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Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad
To retrieve the Iliad's energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story and her account focuses by turns on Homer's extended similes and on the brief biographies of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more than names, but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably – and unforgotten – in the copiousness of Homer's glance.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published October 6, 2011
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4860 people want to read
About the author
Alice Oswald
35 books228 followersAlice Oswald (born 1966) is a British poet who won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England.
Alice Oswald is the sister of actor Will Keen and writer Laura Beatty.
In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.
Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a "... moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep... a celebration of difference... " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).
In 2009 she published both A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.
Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South-West of England.
Alice Oswald is the sister of actor Will Keen and writer Laura Beatty.
In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.
Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a "... moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep... a celebration of difference... " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.
In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).
In 2009 she published both A Sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.
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January 11, 2018
The poetry of Alice Oswald is preternatural…preternaturally gorgeous, preternaturally immediate and relevant and precise. We want to sink into that language and be in that bright place—perhaps not to live (among the flashing swords), but to die there, amongst one’s brethren, with poetry read and songs sung in one’s honor.
Everything about this book is beautiful, and new and bright and contemporary. The Afterword written by Eavan Boland answers all the questions one has while reading this wholly original poem, this ‘oral cemetery’ memorializing the men who fought the Trojan War. I am tempted to suggest you read the Afterword first, but no, of course you must proceed directly to the glory that is the language exploring the feel of the Iliad, a story with so many deaths, so many deaths of young and old and brave and foolish and handsome men.
Everything about this book is beautiful, and new and bright and contemporary. The Afterword written by Eavan Boland answers all the questions one has while reading this wholly original poem, this ‘oral cemetery’ memorializing the men who fought the Trojan War. I am tempted to suggest you read the Afterword first, but no, of course you must proceed directly to the glory that is the language exploring the feel of the Iliad, a story with so many deaths, so many deaths of young and old and brave and foolish and handsome men.
EPICLES a Southerner from sunlit LyciaOswald gives the names she memorializes at the beginning of her work and then proceeds to tell in startlingly immediate language, how exactly they met their end, or some tiny biographical note that makes them, contrarily, come alive.
Climbed the Greek wall remembering the river
That winds between his wheat fields and his vineyards
He was knocked backwards by a rock
And sank like a diver
The light in his face went out…
…Even AMPHIMACHOS died and he was a rarity
A green-eyed changeable man from Elis
He was related to Poseidon
You would think the sea could do something
But it just lifted and flattened lifted and flattened.
EUCHENOR a kind of suicideOswald tells us that the ancient critics of the Iliad praised its ‘enargeia,’ or ‘bright unbearable reality.’ And that is exactly how we perceive the language Oswald gives us: all the bright young brave men, all dead.
Carried the darkness inside him of a dud choice
Either he could die at home of sickness
Or at Troy of a spear wound
His mother was in tears
His father was in tears but
Cold as a coin he took the second option…
ECHEPOLUS a perfect fighterOswald strips the narrative from the oral tradition and gives us a kind of lament poetry aimed at translucence rather than translation. She wants to help us see through to what Homer was looking at. But the context is remarkably unnecessary. It is about young men at war. We understand immediately, sadly.
Always ahead of his men
Known for his cold seed-like concentration
Moving out and out among the spears
Died at the hands of Antilochus
You can see the hole in the helmet just under the ridge
Where the point of the blade passed through
And stuck in his forehead
Letting the darkness leak down over his eyes.
And IPHITUS who was born in the snowThe poetry of war. Breathtaking. Heartbreaking.
Between two tumbling trout-stocked rivers
Died on the flat dust
Not far from DEMOLEON and HIPPODAMAS
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May 29, 201810/10
I've been robbed of my first words on this review by Eavan Boland, who begins an afterword by describing this work as luminous. Let me add transcendent. And sublime. And then, I should stop, for it is Oswald who owns the power of words, and not I.
But when has that ever stopped me?
Neither a re-interpretation, nor a translation of The Iliad, it's easy to suggest that Oswald channels the spirit of Homer through her incandescent verse. This is the Iliad as it was meant to be heard, through the voices of the dead, though not one of them speaks. Through their actions, through their failings, through the very act of falling down dead in the dust and blood, they sing a song of war that is horrific and appalling; they leave grave markers in the dirt, beside their bodies, that say quietly, eerily, be warned, for this is war.
The very rhythm of war echoes down the lines of the poems, beating a tattoo of loss and waste and shame. Oswald has chosen the most beautiful way possible to describe the ugliest possible actions and repercussions of war, and in this counterpoint, the monstrosity of loss is all the greater.
The cadence of her words has its own echo: a Greek chorus picks up the dirge, to rebound and reverberate long after the dead have been buried, in a disturbing hum in your soul.
Calling the ghost of DOLON
They remember an ugly man but quick
In a crack of light in the sweet smelling glimmer before dawn
He was caught creeping to the ships
He wore a weasel cap he was soft
Dishonest scared stooped they remember
How under a spear's eye he offered everything
All his father's money all his own
Every Trojan weakness every hope of their allies
Even the exact position of the Thracians
And the colour and size and price of the horses of Rhesus
They keep asking him why why
He gave away groaning every secret in his body
And was still pleading for his head
When his head rolled onto the mud
Like the fly the daredevil fly
Being brushed away
But busying back
The lunatic fly who loves licking
And will follow a man all day
For a nip of his blood
Like the fly the daredevil fly
Being brushed away
But busying back
The lunatic fly who loves licking
And will follow a man all day
For a nip of his blood
Every strength, every honour, every noble deed is here revealed; every indignity, every weakness, ever dishonour, every abasement is here exposed.
Like a man running in a dream
Can never approach a man escaping
Who can never escape a man approaching
This is the Iliad as not even Homer imagined it could be; or imagined it, but was waiting for Oswald to pick up the echo.
Thanks to Trish for her excellent review which first made me aware of this work.
I've been robbed of my first words on this review by Eavan Boland, who begins an afterword by describing this work as luminous. Let me add transcendent. And sublime. And then, I should stop, for it is Oswald who owns the power of words, and not I.
But when has that ever stopped me?
Neither a re-interpretation, nor a translation of The Iliad, it's easy to suggest that Oswald channels the spirit of Homer through her incandescent verse. This is the Iliad as it was meant to be heard, through the voices of the dead, though not one of them speaks. Through their actions, through their failings, through the very act of falling down dead in the dust and blood, they sing a song of war that is horrific and appalling; they leave grave markers in the dirt, beside their bodies, that say quietly, eerily, be warned, for this is war.
The very rhythm of war echoes down the lines of the poems, beating a tattoo of loss and waste and shame. Oswald has chosen the most beautiful way possible to describe the ugliest possible actions and repercussions of war, and in this counterpoint, the monstrosity of loss is all the greater.
The cadence of her words has its own echo: a Greek chorus picks up the dirge, to rebound and reverberate long after the dead have been buried, in a disturbing hum in your soul.
Calling the ghost of DOLON
They remember an ugly man but quick
In a crack of light in the sweet smelling glimmer before dawn
He was caught creeping to the ships
He wore a weasel cap he was soft
Dishonest scared stooped they remember
How under a spear's eye he offered everything
All his father's money all his own
Every Trojan weakness every hope of their allies
Even the exact position of the Thracians
And the colour and size and price of the horses of Rhesus
They keep asking him why why
He gave away groaning every secret in his body
And was still pleading for his head
When his head rolled onto the mud
Like the fly the daredevil fly
Being brushed away
But busying back
The lunatic fly who loves licking
And will follow a man all day
For a nip of his blood
Like the fly the daredevil fly
Being brushed away
But busying back
The lunatic fly who loves licking
And will follow a man all day
For a nip of his blood
Every strength, every honour, every noble deed is here revealed; every indignity, every weakness, ever dishonour, every abasement is here exposed.
Like a man running in a dream
Can never approach a man escaping
Who can never escape a man approaching
This is the Iliad as not even Homer imagined it could be; or imagined it, but was waiting for Oswald to pick up the echo.
Thanks to Trish for her excellent review which first made me aware of this work.
January 18, 2024
Die Ilias ist das grausamste aller antiken Gedichte. Homer beschönigt nicht den Tod eines Helden, nicht einmal den eines unbedeutenden Myrmidonen. Die griechischen und trojanischen Krieger erleiden ihr Schicksal auf gewalttätige, blutige und viszerale Weise – Homer ist nichts für schwache Nerven.
Mit Memorial verfolgt die britische Dichterin Alice Oswald die provokante Idee, das Gedicht auf zwei seiner markantesten Merkmale zu reduzieren: die grausamen Todesfälle und die Gleichnisse, die oft einen pastoralen Kontrapunkt zur Handlung bilden. Ihre Version verlagert das moralische Zentrum des Gedichts vom Zorn des Achilles und dem Tod Hektors zu einer mündlichen Geschichte der Toten. Oswald selbst nennt ihr Gedicht einen "mündlichen Friedhof" (Original: "oral cemetery"), ein passender Ausdruck, denn der Leser kann hier von Grab zu Grab schreiten und sich an jene erinnern, die verloren gegangen sind – "a reminder of all that's been lost". Die subtilen Schilderungen von Gefühlen, die auffallend moderne Psychologie, die antiken Taktiken, die schicksalsergebenen Krieger - all das fast drei Jahrtausende alte Leben ist auf wenig mehr als eine Bürokratie des Todes reduziert worden.
Trotz der lähmenden Verluste hat Oswalds Ilias eine seltsame, leuchtende Qualität. Wenn man die Erzählung weglässt, bleiben nur noch Nachrufe übrig - und die häuslichen Gleichnisse, die die alltägliche antike Welt einbeziehen: Winzerinnen, die ihre Kichererbsen putzen, eine Frau, die ihre Webarbeiten abwägt, Fische, die versuchen, einem wütenden Delphin zu entkommen. Oswald bringt das Gedicht näher an die Zeugungen der Genesis, die Fakten durch den Nebel der Zeit tragen sollen, als an die Erzählungen von Beowulf und Roland, die zwar in der Geschichte beginnen, aber in der Legende enden.
Unsere Version der Ilias wurde gegen Ende einer vermutlich jahrhundertelangen mündlichen Überlieferung verfasst - die Ilias besaß wie die Odyssee und andere mündlich überlieferte Gedichte die genetische Fähigkeit, sich selbst zu reproduzieren, sich bei jedem Vortrag zu verändern, neue Details aufzunehmen, selbst wenn alte verworfen wurden, aber immer erkennbar zu bleiben. Fast nichts von dem, was in dem Gedicht vorkommt, lässt sich mit Sicherheit auf die mykenischen Griechen zurückführen.
Oswalds komprimierte Version des Gedichts ist grob unvollständig, eine Ilias nach Jahrhunderten weiterer Verluste und der Hinzufügung einiger moderner Artefakte wie Fallschirme und Motorräder. Oswald hat einen ruhigen Weg gefunden, dem Tod zu begegnen. Die Krieger sind weniger dadurch gekennzeichnet, wer sie waren, als dadurch, wie sie gestorben sind - das gehört zum Ethos des Krieges, wo ein heldenhaftes Leben durch einen feigen Tod getrübt werden kann:
Das Leben der Ilias ist hier verschwunden - ein Leben, das oft kleinlich, mürrisch, lächerlich, aber immer im Bewusstsein der Sterblichkeit ist. Doch die Reduzierung des brutalen Kampfes des Epos auf Nachrufe, die sich auf die kleinen Könige und unglücklichen Soldaten konzentrieren, unterstreicht die schockierende Verschwendung dieser Menschenleben. Oswalds Kriegsdenkmal hat die vergessenen Namen in Marmor gemeißelt. Sie hat ein Gedicht geschaffen, das aus dem Gemetzel erblüht.
