To reread the Iliad is to return to the heroic nature of the myth. Founding stories that speak to us from the dawn of humanity to remind us of the essence of who we are. Men and women, governed by the gods and the fatality of a sometimes cruel destiny.
The Trojan War is the great epic starring brilliant heroes such as Hector, Ajax, the great or the invincible Achilles. Beautiful and fatal women like Cassandra, Briseis or Helena who alone are worth ten years of war. Revenge, dignity or honor are mixed with the petty cowardice of characters like Paris. Goddesses like Aphrodite who come to the rescue and prophecies that end up coming true. In addition to tragic love stories like that of young Patroclus.
“I die knowing that my destiny is in the hands of someone greater than anyone…, my Achilles.”
In the end, the intelligence of a single man, Ulysses, guided by the dictates of the goddess Athena, resolves an endless conflict. The Trojan horse as a poisoned gift, sheltering thirty Achaeans inside, overcomes the resistance of an impregnable city. Vanity condemns the Trojans, believing themselves victors beforehand. Before reaching this climatic turn, we have witnessed memorable combats, such as that of Paris and Menelaus, Helen’s two suitors, or that of Achilles and Hector.
The leader of Troy falls to the best of heroes. Achilles thus avenges the death of Patroclus. The cruelty of war has no limits and seems absurd to us, but this is the destiny of the man moved by ambition, greed or the thirst for revenge. Fortunately, humanity is not just that and the heroes are there to remind us of it.
Stephen Fry, that gigantic actor who played Oscar Wilde himself or who was Peter, in the endearing Peter’s Friends (Kenneth Branagh, 1992), tells it as if he were there. Close language, witty dialogues and lyrical descriptions that intersect with the course of events. The characters are perfectly constructed, better than in those Hollywood movies (Troy, Wolfgang Petersen, 2004) where action prevails and seeing Brad Pity showing off muscle.
The author of Troy takes advantage of some famous episodes, such as the death of Achilles, to establish deep and universal reflections.
“Humanity had lost one of the most splendid mortals ever known. Wild, irritable, stubborn, stubborn, sentimental and cruel like few others… his departure marked a change in the human world…
Vulnerability, the defects that each and every human being has evoke the first Achilles heel. Each and every champion since then, in war or sport, has been a miniature of Achilles, a simulacrum, a tiny speck of reminiscence of what true glory can be.”
This is the nature of the heroes that populate universal mythology. As the narrative master Jean Claude Carrière said, men live in eternal contradiction. That is always the basis of every great story.
This Troy closes the trilogy started by Mythos (2019) and Heroes (2021), a successful and updated revisitation of Greek mythology as a source of inexhaustible wisdom. Not since Robert Graves’ versions have we enjoyed such a pleasant combination of erudition and narrative sense. In Stephen Fry, as with Valerio M. Manfredi (Odysseus or the Alexandros trilogy), mythology reads like a novel. The difference is that here destiny is ruled by the gods. Hades, for example, doesn’t give a damn who wins as long as the conflict fills the underworld with new dead souls. Dionisio, on the other hand, does not take an active part, but is pleased to know that liters of wine will be poured out in his honor.
Myths are eternal and universal. Since ancient times, they have talked about us and our history as humans. They do so not with the certainty of history or the empiricism of science, but through the symbolic language with which the gods and heroes of the past speak. Our debt to them is to not stop narrating them.
Stephen Fry Troy Translation by Ruben Martin Giraldez Anagram 392 pages 22.9O euros
