The Mourner's Song: War and Remembrance from the Iliad to Vietnam

by James Tatum

No matter when or where they are fought, all wars have one thing in a relentless progression to monuments and memorials for the dead. Likewise all art made from war begins and ends in mourning and remembrance. In The Mourner's Song , James Tatum offers incisive discussions of physical and literary memorials constructed in the wake of war, from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to the writings of Stephen Crane, Edmund Wilson, Tim O'Brien, and Robert Lowell.

Tatum's touchstone throughout is the Iliad , not just one of the earliest war poems, but also one of the most powerful examples of the way poetry can be a tribute to and consolation for what is lost in war. Reading the Iliad alongside later works inspired by war, Tatum reveals how the forms and processes of art convert mourning to memorial. He examines the role of remembrance and the distance from war it requires; the significance of landscape in memorialization; the artifacts of war that fire the imagination; the intimate relationship between war and love and its effects on the ferocity with which soldiers wage battle; and finally, the idea of memorialization itself. Because all survivors suffer the losses of war, Tatum's is a story of both victims and victors, commanders and soldiers, women and men. Photographs of war memorials in Vietnam, France, and the United States beautifully augment his testimonials.

Eloquent and deeply moving, The Mourner's Song will speak to anyone interested in the literature of war and the relevance of the classics to our most pressing contemporary needs.

Genres: War

240 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

James Tatum is the Aaron Lawrence Professor of Classics, Emeritus, known for his contributions to classical studies and literary criticism. His work explores themes of war, remembrance, and the reinterpretation of classical texts. Among his notable publications is The Mourner’s Song: War and Remembrance from the Iliad to Vietnam, which examines the enduring impact of war narratives across cultures and eras.
Throughout his career, Tatum has engaged in diverse scholarly and artistic collaborations, including musical and dramatic performances that merge classical literature with contemporary expression. His lectures and speaking engagements span prestigious institutions such as Yale, Duke, Howard, and Emory, where he has discussed topics ranging from the transformation of classics in modern contexts to the influence of Plautus on Shakespeare’s Othello. His interdisciplinary approach has brought classical scholarship into dialogue with music, performance, and public discourse.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book reminds me a lot of Paul Fussell's seminal The Great War and Modern Memory. Fussell is a bit more academic in his close reading of poetry produced by WWI, and his scope is somewhat narrower than Tatum's, arguing that the war led to advent of Modernism in literature (though, as Modris Ekstein points out in his brilliant Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, modernism had its start before the war, most famously in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring).
Instead of charting change in literature wrought by war, Tatum, using the Iliad as his primary source, demonstrates that a striking consistency among literary works across periods and countries, as well as physical monuments such as public memorials and statues, reinforces universal and timeless longings and need to make sense of death in war. Far from being repetitive, Tatum deepens his argument in all sorts of fascinating ways, drawing connections among writers as diverse as Balzac, Woolf, Genet, and Oguma Hideo, just to name a few. And his analysis of Maya Lin's Vietnam Veteran's Memorial made me wish he had written it before my own visit to VVM years ago. Tatum has great command of his material, all the more impressive, considering the range of works he includes, and his style seems less, hmm, academic than Fussell's can be at times. In terms of tone, Fussell's rage at the insanity of war outweighs any tendencies to be pedantic, whereas Tatum's voice is more elegiac, which seems fitting, given his focus on remembrance, and his style can be impressively lyrical at times, but never self-indulgent, always in keeping with the topic of a given chapter. I had intended just to spot-read this book out of curiosity, but got hooked quickly and decided to read the whole thing. Now that I've finished it, I think it's actually better than Fussell's book -- and that's saying a lot. I checked this copy out of the library, but plan on buying my own copy now. It's the kind of book I can see returning to again and again.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scholarly exploration of monuments and other ways of remembering war and its victims.