Mit Memorial verfolgt die britische Dichterin Alice Oswald die provokante Idee, das Gedicht auf zwei seiner markantesten Merkmale zu reduzieren: die grausamen Todesfälle und die Gleichnisse, die oft einen pastoralen Kontrapunkt zur Handlung bilden. Ihre Version verlagert das moralische Zentrum des Gedichts vom Zorn des Achilles und dem Tod Hektors zu einer mündlichen Geschichte der Toten. Oswald selbst nennt ihr Gedicht einen "mündlichen Friedhof" (Original: "oral cemetery"), ein passender Ausdruck, denn der Leser kann hier von Grab zu Grab schreiten und sich an jene erinnern, die verloren gegangen sind – "a reminder of all that's been lost". Die subtilen Schilderungen von Gefühlen, die auffallend moderne Psychologie, die antiken Taktiken, die schicksalsergebenen Krieger - all das fast drei Jahrtausende alte Leben ist auf wenig mehr als eine Bürokratie des Todes reduziert worden.
Trotz der lähmenden Verluste hat Oswalds Ilias eine seltsame, leuchtende Qualität. Wenn man die Erzählung weglässt, bleiben nur noch Nachrufe übrig - und die häuslichen Gleichnisse, die die alltägliche antike Welt einbeziehen: Winzerinnen, die ihre Kichererbsen putzen, eine Frau, die ihre Webarbeiten abwägt, Fische, die versuchen, einem wütenden Delphin zu entkommen. Oswald bringt das Gedicht näher an die Zeugungen der Genesis, die Fakten durch den Nebel der Zeit tragen sollen, als an die Erzählungen von Beowulf und Roland, die zwar in der Geschichte beginnen, aber in der Legende enden.
Unsere Version der Ilias wurde gegen Ende einer vermutlich jahrhundertelangen mündlichen Überlieferung verfasst - die Ilias besaß wie die Odyssee und andere mündlich überlieferte Gedichte die genetische Fähigkeit, sich selbst zu reproduzieren, sich bei jedem Vortrag zu verändern, neue Details aufzunehmen, selbst wenn alte verworfen wurden, aber immer erkennbar zu bleiben. Fast nichts von dem, was in dem Gedicht vorkommt, lässt sich mit Sicherheit auf die mykenischen Griechen zurückführen.
Oswalds komprimierte Version des Gedichts ist grob unvollständig, eine Ilias nach Jahrhunderten weiterer Verluste und der Hinzufügung einiger moderner Artefakte wie Fallschirme und Motorräder. Oswald hat einen ruhigen Weg gefunden, dem Tod zu begegnen. Die Krieger sind weniger dadurch gekennzeichnet, wer sie waren, als dadurch, wie sie gestorben sind - das gehört zum Ethos des Krieges, wo ein heldenhaftes Leben durch einen feigen Tod getrübt werden kann:
MNESIUS rolled in sand THRASIUS lost in siltDas Weglassen der langen Argumente und endlosen Reden, zwingt uns, die Ilias durch die Brille ihrer Todesfälle zu sehen und zu erkennen, wie außerordentlich gewalttätig sie ist. Oswalds Gedicht kann ergänzend zu Homer gelesen werden, es verwehrt uns, all die Namen jener, die in der Ilias sterben, zu vergessen. Oswald mahnt uns, uns zu erinnern. Sie legt die Blumen auf das Grab, das Homer schuf.
AINIOS turning somersaults in a black pool
Upside down among the licking fishes
And OPHELESTES his last breath silvering the surface
All that beautiful armour underwater
All those white bones sunk in mud
And instead of a burial a wagtail
Sipping the desecration unaware.
Das Leben der Ilias ist hier verschwunden - ein Leben, das oft kleinlich, mürrisch, lächerlich, aber immer im Bewusstsein der Sterblichkeit ist. Doch die Reduzierung des brutalen Kampfes des Epos auf Nachrufe, die sich auf die kleinen Könige und unglücklichen Soldaten konzentrieren, unterstreicht die schockierende Verschwendung dieser Menschenleben. Oswalds Kriegsdenkmal hat die vergessenen Namen in Marmor gemeißelt. Sie hat ein Gedicht geschaffen, das aus dem Gemetzel erblüht.
March 11, 2012
I have spent all weekend feeling somewhat dazed by this poem. I read it twice yesterday; I have spent today picking it up, leafing to favoured passages, putting it down again. I have bailed people up about it all over the internet. I am in the first flush of love, and I think this will be a life-long relationship.
'Memorial' is Oswald's re-writing (rather than a retelling) of the Iliad. She has stripped out all the narrative, all the alliances, the bickering, the backstory, the begging and threatening, blustering and posturing, the fate, the hubris, the tragic story arc. She has fined down the poem to two of its key features, ones perhaps obscured by the golden stories of Troy; brief descriptions of the non-heroic characters, and similes of nature, death, power, time. As she writes in the introduction:
The poem begins with eight pages of names: all caps, one per line, marching in formation down the page
As you read, you unconsciously slow your pace. You roll each unfamiliar syllable in your mouth. Some names spark a memory - most are just a litany of men. Named men. Dead men.
Then we launch into the poem
Each man is given his due - a word, a sentence, a stanza. We are told of homes, families, mothers, wives, characters. 'SIMOISIUS born on the banks of the Simois / Son of Anthemion his mother a shepherdress / Still following the sheep when she gave birth / A lithe and promising man unmarried.' And 'ECHEPOLUS a perfect fighter / Always ahead of his men / Known for his cold seed-like concentration'. And death comes to them ignobly, dirtily, bloodily, sharp and hard.
Interspersing these small stories of doom are the similes - some two lines long, some eight or twelve lines. Oswald takes Homer's descriptions of armies like swarms of bees, of hunting and hunted animals, of soldiers like stands of corn in the wind, and respins them. Each is printed twice, breaks over you once quickly and once more slowly.
I could quote and quote and quote from this book. It is some of the most marvellous writing I have ever read - smooth, soft and hard, small words that surprise you. Oswald has made the epic poem sing for me anew; has focused my eye, slowed my breathing, touched my heart.
'Memorial' is Oswald's re-writing (rather than a retelling) of the Iliad. She has stripped out all the narrative, all the alliances, the bickering, the backstory, the begging and threatening, blustering and posturing, the fate, the hubris, the tragic story arc. She has fined down the poem to two of its key features, ones perhaps obscured by the golden stories of Troy; brief descriptions of the non-heroic characters, and similes of nature, death, power, time. As she writes in the introduction:
This is a translation of the Iliad's atmosphere, not its story. Matthew Arnold (and almost everyone ever since) has praised the Iliad for its 'nobility'. But ancient critics praised its 'enargeia', which means something like 'bright unbearable reality'.It's the word used when gods come to earth not in disguise but as themselves. This version , trying to retrieve the poem's enargeia, takes away its narrative, as you might lift the roof off a church in order to remember what you're worshipping. What's left is a bipolar poem made of similes and short biographies of soldiers, both of which derive (I think) from distinct poetic sources: the similes from pastoral lyrics (you can tell this because their metre is sometimes compressed as if it originally formed part of a lyric poem); the biographies from the Greek tradition of lament poetry.
The poem begins with eight pages of names: all caps, one per line, marching in formation down the page
PROTESILAUS
ECHEPOLUS
ELEPHENOR
SIMOISIUS
LEUKOS
DEMOCOON
DIORES
PIROUS
As you read, you unconsciously slow your pace. You roll each unfamiliar syllable in your mouth. Some names spark a memory - most are just a litany of men. Named men. Dead men.
Then we launch into the poem
The first to die was PROTESILAUS
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower‐lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus Iton Pteleus Antron
He died in mid‐air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half‐built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Podarcus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He’s been in the black earth now for thousands of years
Each man is given his due - a word, a sentence, a stanza. We are told of homes, families, mothers, wives, characters. 'SIMOISIUS born on the banks of the Simois / Son of Anthemion his mother a shepherdress / Still following the sheep when she gave birth / A lithe and promising man unmarried.' And 'ECHEPOLUS a perfect fighter / Always ahead of his men / Known for his cold seed-like concentration'. And death comes to them ignobly, dirtily, bloodily, sharp and hard.
And PEDAEUS the unwanted one
The mistake of his father's mistress
Felt the hot shock in his neck of Meges' spear
Unswallowable sore throat of metal in his mouth
Right through his teeth
He died biting down on the spearhead
Interspersing these small stories of doom are the similes - some two lines long, some eight or twelve lines. Oswald takes Homer's descriptions of armies like swarms of bees, of hunting and hunted animals, of soldiers like stands of corn in the wind, and respins them. Each is printed twice, breaks over you once quickly and once more slowly.
As if it was June
A poppy being hammered by the rain
Sinks its head down
Its exactly like that
When a man's neck gives in
And the bronze calyx of his helmet
Sinks his head down
As if it was June
A poppy being hammered by the rain
Sinks its head down
Its exactly like that
When a man's neck gives in
And the bronze calyx of his helmet
Sinks his head down
I could quote and quote and quote from this book. It is some of the most marvellous writing I have ever read - smooth, soft and hard, small words that surprise you. Oswald has made the epic poem sing for me anew; has focused my eye, slowed my breathing, touched my heart.
DIORES son of Amarinceus
Struck by a flying flint
Died in a puddle of his own guts
Slammed down into the mud he lies
With his arms stretched out to his friends
And PIROUS the Thracian
You can tell him by his knotted hair
Lie alongside him
He killed him and was killed
There seem to be black flints
Everywhere a man steps
Like through the jointed grass
The long-stemmed deer
Almost vanishes
But a hound has already found her flattened tracks
And he's running through the fields towards her
Like through the jointed grass
The long-stemmed deer
Almost vanishes
But a hound has already found her flattened tracks
And he's running through the fields towards her
.....
SCAMANDRIUS the hunter
Knew every deer in the woods
He used to hear the voice of Artemis
Calling out to him in the lunar
No man's land of the mountains
She taught him to track her animals
But impartial death has killed the killer
Now Artemis with all her arrows can't help him up
His accurate firing arm is useless
Menelaus stabbed him
One spear-thrust through the shoulders
And the point cam out through the ribs
His father was Strophius
Like when a mother is rushing
And a little girl clings to her clothes
Wants help wants arms
Won't let her walk
Like staring up at that tower of adulthood
Wanting to be light again
Wanting this whole problem of living to be lifted
And carried on a hip
Like when a mother is rushing
And a little girl clings to her clothes
Wants help wants arms
Won't let her walk
Like staring up at that tower of adulthood
Wanting to be light again
Wanting this whole problem of living to be lifted
And carried on a hip
December 14, 2021
Στο μνημείο που “φιλοτέχνησε” η Alice Oswald για τους πεσόντες του Τρωϊκού πολέμου οι νεκροί δεν διακρίνονται σε Αχαιούς και Τρώες. Μνημονεύονται με τα ονόματά τους (και με γράμματα κεφαλαία) όπως θα αποτυπώνονταν σε οποιαδήποτε αναθηματική στήλη:
ΠΡΩΤΕΣΙΛΑΟΣ
ΕΧΕΠΩΛΟΣ
ΕΛΕΦΗΝΩΡ
ΣΙΜΟΕΙΣΙΟΣ
ΛΕΥΚΟΣ
ΔΗΚΟΟΩΝ κ.α.
