by liberal japonicus
In the previous post titled Moral Insanity, I shared the opening of The Cure at Troy, by Seamus Heaney, which is the story of Philoctetes, after a play by Sophocles. Nous astutely provided the lines after the part I quoted, and having figured out the verse block on the blog, I put that all down here, along with one more section
Philoctetes.
Hercules.
Odysseus.
Heroes. Victims. Gods and human beings.
All throwing shapes, every one of them
Convinced he’s in the right, all of them glad
To repeat themselves and their every last mistake,
No matter what.
People so deep into
Their own self-pity, self-pity buoys them up.
People so staunch and true, they’re fixated,
Shining with self-regard like polished stones.
And their whole life spent admiring themselves
For their own long-suffering.
Licking their wounds
And flashing them around like decorations.
I hate it, I always hated it, and I am
A part of it myself.
And a part of you,
For my part is the chorus, and the chorus
Is more or less a borderline between
The you and the me and the it of it.
Between
The gods' and human beings' sense of things.
And that's the borderline that poetry
Operates on too, always in between
What you would like to happen and what will
Whether you like it or not.
I left out the part that nous gave not because I disagree with it, it is more that I agree with it too much and putting that in might seem too pointed, too polemical. And I’m sure I go over the top when I add that last section that ends with ‘whether you like it or not’.
A quick summary of the story of Philoctetes and why I think it is worth thinking about. Philoctetes was an archer who inherited the bow and arrows of Hercules, which never missed their mark and always killed the person they were aimed at. It was not just accuracy, the arrows had been dipped in the blood of the Hydra (killed by Hercules in his second labor) guaranteeing an agonizing death from even a scratch. In fact, when Hercules wounded Chiron, his mentor and an immortal centaur, with one of the arrows, the venom caused potentially eternal agony, so bad that Chiron gave up his immortality.
Hercules was poisoned by the same blood, so painful that he built his own funeral pyre, and before he died, gave the weapons to Philoctetes, who later joined the expedition to Troy. When the fleet stopped at the isle of Chryse, he was bitten by a poisonous snake. There are a few different variants about why the serpent bit Philoctetes, but whatever he did, he was bitten on the foot and the wound festered, smelling so bad that the other Greeks could not stand it. In addition, the agony of the wound had Philoctetes screaming and bringing down curses on everyone. So Odysseus and the Atrediea stranded him on the island of Lemnos.
Unfortunately, (as is often the case with these Greek myths), they later learned that in order to sack Troy, they had to bring Philoctetes and the’ bow and arrows he had received to Troy. (They also had to bring Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, to fight, which I may talk about in another post.) It’s one of those arrows, shot by Philoctetes, that kills Paris (who had earlier killed Achilles, cause what’s a Greek myth if not turnabout?) And speaking of turnabout, Paris, whose kidnapping of Helen started the whole thing, died in agony from the poison because his ex-wife Oenone refused to heal him. Ouch.
There is probably a post about thinking of the poison as a metaphor, but the reason Philoctetes is worth thinking about is that his story highlights the idea of putting things aside to move on and Heaney’s poem is built around this. Philoctotes would undergo endless agony if only to punish Odysseus, who is more inclined to trick Philoctetes, while Achilles’ son, Neoptolemus, thinks that if they reason with and show empathy for Philoctetes, he’d agree. However, Philoctetes refuses and only agrees to go when Hercules (who has become a god) tells him he has to. This is a deus ex machina in Sophocles, but in Heaney, it represents the ‘cure’, rising above the cycles of revenge and ill-will.
I started working on this essay a few days before Alex Pretti’s murder, and I felt like I was moving into something not as pessimistic then, but now I’m now sure as hell feeling Philoctetes. It has become easy to imagine someone who would let his foot rot and fall off if it meant stopping any kind of victory for Odysseus and the Greeks. The whole clown car of the administration, if anything I did would provide them the tiniest measure of vindication or expiation, I feel like I would do the same.
In fact, Philoctetes says this about Odysseus, which seems perfectly apropos for our own scourge.
I'd sooner meet the snake that poisoned me.
I'd sooner its forked tongue any day than his.
He has the neck for anything, nothing
Is sacrosanct, he'll say and do the worst.
Sadly, that feeling does not seem to be shared by the folks who attended the premiere of the movie Melania.
The chorus gives voice to Hercules, giving the optimistic end that is often quoted, but unfortunately, I’m not there at the moment.
always in between
What you would like to happen and what will
Whether you like it or not.
That last line seems to fit.
The play dates from the Peloponnesian war (after the catastrophe of the Sicilian expedition that had decimated the Athenian stock of young men) and a period of political turmoil in Athens (violent conflicts between oligarchs and democrats).
It is almost certain that it was read politically even then. Raison d’etat against the individual liberty, the youth manipulated by a deceitful and incompetent leadership etc.
I can’t see anyone in this administration as Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus. All of whom had, besides their tragic flaws, great and noble characteristics. That’s what makes them “tragic heroes“.
i certainly see the self-pity, and the enthusiasm to “repeat their every last mistake.” But anything at all that would qualify as admirable? If someone like that snuck into this administration, she’s keeping an incredibly low profile. (Probably, admittedly, as a matter of self preservation.) But it seems far more likely that anyone like that has walked away long since.
Actually it’s a wonder that so many Trump-appointed judges keep stepping up and ruling against him. Perhaps the Federalist Society’s vetting is less robust that they thought….
I’m not sure that I’d say that Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus were great and noble of character. All three were men of great ability, sure, but of very mixed character. In this they seem to support Aristotle’s claim in the Poetics:
There remains, then, the character between these two extremes,—that of a man who is not eminently good and just,-yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous,—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.
