Tag Archives: Prometheus Bound

Prometheus as an Existential Hero

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Existential responsibility started long before Nietzsche and company espoused those virtues, dating as far back as Aeschylus in his portrayal of Prometheus, the giver of light:

I know exactly every thing/That is to be; no torment will come unforeseen/My appointed fate I must endure as best I can/Knowing the power of Necessity is irresistible/Under such suffering, speech and silence are alike/Beyond me. For bestowing gifts upon mankind/I am harnessed in this torturing clamp.

For I am he/Who hunted out the source of fire, and stole it, packed/In the pith of a dry fennel-stalk. And the fire has proved/For men a teacher in every art, their grand resource/That was the sin for which I now pay the full price/Bared to the winds of heaven, bound and crucified (ll 101-111, Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound)

Ice Friday: Aeschylus’ “Prometheus Bound”

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Suffering and pain are a constant in this life, as the Greek poet Aeschylus attested almost 2,500 years ago in his masterwork Prometheus Bound.

Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside/The prison wall of pain to exhort and teach the one/Who suffers. All you have to say to me I always knew.IMG_4851

Wrong? I accept the word. I willed, willed to be wrong!/And helping humans I found to be troublesome for myself,/Yet I did not expect a punishment as this –/To be assigned an uninhabited desert peak,/Fastened in mid-air to this crag, and left to rot!IMG_5005

Listen, stop wailing for the pain I suffer now./Step on the ground; I’ll tell you what the future holds/For me: you shall know everything from first to last.IMG_4909

Do what I ask you, do it! Share the suffering/Of one whose turn is now. Grief is a wanderer/Who visits many, bringing always the same gift.