Είναι τα θύματα ενός πολέμου, στον οποίο, αλίμονο, δεν συμμετείχαν μόνον ένδοξοι αρχηγοί και θεοί. Είναι οι «ανώνυμοι» παρόντες, οι «ποτέ από το χρέος μη κινούντες». Εκείνοι που δεν θα μνημονευθούν για τα ανδραγαθήματά τους και δεν θα επαινεθούν για την ανδρεία που επέδειξαν στην μάχη, παρότι πολέμησαν εξίσου ηρωικά με τους αρχηγούς τους. Όλοι τους άντρες ρωμαλέοι που η μοίρα το θέλησε να λαβωθούν στη μάχη και να αφήσουν την τελευταία τους πνοή έξω από τα τείχη της Τροίας, σ’ έναν χορό του θανάτου που διήρκεσε δέκα ολόκληρα χρόνια.
Από τον Πρωτεσίλαο, τον ηγέτη της θεσσαλικής Φυλάκης, που «πέθανε στον αέρα, πηδώντας για να φτάσει πρώτος στην γη», μέχρι τον Οφελέστη, που σκοτώθηκε από τον Αχιλλέα στις όχθες του ποταμού Σκαμάνδρου, και τον Έκτορα, τον επικεφαλής των Τρώων, που «πέθανε όπως όλοι οι άλλοι… αλλά το ήξερε ότι θα συνέβαινε αυτό», περισσότεροι από διακόσιοι πολεμιστές, στους οποίους η μοίρα επιφύλασσε το κλέος του εμπόλεμου θανάτου, κατονομάζονται από τον Όμηρο.
Οι περιγραφές των θανάτων των μικρών αυτών ηρώων διανθίζονται στο ποίημα της Alice Oswald με τις βιογραφίες τους και παρομοιώσεις - δάνεια από το ομηρικό έπος - από το βασίλειο της φύσης και της ζωής, συνθέτοντας ένα «διπολικό», όπως η ίδια η ποιήτρια το χαρακτήρισε, ποιητικό έργο που από τη μια πλευρά επιτελεί το λυτρωτικό έργο ενός θρηνητικού και επαινετικού τραγουδιού, ενός μοιρολογιού, κι από την άλλη εξυμνεί τη χαρά της ζωής, της δημιουργίας, της αναγέννησης.
«Ο ΙΛΙΟΝΕΥΣ μοναχοπαίδι στάθηκε άτυχος
Είχε πάντα κάτι το καλοβαλμένο
Οι γονείς του είχαν ένα κτήμα με πρόβατα
Δεν πίστευαν ότι θα πέθαινε
Μα ένα δόρυ πέρασε μέσα από το μάτι του
Κάθισε κάτω πέφτοντας προς τα πίσω
Προσπαθώντας ν’ αρπάξει πίσω το φως
Με τα χέρια απλωμένα
Όπως οι βελανιδιές που παραδέρνουν στους λόφους
Και στρέφουν το πρόσωπο στον άνεμο
Μέρα με τη μέρα σχεδόν απογειώνονται
Είναι στη γη δεμένες
Και δεν εγκαταλείπουν
Γαντζώνουν το σκοτάδι…»
ΠΡΩΤΕΣΙΛΑΟΣ
ΕΧΕΠΩΛΟΣ
ΕΛΕΦΗΝΩΡ
ΣΙΜΟΕΙΣΙΟΣ
ΛΕΥΚΟΣ
ΔΗΚΟΟΩΝ κ.α.
Είναι τα θύματα ενός πολέμου, στον οποίο, αλίμονο, δεν συμμετείχαν μόνον ένδοξοι αρχηγοί και θεοί. Είναι οι «ανώνυμοι» παρόντες, οι «ποτέ από το χρέος μη κινούντες». Εκείνοι που δεν θα μνημονευθούν για τα ανδραγαθήματά τους και δεν θα επαινεθούν για την ανδρεία που επέδειξαν στην μάχη, παρότι πολέμησαν εξίσου ηρωικά με τους αρχηγούς τους. Όλοι τους άντρες ρωμαλέοι που η μοίρα το θέλησε να λαβωθούν στη μάχη και να αφήσουν την τελευταία τους πνοή έξω από τα τείχη της Τροίας, σ’ έναν χορό του θανάτου που διήρκεσε δέκα ολόκληρα χρόνια.
Από τον Πρωτεσίλαο, τον ηγέτη της θεσσαλικής Φυλάκης, που «πέθανε στον αέρα, πηδώντας για να φτάσει πρώτος στην γη», μέχρι τον Οφελέστη, που σκοτώθηκε από τον Αχιλλέα στις όχθες του ποταμού Σκαμάνδρου, και τον Έκτορα, τον επικεφαλής των Τρώων, που «πέθανε όπως όλοι οι άλλοι… αλλά το ήξερε ότι θα συνέβαινε αυτό», περισσότεροι από διακόσιοι πολεμιστές, στους οποίους η μοίρα επιφύλασσε το κλέος του εμπόλεμου θανάτου, κατονομάζονται από τον Όμηρο.
Οι περιγραφές των θανάτων των μικρών αυτών ηρώων διανθίζονται στο ποίημα της Alice Oswald με τις βιογραφίες τους και παρομοιώσεις - δάνεια από το ομηρικό έπος - από το βασίλειο της φύσης και της ζωής, συνθέτοντας ένα «διπολικό», όπως η ίδια η ποιήτρια το χαρακτήρισε, ποιητικό έργο που από τη μια πλευρά επιτελεί το λυτρωτικό έργο ενός θρηνητικού και επαινετικού τραγουδιού, ενός μοιρολογιού, κι από την άλλη εξυμνεί τη χαρά της ζωής, της δημιουργίας, της αναγέννησης.
«Ο ΙΛΙΟΝΕΥΣ μοναχοπαίδι στάθηκε άτυχος
Είχε πάντα κάτι το καλοβαλμένο
Οι γονείς του είχαν ένα κτήμα με πρόβατα
Δεν πίστευαν ότι θα πέθαινε
Μα ένα δόρυ πέρασε μέσα από το μάτι του
Κάθισε κάτω πέφτοντας προς τα πίσω
Προσπαθώντας ν’ αρπάξει πίσω το φως
Με τα χέρια απλωμένα
Όπως οι βελανιδιές που παραδέρνουν στους λόφους
Και στρέφουν το πρόσωπο στον άνεμο
Μέρα με τη μέρα σχεδόν απογειώνονται
Είναι στη γη δεμένες
Και δεν εγκαταλείπουν
Γαντζώνουν το σκοτάδι…»
July 11, 2018
An Oral Cemetery
PROTESILAUSEight pages, five hundred names, the roll-call of the dead in the Trojan Wars, they call to mind the names chiseled into the white marble of so many war memorials, filling four sides of a towering column. British poet Alice Oswald's poem, variously subtitled "a version" or "an excavation of Homer's Iliad," begins not in verse but in cold statistics. She has extracted the names of every person killed, from Protesilaus down to Hector, without regard for heroism or rank, or even whether they were Trojan or Greek. War is war, death is death, no matter the reasons for which the armies were fighting.
ECHEPOLUS
ELEPHENOR
SIMOISIUS
LEUKOS
DEMOCOON
DIORES
PIROUS
PHEGEUS
IDAEUS
. . .
Then she goes through again, offering a brief eulogy or epitaph on all the slain warriors for whom Homer provides enough detail. But these passages are not strict translations of Homer. As she says herself:
I work closely with the Greek, but instead of carrying the words over into English, I use them as openings through which to see what Homer was looking at. I write through the Greek, not from it—aiming at translucence rather than translation.To show this in action, look at this passage (Book 6, 23–33) from the classic translation by Robert Fagles:
Euryalus killed Dresus, killed Opheltius,This is the monumental quality one has come to associate with Homer, the recitation of proper names and pedigrees giving weight to the mythic history. But Oswald is lighter, rearranging the sequence, omitting many of Homer's dynastic details and imagining new human ones; not even punctuation gets in the way of her fluid idyll:
turned and went for Pedasus and Aesepus, twins
the nymph of the spring Abarbarea bore Bucolion…
Bucolion, son himself to the lofty King Laomedon,
first of the line, though his mother bore the prince
in secrecy and shadow. Tending his flocks one day
Bucolion took the nymph in a strong surge of love
and beneath his force she bore him twin sons.
But now the son of Mecisteus hacked the force from
beneath them both and loosed their gleaming limbs
and tore the armor off the dead men's shoulders.
There was a blue pool who loved her lonelinessWhether by design or happenstance, there is a page turn just before the twins are named, making the outcome of that poolside passion seem even more harsh and abrupt. In Book 13, Homer has a sonorous passage of almost 50 lines concerning the death of Othryoneus, a suitor for King Priam's daughter Cassandra, who promised to prove himself worthy by great deeds in battle. But Oswald treats it with almost offhand irony, made poignant by the knowledge that Cassandra would be fated to prophesy the truth and never be believed:
Lay on her stones clear-eyed staring at trees
Her name was Abarbarea
A young man found her in the hills
He took one look at her shivering freshness
And stripped off his clothes
In the middle of his astonished sheep
He jumped off a rock right into her arms
And from that quick fling there were two children
PEDASUS and AESEPUS
They died at Troy on the same day.
In this love-story there was a manThe other element that Oswald has distilled from Homer is his plentiful use of nature images. After each brief portrait ending in a brutal death, she appends a simile, always beginning with "Like…" and making a comparison to something in the everyday world or the natural one:
Who wanted to marry Cassandra
And she was Priam's bright-eyed neurotic
Most beautiful daughter
And he was OTHRYON the dreamer
Who came from Cabesus with no money
When he offered his life for her hand
Her father accepted
And so the dreamer went blushing into battle and died
And everyone laughed and laughed
Except Cassandra.
Like crickets leaning on their elbows in the hedgesNone of these are actual translations, so far as I can see; at least they are not immediately associated in the Homer with the deaths that they follow. But they are absolutely Homeric, images that would be known to him and that recur frequently in his epithets, but with his grand pantheism made more immediate and more poignant. One last example must suffice:
Tiny dried up men speaking pure light
Like tribes of summer bees
Coming up from the underworld
out of a crack in a rock
A billion factory women flying to their flower work
Being born and reborn and shimmering over fields
SCAMANDRIUS the hunterA striking feature of the poem is that every one of these similes is immediately repeated, the two stanzas identical. At first it looks like a mistake. You are tempted to skip past the second time. But read them twice, and the meanings deepen and evolve, the beginning of each stanza gaining a different significance now that you know how it will end. The repetition turns mere narrative into a ritual of remembrance. As Eavan Boland writes in his excellent afterword…
Knew every deer in the woods
He used to hear the voice of Artemis
Calling out to him in the lunar
No man's land of the mountains
She taught him how to track her animals
But impartial death has killed the killer […]
Like when a mother is rushing
And a little girl clings to her clothes
Wants help wants arms
Won't let her walk
Like staring up at that tower of adulthood
Wanting to be light again
Wanting this whole problem of living to be lifted
And carried on a hip
…the soldiers die in one paragraph, but the world they lose occurs in two. The repetition builds throughout the poem into a sheer persuasion of sound. […] This bold practice aligns Memorial even more with the old, sacred purpose of the oral tradition, which is nothing less than to be an understudy for human memory. It is this which makes Memorial—in Oswald's eloquent phrase—"an oral cemetery."
