Listening to the Iliad I realized just how much I vacillate. If I lived then would I have been a Greek or a Trojan? I can see both sides: obviously Helen was abducted, but Menalaeus saw her as a prize, not as a wife, and, therefore, was probably not his only one. Greece was known to invade and vanquish territories surrounding them. This just gave them an excuse. Troy defended themselves valiantly. Their army was not the same size as Greece, but they had a mighty walk that could not be breeched without trickery.
This debate then leads me to think about who was the mightiest warrior. Obviously the choices narrow to Achilles and Hector, but what made Achilles so powerful was his mother's intervention, his staff from Chiron, his five-layered god blessed armor. Hector was mighty because he was a true determined hero.
I see a reflection of Greece's ancient domination in Russia's dominance in Eastern Europe during WWII. It was a constant taking of territory and turning the people to a new way of life, destroying whatever is in the way or defies control.
Lessons can still be learned from the Iliad. Lessons of honor, trust, loyalty, respect, determination
For an alternative perspective check out The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller or Helen by Margaret George.

12/15/18 audiobook #252 reread

سعی کنید هیچ‌وقت زنِ کسی رو ندزدید.

طوری که خدایان رو توصیف میکرد، جالب بود، خوشم میاد:
زئوس که تندر در دستان اوست و سپر دارد;
هرا که بازوان سفید و مرمری دارد
آکلیس که پاهای چابک و زیبا دارد
آتنا که چشمانی آسمانگون دارد...
ایلیاد داستان کاملی از بازیچه و اسباب بازی خدایان بودن آدمهاست. آدمهایی که به محضر خدایانشون دعا میکردن، قربانی میدادن، دلاوری و رشادتها میکردن...ولی همه ش برای هیچی...درواقع جنگ بین مردم یونان و تروا، جنگ بین خدایان بود. زئوس و آرس و آفرودیت یه طرف، هرا و آتنا طرف دیگه...و این وسط، پهلوانها قربانی میشدن...آکلیس، هکتور، منلائوس، پاتروکلس و آژاکس و ...
از خوندنش لذت بردم. انگار واقعا توی جنگ با اونا بودم و حتی صدای جنگ رو هم میشنیدم...توصیفاتش عالی بود، به خصوص صحنه کشته شدن پاتروکلس، چقدر عجیب توصیف کرده بود: احساس میکردم دارم این صحنه از فیلم رو با دور کند نگاه میکنم...وقتی فوبوس جوشن و زوبینشو ازش گرفت...وقتی اوفوب آدمیزاد از پشت بهش نیزه زد و وقتی هکتور با شمشیرش پهلوشو درید...رجز خوندن ها و تهدید ها و حرفهای قبل از مرگشون خیلی قشنگ بود...
چقدر کتاب با فیلمش فرق میکنه...چقدر قشنگ و حماسی نوشته...دوستت دارم شاعر نابینای یونان
به زودی میام به سرزمینت

“Hector! Dearest to me of all my husband’s brothers—
my husband, Paris, magnificent as a god ...
he was the one who brought me here to Troy—
Oh how I wish I’d died before that day!
But this, now, is the twentieth year for me
since I sailed here and forsook my own native land,
yet never once did I hear from you a taunt, an insult.
But if someone else in the royal halls would curse me,
one of your brothers or sisters or brothers’ wives
trailing their long robes, even your own mother—
not your father, always kind as my own father—
why, you’d restrain them with words, Hector,
you’d win them to my side ...
you with your gentle temper, all your gentle words.
And so in the same breath I moum for you and me,
my doom-struck, harrowed heart! Now there is no one left
in the wide realm of Troy, no friend to treat me kindly—
all the countrymen cringe from me in loathing!”

My Prince


P.S. Hollywood, how could you fail the movie?? This is basically one violent gruesome bloody fight scene after the other. Just get rid of Brad Pitt & Briseis love story subplot and you are half there! Jeez...
p.p.s. so much better than odyssey
p.p.p.s. I hate you, Athena. Don't you have anything to do other than getting in everyone's business??

What I learned from this book (in no particular order):

1.tVictory or defeat in ancient Greek wars is primarily the result of marital spats and/or petty sibling rivalry in Zeus and Hera’s dysfunctional divine household.

