Bacchae [translated]

Starts off as a National Lampoon college movie, with Dionysus as the party hero, the Bacchae/Thebians as his fraternity/sorority friends, and Pentheus as the stuffy Dean...

...and ends like a combination of Hostel and Oldboy. Seriously, the tone shift in this story is nuts.

That all said, Dionysus is probably the most interesting Greek God, in that he is associated with the bridge between domestication and wildness.


I've realized something about these non-normative cults, like that of Dionysus, what the Chinese authorities dub White Lotus, and the Gnostics back in early Christianity. Their enemies always describe them as going out into the night, disregarding gender roles, having orgies, and dancing around a fire on drugs.

So folks show more nowadays look back on these cults positively, or try to emulate that behavior attributed to them. It often seems subversive. But the reason they are perceived as behaving in these ways is that their enemies were trying to discredit them by attributing to them behavior that was taboo and illegal at the time. The writings of said enemies are often the only historical documents we have about these cults. So, people's inspiration in these supposed behaviors might just be fetishization of taboos held by respectable society back in Classical Greece or whenever. And not on any actually subversive behavior which, when they did happen, probably didn't look like the exact opposite of ethical norms like these cults do. show less

What is it about great literary geniuses who, at the end of their lives, produce works that exude a completely different atmosphere than their previous work? I am thinking of Shakespeare, Goethe, but also Euripides. He wrote this play in the very last year of his life, and it was not performed until after his death, in 405 BCE. It gives a somewhat messy impression, but that could also be due to the incomplete transmission of the text.
It is highly atypical for Euripides (at least if we judge by the plays we know of him, which is about a fifth of his oeuvre) that a deity appears here from beginning to end, and in a very prominent manner at that: the god Dionysus, Bakchos in Greek, represented in popular culture as the god of viticulture show more and drunkenness, and by extension also of the exuberant, the boisterous, the frenzied—in short, of anything that gets out of hand, and thereby also as the flip side of the orderly and the rational, that for which the ancient Greeks are so well known in our Hellenophilic culture. Following in the footsteps of Nietzsche, this deity and his cult have become the subject of unceasing study and, consequently, of continuous reinterpretation. This is why these Bacchae by Euripides can count on particular interest in that sense as well.
I have tried to read this piece as an outsider, and I must confess that it does not stick with me as much. Here, we are presented with few, if any, individual dilemmas or struggles, but rather with the simple premise of the leader of a city-state who cannot cope with the rise and popularity of a new, unruly cult (that of Dionysus, that is), and does everything possible to crush it. An important and probably misogynistic element is that this cult has enormous success among women.
The play frequently takes on the characteristics of a comedy of errors, and involves a gender-shifting masquerade, only to end in an orgy of blind violence, after which Dionysus himself punishes the perpetrators. Strange, especially since, as a reader, you simply fail to discover exactly what Euripides’ message is: did he want to warn against such excesses, or did he want that other side of reality—not order but chaos—to be taken seriously? The debate on this is still raging. The fact is that this play crosses quite a few boundaries, and that is a manifest Dionysian characteristic in itself. This piece is therefore difficult to place within Euripides' oeuvre, but that it offers food for thought, despite its formal flaws, is beyond dispute.
I highlight a few more historical aspects in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8596053454.
Disclaimer: I'm reading and reviewing classic ancient Greek plays, more or less in chronological order. But I'm not giving a rating. How could I, given their age? I'll make an exception only when a play is exceptional and still strikes an emotional and/or intellectual chord. show less

That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.

Setting a goal of reading 10 ancient Greek book this year including the Homer(s). It is decision based in deficit.

This is powerful, alight with natural bliss and bubbles of madness. It is a shame the Gods so enjoy dispensing the latter at their whim. Pastoral nightmares, this prefigures Hoffmann and the Romantics.

This play is more spiteful than heroic. I did like it. Aside from crowd psychology and chemical issues it does [resent cautionary tale of ridiculing minority sects. The reveal is always so agonizing, it is protracted and the recipient character doesn't understand--until show more she does. show less

Poetic and Fierce
Review of the New Directions (2017) hardcover, which is the North American edition of the Oberon Classics paperback "Bakkhai" (2015) translated by Anne Carson

I'm not quite sure how to define it, but there is just something more raw and primeval about Anne Carson's translations of the Ancient Greek classics and the more I read them the more I like them. There are her occasional untranslated Greek syllabic shouts of O I! O I! or A A! which are used sparingly in this version of Bakkhai, or the run-on strings of OITOITOI and others in her "An Oresteia" for instance. There is the insistence on using/restoring K in names that have been semiotically softened by the dominance of the C over the years. So it become Bakkhai and show more not Bacchae, Kadmos and not Cadmus, Aeskylos and not Aeschylus, Klytemnestra and not Clytemnestra etc. The pronunciation is the same, but it just looks more primitive.

Carson provides only a 4-page verse form introduction in this recent translation of the Euripedes classic and really the only fault to find here is that then the edition forgoes any sort of historical introduction or background or footnotes / backnotes. But these days there are always various online sources for that. Still it is hard to recommend it as an all-purpose Bakkhai, as it has the appearance of a supplement to more expansive scholarly editions. Still, I wouldn't be without it.

The Carson translation was staged by the Almeida Theatre in the UK in 2015 and the look of the production in its photographs conveys some of the raw energy as well. The costuming of Ben Whislaw as a somewhat Christ-like Dionysus in front of a Pontius Pilate-like Pentheus can't have been a coincidence.

https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/mast_image_landscape/public/m...
Ben Whishaw's Dionysus calmly faces Bertie Carvel's Pentheus in the 2015 Almeida Theatre production of Anne Carson's translation. Photograph by Marc Brenner.

https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/images/stories/THEATRE/David_Nice/Ca...
The Bakkhai assemble in the 2015 Almeida Theatre production of Anne Carson's translation. Photograph by Marc Brenner. show less

For those who don’t recognize the title, this ancient Greek theater piece is about the god Dionysus, god of wine. It was first performed in Athens, in 405 BC. And for those who still don’t catch the connection to my blog, it’s this: Many of the characteristics of Jesus are shared with this frivolous Greek god, and at least one of Jesus’ miracles—turning water into wine—also seems closely related. In fact, the late Byzantine play, The Passion of Christ, drew heavily on the Bakkhai.

Greek tragedies are a little hard for us to fully enter into two and a half millennia later, particularly as we struggle to understand on just at what level the Greeks believed in their gods, but the commentary of this book does a great job of show more making something foreign feel familiar. In the play, you’ll see Dionysus’ more unpleasant side … his usual ecstasy and abandon turn into vengeance and bloodlust, aimed toward a young king who seeks to discredit him. True to Greek form, the god wins, with no apparent attempt at a climaxing plot; we understand from the beginning that humans are doomed to subjection before the gods. The punishment for disbelief far exceeds the crime, with no hint of pity or apology, as befits the gods’ disdain for lesser beings.

I found the forty page introduction superb, and the notes following the play a bit less so, though still helpful in illuminating the setting. show less

This is SUCH a good translation; it was an absolute joy to read.

4.5