I think many of the supporting people in the first Clementine Caligula administration fit this description, and were brought low by it. Of the current batch, Rubio is probably the closest thing.
Whatever the case, it’ll probably require a deus ex machina to achieve public catharsis in our current state. We are still deeply polluted, politically, by the miasma we have allowed, and the sources of our pollution have not yet suffered enough to assuage the wrath of the political gods.
…at least speaking from the classic Greek perspective.
Perhaps the Federalist Society’s vetting is less robust that they thought….
Also the Sinister Six’s use of the shadow docket instead of actual cases. Those aren’t precedent under any theory. I seem to recall reading that one of the Justices — Alito? Thomas? — was complaining about the lower courts not using the shadow docket rulings and said something like, “How many hints do you need about how we will eventually rule?”
Does anyone in Greek myths have a noble character as we would define it? Brad DeLong, long ago, noted that he’d rather have Odysseus as his buddy in a foxhole rather than Achilles, as Achilles only wants kleos, whereas Odysseus, because he has metis, would craft a plan to get everyone out of whatever jam they are in. (with Nolan’s film and the Ralph Fiennes movie, the Odyssean pov seems to be ascendent, though I’ve also noted that people can be too clever) One thing I like about thinking about Greek myths is that what they value and deprecate are often at odds with what we do.
Philoctetes certainly doesn’t have any noble traits (those are assigned to Neoptolemus, who was coming fresh to the battlefield) but is identified with a noble act, lighting Hercules funeral pyre when no one else would, which is why he got the bow and arrow. (a quick check shows that another thread has his father, Poeus, lighting the pyre, which then makes the bow and arrows is a tainted inheritance). But in his implacable hatred of those who got him in his situation, I’m really seeing where he is coming from.
My copy of The Cure at Troy has just arrived. I’m looking forward. But it’s weird how the story of Troy seems to be following me around at the moment; I just read Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, and will soon be starting the second and third volumes in her trilogy, The Women of Troy and The Voyage Home. It was fascinating to read the first, it is a story most of us know incredibly well, one of the cornerstone myths of Western culture. Yet reading it for the first time from the point of view of the women involved is a revelation.
If you haven’t, check out Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey and the Iliad.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/08/the-odyssey-translated-emily-wilson-review
A fun quote from the review that gets us to questions of nobility and truthfulness
“He failed to keep them safe,” writes Wilson. “He could not save them from disaster,” is Robert Fagles’ version for Penguin. Chapman has: “But so their fates he could not overcome.” The Greek? “All’ oud’ hos hetairous erruasato” – “but even so he did not protect his companions”. Whereas male translations have a habit, perhaps quite unconsciously, of letting Odysseus off the hook (he tried his best! He just couldn’t manage it!), Wilson is more attentive to the poem’s foldedness, its complexity.
I also may have mentioned this, but if I haven’t, you might be interested in the South African translation of the Iliad
https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2013/2013.03.06/
Fascinating, lj, thanks.
Actually reading both epics does not leave much sympathy for any of the male ‘heroes’*. I wonder in what way Odysseus would explain his 1 year with Kirke and 7 years with Kalypso to his wife (Homer being very explicit about those relationships being sexual and the latter ending with the 7-years-itch). And other sources have Odysseus killed by his son with Kirke who then marries Penelope while his legitimate son Telemachos marries Kirke in turn.
In the Iliad Odysseus is the most active in suppressing protests from the common soldiers. Interestingly, in non-Platonic sources about the trial of Socrates, the philosopher is accused of citing these verses in his agitation against Athenian democracy.
He is, in some sources, also the main culprit in maltreating the women of Troy (and together with Neoptolemos organizes the sacrifice of Polyxena to the spirit of Achilles).
Orestes tries to justify the murder of his mother with the theory that sons are not blood related to their mothers (them being only seed vessels) and later murders Neoptolemos to steal his wife. Neoptolemos beats Priamos to death at the sanctuary altar with the body of Astyanax, his grandchild and son of Hektor (there are vase paintings of the scene).
Authors of post-antiquity had their work cut out to sanitize all of that.
What I find telling is that the Romans (with very few exceptions**) vilify Odysseus. Not for the deeds we find objectionable to-day but for using his brains instead of raw violence as a proper hero would do.
*Medea (for the female side) being an interesting case of developing from a Greek victim in the oldest to a foreign villain in the younger sources. Jason is an a-hole in all ancient sources I know.
**Apuleius being one in his ‘the god of Socrates’
Looked it up again. The Orestes-Neoptolemos affair is ambiguous in the sources. Either Hermione was the (unwilling) bride of Neoptolemos and Orestes tried to get her for himself (and slew Neoptolemos) or she was Orestes’ fiancee, Neoptolemos tried to rape her and Orestes slew him for that. Again, no one asked the girl about her opinion.
Btw, here’s the vase painting of Neoptolemos beating Priamos to death with the body of Priamos’ grandson Astyanax:
There are other stories with Odysseus either killing Astyanax or agitating for it in order to prevent him from growing up and taking revenge (Neoptolemos often involved though).
Thanks Hartmut, more things to think about. I had a section about how the Trojans might be thought of as equivalent to the ‘brown people’ that Donald referred to in his comment and the way Neoptolemos kills Priam with his own grandchild is probably something that ICE aspires to. We zoom in on the Greeks and we see them as humans and individuals, but we pull back and we see a seething mass of resentment ready to loose all manner of torture and suffering.
That notion of the Trojans as minorities is also explored in KAOS, a TV series that unfortunately was not renewed. The allusions the story makes to Greek myth are outstanding.