Euripides' Bacchae: The Agony and the Ecstasy
How does Euripides depict the extremes of ecstasy in this play? What
is the price that has to be paid for this ecstasy? Is Euripides suggesting that
this price is ultimately too high?
The Bacchae is a grotesque, complex and
magnificent exploration of the human condition. Through the suffering of the
young king Pentheus and his mother Agave, Euripides challenges his audience to
question the practices, the underlying principles, and, indeed, the system of
belief that a society is founded upon. On a different level, however, the Bacchae also demonstrates the effect of
these social constructs upon the individual. Ultimately, for Euripides, the
interaction of these two elements is the proper subject of tragedy. The Bacchae, it will be argued, is a play
about emotional extremes. In the first instance it is the extremes of rationality,
of civilization and of repression, and in the second, it is the extremes of
ecstasy, which, for Euripides, necessarily follow from the first. Both Agave
and Pentheus are guilty of these extremes, and both suffer for them.
This essay, then,
will outline these emotional extremes and the way they are depicted. This will
be done, firstly, by demonstrating the extremity of Pentheus’ position in the
opening third of the play. Secondly, the
extremes of ecstasy will be illustrated by using a comparison between the
description of Bacchic revelries by the Asiatic chorus, and the description of the
ecstatic frenzy of the Theban Bacchae, as described by the two messengers.
Euripides’ use of these extremes and their consequences will then be analyzed.
It will be argued that Euripides uses a complex symbolic system to show that the
enormous price paid for such extremes is not only too high, but, in fact,
fundamentally undermines society, which, of necessity, leads to violent and
inhuman consequences.
When Pentheus
first hears news of the Theban women leaving the city to engage in “strange new
evils,”[1]
he reacts swiftly. His focus is on a perceived sexual threat that The Stranger
and the corrupted Theban women represent; he aims at the suppression of the
revelries, by containing the women[2]
and destroying The Stranger[3].
Pentheus’ reaction is, for a king, ostensibly reasonable[4].
He intends to restore order to a city that has, no doubt, been substantially
disrupted by the actions of the women, who have “abandoned their homes”[5].
However, his reaction is also marked by anger towards and ridicule of those
whom he considers, “devoid of common sense” [6].
His position may well have been defensible, as Norwood suggests, but for its extremity.
This point is emphasized by Cadmus, who, despite his comical appearance, takes
a pragmatic position. Cadmus’ is not an emotive or ecstatic appeal to Pentheus
to join the Bacchic revelries but is, instead, a prophetic warning to Pentheus,
which is met once again with a reaction that might be reasonable but for its
extremity[7].
The excesses of
Pentheus’ position find their source in his own make up. His obsessive focus on
the sexual element[8] of
the Bacchae and the Stranger indicates that below the surface of this rational
young king resides a dormant emotional and instinctive temperament, which the
arrival of The Stranger has awoken. When the two finally meet, Pentheus accuses
the now “shapely”[9]
Stranger of attempting to sexually corrupt Thebes, but then, instead of meeting
out the appropriate punishment, engages with him, asking him questions about
the cult of Dionysius. It is clear that Pentheus has moved from a state of anger
to curiosity. Interestingly, when Pentheus does finally punish The Stranger, he
decides to lock him up—contain him—with the women, a far cry from cutting “his
head right off his body!”[10].
The immediate
reaction by Pentheus to the cult of Dionysius has already begun to be reversed.
Initially, he is represented as “a puritan with a puritant mind”[11],
whose effort to contain the Theban women and the Stranger is indicative of an
attempt “to repress the elemental,”[12]
within his own nature. His endeavor to contain the threat within the palace, followed
by the collapse of the palace, can be viewed as the symbolic representation of
this process[13].
The failure of this containment results in the collapse of Pentheus psyche or
“the sudden complete collapse of the inward dykes when the elemental breaks
through perforce and civilization vanishes”[14].
Although Pentheus makes several attempts at regaining his former condition, for
example by trying “to stab,” Dionysius’ “shining image”[15]
and by making another attempt to contain the stranger by locking “every gate in
the encircling rampart,”[16]
the process of complete disintegration has begun, with these pathetic attempts serving
only to highlight the futility of his position and the tragedy of his fate.
It can be argued
that a similar phenomenon is at work with regard to the Theban Bacchae. Their
initial refusal to accept Dionysius has led them to an altered and ecstatic
condition as expressed in their frenetic revelries, the extremity of which will
now be examined. It can be argued that this process is given greater emphasis because
of the comparative peacefulness of the idealized revelry described by the
Asiatic chorus, which will now be briefly outlined.
