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Feet, Fate, and Finitude: On Standing and Inertia in the Iliad

Nikolopoulou, Kalliopi.

College Literature, 34.2, Spring 2007, pp. 174-193 (Article)

Published by West Chester University

DOI: 10.1353/lit.2007.0020

For additional information about this article

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Man stands alone, because man alone

stands. (Weston La Barre)

I. Swift Feet and Winged Words

Feet and fate seem to be curiously related

in the ancient Greek tradition. The

remark may strike us pedestrian at first

(no pun intended), but I hope to show that

this connection signified for the Greeks

something of utmost importance: it signified

what it is to be humanin other words, to

be a mortal being, someone who is conscious

of, and thus in relation to, his or her finitude.

To speak of a human beings fate then is to

speak of his or her standing; standing not

merely in the sense of social statusthough

status is always bound up with the question of

fatebut standing literally on ones feet as

the proper mode of human existence.Our most noted example comes of

course from the myth of Oedipus and its sub-

sequent dramatization by Sophocles. The

Feet, Fate, and Finitude:On Standing and Inertia in the Iliad

Kalliopi Nikolopoulou

Kalliopi Nikolopoulou teaches

in the Department ofComparative Literature at the

State University of New York at

Buffalo. Her research interests

focus on philosophical approaches

to modern European literature

and the relation of the ancientsto the moderns.


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story is well-known: trying to avoid the fatal prophecy that he will be killed

by his offspring, Oedipuss father, Laius, had the infants feet first pierced and

bound, and then instructed a shepherd to dispose of it in the wild. Rescued

by the shepherd and raised by an adopted family, the limping foundling

grewof all thingsinto a peripatetic wanderer. First he wandered in searchof his natural father, and after the accidental parricide, wandered in exile in

expiation of his crime. Both myth and drama suggest that Oedipuss fate is

inscribed bodily in the injury of his feet, an injury that in turn is inscribed

in his very name:Oedipus means swollen foot, and thus the proper name

carries within itself the singular fate of the person. In his reading of

Sophocless Oedipus Tyrannus, Seth Benardete notes the intricacy of this con-

nection between fatality and feet, and their co-inscription in the proper

name. Benardete traces the marking of fate in the shape of the letter thatbegins Oedipuss Labdacid ancestry, the letter L1 and that looks like two

uneven legs:The name of Oedipus perhaps most clearly shows that the sur-

face truth of Oedipus is the sign of his depths as well.To be crippled was

considered to be a sign of tyrannical ambitions, and the very name of the

royal family, Labdacidae, contains within it labda or lambda, the letter that

resembles an uneven gait (2000, 75).

Although the Oedipal myth illustrates most emphatically this link

between fate and feet, it is not unique. In less obvious but still evocativeterms, this relation is expressed earlier on in Homers Iliad as well.2 I am

referring, in particular, to the repeated characterization of Achilles3 as a man

of the swift feet [podas kus] and of an untimely [panarion] (XXIV.540) and

bad destiny [kaki aisi] (I.418). Physical quickness in this story goes hand in

hand with the brevity of life. In her first appearance to Achilles in Book 1,

his mother, Thetis, calls him kumorosa word that contains the adjective

kus of Achilless feetand that designates someone who is short-lived.

When Thetis pleads to Zeus to grant due honor to her son, she appeals to

the god by reminding him of the brevity of Achilless life.This time she uses

the superlative form of the same adjective, stressing how amongst all men he

is the one doomed to this tragic destiny:timson moi huion hos kumrotatos

allon / eplet (I.50506). Later on, in requesting Hephaestus to craft a shield

for Achilles,Thetis again uses the regular form of the same adjective to refer

to her sons speedy death [kumori] (XVIII.458).

Swiftness may indeed be the very essence of Achilles,4 since he is also a

man of winged words [epea pteroenta]. Pteroenta derives from the verbptero,

for which the Liddell-Scott lexicon gives two meanings,one literal, the othermetaphorical: a) to furnish with feathers or wings; b) to excite, to agitate.

Hence,winged words could refer both to a rapid but smooth and eloquent

verbal exchange, as well as to an agitated, edgy speech.Although this formu-

175Kalliopi Nikolopoulou


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la of the winged words applies to other figures in the epic alongside Achilles,

I think that it is more distinctively his characterization as is that of the swift

feet.The reason is that no other mortal hero is assigned this epithet as fre-

quently as is Achilles.5 Since swiftness is what I am claiming here through

the attribute of winged words, it would be interesting to note also that, inthis double characterization of swift feet and winged words,Achilles resem-

bles most of all the goddess Iris, the messenger of the gods, whose swiftness

of feet [podas kea] (II.790, 795) is also compared to the wind [podnemos

kea] (XVIII.166, 183, 196), as she flies to deliver her divine messages [epea

pteroenta] (XVIII.169). It is arguable that Achilles too becomes something of

a messenger of fate to the mortals, precisely because of his intimate knowl-

edge of his own fate, a kind of knowledge that is inaccessible to other

humans. Hence, in living and agonizing over his destiny, he shows the otherwarriors, and the readers as well, how we all participate in mortal destiny.

Fittingly then in Book 24, he explains to Priam the way Zeus distributes fate

amongst the humans (XXIV.52533), separating each mortal being from the

other according to his/her own lot, but linking them also through the mor-

tality they share. However, more on this issue of the sharing of finitude will

follow in the next two sections of the essay.

It is as if then the brevity of Achilless life marks his body from mouth to

feet, from speaking to standingnamely, the two activities that, as I will dis-cuss shortly, distinguish human existence from all other. Such overdeter-

mined connection between Achilless mortality and his feet is literalized in

the well-known extra-Homeric myth, in which he is said to be vulnerable

only in his heel.Achilles and Oedipus: a peculiar symmetry arises as their two

courses that are run oppositely lead to the same placemortal destiny.

