Pages

Wednesday, 29 October 2025

The Aeneid: “She prayed for death/ Being heartsick at the mere sight of heaven”

 

Painting by Nathaniel Dance-Holland. 


1/ After fleeing Troy, Aeneas and his people wander for some time and stop in Carthage. In Books 2-3, he tells his story to Queen Dido of the Phoenicians. 

“The queen, for her part, all that evening ached 

With longing that her heart’s blood fed, a wound 

Or inward fire eating her away.

The manhood of the man, his pride of birth, 

Came home to her time and again; his looks, 

His words remained with her to haunt her mind, 

And desire for him gave her no rest.” 

(Book 4) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

What does that remind me of?

“She loved me for the dangers I had passed,

And I loved her that she did pity them.” 

(Othello, Act 1 scene 3)

Dido confides in Anna: 

“‘[…] I shall say it: since that time

Sychaeus, my poor husband, met his fate, 

And blood my brother shed stained our hearth gods, 

This man alone has wrought upon me so 

And moved my soul to yield. I recognize 

The signs of the old flame, of old desire. 

But O chaste life, before I break your laws, 

I pray that Earth may open it, gape for me 

Down to its depth, or the omnipotent 

With one stroke blast me to the shades, pale shades 

Of Erebus and the deep world of night! 

That man who took me to himself in youth 

Has taken all my love, may that man keep it, 

Hold it forever with him in the tomb.’” 

(ibid.) 

Poor Dido. Why do we fall in love? To love is to make ourselves vulnerable to grief and heartache. She yields, she hopes, she opens up herself to Aeneas, only to have her heart broken as Aeneas follows his fate and leaves her for Italy. 

In this chapter, Aeneas still feels like a blank—one wishes Virgil depicted more of Aeneas’s struggle between his feelings for Dido and his sense of duty, as he sets out for Italy to found a new kingdom for the Trojans so that “Priam’s great hall should stand again”—but Virgil focuses on Dido and his depiction of her passion and heartbreak is deeply moving. 

“… At that sight, what were your emotions, Dido? 

[…] Unconscionable Love, 

To what extremes will you not drive our hearts! 

She now felt driven to weep again, again 

To move him, if she could, by supplication, 

Humbling her pride before her love—to leave 

Nothing untried, not to die needlessly.” 

(ibid.) 

One can’t help thinking though that Venus is cruel—she knows the fate for Aeneas, she knows his mission—why does she make Dido fall in love with him? (Don’t say the Greek/ Roman gods represent impulses, or forces beyond our control—I know, but in the world of these poems, they are characters). 


2/ Whereas Homer often mentions time (the Trojan War lasts 10 years; Odysseus takes 10 years to go home, of which one year is with Kirke/ Circe and seven years is with Kalypso), Virgil does not. He might even be a bit blurry on time and geography (but then the Aeneid wasn’t quite finished when he died). 

Apparently people disagree about how long Aeneas stays in Carthage. In the first five chapters (confusingly called books), there are four references to time. In Book 5, after leaving Carthage and landing again in Sicily, Aeneas organises some competitions to mark the one-year anniversary of his father’s death, meaning that there’s a gap of one year between Anchises’s death in Sicily and the second time Aeneas passes through Sicily on the way to Italy. In Book 1, Dido asks Aeneas to tell his story, saying “now the seventh summer brings you here”, which marks the beginning of their love affair; but in Book 5, during the funeral games, Iris appears in disguise and says to the Trojans “We’ve seen/ The seventh summer since the fall of Troy.” 

Does this mean that Aeneas only passes a couple of months in Carthage—let’s ignore the distance between it and Sicily—or does it mean that Virgil makes a mistake, Aeneas is meant to arrive in Carthage in the sixth summer of his wanderings, and he stays there for almost a year?

Personally I’d like to think that there’s no mistake and Aeneas stays in Carthage for only a month or two: there’s no indication that Aeneas leaves Sicily immediately after his father’s death, and his time with Dido sounds like summer. But this passage adds to the confusion: 

“Now in no time at all 

Through all the African cities Rumor goes—

Nimble as quicksilver among evils. […]

In those days Rumor took an evil joy 

At filling countrysides with whispers, whispers, 

Gossip of what was done, and never done:

How this Aeneas landed, Trojan born,

How Dido in her beauty graced his company, 

Then how they reveled all the winter long

Unmindful of the realm, prisoners of lust.” 

(Book 4) 

Unless we dismiss Rumour altogether, this sounds like Aeneas stays in Carthage for about a year. 


3/ In Book 6, Aeneas goes to the Underworld, which is obviously modelled after Book 11 of the Odyssey. Compared to Homer however, Virgil describes in greater detail the path to, and the look of, the Underworld.  

“The path goes on from that place to the waves 

Of Tartarus’s Acheron. Thick with mud, 

A whirlpool out of a vast abyss 

Boils up and belches all the silt it carries 

Into Cocytus. Here the ferryman, 

A figure of fright, keeper of waters and streams, 

Is Charon, foul and terrible, his beard 

Grown wild and hoar, his staring eyes all flame, 

His sordid cloak hung from a shoulder knot…”

(Book 6) 

It is a horrifying place. 

“Now voices crying loud were heard at once—

The souls of infants wailing. At the door 

Of the sweet life they were to have no part in, 

Torn from the breast, a black day took them off 

And drowned them all in bitter death…” 

(ibid.) 

It is more visual, and detailed. 

In both poems, the protagonists travel to the Underworld and meet the dead people they know. In the Odyssey, there are four great moments: Odysseus meets Agamemnon, who tells the story of his murder (which becomes the basis for the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides); he meets Akhilleus (Achilles), who dies with glory but now says he would rather live an ordinary life than “lord it over all the exhausted dead”; he meets Aias (Ajax), who hated him in life and continues to hate him in death, refusing his gesture of conciliation; and he also meets his mother, who he hasn’t realised is dead, and tries to hug her in vain. The last three moments are extremely moving. Homer gets us to think about the people who have been in our lives: those we love and those we hate, those we may have been like and those we hope not to be like.

The Underworld scene in the Aeneid has one great moment, but it is deeply moving as we have been with them from the beginning: Aeneas meets the spirit of Dido, not having realised that she’s dead, and she doesn’t speak to him. 

