"Yes, but it took me fifty years to learn how to draw that in thirty seconds."

[larryhammer]

It's been a long time since I've had a chance to use this tag, and now I've got two reasons to. I'll deal with them one at a time, because like a good cheese, they they need room to breathe.

So first off, generous thanks to rushthatspeaks, from whom I learned about Thomas Hobbes's translations of Homer. Yes, that Hobbes, author of Leviathan. Apparently, in his 80s, after Parliament basically outlawed his publishing any more philosophy, he turned to poetry, starting with an autobiography in Latin hexameters. This was followed a few years later by the complete Iliad and Odyssey.

Here's the opening of the Iliad:

O goddess sing what woe the discontent
    Of Thetis’ son brought to the Greeks; what souls
Of heroes down to Erebus it sent,
    Leaving their bodies unto dogs and fowls;
Whilst the two princes of the army strove,
    King Agamemnon and Achilles stout.
That so it should be was the will of Jove,
    But who was he that made them first fall out?
Apollo; who incensed by the wrong
    To his priest Chryses by Atrides done,
Sent a great pestilence the Greeks among;
    Apace they died, and remedy was none.

Hobbes translating Greek? Okay, sure, fine -- it's not like he hadn't done Thucydides early in his career. But translating Greek poetry? ... not so much with the good. I mean, where on earth did he get the idea that dogtrot quatrains are equivalent to Homeric hexameters? It's not like he was an unintelligent man, either. (Notate bene: read "incensed" as three syllables -- he would have written the modern pronunciation as "insens'd" -- which adds to his beat's pounding insistence.)

But enough, you say, surely it gets better -- maybe it was only the invocation's high strain that made him ignore the possibilities of mid-line pauses, or any other ways of varying the meter. A plausible argument -- so how about this famous passage from book XXII:

Then Hector durst no longer stay, but fled:
    Fear nimbly made his feet and knees to move;
Achilles no less swiftly followed.
    As when a hawk is flying at a dove,
The dove flies out aside, herself to save;
    But by the hawk again is followed,
That gives not over till the prey he have;
    Achilles so pursu’d and Hector fled,

The reuse of the fled/followed rhyme in successive quatrains is nothing short of inspired, as is focusing on those moving knees. Just what your epic similes need to make them take flight is to look down.

Not.

In short, the WHOLE THING is of a piece, every passage like every other, in style, in tone, in prosody. I leave the touching scene of Hector and wee Astyanax on the walls of Troy to the interested to look up, for you can -- the entirety is digitized and available in a variety of e-formats, thus proving that the internets are working as designed. Instead, I leave you with the conclusion of the Iliad (the Odysseys's being too boring):

And o’er his grave, in haste, they raise a tomb.
    This done, away they went, and by-and-bye
To Priam’s house they came again, and there
    He made a splendid supper for them all.
Then home they went, well pleased with their cheer.
    Thus ended noble Hector’s funeral.

The vision of the warriors of Troy toddling home through the streets like aldermen after a guildhall banquet, pleased enough with the meal that they've forgotten that it was, yanno, the funeral of their best champion, is one to set on a pedastal -- a very tall one very far away from anyone impressionable enough to be influenced by it.

Go. Read. Laugh yourself to sleep. You'll thank me in the morning.

---L.

Comments

[larryhammer]

♥ Wilbur

Tho' checking "Junk," he alliterates three of the beats about half the time. And has the chops to pull it off despite this.

I'm wanting to read this thesis of yours.

---L.