Addressing Ulysses: The perfect contrapasso

Virgil in Inferno 26 tells Dante not to speak to Ulysses - he'll speak for him, because, he says, "They were Greeks, perhaps they'd disdain your words."

Words, language, are the substance of rhetoric -- the very sound of words plays a part in whether the one addressed deigns to respond. So too with spelling. Consider how differently you regard a message seeking your input, or your money, when the message itself lacks orthography, syntax, the basics of civilized discourse.

Virgil fears Dante's address would "lack address," in the secondary sense of adroitness of delivery, the manner of coming at someone:

1 dutiful and courteous attention especially in courtship —usually used in plural 

2 a: readiness and capability for dealing (as with a person or problem) skillfully and smoothly : adroitness 

b obsolete: a making ready; also : a state of preparedness

3 a: manner of bearing oneself  

b: manner of speaking or singing: delivery

Turning to the Greeks, the Roman poet employs a full-bore captatio benevolentiae -- working on his audience by alluding to his own alti versi, the lofty lines of his epic (lines that in fact do nothing to enhance Ulysses' reputation):

"If I deserved of you while I lived . . . if I deserved of you much or little when in the world I wrote the lofty lines, do not move on, but let the one of you tell where, being lost, he went to die."

The ploy works; Ulysses begins a speech that manages to contain a full life's quest within a few lines.

I want to look at the first thing he says, simply because in the large commentary devoted to this canto, these lines might receive short shrift. Ulysses begins:

When I parted from Circe, who held me more than a year near Gaeta before Aeneas so named it . . .

The parallel is clear: Ulysses was "held" -- the verb sottrarre can carry the suggestion of something taken fraudulently -- by Circe, the witch who turned his men into animals. Aeneas, coming to the same place, chooses to name it for his beloved wetnurse, and it bears that name today: Gaeta.

The contrast is between the wily Greek who, though escaping bestial enchantment, nonetheless is caught in the charms of Circe for "more than a year," and the Roman leader who, seeking a new land, names a beautiful portion of it for the nurse who nurtured him (and his son, some say), and who died at that point in their journey.

Throughout the Aeneid the Romans show themselves often nobler, more generous, and more rooted in the realm of the heart than the Greeks. In bestowing the humble nurse's name upon the isle of Circe, Aeneas moves toward the obliteration of the memory of Ulysses' experience there. Ulysses is being written out of epic memory on the Roman peninsula.

For Dante and his world, many of the names they use derive from the exploits, stories, the emperors and poets of Rome. The world was a palimpsest; one could dig down and find Greek predecessors, but they have been overwritten -- put into Italic form, or completely replaced by names that bring in indigenous Roman stories and achievements. Romans accepted the fact that they came after the brilliant world of Greece, but they push back, asserting different values and priorities. Allusively the point is made: Ulysses and the Greeks might have mapped out the world, explored it, given us knowledge, but the romance of the Roman people, their quest and glory, has remapped it with its own aura and meanings.

If Ulysses's language is usurped in this way, it points to another, larger eclipse further on in his journey. To know things is to name them, and Ulysses is rather meticulous in giving his auditors the names of places he and his men took in on their last voyage:

                            Spagna,  

fin nel Morrocco, e l'isola de' Sardi . . . 

. . . Sibilla . . .

 . . . Setta.

Passing the pillars of Heracles they sail five months into the blank oceanic void beyond. A mountain appears, and with it the storm that takes them under. Ulysses has no name for the mountain, of course (see previous post). He has no idea what it is, that it's made of earth that fled the body of Satan as he plummeted down and reamed out the core of the planet.* Ulysses lacks all sense of this, and, of course, he had no one to whom to tell his tale. So neither a name, nor a memory of the exploit, lives on -- other than in the Commedia. 

The world's most accomplished traveler, this former hero of the nostos, not only doesn't return, but also leaves no tale of his final destination, no trace. This silence, this aphasia, is the antithesis of kleos for the Greeks. Only a judicial imagination of genius could have produced what happens here: a contrapasso loaded with irony potent enough to punish Ulysses.

