{"id":1727,"date":"2019-11-22T18:25:16","date_gmt":"2019-11-22T18:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1727"},"modified":"2019-11-22T18:25:24","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T18:25:24","slug":"la-guerre-de-troie-naura-pas-lieu-or-did-it-ever-do-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2019\/11\/la-guerre-de-troie-naura-pas-lieu-or-did-it-ever-do-anyway.html","title":{"rendered":"La guerre de Troie n\u2019aura pas lieu, Or did it ever do anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jean Giraudoux\u2019 1935 play\u2019s title in English claims \u201cThe Trojan War Will Not Take Place,\u201d but his tragedy\u2019s use of the future tense is actually a denial of Cassandra\u2019s prophecy \u2013 in the face of all the evidence that an even worse war was to begin shortly. For the sharp-witted French playwright the Homeric\/Virgilian parallels were with the foibles, follies and bad faith of the intellectuals and so-called statesmen whose pathetic and sometimes wicked policies and diplomatic efforts led to World War I and hastened World War II.          <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/
Fillippo Albacini, The Wounded Achilles<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For a moment, I thought I had caught a missed trick by the four curators of the British Museum\u2019s block-busting new exhibition, \u201cTroy: Myth and Reality\u201d (until 8 March 2020, catalogue published by the BM and Thames & Hudson). Not a chance. A glance at the formidable index takes you straight to p.207, where Giraudoux\u2019 contribution to their chapter on \u201cTroy: Enduring Stories\u201d not only explains why Giraudoux (1882-1944) wrote his anti-war play (he was seriously wounded in the Gallipoli disaster, and \u201cdeeply affected by the carnage he witnessed\u201d), but also tells us that \u201cits performances [are] still lending a voice to protests against the Vietnam War in the 1970s, the Falklands War in the 1980s and the 1990s Balkan conflicts.\u201d The paragraph above this one cites the great Australian painter Sidney Nolan, and the paragraphs below it poets George Seferis, Christopher Logue and Alice Oswald.  And in the show itself are pieces by Cy Twombly, Eduardo Paolozzi, Anthony Caro, Biagio d\u2019Antonio, George Romney, some frescoes from Pompeii, painted Etruscan plaques, a Linear B tablet, a Mycenaean sealstone, a Fuseli drawing, a William Blake watercolour, some Japanese Manga, the Chatsworth marble sculpture \u201cThe Wounded Achilles\u201d by Filippo Albacini, an Angelica Kauffman painting, Oliver Messel\u2019s set model for a staging of the musical \u201cHelen!\u201d at the Adelphi Theatre, London and, of course, Lucas Cranach the Elder\u2019s painting of \u201cThe Judgment of Paris.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Naturally there are manuscripts and printed books on display, and more calyx\/kraters than you can imagine, most of them from the permanent collection of the British Library or the British Museum. The Museum f\u00fcr Vor- und Fr\u00fchgeschichte, Berlin, loaned nearly 100 objects that, says the Director, Hartwig Fischer, enabled them to display many of the celebrated Heinrich Schliemann archaeological finds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cEncyclopaedic\u201d doesn\u2019t quite capture the breadth of this exhibition, which starts by expounding and illustrating the three epic poems that retail the myths of the Trojan War, the return of Ulysses and the founding of Rome, from the opening line of the Iliad, \u03bc\u1fc6\u03bd\u03b9\u03bd<\/a> \u1f04\u03b5\u03b9\u03b4\u03b5<\/a> \u03b8\u03b5\u1f70<\/a> \u03a0\u03b7\u03bb\u03b7\u03ca\u03ac\u03b4\u03b5\u03c9<\/a> \u1f08\u03c7\u03b9\u03bb\u1fc6\u03bf\u03c2<\/a>  to Virgil\u2019s Arma virumque cano<\/em> Troiae qui primus ab oris<\/em> (simply to satisfy myself that I can still remember these schoolboy trifles, though virtually none of the rest of the Iliad, the Odyssey or the Aeneid).  Contemporary and historical pieces are mixed in this splendidly designed exhibition \u2013 but be warned, it will be crowded, and anyone without very good vision might find the printed leaflets with magnified captions helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The catalogue approaches the myths as topics \u2013 the wrath of Achilles, the war as Zeus\u2019s scheme for birth-control, the seizure of Helen, Thetis dipping her infant into the protective stream, Achilles\u2019 passion for Patroclus, the death of Patroclus, the death of Hector, the nay-saying of Cassandra and so on. First, though, the curators argue the case of whether the blind poet, Homer, existed; and there is the evidence of the Roman copy of a 2nd<\/sup> century BC Hellenistic bust and the c.225-205 BC marble relief \u201cThe Apotheosis of Homer.\u201d There are plenty of manuscript texts, which Cicero says were decreed by the tyrant Peisistratus (or his son) in the second half of the 6th<\/sup> century BC to be organised in 24 chapters or books, and to be recited in that order. Though the oral origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey are accepted, it is astonishing that we should have the complete texts in its dactylic hexameters. It helps that there is something formulaic about their composition, with dawn being \u201crosy-fingered,\u201d the sea being \u201cwine-dark\u201d and Achilles always \u201cfleet of foot.\u201d The work of the great Milman Parry (1902-1933) showed that there were living oral traditions of Serbo-Croat epics, where bards recited long poems from memory, aided by the analogies to the Homeric epithets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            The\nexhibition then moves from literary matters and their concrete illustrations to\narchaeology, which makes us doubt, pace<\/em> Giraudoux, that the Trojan War\nactually took place. Weirdly enough, there is a single hero (or villain) in\nthis regard. Heinrich Schliemann (1822-1890) claimed to have discovered the\nsite of Troy about 1868. The difficulty: he used dynamite in his attempts to\nget through the nine levels of archaeological excavations, so we cannot be sure\nthat he did not destroy as much or more than he revealed. The story of the\nmultiple digs in Hissarlik in modern-day Turkey is riveting, but there is an\ninsurmountable problem, as the final layer is at least a full millennium<\/em>\nolder than the presumed-Homeric Bronze Age artefacts and events. Though Priam\u2019s\ntreasures and Helen\u2019s jewellery are fascinating, their identification is about\nas likely as that of the remains of the Trojan Horse, the Walls of Troy or of the\nboat in which Odysseus sailed between Scylla and Charybdis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Even\nso, this exhibition is Joycean in its Ulysses<\/em>-like ambitions to tell us\neverything the curators know about their subjects \u2013 and amazingly successful in\nwalking the high-wire between scholarship and popular interest.  I have to confess that I was lucky enough to\nsee this stunning display absolutely on my own. I recommend that, before you go,\nyou check carefully to find the less populated times when the show is open.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean Giraudoux\u2019 1935 play\u2019s title in English claims \u201cThe Trojan War Will Not Take Place,\u201d but his tragedy\u2019s use of the future tense is actually a denial of Cassandra\u2019s prophecy \u2013 in the face of all the evidence that an even worse war was to begin shortly. For the sharp-witted French playwright the Homeric\/Virgilian parallels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1727","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-rR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1727"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1729,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1727\/revisions\/1729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}