The fact of the matter is that storytelling is a complex process. It's one that requires a great deal of patience and skill if any of us ever wants to get a better understanding of why a book like Lord of the Rings has been able to stick around all these years. Sometimes the folks who write books like this are able to give the curious a bit of help, here and there. Tolkien, for instance, was considerate (or else just plain careless) enough to be willing to talk about the thought processes that went into the making of Middle Earth. His letters are a treasure trove of what goes on in the mind of some nerds when they think the sports jocks aren't listening, and they're out of easy punching and locker stuffing distance. The long and short of it is that this guy had one hell of an outsized Imagination. The kind that's able to fashion entire secondary worlds with the type of skill that seems effortless, yet which the written record reveals took a great deal of trial and error. If you ever want to find out why the world still can't seem to get enough about Hobbits, then the letters and critical comments on the nature of writing made by the author of LOTR are still the best place to start. Tolkien's a pretty good example of what I mean when I say that there are some works of fiction where the audience has to do its homework if any of us ever wants a clearer understanding of what makes a place like Middle Earth so real to most readers today.
The whole thing starts out with an Author's Note by the American poet and translator A.E. Stallings. Right away, she makes presents us with a quirky framing device for how we're to read this work. "When I heard that a rare volume had arrived in Athens at the Gennadius Library, I made an
appointment to see it. The book was an early edition of the Batrachomyomachia (“The Battle
between the Frogs and Mice”), printed in Germany in 1513, and edited by the poet
Thielemann Conradi (1485–1522). In fact, this edition is the first Greek book published in
Germany, and is one of only two known copies in existence. This mock-heroic epic, originally
ascribed to Homer himself, proves to be a pivotal text—as well as wildly popular—for the
Renaissance and the reintroduction of Greek to Western Europe. It seems I had been the only person to request an audience with the physical book since the
library acquired it. How strange that I could just take this ancient and fragile text to a desk to
sit down with it and flip through its pages! (I did have to use a special book support, so as not
to damage the binding, but I wasn’t required to wear gloves.) A couple of things surprised me
about it—its modest size for one (about the dimensions of a classic Moleskine notebook, only
much thinner).
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" Interestingly, there is no mention of Apollo in the poem. Apollo in Homer is referred
to as “Smintheus”—the mouse god. (“Sminthus” was mouse in Cretan, although
Aeschylus also uses that word.) And there is reason to believe that mice were honored in
the Troad at Chryse and Hamaxitos in connection with the god, whose cult statue depicted him with a mouse. (See Strabo and Aelian.) Mice were propitiated in worship as
a means of discouraging them from destroying crops in the fields. The 2nd-century A.D.
travel-writer Pausanias also mentions a temple to Artemis Myasia on the road to Arcadia.
Pausanias doesn’t speculate on the meaning of this name, but his small travelling
companion, Pawsanias, explains that “Myasia” comes not from “mystery,” but from the
Greek for mouse, μῦς—Artemis the Mouse Goddess. As Artemis is the sister of Apollo, it
makes sense that she also has a mouse form and association.2 There is also a mouse
Demeter (Demeter Myasia), no doubt because of her association with the earth and with
grain. Mice tend to symbolize for humans the twin opposing forces of fertility and plague.
Mice and humans eat the same food and share the same dwelling places, which makes
them competitors as well as companions, and mice often stand in for men in fable and
verse. For men as well as mice, the poet Robert Burns reminds us, “the best laid schemes .
. . / gang aft agley.”
"... Mice may also turn the tide of human battle. There are two passages associating mice
with warfare in the 5th-century B.C.
Histories of Herodotus. In one instance, when the
Persians seek to conquer the Scythians, the Scythians send a strange message—a mouse,
a frog, a bird, and five arrows, without comment (4.131, 132). The Persians are perplexed
as to the meaning. One theory was that it was meant as a surrender (of earth and water
and themselves). But another of Darius’s advisors interprets it thus: “If you do not
become birds and fly away into the sky or become mice and burrow into the earth or
become frogs and leap into the lakes, there will be no homecoming for you, for we will
shoot you down with our arrows” (the translation is Grene’s). I would myself point out
that the conjunction of frog, mouse, and bird perhaps points to an ancient fable popular in
the East and which comes to us through two of Aesop’s fables—the fable is a warning
about the dangers of inappropriate alliances. (See below for more on the fable, which is
clearly related to our epic.)
"In another instance out of Herodotus (2.141), mice destroy a human army. The
Egyptian King Sethos is concerned that a great army, led by Sennacherib, king of the
Arabians and Assyrians, will attack Egypt. But in a dream he is told by a god that he will
be sent allies. The allies turn out to be the field mice, who at night gnaw at the enemy army’s quivers and bows and bow strings and the handles of their shields, so that in the
morning the army fled “defenseless.” A version of this story also appears in the Old
Testament (2 Kings 19:35), but there the host of mice is only referred to obliquely as an
“angel of the lord.” (Byron’s memorable poem, “The Destruction of Sennacherib,”
unfortunately makes no mention of the mice.) A version of this tale also appears in the
Chinese annals...While the fables of Aesop—according to Herodotus a slave and story writer of the 6th
century B.C.—contain many stories of mice (“The Country Mouse and the City Mouse,”
for instance) and of frogs (“The Frogs Seek a King,” etc.), there are two related fables
about an unlikely friendship between a mouse and a frog that ends tragically. In both
versions, a mouse and a frog become friends, the frog invites the mouse to his house, the
mouse says he cannot swim, and the frog ties the mouse to his foot, only to end up
drowning him. A
deus-exmachina appearance of a bird means the frog comes to a grim
fate as well. This ancient story of the frog and the mouse was widely known in the East.