2.tZeus “the father of gods and men” is a henpecked husband who is also partial to domestic abuse.

3.tIf you take a pretty girl who is the daughter of a priest of Apollo as war booty and refuse to have her ransomed, Apollo will rain plague on your troops. And he won’t be appeased until you return the girl and throw him a ginormous BBQ party involving hundreds of cattle at his temple.

4.tIf an arrow or a spear were thrown at you in battle, more often than not, it would land on your nipple or thereabout. Or alternatively, it would pierce your helmet and splatter your brain.

5.tParis is a proper guy’s name, not just a name for capital cities or bratty heiresses.

6.tBrad Pitt in man skirt* Achilles is the badassest warrior there ever was.

7.tReal men eat red meat, specifically:
tttta. sheep chines;
ttttb. fat goats; and
ttttc. the long back cuts of a full-grown pig, marbled with lard.

8.t The most valuable booty are (in no particular order):t

tttta. bronze tripods (each worth 12 oxens) and armors;
ttttb. swift war stallions; and
ttttc. pretty women (each worth 4 oxens, if also skilled in crafts). Lesbians are particularly prized.

tt9.tThere is nothing more glorious for a warrior than to sack enemy cities, plunder their wealth, kill all their men, bed their pretty women and enslave their children.

t10. tThe only men who matter are warriors, but if you are a woman, the range of roles that you could play is rather more diverse. You could be:

a.ta runaway wife who sparks a cosmic battle between your thuggish hubby’s city-state and your cowardly boyfriend’s (1);
b.ta war booty with a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome (2);
c.ta manipulative uber bitch (who also happens to be a goddess) (3);
d.ta long-suffering wife and mother (4).

(1) Helent(2) Briseist(3) Herat(4) Andromache

But whatever role you choose to play, you will still be the bone of contention between men and the armies that they lead. All the major conflicts in the story are triggered by women, or specifically by their sexuality: Helen’s elopement with Paris launched a thousand Argive ships against Troy; Agamemnon’s desire to bed Briseis, Achilles’ lawful prize, caused a nearly unhealable rift between them; and Hector’s desire to protect his wife from the dismal fate of being an Argive sex slave inspired him to fight Achilles to the death. Homer’s mortal women might be meek and mild, but his goddesses can kick ass with the best of them, and even occasionally best their male counterparts: Zeus is not above being manipulated by Hera, and Ares the God of War actually got whacked on the head by Athena.

*Troy, Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Warner Bros. 2004.


What I find most surprising about the Iliad is the amount of graphic, X-rated violence that it contains. The violence is not the biblical slaying and smiting, but something much more voyeuristically gory:

“…the one Peneleos lanced beneath the brows, down to the eyes' roots and scooped an eyeball out --- the spear cut clean through the socket, out behind the nape and backward down he sat, both hands stretched wide as Peneleos, quickly drawing his whetted sword, hacked him square in the neck and lopped his head and down on the ground it tumbled, helmet and all. But the big spear's point still stuck in the eye socket ---."

I imagine that this kind of anatomically precise, brain-splattering, gut-spilling action scenes made the Iliad popular with the Romans, who routinely went to the Colosseum to watch gladiators hack each other to death, but there is only so much of it that I could take in one sitting, which is why it took me almost three months to finish it. It is not that I’m particularly sensitive to fictional death and dismemberment --- and after all, this book is a war book --- but the sheer amount of such scenes, as well as their mind-numbing repetitiveness made for tedious reading. It doesn’t help that many of these deaths happened to seemingly throwaway characters, barely introduced in three or four lines, merely to be summarily (and gorily) dispatched in another half a dozen lines on the same page. The Iliad is assumed to be the written version of a much older oral poem, and such characters might represent collective memories of real Bronze Age warriors, but by Zeus, hundreds of pages of them being hacked, cleaved and skewered to death almost did me in.

Now, what is the purpose of such meticulously catalogued carnage? Was Homer trying to present War with all its attendant horrors to shock his audience into pacifism? Or was the old guy just trying to write an 8th century BCE equivalent of a blockbuster action-adventure movie with enough gore to satisfy his young male demographic? The Iliad both celebrates and laments the warrior spirit: the haughty pride and terrible thirst for vengeance and plunder that set men to distant shores, intent on razing cities and putting its inhabitants to slaughter, but also the stark, tragic consequences of such acts.

