Persuasive paradigms: Latour and Sophocles' Philoctetes

In some ways, a play like Sophocles' Philoctetes is more than a rendering of a single story evoked from the tapestry of Greek myth. In choosing this story of a duel between, on one hand, a noble Greek reduced almost to a beast through social indifference, and on the other, the cleverest favorite of Athena, polutropos Odysseus, Sophocles set in motion a paradigm of the Greek world. In that world, a theatrical piece could and did think through the forces that formed it, tested it, and threatened to break it apart.

If one wishes, one can find contemporary authors who have similar aspirations -- whether their art succeeds quite as well remains to be seen. One example might be Bruno Latour's recent Gaia Global Circus.

Circus is "a tragicomedy," writes Erik Bordeleau, that “attempts at plunging into the internal drama of science.” The particular agon of the work relates the question of the Earth (Gaia) and climate change -- a global theme indeed.

Latour, a French philosopher deeply concerned with science, is clear about the aim of his drama: “A good scientific experimentation is like a theatrical situation of dramatization,” he wrote. 

Latour has a point: It might very well be that what physicists like to call "thought experiments" are precisely what were taking place in amphitheaters 2,500 years ago.

The Greeks had numerous stories from their bottomless world of myth that spoke to similar giant themes: questions of world order, the place of man in that order, the precarious state of that "terrible wonder" described by the chorus of Antigone:

Many wonders, many terrors, 

But none more wonderful than the human race, 

Or more dangerous 

This creature travels on a winter gale 

Across the silver sea . . . 

(trans. Peter Meineck)

One way to think of a "classic" is as a work that attacks questions so fundamental that it never ceases to interest and concern us. 

There's much to interest us in Sophocles' drama set on Lemnos. The island is not an idle choice of scene -- it's where Hephaistos landed after he was tossed out of Olympus, some say, because his mother Hera found the limping god too ugly to bear. 

The play alludes to that tale in passing - it's the divine paradigm of ejection, or rejection, of an individual by society - ratcheted up by the fact that the "society" here is the mother who brought little Hephaistos into the world. For both men and gods in this world, part of being "social" is being mobile -- the capacity to run, march, dance, hunt, and all the tasks of war and athletics require health and agility. To lack these is to run the risk of alienation; of course there are degrees of outsiderness. For Hephaistos and for Philoctetes, whose smell offends the senses as his cries of pain unsettle the mind, estrangement on Lemnos proved extreme.

Sophocles provides a rich contrast in pitting Odysseus versus Philoctetes. The latter is given large amounts of dramatic and choral time to arouse compassion both in us and in Neoptolemus and his crew -- he is a study in impoverished selfhood and lack, a human being verging on dissolving into the wild. It is not by accident that a key subtext of this play is the tale of Polyphemus from Odyssey 9 -- Philoctetes's body, mind, and soul are disintegrating in this solitary place into something no longer human. Monstrous.

It's necessary to fully apprehend the radical nature of Philoctetes' physical and emotional state -- the pathos and his huge anger at the leaders of the Greeks that erupts late in the play -- in order to appreciate the challenge facing Odysseus. 

Odysseus is the essential man -- everything Philoctetes no longer is. Strong, cunning, sophisticated, connected, capable of taking on any manner or role (polutropos), and intellectually capable both of seeing the big picture and of thinking through every strategic piece of business needed to win. As he himself puts it:

What kind of man the occasion demands, that kind of man am I. [1050] And accordingly, where the judgment at hand is of just and good men, you could find no man more pious than me. Victory, however, is my inborn desire in every field,

οὗ γὰρ τοιούτων δεῖ, τοιοῦτός εἰμ᾽ ἐγώ: 

χὤπου δικαίων κἀγαθῶν ἀνδρῶν κρίσις, 

οὐκ ἂν λάβοις μου μᾶλλον οὐδέν᾽ εὐσεβῆ. 

νικᾶν γε μέντοι πανταχοῦ χρῄζων ἔφυν, 

What's striking is how confident Odysseus is. Sure, he's worried that if Philoctetes sees him -- the man who so totally abandoned him 10 years before -- he won't survive the ineluctable arrows. But when the Greeks first realized they couldn't win the war without Philoctetes, Odysseus embraced the task with complete confidence, saying they could remove his head if he didn't bring back the wounded man, even though the prophet Helenus specified that Philoctetes must be persuaded and not forced to return to the war.

The full measure of the gageure has to be taken into account -- only so can we see how high are the stakes in this Latourian "thought experiment" of Sophocles. And only so can we enter into the wily fun and strategic gamesmanship of Homer's greatest character. 

