Another View of Euripides’ “Bacchae”

My last post described a psychological interpretation of Euripides’ tragedy that greatly satisfied me and my teacher, Ron Zirin. In retrospect, I’m surprised that Zirin did not recommend The Greeks and the Irrational, the book by E.R. Dodds who edited our edition of the play,  if I wanted to dig deeper into The Bacchae. Instead, he sent me to the library after quite a different work, The Bacchants of Euripides and Other Essays (1910) by a late Victorian critic, Arthur Verrall.

Verrall had written an earlier book called Euripides the Rationalist: A Study in the History of Art and Religion (1895). Verrall saw Euripides as the enemy, not the exponent, of the irrational. And he has a point. Euripides wrote in late 5^th-century B.C. Athens, when intellectuals questioned many traditional assumptions about humans and gods. Euripides’ contemporary Socrates asked people how they know that what they believe is really true. Euripides questioned gender roles to the point where some view him as a proto-feminist. In Alcestis, for example, Apollo granted Admetus, the king of Pherae, the favor of putting off the day he was fated to die if he could find someone to die in his place. Admetus’ wife, Alcestis, agrees to take his place. The tragedy contrasts the rational courage and resolution of Alcestis with the irrational fear and cowardice of Admetus. According to Verrall, Euripides set up all the conflicts in his plays to demonstrate the triumph of rational thought over superstition.

Verrall argued the point programmatically. He returned to the theme again and again throughout his career. Verrall himself was a rationalist. No point can be valid unless proved by rational, scientific means. Euripides became his hero. The tragedian lived in a culture dominated by inherited belief in the gods and other supernatural forces, and he used his gifts as a playwright to expose them as fraudulent. Although sometimes, for his own safety, he had to conceal what he was trying to do under convoluted plots. But Euripides’ rationalism is there to see for readers who know what they are looking for.

Verrall must have realized that The Bacchae posed the greatest challenge to his thesis. “[I]n the Bacchants, and nowhere else among the tragedies of Euripides, we have a drama consisting, from first to last, of incidents which, upon the face of them and according to the prevalent belief of the persons represented, are miraculous and supernatural.”[i] If Verrall could crack this play, his thesis about Euripides would be unassailable. I imagine him taking his time to gather evidence and think through his argument. He hardly mentioned the play in Euripides the Rationalist, and he didn’t analyze the play in a subsequent volume, either, Essays on Four Plays of Euripides: Andromache, Helen, Heracles, Orestes (1905). Verrall waited 15 years after his big book on Euripides till he made a frontal assault on The Bacchae.

Dodds and Zirin accepted the supernatural occurrences in the play as part of the myth of Dionysos and tried to find symbolic meaning in them by using insights from psychology. On principle, Verrall does not accept the supernatural as real in any sense because it has no rational basis. Since Euripides is a rationalist, Verrall reasons, he would not have accepted the supernatural as real, either. He would not have represented them in The Bacchae even for a dramatic conceit. Instead, he expects the discerning reader to see the miracles associated with Dionysos as mere frauds. Here Verrall explains the episode I cited in my last post where Pentheus tries to bind the follower/Dionysos but ends up wrestling with the bull:

What [the follower/Dionysos] tells of his operations upon the mind of Pentheus [is] wild, impossible, destitute of confirmation, inconsistent with visible facts. The adept [follower] is able by suitable suggestion to excite, in those who passionately believe and habitually obey him, imaginative beliefs and even imaginary sensations, for which they themselves are prepared by confident expectancy. This agrees with nature, as we know it now and may presume it to have been known in the days of Euripides. But it does not follow that, by his mere will and pleasure, he could mislead and hallucinate a mind incredulous and hostile. Because the bacchants, at his suggestion, attribute his voice to Dionysus, and because one of them even sees a fire, it does not follow that Pentheus, without any preparation, would take a bull for a man; and the dramatist, by showing us the natural performance, gives us no reason to accept a report of the unnatural. And the facts, the words and behaviour of Pentheus, refute this as well as the rest. The hallucinations indeed, as such, Pentheus might be supposed to have forgotten; but his labours, his frantic efforts to extinguish the fire, his pursuit and assault of the phantom-prisoner—these, whether remembered or not, are ex hypothesi real, and their effect should be visible. The story leaves Pentheus “lying,” as well he may, “exhausted.” The words are scarcely said, when Pentheus himself comes out, vigorous as ever, so far as appears from the dialogue, both in body and mind![ii]

