Sophocles: Philoktetes

  SOPHOKLES

  PHILOKTETES

  Translated by Gregory McNamee

  Originally published by Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, Washington) in 1986.

  Copyright (c) 1986, 1997 by Gregory McNamee

  All Rights Reserved

  This translation is made in loving memory of Scott Douglas Padraic McNamee (1963-1984)

  Todavia

  Estoy vivo

  En el centro

  de una herida todavia fresca.

  ---Octavio Paz

  INTRODUCTION

  When Sophokles produced the Philoktetes in 408 B.C., three years before his death at the age of ninety, the ancient story of the tragic archer, abundantly represented in Greek literature, achieved a dramatic and psychological sophistication of a kind never before seen on the classical stage: the theater of violent action and suddenly reversed fortunes (the Oresteia, Ajax, Hippolytos) gave way, for a brilliant moment, to a strangely quiet, contemplative drama that centered not on deeds but ideas, not on actions but words.

  Foremost among Sophokles's concerns in the play, one that demanded such thoughtful consideration, is the question of human character and its origins. Indeed, the Philoktetes might well be regarded as the first literary expression of what has been termed the "nature-nurture controversy," a debate that continues to rage in the closing days of the twentieth century. In his drama, Sophokles places himself squarely among those who hold that one's character is determined not by environment or custom but by inborn nature (physis), and that one's greatest dishonor is to act, for whatever end, in ways not consonant with that essence.

  The tale itself, reached in medias res, is uncomplicated: Philoktetes, to whom the demigod Herakles bequeathed his magical bow, is recruited by the Achaean generals to serve in the war against Troy. On the way to the battle, Philoktetes, in the company of Odysseus and his crew, puts in at a tiny island to pray at a local temple to Apollo, the god of war. Wandering from the narrow path to the temple, Philoktetes is bitten by a sacred serpent, the warden of the holy precinct. The wound, divinely inflicted as it is and not admitting of mortal healing techniques, festers; and Philoktetes fills his companions' days with an unbearably evil stench and awful cries. His screams of agony prevent the Greeks from offering proper sacrifices to the gods (the ritual utterance eu phemeton, from which our word "euphemism" derives, means not "speak well," as it is sometimes translated, but "keep silent," in fitting attitude of respect). Finally, in desperation, Odysseus--never known as a patient man--puts in at the desert island of Lemnos and there casts Philoktetes away.

  Ten years of savage warfare pass, whereupon a captured Trojan oracle, Helenos, reveals to the Greeks that they will not be able to overcome Troy without Philoktetes (his name means "lover of possessions") and his magical bow. Ordered to fetch the castaway and escort him to the Greek battlefield, Odysseus, in keeping with his trickster nature, commands his lieutenant, Neoptolemos, the teenaged son of the newly slain Achilles, to win Philoktetes over to the Greek cause by treachery, promising the bowman a homeward voyage, when in truth he is to be bound once again into the service of those who marooned him. Neoptolemos is surprised at this turn of events, for until then he had been promised that he alone could finish his father's work and conquer Troy. Nonetheless, he accepts the orders of Odysseus and the Atreids, Agamemnon and Menelaos.

  Here lies the crux of the tale, for Neoptolemos learns through the course of the Philoktetes that he is simply unable, by virtue of his noble birth, to obey the roguish Odysseus's commands: his ancestry and the nature it has given him do not permit him to act deceitfully, no matter what profit might tempt him. Odysseus, on the other hand, cannot help but behave treacherously, for in Sophokles's account it is in his base, "slavelike" nature to do so. The resolution of Neoptolemos's conflict--and for all his ambivalence, the young man is the real hero of the story--forms the dramatic heart of the play.

  Edmund Wilson, in his famous essay "The Wound and the Bow," sought to read the Philoktetes as Sophokles's universal statement on the role of the artist in society: wounded, outcast, lacking some inner quality that might permit him or her to engage in the mundane events of life. Whatever the considerable merits of Wilson's analysis, argued with great sophistication and learning, in the end to read the bowman as a suffering artist seems more an act of anachronistic self-projection than the drama will admit. Instead, it is more likely that a brace of contemporary events propelled Sophokles to create the Philoktetes. The first involves a curious lawsuit that, as some ancient accounts have it, one of Sophokles's sons filed against him, charging that the old man was incapable of managing his affairs and that his estate, therefore, should be ceded to his heir. Sophokles's defense consisted entirely of a recitation from Oedipos at Kolonos, the masterpiece he was then composing. The Athenian jury instantly dismissed the son's suit, holding that no artist of such readily apparent gifts could be judged senile. Although modern scholars doubt the authenticity of this tale, it surely helps explain the tragedian's preoccupation in his final years with the origins of character, and whether a noble parent could in fact produce ignoble offspring.

