Bakkhai Read online

  “Bakkhos,

  my partner in the hunt!

  my comrade in the victory!

  O what a victory!”

  But the trophy in her hands is her own tears.

  Anyway, I’ll get out of here before she arrives.

  To live and think and act within measure,

  reverencing the gods,

  this is a man’s finest possession.

  [exit Servant]

  Bakkhai:

  We dance for Bakkhos,

  we dance for death!

  Pentheus’

  death —

  born of a snake,

  dressed as a woman,

  he took up a thyrsos and followed a bull directly down to Hades.

  For the thyrsos is certain death!

  You Bakkhai,

  you women of Thebes,

  your beautiful victory finishes in tears,

  your glorious game ends in lamentation,

  your lovely hand streams with blood

  as it lifts your own son!

  But look, I see Agave running towards us,

  her eyes are insane.

  Give her a wild welcome,

  a Bakkhic welcome!

  [enter Agave carrying the head of Pentheus]

  Agave:

  O Bakkhai!

  O women of Asia!

  Bakkhai:

  Why are you shouting?

  Agave: We bring from the mountains

  a newcut tendril,

  a lovely bit of hunting.

  Bakkhai:

  I see.

  And I welcome you,

  dear comrade.

  Agave:

  I caught him myself with my bare hands —

  cub of a wild mountain lion, look!

  Bakkhai:

  Mountain? What mountain

  Agave:

  Kithairon —

  Bakkhai:

  Kithairon?

  Agave:

  — slaughtered him!

  Bakkhai:

  Who struck the blow?

  Agave:

  Me! My prize!

  “Agave the blessed”

  is what they call me!

  Bakkhai:

  Who else was there?

  Agave:

  Kadmos’ —

  Bakkhai:

  Kadmos?

  Agave:

  Kadmos’ daughters

  came upon the animal after me.

  Lucky hunting!

  Bakkhai:

  Lucky indeed.

  Agave:

  Won’t you share my feast?

  Bakkhai:

  Share it?

  O my dear.

  O pity!

  Agave:

  What a fresh bloom he is,

  just a kid, just a calf —

  here, see the down on his cheek,

  the long soft hair.

  Bakkhai:

  That long hair

  does give him an animal look.

  Agave:

  Our Bakkhos is wise,

  is he not,

  a wise hunter.

  How wisely

  he drove the maenads upon this beast!

  Bakkhai:

  Oh yes he’s a hunter.

  Agave:

  Do you praise me?

  Bakkhai:

  Oh yes I praise you.

  Agave:

  And soon the men of Thebes —

  Bakkhai:

  not to say Pentheus your son —

  Agave:

  —will praise his mother

  who caught this wild thing,

  this lion cub.

  Bakkhai:

  Extraordinary catch!

  Agave:

  Extraordinary experience.

  Bakkhai:

  So you’re happy?

  Agave:

  I’m overjoyed.

  It was magnificent —

  the day, the hunt, the spectacle —

  magnificent!

  Bakkhai:

  Show your prize to the people, then,

  show your catch, poor woman.

  Agave:

  O citizens of beautifully-towered Thebes,

  come see my catch!

  We daughters of Kadmos hunted and caught

  this wild animal,

  not with javelins,

  not with nets,

  just the slender fingers of our own white hands!

  What are they worth now,

  your boasts, your useless weaponry?

  We took this beast barehanded!

  We tore it limb from limb!

  Where’s my father, where’s the old man?

  Let him approach.

  And Pentheus my son, where’s he?

  I want him to set up a ladder against the house

  and nail this head to the roofbeam:

  my trophy.

  My lion.

  I won it myself.

  [enter Kadmos with servants and body of Pentheus]

  Kadmos:

  Follow me, servants.

  Bring the thing here.

  The thing that was Pentheus.

  Bring it in front of the house.

  I had to search for this body all over Kithairon.

  On the rocks, in the woods, the parts were scattered, lost.

  I found them. I made a pile. It was hard to do that.

  Why did I go up there?

  Because I heard of my daughters’ monstrous acts.

  I had already returned to town with Teiresias

  but

  I went back to the mountain,

  I carried my child away.

  Maenads killed him.

  I saw Ino and Autonoe up there,

  still ecstatic,

  raving in the oak trees:

  oh it was pitiful.

  And then someone told me

  of Agave on her way down to Thebes,

  dancing, delirious.

