At the age of just 29, Jonas Grethlein was offered a professorship in Greek literature at Heidelberg University.

This was preceded by an academic career at a pace that is certainly exceptional in today's humanities: doctorate at twenty-five, habilitation at twenty-seven.

However, Grethlein himself, of all people, warns of this in his recently published book “My Year with Achill” to regard this academic career as simply exemplary.

Shortly after completing his habilitation, he was diagnosed with cancer: “Perhaps the workload of the last two years was too big: the hard work on the habilitation thesis (. . .), then the parties I went to at the weekend had fallen in order to slip back into the corset of the working week on Monday.” For Grethlein, the experience of the illness becomes the starting point and basis for a very personal interpretation of Homer's “Iliad”.

Material things count for little

Anyone looking for a purely scientific contribution to the still open research questions on the "Iliad" has landed here only with reservations at the right book.

Grethlein does provide numerous interesting approaches to interpretation, for example the filigree time structure and Homer's skilful play with expectation and – not always present – ​​resolution.

However, they do not represent the actual core of the book.

The primary aim is to show how Homer's epic, centered on the seemingly unapproachable Achilles, became a kind of literary home for him in a time of existential fears.

With Homer he felt recognized and cared for with his cancer and the intense awareness of the ephemeral nature of human life.

Grethlein interprets the "Iliad" as a great reflection on the inevitability of one's own death, which can overtake us at any time and remains unreachable for us because it cannot be experienced.

Grethlein sees this unattainability of death and the impossibility of looking at one's own history as a whole in the special time structure of the "Iliad", which is permeated with references to the death of Achilles and the fall of Troy, even if they occur immediately before the occurrence of both events ends.

The consolation of literature

Grethlein puts the "strongest of the Achaeans" in a completely new light with his interpretation: "The core of Achilles' heroism is the acceptance of death." For him, Achilles' behavior shows that the hero faces his own mortality and fragility and such gains a different perspective on life: material things count for little there, as evidenced by Achilles' rejection of Agamemnon's embassy, ​​which was endowed with rich gifts.

Nor does he see anything heroic in death, either his own or that of others.

In Grethlein's interpretation, Achill fully accepts the fragility of human existence.

Grethlein underscores this interpretation with sometimes somewhat sweeping excursions into the history of philosophy.

Heidegger plays a central role when Achilles becomes the "hero unto death" by understanding his own temporality and death as the insurmountable frontier.

Although this interpretation is fascinating, it is sometimes difficult to take this warlike demigod of all people – who, moreover, can consciously choose between a long, happy life without fame and a short, all the more glorious life – as an example of human existence.

And that it is, of all things, an archaic war epic that helps through a time of existential fears may not be obvious to everyone.

But that doesn't change the fact that you have an impressive example of finding orientation and support in literature.

Jonas Grethlein: "My year with Achill".

The Iliad, Death and Life.

CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2022. 208 p., ill., hardcover, €24.