Fiction:'Iliad' means a poem about Ilium, Troy. Homer's great epic poem, one of the enduring achievements of Western civilisation, chronicles the 10th year of the Trojan War. It is a story about heroes, both gods and men, who fought it, writes Eileen Battersby.
Homer describes their glory, their honour and in most cases, their deaths. But it is also, most particularly, about the anger of Achilles who, having been insulted by Agamemnon, threatens to leave for home with his troops.
The dispute seems simple. King Agamemnon makes the mistake of taking as his spoil of war, the daughter of a priest. That father happens to be well placed with Apollo to whom the old man appeals for help. Apollo despatches a plague on the Greek camp, and insists the girl is freed.
No less than the prophet Calchas advises that this must be done. Agamemnon has no choice but to return the girl. In true kingly fashion, Agamemnon decides to preserve his ego and deflect his humiliation. If he has to give up the girl, he must be compensated with another - no less than the woman Achilles has taken will do. But Agamemnon has overlooked the fact Achilles is the son of Peleus, a goddess, to whom the warrior son turns, asking her to intervene on his behalf with Zeus.
And so it goes. The Iliad is a masterpiece of sustained narrative, all life is here, war and the ways of heroes, as capable of petty behaviour as they are of heroic deeds. There is also the evocation of an ancient world in which ordinary mortals were familiar with the gods. Above all, this is a great story and one that enthralls children as intensely as it does classical scholars.
Not surprisingly, the Italian novelist Alessandro Baricco, who became internationally famous on the publication of his beautiful third novel, Silk, in 1996, has approached The Iliad for what it is, a story. That said he has taken Homer's original and shaped it into a far shorter prose version and has given many of the central characters speaking parts.
Here and there, he has inserted linking passages of his own. It is important, that he has not presented it as The Iliad, but rather as An Iliad. In an accompanying text, he explains: "Some time ago I had the idea of reading the entire Iliad in public, to evoke the story as it was originally disseminated in the Homeric world." But then he discovered exactly what such an exercise would entail: "It would take some 40 hours and an extremely patient public."
He refers to his cuts as "interventions". Although he has not edited out entire episodes, he has dispensed with the gods. The reasoning behind this is to highlight the human aspects of what is a very human tale of pride and greed, anger and heroism. Baricco quotes Lukács: "The novel is the epic of a world deserted by gods."
Purists may well shudder, especially as the magisterial American classicist, Robert Fagles, published the definitive translation of the 24 books of The Iliad in 1990. It runs to just over 600 pages and is widely available in the Penguin edition. It is exciting and remains a work that may be re-read and revisited without ever losing its dramatic urgency.
The Fagles version is monumental and obviously the one to read. Yet Baricco makes a fair stab at capturing the energy and the urgency by concentrating on the characters and allowing them to speak for themselves.
The near ritual state of violence in which we now live has certainly inspired Baricco's project. "The Iliad has something to teach us," he says, yet he is also alert to the fact that the poem "sings the beauty of war". The abiding ambivalence of human behaviour is enshrined in it. Throughout this version, Baricco presents various heroes toying with life and death; we see them embracing the idea of a heroic death but we also see them desperate to live. We see their petulance as well as their courage. The heroes kill each other, mourn their dead friends and avenge them.
Priam experiences the death of many of his sons; no loss is greater for him than the killing of his beloved Hector, "breaker of horses". Of the many scenes of emotional devastation, none is more powerful than the grief of Achilles on learning of the death of his friend, Patroclus. Even Xanthus and Balius, Achilles' immortal steeds who had caried Patroclus, are inconsolable.
"They stood motionless, like a marble monument on a man's tomb, with their muzzles brushing the earth, and they wept, says the legend, their eyes wept burning tears. They were not born to suffer old age or death, they were immortal. But they had run beside man, and from him they had learnt grief: because there is nothing on the face of the earth, nothing that breathes or walks. nothing so unhappy as man."
"Rage" is the opening word in Fagles's blank verse translation and it is this anger, the rage of Achilles, that provides the dynamic for what is to follow. "Rage - Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus' son Achilles,/ murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,/ hurling down to the House of Death many sturdy souls . . ."
Baricco sees Achilles as the reluctant warrior who takes his time about going to war. "It is he who, like a woman, is present at the war from a distance, playing a lyre and staying beside those he loves."
Achilles also loves life. Baricco has him say: "Nothing, for me, is worth life; not the treasures of the prosperous city of Ilium possessed before, in time of peace . . . the life of a man does not come back, one cannot steal or buy it, once it has passed the barrier of the teeth."
A false note is struck on page 90 of Ann Goldstein's translation of Baricco's version when Hector accuses Ajax of being "a lying show-off". Hector would have employed stronger language than that of the playground. Still, he then proceeds to hurl his spear at Ajax.
In 1999, Seamus Heaney presented readers with a glorious gift, a powerful lyric re-working of the Anglo-Saxon epic, Beowulf. Robert Fagles had already done a similar service to readers of Homer.
Yet Baricco's contribution if more modest, is timely and acts as a reminder of man's need for violence and of the price we pay for it. In The Iliad, he sees many things, most of all though, he sees story. And it is through story that this mighty poem of gods and men, of heroes, and greed and courage, continues to live. Baricco's vividly executed Iliad may well draw readers to an unforgettable experience - Homer's work as brilliantly rendered by Robert Fagles.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
Fiction: An Iliad: A Story of War By Alessandro Baricco Translated by Ann Goldstein Canongate, 158pp. £10.99