Mojo, The Bard, & Me

For much imaginary work was there;

Conceit deceitful, so compact, so kind,

That for Achille’s image stood his spear,

Griped in an armed hand; himself, behind,

Was left unseen, save to the eye of mind:

   A hand, a foot, a face, a leg, a head,

   Stood for the whole to be imagined.



-Narrator

                                   

Lucrece                                                     Line 1423





This is the part of the poem Lucrece where Will goes into a really long description of a painting on the wall that Lucrece is looking at. It’s a painting of the Greek siege of the city of Troy. It’s hard enough to try to make sense of one stanza in this long poem, let alone one line of the stanza. So I gave you the whole stanza. No need to thank me.



Just to summarize, this is the day after Lucrece has been raped by her husband’s associate, and she’s wandering alone around the house in a desperate funk when she stops to look at this painting. Will goes on for a page describing this painting of a battle scene. Today’s Totally Random line is just one piece of this long description.



I guess you’d have to look at each piece of the description, each stanza, to figure out the significance of what Will is describing in each. I can tell you that the stanza above is near the end of the battle scene description, and that after these many descriptions of people in this battle scene, the page leads up to Lucrece finding Hecuba in the picture, and the latter is shown as looking half dead herself as she stares down at her dead husband Priam.



So we’re talking about a dead-in-spirit woman, Lucrece, looking at another dead-in-spirit woman, Hecuba, who in turn is looking at her literally dead husband, Priam. Pretty grim.



And one more thing: Earlier on in the battle Achilles killed Priam's son, Hector, and Priam had to go a beg Achilles for Hector’s body just to be able to bury it. Further, it is later on in the siege that Priam is killed by Achilles’s son Pyrrhus.



Okay, I think that’s all the relevant background facts. Lucrece has been raped, she’s looking at a picture of slaughtering, there’s a stanza about Achilles, but Lucrece wants to see Hecuba grieving over her dead husband who’s just been killed by Achilles’s son. Got it?



So, what does this bit about Achilles, and his spear, and the rest of his body hidden from sight add to the whole thing? Well it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, isn’t it? Darned if I know how this piece fits in. You got anything? 

So what's this? It's the puzzle shelves of course.