*i did not read this exact translation, but this story by Euripides ( )

Starts off as a National Lampoon college movie, with Dionysus as the party hero, the Bacchae/Thebians as his fraternity/sorority friends, and Pentheus as the stuffy Dean...

...and ends like a combination of Hostel and Oldboy. Seriously, the tone shift in this story is nuts.

That all said, Dionysus is probably the most interesting Greek God, in that he is associated with the bridge between domestication and wildness.


I've realized something about these non-normative cults, like that of Dionysus, what the Chinese authorities dub White Lotus, and the Gnostics back in early Christianity. Their enemies always describe them as going out into the night, disregarding gender roles, having orgies, and dancing around a fire on drugs.

So folks nowadays look back on these cults positively, or try to emulate that behavior attributed to them. It often seems subversive. But the reason they are perceived as behaving in these ways is that their enemies were trying to discredit them by attributing to them behavior that was taboo and illegal at the time. The writings of said enemies are often the only historical documents we have about these cults. So, people's inspiration in these supposed behaviors might just be fetishization of taboos held by respectable society back in Classical Greece or whenever. And not on any actually subversive behavior which, when they did happen, probably didn't look like the exact opposite of ethical norms like these cults do. ( )

This is SUCH a good translation; it was an absolute joy to read. ( )

That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the unattainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.

Setting a goal of reading 10 ancient Greek book this year including the Homer(s). It is decision based in deficit.

This is powerful, alight with natural bliss and bubbles of madness. It is a shame the Gods so enjoy dispensing the latter at their whim. Pastoral nightmares, this prefigures Hoffmann and the Romantics.

This play is more spiteful than heroic. I did like it. Aside from crowd psychology and chemical issues it does [resent cautionary tale of ridiculing minority sects. The reveal is always so agonizing, it is protracted and the recipient character doesn't understand--until she does. ( )

Poetic and Fierce
Review of the New Directions (2017) hardcover, which is the North American edition of the Oberon Classics paperback "Bakkhai" (2015) translated by Anne Carson

I'm not quite sure how to define it, but there is just something more raw and primeval about Anne Carson's translations of the Ancient Greek classics and the more I read them the more I like them. There are her occasional untranslated Greek syllabic shouts of O I! O I! or A A! which are used sparingly in this version of Bakkhai, or the run-on strings of OITOITOI and others in her "An Oresteia" for instance. There is the insistence on using/restoring K in names that have been semiotically softened by the dominance of the C over the years. So it become Bakkhai and not Bacchae, Kadmos and not Cadmus, Aeskylos and not Aeschylus, Klytemnestra and not Clytemnestra etc. The pronunciation is the same, but it just looks more primitive.

Carson provides only a 4-page verse form introduction in this recent translation of the Euripedes classic and really the only fault to find here is that then the edition forgoes any sort of historical introduction or background or footnotes / backnotes. But these days there are always various online sources for that. Still it is hard to recommend it as an all-purpose Bakkhai, as it has the appearance of a supplement to more expansive scholarly editions. Still, I wouldn't be without it.

The Carson translation was staged by the Almeida Theatre in the UK in 2015 and the look of the production in its photographs conveys some of the raw energy as well. The costuming of Ben Whislaw as a somewhat Christ-like Dionysus in front of a Pontius Pilate-like Pentheus can't have been a coincidence.

https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/mast_image_landscape/public/m...
Ben Whishaw's Dionysus calmly faces Bertie Carvel's Pentheus in the 2015 Almeida Theatre production of Anne Carson's translation. Photograph by Marc Brenner.

https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/images/stories/THEATRE/David_Nice/Ca...
The Bakkhai assemble in the 2015 Almeida Theatre production of Anne Carson's translation. Photograph by Marc Brenner. ( )