On Poetic Strangeness, Horses, & Myths
“I loved him like my head, my life, myself,” says Achilles in Emily Wilson’s translation of The Iliad, after his soulmate Patroclus has been struck down by Hector. I came across Wilson reading this line aloud in a video, and her voice pierced. It was fraught, strung tight like the notes of a lyre, as plangent as a plucked song. The gist of it is clear — Achilles has lost someone he holds dear to him. But what does it mean? Broken into fragments, it becomes almost nonsensical: “I loved him like my head” or “I loved him like my life” or “I loved him like myself.” The usage of “like” demonstrates that some comparison is being drawn, though it’s unclear how or why.
It’s simply peculiar. Honestly, it makes me imagine Achilles holding his own head in his arms like the Headless Horseman and stroking his hair tenderly. These three things, although intimate and encompassing, are not typically seen as objects of love. I then tumbled down a rabbit hole and learned a little bit about translators: They are (shocker) some of the most deliberate, detail-oriented people in the world, the field of hermeneutics vast and variegated by individual philosophy. So, Emily Wilson knew exactly what she was doing.
I learned that this phenomenon is called “poetic strangeness,” in which unconventional prose is wielded to peel away at ordinary metaphors. It felt like I’d heard the line before because, in a dozen ways, I had: We all know the idiom, “I would give my right arm,” and we all have read or watched characters give heartrending proclamations of love. Wilson has been criticized for her work being too simplistic. In my opinion, brevity is open air, allowing richness and meaning to breathe. And in this one brilliant line, there are so many troughs and peaks to plumb.
What I think rings strangely about the line is how personal it is, to the point that Achilles may as well be saying he and Patroclus were the same person. But that’s the point, Wilson says in an interview. She points out how, in the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus, the beloved and the self are one. In fact, this is a recurring theme for them, and it’s all the more poignant to realize this: Patroclus rode into battle wearing Achilles’s armor, impersonating him, and after they both died, their ashes were mingled together. At the end of The Song of Achilles, by Madeline Miller, Achilles’s mom Thetis etches their names atop each other on a gravestone, as close as they can be. In the final scene of the novel, Achilles and Patroclus reunite in the Underworld, light bursting from their touching fingertips “like a thousand golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
“I loved him like my head, my life, myself” is as unbearably intimate, aching, and confounding as their relationship was. In this way, it makes perfect sense.
I then came across another passage by Emily Wilson, this time in the introduction.
You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love will die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth again and again.
Go ahead — I’ll let you read it again. If Achilles’s line was an ending, this is an opening — literally. She splits you open here, sternum to ribcage, and refuses to stitch you up. This one isn’t musical, either; it’s visceral, a metronome by way of thunder. It left me breathless, and I’ll be honest, a little panicked (nothing like having an existential crisis at midnight). I would argue that there’s still something of poetic strangeness here. I can’t speak for translators, but authors don’t usually write this way. They typically purport some silver lining, some hope — this felt like directors killing off the pet. Like she was breaking some writer code.
Yet, the more I read this passage, the more it seemed to settle within me. It’s like when you find yourself in total darkness, experiencing a brief hitch of terror. Then, you gradually find yourself sinking into the void, drawing it upon you like a blanket. Poetic strangeness, indeed.
In the following days, everywhere I looked, I saw hints of poetic strangeness in the natural and human world. I attended the Lunar Gala for the first time, which was a glittering revelation of silk and tulle and colors. In contrast to the measured gait of other models, one danced down the catwalk, clad in chartreuse and magenta, twin blotches on her cheeks framing a cheshire grin. Another held a black bear close to him, its maw poised over his neck. Most lines had a strong visual aesthetic, but in this one, I couldn’t even tell what it was at first. The bear looked more like an inkblot, albeit a furry one. It seemed to skip past the language of draping and color to arrow straight into meaning.
Wilson describes her style as matching in stride Homer’s “nimble gallop.” This, too, sounds strange, but not in the way of the black bear or Achilles’s grief. It’s … whimsical. I can imagine Homer’s lyricism as a water stallion, kicking up sea foam, a fleeting creature that we of the modern age seek to capture. With the weather getting warmer, Carnegie Mellon’s campus also has a dreamlike quality to it. The sunlit lawns, the students sprawled out on blankets. It’s as if the student body as a whole is emerging from a deep hibernation. We’re stirring, and the air is quickening, this in-between haze of poetic strangeness.
