The Iliad of Homer : book Ⅵ. The joining, revolving and unraveling of Hektor and Andromakhe

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  • Iliad of Homer Book 6 The Joining Revolving and Unraveling of Hektor and Andromakhe

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In ILIAD VI we see a string of small-scale skirmishes, the encounter between Diomedes and Glaukos, the return of Hektor to Troy, and the culminating meeting of Hektor and Andromakhe, a profoundly moving scene due to the forboding sense of permanent separation between husband and wife.In Ernesto Cardinal’s epic poem, Cosmic Canticle (tr. by John Lyons), the poet asks the question, ‘Do we know the universe’s metabolism?’ If it is possible to FEEL the metabolism of the universe, I say letting the poetry of Homer flow through one’s spirit may provide the opportunity, for the music of the Iliad is quantic like the twilight flashes of fireflies, and its rhythms push and pull and twist throughout its beautiful adamantine structure like the colored planets in their invisible orbits.Taking a look at one of Ando Hiroshige’s ukiyoe xylographs (floating world woodblock prints) from One Hundred Views of Edo, ‘View from the Massaki Shrine of the Uchigawa Sekiya-no sato Village and the Suijin-no mori Shrine’, one can also feel a potent and expansive rhythm, a supreme invisible flow. A kind of fragile sadness subsumes the scene, punctuated by the male and female twin peaks of Tsukubayama, with the crepuscular light washing over the blue mountain and the green grove girded by the disintegrating red paste-like horizon. Yet, unlike Andromakhe and Hektor, we know the eastern and western peaks will be together forever.

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