My first reading of the Iliad goes back to my fourteenth year when I learned Greek at the Barleaus Gymnasium in Amsterdam, Holland. As I reread the Iliad this time, from the first verse to the last, the monstrosity and beauty of war overwhelmed me.

  Destruction at random, violence as amusement, the boyish immature pranks of cruel offense, the insanity of destroying each other, the absurdity of one's pride in power, the vanity of one's appearance in shiny armour prevail — although we know well it will end up in dust and blood.

  It is sometimes hard to acknowledge and understand that all this indeed exists.

  It took thirty years before I could express visually any of the horror and despair I have witnessed and suffered in the war.

 I say horror and despair — what about boredom, melancoly, fear, ridiculousness unto insanity ? There is the worst of vanity and the worst of indignity. I have been amazed by the grandeur of people ; I have been shattered by their meanness. I was present at the most astonishing acts of selfsacriflce and the vilest acts of perversity and cruelty. But a feeling dominated that there was nothing left to be proud of in being a human. Still we persist to look like peacocks.

  I have lived all these years with the melancoly of disillusion and the nearly guilty feeling for my miraculous survival.

   I have seen innocent people beaten to death. I did not even dare to blink or that same death would have been my fate.

  Being a prisoner and slave at the same time and being at the mercy and the whim of anyone who happened to be in power at that moment is the worst experience I can remember.

  The most wonderful acts of compassion, of innocent and spontaneous heroism I have seen. There was solidarity and mutual help among strangers, treason within one family.

Never were ugliness and beauty so pronounced.

Love and hatred were one word.

Jan COX, May 16, 1975, Boston.