Leggere un senso nel nome di Filottete: dai tragici greci a Derek Walcott

The name ‘Philoctetes’, combining philos and ktêma, has been traditionally interpreted to mean ‘fond of a possession’ or ‘fond of gain’. Euripides and Sophocles, in the plays dedicated to the story of the hero’s recovery from Lemnos, take advantage of the traditional etymology in a different way; the former, as an ironic background to an attempted bribery of the hero, the latter as a polemical pun that seemingly denies its meaning. In Derek Walcott’s Omeros, the name ‘Philoctete’ borne by a black fisherman whose ancestors were slaves symbolizes the imposition of the masters’ culture, and together with the wound in his shin signifies inherited colonial injury. Hence the Caribbean descendant of the Greek hero experiences his alien name as a festering wound he wishes he could cut from his body.