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A review by jasonfurman
The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes by Seamus Heaney
5.0
I absolutely loved this play. There is something exciting about reading a completely new Greek tragedy and having the experience that even most Greeks watching the tragedy for the first time didn’t have, which is a modicum of suspense in how it will actually turn out. I didn’t know the story of Odysseus taking Achilles’ son Neoptolemus to bring back the wounded Philoctetes from an island because it was prophesied that he needed to return to Troy in order for the Greeks to win the war. Moreover, the play itself does not have a lot of foreshadowing that gives it away.
The play itself seems among the more psychologically perceptive and realistic of the Greek tragedies. Odysseus effectively pressures the younger and more inexperienced Neoptolemus into lying to Philoctetes (Odysseus’s trickery is portrayed as dishonorable compared to the more honest and forthright use of force). The success of the lie makes Neoptolemus guilty and leads him to recant. In what is arguably a weak resolution, literally a deus ex machina, Heracles comes and persuades Philoctetes to actually go to Troy so that Odysseus and Neoptolemus eventually get their way not through guile or force but divine intervention and inevitability.
I really enjoyed the Seamus Heaney translation. It mostly seems like a straight translation (although I didn’t compare to more rigorous translators), but towards the end he inserted some contemporary references, including to hunger strikers, that effectively (although slightly datedly) underscored the contemporary relevance of the play.
The play itself seems among the more psychologically perceptive and realistic of the Greek tragedies. Odysseus effectively pressures the younger and more inexperienced Neoptolemus into lying to Philoctetes (Odysseus’s trickery is portrayed as dishonorable compared to the more honest and forthright use of force). The success of the lie makes Neoptolemus guilty and leads him to recant. In what is arguably a weak resolution, literally a deus ex machina, Heracles comes and persuades Philoctetes to actually go to Troy so that Odysseus and Neoptolemus eventually get their way not through guile or force but divine intervention and inevitability.
I really enjoyed the Seamus Heaney translation. It mostly seems like a straight translation (although I didn’t compare to more rigorous translators), but towards the end he inserted some contemporary references, including to hunger strikers, that effectively (although slightly datedly) underscored the contemporary relevance of the play.