(The 13th-century Persian poet Rumi has a charming version of it.)
"The second, more elaborate Aesop version goes thus (Gibbs translation):
Back when all the animals spoke the same language, the mouse became friends with a
frog and invited him to dinner. The mouse then took the frog into a storeroom filled to
the rafters with bread, meat, cheese, olives, and dried figs and said, “Eat!” Since the
mouse had shown him such warm hospitality, the frog said to the mouse, “Now you
must come to my place for dinner, so that I can show you some warm hospitality too.”
The frog then led the mouse to the pond and said to him, “Dive into the water!” The
mouse said, “But I don’t know how to dive!” So the frog said, “I will teach you.” He
used a piece of string to tie the mouse’s foot to his own and then jumped into the
pond, dragging the mouse down with him. As the mouse was choking, he said, “Even
if I’m dead and you’re still alive, I will get my revenge!” The frog then plunged down
into the water, drowning the mouse. As the mouse’s body floated to the surface of the
water and drifted along, a raven grabbed hold of it together with the frog who was still
tied to the mouse by the string. After the raven finished eating the mouse he then
grabbed the frog. In this way the mouse got his revenge on the frog.
"The points of similarity with our epic are many—the mouse, and the frog, the mention of a bird of prey, the drowning, the fault (or deviousness) of the frog, and the
catalogue of human food associated with the mouse. The real revenge, however, of the
mouse is, I would say, our poem, which memorializes both the noble bravery of the mice
and the turpitude of frogs. The courage of mice is of course a commonplace in literature.
Consider Christopher Smart, “For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valor,” C. S.
Lewis’s valiant Reepicheep, E. B. White’s plucky Stuart Little, or Kate DiCamillo’s
Despereaux. The frogs in Aesop’s fables are consistent in their stupidity (consider the story “The
Frogs Seek a King”), their booming bravado, and their uselessness in action. For frogs in
battle, consider the fable of “The Frog, the Water Snake, and the Viper.” In this tale, the
water snake and the viper fight over their territory in the marsh. The frogs, who hate the
water snake, offer to be allies of the viper, but in the end, only sit on the sidelines
croaking their support, proving both treacherous and ineffectual.
"In the Renaissance, versions of Aesop’s “The Frog and the Mouse” began to be
provided with a backstory—that the frog and mouse are battling over the territory of the
marsh when they are carried off by a kite. This variant seems to owe something to our
epic.
It also seems likely that the composer of our epic was familiar with this Aesop story
and elaborated it, with mouse-ish ingenuity, into the battle narrative we now have (3-7)". It's with this strange context setting the stage that I soon found myself looking into the peculiar history known as
The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice.
The Story.
"I start my song as every poet chooses
By calling on the company of Muses
O come into my heart, I bid you please,
Bless this fresh tablet balanced on my knees,
Make sure the fame of this huge contest carries
(The handiwork of that warmonger, Ares)
To every ear, as I set forth the tail
"Of how it was the Mice came to prevail
Over the Frogs’ amphibian alliance—
A feat to emulate the earth-born Giants
According to the legends men impart.
And this is how the battle got its start: (19-22)".
Conclusion: An Entertaining, if Perplexing Piece of Forgotten Myth.
For those who couldn't tell, the foregoing bit of context in the introduction was all a conceit laid out by, not the author of the poem, but rather it's translator, Alicia Stallings. It's an nice bit of fiction applied on top of another fiction. It seems to have been the editor's way of trying to ease her readers into the secondary world of this ancient beast fable. I guess I'd have to say it worked. At least that's the basic conclusion I can arrive at based on just my initial reaction. Stallings is to be congratulated for managing to achieve two goals in one with her introduction. She's taken the necessity of critical background information and found a way to combine it with, and present it all as an unexpected, yet genuine form of entertainment. In crafting the character of A. Nony Mouse, the translator has seems have found a way to frame the history of a text into something of an actual story. While this is one of those cases where the reader has to be alert in sifting fact from fiction, the good news in that the task is made easier by the lack of any ill will. It's clear that Stallings has no desire to trick her audience. All the relevant historical information is laid out in clear and concise terms which paint as accurate a picture of the history of the poem, and what the critical consensus of scholarship has been able to accurately determine about it. In contrast to this, the editor is careful to deliberately play up to fiction within the criticism to the point that there's no mistake where the real scholarship begins, and the fantasy ends.
The character of "Anonymous" is painted in broad strokes that manage to walk a fine line in terms of his entertainment value. In the hands of a lesser talent, this character could have very well come off as annoying and pointless. It's to Stallings credit that she makes her imaginary mouse editor into someone with a genuine sense of, and respect for the knowledge that went into the poem, and the legacy that it has left behind. At the same time, she also paints this comingled portrait of stubbornness and pride residing together with a sense of academic humility which manages to be somewhat endearing. You get the sense you're the in the presence of one of those quirky NPC characters that dot the landscape of fantasy novels, TV series, and video games of all kinds. He's the sort of fellow who ranges between a familiar sounding form of snarky irascibility on the one hand, and a warm sense of expansive humanism on the other. In fact, the more I think about it, her portrait of this imaginary mouse editor and commentator does put me in mind of at least one, real life scholar whose writings I'm familiar with. His name was Don Cameron Allen, and if I had to find the right words to describe this author, then it would be to tell you to imagine what Mark Twain would be like if he had an actual liking for all things Medieval, Shakespearean, and Miltonic, yet he also still kept a lot of his trademark caustic wit. The only difference being that this time it's a bit tempered. You can tell that Professor Cameron always kept the volume turned down. Yes, now that you mention it. That does sound like a nightmare. The point is that this what the characterization of Stalling's fictional commentator puts me in mind of.