A pagan god like Dionysos did not exist, thinks the Christian Verrall, and a critical intelligence such as Euripides wouldn’t have believed anything so absurd. Therefore, the follower cannot be Dionysos in disguise; he must be a mountebank pretending to exercise divine powers in order to bring credulous people under his sway. Verrall knew about mesmerism, and he agrees that a strong personality can cause the mind of a willing subject to hallucinate. However, he cannot accept that a mesmerist could hypnotize as strong a character as Pentheus against his will. The follower of Dionysos merely claims to have done so in order to trick the Chorus.

Verrall’s rationalistic assumptions lead him to find a different meaning in the play from the one Dodds and Zirin found. For Verrall, Pentheus champions the forces of reason and does battle heroically against Dionysian superstition, especially against the con artist posing as Dionysos’ follower. Pentheus dies a martyr’s death at the hands of the unreasoning horde of women. However, the play poses a challenge to this interpretation: If Pentheus aims to suppress a religion he knows is fraudulent, why does he willingly put himself in the power of the follower of Dionysos? Why let the follower dress him up and lead him out into the fields to slaughter? Verrall offers a rational answer:

[W]e cannot suppose that the stranger, having got Pentheus to confer with him in the palace, makes an idiot of him by merely so willing, — how is it done, and how is the manner of it explained, as of course it must be, to the audience ? Possibly that may not now be discoverable. The text of a dramatist, shorn of the action and not interpreted by directions, is but too likely to present, as the Greek tragedians do, some problems not determinable. But there are some indications, all pointing one way, which, so far as I know, have not been considered, and perhaps have not been noticed. Whether they are sufficient, it is for the reader to decide. I submit them for what they may be worth.

Foremost, because most conspicuous, may be set the fact that, when Pentheus comes forth demented, the first symptom of his state is an affection not at all mystical, but bacchic in the most vulgar sense… In plain terms…the man is drunk. He sees double, like any toper reeling out of a wine-shop. Now surely it was a blunder in the dramatist, a mistake of judgement and taste, to put in this trait, unless he really means that the victim is intoxicated, and has taken something, some drink or drug, such as would naturally do the work.[iii]

Verrall marks down to drunkenness the symptoms that Zirin perceived as psychotic. Euripides could never have meant his rational hero to abuse alcohol; Pentheus must have been drugged by the follower of Dionysos. “The stranger comes from Asia Minor, a home of poisons and poisoners,” Verrall explains. “As an adept in ecstasies, a communicator of secret delights, he is not likely to be without experience in drugs.”[iv] Thus, The Bacchae dramatizes a clash between the good European Pentheus and an evil trickster from Asia who dupes and overwhelms him.

How can intelligent, well educated critics like Dodds and Verrall come to diametrically opposite conclusions about the same play? I will explain next time.

[i] Arthur Verrall, The Bacchants of Euripides and Other Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), pp. 1-2.

[ii] Ibid., pp. 73-4.

[iii] Ibid., pp.107-8.

[iv] Ibid., p.109.

One View of Euripides’ “Bacchae”

The most deeply felt, best justified meaning lulls us. We enter it. We luxuriate in it. And we never leave to go somewhere else. That is a problem. It blinds us to other possibilities in the world.

