture (since that is when the actual war took place and conceivably shortly thereafter the poems about it were first sung), but rather what war makes of every man in every culture. It's like Tolstoy's famous line: Every happy family is happy in the the same way, but every unhappy is unhappy in their own way. Every war causes the same changes in every culture and individual, but in peace cultures vary widely.

How is it that war's grasp is similar throughout cultures? In war, the primary objective is to win, whether for personal survival and/or personal and societal glory. War involves the wholesale destruction of the enemy by any means available, it requires a psychological divide between foe and friend. Comrades in war become incredibly close through the constant sharing of intense situations and the intimacy wiht death. War is a condition of life that stands outside the normal rules. One can kill others without punishment, in fact one's job is to kill others. The constant appearance of death simultaneously raises and lowers the importance of life. Life is easily taken, but perhaps more than ever treasured. The Iliad captures all of these universal facets of warfare, which is one reason for its brillance--there are many others.

It is the ninth year in what will be a ten year war. A war so brutal that it becomes the comparitive war for all of western culture. Whenever a city falls there is somewhere an echo of Troy. The story begins with wrath. Achilles, the greatest of the Greek's warriors, is angry. He has refused to fight because Agammenon, leader of the Greeks, has stolen Achilles' woman (he took her as booty from a raid). Achilles stands against what is obviously an unjust action by the Greek's leader. By choosing passivity, he condemns the army to suffer great losses against the Trojans. He is a kindof twisted Gandhi, choosing passive resistance to fight injustice, yet at the same time praying for his comrades' destruction to prove his righteousness.

Achilles, born of a goddess and a mortal, is stuck with a dilemna: he knows his destiny (it's definitely better not to know). He has been told by his mother that if he stays at Troy, eventually he will achieve great glory but will perish there never to return home. However, if he returns to his island-home he could live out a long life, but die without glory and infamy. He is already half-way to his destiny by being at Troy, but it is here--as he sits in his tent while other battle--when he seems for the first time tempted by the other option: a prosaic long life at home full of unremarkable deeds. He is the only character in the work who openly questions the point of this war, and the point of glory and honor all together. This is not common (either in 13th century BC or 21st century AD). Rarely do soldiers question the war while in it. Number one: they have survival on their mind. And number two: fighting a war one does not believe in is far more difficult than fighting a war one accepts. It's much easier to survive the horrors of war when one is not questioning its validity.

Many have commented on how ridiculous it is for the Greeks and Trojans to spend ten years and countless lives on a woman, Helen. However, there is more to it than that. The Greeks are fighting, because the abduction of Helen goes against the deepest part of their society. Quite simply, one cannot steal one's wife and get away with it. This is a flagrant violation of social rights. What if it was your wife? The Trojans--who never give Helen, although that seems the best way to avoid ruin--are fighting for something much clearer: home and country. The Greeks are threatening to destroy them and their city, wipe them off the face of the earth (which they eventually do). For the Trojans the posture is defensive, of course as the war goes on--as any war progresses--men start fighting for other reasons, personal, deep reasons. Namely that, how can one not fight when they have seen their comrades killed, when they have seen the bloodshed, grief, and terror caused by the other. This is depicted in Achilles when he finally re-enters the war due to Patrolocus' death. His grief becomes as insatiable as his wrath.

There is of course another way of looking at the Trojan war in general: men will use pretty much any excuse to have an enemy and to fight that enemy. A wife is stolen gives an excuse for war. We love war too much, for it paints the world in uncomplicated terms, black and white, making the majority of wars unneccessary. They happen simply because without war a man becomes restless. Witness the current war in Iraq: entered in under false pretenses, no objective but to destroy the regime, and accepted by the American people because, well, we wanted to fight some more and kill some more. Our bloodlust was not satiated with Afghanistan. To begin war all men need is an excuse, not a reason.

Amid all this bloodshed and warfare, The Iliad displays great empathy. There is probably no other war story that displays both sides with such great understanding. You see the war from both perspecitves, equally. Your allegiance shifts with the page. Though composed by the victors, it is a uniquely balanced account. As well, every man who dies on the field is named and described, we discover who their father is, where they grew up, what stories attend their childhood, and why they are here. No one is allowed to be an annoyomus enemy. Despite, the truthfulness of this, most war stories (from then on through today) depict warfare entirely from one side or other, but such perspectives are more propaganda than great literature. Great literature raises questions, propaganda exults in certainity. Here is a great lesson implicit in this epic poem: there is no enemy, there is only men killing men. War is tragic. Inherently, indisputably tragic. Yet, we still have not learned that to protray war from a single side (the 'so-called' good side) is inherently and simply wrong.

