Spotlight Reviews

RHODE ISLAND

University of Rhode Island Library Gallery/ Kingston
www.uri.edu
THE ILIAD — A NEW TRANSLATION BY MERLE MAINELLI POULTON

Scribes and Gutenberg changed the course of human storytelling forever, but in the narrative journeys of today images often compete with and even replace language to answer the question, “And then what happened?” Like the monks of old, adding Celtic dogs and dragons to Bible letters, Merle Mainelli Poulton fuses drawing and word, language and design in a fascinating and successful reinterpretation of the idea of “book.”

Complementing the popularity of anime, graphic novels, adult pop-up books, video games, and Internet communication, Poulton’s fresh translation reconceptualizes the notion of story as an art form that is driven by words and language. Her twenty-four large mixed-media-on-paper works each represent a single chapter of Richard Latimer’s famed translation of Homer’s Iliad. The scenes are evocative, dynamic, and colorful, working to move the story cinematically, as in a storyboard, from beginning to end. But what makes this visual narrative even more compelling is its word-for-word journey as Poulton transcribes every phrase and sentence of Latimer’s work into the paintings, making them part of the graphic action. Many of the images are breathtaking, including powerfully rendered scenes such as Book 2: The Catalog of Ships, showing a fleet of white sails approaching Troy, strewn like loose pages in a blue void. Some, like Book 9: Achilleus Refuses the Embassy, are elegant designs that convey a sense of storybook art. And still others, like Book 10: The Doloneia, cosmic and funereal in both its subject matter and its night shades of color, become more abstract.

Some words are too faint or abstracted to be read, while others stand out, as in Book 12: Hektor Breaks the Achaian Wall; here the arrow-word motion moves dramatically over the stone, hurled in the direction of the blue sea beyond. (“Why are so you afraid of war and hostility” lingers legibly.) All 15,693 lines of Homer’s Iliad were transcribed by Poulton on these twenty-four images in a project that took more than three years to complete. The words, as scribbles and markings, become part of the background in some cases, giving the works a scratchy depth. Other times they hold up walls.

And sometimes they are almost magically transformed into action, word shapes that become arrows and trees, soldiers and oars. Homer, who lived sometime around the 8th century B.C., at the end of the oral storytelling tradition, would have appreciated the irony that his story is recognized (along with his Odyssey) as one of the all-time great works of literature, since it was originally intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the lyre. Now Poulton has given the tale a fresh face, in which the printed words actively change in layers and forms to signify markings that support images. In her telling, the lyre and the printing press have been replaced by a paintbrush.
Doug Norris