Warfare in Homer's Iliad

In no manner do I glorify warfare, nor am I a devout pacifist. I have mentioned before that the prospect and reality of warfare both horrifies and fascinates me at the same time. I cannot fathom the fact that we have it in ourselves to utterly vanquish one another by means of brutality that darkly transcends the violence we see in the animal kingdom; and at the same time, the methods and strategic means by which we wage war, the competitive ebb and flow of it, intrigues my imagination. Devoid of any morbid fascinations with warfare, it utterly amazes me every time I read passages from Homer’s Iliad how descriptive and poetically visual he renders the violent acts of combat. One of my all time favorite quotes from the Iliad, as I have mentioned in the past, comes from Book 7, lines 275–281:

“War—I know it well, and the butchery of men

Well I know, shift to the left, shift to the right

My tough tanned shield. That’s what the real drill

Defensive fighting means to me. I know it all

How to charge in the rush of plunging horses—

I know how to stand and fight to the finish

Twist and lunge in the War-god’s deadly dance.”

Inasmuch as Homer’s descriptive passages are concerned, and with regard to the language he uses to make their violent acts visibly accessible, below are a hand full that I found to be especially impressive.

“With that he hurled and Athena drove the shaft and it split the archer’s nose between the eye—it cracked his glistening teeth, the tough bronze cut off his tongue at the roots, smashed his jaw and the point came ripping out beneath his chin. He pitched from his car, armour clanged against him, a glimmering blaze af metal dazzling round his back—the purebreds reared aside, hoofs pawing the air and his life and power slipped away on the wind.”

“Eurypylus, chasing Hypsenor fleeing on before him, flailed with a sword, slashed the Trojan’s shoulder and lopped away the massive bulk of Hypsenor’s arm … the bloody arm dropped to the earth, and red death came plunging down his eyes, and the strong force of fate.”

“… Agamemnon lord of men spilled the giant Odius, chief of the Halizonians off his car—the first to fall, as he veered away the spearhead punched his back between the shoulders, gouging his flesh and jutting out through his rids—he fell with a crash, his armour rang against him.”

“Antilochus winged a rock and smashed his elbow—out of his grip the reigns white with ivory flew and slipped to the ground and tangled in the dust. Antilochus sprang, he plunged a sword in his temple and Mydon, gasping, hurled from his bolted car face first, head and shoulders stuck in the dune for a good long time for the sand was deep—his lucky day—till his own horses trampled him down.”

“Meriones caught him quickly, running him down hard and speared him low in the right buttock—the point pounding under the pelvis, jabbed and pierced the blatter—he dropped to his knees, screaming, death swirling around him.”

Southey's War

There's nothing more horrifying to me than war. That we have it 'in us' to slaughter each other by the billions, without compunction, and with such derelict indifference, is something so unbelievable to me that I've literally caught myself doubting whether warfare ever happens at all- no exaggeration. And yet, to my own dismay- because I find the subject so indelibly intriguing, even mystifying and sometimes morally imperative- I find myself steeped in scruples about it.

I purchased The New Oxford Book of War Poetry recently, and the first poem I flipped to was Robert Southey's, The Battle of Blenheim- a poem lauded in England as an anti-war poem ... and yet Southey isn't exactly an anti-war poet like, say, Siegfried Sassoon, or Wilfred Owen (the two of whom, by the way, were soldiers in a war much more brutal than that of Blenheim). 

Byron couldn't peg Southey either. On the one hand, The Battle of Blenheim seems to detest the indifference we have when it comes to the carnage war brings, and yet in another poem of his, The Poet's Pilgrimage to Waterloo, our poet seems to lend a sort of homage it. According to Wikipedia, "By 1820, however, Southey had changed his mind about the Battle [of Blenheim], describing it instead as the most brilliant moment in British arms." And yet, again, The Battle of Blenheim, written in 1796, implicitly, if not directly, condemns the apathetic attitude we have about war.

And so I find myself somewhat akin to Southey's ebb and flow on the topic of warfare, and its aftermath. 