For the Greek teller of tales knows that this, his greatest exploit, was swallowed up with his drowning, and this will help us understand why Ulysses is Dante's uncannily nightmarish doppelganger. To have seen what he saw but cannot name or chart, and then to drown, puts his staggering final tale out of reach of knowledge, fame, earshot, of language itself. For this Homeric hero, no greater punishment is conceivable than to have been graced with achieving one incomparable feat, only to lie beneath the sea in eternal silence in the absolute certitude (he will never know otherwise) that no one will ever hear the greatest story he or his odyssey ever could have told. In this certitude, the hero encounters a judge who knew precisely how he deserved to be addressed.

*Lucifer, in falling, excavated the earth that creates the empty cone of hell, carved into the northern hemisphere; the displaced earth fled from Lucifer and then became Mount Purgatory, a cone of earth that rises up in the middle of the southern hemisphere.

Columbia University, Digital Dante.

Experiencing nothing: Ulysses in Inferno 26

[Note: this post has undergone several revisions - I hope it's now "finished."]

Our stimulating discussion of Inferno 26 today made it clearer to me than ever before how rich and enigmatic the canto of Ulysses is. I won't try to summarize the many fine points made by everyone, or the positions regarding whether to find damnable fault, and where, in the career of the Greek hero.

I just want to make a couple of place-holding points while fresh in mind. First, the canto is resonant with images of light, fire, sun, moon, and things large and small. More than just large or small, there is a strange almost quantum effect in which something that was small becomes quite huge, while never ceasing to be small. Scale is liquid, and ingegno, the Muse, must be restrained even as Dante is nearly overwhelmed in the presence of his classical double, the hero of many turns, whose rhetorical art was capable of putting in motion consequences beyond his control.

If nothing else, the presence of Ulysses -- both implicit and via explicit allusion --throughout all three canticles ought to make it clear that Athena's favorite is the predecessor and double of the pilgrim who is following Virgil through hell and purgatory. Take the alto passo where Ulysses meets his end. When we learn from this unique tale that Ulysses drowned within sight of the Mount of Purgatory, we might experience a certain uncanny frisson, remembering the pilgrim lost in the wood who looks back at the passo where he nearly drowned, and looks up at a mountain he cannot climb.

E come quei che con lena affannata,
    uscito fuor del pelago a la riva,
    si volge a l’acqua perigliosa e guata,
così l’animo mio, ch’ancor fuggiva,
    si volse a retro a rimirar lo passo
    che non lasciò già mai persona viva.

And just as someone who, with panting chest,
    Has made his way to shore from the deep sea
    Turns back to gaze at the deadly waters crossed,
So too my mind, continuing to flee,
    Turned back to look again upon that trail
    That never yet let living man go free.*

More allusions to Ulysses come later in the poem And the tale he tells, of seeking to experience the unknown, to know it, presents a paradox basic to the quest: what is there to know if there is still the striving for knowledge, but nothing left in the world to know?

Ulysses is in hell, says Virgil, because he used his arte and ingegno to cause certain events to occur. We have seen this illustrated in granular detail in our reading of the Philoctetes, but it's built in to the mythos of the great-grandson of Hermes. Unlike the horses that took Elijah to the highest, Ulysses fashioned a false horse and the lie that got it into Troy.

Ulysses troubled Dante, just as had the noble ancients of Limbo, and Dante gives him a staggering last hurrah. Profound recognition and admiration -- as well as unsettling fascination and longing -- accompany Dante's encounter with this figure. All the terror of canto 1 is there, at the end of canto 26:

Tre volte il fé girar con tutte l’acque;
    a la quarta levar la poppa in suso
    e la prora ire in giù, com’ altrui piacque,
infin che ’l mar fu sovra noi richiuso.

Ulysses might be damned to the eighth bolgia for his false light of counsel, but his grit is all too human. Which raises the question of how to read his ultimate contrapasso. One might be advised to tread carefully when attempting to read divine judgment.

What Virgil does not say is that Ulysses is damned for seeking to know the unknown. One way to see Dante's tale of Ulysses' final voyage is as a parody of grace. No other living mortal -- certainly no pagan -- ever laid eyes on the Mount of Purgatory. If the Deity wished to bar Ulysses from overreaching, a turbo could have sunk his little boat anywhere along its folle volo. "Altrui" didn't prevent it from reaching visual range of Purgatory.

This is a man who lacked knowledge of Revelation,  but almost stole it.