Homer's empathy extends even beyond the war. In his wonderful similes, he shows empathy for the sheep slain by the lion, and even for the enemy of man--the lion--surrounded by spears. Nothing escapes his empathy, no character is fully despicable. Even Agamemnon, who is probably the closest thing to a complete jack-ass in the book, displays numerous moments of self-reflection, of realizing how terribly he has acted, not to mention his heroics on the battlefield.

There is a moment in the final chapter of this amazing epic when Homer's narrational empathy displays itself in two of the work's greatest characters: Achilles and Priam. Achilles has killed Priam's favorite son, Hector, and then dragged his body around behind his chariot for days. So, Priam secretly goes to Achilles to ask for the body of his beloved son back, so his son may have a proper burial. In their meeting, which can only be described as heart-breakingly beautiful, two enemies see each other anew. A father sees his son's killer as a man of power and intensity. A soldier sees his enemy's king as a man of leadership and gracefulness. They admire each other. As someone in my class said, they see each other's humanity. If their is hopefulness in The Iliad, it is here: in these great men's improbable encounter.

Just because The Iliad is nearly 3,000 years old does not mean it is aged and stuffy. The violence, the brutality, is just as shocking and stark as I imagine it was when first recited. It remains one of the most violent books I have ever read and makes most Hollywood war movies look tame in comparison (did I say most? I meant all). On one level, The Iliad is the world's greatest 'action' book. Heroes slaying heroes, gods fighting gods, spear fights, sword fights, and chariot races. Heroes even fight gods. It's action is so non-stop and relentless that one almost becomes tired of battle after battle, death after death (and I think that is apart of the point), yet this is not some Arnold Swarzenegger souless action piece. The Iliad is a 'great book' because it tackles innumberable themes and questions without providing easy (or any) answers. What is the role of war in society? Is war inevitable? Is this the first anti-war book? What is fate? How much power does one man have over his fate? What is worth dying for and what is worth killing for? What is glory? What is honor? What is our relationship to the Gods (or God) and how does this propel us into, or keep us from, war? Is all fair in love and war, or only in war? Or only in love? Do men love war too much? Could their ever be a war-less society and what would that look like? What is death? Where does it lead? Can anything good come from war? Are war and peace apart of life's cyclical nature?

In some ways The Odyssey, which I am currently reading, is a direct answer to The Iliad. Or at least takes many of the themes from The Iliad and works with them, stretches them, plies them out for more truths and observations. Do not mistake The Iliad as an accurate and full representation of society, just as future historians will hopefully have more material to contemplate our era than Apocalypse Now and Saving Private Ryan. The way men act in war should never be confused with how they act in peace.

A final note: don't confuse the movie Troy as a substitute for The Iliad. Troy is the bad action movie version of a work of genius.

By: Homer

Trans: Robert Fagles

Penguin, 1991

Paperback, 683 pages

ISBN: 0140445927

Coriolanus

I finished Coriolanus, the last of my Shakespeare plays, at the Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Not where we live, but where we often visit. The Tea Lounge is a unique coffee/tea shop (except for the other Tea Louonge relatively close by). We spent alot of time there this fall when we didn't have Internet at home, since they have free wireless. The decor of the Tea Lounge is unimaginably cool; first, it's enormous and I mean warehouse-enormous (which in New York is rare): it's both wide and open, crappy couches fill the space, the coffee bar turns quickly into a real bar, massive fans sway above your head, and they often play truly good music (and usually the whole album!) like The Beatles, Nirvana, and Bob Dylan. A couple warnings: food is expensive and not all that spectacular, the place can be packed on weekends with a mix of hipsters and Brooklyn yuppies, and on weekdays it is the place where all the young mother's gather (and my god there is a lot of them in Park Slope!) for play-dates, for gossip and knitting, and other activities which you wouldn't expect in 21st Century Brooklyn but occur nonetheless .

It was a rainy day in Brooklyn, and our plans for a picnic in the botanical gardens were therefore postponed. So instead we spent three hours at the Tea Lounge. I finished the play, reading the final bear-the-dead-like-a-soldier speech, while my fiance simultaneously read the chapter in Little Women where Jo declines Laurie. What symbol might be drawn from that conjunction, I don't know. But it was fun, nonetheless. We celebrated my completion of Shakespeare's play by proceeding to a market and picking up salmon and Kronenbourg for dinner. It was all in all a lovely, surprising Saturday. In New York City any weekend where you don't do much of anything--where you remember that simple days are still possible--is a good one.

