BOOKS
121
THE ART OF THE ILIAD
THE ILIAD OF HOMER. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. University
of Chicago Press. $4.50.
Each generation produces its own Shakespeare ; each gen–
eration recreates, however dimly understood, its Homer; and in our
time, a period noted chiefly for its wars, there is a continuous, limited,
yet hardy, revival of interest in
The Iliad.
One reprint house has adver–
tised
The Iliad
as "The world's greatest war novel ... A best seller for
3,000 years," which is a peculiarly American way of stating the value
of an heroic and dramatic poem, and the same firm advertises
The
Odyssey
as "the world's greatest adventure story"; it is significant that
both remarks disguise or pointedly ignore the horrid facts that Homer
was a poet and that the two books are in reality long poems. The in–
ference is clear: "our Homer" is not to be confused with writers of poetic
nonsense, but is rather to be classed with Hemingway, Mr. Mailer, and
a gentleman named Mr. James Jones. All this does little enough harm
to Homer's reputation; we can assume that his reputation is at least
secure; nor is great damage done to the intelligence of that mythical
being so familiarly called "the average reader" who is lured into read–
ing Homer almost by mistake-he is rewarded by the knowledge that
Homer is neither dull nor antiquated and that he has inspired, even
in English, passages of worthy and admirably lively prose. Yet the re–
marks that I have quoted do express, though artfully concealed, a
prevalent attitude toward Homer and poetry, an attitude that the
Greeks, however modern, would scarcely claim.
It
has remained for Mr. Lattimore to modify the impression that
Homer, as far as we can read his works in English, was an able
novelist-more than that, a psychological novelist of great importance.
He has effected this by writing an excellent version of
The Iliad
in
unrhymed verse, in what he calls "a free six-beat line"; he has restored
The Iliad
to the province of poetry without loss of movement, color,
and understanding of its essentially dramatic narrative, and for the
modern reader it is the best version of that poem in English verse
since Alexander Pope offered to his fortunate subscribers a new trans–
lation of
The Iliad.
Readers will also be fortunate in discovering Mr.
Lattimore's
The Iliad,
and good fortune, I believe, has attended the
moment that permitted him to employ unrhymed verse in translating
Homer; he has for precedent the adaptations of Greek themes
in
the
unrhymed verse of Robinson Jeffers and Ezra Pound. From one he