  And they were right.

  I’m looking at her now.

  It’s no pretty sight.

  Agave:

  Father,

  now you can boast you have the best daughters in the world!

  I mean all of us, but especially me.

  I left my loom and weaving to go after bigger game —

  to hunt wild beasts with my bare hands!

  I’ve got one here — look! I brought this trophy for your house.

  Take it, father.

  You can hang it up!

  Invite your friends, throw a banquet, show off my prowess!

  Because you know you are a blessed man,

  a blessed man, father!

  What a family of achievers we are!

  Kadmos:

  O grief without measure.

  I don’t know how to look at you.

  Your poor butchering hands.

  What a first-rate sacrifice you offer the gods!

  What a banquet you have in mind!

  And you wish to invite all of Thebes? You’re inviting me too?

  O sorrow.

  Your sorrow.

  My sorrow.

  Certainly, yes,

  he treats us with justice but

  the god goes too far —

  Bromios: our destroyer!

  Bromios: our family!

  Agave:

  Well aren’t you grumpy! Old age is like that, always scowling.

  I wish my son were more like me — lucky in the hunt

  when he goes out after game with t
he young men of Thebes.

  But all he cares about is making war on gods.

  He needs a bit of a talking-to from you, father,

  Will someone call him out here

  so he can witness my good fortune?

  Kadmos:

  [PHEU PHEU] O pity.

  If you see what you’ve done the pain will fall.

  Stay in this ignorance forever

  and you’ll be unhappy

  but you won’t know it.

  Agave:

  What do you mean unhappy? Is something wrong?

  Kadmos:

  First, look up. Look at the sky.

  Agave:

  Okay. Why?

  Kadmos:

  Does it look normal? Or is it changing?

  Agave:

  It’s brighter than before, sort of glowing.

  Kadmos:

  And that fluttering inside you, you still feel that?

  Agave:

  I don’t know, I’m not sure.

  I’m coming back into my own mind somehow,

  my thoughts are moving, shifting, breaking up.

  Kadmos:

  Can you hear me? Can you answer plainly?

  Agave:

  I’ve forgotten what we were talking about.

  Kadmos:

  Whose house did you go to when you married?

  Agave:

  Echion’s. You gave me to Echion.

  One of the Sown Men, as they say.

  Kadmos:

  What child did you bear to your husband there?

  Agave:

  Pentheus.

  Kadmos:

  And whose head is that you have in your hands?

  Agave:

  A lion’s head. So the hunters told me.

  Kadmos:

  Look at it now. Just take a moment. Look straight.

  Agave:

  [EA] What am I seeing? What is this I have in my hands?

  Kadmos:

  Look. Understand.

  Agave:

  I see unimaginable pain.

  Kadmos:

  Does it look like the head of a lion now?

  Agave:

  No. I’m holding the head of Pentheus.

  Kadmos:

  Mourned by me before you knew who he was.

  Agave:

  Who killed him? How did he come to my hands?

  Kadmos:

  Truth is an unbearable thing. And its timing is bad.

  Agave:

  Tell me, my heart is leaping out of me.

  Kadmos:

  You killed him, you and your sisters.

  Agave:

  Where? In the house? Some other place?

  Kadmos:

  Where the dogs tore Aktaion apart long ago.

  Agave:

  Why did the poor boy go to Mt Kithairon?

  Kadmos:

  He went to mock the god and your Bakkhic rituals.

  Agave:

  Me — what was I doing up there?

  Kadmos:

  Raving, mad. The whole city went mad for Bakkhos.

  Agave:

  Dionysos destroyed us. I recognize it now.

  Kadmos:

  He was outraged by your hybris. You denied he was a god.

  Agave:

  Where is the dear body of my son, father?

  Kadmos:

  I gathered the pieces myself.

  It wasn’t easy.

  Here.

  Agave:

  You’ve fitted the limbs together so it looks decent?

  Kadmos:

  See for yourself.

  Agave:

  Ah.

  His body.

  His dear, dear body.

  This is my son.

  This is what I did.

  Come, old man, let us place the head and cover him

  and lay him properly in the grave.

  He deserves that.

  For I do not believe my son had any share in my folly.

  Kadmos:

  But he was like you, he denied the god.

  And so has joined us all together in a single ruination —

  you, himself, our house and me.

  I never had sons myself

  and now I see

  the fruit of your womb, woman,

  dying the worst death possible

  right before my eyes.