Achilles,who knows of his fate at birth, often runs away from it, only to meet

his death at a young age. Oedipus, who is in search of his origin and destiny,

spends all his long life pacing painfully toward that fatality.

In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud thinks of civilization as the trag-

ic consequence of a peculiar archaic event, namely, the appearance of homo

erectus:The fateful process of civilization would thus have set in with mans

adoption of the erect posture. From that point the chain of events would

have proceeded through the devaluation of olfactory stimuli and the isola-

tion of the menstrual period to the time when visual stimuli were paramount

and the genitals become visible, and thence to the continuity of sexual exci-

tation the founding of the family and so to the threshold of human civiliza-

tion (1961, 54 n.1). Civilization is the effect of the repression of smell andits replacement by the sense of vision. Interestingly, however, at this moment

Freudian logic complicates its usual trajectory, appearing almost counter-

intuitive at first: we would expect that the repression of the lower sense of

176 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]


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smell, and its substitution by a higher sense such as vision would attenuate

the sexual instinct, since attenuation of sexuality is the typical function of

repression. Instead, the prominence of vision results in the prolongation of

sexual excitation, since as Freud reasons, the reproductive organs of the

upright human being are now thoroughly visible at all times.The presenceof a permanent sexual partner who could assure the regular satisfaction of

this instinct then becomes necessaryand hence the creation of the family

as a unit of civilization ensues.

If until this point in Freuds account repression seems not to have taken

its toll, we should not be hasty. Family and community as the hallmarks of

civilized existence form also a pair of irreconcilable opposites that tear the

human being asunder as s/he tries to harmonize the desire for personal hap-

piness with communal responsibility.This is then the price of repression: thehuman being becomes the site of an unending strife between what Freud

also calls Eros and Ananke, [Love and Necessity] (1961, 55)namely,

between the individual and fate, were we to subscribe to the vocabulary of

tragedy. IfAntigoneis the tragedypar excellenceof this rupture between fami-

ly and society, then the Iliadfurnishes us with the epic version of the very

same rupture, as Achilles struggles between his private desire and his military

duty. Ironically, the epics commensuration of military honor and sexual sat-

isfaction in the figure of Briseis, namely, of a public recognition and a privaterelationship, radicalizes all the more the antagonism between these two

domains. Eros and Ananke form a conundrum for the human being, as only

this erect creature is claimed simultaneously by an internal desire (and not

merely by instinct), and by the external necessity of coexisting lawfully with

others of its kind, and ideally, with the rest of nature.Thus, reading past the

obvious biological aspects of Freuds narrative of the homo erectusthe bio-

logical is only one of the meanings of what Freud calls a genetic narrative

(1961, 12)we come to see that what is at stake in the notion of the biped

organism is in fact the notion of standing qua comportment: in other words,

standing up is the part of the human that transcends mere organicism, thus

making out of a natural creature a fully human being.

This is what Bernd Jager also means when he writes that for Freud the

moment of standing up does not simply occur but . . . is instead assumed or

inhabited (1988, 8). It does not occur as a biological fact; rather in its hap-

pening, the human being itself happens for the first time. Jager continues:

This standing up is all at the same time a wounding separation and emer-

gence into humanity. . . .Whatever may have guided life up to this decisivepoint remains obscure. But beyond this point human life would be desire in

the form of a standing up and in the form of a falling back into oblivion

(8). Standing up is an emergence, a coming-to-be human, while the wound



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of separation refers to the severance from the undifferentiated natural state

from which primordial humanity emerged.This state, Jager contends, cannot

be accessed, and it is precisely its irretrievability that becomes a wound for

the nascent human being. In turn, this wound,which exceeds expression and

articulation, paradoxically also demands them. The need to articulate thiswound marks in fact the entrance into meaning. Consequently, standing up

as the loss of primordial unity is inextricably related to meaning and to lan-

guage.The standing human is first and foremost a linguistic being.

Jagers reading seems to suggest that in falling back into oblivion death

returns us to the non-human natural state.Certainly Freuds definition of the

death drive as the organisms entropic tendency to return to the inanimate

matter from which it awakened, thus reaching equilibrium, could be read as

this fantasy of recuperating the lost primordial unity. However, Jager correct-ly resists such a facile interpretation of Freud.The death of a being that has

already stood up is different from the death of the other natural creatures, so

that this return is complicated: the death of a standing being is a death that

means, not just a simple factual event.This death, of which the human being

is constantly aware during its life, makes of the human being a mortalfor

a mortal is a being for whom death means, and more generally, a being who

comes to meaning through death. Jager understands that Freuds theoretical

formulation takes us beyond the two equally problematic paradigms to whichthis seemingly biological model could be reduced: Freuds insistence on the

incommensurability of wound and sign allows for a non-totalizable under-

standing of the human, an understanding beyond both a barbaric sentimental

science that seeks to heal our wounds by seducing us back into an undifferen-

tiated natural matrix where all is one, and a hubristic science that would trans-

form our wounds into letters and our world into a text (8).

If we translate this statement into the Homeric characterization of

Achilles, we see that the swift feet are set in a correspondence with the

winged words as both allude to the brevity of life, but they are never

reducible to each other. In fact, the two are chiasmatically related.When the

feet are actually idle, the words fly wisely and eloquently, as in Achilless

speech to the embassy that requests his return to battlea speech concern-

ing the mortal fate the war holds for everyone, brave or coward alike

(IX.31820). Peculiarly, nowhere in this episode are Achilless words

described as winged, though they are admittedly profound, if somewhat agi-

tating, to their audience.To the contrary, in this book, where Achilles is least

physically active and most verbally engaged, all three of his speeches are pref-aced with the line Then in answer to him spoke Achilles of the swift feet

(IX.307, 606, 643). The chiasmatic relationship between feet and words is

reinforced even formally, as Homers epithets turn our attention to what



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remains inactive (the feet), since this physical inactivity itself foregrounds the

significance of the heros words. If anything, Achilless inertia is interrupted

for a short while, as he stands up at the sight of his visitors. Sitting away from

the fury of the war and composing himself epic poems on his lyre, Achilles

now has to suddenly rise up [anororousen Ahilleus] (IX.193) on his swift feet[podas kus] (IX.196), but only for a moment, and this to greet and welcome

his guests. Such hospitality, Achilles recognizes, must take place despite his

anger against the Achaians, for these guests remain his dear friends even in

his anger (IX.19798). This is also why, despite his strong refusal to their

request, his words remain weighed, revealing both a sober understanding of

human mortality and the genuinely mortal anxiety that life is always too

short, and that one should not cut it any shorter by seeking a glorious death.

