“The Iliad has no “truth” in it, no facts not clothed in a mystical and sacramental glory. Rather, it is theophany in dark relief. The hearer of the Iliad becomes Panaghia [Mary] at the foot of the cross, gazing upon Christ’s unjust crucifixion. For the fact is that all the men in the Iliad die unjustly, Simone Weil tells us, in the sense that they are all trapped within the same world of blind might where they must kill or be killed. And the poetry, the language, and the spirituality of the Iliad are all superb.”
-Timothy Patitsas
Reading The Iliad requires of me a certain focus of mind that I don’t always have, which is why it’s taking a while. I listen to the audio version of the Fagles translation, and I have the same in the print edition, which I like better. I am listening to Elizabeth Vandiver’s Teaching Company series of lectures, and I read Rosemary Sutcliff’s retelling for children, Black Ships Before Troy.
But the first impetus for this recent interest probably came from Timothy Patitsas, by way of his book The Ethics of Beauty, which in turn was prompted by his reading of Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam. On the occasion of Veterans Day, Patitsas has shared on his Substack site an excerpt from the introduction to his own book, which relates how a study of Homer is meaningful for soldiers in this modern era. Another excerpt from his post:
“That act of listening to the recitation of the Iliad from someone who knew it by heart over days or weeks worked because it took place in a communal setting among other veterans and it showed a kind of universal compassion to all the soldiers equally. Since in the Iliad there are no good guys or bad guys, its performance helps you to renounce resentment and villainization…. the wind of hate (the spiritual shock of realizing that another human being hates you enough to want to kill you) is itself the villain. It is a force and everyone is the victim of the empire of naked force.”
You can read the whole Substack piece here: “How The Iliad Heals”
haven’t been able to concentrate on this extended philosophical reading project. It could be also that the topic is just too out-of-sync with the situation in my (indoor) living space. The chaos results from having none of the planned-for storage finished — that’s closets and cabinets in six or seven rooms — and that situation is abetted by the pandemic shutdowns of various sorts. The pandemic itself taxes the mind and emotions, and lately I’ve been reading more children’s books than anything.
But, going back to the beginning of my vague plan, about a year ago I brought a fat book about Beauty and Truth into the house. The priest who lent it to me said he’d been unable to penetrate it. I knew it would likely be as heavy for me intellectually as it was in poundage, but it seemed a work I should at least have at hand when I began my study of Beauty.
