The Sick Hero Reborn: Two Versions of the Philoctetes Myth
[In the following essay, Dean compares the tragic vision that both degrades and ennobles humanity in The Man in the Maze with that of Sophocle's Philoctetes.]
A striking Graeco-Roman sard intaglio of the Greek hero Philoctetes which is now in the Francis Bartlett Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston shows the wounded warrior naked, recumbent and in agony within his cave on the island of Lemnos. This remarkable engraving in precious stone portrays Philoctetes clutching the bow of Herakles with such intensity with his left hand that his veins and arteries are bulging out in painful detail all the way up to his shoulder blades. Lower down in the engraving we see his right leg, slightly elevated and swollen to twice its normal size—especially in the calf and in the foot which sustains the vengeful wound of Chryse's sacred serpent.
Philoctetes' festering wound is ringed by a swarm of flies. Some of the flies nip at the infected flesh. Others hover over his leg in greedy anticipation while the sick hero vainly tries to brush them away with his right hand. As if these problems were not bad enough, a human predator is about to attack Philoctetes. For behind him on an overhanging rock is Odysseus, eyeing the suffering man's bow and no doubt scheming how to steal away both the bow and Philoctetes in order to secure the downfall of Troy.1
Thus this sard intaglio affords us an excellent incapsulation of the Philoctetes myth: the story of a constantly ill man who maintains his hold on life, who—after undergoing the sustained agony of psychological alienation and physical debilitation—will be drawn back into an active life.
Over the ages the Philoctetes myth has been expressed by many writers. Among these have been Homer, the author of the Kypria,2 Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, Ovid, François de Fenélon, André Gide and Robert Silverberg.3 Few versions of the Philoctetes myth are both as complementary in thematic content and yet as divergent in style as Sophocles' Philoctetes (409/8 B.C.) and Robert Silverberg's The Man in the Maze (1969). One is a masterpiece of Greek classical tragedy, the other is an excellent modern American work of science fiction. Sophocles' version ends by reintegrating Philoctetes among his own kind. Silverberg's version argues that reintegration for a man of Philoctetes' sensitivity and experience is only possible after an extended period of contemplative isolation. Both Philoctetes and The Man in the Maze are forceful, provocative pieces which are mutually enriched when compared—though they have yet to be analyzed in comparison with each other by classical, comparativist, or American literature scholars.4
Sophocles' Philoctetes is that odd creation in Greek drama: a tragedy with a happy ending. The play begins as the heroic young prince Neoptolemus, Achilleus' son, is duped into accepting Odysseus' pragmatic, vainglorious argument that he should “ensnare / the soul of Philoctetes with … words”5 for the sake of the common good and because the “prize of victory is pleasant to win” (P., 81). Eager to obey his elders, Neoptolemus cooperates and tricks the Heraklean bow away from Philoctetes. After nine years of suffering on Lemnos this is more than Philoctetes can bear and he becomes “a man crazy with storms of sorrow” (P., 1194).
Neoptolemus suddenly changes his mind and returns the magical bow to Philoctetes. Odysseus reappears, confronts Philoctetes, and backs down before him in a scene of cowardly retreat. Philoctetes then falls into a misanthropic, bilious frenzy. Neoptolemus tries to convince him that not only is life worth living, but life is especially worthwhile when acted out in heroic terms. Then, just when Neoptolemus is about to give in to Philoctetes' desire to return back home, an epiphany of Herakles appears and coerces Philoctetes to return to the battle at Troy. Philoctetes subsequently recovers his health, kills Paris, and regains his place as one of the great heroes of the Trojan War.
In both his misfortune and his good fortune Sophocles' Philoctetes is a victim of circumstances and the inexplicable will of heaven. This is the key to his special appeal for modern readers: he suffers without reason, without justifiable cause—yet he endures and he overcomes his suffering. He is that particular type of twentieth century hero which we see as a dominant figure in the works of writers as widely divergent as Saul Bellow, James Dickey, Alexander Solzhenitysn, Ilona Karmel, Albert Camus, William Golding, Hannah Arendt, Bernard Malamud and Ernest Hemingway. The character of Philoctetes as crafted by Sophocles is a survivor figure: “a practical image of the self … [a] prospective carrier of life and hope … a type of moral identity commensurate with dark ages.”6
In our age commensurate with the “inexorable agonies and contradictions of super-states founded upon the always insoluble contradictions of injustice,”7 Philoctetes is a fellow citizen of an oppressive modern world. He is kin to a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp or a Soviet work camp. Philoctetes' survival “is an act of refusal and resistance,”8 a victory “against the monolith of destruction.”9 “Sir,” argues the inexperienced Neoptolemus to Philoctetes, “learn not to be defiant in misfortune” (P., 1387). To which Philoctetes angrily replies: “I know you will ruin me by pleading to me in this way.”10
In more localized terms Philoctetes' prolonged illness symbolically personifies the sufferings of the Greek tribes gathered below the walls of Troy. His illness on Lemnos parallels their daily give-and-take of slaughter, the Pyrrhic victory of their ten year, man-killing siege. Like Philoctetes, the Greeks endure their sufferings in the hopes of better times to come—contrary to what they experience every day.
