Achilles

This is a remarkable book, a long prose-poem that maintains fidelity to its original while looking at it with new eyes. It reminded me that the Iliad isn't about a war, or about Helen: it's about Achilles joining the human race.

There are two kinds of novels about Antiquity: the historical novels like 'Quo Vadis' and 'I, Claudius' and novels about a character from mythology. I prefer the latter because there is more room for fantasy and imagination. In the 1970's the German writer Christa Wolf wrote some outstanding novels about mythology like 'Medea' and 'Cassandra'(the latter translated in English). And now there is 'Achilles' by Elisabeth Cook. It's a willful and sensual novel about Achilles, one of the Greek commanders who besieged Troy. Peleus, his mortal father, begets him with Thetis, a sea-goddess. (A whole chapter is used to describe a fierce and erotic battle between a common man and an immortal woman - it's not very likely he should win but he does). When Achilles was born, Thetis washed him in the river Styx, which made him invulnerable except for a spot at his heel where his mother held him. (Near the end of the Trojan war, Paris kills Achilles by shooting an arrow in his heel). E.Cook gives a personal interpretation about Achilles'heel: she explains why it's the fault of his father instead of Thetis' fault.('Blame it on the father!', I've heard it before). It are these things that make the novel worthwile reading: it's not the mythological story-almost everybody knows it-but the descriptions, events and interpretations imagined by E.Cook. One of the highlights of this story is the description of the Trojan river ( or river-god if you like ) Skamander who tries in vain to drown Achilles. In the last part of the novel, the poet John Keats makes his appearance. Achilles and John Keats had both red hair it seems, but that's not enough to explain the appearance of a completely superfluous personage. Though Keats spoils the fun a little (he's so out of place!) it's a novel interesting enough for those who like Antiquity as the background of a story.

Although the dust jacket identifies "Achilles" as a novel, make no mistake about it -- this is poetry, even if it happens to look like prose on the page. (Interestingly, "A Novel" does not appear on the title page or anywhere else -- perhaps this was just wishful thinking by a publisher scared of marketing the book as poetry.) The spare, concentrated language, the interwoven images of water, fire and blood, the recurring themes of mortality and immortality -- life, death and something in between -- all are masterfully handled in this brief but deep book.Although Achilles' life and death provide the framework for much of the book, in some ways he remains always apart from us. In the underworld he is different from the other dead, just as in life he was different from other mortals. Perhaps his choice, to die young but with a name that will live forever, sets him apart (undying, like the figures on Keats' Grecian urn). We know Achilles' actions, but we seldom see into him in the way that we see into the other characters -- Peleus, Thetis, Priam, Helen, Chiron. Cook is nothing short of brilliant in taking us into the hearts and minds of these "subsidiary" characters. Thetis' grief at the funeral of Achilles and Helen's lonely life are particularly harrowingly drawn.As others have noted, the concluding transition to Keats is initially disconcerting, but as I ponder on it, I see more layers on which it works for me. As demonstrated by the subject-matter of many of his poems, Keats was drawn to the classical past, and to the question of immortality -- what is it that endures? Truth, beauty, art, a life that embodies those qualities -- whatever you call it, this book is one that will endure in my mind.

I usually don't like to make predictions about any modern book becoming a classic. Yet, every now and then a work comes along that is so original and vibrant that it screams out its stature as a Major Work. The last time I found such a book it was Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red, my first edition of which has increased much in value. This time, the book that haunts me is Achilles. The comparison between Carson and Cook's works is not fatuous. Rather, I see Achilles as a literary successor to Autobiography of Red. They are both hybrid works, combining verse and narrative into another form. Carson called her work "a novel in verse." Surely, Achilles is an epic poem as narrative. Achilles is a modern reworking of the story of the Trojan War, but it is not a modernized work. The setting is still ancient Troy (and environs), Achilles and Hector both remain caught in the limbo between mortal and immortal love, and the Gods are as petty, devious and full of trickery as ever. This is a stripped down and muscular Achilles. The book captures the incendiary passion of the story. Here is the immense sadness and isolation of Helen, the most beautiful woman on all of the earth. Here is not only the thunderous wrath of the godlike man named Achilles; there is also the tenderness and sadness of a mortal man who is all too aware of his losses. The Gods here are powerful, but they are not omnipotent. Things go wrong for the powerful here just as they go wrong for the meekest among us.The language of Achilles is sparse, pared down to essentials. Some of the words, the expletives and such, may seem jarringly out of place here for some. At first they seem pandering to modern audience. Ultimately they are necessary, for this is the story of men who were mighty and brave, but also vindictive and cruel. The language is base when the circumstances are base. This is an epic story, and poetry demands an economy of words where the novel form is unbound. The common tongue has been a valid poetical device ever since Dante transformed poetry over 700 years ago.Cook has created a classic, a volume that does not supplant a classic, but is in itself a classic. At times dreamlike in imagery, at other times crushingly commonplace, Achilles demands to be read.

The two reviewers of Achilles seem determined to blame it for not being what they want- a full account of the Trojan war written by someone who has no link with a university. I could imagine American readers objecting to British vocabulary and style, since Achilles works best read aloud, but it is churlish to object to the Keats section which closes the book. Keats is the Greekless reader whose proven empathy for Achilles makes him our ally and our model as we find resonance in 'the pain of others, far away on the plains of Troy.' I suggest to your reviewers that this is the crown of the book- the awareness of how remote Troy now is and how crucial it can be to those who can live in the souls of others. Given Keats' admiration of America, surely America can listen to Keats.