No wonder some people think Book 6 is the most moving one in the Aeneid

Saturday, 25 October 2025

The Aeneid: “Tell me the causes now, O Muse”

Attributed to Lucca Batoni Pompeo.

1/ One of the surprising things about the Aeneid is how similar, how well it fits in with Homer’s epics: even though it’s written centuries later, in a different language, and the gods have Roman names, it’s essentially the same world; Virgil also writes about the Trojan War and its aftermath, just from the other perspective; there are also sacrifices and gods and ghosts; Virgil uses epic similes, as in the Iliad; he includes a story-within-the-story, as in the Odyssey; the Aeneid begins with an invocation of the Muse, like Homer’s epic poems; I’ve also read that the first half of the Aeneid is modelled after the Odyssey and the second half, after the Iliad

(No wonder the three books are sometimes grouped together—there’s a Robert Fagles box set composed of three books, for instance, and in translation they feel like a trilogy). 

When I google the Aeneid, I see many people talk about it as some kind of propaganda about the founding of Rome, but I’m more interested in the aspect of the Aeneid as a spin-off from Homer’s epic poems: Virgil takes Aeneas from the Iliad and the Trojan horse from the Odyssey and tells the story from the other side. And because it’s the other side, the Odyssey is about homecoming and the Aeneid is about becoming an exile and creating a new home. 

I can see that Virgil sets out to imitate—and rival—Homer. 

“With this she left me weeping, 

Wishing that I could say so many things, 

And faded on the tenuous air. Three times 

I tried to put my arms around her neck, 

Three times enfolded nothing, as the wraith

Slipped through my fingers, bodiless as wind, 

Or like a flitting dream.” 

(Book 2) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

That moving scene between Aeneas and the ghost of his wife Creusa is reminiscent of Odysseus trying three times to hug the ghost of his mother in the Odyssey


2/ There are some interesting images in the poem. 

“Here men were dredging harbors, there they laid 

The deep foundation of a theatre, 

And quarried massive pillars to enhance 

The future stage—as bees in early summer 

In sunlight in the flowering fields 

Hum at their work, and bring along the young 

Full-grown to beehood; as they cram their combs 

With honey, brimming all the cells with nectar, 

Or take newcomers’ plunder, or like troops 

Alerted, drive away the lazy drones, 

And labor thrives and sweet rhyme scents the honey.” 

(Book 1) 

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a Homeric simile. 


3/ The poem begins with Aeneas and some Trojans becoming exiles and reaching Carthage. Books 2-3 are Aeneas recounting his story (like Odysseus telling his adventures in Books 9-12 of the Odyssey). The sack of Troy is a particularly great scene, with many touching moments: Aeneas and others continuing to fight amidst the burning city; old Priam taking up weapons only to see another son of his brutally killed before his eyes; Aeneas carrying his aging father out of chaos and fire, then realising that his wife is no longer with them; Aeneas discovering that she’s dead, and trying in vain to embrace her one more time; and so on. It is such a great chapter.   


4/ Virgil repeats stories or images from Homer’s poems: the body of Hector being dragged around Troy walls; the Trojan horse; Scylla (or Skylle) and Charybdis; Polyphemus and the other Cyclops; etc. 

One of the fascinating things about Homer’s poems is that (unless I misremember) no story or incident in the Iliad is repeated in the Odyssey: when Odysseus, or someone that Telemakhos (Telemachus) meets, talks about himself or about the Trojan War, it’s a new story. If the Odyssey was not written by the author of the Iliad, it was written by someone who knew the Iliad very well and made sure not to have any overlapping scenes or stories. 

When Virgil evokes something from Homer, it’s not just a reference or a repetition—he changes the perspective, or does something interesting with it: the ruse of the Trojan horse and the destruction of Troy are now seen from the perspective of Trojans; Polyphemus is seen after he has been blinded by Odysseus (Ulysses) and his men; Aeneas and his crew go the long way, avoiding Scylla and Charybdis; etc. 

It is fascinating to examine the Aeneid as a spin-off. 


PS: I’m reading the Aeneid as a way to keep from killing myself, which may or may not work—I guess we’ll see. 

Wednesday, 22 October 2025

Flannery O’Connor and judgement

Lately, as a break between Greek and Roman literatures, I’ve been reading Flannery O’Connor. Ain’t she just great? When I was reading A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, I thought she must be the greatest writer of bigotry. As I recently read a few stories in Everything That Rises Must Converge, I would add that she must also be the greatest writer of self-righteousness: both “The Comforts of Home” and “The Lame Shall Enter First” depict a parent bringing a delinquent into their homes to save them; the mother in “The Comforts of Home” is the “bleeding heart” progressive type, who tries to help others out of naïve compassion and listens to no reason and ends up causing harm; the father in “The Lame Shall Enter First” feels virtuous and feels good about himself for rescuing a troubled adolescent, whilst neglecting his own son. Whereas many great writers—especially Tolstoy, Chekhov, and George Eliot—write with compassion and get you to understand different points of view and different kinds of people, Flannery O’Connor doesn’t. She judges. She condemns. She’s sharp, unsentimental, merciless. You can feel her contempt for all the characters as she cuts them open and studies them.

The interesting thing though is that when Flannery O’Connor writes about bigotry and racism, such as in “Revelation”, I can see that there’s some of her in Mrs Turpin, that she’s wrestling with her own bigotry, that she’s judging and condemning herself. It is foolish to dismiss her as racist and not worth reading—like that New Yorker piece from 2020—when she knew her own bigotry. 


___________________________________


My list of the greatest short story writers would always have Flannery O’Connor. There’s something cold, harsh, intense about her—she is terrifying—but there’s also something striking and compelling. The contrast between her and Chekhov, my favourite short story writer of all, is fascinating: he’s warm, she’s cold; and she makes one feel deeply uncomfortable. 

I think the best stories in the first collection are “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, “The River”, “The Artificial Nigger”, “Good Country People”, and “The Displaced Person”. 

The best stories in the second collection are “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, “A View of the Woods”, “The Comforts of Home”, and “The Lame Shall Enter First” (but then I have two stories left to read). 

