While writing the previous chronicle, I took a few pauses to search for depictions of Achilles in the history of art. To my surprise, they are scarce—and rather anemic. The balance between his weight in the collective imagination and his trace in the visual arts is tenuous, almost absurd.

Years before immersing myself in Luis Segalá y Estalella’s Spanish rendering of the Iliad, I had already been moved by the exquisite summary José Martí wrote for La Edad de Oro. Its simplicity, its scandalous beauty, is devastating.