In a way, the play works because we give full measure to both antagonists, much as we must to Antigone and Creon. If we reductively "side with" one or the other, the full dimensions of what is at stake never appear, and our experience of the play suffers from our lack of imaginative scope. In many ways Philoctetes is quite similar to the Antigone -- the fiercely antithetical motives, the rift between the State and the individual; the stark contrast of apparent strength and woeful weakness -- and the absolute need to bring them into harmony. 

What's different of course is that the earlier play ended with a tragic lose/lose, where this play -- the next to last produced by the playwright -- ends with a resounding Odyssean "win."

A subsequent post will look at some details of how this plays out.

Danae rendered by Titian and Sophocles

While we've on hiatus we were fortunate to visit the National Gallery, which happened to have Titian's Danae on loan from Naples. It brought back the potent choral ode from Sophocles' Antigone which we'd looked at a short time ago:

The sons of Phineus, Fate and blinding in Antigone

The last two strophes of the fifth ode of Antigone enrich the theme that Fate cannot be dodged, outwitted, or subjected to our will.

From Danae's permeable prison in Argos, to Lycurgus's hopeless repression of Bacchus in Thrace -- both touched on here -- the fifth ode moves to Salmydessus and the tale of the sons of Phineus.

It's a tale of a very bad stepmother -- Idaea, or Eidothea, the second wife of Phineus. This king first married Cleopatra, the daughter of Boreas and Orytheia. The choral ode reminds us that Cleopatra was not only high-born, but that through her mother she traced her lineage to Erechtheus -- the first Athenian culture hero and sacred offspring of an averted rape of Athena by Hephaestus. (More on Erechtheus here.)

The ode, then, concerns a king who was married to a woman descended from the founding hero of Athens and from the North Wind, who bore him two sons. But he put Cleopatra away and married Idaea/Eidothea, the stepmother described in the ode using her shuttle to crush the eyes of the sons of Cleopatra and Phineus.

παρὰ δὲ κυανεᾶν πελάγει διδύμας ἁλὸς 
ἀκταὶ Βοσπόριαι ἥδ᾽ ὁ Θρῃκῶν ἄξενος 
970Σαλμυδησσός, ἵν᾽ ἀγχίπτολις Ἄρης 
δισσοῖσι Φινείδαις 
εἶδεν ἀρατὸν ἕλκος 
τυφλωθὲν ἐξ ἀγρίας δάμαρτος 
ἀλαὸν ἀλαστόροισιν ὀμμάτων κύκλοις 
975ἀραχθέντων, ὑφ᾽ αἱματηραῖς 
χείρεσσι καὶ κερκίδων ἀκμαῖσιν.

And by the waters of the Dark Rocks, the waters of the twofold sea, are the shores of Bosporus and the Thracian city Salmydessus, [970] where Ares, neighbor of that city, saw the accursed, blinding wound inflicted on the two sons of Phineus by his savage wife. It was a wound that brought darkness to the hollows, making them crave vengeance [975] for the eyes she crushed with her bloody hands and with her shuttle for a dagger.

κατὰ δὲ τακόμενοι μέλεοι μελέαν πάθαν 
980κλαῖον, ματρὸς ἔχοντες ἀνύμφευτον γονάν: 
ἁ δὲ σπέρμα μὲν ἀρχαιογόνων 
ἄντασ᾽ Ἐρεχθειδᾶν, 
τηλεπόροις δ᾽ ἐν ἄντροις 
τράφη θυέλλαισιν ἐν πατρῴαις 
985Βορεὰς ἅμιππος ὀρθόποδος ὑπὲρ πάγου 
θεῶν παῖς. ἀλλὰ κἀπ᾽ ἐκείνᾳ 
Μοῖραι μακραίωνες ἔσχον, ὦ παῖ.

Wasting away in their misery, they bewailed their miserable suffering [980] and their birth from their mother stripped of her marriage. But she traced her descent from the ancient line of the Erechtheids, and in far-distant caves she was raised amidst her father's gusts. She was the child of Boreas, running swift as horses over the steep hills, a daughter of gods. Yet she, too, was assailed by the long-lived Fates, my child.

Phineus is variously said to be the son of Agenor or of Phoenix - either way, he's a close relation, possibly a brother, of Cadmus. In a sense, he's a variant of Cadmus -- both were sent to find their sister Europa. Both failed. Cadmus via an oracle ends up founding Thebes, marrying Harmonia, and siring a line that leads to Dionysus, Amphion and Oedipus. Phineus chooses a woman who destroys his family, and according to some versions of his story, causes him to be cursed with blindness for blinding his sons. He also is said to have became endowed with prophecy.

Phineus cancels an alliance with the human cult hero of Athens for a marriage with a woman so violent (ἀγρίας δάμαρτος = savage spouse) as to personally mutilate children.

