BACCHAE - EURIPIDES

 Î’ΑΚΧΕΣ ΕΥΡΙΠΙΔΟΥ (ΞΕΝΗ ΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΗ ΜΕ ΣΧΟΛΙΑ) Roman fresco from Pompeii depicting Pentheus being torn by maenads

ΕΙΣ ΔΙΟΝΥΣΟΣ: THE TRAGIC PARADOX OF THE BACCHAE 

INTRODUCTION [1]

[HEIS DIONYSOS 96] 

Dionysos est double: terrible a !'extreme, infiniment doux. J.-P. Vernant
Ο Διόνυσος είναι διττός: ακραία τρομερός, απείρως ήπιος (J.-P. Vernant)

Every reader gets the Bacchae he deserves. No two scholars agree on the meaning of the play, let alone on the intention of its author. So from the middle of the last century onwards we can perceive a discouraging procession of conflicting interpretations, expanding alarmingly in the last few decades. Naturally, the continuous re-interpretation of the play entailed radically different views of the author's intention. "It seems impossible to establish agreement on the fundamental question: what effect did Euripides intend to produce on the Athenian audience for which these plays were designed? In the absence of such an agreement, the field is wide open for every man to make his own Euripides-the rationalist, the irrationalist, the political dramatist, the philosopher, the feminist, the radical, the reactionary or the mere bungler”[1].

Circa 1850, the earliest interpretation that deserves the predicate 'scholarly' pictured the Bacchae as Euripides' palinodia, a confession of his 'deathbed conversion', which made the grey poet return from the false track of sophistic agnosticism to the re-acceptance of pious religiosity and the service of the gods[2]. In the next generation it was argued that the Euripides of the Bacchae was not essentially different from the author of the 

[HEIS DIONYSOS 97] 

earlier work: if, indeed, the tragedy displays sentiments of authentic piety, this was not novel at all, and it went hand in hand with the criticism of myth so typical of Euripides' later plays[3]. Next appears a romantic Euripides, deeply influenced by the new ambience of primitive and ecstatic Macedonia, which led him to the discovery of the demonic and mystic aspects of religion[4]. This Euripides was in turn succeeded by the rationalist, who unremittingly denounced the excesses, delusions and cruelty of religion: tanta religio potuit .... [5]. In more recent times, we have become acquainted with Euripides as a (Freudian) psychologist, the discoverer of the tension between two contradictory aspects of a single religious phenomenon-blessed ecstasy side by side with bestial cruelty in Dionysiac religiosity - or in a single person-Pentheus' 'schizophrenia' apparent in the conflict between his stubborn defence of law and order and the 'repressed libido' manifest, for instance, in his voyeurism[6]. Though the latter approach still carries much weight in the discussion, in recent interpretations, following modish literary theories, the author more and more abandons the field to the work of art: recent structuralist and semiotic approaches offer a wealth of subtle analyses of contrast and unity in especially Dionysiac religion with its paradoxical coexistence of the codified standards of civic/cultural life and the chaotic/'natural' licence of maenadic ecstasy[7]. But it seems that structure has ousted both the author and his historical settings.

A different Bacchae not only yields a different author, but also different protagonists. "Pentheus .... is left harsh and unpleasant, and very close 

[HEIS DIONYSOS 98] to the ordinary tyrant" is the logical correlate of the 'deathbed conversion': in resisting the great god, the haughty monarch rejects everything that is valuable in religion. The rationalist Euripides, on the other hand, cannot but have devised Pentheus as "the finest character of the piece" (Norwood), marcilessly crushed by a cruel, arbitrary and à la rigueur, faked god. There are countless variations in the interpretation of Pentheus, ranging from the essentially pious character via the truly tragic hero to the theatre tyrant tout court who is characterized by 'stubborn blindness'9. In the latter, predominantly negative view, Pentheus inevitably loses tragic weight: "We have the ordinary hot-tempered and narrow-minded tyrant—not very carefully studied, by the way, and apparently not very interesting to the poet", as Murray saw it[10]. The logical consequence, then, is to reduce Pentheus' dramatic function to the mere task of e contrario illuminating the greatness of the god[11]. Here, in particular, the more balanced views of Dodds and Winnington-Ingram, who emphasize the essential coincidentia oppositorum in both Dionysiac religion and the human rebel, have done much to ban the prevailing positivist monomania that had gradually shackled the play and alienated it from its tragic nature. One of their most conspicuous achievements was to bring Pentheus back to the stage, albeit, as has been correctly contended, once behind the scenes his place is 'on the couch’[12].