  The second motivation may have been Sophokles's scorn for the rising generation of Athenian aristocrats, trained by a herd of eager, expensive philosophers--those whom Sokrates reviled in his Apology--in the arts of sophistry and corruption. These young men, the scions of reputedly noble families, quickly proved themselves to be willing to bring their city to ruin rather than surrender any of the privileges of their class; they argued that greatness of character was the exclusive province of the aristocracy to which they belonged, and that no common-born man (women did not enter into the question) could ever hope to be more than a vassal, brutish by nature and situation; and they governed Athens accordingly, destroying the constitutional foundations of the city and inaugurating the reign of terror of the Thirty Tyrants, under whose year-long rule some 1500 Athenian democrats, the noblest minds of a generation, were executed. For Sophokles, these actions, from which Athens was never able to recover, made it abundantly clear that one's social class had nothing whatever to do with greatness of character--quite the reverse, it must have seemed; but by the time he had crafted the Philoktetes, the humane, mature culture that Sophokles represented so well had been condemned to death by its own children.

  Kenneth Rexroth has written that in Sophokles's work "men suffer unjustly and learn little from suffering except to answer unanswerable questions with a kind of ultimate courtesy, an Occidental Confucianism that never pretends to solution. The

  ages following Sophokles have learned from him the definition of nobility as an essential aristocratic irony which forms the intellect and sensibility." The Philoktetes stands as a splendid application of that ultimate courtesy, addressing timeless problems with a depth of emotion and tragic beauty that is unrivalled in the literature of the stage. (In particular, Sophokles's use of the chorus as the tormented inner voice of conscience is without peer.) It stands as one of the great accomplishments of the Greek mind, a striking depiction of the human soul's rising above seemingly insurmountable hardships to manifest its nobility. One of the fundamental documents in the history of the imagination, Philoktetes is alive, and it speaks to all of us.

  GREGORY McNAMEE

  Tucson, Arizona

  October 1986

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This translation is based principally upon the Greek text and notes established by T.B.L. Webster in his edition of the Philoktetes (Cambridge University Press, 1970), a model of classical scholarship in every detail.

  I am indebted to many friends for their help in the course of preparing this version. Jean Stallings first introduced me to the play in the original Greek; with her, Timot
hy Winters and Richard Jensen helped guide me through the intricacies of the text. Melissa McCormick and my family, as always, offered indispensable encouragement. I am especially grateful to Scott Mahler, Stephen Cox, and above all Thomas D. Worthen for their critical readings of the manuscript in various drafts. Last, I am grateful to Sam Hamill and Tree Swenson, vortices of imagination, without whose efforts this book would not be.

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  Odysseus

  Chorus

  Trader (Spy)

  Neoptolemos

  Philoktetes

  Herakles

  PHILOKTETES

  ODYSSEUS

  This is the shore of jagged Lemnos,

  a land bound by waves, untrodden, lonely.

  Here I abandoned Poias's son,

  Philoktetes of Melos, years ago.

  Neoptolemos, child of Lord Achilles,

  the greatest by far of our Greek fighters,

  I had to cast him away here:

  our masters, the princes, commanded me to,

  for disease had conquered him, and his foot

  was eaten away by festering sores.

  We had no recourse. At our holy feasts,

  we could not reach for meat and wine.

  He would not let us sleep;

  he howled all night, wilder than a wolf.

  He blanketed our camp with evil cries,

  moaning, screaming.

  But there is no time to talk of such things:

  no time for long speeches and explanations.

  He might hear us coming

  and foil my scheme to take him back.

  Your orders are to serve me,

  to spy out the cave I found for him here---

  a two-mouthed cave, exposed to the sun

  for warmth in the cold months,

  admitting cool breezes in summer's heat;

  to the left, nearby it, a sweet-running spring,

  if it is still sweet.

  If he still lives in this cave or another place,

  then I'll reveal more of my plan.

  Listen: both of us have been charged with this.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Lord Odysseus, what you speak of is indeed nearby.

  This is his place.

  ODYSSEUS

  Where? Above or below us? I cannot tell.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Above, and with no sound of footsteps or talking.

  ODYSSEUS

  Go and see if he's sleeping inside.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  I see an empty dwelling. There is no one within.

  ODYSSEUS

  And none of the things that distinguish a house?

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  A pallet of trampled leaves, as if for a bed.

  ODYSSEUS

  And what else? Is there nothing more inside the cave?

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  A wooden mug, carelessly made,

  and a few sticks of kindling.

  ODYSSEUS

  So this is the man's empty treasure-vault.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Look here. Rags lie drying in the sun,

  full of pieces of skin and pus from his sores.

  ODYSSEUS

  Then clearly he still lives here.

  He can't be far off.

  Weakened as he is by long years of disease,

  he can't stray far from home.

  He is probably out scratching up a meal

  or an herb he knows will relieve his pain.

  Send a guard to keep close watch on this place

  so he doesn't take me by surprise--

  for he'd rather have me than any other Greek.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  The path will be guarded.

  Now tell me the rest.

  ODYSSEUS

  Son of Achilles, we are here for a reason.

  You must be like your father, and not in strength alone.

  If any of this sounds strange to you,

  no matter. You must still serve those who are over you.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  What must I do?

  ODYSSEUS

  Entangle Philoktetes with clever words.

  In order to trick him, say, when he asks you,

  "I am Achilles's son"--there's no lie in that--

  say you're on your way back home,

  that you have abandoned the Greeks and all their ships,

  you hate them so.

