To answer these questions, it is first necessary to take a brief lesson in classical mythology.
With a name meaning ‘forethought’, Prometheus was blessed with quick intelligence, and came to be associated with notions of ‘crafty counsel’. As a recurring figure throughout Greek mythology, and in various versions, he is attributed with creating mankind, and giving humans the gift of fire, which he stole from Zeus, and which brought on the god’s wrath in the form of the severest punishment. For the misogynist and highly patriarchal ancient Greeks, this was the creation of woman in the figure of Pandora, who would then, from her box, release evil upon the world.
“But the noble son of Iapetus outwitted him and stole the far-seen gleam of unwearying fire in a hollow fennel stalk. And Zeus who thunders on high was stung in spirit, and his dear heart was angered when he saw amongst men the far-seen ray of fire. Forthwith he made an evil thing for men as the price of fire”.
“But when he had made the beautiful evil to be the price for the blessing, he brought her out, delighting in the finery which the bright-eyed daughter of a mighty father had given her, to the place where the other gods and men were. And wonder took hold of the deathless gods and mortal men when they saw that which was sheer guile, not to be withstood by men.”
“For from her is the race of women and female kind: of her is the deadly race and tribe of women who live amongst mortal men to their great trouble, no helpmeets in hateful poverty, but only in wealth.”
Hesiod, The Theogony (700 B.C.)
Prometheus was also personally punished, and was chained to the side of what are today the Caucasus mountains in Georgia, where every day an eagle (or vulture) would tear his flesh and eat out his ever-regenerating liver. According to the play written by Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, the fire that he stole was Hephaestus’s own ‘brilliant “flower” of fire, deviser of all the arts.’ Chained to the mountain, Prometheus expresses his bitterness because, although he with his mother fought on the side of Zeus against the Titans, his only reward is torment.
In one section of the play, Prometheus lists the many gifts he has given to mankind for whom he suffers:
“Listen to the troubles that were among mortals and how I gave them sense and mind.”
“They did not know of brick-built houses that face the sun or carpentry, but dwelt beneath the ground like tiny ants in the depths of sunless caves. They did not have any secure way of distinguishing winter or blossoming spring or fruitful summer, but they did everything without judgement, until I showed them the rising and the setting of the stars, difficult to discern.”
“And indeed I discovered for them numbers, a lofty kind of wisdom, and letters and their combination, an art that fosters memory of all things, the mother of the Muses’ arts.
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (415 B.C.)
The myth has been reprised through the entire history of the arts, and still continues in today’s culture. Comparatively, there are echoes and similarities in many other cultures including Native American, Indian, Norse. There are also resonances which appear in Christian mythology – punishment for the sins of mankind (accepting fire). In some accounts he is also chained to the mountain in a cross-formation, the obviousness of which needs no further explanation.
In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which was also subtitled “The Modern Prometheus”, she takes a dim look at what the effects of the gift of fire have been for mankind. In this regard, Prometheus is not the saviour of mankind, but something of a devil, whom she blamed for bringing fire to man and seducing the human race to the vice of eating meat (fire brought cooking which brought hunting and killing, and by extension – war and industrialisation). Shelley was interested in Prometheus as ‘the maker’, ‘artist’ and ‘shaper’ of men, which she portrayed through the scientist-hero figure of Victor Frankenstein.
In some ways, the modern experience – and certainly the postmodern – finds us in a similar situation to the monster he created. We are similarly manipulated by forces that are beyond our control (which are human managed) – science, technology, the ‘machinery’ of State, globalisation, the mass media – all of which link’s our predicament to the monster’s; he who was put together from dead human parts and then infused with ‘a spark of being’, without having any say in the form or genesis of his (and our) own life.
So, as you can see, Prometheus works to bring out interesting ethical and philosophical questions. What humans do with their ‘creative spark’ is up to them. It can lead to horrors such as Auschwitz and the atomic bomb, or it can lead to the United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights, or to great artworks, literature, film or television.
That’s my project. To make ethical choices with the ‘creative spark’ I possess. Whether it has been given to me, is a question of religion, and not a belief I hold. What I do believe in is the free transfer of energy – in pyrotechnics of creativity and boundless artistic and intellectual endeavour.
When reading a literary award winner, and especially one as prestigious as the Man Booker, I can’t help but be on the lookout for the quality with which the judges deemed it worthy. Prior to reading this year’s winner, The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson, I also managed to read Peter Carey’s short-listed Parrott and Olivier in America. Having won the award twice already, Carey was up for a historical third, and closing the final pages I felt that he had a winner. And so when the winner was announced I was surprised that Jacobson was the judge’s pick.
