On Prometheus and the Promethean Spark

Director's Notes from the 2003 Production of Prometheus Bound at Saint Michael's College (Colchester, Vermont):

Prometheus is most often depicted in two famous moments from myth: in the act of stealing fire from the gods, and in his torment, chained to a mountainside, where an eagle devours his liver. Every night, his wounds heal, but every morning, the eagle returns. His name means “foresight,” reflecting his gift of prophecy, but also “forward-thinking” and “resourceful,” suggesting that he knows the future because he understands the the underlying order of the cosmos. Aeschylus turns a clever trickster into the patron of humanity, an icon for human reason and the source of its passionate curiosity.

“All human culture comes from Prometheus,” the Titan exclaims at the end of a speech at the heart of Prometheus Bound. Is this the claim of a braggart upstart? Is it the delusion of a colossal intelligence that cannot see its own limitations? Perhaps. But Prometheus’ words are also those of a proud teacher looking upon the lessons humanity has learned because of a single act of compassion. Prometheus gives not a blazing torch but a hidden spark, smuggled from heaven in a fennel stalk (often used by ancient blacksmiths to protect embers, when fire was more difficult to start). Fire itself becomes humanity’s teacher, an icon of human intellect even today, the sign of the human propensity for tool-making. When he lists the many skills that human beings have mastered, he’s not describing the lessons he himself has taught them, but the tools that humans have devised because of him – because of the spark of curiosity, the burning desire to know and understand, that drives all human learning.

Such a spark, like fire itself, is a perilous tool. The misanthropic Hesiod felt that it was as much a curse as a blessing. Knowledge can lead to the preservation of life, but can also expedite destruction. Each new leap forward in technology is often accompanied by an astonishing burst in the human capacity for murder. While the gods denounce Prometheus for placing his trust in so dangerous a species, they seem hardly worthy of its power themselves, trapped as they are in a cycle of devastation and bloody revolution.

Zeus, a new ruler with supreme power, seems manifestly unworthy of it. With the overwhelming power of the thunderbolt – a divine technology – he attacks everything he sees as a threat, simply because he can. One reason the gods are so alarmed by Prometheus’ gift of fire to mortals is that the gods themselves are subject to the paradox of technology and dangerous knowledge. (It’s a line of thought not unfamiliar to those modern nations who have a vested interest in ensuring that all-powerful weapons remain in the hands of the few – perceiving, perhaps, that they themselves cannot be entirely trusted with them.)

What Prometheus knows is dangerous – but what Prometheus knows can also provide a solution. The outcast enemy of the gods holds the key to their ultimate security or doom. He knows that the cycle of violence which brought Zeus to power will continue, that Zeus’ weapons will be outdone by as-yet unimagined terrors. Prometheus clings to his knowledge of how this will happen as a treasure to console him through aeons of punishment: a deliciously bitter irony that the former ally, who betrayed him, will fall without his help. To save the gods from destruction, Prometheus would have to reveal this precious secret – but by giving in, he would ensure the permanence of Zeus’ rule, and lose all hope that he might ever be freed. Once Zeus learns that Prometheus knows how his rule will end, he too is faced by a paradox: to stay in power, he must know what Prometheus knows, but to learn that, he must contravene his own orders, and undermine his authority. The tragic opposition is complete – Zeus will not relent, nor will Prometheus.

The Chorus of Daughters of Ocean who come to console Prometheus – water-goddesses who incarnate the tears of the earth itself, mourning the conflict – learn that Prometheus’ gift took from human beings the knowledge of how and when we die. That uncertainty gives rise to blind hope: we strive for permanence, despite knowing that all things must pass away in time. In this play, Prometheus clings to such blind hope himself – not regarding his own death (he is immortal), but the possibility of freedom, in the face of utter, divine, cosmic hopelessness.

The Greek audience knew quite well that Prometheus would ultimately be freed – by Heracles, the demi-god who would one day slay Zeus’ eagle with his famous bow, and permit the Titan’s bonds to be broken. Aeschylus imagines a moment thirteen generations before Heracles was born. The crux of his hope, then, lies with a mortal woman – the Eve-like Io, who according to myth became the mother of kings, and Heracles’ progenitor.

Like many women in Greek myth, Io suffered the unwanted attention of a god – the infinitely promiscuous Zeus – and as a consequence of her defiance was cursed to wander the ancient world in the form of a cow, driven by a pernicious gadfly. Her family has exiled her like a sacrificial animal, given as an offering to an implacable universe. We feel for Io because her situation is inherently unjust: her tale is sad in the way that Job’s tale, in Judeo-Christian tradition, is sad: a testament to the utter incomprehensibility at the root of human suffering. There is no happy ending in sight for Io.

Her encounter with Prometheus, however, transforms everything. Her power of speech restored by the presence of Prometheus, Io wants an answer to a simple question: will my suffering have an end? She is given a long, but ultimately simple answer: yes. The journey will be longer than she imagined; the hopelessness of her situation is even greater than she dreamed. But despite the overwhelming weight of knowing what lies ahead of her, her way is lit by the same kind of spark that Prometheus bears – a blind, but not unreasoning hope that there is a way out of darkness, that there is something to live for in the shadow of death.

If Io can endure the most agonizing possibility she can imagine – reconciliation with the enemy whose desire cursed her to begin with – she will conceive a child born from the touch of forgiveness. Hoping to reveal the need for her to make this choice, Prometheus tells Io the story of one of her descendants, who will surrender her craving for revenge – and even her honor – out of compassionate love. Sympathy and understanding, tragedy suggests, can end the cycle of violence.

Aeschylus’ rendition fully accepts the bitterness of such a choice – Io is overwhelmed by the horror of it. But if a mortal can pay such a price, choosing love over death, then why not a god? If Io makes this heroic choice, her sacrifice will enable the birth of another hero – and enable an end to Prometheus’ own endless journey of pain. For Io, her wandering is now driven not by an aimless fear of whatever hunts her, but by the blind hope that somewhere, perhaps beyond her own lifetime, her suffering will ease someone else’s. Through their awareness of irony and paradox, Io and Prometheus both encounter something they had never expected – a being whose plight is worse than their own.

Ultimately, that discovery instructs the gods – Prometheus and Zeus. The hope that Heracles might free him gives Prometheus another ending to his story, one based not on revenge but forgiveness. Heracles’ intervention – which was almost certainly depicted in the two plays now lost to us that complete Aescyhlus’ Prometheus trilogy, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus Firebearer – might provide Zeus with a way to forgive Prometheus without destroying himself. Although Prometheus Bound ends with defiance – and the promise of imminent, as yet unrealized punishment – it contains, hidden within it, the possibility of peaceful reconciliation, an impossible but undeniable spark of hope.

We can only imagine how Aeschylus himself resolved the conflict. We will probably never know for certain what those lost plays contain. But the absence of answers is no reason to stop looking. “My mind sees more than may be seen,” Prometheus intones, and we may glean from this that humanity’s gift may reside in its imagination – our ability to see the unseen, to envision solutions when no resolution seem feasible, and to transform our pointless flight from death into a journey of potential discovery with no perceivable end – fully aware that our sacrifices, whatever their meaning, are a necessary part of that journey.

Dr. Kirk Andrew Everist ~ October, 2003