Prometheus Bound Reappropriated: A Modern Greek Promethean ‘Palimpsest’ by Νikiforos Vrettakos

Introduction: Aims, scope and evidence

This article seeks to explore the literary, ideological, and cultural processes determining the reception of Prometheus Bound ascribed to Aeschylus in the poetic drama entitled Prometheus or The Play of a Day (Ο Προμηθέας ή το παιχνίδι μιας μέρας [1978]) by the renowned Modern Greek poet Nikiforos Vrettakos (1912–1991). The play was written in the period of the poet’s self-exile during the military dictatorship in Greece (1967–1974) and has so far received little scholarly attention, having been overshadowed by the popularity of Vrettakos’ purely poetic oeuvre.^[1]

What makes the play’s re-reading appealing today? What is the distinctiveness of this reworking of the tragic myth? What difference does it make? As Lorna Hardwick has pointed out, “Prometheus has historically been an icon for defiance and struggle, appropriated for ‘causes’”.^[2] Vrettakos’ use of the Titan as an embodiment of resistance to oppression is in line with the cultural conditions in Greece during the dictatorship. In fact, the ancient exemplum of his play, Prometheus Bound, was twice brought on stage in that period (in 1967 and 1974) as a means of political and cultural intervention in the struggle against the anti-intellectual, authoritarian regime.^[3] In turn, Vrettakos’ reappropriation of this tragedy could give scope for a case study that may yield insight into the ideological forces determining cultural production in a state of crisis; indeed, the most critical period of the recent Greek past. At the same time, as it will be pointed out, his treatment is not restricted to the immediate socio-political situation, but also appeals to a wider transhistorical context of political resistance and humanism.

To understand Vrettakos’ poetic agenda, it is essential to address the play’s ‘palimpsestuous’ character, that is, to explore the ways in which this poetic drama grafts itself onto its source-texts.^[4] As it will be shown in the next sections, the poet reconfigures distinctive aspects of the plot, characters, and concepts of Prometheus Bound, whilst imbuing his play with key literary and ideological elements coming from mediating (European and Modern Greek) reworkings of this tragic myth. I shall argue that from an aesthetic and conceptual viewpoint this interplay generates a rich, multi-layered palimpsest, which is employed to convey the poet’s own voice in a time of heightened crisis. The final section will address the issue of the play’s performativity, which is a vexing matter in the case of poetic dramas.

To this end, the evidence employed emerges from a close reading of the play, which could give scope for mapping and peeling the intertextual layers that can be deciphered. Significant evidence for the making of the play is provided in the Archive of Nikiforos Vrettakos at the Municipal Library of Sparta. This involves paratextual material, such as the manuscript of Prometheus or The Play of a Day with marginal notes by the poet;^[5] his correspondence with members of his family (especially his son, the author and director Costas Vrettakos, who passed away in 2018) and friends, which sheds light on the poet’s thoughts and intentions during the writing process; copies of the literary works which were kept in his library and informed his play, including passages of interest marked in the margin by the poet himself. This rich material contributes to contextualizing the evidence coming from the dramatic text and could yield insight into the poet’s modus operandi.

1 The play and its author: An overview

Nikiforos Vrettakos was born in the Laconian village of Krokees, near Sparta, in 1912. He spent his early childhood in his family’s farm on the slopes of Mount Taygetos in Laconia, where he developed a close, almost mystical communion with nature that determined his poetics.^[6] In 1929 he moved to Athens to study Law, but due to financial difficulties he left a year later to undertake various jobs as a clerk. In 1937 he began a thirty-year career in the Greek Civil Service. The War, German occupation (1941–1944), Resistance and the ensuing civil strife (1946–1949) shaped his poetic conscience. During the War he joined the left-oriented National Liberation Front and subsequently became a member of the Greek Communist Party; he was expelled from the latter in 1949 due to his pacifist stance against Cold War conflicts, as expressed in his collection of lyrical essays entitled Two People talk about Peace in the World (Δυο άνθρωποι μιλούν για την ειρήνη του κόσμου).