On yet another level relating to the war at Troy “Philoctetes … signifies … the punishment which pursues sin as the shadow follows the body.”11 The Greek kings broke certain taboos in their undertakings against Troy, such as Agamemnon's infanticide of Iphigeneia, and the gods would not let these crimes pass without retribution. The gods exact an especially Philoctetean kind of suffering upon Iliadic warriors such as Achilleus and Ajax. This is shown in Achilleus enduring agony that “a man's life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted / nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth's barrier.”12 The same sentiment appears in the First Semichorus' comment in Sophocles' Ajax directly after Ajax's suicide: “Toil breeds toil upon toil.”13 Philoctetean suffering is a “sterility of the spirit,”14 a Hamletesque realization that the noble dust of Alexander can stop a bung-hold, that life can be reduced to loneliness, futility and death.
Yet, in defiance of this suffering, the tensions of life are maintained by the Greek tribes and by Philoctetes. Philoctetes will not relinquish his Heraklean bow. After all, his name means the “lover of the possession.”15 He struggles to keep his last hold on potency, on his weapon which was once strong enough to kill the man-eating Stymphallian birds and to frighten the great Sun-God Helios himself. Philoctetes endures great suffering, but he can not endure being without any means of combative expression. Likewise with the Greeks fighting at Troy: they will endure all manner of hellish experiences as long as they can continue their war.
Robert Silverberg's The Man in the Maze fights the same thematic battle on different terms. The three main characters duplicate Odysseus (Charles Boardman), Neoptolemus (Edward Rawlins), and Philoctetes (Richard Muller). The island of Lemnos is matched by the planet of Lemnos, “one of the abandoned ancient planets of an unknown ancient race.”16 The main characters belong to an upper-class elite. Richard Muller (Silverberg's Philoctetes, survivor figure) is incapacitated not by a festering snake-wound in his foot but by a sickness of spirit, really an uncontrollable telepathic ability to communicate and expose the innermost workings of his heart, mind and soul. He received this psychic wound while serving as humanity's first envoy to an alien race, the Hydrans. They operated on his mind and left the wound open. “It was not true telepathy that the Hydrans had given him … What came forth was this gush of self; a torrent of raw despair … all the sewage of a soul … [his] goddamn soul leaking into the air” (TMITM, p. 113, 108).
Like Philoctetes' wound, Richard Muller's emanating soul gives off an unbearable sensation. “It's like stepping into a bath of acid … You can get used to it, but you never like it” (TMITM, p. 18). As with Philoctetes, Richard Muller is needed to save his own kind. Humanity is threatened by a second alien race which can only be restrained from consuming mankind if mankind can prove “that we feel, that we sense, that we are something other than clever machines” (TMITM, p. 154). Or, as the young Edward Rawlins summarizes the situation for Richard Muller: “if we could persuade them that we have … souls—they might leave us alone” (TMITM, p. 167). Richard Muller is the nauseating proof of mankind's spiritual capacity, and, if used correctly, the reason why mankind should be spared the hideous fate of becoming “radio-controlled robots” (TMITM, p. 165) at the mercy of “monstrous masses of glossy pink protoplasm” (TMITM, p. 166).
Placing the Philoctetes myth in a science fiction context allows Silverberg to reinvigorate the Sophoclean sense of wonder at the insoluble mysteries of the universe. While Philoctetes is bracketed by the goddess Chryses and the god Herakles, The Man in the Maze is bracketed by the alien Hydrans and the alien Radio Beings. Silverberg's aliens are effectively divine, especially the Radio Beings who are omnipotent, all-knowing and capable of “controlling [their] flunkeys from eighty light-years away” (TMITM, p. 165). It must be stressed here that Silverberg is writing a highly sophisticated style of science fiction, for an audience of which approximately seventy-five per cent have unusually high attainments in formal education.17 Silverberg's reinvigoration of Sophoclean wonder is successful because of his ability to adapt science fiction to Greek classicism, his audience demands, and the inherent quality of his own writings.