Summary of the Poem

In Southey's poem an old man sits in front of his cottage with his granddaughter as the two watch her brother play by a stream. The brother finds something large and round, which he brings to his grandfather. Turns out, the boy found a human skull. The grandfather, Kaspar, tells young Peterkin that he finds these all the time, sometimes even turns up bones out of the ground when he ploughs. He goes on to explain that there was a great battle in the area between the English and the French, and that many lives were lost- even innocent women and children- but that the battle was nevertheless a great victory. Astonished, the grandson inquires into the reason for the battle, and the grandfather, cognizant only of the great victory and not of the thousands of lives lost, admits that he has absolutely no idea why the bloodshed occurred ... hence the poem's polemic on war as a seemingly unnecessary and unfortunate reality (not to mention our indifference towards it). Below, the poem in its entirety.  

The Poem

The Battle of Blenheim

                    I.

It was a summer evening,
    Old Kaspar's work was done;
And he before his cottage door
    Was sitting in the sun,
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.

                    II.

She saw her brother Peterkin
    Roll something large and round,
That he beside the rivulet
    In playing there had found;
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large, and smooth, and round.

                   III.

Old Kaspar took it from the boy
    Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
    And with a natural sigh,
'Tis some poor fellow's scull, said he,
Who fell in the great victory.

                    IV.

I find them in the garden, for
    There's many here about,
And often when I go to plough,
    The ploughshare turns them out;
For many thousand men, said he,
Were slain in the great victory.

                    V.

Now tell us what 'twas all about,
    Young Peterkin he cries,
And little Wilhelmine looks up
    With wonder-waiting eyes;
Now tell us all about the war,
And what they kill'd each other for.

                    VI.

It was the English, Kaspar cried,
    That put the French to rout;
But what they kill'd each other for,
    I could not well make out.
But every body said, quoth he,
That 'twas a famous victory.

                   VII.

My father lived at Blenheim then,
    Yon little stream hard by,
They burnt his dwelling to the ground
    And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

                   VIII.

With fire and sword the country round
    Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
    And new-born infant died.
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.

                    IX.

They say it was a shocking sight
    After the field was won,
For many thousand bodies here
    Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that you know must be
After a famous victory.

                    X.

Great praise the Duke of Marlbro' won,
    And our good Prince Eugene.—
Why 'twas a very wicked thing!
    Said little Wilhelmine.
Nay—nay—my little girl, quoth he,
It was a famous victory.

                    XI.

And every body praised the Duke
    Who such a fight did win.
But what good came of it at last?—
    Quoth little Peterkin.
Why that I cannot tell, said he,
But 'twas a famous victory.

Of the Poem (A Few Notes)

It's not often that we happen upon human skulls or bones in our lives. In the poem, Kaspar has seen many of these, and is quite aware why- the result of a large battle where many thousand men were slain. His outlook on this, and on the aftermath of the battle, seems one of indifference and a sort of 'these things happen' attitude. He's repeatedly justifying or maybe even ignoring the carnage and loss of human life from the perspective of victory, as if the loss of human life through warfare was a normal condition of human existence:

And many a childing mother then,
    And new-born infant died.
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory

Or again, in stanza IX:

For many thousand bodies here
    Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that you know must be
After a famous victory

Amazingly, Kaspar even glosses over that fact that his own father and mother were directly affected by this war, that as he was a child his parents had to flee for their lives because their home and the town they lived in was set aflame- his parents essentially becoming refugees ... yet still, as Kaspar's refrain declares, "things like that, you know, must be." 

My father lived at Blenheim then,
    Yon little stream hard by,
They burnt his dwelling to the ground
    And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.

Perhaps the poem isn't solely a diatribe against war and our indifference towards it- perhaps it tacitly condemns our affection for vengeance.  I suggest this because it's strange to me that Kaspar knows the finest details of his parent's plight, but claims to know nothing at all about the cause of the conflict, which makes me wonder if his parents might have died as a result of it, and that as a result of deep-seated resentment he praises the routing and slaughter of the French by the English, not caring at all for the reason or 'why' of the war.

To be clear, the battle Southey refers to actually happened historically. In 1704, as the result of a long and drawn out power-struggle with France and Bavaria, Austria and England eventually, and essentially, massacred their enemy. 20 to 40,000 French soldiers lost their lives there by the Danube during this conflict- this compared to a mere (mere?) 5 to 6,000 lives of allied Austrian and English forces (this doesn't include civilian casualties and displacement, by the way, which are almost always higher). 