I actually find the gods’ politicking and manipulations more interesting than the actual war. The Greek gods are blissfully free of any human notion of morality --- which makes the problem of theodicy much more simpler to solve than in the Judeo-Christian model. The Olympian gods do not move in mysterious ways: they are moved by caprice and petty grievances. Why did we suffer such an ignominious defeat, despite all that we had done to win Zeus’ favor? Well, it happened that just before the battle was about to begin, Hera seduced him and subsequently put him to sleep with the help of Hypnos, whom she bribed with one of the Graces. A perfectly logical and very human explanation.

The story gets much more interesting in the last five books. The Olympian gods entered into the fray and the effect is sometimes like watching WWE SmackDown:

“Bloody Ares lunged at it now with giant lance
and Athena backed away, her powerful hand hefting
a boulder off the plain, black, jagged, a ton weight
that men in the old days planted there to make off plowland ---
Pallas hurled that boundary-stone at Ares, struck his neck,
loosed his limbs, and down he crashed and out over seven acres
sprawled the enormous god and his mane dragged in the dust.”

Or maybe an episode of Super Friends :

“How do you have the gall, you shameless bitch,
to stand and fight me here?
….
But since you’d like a lesson in warfare, Artemis,
just to learn, to savor how much stronger I am
when you engage my power ---“

The gods are “deathless”, so you know that there won’t be any lasting harm from their catfight, but the cost of battle to all too mortal men is heavy indeed. This was a time when war was as elemental as they come: no mercy was shown to the enemy on the battlefield, save one that pertained to a warrior’s honor, which was to be buried with full honors by his family and comrades. When mighty, “stallion-breaking” Hector finally succumbed to Achilles in a strangely anticlimactic duel, his father Priam went to Achilles’ camp and

“kneeling down beside Achilles, clasped his knees
and kissed his hands, those terrible, man-killing hands
that had slaughtered Priam’s many sons in battle.”

Troy’s old king begged for his son’s body, and in the magnificent, poignant last book, Homer showed us the real cost of war, both on the vanquished and the triumphant. By the will of the gods, Achilles’ death would soon follow: his destiny was ultimately no different from the rest of tragic humanity, fated to suffer and die by callous, immoral gods for causes that were entirely beyond their ken.

“So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men
live on to bear such torments ---“

n  n
نبرد معروف آخیلس و هکتور منقوش بر کوزه ای قدیمی؛ در زیر پای جنگجویان، جسد پتروکلس دوست آخیلس افتاده است

ایلیاد، سروده ی هومر، معروف ترین حماسه سرای یونانه که ماجرای جنگی ده ساله بین یونانیان و ایلیون (یا همون تروی) رو بازگو میکنه. بسیاری از اسطوره های یونانی (خدایان ساکن کوه المپ، قهرمانان بزرگ، مثل آخیلس و هکتور و...) رو ما امروزه فقط از طریق این کتاب میشناسیم.

اما چیزی که این حماسه رو برای من که اسطوره شناس یا متخصص ادبیات یونان باستان نیستم، خیلی خیلی درخشان میکنه، سه چیزه: یکی داستان پردازی قدرتمند، دوم شخصیت پردازی استادانه و سوم توصیفات دقیق و گیرا.

داستان پردازی
داستان، بسیار درخشانه. ارتباط علّی و معلولی وقایع با هم دیگه مثل یه ریسمان محکم، کل داستان رو به هم متصل میکنه. هر چیزی علتی داره و حتا دخالت خدایان در جنگ هم تابع انگیزه ها و دلایل داستانیه. همچنین وقایعی که رخ میدن، خیلی زیبا و دراماتیک هستن. حسادت ایزدبانوان و به داوری طلبیدن پاریس، قهر کردن آخیلس و کناره گیری از جنگ، سوگواری آخیلس بر رفیقش و انتقام گرفتنش و...