It amounts to little more than a nice bit of characterization. It's also one that's drawn with enough skill that the writer is able to bring the character into the spotlight, and then keep him there firmly in the audience's mind. Doing this allows Stallings to execute her second and more important goal in writing her introduction. She's tasked with presenting the history of the
Batrachomyomachia manuscript to her readers, and this seems to have presented her with something of a creative challenge or opportunity. I can't claim to know what the exact thought process was, yet it "seems" as if somewhere in the process of making her translation, Stallings hit upon a novel idea of conveying what could otherwise have been little more than a few minor, dry-as-dust fragments of the scant information that we've been able to find out about this obscure Mock Epic. Tying it all together into the commentary of a pretend "Anonymous" Mouse seems to have been her brilliant stroke of Inspiration for how to get all this scholarly information across to her readers without the danger of having their eyes glaze over as they scan the page. The ingenious use of a fictional creation to get the scholarship across might be an even greater asset to Stallings efforts if, as seems likely, what I've got here is a text meant for a young reader audience.
If any of that proves to be true, then I must take my hat off to the translator here. She's presented us with one of the most creative means of easing her readers into the main text. This just leaves the question of how well does story of the War between Mice and Frogs hold up on its own? Well, let's start with the narrative setup. I've described the story as a kind of Epic, and that's true enough, up to a point. The twist in the tale comes from its resolution, yet what leads up to that is the poem's inciting incident. It all starts with an encounter between a mouse and a frog on the banks of a lake. This is how the narration tells it:
"One day a thirsty mouse approached the brink
Of the lake and dipped his muzzle in to drink.
No water could be welcomer or brisker.
He’d only just escaped death by a whisker—
That bane, the Weasel!
"As he slaked his thirst
A boom-voiced swamp-joy spied him and spoke first:
“Who are you, sir? whence came you to this pond?
Speak, stranger: from what parents were you spawned?
Don’t lie. If you’re a friend that’s good and true,
I’ll take you home and give fine gifts to you.
I am King Pufferthroat—throughout these bogs
I am renowned as ruler of the frogs!
"Peleus, Lord Mudworth, was my Sire,
My mother was the Princess of the Mire,
And I was bred upon the river bank.
"But I can see that you must have some rank:
Good-looking, strong, no ordinary mouse,
The crowning glory of a royal house,
A fighter famous on the field of battle.
Tell me your pedigree, and do not prattle (22-23)”.
This is the basic rhyme scheme in which the story, as a whole, is told. Since I'm not an expert in Art of Classical Poetics, I won't be able to say much about it except the following. The story is all related in the same stanza scheme of roughly six verse lines or less, for the most part. It places both the poet and the translator under a strict rule of composition. Any translation must either find a way to remain true to the poem's original metrics, or else breakaway from the poetic format entirely. Stallings opts to stay true to the narrative's original format and plot beats. While there will be more to say about the results of this choice later on, for now it's enough to note that her translation of the original Greek starts out as something of a winning combination. It means the narrative tone of the poem is conveyed in an admixture of the original Spartan style of Classical Poetics, while Stallings herself is able to wed the story's crisp and fast-paced prosody to a sense of whimsy that is both modern and all her own at the same time. The result is that the reader is treated to scenes of dialogue that play out in an interesting manner. For instance, here is how the mouse's answer's the Frog King's initial greeting and questions:
"Crumbsnatcher answered him in winged words:
“My race is known to men and gods—and birds—
But since you ask, Crumbsnatcher is my name,
Brave Breadgnawer my father, and my dame,
The daughter of King Hamchew, Nibblecorn.
"In Old Wainscotting I was bred and born.
She fed me there on figs and walnut meat
And gave me dainties of all kinds to eat.
I’m so unlike you, how can we be friends (24-25)"?
I'm sort of curious as to how this must sound to modern ears. In terms of
how Stallings tells the narrative, it's tone comes off as a curious admixture of the Epic and the Ridiculous. You've got characters speaking to each other in the kind of grandiloquent manner which, in a strange way, a lot of us still seem to be familiar with. That's because it's a particular
type of writing which has managed to keep ahold of the collective Imagination of the audience in spite, or perhaps even
because of its antiquity. It's the same mode of speech and description in which Homer is claimed to have either written or sung
The Iliad, and in which Vergil composed
The Aeneid. This is also present in the more famous
Odyssey from start to finish. The fact that the latter poem is still part of our contemporary pop-culture awareness goes a long way toward explaining how Homer and Vergil's shared system of Epic style has managed to hold on to this very day. It also doesn't hurt that writers like Tolkien were able to come up with sometimes finding more or less workable to other times downright brilliant ways of translating this voice of Epic poetry into modern and digestible prose. Something
like this same operation is at work in Stallings' editorial work here. However, there's also this one note of major difference. When you read passages like that, you come away wondering how sincere it all is?
