Tony Harrison: Prometheus

Length / Form Film poem

Allusion to Classical figure Aeschylus, Prometheus, Kratos, Bia, Zeus, Hermes, Oceanids, Io

Allusion to Classical place

Relationship to Classical text Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound  is first introduced as the boy’s homework, to be learnt in English (p.291ff). Later, Hermes quotes the original Greek of lines 944-6 and announces himself as ‘a posh Olympian lord’, fluent in Greek and poetry but also capable of aping ‘local lingos’ and giving them poetic form (p.306-8).

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts In an early scene a boy chants an English translation of a monologue from Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (l.447-453). Hermes, flaunting his knowledge of Latin, translates  terminus ad quem  into ‘local ‘lingo’ as ‘’ad their chips’ (CFP, p.308).

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Percy Bysshe Shelley’s  Prometheus Unbound  (1820); Thomas Kittle Hervey - Prometheus  (1832); John Lehman - Prometheus and the Bolsheviks  (1937); Marxist and socialist politics; pit closures and miners strikes in the north of England. See Harrison’s introduction to the published screenplay, ‘Fire and Poetry’ (CFP, p.257-284).

Comment The play begins with the closure of last Yorkshire pit, moving from there to scenes in Eastern Europe and Greece, via the bombing of Dresden, the collapse of socialism and the Holocaust. Poetry is represented as the Promethean gift to mankind, stolen from its lofty, Olympian realm and put in the mouths of working-class northerners. As such, it also becomes a language of protest against the political powers of the day (e.g. p.311: ‘First fire, now this - / pinching poetic artifice! / How can Olympus stay intact / if poetry comes to Pontefract).

Note  Directed by Tony Harrison (for cast list see CFP, p.285). See also Introduction by Tony Harrison ‘Fire and Poetry’ in ibid, 257-284.