On the contrary, when the feet are swift and active in their rage, thewords become impoverished, concealing rather than exposing the mortal

fear that governs their savagery.They are winged not in the sense of unerr-

ing readiness or lightness of eloquence, but rather in the sense of a fast, agi-

tated, and impudent thought. Such verbal insolence as we find in the later

books of the epicthough stemming from Achilless agonistic relation to his

own mortalitydoes not disclose finitude as common human destiny, but

rather distorts it into sheer violence and inhumanity.

In these later books that narrate Achilless return to battle, Achillesrepeatedly aligns himself with the world of beasts rather than men. Book 20

concludes with Achilless fury setting everything ablaze, as he fights daimoni

isos (XX.493), namely, with inhuman intensity. Richmond Lattimore ren-

ders this phrase as something more than a mortal, while the Loeb edition

prefers the more literal translation like some god. We should underline

here, however, that the term daimon does not carry only the positive conno-

tation of being godlike; it carries also the negative one of inhumanity, of act-

ing beyond ones own destiny. Both Liddell-Scott and Georg AutenriethsA

Homeric Dictionary associate daimon with aisa and tuchthat is, with the way

the immortals act toward the mortals in distributing to them their fate qua

finitude. When Achilles is said to behave like a god in this instance, it is

because he assumes the hubristic position of controlling the fate of others, as

if he were himself immortal, distributing indiscriminately death all around

him.As such, he also assumes only the bestial, mad, most primitive aspects of

divinity.6 Indeed, in the next book, as Achilles wages war against the river-

god Xanthos,7 we see that he tries to match his prowess with that of the god,

even though it is also during this battle that he faces most concretely his ownhuman limits and his finitude.Here his swiftness of feet is not enough to save

him from the onrush of the waters, and it takes the double intervention of

Poseidon and Athena to defer the fulfillment of his mortal destiny



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(XXI.251286). That in being more than a god Achilles is also less than a

man is further shown in this book in Achilless refusal to spare the life of the

supplicant Lykaon (XXI.99113).This refusal once again points to the space

of inhumanity Achilles now inhabits, a space of utter lawlessness.

Lykaons treatment at the hands of Achilles forms a preamble to the wayAchilles will handle Hector. Achilless exit from human community culmi-

nates in his refusal of Hectors plea for a reciprocal oath that would bind

them to treat each others corpse respectfully. Just like his speeches to the

embassy, Achilless speeches to Hector during their duel are also prefaced

with his characterization as a man of the swift feet, but this time around his

feet are indeed in fury as his stare grows angry and dark:Ton d ar hupodra

idn praseph podas kus Ahilleus (XXII.260, 344). Though inert, Achilless

swift feet remained his prevailing characterization in Book 9. After all, onetends to think of Achilles not as a verbal, let alone, philosophical character.

Homer perhaps is in on the joke: even when Achilles speaks thoughtfully, one

still thinks of his physical prowess; yet in emphasizing physical prowess where

none is shown, the poet demonstrates by contrast how obviously inactive the

hero is, having substituted words for deeds. In Book 22, however, the empha-

sis on Achilless feet is literal, as his aristeia devolves into a killing spree. Here

feet and words are no more contrasted chiasmatically; rather, they collapse

upon each other, as Achilless language reduces itself to the violent physical-ity of his feet.The terrible coincidence of language and body, feet and words,

wound and symbol, which Jagers reading of Freud warned us against, occurs

here: the racing and raging feet are followed by atavistic speech.

In his speech to Hector,Achilles describes his relationship to his enemy

with a simile that explicitly equates Hector with animal prey and himself

with animal predators:As there are no trustworthy oaths between men and

lions, / nor wolves and lambs have spirit that can be brought to agreement /

but forever these hold feelings of hate for each other, / so there can be no

love8 between you and me, nor shall there be / oaths between us

(XXII.26266).The fear of mortality, the quintessential fear of the standing

being, turns Achilles into an animal.The animal is not bound by oaths or

treatiesthe symbolic reminders of human limitedness and of human sub-

jugation to Ananke. Because it operates on instinct, and because instinct is

governed completely by necessity, the animal creature does not recognize

necessity as alien to it, and thus remains unconscious of negation, limits, and

ultimately, death. As Georges Bataille writes, for an animal, nothing is ever

forbidden. Its nature fixes the animals limitation; in no instance does it limititself (1955, 31).Achilless rampage is the result of this impossible and terri-

ble dream to re-inhabit (but the prefix re- is always already impossible from

the place of humanity) the space of nature where death does not mean, to



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revert to a stage before homo erectus. Indeed, Achilless responses to Hector

become increasingly animalistic, and as such, not disclosive of mortality, but

paradoxically mute: now that everything is reduced to bestiality, language is

also reduced to an assault, as Achilles is unable to truly listen to his inter-

locutor. To Hectors plea to not let his body become prey to the dogs(XXII.339),Achilles replies first by calling him a dog (XXII.345), and then

by quickly slipping himself into this canine image:I wish only that my spir-

it and fury would drive me / to hack your meat and eat it raw

(XXII.34647).