I learned this lesson while finishing a degree in Classics during one summer. The Classics faculty at my university generously agreed to teach me one-on-one. Ronald Zirin took me through my first Greek tragedy, Euripides’ The Bacchae. The play appealed to him because he himself was studying for a second Ph.D. in psychology. He did some student counseling at the school and became interested in psychology that way. Euripides appeared quite modern to critics in the 20^th century because of his depiction of psychological complexes, above all in The Bacchae. Zirin chose an annotated edition of the play, edited with an introduction by E.R. Dodds. Dodds later expanded the introduction into his book The Greeks and the Irrational (1951), which analyzed how the ancient Greeks dealt with irrational psychological impulses in art and religion. The Athenian festival in which The Bacchae and other Greek tragedies were originally performed honored Dionysos, and this play depicted the myths and cult of the god.

Every night, I would open a Greek-English lexicon on my small desk, and with the text of The Bacchae in my hand and a Greek grammar nearby, I would pick my way laboriously through 100 lines. The next morning I would appear at Zirin’s office. He had thin black hair, drank coffee, and kept a toothpick in his mouth most of the time. I would spend the hour translating the passages I had worked up. He corrected my mistakes and helped me over the rough spots. Occasionally he would pause to fill me in about the structure of Greek tragedies, versification, Euripides as an author, the historical background of the play, and so on. But our most interesting discussions revolved around psychology. I had read a lot of C.G. Jung, who had made a study of psychosis and its relationship to mythology. So we had a common language to talk about the play.

The Bacchae deals most directly with the irrational of any Greek tragedy. The play depicts the apotheosis of Dionysos, or Bacchus, the god of wine, revelry, and earthy impulses. It starts with the arrival of Dionysos for the first time in Greece. He had introduced his cult first in Asia and made his way West in a march of conquest until he came to the city of Thebes. The Theban women, including the mother and aunts (Ino and Agave) of the young king Pentheus, don fawn skins and go out into the fields to perform the god’s ceremonies. The elderly prophet Tiresias and Cadmus, the former king and Pentheus’ grandfather, participate as well.

The whole state threatens to convert to the worship of a foreign god. In one of the rituals, these Bacchae chase wild animals through the fields, rip them apart with their bare hands, and eat the flesh raw.

Back in Thebes, Pentheus denies that Dionysos is really a god. He suspects Dionysos merely offers an excuse for the women to engage in orgies. He sets out to suppress the worship of Dionysos and restore order. He arrests and throws into the palace dungeon a follower of Dionysos, who is actually Dionysos in disguise. Dionysos destroys the palace by earthquake and fire. The “follower” escapes and describes the incident to the chorus of Bacchants:

CHORUS:       Didn’t he even grab hold of your hands in fetter-like nooses?

DIONYSOS:   These things also outraged him, since he seemed to bind me

                        But didn’t graze nor grab us yet nourished his hope.

                        Seeing a bull at the manger where he dragged us and shut us up,

                        He threw nooses around its knees and hoofs—

                        He was breathing hard, dropping sweat from his body,

                        His teeth showing between his lips. And I was right there beside him,

                        And I sat calmly and watched. (615-22)

The scene illustrates the futility of a mortal trying to wrestle down the bull-like power of a god. Pentheus misdirects his force onto a delusive object, the bull, while the untouched god looks on.

Subsequently, the escaped follower/Dionysos persuades Pentheus to go out into the fields undercover to find out what is happening so that he can take action more effectively. Pentheus readily agrees and dresses up in fawn skins as a Bacchant. Dionysos causes Pentheus’ mother and aunts to hallucinate that Pentheus himself is a bull. They chase him down and tear him apart. In this way, by destroying his enemy, Dionysos demonstrates that he is in fact a powerful god.

The psychology of the puritanical Pentheus stands out. He maintains an almost hysterical opposition to Dionysos. Pentheus is a man. He stands for the manly virtues of a patriarchal culture. He controls a city that’s protected from the wider world within high walls. He values law and order. By contrast, Dionysos and his follower are effeminate. His worshipers are women. They wander in the wide open fields. They eschew traditional Greek customs in favor of foreign ones. In short, Dionysos contradicts Pentheus’ view of how the world should work.

