Bakkhai Read online

  And

  given the way he threatened me,

  I’d like to see him made mock of,

  paraded through town in all his ridiculous female finery.

  So

  I’ll go rig him up, put on his dress — he’ll

  wear that dress to Hades

  after his mother slaughters him with her own hands.

  And he will come to know Dionysos,

  son of Zeus,

  true and consummate god,

  god of the intensities of terror,

  god of the gentlest human peace.

  3rd CHORAL ODE

  Bakkhai:

  When shall I

  set my white foot

  in the allnight dances,

  when shall I

  lift my throat

  to the dewy air,

  like a fawn

  skylarking

  in the

  green joy of the meadow —

  she runs

  free

  from the hunt and the hunter,

  she leaps

  over the net

  as he cries up his dogs,

  with storms

  in her feet

  she

  sprints

  the plain,

  races

  the river

  flies

  down

  to the shadows that deepen the trees,

  overjoyed!

  at the sheer absence of men.

  What is wisdom?

  What feels better

  than to hold your hand over the head of your enemy?

  Who

  does

  not

  love

  this

  feeling?

  It moves

  so slowly

  – the force of the gods —

  yet it is absolutely guaranteed

  to arrive.

  To punish

  human folly

  and the arrogance

  of a private theology.

  Ingenious

  how a god can hide

  and then

  leap out

  on the unholy man.

  To think or act outside the law is never right.

  But this is valid —

  this thing we call the daimonic

  ancient,

  elemental,

  fixed in law and custom,

  grown out of nature itself.

  What is wisdom?

  What feels better

  than to bring your hand down on the head of your enemy?

  Who

  does

  not

  love

  this

  feeling?

  Happy is he who escapes the winter sea,

  finds a harbour,

  prevails over pain.

  Still, one man will always outdo another in wealth or power.

  And hopes

  are countless, they come on like waves,

  rising

  and

  falling.

  Just be happy,

  day to day:

  this I call blessed.

  [enter Dionysos]

  Dionysos:

  You! Pentheus! I’m talking to you!

  Still so keen on seeing sights you should not see?

  Still hungry for mischief?

  Come out and show me your Bakkhic get-up,

  your maenad-suit,

  your costume for spying on women.

  [enter Pentheus]

  You look like one of Kadmos’ daughters!

  Pentheus:

  You know, I seem to see two suns.

  And a double Thebes, each with all its seven gates.

  And you look like a bull leading me in procession —

  you’ve got horns growing out your head!

  Were you perhaps an animal all the time?

  You’re certainly a bull at the moment.

  Dionysos:

  The god is with us now.

  He’s come round, he’s on our side.

  You’re seeing as you ought to see.

  Pentheus:

  How do I look?

  Is this the way Ino stands?

  Or Agave my mother?

  Dionysos:

  I feel I’m seeing them in person.

  But here, this bit of hair is out of place —

  I had it tucked under, did I not?

  Pentheus:

  I was tossing my head back and forth like a maenad inside the house.

  Dionysos:

  I’ll redo it — I’m here to serve you. Hold still.

  Pentheus:

  Oh lovely. You redo it. I’m in your hands.

  Dionysos:

  And your belt is loose, your pleats uneven,

  the hem’s slipping down around your ankles.

  Pentheus:

  Is it? Possibly, on the right anyway.

  Over here it hangs straight, so far as I can see.

  Dionysos:

  You’ll think me your best friend I’m sure,

  when you see how sober and sensible the Bakkhai are,

  not what you expect.

  Pentheus:

  Do I take the thyrsos in my right hand

  or like this,

  to look really Bakkhic?

  Dionysos:

  Right hand.

  Raise it in time with your right foot.

  I’m so glad you had a change of heart!

  Pentheus:

  I’ll be able to lift Mt Kithairon on my bare shoulders,

  Bakkhic women and all, am I right?

  Dionysos:

  No problem. Your whole attitude before was unsound

  but not anymore!

  Pentheus:

  Should we take crowbars?

  Or shall I just put my shoulder under the mountain and shove?

  Dionysos:

  Be careful though, you musn’t do damage to the temples of the Nymphs

  or the places where Pan plays his pipes.

  Pentheus:

  Good point. Brute force is out. Doesn’t work with women anyhow.