Saturday, 11 October 2025

100 latest films and plays I've watched

From December 2024 to October 2025 

In bold: films and plays I think are good 


1/ Až přijde kocour (When the Cat Comes/ The Cassandra Cat - Czechoslovakia - 1963) 

2/ Lekce Faust (Faust - Czech Republic, France, UK, US, Germany - 1994) 

3/ Cléo de 5 à 7 (Cléo from 5 to 7 - France, Italy - 1962)

4/ To Be or Not to Be (1942)

5/ Kedi (Turkey - 2016) 

6/ A Midsummer Night's Dream (2024, Royal Shakespeare Company, dir. Eleanor Rhode, starring Mathew Baynton as Bottom) - onstage 

7/ I Slept with 100 Men in One Day (2024)

8/ The Wizard of Oz (1939) 

9/ Burning Sun: Exposing the Secret K-pop Chat Groups (2024) 

10/ The Ladykillers (1955) 

___________________________________

11/ Cien Años de Soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude - Colombia - 2024) - Series 1, 8 episodes

12/ Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror - Germany - 1922) 

13/ Daughters of Darkness (Belgium, France, West Germany - 1971) 

14/ In Bruges (2008)

15/ PinkNews: Behind Closed Doors (2024) 

16/ The Man in the White Suit (1951)

17/ Nosferatu (2024) 

18/ Dispatches: Beneath the Veil (2001) 

19/ The Lavender Hill Mob (1951)

20/ A Real Pain (2024) 

21/ Wonka (2023)

22/ It Happened One Night (1934) 

23/ The Palm Beach Story (1942)

24/ Midnight (1939) 

25/ Cleopatra (1934) 

26/ A Star Is Born (2018) 

27/ The Flame of New Orleans (1941)

28/ Coriolanus (2024, National Theatre, dir. Lyndsey Turner, with David Oyelowo as Coriolanus) 

29/ King Lear (2018, National Theatre, dir. Jonathan Munby, with Ian McKellen as Lear) 

30/ The Brutalist (2024) 

31/ Othello (2013, National Theatre, dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Adrian Lester as Othello) 

32/ Julius Caesar (2018, National Theatre. dir. Nicholas Hytner, with Ben Whishaw as Brutus) 

33/ Mahanagar, aka The Big City (India - 1963) 

34/ Anora (2024)

35/ L'Amour l'après-midi (Love in the Afternoon - France - 1972) 

36/ Hunting the Catfish Crime Gang (2023) 

37/ Panorama - My Online Stalker (2025) 

38/ Eye Investigations: Liked, Lured, Livestreamed (2025) 

39/ Moonstruck (1987)

40/ Le ballon rouge (The Red Balloon - France - 1956) 

41/ Heathers (1988) 

42/ Tom Jones (1963) 

43/ The Big Clock (1948) 

44/ Groomed: A National Scandal (2025) 

45/ Eye Investigations: Make Me Perfect: Manufacturing Beauty in China (2025) 

46/ 晩菊 (Late Chrysanthemums - Japan - 1954) 

47/ Macbeth (1971) 

48/ 龍門客棧 (Dragon Inn - Taiwan - 1967) 

49/ Cyrano de Bergerac (France, Hungary - 1990) 

50/ Hamlet (2009, RSC, ft. David Tennant) 

51/ Paper Moon (1973)

52/ タンポポ (Tampopo - Japan - 1985) 

53/ Diddy in Plain Sight: UNTOLD (2025) 

54/ Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) 

55/ Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (2025) 

56/ Stacey Dooley: Meet the Shoplifters (2025) 

57/ Anna Karenina (1977) - 10 episodes 

58/ Mansfield Park (1983) - 6 episodes 

59/ Pride and Prejudice (2005) - again 

60/ North and South (2004) - 4 episodes 

61/ Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov - Soviet Union - 1969) 

62/ Straume (Flow - Latvia, France, Belgium - 2024)

62/ The Apartment (1960) - again

63/ The Servant (1963) 

64/ Some Like It Hot (1959) - again 

65/ Ball of Fire (1941) 

66/ The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) 

67/ Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) 

68/ Citizen Kane (1941) - again 

69/ Sound of Metal (2019)

70/ My Man Godfrey (1936) 

71/ The Naked Gun (2025) 

72/ Odd Man Out (1947) 

78/ 12 Angry Men (1957) - again 

79/ Ninotchka (1939)

80/ Frankenstein (1931) 

81/ Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

82/ 千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away - Japan - 2001)

83/ Casablanca (1942) - again 

84/ The Plot Against Harry (1971)

85/ The Three Faces of Eve (1957) 

86/ Poor Things (2023) 

87/ Young Frankenstein (1974) 

88/ High Anxiety (1977) 

89/ Dark Waters (2019) 

90/ Dracula (1931, English-language version) 

91/ Son of Frankenstein (1939) 

92/ Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931) 

93/ The Invisible Man (1933) 

94/ The Black Cat (1934) 

95/ The Return (2024)

96/ The Public Enemy (1931) 

97/ Steve Jobs (2015)

98/ パーフェクトブルー (Perfect Blue - Japan - 1997)

99/ ハウルの動く城 (Howl's Moving Castle - Japan - 2004) 

100/ となりのトトロ (My Neighbour Totoro - Japan - 1988) 

Friday, 10 October 2025

Some further thoughts on the Iliad and the Odyssey

1/ As I’m too ignorant—I don’t even read Greek—to wade into the debate over whether the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by the same person, I’m just going to treat them like they were, and compare them. The Iliad is thick with epic similes (especially in Book 11); the Odyssey has some extended similes but most of the similes are in single phrases. The Iliad has a straightforward narrative; the Odyssey has a much more interesting structure, with jumps, flashbacks, story-within-a-story, etc. The Iliad is more like War and Peace, having hundreds (or 1000?) of characters and focusing on several main characters; the Odyssey is more like Don Quixote, following the main character(s) and moving from one set of characters to another. Both are foundational works of Western literature; both are great; both are subtle and sophisticated. 

