THE "DAIMONS" OF HEARTBREAK HOUSE

Abstract

WHEN OEDIPUS THE KING, blinded by his own hand, gropes his way onto the stage in Sophocles' play, the chorus asks him, "What daimon drove you on?" When King Agamemnon, in Homer's Iliad, seizes Achilles' mistress to compensate for the loss of his own captive girl, he blames an irresistible temptation generated by the dairnons who have befuddled his understanding. To the Greek mind, suspension of rational behavior was never acknowledged as intrinsic to human nature, but always attributed to impulses which might overwhelm the most thoughtful man in times of stress when the daimons chose to exercise their supernatural power. These daimons were not merely poetic or epic conventions. They were realistic reflections of the fears and convictions of a rational people who named them and blamed them for leading them from virtue. Daimonic force, as distinct from the divine, was dangerous, punitive, and irresistible, and, as Medea's nurse observed, only inconsequential people were untouched by its destructive energy. Euripides, the most rational of the tragedians, appeared to have devised his characters to be particularly superstitious. Phaedra, in the Hippolytus, also laid the blame for her infatuation on the daimons. Thus, it would seem that the predicament in which one found oneself had less to do with one's character than with a force which today we might call psychic intervention. Even the most heroic men who prided themselves on their autonomy could be driven from their course by invisible or cunningly disguised daimons who came to them unbidden.