Faber, 2015, pp. 341
In this sun, swords and sandals summer of Hellenic excess, now is the perfect time to revisit Christopher Logue’s War Music but, if you are as yet unfamiliar with his account of Homer’s Iliad then, appetite whetted by Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, you’ll appreciate the cinematic vision of Logue’s masterpiece.
Logue’s military service in the Black Watch (1944 – 1945) was not plain sailing and, as as his obituary in The Guardian records, he was court-martialled and served 16 months for his role in a scheme to sell stolen pay books. By 1960, Logue was a member of Bertrand Russell’s Committee of 100, campaigning for nuclear disarmament and, in 1961, he was back in the dock, this time at Bow Street magistrates court, where he was charged as ‘a disturber of the peace, in that you have incited members of the public to commit breaches of the peace and breaches of the law and in particular have incited diverse persons unknown unlawfully to obstruct the highway at or in the vicinity of Parliament Square.’ Perhaps this goes some way in explaining his interest in the wrath of Achilles: one the one hand, Achilles is a professional soldier but, on the other, he is stymied by his principled, self-lacerating disgust at the conduct of his leader, Agamemnon. Achilles rebukes his king, saying:
And from now on,
Seeing your leadership has left me leaderless,
I shall not fight for you, or by your side,
Or for, or by, these federal lords that let you live.
Despite the hauteur of this sentiment, elsewhere, War Music is unsettling and strange. As Achilles and Agamemnon tussle over Briseis, a woman enslaved as a result of the Trojan war, Agamemnon justifies his seizure of Achilles’ property saying that:
As God has taken Cryzia from me
I shall take his prize she, Briseis, from him.
The timeless quality of these lines shames our species. Rape and gender-based violence are still endemic to conflict and the narrator’s routine references to women as ‘shes’ is an act of objectification: they are bloodstock as much as women. Behind Troy’s walls, even Helen fares no better. Here we see her being schooled in submission by Aphrodite:
Tall, beautiful, alone,
Wearing a long, translucent, high-necked dress.
Gold beads the size of ant-heads separate her girdle’s pearls. […]
‘So, when they lift the curtains, and he looks – you hesitate.
And then you say: Take me, and I shall please you.’
Pause.
‘What do you say?’
‘Take me, and I shall please you.’
‘Good. Now in you go.’
Perhaps this distasteful encounter ought to be no less shocking than Apollo’s interference on the battlefield but Aphrodite’s a goddess, not a god, and that makes her role as pander all the more distasteful as she schools Helen in theatrical, submissive diffidence.
Given their exploitation of their worshippers, Logue’s decision to make Greek and Trojan prayers sound as if they would be at home in a Christian context cocks an oblique snook at all gods and all religions, no matter the time, no matter the place. As Patroclus wades into battle, Achilles prays:
Our Father, Who rules in Heaven,
Because Your will is done where will may be
Grant me this prayer.
A few pages on, the Trojan hero, Gray, prays to Apollo:
Wherever you may be,
And you are everywhere,
And everywhere you hear
Men in their trouble.
Gray’s prayer might as well be a psalm, and serves to underscore that, regardless of the politics of the day, combatants are more united than they are divided. As the narrator observes grimly:
Hard to say who is who: the fighter, the heroes,
Their guts look alike.
A great reason to read an epic poetry is to savour its language and Logue’s magpie mind stitches moments of memorable beauty into his tapestry. We catch an echo of Heaney as Apollo takes ‘a corner of the sky / Between his finger and his thumb’ and Christopher Reid, Logue’s friend and editor of this edition, points the reader to a range of borrowings from Keats, Tennyson, Shakespeare and others. There are references to popular culture here too. Books 5 and 6 of Logue’s account are entitled ‘All Day Permanent Red’ – a borrowing from a Revlon lipstick ad which enjoys a deserved eternity on the blood-soaked sand. Its epic similes are striking. (Check out Alice Oswald’s Memorial for her heart-breaking collection of similes drawn from Iliad: domestic and poignant). Logue’s invite the reader to connect one hot, dusty conflict with another, as time collapses and the siege of Troy represents all wars. Ajax, for example, is ‘Grim underneath his tan as Rommel after ‘Alamein’ and, as he is overwhelmed by Trojan forces:
The iron chaps of Ajax’ helmet slapped his cheeks
To soft red pulp, and his head reached back and forth
Like a clapper inside a bell made out of sword blades.
With the instincts of a war photographer, Logue lets his images do the talking. If you are familiar with Paul Watson’s haunting photograph of the desecration of the body of American staff sergeant William David Cleveland [content warning], paraded through the streets of Mogadishu during the 1993 Battle of the Black Sea, then you will catch its echoes in the mutilation of Patroclus:
Anaxapart has tied Patroclus’ body to a shield:
Spreadeagled on its front
With Zeeteez and Opknocktophon as crucifers.
And much as their posterity will spurn
Vampires with garlic, ignorance with thought,
Those Trojans elevate his corpse and claim:
‘Gangway for Troy!’
While in the chariot length their idol gains,
With finger bells and feathered necklacing,
Molo the Dancer from Cymatriax
Tugs at its penis as he squeaks:
‘Achilles’ love!’
If you don’t know War Music yet, then this summer is the perfect time to become acquainted with this brilliant response to the Greek epic. No, I’ve not watched Nolan’s The Odyssey, but I am grateful to it for engendering the desire to reread Logue.