Iliad (L'Iliade)

Overview

Homer's Iliad is the Greek epic of the anger of Achilles in the tenth year of the Trojan War, in 24 books (rhapsodies) of hexameters, traditionally dated to about the eighth century BC. In nineteenth-century France it was read in French translation (the prose or verse versions of Dacier, Bitaubé, Dugas-Montbel, then Leconte de Lisle's of 1866, which is linked here); Greek was seldom taught to girls. It is the chief source for the figures Marie names: Achilles and Patroclus, Menelaus, Antilochus, Priam and Hecuba.

Marie and this work

First reading, October 1873 - January 1874 (Nice). It is a school assignment. On 16 October 1873 it is raining, "Je vais lire L'Illiade d'Homère" (011.0020). On the 18th she has "à lire pour mardi tout l'Iliade" (011.0075) and keeps being interrupted. On 26 December: "Un passage dans L'Iliade m'a frappée, c'est lorsque Ménélas apprend la mort de Patrocle à Antiloque" -- Menelaus sends Antilochus with the news to Achilles, and Antilochus is struck dumb, his eyes full of tears (Iliad XVII, 694-696; 014.0229). The shock, she says, is exactly what she felt "lorsque pour la première fois j'ai lu que mon Patrocle se marie": the Duke of Hamilton, whom she casts as her Patroclus, was marrying. "Je ne savais pas comment m'exprimer, mais Homère m'a enseigné." On 28 December she has done "quelques chants" and plans to "finir L'Iliade" (014.0261-0262), and on 6 January 1874 she writes "J'ai fini L'Iliade. Miserere !" (015.0057).

Argument with her father (9 April 1875, 031.0140-0141). At dinner her father tells her she does not know what the Iliad is; she retorts that it is he who does not, and asks what remains of Homer apart from the Iliad. "Rien, il n'y a que l'Iliade !" he answers, and she nearly chokes with triumph. On 30 April 1875 she calls the Sapogenikoff family's life "une Iliade plus terrible et sanglante que celle d'Homère" (032.0203).

1876-1877. "Sans parler d'Homère ou de l'histoire romaine", a woman can seem educated (067.0306, 25 October 1876). On 4 August 1877 she scoffs that her hired scholar for her chronological catalogue began with Homer: "Mais tous les portiers connaissent Homère !" (073.0281). On 18 August 1877: "Lorsque je lisais Homère je comparais ma tante en colère à Hécube dans l'incendie de Troie... aucun drame moderne, aucun roman, aucune comédie à sensation, de Dumas ou de George Sand, ne m'a laissé un souvenir aussi net... que la description de la prise de Troie" (073.0487), and the next day she says that a figure called Gioia (possibly Marie's own story; not identified) was raised "entre Homère et Virgile" (073.0498). On 23 September 1878 she lists Homer among the Greeks she knows: "je le connais très bien" (082.0442).

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