Episode 9
Oedipus Wrecked Me. Week 9: Greek Drama
I'm reading and talking about Ted Gioia's "Immersive Humanities Course," 52 weeks of World Classics.
Ted listed SIX Greek dramas for this week: Bacchae (Euripides), Lysistrata (Aristophanes), Agamemnon (Aeschylus), and the three Theban plays from Sophocles, Oedipus the King, Oedipus in Colonus and Antigone.
We discuss how to read drama in general. I tried to read a little bit of background on each play before I dove in. One thing that’s easy to forget with Greek drama is that the audience didn’t have any spoilers; they knew all of these stories really well. They were there to see HOW it came together. That meant that some of the plot gets treated with shorthand in some ways.
I tried to figure out the major players, and how they might have interacted with characters I had met elsewhere. It’s astonishing how all of these characters are connected by one or two degrees of separation. Bill and I joke that it feels exactly like when we moved to Charleston a couple of years ago. I swear that every person we meet knows someone else we know through one or two people. It’s the strangest thing, and Greek drama is exactly like that.
I also flag my books like crazy: one flag for the cast of characters; one for the endnotes; one for a map, even if it’s in a different book. As a matter of fact, my Fagles translation of the Odyssey came in handy this week. Not only are there some great maps, there is also a glossary of all the proper names in the Odyssey. Many, many of the characters I came across this week also put in an appearance in the Odyssey.
Finally, I kept a brief “plot summary” of each play as I read. Only Bacchae was divided into scenes, but for each play I tried to keep a brief synopsis of the action as I read. This kept me from mixing up characters too much, and also it helped me to get an idea of how the various stories fit together.
In addition, I read out loud occasionally, especially if I found myself alone in the house. It’s easy to lose the thread of some of these long passages, especially where the chorus has an extended explication of action taking place off stage. Reading out loud helped me capture the rhythm of the language and also the drama of it in a way that reading silently could never do.
I started with Euripedes’ Bacchae, translated by Paul Woodruff. To be honest, half the reason I bought this edition was that it had Elvis on the cover as Dionysus! Not long after the founding of Thebes, Dionysus appears to bring his cult to the city. Dionysus is a son of Zeus but also the grandson of the founder of Thebes, Cadmus. Dionysus’ cousin Pentheus is now king, and he refuses to acknowledge the god-status of Dionysus. Let’s just say Pentheus regretted that decision. This play was shockingly brutal to me, even though all the violence always takes place off-stage in a Greek drama. There are ideas of redemption, and lack of it, woven throughout the play. Bacchae left me curious about anything related to the practice of the cult of Dionysus. Apparently the rites were so secret that nothing, not one thing, survives to help us understand what they did.
Next I read Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. This is a comedy, truly a farce, whose entire plot revolves around the women of Greece coming together to deny all their men sex so they will quit fighting with each other. It is hilarious, and I’d love to see this one performed live. I love a good marriage quote:
“No man can live a happy life unless his wife allows it.”—Aristophanes
Happily, I bought an edition of Lysistrata that also had three other plays translated by Aaron Poochigian. Clouds, in particular, is a send-up of Socrates and that one is definitely on my to-read list! Also, it was fun to see Aristophanes again after meeting him in Symposium. His argument for love was the idea of “you complete me,” so it was interesting to think about that in light of all of the marriage talk here.
Agamemnon was next, by Aeschylus. Here’s where things took a more serious turn. I feel like Aeschylus grabbed me by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Agamemnon was the king of Argos who sailed off to Troy to help his brother Menaleus take back Menaleus’ wandering wife Helen. When he showed back up in Argos after a decade, his wife carried out the murder plot she had had ten years to perfect. This play is so dark, so full of blood guilt and pain and anger, you just can’t look away. Is there such a thing as guilt that a family can’t erase? Where does devotion to a god cross paths with family love and loyalty, and can anyone win? This is the first play of the Oresteia trilogy (or “cycle”) in which Clytamnaestra and Agamemnon’s son Orestes also is a hero. Here’s an idea for an aspiring novelist: write a novel about the Murdaugh murders, but based on the Oresteia cycle. I’m not smart enough but I will definitely read that! As far as future reading, I’m definitely returning to find out more about Orestes.
For this play and the three from Sophocles I read the towering Fagles translations. It’s not that I’ve become an expert, but even with my little bit of reading I’m starting figure out what I like in a translation, and for now, for me, it’s Robert Fagles all the way.
Finally, I read the Sophocles plays set in Thebes: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. Before I read these plays, I only knew about Oedipus from our friend Sigmund Freud and the Oedipus complex. Now I feel kind of mad at Dr. Freud, honestly, because the truth of Oedipus is nothing like the salacious diagnosis. These plays were dark, but not howling in anger like Clytemnaestra in Agamemnon. The ideas of blood guilt remain—can a family undo the dark sins of an earlier generation, or are they doomed to carry out the devastation begun by someone else? Can there be redemption? (I think that the idea of redemption like we Christians think of it is far from Greek ideals.) Can the Fates turn kind? I can’t even describe how much I enjoyed these plays, if “enjoy” also includes crying over the scene where Oedipus tells his daughters goodbye, and being furious at what a total jerk Creon is. Of the three, I particularly loved Oedipus at Colonus.
If there is any small part of you that wonders if you can do this, you CAN. And it’s absolutely worth the effort.
Music this week was Early Blues. We looked at Greek pottery for art. Links are below.
This is a year-long challenge! Join me next week for seven books of the Bible. If you've never read it or read it a hundred times, you will get something out of next week's episode.
LINK
Ted Gioia/The Honest Broker’s 12-Month Immersive Humanities Course (paywalled!)
My Amazon Book List (NOT an affiliate link)
Oedipus at Colonnus (YouTube)
Blind Willie Johnson (Spotify)
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