[HEIS DIONYSOS 99] 

"Did Euripides approve or disapprove of Dionysos? The question is silly" said the sensible Kitto[13], and the nearer we approach contemporary research the more he seems to be put in the right. For even for one who is not prepared to follow frenis remissis the protagonists of structural or semiotic theory, it will be difficult to deny that such recent interpretations as those by Vernant, Detienne and Segal have opened new perspectives on the essentially tragic nature of this tragedy[14]. More cogently than Dodds' psychological intuitions, the best products of recent research have at least taught us to appreciate the intrinsic ambiguities of Dionysiac religion as the potentially explosive incentives to a tragic paradox. When the first—substantially different—version of the present chapter appeared as an article in the Dutch journal Lampas in 1976, none of these structuralist interpretations had seen the light. Now that I have read (and benefitted from) them, I find that I have two reasons for satisfaction. The first is the remarkable correspondence between my own ideas and some of the major themes of these subsequent publications, especially the common emphasis on the intrinsic ambiguity of Dionysiac religion. The second is the equally remarkable difference in approach. Though I unconditionally adhere to the idea that the contradictions within Dionysiac ideology by their very nature may give rise to tragic clashes, my own point is an essentially different one.

I shall argue that Euripides was fully alive to the timeless ambiguity of Dionysiac religion, but that he exploited it for his own specific purpose, which aimed at converting the eternal Dionysiac ambiguity into a conflict manifest in the actual reality of his own time. In other words, I shall try to fill the gap which the structuralists have left by remaining too much "al di qua della ‘storia’”[15]. I shall argue that the poet deliberately presented Dionysiac religion as one of the new 'sects' that invaded Greece and especially Athens in his time. His chief purpose was not to evoke the innate paradoxes of Dionysiac religion, though they surely served him as a handle, but rather to question the nature of religious convictions in general, both the established and novel ones, by sowing doubt about their status and mutual relationship. For this reason he manipulated the para-

[HEIS DIONYSOS 100] 

doxical aspects of Dionysiac religion by applying a stark historical distortion and cunningly mixing up the mythic past and tile historical present. Contemporary authorities, backed by popular opinion, condemned thy new zealots. In doing so they had the law on their side and so, from this angle, had Pentheus. However, the public knew that Dionysos was not a new god, but an ancient, accepted, civic deity. Seen in this light Pentheus was not right. I hope to show that the Bacchae is the tragedy of two conflicting positions which, though both right in principle, make theimselves both guilty of asebeia. And this is a truly tragic paradox. Furthermore, I shall argue that in the context of this tragic objective, Euripides was the first Greek author to recognize and design the image of a revolutionary new type of god and the concomitant religious mentality, an image which, though no doubt tolerated by the unique nature of classical Dionysos, must have been particularly fostered by the presumptions of the new 'sects'. Deities of this nature only came to prosper in the Hellenistic and Roman period, where they became ‘routinized’ just as Dionysos had been long before. 

In developing my ideas I start from the following assumptions, which it will for reasons of space be impossible to argue in any detail here: 

1) A new interpretation of the Bacchae can do without a detailed survey of the literary history of the play. No new theory, however, can boast independence from previous research. The reader will soon discover my indebtedness to, for instance, Winnington-Ingram and especially Dodds, not to mention more recent authors. He will also find that my interpretation, though excluding some, certainly does not dismiss all previous views of the tragic clash between god and king. 

2) As I said in the introduction to this book, there is in my view one indisputable precondition to embarking on an (historical) interpretation of a work of art: the conviction that the ancient audience and the modern reader share the basic human qualities necessary to provide an at least provisional platform for understanding the meaning of the work, as it was intended by the author (which does not exclude the existence of other meanings). After characterizing Euripides as "the man of hard analytic vision who sees the here and now truly and exactly for what it is, B. Knox 16 continues: "he must have intended (my italics H.S.V.) to produce this unsettling effect, which disturbed his contemporaries as it disturbs us: to leave us with a sense of uncertainty”. Though fully aware of its blasphemous infringement upon structuralist,