At this point we can at least see how this background creates a link to the earlier ode that begins:

εὐδαίμονες οἷσι κακῶν ἄγευστος αἰών. 
οἷς γὰρ ἂν σεισθῇ θεόθεν δόμος, ἄτας 
585οὐδὲν ἐλλείπει γενεᾶς ἐπὶ πλῆθος ἕρπον: 
ὅμοιον ὥστε ποντίαις οἶδμα δυσπνόοις ὅταν 
Θρῄσσαισιν ἔρεβος ὕφαλον ἐπιδράμῃ πνοαῖς, 
590κυλίνδει βυσσόθεν κελαινὰν θῖνα καὶ 
δυσάνεμοι, στόνῳ βρέμουσι δ᾽ ἀντιπλῆγες ἀκταί.

[583] Blest are those whose days have not tasted of evil. For when a house has once been shaken by the gods, [585] no form of ruin is lacking, but it spreads over the bulk of the race, just as, when the surge is driven over the darkness of the deep by the fierce breath of Thracian sea-winds, [590] it rolls up the black sand from the depths, and the wind-beaten headlands that front the blows of the storm give out a mournful roar.

Phineus's house has been shaken - the sea winds of Thrace, roiling the ocean, are a fit image of his kingdom overturned by his love of Idaea. We are reminded that Cleopatra was the daughter of the North Wind. 

This relevance of one ode to another leads us to consider that the odes of Antigone might be read as a closely composed group of mutually allusive texts -- a subject for a book-length study. Having no time for that just now, let's just look briefly at two passages that bring the tale of Phineus into line with salient lines of earlier odes:

The first evokes how a house can violently lose light -- a blinding:

(599) For now that dazzling light (φάος) that had been spread over the last roots of the house of Oedipus in its turn is cut down by the blood-stained dust of the gods infernal and mindlessness in speech and frenzy.

The second, from the ode addressing Eros, speaks in a strangely detailed manner to the errant love of Phineus:

. . . you (i.e., Eros) roam over the sea and among the homes of men in the wilds. Neither can any immortal escape you, [790] nor any man whose life lasts for a day. He who has known you is driven to madness.

φοιτᾷς δ᾽ ὑπερπόντιος ἔν τ᾽ ἀγρονόμοις αὐλαῖς: 
καί σ᾽ οὔτ᾽ ἀθανάτων φύξιμος οὐδεὶς 
790οὔθ᾽ ἁμερίων σέ γ᾽ ἀνθρώπων. ὁ δ᾽ ἔχων μέμηνεν.

If nothing else, the tale of Phineus is an apt illustration of one who has been "driven to madness" by love. In the ode we have been reading, his tale follows those of Acrisius and Lycurgus -- two other kings who strove to outwit destiny, to subject Fate to their will.

It is this that the last strophe addresses. Though the entitled sons of Cleopatra had every reason to "look forward to" a distinguished life as royal princes, as well as scions of Boreas, they languish in a prison, where they see only darkness. The future we have the temerity to anticipate exists for us as a mode of unauthorized prophecy -- it can prove false, as it did for these children, as well as for Cleopatra.

If any one could have outrun fate, or dodged the Symplegades, it would have been Cleopatra:

She was the child of Boreas, running swift as horses over the steep hills, a daughter of gods.

But no:

Yet she, too, was assailed by the long-lived Fates, my child.

In fact, the ode tells us, we are, and can only be, blind to the future. Anticipation is illusion. No matter how much cause we might have to foresee great things (or terrible things) for ourselves, what comes is not what we prophesy to ourselves, but what Fate holds in store. As Oedipus came to see, the Fate he dreaded was what he, the unriddler, saw too late. We are always too late to control what is to come.

By coincidence, or Fate, the next voice we hear is that of Teiresias, who knows what we can and cannot see, or foresee.

Danae, Lycurgus and the strength of Fate

The next-to-last ode of Sophocles' Antigone immediately precedes the entrance of Tiresias. It speaks of three myths -- we'll look at the first two here.

Danae:

ἔτλα καὶ Δανάας οὐράνιον φῶς 
945ἀλλάξαι δέμας ἐν χαλκοδέτοις αὐλαῖς: 
κρυπτομένα δ᾽ ἐν τυμβήρει θαλάμῳ κατεζεύχθη: 
καίτοι καὶ γενεᾷ τίμιος, ὦ παῖ παῖ, 
950καὶ Ζηνὸς ταμιεύεσκε γονὰς χρυσορύτους.
ἀλλ᾽ ἁ μοιριδία τις δύνασις δεινά: 
οὔτ᾽ ἄν νιν ὄλβος οὔτ᾽ Ἄρης, οὐ πύργος, οὐχ ἁλίκτυποι 
κελαιναὶ νᾶες ἐκφύγοιεν.