In other words, one of the strange qualities of this poem is that it is describing setups and characterizations in a manner that sounds reminiscent of works like The Odyssey or Lord of the Rings. What brings us up short is a number of things concerned with the way this style is executed. Whenever you even so much as hear this manner of narration used, it's like our first instinct is to associate it with situations of great import and scope. If you open with two characters who meet each other in such fashion, then it seems like the very presence of the style is enough to set our expectations in a certain direction. It leads us to anticipate a story concerning mighty heroes, and great deeds. In other words, the nature of the Epic style alone is enough to gear and ready our minds for the kind of narrative and action that is best suited for such a manner of writing. To an extent, this poem does almost read at times like it's set out to do just that. The way this initial contact between the Frog and the Mouse builds up is that an uneasy truce is struck between the characters, with the King of the Lake willing to take the Prince of the Fields on a tour of his Kingdom. The one catch is that getting there will mean treading through water. The Mouse points out to the Frog that he can't swim. The King reassures his new guest that this will not be a problem. He'll teach him to swim and tie and rope around both of their feet.
Just as each of them is taking a tentative step into the lake, a crow comes flying down out of the sky, intent on having one, the other, or both for its next meal. The Frog King acts on instinct a dives into the lake to save its life. He manages to get away from the bird of prey, yet once he's clear of danger, he makes the unfortunate discovery that he's drowned the Mouse King's son. It's this inciting incident that leads to the titular Battle between the Scavengers of the Field and the Dwellers of the Lake. In terms of a bare-bones description, the subject matter appears fitting enough as a topic for an Epic myth. After all, a similar yet differing incident is what sets the events of
The Iliad in motion. In a way though, that's also the reason for this odd, combined sense of both stylistic and narrative dissonance that colors the story from start to finish. It's true there may be a sense of whimsical charm to the proceedings, yet the way it all shapes out is what leaves me faced with the real conundrum when it comes to judging this poem. I'm not quite whether I've read a good or a bad story on my hands, here. What I think it comes down to for me is a question of narrative, and therefor tonal dissonance. It's as if the style, characters, and above all, the narrative proper are forced to walk two tightropes and once, and it doesn't work.
Let's take Stallings choices of names for her characters, as an example. We've already had a fair sample of the translator's sense invention from the snippets of the poem displayed above. Now my own reaction to what might be termed the labeling aspect of Stallings' strategy was based on a "Wait and See", Simple Simon type policy. In other words, let me see how good your skills as a storyteller are first, then I'll judge the whole work later on. What this meant in practice is that when I first read of characters with names like Morselsnatcher or Potcreeper, I'll admit my immediate reaction was neither one of puzzlement, or else just plain cringe. Instead, it was basically, "Well, alright, let's just see where this goes". I think part of the reason for my initial open-minded reaction was because I can still recall some of the pre-school fair I lived off of as a five to eight year old to know that it was possible to construct an entire secondary world in which characters with names like this could run around and have an adventure in. Granted, I'm pretty sure I'd also seen Don Bluth's
An American Tail by around my sixth or seventh year. Yet when you're a kid, you take the differences in storytelling quality in stride. If Stallings had found the right situation for names like Crumbsnatcher to be characters in, then odds are even I'd have less of a complaint to make. The irony being it would've also been the kind of pre-teen stuff that I might not have bothered to spare a second glance at, even way back when I was a kid.
Like I said, I was already familiar with names like Bluth, Seuss, Henson, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe by the time I reached the age of nine. So I guess you could argue a lot of my misgivings about this poem stem from being able to acclimate myself to the kind of food they were all serving a the big kids table from such a young age. Circumstances like that might well be a part of it. Yet there are other things about Stallings' narration that make me think there are other contributing factors to my ambivalence about this translation. For one thing, it's just plain odd to hear characters with names like Breadgnawer and (I kid you not) Lick-a-plate discoursing to each other in the kind of tones you tend to reserve for characters like Aragorn, Ulysses, or even Hamlet. It's like there's no way you're mind can manage to take all of this seriously. Now, I do open myself to a potential criticism here. The more knowledgeable readers could argue that I'm just biased because I lack the proper sense of appreciation necessary for understanding the virtues of the Mock Epic. In other words, I lack the skill set necessary to enjoy a good piece of Satirical Fantasy. To which, I have just one observation to make on that score.
If it is at all possible to describe the Classical Mock Epic as something of a primitive precursor to our current notion of the Comedic Fantasy, then why is it I can quote almost the entirety of films like
Monty Python and the Holy Grail or
The Princess Bride almost from heart, yet I'll swear I felt like I'd come away less entertained from Stallings' translation than I probably should have been? What is it that doesn't make this Epic Satire work quite as well as it ought to? I think the issues of tonal dissonance stems from something endemic to the story itself. The real musing punchline is that we might be dealing with something that probably wasn't a problem that troubled audiences in Homer's time, but which might very well be a problem now. You see, one of the key things to know about
The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice is that it's not Spartan just in style, but also in terms of its overall narrative. Let me demonstrate what I mean with a bit of helpful comparison. Take a gander at Stallings' translation of one of the major battle scenes from the Mock Epic, then go and read a passage from Richard Adams'
Watership Down. The similarities, differences, and levels of storytelling quality become downright glaring. Here for instance, is the way Stallings tells of a meeting between the gods of Olympus:
"Thus spoke Athena, and the gods agreed,
And took their places, with all eager speed.
Mosquitoes then, on bugles much too large,
Trumpeted the military “charge!”
And from the sky, Zeus sent the boom and rattle
Of thunder as the omen of dread battle.
