Brief thoughts on Othello (Theatre Royal Haymarket), dir. Tom Morris and ft. David Harewood

Yesterday I was thinking about killing myself. But weeks ago, I had bought a ticket for Othello at Theatre Royal Haymarket, so today I went. 

I was in tears by the end.

The best part of the production was David Harewood’s performance. The first black actor to play Othello at the National Theatre in 1997 (shocking, I know), he now returns to the role when he’s more, er, “declined into the vale of years”, and delivers a great performance. Here is a noble Moor, here is a dignified and strong general, and yet he makes one feel uneasy when he says “My life upon her faith”, and later “Perdition catch my soul/ But I do love thee. And when I love thee not/ Chaos is come again.” He plays Othello with dignity, and with vulnerability. When Iago puts poison in his ear, he cracks, all collapses. His threat to kill Iago and his changed behaviour towards Desdemona are terrifying. But Othello is not a base little man—the nobility is there—one leaves the play feeling pity and sorrow for a noble man ensnared and corrupted by a villain. The play belongs to Othello—to David Harewood. 

I’m not sure if I prefer him or Adrian Lester in the role.

I also like Tom Byrne as Roderigo and Vinette Robinson as Emilia. Generally speaking, Tom Morris respects the text—no nonsense, no gimmicks—it’s interesting to see Iago’s wife played by a black actress, which gets you to see Iago in a different light. However, I think Tom Morris makes a few questionable choices. Sometimes he uses a bit too much stage effects, which is distracting, and sometimes the staging is slightly odd, such as when Desdemona (Caitlyn Fitzgerald) is praying and preparing for bed onstage at the same time as Roderigo wounding Cassio and getting killed by Iago. Especially questionable is the removal of Desdemona seemingly returning from death and exonerating Othello—we hear a sound effect instead of Desdemona, and she does not speak—why? 

But my main problem with this production is Toby Jones as Iago. I guess you could argue that he approaches the role differently, which is fine, considering that Ian McKellen and Bob Hoskins and Rory Kinnear are very different Iagos and all great. I came across a theatre forum thread in which people were discussing this production and a few of them said Toby Jones played Iago as a weakling, or a little weasel, who’s constantly bewildered that his plans are working. You might think it works, you have to see for yourself. My problem with his performance is that I don’t think he conveys a sense of menace except till the very end, when he says “What you know, you know.” 

So do I think this is a great production? No, my favourite is still the one from 2013, with Adrian Lester as Othello and Rory Kinnear as Iago. 

Do I think it’s worth watching? Yes, David Harewood is magnificent and the final scene would wreck you.  

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. 

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. 

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. 

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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). 

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) 

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. 

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.