Euripides: The Bacchae (407 BCE)
When I was young, and attended church, I recall hearing the statement “God created man in his own image”. Today, I find more and more truth in this statement as I see first-hand just how irrational, egotistical and needy we humans can be. Maybe it would be more accurate to say “Man created God in his own image”. Nevertheless, the God Dionysius in The Bacchae, rather than leaving
Looking at these two compartments within each of us, one cognitive the other affective, our ability to experience the numinous is compartmentalized within our Dionysian (affective) side but it can be effaced by our cognitive gifts. That this experience stems from our primitive origins may be why it gives a sense of completeness and unity with nature.
These plays are an appeal for moderation in all things, and a cry against excess, prudery and Puritanism. What is called for is balance and respect for our humanity which encompasses our physical, spiritual as well as mental faculties. To provide one telling comparison: Faustus indulges his senses to the fullest for 24 years and for this he is considered weak, is dismembered, and spends an eternity in hell. Pentheus’ outright refusal to behave in such a way results in his limbs being torn from his torso as well. If you sit at either extreme, your detachment from nature manifests itself physically.
Despite both being fixated on the senses, Faustus and Pentheus are blind to their own salvation. Each is given ample warning and evidence that they are on the skids: p.47, (668) Dionysius warns Pentheus: “My friend, it is still possible to put this right”, and the Good Angel and Mephistopheles himself warn Faustus that he should cease his dealings with the devil. Faustus ignores whatever advice comes his way and assaults his senses to escape thinking about his fate - the best example of this is when, within a day of being dragged to hell by Lucifer, he spends the night with Helen of Troy, “Come, Helen, come give me my soul again. Here will I dwell for heaven is in these lips and all is dross that is not
In Euripides’ Medea, Creon’s blindness and arrogance lead us to believe that he was justly punished (at least we do not feel that the world will miss him very much). But consider Pentheus in The Bacchae: to be torn limb from limb merely for disbelieving. People! Is this not going a bit too far? What about Cadmus? His only “crime” was that of passing the kingship to his son, and for this he is ruined. What does this say about justice and morality of the gods and of the times The Bacchae was written? The Peloponnesian War between
There must be a causal relationship between the so-called Age of Pericles’ and the Golden Age of Athens. Indeed, these eras are synonymous with one another. Pericles was a rationalist and tolerant of Sophists. His friend Protagoras, at some point, was exiled because he tried to present a scientific account for some heavenly bodies. Most Sophists were agnostic or atheists, believed in natural rather than divine causation, and flocked to
Politics today, as before, suffers from human nature, only on a larger scale. If anthropomorphized, governments show all the traits of a confused and emotionally undeveloped adolescent who has access to liquor and the car keys. Governments know themselves, as bodies, as little as said adolescent, and they are just as irrational and hormonally-driven. Precisely like Pentheus, governments work under the illusion of practising Logic but have a strong attraction for the “other, dark side”. Without accepting this fact and praising the Dionysian side, one gets torn apart from the inside when one comes face to face with it. (You know what happens to Pentheus…) “The policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash." (King Lear - paraphrased by Christopher Hitchens.)
Euripides’ play must be, on some level, a prediction of the outcome of the Peloponnesian War. Similar to the play, the outcome of the war was the imposition of barbarian influence upon the Greeks. I like to think that Euripides in his old age came to see war as the waste of life that it is and saw promise in accepting outsiders and their ways. P. 27 (390) …“DIONYSIUS: One who speaks wisdom will seem foolish to the ignorant. PENTHEUS: Is this the first place you have brought your god? DIONYSIUS: All of
Sometimes one must break from tradition and come face-to-face with something new (foreigners, the “Dionysian”) in order to see one’s divine nature and to progress. To stagnate within one extreme is to fester and die. This dilemma speaks to the perennial schism between physis (unchanging nature) and nomos (manmade law or convention). Is it a result of human custom that we isolate ourselves from neighbours that we view as different? Is it natural for the gods to hold power over us? These questions the Sophists brought to the stage, as did Euripides.