  I’ll hide in the pines.

  Dionysos:

  You’ll hide in the hiding place a man should have

  who comes to spy on the Bakkhai.

  Pentheus:

  You know, I can see them in my mind’s eye,

  little birds in the bracken,

  all tangled up in sex.

  Dionysos:

  Well that’s your mission, right?

  Catch them at it!

  Unless you’re caught first.

  Pentheus:

  Take me right through the middle of the city:

  I’m the only man bold enough to do this.

  Dionysos:

  Yes, you alone bear this burden on behalf of Thebes.

  A contest awaits you: the contest of your destiny.

  Follow me.

  I am your guide and saviour.

  Someone else will bring you home.

  Pentheus:

  My mother!

  Dionysos:

  You’ll be conspicuous to all.

  Pentheus:

  That’s my hope.

  Dionysos:

  You’ll be carried aloft.

  Pentheus:

  What a luxury!

  Dionysos:

  In the arms of your mother.

  Pentheus:

  Now you’re spoiling me!

  Dionysos:

  Indeed I
am.

  Pentheus:

  But I deserve it.

  Dionysos:

  You are an amazing strange man

  and amazing strange experiences await you.

  Your celebrity will reach high heaven.

  Open your arms, Agave,

  open your arms, daughters of Kadmos!

  I am leading this young man to a great contest, to his ultimate performance.

  And who will win?

  I will win.

  Bromios and I.

  As for the rest: soon enough obvious.

  [exit Pentheus]

  4th CHORAL ODE

  Bakkhai:

  Run, you dogs of madness!

  Run to the mountain

  where the daughters of Kadmos

  are dancing!

  Sting them and drive them

  to hunt down that man —

  dressed up as a woman

  he spies on women —

  his eye has a crazy glow.

  First

  his mother will spot him

  ducking and dodging,

  hopping and hiding,

  sneaking and sniffing

  from cliff to crag

  and

  she will call out to her maenads:

  Who is this man

  come to our mountain

  to hunt us from peak to peak,

  O Bakkhai?

  Who gave him birth?

  Surely no woman!

  His mother must be some lion, some Gorgon!

  Into the throat

  of

  the

  ungodly

  unlawful

  unrighteous

  earthborn

  son

  of Echion

  let justice

  sink her sword

  !

  His judgment is wrong,

  his anger chaotic,

  his arrogance out of control.

  He dispatches himself against you,

  Bakkhos,

  against your mother,

  against your holy rites.

  He is a violent man.

  But

  Death will discipline him.

  Death takes no excuses.

  To accept that we are mortal

  helps us live without pain.

  Myself,

  I’ve no interest in wisdom.

  I hunt another quarry,

  by day,

  by night:

  the great clear joy of living pure and reverently,

  rejecting injustice

  and honouring gods.

  Into the throat

  of

  the

  ungodly

  unlawful

  unrighteous

  earthborn

  son

  of Echion

  let justice

  sink her sword

  !

  Show yourself, Bakkhos!

  Be a bull,

  be a snake,

  be a lion,

  be manifest!

  Come with your little net

  and your fatal smile,

  your little smile

  and your fatal net,

  hunt down the hunter!

  Trip him and tangle him!

  Let him fall under a pack of maenads!

  [enter Servant]

  Servant:

  This house was fortunate once.

  Founded by Kadmos,

  who sowed an earthborn crop from dragon’s seed.

  How I grieve for you, though I am but a slave,

  still I grieve for you.

  Bakkhai:

  What is it? News of the Bakkhai?

  Servant:

  Pentheus is dead, the son of Echion.

  Bakkhai:

  O Bromios!

  You are revealed to eye, mind and judgment a great god!

  Servant:

  I beg your pardon? What are you saying?

  You women rejoice at my master’s downfall?

  Bakkhai:

  We are foreign, we sing a foreign song of joy.

  No more cowering! No more prison!

  Servant:

  You think Thebes has no men left to govern you?

  Bakkhai:

  Dionysos, not Thebes, is my government.

  Servant:

  Understood, ladies, but to gloat over others’ misfortune

  is not decent.

  Bakkhai:

  How did he die? I want to know details.

  He was an unjust man.

  A thoroughly unjust man.