[HEIS DIONYSOS 101] 

post-modernist or post-post-modernist confessions I endorse this point of view. No literary theory will ever be able to discard the significance of the public's reactions to especially Euripidean drama. When in Aristoph. Thesmoph. 450-1, a seller of wreaths for statues of the gods claims that Euripides has spoiled her livelyhood because "by working in tragedies he has persuaded men that gods do not exist", this speaks volumes on the immediacy of the audience's involvement. And this leads us to my third point. 3) The quest for the meaning of a text is hopeless without a certain knowledge of the expectations one may presuppose in the audience. This involves the task of investigating as far as possible the social and mental experience of the Athenians of the late fifth century. For my subject this will require, first, an analysis of the new cults and the reactions they provoked in Athens, and, second, an assessment of the position of the orgiastic and maenadic aspects of Dionysiac religion in Greece. In confessing my belief in a historical approach to the work of art, I feel buttressed by the remarkable recent reappraisal of the historical Sitz im Leben for the understanding of Greek tragedy[17], which had somewhat faded into the background, no doubt under the influence of the combined forces of psychological and structuralist approaches. However, not a little alarmed by such over-enthusiastic historicists who, for instance, manage to stage Dionysos as the mythical double of Alcibiades[18], I wish to concentrate on general tendencies as traits d'union between the fiction of tragedy and the historical reality of its social setting. Whenever I do believe that close reflections of specific details can be detected, I hope they are more convincing than the identification just mentioned. Thus I hope implicitly to demonstrate the truth in the words of a great philologist: “the works we have got: Euripides—that is: these eighteen plays. In them indeed is all the history of his time; but not in the form of a running commentary on

[HEIS DIONYSOS 102] 

the issues of the day. Every experience and every idea that stirred his age, every hope that winged, every despair that bent it: they have all been absorbed, by a genius of unlimited perception and penetration, into objective world of art"[19]. 

1. HAILING NEW GODS IN ATHENS 

1. New gods and their reception

The Olympian family of the archaic and early classical period strikes us as an established and fairly static society. Foreign gods could be admitted, it is true, but admission to official cult was only granted on condition that the new god submitted to the local nomoi of the polis. In view of the tolerant[21] and inclusive nature of polytheism, we should be less surprised by the fact that foreign gods did find their way into the Greek pantheon than by the fact that so few availed themselves of the opportunity. Strabo, in a famous passage (10, 3, 18), praises Athenian hospitality, including tolerance towards foreign gods: "for they welcomed so many of the foreign rites that they were ridiculed by comic writers", but he menions only the Thracian Bendideia [Βενδίδεια] and the Phrygian rites of Sabazios. Granting that there must have been more foreigners—albeit hardly in the official circuit—than are documented in our sources, and ignoring the ones that are of no particular interest to our purpose—such as Hecate, Ammon, and Greek migrants like Pan or Asclepius[22] – with half a dozen

[HEIS DIONYSOS 102] 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

ΣΗΜΕΙΩΣΕΙΣ

1 B. Knox, Word and Action. Essays on the Ancient Theater (Baltimore-London 1979) 330.

2 This interpretation has been defended by, among others, Tyrwhitt, Lobeck, K. 0. Muller, Nagelsbach, also followed by Rohde and the young Wilamowitz. The idea has not died out yet: in the introduction to his Bude edition of the Bacchae (Paris 1961) 236 f., H. Gregoire still adheres to it, and it is not completely absent from]. Roux's commen-tary either. See on the 'palinode' theory in general and the contribution by Nietzsche in particular: A. Henrichs, The Last of the Detractors: Friedrich Nietzsche's Condemnation of Euripides, GRBS 27 (1986) 369-97, esp. 391 ff. For this rapid history of Euripidean scholarship I am specially indebted to the surveys by H. Merklin, Colt und Mensch im 'Hip-polytos' und den 'Bakchen' des Euripides (Diss. Freiburg im Breisgau 1964) 30-9; J. M. Bremer, De interpretatie van Euripides' Bacchen, Lampas 9 (1976) 2-7; Oranje 1984, 7-19.