Pentheus knows nothing about what the Bacchae do in the fields, but his mind leaps to lewd behavior. In this way, Pentheus inadvertently divulges what lies in his own repressed subconscious. He starts to feel the transgressive impulses within himself. With just a thin pretext, that of scouting out the enemy, the follower easily persuades Pentheus to dress as a woman and become a Bacchant himself. Notice how Pentheus starts to enjoy dressing in drag:

DIONYSOS:   You show the shape of one of Cadmus’s daughters.

PENTHEUS:   And I really seem to see two suns,

                        And Thebes is doubled, even the seven-gated city;

                        And you seem like a bull leading the way for us

                        And to have sprouted horns with your strength.

                        But are you sometimes an animal? For you have become a bull.

DIONYSOS:   The god pursues his way with us under truce, though really he is

Not well disposed. And now you see what is necessary for you to see.

PENTHEUS:   So what do I look like? Hasn’t this been Ino’s posture

                        And Agave’s and my mother’s? (Bacchae 917-926)

Pentheus has succumbed to the psychosis of Dionysian worship. Zirin pointed out that seeing double is a common symptom of psychotic episodes. Pentheus seems detached from reality. At least, he is wrapped up in his own concerns—he preens in his fawn skins and worries about his appearance—and does not respond directly to Dionysos or notice his ominous words. Pentheus exhibits further signs of dissociation in seeing Dionysos as a bull. Pentheus and the follower/Dionysos thus switch roles, with the disguised Pentheus now taking the effeminate part while Dionysos reveals his divine power by appearing as a bull, a symbol of virility. At the same time, Pentheus projects himself onto Dionysos, for he himself is the masculine bull that the Bacchic women tear apart. Pentheus offers a study of the power of unconscious impulses and how they can destroy us if we do not honor them but try to suppress them. Zirin saw the eagerness with which I pulled these riches out of him.

But he did not let me remain in this exciting interpretation. Next time, I will describe how Zirin forced me to look at The Bacchae from a different perspective.

The Text Is the Reader’s Fate

Last time I described the use of the first person in a monument to Phrasikleia. The first-person narration adds yet a further dimension to the life force of the statue. The ancient Greek visitor would have read the inscription aloud because silent reading had not been invented yet. (Silent reading became widespread only in the early Christian centuries as a means of private devotion.) Throughout classical antiquity, people voiced the text in order to read it, and they often did so in the company of others. We can imagine a visitor standing in front of Phrasikleia’s monument as though meeting her for the first time. He sounds out the syllables to discover what they mean. The speech would seem spontaneous, of the moment.

The reader would thus voice the role of the statue, re-enacting its words as though he were an actor in a kind of miniature play who steps forward and delivers his line. In this way, the first-person inscription offers a mechanism for reviving Phrasikleia temporarily in the reader. The reader lends her a mouth, a tongue, a throat, lungs. Indeed, a whole body belongs once again to Phrasikleia. The reader becomes Phrasikleia. “I” is not a character who happens to narrate the story. We ourselves become the character and inhabit the story. It becomes our self at least for the moment.

The self of the statue and inscription does not substitute for Phrasikleia’s identity. It’s not a matter of resemblance even if we may assume that the statue looks like the human Phrasikleia did. Most visitors would never have seen the living Phrasikleia, so the soul or force of the monument that they feel consists of something else beside the echo of the living girl it might have evoked for her family and friends.

Indeed, they too never really knew Phrasikleia either, except as a self, that is, through the image or images she projected of herself. As in a dream, all selves exist on the plane of image, regardless of whether they are “real” (the girl) or “fake” (the statue). The viewer or reader experiences them the same way, and only subsequently do we attribute the self to life or art and assign different values to it.

