Introduction
Kazantzakis completed the first draft of his Prometheus-trilogy within less than a month (6 August – 3 September 1943). The core idea for a Prometheus play, however, seems to have been conceived much earlier; this, at least, can be adduced from a letter that Kazantzakis sent to his wife Galateia in 1922, expressing the wish to send his Prometheus and Christ out for publication. Even though it cannot be specified with certainty whether this Prometheus refers to the trilogy, it has been proposed that it could, in fact, be the lost Heracles, later incorporated in the Prometheia (Petrakou, 371). The second version of the play was completed in March 1944, but it was not until the beginning of 1945 that it was finalised. The first choral part of the trilogy was published in the journal Grammata 5 in August 1944, and an excerpt from the Prometheus Bound in Nea Estia 37 in May 1945. The completed trilogy was published in 1955 by Difros Publications.
Kazantzakis intended to provide a prequel and sequel to Aeschylus’ extant Prometheus Bound, but wanted to squeeze everything into a single play. Yet, as he confesses in a letter sent to I. Kakrides (Eighty-four letters of Kazantzakis to Kakrides, 273), his vision turned out to be beyond reach. Accordingly, Kazantzakis put together a Prometheia and named the three plays after the plays alleged to have formed the Aeschylean trilogy. The list of the Aeschylean dramas transmitted in MS M contains three Prometheus titles: Prometheus Fire-Bringer, Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound. It is believed that these plays formed a connected trilogy, even though it has also been suggested that the Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unbound might have stood together in a ‘dilogy’. The sequence of the lost plays is also in dispute; some prefer to place Prometheus the Fire-Bearer first, some others third. Finally, it should be noted that ancient sources (e.g. Pollux 10.64) also mention of a fourth Prometheus play, Prometheus the Fire-Kindler, from which only a handful of fragments have survived. The play is believed to have been a satyr-play featuring Prometheus bestowing fire upon Satyrs (Podlecki, 27). Although − barring the Prometheus Bound − only fragments remain from the other Aeschylean Prometheus plays, it seems that Kazantzakis had read about them before attempting to flesh them out.
The titles chosen by Kazantzakis for the plays of his Prometheia clearly attest to his Aeschylean influences. Moreover, from his letters to Kakrides we find out that he consulted at least two academic books on Aeschylus’ Prometheus: 1) Welcker, Aeschylische Trilogie Prometheus and 2) F. de Lasault, Prometheus, die Sage und ihr Sinn (Eighty-four letters of Kazantzakis to Kakrides, 269). It should also be noted that in addition to the mythical kernel and plot, Kazantzakis keeps both Aeschylus’ style (verbose and high-flown) and tragic structure (dialogic and choral parts).
In addition to Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound the presence of Pandora and Epimetheus in the trilogy are clear indications that Kazantzakis also draws on Hesiod’s version of the myth, as this is cited in the Theogony (507-616) and the Works and Days (1-105), as well as on Plato’s Protagoras (320c-323a). It is also significant to bear in mind that Kazantzakis was exposed to a number of modern treatments of the myth, for instance Shelley’s lyric drama Prometheus Unbound (1820) and Goethe’s unfinished drama Prometheus (mention should also be made to Goethe’s poem bearing the same title, subsequently tacked on the drama as the beginning of Act 3).
Kazantzakis’ Prometheia is a work that reflects its milieu; it is also a mirror of Kazantzakis’ philosophical credo and idées fixes. As Bien (2007: 185-186) succinctly puts it:
“In his retelling of the Prometheus myth he [Kazantzakis] had once again led his audience from a time of chaos, war, and conflicting passions to a time of concord deriving from the reconciliation of Zeus (=power) and Prometheus (=wisdom).
[…….]
It is a grand allegory, a masque for contemporary Greece showing the stages through which the struggle for freedom must pass pointing out that a blind palikaria admirable at one stage can, if kept inflexible become a horror at a subsequent stage. The applicability to the Greece of 1943-1944 should be too obvious.”