Page 57 - Studio International - May 1969

Sky and Sea, the indefatigable Sun, the Moon
at the full, and all the Constellations with
which the heavens are crowned....
Next he showed two beautiful cities full of
people. In one of them weddings and
banquets were afoot . . . The other city was
beleagured by two armies, which were shown
in their glittering equipment....
Next he depicted a large field of soft, rich
fallow, which was being ploughed for the
third time. A number of ploughmen were
driving their teams across it to and fro. When
they reached the ridge at the end of the field
and had to wheel, a man would come up and
hand them a cup of mellow wine ... The field,
though it was made of gold, grew black
behind them, as a field does when it is being
ploughed. The artist had achieved a
miracle ...
Next the god depicted a dancing-floor like
the one that Daedelus designed in the
spacious town of Cnossus for Ariadne of the
lovely locks. Youths and marriageable
maidens were dancing on it with their hands
on one another's wrists, the girls in fine
linen with lovely garlands on their heads, and
the men in closely woven tunics showing the
faint gleam of oil, and with daggers of gold
hanging from their silver belts. Here they ran
lightly round, circling as smoothly on their
accomplished feet as the wheel of a potter
when he sits and works it with his hands to
see if it will spin; and there they ran in lines
to meet each other. A large crowd stood
around enjoying the delightful dance, while
a couple of acrobats, keeping time with the
music, threw cart-wheels in and out of the
people.
Finally, round the very rim of the wonderful
shield he put the mighty Stream of Ocean.7
The illustrations are taken from production stills,
film and slide projections used in Why Tears, Achilles?
and Attic vase portraits of Achilles and Hector (from
The Legends of Trov in Art and Literature by Margaret
R. Scherer, Phaidon, 1963).
NOTES
`The Iliad, The Odyssey, and the Epic Tradition',
Charles Rewan Beye, Macmillan, 1968.
2 ibid.
3 This, and all translations from Homer except (7)
come from `Patrocleia', Book XVI of Homer's
`Iliad' adapted by Christopher Logue, Scorpion
Press, 1962; 'PAX', Book XIX of 'The 'Iliad',
translated by Christopher Logue, Rapp & Carroll,
1967.
W. H. Auden: Mush Des Beaux Arts.
5 'Le Totémisme Aujourd'hui,' Claude Levi-
Strauss, Presses Universitaires de France, 1965.
6 'The Savage Mind', Claude Levi-Strauss,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966.
7 Homer: 'The Iliad', a new translation by E. V.
Rieu, Penguin Classics, 1950.
Why Tears, Achilles? presented in the Gulbenkian
Hall of The Royal College of Art, 17-21, March
was an extraordinarily ambitious and successful
collaboration between students, and I should like
to pay tribute to the initiative of Peter Elford in
masterminding and staging such a complex enter-
prise with such conviction.
I hope he will not take it amiss if I end these credits
with the hope that the work he has begun may soon
be continued with professional resources and back-
ing. The RCA students mounted their production
on a three-figure budget, and made it come glow-
ingly alive for their audience. With a professional
cast playing the leads (one thinks of Albert Finney
for the narrator figure), and in a building like the
Roundhouse, Why Tears, Achilles? could become a
major landmark for a wide public. In a professional
context, such a production would need a five-figure
budget. If an angel could be found to guarantee
such a budget, the ICA would willingly mount
such a production, using a combination of the
best professional talent and the students who have
shown such talented dedication to this epic. Is any-
one reading this a potential angel ?