Coriolanus proved a difficult play to get into, although the play begins with action: a blossoming of various battles (which seems a rarity for Shakespeare, there was very little exposition). The first act feels initially as though it should be the fourth or fifth. I did finally get grasped by the play, but by the end I didn't feel fully moved or astounded. Plot-wise the play is very well put together, and it certainly deals with some interesting issues, but I felt it lacked the emotional punch of almost every other of Shakespeare's tragedies.

The story is pretty simple, Coriolanus is a soldier through-and-through, a man who performs daring and near god-like deeds in warfare. However, his inability to double-speak or make love to the plebians of Rome causes his downfall and eventual banishment from his home. To revenge himself upon his citizens, he joins with an old enemy, Aufidius, to storm the gates of Rome and lay waste to the city. Militarily, he is set up to succeed, but he is finally convinced to seek a truce when by his mother. As revenge, and partly as a way to regain his own status, Coriolanus is murdered by Aufidius. Shakespeare took the story from Plutarch's Lives.

The main set-up of the story, as I see it, is the tension between Coriolanus, a man of action, utterly incapable of duplicity, and the nature of Rome (or political states in general) where one must be able to play the political game, i.e. being a war hero is not enough. Coriolanus can often be compared to Achilles, the greatest war hero of war-heroes (although, I felt Coriolanus lacked the potent mix of raw fierceness and knee-jerk passion which Achilles represents so well). Both men achieve great military victories for their state, both men feel underappreciated, and both men meet tragic ends. It could be argued that Achilles' blend of undiluted anger and arete is more more accepted by the society of Ancient Greece than Coriolanus' same qualities in later Rome, but I think that's overlooking the consistent reactions of the Greeks to Achilles in The Iliad; Achilles is often lectured by Agamemnon and Odysseus for his temper, he is treated as a child, unable to grasp the political realities of Ancient Greece. While it is certain that Achilles was revered throughout classical Greece as a hero worthy of emulation, I don't think The Iliad itself makes it so, the portrait painted there is too complex. The same stands for Coriolanus. While a war-hero and a man who lives up to his word (except in foregoing the destrcution of Rome), Coriolanus is still protrayed as petulant, almost stupid, and certainly a mama's boy. He is only kind of worth his hero-status, only kind of worth emulation. Perhaps, what this best attends to is the sense that certain aspects of society should not be forced to mix. In other words, soldiers--even the greatest--should not be forced into politics by default. Just as being a politician does not automaically make one a good soldiers. With that I'll let the heroes lie.

One nice coincidence: I finished my Shakespeare-play-completion on April 22nd, but I read the Introduction on the 23rd--Shakespeare's (supposed) birthday. It seemed fitting.

That evening in Park Slope, as my girlfriend and I walked from the Tea Lounge to the grocery, I was saying something about how I was excited that now I had read everything Shakespeare had written.

"Really everything?"

"Yeah, I think so. All the plays, the long poems--you know."

"You've read all the sonnets?"

"Ah...well, no."

And there it is. Now, I've got to pull out the sonnets and get to work. Well...maybe. I think first a break is required. Perhaps a classic children's novel is in the works, one in which I was too deprived to have read as a child.

Much ado.


Book borrowed from the 96th St. New York Public Library.

Coriolanus

By: William Shakespeare

Signet Classics, 2002

Paperback, 384 pages

ISBN: 0451528433

Breath

In college I minored in history. I now think that I probably should have double-majored: english and history (maybe tripled, theatre). Since graduating, my fascination--obsession may be a better word--with history has only grown. It's incredible to wonder at the scale of lives that have come before ours, each one unique and important. There are so many stories in those multitudinous lives. I think it would be nearly impossible to be a good reader (which is what I strive for) and be bored by the past. In fact I doubt if it's possible to be fully engaged with the world, and be bored by the past.

I am always surprised how history receives a bad rap in our culture (but then I am also puzzled by how 'intelligence' is given a bad rap too). Like math and science, history is usually considered a boring subject, only for specialists, i.e. geeks, nerds, and the like. At most history to us is a source of entertainment (i.e. movies) or a harmless hobby and not illumination. A basic example is the amount of not only badly made historic films, but also the amount of inaccuracy in Hollywood. A film may cost three hundred million, but none of this seems to go into any actual research. There are of course exceptions: Master and Commander comes immediately to mind. But as usual I am digressing, let me just say that history--while always entertaining--is more than entertainment, and the past deserves more respect and curiosity than is usually granted it.

