Summer Special - His Left Foot: Philoctetes

Audio file 

“HIS LEFT FOOT: PHILOCTETES”-transcript 

There's something that happens when you put a jigsaw puzzle together that I always look forward to. I do about one Jigsaw puzzle a year in the summer, and I usually wind up with patches of the picture sort of spread all over the table, little clusters that I've assembled. And then there's usually a moment when I suddenly realize that one of these clusters on one side of the table actually fits perfectly with one of the clusters on the other side of the table, and you drag them together and snap them into place. And you have this great big cluster. Very exciting. 

And that's sort of where I'm at with the story that I want to tell you today. The story of Philoctetes. It's a story that I've known vaguely for a long time. And when I delved into it, I realized that it's actually the perfect story to follow. After the story of Achilles on Skyros, which was the last episode. The two stories are perfectly connected. They dovetail together through the character of Neoptolemus. In the last episode, you'll remember that Achilles was hiding out courtesy of his mother. He was hiding out on the island of Skyros, disguised sort of half-heartedly as a woman. But he revealed his true identity to the King's daughter, Dedamia, and they had an affair and the child. And at the end of the episode, Achilles is taken off by Odysseus to fight in the Trojan War, leaving his infant son Neoptolemus behind. Well, in this episode, Neoptolemus returns. 

So, hello, I'm Tom Lee, and this is The Odyssey Odyssey, the podcast that tells the story of the Odyssey as well as all the stories that lead up to and away from the story that surround it and that spurring. Out of it. This is the second and I think the final of my summer specials. And I'm really excited to share this story with you because I've known about it for a long time and it fascinates me. Whenever I'm telling any story at all, there's three basic questions that I always ask myself. 

Who are the characters and what do they want? What are they trying to get? And what's keeping them from getting what they want? 

Almost every great story, actually, maybe every single story is basically about someone who's trying to get something that they want that they can't immediately get. There are obstacles in their way, and they have to overcome them. That comes to me from Stanislavsky by way of David Mamet. Who refined these Stanislavski in questions and? And every acting student worth their salt has these questions tucked, tucked up their sleeve. It's a great way to start thinking about a story. What I love about the story of Philoctetes is there's only three characters in this story. And they all desperately want something from each other, and they're all equally determined not to give it up. So there's this tremendous tension. In the story, the most refined retelling of this story actually comes from a play by Sophocles. This play was performed for the festival of Dionysus in the year 409. 9 BC and so it's it's a good 400 years after the story of the Odyssey, although Odysseus is one of the main characters, a couple of fun facts about theater in 400 BC, it was a competition. Playwrights were chosen to compete. Against each other, and each of them would have to write three tragedies and a satyr play, sort of  farcical, bawdy play and there would be a winner the first, second and third place and this play won. We know specifically it was in 409 because this play won first place. Another astonishing thing to think about. When we think about Greek drama, is that thousands of plays were written. And we have dozens remaining to us. Sophocles alone wrote more than 100 plays and we know the titles of of those plays. But the texts of those plays only 13 have come down to us. And that's true for all the great playwrights. And there are there are many writers. Presumably, people who didn't win the contests, whose plays have just been lost forever. So it's just a tiny fraction of Greek drama that that remains to us, and the story of Philoctetes really begins with Heracles. If you know anything about me by now. You know how much I detest. The Walt Disney Movie of Hercules because they get everything wrong starting. Right away with the idea that that Heracles was born a God in in the Disney movie Heracles, Hercules is born a God and he wants to become human. And this is precisely the opposite of what happens in in. Heracles is the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. Alcmene, and the deal is if if you have a God for a father and a mortal for a mother, you are mortal, only one God was born of a of a mortal woman, and that was Dionysis. But that's only because he was transplanted in embryo form from the. Body of his mother Semele, who had burst into flames into the thigh of his father Zeus, so he sort of absorbed the deific quality of his father. But all that is another story for another day. The important thing is that Heracles 100% was mortal, and of course we know his great struggle. His labors the 12 labors of Heracles. And these were imposed upon him after he had been driven mad by Heror. And in this fit of madness, he killed his wife and his children, a desperately sad moment in