In 1967 he responded to the military coup in Greece by going into self-imposed exile at the International Children’s Village of Pestalozzi at Trogen on the Swiss Alps. In 1970 he moved to Palermo and returned to Greece after the reconstitution of democracy in 1974. In a literary career of about sixty years, he published more than eighty-five collections of poetry, eight prose works and numerous newspaper articles. In the 1950s and 1960s he also produced a series of translations of works by Honoré De Balzac, Romain Rolland, Attila József, Pearl Buck and Edita Morris. The choice of these authors reflects his own ideological concerns about social structure, human socialism, as well as pacifism in the wake of the Cold War.

Vrettakos belongs to the so called 1930s generation of Greek poets, which includes, among others, Giorgos Seferis, Odysseas Elytis and Yannis Ritsos, his slightly older contemporary, with whom he went to the same school. The conceptual framework of this generation’s literary production involves the effort of constructing a fresh cultural identity through a dialogue with the archetypes of the Classical, Byzantine and Early Modern Greek past on the one hand and European culture on the other that could offer an invigorating and liberating balance between tradition and progressivism.^[7] This is significant for understanding the convergence between the Modern Greek and the European perspective that pervades Vrettakos’ rewriting of the tragic myth in the 1960s and 1970s.

The poet was nominated four times for the Nobel prize, he won three State Prizes for poetry (1940, 1956, 1983), the Academy of Athens Award (1977) and the rarely awarded National Prize for Letters (1985). In 1987 he was elected member of the Academy of Athens; in fact, the first left-oriented member of the Academy. His work has been translated into most European languages, as well as into Arabic, Turkish and Japanese.

In 1978 Vrettakos published Prometheus or The Play of a Day, a poetic drama in free verse, following a lengthy writing process. In his correspondence with his son and his friends kept in his Archive, Vrettakos states his purpose of writing a Prometheus play as early as November 1967. This was the start of the period of his self-exile at Trogen, when he was writing an autobiographical chronicle entitled Anguish (Οδύνη) published in 1969.^[8] Nonetheless, the process of writing this play took him much more than he expected, as he was working on it along with parallel poetic projects. Moreover, the fact that it was his first (and only) attempt to write a drama may also account for the length of time in the making of his Prometheus. In his subsequent letters he mentions that he started drafting it in May 1971 and was heading towards completion by the end of 1973 alongside his poetic collections entitled Protest (Διαμαρτυρία [1974]) and The River Byes and Seven Elegies (Το ποτάμι Μπυές και τα εφτά ελεγεία [1975]).^[9] He was then nursed for five months in a sanatorium and in August 1974 he returned to Greece, where he completed his play. Hence, the contextual works to his Prometheus are Anguish, his autobiography, which sheds light on the factors shaping his poetic persona, and the two aforementioned collections (Protest and The River Byes and Seven Elegies), which employ powerful language to disparage oppression and political tyranny.

Prometheus or The Play of a Day consists of four acts and begins with an imposing image of darkness and the sound of the voices of Hephaestus, Power and Violence, as well as those of Deucalion, Pyrrha and of Zeus himself. Unlike Prometheus Bound, the characters of Hephaestus, Power and Violence do not appear, but their voices are heard offstage (Act I, 9–17). Moreover, in Vrettakos’ play there is no hint of pity expressed by Hephaestus towards the Titan, unlike his ancient counterpart (PV 12–72);^[10] instead, he submissively aligns himself with Power and Violence, the instruments of Zeus’ tyranny. In contrast to Prometheus Bound, where Zeus does not appear at all, though his will is conveyed through his henchmen, Vrettakos introduces the god’s offstage voice, which evidently serves to enhance the distance and the detachment of Zeus’ ruling power. At the same time, he inserts the figures of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the well-known benefactors of mankind (see e. g. A.R. 3.1084–1089, Ov. Met. 1.313–415). Vrettakos follows a widespread mythical version going back to Hesiod (Cat. fr. 2 M.-W.), according to which Deucalion was Prometheus’ son (see also below, § 3.4).^[11] The former and his wife both remain loyal to the Titan throughout the play and exhort humankind, which is represented by the chorus, to proceed using the gift of fire without any fear of Zeus (pp. 30–31). He also introduces Ephestios, who helped Prometheus give fire to men. Towards the end of the first act Hermes makes his first appearance, asking men to return the fire to Zeus. His demand is rejected by Deucalion, Pyrrha and Ephestios, and the god appeals to Zeus, who sends a storm to put out the fire (pp. 31–37); the men of the chorus urge each other to protect the fire in eight different languages (Greek, English, Russian, French, Chinese, Italian, German and Spanish), which brings forward the ecumenical angst lying behind this collective cry.