As for the main characters, Akhilleus (better known as Achilles) and Odysseus are both vividly alive, both complex characters (now that I’ve “met” them, Harold Bloom’s idea that Shakespeare “invented the human”—whatever that means—is even more absurd). I would even say that Akhilleus and Odysseus are two of the greatest characters I’ve come across in literature: Akhilleus, as he returns to battle because of Patroklos, turns himself into a killing machine, merciless and indifferent to human mortality, but regains his humanity in the final chapter, as he meets Priam and comes to understand the value of human lives and relationships; Odysseus is multi-faceted and full of contradictions, and more interestingly, he’s a storyteller and an actor, transforming himself like a Shakespearean character. 

The funny thing about reading classic literature and going back to the foundation is that once in a while some books feel old, but some feel astonishingly fresh. For instance, when I trace back to (some candidates for) the first English novels, Pamela and Joseph Andrews feel a bit crude (compared to the peaks in the 19th century) and Robinson Crusoe feels very much like a relic of the past, but the first modern novel, Don Quixote, is still sophisticated and dazzlingly inventive. The Iliad and the Odyssey are fresh, and it’s extraordinary that they’re about 2700 years old. 


2/ I recently watched The Return, a retelling of the Odyssey

In theory, I don’t mind filmmakers taking liberties with the source material (after all, lately I’ve been enjoying the 1930s loose adaptations of Frankenstein and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde). The Return has an interesting idea: if we strip the Odyssey of mythology and remove all the gods—and imagine “the real Odysseus”—then why did Odysseus wander for 10 years instead of going home? The answer of the film is that he’s haunted by war and unable to face everyone out of shame for returning alone. That is no Homer, but the idea is fine and Ralph Fiennes is magnificent in the role. 

However, as The Return emphasises the anti-war message, it consequently changes the nature of the relationship between Odysseus and Telemachus, and between Odysseus and Penelope. And the problem with the film is that it reduces Telemachus to a one-dimensional twat, unlikeable, extremely unpleasant to both his father and mother; it also reduces Penelope to a “bleeding heart” in the final scenes, which is even more disappointing because up till that point, Juliette Binoche was very good as Penelope. 

The more I think about it, the more I dislike it. 

Not particularly hopeful about the Christopher Nolan film that’s coming out next year either.  


3/ I’m currently reading An Odyssey: A Father, a Son and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn, a book about the author’s eighty-one-year-old father enrolling in his Odyssey seminar at university, and about their relationship. Daniel Mendelsohn also released his own translation of the Odyssey this year. 

It’s quite a good book to read after Homer, especially because I don’t know Greek and he explains some of the Greek in the poems. 

Tuesday, 7 October 2025

The Iliad: “two possible destinies carrying me toward death”

Painting by Jean Joseph Taillason: Akhilleus displaying Hektor’s body at the feet of Patroklos. 


1/ One thing I didn’t know about the Iliad was that a large part of the poem was about Akhilleus (or Achilles) not fighting: the conflict between him and Agamemnon begins in Book 1, and he doesn’t return to battle till Book 19 (out of 24). In a sense, the entire Iliad is about Akhilleus’s wrath: first at Agamemnon, then at Hektor and the Trojans (for killing his friend Patroklos). 


2/ A while ago, a woman tweeted that the Iliad was essentially about mortality—I’m paraphrasing—and the thread was swarmed with lots of men angrily saying that it’s about war and honour and glory, and women couldn’t possibly get it (?). Now that I’ve read the whole poem (after nearly 3 weeks), it’s hard to see how anyone could say it’s about glory—of course glory is a big thing in ancient Greek culture and the Iliad is not an anti-war poem—but what is glorious about the Akhaians’ destruction of Troy? What is glorious about Paris taking someone else’s wife and refusing to yield her up? What is glorious about all these brutal killings? What is glorious about Akhilleus throwing away his own humanity and degrading Hektor’s body after killing him? Homer has no illusions about what “heroic men” do in war. 

To name one thing that the Iliad is about would be reductive, but I do think that mortality—the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death—is one of the central themes of the poem. Over and over and over again, Homer depicts the deaths in the Trojan War and makes us think of youthful lives cut short, and families torn apart.  

“It was young Iphidamas, 

Antenor’s brawny and athletic son, 

who had been reared in Thrace, that fertile country, 

billowy grassland, nourisher of flocks. 

Kisses, father of Theano, his mother, 

brought up the child, and when he reached the stage 

of promising manhood tried to hold him there, 

betrothing to him a daughter. But he left 

his bridal chamber for the Akhaian war 

when the word came. […]

The Lord of the Great Plains now took hold and drew 

the weapon toward him, raging, lionlike, 

wrenching it from the Trojan’s hands; then struck him 

with a sword-cut across the neck and killed him. 

Down he dropped into the sleep of bronze. 

Sad that he fought for the townsmen of his bride 

and died abroad before he could enjoy her, 

lavish though he had been for her: he gave 

one hundred beeves, and promised a thousand head 

of sheep and goats, for myriads grazed his land.” 

(Book 11) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

Throughout the Iliad, Homer emphasises that each of these deaths is an individual, with a family and people who love them and would grieve their loss. 

When the emissaries come to Akhilleus to make peace and ask him to return to battle, he says: 

“Why must Argives 

fight the Trojans? Why did he raise an army 

and lead it here? For Helen, was it not?”

(Book 9) 

He does not care to fight. 

“Now I think 

No riches can compare with being alive 

[…] 

My mother, Thetis of the silvery feet, 

tells me of two possible destinies 

carrying me toward death: two ways: 

if on the one hand I remain to fight 

around Troy town, I lose all hope of home 

but gain unfading glory; on the other, 

if I sail back to my own land my glory 

fails-but a long life lies ahead for me…” 

(ibid.) 

It is one of the greatest scenes in the Iliad. Akhilleus does not care to fight not only because he has been humiliated by Agamemnon, but also because of the pointlessness of it all. When he returns to battle, it is not a choice of “unfading glory”—it is his sense of duty and revenge after the killing of Patroklos. And once he accepts his fate and re-enters the war, he becomes utterly ruthless. No mercy. No human feelings. And he becomes a terrifying killing machine until Book 24, when he meets Priam and thinks of his own father and regains his humanity. 

Akhilleus is one of the greatest characters in literature. 