Silverberg also manages to maintain in The Man in the Maze a Sophoclean sense of cosmic dissatisfaction. Richard Muller is victimized by the natural conditions of existence. As he says to Edward Rawlins: “You hate me because you learn things about your own soul by getting near me. And I hate you because you must draw back from me. What I am, you see, is a plague carrier, and the plague I carry is the truth” (TMITM, p. 119). Yet Richard Muller endures his suffering and he eventually achieves, as he admits in a bittersweet tone: “A happy ending to my doleful story” (TMITM, p. 188). But why his life story concludes positively is finally beyond explanation. Richard Muller triumphs in spite of the surrounding universe. “There is wonder, indeed / … how in his loneliness / … he kept hold at all / on a life so full of tears” (P., 86-87; 89-90).
Silverberg counterbalances this morbid, heroic theme drawn from Sophocles with the game-like aspect of the Lemnos maze. On one level The Man in the Maze is an extremely playful book. This element is especially evident in chapters one through six which create the effect of a literary pinball game of traps, death alleys and extra-ball lanes as the robot drones and the various humans struggle through the maze. The Man in the Maze is certainly a serious work of literature, but it also succeeds because it is occasionally light-spirited and amusing.
After the adaptation of the Philoctetes myth to a science fiction context the most important distinction between Philoctetes and The Man in the Maze is that Silverberg grafted on to the Philoctetes myth the theme of the city. This is the kind of science fiction city which Clifford D. Simak used in his novel City (1952) and James Blish used in his Cities in Flight (1952-1962) quartet. In The Man in the Maze the city is used as a psychic metaphor for man. The character of a city, with all its twistings and turnings, its patterns of architecture, its centering of social life and culture, is used as perfect mirror image for man's own nature.
In his nine years of isolation on the planet of Lemnos Richard Muller lived in “a city designed to last a million years” (TMITM, p. 25): the maze of Lemnos, a tricky fortress swarming with deadly traps, a “mindless, deathless, diabolical city” (TMITM, p. 27) which approximates Philoctetes' Sophoclean cave on the island of Lemnos. Richard Muller is in perfect harmony with his demanding surroundings since he flourishes only in a “time of testing” (TMITM, 190). Moreover his life has always been dedicated to decoding alien symmetries, and so he appropriately decides to end his life within the Lemnos maze.
By creating this harmony between the protagonist and his environment, Silverberg is suggesting that the intricacy of man's mind and soul, personified by Richard Muller, finds its perfect mirror image in a literal urban maze. The labyrinth of Lemnos is as deadly, dark, alien and potentially unfathomable as man's own subconsciousness. The essential philosophy of this urban monument is to “kill the stranger” (TMITM, p. 109). It represents the cultural paranoia upon which man's nature is founded: which first led men to build cities as protection against their fellow mankind, which continues to rebound in self-hatred and misanthropy.
The city of Lemnos also functions as an initiation maze for the young Edward Rawlins. Rawlins is a much deeper character than his equivalent in Philoctetes, Neoptolemus, a difference which Silverberg accomplishes by making Rawlins undergo a far greater variety of tests in the Lemnos maze than Neoptolemus undergoes on the island of Lemnos. Neoptolemus switches too quickly from being a full-fledged supporter of Odysseus and the credo that “it is the tongue that wins and not the deed” (P., 99) to being an all-out supporter of Philoctetes. His change is not wholly credible. Edward Rawlins changes slowly, unevenly and with long, painful insights into his moral dilemma. He even considers suicide and wonders if the “only way to avoid … moral ambiguities … [is] to die in the maze” (TMITM, p. 73). Fortunately, he finds his way safely both to the inner sanctuary of the maze where Richard Muller resides and to the center of his individual conscience dominated by an ethos of justice.
The labyrinth metaphor developed by Silverberg heightens as well the character of Charles Boardman, the Odysseus figure. Boardman is a polútropos Odysseus, the wily and unscrupulous trickster. Yet he is paradoxically divided between working for a higher good, “the fate of galaxies … billions yet unborn” (TMITM, p. 97), and his own self-aggrandizement by succeeding in the most important assignment of his career. Boardman is preeminently the diplomat, the politician. As with the raw, inexperienced Rawlins, so with Charles Boardman: his name betrays his inner character. He belongs to the Board of Directors, he is a board-man, an establishmentarian, a type of sly, overweight Henry Kissinger who “easily dominated any group at a conference table” (TMITM, p. 13). The maze of Lemnos matches Charles Boardman's character as a metaphor for his foxiness, a man who wears “a facade of shrewdness to hide shrewdness” (TMITM, p. 142), who builds a maze of trickery, lies and compromises in order to extract Richard Muller from his cave.