  You were the light of our house, child,

  as son of my daughter, you held it together.

  And what a terror to the city — no one dared insult me

  once they saw your face,

  you’d make them pay!

  But now I’ll be an exile, driven from home and from honour,

  Kadmos, the great,

  who sowed the Theban race

  and reaped fair harvest.

  O beloved one —

  I know you are dead but still, child, still,

  you count

  as my most beloved –

  never again will you touch my face

  or fold me to you saying,

  “Does someone slight you, old man?

  Does someone disrespect or vex or make you sad?

  Tell me, I’ll punish him!”

  No.

  I am brokenhearted now

  and you are lost to us,

  your mother ruined,

  her sisters bereft.

  If anyone here despises the daimonic,

  let him look on this boy’s death and believe in gods.

  Bakkhai:

  I feel your sorrow, Kadmos.

  Your grandson’s punishment was justified,

  yet agony for you.

  Agave:

  O father! Here is my life turned upside down!

  [enter Dionysos]

  Dionysos:

  I am the god triumphant.

  You squandered all your chance to worship me.

  That was unwise.

  You must leave this city and go among strangers.

  You are defiled.

  And you insulted me —

  you claimed I was a mortal man.

  Now learn,

  murderous woman,

  learn what kind of god I am.

  You will turn into a serpent,

  your wife into a savage snake.

  You and she,

  as the oracle foretells,

  will lead a barbarian army

  in the sacking of cities

  and the laying waste of shrines,

  then journey miserably home.

  But Ares will save you,

  and translate you alive to the land of the blessed.

  I say these things,

  not as the child of a mortal father,

  but as son of Zeus.

  Had you known how to live within measure,

  you’d be prospering now,

  and the son of Zeus your ally.

  Kadmos:

  Dionysos, hear our prayer. We did wrong.

  Dionysos:

  You’ve learned too late. Far too late.

  Kadmos:

  Yes. Yes. But your retaliation is too much.

  Dionysos:

  I am a god and you insulted me!

  Kadmos:

  Gods should not resemble humans in their anger.

  Dionysos:

  My father Zeus approved all this a long time ago.

  Agave:

  It is decided, old man. Alas!

  We go into exile. Into despair.

  Dionysos:

  Exactly.

 
; Why then delay?

  [exit Dionysos]

  Kadmos:

  O my child.

  Evil, evil, is where we are,

  you and your sisters and I,

  this is the worst.

  I’m to make my way as a stranger in strange lands.

  I’m to live as a snake!

  I’m to lead an army

  against the altars and tombs of the Greeks.

  I will find no release from my misery,

  not even by sailing down the river of death to peaceful oblivion.

  Agave:

  O father!

  I’ll go into exile, I’ll never see you again!

  Kadmos:

  Why wrap your arms around me, you poor child,

  like a young swan with its whiteheaded father?

  Agave:

  Where shall I go? I have no home!

  Kadmos:

  Child, I don’t know.

  Your old father is not much help.

  Agave:

  Farewell, my house,

  farewell my city.

  I am leaving you now for the absolute pain of exile.

  Kadmos:

  Go.

  Agave:

  I grieve for you, father.

  Kadmos:

  I grieve for you too.

  And for your sisters.

  Agave:

  It is a terrible, terrible torment

  lord Dionysos has brought against our house.

  Kadmos:

  Terrible what you did to him.

  You took away the honour of his name in Thebes.

  Agave:

  Farewell, my father.

  Kadmos:

  Farewell, my poor dear daughter.

  But you are beyond faring well!

  Agave:

  Lead me away.

  To my sisters, to the place of our pitiful exile.

  May I never go near Kithairon again,

  never set eyes on it,

  never see a thyrsos,

  never remember a moment of this.

  Leave the thyrsos to the Bakkhai!

  Bakkhai:

  Many are the forms of the daimonic

  and many the surprises wrought by gods.

  What seemed likely did not happen.

  But for the unexpected a god found a way.

  That’s how this went

  today.

  Copyright © 2015 by Anne Carson

  All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

  Cover art: Ragnar Kjartansson, The End, 2009. Collection of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo. Courtesy of the artist; Luhring Augustine, New York; and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik. Commissioned for the Icelandic Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale: six-month performance during which 144 paintings were made.

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  New Directions books are printed on acid-free paper