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

Abstract

Abstract This article seeks to investigate the cultural and ideological processes conditioning the reception of Prometheus Bound ascribed to Aeschylus in the so far unexplored poetic drama Prometheus or The Play of a Day (1978) by the renowned Modern Greek poet Nikiforos Vrettakos. It is argued that his rewriting of the tragic myth bears the features of a palimpsest, whose layers include archetypal features 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 (Goethe, Camus, Kazantzakis, Sikelianos, Varnalis, Michalakeas) of the ancient exemplum. At the same time, Vrettakos chooses to deploy Prometheus as his self-image and grafts the poetic ego onto the title-character to raise critical awareness and convey his ideological and ethical stance. These elements contribute to the play’s distinctiveness, as well as its power to move beyond the immediate socio-political circumstances of the military dictatorship in Greece (1967–1974) and offer a diachronic perspective on intrinsic aspects of the human condition: the dignified resistance to oppression, the limits of human intellect and the sense of humanism emerging from the perception of mankind and nature as an inseparable entity – a feature of Vrettakos’ poetics par excellence.