Writing an Epic poem in the 21st century.

I’ve been reading William G. Carpenter’s Eþandun for a review in the next issue of the Brazen Head. There’s a quote on the inside of the dust jacket that intrigues me. It describes the book as ‘A war epic in the tradition of Homer and Virgil, Eþandun (eth-an-dune) paints Western Christendom in its darkest hour.’

 

Leaving aside the inaccurate hyperbole in the second part of the sentence, I’ve been wondering if it’s possible to write ‘a war epic in the tradition of Homer and Virgil’ in the twenty first century.

 

My tentative answer is probably not, however….

 

David Jones was probably the last person to do it successfully. In Parenthesis works because Jones was describing a war that he’d fought in which his readers had either fought in or knew about and could recognise the accuracy of his descriptions. Secondly, he was able to blur the distinction between autobiography, history and fiction. And thirdly his heroes are believable men in extra-ordinary situations who are raised to the status of legendary figures by the way Jones presents them. Though his language, though his habitual blurring of the past and the present, he was able to raise the story of the historical assault on Mametz wood into the realm of legendary activity, while holding on to the historical event. 

Having said that Private Ball is hardly heroic. He crawls away from the battle field and abandons his weapon. But you can believe in Private Ball in a way you never believe in Achilles.

 

If this sets up the criteria for a successful ‘war epic in the tradition of Homer and Virgil’ then perhaps we could split the question into two parts. Firstly a war epic about a modern war, and secondly one set in the distant past. 

 

A modern war poem in the tradition of Homer or Virgil, assuming such a thing were desirable, could be written by someone who had fought in one of the many wars in the past fifty years. It would be realistic. It’s central character would be an ordinary soldier like Private Ball. It would blur the distinctions between autobiography or report. And then you’d wonder why bother? If it’s a narrative why trade the powerful effects of documentary prose for the inevitable fictive effect of poetry? How would it struggle free from all the films and books that are already issuing from these conflicts to claim the necessary seriousness an epic requires?  

 

Difficult but possible. 

 

For a story set in the past the differences between what Virgil was doing and what a modern poet could do might be too great.

 

His audience were trained in the use of weapons and accepted combat as a natural part of their lives. That might be the crucial difference between a Roman Aristocrat who has fought in the Empire’s wars listening to or reading the final combat in the Aeneid, and a modern audience reading that same passage. 

 

In a patriarchal, military society geared to colonial expansion, warfare might be a fine subject and Aeneas a role model for men. but women have walk on parts in Virgil and Homer, and they are usually dead or grieving at some stage. Today, wars are things most people hope to avoid, not a highly anticipated career opportunity for every young man.  

 

To compound the problem, sword swinging heroes have been conscripted by various fantasy genres. There is something enjoyably adolescent about them. If only your problem were so simple you could pick up a sword and belt it. If only the messy life that confuses and defeats you could be reduced to a simple binary proposition and personified in one opponent you could hack to pieces. If only beautiful members of the desired sex just threw themselves at you because of your ability to wave your phallic symbol around. It’s a nice idea for the frustrated and lonely adolescent lurking in everyone. But its hopelessly simplified and unrealistic. Moreover, familiarity with such fantasy exerts a gravitational pull on what was once meant to be taken seriously. 

 

Perhaps the idea of the hero who wins a war or changes history on his own has always been unrealistic. Even In the first century AD Roman armies were victorious because of the ruthless discipline belted into their infantry during training. But for that original audience of Homer and Virgil, the past was also a very different place to their own present: gods interacted with humans while larger than life heroes stalked about the earth. 

 

In the 21^st century we split History, which is (hopefully) evidence based and factual, from a thing called Fiction which is a culturally sanctioned form of lying. The split is very recent, certainly post-medieval. By a process of historical evolution poetry now belongs firmly in the category of fictive literature. It’s almost impossible for a modern reader not to read the Aeneid as fiction; a high-class Roman Marvel Comic with suited superheroes and bickering gods. The suspension of disbelief we’ve learnt from reading and watching fiction automatically takes over and the effect is amplified when we see the lines don’t go all the way to the right hand margin.

 

So is the essential problem that Virgil and Homer weren’t writing fiction? 

 

Today, anyone attempting a story set in the past has to assume that the poem will be treated as fictive. No matter how accurate the details, the minute King Athelstan speaks to his troops before Brunnaburgh, the story has slid into the comfortable and comforting world of make believe. 

 

No one to day has donned armour, mounted a horse and charged a line of archers. No one has stood his ground behind a line of shields while a bunch of sword whirling Britons tried to take his head off. There’s not much evidence to tell us what it was like, either. As you go back in time, first person accounts of battle become non-existent and descriptions of battle become increasingly rare until they disappear. They are almost non-existent for pre-Conquest England.  

 

If you stay this side of 1800, where there are eyewitness accounts and increasing amounts of first-hand information to draw on, than the days of the individual hero are already long gone and war is a brutal, increasingly mechanised, increasingly impersonal affair which essentially redefined heroism. 

 

So my tentative answer is I don’t know how anyone could overcome the problems inherent in the fictive nature of the enterprise. To write about a modern war in narrative poetry would fictionalise the reading experience and inevitably mute the effect. A poem telling a story set in the more distant past is inevitably an historical novel written in short lines. It might be historically accurate, but focus it on warfare, and it’s going to read like a fantasy novel.