1. Prometheus Bound in a Global Context
This may seem like a stretch, but Prometheus Bound brings to mind (for me, anyway) the current print revolution in which we are living. "It was a bad play because the structure was episodic, the characters extravagant and improbable, the diction uncouth and wild" (pg 132). The structure of our own print material has changed dramatically. Pages-long newspaper articles have been replaced with brief blog posts. Our multimedia and data mash-ups are nothing if not improbable. And where Aeschylus' writing is episodic, our own writing has been reduced to 140 character tweets. Sometimes, the ground-breaking departure from standard storytelling isn't recognized as a positive change until the audience has the perspective that comes with the passing of time. Prometheus Bound was like that. Perhaps tweeting will be like that, too, one day.
2. Prometheus Bound in a Personal Context
One a personal level, I was struck by two things: 1) the verses in Prometheus Bound that are suggestive of contemporary experiences and 2) the simultaneous similarities and juxtaposition of Prometheus and Jesus Christ.
On Contemporary Expressions:
"It is an easy thing for one whose foot
is on the outside of calamity
to give advice." (pg 149)
How often does someone give us advice, to which we rejoin "Sure. That's easier said than done."
"Worship him, pray; flatter whatever king
is king today." (pg 174)
How often do we cast our lots with he or she to whom some connection confers a degree of power or importance upon ourselves?
On Comparisons to Christ:
The religious allusions throughout the poem were fascinating. One moment, Prometheus was like Christ. The next moment, Christ's polar opposite.
". . .do not sorrow for my present sufferings;
alight on earth and hear what is to come. . ." (pg 149)
This sounds like something Jesus might have said to his followers, or even as he died on the crucifix. But religious thoughts were hard to maintain, especially in light of verses such as
". . . I, a God, suffer
at the hands of Gods - " (pg 143)
While it may have been true, this is decidedly not something that Jesus would have said.
The brief moments you cite as being similar to contemporary expressions really struck me because I found myself wondering if there were similar moments in the Iliad - pithy reflections on human experience that ring true today. It strikes me that in the Iliad we see people - and gods, for that matter - behaving in ways we can relate to, but I believe these more self-conscious aphorisms are absent. This raises questions about the kind of self-awareness of ourselves that gives rise to these kinds of reflections and whether or not people were really capable of that way of thinking in the Homeric Era.
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