Philoktetes

Sophocles

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780062132178
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Théâtre antique et classique

Among the most celebrated plays of ancient Athens, Philoketes is one of seven surviving dramas by the great Greek playwright, Sophocles, now available from Harper Perennial in a vivid and dynamic new translation by award-winning poet James Scully.

A powerful tale born out of the blood and chaos of the Trojan War, Philoketes tells the story of a wounded soldier exiled by Odysseus, and the devastating consequences of the abandoned warrior's dangerously conflicted emotions when his former commander realizes Troy will not fall without Philoktetes and attempts to recruit him once more. This is Sophocles, vibrant and alive, for a new generation.

PHILOKTETES

INTRODUCTION
SOPHOCLES AT 87

Philoktetes. First performed in 409 BCE, when Sophocles was 87 years old.

Philoktetes—with a festering, god-given wound in his foot—has been abandoned on the desolate island of Lemnos by the Greeks under Odysseus. They couldn’t stand the stench, nor his screams of pain. That was ten years ago. Since then, they’ve learned they can’t take Troy without Philoktetes and the bow given to him by Herakles—nor without Neoptolemos, son of the dead Achilles. Yet Philoktetes would rather kill Odysseus than return to Troy. It’s up to Neoptolemos, inveigled by Odysseus, to trick Philoktetes into returning. Odysseus, an opportunistic character representing the Greek army, will use any means to carry out his mission. Philoktetes and Neoptolemos, however, are constantly at sea: shifting and re-shifting amidst mixed feelings, deceptions, suspicions, and qualms as they struggle with themselves and their obscurely evolving relationship.

There are many plays within this play. Philoktetes and Neoptolemos are driven not only by unbidden psychologies but by their through lines: the specific ends they want to achieve. With the scenario given him by Odysseus, Neoptolemos is caught between playing a character, a curtailed version of himself, and being his own person. He has a tenuous grip on his role. That, plus pressure from the nakedly visceral Philoktetes—by turns friendly, even fatherly, and bitterly hostile—will wear him down. Remarkably, there are no offstage events in this pressure cooker of a play. Everything happens in the moment, up close and personal. (The false Merchant and his tale are themselves an event, not the report of one.) Once Odysseus’s hooks are set—in Neoptolemos and, through him, in Philoktetes—there’s no let up.

Philoktetes is a discarded veteran of the Trojan War. He is as well a generic old man—sick, smelly, cantankerous, a burden abandoned in a seemingly blank space. Yet he isn’t expendable. The Greeks can’t win the war without him. Further, it seems elders in general are socially necessary. Curious about former comrades, Philoktetes asks if the “old and honest” Nestor is still alive—adding, with the hated sons of Atreus in mind: “He’s the one / could baffle their schemes with wise advice” (471–472). He wonders what future may be envisioned without the ‘good’ people—the likes of Nestor, or the dead Achilles and Aias. “What’s to be our outlook on life / when they’re dead, and Odysseus, / who should be dead, isn’t!” (478–480).

The novice Neoptolemos and the old hand, Philoktetes, occupy the opposite poles of a historical-cum-cultural continuum that is rediscovering itself over a dead space: the ‘deadness’ is not Lemnos, however, but the cynical, soulless present of Odysseus.¹ Objectively, Odysseus does have the right end in view. The goal to unite Neoptolemos, Philoketes, and Herakles’ bow to capture Troy and so end the war is beyond question in this play. But Odysseus’s crudely instrumentalist means lack the cultural and historical integrity, the broth of trust, needed to achieve that end.

Philoktetes’ affliction is intolerable. His intransigence, exasperating. He wants to be cured but refuses to be cured—wants to...