One of my favorite unconventional translations, alongside Stephen Berg’s With Akhmatova At The Black Gates and Dark Elderberry Branch by Kaminsky & Valentine.

War Music is a “variation” on the Iliad that became something of a lifelong project of Logue’s. Unfinished at the time of his death, it nonetheless grew from the commissioned translation of a single passage (book 16, Patrocleia) to a rather complete interpretation of the whole epic, absent Logue’s planned final section, Big Men Falling A Long Way. The most recent edition includes the author’s notes on Big Men, for a glimpse at what the conclusion might have looked like.

Speaking of editions, of interest to me as a translation geek are Logue’s constant self-revisions as War Music matured through several printings. From the opening words the 2023 edition contains notable differences to its 1997 sibling, itself changed from the '81, '91, '94 etc. drafts.

See how the '97 edition begins:

Picture the east Aegean sea by night,
And on a beach aslant its shimmering
Upwards of 50,000 men
Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet.

    Now look along that beach, and see
Between the keels hatching its western dunes
A ten-foot-high reed wall faced with black clay
Split by a double-doored gate;
Then through the gate a naked man
Whose beauty’s silent power stops your heart
Fast walk, face wet with tears, out past its guard,
And having vanished from their sight
Run with what seems to break the speed of light
Across the dry, then damp, then sand invisible
Beneath inch-high waves that slide
Over each other’s luminescent panes;
Then kneel among those panes, beggar his arms, and say:

Now, here is the finalized text from literally six months ago (my pre-order copy is dated January 27th):

Picture the east Aegean sea by night,
And on a beach aslant its shimmering
Upwards of 50,000 men
Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet.

    Now look along that beach, and see
Between the keels hatching its western dunes
A ten-foot-high reed wall faced with black clay
Split by a double-doored gate;
Then through the gate a naked man
Run with what seems to break the speed of light
Across the dry, then damp, then sand invisible
Beneath the inch-high waves that slide
Over each other’s luminescent panes;
Then kneel among those panes, burst into tears, and say:

Finally compare both to the corresponding original, maybe the most famous opening lines since Genesis:

    Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus
and its devastation, which put pains thousandfold upon the
    Achaians,
hurled in their multitudes to the house of Hades strong souls of heroes, but gave their bodies to be the delicate feasting of dogs, of all birds, and the will of Zeus was accomplished since that time when first there stood in division of conflict Atreus’ son the lord of men and brilliant Achilleus. —Lattimore

Here is a second comparison, between Homer and the '23 Logue—from the initial rupture between Agamemnon and Achilles, the dispute over Chryseis:

    Then in answer again spoke brilliant swift-footed Achilleus:
‘Son of Atreus, most lordly, greediest for gain of all men,
how shall the great-hearted Achaians give you a prize now?
There is no great store of things lying about I know of.
But what we took from the cities by storm has been distributed; it is unbecoming for the people to call back things once given. No, for the present give the girl back to the god; we Achaians thrice and four times over will repay you, if ever Zeus gives into our hands the strong-walled citadel of Troy to be plundered.’
    Then in answer again spoke powerful Agamemnon:
'Not that way, good fighter though you be, godlike Achilleus, strive to cheat, for you will not deceive, you will not persuade me. What do you want? To keep your own prize and have me sit here lacking one? Are you ordering me to give this girl back? Either the great-hearted Achaians shall give me a new prize chosen according to my desire to atone for the girl lost, or else if they will not give me one I myself shall take her, your own prize, or that of Aias, or that of Odysseus, going myself in person; and he whom I visit will be bitter. Still, these are things we shall deliberate again hereafter. Come, now, we must haul a black ship down to the bright sea, and assemble rowers enough for it, and put on board it the hecatomb, and the girl herself, Chryseis of the fair cheeks, and let there be one responsible man in charge of her, either Aias or Idomeneus or brilliant Odysseus, or you yourself, son of Peleus, most terrifying of all men, to reconcile by accomplishing sacrifice the archer. —Lattimore

Cinch your jockstrap, here’s Logue:

    Until Achilles said:

    ‘Dear sir,
Where shall we get this she?
There is no pool.
We land. We fight. We kill. We load. And then—
After your firstlings—we allot.
That is the end of it.
We do not ask things back. And even you
Would not permit your helmet to go round.
    Leave her to Heaven.
And when—and if—God lets me leap the Wall,
Greece will restock your dormitory.’

    ‘Boy Achilleus,’ Agamemnon said,
‘You will need better words
And more than much more charm
Before your theorising lightens me.
    Myself unshe’d, and yours still smiling in the furs?
Ditchmud.’

    Widening his stare:

    'Consult. Produce a string. Or—
Now listen carefully—I shall be at your gate
Demanding Uxa, Ajax, or
At my lord Diomed’s for Gwi—
Kah!—What does it matter whose prize she I take?
But take I shall, and if needs be, by force.

    'Well . . .
We shall see.

    ‘And now
Let us select and stow a ship,
Captained by you, lord Thoal, or by you,
Our silencer, Idomeneo.
At all events, some diplomatic lord
To take my pretty Cryzia home
That holy smoke and thermal prayers
Commend the Son of God
To exorcise the insects we refresh.’

God damn.