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Part I
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1 Dionysos and the tragic
Every epoch believes itself to be the end of history. We, unquestionably, focus more passionately on ends than on beginnings. History advances oblivious to human loss yet mobilized by it. The new emerges out of mourning for the old. The chorus of “mourners” is always led by the poet who positions her/himself at the border between two worlds. Thus, Euripides, an old man in exile – exiled from his time, not only geographically – takes up the kalamos to write down his last play in the wild forests of Macedonia. It is a nightmare, a cry of protest, an act of despair, perhaps even an act of revenge. The scene opens on a ruined landscape, smitten by divine fire, a smoldering thunder-blasted tomb. It is a mother’s tomb, a mother that was struck by lightning and gave birth to her baby, a birth before its due time (time always runs ahead of being). All this by a clear mountain spring that flows quietly into a river. Birth–death, violent rupture and a tranquil stream of soothing continuity seize the spectator in the first eight lines of the Bacchae.1 Moreover, something else: “Here I come disguised,” declares the son now re-appearing on the scene, returning to the deadly place of his birth.
“Many are the forms of the Daemon,” the chorus will conclude 1388 lines later – clearly two: living, dead, both in disguise.
The Bacchae is a play whose intriguing seductive appeal few stage directors have been able to resist – and it has proven to be the Waterloo of many. It has been called a meta-tragedy,2 a tragedy about tragedy, a play about the very nature of theater. It tells of the powers of the divine – powers of creation and destruction – the might of Dionysos, whose terrifying hegemony no-one may contest.
Dionysos has been the subject of several lost tragedies, e.g., Aeschylus’ Pentheus, Bassaridae and the Lykurgos trilogy, but it is only Euripides’ Bacchae that has survived in its entirety. In the Bacchae, Segal claims, “Euripides uses the figure of Dionysos as a god of the tragic mask to reflect on the paradoxical nature of tragedy itself.”3 It will be argued here that it is the paradoxical nature of all theater that is dealt with in the Bacchae.
Although it has not been without challenges,4 the prevailing view is that tragedy as a genre is intimately linked with Dionysos and the ritual practices of his early worshippers. The historical evidence for this comes from Herodotus5 and, importantly, from Aristotle’s account in his Poetics.6 Aristotle’s theory of the origins of tragedy must be taken seriously, insofar as he was chronologically closest to the facts (even though removed from them by about two centuries) and it is likely that he had access to sources no longer available to us. Aristotle claims that tragedy emerged as an “improvisation” that was started by the “leaders of the dithyramb”7 and evolved gradually until it reached its final form. Dithyramb was the song of the followers of Dionysos accompanying their frenzied, ecstatic dances. We read, for example, Archilochos, the seventh-century iambic poet, who is boasting that he knows “how to lead off the fair song of Dionysos, the dithyramb, when my wits are thunder-struck with wine.”8 In fact, “dithyramb” was used as an epithet for the god.
A crucial question that confronts us is the exact nature of the “improvisation” that Aristotle mentions as the first step leading to the development of tragedy, a step taken by the leader of the dithyramb. What exactly did it involve? We shall return to this important question. What is, however, generally accepted is that the origins of tragedy are traceable back to the early Dionysian satyr chorus and the associated dithyramb hymns sung in honor of Dionysos. In view of this, a closer look at the god of tragedy as we see him in the only surviving tragedy in which he is the central figure may throw some light on the nature of tragedy itself and on the nature of the tragic in particular.
