RUMORS OF WAR

When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom...
—Mark 13:7-8a

Then the king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Zeboiim, and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) went out, and they joined battle in the Valley of Siddim with King Chedorlaomer of Elam, King Tidal of Goiim, King Amraphel of Shinar, and King Arioch of Ellasar, four kings against five.
—Genesis 14:8-9

In our weekly staff meetings, we are reading sections of the book of Genesis as broken out in a commentary by renowned Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. This week's "section" was chapter 14. Craziness abounds as Abram's nephew Lot is captured in the above mentioned fray. Abram takes his own horde of trained men and frees Lot. When the war ends, Abram, by right, is allowed the spoils of war and he refuses! He is simply content with the freedom of his nephew and the ability to continue to inhabit his own land. Now there is a lesson for today's warmongers. Free the people of Iraq, if that is truly what you intended, and then leave their oil to them.

I am currently reading An Iliad by Alessandro Barrico. Barrico has reimagined The Iliad with a modern audience in mind. His retelling is economical in language, told in sparse prose and condensed scenes, unlike a great verse translation like that from Robert Fagles. That doesn't mean that Barrico's book is bad. It has its moments.

One of the interesting features is that the story is told by twenty-one different characters, each with his, her, or its own chapter, rather than a single narrator. This collage of voices gives us a slightly different view of events while still following the basic outline of Homer's story.

Another piece that intrigues me is that Barrico is trying to draw analogies between the unending war of the Trojans and Achaeans, and our modern thirst for bloodshed and carnage. The bodies still pile up in Barrico's version of events:

Sarpedon was hit in one thigh, and the eager bronze penetrated to the bone. His companions seized him, without even pulling out the spear. The long spear was heavy, but they carried him off, like that. And Odysseus, seeing his companion Tlepolemus die, rushed to finish off Sarpedon. He killed Coeranus and Alastor and Chromius, and Alcander and Halius and Noemon and Prytanis. He would have gone on killing if Hector hadn't suddenly appeared, clothed in shining bronze, terrifying. [38]

Hector almost sounds like a god when he appears before Odysseus, except that the gods are only alluded to as distant figures here. They have all but been removed from the text. As Barrico writes in his introduction: "I removed all the appearances of the gods...They are probably the aspect of the poem most extraneous to a modern sensibility, and often break up the narrative, diffusing a momentum that should rightly be palpable." Barrico doesn't feel them necessary. I disagree. The oftentimes provide momentum and motivation, giving us rationale for the actions of characters. As a reader, I don't have to take the gods as literal beings, although there is nothing wrong with that, either. But, don't pretend they don't matter or that they insult my "modern sensibilities."

The other issue I have with Barrico's telling of the tale is that he has italicized portions of chapters that are pieces that he added to the text. Although they are few, they are also the most stilted pieces of writing in the story. They also draw attention to Barrico and away from the text, the tale itself. Okay, okay, I get it. You are a writer. This is your postmodern intrusion into the text. I don't want to read about you, Alessandro Barrico. You have inserted yourself as a god into the tale, and have diffused momentum, which is why you claim you left the gods themselves out of the text.

I have read three-quarters of the book and will probably finish tonight. This is a good introduction to Homer's tale. It is a quick read that is fairly well written, even if it does have its faults and quirks. The best thing, though, is that it got me to dust off my copies of Robert Fagles's translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, and to peek between their covers again.