{"id":409,"date":"2010-12-28T10:44:13","date_gmt":"2010-12-28T10:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=409"},"modified":"2014-02-11T22:29:06","modified_gmt":"2014-02-11T22:29:06","slug":"409","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/?p=409","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Logue’s Homer: Patrocleia – 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

One great contrast between Patrocleia<\/em> and the later sections of War Music<\/em> is the human scale of Patrocleia<\/em>\u2019s heroes. Another is in the presentation of the gods. When things get serious the chasm between the human and the divine is absolute. The poem\u2019s climax comes when Patroclus, excited by success and blind to the extent to which all men are only the puppets of the gods, forgets his mere humanity, forgets Achilles\u2019 warning against overreaching himself, and collides with Apollo\u2019s divine power. At the point I\u2019m going to quote Patroclus has started to scale the walls of Troy. Apollo shouts a warning so loudly that<\/p>\n

Even the Yellow Judges giving law
\nHalf-way across the world\u2019s circumference, paused<\/p>\n

The tide doesn\u2019t yet turn for the Trojans, but it does for Patroclus as he hurls himself back into the human melee \u201cdesperate to hide \/ (To blind that voice) to hide \/ Among the stainless blades\u201d. Although he obeys the god it\u2019s too late to save him:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Patroclus fought like dreaming:
\nHis head thrown back, his mouth \u2013 wide as a shrieking mask \u2013
\nSucked at the air to nourish his infuriated mind
\nAnd seemed to draw the Trojans onto him,
\nTo lock them round his waist, red water washed against his chest,
\nTo lay their tired necks against his sword like birds.
\n\u2013 Is\u00a0 it a god? Divine? Needing no tenderness? \u2013
\nYet instantly they touch, he butts them,
\nCuts them back:
\n\u2013 Kill them!
\nMy sweet Patroclus,
\n\u2013 Kill them!
\nAs many as you can,
\nFor
\nComing behind you through the dust you felt
\n\u2013 What was it? \u2013 felt creation part and then<\/p>\n

(page break)<\/em><\/p>\n

At this point you really need the book. You turn the page to find a giant<\/em> APOLLO!<\/strong> blasted across the double page spread followed by a single half line:<\/em><\/p>\n

Who had been patient with you<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (page break)<\/em><\/p>\n

Struck.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 His hand came from the east
\nAnd in His wrist lay all eternity;
\nAnd every atom of His mythic weight
\nWas poised between His fist and bent left leg.
\nYour eyes lurched out. Achilles\u2019 helmet rang
\nFar and away beneath the cannon-bones of Trojan horses,
\nAnd you were footless… staggering… amazed…
\nBetween the clumps of dying, dying yourself,
\nDazed by the brilliance in your eyes,
\nThe noise \u2013 like weirs heard far away \u2013
\nDabbling your astounded fingers
\nIn the vomit on your chest.<\/p>\n

This is a stunning moment which I’m sorry not to be able to reproduce (even if I could do the giant letters, I couldn’t get the effect of turning a page). Of course the impact isn’t\u00a0merely a matter of the use of huge block capitals but also of the way their effect is fed by contrast: we\u2019re held in our uncertainty and dim grappling with an extremely abstract idea (\u201cYou felt \/ \u2013 what was it? \u2013 felt creation part and then\u201d) until we turn the page and this uncertainty is blasted through by the single giant word.<\/p>\n

One obvious point to make here again concerns our shifting relation to the characters in the story and how we are drawn into imaginative identification with them. In what I\u2019ve quoted we move rapidly from what appears to be a neutral spectatorial position to that of someone loving Patroclus and shouting him on, caught up in the moment but also seeing it in retrospect as Patroclus\u2019 last chance to do anything before being killed. And then, brilliantly, our response is made to split so that we\u2019re simultaneously seeing Patroclus from outside (addressing him as \u201cyou\u201d) and feeling things as he feels them \u2013 the vague, disturbing parting of creation and the overwhelming shock of Apollo. Patroclus was, of course, wearing Achilles\u2019 helmet till Apollo struck him and sent it flying. The long heptameter line \u201cFar and away between the cannon-bones of Trojan horses\u201d stretches the distance to the helmet and again makes us see it through his eyes, as if he\u2019s seeing it and everything except Apollo\u2019s blinding light through the wrong end of a telescope. What a marvellously filmic effect that is. It\u2019s followed by a purely verbal one: the ellipses marking trailing pauses in the following line make the line itself seem to stagger and trip over its own metrical feet.<\/p>\n

Even now, even as so much compels us to enter into Patroclus\u2019 experience, the second person pronouns hold him and that experience away from us. If I can split into separate elements tones that are blended in our response, I think there are feelings of empathy (as if we were him) and compassion (for someone suffering outside us \u2013 something he markedly didn\u2019t feel himself) and also something more complicated. This last element is a sense of Patroclus\u2019 being presented as an object lesson and comes most fully into focus with \u201cBetween the clumps of dying, dying yourself\u201d and with \u201camazed\u201d and \u201castounded\u201d. It\u2019s as if Patroclus never believed that he could be killed himself until it started to happen. No doubt there\u2019s an element of a sense of his getting his come-uppance here, of tables being turned on the pitiless killer. No doubt there\u2019s pity for his boyish rashness. But above all there\u2019s the feeling that he\u2019s a lesson for all of us in the sense that his blindness and vulnerability and ultimate impotence are essential elements of our shared human condition, even though they\u2019re elements we have to forget most of the time if we\u2019re to be active in our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One great contrast between Patrocleia and the later sections of War Music is the human scale of Patrocleia\u2019s heroes. Another is in the presentation of the gods. When things get serious the chasm between the human and the divine is absolute. The poem\u2019s climax comes when Patroclus, excited by success and blind to the extent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christopher-logue","category-homer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edmundprestwich.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}