The second act starts with an altercation between the voices of Zeus and Prometheus, serving to delineate the god’s absolute power and his blind retribution for the theft of fire, which Prometheus regards as a rightful possession of mankind (Act II, 41–46). Subsequently, Prometheus confronts Athena and his brother Epimetheus, who are both presented as mouthpieces of Zeus trying to urge him to submit to his will (pp. 47–58). Meanwhile, Vrettakos deploys the tragic convention of the secondary chorus,^[12] by introducing a subsidiary chorus of Nymphs, who enter divided into three groups and attempt to beguile Prometheus; first they challenge his faith in peace, justice and love and then they employ seductive, honey-sweet words reminiscent of the enticing manner of the Odyssean Sirens (pp. 59–62). Unlike Prometheus Bound, where the chorus of Oceanids is sympathetic to the Titan, Vrettakos’ female subsidiary chorus is an agent of Zeus, whilst the main chorus of his play is male representing the benefitted mankind. The use of the antiphonal choruses serves to underscore their alignment with two competing, hegemonic forces.

Hermes’ archetypal confrontation with Prometheus, which originates in Prometheus Bound and highlights the Titan’s relentless spirit as against Hermes’ wholly submissive attitude, signposts the beginning of the next act (Act III, 69–75). Subsequently, Epimetheus reappears to break his brother’s spirit by reporting that mankind has abandoned him and succumbed to the power of Zeus (pp. 76–87). Indeed, in the fourth and final act the chorus-leader admits that they have yielded to the absolute power of Zeus, who lured them by offering untroubled life, as long as they kneel before him and perform all humiliating tasks assigned to them, such as providing Hera with perfumes or carrying whips to guard Zeus’ tyranny (Act IV, 91–94). Heracles arrives to liberate Prometheus; he is sympathetic towards the Titan, albeit a servant of Zeus. But instead of compromising and accepting Zeus’ luring gifts, the freed Prometheus chooses self-exile on Mount Caucasus (pp. 95–100, 105–108). Zeus’ apparent ‘generosity’ seems to allude to the superficially ‘clement’ and quasi liberalising practices of the Greek dictatorial regime in its effort to gain legitimacy during the period before the Polytechnic uprising (November 1973).^[13]

Following a procession of legendary monsters, including the Harpies, Scylla and Charybdis (p. 114), there is a change of setting from Mount Caucasus to Mount Olympus at the end of the last act. A closing tableau displays Zeus’ feast on Olympus; the most violent, oppressive or disgraceful figures of history including Nero, Attila, Genghis Khan, Pope Gregory the 13^th, Hitler, Stalin and Nixon (U.S. president who escalated the Vietnam War, during which this play was written) have been invited to the banquet to celebrate Zeus’ triumph (p. 113). Hermes then appears to inform Zeus of Prometheus’ self-exile on Caucasus and to convey the Titan’s message that the struggle is not over (p. 114). Zeus is infuriated by Epimetheus, who failed to convince his brother to reconcile, and punishes him as a traitor, whilst the latter is kneeling before him begging for his forgiveness (pp. 114–116). The play ends with a metatheatrical address of Hermes to the audience, signposting the drama as a ‘play within a play’:

Κύριοι, τελειώσαμε. Μπορείτε να πάτε

τώρα στα σπίτια σας. Ο Δίας, το Κράτος,

η Βία, ο Ήφαιστος, κι όλοι οι άλλοι,

μικροί και μεγάλοι θεοί, αποσύρθηκαν πάλι

τώρα σε σύσκεψη. Την επόμενη μέρα,

μετά από χρόνια, ένας άλλος ποιητής

θα ετοιμάσει για σας μιαν άλλη παράσταση.

Gentlemen, it is over. You may now go home. Ζeus, Power, Violence, Hephaestus and everyone else, great and lesser gods, have now gone to another meeting. On the next day, years later, another poet will prepare another performance for you.^[14]

(Act IV, 117)

In this manner, the poet refers to the gods as quasi politicians, thus alluding to politics as a performance that keeps repeating itself and as a ‘play’, which accounts for the title of this poetic drama. At the same time, the second term employed in the title, the ‘day’, could be suggestive of the unity of time involving the development of the plot within the course of one day; this is a technique going back to Greek tragedy, through which Vrettakos’ metapoetic debt to tragedy seems to be further acknowledged.