شخصیت پردازی
شخصیت پردازی، به قدری استادانه است که آدم فکر میکنه داستان در صد ساله ی اخیر نوشته شده، و نه 2800 یا به روایتی 4000 سال قبل. شخصیت ها، تک بعدی نیستن: انسان هستن، هزار بُعد دارن. واکنش هاشون به قدری طبیعیه که آدم فکر میکنه اگه من هم بودم همین کار رو می کردم. حتا خدایان هم از این قاعده مستثنا نیستن. حسادت ایزدبانوان، کاملاً انسانیه. قهر کردن آخیلس کاملاً انسانیه. بی حرمتی آخیلس به جسد هکتور به خاطر شدت خشمش، کاملاً انسانیه. و صدها مثال دیگه.

توصیفات
و نهایتاً، توصیفات بسیار بسیار دقیق و گیرا هستن. توصیفات رزم هاش، به قدری جزئی و پر از ریزه کاری های جذّابه که آدم فکر میکنه هر جنگ رو با الهام از یه جنگ واقعی که خودش شخصاً حضور داشته توصیف کرده. آخیلس زره هکتور رو برانداز میکنه تا نقطه ی ضعفش رو پیدا کنه، مِنِلِس کلاهخود پاریس رو میگیره و میکشه تا با بند کلاهخود، پاریس رو خفه کنه و...

I read the Odyssey at Uni and really loved it. A romp off to parts unknown with a man who is good company from a distance. As with much of fiction, the people I am delighted to spend lots of time with on the page are not necessarily those I would want to spend anytime with otherwise.

I’ve always meant to get around to reading this. I mean, this Homer guy only wrote two books and I had enjoyed the other one, so … so, a mere twenty years later (how time flies) I got around to reading this one.

The problem was that I knew exactly what this one was about. You know, this is about Helen getting taken to Troy after Paris wins her after he judges which of the goddesses is the most beautiful which pisses off the Greeks and then there’s the siege and sacking of Troy after that rather clever trick with the wooden horse. Not much point reading this one if you already know the whole damn story.

Now, you might be thinking – this guy should have put a spoiler alert at the start of this. You might also be thinking – this guy probably thinks it’s okay not to put a spoiler alert on this because everyone already knows this story. Umm, I haven’t put a spoiler alert on this because I haven’t told you anything that is actually in this story yet.

Look, I know, I’m as surprised as you are. “Bugger me with a brick”, as a friend of mine would say. The idea Homer could be allowed to get away with writing a book about something everyone knows it is about and not actually writing about any of these things is, to say the least, rather frustrating. I’m sure that in some countries there is probably even a law against this sort of thing.

It might just be me, but I would have thought that if you are going to write the FIRST epic in the Western Literary Tradition it does seem somewhat presumptuous to assume people know the back story. I know I can be naïve at times, but if first is to mean anything, surely it doesn’t really allow the writer to assume everyone already knows the back story. Instead, this book starts a mere 9 years after the war had began. There is precious little by way of explaining how we got here. And it ends the day before the final battle for Troy and before anyone seems to have come up with the idea of a wooden horse with a hollow middle.

Spoilers start more or less now – if you are worried.

A lot of this is boys’ own adventure stuff. Also a bit like the Godfather films in which they seem to have decided not to kill any two major characters in exactly the same way. Bronze swords knocking out teeth before plunging through skull with attendant buckets of blood and spraying brain matter plays, be well assured, a large part in this book. If I have any criticism at all it is that the war bits were over-long and after a while became all a bit same/same. In fact, by close to the end I was thinking I had had more than enough and was looking forward to the whole thing being over.

And then that totally unexpected end! Jesus, what a way to finish a book. I was blown away.

Achilles does not really come out of this book looking too good. I know he is meant to be a bit of a hero (the only things I knew about him before this being he had been dipped in a river as a child to protect him from harm and held by the ankles, so therefore these were his only venerable parts – and of course, none of this is actually mentioned here, though I suspect you are meant to already know). The whole book revolves around Achilles being annoyed at having his girlfriend taken from him and him spending most of the time in a petulant rage about to go home, stuck in one of his ships while all hell is breaking lose around him. Hector certainly seems the ‘better man’ in all this – even though he is a Trojan. This was something else I hadn’t expected.

