Creating an Image: Homer’s Text vs. Homer’s Idea

 

The Iliad Pg. 94, Book 1, Lines 587-602

 

But now as the twelfth dawn after this shone clear

the gods who live forever marched home to Olympus,

all in a long cortege, and Zeus led them on.

And Thetis did not forget her son’s appeals.

She broke from a cresting wave at first light

and soaring up to the broad sky and Mount Olympus,

found the son of Cronus gazing down on the world,

peaks apart from the other gods and seated high

on the topmost crown of the rugged ridged Olympus.

And crouching down at his feet,

quickly grasping his knees with her left hand,

her right hand holding him underneath the chin,

she prayed to the lord go Zeus, the son of Cronus:

“Zeus, Father Zeus! If I ever served you well

among the deathless gods with a word or action,

bring this prayer to pass: honor my son Achilles!-

doomed to the shortest life of any man on earth.

And now the lord of men Agamemnon has disgraced him,

seizes and keeps his prize, tears her away himself. But you-

exalt him, Olympian Zeus: your urgings rule the world!

Come, grant the Trojans victory after victory

till the Achean armies pay my dear son back,

building higher the honor he deserves!”

                                                            She paused

but Zeus who commands the storm clouds answered nothing.

The Father sat there, silent. It seemed an eternity…

But Thetis, clasping his knees, held on, clinging,

pressing her question once again: “Grant my prayer,

once and for all, Father, bow your head in assent!

Or deny me outright. What have you to fear?

So I may know, too well, just how cruelly

I am the most dishonored goddess of them all.”

 

 

 

Reading the description in this passage from The Iliad may conjure up a variety of images for different people. Hearing them, as was the method of transmission when the epic poem was first created, may have an even different effect on what seem to be the most important parts of the passage.

The language is the foundation for how the story with affect the person receiving the information. The language itself is not what will create an emotional response, but the associations a person makes with the language.  It is the narrator’s job to create an environment in which the material can be best received. In The Iliad, in particular, Homer sets up a number of situations in great detail but leaves out what many of the characters are truly using as motivation. It is the context within the story that allows the characters to be developed for each person who will encounter the text. “He clearly defines what kind of people the characters are, and invites the audience to imagine that they have psychological complexity. He then leaves many details of motivation opaque, so that the audience must infer or guess.” (Scodel 51) In Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ painting Jupiter and Thetis, 1811, the artist is able to take those inferences and use them to fill out the character relationships through visual representation.

 

 

  Jupiter and Thetis, Jean-Auguste-Dominique INGRES, 1811

 

 

In this passage describing Thetis’ appeal to Zeus (also known as Jupiter), the physical relationship between the two characters is clearly outlined. It makes the basic composition of the two figures, very simple for an artist. Ingres is able to take the parameters of body position and tell a complete story. One look at Ingres’ painting expands upon the language of Homer.

The painting gives visual representation to the characters and reflects there relationship not only in their physical connection, but also in the makeup of the figures themselves. While Zeus sits up straight and high in a very strong power position, the figure of Thetis is distorted as she kneels at Zeus’ feet. Ingres has switched the hands she uses as her right hand is resting on (rather than “grasping”) Zeus’ knee, while her left hand reaches toward his chin.  These features are exaggerated on Thetis. Her body is made to appear flexible and fluid, while Zeus is strongly connected to the steps below him and hardly looks as though he is capable of moving. Thetis stares straight up at Zeus but he stares straight ahead. It can therefore be recognized that she is pleading for a response.

These features are ways in which Ingres is able to take the essence of this short scene and freeze frame it into one moment. Ingres takes the art of painting and interprets the poetry, just as the poetry is an interpretation of events, whether fact or fiction. These parallels in art form lead to an idea that poetry is perceived by some to be fulfilling the same purpose as painting. An idea that goes all the way back to Plutarch:

 

Let us fix our young student’s mind even more firmly, by indicating, the moment we introduce him to works of poetry, that poetry is an art of imitation, a capacity analogous to painting. He should of course be given the familiar dictum that ‘poetry is speaking painting and painting silent poetry’; but in addition to this let us explain that when we see a picture of a lizard or a monkey or Thersites; face we feel pleasure and admiration not because it is beautiful but because it is like. Ugliness cannot become beautiful in its essence, but imitation is commended if it achieves likeness, whether of a good or bad object. (Plutarch 197)

           

If Plutarch is in fact correct and a painting is successful by its ability to be “like” what does that mean for Homer? What would Ingres be trying to achieve in his painting, being like Homer’s text, or being like the idea of Homer’s text? Perhaps there are elements of both. Just as translations of Homer’s text vary from culture to culture, so do the translations of his ideas vary from person to person and generation to generation. There is no way to know exactly what Ingres intended in his painting, but that does not mean it can not stimulate thought and interest.

Ingres painting not only utilizes the central figures of Zeus and Thetis but incorporates other images. The chariot goes bounding past Zeus’ feet as a constant reminder of the mortals below and Thetis’ plea regarding her son and the war. The draping of fabric around Thetis’ body which reveals her nude flesh is a signal of her vulnerability. She is given to employ whatever device she has to persuade Zeus to her cause. The figure of Zeus is connected to bottom in the painting. Thetis is merely an element of a world that is his.

These are all observations that can be inferred through the context and language of the text itself, but not all of this is described, in detail, by Homer. How then, did Ingres come up with the composition? It is a combination of the thoughts of Scodel and Plutarch that allow the artist and the poet to work parallel to and with one another.

A painting cannot be a literal translation of text; it is a manifestation of human emotions and reactions into a two-dimensional form that will then cause other human reaction.  Ingres is able to take the silent spots of Homer and create a full picture of what may have been the encounter between Zeus and Thetis, but either way, just as with Homer, it gives a person something to think about.

 

Bibliography

 

Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Robert Fagles. New York: Penguin, 1990.

 

Plutarch. “On the Study of Poetry.” Classical Literary Criticism. Ed. D.A. Russell and

Michael Winterbottom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 192-216.

 

Scodel, Ruth. “The Story-Teller and His Audience.” The Cambridge Companion to

Homer. Ed. Robert Fowler. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 45-58.

 

 

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