  Speaking to him piously, as though to the gods of Olympos,

  tell him they convinced you to leave your home,

  by swearing that you alone could storm Troy.

  And when you claimed your dead father's weapons,

  as is your birthright, say they scorned you,

  called you unworthy of them, and gave them to me,

  although you had been demanding them. Say whatever you want to

  against me. Say the worst that comes to mind.

  None of it will insult me. If you do not match this task,

  you will cast endless sorrow and suffering on the Greeks.

  If we do not return with this poor man's bow,

  you will not take the holy city of Troy.

  You may wonder whether you can do this safely,

  and why he would trust you. I'll tell you why:

  you have come here willingly, without having been forced,

  and you had nothing to do with what happened before.

  I cannot say the same.

  If Philoktetes, bow in hand, should see me,

  I would be dead in an instant.

  So would you, being in my company.

  We must come up with a scheme.

  You must learn to be cunning,

  and steal away his invincible bow.

  I know, son, that by nature you are unsuited

  to tell such lies and work such evil.

  But the prize of victory is a sweet thing to have.

  Go through with it. The end justifies the means, they'll say.

  For a few short, shameless hours, yield to me.

  From then on you'll be hailed as the most virtuous of men.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Son of Laertes, what pains me to hear

  pains me more to do. It is not my nature, as you say,

  to take what I want by tricks and schemes.

  My father, as I hear it, was of the same mind.

  I will gladly fight Philoktetes, capture him,

  and make him our hostage, but not like this.

  How can a one-legged man, alone, win against us?

  I know I was sent to carry out these orders.

  I do not want to make things hard for you.

  But I far prefer failure, if it is honest,

  to victory earned by treachery.

  ODYSSEUS

  You are the son of a great and noble man.

  When I was young, I held my tongue back

  and let my hand do my work.

  Now, as you're tested by life--as men live it--

  you will see as I have that everywhere

  it is our words that win, and not our deeds.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  What are your orders, apart from telling lies?

  ODYSSEUS

  I order you to capture him,

  to take him with trickery, however deceitful.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  And why not by persuasion

  after telling him the truth?

  ODYSSEUS

  Persuasion is impossible. So is force.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Is he so sure of his strength?

  ODYSSEUS

  Yes, if he carries his unswerving arrows,

  black death's escorts.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Even to meet him, then, is unsafe.

  ODYSSEUS

  Not if you win him over by guile,

  as I have said.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  And you do not find such lying disgusting?

  ODYSSEUS

  Not if a lie ends wi
th our salvation.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  How could one say such things

  and keep a straight face?

  ODYSSEUS

  What you do is for our gain.

  He who hesitates is lost.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  What good would it do me for him to come to Troy?

  ODYSSEUS

  Only Philoktetes can conquer the city.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Then I will not take it after all,

  as I have been promised.

  ODYSSEUS

  Not without his arrows, nor they without you.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Then I must have them, if what you say is true.

  ODYSSEUS

  You will bring back two prizes, if only you'll act.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  What are they? If I know,

  I will not refuse the deed.

  ODYSSEUS

  You will be called wise because of your trick,

  and brave for the sack of Troy.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Then let it be so. I will do what you order,

  putting aside my sense of shame.

  ODYSSEUS

  Do you remember all the counsel I have given?

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Every word of it. I will follow it all.

  ODYSSEUS

  Stay here at the cave and wait for him.

  I will leave so he doesn't know I have been here.

  I will take the guard and go back to the ship;

  if I think you're in trouble I will send him back,

  disguised as a merchant sailor, a captain.

  Whatever story he tells you, use it to advantage.

  I am going now. The rest is up to you.

  May our guides be Hermes, who instructs us in guile,

  and Athena, goddess of victory, goddess of our cities,

  who aids me at all times.

  CHORUS

  I am a stranger in a foreign land.

  What shall I say to Philoktetes? What shall I hide?

  Tell me. Knowledge that surpasses all others' knowledge

  and greatest wisdom falls to him who rules

  with Zeus's divine scepter.

  To you, child, this ancient strength has come,

  all the power of your ancestors. Tell me

  what must be done to serve you well.

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Look now, without any fear:

  he sleeps on the seacliff,

  so take courage.

  When he awakes it will be terrible.

  Muster up your courage, and aid me then.

  Follow my lead. Help as you can.

  CHORUS

  As you command, my lord Neoptolemos.

  My duty to you is always first in my thoughts.

  My eye is fixed on your best interests.

  Now show me the place that he inhabits,

  and where he sleeps.

  I should know this lest he take me in ambush.

  I am frightened and yet fascinated,

  as though by a snake or a scorpion's lair.

  Where does he live? Where does he sleep?

  Where does he walk?

  Is he inside or outside?

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  Look. You will see a cave with two mouths.

  That is his house.

  That is his rocky sleeping-place.

  CHORUS

  Where is he now, the unlucky man?

  NEOPTOLEMOS

  It is clear to me that he claws his way

  to find food nearby.

  He struggles now to bring down birds with his arrows,

  to fuel this wretched way of life.

  He knows no balm to heal his wounds.

  CHORUS

  I pity him for all his woes,