"Then first Loudboomer’s spear went, with a quiver,
Right through poor Nibbleman, and struck his liver.
He fell down, muzzle first, and with a thud,
Soft fur and armor both lay in the mud.
Then Holehider at Mudworth’s son took aim,
And with his stout spear gigged him through the frame.
Down fell the frog, snatched off by gloomy Death,
And out of his gaping mouth gasped his last breath.
Potcreeper struck Beeteater with a blow
Right to the heart, and laid the hopper low.
Then Catchfly, wild with grief, uprose and smote
Holehider in the soft and furry throat
With his sharp reed. At once, the rodent died.
He had not pulled his blade out when he spied
Crustcruncher coming at him—breaking rank,
In headlong flight he’d tumbled down the bank,
And kept on fighting even in the mud.
But struck, he fell, and did not rise. His blood
Stained the water with its scarlet gore;
His body lay stretched out upon the shore (56-63)".
What you've got here is the kind of bloody conflict you expect to here from any halfway decent telling of the Fall of Troy. And, to an extent, this is just what the narrative description is able to give the reader's; at least in part. If this one, singular, Epic aspect had been allowed to be the sole guiding note of the entire passage, then one gets the sense that the final results would have been serviceable and worth a read, at the very worst. Compare this idea to how a similar concept is executed in the pages of Watership Down. "Thunder sank his teeth into a piece of broken root and pulled it out. There was
an instant fall of earth and a gap opened where he had been digging. The soil no
longer reached to the roof. It was only a broad pile of soft earth, half filling the
run. Woundwort, still waiting silently, could smell and hear a considerable
number of rabbits on the far side. He hoped that now they might come into the
open burrow and try to attack him. But they made no move.
"When it came to fighting, Woundwort was not given to careful calculation.
Men, and larger animals such as wolves, usually have an idea of their own
numbers and those of the enemy and this affects their readiness to fight and how
they go about it. Woundwort had never had any need to think like this. What he
had learned from all his experience of fighting was that nearly always there are
those who want to fight and those who do not but feel they cannot avoid it. More
than once he had fought alone and imposed his will on crowds of other rabbits.
He held down a great warren with the help of a handful of devoted officers. It did
not occur to him now -- and if it had, he would not have thought it mattered --
that most of his rabbits were still outside; that those who were with him were
fewer than those on the other side of the wall and that until Groundsel had got
the runs open they could not get out even if they wanted to. This sort of thing
does not count among fighting rabbits. Ferocity and aggression are everything.
What Woundwort knew was that those beyond the wall were afraid of him and
that on this account he had the advantage (441)". Here the sense of embryonic potential contained in the best parts of Stallings' translation has, not been realized, so much as taken, refined, and perfected to its highest possible limit of artistic expression. Adams' prose line has to be described as one of life's happy little freaks of nature. It is a sublime combination of the Epic voice grafted with strength and care onto a style that is modern, analytical, and Romantic by various turns, each tone blending into one another. Thus creating a seamless tonal totality, where atmosphere tension and narrative meet as one.
The action described in the passage above is no more than the book's villain contemplating his advantages on the field of battle, accompanied by a simple bit of running commentary. Yet the way it's all built up helps to generate an accumulating and necessary atmosphere of suspense and dread. Pretty soon the antagonist is expected to make his big move against the novel's heroes, and the author lets us know that when it happens, then nature will show itself, red in tooth and claw. Adams' skill as a writer makes the tapestry painted by his words alone come out as that seamless whole. What the author has given us here has to be described as one of the great works of literature. He's managed to come as close to the pinnacle of the Animal Fable Epic as anyone has ever come. It's a height that perhaps only someone like Peter S. Beagle has ever been able to surpass. No one else, to my knowledge, has ever climbed to quite the same heights. The
Batrachomyomachia counts as a work written within in the same literary tradition, or subgenre. Yet the issues with Stallings' efforts at bringing this ancient Myth to life are apparent. The problem with this iteration, or retelling seems to stem on the one hand from the translator's misjudgment in terms of which best fitting words would have helped the plot achieve its desired artistic effect. A second issue with this story is also perhaps the more fundamental problem on review.
In turns of its overall narrative, the
Batrachomyomachia runs the risk of catching the reader up a bit too short for its own good. Frivolous naming conventions aside, the more pertinent issue seems to be twofold. It ends as abruptly as it started, and when the finale does arrive, it might sound a bit too anti-climactic in the face of all the build-up that precedes it. In addition to Stallings' awkward use of the
Kail Yard approach stunting whatever power and momentum the main action of the poem might have, the original poet (whether they were Homer or someone else whose name is now lost to time) could be labeled as guilty of strangling his story's promise before it even manages to crawl its way out of the crib. The way the whole thing ends is on a rather hollow note. The gods of Olympus are watching the frogs and mice duke it out together, and just when it looks as if the rodents are about to turn a retreat into a full-on route, Zeus decides to take pity on the people of the lake by sending in an army of crabs to scare away the mouse kingdom, thus allowing the frogs to escape. That is literally where the story ends.
