La Douleur D'Andromaque

Grief Triumvirate: Structure, Myth, and Gender in La Douleur d’Andromaque

In the painting, La Douleur D’Andromaque, Andromaque grieves hopelessly at the side of her lifeless husband. Her infantile son, who would soon follow his father’s dreadful fate to the underworld, clings desperately to her. The progeny, Astynax, is bare and virginal in his naivety, but draped in a cloak the color of blood signifying innocence molested by war and senseless bloodshed. Andromaque wears white, the color of purity and newlywed brides, despite her womb being assaulted by death—through the son born of it and the husband who deposited him there. Yet, evidence of such defilement can be seen in the slight dinginess of the funerary shroud crowning her head with modest agony.

The painting features a distinct triangle grouping which is exceptionally orderly considering the afflicted and directionless expression on the face of Andromaque and the overall untidy theme of death and grief. Such a structural shape calls to mind a loosely fitting example of the Karpman Drama Triangle: death the ultimate persecutor, aggressive and spiteful, defiling the innocent at any opportunity—whether that be the one whose life is taken or the innocent victims left to mourn the deceased. Astynax is the victim, helpless and dependent upon the only other adult he has. Andromaque, in turn, is resigned to the station of rescuer.

The upper half of the painting, the canvas, is rather sparse and almost brutalist in its architectural focus. This environment acts as a sort of manmade heaven, that is the first of the three heavens according to Christian theology. Subscribing to the beliefs of Greek mythology, however, it is revealed that every mortal soul is damned to the underworld. Thus, Hector's palace is as “heavenward” as he would ever ascend and it is quite fitting that, in the image, he is portrayed beneath the ground level of his palace—signifying his spiritual descent to the Asphodel Meadows. The near-peaceful reflection on his long since deceased face suggests he already has taken a long cool drink from the mind numbing River Lethe.

Behind the grieving bride and distraught child is a black curtain, hanging from four knots. These knots can be translated as the four classical elements—the last of which, and the only one illuminated in the image, is fire—foreshadowing Hector's cremation. This is further solidified by the puffs of smoke rising from the golden urn at the foot of Hector's unpossessed form.

Further still are three Corinthian columns. Their bases alone are visible—a rare choice, given most viewers only recognize Corinthian columns by their ornate capitals. This is especially relevant in David’s political theme of war and its victims. We often neglect the base or underside of great and stately pillars, so much so we fail to recognize the second face of the same being. By only allowing the base of the columns to be visible it calls to view such a rare ideal in David’s work which is female grief, a rather feminist ideal from David. The base reflects the unseen, the grief, the mortality, the woman behind the man if you will, it is the womb and also the foothold upon which the iconic grandeur is built. Alternatively, the three pillars evoke the Three Sisters of Fate. The first two—birth and life—are shaded. Only the third death—is illuminated.

The gilded belt, removed from the waist of Hector and coiled beneath his carcass, takes the form of a serpent and acts as representation of decorum and princelyhood. The same succubus that constricts around the hips of the predestined and has seduced many a decent man causing them to fall on the ever sharp sword of allegiance. In death he has abandoned his princelyhood but the belts persistent presence there suggests it is in search of another victim to quench its bloodlust.

Focusing in on Andromaque, she reaches out, open-handed for her husband, an act reminiscent of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam.” Where in Adam extends his hand to the Lord, unenthused and with his hand guarded, facing down, a signifier of his not having faced mortality yet. Andromaque’s palm being bared upwards to the heavens and outwards to the viewer reflects submission and hopeless vulnerability, almost like Christ’s palm in the Passion, transcending into a poignant representation of women’s self sacrifice in war and diplomacy and recognition of mortal impermanence, and in this small act deifies herself. She is elevated to the position of the Lord, in Creation of Adam, untouched by mortality except through the grief of having her spiritual mortals purloined from her. This especially contrasts with her husband’s sword being within arms distance of her, yet she does not reach out for vengeance, she pleads to the unaffected gods and yields to the insurmountable unchangedness of fate. With her open and unguarded palm she worships her husband in mourning. In death she makes of her husband a pagan martyr and idol.

The infant grasps for the ivory neck of his mother alluding to the possibility of his mere presence there being yet another foreshadowing of the arrival of the guillotine called death and sorrow. Her own son will be her unwilling and noncommittal executioner, though the blade is unjust bloodshed. His mother however, grips his wrist—does she think she can stop the inevitable? In the striving embrace of the child it turns maternal love and bridal piety into a choking cycle of grief.

Bride of No Measurable Importance

I lift my eyes to the heavens

My pupils strive to catch sight of the soles of the gods

who would so cruelly allow the soul of my husband to be chained to the underworld

before his time.

The only thing anchoring me here

is the beautiful son my love gave me—

so much like his father in appearance

And bearing the same kiss of death, which arrays itself in the cloak of duty.

He is a prince of Troy

Curse the gods for making him so.

It would have been better to have had a

closed-off womb

than to know this trepidation.

The fear of losing one's son.

From an egg carried within me

since I was a babe in my own mother's womb

did he blossom.

Like Leda,

I submitted to the beautiful white imperial swan

as he molested me,

leaving me with a hatchling.

Molestation, I call it—

for I did not know

of the pain one must bear

without recognition,

without praise,

when coupled with a man of such duty.

His masculine glory

coerced my naive will.

I spit on the grave of duty,

that succabethan serpent

coiled around the rod of virility—

shaping itself into a perverted Nehushtan

and like the Israelites,

man worships it.

For offering they gift incense

derived from the ashes of their lifeless,

hell bound carcasses.

What fools.

What muscular and virile fools.

Has not Hesiod warned you

of the bronze seductress?

Man has damned us

to the brutalist bronze age.

You have pillaged Hera and Gaia

in the name of Eres.

You have rejected the breast of Eirene,

and the warmth of Hestia

to dine with Dionysus,

who has laced your wine with ill fates!