2 Vrettakos’ dialogue with Prometheus Bound: Convergence and Variation

As would be expected, Vrettakos, like other poets revisiting this tragedy, was evidently not concerned with the scholarly discussions about the authenticity of Prometheus Bound, whose Aeschylean ascription has been challenged – though inconclusively – on philological grounds.^[15] Rather, he seems to have used the ancient play as the springboard for the making of a new drama that exploits formal conventions of Greek tragedy (the unity of time, the chorus – main and subsidiary – and the debate) and the core Promethean concept of the duality of the human condition, involving the potential for progress and suffering, in wholly different ideological and cultural contexts.

Vrettakos reiterates key facets of Prometheus Bound which determined its subsequent receptions, such as the spirit of justified rebellion, the defence of the weak and the concept of progress.^[16] In particular, he builds upon Prometheus’ tragic portrayal as a philanthropist whose help of mankind is perceived as a challenge to Zeus’ prestige (PV 11, 27, 30, 123, 446, 506, 543–544, 547–551, 613–614).^[17] The polarity between Prometheus’ championship of man and his defiance of Zeus emerges especially from PV 10–11 (ὡς ἂν διδαχθῇ τὴν Διὸς τυραννίδα/στέργειν, φιλανθρώπου δὲ παύεσθαι τρόπου) and 28–30 (τοιαῦτ’ ἐπηύρου τοῦ φιλανθρώπου τρόπου./θεὸς θεῶν γὰρ οὐχ ὑποπτήσσων χόλον/βροτοῖσι τιμὰς ὤπασας πέρα δίκης·), where this notion is further underscored by means of the term φιλάνθρωπον (‘man-loving’). Vrettakos imbues the Titan’s philanthropy, which pervades his ancient exemplum, with altruistic notions, such as compassion for the weak and the quest for social justice (Act I, 21–26, Act II, 58, 61, Act IV, 106–107). His own Prometheus describes how he was roused by human suffering due to Zeus’ injustice and his sense of debt to help mankind and the new generation:

Αλλά αυτό που αναρρίπισε

το μέσα μου φως και το έκαμε λάμψη

ήταν το κλάμα τους. Τα δάκρυά τους

έμοιαζαν ως ν’αναδύονταν μες

από ασύλληπτα βάθη, κυανά

και δονούμενα. Και κάθισα τότε,

σκέφτηκα και είπα: μπορεί όσα άστρα

είναι πάνω από μας, ορατά και αόρατα,

να ’ναι και μέσα τους. Ασπάστηκα έπειτα

τα βρέφη τους και έφυγα.

But what roused the light inside me and turned it into sparkle was their cry. Their tears looked as if they were coming from immense depths, blue and vibrant. And then I sat, thought, and said: Perhaps the stars upon us, visible and invisible, may be inside them too. And then I kissed their babies and left.

(Act I, 21–22)

Vrettakos’ credo is permeated with features of Christian faith; instead of accepting the (initially) grateful crowd’s kiss of his feet, Prometheus asks them to kiss each other (Act I, 25), which recalls Christ’s commandment “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15.12). The portrayal of Prometheus as a martyr and as a philanthropist, as a Messianic figure, also emerges from Heracles’ appeal to the Titan to remember him when he comes to power (Act IV, 99), which alludes to the well-known gospelic passage from Luke (23.42: “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom”). Likewise, Pyrrha’s earlier description of Prometheus as carrying the whole human race on his shoulders (Act I, 18) echoes John’s Gospel 1.29 (“There is the Lamb of God, who carries away the sin of the world’).

