Modern Day Prometheus

Prometheus Bound and the Oceanids

A 1879 marble sculpture by German sculptor Eduard Müller, located at Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Germany.

It would seem an inevitability that a creator must surrender something for their creation. Prometheus risked Zeus’s wrath by creating mankind and gifting them with stolen fire. His life was forfeit in this act of betrayal . In this act of love. And so the artist sacrifices interminably for their art. Writing demands time—so priceless a resource, for which many hands claw. I need it in abundance, a great, looming space into which thought and feeling seep and form. Then it is required when pen is finally put to paper.

But this means relinquishing time in which I might be anything other than a writer: a reader, a dancer, a psychologist, a business owner. Sometimes I feel I forsake even being a daughter, a sister, a friend, a person. Every other pursuit or accomplishment must be measured— and fall short—against my art. Or I cede time to the mundane tasks of living: earning money with which to eat, sleep, exist. Gold is a thief as much as it is a patron.

I grieve every loss. It pecks at me as the vultures do Prometheus’s liver. Who gains? But the birds who eat, and the clock that swallows time. Prometheus does not regret the sacrifice for his creations, but I fear I resent mine.