3/ Another central theme of the Iliad, as in the Odyssey, is the caprices of the gods. Reminiscent of those lines from King Lear

“As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods 

They kill us for their sport.” 


4/ The killings became increasingly heavy and tiresome after a while; the greatest—most haunting—battle would be the one between Akhilleus and Hektor (after that scene, I could see why Shakespeare didn’t like Achilles). 

My favourite scenes in the Iliad are generally not battle scenes: I love the confrontation between Agamemnon and Akhilleus; the scene of Hektor with his wife and baby; the scene of Akhilleus and the emissaries (one of whom is Odysseus); the grief of Akhilleus after Patroklos’s death; the mourning for Hektor; the meeting between Akhilleus and Hektor’s father Priam, etc. 

It is such a vast, moving work of art. 

Thursday, 25 September 2025

Frankenstein, Dracula, and some monster films I recently saw [updated]

As it turns out, this year I’ve seen quite a few monster films, mostly based on or inspired by the myths of Frankenstein or Dracula—let’s not get into a debate on whether vampires count as monsters—so I’d better jot down some brief thoughts. 


Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922): Pure monster, no eroticism, no romance. The best Nosferatu film, perhaps the best Dracula film. Orlok’s appearance at the door, Orlok on the ship, Orlok’s shadow on the wall, etc.—the film is full of striking, unforgettable images and Max Schreck remains bone-chilling and sinister after over 100 years. More sinister than Klaus Kinski and Bill Skarsgård.  

Nosferatu (2024): The film focuses on sex and shame, or rather, presents the vampire as an embodiment of sexual desire/ shame/ disgust, which perhaps appeals to fans of monster smut. I don’t like the look of Orlok. I don’t think it’s a good film either. Lily-Rose Depp is impressive but the characters are under-developed, there’s little change in tempo and no sense of pacing, the film feels drawn out.

Dracula (1931): This is another classic, but I don’t like it. Lots of overacting, especially Dwight Frye as Renfield; I don’t even like Bela Lugosi as Dracula (unpopular opinion, I guess?). There are some interesting shots, especially at the castle and the abbey. Can see some influence from Nosferatu

Daughters of Darkness (1971): Vampire film, no Dracula connection. Silly film, but Delphine Seyrig is so beautiful and elegant. 

Now that I’ve thought about it, I wonder why I have seen so many Dracula films over the years when I don’t care for horror and didn’t like Bram Stoker’s novel all that much. Off the top of my head: part of Hammer’s Dracula (1958); Brides of Dracula (1960); Count Dracula (1977); Coppola’s Dracula (1992); Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979). 


Frankenstein (1931): Quite different from Mary Shelley’s novel, but it’s an excellent film in its own right. Great cinematography, great production design, great makeup, great performance from Boris Karloff. One of the most visually arresting films in black and white. In a way, the film simplified the story, removing some of the complex ideas about upbringing, education, development, civilisation, etc. but then it gave us the most iconic image of Frankenstein’s monster and solidified the myth—my friend Himadri thinks the film has had more impact on public consciousness than the novel has, and he’s probably right.  

Bride of Frankenstein (1935): Another excellent film by James Whale. I must praise Jack Pierce for not only doing the fantastic makeup for Frankenstein’s monster (Boris Karloff), but also creating the iconic hairstyle for the bride (Elsa Lanchester). 

Young Frankenstein (1974): Not much to do with Mary Shelley’s novel, this is an affectionate pastiche of the Frankenstein films starring Boris Karloff. Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman are wonderful together. A perfect film, very funny, extremely quotable: “It’s Fronkensteen!”, “It’s pronounced Eye-gore”, “What hump?”, “Walk this way”, etc. Did you know Gene Hackman could be so funny? I didn’t. I laughed like a hyena.  

Son of Frankenstein (1939): This film is a sequel to the films by James Whale, but I watched it after Young Frankenstein. It’s quite all right as a film, featuring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi and Basil Rathbone. However, it suffers in comparison: next to James Whale’s films, Rowland V. Lee’s Son of Frankenstein doesn’t have such striking and iconic images; and I couldn’t watch it without thinking about the jokes and the parody in Young Frankenstein; the inspector in particular is so well-parodied that he seems rather ridiculous in the original. 

Poor Things (2023): Based on a novel by Alasdair Gray, inspired by the Frankenstein myth. As one would expect from Yorgos Lanthimos, it is weird and stylistically interesting, but it’s more disturbing than Frankenstein and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I dislike all the ideas about “feminism” and “female empowerment” in the film. Repugnant, even. 


Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931): What was in the air that in 1931, Hollywood produced Frankenstein and Dracula and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Stevenson’s novella is my favourite of the three books, but again the film is its own work of art—one of the major changes is the creation of two female characters—and it is a very fine film. Fredric March is very good as Jekyll and Hyde, and I especially like that the film gets right Stevenson’s idea that Jekyll and Hyde are not two sides of the same person—Hyde is the concentration of all the evil and dark impulses in Jekyll. 


Addendum: Adding some more stills so you can see how beautiful the B&W is. 

Frankenstein


Bride of Frankenstein


Son of Frankenstein

Wednesday, 24 September 2025

The Iliad: “whiter than snow and swift as the seawind”


Illustration by John Michael Rysbrack. 


1/ I’m writing about similes again, as Homer has some of the most vivid and interesting similes I’ve come across. 

Most of the time, the armies are compared to animals—wild animals especially: 

“Now the Lord of the Great Plains, Agamemnon, 

hit one with a spear-cast in the chest 

above the nipple; the other, Antiphos, 

he struck with his long sword beside the ear, 

toppling him from his car. […] 

A lion, discovering a forest bed, 

and picking up in his great fangs the fawns 

of a swift doe, will shake and break their backs 

and rend their tender lives away with ease, 

while she is powerless to help, though near, 

but feels a dreadful trembling come upon her; 

bolting the spot, she leaps through underbrush 

at full stretch, drenched in sweat, before the onset 

of the strong beast of prey. Just so, not one 

among the Trojans could prevent those two 

from being destroyed: the rest, too, turned and ran…” 

(Book 11) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

You don’t often see such a long, elaborate simile, do you? 

