Alexander Pope’s Preface to Homer’s Iliad

“It is to the strength of this amazing invention we are to attribute that unequalled fire and rapture, which is so forcible in Homer, that no man of a true poetical spirit is master of himself while he reads him.” -Alexander Pope

There are certain books you must return to, again and again. Since I started writing on RESAVAGER, I’ve only been shown my own LACK of an education(thank you public schools) and I have been forced to read too many books. Some of these books, however, I keep returning to. The Iliad is a book I try to read every year. It gives you a glimpse into the real human nature, void of all the fake modern world. A while back I compared passages from six translators of the Iliad, but one important translator was missing: Alexander Pope. The reason for this is simple: I didn’t know about him.

Usually, when I talk about books, I make single essay discussing it and how it is relevant to this project. But the Iliad deserves a deeper look. I like to read James LaFond’s website(Jameslafond.com), and he has ongoing series on Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. If there is interest, I would like to do similar deep dive into the Iliad. I’m thinking, perhaps, a poast for each book in the Iliad.

These poasts will be focused on what I see as important passages or lessons you must take away from Homer. In the past, I’ve said Ragnar Redbeard’s Might is Right is the way to learn about real human nature. You can argue that it’s the crude way to learn about human nature, whereas, in Homer’s Iliad, you see human nature in real time and truly understand it.

“What he writes is of the most animated nature imaginable; everything moves, everything lives, and is put in action. If a council be called, or a battle fought, you are not coldly informed of what was said or done as from a third person; the reader is hurried out of himself by the force of the poet's imagination, and turns in one place to a hearer, in another to a spectator.” -Alexander Pope

It’s one thing to have Redbeard tell you that might is right. That the weaker belong to the stronger. But it’s quite another to experience it in Homer. He puts you into the fray. You feel what his characters are feeling. BAP has said he didn’t understand the Iliad until he read Nietzsche, so perhaps you look up Nietzsche’s Contest before you read the Iliad if you haven’t read Homer before.

It’s hard to say how I came to understand the Iliad. I DID read Nietzsche beforehand. The first translation of the Iliad I digested came from the Lombardo translation audiobook, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but as I listened to it, I could see how it would be hard for a normie to understand what was being said by Homer. His normie judgments would prevent him from understanding. I listened to the Lattimore translation next which was much better in that it did not separate Homer’s similes from the story as Lombardo’s did(read guide to Iliad translation for more on this). What we will start with here with Alexander Pope’s translation of the Iliad is his preface at the beginning of the book.

“This fire is discerned in Virgil, but discerned as through a glass, reflected from Homer, more shining than fierce, but everywhere equal and constant: in Lucan and Statius, it bursts out in sudden, short, and interrupted flashes: in Milton, it glows like a furnace kept up to an uncommon ardour by the force of art: in Shakespeare, it strikes before we are aware, like an accidental fire from heaven: but in Homer, and in him only, it burns everywhere clearly, and everywhere irresistibly.” -Alexander Pope

What Pope does in the preface is discuss the greatness of Homer’s poetry, how it compares to other poets like Virgil or Milton, and where other translations, like Chapman’s fail. Is it necessary to read this preface? No, but it is interesting if you are fond of the Iliad as I am. What I want to do here is highlight what Pope has to say. What I especially appreciate is the recognition of Homer’s FIRE which comes out in the Iliad. Fire is an important thing. I talk about wanting to light the fire in men’s souls. While some of you have appreciated the vitalism in what I write, I could never hope to compare to what Homer did.

“That of the Iliad, is the anger of Achilles, the most short and single subject that ever was chosen by any poet. Yet this he has supplied with a vaster variety of incidents and events, and crowded with a greater number of councils, speeches, battles, and episodes of all kinds, than are to be found even in those poems whose schemes are of the utmost latitude and irregularity. The action is hurried on with the most vehement spirit, and its whole duration employs not so much as fifty days.” -Alexander Pope

What you must understand when you read the Iliad is that it is centered around the RIGHTEOUS anger of Achilles. This gets lost on moderns who are concerned only with fighting as a service to kin and country. The idea that the characters of the Iliad would place themselves before the army or that they expected loot from their “service,” is something few in our time could understand or relate to. It appalls the moderns that the Greks thought Achilles was justified in his actions. He did nothing wrong. He followed his destiny. Hector gets a lot of acclaim because he acts more like what the modern expects a warrior to act, but never forget he died running away from Achilles. How does this make you feel?!

It’s my belief that Achilles, however many thousands of years later still doesn’t get the RESPEC he deserves. I wrote about this before and many lashed out at me in response. Mayb you check out before you read or reread the Iliad? To do what Achilles did — and all of Homer’s heroes do during the poem — and put the army on his shoulders required excellence and bravery incomparable today.

“We acknowledge him the father, of poetical diction, the first who taught that language of the gods to men.” -Alexander Pope