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Plan of session 1. Dramatic action in the Bacchae, scene by scene 2. The Dionysiac and the totality of the human experience; Dionysus and the tragic poets 3. Thinking about the Dionysiac through space: - Antithetical spaces, antithetical ideas - Confinement and liberation; movement and the static 4. The Bacchae and Dionysiac ritual 5. Approaching the Bacchae through costume 6. Eyes, vision, knowledge and madness 7. The ‘psychotherapy scene’ in the Bacchae Dramatic action in Bacchae (or ‘Bacchant Women’) Dionysus and the totality of human experience (Segal, Dionysiac poetics p.10 ‘The elusive god’) Dionysus collapsing boundaries in the Bacchae: some examples - Appears as all three: human, animal and god - Greek born, but coming from Asia - Female in appearance, persuades Pentheus to dress in feminine clothes, turns women into fighters and hunters - Possesses both the house interior, AND the mountain (internal and external) - Turns women into wild Bacchants, ‘running hounds’, eating raw and tearing animal flesh apart - Brings both life/abudnance and death Dionysus, nature and civilisation - Dionysus is the god of the wild and the autonomous, unpredictable surges of the life energies in nature and in man as part of nature - As a result, Dionysus has a necessarily ambiguous relationship to civilisation - He is a force within man that the society can channel to creative purposes and a force (the irrational, the emotional) that threatens and dissolves the bonds of society - Both the acknowledgment and the repression of ‘Dionysus’ are necessities for civilised life. Ch. Segal, Dionysiac poetics and Euripides’ Bacchae Either one or the other ALONE may be destructive. Dionysus and Euripides (and Sophocles, and Aeschylus) TWO ANTITHETICAL SPACES TWO ANTITHETICAL IDEAS; Mountain vs Palace (oikos, polis) Huge tension between mountain and un-domesticated nature in general with Pentheus’ oikos Mountain and oikos for Pentheus • For king Pentheus, the mountain (and un-domesticated nature as a whole) embodies the Dionysiac, which he perceives as untamed/uncivilised, and hence AS A THREAT to the ORDER of the polis (cf. Lydia/the foreign land where Dionysus comes from) • Order and civilisation for Pentheus are embodied by the oikos, i.e. by the palace (and the polis). The mountain (as space and as symbol) has no place in the ‘orderly’, supposedly civilised world of Pentheus. There is a huge tension between the two spaces throughout the play. • The Dionysiac is perceived as threatening and needing to be contained; the arrest of the maenads on the mountain and their incarceration in the palace has huge symbolic meaning • But the Dionysiac cannot be contained – the women escape back to the mountain, to even more wondrous effects this time. • Most importantly, the Lydian stranger, who was impossible to contain, escapes The invasion of ‘civilised’ spaces • At the beginning of the play, the Dionysiac has been banned from the polis, but cannot really be contained outside. • Even when the play opens, Pentheus’ house has been ‘invaded’ by the Dionysiac: the men and the women of the household (their minds, their bodies) have been possessed by the desire for Dionysus, for the Dionysiac, and – in spatial terms – for the mountain. Spatial ‘attraction’ towards the mountain. • At Pentheus’ attempt for their containment in the house, the house itself is invaded by the Dionysiac => earthquake, destruction/collapse of house => i.e. unleashing of Dionysiac powers on the par excellence symbol of civilised order, the house The Bacchae in one image! Confinement/constriction vs. liberation Movement, setting in motion and entering/invasion of spaces vs. the static OR Thinking about the Dionysiac through space Further symbolism of the house • The invasion of nature into the Theban royal house also reveals what will happen to Pentheus later on in the play. WHY? (Revision question ) • The ‘interior’ of Pentheus (his mind, his psyche) is the only ‘interior’ that still resists the Dionysiac when the play opens – and he wants his house (and the city) to remain that way. • Furthermore, Pentheus, as we saw, tries to confine others in interiors (maenads in palace prison, Lydian stranger in stables) • When Pentheus’ interior is invaded by Dionysus, the result is as unsettling and as destructive as the earthquake that has struck the house earlier on • He becomes the vehicle for the god’s revenge on the humans for having resisted an essential part of human nature, the Dionysiac, and suppressed it with a misconceived as civilised, rational, order • “Will I be able to carry the mountain with me?” 945 • The horrific events of the play’s last scene show the mountain itself ‘invading’ the house of Pentheus: the Dionysiac is experienced in its most destructive facet. • “The mountain killed him” 1177; (Landscape and psychology) • The removal of the royal family from the oikos and the polis => transition to a state of barbarity Boo! Euripides’ Bacchae and Dionysiac ritual the stuff of myth, or historical reality? Maenadism Ancient Greek Attic white-ground kylix 490–480 BC from Vulci. Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich, Germany Two satyrs and a maenad. Side A from an Ancient Greek red-figure kylyx-krater from Apulia, 380–370 BC. Louvre, Paris. Euripides’ Bacchae and Dionysiac ritual Dionysiac festivals and mass participation – from the small group to the entire polis The Pompe of the Great Dionysia Euripides’ Bacchae and Dionysiac ritual Dionysus as the god of the group => invested with democratic content early on Euripides’ Bacchae and Dionysiac ritual - The Dionysiac mystic cult – in the 5th century probably identical with Eleusinian mystic cult - Extremely popular for its promise for the afterlife :a rite of passage, centred around an extraordinary (sometimes death-like experience) that effected a transition from outside to inside the group; Euripides’ Bacchae and Dionysiac ritual INITIATION RITUAL and the EXPERIENCE OF THE INITIAND • Travelling; movement from place to place in a parade • Entering a dark, interior space (Telesterion in Eleusis) - Disguise and transvestism; crossing genders - Parading in crowds and humiliation - Some resistance and powerful negative emotions - Experience of terror; physical suffering (e.g. flaggelation) - ‘Sacrifice’; ‘death’ => REBIRTH AND TRANSFORMATION INTO INITIATE In the Bacchae, who acts out the experience of the initiand? Approaching the Bacchae through costume Ba. 178ff., pp. 27ff. vv. 337-51, pp. 41-43 vv. 451ff., p. 51 vv. 493-97, p. 57 After the earthquake, the stranger’s liberation, the royal women’s escape to the mountain and the miraculous events there …. Pentheus is still resisting the offers to join the Dionysiac …. Until…. …break… Extra-metrical Ahhhh! exclamation vv. 821-846 pp. 91-95 And later on… vv. 927- 938 p. 103 Perseus’ hidden nature and his origins vv. 547-58, p. 63 Eyes, seeing and vision in the Bacchae vv. 918-24; p. 101 Eyes, seeing and vision in the Bacchae Where else is vision important? Seeing and state of mind / seeing and knowing What does Euripides’ Bacchae have to do with psychotherapy? What Agave sees before Cadmus’ entry (vv. 1197-1208, pp. 131-33) The ‘psychotherapy’ scene vv. 1265-85, pp. 137-1c41 Classic 1970s article by Devereux, still of some value The process of ‘insight-and-recall’-oriented psychotherapy: A condensed, poetic, but coherent version Agave's principal on-stage symptoms are: • disorientation with respect to reality, • defensive hypomanic exaltation masking great underlying grief, • a coy, hysterical foolishness • and, above all, a partial amnesia Pre-therapeutic process • Overcoming resistance; Restoration of identity Therapeutic process: • Reminiscence of deed in space and time By the end of the scene, the objective is attained. Agave is now sane, non-amnesic, reality-oriented and 'self-connected' in time; her past has, at become part of her present. It only remains for her to learn to live with it. For bibliography, see ‘general bibliography’ .
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