Missing the Vital Spark
Mark Ford
- Prometheus by Tony Harrison
Faber, 86 pp, £8.99, November 1998, ISBN 0 571 19753 1
The first literary appearance of the mythical figure of Prometheus (whose name means ‘foresight’) is in the writings of Hesiod. Hesiod’s Titan is something of a trickster, of ‘intricate and twisting mind’ in Richmond Lattimore’s 1959 translation, who first affronts Zeus by trying to cheat him of his sacrificial dues: Prometheus slaughters an ox, but instead of offering the meat to the father of the gods, he gives it to men, presenting Zeus only with the animal’s bones, concealed beneath a thick layer of fat. As punishment, Zeus decides to deny mankind the use of fire, but Prometheus cleverly manages to steal the sacred flame, which he smuggles down to Earth by hiding it in the hollow of a fennel stalk.
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Vol. 21 No. 10 · 13 May 1999 » Mark Ford » Missing the Vital Spark (print version)
pages 25-26 | 3031 words