Swift feet and winged words characterize Achilles, aligning him with

finitude and the mortal anxiety over death, but they are not commensurable:

the swift feet that wound know nothing of the eloquent winged words that

come from the mouth of the wounded and dishonored man, for such wordssay always more than the private injury that initiated them. I would go as far

as to say that in this poem the swift feet coincide with the winged words only

when we think of the metrical feet, of the bards verbal rhythm,whose rush-

nessand even agitationremains faithfully at the service of measure (of

ontological as much as metrical measure) and disclosure.

Let us then briefly return to Freuds narrative of homo erectus, from where

this discussion of word and wound proceeded. The difference between

wound and word, or body and meaning corroborates the fact that Freudsaccount of standing as a genetic moment in human civilization is such not

only in the biological, instinctual sense of the term genetic, but in the strict

psychoanalytic sense of genesis as arch, as the origin of a desire (Eros) and a

necessity (Ananke).And as every archis a leap, suggesting a moment of dis-

continuity, this genetic narrative turns out to be one of finitude as well

death being the other name of necessity. This moment of standing upright

then is an origin, the origin of mortality, and as such, of meaning. It func-

tions as a quantum leap that differentiates us once and for all from the ani-

mal world (indeed in a sense it makes the very reference to a possible con-

tinuum impossible), and engenders all the ensuing antagonisms that have

constituted civilized existence, as well as structured philosophical thought

from its very beginnings: high/low, reason/emotion, mind/body,

pure/impure.

After all, the Oedipal narrative enjoys such a central space in Freuds

thought precisely because of this connection between mortality and stand-

ing as human habitation.The Sphinxs riddle is nothing but an expression of

the relation between time and human standing; in other words, it articulatesthe human withstanding of time. As Jean-Pierre Vernant also remarks, the

Sphinxs riddle defines the human being in opposition to all other natural

creatures: All these creatures are born, grow up, live, and die with a single



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modality of locomotion. Man is the only one to change the way that he

moves about, assuming in succession three different gaits: four-footed, two-

footed, then three-footed (1988, 214).Homo erectus is not simply a being on

two legs, but the being that came to stand on two legs, and the being that

knows his/her two legs will give outthe being in succession, in change,in time.

II. Achilles Heel: Myth Interrupted

Apparently, though widespread, the myth of Achilless heel is not to be

found in Homer.Thetis announces to Achilles in Book 1 that to a bad des-

tiny she bore him in her chambers (I.418), but there is no mention of the

fact that she failed to immerse him fully into the immortal water of Styx,

leaving his heel dry and vulnerable.9 Regarding this notable omission,Lattimore, in the introduction to his translation of the Iliad, writes:Achilleus

is not in any sense immortal.The legend of almost complete invulnerability

is either unknown to Homer or discarded by him (1961, 47). He adds that

Achilles is neither semi-divinity nor superhuman ( 47), and that [a]bove

all,Achilleus is a real man, mortal and fallible, but noble enough to make his

own tragedy a great one (48).

Whether or not Homer was aware of the immersion myth, or its other

versions, seems to me to be beside the point. After all, even if such a mythwere not in currency during Homers time, the poet could have easily

invented one like it himself, had his purpose been to relate a story about

divine feats.However, it is precisely this narrative possibility that Homer must

discard in order to tell another onethe story of mortal men. Homer moves

us away from the static realm of almost invulnerable demi-gods and other

immortals into that of heroes, who are actually mortal beings and who take

responsibility for their acts. Hence, Lattimore can read Achilles the way he

doesnamely, tragically, for tragedy is an expression of the mortal predica-

ment.Achilles is a mortal being of splendor but also of destructive passions,

rather than an immortal deity, whose acts are not bound by time. In Achilless

figure, Homer demarcates the mortal and the divine spheres, and in doing so,

the epic poet anticipates tragedy. It is worthwhile noting that this much-

debated question of the degree to which the Iliad is a tragic work has more

far-reaching implications than the simply generic ones, in which the terms

of the debate are usually cast. I would suggest that Homers anticipation of

the tragic form as the direct result of his thematic separation of gods and

mortals bespeaks an even more profound and structuring separation in thelanguage and thought of the Greeksthat between myth and literature.

This claim needs some elaboration, particularly in light of the fact that

the Iliad, as the Ur-text of Western literature, has been predominantly dis-



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cussed in terms of a coincidence between myth and literature: it is myth as

literature. That the Iliad itself furnishes us with a definition of muthos as a

word of mouth, a spoken word, can only lend further credibality to this argu-

ment of mythical and literary coincidence. Following this argument to its

logical conclusion, we would have to concede that insofar as the epic (thisepic, but also Western epic in general) forms an originary literary expression

of human community, it does so by referring this community to myth.This

is not an unproblematic conclusion, since the word myth is not simply an

innocent word of mouthat least not for us, modern interpreters of Homer.

Myths hearsay, which results in many and often contradictory stories of the

same event, is perhaps the most obvious example of why this word of mouth

brings about confusion, deception, and obscurity.Yet, through a rather vio-

lent reversal, the obfuscating character of myth presents itself as transparency,as the patency of all there is.The power of myth lies precisely in its invisible

distortion.

From this perspective myth looks much more sinister, particularly as it

claims to define national destinies by referring human beings to their so-

called national literary heritage, which in turn is defined as native myth and

the like. Ultimately, in fostering unproblematic identifications with heroic

figures and moral ideals, the objective of every myth, in some way or anoth-

er, is the denial of finitude: the most obvious instance of this denial is thedead soldier,whose singular death is effaced at the very moment he becomes

a symbol of pride and national identification, and thus lives on forever.

This, of course, is myths inevitable lie: it conflates the mortal with the

immortal, thus disorienting the human from turning toward its proper direc-

tion, toward finitude.

