Kevin's Watch

Spurred by the "unforgettable openings" topic, here's something for passages in general.

So the Trojans held their watch that night but not the Achaeans-
godsent Panic seized them, comrade of bloodcurling Rout:
all their best were struck by grief too much to bear.
As crosswinds chop the sea where the fish swarm,
the North Wind and the West Wind blasting out of Thrace
in sudden, lightning attack, wave on blacker wave, cresting,
heaving a tangl.ed mass of seaweed out along the surf-
so the Achaeans' hearts were torn inside their chests.

This selection is from the beginning of The Iliad, book 9 (if you go by the 24 book organization of the text), The Embassy to Achilles. We're past it by now, but this passage just sticks in my mind, particularly the extremely well written, grounded simile; every piece of imagery fits perfectly.

The presence of winds tie back to book 7, where Hector's return to battle is compared to a wind refreshing the trojans as well. The suspension of the Greeks, and the Trojans for that matter, in the sea represents their dependence on the benevolence of Zeus, the gods, the Fates, etc; after all, Zeus has driven the Achaeans back to their enclosures. The sudden lightning attack, as fast fading, and the cresting wave which will soon wash in, then away, represent this as the furthest the Trojans will get in pushing back the Greeks. The tangle of seaweed, of course, represents the scattered greeks. Finally, homer concludes with "the Achaeans' hearts were torn inside their chests"; although the Achaens haven't taken heavy losses (compare the trojan officer casualties to those of the greeks in chapter 8; Teucer is the only greek officer injured from my count), their morale is plummeting.

The winds in the second line of the simile I'm not too sure of, but I think it might be similar to Demosthenes' comparison of Phillip of Macedon (or maybe one of the Persian emperors...?) to a storm cloud breaking off a mountainous region (thrace, IIRC, is mountainous). In doing so, Demosthenes applied the struggle of the farmers dependant on mild conditions to political discourse. I can't remember what speech the particular line is from, but I recalled it when I read this passage.

I used to read the Iliad and Odyssey over and over again when I was 10. I was so much better-read then than I am now.

Sorry I'm not more help...

Trapper439 wrote:I used to read the Iliad and Odyssey over and over again when I was 10. I was so much better-read then than I am now.

Sorry I'm not more help...

Help? Just post up a passage or two if you find one, not from there in particular.

Sorry for my earlier flippancy Holsety. How about this one about WWI:

ANDREW DENTON: There are so many men that you wrote about. I want to read a quote from a man called Alec Raws, a Victorian, and this - again you said this was a stoic era where people didn’t speak much of their feelings. He was definitely an exception. “I, who cannot tread upon a worm, who has never struck another human being except in fun, who cannot read of the bravery of others at the front without tears welling to his eyes, who cannot think of blood and mangled bodies without bodily sickness, this man, I go forth tomorrow to maim, murder and ravage”. What sort of a man was Alec Raws?



LES CARLYON: That’s typical of him. He’s a very sensitive man. He was in fact the head of the - the Melbourne Arguses Parliamentary reporting team. He’s a journalist. And why his stuff from the war is great is he somehow wrote outside the clichés. He literally said - you know he - he was a very gentle soul. He wouldn’t tread on a worm. Now, a couple of days after he wrote that, suddenly, he’s thrown into the battle of Pozieres, and here he is threatening other Australians with a - with a revolver, if they - if they leave their position. You’ve got to stay doing all sorts of things, walking round in the uniform, as he described it with - with another man’s brains spattered all over it. And what happened simply was he - he was a - you know a very, very sensitive man and everything else but, when the time came, he did his job.

But he never really believed in sort of the military heroics and everything. He enlisted out of duty and of course at Pozieres he lost his brother. And then eventually a shell got Alec himself and there wasn’t a mark on his body, just killed by concussion, but that was the end of him. They buried him and the grave was lost, so all you’ve got to remember Alec Raws now is a line on the Australian memorial at - on the Wall at Villas Bretno.

www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1777008.htm