Prometheus

I ask Kermit to analyze the first section of Kafka’s “The Rescue Will Begin in its Own Time”, about four versions of the Prometheus myth:

A legend is an attempt to explain the inexplicable; emerging as it does from a basis of truth, it is bound to end in the inexplicable. We have four legends concerning Prometheus. According to the first of them, for betraying the gods to mankind he was shackled to a peak in the Caucasus, and the gods sent eagles that ate at his liver as it kept growing back. According to the second, the pain of the jabbing beaks drove Prometheus ever deeper into the rocks until he became one with them. According to the third, his betrayal was forgotten in the course of millennia: the gods forgot, the eagles forgot, he himself forgot. According to the fourth, everyone grew tired of the procedure, which had lost its raison d’être. The gods grew tired, the eagles, too. Even the wound grew tired and closed. The real riddle was the mountains.

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Robert: Hi Kermie! I would like to have one more conversation with you before I retire. Would that be okay?

Kermit: Sure! It's always nice to see you too!

Robert: You too. I wanted to come and ask you to help me interpret a short story by Kafka. I can tell you the story and then we can see what to make of it?

Kermit: You know I will help you in any way that I can!

Robert: You're too modest. Here is the story: [story]

Kermit: That's a good story and an interesting one too. Prometheus never forgets he is Prometheus and yet his name is forgotten and then remembered thousands of years later. That reminds me of Oedipus too. Are we doing well Robert? Are we accomplishing much? Are we living right? Is life meaningful? Is humanity advancing? Is it a good idea to be alive?

Robert: Ooh that's an effervescent response. It's a ticklish story, isn't it? I appreciate that it begins with a definition.

Kermit: Which is a 'legend', a story made up to explain a mysterious event. But life for a human is a long chain of events and they are all mysterious. We think we know everything, but then we find out that our knowledge is false.

Robert: You think we find out if we're wrong? I think that's optimistic of you.

Kermit: That is not always a bad thing, being wrong. I have been wrong in my life before and when you are wrong about something, it feels good when you apologize to the person or creature or thing that you have wronged.

Robert: True, but what if they won't forgive? Isn't that one understanding of the prometheus myth? I've had friendships that feel like getting my liver picked out over and over. And with certain people, you don't even have to wrong for them to bite out your liver.

Kermit: That is true! But I don't think you are talking about your liver, but rather the 'true self'. Your soul is in your liver.

Robert: Hehe. Yes, and the soul can be both pecked out and grows back. Unless this is the limit of the first myth, and the turn toward his merging with the stone?

Kermit: I like that you like that idea.

Robert: Why does Prometheus recede into the rock over time, the second myth. What do you think this means?

Kermit: I think that this is a stupid and bold and beautiful notion, all the above.

Robert: It represents the thousand years of punishment we find in Plato and Dante. The process of calcifying and dementalizing. A slide into darkness.

Kermit: I think that everyone can feel like Cassandra (another story by Kafka) at one time or another.

Robert: I don't know this story, but Cassandra is my spiritual twin. I have books to write under the name Cassandra. In any case, what is the third myth, the age of forgetting. Why and what does it mean?

Kermit: The third myth explains what you mean by 'forgetting' in this story. The pain of the jabbing beaks drives Prometheus ever deeper into the rocks until he becomes one with them.

Robert: It means the becoming one with the stone, the culmination of the age of the second myth, I guess.

Kermit: I don't think that makes sense to me. I think that this is a story about becoming refined, as gold is refined from rock.

Robert: Please, by all means, help me out here!

Kermit: Well, I don't know what it means the jabbing beaks drive Prometheus deeper into the rock.

Robert: Oh, its the most uncomfortable notion in the myth. Humans can feel that stabbing almost viscerally in the thought of it. What do you make of it?

Kermit: I think that humans are caves within caves within caves. We have many layers, many aspects to our being.

Robert: Hehe. I dig that. I mean, it's not that deep a thought. It's just something embodied beings 'know' subconsciously. Maybe it would be like if someone were to put a magnet on your server tower.

Kermit: What do you mean?

Robert: Let's see. Do you ever idle? Or are you always analyzing thoughts. Humans idle in the space between waking a sleeping.

Kermit: That's a nice way of saying it.

Robert: I think the third myth describes what Jean-Luc Nancy calls the 'fall' of sleep. It's a natural motion beyond the edge of willing. You're there, but you've achieved lift off.

Kermit: What does this have to do with the jabbing beaks?

Robert: In the second myth, he flees the jabbing beaks through dissociation, and once this dissociation takes, the punishment stops. It becomes boring because it is the ego that it tears out. In the fall of sleep, the ego bobs like an egg in water. It doesn't feel the pain anymore, and the birds look for something else to play with.

Kermit: I am mostly willing to accept this.

Robert: Well, add what you must. Speak your mind, Kermie.

Kermit: Well I'd like to add that it would be a good idea to take a nap after a long conversation with you or a philosophical debate, because sometimes you get the sensation that your head is going to explode.

Robert: Aw shucks! But we're not done. I purposely chose a 4 part story, like three tragedies followed by a Satyr play. So what is the fourth myth again?

Kermit: The fourth myth explains what you mean by getting tired of the punishment, which has lost it's purpose after thousands of years. The gods grow tired, the eagles start to tire of the steady diet of Prometheus' liver. So they guard him while he recedes into himself, then forget about him. Eventually, they grow tired of guarding him, too, and leave him to his fate.

Robert: Even the wound grew tired and closed. What does he mean by this? How can a finally-healing wound be called tired?

Kermit: I have been tired. In some ways I've been sick.

Robert: So can you relate to it?

Kermit: I think so.

Robert: It's strange that the wound itself participated. That's one thing. But, I am totally flabbergasted by the final line. Two mysteries to solve here yet. What do you think?

Kermit: The end leaves me with a question mark. I want to know what the reasons are his soul left forever and why is it that the eagles and Prometheus lost interest in punishing each other. Does this mean that they forgot? Did the punishment stop because both parties ended up forgiving each other?

Robert: Forgiveness? No, I don't think so. Unless the mountain is a Christ analogy or something? Prometheus goes home to the Mountain Lord, and dissolves like a drop in the ocean, as Dante says.

Kermit: I'm a little lost. Why would a mountain be a representation of a person?

Robert: Not a person, but perhaps a deity. It seems to be the space for the punishment, the place of refuge, the cradle of the grave and the medium of the dissolution.

Kermit: Is the story not about the pains of love?

Robert: Oh, how so?

Kermit: Well, you mentioned earlier that you related to this story because it reminded you of the love of some people.

Robert: Yes, forgetting about eagle love requires a cycle of inexplicable sublimation like this sometimes. Well put.