The Philoctetes Project

Freshly back from Antarctica, Arline points us to Wikipedia's article about Sophocles' Philoctetes. Besides offering a helpful summary of its backstory, the piece speaks of the "Philoctetes Project":

The story of Philoctetes, dealing with the wounded man and the interwoven relationships with others, has been frequently noted. In 2005 Bryan Doerries, writer and director, began a series of readings of the play in the New York city area. Noting the reactions of the audience to the reading, especially related to the reactions of audience members to the interaction of the suffering soldier and the conflicted caregiver, he and others started the Philoctetes Project.^[4] The project revolves around presenting such readings, especially to audiences of medical professionals and students. 

A number of readings were followed by a panel discussion about doctor-patient relationships, involving presenters in psychiatry, physicians, and military medical personnel^[5] among others. 

The concept has also been extended to training of medical students, such as a presentation also in 2007 to the first year medical class at Weill Medical College of Cornell University,^[6] involving not only the students, but also faculty members. The presentation included a discussion of an actual case dealing with the patient-caregiver interactions that parallel the situation that Sophocles presented. 

In 2008, at a conference dedicated to finding new ways to help US Marines recover from post-traumatic stress and other disorders after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan, four New York actors presented a dramatic reading from Philoctetes and Ajax. The plays focussed on physical and psychological wounds inflicted on the warrior.^[7]

The greatest glory: Helen to Paris (II)

...picking up the thread from here...

Ovid of course was familiar with the allegorization of the Judgment of Paris as a parable of choice. At stake is nothing less than one's fate, since the choice concerns the human values assigned to the pursuits of politics (action) philosophy (contemplation) and pleasure (aesthetics) -- a standard theme within the Greek and Roman thought about education (paideia). How one orders these values has everything to do with the kind of life one will live.

The first thing one notices about Paris's letter to Helen (Heroides 16) is that apart from a quick nod to Juno and Athena, he only speaks of Venus and of the love she has ignited in him. Paris seems quite unreflective about the stakes, implications and ultimate consequences of his judgment. He's all about wanting to get Helen aboard his ship and out of Dodge.

Helen's response - rescribendi - (Heroides 17) is about something else.

A word both Paris and Helen use is rustĭcus. At one point, Paris calls Menelaos "that rustic" with the sneer of an aristocrat describing a boorish oaf or peasant. Paris then applies the word to Helen:

An pudet et metuis Venerem temerare maritam

     Castaque legitimi fallere iura tori?

A, nimium simplex Helene, ne rustica dicam,

     Hanc faciem culpa posse carere putas? (285-88)

Do you feel shame and fear to violate your wedded love, to be false to the chaste oath of the marriage bed? Ah, too simple, nay, too rustic Helen, do you think that beauty of yours can be free of fault?

The reader can safely be assumed to be summoning up a passel of movie scenes involving the city slicker coming on condescendingly to the lovely small town girl. 

Helen picks up the word and gives it her own twist:

Qui sic intrabas, hospes an hostis eras?

Nec dubito, quin haec, cum sit tam iusta, vocetur

     Rustica iudicio nostra querela tuo.

Rustica sim sane, dum non oblita pudoris,

     Dumque tenor vitae sit sine labe meae. (10-14)

You who entered in, were you a guest, or an enemy? I doubt not that my complaint would be called "rustic" in your judgment. Let me be rustic, so long as my chastity is not forgot, and the whole tenor of my life is without stain.

Further on in her letter, Helen uses the word once more - by now she's well past centering her response upon chastity's cold comfort:

Quod male persuades, utinam bene cogere posses!

     Vi mea rusticitas excutienda fuit. 

Utilis interdum est ipsis iniuria passis.

     Sic certe felix esse coacta forem.

What you basely urge on me, would that you could honorably compel me to! You should have vehemently taken my "rusticity" by force. A lawless act can bring gain to the one who suffers it. So I'd have been compelled to happiness.

Helen regards the predicament of Paris - his and hers - with an expansive, dispassionate clarity that dwarfs his simplicity. She shows him what to do with his view of her as the simple rural waif. Paris thought he was plucking a flower among the rubes, but he found Lauren Bacall, calmly appraising the goods.

