Achilles (10 page)

Methought I had beheld it from the flood –

But whose power's vassal was this?

Someone taking advantage of the sunshine to get a little barbering done on the Heath.

‘Our bodies every seven years are completely fresh-materiald … We are like the relict garments of a Saint: the same and not the same: for the careful Monks patch it and patch it: till there's not a thread of the original garment left and still they show it for St. Anthony's shirt.'

He has thought about soul-making; but what about body-making? The cadavers he has seen (the resurrectionists always kept Astley Cooper well supplied) so clearly
relicts.
So clearly no longer men, or women. More like a kind of deposit. The leavings. The imprint left when the soul has gone. Like fossil traces of the soul.

Our bodies – not remade from scratch every seven years but constantly eroding and renewing until the renewal stops. What persists most is what is least alive. Scar tissue for example – intractable, durable stuff. Once the body has rallied to repair itself the site of repair becomes fixed; unable to renew itself any more.

The more durable, the less living.

The more solid, the less real.

‘I will clamber through the Clouds and exist.'

It takes energy, some kind of ardent pursuit, to exist, to be distinct, to be real.

‘I go among the Fields and catch a glimpse of a stoat or a fieldmouse peeping out of the withered grass – the creature hath a purpose and its eyes are bright with it – I go among the buildings of a city and I see a Man hurrying along – to what? The Creature has a purpose and his eyes are bright with it.'

The look of a creature, fully alive. It is this that Hazlitt saw in the Dulwich portrait. It may make a man resemble a horse, a bird, an otter, a stoat.

‘What a set of little people we live amongst. I went the other day into an ironmonger's shop, without any change in my sensations – men and tin kettles are much the same in these days.'

A
NTONY
:     
To the Boy Caesar send this
grizled head, and he will fill thy wishes to the brimme
With Principalities.

C
LEOPATRA
:     
That head, my lord?

The head she has cradled, caressed; whose lips, tongue, mouth have aroused her, answered her. How can that ever be a thing to send?

This living hand, now warm and capable / Of earnest grasping
 … will one day, possibly soon, be part of the earth: interred. It will become waterlogged, and the small life of the earth will begin to take it apart. It is unpleasant to think that the nails and the hair will continue to grow for some time: their life independent of any controlling consciousness.

Who hath not loiter'd in a green church-yard,

And let his spirit, like a demon mole,

Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard,

To see scull, coffin'd bones, and funeral stole;

Pitying each form that hungry Death hath marr'd,

And filling it once more with human soul?

This living hand, the relict garment of a saint.

‘it was not this hand that clench'd itself against Hammond'
nor this same hand that last clasped yours.

But there is a connection.

The most intimate continuity between cell and cell. The part that's born has touched the part that dies and the dying body is parent to the living.

Like a relay. The baton passed from hand to hand.

Or like a chain of fire. The beacons proclaiming that Troy has fallen – the news carried from high point to high point, swift almost as thought, till it reaches the heart of Achaea and the remotest islands; till Clytemnestra knows, and Penelope, and Peleus.

If continuity between cell and cell, between my hand now and my hand then, so also between man and man. This hand that clasped your hand that clasped his hand and so on. As if the warmth in my veins were passed back to run in his who lived so long ago.

My father, me thinkes I see my father.

Is it the same song – though sung by another nightingale – that I hear now as Ruth heard, sick for home? Different lungs and larynxes to be sure. Different ears too. But is there enough the same?

A game of Chinese whispers. A hot word thrown into the next lap before it burns. It has not been allowed to set. Each hand that momentarily holds it, weighs it, before depositing it with a neighbour also, inadvertently, moulds it; communicates its own heat.

From cheep to chirp.

From woof to warp.

‘We read fine things but never feel them to the full until we have gone the same steps as the Author.'

Who are we when we read? Or when we really listen to the story of another? When we
attend
a performance? Is there not a tiny, palpable, nervous participation: the thin end of a wedge whose wide end is visible action? Do we not, in a small way, imitate?

C
ORIOLANUS
:      …
I will not doo't,

Least I surcease to honor mine owne truth

And by my Bodies action teach my Minde

A most inherent Basenesse.

We are what we do.

One of the things which we do is imagine.

‘… even now I am perhaps not speaking from myself; but from some character in whose soul I now live.'

*   *   * 

‘…
THE FIRE
is at its last click – I am sitting with my back to it with one foot rather askew upon the rug and the other with the heel a little elevated from the carpet … These are trifles – but I require nothing so much of you as that you will give me a like description of yourselves … Could I see the same thing done of any great Man long since dead it would be a great delight: As to know in what position Shakespeare sat when he began “To be or not to be” – such things become interesting from a distance of time or place.'

*   *   * 

T
HE RELICTS
of a saint are not moved by those acquisitive of their virtues. They are
translated:
carried across. A chain of hands across the waters, across the mountains, across time, conveying the precious changed and changing thing.

(
‘Yet through all this I see his splendour … I am … straining at particles of light in the midst of a great darkness.'
)

Chapman's Homer. The
Iliads
written in fourteeners (Keats uses the metre for a walking poem): in it appear angels; whales.

There Keats reads of Patroclus' funeral:

They rais'd a huge pile, and to arms went every Myrmidon,

Charg'd by Achilles; chariots and horse were harnessed,

Fighters and charioters got up, and they the sad march led,

A cloud of infinite foot behind. In midst of all was borne

Patroclus' person by his peers. On him were all heads shorn,

Even till they cover'd him with curls. Next to him marcht his friend

Embracing his cold neck all sad, since now he was to send

His dearest to his endless home. Arriv'd all where the wood

Was heap'd up for the funeral. Apart Achilles stood,

And when enough wood was heapt on, he cut his golden hair

Long kept for Spercheus the flood, in hope of safe repair

To Phthia by that river's power;

Peleus had vowed in vain that Achilles' long hair would be offered to the river on his safe return from Troy. Achilles speaks:

‘… since I never more

Shall see my lov'd soil, my friend's hands shall to the Stygian shore

Convey these tresses.' Thus he put in his friend's hands the hair.

