Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles (HarperCollins 2011)
The first half of The Song of Achilles is in effect a Young Adult boy-meets-boy love story, as the demigod Achilles befriends our narrator Patroclus, one of his father’s many foster-sons. The friendship becomes increasingly steamy until, while the language remains as chaste as anyone could wish, the two teenage boys find rapture in each other’s arms and are soon tacitly acknowledged as a couple. ‘Patroclus is my sworn companion,’ Achilles announces at a state occasion. ‘His place is beside me.’ This is against the will of Achilles’ goddess mother, Thetis.
Most of my readers won’t need to be told that Patroclus and Achilles are key characters from The Iliad, and that the emotional heart of that epic is Achilles deep love of Patroclus and his inconsolable grief when Patroclus is killed. This novel is mainly back story. The explicit sex isn’t so much a departure from the original as a confirmation.
At about the halfway point, after spending years being trained by the centaur Chiron and an episode in which Achilles hides out dressed as a girl, the two young men arrive with the vast Greek war force at the beach near Troy. Achilles is now acclaimed as the greatest of the Greek warriors, and the second half of the book is a completely engrossing retelling of The Iliad.
Because it’s November*, I won’t linger on page 77, when teenaged Patroclus wakes up in bed next to Achilles in Chiron’s cave. Instead, I have gone to page one, and read until I came to a potential first line for an Onegin stanza. The book begins with Patroclus’ mentally incompetent mother and his own physical ineptitude (the only element in Madeline Miller’s telling that conflicts with my own reading of The Iliad – it had never occurred to me that Patroclus was less than formidable). Patroclus’ first glimpse of Achilles is when Patroclus is five years old. Achilles is among the youngest boys who compete in games hosted by Patroclus’ royal father and, being a demigod, he wins. This is in spite of being easily the youngest competitor: ‘He is shorter than the others, and still plump with childhood in a way they are not.’
In the book, this last sentence signifies that Achilles is gifted well beyond his years. When I nicked part of it for my first line, my mind went somewhere completely different, to a memory from 60+ years ago.
Verse 1: Nudgee College, 1961–1962
He is shorter than the others,
thinner too, not seen as cool.
We've all been sent here from our mothers,
to this Christian boarding school,
sons of far-flung Queensland farmers,
just four hundred teenage charmers:
ten grown men. It's no surprise
that kindness doesn't rule our days.
His nakedness provokes derision,
soapsuds sprinkled in his sheets
cause eczema, and laughter greets
his asthma. Here's my shamed admission:
terrified, I turn my back
glad it's not me they attack.
OK, maybe tomorrow will get cheerful.
Added later: Inspired by the online course in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo) I’m currently doing, here’s a chance-based/ procedural poem created from The Song of Achilles. It begins with the book’s first word beginning with A, which is followed by the first word after that to begin with B, and so on. It took 52 pages to get to ‘Zeus’.
A built ceremony
did eye forward
glints.
He is jest kneeling
looked man
not one present quieted
raised
said things
upbringing vividness
when exile you Zeus
I wrote this blog post in Gadigal Wangal country, and am posting it as lorikeets shout to each other about the rain that is about to come down. I acknowledge Elders past, present and emerging for their continuing custodianship of this land, over which their sovereignty has never been ceded.
* For the last 14 years, I have challenging myself to write fourteen 14-line poems during November. The poem may be inspired by a book I’m blogging about, or may be connected to it by the vaguest of tangents, as here.
Me fail? I fly! 