According to Lilly this is required reading for The Secret History, so thanks for the recc.

Good first read of the year, easier to read than I expected, maybe 2023 is the year I read lots of Greek plays?

Dos "três grandes" da tragédia grega, faltava-me ler o "mái novo", Eurípedes.

کادموس: ای دیونوسوس بر ما رحم آور اگرچه گناهکارانیم
دیونوسوس: دریغا که مرا دیر به جا آوردی نه آن زمان که می بایست
آگاوه: اما خدایان را نشاید که خشم آدمیان را با خشم پاسخ بگویند.
.
باکخانت ها یا کاهنه های باکوس

Translator: Philip Vellacott

This was such a fascinating read, particularly after rereading The Secret History not too long ago, where the Bacchae plays a pretty important role. If you know, you know. Vellacott's translation was beautifully written and easy to read, too. Dark, compulsive, frightening.

Bu sefer kolaya kaçıyorum ve yorum yapmayıp kitaptan benim için kitabın özeti olan iki alıntı yapmayı tercih ediyorum.

"İnsani tutkular tanrılara yakışmaz" (s.62).

"Tanrılar insanların bahtında
türlü türlü gösterirler kudretlerini.
Türlü hallere sokarlar bizi hiç beklenmedik,
umduğumuz şeyler olmaz
ummadığımız hallere getirirler bizi.
İşte bu dram da böyle bitti" (s.64).

Another top tier play by my main man Euripides. Dionysus is such a riot I love him. Much like with Medea would love love love to see this performed live. Can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realise how class the Ancient Greek plays are omg. Phenomenal stuff.

Horror story about a guy whose supernaturally beautiful, charismatic, and powerful twink cousin one day appears in town leading a cult. Then things get funky.

deserved

O que é a sabedoria? Ou que dádiva mais bela
dos deuses, aos olhos dos homens,
do que manter a mão segura
sobre a cabeça do inimigo?

... quando o inimigo é poderoso, sabedoria será "dançar com as Bacantes" para não se perder a cabeça. Como a perdeu Penteu, cuja tragédia é das mais terríveis da Mitologia Grega.


(Morte de Penteu - Fresco da Casa dos Vettii, em Pompeia)

Penteu, rei de Tebas e neto de Cadmo e Harmonia, quando Tirésias o avisa da chegada de um deus - que será a sua destruição caso não se submeta ao novo culto - escarnece do vidente. Penteu não aceita que o seu povo idolatre um rapaz efeminado que diz ser filho de Zeus. Todos o tentam chamar à razão, mas Penteu não cede e manda prender Diónisos. Iludido pelo deus, vai ao local de culto onde as Bacantes, enfeitiçadas, o despedaçam. É Agave, a mãe de Penteu, que lhe arranca a cabeça exibindo-a, triunfante, julgando tratar-se de um leão.

Se tivésseis sabido ter senso, o que não quisestes, poderíeis ser felizes, tendo por aliado o filho de Zeus.

Antigone on PCP

Sophocles' Antigone is about tyranny, or more broadly authority: Creon's need for order vs. Antigone's need for personal freedom. Everyone loses, Creon most of all, and your reaction to Antigone might depend partly on your feelings about authority; if you're a pro-authority type of person, your sympathies might tend towards Creon.

Here we have essentially the same debate. Dionysos shows up in his birthplace of Thebes to start his cult, with a band of ecstatic lady followers in tow. Theban leader Pentheus (also Dionysos' cousin, which doesn't particularly come into play) is all "You guys are nuts and I'm having none of this bullshit." And Dionysos responds.

Because this is Euripides, who's relatively lurid, Dionysos' reaction seems completely out of proportion, at least to me: he sends Pentheus's mom into a frenzy during which she tears off Pentheus's head. Holy shit, right? Isn't that sortof a ripoff of True Blood season 2?

But the point is authority vs. freedom, a theme the Greeks returned to again and again - see, in addition to Antigone, that whole Socrates thing. This is about what leadership should be - what should be led and what left alone - and it's a good thing the Greeks spent so much time thinking about it, considering that they were in the process of inventing leadership as we know it. And that exploration, cast through the double-crazy lens of Dionysos and Euripides, is terrific.

Guys, I'm so glad I figured this out. My original review was like "WTF is this, I don't get it," and I feel way smarter now. Also, now I really like this play. High five!

Also: nice to see the old blind sex-shifting prophet Tiresias, as he gets ready to go out Bacchaeing with Pentheus's grandfather:

Well, where do we dance?
Where do we let our footsteps fall
and waggle our decrepit grizzly heads?

which is something I might put on my tombstone. Tiresias kicks ass.