September 18, 2014
Alice Oswald says her Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad is a translation of Iliad's atmosphere, not the story. The "Afterword" by the poet Eavan Boland tells us it's a catalog, comparing it to a cemetery for the Iliad's forgotten dead. These are the little-known warriors of the epic who receive only mention in Homer's poem. Oswald, in small verse biographies, brings them to the surface of the poem while letting Homer's heroes, the likes of Achilles and Agamemnon and Hector and Patroclus, sink out of sight. Each biography recording a man's death is followed by a short simile portraying some pastoral or domestic aspect of the man's life. Each simile is repeated in a process which Oswald explains is intended to present an elegy like that of a rhapsode which in Homer's Greece was followed by the chorus's repetition. The effect is stunning. I believe the similes the truest poetry of the book, even if Oswald tells us they're the closest to direct translation. An example:
Like the hawk of the hills the perfect killer
Easily outflies the clattering dove
She dips away but he follows he ripples
He hangs his black hooks over her
And snares her with a thin cry
In praise of her softness
James Joyce, who included many in his novels, thought catalogs created a reality. That's certainly the effect of Oswald's long poem. Memorial becomes a long elegiac contemplation of not only war but the tragic loss of men who disappear in the obscuring pervasiveness of battlefield death. She reminds us that men like Euchenor and Opites deserve to be brought from the depths of an Iliad veiled by the dust of desperate fighting and the agony of their own fear and pain to be remembered. She reminds us that they are 21st century men as well as 9th century warriors on the plains outside Troy. In elegant curve from the present, Oswald has swooped to snare the epic majesty of the past and in the process created a brilliance that illuminates Homer's work.
Like the hawk of the hills the perfect killer
Easily outflies the clattering dove
She dips away but he follows he ripples
He hangs his black hooks over her
And snares her with a thin cry
In praise of her softness
James Joyce, who included many in his novels, thought catalogs created a reality. That's certainly the effect of Oswald's long poem. Memorial becomes a long elegiac contemplation of not only war but the tragic loss of men who disappear in the obscuring pervasiveness of battlefield death. She reminds us that men like Euchenor and Opites deserve to be brought from the depths of an Iliad veiled by the dust of desperate fighting and the agony of their own fear and pain to be remembered. She reminds us that they are 21st century men as well as 9th century warriors on the plains outside Troy. In elegant curve from the present, Oswald has swooped to snare the epic majesty of the past and in the process created a brilliance that illuminates Homer's work.
February 4, 2017
Alice Oswald slashed seven-eights of Homer's epic and compacted it into a hypnotic sequence of biographic vignettes and pastoral similes. The shock of violent battlefield death is contrasted with timeless images of an elemental world subjected to an endless cycle of destruction and creation. A compelling antiphonal image of man in his world. And so very unlike anything else I have read. The poem's mesmerism is reinforced by the poetess' practice of (almost always) repeating the simile. This certainly contributes to the work's attractive pulse, which makes it a joy to read aloud. The only thing that I found to jar somewhat with the poem's magnificence were some of the contemporary words ('motorbike', 'typically') that the author included in the text. But that may be explained by Oswald's ambition to convey the Iliad's raw 'energeia' as opposed to its more generally appreciated nobility. I would love to read more by Oswald. This one I'm keeping on my nightstand for a while.
SARPEDON the son of Zeus
Came to this ungreen ungrowing ground
Came from his cornfields from his leafy river
From his kingdom of paths and apple groves
And was killed by a spear
Then for a long time he lay crumpled as linen
Until two soft-voiced servants Sleep and Death
Carried him home again they left him
Folded on the grass and a breeze from heaven
Almost lifted him up almost shook him out
And set him sighing and wispering but no one
Not even a great man not even a son of Zeus
Can buy or steal or borrow back his last breath
Once he has hissed it out
Through the shutter of his teeth
Like the blue flower of the sea
Being bruised by the wind
Like when the rain-wind
Bullies the warm wind
Battering the great soft sunlit clouds
Deep scoops of wind
Work the sea into a wave
And foam follows wandering gusts
A thousand feet high
Like the blue flower of the sea
Being bruised by the wind
Like when the rain-wind
Bullies the warm wind
Battering the great soft sunlit clouds
Deep scoops of wind
Work the sea into a wave
And foam follows wandering gusts
A thousand feet high
SARPEDON the son of Zeus
Came to this ungreen ungrowing ground
Came from his cornfields from his leafy river
From his kingdom of paths and apple groves
And was killed by a spear
Then for a long time he lay crumpled as linen
Until two soft-voiced servants Sleep and Death
Carried him home again they left him
Folded on the grass and a breeze from heaven
Almost lifted him up almost shook him out
And set him sighing and wispering but no one
Not even a great man not even a son of Zeus
Can buy or steal or borrow back his last breath
Once he has hissed it out
Through the shutter of his teeth
Like the blue flower of the sea
Being bruised by the wind
Like when the rain-wind
Bullies the warm wind
Battering the great soft sunlit clouds
Deep scoops of wind
Work the sea into a wave
And foam follows wandering gusts
A thousand feet high
Like the blue flower of the sea
Being bruised by the wind
Like when the rain-wind
Bullies the warm wind
Battering the great soft sunlit clouds
Deep scoops of wind
Work the sea into a wave
And foam follows wandering gusts
A thousand feet high
May 30, 2020
“Like when god throws a star
And everyone looks up
To see that whip of sparks
And then it’s gone” ✨
OOF
tbh I found the repetition of similes slightly tedious on the page but I get why they’re there
And everyone looks up
To see that whip of sparks
And then it’s gone” ✨
OOF
tbh I found the repetition of similes slightly tedious on the page but I get why they’re there
June 22, 2025
“Ancak tarafsız ölüm öldüreni öldürdü”…
İngiliz kadın şair Alice Oswald “Abide”de Homeros’un “İlyada” destanında anlatılan hikayeyi anlatmıyor, bu destandaki savaşan tarafları, çekişmeleri, savaşın arka planını, savaş kahramanlarını bir tarafa bırakarak, ölenlerin trajik hikayelerini şiirleştiriyor. Truva Savaşında ölen ama kahraman olmayan karakterleri, kısa açıklamalar ile anıyor ve onların ölümlerinin sıradan olmadığını anlatıyor. A. Oswald şiirinde ne tanrılara, ne kahramanlara ne mucizelere yer vermiyor, savaşın karanlık yüzünü ölen her bir insan üzerinden veriyor. Etkileyici, kısa bir deneysel şiir kitabı.
İngiliz kadın şair Alice Oswald “Abide”de Homeros’un “İlyada” destanında anlatılan hikayeyi anlatmıyor, bu destandaki savaşan tarafları, çekişmeleri, savaşın arka planını, savaş kahramanlarını bir tarafa bırakarak, ölenlerin trajik hikayelerini şiirleştiriyor. Truva Savaşında ölen ama kahraman olmayan karakterleri, kısa açıklamalar ile anıyor ve onların ölümlerinin sıradan olmadığını anlatıyor. A. Oswald şiirinde ne tanrılara, ne kahramanlara ne mucizelere yer vermiyor, savaşın karanlık yüzünü ölen her bir insan üzerinden veriyor. Etkileyici, kısa bir deneysel şiir kitabı.
May 29, 2021
Like a stone
Stands by a grave and says nothing
Review of the W.W. Norton Company paperback edition (2013) of the original Faber & Faber hardcover (2011)
This is an extraordinarily beautiful meditation and elegy on death, loss and the fleeting nature of life. Although ostensibly a "version" of Homer's Iliad, it is Alice Oswald's poetic similes that follow each listing of a death or deaths from the Greek epic which are the affecting and haunting chorus to each passing.
Oswald starts off by listing all 200 names of the dead from The Iliad, from Protesilaus through to Hector. She then begins to intone each again, with some excerpts relating to their deaths in the epic and then following them with her similes, each of those latter repeated twice. In my ignorance I thought the repeats were a typo at first, and then realized the beauty of repeating them and letting their imagery sink in.
Reading this during the current pandemic and the extent of the worldwide loss of life due to that disease made me think of the mythological Trojan War as a metaphor for any sort of long term unjust forms of death and I became more focused on Oswald's choruses than the Iliad sections.
The poem is followed by an excellent Afterword by Eaven Boland in this 2013 Norton paperback edition.
I've been a long term fan of Christopher Logue's Homer in War Music (2015), but I have to confess that Alice Oswald has become my new fave Iliad adaptation.
My thanks to Liisa & family for this kind gift.
Stands by a grave and says nothing
Review of the W.W. Norton Company paperback edition (2013) of the original Faber & Faber hardcover (2011)
This is an extraordinarily beautiful meditation and elegy on death, loss and the fleeting nature of life. Although ostensibly a "version" of Homer's Iliad, it is Alice Oswald's poetic similes that follow each listing of a death or deaths from the Greek epic which are the affecting and haunting chorus to each passing.
Oswald starts off by listing all 200 names of the dead from The Iliad, from Protesilaus through to Hector. She then begins to intone each again, with some excerpts relating to their deaths in the epic and then following them with her similes, each of those latter repeated twice. In my ignorance I thought the repeats were a typo at first, and then realized the beauty of repeating them and letting their imagery sink in.
Like leaves
Sometimes they light their green flames
And are fed by the earth
And sometimes it snuffs them out
Like leaves
Sometimes they light their green flames
And are fed by the earth
And sometimes it snuffs them out
Like moonlight
Or the light of a bonfire
Burning on the cliffs
When sailors get blown along
Homesick over the sea
They notice that far-off fire
And think of their wives
Like moonlight
Or the light of a bonfire
Burning on the cliffs
When sailors get blown along
Homesick over the sea
They notice that far-off fire
And think of their wives
Like when god throws a star
And everyone looks up
To see that ship of sparks
And then it's gone
Like when god throws a star
And everyone looks up
To see that ship of sparks
And then it's gone
Reading this during the current pandemic and the extent of the worldwide loss of life due to that disease made me think of the mythological Trojan War as a metaphor for any sort of long term unjust forms of death and I became more focused on Oswald's choruses than the Iliad sections.
The poem is followed by an excellent Afterword by Eaven Boland in this 2013 Norton paperback edition.
I've been a long term fan of Christopher Logue's Homer in War Music (2015), but I have to confess that Alice Oswald has become my new fave Iliad adaptation.
My thanks to Liisa & family for this kind gift.