“At last they reached the West Gate and the oak 

and halted there, awaiting one another, 

as those behind in mid-plain struggled on 

like cows a lion terrifies at dusk 

into a stampede. One cow at a time 

will see breathtaking death: damped on her neck 

with powerful fangs, the lion crunches her 

to make his kill, then gulps her blood and guts.” 

(ibid.) 

Homer’s similes are not just vivid, strongly visual; they’re full of energy.

“At this he led the way, and Aias followed, 

godlike, formidable, and before long 

they found Odysseus: Trojans had closed round him 

as tawny jackals from the hills will ring 

an antlered deer, gone heavy with his wound. 

After the hunter’s arrow strikes, the deer 

goes running clean away: he runs as long 

as warm blood flows and knees can drive him on. 

Then when at last the feathered arrow downs him, 

carrion jackals in a shady grove 

devour him. But now some power brings down 

a ravenous lion, and the shrinking jackals 

go off cowering: he must have their prey.

Just so around Odysseus, man of war 

with versatile wits, the Trojans closed…” 

(ibid.) 

Even more interesting is when Homer compares the troops to something in nature, like fire and wind:  

“As a fire catches 

in parching brushwood without trees, and wind 

this way and that in a whirl carries the blaze 

to burn off crackling thickets to the root, 

so under Agamemnon’s whirling charge 

the routed Trojans fell…” 

(ibid.)

Or: 

“A lashing gale 

out of the west will rift high snowy clouds 

the south wind piled, as big seas rise and roll 

with foam and spindrift from the whistling wind: 

so were Akhaian masses rent by Hektor.” 

(ibid.) 

The quote in the headline comes from Book 10. 

Sometimes Homer’s similes feel ironic, like when he compares the destructive act of war to the productive activity of farming: 

“Imagine at each end of a rich man’s field 

a line of reapers formed, who cut a swath 

in barley or wheat, and spiky clumps of grain 

are brought low by the scything: even so 

those armies moved to cut each other down, 

and neither Trojans nor Akhaians thought 

of ruinous retreat…” 

(Book 11) 

Or when he compares pain in war to the pain of giving birth: 

“Comparable to the throes 

a writhing woman suffers in hard labor 

sent by the goddesses of Travail, Hera’s 

daughters, Twisters, mistresses of pangs, 

the anguish throbbed in Agamemnon now.” 

(ibid.) 

Homer’s similes are dazzling. I think so far the writers I’ve read who have the most striking metaphors/ similes are Shakespeare, Dickens, Flaubert, Proust, Flannery O’Connor, and Homer. Roughly speaking, Shakespeare seems to prefer metaphors and Homer seems to prefer similes. 

On a side note, I can’t help noticing that some parts of the Iliad are packed with similes—all the examples above are from the same chapter (confusingly called book)—but some parts hardly have any. 


2/ I like this simile for Hektor: 

“As from night clouds a baleful summer star 

will blaze into the clear, then fade in cloud, 

so Hektor shone in front or became hidden 

when he harangued the rear ranks—his whole form 

in bronze aflash like lightning of Father Zeus.” 

(ibid.) 


3/ One thing readers may notice about the Iliad is that the deaths are all different. 

Another thing is that the comparisons are also varied: look at all the times Homer compares a warrior to a lion—the lion image appears over and over again throughout the poem—but each simile is different. 

“… A hungry lion 

that falls on heavy game—an antlered deer 

or a wild goat—will rend and feast upon it 

even though hunters and their hounds assail him.” 

(Book 3) 

This is different: 

“… Think of a lion that some shepherd wounds 

but lightly as he leaps into a fold: 

the man who roused his might cannot repel him 

but dives into his shelter, while his flocks, 

abandoned, are all driven wild; in heaps 

huddled they are to lie, torn carcasses, 

before the escaping lion at one bound 

surmounts the palisade. So lion-like, 

Diomedes plunged on Trojans.”

(Book 5)

This is different: 

“Imagine two young lions, reared 

by a mother lioness in undergrowth 

of a deep mountain forest—twins who prey 

on herds and flocks, despoiling farms, till one day 

they too are torn to pieces, both at once, 

by sharp spears in the hands of men.” 

(ibid.) 

The lion similes earlier in this blog post are also different. You get the idea. Except for something like “wine-dark sea”, which becomes a formulaic phrase similar to the epithets (“Odysseus, raider of cities”, “grey-eyed Athena”, “red-haired Menalaos”, etc.), Homer (generally) doesn’t repeat his comparisons. Even when he does repeat an image—comparing the ferocity of an attack to a lion on cattle, for example—he adds detail and makes the simile so elaborate that each one feels fresh and original.  

“But even so, and even now, the Trojans 

led by great Hektor could not yet have breached 

the wall and gate with massive bar, had not 

Lord Zeus impelled Sarpedon, his own son, 

against the Argives like a lion on cattle. 

Circular was the shield he held before him, 

hammered out of pure bronze: aye, the smith 

had hammered it, and riveted the plates 

to thick bull’s hide on golden rods rigged out 

to the full circumference. Now gripping this, 

hefting a pair of spears, he joined the battle, 

formidable as some hill-bred lion, ravenous 

for meat after long abstinence. His valor 

summons him to attempt homesteads and flocks

and though he find herdsmen on hand with dogs 

and spears to guard the sheep, he will not turn 

without a fling at the stockade. One thing 

or the other: a mighty leap and a fresh kill, 

or he will fall at the spearmen’s feet, brought down 

by a javelin thrown hard.” 

(Book 12) 

The Iliad is unrelenting in its depiction of the brutality of war, but it’s not at all a dry or boring read—just look at the similes. 


4/ Another image that recurs often throughout the Iliad is the boar: 

“He stirred them, 

rallying each man’s courage. As a hunter 

would send his hounds against a lion or boar 

so Hektor sent his Trojans headlong in 

against the Akhaians: Hektor, Priam’s son, 

hard as the wargod—now in pride and zeal 

this hunter led his fighters on. He fell 

on the battle line like a high screaming squall 

that blows down on the purple open sea! 

And who were the adversaries that he killed

when Zeus accorded him this rush of glory?” 