The Asiatic chorus
describes key elements of Bacchic ritual, including the clothing worn, such as
ivy crowns and fawnskins, the objects used, such as the thyrsus, and the
activities participated in, including the playing of instruments and dancing, and
the slaughter of animals and feasting. It can be argued that this represents a
formal and controlled revelry[17],
the overall impression of which, is an unusual yet beautiful, naturalistic and
joyous scene[18].
Additionally, there is an emphasis on femininity and fertility:
Swiftly rejoicing, then,
Like a filly grazing with her mother,
The Bacchant leaps
Swift and nimble on her feet.[19]
This scene offers
a stark contrast with the “strange feats,”[20]
of the Theban Bacchae.
Two messengers
present the narrative of the Theban Bacchae to the audience, which represents
the first significant difference between them and the Asiatic chorus, who
present their own version of events. Importantly, this means that, whereas the
Asiatic revelries would have been sung, the description of the Theban women would
have been spoken, creating a clear distinction between the two and allowing for
a “vivid narration of violent and shocking events”[21].
Beyond this formal
element, the differences between the two Bacchae are many.
For example, the
Asiatic choir mentions their revelries within the context of “biennial
festivals,” [22]
which implies that they are nocturnal[23]. The Theban women, by contrast, begin their revelries
“as the sun lets loose its rays”[24].
These revelries constitute a wild Bacchic frenzy, occurring in broad daylight,
which become progressively more violent and shocking. The maternal images of the Asiatic choir are
inverted, firstly, by the description of the Theban women breast-feeding “fawn
or wild wolf cubs”[25]
and then by their snatching “children from their homes”[26].
Significantly, the women are likened to “enemy soldiers,” “turning it all
upside down,”[27] a
direct allusion to the inversion occurring here. While such practices may have formed
part of actual Bacchic revelries, it can be argued that their inclusion by
Euripides in a tragedy to be performed in Athens, means that their intended
effect was to shock, or, at the least deeply concern the audience[28].
If the reports of
the first messenger failed to shock, the progression of the Theban women toward
ecstatic madness, as described by the second messenger, cannot have failed in
this endevour. The second messenger describes in vivid detail the dismemberment
of the king, the predominant image of which is the ripping and tearing apart of
Pentheus by the Theban women, which of course includes his mother and aunts[29].
Agave is described as “foaming from the mouth and rolling her protruding
eyeballs,” and, like Pentheus earlier in the play “not thinking what she ought
to think”[30]. What is depicted here is “the blind force of
instinct, the primal spirit of chaos,”[31]
the progressive and complete loss of control by the Theban women.
The two emotional
conditions analyzed here represent the polar extremities of the human
condition. Euripides employs a complex symbolic system in order to display
these conditions and their dangers. The young king, as we first meet him, represents
the extremes of civilization, of the polis. As Espositio explains, the city, in
“the Greek imagination,” represents “order, wisdom, sanity, culture … morality,
religion and politics”. This is the set of values that drives the king to act
swiftly and resolutely to contain the public disturbance of the Bacchae and The
Stranger; in brief, this is the “traditional male warrior code”[32]. However, it is the extremity of this
position, the absolute rigidity of such an ethos, that leads to the king’s
demise, through the agency of Dionysius.
Equally, Agave,
her sisters, and the rest of the Theban women, may have fallen victim to such a
position; this we cannot know as it occurs before the action. All
we are told is
that the Theban women “denied that I, Dionysius, was begotten from Zeus,”[33].
What we are shown is the danger of embracing “the wilderness of the mountain,”
and all it represents, to the degree that these women do; “the song, dance,
ecstasy … madness, disorder,”[34]
of the Bacchae, the outward expression of primal energy, which, though it has
its place, and may even serve a vital social function, when taken to the
extreme, leads to inhumane consequences. The perversion of the women could not
be described in more shocking terms, it is their maternal and familial bonds
that are destroyed. Once again it is through the agency of Dionysius that the
women are driven to these extremes.
What, then, are we
to make of Euripides’ Dionysius, whose omnipotence in the Bacchae is especially baffling if we credit Lima[35]
with accuracy when he asserts that Euripides was in fact an atheist.
Perhaps, in this
regard, it is useful to consider Dionysius himself as part of Euripides’
symbolic system. In the Bacchae, Dionysius can be viewed as a
representation of those wilder elements of the human psyche that he is most
often associated with—those elements that Pentheus, with his rationalist,
civilized, warrior code, sought to contain, to build walls around, to repress[36].
