The Story of the Iliad

,. 1 REVIEWS 209· · his deep sympathy with human struggles and suffering. Hauptmann's creative processes were essentially organic and almost subconscious, rather than intellectual or rational; they were often dream-like and visionary. Particularly in his later years, Hauptmann dictated his works as if he were a medium, listening in a kind of trance ro the promptings of an inner voice. Iphigenie in Delphi was produced in this way, in two short summer months in Hiddensee in 1940; and the one-act play Elektra, Hauptmann's last great creative effort, was dictated in one breath, so to speak> in·October1 1944, in AgnetendorF. Voigt concentrates even more than Behl on Hauptmann's later years. Four great works represent Hauptmann's cmwning achievement since his sixtieth birthday in 1922; the verse epics Till (1927) and Der Grosse Traum (1942), the un£nished novel Der Neue Christophorus, and the dramatic fragment Der Dom. Voigt characterizes them as "der Strom in die Tiefe." In a long set·ies ofbaffiing and sometimes terrible 11 Cosmic" visions, Hauptmann tried to come to grips with the uchthonian" powers (i.e., the gods and spirits of the underworld); he probed the secret foundations of the universe and penetrated to the weJI-Spri ngs of life itself; he wrestled with the problem of God and evil-in the sense of the Theodicee of Leibniz, but (as Voigt remarks) wirh little of the Leibniz optimism. Hauptmann's great spiritual ancestors in this connection are Jakob Bohme and the long line of Siles.ian mystics1 and Paracelsus, l'whose works always lay open in Hauptmann's library." "Like Paracelsus and Bohme, Hauptmann teaches that the evil as well as the good; the No as well as the Yes, rests in God." ·And yet there are still superficial .and facile crit1cs who maintain that Hauprmann had no "\Veltanschauung" ! These two books are I.imired in size and scope; but they are indispensable (or Hauptmann research. THE STORY OF THE ILTAD>l rarely avoids intruding his personal tastes. He is betrayed into a form of autobiography. If this, by and large, is the contemporary ethos governing criticism, then Owen's approach is less fashionable, more classical. Here) one suspects, is a book written out of a lifelong passion {or the Iliad, but a passion severely con- .. Tlu StorJv of the lliad, as told in tlu Iliad. By E. T. Ow~::N. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin. 1947. Pp. xii, 248 . ($2.50) 210 THE UNIVERSlTY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY trolled. If Homer be compared to a vety powerful radio station, which however has to transmit to us over an immense distance> Owen allows himself to intervene as the relay station, picking up the wave length and re-transmitting it to us, so that we can hear it. His 248 pages constitute a sort of continuous running commentary, addressed not to matters of philology or archaeology, but to the texture of Homer's plot, and the intricate interweave (as Owen is convinced) of its many threads. His argument demands the same close and complicated attention from the reader as Homer himself requires. The books of the Iliad are followed through in their order, from the first to the twenty-fourth. Only the last two are telescoped into a single chapter. Of the remaining twentytwo , each inclividually receives appropriate analysis of its inner logic and outward connections. Analysis is supported by plentiful quotations in English and in Greek (the book is printed in Canada), but the reader a-lmost needs to have his finger on the Greek text as he reads. It is 'as thoug·h, at every turn, Owen were· at his elbow, pointing to Homer's workmanship, saying "Look, see what he is doing! Watch the weave of the cloth as it leaves the loom." His argument is Homer's argument. That is why it is a good argument. Where the plot of the Iliad _is perfunctory or episodic, Owen is perfunctory (as in Books V, X, and XIII). \Vhere it gathers to a head, crystallizes issues, exposes poignancy of character or situation, Owen's pages likewise expand (Books VI, IX, XVIII, XXIJ and especially in Book XVI). As the epic crescendo rises towards the...