4.1: Aeschylus's Prometheus and Shelley's Prometheus -- Readings

Please write a brief instroduction for studetnts so they can understand what they are reading, why they are reading it, anything they should be thinking about while reading the selections, and how it all relates to the course. 

 

From Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound:

 

Prometheus: Do homage, make thy prayer, cringe to each ruler of the day. I care for Jove less than nothing; let him do, let him lord it for this brief span, e'en as he list, for not long shall he rule over the gods. But no more, for I descry Jove's courier close at hand, the menial of the new monarch: beyond all [doubt] he has come to announce to us some news.

Enter Mercury.

Thee, the contriver, thee full of gall and bitterness, who sinned against the gods by bestowing their honors on creatures of a day, the thief of fire, I address. The Sire commands thee to divulge of what nuptials it is that thou art vaunting, by means of which he is to be put down from his power. And these things, moreover, without any kind of mystery, but each exactly as it is, do thou tell out; and entail not upon me, Prometheus, a double journey; and thou perceivest that by such conduct Jove is not softened.

Prometheus: High sounding, i'faith, and full of haughtiness is thy speech, as beseems a lackey of the gods. Young in years, ye are young in power;⁷⁷ and ye fancy forsooth that ye dwell in 49a citadel impregnable against sorrow. Have I not known two monarchs⁷⁸ dethroned from it? And the third that now is ruler I shall also see expelled most foully and most quickly. Seem I to thee in aught to be dismayed at, and to crouch beneath the new gods? Widely, ay altogether, do I come short [of such feelings]. But do thou hie thee back the way by which thou camest: for not one tittle shalt thou learn of the matter on which thou questionest me.

Mercury: Yet truly 'twas by such self-will even before now that thou didst bring thyself to such a calamitous mooring.

Prometheus: Be well assured that I would not barter my wretched plight for thy drudgery; for better do I deem it to be a lackey to this rock, than to be born the confidential courier of father Jove. Thus is it meet to repay insult in kind.

Mercury: Thou seemest to revel in thy present state.

Prometheus: Revel! Would that I might see my foes thus reveling, and among these I reckon thee.

Mercury: What dost thou impute to me also any blame for thy mischances?

Prometheus: In plain truth, I detest all the gods, as many of them as, after having received benefits at my hands, are iniquitously visiting me with evils.

Mercury: I hear thee raving with no slight disorder.

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Prometheus: Disordered I would be, if disorder it be to loathe one's foes.

Mercury: Thou wouldst be beyond endurance, wert thou in prosperity.

Prometheus: Woe's me!

Mercury: This word of thine Jove knows not.

Prometheus: Ay, but Time as he grows old teaches all things.

Mercury: And yet verily thou knowest not yet how to be discreet.

Prometheus: No i'faith, or I should not have held parley with thee, menial as thou art.

Mercury: Thou seemest disposed to tell nought of the things which the Sire desires.

Prometheus: In sooth, being under obligation as I am to him, I am bound to return his favor.

Mercury: Thou floutest me, forsooth, as if I were a boy.

Prometheus: Why, art thou not a boy, and yet sillier than one, if thou lookest to obtain any information from me? There is no outrage nor artifice by which Jupiter shall bring me to utter this, before my torturing shackles shall have been loosened. Wherefore let his glowing lightning be hurled, and with the white feathered shower of snow, and thunderings beneath the earth let him confound and embroil the universe; for nought of these things shall bend me so much as even to say by whom it is doomed that he shall be put down from his sovereignty.

Mercury: Consider now whether this determination seems availing.

Prometheus: Long since has this been considered and resolved.

Mercury: Resolve, O vain one, resolve at length in consideration of thy present sufferings to come to thy right senses.

Prometheus: Thou troublest me with thine admonitions as vainly as51 [thou mightest] a billow.⁷⁹ Never let it enter your thoughts that I, affrighted by the purpose of Jupiter, shall become womanish, and shall importune the object whom I greatly loathe, with effeminate upliftings of my hands, to release me from these shackles: I want much of that.