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If that final result sounds like something of a letdown, then trust me when I say you're not alone. We seem to be dealing here with a twofold issue. On the one hand, this is a Mock Epic that deserves, not just a better translation, but perhaps also something of a rewrite, or a further completion. The basic setup sounds interesting enough, yet the way its resolved comes off as just too quick that it almost comes off sounding like it was phoned-in at the last minute. There's also that lingering note of tonal dissonance to be dealt with. There are moments when its just clear enough that the Battle Poet (for lack of a better name) means their reader's to understand that certain passages are meant to be taken with a note of genuine amusement. If this is indeed the poetic effect they were going for, then the irony is that we're confronted with a writer whose literary tastes in humor find themselves more or less outdated from a modern perspective. If the War of Frogs and Mice is to be seen as something of a comic animal fable, then we've reached a point in our conception of such a sub-genre where anyone attempting this kind of story must learn to stretch their Imagination a bit further, in order for the idea to succeed in our contemporary age. The potential storyteller must not make the same mistakes as the Battle Poet.
Characters like Physagnathus the Frog King, and Psicharpax the Mouse Prince need to be more fleshed out as proper characters, rather than a series of mere chess pieces that the author can move about to serve a sense of humor which was probably moribund by the time Shakespeare came to write his own plays. They need to be given a full narrative to take part and come alive in. If this is to happen, then there could be a very difficult question that any future translator of this poem might have to face. It goes something like this. Does the editor leave the text as is, or is there room for improvement? It's one of those statements that are more controversial than it looks. For one thing, we seem to have entered a time when the suggestion that certain works of past Art need to be changed to suit the times has given rise to a number of lackluster experiments. The paltry results from these rather puzzling efforts have raised the very natural suspicion that to even suggest the idea is to invite an inevitable, and sometimes justified degree of ridicule. That's why I've got to go out of my way to prove I'm not about to suggest anything so drastic as, say, rewriting
The Odyssey from scratch. My own line of thought here has nothing to do with the quality of objectively good to great works of storytelling. I'm operating by a much simpler rule of thumb, here. It it ain't broke, don't fix. If there's room for improvement?
Let me head off another criticism here by saying that in asking if it's possible to improve on a finished product, I don't mean major works of literature or cinema such as Lord of the Rings, Citizen Kane, or Psycho. Nor is my thinking applicable to the best efforts from franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek. I'm talking, instead, about a specific type of narrative. The ones where it's clear there's the seed of a good idea going on here, and yet the ground soil of the Creative Idea hasn't been watered and tended to enough to get all of the rich story harvest into the full light of day. I'd argue that's the main problem with a Myth like the Batrachomyomachia. Once upon a time, someone had the beginnings of a maybe workable idea for a decent animal fable fantasy. One that seems to have been meant to combine the overall serious tone and setup of the Classical Epic, and yet the action of the plot was also meant to be laced throughout with a sense of what we now know as Dramatic Irony. It's clear the War of Mouse and Frog is meant to be one of those grand tales where everyone is convinced they are the hero, and hence should be seen as the ones who are doing the right thing. It's also clear that there's meant to be an ongoing series of set pieces that are meant to poke a lot of holes into the main cast's perception of themselves on both sides of the conflict. It's a story where the small-mindedness of the characters is meant to be exposed one careful plot beat at a time, and then judged against an ethical background.
And it's all set against the backdrop of a mortal conflict between a pair of differing cultures within the animal kingdom, which is probably meant as an allegory for the way in which human civilizations slide into conflict with one another with such disturbing ease. In fact, it might be possible to posit that the entire narrative of the
Batrachomyomachia is itself inspired by the events of the Trojan War. This could have been something that readers and audiences of the Battle Poet's age might have picked up on. If so, it would explain why the poem has traditionally been attributed to none other than Homer himself. As it was his artistry in describing Greece's war against Troy that cemented our idea of that conflict right up to the present moment. Such an artistic feat takes a great deal of talent, and it was all done with a remarkable level of literary even-handedness. While Homer can be said to take a side in the battle, it's clear that his larger view on things leaves all of the
Iliad's participants open to any number of charges for a whole catalogue of moral failings. Each of which slowly begins to gray a situation that had initially started out as a setup of stark blacks and whites. A similar narrative strategy seems to be at work in the Frog and Mouse poem. What makes it a lesser work than the
Iliad is that it lacks all of the further qualities that makes Homer's Myth of Troy come off as a three-dimensional seeming whole.
The King of the Frogs and the Ruler of Mice have none of the pathos and grandeur of Hector and Achilles. Nor does the young Prince whose death by drowning ignites the plot able to invite the same levels of fascination about character and motivation as that done by Helen of Troy. Instead, what we've got is a poem that's so thin on the ground that it makes more sense to speak of the cast as puppets or chess pieces being moved around on the board in a game whose outcome has already been determined before the curtain rises. It means the story lacks all of the color, spontaneity, and personality that one would expect from a well written work of this sort. Once more, here is where Homer is able to clobber the Battle Poet without even having to raise a finger. Now, there is one other criticism that can be lobbed against my own misgivings here. Since the poem is classified as a Mock Epic, doesn't that mean it shouldn't be judged by the same kind of critical standards that need to be used for a text like
The Iliad? To be fair, that's a decent point. The whole purpose of a Mock Epic is to take the conventions of the typical Mythic paradigm, and to satirize them. As long as any one work in this sub-genre can be said to do this well, then there's no cause for complaint. To all of which I reply with a number of titles brought up before:
Monty Python and the Holy Grail and
The Princess Bride. Both films are masterclasses in modern day Mock Epics. They are satires of fairy tales and Arthurian mythology.