in the play of Heracles, when he wakes up from this. His mad trance, and he wonders where his family is and and of course the audience knows that he's murdered them. But he sent off to atone for this by performing. The 12 labours. And eventually he chooses another wife and her name is Deianira. And there's a long and fantastic story about the river God Achelous. This is Deianira's father, and Heracles has to wrestle this river God who's constantly transforming himself. And I'm especially fond of Heracles and Achelois because. That is the root of a magnificent Irish folk tale called the Speckled Bull. Absolutely one of my favorite stories and one of the pieces in my repertoire that I I most enjoy performing. There's a recording of that, a performance that I did during the pandemic. And that's available online and I will link to that on the show page for this podcast. But when he finally conquers alkaloids and is given permission to marry genera, he comes to a river. With his bride to be, and they have to cross this river and he puts her on the back of a Centaur Nessos. Heracles has a lots and lots of connections to these centaurs who are. Part, ma'am, but also part beast. And it's always the bestial part of the centaurs that wins out. So much so that Nessus attempted to rape genera in the middle of the river, and when Heracles saw this, he took his bow and arrow and he shot an arrow. Into Nesos and killed it. But as Nessus was dying, he laid a sort of diabolical trap for Heracles, and he told Deianira to save some of his blood. The centaur's blood. He said that if Heracles ever began to fall out of love. With genera, she should take some of this Centaur blood and coat Heracles’s clothing with it and it would turn to a love potion and Heracles would be madly in love with her once again. So Deianira very adroitly saves some of this Centaur blood and hides it away from her husband. And they do live happily for many years. But myth being what it is, Heracles eventually fell in love with another woman, and this part of the story is wildly and incredibly complicated. I'm not even going to try to retell it. But when Daenerys suspected this realized that Heracles was falling in love with another woman, she remembered her Centaur blood, and she soaked Heroicly shirt in this. And when he put it on, she expected that Heracles would again fall madly in love with her. But, of course, this was a deadly, deadly poison and it began to burn Heracles’s body. It began to torment him and torture him, and he could. Not take this shirt off and the only way he could end this pain was through death. So he erected a a funeral pyre in the midst of his his agony, he erects a funeral pyre. He gets on it, and he needs someone to light this on fire for him. And no one will do it. Everyone knew that Heracles was the enemy of Hera, and no one will light this funeral pyre except one man. And this is a man named Poyas. And ingratitude. Heracles hands poyas his bow and arrow. Just before the flame is lit. And it turns out to end happily for Heracles, because his body is carried up, or his spirit is carried up to Mount Olympus, and he undergoes an apotheosis. He transforms. From a human to a God, and all is forgiven. He and Hara become best friends. He marries Heebee, who is the cup bearer of the gods, and one of the goddesses of marriage, and they live happily ever after. How often do you get to say that in Greek mythology? But they do. But what about that bow? So Poias has received the bow and several arrows of Heracles, and he bequeathed this to his son Philoctetes. What's kind of cool about the Heracles stories in the age of the epochs and the age of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is that Heracles is dead and gone. Is this great? But he is the memory. He's someone that we tell stories about. He wasn't immortal. He's even though he's among the gods. He had this death. His life ended. So stories about Heracles always sort of signify the past. Before this time of the Trojan. But Philoctetes is very much living in the time of the Trojan War, and he is one of the many rulers who gathers his ships together to sail to Troy. But on the way, they stop at a. Place called Chryse. Which is an island and he has the bow of Heracles with him and Philoctetes undergoes one of these incredibly unjust. Experiences that the gods love to dole out. There's a shrine. There's a sacred place on this island that is sacred to the goddess Chryse. But there's no indication of this. There's nothing to show that this is sacred and that. No mortal should set foot in it. He's not breaking any rules. He's just. Coming to this beautiful place, in fact, he sees an altar and he thinks it would be appropriate to go and worship the goddess that the island is named after. But in doing so he transgresses. He enters into this totally hallowed sacred space, and there's a snake there that guards the space. And the snake attacks Philoctetes and bites with his fangs into his foot, and he's in terrible pain and the sailors carry him back to the ship. But as they continue to travel to Troy, this snake wound begins to fester. It doesn't heal, it grows incredibly foul. It's this cancerous. At one point, Sophocles says worm eaten wound. In his body. And lets off this