Indeed, this thesis is given weight by the doubling that occurs throughout the
drama between Pentheus and Dionysius (as the Stranger), who are cousins of a similar
age, from the same city, who in many ways collude throughout the play; there is
both a mirroring and a symbolic unity between the two.
This symbolic
reading of Dionysius implies that the play is a narrative about the self and the
effect of civilization upon the individual. This reading gives new and
prophetic resonance to the last words of the second messenger when he opines,
“moderation and reverence for things divine is the best course. And it is also,
I think, the wisest possession for those mortals who use it.”[37]
Perhaps Euripides means to encourage his viewers to pay due reverence to
themselves, to all the parts of their psyche, in moderation; and to encourage a
society to offer a moderate and controlled outlet for all of its members to
express themselves and to not simply privilege the powerful and their rigid
ethos. It seems that such a didactic purpose is a likely explanation for a
drama such as this, written by an aging poet, living in exile from a homeland
emerging from the ravages of thirty years of excess.
Reference List
Primary Sources
Euripides, Bacchae,
Euripides: Four Plays Medea, Hippolytus,
Heracles, Bacchae, ed. and transl. S. Esposito, Newburyport MA: Focus
Publishing (2004).
Secondary Sources
Dodds, E, R, ‘Maenadism
in the Bacchae’, The Harvard Theological
Review 33 03 (1940) 155-176.
Esposito, S,
Introduction to Euripides: Four Plays Medea, Hippolytus, Heracles, Bacchae, in
Esposito, S, Euripides: Four Plays Medea,
Hippolytus, Heracles, Bacchae, Newburyport MA: Focus Publishing (2004)
01-34.
Grube, G, M, A,
‘Dionysius in the Bacchae’, Transactions
and Proceedings of the American
Philological Association 66 (1935) 37-54.
Kraemer, R, S,
‘The attraction of Women to the Cult of Dionysius’, The Harvard Theological
Review 72 01/02 (1979) 55-80.
LaRue, J, A,
‘Prurience Uncovered: The Psychology of Euripides’ Pentheus’, The Classical
Journal 63 05 (1968) 209-214.
Lima, R, ‘The
Primal Spirit: Sacred Frenzy in Euripides’ Bacchae’, in Stages of Evil:
Occultism in Western Theatre and Drama, Lexington: University of Kentucky
(2005) 101-115.
Norwood, G, The Riddle of the Bacchae: The Last Stage of
Euripides’ Religious Views, Manchester: University of Manchester Press
(1908).
Shein, S, L,
Introduction to Sophokles: Philoktetes, in Shein, S, L, Sophokles: Philoktetes, Newburyport MA: Focus Publishing (2003)
1-18.
[1] Bacchae, 216
[2] Bacchae, 226, 231
[3] Bacchae, 241, 245, 356
[4] Norwood, 1908, 60, for example, argues that there is “nothing
whatever objectionable in his attitude”.
[5] Bacchae, 217
[6] Bacchae, 252
[7] Bacchae, 343
[8] LaRue, 1968, 209, claims that Pentheus possesses a “morbid sexual
curiosity”.
[9] Bacchae, 454
[10] Bacchae, 241
[11] Grube,1935, 40
[12] Dodds, 1940, 159
[13] Seeing the palace collapse as largely symbolic, while still
problematic, helps to address Norwood’s pertinent concerns about this scene,
without resorting to his questionable conclusions, see Norwood, 1908, 37-48
[14] Dodds, 1940, 159
[15] Bacchae, 631
[16] Bacchae, 653
[17] Kraemer, 1979, 80, argues that Dionysiac possession allowed women
to “temporarily defy their normal roles” within a structured framework.
[18] Grube,1935, 39.
[19] Bacchae, 166-169
[20] Bacchae, 667
[21] Schein, 2003, 08
[22] Bacchae, 133
[23] Kraemer, 1979, 60
[24] Bacchae, 679
[25] Bacchae, 699
[26] Bacchae, 754
[27] Bacchae, 753-754
[28] Dodds, 1940, 174
[29] Bacchae, 1127, 1130, 1135
[30] Bacchae, 1122-1123
[31] Lima, 2005, 112
[32] Esposito, 2004, 19
[33] Bacchae, 27
[34] Esposito, 2004, 19
[35] Lima, 2005, 103
[36] LaRue, 1968, 212, writes “Dionysius is merely the symbol of the
savage bestial side of Penthues’ own psyche”.
[37] Bacchae, 1150-1152
No comments:
Post a Comment