This is a review of the play, not this translation; I used Paul Roche's translation, which was (as usual) fine.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of Greek tragedy. But when I attempt reviews, my tongue turns to ashes in my mouth. It’s not that they’re too old (I’ve reviewed older books), nor because they’re so foundational (I’ve reviewed equally fundamental books). It’s because I strongly suspect that I just don’t get it. It strikes me that the Greek tragedians were trying to accomplish something essentially different from what I’ve come to expect from literature.

Greek tragedy has not even the slightest element of suspense. When you read one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, you know that it will end badly for the protagonist (and at least a few other people)—otherwise it wouldn’t be a tragedy. But there always seems to be a glimmer of hope, a chance that it could’ve turned out differently. The tragic outcome hinges on the character of the tragic hero; the final result is tragic because of that tantalizing “what if?” which lingers in the air as the curtain falls.
t
But in the plays of the Greek tragedians, the story is a fait accompli. Everything happens because of the will of the gods, or the mysterious hand of fate. Every character inexorably fulfills their destiny. The only thing they can do, it seems, is to sing about how awful their situation is. Thus we get line after line of the chorus—interrupting the action like a song in a musical, telling the audience what they already know in sing-song verse.
t
This isn't the fault of the playwrights. Because hardly anybody can read Ancient Greek nowadays, we’re forced to read the plays in translation; and poetry is always sub par in translation. Also, these chorus interludes actually did have music when they were performed; so it’s a bit unfair to judge them merely as poetry. (Imagine if archaeologists dug up a book of Beatles lyrics 2,000 years from now. They would have no idea why the Beatles were such a hit.)
t
Nietzsche thought this aspect of Greek tragedy was the root of its power. In his first published work, The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche spills much ink in describing his love for the unbridled spirit of life in the music of the Greek tragic chorus. For Nietzsche, the very fact that the music wasn’t ‘realistic’—that it didn’t attempt to portray the facts of life—is what gave it its tremendous power. This is why Nietzsche thought that Euripides was decadent.
t
Euripides is distinguished from Aeschylus and Sophocles precisely for his realism. His plays actually do have that element of unpredictability we’ve come to expect from modern tragedy. We don’t feel that the action is foreordained; that the people are merely acting out the decree of Fate. When his characters give monologues, the poetry doesn’t seem stylized or wooden—like old song-lyrics do. Rather, Euripides seeks to portray the psychology of his protagonists as if they were real people; the final result is more like reading someone's thoughts than reading sing-song poetry.

This is not to say that he didn’t include mythological or fantastic elements. Take this play. For a completely illogical reason, the god Dionysus decides to wreak havoc in Thebes. He doesn’t do it for the sake of justice; nor to accomplish some goal. He does it, more or less, on a whim. This is what makes the action of the play so shocking. It’s as if the reader has been dropped in via helicopter down on some battlefield, and is forced to watch the senseless violence.
t
Nietzsche admired, almost worshiped, the Dionysian impulse—the mad impulse to riot, to dance, to sing, to live. He found in the character of Dionysus the solution to everything wrong with Christian morality and the scientific mentality. Nietzsche believed that the drive to divide up the world into good and evil, and to value the literal truth above figurative myth, destroys man’s ability to reach his highest potential. But Euripides sees something much darker and devious in the character of Dionysus. Euripides sees that, once morality and truth are abandoned, one is left only with naked power. And naked power can be used just as easily for wanton destruction as for beneficent creation.
t
So it’s hard for me to agree with Nietzsche and consider Euripides as a decadent playwright. Every one of his plays I’ve so far read has been a dramatic masterpiece; and when you think about them, there’s usually an intriguing lesson to be learned, a thought to be pondered. Aeschylus and Sophocles remain partially veiled in translation; their music, lost to time. But now, I can at least say I’ve found one Greek playwright I ‘get’.

Τι να πω γι' αυτό το υπέροχο έργο του Ευριπίδη, το κύκνειο του άσμα, μια από τις μοναδικές τραγωδίες που ασχολούνται εξ' ολοκλήρου με τον Διόνυσο και τις τελετές του. Αιματηρή αλλά και διδακτική. Κωμική σε κάποια σημεία και εκστατική σε άλλα, με ένα τραγικό τέλος. Μου άρεσε που υπάρχει αντικριστά το αρχαίο με το νέο κείμενο για άμεση σύγκριση καθώς και εκτεταμένος σχολιασμός που βοηθά στο να έχεις μια πληρέστερη κατανόηση του έργου. Περισσότερα λόγια είναι περιττά.