Perhaps the most systematic philosophical problematization of the rela-

tion of myth to community today is Jean-Luc Nancys chapter Myth

Interrupted in his Inoperative Community.Trying to think through the issue

of community and its foundational myths, Nancy maintains that the oldest,

most powerful, but also most inconspicuous myth of community is the one

that says that community itself originates in mythin our case, in the epic

narratives recounting the great deeds of a tribes or a nations heroes. This

myth of communitys origin in myth is what Nancy calls mythation (1991,

45). Nancy proceeds to show that the structuring principle of this original

myth is fusion, that is, the tendency of myth to conflate boundaries of all

sorts, thus denying the irreducible singularity of events as well as beings. I

have already mentioned three major examples of myths fusional structure: a)the semantic confusion brought about by myths own many versions; b) the

dream of fusion in tribal, national, religious, or any other group membership,

which myth promises; and c) myths promise of immortality through the



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fusion of human and divine realms, or rather through the fusion of the finite

into the infinite.

For Nancy, the last one is perhaps the greatest and most pernicious of

myths fusional dreams, because in denying death in the name of communi-

ty, it actually denies us the very possibility of community. It denies us com-munity because, as Nancy maintains, community is nothing else but the

exposition of finitude as the singular experience that is shared by us (as

Achilles states in Book 9, we all die, strong and weak alike), but that also

shares us (Moira literally means the lot distributed to each one of us, a singu-

lar lot that distinguishes our destiny from that of our fellow human being, a

lot that is given to us in common but that is not our common lot). Nancy

writes: Community does not sublate the finitude it exposes. Community itself, in

sum, is nothing but this exposition. It is the community of finite beings, and assuch it is itself a finite community (1991, 2627). Following Heidegger,

Nancy calls this mortal existence that is allotted to us our Being-in-com-

mon, rather than our having something in common.Anything short of this

exposure to finitude is a culture of myth that makes a work out of death,10

putting death to serve the utilitarian projects of history, nation-building, and

other so-called great ideals.To the contrary, Nancy understands community

as the un-working of deathhence, the term inoperative:

Community no more makes a work out of death than it is itself a work.The death upon which community is calibrated does not operatethe dead

beings passage into some communal intimacy, nor does community, for its

part, operatethe transfiguration of its dead into some substance or subject

be these homeland, native soil or blood, nation, a delivered or fulfilled

humanity, absolute phalanstery, family, or mystical body. Community is cal-

ibrated on death as on that of which it is precisely impossible to make a work

(other than a work of death, as soon as one tries to make a work of it).

(Nancy 1991, 15)

We can now see more clearly the death-work behind the example of thedead soldier I had cited above: in the identification with the national hero,

death is worked out and resolved into the higher plane of symbolic eleva-

tion that can, in turn, serve every patriotic delusion of resurrection. It

becomes rather obvious how such denial of finitude results in an ethico-

political nightmare where dreams of invincibility are almost always followed

by acts of violence.

In closing this brief reflection on myths relation to community and fini-

tude, I would like to suggest that Homers omission of the myth of Achillessinvulnerability un-works this process of mythation, exposing instead the expe-

rience of finitude. First of all, whereas we have said that myth entails a con-

flation of boundariesmost of all the conflation of finitude and infinitude



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Homer is more interested in establishing clear boundaries between gods and

mortals: Achilles may be extraordinarily strong, but nothing is said of invul-

nerability.Why not? Because to do so would mean to separate the spheres by

resorting to the literalness, but also arbitrariness, of a myth that always risks

replacing the separation with a conflation: peculiarly by positing one onlymortal body part, the myth of Achilless heel would work to emphasize his

near-immortality rather than his mortality. Instead, Homer consolidates the

separation of the spheres in a subtler manner, by developing the ethos of his

characters through their words and deeds, and by showing howone acts or

stands as a mortal, not why one is born a mortal. It is through his words and

his acts that Achilles comes to see what it means to be a mortal, and it is

through them also that the listeners/readers of the Iliadunderstand their

finitude as well.Thus, if Achilles is killed by an arrow at the heel, it is not somuch because his divine mother failed to immerse that part in immortal

water, but rather because the heel on which the human being supports itself

emerges also as the symbol of mortal vulnerability. What helps us stand is

also what makes us fall. Hence, Homers manipulation of the mythological

material serves not simply to yield a more compelling or manageable story-

line, but a more profound task, that of demarcating the limits between myth

and mythopoesis, of interrupting the unproblematic equation between myth

and literature.

III. Laying Apart: Inoperativity and Finitude in Books 9 and 24

Achilless most vulnerable part marks strangely enough the place of his

prowess: being the fastest of the warriors, he is like a lightening bolt in bat-

tle. It is, after all, his speed that wins him the battle against Hector, since

Achilles tires his opponent to death before he kills him.Perhaps it is this very

instability, the fact that he never has both feet on the ground that is respon-

sible for his mercurial nature.11Yet this man of the swift feet is confined for

the most part of the epic to his tent, not running, or even standing up, but

laying apart and awaiting his fate in inertia.

In a certain way the Iliadcould be read as the development of Achilless

stance vis vis the war. In Book 1 he stands in at least three ways. Firstly, he

stands out, in the sense that he is the only warrior to question Agamemnons

arbitrariness. Secondly, in voicing his dissatisfaction against Agamemnon, he

also stands in as an implicit representative for the rest of the army that is too

terrified to express its discontents. Finally, his symbolic standing up to

Agamemnon takes place in the middle of two scenes, which require ofAchilles a literal, physical standing upright:Achilles stands up as he summons

the Achaian assembly to discuss the plague, and after the quarrel with

Agamemnon, he again stands up taking his oath of withdrawal. In sharp con-



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trast to this active description early in Book 1,Achilles retreats after the oath

to sitting by his ships (1.330, 488), weeping for his dishonor.As early as Book

2, the verb keitai(II.772), meaning to lay, is introduced to describe Achilless

idleness and withdrawal. Significantly, this verb is also used to describe the

posture of a corpse, since Achilless withdrawal can be read both as death forthe Achaians and as a symbolic death of himself as a warrior. When the

Achaian embassy comes to him, they find him in a reclining state, delighting

in his lyre.This reclining posture, which dominates most of the Iliad, is inter-

rupted for the brief exaction of revenge and resumes in Book 24 during

Achilless meeting with Priam. Book 1 then starts with standing,but ends with

lying apart, and lying apart turns out to be the way the epic will conclude.

