Christopher Logue's War Music

An Epic New Translation Based on Homer's Iliad and Trojan War

Jun 22, 2007

Poet Christopher Logue, who doesn't speak Ancient Greek, has produced a radical new poem based on The Iliad with the help of Homeric scholar Donald Carne-Ross.

Translating a great poem is a tricky business, which usually involves striking a balance between the literal meaning of the words, and the artistic licence which will make it work as a poem. Most translations lean towards one side or the other: for example, Michael Alexander’s Beowulf is relatively faithful to the Anglo-Saxon epic, whilst Seamus Heaney’s version strays further in order to achieve poetic effects.

Christopher Logue’s version of Homer’s Iliad, however, has no such concerns about fidelity to the original text. Logue boldly set out to provide an “account” of one of the founding poems of our culture, without being able to speak Ancient Greek, or having any academic background in Homer’s work. The result is a poem of dazzling brilliance and real emotional impact, which eschews accuracy and caution in favour of outrageous images and high-speed action.

Logue worked with the Homeric scholar Donald Carne-Ross, who explained the literal meanings of the words to him, and tutored him in Greek culture, before reshaping the work into his own poem a genuinely poetic translation in the wider sense. He did not work chronologically through the whole epic, but instead focussed on one section (Books 16-19) which includes the turning points of Patroclus’ death and Achilles’ decision to return to the fighting. His style is equally unusual, based on a loose pentameter line, and bringing together classical poetry and modern concepts, such as:

Achilles’ armour was not made on earth. / Hephaestus Scientist yoked its dancing particles.

The piston-kneed, blade-flailing Greeks pour down / Like a gigantic fan with razored vanes.

The lack of slavish reverence for Homer’s original and the pace of the verse are both equally exhilarating. This does not mean, that Logue’s work disregards the spirit of the Iliad, but instead of recounting the epic in its original terms he has attempted to produce the same sense of awe, brutality and heroism for a modern English-speaking audience. The title of this volume, War Music, is a reference to some advice received from the classicist Xanthe Wakefield when he set out on the translation: “The Greeks are not humanistic, not Christian, not sentimental. Please try to understand that. They are musical.” That archaic, pitiless music comes through in lines like:

Moving at speed, but absolutely still/ The arrow in the air. Death in a man/ As something first perceived by accident.

Judged as a translation of Homer, War Music is a controversial and bizarre work. Judged as a poem, it is gripping, lyrical and irresistibly dramatic.

Sources: Logue’s Homer, Christopher Logue, (Introduction by Christopher Reid, 2001)

The copyright of the article Christopher Logue's War Music in Poetry is owned by Jem Bloomfield. Permission to republish Christopher Logue's War Music in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.