Whew, so I realize that it's now been over two years since I last updated this blog in its intended fashion, having only bastardized it as a mechanism for drilling important bits of information into my appreciably dense skull in order to overcome the significant hurdle of my oral exam, and then abandoning it entirely in favor of focusing (if that term veritably describes what I've been truly doing) on the production of my dissertation, which progresses smoothly, if not always satisfying-ly. That said, I'm hoping to bring this project to a close in the not-so-distant future, especially since events have taken us to close to the play's conclusion. Hopefully I can recapture the tone and spirit of the original part of the translation...although I don't quite feel like expending the effort to reread that far back. Hopefully Present Self can be on the same page, metaphorically as well as actually, as Past Self. Future Self will thank us, buddy.
And so we re-approach the text as the moment of dramatic crisis approaches: Agave returns to Thebes at the start, carrying the dismembered Pentheus' head, still unaware of what has really transpired. Her imperfect knowledge as a 'temporary' Bacchant, a Theban approximation of Maenad worship, creates an asymmetry with the perfect knowledge of the 'true' Bacchae, the Asian followers of Dionysus who form the chorus - and when confronted with the horror before them, recoil despite their devotion to their orgiastic overlord. They begin with a curtailed dance of victory, but as their thoughts turn from the defeated Pentheus to the tragic Agave, horror, if not pity, creeps into their words. While before they were perfectly content to revel in victory, the empathy of person to person, woman to fellow woman, and perhaps mother to mother (as Bacchae, as seen in the idealized forest scene where they suckle baby animals, embody proper motherhood, considering also that enshrining Semele and her fulfillment of proper motherhood forms the entire reason for Dionysus' visit to Thebes in the first place).
Within formalist notions of tragedy, this song and the following scene construct Agave as tragic figure and the centerpiece of the tragedy; not Pentheus the (stereo?)typical tragic king or Dionysus the semi-central character. Leaving aside that admittedly-interesting question, we see that Agave starts the process of tragic anagnoresis: the coming to understand one's true situation through the slow unveiling of things. The scene starts with her unawares, afflicted with something which is not aporia, but misapprehending the true nature of things, directly contradicting a truth which is coming more and more clearly to light - a frequent feature of the tragic stage; see Odysseus' painfully slow self-reveal in the Oedipus Rex. But here the mechanism by which information enters her consciousness is not the clues and facts uncovered by events, but the metaphorical unveiling of her mind, as the fog of Dionysus' spell slowly begins to lift.
1153-1215
CHORUS:
Let us begin the Bacchic dance,
Let us shout aloud the misfortune
fallen on Pentheus born from snakes,
the man who took up a woman's dress
and the narthex, certain death,
the beautiful wand of Bacchus,
having a bull as misfortune's guide.
Cadmeian Bacchae,
you've achieved a glorious victory-
the result is lamentation and tears.
A fine contest! To drench your hand,
dripping in your child's blood!
But wait, I see Agave, mother of Pentheus,
hurrying home, her eyes agog.
Join in Dionysus' revel! Euoi!
AG: Asian Bacchae -
XO: O! Why do you bother me?
AG: We're carrying from the mountains
a fresh-cut bit of vine for the palace,
a reverent prize!
XO: I see and receive you, fellow reveler.
AG: I caught this one without any nets,
the young cub of a wild lion,
as you can see.
XO: In which wilderness?
AG: Cithaeron-
XO: Cithaeron?
AG: The place slaughtered him.
XO: Who cast the spear?
AG: Mine the prize, first of all.
Agave the chosen, our bands praise her.
XO: And who else?
AG: Honor is to Cadmus [--section perhaps missing--]
XO: Cadmus??
AG: His family laid hands on the beast,
but after I did, after me! It was a wondrous hunting.
XO: [---At least one line,
perhaps more, is missing---]
AG: Now partake of the feast!
XO: What? Partake? You're ruined.
AG: A young calf, with soft hair just
starting to bloom on his chin, under
his long-maned crest.
XO: It seems akin to a field-dwelling beast in its hair.
AG: The Bacchic one, the hunter,
the wise one, wisely set
his maenads in motion against this beast.
XO: Yes, the lord is a hunter.
AG: Do you praise him?
XO: I praise him.
AG: Swiftly the Cadmeian ones...
XO: And the child Pentheus-
AG: His mother will be praised
for having seized this wild, lion-like creature.
XO: It's extraordinary!
AG: And extraordinarily done!
XO: Do you rejoice in it?
AG: I rejoiced,
this incredible, incredible, and portentous
thing I accomplished in the hunt!
XO: Look now, wretch, at the wild prize of victory
which you came bearing for the townspeople.
AG: O inhabitants of the beautiful-towered city
of the land of Thebes, come and see the beast,
the animal the daughters of Cadmus caught,
not with Thessalian javelins and their missiles,
not with nets, but with our white arms
and our fingertips. So should anyone boast
and acquire in vain the spearmaker's instruments?
I seized this beast with this, my own hand,
and we tore our target's joints apart!
Where's my elderly father? Have him come near.
And where's my son Pentheus? Have him get a ladder
and set it fixed up against the house,
so he can fasten to the triglyph tablets
this lion's head that I caught and brought back to the house.
No comments:
Post a Comment