In his Turning: From Persuasion to Philosophy: A Reading of Homers Iliad,

Michael Naas has argued against Achilless inertia as the destructive postureof a self-centered, hubristic warrior, who refuses repeatedly to be persuaded,

thus driving his community to ruin.12 I hope to show, in the rest of this sec-

tion, that Achilless inactivity can be read differentlynot simply as a death-

inducing solipsism,but as the figurepar excellenceof the Iliads un-working of

death, in the sense that Nancy, after Bataille, speaks of un-working.To begin

with, this inertia, this rendering inoperative of Achilless feet, is a mark of

withstanding finitude.As I mentioned earlier on,Achilless feet can be meas-

ured against his words and vice versa. In this reciprocal calibration of mouthand heels the disclosure of mortality happens at times as revealing and at

times as concealing: the Achilles of Book 9,who refuses to use his feet in the

battlefield, is a hospitable man, extending courtesies to an otherwise cunning

embassy that tries to buy him back.This Achilles, despite his refusal to be per-

suaded by the embassy, appeals to his estranged friends to turn their regard

toward what lies ahead and is shared by all of them in common: fate as fini-

tude. Peculiarly, the army community, which could have a privileged access

to this understanding because of its constant exposure to death, conceals this

experience by embracing narratives of heroic action and immortality

through glory. In contrast,Achilless abandonment of the heroic ideal in this

book as an un-working of deaththat is, as a refusal to idealize death into

immortal glorygoes hand in hand with his physical inertia.

Beyond the pragmatic objections Achilles raises against Agamemnon,

Book 9 is first and foremost about Achilless revelation to the embassy that a

community not based on finitude is no community, and that in this sense, it

is Agamemnon who refuses to accept finitude and to act himself as a finite

being. How else can we understand his phrase is moira menonti, kai ei malatis polemizoi / en de ii timi men kakos de kai esthlos (IX.318-19)? The por-

tionthat is, the fateof the man who abstains from the war is equal to the

one who fights, says Achilles.And if divine distribution is alike for the brave



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and the coward, how could all this be affected by the human distribution of

booty as mark of honor? The astounding answer from this bravest of warriors

is that brave and coward are held in a single honor. In other words, the por-

tion that really counts is that of moira, of finitude, not of timand the immor-

tality through glory that tim implies. Achilles repeats this realization inslightly different terms to the embassy: booty, he says, can be pillaged or won

in battle, but a mans life [andros de psych] can neither be pillaged nor won

back from death (IX.406409). It is this quotidian yet difficult wisdom that

Agamemnon cannot reach from his position of power. How significant, that

when Agamemnon admits to his fault later on,he attributes it toAtename-

ly, to Delusion that blinds his judgment (XXIX.9194). Indeed,Agamemnon

suffers from the most destructive of delusions, the delusion of infinitude,

since he conflates kingly power with eternal invincibility. For all that hasbeen said of Achilless pride, it does not measure up to Agamemnons arro-

ganceif for no other reason, than for the fact that Achilless demand for

redress proceeds from and attests to his dishonor, admitting thus to injury and

to being finite.

Finitude in Book 9 appears first through Achilless own fate, as he cites

his mothers words to him (IX.41116), but extends to everyone else equal-

ly:Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard

(IX.318). Although both agonistic and resigned in its tone, this line remainsan open invitation to his guests, and presumably to the readers, to partake of

finite existence. I imagine that it is such an understanding of finitude that

keeps Achilles silent when he is taunted by the embassy with the following

remark:The very immortals / can be moved; their virtue and honour and

strength are greater than ours are, / and yet with sacrifices and offerings for

endearment, / with libations and with savour men turn back even the

immortals / in supplication, when any man does wrong and transgresses

(IX.497501). The Achaians implicit denunciation of Achilles is hubris.

However, Achilless silence with regard to this point, less than a mark of

hubris, points toward something else. It is not only a different understanding

of religiosity, one that refuses to degrade the gods to being partners in barter

(a marvelous insight that would be admittedly inconsistent with much of the

Iliads understanding of ritual practice), but one that undermines the very

comparison the Achaians attempt between the divine and mortal spheres.

Achilles knows by now his place in the order of things, and despite his part-

ly divine lineage, he has learned through his dishonor the corruption and

mutability entailed by time. Achilless silence disrupts the continuumbetween mortals and immortals, un-works the Achaian comparison, and

results in a human-all-too-human refusal to exchange death for glory; for,



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after all, no exchangeif it ever takes place with the godscomes at a cost

for a god as it may for a mortal.

Book 24 opens with Achilless restless motion. On the one hand he is

lying inconsolable, tossing and turning, unable to sleep after the burial of his

friend, Patroclus; on the other, he rises to his feet, pacing back and forthalong the seashore:allot epi pleuras katakeimenos, allote d aute / huptios, allote

de prns tote d orthos anastas / dineuesk alun para thin halos (XXIV.1012).

Much like Book 9,Book 24 explores the condition of finitude in relation to

Achilless movement and inertia.The restlessness of the opening lines gives

way to a resigned calmness, as the gods have decided to send two messengers

to Achilles and PriamThetis and Iris, respectivelyto prepare a meeting

for the return of Hectors body. Concerning Achilless mortality, let me note

parenthetically that, although Hera insists during the divine assembly on anhonor differential between Hector and Achilles, as the former was a mortal

man [thntos], but the latter is the son of a goddess [theas gonos]

(XXIV.5859), Homerin the words of another godreinforces Achilless

mortality, securing once again the separation of mortal and divine realms:

when Hermes, who was accompanying Priam to Achilless hut under the

false identity of a mortal, arrives there, he blows his cover, telling Priam that

it is time for him to part the company of mortal men, since it is inappropri-

ate for a god to fraternize openly with a mortal like Achilles:nemesston deken ei / athanaton theon hode brotous agapazemen antn (XXIV.46364).The

mythical time when gods attended human banquets is over, not least because

it was in one of these banquets,Thetiss wedding to the mortal Peleus, that the

seeds of this war were sown.13 We could say that it is the very mythical con-

flation of the spheres that instigates thispolemos, and that Homers Trojan War

as the demarcation of the spheres constitutes a moment of de-mythification.