The thing I really like about the Greek Gods – and the reason Plato said that the poets shouldn’t be allowed to write stories about them – is that they are just this huge dysfunctional family. Nothing they like better than getting involved in human affairs and causing infinitely more trouble than they are worth. I also like that even when they know the outcome of something – Troy will fall, for example – that doesn’t stop them remaining loyal and supporting their favourite side all the same. It is as if the West Moorabbin Under Twelves are being put up against Manchester United all stars team and the dads of the under twelves are turning up to support their kids. Everyone knows the outcome, but all the same… “Go Johnny!”

A lot of this is of more than just passing interest in the sense that it gives a fascinating (and tragically realistic) account of the horrors of warfare in the ancient world – and these horrors are many and graphic. Both sides foresee what is to happen to the women of Troy once the battle is over, for example, and this is none-too-pretty. All the same, after book after book of this I was well over these endless descriptions. But then book 24. Hector has been killed. Achilles killed him to revenge the death of his friend Patroclus, who Hector had killed and tried to quarter and feed to the dogs. Achilles is overpowered by grief for his friend and as a mark of respect slaughters 12 boys of Troy as an offering at the funeral of Patroclus (hard to express my disgust at this – not the act of a ‘hero’). He also spends days dragging Hector’s body about (ironically enough, attached to his chariot by the ankles) around the funeral site of his friend in some sort of bizarre ritual that is neither improved in report nor in deed, I think the line ran). I had never really thought about the significance of bodies after they have died in war – but psychologically, knowing (or worse, as in this case, not knowing, but assuming) what the enemy are doing to the dead body of your child, is, without question, unspeakably horrible.

To regain his son’s body and to give it a proper funeral, Priam goes to Achilles and is helped there by the gods. He kisses the hand of his son’s murderer and begs for his body so as to be able to give him a proper funeral. Like I said, a remarkably moving end to the poem.

I used to think that a good definition of a classic would be ‘a book that is rarely about what you think it is about before you read it’. As always, I was much too timid in my definition. It seems that a classic is NEVER about what you think it will be about before you read it. If they are particularly good classics, they are also not about what you think they were about while you were reading them either. This is an excellent case in point.

They lived in a house where a narrow enfilade made up for a pitch to make up for an amateurish game of cricket with one opening to the hall room and the other two to a bedroom and kitchen facing opposite to each other. As any elder sibling is wont to do, he sneaked into the younger sibling’s bedroom and passed taunts in an attempt to slake his vengeance for the previous match lost. The challenge of a re-game to settle the dust on who is the better player would finally lead to a recollection of past games which were remembered distinctly by the two challengers in a way that favored them. The younger brother readily accepted the challenge of a replay of the previous final to settle the mad confusion of pride.
In a series of events rife with verbal intimidation and disagreements they reached up to the last ball of the final over where the younger brother had to take up a run to win the game. The bowler weighed his options and decided to propel the final ball to the weak-spot of the batsman, a well-known weakness although taking the risk of the batsman correctly anticipating it. The ball was bowled out of the reach of the batsman with its first bounce onto the floor which would in its further movement move inwards leaving the batsman with no option other than to send the ball into the hallway and in order to completely execute the shot the batsman had to shift to his weaker leg leaving him in an awkward position which made it a difficult shot to play.
As feared by the bowler, the ball was anticipated correctly and was successfully sent into the hallway and the batsmen hurtled towards the opposite end to get the single run and win the game. Little did he realize the ball dragged across the complete diagonal of the hall and reached for the showcase containing the statue of the famed discus thrower.