3 Thus by and large: Hartung, Tyrrell, Sandys, Kraus, Wecklein.
4 Dieterich, Schmid, in a way also Wilamowitz: Traces in Roux.
5 The extremes in the notorious theories of G. Norwood, The Riddle of the Bacchae (Manchester 1908), who, however, recanted his earlier views in Essays on Euripidean Drama (London 1954) 52-73, and A. W. Verrall, The Bacchants of Euripides and Other Essays (Cam-bridge 1910) 1-163. Recently, Lefkowitz 1989, argued that, though the picture of impiety derives from Euripides' own dramas, any character in Euripides who expresses 'phi-losophical' notions about the gods does so out of desperation. Ultimately the gods will prove-not always to the character's satisfaction-that they retain their traditional power.
6 Fundamentally in Dodds 1960, already foreshadowed in his: Euripides the Irration-alist, CR 43 (1929) 97-104, and Winnington-lngram 1948. Cf. also G. M.A. Grube, Di-onysos in the Bacchae, TAPhA 66 (1935) 37-54. Apart from their contributions to our in-sight into the psychology of Pentheus, their influence has been particularly fertile in the exploration of the typically ambiguous nature of Dionysiac piety, as it is for instance ex-plored in Musurillo 1966, Cook 1971, and recent structuralist works.
7 Segal1982; 1986, with serious attention for psychoanalysis. See esp. 'Pentheus and Hippolytus on the Couch and on the Grid: Psychoanalytic and Structuralist Readings of Greek Tragedy', ibid. 268-93; Vernant 1986a and 1986b. 8 The problems connected with the pursuit of the author's intention had long been recognized: "Hinter dieser frommen, allzu fromm dramatisierten Legende ( .... ) ist der Dichter abgetreten. Man riit bis heute daran herum" (K. Reinhardt, Die Sinneskrise bei Euripides, in: E. R. Schwinge [ed.), Euripides [Darmstadt 1968] 506).


ΒΙΒΛΙΟΓΡΑΦΙΑ
https://brill.com/view/book/978900429...
Versnel, H. 1998. "ΕΙΣ ΔΙΟΝΥΣΟΣ: THE TRAGIC PARADOX OF THE BACCHAE," in Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion 1: Ter Unus. Isis, Dionysos, Hermes. Three Studies in Henotheism (Series: Studies in Greek and Roman Religion, Volume: 6/1), pp. 96-205.

https://www.greek-language.gr/digital...            ÎœÎ½Î·Î¼Î¿ÏƒÏÎ½Î·. Ψηφιακή Βιβλιοθήκη της Αρχαίας Ελληνικής Γραμματείας, s.v. Βάκχες
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://www.academia.edu/50771831/Dio..., R. 2021. "The politics of Euripides’ Bacchae and the preconception of irresolvable contradiction," in Dionysus and Politics. Constructing Authority in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. F. ,  Doroszewski and D. Karłowicz,  London / New York, pp. 18-31.
I will maintain that, contrary to a widespread view of Bacchae, (§1) Pentheus does not embody the values of the polis: quite the reverse; (§2) there is no contradiction between Dionysos and the polis: quite the reverse; (§3) there are reasons why the punishment inflicted by Dionysos would have seemed to the Athenian audience justified, especially given (§4) the very dangerous political circumstances in which the play was written, which have been ignored by its interpreters; (§5) there is no unresolved or irresolvable contradiction, whether within the Dionysiac or between the Dionysiac and Pentheus; (§6) liberating ourselves from the PIC can be advanced by understanding its historical origin.                 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------https://journals.calstate.edu/jet/art..., R. J. 2018. "Comparison as poetry: Reading Euripides’ Bacchae and the Zhuangzi," Journal of East-West Thought 8 (3), pp. 31-58.CHINA ..Abstract: This essay has two major parts. First, a comparison between poetry and comparative work itself. Second, a comparison of the Zhuangzi and Euripides’ Bacchae. Comparison is like a poem in that both are imaginative constructions that rely on the creativity of the comparatist or poet. Comparisonand poetry take features of the world and alter them in such a way as to suggest an alternative. The Zhuangzi and the Bacchae, via the theme of forgetting, do the same thing—unsettle our fixed suppositions or knowledge. The argument that a comparative work is like a poem thus relies on the comparison of Zhuangzi and Euripides as an illustration. Both the Zhuangzi and the Bacchae invite a relinquishing of fixed knowledge, and depict a human nature that is tenuous and given to change. This article suggests that a similar experience characterizes the practice of comparison, and that such an experience is something we often see in poetry. 
ΣΗΜΕΙΩΣΕΙΣ

[1]. Versnel 1998, p. 96 fe.