The self comes from an act of linguistic creation. The Greeks and Romans imagined fate as an utterance. The gods observe humans and their actions dispassionately. At the critical moment, when the future of an individual hangs in the balance, the gods announce what will happen to him. The decree marks his character eternally. Hector will forever be known as the Trojan hero who was slain by Achilles and dragged around the walls of Troy behind a chariot. The gods made Hector’s fate manifest by pronouncing it. The act of speaking this fate equals the fate itself.

The word “fate” originally meant simply “that which has been said.” What had seemed unclear and indeterminate to humans one moment becomes clear and fixed the next, after the gods speak. We readers fashion our own fates through a similar act of pronunciation. An undifferentiated stream of words flows swiftly before our eyes and through our minds. At some point, like Creeley’s student, we cease to be passive observers and become the protagonist of our own dreams. We pick out a passage that strikes us. We start to hear rhythms in the text. We create something new out of them. That is who we are. That is our fate.

What an Ancient Greek Monument Can Teach Us About the Self

My last post proposed that the unconscious is not a separate space “inside” us but a psychological way of looking at the world. Anything we encounter can become our unconscious if we look at it soulfully. Words are objects in the world, too, and can therefore become the unconscious. The reader’s self extends from out of the words just as it extends from out of the dream in Hillman’s example.

We would grasp this possibility if we stopped thinking of the text as a medium of communications for conveying a message that is separate from the words themselves. Let’s go to ancient Greece and look at the earliest instance of the first-person narrator, dating from 700-650 B.C. As tombstones do today, the first Greek monuments employed the third person—“Here lies….” The text serves as a label. It draws our attention to something without altering it. The text points to the contents of the grave, which we cannot see. We learn whose remains are buried in that spot through the mediation of the text. Our thought passes through the text, as through a window, to the corpse in the ground and the life that used to be attached to it. We don’t fuss about how fully the inscription portrays the contents of the grave because we care about the grave, not the words. We only need them as a matter of convenience to say, “Here it is.”

Then monument carvers started using the first person. Writing from the perspective of “I” does alter the contents that the inscription supposedly describes. Consider this epigram attached to the statue of someone who died in childhood:

As Phrasikleia’s memorial, I will always be called girl since I received this lot from the gods instead of marriage.[i]

Certainly, the inscription locates the deceased and conveys information about her if that’s what we want. However, the simple trick of writing in the first person performs the much more remarkable feat of animating the monument. The monument addresses us like any interlocutor. We face a three-dimensional personality. Although the inscription disarmingly acknowledges the difference between the statue and the actual Phrasikleia, the statue takes on Phrasikleia’s characteristics. It is a girl just as she was, and it too once had, but lost, the potential for being married. The gods concern themselves with the fate of the statue in parallel with the fate of Phrasikleia. The statue even has as great a capacity for change and growth as Phrasikleia once had. The statue will “be called girl,” a phrasing that implies it could in fact be other things if the gods so wished. “Girl” was not the statue’s inevitable state and sole essence. It is merely a provisional identity, which could have changed if the gods had not decreed otherwise and frozen it in place.

“The gods” form the ground from which Phrasikleia’s self springs. The inscription uses the indefinite plural deliberately, not specifying which particular gods determined Phrasikleia’s lot. The text ascribes her self to the gods as a way of acknowledging its divine origin without being able to define it precisely just as we never know where our own linguistic creativity springs from. The self exhibits an articulate structure as though fashioned by a god. It’s expressive. It conveys thought and feeling. But where that structure originates remains a mystery. Phrasikleia did not will it. The Greeks spoke of the gods the way we might speak of the imagination. The plurality of the gods leads inevitably to the many possibilities for Phrasikleia’s self, of which “girl” forms one instance. One set of gods bestowed that identity. A different set would have given her another identity.

[i] Jesper Svenbro, Phrasikleia: An Anthopology of Reading in Ancient Greece, tr. Janet Lloyd (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), p. 17.