November 1, 2023
Alice Oswald herschrijft de Ilias - één van de twee meesterwerken van Homeros - op compleet eigen wijze. Ze behoudt enkel de beschrijvingen van hoe verschillende helden en ‘gewone’ soldaten sterven én de vele Homerische vergelijkingen die daarbij horen. Deze ‘vertaalt’ ze overigens ook op haar eigen kenmerkende manier. Het resultaat is zoals de titel verklapt een soort gedenkteken, een begraafplaats en galerij van Helleense en Trojaanse gesneuvelden. Hun dood bezongen en beklaagd op erg mooie wijze. De vele inventieve manieren waarop Oswald (en Homeros) de dood vergelijken met alledaagse gebeurtenissen zijn vaak hartverscheurend.
Zoals geweten beschrijft Homeros de manier waarop sommigen van deze ongelukkigen hun dood vonden erg expliciet, een element dat Oswald behoudt. Dit zorgt ervoor dat niet enkel het heroïsche van de dood aandacht krijgt; maar vooral ook het plastische, het lichamelijke, het choquerende. Het deed me meer dan eens denken aan de droevige actualiteit. Ik kon dit boek niet neerleggen na het te beginnen.
Schitterende herschrijving, schitterende poëzie. (Enig minpuntje: tegen het einde toe valt het woord ‘motorbike’ in een vergelijking. Onnodig en voor mij eigenlijk storend, dat breken van de tijdsgeest. Voor het overige dus uitmuntend!)
Zoals geweten beschrijft Homeros de manier waarop sommigen van deze ongelukkigen hun dood vonden erg expliciet, een element dat Oswald behoudt. Dit zorgt ervoor dat niet enkel het heroïsche van de dood aandacht krijgt; maar vooral ook het plastische, het lichamelijke, het choquerende. Het deed me meer dan eens denken aan de droevige actualiteit. Ik kon dit boek niet neerleggen na het te beginnen.
Schitterende herschrijving, schitterende poëzie. (Enig minpuntje: tegen het einde toe valt het woord ‘motorbike’ in een vergelijking. Onnodig en voor mij eigenlijk storend, dat breken van de tijdsgeest. Voor het overige dus uitmuntend!)
August 1, 2018
Why do we write such exquisitely beautiful poems about death in war? We lament that aspect of a culture that conferred glory on death in battle, but Homer is so mesmerizing that we can’t escape his allure.
I was absolutely captivated by this creative work that echoes the Iliad in the victims' names and some of the details of their homelands and deaths, but soars off on its own form and invention. Oswald gut punches you time after time with an end-stopped line or a wrenching simile. But in beautiful, soaring language that celebrates youth and the bereaved as well as the dead.
My only quibble is that toward the end several of the similes didn’t seem connected to the rest of the poem or to Home, but maybe I was just tired when I read them. Small issues in an overall amazing accomplishment. Recommended!
I was absolutely captivated by this creative work that echoes the Iliad in the victims' names and some of the details of their homelands and deaths, but soars off on its own form and invention. Oswald gut punches you time after time with an end-stopped line or a wrenching simile. But in beautiful, soaring language that celebrates youth and the bereaved as well as the dead.
My only quibble is that toward the end several of the similes didn’t seem connected to the rest of the poem or to Home, but maybe I was just tired when I read them. Small issues in an overall amazing accomplishment. Recommended!
April 11, 2012
It is well worth getting the CD of Alice Oswald reading Memorial. It is akin to standing on Remembrance Sunday listening to the names of the dead being read aloud. These are the ordinary men who were killed during the Trojan wars - jumping to be first ashore (that was Protesilaus) or Charops who 'ran out his last moments in fear of the next ones'.
You do not have to know anything about Homer or the Iliad as this poem stands on its own merits although it did make me want to go off and read the original.
You do not have to know anything about Homer or the Iliad as this poem stands on its own merits although it did make me want to go off and read the original.
April 30, 2021
Efsaneler vardır, hikâyeler vardır, gerçekler vardır... çokça insan ölür ve bir sayı olarak dimağımıza gömülürler. Abide'de Oswald, İlyada'nın ölülerine bir yas töreni, bir resmi geçit sunuyor. Bilirsiniz, ölüler geçerken saygı için ayağa kalkmak gerekir. Ben de ayağa kalkıp bu sözlü mezarlığı kütüphanemin manzaralı bir bölümüne yerleştiriyorum.
November 17, 2011
It is mid-November 2011, and just a few days removed from November 11th, the traditional "Remembrance Day" (UK) and "Veteran's Day" (US), and somehow it seems highly appropriate that I have just finished reading a new book-length poem entitled, Memorial: An Excavation of the Iliad, by the British poet, Alice Oswald. Oswald's poem deeply affected me in a fashion similar to that that has occurred upon each of my visits to the Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Now, let me see if I can explain why.
First of all, let me make myself clear, that while war, it seems, is a necessary evil and has been with us since the dawn of Humanity, this post is not about the morality, or immorality, of war. What I want to briefly focus on is the human cost, and how that cost is recorded and remembered, i.e., memorialized. Many countries have special days that commemorate their war dead, battles won, or wars fought. Most countries have physical monuments or memorials too, from the small monuments in village squares or parks, to those grand and elaborate national monuments typically found in capital cities. There's another type of memorial that some of us encounter through the course of our lives, and that is through the literature we read. For example, many of us have read Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, or Willa Cather's One of Ours, or Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, just to name a few; and they all, to one degree or another, describe the horrors and futility of war, and memorialize, if you will, its impacts upon the combatants. Over the ages, poetry has also been effectively utilized in a similar fashion, and one of the very first poems to deal directly with war and its costs is The Iliad by Homer. This is the subject of Alice Oswald's poem, Memorial.
The poem starts with eight pages of a list of names--214 names--all in uppercase. This is a listing of each death described by Homer in The Iliad and presented in the chronological order in which it appears in the poem. It is staggering to slowly come to the realization that Homer has described 214 individual combat deaths through the course of nearly 16,000 lines of poetry. To see that long list of names, on page after page after page, could not but help instantly transport me to the National Mall to stand in front of the Vietnam Memorial looking at the chronological ordering of the 58,272 names (all in uppercase too) of those who lost their lives during the Vietnam War from 1959 through 1975. Oswald's listing of these names, one after the other, is an incredibly powerful and visceral mechanism for instantly engaging her reader. There's none of the bickering between Achilles and Agamemnon here, the speech-making of Odysseus, or even the divine intervention of the gods. Nope, Oswald instantly starts the reader off with the stark and undeniable cost of that messy little war on the Trojan Plain--in human lives.
Oswald's Memorial respectfully, even reverently, yet relentlessly brings the reader front-and-center with each of the deaths in Homer's epic, through the slaughter that Diomedes wreaks upon the Trojans in Book 5; the death of Zeus' beloved son, Sarpedon, at the hands of Patroclus in Book 16, quickly followed by Patroclus' own death; and culminating with the last death, that of the Trojan great, Hector, killed by Achilles in Book 22. In between these more 'famous' deaths are all of the others, one after the other, after the other. Also, in an effort to provide a momentary respite or interlude from the carnage of killing and death, Oswald has masterfully utilized her own version of Homer's similes. These similes, always presented twice consecutively, give the reader a well-needed moment for pause and internal reflection. At times, Oswald's lines of poetry are humorous, and then others are unbearably sad. This is, I think, a poem about life at the moment of death--a celebration of the life, and a memorial to the death. Oswald herself says that the poem is like something "from the Greek tradition of lament poetry", and that her poem presents The Iliad as "a kind of oral cemetery...an antiphonal account of man in his world." Maybe it is fitting that I close this review with the death of Hector "Breaker of Horses"--
I have a shelf that contains seven different translations of Homer's The Iliad, as well as the three thin volumes of Christopher Logue's brilliant poetic reinterpretation (e.g., War Music, etc.), and David Malouf's gorgeous little novel Ransom. Alice Oswald's beautifully moving poem, Memorial, will be joining that company, as a monument to those 214 men who died on the Scamander Plain nearly 4,000 years ago. Somehow, I think Homer would see this as quite fitting.
Memorial
By Alice Oswald
Faber and Faber Limited, 2011.
84 pages.
***
First of all, let me make myself clear, that while war, it seems, is a necessary evil and has been with us since the dawn of Humanity, this post is not about the morality, or immorality, of war. What I want to briefly focus on is the human cost, and how that cost is recorded and remembered, i.e., memorialized. Many countries have special days that commemorate their war dead, battles won, or wars fought. Most countries have physical monuments or memorials too, from the small monuments in village squares or parks, to those grand and elaborate national monuments typically found in capital cities. There's another type of memorial that some of us encounter through the course of our lives, and that is through the literature we read. For example, many of us have read Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage, or Willa Cather's One of Ours, or Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, just to name a few; and they all, to one degree or another, describe the horrors and futility of war, and memorialize, if you will, its impacts upon the combatants. Over the ages, poetry has also been effectively utilized in a similar fashion, and one of the very first poems to deal directly with war and its costs is The Iliad by Homer. This is the subject of Alice Oswald's poem, Memorial.
The poem starts with eight pages of a list of names--214 names--all in uppercase. This is a listing of each death described by Homer in The Iliad and presented in the chronological order in which it appears in the poem. It is staggering to slowly come to the realization that Homer has described 214 individual combat deaths through the course of nearly 16,000 lines of poetry. To see that long list of names, on page after page after page, could not but help instantly transport me to the National Mall to stand in front of the Vietnam Memorial looking at the chronological ordering of the 58,272 names (all in uppercase too) of those who lost their lives during the Vietnam War from 1959 through 1975. Oswald's listing of these names, one after the other, is an incredibly powerful and visceral mechanism for instantly engaging her reader. There's none of the bickering between Achilles and Agamemnon here, the speech-making of Odysseus, or even the divine intervention of the gods. Nope, Oswald instantly starts the reader off with the stark and undeniable cost of that messy little war on the Trojan Plain--in human lives.
"PROTESILAUSAnd on and on it goes. After the list, Ms. Oswald moves straight into her poem, and what she has done is eloquently embrace and adapt Homer's vignettes of information that he provides in the poem about many of the men that are killed. A poignant example of the grace and sensitivity that Oswald brings to telling the story of these dead men is in the first one--
ECHEPOLUS
ELEPHENOR
SIMOISIUS
LEUKOS
DEMOCOON
DIORES
PIROUS
PHEGEUS
IDAEUS..."
"The first to die was PROTESILAUSWhew! In twelve concise lines we see a man with a life in a pastoral land that was his, he had a house (half-built), and a wife, and then he sailed off to war with his men and his brother. And then he is dead. Sounds eerily like the story of the men that sailed off and then participated in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day, and now lie in the earth near the Omaha Beachhead.