In sum, the supreme achievement of Sophocles' Philoctetes and Robert Silverberg's The Man in the Maze is their painfully invigorating examples of mankind's paradoxical ability to be degraded and ennobled at the same time. The true sense of tragedy in both works is the “deeper insight that it is not his individual sins that the hero atones for, but original sin, i.e., the crime of existence itself.”18 Man may struggle through the sufferings which flesh is heir to even though his deepest level offers him:
nothing more than an awareness of the punishments the universe devises for its inhabitants … the missed chances, the failed loves, the hasty words, the unfair griefs, the hungers, the greeds, the lusts, the knife of envy, the acid of frustration, the fang of time, the death of small insects in winter … aging, loss, impotence, fury, helplessness, loneliness, desolation, self-contempt, … madness … a silent shriek of cosmic anger. (TMITM, p. 113).
Notes
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A photo of a cast taken from this sard intaglio (M.F.A., Francis Bartlett Collection 13.237) can be found in The Trojan War in Greek Art, eds. M. Comstock, A Graves, et al. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts Press, n.d.), p. 39, illus. No. 36A “Odysseus Finds the Wounded Philoktetes on Lemnos.”
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Variously ascribed to Homer, Stasinos & Hegesias. See: H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Literature (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1960), p. 48.
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For all but the Silverberg version, useful summaries of these different variants can be found in H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Literature, op. cit., & W. B. Stanford, The Ulysses Theme (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1968; 2nd edn.).
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There is, of course, a wide range of material on Sophocles' Philoctetes, most useful of which are: W. J. Oates, ed., From Sophocles to Picasso (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1962); Gilberte Ronnet, Sophocle, poète tragique (Paris: Boccard, 1969); J. C. Opstelten, Sophocles & Greek Pessimism, trans. J. A. Rose (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publ. Co., 1952); C. H. Whitman, Sophocles. A Study of Heroic Humanism (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 195k).
While the critical material on Robert Silverberg includes his own reflections on writing in Hell's Cartographers, eds. B. W. Aldiss & H. Harrison (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1975; Orbit pb. rpt., 1976); R. Silverberg, ed. The Mirror of Infinity: A Critics Anthology (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); “Silverberg (Robert)” in Encyclopédie de L’Utopie des Voyages Extraordinaires et de la Science Fiction (Lausanne: Editions L’Age d’Homme S.A., 1972); Stella Nova: The Contemporary Science Fiction Authors, ed. R. Reginald (Los Angeles: Unicorn & Sun, 1970; rpt. 1975, New York: Arno Press).
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Unless otherwise noted all quotes from Sophocles' Philoctetes are from: The Complete Greek Tragedies, Sophocles II, ed. D. Grene & R. Lattimore (New York: Washington Square Press, 1967), pp. 202-264. The Greek text used: F. Storr, ed., ΦΙΛΟΚΤΗΤΗΣ in Sophocles, Vol. II (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1913; rpt., 1967), pp. 364-493. To economize on footnoting all further references to Philoctetes will be included in the text, referred to as P., followed by the line number in the Grene & Lattimore text.
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Terrence Des Pres, “The Survivor” in Encounter, Vol. XXXVII, Sept. 1971, pp. 3-19, above quote, p. 3.
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Norman Mailer, “The White Negro” in Dissent, Summer 1957, rpt. in Protest, ed. G. Feldman & M. Gartenberg (London: Panther, 1959), pp. 288-306, above quote, p. 289.
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T. D. Pres, “The Survivor,” op.cit., p. 10.
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loc. cit.
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This seems to me a more effective translation of the Greek [text …] than Grene's “You will ruin me, I know it by your words” (P., 1388).
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J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971; 2nd edn.), p. 168.
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Homer, The Iliad, trans. R. Lattimore (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951; rpt. 1967), p. 209, Il., IX, 408-409.
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Sophocles, Ajax,, trans. J. Moore in Sophocles II, ed. D. Grene & R. Lattimore, op. cit., pp. 1-66, above quote p. 43, l. 867.
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J. E. Cirlot, loc. cit.
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C. Kerényi, The Heroes of the Greeks (New York: Grove Press, 1962; rpt. Thames & Hudson, 1959 edn.). p. 343.
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All quotes from The Man in the Maze refer to Robert Silverberg, The Man in the Maze (London: Tandem, 1977; rpt. Sidewich & Jackson 1969 edn.). To economize on footnoting all further references to The Man in the Maze will be included in the text, referred to as TMITM, followed by page no. in Tandem text.
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For more on the statistical breakdown of modern science fiction readership see: A. I. Berger, “Science-Fiction Fans in Socio-Economic Perspective: Factors in the Social Consciousness of a Genre” in Science-Fiction Studies, No. 13, Vol. 4, Part 3, Nov. 1977, pp. 232-246, esp. pp. 236-237.
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Arthur Schopenhauer as quoted by Raymond Williams in Modern Tragedy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969), p. 37.
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