(Book 11)

That comes from the Robert Fitzgerald translation that I’m reading. Out of curiosity, I looked at the translation by George Chapman and this is how he translated the same passage: 

“Thus as a dog-giv’n hunter sets upon a brace of boars

His white-tooth’d hounds, puffs, shouts, breathes terms, and on his emprise pours

All his wild art to make them pinch: so Hector urg’d his host

To charge the Greeks, and he himself most bold and active most:

He brake into the heat of fight, as when a tempest raves,

Stoops from the clouds, and all on heaps doth cuff the purple waves.

Who then was first, and last, he kill’d, when Jove did grace his deed?”

As translation, it seems quite loose; as poetry, it sounds good. George Chapman’s Iliad came out in instalments in 1598 and this is the translation Shakespeare would have read—imagine Shakespeare’s excitement when he read Homer! 

Monday, 22 September 2025

The Iliad: “Very like leaves upon this earth are the generations of men”


Painting by Gavin Hamilton. 


1/ Strictly speaking, the Iliad is not quite a realistic depiction of war (I mean, one-on-one combat? with lots of talking? not to mention the gods’ involvement?), but it is true and unrelenting in its representation of the horror and brutality of war. 

“Aias Telamonios, Akhaian 

bastion on defense, attacked and broke 

a Trojan mass, showing his men the way, 

by killing the best man of all the Thracians

Akamas, Eussoros’ brawny son. 

He hit him on the forecrest, and the spearhead 

dove his frontal bone, lodged in his brain, 

filling his eyes with darkness.”

(Book 6) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

Homer doesn’t shy away from violence. 

“Seeing him tugging at the corpse, his flank 

exposed beside the shield as he bent over, 

Agenor with his spearshaft shod in bronze 

hit him, and he crumpled. As he died 

a bitter combat raged over his body 

between the Trojan spearmen and Akhaians, 

going for one another like wolves, like wolves 

whirling upon each other, man to man. 

Then Aias Telemonios knocked down

the son of Anthemion, Simoeisios, 

in the full bloom of youth…” 

(Book 4) 

It is gruelling. 

“A west wind rising 

will cast a rippling roughness over water, 

a shivering gloom on the dear sea. Just so 

the seated mass of Trojans and Akhaians 

rippled along the plain.” 

(Book 7) 

The gods may take sides, but Homer depicts the suffering on both sides: 

“Bright Helios 

had just begun to strike across the plowlands, 

rising heavenward out of the deep 

smooth-flowing Ocean stream, when these two groups 

met on the battlefield, with difficulty 

distinguishing the dead men, one by one. 

With pails they washed the bloody filth away, 

then hot tears fell, as into waiting carts 

they lifted up their dead. All cries of mourning 

Priam forbade them; sick at heart therefore 

in silence they piled corpses on the pyre 

and burned it down. Then back they went to Ilion. 

Just so on their side the Akhaians piled 

dead bodies on their pyre, sick at heart, 

and burned it down…” 

(ibid.) 

And he doesn’t shy away from depicting the bloodlust of (some) Akhaians:

“Agamemnon in grim haste came by 

to bar his mercy and cried: 

“What now, soft heart? 

Were you so kindly served at home by Trojans? 

Why give a curse for them? Oh Menelaos,  

once in our hands not one should squirm away 

from death’s hard fall! No fugitive, not even 

the manchild carried in a woman’s belly! 

Let them all without distinction perish, 

every last man of Ilion, 

without a tear, without a trace!””  

(Book 6) 


2/ I know that the same characters from Greek mythology in different works of art are not necessarily the same—Odysseus from Homer’s epics is different from Odysseus in Sophocles’s Aias and Odysseus in Euripides’s Hecabe and Ulysses in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida—but I suspect that when I reread Aeschylus’s Oresteia, my view of Agamemnon would be coloured by his cruelty in war and unreasonable behaviour towards Akhilleus (better known as Achilles) in the Iliad. He’s not exactly likeable, is he?  

One of the great things about the Iliad is that Homer shows war to not only be about battle, about also about politics. The poem begins with a quarrel between Agamemnon and Akhilleus: Agamemnon, forced to return his war prize Kryseis, decides to take Akhilleus’s Briseis instead and humiliates him before the troops; Akhilleus then refuses to fight. The scene in Book 9, when Odysseus, Phoinix, and Aias come to Akhilleus as emissaries, is one of the greatest scenes in the book: the three men come to offer him gifts and an apology from Agamemnon and try—in three different ways—to persuade him to return and fight the Trojans; but Akhilleus continues to refuse. 

“Why must Argives 

fight the Trojans? Why did he raise an army 

and lead it here? For Helen, was it not? 

Are the Atreidai of all mortal men 

the only ones who love their wives? I think not. 

Every sane decent fellow loves his own 

and cares for her, as in my heart I loved 

Briseis, though I won her by the spear…” 

(Book 9) 

Why should he fight for a commander he doesn’t respect, who has humiliated him in front of everyone else? He goes further: 

“Now I think 

no riches can compare with being alive…” 

(ibid.) 


3/ Like War and Peace, the Iliad is not just one battle scene after another—there are also some domestic scenes. One of the most moving moments in the poem is when Hektor (or Hector) sees his wife Andromakhe (better known as Andromache) and their baby. 

“As he said this, Hektor held out his arms 

to take his baby. But the child squirmed round 

on the nurse’s bosom and began to wail, 

terrified by his father’s great war helm—

the flashing bronze, the crest with horsehair plume 

tossed like a living thing at every nod. 

His father began laughing, and his mother 

laughed as well…” 

(Book 6)

This is such a lovely moment (but heartbreaking when you think about what would later happen to them).

I have seen numerous heroic characters from the Trojan War/ the Iliad turned inside out and upside down in the Greek plays and in Shakespeare’s works and in other places, but never seen Hektor depicted as anything less than noble—even in Troilus and Cressida, Shakespeare’s most bitter and unpleasant play, Troilus is idealistic and foolish, Cressida is capricious and unfaithful, Paris and Helen are callous, Ulysses (Odysseus) is sly and cunning, Pandarus is a pimp, Patroclus (Patroklos) is “a masculine whore”, Ajax (Aias) is a fool, Thersites is deeply bitter and cynical, even Achilles is egoistic and despicable, but Hector is noble—the only noble, admirable character in Shakespeare’s play.  