The summit of human striving goes no further -- Ulysses doesn't even make it to the soggy beach at the base of the mount. His double, Dante, will. Ulysses is graced with an extraordinary glimpse before he drowns. The pilgrim goes a different route, one that is in touch not only with classical wisdom but endowed with Revelation, and goes beyond Ulysses by a different way, not under his own steam.

No other human, not even Heracles, came close to what Ulysses experienced. The punishing irony: he has no idea what he experienced. He saw with the naked eye what could not be seen, what could not be part of experience or knowledge in the classical, horizontal sense: the upward spiraling ladder of Revelation may only be gratuitously given, never discovered, uncovered, inferred or deduced by any inquiry, math or logic. To see revealed truth without Revelation is tantamount to seeing nothing at all.

*Translation courtesy of Peter D'Epiro.

Two-mouthed play: the duality of the Philoctetes

προσαναγκάζειν τὸν Σωκράτη ὁμολογεῖν αὐτοὺς τοῦ αὐτοῦ ἀνδρὸς εἶναι κωμῳδίαν καὶ τραγῳδίαν ἐπίστασθαι ποιεῖν, καὶ τὸν τέχνῃ τραγῳδοποιὸν ὄντα καὶ κωμῳδοποιὸν εἶναι.

Socrates was compelling them to admit that the same man could have the knowledge required for writing comedy and tragedy—that the fully skilled tragedian could be a comedian as well. Plato, Symposium.

To some it seems impossible that I could still have something left to say about Sophocles' Philoctetes. A friend has delicately suggested that I should make an end. Let's end with the man who wrote it - a man whose work embodies a fusion of thought and feeling. As the late Eduardo Galeano wrote,

My language is a feel-thinking language, feeling and thinking at once, that is why it is a celebration of life, and at once it is a denunciation of everything that is not allowed in life to be real life, its plenitude.

Sophocles was about 88 when his Philoctetes was performed, winning first prize. It's an old man's play, a storehouse of an extraordinary life in 5th century Athens.

It's worth noticing that his abandoned character was neither a woman, a poor man, or someone of less than 100% Greek ethnicity. This is not a tale of racism, sexism or classism. Rather, it's a story about what the best are capable of doing to their peers under the intense pressures of life, war, and duty.

Never in dispute is the fact that Philoctetes was most cruelly used by the Atreides and by Odysseus at their bidding. His resulting suffering and alienation are explored in potent speeches. Nothing hides the sordidness of the case, nothing embellishes. The harsh natural world coupled with the mute neglect and indifference of his peers is voiced with the plenitude Galeano speaks of:

Birds my victims, tribes of bright-eyed wild creatures,
tenants of these hills, you need not flee from me or my house.
No more the strength of my hands, of my bow, is mine.
Come! It is a good time to glut yourselves freely on my discolored flesh . . .
                                                                        (Grene 1148-52)

ὦ πταναὶ θῆραι χαροπῶν τ᾽ ἔθνη θηρῶν, οὓς ὅδ᾽ ἔχει χῶρος οὐρεσιβώτας, μηκέτ᾽ ἀπ᾽ αὐλίων φυγᾷ 1150πηδᾶτ᾽: οὐ γὰρ ἔχω χεροῖν τὰν πρόσθεν βελέων ἀλκάν, ὦ δύστανος ἐγὼ τανῦν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀνέδην, ὁ δὲ χῶρος ἄρ᾽ οὐκέτι φοβητὸς οὐκέθ᾽ ὑμῖν, 1155ἕρπετε: νῦν καλὸν ἀντίφονον κορέσαι στόμα πρὸς χάριν ἐμᾶς σαρκὸς αἰόλας: 

But the thrust and climax of the play is not here. His suffering is rendered with naturalistic power, but this is one moment within a larger mythical encounter. (We noted the co-presence of both naturalism and mythic language early on in our reading of this play.)

Sophocles expands the tragic frame to bring in Odysseus, the man of occasion, the crafty illusionist, the resourceful man of words. Odysseus is comedic through and through; his skills are practical, group-oriented, businesslike. He is an agent sent to do a job -- he is there to ensure through winning words a happy end for all.