Let us return, however, to Achilless stance in this concluding book.

When Priam arrives in the night, he finds Achilles sitting alone [Achileus

hizeske] (XXIV.472) apart from his comrades [hetaroi d apaneuthe kathato]

(XXIV.473).There follows the scene of supplication and their shared lamen-

tation.The text offers a heartrending image, in which Priam mourns his son

curled around the slayers feet (XXIV.510).That Priam falls to Achilless feet,

instead of assuming the usual posture of supplicationnamely, genuflec-

tionis particularly significant in further reinforcing the link between feet

and fatality. In this image of supplication, Priam touches the most murderous

of Achilless body partsfor as I mentioned above,Achilles defeats Hector by

outrunning himthe same body part that in the legend proves the most fatalfor Achilles himself. Once Priams lamentation is over, Achilles springs up

from his seat [apo thronou rto] and raises the old king by his hand [geronta de

cheiros anst] in pity and respect (XXIV.515). Just as in Book 9, here also the



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moments of Achilless standing up are not associated with warlike aggression;

they are rather moments of deference, of acknowledgment of the others

presence, and of hospitality.The raised Priam is to sit on equal footing with

his sons murderer, to be treated in a dignified manner.Rising to raise anoth-

er to sit next to him, so that they can now co-exist, so that they can bothstand as human beings: this is the movement Achilles performs in response

to Priams supplication, before he even mentions anything about Hectors

body. No return would be complete unless this shared humanity between the

living foes is first established. This is the reason why Achilles gets briefly

angry with Priam, when the old man refuses the offered seat, demanding

instead to receive the body before accepting any hospitality.The two solemn

actions that followactions of forgiveness and hospitalitycoalesce with

the weighty inertia that otherwise dominates Achilless hut during the meet-ing. Except for Achilless preparation of Hectors body for its return

(XXIV.57296), and the making of the meal (XXIV.62126), it is this iner-

tia that fosters the friendship and compassion between these two enemies.

In their shared destitution, there is no more to do, no scheme to devise,

nowhere to run away to, nobody to chase. Calmly and resolutely, sitting by

one another, they acknowledge the finitude they share, but that also shares

and divides them; for in the spectrum of life, they are both as close to each

other in terms of loss, as they are far apartthe one youthful the other old,the one victor the other vanquished.This calm sharing is given to us in a

marvelous image, which also provides the last sustained description of

Achilles in this text. Here Achilles is not the brilliant runner he is famed to

be, not even the speaker of winged words: he is silent and attentive in the

others presence. Fittingly, this last sight we have of him comes through the

prolonged and admiring gaze of Priam, which is then reciprocated by

Achilless admiring eyes: Priam, son of Dardanos, gazed upon Achilleus,

wondering / at his size and beauty, for he seemed like an outright vision /

of gods.Achilleus in turn gazed on Dardanian Priam / and wondered, as he

saw his brave looks and listened to him talking (XXIV.62932). After this

comes sleep, and in sleeps inertia the text leaves Achilles for good, turning in

its remaining portion to Hectors burial.

In concluding, I would like to suggest that this peculiar community that

happens at the end of the epic between the two enemies is possible because

of the inoperative character of Achilless feeta physical inoperativity, which

stands for an ontological dsoeuvrement, the one Nancy calls the un-working

of death.These feet that were murderous in their pursuit of Hector are nowwithdrawn; they become the locus of supplication, and this supplication itself

renders them vulnerable, exposed. Achilles is able to share with Priam in

finite Being, insofar as he passes over to this space of inactivity symbolized



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by his lying apart. I would also venture the larger claim that such an un-

working of death constitutes Homers most radical contribution in our

understanding of the epic genre itself: namely, that the epic is not the origin

of a community in the myth of glorified death, but a work of literature that

opens itself to a finite community, as it un-works the very ideals of heroismand immortality it is supposed to sing.

Notes

1 The same point was made earlier by Jean-Pierre Vernant in The Lame Tyrant:

From Oedipus to Periander (1988, 209) and elaborated further by Peter Stallybrass

in his essay The Mystery of Walking.2 All translations of the Iliadare Richmond Lattimores. For the Greek original

I used the Loeb edition.3The Iliadgives us summarily another example of this connection of feet to fate

in the figure of Philoktetes in Book 2. Philoktetes, an Achaian leader on his way to

the Trojan War, received a poisonous snakebite on his foot and was abandoned by his

fellow soldiers to suffer alone in the island of Lemnos, the sacred island of the lame

god Hephaistos. It is worth noting that a close inspection of the passage describing

Philoktetess fate in Book 2 reveals subtle but strong connections to Achilles. During

his isolation in Lemnos, Philoktetes is said to lay apart [keito] from the Achaians, a

formulation that is used repeatedly to describe Achilless abstinence from the war

(II.721).We are also told that the Achaians, who abandoned Philoktetes in his suf-fering, would later be in dire need of him (II.72425), the same way that they are in

need of Achilles in Book 9.4 Elaine Scarry observes the same point: Achilles prowess takes many forms,

but it is one thing in particular, his lucidity of motion,his speed. . . . Because his run-

ning is brilliant, it ignites lights in our minds and we see him streak across the shore,

or down the Scamander River, or three times around the walls of Troy (1999,

7879). For Scarry, this luminescent speed of Achilles, which bathes the whole Iliad

as a poem of motion, demands us to enter the poem through a specific path of the

imagination she calls radiant ignition.5 In fact, out of the total instances where this formula is used, the majority

belongs either to interchanges among the gods (e.g., Zeus to Dream: II.7, Zeus to