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus Iton Pteleus Antron
He died in mid-air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half-built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Podarcus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He's been in the black earth now for thousands of years"
Oswald's Memorial respectfully, even reverently, yet relentlessly brings the reader front-and-center with each of the deaths in Homer's epic, through the slaughter that Diomedes wreaks upon the Trojans in Book 5; the death of Zeus' beloved son, Sarpedon, at the hands of Patroclus in Book 16, quickly followed by Patroclus' own death; and culminating with the last death, that of the Trojan great, Hector, killed by Achilles in Book 22. In between these more 'famous' deaths are all of the others, one after the other, after the other. Also, in an effort to provide a momentary respite or interlude from the carnage of killing and death, Oswald has masterfully utilized her own version of Homer's similes. These similes, always presented twice consecutively, give the reader a well-needed moment for pause and internal reflection. At times, Oswald's lines of poetry are humorous, and then others are unbearably sad. This is, I think, a poem about life at the moment of death--a celebration of the life, and a memorial to the death. Oswald herself says that the poem is like something "from the Greek tradition of lament poetry", and that her poem presents The Iliad as "a kind of oral cemetery...an antiphonal account of man in his world." Maybe it is fitting that I close this review with the death of Hector "Breaker of Horses"--
"And HECTOR died like everyone elseJust as Homer lovingly describes the intimacy of the feelings between the Trojan husband and wife (Book 6), Oswald's modern verse reinterprets those hopes, desires, and fears within Hector's death scene in a few starkly spare lines in such a fashion that one almost feels as though you are standing there witnessing his last living moments. It is powerful stuff! This is experiential poetry in the truest sense, as Oswald forces the reader to confront one of the primary elements of The Iliad--Men killing, and Men dying.
He was in charge of the Trojans
But a spear found out the little patch of white
Between his collarbone and his throat
Just exactly where a man's soul sits
Waiting for the mouth to open
He always knew it would happen
He who was so boastful and anxious
And used to nip home deafened by weapons
To stand in full armour in the doorway
Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running
All women loved him
His wife was Andromache
One day he looked at her quietly
He said I know what will happen
And an image stared at him of himself dead
And her in Argos weaving for some foreign woman
He blinked and went back to his work
Hector loved Andromache
But in the end he let her face slide from his mind
He came back to her sightless
Strengthless expressionless
Asking only to be washed and burned
And his bones wrapped in soft cloths
And returned to the ground"
I have a shelf that contains seven different translations of Homer's The Iliad, as well as the three thin volumes of Christopher Logue's brilliant poetic reinterpretation (e.g., War Music, etc.), and David Malouf's gorgeous little novel Ransom. Alice Oswald's beautifully moving poem, Memorial, will be joining that company, as a monument to those 214 men who died on the Scamander Plain nearly 4,000 years ago. Somehow, I think Homer would see this as quite fitting.
Memorial
By Alice Oswald
Faber and Faber Limited, 2011.
84 pages.
***
April 18, 2014
Astoundingly evocative retelling--perspective shift, really--of the Illiad. Now I want to read everything she's ever written.
January 15, 2022
I have become a huge fan of Alice Oswald, after Dart and Nobody. This short collection is a translation from the Iliad, and so, as with anything Homeric, I could not resist a look.
I didn’t know what to expect, but this probably wasn’t it. The two pages of introduction spell out what is in store, ‘…a translation of the Iliad’s atmosphere, not its story.’ Oswald notes that while modern critics have praised the work for its nobility, in ancient times critics spoke of its ‘enargeia’ meaning its ‘bright unbearable reality’. Her book tries to find that ‘enargeia’, taking away the narrative and leaving the short biographical similes about each soldier. I found it to be a series of short memorials which occasionally shone a brief light on a life lost. Sometimes it was just the way they died, but sometimes there was a brief hint about their life before the battlefield, a snatch of beautiful story that took us somewhere else.
We begin with a seven-and-a-half-page-long list of names. Two hundred and eleven in all. Beginning with PROTESILAUS and ending with HECTOR. Each name in capitals. The body of the poem runs through the list in the same order. Some descriptions are very straightforward, others have a ‘poetic’ beauty like this one:
At other times the description of a gruesome death is followed by beautiful lines that transport us somewhere else entirely.
Not every man on the list is lucky enough to get their own brief epitaph. Some remain as short lists, now and then, like a list of those taken down by eight flint-leaved arrows seemingly out of nowhere.
Until at last we reach Hector, the beginning of the end for the Trojan defenders, and this moving tribute:
I love the way this speaks directly of and to the dead, as if they were only just missing, had just stepped outside for a moment, not a dimmed memory from over three thousand years ago.
I didn’t know what to expect, but this probably wasn’t it. The two pages of introduction spell out what is in store, ‘…a translation of the Iliad’s atmosphere, not its story.’ Oswald notes that while modern critics have praised the work for its nobility, in ancient times critics spoke of its ‘enargeia’ meaning its ‘bright unbearable reality’. Her book tries to find that ‘enargeia’, taking away the narrative and leaving the short biographical similes about each soldier. I found it to be a series of short memorials which occasionally shone a brief light on a life lost. Sometimes it was just the way they died, but sometimes there was a brief hint about their life before the battlefield, a snatch of beautiful story that took us somewhere else.
We begin with a seven-and-a-half-page-long list of names. Two hundred and eleven in all. Beginning with PROTESILAUS and ending with HECTOR. Each name in capitals. The body of the poem runs through the list in the same order. Some descriptions are very straightforward, others have a ‘poetic’ beauty like this one:
Like the hawk of the hills the perfect killer
Easily outflies the clattering dove
She dips away but he follows her ripples
He hangs his black hooks over her
And snares her with a thin cry
In praise of her softness
At other times the description of a gruesome death is followed by beautiful lines that transport us somewhere else entirely.
And AGELAOS in the act of turning
Noticed the death cloud Diomedes towering towards him
He was heaving his horses round swearing
When a spearshot pushed through his shout and out through his chest
He fell made of metal banging on the ground
Like a man put a wand of olive in the earth
And watered it and that wand became a wave
It became a whip a spine a crown
It became a wind-dictionary
It could speak in tongues
It became a wobbling wagon-load of flowers
And then a storm came spinning by
And it became a broken tree uprooted
It became a wood pile in a lonely field
Not every man on the list is lucky enough to get their own brief epitaph. Some remain as short lists, now and then, like a list of those taken down by eight flint-leaved arrows seemingly out of nowhere.
Like a man running in a dream
Can never escape a man escaping
Who can never escape a man approaching
Until at last we reach Hector, the beginning of the end for the Trojan defenders, and this moving tribute:
And HECTOR died like everyone else
He was in charge of the Trojans
But a spear found out the little patch of white
Between his collarbone and his throat
Just exactly where a man’s soul sits
Waiting for the mouth to open
He always knew it would happen
He who was so boastful and anxious
And used to nip home deafened by weapons
To stand in full armour in the doorway
Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running
All women loved him
His wife was Andromache
One day he looked at her quietly
He said I know what will happen
And an image stared at him of himself dead
And her in Argos weaving for some foreign woman
He blinked and went back to his work
Hector loved Andromache
But in the end he let her face slide from his mind
He came back to her sightless
Strengthless expressionless
Asking only to be washed and burned
And his bones wrapped in soft cloths
And returned to the ground
I love the way this speaks directly of and to the dead, as if they were only just missing, had just stepped outside for a moment, not a dimmed memory from over three thousand years ago.
September 17, 2019
Este es un clásico caso de necesito más estrellas, un libro hermoso. Oswald retoma todas las muertes de la Ilíada y construye un memorial con esa lista de nombres y de vidas y a la vez las va intercalando con los símiles, de los que elige algunos, los desordena respecto de como aparecen en la Ilíada y los traduce de una forma muy particular, tensando ciertos sentidos para su propia composición.
Bueno en primer lugar es hermoso de leer, tiene fragmentos como este "Like the hawk of the hills the perfect killer / Easily outflies the clattering dove / She dips away but he follows the ripple / He hangs his black hooks over her / And snares her with a thin cry / In praise of her softness" o este otro "Like moonlight / Or the light of a bonfire / Burning on the cliffs / When sailors get blown along / Homesick over the sea / They notice that far-off fire / And think of their wives". Bueno es todo así, todo hermoso, para releer al infinito.
Pero lo más interesante para mí es cómo entiende las muertes y la violencia y la escritura de la historia de la violencia. El libro se llama "Memorial", me parece inevitable pensarlo en relación a los memoriales, que están tan de moda en los últimos años. En ese sentido al retomar esas dos partes de la Ilíada (las muertes y los símiles) creo que hace dos operaciones simultáneas y relacionadas (y en tensión). Hace foco en cada nombre para después también diluirlo en una serie de historias cada vez más amplias, hasta abarcarlo todo.
Las muertes se presentan (casi siempre) con pequeñas biografías. Un primer efecto es que esas muertes no nos son indiferentes. Pero a la vez esas vidas cobran sentido por sus muertes, las vidas están narradas en función de la participación en la guerra, es como si toda la vida de esos hombres fuera un camino que los lleva a estar en medio del campo de batalla en el momento justo en que una flecha los atraviesa. Las muertes cobran sentido porque conforman la historia, la historia de la guerra (y yendo un poco más lejos, la historia de occidente, podría decirse, no por nada retoma la Ilíada para escribir un memorial en plena "Era de las conmemoraciones"). Pero hay una segunda operación que hace Oswald al mismo tiempo: al vincularlas con los símiles, que casi siempre tienen que ver con fenómenos naturales (animales, fuego, vientos, olas, hojas, luz, truenos, emociones -aunque también con trabajos manuales), las muertes y la violencia quedan remitidas a una historia natural. Esto me pareció un flash. (Y me hizo pensar en INRI de Zurita, sólo porque lo leí hace poco). En ese sentido las muertes se igualan, "Y Héctor muere como todos los demás". Las últimas páginas después de la muerte de Héctor enfatizan un montón esa historia natural de la violencia: se muere como hojas que pudieran escribir una historia de las hojas, los cuerpos muertos son su linaje: "Like leaves who could write a history of leaves / The wind blows their ghosts to the ground / And the spring breathes new leaf into the woods / Thousands of names thousands of leaves / When you remember them remember this / Dead bodies are their linage / Which matter no more than the leaves". El polvo lo cubre todo. Y ATENTI AL FINAL: "Like when god throws a star / And everyone looks up / To see that whip of sparks / And then it's gone". Toda la historia es eso. Dios tira una estrella, miramos para arriba para ver ese látigo de chispas, y entonces ya no está.
Bueno en primer lugar es hermoso de leer, tiene fragmentos como este "Like the hawk of the hills the perfect killer / Easily outflies the clattering dove / She dips away but he follows the ripple / He hangs his black hooks over her / And snares her with a thin cry / In praise of her softness" o este otro "Like moonlight / Or the light of a bonfire / Burning on the cliffs / When sailors get blown along / Homesick over the sea / They notice that far-off fire / And think of their wives". Bueno es todo así, todo hermoso, para releer al infinito.
Pero lo más interesante para mí es cómo entiende las muertes y la violencia y la escritura de la historia de la violencia. El libro se llama "Memorial", me parece inevitable pensarlo en relación a los memoriales, que están tan de moda en los últimos años. En ese sentido al retomar esas dos partes de la Ilíada (las muertes y los símiles) creo que hace dos operaciones simultáneas y relacionadas (y en tensión). Hace foco en cada nombre para después también diluirlo en una serie de historias cada vez más amplias, hasta abarcarlo todo.