[944] So too Danae suffered her beauty to take in exchange for the light of the sky
a brazen chamber; yoked in that hidden tomb and bridal suite;
And yet was she of esteemed lineage, O child,
and held in trust a deposit of the gold-flowing seed of Zeus.
But terrible is the strength of fate:
neither by wealth or by war, by towered city
or dark, sea-beaten ships can one go beyond it.

Lycurgus:

ζεύχθη δ᾽ ὀξύχολος παῖς ὁ Δρύαντος, 
Ἠδωνῶν βασιλεύς, κερτομίοις ὀργαῖς 
ἐκ Διονύσου πετρώδει κατάφαρκτος ἐν δεσμῷ. 
οὕτω τᾶς μανίας δεινὸν ἀποστάζει 
960ἀνθηρόν τε μένος. κεῖνος ἐπέγνω μανίαις 
ψαύων τὸν θεὸν ἐν κερτομίοις γλώσσαις. 

παύεσκε μὲν γὰρ ἐνθέους γυναῖκας εὔιόν τε πῦρ, 
965φιλαύλους τ᾽ ἠρέθιζε Μούσας.

[955] And yoked was Dryas's son -- the Edonian king swift to anger --
Dionysus closed him in rock-like bonds for his heart-cutting rages.
There the fierce and flowering force of his madness trickled away.
Raging terribly, that man came to know
the god whom his heart-cutting tongue had touched.
For he sought to silence the god-driven women and the sacred fire,
And angered the flute-loving Muses.

The first two strophes of this dark ode of inescapable fate engage in a complex symmetry of figures and agency, each mirroring the other in poetic form, and in more detailed ways -- verbal echoes, images, and so forth.

Danae is imprisoned by her father to prevent her impregnation, yet Zeus's golden sperm finds its way. Lycurgus seeks to silence young Dionysus and his Bacchae, but his heart-cutting mockery puts him in rock from which his madness "trickles out."

Both figures are said to be "yoked" (ζεύχθη), or bound, by forces stronger than they -- Danae by her father, King Acrisius, who learned from an oracle that that he'll die at the hands of Danae's son. Lycurgus is overwhelmed by Dionysus, who according to one version was still being nursed when the raging Lycurgus chased him into the sea, where Thetis protected the god.

Can these figures be seen as reflections, distorted perhaps, but nonetheless fractal images of Antigone and Creon? The parallels seem clear: A woman doomed to be barren, cut off from all future life in the form of a child; a king seeking to suppress the resuscitating powers of Dionysus, whom the opening chorus wanted to celebrate in victory dances. But there's more. Danae was buried in the bronze chamber by her father, the king. Indeed this reflection of Creon might be more apposite, since in fact Antigone experiences no revivifying rain.

Both strophes, then, recount stories of human kings attempting to control divine power, and divine power striking back, crushing them. Far from being avoided, Fate is fulfilled.

The language of the ode does still more. At first blush, Danae seems passively to endure a brazen failure to prevent a god's rape; yet she, or her beauteous form, is said to exchange -- ἀλλάξαι -- the light of the sky for the bronze chamber. ἀλλάξαι could also mean "to barter" -- it carried a connotation of commercial exchange. What first seemed the imposition of a cruel father can be read as a daring and savvy kind of transaction. This is subtly reinforced when Danae is described as ταμιεύεσκε, i.e., holding in trust a deposit, deriving from a noun meaning paymaster, treasurer, or controller, which lends a certain businesslike luster to the golden rainfall of Zeus's love.

If the apparent victim of kingly control can turn into a broker in a more complex "twist" of Fate, then the one who thought himself to be king might be nothing more than a pawn in another's game. Fate doesn't unfold like some natural, linear organic development; rather it seems to get uncorked in our efforts to avoid it. Had Acrisius not tried to avoid being killed by his grandchild . . . etc. Remind us of anybody?

The surprising turns of phrase continue with Lycurgus. He's huffing and puffing against the young Dionysus, but ends in rocky bonds while the blooming (ἀνθηρόν, from "flower") force of his madness "trickles out." The bloom of madness trapped in stone reminds us that Lycurgus was actively trying to chop at the grapevines of Bacchus when, depending on which version one chooses, he lethally mutilated his son, his father, or himself. The king who sought to control the god, to uproot his potent vine, is (like) a blooming flower that doesn't merely petrify, but oozes. The passage evokes Niobe in its curious blend of petrifaction and liquefaction.

The first two strophes of the ode thus offer a complex interplay of symmetries and reversals. A young girl yoked by a king; a king yoked by a god; one turns from bronze dungeon to divine rain, while a crazed king turns to stone, which trickles. The ode, already complex, devotes the next two strophes to the blinding of the sons of Phineus. The poetic dimensions of Antigone are too interesting to be ignored -- especially if one views the play as a meditation upon the relation of the political to the noumenal.