The autocratic features of Zeus go back to Prometheus Bound, where he represents the archetype of the ‘bad tyrant’;^[18] he governs with lawless customs (PV 150–152), keeps justice in his own hands (186–187, 402–405), has subjugated the rest of the gods and will not stop until he has satiated his soul or until he loses his empire by guile (163–166). Vrettakos revisits the ancient paradigm to bring forward multiple facets of Zeus’ tyrannical power. This is conveyed through Prometheus’ fierce altercation with the god’s offstage voice (Act I, 11–16 and II, 42–46) and Zeus’ manipulation of the forces of nature to break Prometheus’ spirit and human spirit (eclipse of the sun, thunderbolts, storm: Act I, 9, 11–12, 16, 19, 37, II, 42, 46, III, 75, IV, 116); the latter idea originates in the closing scene of the earthquake in the source-text (PV 1043–1052, 1080–1088). At the same time, Vrettakos’ play also echoes the Titan’s prediction of Zeus’ downfall in Prometheus Bound (507–525, 757–768, 907–940, 955–959), stressing that his harsh authority will eventually be challenged (Act I, 13–14, III, 79, IV, 114). The delineation of Zeus’ tyranny in the ancient paradigm is appropriated by the modern poet to bring forward facets of violent oppression across place and time, such as Zeus’ atrocious consorts at the closing scene on Olympus.

The oppression imposed by Zeus is similarly conveyed through Prometheus’ confrontation with the god’s subservient agents, namely Hermes, whom Vrettakos naturally derives from Prometheus Bound (943–1079), but also Epimetheus and even Athena. In more specific terms, Vrettakos reiterates Hermes’ servile character-portrayal in Prometheus Bound, where the god is contemptuously addressed by Prometheus as Zeus’ servant (PV 954: ὡς θεῶν ὑπηρέτου, 966–967: τῆς σῆς λατρείας τὴν ἐμὴν δυσπραξίαν,/ σαφῶς ἐπίστασ’, οὐκ ἂν ἀλλάξαιμ’ ἐγώ). Similarly disdainful comments on Hermes’ slavishness are delivered by the Titan in Vrettakos’ poetic drama (Act III, 69, 74, cf. also below, § 3.4). Moreover, Hermes himself cynically admits that to be able to serve Zeus one should be as unscrupulous as possible. He even goes as far as to assert: “I have as many flaws as needed to be Hermes” (Act III, 71). This is a remarkable metatheatrical self-representation of his persona, as shaped by the tragic tradition; this case of dramatic self-reflexivity prepares the audience to anticipate nothing less than the calculating and insensitive mouthpiece of Zeus that Hermes traditionally represents. Further correspondences with the source-text include the Titan’s uncompromising stance, which Hermes interprets as imprudence (PV 964–965: τοιοῖσδε μέντοι καὶ πρὶν αὐθαδίσμασιν/ἐς τάσδε σαυτὸν πημονὰς καθώρμισας, 977: κλύω σ’ ἐγὼ μεμηνότ’ οὐ σμικρὰν νόσον, 982: καὶ μὴν σύ γ’ οὔπω σωφρονεῖν ἐπίστασαι, 1008–1013, 1054–1057). Like his ancient counterpart, Hermes in Vrettakos’ play threatens Prometheus that his immoderation will be brutally retributed (Act III, 75: “I am seized by terror for your fate!”). Notably, Vrettakos adds further opponents to Prometheus, such as Athena and Epimetheus, whilst depriving him of allies, if we also consider his ultimate betrayal by mankind. At the same time, he deliberately omits moderate and well-meaning characters advising the Titan to give up self-sacrifice, such as the Ocean (PV 284–396), with the purpose of drawing a sharper contrast between Prometheus’ relentless ēthos and the subservience of Zeus’ henchmen.

In showing both the tyrannical features of Zeus and Prometheus’ tragic portrayal as a philanthropist, Vrettakos conceivably engaged with the Romantic interventions of Byron and Shelley, albeit in a less direct way than with the works discussed in the next sections. In Byron’s Ode to Prometheus (1816), which brings together the Titan’s suffering for the sake of mankind with his heroic fight against tyrannical powers, it is stressed that “Thy Godlike crime was to be kind” (v. 35). Whilst writing this ode, Byron interacted with Shelley, who was working at the same time on his Prometheus Unbound (1820), a closet drama which focuses on the liberating power of love and forgiveness for the salvation of humanity, advocating equality and denouncing violence.^[19]

Another feature of Vrettakos’ play that echoes Shelley is the former’s choice to employ Zeus’ offstage voice, which is equivalent to the Shelleyan use of the phantom of Jupiter as a means of stressing his ruthlessness and detachment. Although the use of the voice of God is a literary motif (and thus not restricted in these two poets), the shaping influence that Shelley’s lyrical drama exerted on the perception of the myth in Western thought makes it likely that Vrettakos may have consciously or unconsciously have it in mind. In contrast to Byron’s and Shelley’s defiantly atheistic versions, however, Vrettakos’ text is permeated with the aforementioned Christian references, which are consistent with the Christianised features of modern Hellenism (on the ‘amalgamation’ of Prometheus with Christ see below, § 3.3).

