Sophocles Women of Trachis
The world of savagery and Eros All central characters seem to be under the effect of that invincible power: Heracles, Achelous, Centaur Nessus, Deianeira Sexual passion in Greek myth and tragedy. P. 175
Eros and Deianeira Genuine love for the hero; Sympathy for Iole but also an instinct for self-preservation and preservation of the oikos The play shows that Deianeira s feelings for Heracles are also manifested in a more sinister form, which materialises in what she goes on to do later on. The mysterious forces that operate in the human mind and cannot be contained in any construct of civilisation / society Symbolism of the philtre that remains well hidden in the recesses of the house
Eros and Deianeira - Eros/passion and Heracles She understands the nature of eros as a passion and admits the effect it has on her, as on all others Eros is acknowledged as a disease and enters the sphere of the irrational and the destructive. As the play unfolds, a close association forms between erotic passion, the philtre, the poisoned blood, the violence of wild beasts and finally the disease / affliction of Heracles
HERACLES AFFLICTION AS BEAST vv. 1010; 1023-30, p. 225 and vv. 1083-6, p. 229
The zoology and daemonology of human passion Ch. 6 of Ruth Padel s In and Out of the Mind Humans are imagined as part of the universe to such an extent that the barriers between human interior and worldly exterior are VERY permeable Humans are invaded by elements of the universe and their thoughts/emotions/passions affect the universe
Passion / the irrational element in a civilised world The Women of Trachis might be taken as a sustained metaphor of this perennial question Elsewhere in Greek literature: Oresteia, Bacchae, but even Thucydides and Herodotus The suppressed / hidden aspects of human mind/psyche: Deianeira, Lichas
Passion / the irrational element in a civilised world To a large degree, Heracles is a symbol of this central idea, because of his liminal / ambivalent nature. He embodies an irrepressible force, almost a force of nature, which can have beneficial, but also destructive effects; who can be at the same time a civiliser, but also a personification of hybris itself. Why he asks Hyllus to marry Iole is one of the mysteries of the play. But at least his oikos, which was almost destroyed through uncontrollable passions, will continue
The OIKOS in the Women of Trachis The wilderness which is described in much of the play comes to a stark contrast with the oikos, the unit of civilisation The hidden philtre in the recesses of the house The opening lines about the constant absence and return of Heracles Women of Trachis is one more play where the return to the oikos is a central preoccupation There is a tension between Heracles and the oikos Oikos and female oikos and male
OIKOS and Deianeira vv. 899-910, 215 Deianeira s world is the oikos, and she tries to save it by resisting to the powers outside it that threaten it Paradoxically, Deianeira s passion, Heracles passion, and the passion of the two monsters have a lot more in common than it appears at first: they both destroy the house that she agonises to preserve
Oikos and Heracles Heracles never enters the house, frustrating the dramatic anticipation for his return His nostos, therefore, is not complete (cf. the preparation of the bed outside the house, p. 215) Symbolism: Heracles never reintegrates into human society / civilisation Aristotle Pol. 1253a27: «whoever is not part of society is either a beast or a god» Heracles end: his way upwards towards Mt Oeta
Marriage, oikos, and Greek tragedy Marriage is a motif that fascinates and obsesses Greek tragedy. Why? association with oikos, association with female, idea of subjection of female to male, paragon of patriarchal order, idea of continuity and preservation of oikos; ideas of production and reproduction; microcosm of society / civilised order; also, connection with eros (from individual to cosmic); violence and order; key states of human life / crucial transitions and rites of passage, esp. death Entire plays, like Medea, are based on evoking marriage ritual; (the structure of Medea captures the experience of a female in a patriarchal world at its most extreme)
Marriage, oikos and the Women of Trachis How is marriage dramaturgically captured in the Women of Trachis? What motifs and images permanently keep the motif of marriage in front of our eyes?
Readings: The chapters on the Women of Trachis by Charles Segal: Segal, C.P. (1998), Myth, Poetry and Heroic Values in the Trachinian Women and Time, Oracles and marriage in the Trachinian Women in Sophocles Tragic World, Cambridge Mass., 26-95. Segal, C.P. (1981), Trachiniae in Tragedy and Civilization: an Interpretation of Sophocles, Cambridge MA, 60-108. The zoology and daemonology of emotion in R. Padel In and out of the Mind, 114-37
Greek myth, tragedy and the approach of structuralism Structuralism: elements of human culture must be understood in terms of their relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure Started with linguistics, but expanded to anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, economics, architecture 1950s and 60s Under criticism in 1970s, especially for rigidity and a- historicism; but continued to influence until much later French school ; following anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, in Classics main proponents were Jean-Pierre Vernant, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Marcel Detienne Heavily influenced by them and defending the merits of structuralism for Classics: C. Segal; in the same vein, R. Padel
Systems of relations produce meaning Beast human god Light - darkness Underworld earth heavens / low high Inside outside Individual community Tame/civilisation wild/savagery Male female ~ Nature - culture Tragedy s density of imagery makes the structural approach particularly rewarding (and a lot less schematic than structuralism is often criticised for).
