Besides the famous list of Achaean (European) ships, Homer’s “Iliad” contains an even more extensive catalog of bodily deformations and methods of killing, mainly marked by the names of the slain Trojans (Asians). Here are variously pierced and cracked skulls: through the ear and through the other ear; through the temple; through the bridge of the nose, mouth, and chin; a blow to the back of the head — so that the eyes fall like bloody balls to the foot of the chariot. There are arrows piercing the heart, shoulder, liver, through the pubic bone, into the bladder. There are necks pierced so that the head, hanging only by the skin, helplessly falls to the side, there are torsos without heads and arms, rolling “like a mortar” among the fighters. The Trojans mainly play the role of “cannon fodder,” as they usually appear only to be immediately killed by one of the Achaean leaders. Their appearance is equivalent to disappearance; besides the methods of killing, the text only provides their names — obviously hastily invented, arbitrarily, obeying only the requirements of meter. So this most “brutal” level of the “Iliad” paradoxically is also the most “poetic.”
The table presented here was compiled based on a meticulous textual analysis of the “Iliad”: in the left vertical column are the names of all Achaean leaders, and across the rows are the names of Trojans killed by each of them, specifying the method of injury: to the head, neck, shoulders, chest, etc. Then diagrams were created where, on a conditional body outline (so to speak, the body of the “unknown Trojan soldier”), the wounds of all Trojans killed, for example, by Achilles, or Ajax, Odysseus, Diomedes, etc., were marked. At the same time, this also resembled dance diagrams, where the directions of strikes — say, a spear entering the chest and exiting the back — were marked as positions of the left and right feet. Finally, enlarging these floor diagrams, I myself tried to dance each of these dances, always to the same very “European,” brash, heroic music (an excerpt from Schubert’s 5th Symphony).
This project enjoyed unexpected success, and proposals to present it began to come from various places. Trying to diversify the matter a bit, I started varying the sets of dances from city to city: in Warsaw, these could be, say, the dances of Achilles, Menelaus, Diomedes, Ajax; in Moscow, the dance of Agamemnon was added; in Paris, there were Achilles, Agamemnon, Diomedes, and Patroclus, etc. However, it is obvious that all these dances looked roughly the same: reckless European heroism, sprawled Asian deficiency, and a small bespectacled man in a black denim jacket clumsily darting between them[1]
[1] Leiderman Yu. Dances of the slain Trojans [Electronic resource] // Moscow Conceptualism – Access mode to the resource: http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=949Comment type: Published comment
Author: Yuri Leiderman
Bibliography:
Leiderman Yu. Dances of the slain Trojans [Electronic resource] // Moscow Conceptualism – Access mode to the resource: http://www.conceptualism-moscow.org/page?id=949
Sources: Yuri Leiderman. Ensemblement – Quimper: le Quartier, 2004. – 144 p.