Athena: IV.69, Hera to Athena:V.713,Ares to Zeus:V.870, Hera to Athena:VIII.351,

Sleep to Poseidon: XIV.356, Hera to Zeus: XV.35, Zeus to Hera: XV.48,Themis to

Hera: XV.89, Hera to Apollo and Iris: XV.145, Zeus to Iris: XV.157, XIX.341 Zeus

to Athena: XIX.341, Xanthos to Hera: XXI.368, Athena to Ares: XXI.409, Hera to

Athena: XXI.419,Athena to Ares and Aphrodite: XXI.427), or to the gods address-

es to the mortals (e.g., Athena to Pandarus: IV.92, Athena to Diomedes: V.123,

Poseidon to Agamemnon:XIV.138,Apollo to Patroklos: XVI.706,Apollo to Hector:XVII.74, Poseidon to Aeneas XX.331, Athena to Achilles: XXII.215, Athena to

Hector: XXII.228). Achilles follows with ten citations (I.201, XVI.6, XIX.20,

XX.448, XXI.121, XXII.377, XXIII.535, XXIII.557, XXIV.142, 24.517). The

remaining instances are distributed among various other heroes.



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6 Mythology and primitive religion in general are based on this coincidence of

god and beast. Batailles work on the animal paintings of the Lascaux cave proceeds

from this assumption as well.We could say that Achilless inhumanity, or demoniza-

tion, involves a similar equation between the godly and the bestial.As he tries to sur-

pass the river-god,Achilles also transgresses human limits, acting in a barbarous way.His excesses turn both against nature, by polluting the river with corpses, and against

other humans, since he sets out to kill all Trojans indiscriminately.7 The double naming of this river is of particular interest, since it functions as a

mark of the separation between gods and mortals, and as such, it shows us something

of Achilless mortality. Homer tells us that the same river is called Xanthos by the

gods,but by mortals Skamandros (XX.74). In Book 21,while the poet refers to this

river mostly in its divine name (XXI.2, 15, 145,364,383),calling it Skamandros only

twice (XXI.305, 603), Achilles addresses it consistently as Skamandros (XXI.124,

223).Achilless appellation confines him strictly within the sphere of mortals, and isset in sharp contrast to the goddess Heras choice of name, which is, of course,

Xanthos (XXI.332, 337).8 This is Lattimores rendering. The Loeb translation is more to the point:

Achilles is saying that it is not possible for him and Hector to be friends.9 Some maintain that the immersion in water is a later Roman version of the

myth of Thetiss efforts to make her son immortal, though others insist that it is an

earlier and, admittedly, the most dominant myth.An alternative version of the myth

says that Thetis tried to purge the mortal aspects of her son by placing his body over

fire, an act that frightened his father, Peleus, who interrupted the process.Significantly, neither versioneven though it is likely that such a myth must have

been in circulation by the time of Homerappears in Homer. My supposition that

such a myth must have existed by the time of Homer is mainly supported by two

other Iliadic references: a) Hectors prediction of Achilless death (XXII.35960),

which involves an allied attack by Paris and Apollo, the same figures that in the

immersion myth are said to defeat Achilles by striking an arrow at his vulnerable

heel; b) Achilless fastening of Hectors corpse to his chariot by the heels:In both of

his feet at the back he made holes by the tendons / in the space between ankle and

heel, and drew thongs of ox-hide through them, / and fastened them to the chariotso as to let the head drag (XXII.395-98).The image recalls almost identically the

piercing and fastening of Oedipuss feet, and it seems to me that the attention to

Hectors heels may not be simply coincidental in an episode where Achilless and

Hectors duel foregrounds the workings of mortal fate. In other words, the text here

intimates that Hector has already arrived to the place where Achilles will soon be.10 The notion of the inoperative (dsoeuvr), of un-working and neutralizing the

work of death, Nancy takes from Georges Bataille. The Inoperative Community is in

fact a reading of Batailles thought on sovereign inertia-namely, the refusal to think

the human through projectalong with Heidegger's Mitseinnamely, the fact thatBeing is always a Being-with.

11 There is a consensus among classical scholars in reading Achilles as a waver-

ing figure. For instance, Jasper Griffin has argued that often Achilles cannot make up



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his mind: in Book 9 he wavers between going back to Phthia or staying in Troy,

while later on he oscillates between keeping and returning Hectors corpse (Griffin

1995, 22).Without attempting to further explicate my position on this issue, which

would exceed the focus of the present essay, I limit my remarks to saying that

Achilless overall demeanor is more complicated than that of a pouty youth, whosways irresponsibly from one extreme to another.While there is enough textual evi-

dence to support a reading based on oscillation, there is also compelling evidence to

argue for a certain unyielding aspect in his posture. For an account of this peculiar

steadfastness that underlies Achilless contradictory choices, and for a problematiza-

tion of the very notion of choice with respect to Achilless actions, see another arti-

cle by the present author, entitled "Deserting Achilles: Reflections on Intimacy and

Disinheritance." Indeed, some of the present discussion of Achilless stance in Books

9 and 24 furthers the line of arguments the author has started there.

12 I have pursued a more extensive critique of Naass argument and the ethicsof persuasion in "Deserting Achilles."

13 According to the myth, it was in the banquet in honor of Thetiss wedding

that the goddess of discord, Eris, left a golden apple as a token of dispute among the

other goddesses (Hera,Athena, and Aphrodite).The dispute necessitated the arbitra-

tion of a young Trojan prince, Paris.As a reward from Aphrodite for granting her the

apple in the contest, Paris received Helen of Sparta, thus instigating the Trojan War.

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Bataille, Georges. 1955. Lascaux, or the Birth of Art: Prehistoric Painting.Trans. Austryn

Wainhouse. Lausanne, Switzerland: Skira.

Benardete, Seth. 2000.Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus. In The Argument of the Action:

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