Not strictly through pairs of opposites, e.g. dark light, or inside outside But through inter-relations Usually between images
Remember how we started looking at the Oresteia
Key themes and Aeschylean unfolding Aeschylean unfolding : themes, images, ideas appear initially only as flashes/sperms. As the trilogy unfolds, these develop, their semantics augment, change and intertwine, and they only acquire their full, multi-levelled semantic force only in later stages (and they often manifest in a physical form.) [Parallel: the role of garments in the Persians] Lebeck, The Oresteia, 1971 (about imagery in the Oresteia)
Something like this
Some works which draw heavily on structuralism:
J. P. Vernant Myth and Thought among the Greeks, 1983 (French original: 1965) Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece, 1981; Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece, 1988 (French originals: 1972, 1986) Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, 1978 (French original 1974) C. Segal Tragedy and Civilization: an interpretation of Sophocles (1981) Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides' Bacchae (1982); Heavily influenced by French structuralists, although he also drew on poststructuralism and narratology, genre studies and Bakhtin, gender studies and feminist scholarship.
Tragedy and civilisation Principal concern: the implicit definitions of civilization in the plays and with the conflicts and contradictions inherent in the paradoxes of human nature, as explored in their tragic light. Sophoclean plays portray the harmony, the proportion, the balanced grace and the violence, questioning, harshness. Civilization is the fruit of man's struggle to discover and assert his humanness in the face of the impersonal forces of nature and his own potential violence on the one hand and the remote powers of the gods on the other. Segal, Preface to T&C
The surviving plays and the idea of savagery-civilisation The hero's problematical relation to civilized values / polis / community: Antigone, Oedipus King, Oedipus at Colonus, but also Electra, Philoctetes, Ajax, Women of Trachis
Tragedy, civilisation and spatial relations The Greeks view the human condition, as they view so much else, in terms of a set of spatial configurations, a structure whose spatial and moral coordinates coincide. Man is threatened by the beast world pushing up from below, but he is also illuminated by the radiance of the Olympian gods above. Myths of heroes attaining Olympus express the highest possible human achievement. Heroes like Tantalus and Ixion in Pindar, who betray the gods' trust in them, are sent from the radiance of Olympian feasts to the utter darkness of Hades. The vicissitudes endured by heroes like Pelops and Bellerophon take the form of upward and downward movement, which represents the task of achieving the proper mediation between earth and Olympus, lower and upper realms. Segal p. 3 T&C
5. The motifs of knowledge/realisation, the changeability of human affairs, and time The play explores human nature and the human construct of civilisation and progress in close relation to these motifs.
KNOWLEDGE / REALISATION When everything looks it is going towards catastrophe and disintegration, the motif of later knowledge / realisation starts taking a strong hold. Every character of the play aquires later knowledge : Deianeira, Lichas, Hyllus, Chorus, Heracles The motif highlights the idea of tragic human ignorance: above all, human inability to acquire true knowledge of the forces which affect and determine human actions; but also, human inability to fathom fully the human condition, and of course the future.
THE CHANGEABILITY OF HUMAN AFFAIRS Humans are parts of this universal process, however much they desire to escape from it or to dominate it. Everything changes constantly and death is part of this constant change.
TIME Inextricably tied to the idea of changeability of human affairs is the idea of time The play is full of characterisations of time, and references to the past Motif of endless waiting, precise characterisations of time, memories suppresses and awakened The interest in time is generally stronger in Sophocles than in other playwrights
THE DIVINE PLANE AND THE ORACLES The divine plane: in tragedy, the state that is devoid of changeability, decline of any form, and decay In Sophocles, the divine place reveals itself mainly through the oracles Cf. Oedipus King There is something very important about the nature of oracles as they are given to humans the fact that they only reveal part of the truth
THE DIVINE PLANE AND THE ORACLES In Women of Trachis, the oracle is written Written suggests permanence and certainty In a way, it captures the nature of the divine plane Heracles and Deianeira had the oracle in their hands from the start but human knowledge & intelligence are insufficient to fathom the divine will The nature of oracles too late
Human effort to rise up from human nature, whereas it is essentially impossible, captures what the tragic is for Sophocles The tragicality is intensified by the presence of the opposite, which humans only fathom when it is too late This ever-lasting effort is what human nature is about the endless passion which both exhausts and destroys, but also deifies ~ cf. the apotheosis of Heracles.