The statue was bought from Italy by a young man with the same smile the boy had when he reached the crease and made the winning run. The toppling sound of the statue wiped the familiar grin of the little boy’s face. He launched a frenzied run towards the showcase. He dropped to his knees and held the tiny piece of the disc thrower’s ankle which was separated from the statue owing to the ball’s force. Contrary to reacting like a child and blaming his ill-fate, he marveled at the lithe body frame of the man holding the disc, the smooth curves of the statue and why it held a special place in his father’s heart. It wasn’t just the materialistic build of its physical form. It existed among all the other antiques in the shelf but it held a special place in his father’s remembrance of his younger days indulging in Greek mythological sculptures and paintings. It had held him in a peculiar state of rapture every time he glanced at the statue.
That is the exact point of commencement of a passion the younger brother still pursues to this date. His love for statues depicting stories of an expansive mythology where men talked to the Gods, where empires fell, where heroes retaliated against a higher force, how men exulted and pride blinded them, how the Gods would favour their mortal child and often fought against other deathless Gods only realizing the mortality of humans and their petty battles leading to nothing other than a purposeless satiation of one’s ego. What merely seemed like stories found a home in the boy’s heart.
The passion sill goes strong. Have you ever been deeply conscious of a passion you pursue so as to precisely depict the impingement of an ongoing rush of adrenaline hitting you every time you think of it? The tragedy, the unending conquest of humans as well as the Gods to extend their hands and rapaciously grab onto something higher than self ultimately leading to their downfall. The realization of hubris and the rationale behind it and yet repeating our mistakes seem to be a common theme yet the circumstances and the reasoning behind it always make the stories worth the read. This conspicuous theme with a backdrop of bloody violence and unfair dealings to the mortals leaves with the same expression and the same learnings which could be possibly abstracted from other pieces of Greek literature but it still connects me to the human side of events guided by force. Interesting thing about force is the way a human being would perceive it. It might just be the different emotions depicted as Gods. Or simply an ephemeral piece of conscious driving motives in the characters.

I had originally intended to write a review sticking to my usual skeptical reader perspective trying to base them on facts and giving ratings depending on the degree of mitigating my skeptical nature towards a book but I have failed in doing so and I’m happy I did. I apologize for the disjointed review though and would gladly agree that my bias towards Greek mythology drove me to give this book a 5 star rating.

Also, this probably might be the only passion I share with my father and in a recent telephonic conversation since we hardly meet thrice a year I told him I was reading ‘Iliad’. He replied, “Now? But you already know the complete story.” And yes I would still give it a 5-star if I re-read it.

شاید کمتر کسی باشه که با جنگ تروآ آشنا نباشه و یا در گوشه کناره ها درباره این اثر (ایلیاد) نشنیده باشه.
ایلیاد داستان سال آخر جنگ تروآ یعنی سال نهم و آخرین سال جنگ، برای کسانی که نمیدونند این داستان چی هست و یا کلیت کتاب چی هست خلاصه کوتاهی از داستان رو در پایین مینویسم:

در پی جشن عروسی برگزار شده توسط خدای آسمان ها زئوس، اریس الهه کشمکش و یا نفاق به این جشن دعوت نشد که خب فکر میکنم بتوند حدس بزنید چرت دعوت نشده، پس از این موضوع این الهه سیبی طلایی رو به داخل مهمانی پرتاب میکنه که روی اون نوشته شده برای زیباترین زن، و سه اله با نام های: هرا ، آتنه و آفرودیت هر سه ادعای مالکیت بر سیب میکنند و از اونجایی که به نتیجه نمیرسند از زئوس درخواست میکنند تا بین این سه داوری کند و از اونجایی که زئوس حال و حوصله سر و کله زدن با این سه الهه رو نداره این داوری رو به پاریس زاده تروآ واگذار میکنه و طی صحبت هایی هرمس این سیب رو به دست پاریس میده و داوری بین این سه الهه رو روی دوش این مرد بینوا میذاره. سه الهه بعد از شنیدن این موضوع برهنه شدند و به سوی پارس رفتند و از او خواستند تا بهترین رو انتخاب کنه و هرکدوم رشوه ای به پاریس پیشنهاد دادند، هرا پادشاهی اروپا و آسیا ، آتنا به او جنگاوری و خرد و آفرودیت زیباترین زن اسپارت یعنی هلن رو پیشنهاد داد و از اونجایی که پاریس ما سست بوده پیشنهاد آفرودیت رو قبول میکنه و این همه تراژدی و غم و خوشی را در به نام جنگ تروآ رغم میزنه، چرا که پاریس پس از دادن سیب به آفرودیت در مهمانیی هلن رو از دست همسرش منالئوس میدزده.