It is noteworthy that the Titan’s steadfastness and uncompromising attitude mirror the ethical stance of Vrettakos himself, who seems to deploy the tragic persona to voice his own internal anxieties. Prometheus as a self-image of the poet is part of a rich literary legacy, involving, among other cases, the Romantic poets. In Shelley the Titan represents the poet-saviour, in Byron the poet’s unyielding will, whilst in Goethe the artist rejoicing in his own creative power (see § 3.2).^[20]

Vrettakos’ intention to present Prometheus as his mouthpiece emerges from his correspondence with his friend Anthoula Ganiari:^[21]

There was this frustrating winter, my staying inside, the vagueness of tomorrow. Fortunately, I prepared Prometheus in my mind, and he says everything that I would say if I was tied to Caucasus (aren’t I?).

(Palermo, 3/3/1973)

I have based my Prometheus on excellent findings and I shall address with an intense voice through him my ‘brothers’ Attila, Hitler, Stalin, Nixon etc.

(Palermo, 30/3/1973)

This purpose seems to be most eloquently articulated through the theme of the Titan’s self-withdrawal at the end of the play, which provides a lucid case of poetic self-representation. Having to choose in real life between his own civic principles and compromise with the regime of the colonels in 1967, Vrettakos opts for self-exile on his own ‘Caucasus’, the Alpine village of Trogen and, more specifically, the Pestalozzi Foundation for war-affected children. This choice bears a particularly symbolic meaning, as the poet chooses a children’s shelter from war as his own shelter from oppression, thus seeking purity as against political corruption.^[22] This concept also emerges from the dramatically nuanced change of setting from Caucasus to Olympus at the closing scene, which draws a telling contrast between the ascetic purity of Caucasus and the idea of tyrannical corruption attached to Olympus.

Likewise, the concept of self-withdrawal is represented in two of his collections coming from the same period, Protest and The River Byes and Seven Elegies. In his ‘Farewell to the Sun of Greece’ from Protest the poet speaks in the first person powerfully asserting that he has chosen self-exile over submission to political tyranny (“I chose to leave my enslaved land lot, taking a cane and a sack. Desert and exile will be sweeter; the sand will be like soft grass under my feet, as long as I keep my soul, o my sun, and my word”).

3 Mediating receptions and Vrettakos’ poetic agenda

4 A performance script?

A final question concerns the performativity of this poetic drama. Has it been staged? How often? Which factors may determine its theatricality? The genre of poetic drama has given rise to much theoretical discussion about the ‘rivalry’ between what is theatre and what is poetry. Theatricality requires that poetic diction and its registers should be bearers of meaning in performance; the poet needs to forsake the purely logocentric and produce a text for the stage ‘translated’ into sights, sounds and actions.^[51] This is a highly perplexing matter, given that a ‘recipe’ for performativity does not exist. I am thus going to put forward some thoughts about staging and the restrictions that seem to be imposed by the ‘poeticity’ of the work.

The play has been staged only once, in a high school performance in 2012 owing to the prominence of Vrettakos’ poetry in the secondary school curriculum.^[52] Nonetheless, as the poet himself mentioned in his correspondence, he wrote this play with a view to be (professionally) performed.^[53] His choice to write a theatre piece is probably related to his intention of communicating the ideological tenor of his work to broader audiences through performance. This purpose also emerges from the staging directions incorporated in the dramatic text, including references to visual elements of the performance, namely the setting (Caucasus and Olympus), stage props (the rock on which Prometheus is bound), costumes (the golden costumes of Power and Violence, Athena’s attire, Hermes’ camouflage) and stage lighting (the lighting of the actors’ faces, the interchanges of darkness and light and stage effects, such as clouds and lightning). Likewise, there are directions pertaining to the aural components of the performance, such as human voices, animal sounds, Zeus’ thunderbolt, the sound of human steps and of musical instruments (trumpets, drums) and instructions about onstage movement: entrances and exits, identification cues, the division of the chorus into groups and the use of kinesic signs (gestures, facial expressions, proxemic signs).