An approach to the last scene that envisages the procession ascending on Mt Oeta for Heracles to meet his end. Many interpretations; perhaps: From the beastly to the divine, and human life as never ending struggle, never-ending tension/oscillation between these two antithetical states
Male and female in Women of Trachis Male world of beasts and violence (even when one is a civiliser) Female the recipient of the violence Yet, more complex picture
Trach. 1046-1082
The chorus in Greek tragedy With an emphasis on the chorus of the Women of Trachis
What we do not know about the chorus We have enormous gaps in our knowledge about the function of the chorus in Greek drama: The musical compositions have been lost entirely. We can get an idea from the changes in metres, but essentially the musical element is lost We know very little about the positioning of the chorus in the orchestra and their movements. Even the terminology that ancient commentators used to classify choral odes is obscure for us: what is a stasimon? What is a hyporcheme?
Old beliefs which are not considered valid any more (but are sometimes still used in school education) That the chorus did not really dance (cf. stasimon) That the chorus accompanied the dialogue of the actors with mimetic movements which conveyed their emotions That the chorus was usually positioned in a circular formation. They performed the strophes in a clockwise movement, and the antistrophes in an anticlockwise movement. That the chorus was positioned in a rectangular formation (just like a mini-army!) That every choral song was accompanied by dance, whatever the dramatic situation
Old beliefs which are not considered valid any more (a) that the chorus expresses the voice of the poet Theatre is a polyphonic medium. The chorus usually has an autonomous dramatic character, which conforms to the necessities of the dramatic action. At the same time, the chorus reflects other positions: the voice of the / a community is one of them, but the voice of the fictionalised poet might also be one, especially in comedy. (b) that the chorus represents, in a way, the ideal spectator As characters are mistaken, choruses are often mistaken. Choruses also often consist of women, slaves, barbarians, which suggests that they are not in a privileged position.
So what is the function of the chorus? Some reminders: Not all choruses are the same and not all perform the same functions. The function and role of the chorus varies from play to play; playwrights experiment enormously with choruses and their functions Understanding the choice and construction of the chorus is often key to the interpretation of a play.
Some general observations The chorus are always present, and more often than not, get involved in the dramatic action (to varying degrees). This has important implications which we miss if we do not take the chorus into account in our interpretation of the drama They develop a relation towards the protagonist (sometimes tense / oppositional). The tension between chorus and characters, especially the protagonist, is a fundamental dimension of the chorus function in Sophocles (e.g. Antigone) The chorus usually re-act, rather than act (although there are exceptions) The chorus often project and frame elements of the dramatic action in a moral universe. We usually get to consider the mythical parallels from the choral reflections, and this is important; these direct our judgement, make us notice controversies, ambiguities, complexities (e.g. Electra) The chorus are not always right, although they do have a certain authority
Some general observations The chorus guarantees continuity within the drama, on the level of themes, ideas, symbolism and especially, on the level of imagery The function of the chorus is inextricably tied with the ritual aspect of drama; some playwrights and some plays choose to emphasise this A LOT (e.g. Bacchae) The function of the chorus as the voice of the community underlines the socio-political dimension of the plays
The chorus in Sophocles and especially in the Women of Trachis
The distorting image of ancient tradition and selection for survival Please try to resist any teleological analyses of the three tragedians (the primitive but grand Aeschylus, the golden medium Sophocles, the experimental but decadent Euripides ). These originate in the complex processes of canonisation and in popular perceptions that were shaped and re-shaped by comedy, such as Aristophanes Frogs. The impression we get from the surviving plays may not be representative of the historical reality, since we only have a fraction of the plays, and the surviving plays were not selected with the criterion of how representative they were.
The chorus in Women of Trachis Age, status, provenance? How do they relate to Deianeira, to the captives, to the male characters and especially to Heracles?
Creative use of the chorus ritual function and background 205-224, p. 151-3
The chorus in Women of Trachis Do they have a uniform presence / involvement? How does their involvement vary as the play progresses?
582-99; pp. 185-7
813-20, p. 205
850-61, p. 209
vv. 947-970, p. 219
The chorus in the Women of Trachis No real connection with Deianeira; she is a foreigner-guest; age, status More interest towards the return and fate of Heracles. They look outwards. Once Heracles is brought on stage, at the realisation of what has taken place, the chorus withdraws almost entirely. From 970 to 1278 (308 lines) they speak only 4, at 1044-5; 1112-13. Crucially, they say NOTHING at the end.