We miss part of the strange texture of the play if we do not relish the potential comedy of Odysseus. His self-referential denigration as the false Merchant would be delightful in the hands of the right actor. Twice in the play Odysseus runs offstage to avoid being shot by Philoctetes or pummeled by Neoptolemus. Depending on how this is performed, it can be a dramatic show of cowardly smarts, or a broader "feets-don't-fail-me-now" piece of farce typical of low characters in ancient Comedy.

Odysseus announces at the very start that he has a ruse; he seems confident of its ability to persuade Philoctetes to return to the war. At every point in the play, we are uncertain whether fateful events are unfolding of themselves, or we are audiences to a script authored and directed by Odysseus. The tension is structural: Tragedy's dignity, pathos, and claim to significance are never more at risk than when comedy threatens to puncture the spell.

. . . the fully skilled tragedian could be a comedian as well.

Sophocles appears to have fulfilled the high goal of Socrates: he has shown he knows how to produce both genres -- a double-mouthed play. Poised perfectly, the text turns endlessly around this duality, not unlike one of those ambiguous illusions that seem one moment to be one thing, and suddenly quite another thing altogether.

The heightened relation of the comedic and tragic in the Philoctetes differs from earlier works of this playwright. The text holds both masks in tension.

It might be fanciful to see a resemblance here to the tension Socrates speaks of in the Symposium with regard to Eros, but it's hard to resist. At the feast he tells Diotima's tale of the inevitable attraction of Poros and Penia, Resource (or, Contrivance) and Poverty, whose union produces Eros the archer. Poros and Penia are like figures in the tapestry of the Philoctetes: a man in isolation, lacking all, unloved, encounters an artful speaker seeking his seduction.

As Socrates puts it:

Eros is ever poor, and far from tender or beautiful as most suppose him: [203d] rather is he hard and parched, shoeless and homeless; on the bare ground always he lies with no bedding, and takes his rest on doorsteps and waysides in the open air. . .

Eros is . . .  always weaving some stratagem; desirous and competent of wisdom, throughout life ensuing the truth; a master of jugglery, witchcraft, [203e] and artful speech.

The rhetorical duel of the Philoctetes -- strangely akin to that which Socrates finds within Eros itself -- sets in motion the endgame of the Trojan war and mirrors its beginning. Odysseus woos Philoctetes and takes him off in his ship, much as Paris had seduced Helen. Fortunes are turning. Philoctetes' heel will be made whole, enabling him to wound Paris mortally in the heel. The saddest man on Earth has the Heraclean bow, and he's on his way to Troy.

χαῖρ᾽, ὦ Λήμνου πέδον ἀμφίαλον, 

καί μ᾽ εὐπλοίᾳ πέμψον ἀμέμπτως, 

ἔνθ᾽ ἡ μεγάλη Μοῖρα κομίζει 

γνώμη τε φίλων χὠ πανδαμάτωρ 

δαίμων, ὃς ταῦτ᾽ ἐπέκρανεν.

Farewell, foothold of Lemnos embraced by two seas, [1465] and send me sailing fair to my heart's content there where mighty Fate and the intent of my friends carries me, and the all-taming god who has brought these things to pass.

Ambiguous equation: What we don't know in the Philoctetes

We've looked at the lonely anguish of the abandoned Philoctetes, and how even the chorus was moved by the wounded man's condition:

Chorus
Here, he alone was his own neighbor, powerless to walk, with no one in the land to be his companion while he suffered—no one to whom he could cry out a lament that would be answered [695] for the plague that gnawed his flesh and drained his blood—no one to lull with healing herbs gathered from the nourishing earth the burning blood which oozed from the ulcers of his [700] envenomed foot, whenever the torment attacked him. Instead he would then creep this way or that, stumbling like a child without his kind nurse, to any place from where his needs [705] might be supplied, whenever the devouring anguish withdrew.

Indeed, it's the almost involuntary compassion evinced by the sailors that enables us to understand and be persuaded that Neoptolemus too, after taking on the role that Odysseus had assigned him of seeming to be Philoctetes' friend, actually becomes that friend, vowing to take him home to Oeta.

The relationship of Neoptolemus and Philoctetes is complex. At first, the younger man is clearly playing the role assigned him - getting Philoctetes to hand him the bow while he falls into a deep sleep after suffering excruciating pain that then subsides. When Neoptolemus reveals that he is in fact conspiring with Odysseus to bring Philoctetes to Troy for a good cause, Philoctetes is stunned, and confronts the truth: that he has been fooled, tricked into giving up the weapons of Heracles, and now faces an inevitable death alone on Lemnos.

