The Bacchae in Around the World in 80 Books

Aug 28, 2024 Fee rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, 2024-top-five

Since I read The Bacchae in August I've been trying to put into words exactly why I loved it so much, and the struggle continues. The review I offered at the time said simply:

Obsessed.

and that's pretty much where I still am. It overwhelmed me in a way I haven't experienced since I first read House of Leaves: a connection on the most basic, cellular level, and never has the word visceral felt more fitting. At the time, unable to funnel my thoughts about The Bacchae into any meaningful order, I ma Since I read The Bacchae in August I've been trying to put into words exactly why I loved it so much, and the struggle continues. The review I offered at the time said simply:

Obsessed.

and that's pretty much where I still am. It overwhelmed me in a way I haven't experienced since I first read House of Leaves: a connection on the most basic, cellular level, and never has the word visceral felt more fitting. At the time, unable to funnel my thoughts about The Bacchae into any meaningful order, I made a giant vase in tribute to it instead.

The Bacchae doesn’t just take place in a mythic past, it exists in a space where time itself feels irrelevant, and this liminality permeates every aspect of the play. This is a story suspended between order and chaos, the rational and the primal, the mortal and the divine, where characters live in states of transition and transformation, caught between societal roles, identities, and allegiances.

There is an inherent queerness to the Bacchae that can't be overlooked. Dionysus himself, LGBTQ+ icon, two mothered, twice-born by Semele and Zeus, exists far outside of the gender binary, and the presence of Tiresias here serves only to echo this subversion. Pentheus's interest in 'this effeminate stranger' has a definite hint of the homoerotic, and, of course, there is the scene in which Pentheus is persuaded to dress as a woman to spy on the Maenads, outwardly taking on the appearance of a female and also adapting his personality from aggressive masculine to passive feminine. In ancient Greece, women weren't allowed to perform in plays so this scene would have resulted in the male actor playing Pentheus dressing up as a woman to spy on women, played by men, acting like men. Plans within plans within plans.

The women of Thebes, liberated and driven to madness by Dionysus, embody an unapologetic fury that is as exhilarating as it is terrifying. Female rage is still woefully underrepresented in media. The idea of a female being driven to violence is usually sidelined in favour of the more socially acceptable stiff upper-lipped, wronged femme, who contains (ie. represses) her rage and accepts her lot with dignity before quietly enacting her revenge. Very mindful. Very demure. In the Bacchae, female rage explodes across the page, irrepressible, uncontrollable, wild. The ecstatic frenzy of the Maenads (from the Greek maínomai, 'to rave, to be mad; to rage, to be angry') culminates in the sparagmos of Pentheus - he is torn to ~~pisces~~ pieces. Their rage is a divine and unstoppable force that sweeps through the narrative with devastating consequences.

There is a power and a resonance to The Bacchae that I've never encountered in any other text. I acknowledge how ridiculous it is to try to review a play that's two and a half thousand years old; suffice to say I loved it, and I continue to be enchanted by it, and I'm still trying to figure it all out. This will do for now. ...more

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