Killer Painting

Though reading Ancient texts can sometimes drag with their catalogues of ships, warriors, geneologies, there are occasionally moments that even the worst translator can't ruin.

The Argonautica by Appolonius of Rhodes does not start off with a bang, by which I mean reading Book 1 (of 4) can feel endless as the women weep to have the men following Jason to steal the golden fleece, the men build a ship with the assistance of Athena, they sail around and backwards, find women to satisfy them on another island, leave them with yet more accounts of wailing, and on to the next island with slight variation. But Book 2, begins with a fantastic boxing scene so vivid that I can't believe it has not been painted.

Polydeukos "took off his closely woven fine-textured mantle" while King Amykos "threw down his thick dark cloak, pins and all, and the herdsman's rough-cut staff of wild mountain olive that he carried". They prepare themselves, selecting knuckle straps cut from rawhide, tanned dry, toughened, to be wound around their fists by their servants. One shadowboxes to test his skill, while the other stands by in silence.

They fight, "blow after blow continually resounds so the cheeks and jaws of both of these combatants sounded when struck and an endless noise of grinding teeth was heard". They pull away and rest. They return, but as Amykos rises to his full height, "rising on toe like an ox butcher, and bringing his heavy hand slamming down on him, Polydeukos sidestepped the blow, withdrawing his head, so that he caught the forearm glancingly on one shoulder; then whipping in, knee past knee, he drove home over the ear a blow that shattered the inner bones".

Sweat flying, blood pours as the head leads a limp body to the ground. Eyes stunned, still open.

The men of Amykos rise with clubs to come after Polydeukos, whose men circle him with scabbards, "first Kastor struck a man on the head as he bore down on him, and the skull, split lengthways, dropped in halves on either shoulder".

It goes on. Polydeukos' men defeat Amykos' men, who eventually flee, leaving their orchards and villages to be plundered. We desire as they did. We work. We destroy, day to day, companies and countries, economies and more common things. Heroes were the Everyman writ large.

I want Titian color, Michelangelo scale, the stress of Van Gogh, I want globs of paint like gore. Medea may be psychological and so interesting in that way, but this language from Book 2 of a boxing match turned gang violence rivals a Mike Tyson match. I want the audacity that slices through a holistic vision and halves our mental tenacity. I want to feel the work–be overtaken by the picture's power, pride and superiority–not nod in ironic correspondence with some over-conceptualized, hyper-textual, isolationist musing produced by a beardo who loses Life for the perfection of pretense. I crave the wild possibilities of killer painting!