Philoctetes Hollow in the caverned rock, now hot, now frosty, how true it seems, then, that I was sadly fated never to leave you! [1085] No, you will witness my death, too. Ah, ah, me! Sad dwelling, so long filled with the pain welling from my flesh, what will be my daily portion hereafter? [1090] Where, from what provision, shall I, unhappy, find any hope of sustenance? Above my head the tremulous doves will go on their way through the whistling wind. I can stop their flight no more.

Let's look at this from Odysseus's point of view. With Neoptolemus's help, he's succeeded in obtaining the weapon, but Philoctetes is choosing to starve to death rather than rejoin the Greek cause, so great is his detestation of the Atreidai and Odysseus, and his disappointment in the treachery of Neoptolemus.

Odysseus and Neoptolemus then leave Philoctetes with the chorus while they go to the ships. The chorus, which had been deeply sympathetic, now expresses a more calculated judgment:

Chorus
[1095] It was you, you, I say, doomed one, that chose this fate; and this fortune to which you are captive comes from no other source, nor from a stronger man's compulsion. For when in fact it was in your power to show sense, [1100] you chose to reject the better fate, and to accept the worse.

The lengthy scene allows Philoctetes to explore every nuance of his plight, and to reaffirm that nothing will persuade him to give in and willingly return to Troy. In a moment of severe pain, he cries:

Philoctetes
Never, never—of that be certain! Not even if the lord of the fiery lightning comes to wrap me in the blaze of his thunderbolts! [1200] Ilium be damned, and as many of the men before its walls as dared reject this foot of mine! But oh, friends, grant me one wish!

The wish turns out to be that they give him a weapon with which he can dismember himself -- this is a man who has lost everything except his indomitable will.

At this point a normal emissary would concede that this man is beyond persuasion.

Odysseus and Neoptolemus now return. They are arguing, because, Neoptolemus says, he's had a change of heart, is sorry for his part in the deceit, and intends to give the bow back. They nearly come to blows, but Odysseus backs off and leaves. Neoptolemus then attempts to recapture the good graces of Philoctetes, but the wounded man refuses to believe his words:

Neoptolemus
Take heart and listen to my words.

Philoctetes
I am afraid. Beautiful words did me evil once before, when I believed [πεισθεὶς] your promises.

Neoptolemus
[1270] Is there no room, then, for change of heart [μεταγνῶναι]?

Philoctetes
You spoke just like this, when you were seeking to steal my bow—a "trusted" [πιστός] friend, with my destruction in his treacherous heart.

Neoptolemus
I assure you, I am not so now. I merely wish to know whether you have resolved to stay here and endure, or to sail with us.

Philoctetes
[1275] Stop, not another word! Whatever you may say will be said in vain.

No words will persuade Philoctetes, but Neoptolemus now goes beyond words. Quietly he extends his hand, holding the sacred bow, to Philoctetes. The reaction is immediate:

Philoctetes
Am I being tricked a second time?

Φιλοκτήτης
πῶς εἶπας; ἆρα δεύτερον δολούμεθα;

Philoctetes is beyond the reach of any words, but being offered his bow, along with an oath to Zeus that this act of Neoptolemus is genuine, changes his mind. He is persuaded that the young man is on his side.

Of course, it's at this moment that Odysseus springs from his concealment and confronts them.

Odysseus
But I forbid it, as the gods are my witnesses, in the name of the Atreids and the entire army!

Interestingly Odysseus doesn't use the usual word for "witness"; rather, he uses ξυνίστορες, which carries more the sense of "one who is in on, privy to" some secret plot.

The word is doubly, or perhaps trebly suggestive at this crucial moment, which requires us to ask -- who is in on this scheme here? Has Odysseus lost, thanks to Neoptolemus' change of heart? Or is it more complicated than that?

Anyone familiar with the wiliness of Odysseus might wish to consider three possibilities:

1. Odysseus has indeed lost the game. Neoptolemus is helping Philoctetes.
2. Odysseus's ploy is working, thanks to the ongoing collusion of Neoptolemus, whom he coached when they left the stage.
3. Odysseus's ploy is working without any collusion on the part of Neoptolemus, whom he knew would have a change of heart -- in fact, he counted on it.