I don't think Donna Jo Napoli is well known outside of the YA market; this is a shame. From the two novels I have read of hers, she is a sublime novelist of history. She is a masterful storyteller with a style that punches by way of its simplicity. Using just a few sentences she can craft historical places and times that prove both recognizable and entirely alien. I imagine any run-of-the-mill time traveler would undergo a similar experience. Most of her novels take familiar fairy-tales or myths and attempt a new spin on them while infusing raw and gritty historical 'reality' over most of the fantastical elements (in fact it is only really when Napoli attempts 'fantasy' that her stories slip a bit and fade).

Breath is a retelling of the medieval story of the pied piper who stole away Hamelin's rats (and children) by music. But really Breath only focuses on this traditional part of the story in the last fifty or so pages, and it is the previous two hundred that I found truly enthralling. Here we see a small, 13th Century German town and farmstead recreated in brief, yet utterly believeable, detail (a scene in which a grandmother and grandson make a sparrow-pie dinner sticks out). Salz--our narrator crippled with cystic fibrosis--tells his story in heart-breaking, stark prose. One minute he's playing with his new kitten, and the next he's stricken with tremendous, life-threatening pain, but the change is so abrupt and simple, the reader hardly recognizes it until they are in the midst of the pain, with Salz.

The bulk of the book deals with the slow destruction of Hamelin as a mysterious illness overtakes one household after another. The disease is blamed on a sudden increase in rats--hence the piper. But the disease takes on a form that may be even more terrifying than the black plague (which had not yet reached Europe from Asia in 1284 when the novel takes place). This plague instead causes night-madness: hallucinations, sexual deviance, explosive violence. Salz proves immune to this sickness (whose scientific nature is explained thoroughly in an Afterward by Napoli), and it is through these innocent eyes that we watch his family, and the whole town, suffer a fate worse than death. It is a nightmarish Jekyll-and-Hyde vision, gut-wrenching and haunting. And Napoli protrays it with such care and simplicity that the terror rises almost unbeknown. Certainly, it is unwelcome, even by the reader: one cannot help but react to the town's devastation with even more disbelief than does Salz.

As with Bound, the other Napoli novel I have read, the book loses some of its focus and even believability in the last few chapters. By hewing so close to the Pied Piper story, she gets herself stuck in a situation that is just not believable, and starkly so against the gritty realism of the rest. Still the book is harrowing, affective, and give you a better glimpse of the 13th century than almost any movie and most other books. Rather meant for adults or children. However, if you're looking for a good medieval antithesis to Breath (that's still every bit as wonderful and accurate) check out Adam of the Road, a wondrous, beautiful tale of a boy who loses his father and dog in the medieval England.

If Breath sounds like it shouldn't be meant for children, that's probably right. In my mind this is really a 14 and up YA novel, however a mature 12-year-old could probably handle it. But this brings up one of the depressing issues surrounding "Young Adult Literature" (and there are many). More and more books are being classified young adult simply by the age of the narrator or main character and not neccesarily based on content and/or the author's desired audience. Donna Jo Napoli is a wonderful writer for young adults, but she is also a wonderful writer for any age. But how many adults take YA literature into consideration when choosing their next book? Of course, the majority of YA novels are crap, but this doesn't mean the gems should be stuck in the same category. Having spent the last nine months reading and re-reading children's literature, I can safely say that a lot of it deserves wider attention than it receives and some of it deserves far less attention than it already gets (i.e. Gossip Girls series, The Clique series, and any of the other trashy, nullifying kid lit. out there).

Well that is enough of this rambling entry where I seemed to cover everything (and resolve little) from American society's take on history to the actual book to various issues in classifying books as Young Adult. Next time (Shakespeare returns) I'll try to focus a little more.

(Book borrowed from work; picture above is of the hardcover edition, because I think that cover is far better)

Breath

By: Donna Jo Napoli

Simon Pulse, June 2005

Paperback, 272 pages

ISBN: 068986177X

Timon of Athens

Rather than begin with an introduction both of myself and of this blog, I will instead begin with a book. I'll shelve that introduction for another time, another place.

I am at the tail-end of a reading journey (which I do not doubt will prove the most fulfilling of my life) of Shakespeare's works; this journey began twelve years ago when I first read A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was on an extended hiatus from school and had checked out the play from our local library. I remember sitting in bed, eating a TV dinner I had microwaved myself, and reading the entire play in one sitting. I felt daring and grown-up. One, because I was home alone and left to my own devices, and, two, because I was reading literature that was clearly beyond me. I probably understood a fifth of it at the time (although perhaps that is being too generous), but I recall laughing whole-heartedly at the lovers' mercurial hearts. The line that sticks out most from that particular reading belongs to Lysander: 'And run through fire I will for thy sweet sake!' I still crack-up at that one when I see the show performed; in most audiences I think I am the only one to laugh.

Currently--what seems a lifetime later--I am reading Timon of Athens on the subway to and from work. This is my last Shakespeare play, but one. After Timon, it's Coriolanus. Once I'm finished with the canon, I don't truly know how I will respond. I suppose I should expect some sense of loss, some cold frigid feeling. After all, unless in my lifetime some lost play of Shakespeare's re-emerges (I'm hoping for Cardino simply because the title is so striking), Corialanus will prove the last time Shakespeare's words will be entirely new to me. But in actuality I don't feel any foreboding toward the end. For one thing, Shakespeare is one of the rare writers whose works I can read (or see) again and again without any trepidation. His plays age better than wine, and are far less expensive (cheap bottle of wine in New York: fifteen dollars, used Shakespeare play: four). Though this view will certainly not gain any points in originality: I attest that Shakespeare is the greatest writer of any age. There is something about his words that is inexpressible, they reach into the deepest valley of what it is to be human--and pull out conundrums. His metaphors, while never unfunctional, are always bold, daring, and replete. He creates characters that are at once bigger-than-life yet at the same time as true-to-life as any person who has ever graced this earth. He is the master imaginer.

But enough of this, I'm certain I will return to 'why-Shakespeare-above-all-others' again in the future. On to: Timon of Athens. I just finished Scene 1 of Act IV, in which Timon curses Athens--with true Shakespearean passion--the city that has grounded his ruin. The play is not one of Shakespeare's best, however I still find myself enthralled. One of the things that intrigues me most is how Shakespeare can write a compelling play centered almost entirely on economic issues (although I shouldn't be surprised: A Merchant of Venice). To me--a person with mostly an artistic and dramatic sensibility--it seems like a rather bland topic. But here Shakespeare brings both the micro-economy of Timon and the macro of Athens into light. He is fascinated by how the decisions one person--or a community--makes with money can so easily shape our fates. What are these gold pieces, these dubloons, these talents, this cash? Of course, Shakespeare doesn't answer this question; it would be ridiculous if he did. But for myself--entering my late twenties--I almost wish he did. Us post-college loaners could use a little Shakesperean advice.

Shakespeare's round-about, open treatment of loaning/lending reminds me of Neal Stephenson's own presentation of cash in Quicksilver. I read that book this summer, and while I did not love it enough to read the two following hefty volumes, I really did enjoy the read (except for the very strange sex/purging scenes). I was especially drawn-in by Stephenson's obsession with money or, perhaps more properly, the rough-and-tumble beginnings of a capitalist market economy where money becomes like air. It's there: we know that because we breathe it, it allows us to live; it's there, but it's no longer tangible. It's tied up. It's invested. It is--beyond true comprehension.

But Timon begins with actual assets, and then loses everything due to unbridled spending. Or does he lose everything because what he invests in (friendship) refuses to pay him back? There is no return on camraderie, certainly not cold hard glittering cash. So here money is not based on material worth or market value, but rather on social ties and social relationships. Or are social ties only corrupted by financial? Maybe. Maybe not. Here is a sign of things to come: there will be no answers in this blog. Answers don't belong in great literature, only questions and musings.

While it sucks to be Timon, at least he's expressive enough to pay back his lackluster friends with perfected cursing. I'll leave you with these impassioned words:


bankrupts, hold fast;
Rather than render back, out with your knives,
And cut your trusters' throats! bound servants, steal!
Large-handed robbers your grave masters are,
And pill by law. Maid, to thy master's bed;
Thy mistress is o' the brothel! Son of sixteen,
Pluck the lined crutch from thy old limping sire,
With it beat out his brains! Piety, and fear,
Religion to the gods, peace, justice, truth,
Domestic awe, night-rest, and neighbourhood,
Instruction, manners, mysteries, and trades,
Degrees, observances, customs, and laws,
Decline to your confounding contraries,
And let confusion live!


(Library Book, NYPL 96th St.)


Titus Adronicus/Timon of Athens

By: William Shakespeare

General Editor: Sylvan Barnet

Signet, 1989

Paperback, 432 pages

ISBN: 0-451-52269-9