Mercury: With all that I have said I seem to be speaking to no purpose; for not one whit art thou melted or softened in thy heart by entreaties, but art champing the bit like a colt fresh yoked, and struggling against the reins. But on the strength of an impotent scheme art thou thus violent; for obstinacy in one not soundly wise, itself by itself availeth less than nothing. And mark, if thou art not persuaded by my words, what a tempest and three-fold surge of ills, from which there is no escape, will come upon thee. For in the first place the Sire will shiver this craggy cleft with thunder and the blaze of his bolt, and will overwhelm thy body, and a clasping arm of rock shall bear thee up. And after thou shalt have passed through to its close, a long space of time, thou shalt come back into the light; and a winged hound of Jupiter, a blood-thirsting eagle, shall ravenously mangle thy huge lacerated frame, stealing upon thee an unbidden guest, and [tarrying] all the live-long day, and shall banquet his fill on the black viands⁸⁰ of thy liver. To such 52labors look thou for no termination, until some god shall appear as a substitute in thy pangs, and shall be willing to go both to gloomy Hades, and to the murky depths around Tartarus. Wherefore advise thee, since this is no fictitious vaunt, but uttered in great earnestness; for the divine mouth knows not how to utter falsehood, but will bring every word to pass. But do thou look around and reflect, and never for a moment deem pertinacity better than discretion.

Chorus of nymphs, daughters of ocean: To us, indeed, Mercury seems to propose no unseasonable counsel; for he bids thee to abandon thy recklessness, and seek out wise consideration. Be persuaded; for to a wise man 'tis disgraceful to err.

Prometheus: To me already well aware of it hath this fellow urged his message; but for a foe to suffer horribly at the hands of foes is no indignity. Wherefore let the doubly-pointed wreath of his fire be hurled at me, and ether be torn piecemeal by thunder, and spasm of savage blasts; and let the wind rock earth from her base, roots and all, and with stormy surge mingle in rough tide the billow of the deep and the paths of the stars; and fling my body into black Tartarus, with a whirl, in the stern eddies of necessity. Yet by no possible means shall he visit me with death.

Mercury: Resolutions and expressions, in truth, such as these of thine, one may hear from maniacs. For in what point doth his fate fall short of insanity?⁸¹ What doth it abate from ravings? But do ye then at any rate, that sympathize with him in his sufferings, withdraw hence speedily some-whither from this spot, lest the harsh bellowing of the thunder smite you with idiotcy.

Chorus: Utter and advise me to something else, in which too thou mayest prevail upon me; for in this, be sure, thou 53hast intruded a proposal not to be borne. How is it that thou urgest me to practice baseness? Along with him here I am willing to endure what is destined, for I have learned to abhor traitors; and there is no evil which I hold in greater abomination.

Mercury: Well, then, bear in mind the things of which I forewarn you: and do not, when ye have been caught in the snares of Atè, throw the blame on fortune, nor ever at any time say that Jove cast you into unforeseen calamity: no indeed, but ye your ownselves: for well aware, and not on a sudden, nor in ignorance, will ye be entangled by your senselessness in an impervious net of Atè.

[Exit Mercury.

Prometheus: And verily in deed and no longer in word doth the earth heave, and the roaring echo of thunder rolls bellowing by us; and deep blazing wreaths of lightning are glaring, and hurricanes whirl the dust; and blasts of all the winds are leaping forth, showing one against the other a strife of conflict gusts; and the firmament is embroiled with the deep.⁸² Such is this onslaught that is clearly coming upon me from Jove, a cause for terror. O dread majesty of my mother Earth, O ether that diffusest thy common light, thou beholdest the wrongs I suffer.

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From Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound:

 

ACT III, SCENE III.-- Caucasus. PROMETHEUS, HERCULES, IONE, the EARTH, SPIRITS, ASIA, and PANTHEA, borne in the Car with the SPIRIT OF THE HOUR. HERCULES unbinds PROMETHEUS, who descends.

