Prometheus
There are four legends concerning Prometheus:
According to the first he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.
According to the second Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
According to the third his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.
According to the fourth everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.
There remains the inexplicable mass of rock. - The legend tries to explain the inexplicable. As it comes out of the substratum of truth it has in turn to end in the inexplicable.
(KAFKA, Franz: "Prometheus", after the translation of Willa and Edwin Muir, in The Complete Stories, Edited by Nahum N. Glatzer, Schocken Books, New York 1971, p.432)
