Matthew Gumpert, Bogazici University
Achilles’ dogged pursuit of Hector in the Iliad is distinguished by an uncanny fixity of purpose (Redfield 27-29, de Jong 2012: 18; Schadewaldt 262; note Apollo at 24.40-44, echoing Hector at 22.356-57), belied by his apparent madness (Bowra 199, Clark 83-84). This paper construes Achilles’ signature single-mindedness as a preternatural critical capacity (one that makes him, conversely, unreadable: a text with no way in [Redfield 28]). I approach Iliad 22.321-29 as a tour de force of close reading, where such reading is a violence enacted upon the text. Each man, this encounter suggests (pace Wilde [668]), kills the thing he reads.
In solving (διειπειν 394 Jebb) the riddle (αινιγμ’ 393) of the Sphinx – something Sophocles likens to the shooting of an arrow (τοξεύσας 1197) – Oedipus destroys (επαυσα 397) her. At 22.321 Achilles solves/slays Hector by scanning him like a text, “eyeing” (εἰσορόων) his body to “spot” (ὅπῃ) a chink in the armor, an opening where the “skin” (χρόα) might “give way” (εἴξειε) – and which is “revealed” (φαίνετο 324) “there where the collarbones divide neck from shoulders,” namely, “the gullet” (λαυκανίην 325) (translations consistent with Benner, Richardson, Leaf, Steadman, de Jong 2012). For de Jong 2012 the reference to Patroclus at 22.322-23 (echoing 17.287) marks a shift in Achilles’ “focalization” (see de Jong 2004 passim): observing Hector, Achilles remembers his usurpation of Patroclus’ armor. I treat such focalization not as a psychological but an hermeneutic device. Note the close relation here between seeing, solving, and slaying. De Jong’s rendering (2004) of 321 (“looking and asking himself where it [Hector’s body] would most give way”) drives home the point: Homer “slows down his narrative speed,” offering “a close-up of Hector’s (armoured) body.” I argue instead this close-up establishes Achilles’ critical modus operandi: meticulous, methodical, murderous. Once Achilles discovers Hector’s vulnerability, “in this place” (τῇ 326) Achilles drives his spear: “through the tender neck went the point” (ἀντικρὺ δ’ ἁπαλοῖο δι’ αὐχενος ἤλυθ’ ἀκωκή 327; compare Hector’s corpse at 22.369-76, softer [μαλακώτερος 373] than when alive, first gazed upon, then pierced by the Achaeans). The Greeks reflexively equate knowing with seeing (see Holmes 56; note the cloud proposed by Zeus at 14.344-45 through which not even Helios can “see [διαδράκοι], although his light is sharpest at discerning [εἰσοράσασθαι]”); but in Achilles that optics has been rigorously weaponized.
A text, particularly one as polyvalent as Hector (recall 6.429-30), is not so easy to shut down – or shut up. Because Achilles misses the windpipe (ἀσφάραγον 328), Hector can still speak. Critics have had difficulty justifying this nicety (Leaf; Richardson); I argue such anatomical precision conveys the extraordinary focalization of the critical eye at work. Despite Achilles’ efforts, Hector as text escapes the efforts of the reader to master/muzzle him. Hence the gods’ preservation (rendering it impenetrable) and Achilles’ relinquishment of Hector’s body. For the text does not, in the end (pace Barthes 1470), belong to the reader, any more than it did to the author.