Las muertes se presentan (casi siempre) con pequeñas biografías. Un primer efecto es que esas muertes no nos son indiferentes. Pero a la vez esas vidas cobran sentido por sus muertes, las vidas están narradas en función de la participación en la guerra, es como si toda la vida de esos hombres fuera un camino que los lleva a estar en medio del campo de batalla en el momento justo en que una flecha los atraviesa. Las muertes cobran sentido porque conforman la historia, la historia de la guerra (y yendo un poco más lejos, la historia de occidente, podría decirse, no por nada retoma la Ilíada para escribir un memorial en plena "Era de las conmemoraciones"). Pero hay una segunda operación que hace Oswald al mismo tiempo: al vincularlas con los símiles, que casi siempre tienen que ver con fenómenos naturales (animales, fuego, vientos, olas, hojas, luz, truenos, emociones -aunque también con trabajos manuales), las muertes y la violencia quedan remitidas a una historia natural. Esto me pareció un flash. (Y me hizo pensar en INRI de Zurita, sólo porque lo leí hace poco). En ese sentido las muertes se igualan, "Y Héctor muere como todos los demás". Las últimas páginas después de la muerte de Héctor enfatizan un montón esa historia natural de la violencia: se muere como hojas que pudieran escribir una historia de las hojas, los cuerpos muertos son su linaje: "Like leaves who could write a history of leaves / The wind blows their ghosts to the ground / And the spring breathes new leaf into the woods / Thousands of names thousands of leaves / When you remember them remember this / Dead bodies are their linage / Which matter no more than the leaves". El polvo lo cubre todo. Y ATENTI AL FINAL: "Like when god throws a star / And everyone looks up / To see that whip of sparks / And then it's gone". Toda la historia es eso. Dios tira una estrella, miramos para arriba para ver ese látigo de chispas, y entonces ya no está.
January 25, 2023
Outstanding. In Memorial Alice Oswald basically strips away all the gods stuff, and gives you a roll call of the dead. Each name (well mostly, there are a few lists) is given a short biography, such as this one in the opening:
The first to die was PROTESILAUS
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower‐lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus Iton Pteleus Antron
He died in mid‐air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half‐built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Podarcus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He’s been in the black earth now for thousands of years
The bio is then accompanied by an always hauntingly beautiful, usually pastoral simile, repeated twice to recreate (I assume) a Greek chorus effect:
Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads
Like leaves who could write a history of leaves
The wind blows their ghosts to the ground
And the spring breathes new leaf into the woods
Thousands of names thousands of leaves
When you remember them remember this
Dead bodies are their lineage
Which matter no more than the leaves
It kind of reminds me of that scene at the end of "Gladiator" where the dying Maximus imagines himself looking over fields toward his farm and family. In the form of Oswald's breathtaking formula, the effect, especially after so many deaths, is overwhelming, and always poignant. It's interesting how, other than the occasionally obvious Greek or Trojan, Oswald refuses or avoids attachment to either warring side. Most of these names are minor characters living and dying in Homer's Iliad. That said, Oswald gives at least one big name his due:
And HECTOR died like everyone else
He was in charge of the Trojans
But a spear found out the little patch of white
Between his collarbone and his throat
Just exactly where a man's soul sits
Waiting for the mouth to open
He always knew it would happen
He who was so boastful and anxious
And used to nip home deafened by weapons
To stand in full armour in the doorway
Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running
All women loved him
His wife was Andromache
One day he looked at her quietly
He said I know what will happen
And an image stared at him of himself dead
And her in Argos weaving for some foreign woman
He blinked and went back to his work
Hector loved Andromache
But in the end he let her face slide from his mind
He came back to her sightless
Strengthless expressionless
Asking only to be washed and burned
And his bones wrapped in soft cloths
And returned to the ground
But this is not quite the end, as Oswald concludes her poem with a series of similes without their repetition or attendant body or death. Like unattached echoes meant to exist in something beyond history, but in memories that are both distant but always present.
Like leaves who could write a history of leaves
The wind blows their ghosts to the ground
And the spring breathes new leaf into the woods
Thousands of names thousands of leaves
When you remember them remember this
Dead bodies are their lineage
Which matter no more than the leaves
Highly recommended.
The first to die was PROTESILAUS
A focused man who hurried to darkness
With forty black ships leaving the land behind
Men sailed with him from those flower‐lit cliffs
Where the grass gives growth to everything
Pyrasus Iton Pteleus Antron
He died in mid‐air jumping to be first ashore
There was his house half‐built
His wife rushed out clawing her face
Podarcus his altogether less impressive brother
Took over command but that was long ago
He’s been in the black earth now for thousands of years
The bio is then accompanied by an always hauntingly beautiful, usually pastoral simile, repeated twice to recreate (I assume) a Greek chorus effect:
Like a wind-murmur
Begins a rumour of waves
One long note getting louder
The water breathes a deep sigh
Like a land-ripple
When the west wind runs through a field
Wishing and searching
Nothing to be found
The corn-stalks shake their green heads
Like leaves who could write a history of leaves
The wind blows their ghosts to the ground
And the spring breathes new leaf into the woods
Thousands of names thousands of leaves
When you remember them remember this
Dead bodies are their lineage
Which matter no more than the leaves
It kind of reminds me of that scene at the end of "Gladiator" where the dying Maximus imagines himself looking over fields toward his farm and family. In the form of Oswald's breathtaking formula, the effect, especially after so many deaths, is overwhelming, and always poignant. It's interesting how, other than the occasionally obvious Greek or Trojan, Oswald refuses or avoids attachment to either warring side. Most of these names are minor characters living and dying in Homer's Iliad. That said, Oswald gives at least one big name his due:
And HECTOR died like everyone else
He was in charge of the Trojans
But a spear found out the little patch of white
Between his collarbone and his throat
Just exactly where a man's soul sits
Waiting for the mouth to open
He always knew it would happen
He who was so boastful and anxious
And used to nip home deafened by weapons
To stand in full armour in the doorway
Like a man rushing in leaving his motorbike running
All women loved him
His wife was Andromache
One day he looked at her quietly
He said I know what will happen
And an image stared at him of himself dead
And her in Argos weaving for some foreign woman
He blinked and went back to his work
Hector loved Andromache
But in the end he let her face slide from his mind
He came back to her sightless
Strengthless expressionless
Asking only to be washed and burned
And his bones wrapped in soft cloths
And returned to the ground
But this is not quite the end, as Oswald concludes her poem with a series of similes without their repetition or attendant body or death. Like unattached echoes meant to exist in something beyond history, but in memories that are both distant but always present.
Like leaves who could write a history of leaves
The wind blows their ghosts to the ground
And the spring breathes new leaf into the woods
Thousands of names thousands of leaves
When you remember them remember this
Dead bodies are their lineage
Which matter no more than the leaves
Highly recommended.
June 20, 2014
Very beautiful. Very moving to read. Alice Oswald excavates one aspect of The Iliad: the laments that accompany many of the deaths, and the similes that accompany them. Here is a typical example:
As if it was June
A poppy being hammered by the rain
Sinks its head down
Its exactly like that
When a man's neck gives in
And the bronze calyx of his helmet
Sinks his head down.
For comparison, to get a sense of what Oswald is doing, here is Robert Fagles translation of the same lines:
As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends
drooping its head to one side, weighed down
by its full seeds and a sudden spring show,
So Gorgythion's head fell limp over one shoulder,
weighed down by his helmet. (8, 344)
Fagles is an eloquent and expressive translator himself, but Oswald allows herself the freedom to write her own version, and as we see here, focuses the image making it sharp and the language taut. Many of her could stand alone as imagistic poems; together they form a powerful lament for the fallen. This is a different effect from that of Homer, who also celebrates warriors and offers a narrative that has its own effect. Oswald also spares us the brutality of Homer's descriptions of killing. She achieves a pathos that is far more than a literary achievement. It reaches back through time and lets us see those young men, dying one by one in surprise and confusion.
The poem starts by simply listing the names of the men whose deaths are described: a litany that reminded me of an event at Birkenau, where the names of the dead were read out, one at a time. The context is sufficient to make each word a poem:
PROTESILAUS
ECHEPOLUS
ELEPHENOR
SIMOSIOS
LEUKOS
The complete poem offers a cumulative effect of their loss.
Like leaves who could write a history of leaves
The wind blows their ghosts to the ground
And the spring breathes new leaf into the woods
Thousands of names thousands of leaves
When you remember them remember this
Dead bodies are their lineage
Which matters no more than the leaves
As if it was June
A poppy being hammered by the rain
Sinks its head down
Its exactly like that
When a man's neck gives in
And the bronze calyx of his helmet
Sinks his head down.
For comparison, to get a sense of what Oswald is doing, here is Robert Fagles translation of the same lines:
As a garden poppy, burst into red bloom, bends
drooping its head to one side, weighed down
by its full seeds and a sudden spring show,
So Gorgythion's head fell limp over one shoulder,
weighed down by his helmet. (8, 344)
Fagles is an eloquent and expressive translator himself, but Oswald allows herself the freedom to write her own version, and as we see here, focuses the image making it sharp and the language taut. Many of her could stand alone as imagistic poems; together they form a powerful lament for the fallen. This is a different effect from that of Homer, who also celebrates warriors and offers a narrative that has its own effect. Oswald also spares us the brutality of Homer's descriptions of killing. She achieves a pathos that is far more than a literary achievement. It reaches back through time and lets us see those young men, dying one by one in surprise and confusion.
The poem starts by simply listing the names of the men whose deaths are described: a litany that reminded me of an event at Birkenau, where the names of the dead were read out, one at a time. The context is sufficient to make each word a poem:
PROTESILAUS
ECHEPOLUS
ELEPHENOR
SIMOSIOS
LEUKOS
The complete poem offers a cumulative effect of their loss.
Like leaves who could write a history of leaves
The wind blows their ghosts to the ground
And the spring breathes new leaf into the woods
Thousands of names thousands of leaves
When you remember them remember this
Dead bodies are their lineage
Which matters no more than the leaves
September 6, 2015
As a Classicist and an Iliad-enthusiast, this book was absolutely amazing. I think Oswald attains all she sets out to do in recreating the feel of the Iliad without the content. And her methods all prove effective, from the brief biographies of the dead to the repeated chorus of modified epic similes (and their juxtaposition).
The book is haunting, in a way, that makes Memorial the ideal title. I'd say the book is definitely worth reading if you've read the Iliad. It recreates the dread so necessary to the narrative. If not, it might be interesting to read it anyway. Without the content, the dread itself becomes the structure, generating a pervasive atmosphere strong enough to grip the reader(me).
I wish it were longer, Oswald's poetry is a pleasure to read. The fact that she decides to focus so overtly on the oral poetry aspect of the Iliad allows her to recreate the feel of the poem so powerfully. Her similes sit with you as plaintive embodiments of the lives and characters of the long dead.
The book is haunting, in a way, that makes Memorial the ideal title. I'd say the book is definitely worth reading if you've read the Iliad. It recreates the dread so necessary to the narrative. If not, it might be interesting to read it anyway. Without the content, the dread itself becomes the structure, generating a pervasive atmosphere strong enough to grip the reader(me).
I wish it were longer, Oswald's poetry is a pleasure to read. The fact that she decides to focus so overtly on the oral poetry aspect of the Iliad allows her to recreate the feel of the poem so powerfully. Her similes sit with you as plaintive embodiments of the lives and characters of the long dead.
April 29, 2023
Podarker her açıdan daha az etkileyici kardeşi
Kumandayı üstlendi ama bu çok uzun zaman önceydi
Şimdi binlerce yıldır kara toprağın altında
.
Yas karadır topraktan yapılır
Gözün çatlaklarına kaçar
Düğümü boğaza oturur
İnsan kardeşini yerde görünce
Deliye döner koşarak gelir nerede olursa olsun
Bakmadan atılır ve işte böyle öldü KOON
.