terrible stench, and none of the sailors can stand this. And Philoctetes is crying out in pain. He's screaming in pain. And I like he did nothing. He did nothing wrong. The gods do this many times. Famously, when Acteon totally innocently stumbles upon the goddess Artemis in the woods. She's the goddess of hunting, and he's a hunter. And she's bathing. And she's completely naked and. Act Hyun sees the goddess naked, and she's so enraged by this that she reaches down and splashes him with water from the pool that she's bathing in, and this transforms him into a stag. But he doesn't realize it, and he calls for his own hunting hounds, who see him. And they're so well trained. They attack and kill this stag. They kill their master famous. Sort of arbitrary violent end that the gods sometimes dole out to hunt. And here is Philoctetes in agony. Because of this punishment for a crime he never intended to commit, didn't even know he committed, and the sailors revolt. They can't stand the stench. They can't stand the cries. Of Philoctetes they they tell him that he's fouling their sacrifices to the gods, they can't have this illness on board the ship. And who comes up with the plan? We're not quite sure if it was Menelaus and Agamemnon or, more probably Odysseus, Odysseus, the trickster Odysseus, the wisely 1 Odysseus the liar. In any case, they. Come to the island of Lemnos on the way to Troy, and while Philoctetes is sleeping. They carry him on to this island and he awakes to see all of the ships abandoning him there on Lemnos. And in the Sophocles play you have this idea that this island is completely deserted. There's not a there's not a soul on it except for Philoctetes himself. There are other stories about Lemnos. It has a lot of connections to Hephaestus, the God of fire, the God of the forge, the the blacksmithing God, and some people say, well, he was out of, you know, particularly particularly remote area of Lemnos. But there's certainly no other. Humans living there in Sophocles's play and they just leave him there. They leave him there, presumably to die, but he survives, although he is in constant constant pain all day, every day, he's in agony. And he only manages to survive because he has the bow of Heracles with him, so he can shoot any bird from the sky. The bow of Heracles never misses its target, whether it's human or animal, you never miss when you shoot with this bow so he can shoot birds from the sky. But then he has to sort of drag himself in agony to the place where the birds have landed. And then he has to drag himself to find firewood to light a fire so that he can cook his food. He lives this life of. Constant. Intense. And our friends, the Greeks, our friend Odysseus, has completely forgotten about Philoctetes left him there to die, to promote the cause of the war, they had to sacrifice this man, leave him on the island and carry on to Troy to fight. Nine years into the war. It seems absolutely unwinnable. The Greeks have done everything that they can. Trojans fight arrow for Arrow, death for death. This war will not end. And by chance, or perhaps by the will of the. Words Odysseus captures a prisoner, A Trojan prisoner, and this is one of Priami's sons. His name is Helenus, and as it turns out, he's something of a prophet himself. He can see into the future. And Odysseus interrogates him. And some people say Helenus had a bone to pick with the Trojans because he wanted to marry Helen himself, but he was not permitted to. And so he was ready to betray his family. But for whatever reason, he gave away the secret of the end of the war. He said that the war will not. End until the bow of Heracles is brought to Troy. And with this bow you can kill the king. This is his own father. He's talking about killing. You can kill King Priam. And you can end the war.

Well, where's the bow of Heracles? Odysseus knows he left it on the island of Lemnos when he abandoned Philoctetes. And total side note here, I was delighted that researching this episode gave me permission to rewatch the episode of Battlestar Galactica where Starbuck has to return to the abandoned or radiated planet to retrieve the arrow of Athena. If you're not a Battlestar Galactica fan, all I can say is whatever reason you think you probably won't like it. I'm sure you're wrong. It has all kind of forgotten how many crazy overlaps there are with Greek mythology in that amazing series, but there she goes to get the arrow of Athena. So all of that is the back story. To the play in which Odysseus arrives on the island of Lemnos, and he's going to try, after having completely abandoned Phylacteries to 9 years of indescribable pain and suffering. He's going to try to get this bow back. So if you remember, I was saying about stories being about people who want things they can't get. It is highly improbable that Philoctetes is going to hand over the bow of Heracles to Odysseus. In fact, the prophecy says that that Philoctetes himself hath to come with the bow. Troy will not fall. Until Philoctetes comes with the bow of Heracles to kill King Priam. So how is Odysseus going? To do this. And it's it's worth stating here that he's our guy. He's the hero of the Odyssey. But in the much broader traditions of of myths and stories and plays, Odysseus