The writing in both is clever and quotable by turns. Their sense of humor is top-notch. The acting is perennial, and the narratives for each picture are what allows it all to live forever. The Battle Poet's problem in all of this is best described as a matter of working limitations. They were writing their poem in a time and era where the Idea of Humor was not of the same nature, let alone the caliber of what we consider to be funny today. Take the ending of the poem as a good for instance. Zeus decides to end the Frog and Mouse War by sending in an army of vicious attack crabs to break up the argument. Now, to be fair, on the level of a bare outline, it might be possible to claim there's something salvageable in this resolution, and it's easy to see why. The idea of being in the midst of this life or death struggle for honor and glory, only to turn around and see everyone turning chicken at the sight of a bunch of ambling bits of seafood presents such an incongruous image, that you sort of have no choice but to laugh at it. It's the same humorous logic that the Pythons applied to the idea of a bunch of combat hardened Knights of the Round Table getting the piss taken out of them by nothing more than a fluffy little bunny rabbit. The very absurdity of the idea is what makes it work whenever it's done well.
Therefore it might have been possible to achieve an ancient form of the same effective. This in itself is a fascinating train of speculation. The idea that writers from an age that is now thought of as primitive at best might still have been able to produce the same comedic effect as the
Watership Down 2: After the Armageddon scene from
Holy Grail is one of those notions that sets the mind alight with all the creative possibilities and directions such thought can take. It just begs the question of how well did the Battle Poet manage to pull off this particular idea for an ending? Well, it goes as follows, for what it's worth:
"Then Zeus took pity on the Frogs’ demise,
And shook his head, “What’s this before my eyes
I see—oh no—what brave and dreadful feat—
That mouse pursues the Frogs in their retreat!
Quick! send Athena, with her saber-rattle,
Or Ares himself, to stop that mouse in battle,
Brave though he is.” Thus Zeus spoke.
"Then his wife,
Hera replied—
“Neither the Lord of Strife,
The dreadful Ares, nor your warrior Daughter
In olive drabs has strength to stop this slaughter.
Let’s all haste to their aid.
Or you could drop
One of your thunderbolts to make it stop—
As once you slew Capaneus for defiance
And Enceladus, and all the savage Giants.”
"She spoke. And Zeus took up the blazing bolt
And sent it spinning from his hand.
The jolt
Made all alike—the Mice and Frogs—afraid,
And yet the host of Mice was not dismayed,
But all the more sought to annihilate
The fighting race of Frogs—their strength was great,
And so they might have done it, given the odds,
If not for Zeus, the sire of men and gods,
Who had a bright thought in the nick of time
To aid the poor Frogs dying in the slime.
"She spoke. And Zeus took up the blazing bolt
And sent it spinning from his hand. The jolt
Made all alike—the Mice and Frogs—afraid,
And yet the host of Mice was not dismayed,
But all the more sought to annihilate
The fighting race of Frogs—their strength was great,
And so they might have done it, given the odds,
If not for Zeus, the sire of men and gods,
Who had a bright thought in the nick of time
To aid the poor Frogs dying in the slime.
"Thus out They came, with backs like armored tanks,
Crook-clawed, cross-eyed, sidestepping, ranks on ranks,
Scissor-mouthed, eight-legged, and bony-shelled,
Flat-bodied, gleaming-shouldered, hands out-held,
With eyes chest-high and hides immune to stabs,
Twin-horned, unyielding nation of the Crabs!
They snapped the Mice’s tails and snipped their paws—
The Mice’s spears were bent back by their claws,
And soon the Mice were frightened, on the run.
While in the west the setting of the sun
Announced to all the One-Day War was done (80-91)".
Let me anticipate a number of logically possible reactions from anyone who decides to read those last few lines. First off, yes, they are all taken direct from the poem. Also, yes, that really is all there is to it. The story ends on that very same note of abrupt cancellation described above. And a reaction of general confusion along the lines of "What the fuck"? can be considered more or less warranted here. If there is any real comic potential in the conclusion, then it's clear the Poet has squandered it all by choosing to truncate all of the concluding action down into the space of just a single stanza. The result is inevitable enough. Every line before that has the note of the action building up to some grand bit of revelation that could be either Epic, Comic, or a possible admixture of both. Instead, the writer acts as if they'd grown tired with their own composition, and just chose to sow everything up, then and there. If that should ever be revealed as the case, then that's a real shitty bit of patchwork right there. The tension is thwarted. The big reveal is a letdown. And everything proceeds to conclude in such a slap-dash manner that I was left wondering if I'd just wasted some valuable time, money, and effort. In terms of constructive criticism, I can only offer a number of possible solutions for the Poet's dilemma.
To start with, the scope of their story should have been expanded by quite a few staves and stanzas. The author shouldn't have to let the tale develop into something close to a legitimate Epic. It should merely have been allowed to grow long enough to the point that the characters begin to take on the all the right qualities of Imaginary flesh and blood. They should be well-rounded personalities with clear outlooks, motivations, and above all, the proper sense of Mock Epic flaws. The way this could work in execution is to go back to the Battle Poet's ending, and suggest a better way for things to conclude. To start with, once Zeus sends in the crabs (and yes, that is a real sentence for some reason), a better way to introduce this final element into the conflict would be to introduce them in increments, through first one, then other characters on the battlefield becoming aware of them. I almost want to suggest
this scene from
Holy Grail as a good way of playing up the comic potential inherent in Zeus's final grand move. Have one Mouse Warrior turn and notice something's coming toward the battlefield in the near distance. Then have a Frog Soldier figure the same thing out. Then have the appearance the killer death crabs take place in a way that's similar to the joke done with John Cleese's satirical version of Lancelot.