What I'm saying is that this poem doesn't just center around a story with fictional characters that we can just forget about when we're done reading it- no, real individual humans, thousands upon thousands, actually lost their lives over a conflict that our poet's narrator seems to care nothing about. 

Interestingly, we have the perspective of Kaspar's grandchildren, young Wilhelmine and her brother Peterkin. Horrified would be too strong a word to use, but they were no doubt deeply astonished that events like these occur. Warfare? Young Peterkin didn't even know that what he was playing with was a human skull (he came to ask what he had found, the poem declares). The concept of death itself seemed completely foreign to these children, much less that we inflict this eventuality on each other wholesale! 

Wilhelmine and Peterkin, eager to understand what happened here, and why they were handling a human skull, seemed naturally repulsed by the notion of war. In fact, if Southey's poem directly condemns the idea of war, it's from the perspective of Kaspar's grandchildren. 

The kids didn't care at all about the victory, but rather why such an event could even be possible. Peterkin asks repeatedly in perplexed desperation: Now tell us what 'twas all about ... tell us all about the war / And what they kill'd each other for. 

Wilhelmine, who seems to be the younger of the grandchildren, without prejudice outright condemns the notion of war, of such tremendous loss of life, and of the suffering of women and children.

Why 'twas a very wicked thing!
    Said little Wilhelmine.

One recalls the phrase: From the mouth of babes ... 

There are so many angles that one can take regarding the anti-war polemics this poem endorses (whether Southey is for or against war), way too many for me to cover here at this time. Still, I'm in scruples. Sometimes some wars seem imperative, and yet, at other times (most times), one of the most despicable evils that we have brought upon ourselves.

You tell me ... 

Of Warfare

Dedicated to three incredible, incredible poets: Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, and Joyce Kilmer.

The Trenches 

They held with horrid hell their lines 

Til shells dispelled their noxious fumes 

Then through the labyrinth there fell 

A myriad to Earth’s gray womb 

A thousand summers ere that day 

Those fruitful fields were green and bloom 

What once were luscious, lovely plains 

Are now a wasteland and a tomb 

-jwm

Of the Poem (A Brief Comment):  

I apologize for that gruesome picture of dead soldiers along that trenchbed, but war is real, and as disturbing as sights like this may be, we need to remember that this is what we do to each other.

I hate it- I can’t stand that we war. But whether it’s for remembering a noble cause (if such a thing exists), or acknowledging the inherent evilness of it, or even simply to weep at its existence, we cannot and should not look lightly past the fact that we war with one another, and that warfare is one of the most heinous, one of the most brutal and cruelest, one of the most unfortunate aspects of human reality.

Dulce et Decorum Est

I posted earlier this month on Siegfried Sassoon, a war poet who I came to know of and appreciate a long time ago. Since then I’ve been studying the works of an acquaintance of his, another poet who was also in the first world war, Wilfred Owen.

Now I have to say, I still consider Sassoon to be the best and most intense war poet I’ve read thus far, but Owen’s poetry is radically intense, and the imagery he employs in his poems is incredibly, incredibly vivid!

This poet, over a course of a few weeks, has been thrust into the center of my attention. His poetic genius astonishes me. Read this poem for example, just keep in mind that its title comes from a poem written by Horace, a Roman poet, and that the full Latin phrase (Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori) is: How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country …


*****


Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Glory of Women

The first war poet I read, Siegfried Loraine Sassoon was one of my earliest influences in the realm of poetry.

His poetry, which emerged from and absorbed events that related to and surrounded the first World War, is exceedingly ontic, intermittently disturbing (though truthful), and tragically profound. His style is very ‘earthly’ and very existential, and he gracefully and nobly touches on topics that are taboo. He’s a good poet.

The first poem of his I read was Death Bed- a poem that depicts the throes of death and the dying away of a soldier in an infirmary (a highly recommended read). The poem below, titled Glory of Women, bares beautiful testimony of the talent and audacity of this poet’s works- check it out …


Glory of Women

You love us when we're heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place.
You worship decorations; you believe
That chivalry redeems the war's disgrace.
You make us shells. You listen with delight,
By tales of dirt and danger fondly thrilled.
You crown our distant ardours while we fight,
And mourn our laurelled memories when we're killed.
You can't believe that British troops "retire"
When hell's last horror breaks them, and they run,
Trampling the terrible corpses - blind with blood.

