"Without plagiarism, there would be no literature."

I had a friend in high school with whom I could talk about a lot of things, one of them being literature. Since he is not available to talk to anymore, here is what I would have talked to him about regarding my classics in English literature class.

Christopher Logue's project of translating The Iliad is astounding. War Music is the most important poem of this century--and Logue doesn't know a word of Greek. In his project, he combines not only Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Milton, and Pope, but also a number of English poets like Pound and Eliot. The latest book, All Day Permanent Red, contains only the battles scenes from The Iliad--and Logue took the title from a Revlon lipstick ad. I love how he combines the epic conventions and their subsequent reception into English literature with pop culture references. His style is the most overt modern influence. If Cecil B. DeMille did The Iliad, Logue would be the screenwriter. His style is essentially cinematic, which ultimately speaks to our modern aesthetic and mindset--the lapses into present tense, the quick cuts, the reliance on montage, the emphasis of the visual all imply a silver-screen behind the words. Logue's work has the sweep of epic cinema and the cadence of epic poetry, which is what makes it successful.

I think what it comes down to is that it's the meaning, not the name, that is important. Milton first brought this up when he talks about how the gods of pagan religions are really the devils cast out of heaven with Satan (whose name, incidentally, becomes synonymous with Achilles, Aeneas, Hephaestus, and other classical figures), and the pagans just got the names wrong. The meaning behind Logue's anachronistic project is to convey the truth The Iliad tells about "the propensity to violence in human males." Civil war will always be civil war, it's only the names and dates that change over time. Whether it's the civil war in heaven or the English Civil War during Milton's time, people will always find a reason to rebel and as always, the victors will write (or rewrite) the story.

And Logue says it more powerfully, is able to even say it at all, because of the classical source texts and the history of their reception by English writers.

That's all I'm trying to say.