Abide başta tarzıyla farklı bir okuma olduğunu gösteren bir kitap. Alice Oswald, İlyada’yı canlandırmak en azından onun atmosferini şiire taşıyabilmek istemiş. İlyada’daki askerleri ve ölümleri merkeze alarak bir savaş anlatısına dönüştürmüş. Fikir olarak oldukça enteresan ve savaşı yansıtma konusunda da oldukça başarılı. Ama ben şiir tarzından pek hoşladığımı söyleyemem. İki kısım gerçekten hoşuma gitti bu sebeple kitaptan hiçbir keyif almadığımı iddia edemem ama genel olarak pek sevemedim. Bazı kısımlarda sadece özel isimlerin sıralandığı bazı kısımlarda ise etkiyi arttırmak için tekrar yapılan yerler vardı bana açıkçası pek geçen bir duygu olmadı. Ama okuduğum en farklı şiir metinler içerisindeydi.
Kumandayı üstlendi ama bu çok uzun zaman önceydi
Şimdi binlerce yıldır kara toprağın altında
.
Yas karadır topraktan yapılır
Gözün çatlaklarına kaçar
Düğümü boğaza oturur
İnsan kardeşini yerde görünce
Deliye döner koşarak gelir nerede olursa olsun
Bakmadan atılır ve işte böyle öldü KOON
.
Abide başta tarzıyla farklı bir okuma olduğunu gösteren bir kitap. Alice Oswald, İlyada’yı canlandırmak en azından onun atmosferini şiire taşıyabilmek istemiş. İlyada’daki askerleri ve ölümleri merkeze alarak bir savaş anlatısına dönüştürmüş. Fikir olarak oldukça enteresan ve savaşı yansıtma konusunda da oldukça başarılı. Ama ben şiir tarzından pek hoşladığımı söyleyemem. İki kısım gerçekten hoşuma gitti bu sebeple kitaptan hiçbir keyif almadığımı iddia edemem ama genel olarak pek sevemedim. Bazı kısımlarda sadece özel isimlerin sıralandığı bazı kısımlarda ise etkiyi arttırmak için tekrar yapılan yerler vardı bana açıkçası pek geçen bir duygu olmadı. Ama okuduğum en farklı şiir metinler içerisindeydi.
October 20, 2017
In Memorial, her 'excavation' of the Iliad, Alice Oswald has interpreted the wonderful epic poem with emphasis upon its deaths. She begins by writing: 'This is a translation of the Iliad's atmosphere, not its story', and goes on to write a large list of character names who were killed during battle in the original. She has stripped away seven eighths of the original story, and has crafted a series of short biographies in order to memorialise the poem's dead.
Memorial is cleverly structured and well evoked, along with being beautifully written. Oswald brings fresh eyes to the poem; it is a little bleak, as one will surely expect, but it is always rich and evocative. The natural imagery which she uses throughout as a contrast to the deaths is often startling and lovely, and the repetition which she uses is highly effective. Memorial is a wonderful interpretation of a classic, and I would highly recommend it.
Memorial is cleverly structured and well evoked, along with being beautifully written. Oswald brings fresh eyes to the poem; it is a little bleak, as one will surely expect, but it is always rich and evocative. The natural imagery which she uses throughout as a contrast to the deaths is often startling and lovely, and the repetition which she uses is highly effective. Memorial is a wonderful interpretation of a classic, and I would highly recommend it.
April 6, 2023
I read this in one sitting, and I think that must be the way to do it, because the onslaught of death upon death and simile upon simile made for some deeply affecting poetry.
I do feel like I should caveat my five stars with the note that what I thought I was getting based on Oswald’s introduction was slightly different from what I actually got. Somehow, I went in with the impression that Oswald, while translating and paraphrasing freely, was keeping all the pieces in the same order as the original Iliad. But it became clear pretty fast that she was also moving the similes and biographies around—although I don’t know the Iliad well enough to be sure of the extent of the rearranging. And like, that’s not a problem, but it does color my appreciation differently.
I do feel like I should caveat my five stars with the note that what I thought I was getting based on Oswald’s introduction was slightly different from what I actually got. Somehow, I went in with the impression that Oswald, while translating and paraphrasing freely, was keeping all the pieces in the same order as the original Iliad. But it became clear pretty fast that she was also moving the similes and biographies around—although I don’t know the Iliad well enough to be sure of the extent of the rearranging. And like, that’s not a problem, but it does color my appreciation differently.
August 18, 2022
The other casualties of the Iliad are easily lost in the normal translations, a few names surpassed so greatly by the gods, by Achilles, by Hector, by Paris or by Troy itself. Memorial doesn't give the full story of who these men were, but it does give them one more second to have some truth made about their spirit: a succinct and lovely tale of their of life, a final frustration at being so far from home, or worst of all for so many of them, a sudden and brutal death that leaves alone in the dust and waters of the city for the sake of nothing. The one extra second that the 200 names of Memorial get turns them into real enough people that as you read you can't help but mourn them. At least a little bit.
April 10, 2021
After each death remembered, Oswald inserts an elongated simile that is repeated. I can see how this could be quite powerful and affecting when recited, however, while reading it I found it too repetitive.
June 16, 2022
Wow! I love love love Oswald’s poetry, her exploration of the Trojan war married with direct translations from ‘The Illiad’ and intense descriptions of nature all meld beautifully together to form everything that poetry should be. I love her work and strongly recommend it to all!!
February 4, 2013
Ms. Oswald is a British poet of great skill and interest. She has written a powerful book-length poem about the river Dart and several collections of poems, each uniquely accomplished. With Memorial Oswald again turns to the long poem form and borrows from Homer to create a remarkable elegy that both honors the source and by echoing contemporary media memorials that list the names and basic information of our combat dead respectfully challenges the folly that is war.
The first section lists over eight pages the 214 Greeks and Trojans whose deaths are described in The Iliad. The next 62 pages is a narrative of death, brief descriptions of many of the named dead—those whose deaths are not described are again listed in sequence. “The first to die was PROTESILAUS / A focused man who hurried to darkness / With forty black ships leaving the land behind / Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs / Where the grass gives growth to everything / Pyrasus Iton Pteleus Antron / He died in mid-air jumping to be first ashore.”
The last to be recorded is Hector. “And HECTOR died like everyone else / He was in charge of the Trojans / But a spear found out the little patch of white / Between his collarbone and his throat / Just exactly where a man’s soul sits / Waiting for the mouth to open / ….Hector loved Andromache / But in the end he let her face slide from his mind / He came back to her sightless / Strengthless expressionless / Asking only to be washed and burned / And his bones wrapped in soft cloths / And returned to the ground.” Sub-titled a version—here, for example, his Fagles’s rendering of Hector’s moment of death: “The rest of his flesh seemed all encased in armor, / burnished, brazen—Achilles’ armor that Hector stripped / from strong Patroclus when he killed him—true, / but one spot lay exposed, / where collarbones lift the neckbone off the shoulders, / the open throat, where the end of life comes quickest—there / as Hector charged in fury brilliant Achilles drove his spear / and the point went stabbing clean through the tender neck…”—Oswald says in her forward that hers is a translation of the atmosphere, not the story of The Iliad. There is no thread of a story, Patroclus’s death is not linked to Hector’s, only a litany of deaths.
After each described death comes a repeated simile, some six or eight or even twelve lines long, others briefer. “Like when they’re cutting ash poles in the hills / The treetops fall as soft as cloths // Like when they’re cutting ash poles in the hills / The treetops fall as soft as cloths.” It’s eerie and effective, even poignant. The final twelve pages each contain a single short verse, two to seven lines, comprised of additional similes. “Like leaves who could write a history of leaves / The wind blows their ghosts to the ground” begins one. The last one repeats on the final two pages. “Like when a god throws a star / And everyone looks up / To see that whip of sparks / And then it’s gone”. It is wondrously effective, moving and memorable.
Oswald’s choices of topic and form seem to be motivated by an intense need to communicate something particular about human experience. There is nothing academic about her poetry. It is earthy, vital, and compelling precise.
The first section lists over eight pages the 214 Greeks and Trojans whose deaths are described in The Iliad. The next 62 pages is a narrative of death, brief descriptions of many of the named dead—those whose deaths are not described are again listed in sequence. “The first to die was PROTESILAUS / A focused man who hurried to darkness / With forty black ships leaving the land behind / Men sailed with him from those flower-lit cliffs / Where the grass gives growth to everything / Pyrasus Iton Pteleus Antron / He died in mid-air jumping to be first ashore.”
The last to be recorded is Hector. “And HECTOR died like everyone else / He was in charge of the Trojans / But a spear found out the little patch of white / Between his collarbone and his throat / Just exactly where a man’s soul sits / Waiting for the mouth to open / ….Hector loved Andromache / But in the end he let her face slide from his mind / He came back to her sightless / Strengthless expressionless / Asking only to be washed and burned / And his bones wrapped in soft cloths / And returned to the ground.” Sub-titled a version—here, for example, his Fagles’s rendering of Hector’s moment of death: “The rest of his flesh seemed all encased in armor, / burnished, brazen—Achilles’ armor that Hector stripped / from strong Patroclus when he killed him—true, / but one spot lay exposed, / where collarbones lift the neckbone off the shoulders, / the open throat, where the end of life comes quickest—there / as Hector charged in fury brilliant Achilles drove his spear / and the point went stabbing clean through the tender neck…”—Oswald says in her forward that hers is a translation of the atmosphere, not the story of The Iliad. There is no thread of a story, Patroclus’s death is not linked to Hector’s, only a litany of deaths.
After each described death comes a repeated simile, some six or eight or even twelve lines long, others briefer. “Like when they’re cutting ash poles in the hills / The treetops fall as soft as cloths // Like when they’re cutting ash poles in the hills / The treetops fall as soft as cloths.” It’s eerie and effective, even poignant. The final twelve pages each contain a single short verse, two to seven lines, comprised of additional similes. “Like leaves who could write a history of leaves / The wind blows their ghosts to the ground” begins one. The last one repeats on the final two pages. “Like when a god throws a star / And everyone looks up / To see that whip of sparks / And then it’s gone”. It is wondrously effective, moving and memorable.
Oswald’s choices of topic and form seem to be motivated by an intense need to communicate something particular about human experience. There is nothing academic about her poetry. It is earthy, vital, and compelling precise.
January 25, 2018
Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad
Alice Oswald, Eavan Boland (Afterword)
The first sentence of the authors introduction:
"This is a translation of the Iliad's atmosphere, not its story."
Huh? What does that mean? How is it even possible?
The majority of this work is a brief poetic description of how people lived and died while fighting this war. The means of death were varied. The cause of death was war.
The cumulative effect is indeed a heavy emotional atmosphere. One can barely turn another page without the threat or fact of tears.
Alice Oswald, Eavan Boland (Afterword)
The first sentence of the authors introduction:
"This is a translation of the Iliad's atmosphere, not its story."
Huh? What does that mean? How is it even possible?
The majority of this work is a brief poetic description of how people lived and died while fighting this war. The means of death were varied. The cause of death was war.
The cumulative effect is indeed a heavy emotional atmosphere. One can barely turn another page without the threat or fact of tears.
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