Pictorial 106

The mix of the rational and sexual in modernity is nowhere better mirrored than in Euripides’ The Bacchae (HB62/2) Pentheus, king of Thebes, is a totally split personality. He at omce cages Dionysus in the pursuit of social order, then succumbs to his temptations of wild and ill-clothed women frolicking on the hillsides.

He is almost the picture of someone who uses “nice calculations” (Euripides, The Bacchae and other Plays, Penguin Classics 1954, page 188) in a very bureaucratic sense, ticking all the boxes of officialdom, law and order.

But is that rational – or pettiness? “The insane man is the man who has lost everything except his reason” – GK Chesterton (The False Apollo). A rational man, in the classical sense, must have empathy so as not to be cut-off from nature’s call.

Pentheus’s rationality is only skin-deep so that, when Dionysus offers his thrilling sights from a wood,

“I would give a large sum of gold to see that.” (page 206)

Yes, indeed, money is the very heart and soul of reason, when it is applied to pleasure! Pentheus cannot release his mind from the petty calculations of officialdom in his wood-spying antics, persuading himself it is just research (“just”, legal) - and calls down berserk frenzy of the capering Maenads.

(page 215)  

It is this ungodly mix of petty officialdom with sex which is so very modern. This is what I call the dark metamorphosis whereby calculation (number) and sex become one through the dominion of thought.

This is wholly unnatural, since sex is a dance like the Maenads. It is being like the wild animals and, in fact, in the play,

(page 203)

Pentheus’s pettiness brings down the savagery of the wild women, who cannot abide his calculating infiltration.

Pentheus could be taken to represent number (or money) as against the spirit of dance that partakes of the beast in the field, running round with gay abandon (P14) This spirit when roused is blood and power, or as gentle as the lamb. The two sides of nature, predator and prey.

Also plants, since the women wear garlands and other bits of shrubbery. The spirit of the plants, I just recalled, was invoked at Findhorn community by Dorothy MacLean and others (having just seen her obit.)

Dorothy discovered that she was able to make contact with vegetable spirits called devas. The deva of the garden pea promised help, though it instructed them not to be too hard on the slugs. More practical assistance was provided by a local farmer who invited them to help themselves to his horse manure.

Soon there were stories of 40lb cabbages, broccoli so large it could barely be lifted, and winter-flowering roses. The gardens began to attract people to visit Findhorn to find out how it was done.

Is that spirit or horseshit? Well, both since horses are spirited beasts! Every living thing is a dance as opposed to a calculation of numbers. This points also to the fact that “nice calculation” is a type of hygiene that detaches itself from the dirt that enriches life.

The calculator – sorcerer or acolyte – can only conduct reports on appearance (Apollo) rather than the reality of blood and power that springs from the land.

Nietzsche associates this reality with Dionysus, though there is also the wild hunt of Artemis of the moon. It is true that Dionysus is the “Oriental” god most often associated with frenzied rites in forest groves.

In the play he is the “effeminate” god with ringlets in his hair. Pentheus also sees his “animal horns”, so it’s clear his animal nature can be sided with the destructive Artemis of the hunt, running silently under the silent moon.

The play does also make reference to the fate of Actaeon, the hunter who was turned into a deer and slain by the hounds of Diana (Artemis).

HB31

The 1972 Jean-Luc Godard film Tout va Bien does have a few similarities with the Euripides play. The scene of the factory takeover has a sequence of singing and dancing “grevistes”.

TOUT VA BIEN

Jane Fonda plays an American journalist trapped in the building with Yves Montand and the boss, Vittorio Caprioli. There is a lot of Union talk of “figures” (ie numbers) which are pitted against the anarchic closure of the building by “les marginales.”

There’s also an extended gag where the boss, locked with Fonda and Montand in his room, phones out to say, “Je veux pisser.” They escort him out but, lo and behold, as they tour the building every toilet is taken,

He is desperate, and starts running round the building. Finally he breaks a window. It is a sort of Latin humour, crude and lewd, that would have gone down well in ancient Greece (see Aristophanes P47) The reality of his distress is the savagery of the anarchists versus the rational and numerical.

Pentheus is torn apart by his mother and sister