خب داستان و علت جنگ تروآ اینطوری شروع شد، حالا بریم سراغ داستان اصلی که در این منظومه روایت میشه:

برای شخص من یکی از جذابترین تجربه ها خوندن این کتاب و یا منظومه بود، درگیری بین خدایان، انسان ها و دخالت هاشون در امور همدیگه بسیار جذاب بود، حقیقتا قبل شروع حس میکردم با توجه به اینکه این منظومه بالای 2500 سال پیش سروده شده، نتونم باهاش ارتباط بگیرم و خوندنش حوصله سر بر باشه و در وهله اول این شک و ابهام من راجع این اثر رفع شد.

شخصا در ادبیات و کتابخوانی با کتاب های داستانی که نبرد در اونها و توصیفات نبرد نقش بسزایی داره و یا تمرکز روشون هست برای من چنان جذاب نخواهد بود ولی در این منظومه برعکس بود، بطوری که از خط به خط این نبردها بین قهرمانان و یا لشگریان و حتی دخالت خدایان در این جنگ و در پی هدفی که بودند برای من به شدت زیبا بود و لذت میبردم، رجز‌خوانی ها حرکت سربازان و آماده شدن آنها برای رزم.

درباره شخصیت های مورد علاقم باید به هکتور، آژاکس، دیومد اشاره کنم.
هر یک از شخصیت های داستان نمادین هستند، به طور مثال شخصیت آگاممنون شخصیتی متکبر و خودبین که بخاطر منافع شخصی دل قهرمان خود را میکشند و همین باعث میشود که لشگرش تلفات زیادی تحمیل بشه و تفرقه بین فرماندهانش افتد.
به جرات میتوان گفت در آثار غربی یکی از حماسی ترین کتاب ها بود، یعنی وقتی این منظومه رو مطالعه میکنیم معنای کلی حماسه رو در میابیم.
و خب لازم به ذکر هست که این منظومه بی نقص هم نیست، بار ها شاید رفتار های کودکانه و قهر و آشتی ها و گریه های کودکی که اسباب بازیش رو ازش گرفتند نیز هستیم که گاها باعث میشد به این رفتار شخصیت ها بخندم ...

تراژدی .... در مورد تراژدی باید بگم که یکی از زیباترین ها برای من بود، دوستی عزیز از دست رفته و بار ها و بارها باعث غم و اندوهی جانکاه همراه با اشک هایی برای کسی چون برادر از دست رفته رو در این داستان میبینیم که واقعا خوندنش برام احساسات را کما بیش برانگیخته میکرد و اون حس غم رو خوب القا میکرد.

سخت بود برای همچین کتابی چیزی بنویسم و سعی کردم اون حسی که از کتاب گرفتم رو در اینجا بنویسم، و برای نقد این کتاب اشخاص بسیار بزرگرتری هستند که با دانش بار ها و بار ها این اثر رو از جنبه های مختلف بررسی کردند.

ممنون که این ریویو رو خوندید

i wish i could do some messed up shit then just be like oh sorry actually the gods made me do that . i actually really want to pick up other translations (i’m looking at you caroline alexander) and experience it again but different! there’s so much emotion i just am so interested in how different translators handles it! (im not going to rate this bc ? it feels weird rating it ? but i loved it obviously)

Oh my favourite sins!!! To be enjoyed on this thirteenth stop on the world tour - Ancient Greece.

Pride, wrath, revenge, honour, anger, stubbornness, and the relentless pursuit of glory in war. All constant themes in this godly work of art. A giant in Greek Mythology. A poetic masterpiece which is complex, busy with lots of characters and an abundance of Olympian gods. Fascinating, timeless and unforgettable but not an easy read.

I wish I had reviewed this when I read in my teens because now I have so many images of Achilles - not just the great warrior but also the tempestuous and sulking little devil that the book does not shy away from portraying. In fact, much of this book is told years into the Trojan wars and opens with a quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon which results in Achilles refusing to fight because of the dishonour Agamemnon shows Achilles by stealing his female slave. And so this deadly game or war, revenge and power ensues between the Trojans, Achaeans, Greek heroes, and Olympian gods all making their mark on this richly observed story/ poem.

The contrast of courage and petty quarrels not just among the human characters but Greek gods is fascinating. So too are the themes which makes this historical account captivating and compelling.