 

HERCULES

      Most glorious among spirits! thus doth strength

      To wisdom, courage, and long-suffering love,

      And thee, who art the form they animate,

      Minister like a slave.

 

PROMETHEUS

                              Thy gentle words

      Are sweeter even than freedom long desired

      And long delayed.

 

                         Asia, thou light of life,

      Shadow of beauty unbeheld; and ye,

      Fair sister nymphs, who made long years of pain

      Sweet to remember, through your love and care;

      Henceforth we will not part. There is a cave,                   10

      All overgrown with trailing odorous plants,

      Which curtain out the day with leaves and flowers,

      And paved with vein'd emerald; and a fountain

      Leaps in the midst with an awakening sound.

      From its curved roof the mountain's frozen tears,

      Like snow, or silver, or long diamond spires,

      Hang downward, raining forth a doubtful light;

      And there is heard the ever-moving air

      Whispering without from tree to tree, and birds,

      And bees; and all around are mossy seats,                       20

      And the rough walls are clothed with long soft grass;

      A simple dwelling, which shall be our own;

      Where we will sit and talk of time and change,

      As the world ebbs and flows, ourselves unchanged.

      What can hide man from mutability?

      And if ye sigh, then I will smile; and thou,

      Ione, shalt chant fragments of sea-music,

      Until I weep, when ye shall smile away

      The tears she brought, which yet were sweet to shed.

      We will entangle buds and flowers and beams                     30

      Which twinkle on the fountain's brim, and make

      Strange combinations out of common things,

      Like human babes in their brief innocence;

      And we will search, with looks and words of love,

      For hidden thoughts, each lovelier than the last,

      Our unexhausted spirits; and, like lutes

      Touched by the skill of the enamoured wind,

      Weave harmonies divine, yet ever new,

      From difference sweet where discord cannot be;

      And hither come, sped on the charm'd winds,                     40

      Which meet from all the points of heaven--as bees

      From every flower aerial Enna feeds

      At their known island-homes in Himera--

      The echoes of the human world, which tell

      Of the low voice of love, almost unheard,

      And dove-eyed pity's murmured pain, and music,

      Itself the echo of the heart, and all

      That tempers or improves man's life, now free;

      And lovely apparitions,--dim at first,

      Then radiant, as the mind arising bright                        50

      From the embrace of beauty (whence the forms

      Of which these are the phantoms) casts on them

      The gathered rays which are reality--

      Shall visit us the progeny immortal

      Of Painting, Sculpture, and rapt Poesy,

      And arts, though unimagined, yet to be;

      The wandering voices and the shadows these

      Of all that man becomes, the mediators

      Of that best worship, love, by him and us

      Given and returned; swift shapes and sounds, which grow         60

      More fair and soft as man grows wise and kind,

      And, veil by veil, evil and error fall.

      Such virtue has the cave and place around.

                                  [Turning to the  SPIRIT OF THE HOUR.

      For thee, fair Spirit, one toil remains. Ione,

      Give her that curved shell, which Proteus old

      Made Asia's nuptial boon, breathing within it

      A voice to be accomplished, and which thou

      Didst hide in grass under the hollow rock.

 

IONE

      Thou most desired Hour, more loved and lovely

      Than all thy sisters, this is the mystic shell.                 70

      See the pale azure fading into silver

      Lining it with a soft yet glowing light.

      Looks it not like lulled music sleeping there?

 

SPIRIT

      It seems in truth the fairest shell of Ocean:

      Its sound must be at once both sweet and strange.

 

PROMETHEUS

      Go, borne over the cities of mankind

      On whirlwind-footed coursers; once again

      Outspeed the sun around the orbed world;

      And as thy chariot cleaves the kindling air,

      Thou breathe into the many-folded shell,                        80

      Loosening its mighty music; it shall be

      As thunder mingled with clear echoes; then

      Return; and thou shalt dwell beside our cave.