POETRY In The Homeric Fashion

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31530, 18 November 1967, Page 4

POETRY In The Homeric Fashion

fltwiewea b» M.P B I Pax. By Christopher Logue. Rapp and Carrol. 21 pp. Inevitably one loses in translation. However, in some instances (certain verse of Ezra Pound and Robert Lowell for example), it is possible to gain. Christopher Logue's “Pax,” his translation of Book XIX of the Iliad, is surely such an instance. Whatever the loss from Homer’s epic in quantitative verse, the gain is in the fact that Logue has been able to retain much of the world of Homer while constructing a superb poem of his own. The occasion for Logue’s poem is Book XIX, wherein Achilles, grief stricken by the death of his beloved friend Patrodos, renounces his terrible wraith and King Agamemnon apologises for his overwhelming pride and arrogance in seizing Briseis, Achilles’ concubine taken in battle. We witness, in all its tension, the public encounter between the two warriors as they make their peace before the assembled troops, thereby

saving the Achaen host from unnecessary suffering, death and dishonour—the result of the quarrel between the two heroic figures.

And it is all here in characteristic Homeric fashion: the aura of action, passions aroused, conflict of wills, the omnipresence of the Gods—the sense of the universal in terms of the earthy and the real, right down to the characteristic descriptions of the hero’s armour: lifted a piece of it between his hands; turned it; tested the weight of it; then, spun the holy tungsten a star between his knees. His eyes like furnace doors ajar.

Logue has balanced his narrative and descriptive skills with nice flashes of wit and the colloquial, and they work admirably together. Following the consummation of the peace pact and the wis4 counsel of Odysseus, Achilles says:

“Let us light now—at once—” “Wait*’—slipping the word in like a bolt—

“marvellous boy,” Odysseus says, “you can do what like with us except make men fight hungry”

Then there are evocative descriptions that set the scene for battle preparations:

Achillas stand*, stretches, turns on his heel, punches the sunlight, bends, then—jumps/ . . . and lets the world turn fractionally beneath his feet. Noon. In the foothills melons roll out of their green hiding.. Heat. He walk. toward. the chariot. Greece waits. Over the wells in Troy mosquitoes hover The measure of line used by Logue is always adapted to sense of narrative or action. The rhyming, slant, and on occasion internal, with controlled assonance and consonantal effects, is subtle. No effort is made to lock the sense and sound of action or dialogue in a regulated metre or rhyme pattern. Rather, it is obvious that Logue has been able to apply his particular vision and considerable skills to an intelligent understanding of the original material; and he has brought to the task a quite extraordinary poetic talent