I also loved the book ‘Song of Achilles’ because I felt it was more aligned to the way Achilles is portrayed in The Iliad. Watching the films - although blockbusters they are not how Homer depicted the great warrior Achilles who was flawed, stubborn and driven more by rage than common sense.

The Iliad is one of those books you should read in your lifetime. Going in though, remember it’s not what you see in the movies. This is Homer’s story and how he wants you to enjoy this godly world and Greek Mythology.

Its is everything you would expect from Greek literature - dramatic, tragic and heroic.

So: the siege of Ilium of Troy has been going on for nearly ten years, when Agamemnon angers Achilles - enough to make him not participate in the war - with the result that following battles are often dominated by the Trojans, with Hector particularly playing the hero's part. But at a certain point, something happens that may change Achilles's mind...

Read this 1946 Rieu translation, revised and updated in 2003 by Jones and another Rieu. At the start are the lists of the main characters in groups (some god-names are in English form, fe. Strife, not Eris), plus 5 maps; at the end is glossary and a list of omitted fathers' names. The introduction is spoilery; each chapter of the story itself comes with short plot description, and smaller side-titles are used within the chapter itself, which can be helpful if you're searching for a particular point in the chapter.

This story was composed c.700 BC, from oral tradition stories.
Only part of the whole 'Greeks go against Trojan's to get back one leader's wife' is given in this book, so it may feel a bit strange to see where it ends, before the whole story is truly finished, and before the war can be over. Achilles doesn't die yet, though he knows he will; Ilium is not yet conquered, nor has Aeneas yet barely escaped to be part of his own story that is Virgil's "Aenid". 4/5ths of the story happens in 4 days.

During the story one might find oneself changing one's mind about which sides deserves to be favored more more than once. And you may also find taking sides about which god(s) deserve reader's admiration and who doesn't. The gods in some ways act like humans (and can be wounded like them though they can't die), and in other times acting according to some god-logic and you may hate or like that. The humans in the stories may or may not realise they're being influenced by them, or they may notice gods putting pressure on them to act certain ways. How much of the story is true history is not certain, but there might be some memories of Mycenian/Minoan world in there.

The battles follow a certain battle when it comes to killings, and there's some good variety in what type of battles they are. People make wise or foolish moves during it (like the wealthy but foolish Dolon). Quite a lot of death are graphic and dark - eyeballs and innards and brains (o my) - and sometimes even the horses in the chariots do die (they also show their mourning, and on one occasion are able to talk). Sacrifices to gods are made and often, though they don't always work. I was also a bit surprised that there would be funeral games after the cremation of Patroclus, but I guess it was the thing to do at that time.
(I do think that there are two words I don't like in this translation - the use of 'bitch' and 'slut' - was this something chosen, something that was thought to be ok to translate like this during the time the original translation was done? What would Emily Wilson, who recently translated the Odyssey, say about this?)

Pasts are recalled, there is some flash-forward in telling what will happen in the future all of a sudden; and the POV sometimes switches from "he" to "you", which is interesting. The storyteller also calls certain people fools or innocents for believing things will go certain ways during the battle or elsewhere; during some people's deaths he might also tell of consequences of this for their families.
I was a bit surprised yet glad that among the place names that briefly appear is Athos in chapter 14 (just one of my areas of religious interest I read books about elsewhere).

I also had to check about lions in Greece, since they were used as an example for some actions and behaviors so many times, if they were common in the country back at the time of the composition of this book's story; (as quoted from Wiki): "In Greece, [the lions were] common as reported by Herodotus in 480 BC; it was considered rare by 300 BC and extirpated (eradicated) by AD 100."

So though the story itself is somewhat simple (Achilles' refusal and its consequences), it's far from boring, but perhaps that's because I've been reading it at the right time of my life. It's not an anti-war story, but it does show you all the moods that flow during battles, what deaths can be like, how exhausting, confusing, and frightening it can be, and how who's dominating the battle can change so fast. The story might end before the war is completely over, but what happens here has consequences, for both Achilles and Ilium... beautiful, horrifying and interesting, all the details and behaviors and actions and consequences - it's easy for me to see why this is such a good story and a classic. Now on to reading Odyssey...