Alice Oswald adds her voice to the long list of interpretations in Memorial: A Version of Homer's Iliad. Mimicking the style of epic poetry, she offers a self-titled translation of the text. Using Greek sparingly, she chooses to forgo plot in favor of emotion. Oswald uses the original text, set during the Trojan War, as an example of the dangerous consequences of war.
Beginning with a memorial list of all the names of soldiers killed during the conflict, Oswald's writing feels eerily similar to recent visions of the Vietnam Memorial or other such places where the names of fallen soldiers are carved into stone. Her vision is clear: war kills people. She communicates this through a detailed explanation of individual soldier's death, maybe their backgrounds and the reactions of their loved ones as well. Making few and extremely choice distinctions between famous characters and more obscures ones. In death they are all equals.
More than anything Oswald's translation offers a more personal interaction with Homer's original text. The implications are generous and far reaching as far as contemporary war is concerned. Oswald sees the implications of death in antiquity as unchanged in modern warfare, a kind of biting truth which flavors the entire text. Rather than examining the cause or the narrative of Homer's tale, Oswald is interested in the cost.