O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

A Mystic as a Soldier- A Sassoon Poem

A Mystic as a Soldier
 
I lived my days apart,
Dreaming fair songs for God;
By the glory in my heart
Covered and crowned and shod.

Now God is in the strife,
And I must seek Him there,
Where death outnumbers life,
And fury smites the air.

I walk the secret way
With anger in my brain.
O music through my clay,
When will you sound again?



Of the Poem:
 
The poem is essentially about the destruction of internal bliss as a result of exernal brutality- especially where warfare is concerned. We have three stages, therefore, to the poem:

1st stanza: an internal state bliss
2nd stanza: violence done to that bliss
3rd stanza: and, lastly, bliss in a crippled state

I lived my days apart
 
The idea of the consecrated life is immediately established in line 1, particularly with the word apart- a word that quite literally can be taken to mean sanctification (i.e. set apart by God).

Dreaming fair songs for God
 
Line 2 establishes the mystical depth of the poem by showing a desire to reach Deity by fair songs- songs, of course, being one of the highest and most internal displays of worship one can express.

By the glory in my heart* / Covered and crowned and shod
 
The poet, with lines 3 and 4, wishes to show the extent of the mystic's spiritual life- indicated by the phrase glory in my heart (which signifies the beauty of the mystic's internal life). The poet then uses polysyndeton in line 4 to reinforce the idea that this glory permeates the mystic's life in every area: Covered and crowned and shod ... 

Now God is in the strife
 
Suddenly the mystic finds himself in the midst of war, a situation far removed from the rosy world spoken of in the previous stanza- in fact, the blatant transition from bliss to bleak most certainly depicts Sassoon’s poetic intention here: despite ethereal existence, world is utterly brutal.

Line 5 therefore seems to indicate that, though a soldier now in warfare, the mystic's center of reflection is still God- even in the trenches: I must seek Him there, he says in line 6.

But warfare's no joke: death outnumbers life / fury smites the air

The third stanza speaks of the aftermath, the residual psychological condition within which the mystic finds himself- and it's not pretty.

I walk the secret way

Our mystic, despite the trauma of war and the hideous events thereof, still remains a devotee to that which is Transcendental, he's still among the ranks of the initiate (i.e. the secret way).

With anger in my brain
 
He hasn't, however, emerged unscathed. War's brutal aspect has robbed his peace of mind (line 9), and though he walks the secret way, he does so with a pain- an anger- that's foreign to him. His song, that aforementioned state of joyful worship, has diminished.

Poetic Parameters:

Stanza: quatrain
Meter: trimeter (i.e. three metric feet, or six syllables)*
Rhyme Scheme: a.b.a.b.

*Line 3 of the poem actually has a seven syllable count, so technically the poem isn't entirely done in trimeter. I'd like to fancy poetic intent here and think, considering the number 7 is said to signify holiness, that the poet wanted to convey the depth of the mystic's spiritual state of sanctification.

Imagery from the Iliad

One of the things I like about poetry is its ability to use imagery from the natural world to convey a thought, an emotion, a situation, etc. There’s a passage in the Iliad where a truce between the two armies dissolves, and war breaks out. The author uses meteorological imagery to describe the clash between the two. Lines 517 through 523 (the first eight lines here) tell the 'literal' account of the conflict, while the following lines employ beautiful imagery.

It's pretty neat.

At last the armies clashed at one strategic point,
they slammed their shields together, pike scraped pike,
with the grappling strength of fighters armed in bronze
and their round shields pounded, boss on welded boss,
and the sound of struggle roared and rocked the earth.
Screams of men and cries of triumph breaking in one breath,
fighters killing, fighters killed, and the ground streamed blood.
Wildly as two winter torrents raging down from the mountains,
swirling into a valley, hurl their great waters together,
flash floods from the wellsprings plunging down in a gorge
and miles away in the hills a shepherd hears the thunder—
so from the grinding armies broke the cries and clash of war.

Iliad Book IV, Lines 517 – 527*