In aiming for these and other objectives in a version of the Iliad, I have had many kinds of help. The greatest has come from my collaborator, Bernard Knox, whom I would rather call a comrade. Not only has he written the Introduction and Notes to the translation but he has commented on my drafts for several years. And when I leaf through those pages now, his commentary seems to ring my typescript so completely that I might be looking at a worse-for-wear, dog-eared manuscript encircled by a scholiast’s remarks. Or is it something of a battle-map as well? The vulnerable lines at the center are shored up by a combat-tested ally, whose squads reinforce the weakest sectors and who deciphers Homer’s order of the day and tells a raw recruit what war—the movements of armies and the sentiments of soldiers—is all about. And more, what tragedy—in this, the first tragedy—realty means. In Book 9 of the Iliad old Phoenix calls for a man of words and a man of action too. My good fortune has been to work with such a man.
Several modem scholars and critics, cited in the bibliography, have helped as well, and so have several modern translators of the Iliad, in whole or part. Each has introduced me to a new aspect of the poem, another potential for the present. “For if it is true,” as Maynard Mack proposes, “that what we translate from a given work is what, wearing the spectacles of our time, we see in it, it is also true that we see in it what we have the power to translate.” So my debts to others are considerable, and here I say my thanks to William Arrowsmith, Robert Graves, Martin Hammond, Richmond Lattimore, Christopher Logue, Paul Mazon, Ennis Reese and E. V. Rieu. A few I have known in person, most I have never met. Yet I suspect we all have known each other in a way, having trekked across the same territory, perhaps having all encountered the nightmare that haunted Pope—“that he was engaged in a long journey,” as Joseph Spence reports, “puzzled which way to take, and full of fears” that it would never end.. And if you reach the end, the fears may start in earnest. In any event, the translator I have known the best is the one to whom I owe the most, Robert Fitzgerald, both for the power of his example and because, at a sensitive moment, he heartened me to “fit on your greaves and swordbelt and face the moil or the melee.”
Many other friends have come to my side, some by reading, some by listening to me read the work-in-progress, and responding in close detail with criticism or encouragement or a healthy combination of the two. Most encouraging of all, none has asked me, “Why another Iliad?” For each understood, it seems, that if Homer was a performer, then his translator might aim to be one as well, and that no two performances of the same work—surely not of a musical composition, so probably not of a work of language either—will ever be the same. The timbre and tempo of each will be distinct, let alone its deeper resonance, build and thrust. My thanks, then, to Marilyn Arthur, Paul Auster, Sandra Bermann, Charles Beye, Claudia Brodsky, Beth Brombert, Victor Brombert, Clarence Brown, Rebecca Bushnell, Robert Connor, Robert F. Go heen, Rachel Hadas, Robert Hollander, Samuel Hynes, Edmund Keeley, Nita Krevans, Janet Lembke, David Lenson, William Levitan, Herbert Marks, J. D. McClatchy, Earl Miner, William Mullen, Georgia Nugent, Joyce Carol Oates, Joanna Prins, Michael Putnam, David Quint, Richard Reid, James Richardson, Charles Segal, Steven Shankman, Michael Simpson, Raymond Smith, Paolo Vivante and Theodore Weiss.
And several classicists have lent a steady hand: William A. Childs, George Dunkel, Elaine Fantham, Andrew Ford, John Keaney, Richard Martin, Glenn Most and Froma Zeitlin. The published commentaries of other scholars, cited among the further readings, and even some unpublished have helped us on our way, thanks to the kindness and alacrity of their authors. Our book was in its later stages when M. M. Willcock sent the galleys of his second volume, Books 13 through 24. And the remaining parts of the commentary-in-progress under G. S. Kirk’s editorship—his own work on Books 5 through 8, J. B. Hainsworth’s on 9 through 12, Richard Janko’s on 13 through 16, Mark W. Edwards’ on 17 through 20 and Nicholas Richardson’s on 21 through 24—luckily arrived while each was still in proof or typescript. The first impulse for the translation, however, came from the late W. B. Stanford, who, one afternoon in County Wicklow many years ago, sketched out my route for returning to the source.
The roofs of some great houses have extended welcome shelter to the translator and his work. Theodore and Mary Cross have turned Nantucket into Ithaca West with their Homeric hospitality. The Rock efeller Foundation provided a resident fellowship at the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio during May 1985. Princeton University gave me leaves of absence in the spring semesters of 1982, 1985 and 1989, and, more important, the chance to study Homer with many students who have been an education to me. The Program in Hellenic Studies at the university twice appointed me to a Stanley J. Seeger Fellowship, first to begin the translation on Greek terrain, then to complete it there years later. The secretariat of Comparative Literature, from its leader, Carol Szymanski, to Gary Fuchs, to the Quietwriter and lately, the LaserJet, have been invaluable in helping to prepare the final manuscript. And close to the zero hour Deborah Fryer shared the task of placing the Greek line numbers throughout the text.
To produce the book at hand, my editor, Kathryn Court, assisted by Caroline White, has treated the writing and the writer, too, with energy, affection and address. Beena Kamlani’s efforts to copy-edit a fairly large and unruly manuscript have been heroic. Ann Gold, with all her artistry joined by Amy Hill’s, has designed a volume to companion the two that came before it. Anita Karl and James Kemp have drawn up the fine maps to guide the reader through the wilds of Homer’s world. Mary Sunden has labored long and hard with Joe Marcey and Peter Smith to find this version of the Iliad some readers. And the good people at Viking Penguin—Michael Jacobs, Christine Pevitt, Leigh Butler, Paul Slovak, Marcia Burch, Faye Darnall, Maureen Donnelly, Daniel Lundy, Cynthia Achar, Roni Axelrod—all have been loyal allies in New York. In London Peter Carson and Paul Keegan have been generous hosts to the latest Homer in the house. Before he left the publisher my former editor, Alan Williams, who saw me through the troubles of Aeschylus and Sophocles, gave my plans a happy push toward Troy. Prior to the present volume, Ben Sonnenberg graciously opened the pages of Grand Street and ran three books of the translation. Reginald Gibbons gave another book a timely berth in TriQuarterly. And through it all, without the unfailing stay and strategies of my friend and agent Georges Borchardt, assisted by Cindy Klein, this Iliad might never have been published.
“The Classics, it is the Classics!” Blake exclaimed, with pointed reference to Homer, “that Desolate Europe with Wars!” The violence of the Iliad can be overpowering, as it was for Simone Weil and many others, yet, as the Introduction observes, Homer makes that violence coexist with humanity and compassion, as close together as the city at war and the city at peace emblazoned on Achilles’ shield. If the translation offers any sense of this, it is because the translator has often consulted the familiar spirits of Adam and Anne Parry, and always relied on the Muses summoned in the dedication, chief among them Lynne.
R.F.
Princeton, New Jersey
June 17, 1990
A NOTE ON THIS PRINTING:
This printing contains minor revisions of the text.