Philomela, A Game of Chess

I read A Game of Chess as a fractal point in space time representing the formal concept of fornication. This mystic scene unfolds in a fabulous room beyond imagination, suggesting an interconnected concept rather than a single scene. In this conceptual space, the viewer looks backward to Eve's first bite of the apple, hangs suspended in Cleopatra's ostentatious and seductive palace, and peers forward to a modern bar scene. Always we have perfumes, be they from glands, vials, or modern commodities. The 'room' transforms through time yet stays tied to that first fornication. Standing inside of it feels like a psychedelic time-travel experience: the walls transform and the characters morph, yet I remain in the same point in interconnected space-time.

The reference to Philomela adds an extra dimension of meaning and space to this fractal point. We ascend from the human drama of fornication into the space of 'the rape of modernity,' for just as Philomela, having been raped, exits humanity and yet retains her soul, the Earth constantly evades the foolish attempts to subdue Her. Now, 'fornication' comes in to stand for man's gradual rape of the Earth's surface.

Besides Philomela's transformation, the reference suggests 'the rape of modernity' for the fact that modernity holds the privelleged position of integrated knowledge. The Modern Scholar looks out of the window of the conceptual room and sees not just a scene of human eroticism but instead a highly symbolic artwork unfolding. As he connects they symbolism with the image, he raises the trope of fornication from the humanistic sphere and into the global.