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Dionysus (3): the God's Epiphanies in the Bacchae

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Dionysus (3): the God's Epiphanies in the Bacchae CHAPTER EIGHT DIONYSUS (3): THE GOD'S EPIPHANIES IN THE BACCHAE In comparing the Homeric hymn to Dionysus with the Bacchae (p. 123) it has been established that in his play Euripides prevented the ap­ pearance of the actor portraying Dionysus from acquiring the naturalness of an epic epiphany; the poet achieved this by continually bringing the audience face to face with the fact that the appearance of the Lydian had an epiphanic character, but that at the same time this epiphanic character was not experienced by Pentheus; in other words, the poet applied a sort of alienation effect. It was then suggested that Euripides weaves together the epiphanic motives in his plot into the principium actionis: the con­ tinuous oppressive or liberating presence of a god among mortals. Con­ sideration of the epiphanic action of the god in the Bacchae supports these claims. In the prologue and the exodos of the Bacchae we meet a theatrical con­ vention frequently used by Euripides, the appearance of a divinity on the stage. This appearance can be called a stage epiphany; from the spec­ tator's point of view these appearances have no referential aspects of meaning, because the way in which the god speaks his prologue or ap­ pears as a deus ex machina on the tragic stage, does not refer to the way in which gods might be perceived in the reality outside the theatre. This stage epiphany therefore stands outside the categories of epic, mythical, cult and soteriological epiphanies (p. 114 f. ), and the action ofthe god taking part in the complications of the plot is in strong contrast to it. As speaker of the prologue the contrast lies in his addressing himself exclusively to the audience, while the god who acts with mortal characters on the stage is imitating a mythical or cult practice; as deus ex machina in his address­ ing himself, whether from the theologeion or from the machina, directly to the characters in the play, while his performance is no imitation, but a code, by which an actor makes the fact visible that gods interfere in the lives of men in order to achieve their ends. 323 The spectator does not see 323 This review of the epiphanic nature of Dionysus' actions in the Bacchae is not the place to discuss the function of the deus ex machina, but see G. Murray, Euripides and his Age 221ff.-Gerd Kremer, Die Struktur des Tragodienschlusses (in W. Jens ed., Bauformen 117ff.) makes a distinction between 'Ecceschluss' and 'Handlungsschluss' (cf. above n. 219). The ecce-ending (sometimes too: Prasentationsschluss) is primarily directed at an explanation of what happens in the action (=the story), both past and to come. The ex­ odos with 'Handlungsschluss' is more like a normal episode: here the action gets a new impetus, and the tragedy is only brought to its end in the last scenes. A remark by the 132 DIONYSUS' EPIPHANIES IN THE BACCHAE the theatrical representation of a religious experience, an epiphany, but decodes the code in strict narrative terms: this was the god's will in the story told about him, this was the way history continued in the period after that of the play, and so on. The appearance of Dionysus in the course of the Bacchae's action (be­ tween 434 and 1088), is on the other hand a continuous epiphany, because it is a mimesis of epiphany. But what could this have meant to the spectator of Euripides' day? He knows that in the myth about Pen­ theus the god appeared in Thebes, just as in all the myths about Dionysus he makes a local appearance to establish his cult; 324 he also knows that the god appears in the practices of the cult (in the l&po~ yixµo~ ( sacred mar­ riage) at the Anthesteria, as an orgiastic god in the nAncx( (initiation rites), as lacchos at the Lenaea325). In addition he would be conscious, far more strongly than a modern man would be likely to be, of the god's presence in wine, and in all the facets of moist nature nourished by sap. But for the audience, and certainly for Euripides himself, the appearance of Dionysus in an epic epiphany would have been an intolerable archaism in their theatre, since it would have seriously disturbed the theatrical reality as an imitation of life. The god does not therefore appear as a god, but as a mortal, and indeed as a travelling stranger from Lydia. So there is NO appearance of the GOD. For the mortal participants the separa­ tion of god and stranger is an absolute separation, since there would be no more imitation of reality if they were to see the stranger acting as a god. Ignorance about the true identity of the stranger affects the god's female companions from Lydia as much as it does the inhabitants of Thebes; the male leader of the thiasos is certainly not the god to the chorus, cf. 54 7 ff.: 'tOV lµov ... 6tcxcrw-ccxv crxo-cCcxt~ xpu1t'tOV lv dpx-ccxr~. foopqt~ -cixo', w Llto~ 1tcxr, .:'.lt6vucrt; ( the leader of my thiasos hidden in a dark prison. Do you see this, Dionysus, son of Zeus?). The palace miracles alter this ignorance not at all (613 1tw~ ~Atu6tpw6ri~; How were you set free?) and the stranger carefully maintains the separation (623, 630). Even when he brings into the struggle his divine weapon, mania, before the watching audience, he maintains the separation (849-50, 975-76), which for the victim is only removed in his delusion (920-22). When the stranger disappears into thin air just before the sparagmos of Pentheus (we do not see him go, but he is suddenly no longer there, 1077), the thought still does not strike Pentheus' bodyguard that the voice that he author about the Hipp., which he recognizes as an cccc-cnding, is valid in my opinion for all appearances of a deus ex machina in Euripides (p. 136): 'Funktion dcr Gottcrszcnc ist cs viclmchr, <las Eccc zu vcrticfcn'. 324 Cf. Marcello Masscnzio, Cultura e crisi permanente: la 'xenia' dionisiaca, Rome 1970. 325 Cf. H. S. Versnel, IAKXO:E, Talanta 4 (1972) 23-38. .
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