  Servant:

  We had left behind the outskirts of Thebes and the river Asopos,

  heading for Mt Kithairon — it was Pentheus in front,

  me following,

  and a stranger who offered to act as our guide.

  We came to a grassy glen,

  walking silently,

  looking to see and not be seen.

  There was a hollow between two hills,

  crossed by streams and shaded by pine trees

  where the maenads were sitting happily working at little tasks.

  Some were rewinding a thyrsos with tendrils of ivy,

  others frisking like colts set free

  and singing Bakkhic songs back and forth.

  But Pentheus, the hapless man, couldn’t quite see the women

  and said to our guide,

  “From where I stand I can’t make out those imposters,

  those maenads,

  but up on the bank,

  if I were to climb a tall pine,

  I could get a good view of all their obscene goings-on.”

  And then I saw the stranger work a miracle.

  Seizing the top branch of a towering pine

  he brought it down,

  down,

  down

  to the black ground

  curved taut like a bow

  or a rim forced round a wheel.

  So did the stranger force that pine tree down to earth —

  no mortal could have done it.

  Then he sat Pentheus upon the branch

  and let the tree go straight up through his hands,

  gradually, gently,

  lest it unseat the rider.

  And up the tree rose to the sky —

  straight up — with my master crouched on top.

  And now the maenads saw him more than he saw them,

  still he was not completely visible on his perch.

  But the stranger suddenly vanished

  and a voice came out of the air —

  it was probably Dionysos — shouting:

  “Here he is, women! I bring you the man

  who mocks me and mocks my holy rites.

  Punish him!”

  And as he said this

  a column of fire shot between heaven and earth. Then silence fell.

  Silence through the wood and on the leaves and every animal was silent.

  You could hear not a twitch.

  The Bakkhai got to their feet and were peering around —

  they hadn’t clearly recognized the voice.

  Again it rang out.

  And now they knew his cry!

  Off they shot with the speed of doves —

  Agave, her sisters, all the Bakkhai —

  racing over glen and stream and jagged rock,

  maddened by the breath of god.

  And when they saw my master sitting atop a pine tree

  they climbed a facing hill and began pelting h
im with rocks,

  they hurled pine boughs like javelins,

  or used the thyrsos as a spear.

  Yet they kept missing.

  Poor Pentheus was out of range, although absolutely helpless.

  Finally they started ripping off branches of oak

  to use as crowbars

  and uproot the tree.

  It didn’t work.

  Agave spoke:

  “Come, maenads, stand round in a circle

  and grip the trunk of the tree.

  Up there’s a wild animal we must capture

  or he’ll broadcast the secrets of our god!”

  With that,

  countless hands took hold of the pine tree and tore it from the ground.

  And

  down,

  down,

  down

  he fell

  to the ground

  from his high seat,

  yelping and sobbing.

  Pentheus.

  He was close to understanding his own doom.

  Agave,

  as priestess of the slaughter

  launched herself first upon him.

  He pulled the headdress from his head

  in hopes that she,

  his poor luckless mother,

  would know him, would spare him —

  he touched her cheek and cried out,

  “Mother, it’s me! I am the child you bore in the house of Echion!

  Pity me, mother,

  do not murder your own child, whatever his mistakes!”

  But she

  was foaming at the mouth,

  was rolling back her eyes,

  was out of her mind.

  Bakkhos had possessed her,

  she did not even hear the boy.

  Seizing his left arm by the wrist

  she planted her foot against his ribs

  and ripped the arm off at the shoulder —

  not by her own strength, the god made it easy.

  Meanwhile Ino was working away at the other side

  stripping the meat from the bone,

  and Autonoe with the whole mob of Bakkhai

  attacked.

  It was one float of hideous sound —

  him gasping and groaning,

  them shrieking their war cry.

  One carried off an arm, another a foot still in its shoe,

  his ribs were laid bare of flesh

  and every woman

  drenched in blood

  for they were playing ball with his body parts.

  So the corpse was lying all over the place,

  some by the rocks, some in the woods,

  hard to find.

  But the head,

  the terrible head,

  his mother picks up

  and (as if it were some mountain lion’s)

  impales on top of her thyrsos!

  And she’s carrying it now,

  marching right down Kithairon,

  leaving her sisters behind —

  yes, she’s on her way here.

  Exulting in that dark and bloody prize

  and calling out —