Tony Harrison: A Cold Coming

Allusion to Classical figure Hector, Sophocles

Relationship to Classical text Uses image of Hector as comparator of ‘Charred Iraqui’ - ‘I doubt victorious Greeks let them join in their feast as spoiling spectre’. The gruesome portrayal (which is a response to a photograph, published widely in the British media, of the burnt body of an Iraqi soldier inside an army truck) is reminiscent of Aeneas’ dream vision of Hector in Aeneid II (l.268-97)

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts ‘the best of fates is not to be’ is a translation of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, l.1225.

Comment Title Alludes to TS Eliot's ‘Journey of the Magi’.

Note First published in The Guardian newspaper.