Make their arrival seem like the approach of something imposing at first, then introduce a nice bit of comedic reversal as they come into view. You can even have one of the fighters give a decent Mock Epic equivalent of an "You've got to be fucking kidding". Then apply the logic of the mutant killer death bunny scene (and somehow that makes more sense than the crab line; should I be worried?). Have the soldiers on both sides think this is just a minor inconvenience, only to realize how far up the creek they all are when the crabs proceed to turn the stage into an Ancient Greek version of a Kaiju film. From there, both armies are forced to retreat. The also don't just "Run Away!", they do so in a disorganized manner that results in all of the remaining troops of each military comingled with one another. What that means is you've got Frog footmen huddled right next to a Mouse sergeant behind the same trench. Also drive home that the leaders of both armies have been killed at this point, which means that the regiments of each side have now been tossed together, and are stuck seeing if they can find a way to join forces in the hopes of surviving the onslaught. From there, you can have all sorts of nice comedic character moments, as it soon becomes clear that out of all the soldiers present, they're each stuck having to share maybe just one or two functioning brain cells between the whole lot of them.
However, it can also be allowed to end in a way that is true to the spirit of the Poet's text, more or less. The only thing I would add is that it might work best if the actual resolution comes about when the remaining Mice and Frogs realize their only chance of survival is to set aside their differences and work together to defeat this new threat, thus building a number of bridges (however unsteady) between their two cultures. I don't know how that sounds, yet it's a hell of a better denouement than what we got. Stallings and the Poet's real problem is similar to that faced by Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. The difference is that the only problem the Madness of Roland suffers from is the want of an audience capable of understanding the very real and present charms of a Satirical form of narrative poetry which has nonetheless gone too far out of style for all of its strengths to be appreciated. With The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice, it's almost as if I'm reading an inverted form of the same issue. The prosody is serviceable, yet the narrative its placed in service of creates this kind of jarring dissonance in the reader's mind that makes it difficult to tell the poem's strengths from its weaknesses. The major difference is that you can tell Ariosto has written a great work of comic genius. The Orlando is one of those works of literature whose only fault is that the audience has moved on from its frame of taste.
Unlike the Battle Poet, Ariosto's sense of comedy is very much synonymous with our own. It's just that the nature of his poetic structure means that sometimes the cleverness of his jokes run the risk of flying way too far over the audience's heads. The good news in his case is all that's needed is the right sort of translation that can bring out all the humor in the character's dialogues, mannerisms, and the situations they find themselves in for the full meaning of Ariosto's humor to be appreciated. If that could be done right, then you much just have a precursor successor to the likes of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, and maybe even the Pythons themselves. I'll tell you this much, it is the kind of story that someone like Terry Gilliam would love to make into a film of some kind, and of course he never could. Let that be a testament to the
Orlando Furioso's quality. The Battle Poet, meanwhile, seems to suffer from a more complicated problem. Either they're an example of a time and place in which Humor and the Joke proper were of such an underdeveloped quality that it's an open question of whether we as human beings had even attained an idea of what comedy is or should be, or else our sense of the comedic back then was so primitve and nascent that there's no way it can mean anything to us who live in an era that raised on a plethora of comic talents that include the famous (Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Bill Murray, John Candy) to the obscure (Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl). It's an inescapable sort of artistic bind.
There's no way for us to identify with a sense of humor that is so old its very difference from our current standards renders it automatically obsolete. At the same time, the very fact that the Mock Epic was recognized as a legitimate form of satiric writing seems to imply that a sense of humor of some kind existed by during the days of Juvenal and Aristophanes. With any luck, it will be possible to find another sample of Ancient Greek comedy that works in a better meter than this one, and thus it'll be possible to compare notes in a clearer light. For the time being, I'm left having to describe The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice as something of a Classical example of wasted potential. We've got the germ of a good idea on our hands, yet it's clear the artist didn't have whatever was necessary in them to bring the full performance of life the Myth needed to make it into a solid entertainment. Stated in it's simplest form, the idea of a fable about the conflict between two species of the animal kingdom is one of those ideas with enough artistic potential to be told in a number of ways. It can be played either as straightforward, in which case you might have the makings of the kind of Fantasy that not just Aesop, but also the likes of Don Bluth were good at telling. If you wish to stick true to the original note of comic satire from the original narrative, then this can be done with a reasonable amount of skill also.
The key things to remember is that in order for this concept to work, you've got to avoid the mistake the original Poet made. It can't be done by half-measures. This is one of those ideas where you have to find the right tone of voice (whether it be Epic or Comedic) in which to tell it in, and then you've got to give story as much room to breath as it needs. There really is no other way to write fiction, if I'm being honest. If an idea like this is firing on all cylinders, then it's something the reader or audience is able to pick up on, nine times out of ten. It's possible to try and invent your way through a narrative, yet even if the final result can be thought of as good, that's still all it will ever be. Uninspired invention can only take you so far. It takes a spark of Inspiration from the Imagination in order to do any real narrative justice. In the case of
Batrachomyomachia, you get the sense that the Poet may have started out with a good idea, yet for whatever reason, they either couldn't take it seriously, or else the gas tank ran out of whatever fuel was needed to power this little soap box racer of a story all the way to the finish line. In that sense, the final verdict has to be that what we've got here is a Creative Idea with a lot of promise, and the failure of one writer to do it justice.
The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice is therefore best understood as rare case of a story waiting to be told, or a Myth still awaiting it's proper spotlight.
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