always has this sort of slightly reprehensible side to him. He's willing to to do anything. He's willing to lie, cheat, steal. To get what he wants, he's doing it for the cause, but his actions, his methods are, are usually quite reprehensible and he knows that if Philoctetes sees him on Lemnos. And Philoctetes has a bow and arrow that never miss. Guess what? The first target is going to be Philoctetes will surely kill Odysseus. So he goes back to the island of Skyros to bring Achilles. Achilles is dead. Ajax is dead. We're getting close to the end of the war. But nobody knows that. But Odysseus knows that Achilles has a son living on Skyros, and he has never been to Troy. Philoctetes has no knowledge of this boy. He can't be seen as the enemy, and if you're thinking about it at all, this doesn't quite make sense because the son of Achilles at this point. And really be no more than 11 or 12 years old, but I think we can suspend that disbelief and he's he's usually depicted as a as a sort of the image of Achilles. He's a young man in his 20s, so Odysseus brings this boy, the son of Achilles and the octopus. He brings him to Lemnos and he says. You have to lie. You have to cheat. Tell Philoctetes that you are my enemy. Tell him anything you want. Make up a story to make him believe that you hate me and that you're going to bring him away from this island. You're going to take him home. And Neoptolemus Achilles son says. Why must I lie? I'm a soldier. I'm strong. I can steal this bow by force. I can use my power and Odysseus being Odysseus says, no, you can't do this in any other way than by trickery than by deceit. Pointing up Thomas's is trapped between these two. His desire to sort of be this honorable, strong soldier and his desire to get this bow and do what his captain Odysseus tells him to do. So Odysseus hides himself away and Philoctetes encounters. Neoptolemus and Neoptolemus really tries his best to lie. He makes up this lengthy story that he went to Troy. He's never been to Troy in reality, but he tells Phylacteries. I I went to Troy. Fight and I wanted them to give me my father's armor. I'm the son of Achilles, and I thought I should have Achilles magnificent shield. But that bastard Odysseus has taken it for himself. Odysseus is my sworn enemy. Well, Philoctetes absolutely takes this bait. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And he begins to bond with this boy and he says I there's one thing. Wherever you're going, if you're going back to Sky Ross, if you're leaving. Troy, please Take Me Home. He literally begs to be brought home, he says to the land of my father. I don't even know if my father. Is still alive, but I beg you to take me and this all looks kind of QED. Philoctetes has fallen for the lie. Neoptolemus will be able to get him on board. Ship not, of course, to bring him home to his fatherland, but to take him to the one place he does not want to go to Troy and the Optimus tells him, you know, go get your things and fill out teddies. Basically says I don't have any things. I've been living here with this. This wretched foot, all I have is rags and herbs that I've tried to lessen the pain with the only object that I have here is the bow of Heracles. Oh, says Neoptolemus. Well, you certainly want to go and get that. And there's this magnificent moment when he presents the bow and Neoptolemus says. May I hold it? May I touch it? And Philoctetes says no other person, no other mortal has ever handled this bow. And then he suddenly seized with an attack of pain. We have the idea that he's in constant. But every now and again the pain just increases to be to be unbearable. And it's magnificent. When you see this text in in the Greek, there's this sort of jumble of of letters, pies and alphas where he it's just this, this garbled, tortured sound that. Pores out of him as he screeches and screams. It's interesting to see how different people translate. This, but just before this attack reaches its climax, he says to Neoptolemus. When this is over, I'm going to fall asleep. Take this bow and I beg you to stay by my side. Stay with me while I go through this pain and he hands the bow of Heracles. In the Uptown. Who? You know could. Run off with it right there in them, but he doesn't. He stays beside Philoctetes as he goes through this, and sure enough, he passes out when the pain ends and there's a beautiful moment when Philoctetes opens his eyes and he's seizing up, Thomas sitting there, he stayed with. Philoctetes has been alone for nine years. Occasional traders or sailors have stumbled onto the island, he says, but the his foot is so repulsive and the stench of his foot is so horrible that they've all left him. He's profoundly moved to see that Neoptolemus is waiting for him. And this just kills Nipton, lamus everything about this is reprehensible to him that he's lying, that he's he's being deceitful. Now he's. Formed this bond with this man and just when the the object that he wants most, the bow is literally in his grasp. The thing that he wants most, which is to be honest, to be noble, this is going to be lost to him and he can't let go of it and he confesses. Everything he tells him this was all a lie. This was all a trick arranged by Odysseus himself. I am here to