Greeks and Trojans

[poliphilo]

Everyone says Troy is a big disappointment. On the BBC's Friday Review Programme last night they were all against it with the exception of Germaine Greer who pointed out that Brad Pitt "has the most kissable lips of the millennium."

I tried reading the Iliad a few years back and got stuck half way through. I think its the most truthful thing ever written about war- and because of that truth its almost insufferably boring. All these beef-eating hardmen whom I couldn't give a toss about kept squaring off against one another and beating their brazen chests and then one or other of them would get skewered or hacked to bits and go down to Hades in a puff of testosterone and dust and jolly good riddance to bad rubbish (as we used to say in school.)

And all the while the poor bloody helots are getting slaughtered in their hundreds without a whiff of lamentation.

Just like the western front.

As a kid I got my Greeks by way of the Victorians and Steve Reeves- with all the repetitive bronze age realism edited out. I picked my team. I picked Troy- and reading Homer I realised I'd picked well. Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax- they're all horrible, psychopathic, disgusting, stupid, whereas the Trojans are haloed in the glamour of their ultimate defeat.

And Hector has a wife and little son.

Comments

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

The Iliad is not boring. Translators suck. And it is much more sensitive than what you're describing, with The Odyssey it is often referred to as an anti-war poem. No, the Greeks don't come off well (but there were no helots, that's a word used for Spartan slaves--mostly Messenians--which didn't exist until much later. Sparta is nothing special in the Homeric Age and doesn't have a race of slaves) but there is so much there--every archetype, every human instinct.

Maybe try getting it on audio tape. I attended a full oral reading of it a few years ago and it blew me away, made me a classicist--I spent the next three years learning Greek. Everyone there was sobbing at the end. It is one of the greatest pieces of literature mankind has ever produced.

And the movie isn't really based on the Iliad. It isn't supposed to be. It includes some of the same action.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

You can tell I'm not a classicist. The guys on TV last night were refering to the poor bloody infantry as "helots" and I, in my ignorance, went with them.

Well, I should persevere. I know I should. And I do recognise that Homer is the great foundation text of Western civilisation. The fault isn't in him, it's in me.

I also recognise that Homer has the measure of Agamemnon and Achilles and co. He knows what shits they are. He is unblinking and utterly unsentimental (unlike yours truly).

So, yeah- I'll pick up the Iliad again- at the point where I left off. Hold me to it!

[catvalente.livejournal.com]

Try the Fagles translation. That's the one I like.

The common man actually makes his first appearance in the Iliad. Look for Thyrsites. He's infantry who tells Agamemnon that the boys would all really like to go home now.

Then Odysseus thumps him on the head with a big stick and tells him to shut up.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes I've got the Fagles. And I remember the bit with Thersites and Odysseus. Well, I remember it now that you've reminded me.

So tonight, after tea, the Iliad comes down off the shelf and I get stuck back in!

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about watching Troy the other day in passing. But I think I want to give Homer another read before I do. It's shameful, but I remember close to nothing outside the general storyline.

For shame, for shame. And I call myself an educated woman! Did you end up watching the movie?

ps: Brad Pitt has kissable lips? Ah, Greer doesn't know her stick from her gloss. No, no. Michael Pitt has the most kissable lips. Pillow lips, they call him. With good reason.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

No, like you I'm going to read Homer first. Yuki Onna has shamed me into it.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

Ah! She lured me to it, too, when I interviewed her about one of her books. [Smiles]