The Husbands: An Account of Books 3 and 4 of Homer's Iliad

by Christopher Logue, Homer

In The Husbands, Logue trains his lyrical eye upon Homer's ultimate femme fatale, Helen of Troy, and her ardently mortal husbands, Menelaus and Paris.
Carrying the Homeric world into our own, Logue's language is at once musical, profoundly tender, and frighteningly graphic. With cinematic speed, disarming confidence, and lyrical care, Logue gives us a reading of classic literature that makes unquestionably clear its relevance to our own time.

Genres: Poetry, Literature

55 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 1994

About the author

Christopher Logue, CBE was an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. He also wrote for the theatre and cinema as well as acting in a number of films. His two screenplays are Savage Messiah and The End of Arthur's Marriage. He was also a long-term contributor to Private Eye magazine, as well as writing for the Merlin literary journal of Alexander Trocchi. He won the 2005 Whitbread Poetry Award for Cold Calls.

His early popularity was marked by the release of a loose adaptation of Pablo Neruda's "Twenty Love Poems", later released as an extended play recording, "Red Bird: Jazz and Poetry", backed by a Jazz group led by Tony Kinsey.

One of his poems, "Be Not Too Hard" was set to music by Donovan Leach, and made popular by Joan Baez, from her 1967 album "Joan". Donovan's version appeared in the film "Poor Cow"(1967).

His major poetical work was an ongoing project to render Homer's Iliad into a modernist idiom. This work is published in a number of small books, usually equating to two or three books of the original text. (The volume entitled Homer: War Music was shortlisted for the 2002 International Griffin Poetry Prize.) He also published an autobiography called Prince Charming (1999).

His lines tend to be short, pithy and frequently political, as in Song of Autobiography:

"I, Christopher Logue, was baptized the year
Many thousands of Englishmen
Fists clenched, their bellies empty,
Walked day and night on the capital city."

He wrote the couplet that is sung at the beginning and end of the 1965 film A High Wind in Jamaica, the screenplay for Savage Messiah (1972), a television version of Antigone (1962), and a short play for the TV series The Wednesday Play titled The End of Arthur's Marriage (1965).

He also appeared in a number of films as an actor, most notably as Cardinal Richelieu in Ken Russell's 1971 film The Devils and as the spaghetti-eating fanatic in Terry Gilliam's 1977 film Jabberwocky.

Logue wrote for the Olympia Press under the pseudonym, Count Palmiro Vicarion, including a pornographic novel, Lust.

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source: wikipedia.org

Reviews

[Richard Clay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars as long as you accept that this shouldn't be your first Iliad. It's a very free translation - so free that Logue chose not to call it a translation at all; it is, in his words, an 'account'. But some of the most vivid imagery to be found in English poetry of the last fifty years is here - especially when bloody violence and superhuman strength are evoked. And Achilles isn't even in this bit - well, hardly.

[Sunblinding · Rating 5 out of 5]

Logue absolutely cooking:

"and when the armies met, they paused,
and then they swayed, and then they moved
much like a forest making its way through a forest.
after ten years, the war had scarcely begun,
and the god merely breathes for the Greeks to be thrown
(as shingle is onto the road by the sea)
back down the dip, swell, dip of the plain.
and now it has passed us the sound of their war
resembles the sound of the Niagara
heard from afar in the still of the night.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to read this again after reading War Music. Perhaps my rating will go up.

[Kirsti · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the excellent audiobook version narrated by Simon Vance. Who doesn't want to know what "breakfast in heaven" is like?

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If my love did not sit there somewhere between the Greek and Trojan lines, long ago stones from all sides would have turned your face into froth” -Aphrodite to Helen

[Sophia Haralambis · Rating 5 out of 5]

utterly obsessed is an understatement

[Courtney Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Logue takes it back. Tense, hard, bright, vicious, human - 'The Husbands' does all the things I wanted 'Kings' to do.

Here Logue focuses on the fight between Helen's two husbands - Menelaus the Greek and Paris the Trojan - that had the chance of settling the nine-year siege of troy once and for all. But the gods can't put their humanity aside long enough to keep out of mortal affairs, and all good plans are led awry ...

I'm going to give you the full first page of the poem, painfully (and probably erroneously) transcribed. See why it swept me away ...

Think of those fields of light that sometimes sheet
Low tide sands, and of the panes of such a tide
When, carrying the sky, they start to flow
Everywhere, and then across themselves:
Likewise the Greek bronze streaming out at speed,
Glinting among the orchards and the groves,
And then across the plains -- dust, grass, no grass,
Its long low swells and falls -- all warwear pearl,
Blue Heaven above, Mt Ida's snow behind, Troy inbetween.
Ans what pleasure it was to be there! To be one of that host!
Greek, and as naked as God, naked as bride and groom,
Exulting for battle! lords shouting the beat out
'One --'
Keen for a kill
'Two-three'
As our glittering width and our masks that glittered
Came over the last low rise of the plain and

'Now'

(As your heart skips a beat)

'See the Wall.'

And you do.

It is immense.

So high

So still

It fills your sight.

[Naomi Ruth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really very wonderful "translation" of part of the Iliad. It weaves in more than just Book III and IV and uses references from other poets. If you are a fan of the Iliad or Homer you should definitely give this rendition a try. It was quite moving and will stay with me.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

searing, beautiful. i know, i know, i need to read the real thing. this summer.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

see "War Music"