Let's remember: Odysseus swore to the army to bring back Philoctetes and his bow, and to persuade him with "winning words" -- without force. He was confident enough to say they could separate his head from neck if he failed. He has never shown the slightest doubt that he'll succeed. But here he's running for his life from the deadly poison arrows. Yet he keeps affirming that his task is ordered not just by the generals, but by Zeus.

A fair reading ought to consider these options. To do so enriches the play immeasurably, because it truly pits the broken heart, mind, and body of Philoctetes, along with his unbroken will, against Odysseus's limitless cleverness and considerable powers of illusion.

If we try on the notion that Neoptolemus is furthering Odysseus's scheme - knowingly or unknowingly - we see that Odysseus still has a card or two to play. Indeed, in the next scene we find that while Neoptolemus has completely won over Philoctetes' trust, he has not completely gone over to his side. Rather the boy offers some rather profound insight into the soul of Philoctetes,

It is true that men are compelled to bear the fortunes given by the gods; but when they cling to self-inflicted miseries, as you do, [1320] no one can justly excuse or pity them. You have become savage [σὺ δ᾽ ἠγρίωσαι]: you welcome no counselor, and if someone admonishes you, even if he speaks in all good will, you detest him and consider him an enemy who wishes you ill.

and adds for good measure a large-scale interpretation of the working out of the dark forces of divine intent:

you suffer this plague's affliction in accordance with god-sent fate, because you came near to Chryse's guardian, the serpent who secretly watches over her home and guards her roofless sanctuary. Know also that you will never gain relief from this grave sickness, [1330] as long as the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west, until of your own free will you come to the plains of Troy, find there the sons of Asclepius, our comrades, be relieved of this infection, and, with this bow's [1335] aid and mine, be hailed as the sacker of Troy's towers.

Neoptolemus is showing penetrating insight into human motives and an interpretive confidence worthy of Odysseus -- quite possibly because he's been listening to him. The snakebite was not random, but fully part of a sacred plan. He reveals in great detail the prophecies forced out of Helenus by Odysseus, which include all the enticements that any sane man could ask for.

Whether Neoptolemus's transformation is real or feigned, he is still on script -- Odysseus's script (we noted here how this uncertainty is built into the structure of the play).

It is not unreasonable to believe that Odysseus here is playing his last card, having Neoptolemus bring out every argument. They are powerful arguments -- restored health, heroic work, glory, obedience to Zeus -- which, in this renewed moment of trust, might persuade Philoctetes to undergo his own change of heart [μεταγιγνώσκω].

If we read this scene this way, it in fact conforms to an extended uncertainty that runs spinelike throughout the play, which has everything to do with whether something is actual, or simply represented, pretended, feigned. It's present when the chorus sings the tale of Ixion, itself a story of doubles and redoubled trickery:

Chorus
I have heard a rumor, but never seen with my eyes [λόγῳ μὲν ἐξήκουσ᾽, ὄπωπα δ᾽ οὐ μάλα,], how the man who once approached the bed of Zeus was bound upon a [680] swift wheel by the almighty son of Cronus. But of no other mortal do I know, either by hearsay or by sight [οἶδα κλύων οὐδ᾽ ἐσιδὼν], that has encountered a doom so repugnant as this of Philoctetes.

Here and in other lines, Sophocles makes it clear that he is taking up a large epistemological problem -- how we know what we know, and whether it is indeed something we truly experience via our sovereign senses, or whether, on the contrary, we "know" a thing simply because someone has repeated an account of it to us. And this problem is relevant for the basic reason that it goes to the root of the event of persuasion.

Philoctetes has suffered enough not to trust men's words, especially after he's found Neoptolemus to have deceived him. Yet he rebounds because he cannot dispute deeds, and Neoptolemus has given him back his bow. But then Neoptolemus both prevents him from killing Odysseus, and pours on the full-court press of reasons for rejoining the Greeks -- more words!

Philoctetes
How can I not be persuaded [ἀπιστήσω] by this man's words, when he exhorts me with good will?