Despite this variety of staging directions, this work seems to be principally a poetic text cast in dramatic form. The use of conceptual imagery in lengthy passages to the detriment of dramatic economy, the sometimes didactic and grandiloquent rhetoric, lyric vocabulary, hyperbaton, and further poetic figures seem to diminish the text’s performative effect. Modern audiences are accustomed to stylistic naturalness, and this could be one of the reasons why verse drama does not sit easily with their theatrical expectations and sensibilities. Therefore, the use of staging directions cannot as such ensure theatricality, if the language of the dramatic text is not performative per se, integrating both verbal and non-verbal (performative) codes, which ‘translate’ words into physical enactment and vocal delivery.^[54]

At the same time, it is worth bearing in mind that the degree of the play’s theatricality may have well been determined up to an extent by its intertexts. Even the ancient exemplum of Vrettakos’ poetic drama, Prometheus Bound, presents inherent staging peculiarities, in that it is a rather static tragedy constructed upon Prometheus’ immobility and, simultaneously, a ‘spoken’ play whose action is mainly carried out with words. This feature was enhanced in the subsequent Prometheus dramas, by which Vrettakos’ play was similarly informed. The overwhelming literariness of Kazantzakis’ Prometheus trilogy and Varnalis’ The Burning Light does not make them suitable for the modern stage.^[55] Although Sikelianos’ Christ Unbound: The Death of Digenes (intended for performance as a part of his agenda to revive tragedy) was staged twice (1957, 1975),^[56] theatre reviews stressed that it should be evaluated as a poetic and not as a theatrical text.^[57] Such cases of verse dramas could account for the limited performance of plays of this genre as against the more realistic prose drama, which was more suitable for the stage.

On balance, Prometheus or The Play of a Day is well understood and deeply appreciated primarily as a poetic text. It is mainly known to us through reading, as is the case with its aforementioned intertexts, including Goethe’s dramatic fragment and Shelley’s closet drama. All the same, the play’s lesser theatricality does not entail that it cannot be performed by means of an adaptation fulfilling staging requirements. After all, more than a few literary texts (including verse dramas of considerable length, such as Faust) have been adapted for the stage. In such cases, a symbiosis between the dynamics of the text and the director’s conceptual approach is required, so that the polarity between poetry and theatre is ‘reconciled’.^[58]

Concluding Remarks

This discussion has attempted to bring forward the distinctiveness of Vrettakos’ reappropriation of Prometheus Bound in a critical period of socio-political oppression. The rewriting of the tragic myth bears the features of a palimpsest, whose layers include archetypal elements of Prometheus Bound, such as the Titan’s dignified struggle, his philanthropy, and the concept of human progress, filtered in varying ways through the mediating receptions of the ancient exemplum. These include Vrettakos’ reconfiguration of the pivotal notion of intellect in Goethe and Kazantzakis to allude to the subservience of knowledge to authoritative rule. Moreover, the poet’s agony for the abuse of Promethean technology at the expense of mankind and nature seems to echo Camus’ rejection of crude anthropocentrism. At the same time, the Titan’s Messianic suffering draws on Sikelianos’ fusion of Prometheus with Christ, being also congruent with the Christianised character of Modern Hellenism. Vrettakos’ ideological posture has also shaped his consciously antiphonal response to the Marxist appropriations of Prometheus, in that he upholds a pacifist position, which permeates his oeuvre as a whole. His cross-fertilization of conceptual and aesthetic elements from varying sources thus forms a complex ideological amalgam conditioned by the driving energy of his poetic agenda.

In his multilayered reworking of Prometheus Bound Vrettakos exploits the Titan’s iconic appropriation for causes by choosing to deploy him as his mouthpiece. The poetic ego is grafted onto the title-character to raise critical awareness and convey the poet’s ideological and ethical stance. What makes the re-reading of this poetic drama captivating even more than forty years later is its power to move beyond the immediate socio-political circumstances and offer a diachronic perspective on intrinsic aspects of the human condition: the dignified resistance to oppression, the limits of human intellect and the ecology of emotion that encompasses mankind and nature as an inseparable whole.