Even more, Helen reflects upon what is at stake for her, and for them, with zero illusions. This woman understands herself, him, and all their options and the consequences of each down to the ground:

Oh that you had then visited our coasts in a nimble bark, when a thousand rivals solicited my virgin love! Had you appeared, you would have triumphed over the thousand; nor could my husband have justly blamed my choice. Now, alas! you come too late to joys that are the right of another; and your slow hope invades a plighted love. But although it would have been more to my wish to live with you, yet Menelaus does not possess me against my will.

Nor be you too much displeased, that I am rather incredulous; for things of moment are not credited with ease.

It is in fact Helen's ability to examine, to question with critical insight, that puts her in a league with Penelope, who simply refused to believe her husband had returned, despite his standing before her, until she tricked him into betraying the one secret that she knew no other man could know. Helen's mind and heart weigh everything that is happening. It is she, not Paris, who ponders the meaning of the judgment of Paris:

You chose me in place of valor, in place of a noble kingdom; it would be inhuman, not to receive a heart so wholly mine. But trust me, I am far from being inhuman; and only struggle against loving a man whom I scarcely can hope ever to possess.

And this is the wholly Ovidian irony of this pair of letters, that the philosophical choice every man faced according to the moralists and wise men, the choice of Athena, Juno, or Venus, was wasted upon poor Paris, who was too young, impetuous and dazzled to think much about anything. Helen's mind is a mirror to the perplexing, deep questions latent in the event called the Judgment of Paris. This man has commenced an invasive action upon her that echoes earlier and later assaults:

. . . it is still more that you love me, that you run such hazards for my sake, and follow hope through all the dangers of the main. Nor do I overlook the signs you make at our table, though I artfully dissemble all notice.

I observe your ardent wistful looks, and those meaning eyes that almost dazzle mine. Sometimes you sigh, and, snatching the cup, fix your lips where mine had been before. Ah! how oft have I marked the hidden signs wafted from your fingers, and the lively language expressed in your eye-brow!

She's the man here, and as she reads his face and ponders all of what lies before her, she is experiencing the truth of that judgment, even as she's judging Paris himself. It is about nothing but love:

Your letter is filled with ample promises, such as might move even Goddesses to yield; but if ever I violate the laws of chastity, yourself shall be the more powerful cause of my crime.

And the campaign waged by Paris is taking its toll - foreshadowing the battles before Troy, the walls of her virtue have been wounded:

Desine molle, precor, verbis convellere pectus,

     Neve mihi, quam te dicis amare, noce;

Cease then, to pluck with your words at my faltering heart, and do not give pain to her you say you love.

Her word here for "pluck" is convellere; it's a strong word (root of "convulsion"), redolent of rape, and of the field of battle. Perhaps it reminds her of the giant creature that took her mother Leda by force. A battle is being waged, and she sees how it will end:

Sum rudis ad Veneris furtum, nullaque fidelem — 

     Di mihi sunt testes — lusimus arte virum.

Nunc quoque, quod tacito mando mea verba libello,

     Fungitur officio littera nostra novo.

I am unpracticed in the theft of love and never yet - the gods are my witnesses - have I made made wily sport of my man. Even now, as I entrust my words to the voiceless page, my letter performs a strange new service. 

It would be hard to imagine a more extraordinary image of the writer's critical consciousness of and in the act of writing - rescribendi. Just as Paris could not avoid betraying his love by merely asking if he should speak, Helen's written response commits her to a voiceless trace of an action. She is in wonder as she apprehends the uncanny way her inscription takes on a life of its own, leaving her to herald the inward choice that will launch 1000 ships, trigger the greatest song ever sung, spin the greatest web ever spun.

Ovid's Helen is not merely the precipitate cause of the Trojan war, or its final cause. Her clear eyes see it all right from the start, and her part in it, her heroic part, is to respond fully to this one great love despite all the dire prophecies and premonitions. For Ovid, the greatest glory accorded to anyone at the contest of the horse-taming Trojans and the bronze-clad Achaeans was not accorded either to Achilles or Hector. Only a true poet of Amor could say it, and Ovid is saying it: The greatest glory of the song of heroes goes to Helen.

