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Sign up todayChristopher Logue: War Music
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Learn moreWar Music is a dramatic poem based on Homer’s Iliad. Logue worked on it for more than forty years and it was left incomplete at his death in 2011. At the time of this recording it was divided into three parts: Kings, The Husbands, and War Music, the last of which is further divided into three sections: Patrocleia, GBH, and Pax. War Music later became the poem’s general title. Commissioned in the first instance by BBC Radio, War Music changed slightly as it developed, which means that there are a number of small discrepancies between the published and the recorded work.
The Iliad itself is a continuous narrative of some 16,000 lines and is generally thought to be the product of a poetic tradition as much as or even more than of an individual poet. It tells the story of the war fought over the departure of Helen from Greece to Troy.
Christopher Logue (1926–2011) was a poet, playwright, scriptwriter, and actor. He published his first book, Wand and Quadrant, in 1953. The last published volume of War Music, Cold Calls, won the Whitbread Prize in 2005.
Christopher Logue (1926–2011) was a poet, playwright, scriptwriter, and actor. He published his first book, Wand and Quadrant, in 1953. The last published volume of War Music, Cold Calls, won the Whitbread Prize in 2005.
Reviews
“The war it portrays is real, and harsh, and horrible; but the music is real, too.”
“War Music is at once an ancient and a modern poem, a triumph of virtuoso rhetoric.”
“One can hardly help oneself from singing the lines Logue puts in our mouths as well as our minds.”
“Less a translation than an adaptation. Less an adaptation, in fact, than an original poem of considerable power.”
“The careful reader may notice the care of Logue’s line endings, the sy hum of his iambic pentameter, the lovely repetition of ‘sigh’ and the complex imbrication of sighing sounds. It is through such care that Homer is so triumphantly renewed for our age.”
“[Logue’s] considerable work in theater and film as actor, playwright, and screenwriter nourished the poetry, much of which was dramatic in nature, and also helped make him one of his generation’s finest readers of verse.”
“A work of great virtuosity, something completely original in style and stance…Faithful in tone and spirit to the essential Greekness of the old poem. More than this, the characters who figure are drawn with economy and clarity—they spring off the page…a small ‘triumph of skill and beauty.’”
“I am crazy about it. Haven’t seen such poetry in ages.”
“Never was blood bloodier or fate more fatal.”
“A lasting harvest.”
“Logue’s vivid and excellent poem is…a thorough reconstruction…The care with which the original has been re-brushed is wonderful. The bright colors and light of the Middle East hit you like a hammer. The sighing humanity of the mortals stands above the brittle gods, who just want to see a good punch-up. Logue has produced a mesmeric poem that bears comparison with Eliot.”
“One of the landmarks of twentieth-century poetry.”
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