The traditional belief held Dionysos to be a newcomer to Greek soil, surreptitiously invading from the north and challenging Apollo, the Greek god of light, clarity and aesthetic order. This, however, has been shown to be unfounded following recent archeological evidence. At the end of the nineteenth century, Rohde,9 in advocating Dionysos to be an element foreign to Greek culture, was expressing the dominant idealizing view of his time that regarded the Greeks as a purified culture of order, reason and harmony. Basing himself on Herodotus’ claims10 and on the fact that the god is hardly present in Homer, Rohde maintained that the barbarian Thracian god was belatedly introduced to Apollonian Greece and that this was done against great local resistance. Dionysos – following this view – became gradually “Hellenized and humanized,” eventually taking his place side by side with Apollo in Greek religious life. This was shown in the pediments of the Delphic temple: the east classic pediment was occupied by Apollo and the Muses, whereas the Western classic pediment showed Dionysos and his maenadic thyiads. Wilamowitz,11 too, was of the opinion that the establishment of worship of Dionysos in Greece could not have taken place before 700 BCE. All this, however, had to be revised when excavations in the island of Keos brought to light a sanctuary of Dionysos dating back to the fifteenth century BCE. In addition, evidence from deciphered Linear B tablets from Pylos indicates that the worship of Dionysos was already established in Mycenaean times. It would seem, therefore, that, alongside the worship of Apollo, Greek society had, as early as the Late Helladic period, maintained a space for the observance of the ek-static,12 the mystical, the irrational, the uncanny and the otherworldly represented by the illusive god. Peisistratus’ political acumen led him to found, in the sixth century, the Great Dionysia festival to honor the god that “brings to wretched humans . . . sleep and oblivion from daily sorrows.”13
It was during the five-day festival of the Great Dionysia, or City Dionysia, celebrated in the spring month of Elaphebolion, that tragedies were performed and trophies awarded to the best tragedians. Tragedies were performed, also, at another festival in honor of Dionysos, the Lenaia, which took place earlier in the year, in the month of Gamelion, i.e., the month of weddings. The performance of tragedies as a core component of Dionysian festivals adds support to the theory that tragedy, both regarding its origins and to its form, had a deep connection with the god’s worship.
In the formative shadow of the Aristotelian legacy, Nietzsche,14 proclaiming himself to be “the last disciple of the philosopher Dionysus,” developed, in his The Birth of Tragedy From the Spirit of Music that appeared in 1872, the theme of the Dionysian origins of tragedy, linking it to the primitive forces governing the god’s fusional satyr chorus chanting the dithyramb. The book sold initially only 625 copies and damaged Nietzsche’s academic career irreparably, but its subsequent influence has been immense.
The ritual origins of tragedy were given a new emphasis and a novel interpretation by a group of British scholars (J.E. Harrison, F.M. Cornford and G. Murray) at the beginning of the twentieth century. Influenced by W.R. Smith’s theories about ritual and myth and J.G. Frazer’s evolutionary anthropological theories that were quite popular at the time, these so-called “Cambridge Ritualists” believed Dionysos to be, in effect, a Year God (eniautos daimon)15 that represented the natural cycle of death and rebirth. They held, accordingly, that tragedy arose from spring vegetation rituals celebrating the rebirth of the Year Spirit identified with Dionysos. Although the Year God theory of the origin of tragedy has been criticized for lack of evidence,16 the theory’s refutation has not challenged the direct link of tragedy to Dionysos and his rituals.
Looking at Euripides’ play now, we see Dionysos disguised as a traveler arriving at his native city, Thebes. Thebes is ruled by his cousin Pentheus who refuses to recognize Dionysos’ divine status and scoffs at his rituals. Intent on initiating the Thebans to his mysteries, Dionysos drives the women of Thebes to the hills in Bacchic frenzy, while his retinue of Asiatic women sing the story of the god’s miraculous violent double birth, first from his mortal mother’s womb and later from his father Zeus’ thigh. The Stranger cleverly seduces Pentheus to stealthily watch the maenads’ “secret dances” in the wild – sights “pleasurable and repulsive” – dressing him up as a bacchant in order not to be recognized. Once dressed up Pentheus declares seeing double, beholding two suns and two Thebes, to which the Stranger responds “Now you see as you should.” Alas, the eager spectator of the women’s mysterious exploits becomes himself part of a primordial sacred act, as “his flesh is broken asunder” by his entranced mother and his body is left “divided.” When she recovers from her ecstatic orgy, Agave bewails: “Oh penthos [mourning grief] immeasurable! Oh murder by these wretched hands!” The god finally appears in his true guise speaking of the ...
