Philoctetes

Lately, I have been reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  It is both inspiring and depressing.  So, when I want to read, but don't want to lapse into a funk, I pick up a book that my great friend Clark Dana shared with me called The Joy of Reading by Charles Van Doren. 

Yesterday I read about Philoctetes, and was inspired to do a little more research.  Most of the stories surrounding the Trojan war were recorded and recounted by all the Greek playwrights, but the story of Philoctetes is only found in a play written by Sophocles.  Philoctetes was the greatest archer among the Mycenaeans (Greeks).  He had inherited Hercules' bow, and was drafted by Agamemnon to fight against Troy.  He was bitten on the foot by a snake during the journey.  The wound never healed (over more than ten years), and festered and smelled so awful that Odysseus and the men on the ship decided to leave him on an island.

Philoctetes on the island of Lemnos.

Ten years after leaving him there, Philoctetes has survived, and a seer tells Odysseus that they will not defeat the Trojans unless they retrieve Philoctetes and his bow.  Odysseus returns for him, but Philoctetes is irate.  He hates the men who left him, and his pain has never subsided from the wound.  Odysseus steals his bow, but later returns it in an act of compassion and expresses regret for having left him on the island.  Philoctetes initially refuses to accompany them, but is told in a vision that if he fights in Troy, he will be great in battle and his wound will heal.  He goes with them, slays many Trojans (including prince Paris- the one who killed Achilles, and stole Helen from Agamemnon and started the war in the first place).  His wound, as promised, was also healed.

Literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote a book called The Wound and The Bow based on the story of Philoctetes.  In it, he discusses the theme of the indespensible man with the magic instrument.  Wilson states that most geniuses (people who have a great gift or talent to offer the world) are often like Philoctetes.  They possess a gift of immense value, but suffer from an incurable psychic wound, a neurosis that can only find relief in the expression of their gift.  He sites artists as an example.  Their malady is only relieved in the expression of their art.

Edmund Wilson

Consider the great writers, painters, composers, and others- men and women apart, living lives of suffering on lonely islands of their own making and finding their only happiness in their art.  Wilson claims that, as Odysseus was commanded to do, we must always invade their loneliness that in the end they may find peace.  

This theory is so interesting to me because the theme applies to so many historical figures, especially in Greek writings- Oedipus, Antigone, Achilles, etc.  It also has some practical application, as we all have neuroses and talents, wounds and bows to be healed and shared with the world.