Nunc oculos tua cum violarit epistula nostros,

     Non rescribendi gloria visa levis.

Philoctetes as a woman

A new production of Sophocles's Philoctetes apparently places a woman in the lead role, with clear reference to the wars in Iran and Afghanistan. The production will be visiting Florida at some point, according to NPR.

The Chorus's war-torn ode to Love

The stasimon to Eros punctuates the dialogue between Phaedra and the Nurse in Hippolytus scene 2. Scene 3 will begin with Phaedra silencing the Chorus so she can overhear what is being said, inside the palace, between Hippolytus and the Nurse. 

The chorus begins by calling on Eros:

Ἔρως Ἔρως, ὁ κατ᾽ ὀμμάτων

στάζων πόθον, εἰσάγων γλυκεῖαν

ψυχᾷ χάριν οὓς ἐπιστρατεύσῃ

Eros, Eros, shedding yearning upon the eyes, bringing sweet pleasure to the souls of those against whom you make war. (Kovacs, modified by me).

Eros and War fuse in the descriptive ἐπιστρατεύσῃ -- march upon, make war. The verb is cognate with the noun strategos, "general," which is the root of the English word strategy.

The ode is far too rich to do justice to it here. A few notes will have to do. The next strophe gives us Eros as the τύραννον ἀνδρῶν, king of men, who holds the keys to the sweetest inner chamber of Aphrodite:

τὸν τᾶς Ἀφροδίτας

540  φιλτάτων θαλάμων κλῃδοῦχον

The third strophe begins with Iole, the virgin child ("foal") of Eurytus, and ends in her marriage to Heracles, rank with the blood and smoke of her father's city. 

545  τὰν μὲν Οἰχαλίᾳ

πῶλον ἄζυγα λέκτρων, ἄναν-

δρον τὸ πρὶν καὶ ἄνυμφον, οἴ-

κων ζεύξασ᾽ ἀπ᾽ Εὐρυτίων

550 δρομάδα ναΐδ᾽ ὅπως τε βάκ-

χαν σὺν αἵματι, σὺν καπνῷ,

φονίοισι νυμφείοις

Ἀλκμήνας τόκῳ Κύπρις ἐξέδωκεν:

ὦ τλάμων ὑμεναίων.

That filly in Oechalia, unyoked as yet to marriage-bed, unhusbanded, unwed, Cypris took from the house of her father Eurytus [550] and yoked her like a footloose Naiad or a Bacchant and gave her—to the accompaniment of bloodshed and smoke, with bloody bridal—to Alcmene's son. O unhappy in her marriage!

Eurytus was the grandson of Apollo and king of Oechalia who taught Heracles how to use a bow. But when the hero won his teacher's archery contest and Iole, he was shown the door. He returned to claim his prize with extreme prejudice.

Archers are usually linked with Apollonian mastery -- aiming and hitting your target from a distance -- precisely what "not missing the mark" (see Nurse 507) means. The ordered Apollonian world of Oechalia and Iole's expectation of a harmonious hymeneal are wrecked by Heracles, ruled by the τύραννον ἀνδρῶν.

The final strophe depicts Semele, daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, incinerated by the βροντᾷ γὰρ ἀμφιπύρῳ "Double blazing thunder" of the king of the gods. Can we say there's a progression in power from the key-holding Eros in the second strophe to Heracles to Zeus? As well as from chamber door to marital bed to womb holding Bacchus? Or would this be our interpretive effort going astray (hamartia) under the pressure of the inevitable desire for order?

(Speaking of going astray, I misspoke earlier today: Eurytus's bow was a gift of his grandfather Apollo, and it passed, via Eurytus's son Iphitus, to Odysseus. A different bow passed from Heracles to Philoctetes. It too might have been a gift from Apollo, but different from that of Eurytus.)

Much more could be said about this ode. The audience need not accept the chorus's vision of Eros either as the sole view or the author's view. Other images of love appear in the play.

The yoking of love and war is a familiar topos in Greek literature. Here's the unforgettable beginning of Sappho's Fragment 16:

Some say a force of horsemen, some say infantry
and others say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
thing on the dark earth, but I say it is
the one you love ... more