πῶς ἀπιστήσω λόγοις τοῖς τοῦδ᾽, ὃς εὔνους ὢν ἐμοὶ παρῄνεσεν; 

The play grapples richly and in nuanced fashion with the cognitive problems bound up with seeming and knowing, with words and deeds, and, as evinced by Philoctetes here, a widening rift of uncertainty about what to believe, and why, and how. It would be unfortunate to reduce our reading to simply one side of the ambiguous equation. It's far more interesting to open up our "witness" to the possibility that there are more layers to this plot, more possible readings here, stemming from more calculated lies or useful truths, than first appeared.

With this in mind, another question beckons. Has Odysseus now played his last card?

Tough sell: The agon of rhetoric in the Philoctetes

One reason that the Philoctetes is an extraordinary work -- a classic -- is that it takes on one of the most difficult confrontations imaginable, between the isolated, socially and physically wounded Philoctetes, and Odysseus, the fully networked lieutenant and executor of the will of the generals, and of the general will.

These characters move through an intense and fascinating duel -- Odysseus's task is to convince Philoctetes to return willingly to the Trojan War. Odysseus has a tantalizing story of restoration of honor, health, and eventually the prize of glory -- everything a Greek Prince could ask for. But a man who's been abandoned for nine and a half years no longer dreams. Philoctetes's dearest wish is to kill Odysseus with the bow of Heracles, which never misses, and is always lethal. It's going to be a tough sell.

Sophocles has designed the play to amplify the profound dichotomy between the two older characters, with Neoptolemos serving as a kind of bridge between them. If we look more closely at the features of both the archer and the captain, we'll see why Odysseus has his work cut out for him.

In his singular isolation, Philoctetes has been nearly reduced to an inhuman creature -- not unlike the Cyclops Polyphemus whose episode the play richly echoes (see νήπιος: Philoctetes and Polyphemus). He speaks out of a neglected, asocial existence with such lyric power that he might well be the archetypal voice of the outcast, the existential loner, the underground man, the forlorn self persuaded by Nietzsche's potent argument that "God is dead."

In part, Philoctetes can lay claim to being an outcast as his lameness and abandonment so closely replicate that of the first outcast on Lemnos, the fire god Hephaestus.

Philoctetes

O Lemnos, and you all-conquering flame kindled by Hephaestus, will you indeed endure it that this man should take me from your domain by force?

While there are no women in the play, a consciousness of the absence of womanly nature is pervasive. Hephaestus was sent away, or thrown down, from Olympus to land on Lemnos because he displeased Hera, his mother. Unlike the other gods, he was ugly, comical, lame. The cruelty of the mother here, seconded through the play's allusions to Cybele, underscore the pathos of a child experiencing a harsh nature, a world without a mother's tenderness.

Philoctetes speaks with a heart-driven immediacy -- his world is this small rocky place where his pain and hunger drive him to use the bow of a hero to eke out a life:

Philoctetes 

Hollow in the caverned rock, now hot, now frosty, how true it seems, then, that I was sadly fated never to leave you! [1085] No, you will witness my death, too. Ah, ah, me! Sad dwelling, so long filled with the pain welling from my flesh, what will be my daily portion hereafter? [1090] Where, from what provision, shall I, unhappy, find any hope of sustenance? Above my head the tremulous doves will go on their way through the whistling wind. I can stop their flight no more.

Φιλοκτήτης

ὦ κοίλας πέτρας γύαλον 
θερμὸν καὶ παγετῶδες, ὥς σ᾽ οὐκ ἔμελλον ἄρ᾽, ὦ τάλας, 
λείψειν οὐδέποτ᾽, ἀλλά μοι καὶ θνῄσκοντι συνείσει. 
ὤμοι μοί μοι. 
ὦ πληρέστατον αὔλιον 
λύπας τᾶς ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ τάλαν, 
τίπτ᾽ αὖ μοι τὸ κατ᾽ ἆμαρ 
1090ἔσται; τοῦ ποτε τεύξομαι 
σιτονόμου μέλεος πόθεν ἐλπίδος; 
πέλειαι δ᾽ ἄνω 
πτωκάδες ὀξυτόνου διὰ πνεύματος 
ἐλῶσιν: οὐκέτ᾽ ἴσχω.