Friday, 19 September 2025

The Iliad: “rising like a dawn mist from the sea into a cloud” [update 2]

1/ The quote in the headline comes from Book 1, about Thesis, mother of Akhilleus (better known as Achilles). 

I like the comparisons and images in the Iliad

“From the camp 

the troops were turning out now, thick as bees 

that issue from some crevice in a rock face, 

endlessly pouring forth, to make a cluster 

and swarm on blooms of summer here and there, 

glinting and droning, busy in bright air. 

Like bees innumerable from ships and huts 

down the deep foreshore streamed those regiments 

toward the assembly ground—and Rumor blazed 

among them like a crier sent from Zeus…” 

(Book 2) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

Reminds me of the long passage in War and Peace in which Tolstoy compares people in Moscow to bees. 

This is an even more interesting passage, as Homer piles simile upon simile, comparing the troops to different kinds of animals: 

“And as migrating birds, nation by nation, 

wild geese and arrow-throated cranes and swans, 

over Asia’s meadowland and marshes 

around the streams of Kaystrios, with giant 

flight and glorying wings keep beating down 

in tumult on that verdant land 

that echoes to their pinions, even so, 

nation by nation, from the ships and huts, 

this host debouched upon Skamander plain. 

With noise like thunder pent in earth 

under their trampling, under the horses’ hooves, 

they filled the flowering land beside Skamander, 

as countless as the leaves and blades of spring. 

So, too, like clouds of buzzing, fevered flies 

that swarm about a cattle stall in summer 

when pails are splashed with milk: so restlessly 

by thousands moved the fighters of Akhaia 

over the plain, lusting to rend the Trojans. 

But just as herdsmen easily divide 

their goats when herds have mingled in a pasture, 

so these were marshaled by their officers 

to one side and the other, forming companies 

for combat.” 

(ibid.) 

I guess that is what people call a Homeric simile. 

Here the troops are compared to other animals: 

“The Trojans were not silent: like the flocks 

that huddle countless in a rich man’s pens, 

waiting to yield white milk, and bleating loud 

continually as they hear their own lambs cry, 

just so the warcry of the Trojans rose 

through all that army—not as a single note, 

not in a single tongue, but mingled voices 

of men from many countries.” 

(Book 4) 

In the Odyssey, a lot of the comparisons are in a single phrase—“Eteóneus left the long room like an arrow”, “killed him, like an ox felled at the trough”, “her mind turning at bay, like a cornered lion/ in whom fear comes as hunters close the ring”, “the boat careered like a ball of tumbleweed/ blown on the autumn plains, but intact still”, etc—but there are also some extended similes. 

“He pushed aside the bushes, breaking off

with his great hand a single branch of olive,

whose leaves might shield him in his nakedness;

so came out rustling, like a mountain lion,

rain-drenched, wind-buffeted, but in his might at ease,

with burning eyes—who prowls among the herds

or flocks, or after game, his hungry belly

taking him near stout homesteads for his prey.

Odysseus had this look, in his rough skin

advancing on the girls with pretty braids;

and he was driven on by hunger, too…” 

(Book 6) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

Or: 

“And Odysseus

let the bright molten tears run down his cheeks, 

weeping the way a wife mourns for her lord

on the lost field where he has gone down fighting

the day of wrath that came upon his children.

At sight of the man panting and dying there,

she slips down to enfold him, crying out;

then feels the spears, prodding her back and shoulders,

and goes bound into slavery and grief.

Piteous weeping wears away her cheeks:

but no more piteous than Odysseus’ tears,

cloaked as they were, now, from the company.” 

(Book 8) 


2/ There is something strange about reading such a foundational, influential literary work like the Iliad for the first time. You’ve known about the Trojan war from pop culture, and now see the fighting in close-up. You’ve encountered Agamemnon, Menalaos, Odysseus, Aias, Hecabe… in Athenian tragedy, and now see them—sometimes quite different—in Homer’s epics. You know Christopher Marlowe’s line “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships/And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”, and now not only meet Helen but also get a catalogue of the ships.

(The catalogue of ships reminds me of the long catalogue of armies in Seven Against Thebes by Aeschylus). 

What does it say, though, that the first substantial piece of Western literature was a war story? 


3/ The gods don’t just interfere in people’s lives—they take sides in the war. 

“The whipping 

string sang, and the arrow whizzed away, 

needlesharp, vicious, flashing through the crowd. 

But, Menelaos, you were not neglected 

this time by the gods in bliss! Athena, 

Hope of Soldiers, helped you first of all, 

deflecting by an inch the missile’s flight 

so that it grazed your skin—the way a mother 

would keep a fly from settling on a child 

when he is happily asleep. […] 

Then dark blood rippled in a clouding stain 

down from the wound, as when a Mêionian  

or a Karian woman dyes clear ivory 

to be the cheekpiece of a chariot team…” 

(Book 4)

The last bit is a strange—cold—comparison. 


4/ Sometimes Homer compares one thing to multiple things in the same passage, piling simile upon simile. Sometimes he picks a single image and extends it over several lines: 

“… Think of a lion that some shepherd wounds 

but lightly as he leaps into a fold: 

the man who roused his might cannot repel him 

but dives into his shelter, while his flocks, 

abandoned, are all driven wild; in heaps 

huddled they are to lie, torn carcasses, 

before the escaping lion at one bound 

surmounts the palisade. So lion-like, 

Diomedes plunged on Trojans.”

(Book 5) 

A couple of stanzas later: 

“Next two sons 

of Dardan Priam Diomedes killed 

in one war-car: Ekhemmon and Khromios. 

Just as a lion leaps to crunch the neck 

of ox or heifer, grazing near a thicket, 

Diomedes, leaping, dragged them down 

convulsed out of their car, and took their armor, 

sending their horses to the rear.” 

(ibid.) 

The next time we see the lion image, the simile is no longer about Diomedes however, but about a Trojan who has been fighting Diomedes in the same scene: 

“With shield and spear Aineias, now on foot, 

in dread to see the Akhaians drag the dead man, 

came and bestrode him, like a lion at bay.”

(ibid.) 

This is fascinating.