In creating a world where physis is altered to the point of introducing gods as characters, Marlowe and Euripides push the boundaries of what had been acceptable. They go against tradition, personified by Tiresias, who says (p.13, 168) “We do not hold intellectual debates on the gods. No logic will overthrow the traditions we have received from our fathers, traditions as old as time, no matter what clever arguments are thought up by the greatest minds…” However, dear Tiresias, when a god says, “Yes [I dismembered your family member and ruined your lives, exiling you from your hometown], for your behaviour towards me was terrible, When my name was without honour in
The chorus speaks in support of the gods in this play. It acts as a barrier enclosing the “Dionysian” from the “rationally-minded” crowd. The chorus - acting as a filter between the stage and reality - are speaking directly to the open hearts of the spectators who are infected by the Dionysian and “the sublime”. Euripides is appealing to their sense of what is right and what is decent and human:
The Parodos (the first chorus entry) is a joyful song in praise of Dionysius followed by a choral ode that criticizes Pentheus for his denial of the god. The chorus certainly leans in favour of that which is touched by the divine and not wholly human. Similarly, both Faustus and the wholly human (depending on your beliefs) representative of God, the Pope, are in want of human and earthly pleasures. No doubt that the Pope sings a different tune on his pulpit, though. His reaction to anything that his rational mind cannot explain is one of surprise, fear and anger, implying that his Dionysian side is neglected.
The Dionysian is an escape from our everyday routine and humdrum lives. Poor Pentheus is positioned on the outside of the Bacchic party, looking in. Only when fully infected by Dionysian’s energy does he jump into the revelry and have a grand time (albeit too short a time, if you were to ask him). The Dionysian allows us this chance to live out our dreams and fantasies to and to indulge in what we might consider a religious experience. There is something very (pre-) Freudian in the idea that Pentheus’ internalization and repression of his Dionysian urges results in his ruin. I am probably way off, but I can’t help but wonder whether Marlowe had a similar idea in mind when he had Faustus speaking of himself in the third person: Is this because Faustus is so internally divided, so lost and removed from himself and his own reality, or was speaking this way common in the 1500s? P.67, “What art though, Faustus, but a man condemned to die?” Is he speaking to the other half of himself that he has neglected and allowed to wither? Ignore the Dionysian at your peril, Faustus!
Just as the transcendent Dionysian experience has roots in our primal past, so does the Christian God have its roots in the ancient Greek world. Similarities go as far back as the belief systems’ Creation stories and although there are many differences between the two, the irrationality of the gods stays constant. One should be careful, though, not to be rational in reading and in thinking about these stories as their beauty is stripped away and can be easily mocked in so doing. Think of these religious stories as poetry – if we take them too literally, they can appear a mere jumble of words, but analyzed correctly through a Bacchian lens, their beauty can shine through.
Faustus is a representative of the Renaissance. The diminishing power of the Catholic Church due to Protestantism and the rise of individualism in Marlowe’s day had an effect on Faustus. He paints himself as the centre of universe (p.19) “What boots it to think on God or Heaven? Away with such vain fancies and despair. … The god thou servest is thine own appetite.”) p.25 [2.1] (133) “I think hell’s a fable.” No doubt this is what many at the time were thinking (if not speaking aloud). This trend helped science advance and some may say that it lead to an equally explosive growth in humanity’s hubris and caused a release of forces that it had no “right” to unleash. Remember Frankenstein? His hubris was his own downfall, and only a handful of people suffered as a consequence of his doings; [Oppenheimer link]. The hell doctrine promoted in the 1500s may be a fable, but a new version of hell has been made real by scientific advances along with the threats they impose on us all. Thinking on this, along with today’s environmental disasters (natural and man-made), climate change, religious fanaticism and wars, there is something very “Biblical” about the times we live in.