bring you to Troy, and it's this moment of betrayal. Odysseus appears. He reveals himself and Philoctetes is completely betrayed. His furious. And he. He tells Odysseus, never, ever, ever. There's no possibility that you will ever bring me to Troy. And so there they are. That the three. Actors on basically an empty stage. This would be a very good play for Samuel Beckett to have. Written, they're all trying to persuade each other to give up the thing that they want the most, and the Autolycus appears to relent to side with Odysseus and they take the bow and they leave and Philoctetes is left to speak to the the carrier. The one character we haven't mentioned, which is the chorus, who are trying to console him. Not only is he still in pain, not only has he been betrayed, but he's lost his beau, which means he's probably now going to starve to death on the island. Odysseus says, you know the hell with him. If he's not going to come to Troy. To help us end the war. We have perfectly good Archers and we'll take the bow of Heracles and we'll win the war without him. And then there's this sort of pause. And then Neil Thomas reappears and he begs for forgiveness. He says I can't do this. I've come to give you back your bow and of course Felicities doesn't believe him. He's been lied to before. He's been betrayed before. But Neoptolemus swears to him I I can't do this. I can't steal this from you. I must keep my honor. And Filotti says, will you keep your promise? And will you Take Me Home near Petaluma says absolutely. I will bring you in my own ship to the home of your father. Philoctetes says they'll they'll come after you. They're bound to come after you. What will you do? If Odysseus comes after you and he says. You have the bow of Heracles. You can defend us both. Against Odysseus. So here's an amazing moment. The destiny of Troy, that the war will only end when Philoctetes brings the bow of Heracles to Troy to end the war. This is all about to change because of Neoptolemus's desire to be honest and truthful. How are we going to resolve this? Oh, look, it's a God coming down from the sky. It is Heracles himself, Heracles. In this classic Deus Ex machina, a Latin term referring to the Greek tradition of many playwrights ending a play. With the appearance of a God from a machine, there would have been some great big. Mechanism to lower. Heracles, down from the sky onto the stage. And he says you are going to fulfill your destiny. You are going to end the war. I am going to send the God Asclepius to Troy. And this is the son of Apollo, and he is the God of healing. He is the God of medicine, all physicians. In ancient Greece were servants of the God Asclepius, and there's lots and lots of evidence of this. He had his own temple where people would go when they were suffering from various illnesses. And many of the prayers that they offered in that. Thanks for being healed by the goddess Aclepias. As many of those prayers carved in stone are still at that temple sight, and Heracles says I'm going to send the God of healing to Troy. He will heal your foot. And you will end the war. You will kill Priam. The war will end and you will go home. And in the final very moving moment of the play, Philoctetes turns and bids farewell to the island of Lemnos, where he's been a prisoner for 10 years, and. Off he goes. To end the war and the curtain falls. Except, of course, they didn't have a curtain in ancient Greece where they had 17,000. Men, probably all men sitting in the auditorium, voting on the best play, so that's Philoctetes and I I hope you enjoyed that story. I I'm really. Happy that I got to. I've known about it for many, many years and I was really happy that I got to delve into it for this podcast. There's a version of the play written by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. It's called the cure at Troy, and it's mostly pretty faithful to the text of. The Sophocles he. He doesn't have Heracles appear at the end. The character of the chorus is sort of taken over by the spirit of Heracles. And there are many references to the violence between Ireland and and Northern Ireland. They're not thinly disguised. They're pretty blatant. As the parallel to the Trojan War, but it's a brilliant translation. It was written in the 1960s, but it wasn't produced until the 1990s, and Stephen Ray of the Crying Game fame. He actually directed it. So the cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney. Or the good old Lattimore green translation is is also pretty crystal clear to read if you're interested, so that's our second summer special, and in a few weeks I promise we'll be. Back to the narrative of the Odyssey, and we'll find out what happens to Odysseus on this island, where he has drifted ashore and is waiting. Under that pile of leaves, I'm Tom Lee, and I can't let an episode go by without reminding you that my programs are available for schools, for libraries, for museums, and always appreciate when people pass the word of my work on to people that work in those places. And you can also support the program directly by making a contribution. Via Mywebsite, www.tomlee storyteller dot. Com and you can also send me a note from that page and I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening.