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