Keats remembers the lock that landed on him that day on the Heath and tugs again at his hair. He would like to shear some off this time in honour of Achilles and place it in his hands. To pave his own way to the Stygian shore. And, though he cannot place it in Achilles' hands, he cuts his hair anyway, enjoying the crunch of the scissors on it, realising that Achilles would have used a knife or the edge of his sword. He holds in his own quite delicate hand a hank of auburn hair, not yet made dull or lank by illness. The same colour as Achilles' hair and, though the hand which holds it may be smaller than that of the large Achilles, it is made in the same way, the same number of small bones. It holds and releases its contents in a similar way, using similar muscles (‘
Thus
he put…'). It is prompted by similar nerves. Fed by a like heart.

It gives him great pleasure to know this.

GLOSSARY OF CLASSICAL NAMES

ACHAEA
Greece.

ACHERON
One of the rivers of Hell.

ACHILLES
Son of King Peleus and the sea nymph Thetis; Prince and commander of the Myrmidons; the Greeks' greatest warrior.

AGAMEMNON
Son of Atreus, king of Mycenae and Commander in Chief of the Greek army; brother of Menelaus and husband of Clytemnestra.

AJAX
A mighty Greek warrior; son of Telamon and leader of the troops from Salamis.

ALCIMUS
A Myrmidon commander.

AMAZONS
A race of women warriors, fighting as allies of Troy.

ANDROMACHE
Wife of Hector and mother of Astyanax.

ANTIELUS
A Greek; one of those in the wooden horse.

APOLLO
Son of Zeus and Leto, brother of Artemis; associated with music, archery and healing. This god supports the Trojan cause.

ARTEMIS
Daughter of Zeus and Leto, sister of Apollo; associated with hunting, chastity and fertility.

ASCLEPIUS
A great healer, educated by Chiron; father of Machaon who inherits his skills.

ASTYANAX
Son of Hector and Andromache; killed in infancy by Neoptolemus at the Sack of Troy.

ATHENE
Daughter of Zeus (from whose head she was born, fully armed); defender of the Greeks.

ATLAS
Once a Titan, now a mountain that supports the heavens.

ATREUS
Son of Pelops; father of Agamemnon and Menelaus.

AULIS
Harbour on the narrow strait between Euboia and the Greek mainland where the Achaean fleet gathers and from where it sets sail.

AUTOMEDON
Charioteer to Achilles and Patroclus; Achilles' best friend after Patroclus.

BRISEIS
A war-prize of Achilles and loved by him.

CASSANDRA
Daughter of Priam and Hecuba, a princess of Troy. Apollo – with whom she mated – gave her the uneasy gift of accurate prophecy which would never be believed.

CASTOR
Brother of Helen and Polydeuces.

CHIRON
The wise centaur who educated Peleus, Achilles and many other heroes.

CIRCE
A sorceress living on the island of Aeaea; Odysseus interrupts his journey home from the war to be her lover for a year.

CLYTEMNESTRA
Wife of Agamemnon whom she murders on his return from the war.

DEIDAMIA
Daughter of King Lycomedes of Skiros; Achilles' first female lover and mother of Neoptolemus.

DEIPHOEBUS
Son of Priam and Hecuba; younger brother of Hector.

DIOMEDES
One of the Greeks' finest warriors.

ELEPHENOR
A Greek commander.

EUMELOS
A Greek commander; one of those in the wooden horse.

EURYDAMAS
A Greek commander; one of those in the wooden horse.

EURYPLOS
A Greek; one of those in the wooden horse.

FURY
An avenging spirit. The Furies are traditionally female.

HECTOR
Son of Priam and Hecuba, husband to Andromache, father of Astyanax. He is Troy's greatest hero.

HECUBA
Queen of Troy; wife of Priam.

HELEN
Daughter of Zeus and Leda; wife of Menelaus. Her abduction to Troy by Paris is the cause of the war.

HEPHAESTUS
God of fire; chief artificer among the gods.

HERACLES
Greek hero, renowned for his Labours; educated by Chiron whom he inadvertently wounds with a poisoned arrow.

HERMES
A son of Zeus; a god of quick wits and changing shapes.

IDAEUS
Priam's herald. His name (‘from Mount Ida') is common among Trojans.

IDOMENEUS
Commander of the Cretan fleet.

IOLKOS
City near Mount Pelion on the Greek mainland. The Argonauts set sail from the Bay of Iolkos.

IPHIGENEIA
Daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon; sacrificed to Artemis at Aulis in obedience to an oracle stating that the Greek fleet would be becalmed until this happened.

IRIS
A goddess; Zeus' messenger.

ITHAKA
The island home of Odysseus.

JASON
Commander of the Argonauts; educated by Chiron.

JUNO
Queen of the heavens; wife (and sister) of Zeus.

LAERTES
King of Ithaka and father of Odysseus.

LEONEUS
A Greek; one of those in the wooden horse.

LYCOMEDES
King of Skiros; father of Deidamia.

MACHAON
Son of Asclepius; a Greek commander and valued healer.

MEGES
A Greek commander; among those in the wooden horse.

MENELAUS
King of Lacedaemon, brother of Agamemnon and husband of Helen. The Greeks' second in command.

MERIONES
A Greek; Idomeneus' second in command; one of those in the wooden horse.