No one else in the play speaks with such poetic power. When Philoctetes addresses nature, he speaks out of a profound loss of human companionship and of hope of any divine succor. He has formed bonds with birds, rocks and waves akin to those of an child, or an animal. His speech is highly figural, rhythmical, sonorous, and emotively addresses Being as "you," as he does at the close:

Philoctetes 

Farewell, chamber that shared my watches. Farewell, [1455] nymphs of stream and meadow, and you, strong pounding of the sea-lashed cape, where often in the cavern's inmost recess my head was wetted by the south wind's blasts, and where many times the Hermaean mount sent an echo [1460] to my sad groans in the gale of my sorrow! But now, clear springs and Lycian fount, I am leaving you, leaving you at last, though such a hope had never buoyed me! Farewell, sea-wrapped Lemnos, [1465] and send me off with sailing fair to my heart's content . . .

No Greek character could be farther from this mode of speaking than the hero of the Odyssey. Here he's describing himself after Philoctetes has spurned the request to join Odysseus and Neoptolemus who will return to battle:

Odysseus 

I could say much in answer to his claims, if time allowed; but now I can say one thing only. 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. 

Never at a loss for words, Odysseus's facility makes him the ideal broker/facilitator. He fluidly goes with whatever role is required of him, rapidly appraises every situation and devises clever solutions to problems most men would find daunting. He continues:

Victory, however, is my inborn desire in every field—save with regard to you. To you, in this case, I will gladly give way. Yes, release him, and lay not another finger upon him. [1055] Let him stay here. We have no further need of you, now that we have these weapons. For Teucer is there among our forces, well-skilled in this craft, as am I, and I believe that I can master this bow in no way worse than you, and point it with no worse a hand. [1060] So what need is there of you? Farewell! Enjoy your strolls on Lemnos! We must be going. And perhaps your onetime prize will bring me the honor which ought to have been your own.

He not only poses as a "winner," but denies the uniqueness of Philoctetes, the actual need of him. If this stubborn man won't do it, we'll find another who can. Of course, he's bluffing -- they do need the actual, one and only Philoctetes. This is the calculating mind of the strategist, pretending that identities are fungible, and individuals matter little as men become pawns on a field of action.

It is entirely in keeping with his plan -- to persuade Philoctetes that he must come back with them -- that Odysseus here speaks with pointed cruelty, but still, it's devastating:

. . . what need is there of you? Farewell! Enjoy your strolls on Lemnos! We must be going. 

No wonder in later times Odysseus was often characterized as heartless and false. But he's about more than mere trickery. Ask him and he'll tell you: His larger task is that of the politician who is trying to hold together a social order that's coming apart at the seams. This too is part of who he is, at a level above that of the strategist and broker.

Let's remember it was Odysseus who captured Helenus and gained the intelligence of how to defeat Troy. For all his machinations, Odysseus is not a traitor to the Greeks as Helenus was to his family and his people. He is tasked with reintegrating the most alienated Greek warrior (more even than Achilles!) for the larger good.

If we put these elements together, we have something like this:

1. The task of persuading Philoctetes is the action of the play. 
2. It is complicated by the fact that Odysseus was the perpetrator of the original abandonment of Philoctetes.
3. Yet Odysseus is the most capable man for the job.
4. The outcome of the Trojan War, and, possibly, of the Greek world, hangs on whether Philoctetes can be turned around to return and fight for those who threw him away.

In a word, what Sophocles has staged is a duel with everything at stake. If Philoctetes is the immovable object, the power of Odysseus's rhetorical and theatrical skills is the irresistible force. When we look more closely at the play's structure, we'll find the stratagems to persuade Philoctetes are scrupulously explored from every angle.

Over and over, variants of the word for persuasion (πείθω) include power, trust, truth and even obedience. Here's Neoptolemus:

What can I do, then if my pleading lacks power [δυνησόμεσθα] to persuade [πείσειν] you of anything that I say? [1395]

τί δῆτ᾽ ἂν ἡμεῖς δρῷμεν, εἰ σέ γ᾽ ἐν λόγοις  

πείσειν δυνησόμεσθα μηδὲν ὧν λέγω;  

Without the use of force, doing and saying are all that Odysseus and Neoptolemus have to work with, aren't they?

The duel of Odysseus and Philoctetes is the agon of truth and lie, of rhetoric and reality. It yields this playwright's mature meditation on the powers and limitations of words, deeds, trust, knowledge and illusion. We'll look at how this plays out in another post.