Memorial

A Version of Homer's Iliad

By: Alice Oswald, Eavan Boland - afterword

Narrated by: Mark Ashby

"Matthew Arnold praised the Iliad for its "nobility", as has everyone ever since - but ancient critics praised it for its enargeia, its "bright unbearable reality" (the word used when gods come to earth, not in disguise but as themselves). To retrieve the poem's energy, Alice Oswald has stripped away its story, and her account focuses by turns on Homer's extended similes and on the brief 'biographies' of the minor war-dead, most of whom are little more than names, but each of whom lives and dies unforgettably - and unforgotten - in the copiousness of Homer's glance.

"The Iliad is an oral poem. This translation presents it as an attempt - in the aftermath of the Trojan War - to remember people's names and lives without the use of writing. I hope it will have its own coherence as a series of memories and similes laid side by side: an antiphonal account of man in his world... compatible with the spirit of oral poetry, which was never stable but always adapting itself to a new audience, as if its language, unlike written language, was still alive and kicking".
—Alice Oswald

©2011 Alice Oswald, Afterword copyright 2012 by Eavan Boland (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Wonderful poem, terrible narration

I love this poem and have read it in print before. It's brilliant of Oswald to take what can sometimes seem like the longueurs of the Iliad--death after death after death, accompanied by details of the dead man's parentage--and make them into a memorial for each short-lived warrior, and then finally a tribute to all of us, short-lived as we are. (I don't share the poem's theological perspective at the end, but I don't have to, in order to love this poem and love the way Oswald is reading/attending to/transforming Homer.)

But the narration! WHY did they a hire a narrator at all, when Alice Oswald is known for performing this poem from memory, like a rhapsode? You can find clips of her performances on the internet (but not of her reading the poem in its entirety, unfortunately). I was so sure it would be her, I didn't even listen to the sample. That dead, robotic voice makes it hard for me to finish listening to this.

Brilliant

A clever idea brilliantly executed -- a poetic interpretation of the Iliad. The glimpses of the characters are so sharply drawn I could not have felt closer to them.

Beautiful poetry

The text is beautiful and moving. The narration is excruciating. He ends every line with a rising intonation that drove me absolutely crazy. It's such a shame -- I feel like this is an ideal work to be experienced aurally!

Narrator reads like he is reading the news.

This was a tough one. It is great poetry. Narrator nearly kills this audiobook. Shame.

Brilliant and moving

This poem allows you to experience the oral tradition of the Iliad as it may have been felt in 5th century BCE Athens. It captures the deaths of these 200 Iliadic warriors and takes you back 3000 years to the Trojan War.