Greek Tragic Fragments with a Black Sea (original) (raw)
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The study of fragments, dramatic or otherwise, inevitably involves 'an element of creative fiction (which is not a dirty word),' as Matthew Wright has recently so aptly observed. 1 In this respect, at least, 'fragmentology' finds itself in methodological harmony with a rather different type of reconstructive project: the history and analysis of ancient dramatic performance. While much excellent work has been done in recent decades to expand our understanding of the conditions and structures which obtained in ancient theatrical productions, 2 scholarly discussions of ancient performance nevertheless still require a certain imaginative leap and the study of opsis retains something of its Aristotelian legacy as the least technical (atechnotaton) part of tragedy. 3 Like fragmentologists, those thinking about ancient performance must face 'the unavoidable hazard' of piling 'conjecture upon hypothesis,' with results that are 'necessarily speculative at best.' 4 With regards to both of these speculative endeavors, I share Wright's view that the use of creativity and imagination in the face of irresolvable uncertainties does not, in and of itself, undermine the intellectual value of scholarship. Rather, as Wright urges, we can (and should) 1 Wright (2016) xxv. 2 In addition to the seminal work of
Theatre Journal, 1980
When this book was first published, its burden-that Greek tragedies make more sense when they are treated as plays for performance-was fairly novel, or at least it was preached more than it was practised. In the few years since then, it has become an orthodoxy, and stagecraft is now given due attention in nearly all new books. While happy about that, I am not happy that my name is cited as a 'ringleader' of those who maintain that we should concentrate on performance rather than words. I do not endorse that: the power of the Greek theatre rests on its extraordinary combination of word and embodiment. To neglect one is to impoverish the other. I trust that this book does not encourage anyone to set the performative dimension in competition with the verbal. I hope it does not seem fickle to say that there are things here which I would not write in the same way today. The revised bibliography gives some idea of how fast the water is flowing under the bridges of scholarship. I would also acknowledge more openly in chapter 1 the selectivity of any account of the 'author's meaning'. And in the last chapter I would stress more that it is the place of books like this to suggest and to prompt rather than to dictate to the professional theatre. The use made of my work by the National Theatre Oresteia in London in 1981-2 shows that such a relationship can work. This book is, in fact, about ancient Greek culture and about the theatre, and it is meant for the 'general reader' who is interested in either or both. I hope professional Hellenists will read it, but it was not written primarily for them. While I have had students in mind above all, students of drama or English literature or Classical civilization, any student who encounters Greek tragedy, anyone who is fascinated by the Greeks, who loves the theatre, anyone who is prepared to be enriched by the great literature of the past may find these pages worth while. But there is a condition. The core of the book (chapters 3-9) demands and assumes that the reader already knows all, or at least some, of the nine tragedies it concentrates on (they are listed on p. 22). Furthermore, it is probably best read with a translation (or text) open to hand, preferably a translation which has the line numbers in the margin (there are recommendations on pp. 197-8). This book is in no way a substitute for reading the plays themselves-and, if possible, seeing them. Indeed, I should like to think that the book has encouraged and will encourage theatres to stage these great dramas, and might help to find them audiences. I quote from the tragedies liberally. All quotations are translated and all the translations are my own. I am only too aware how stilted and imperfect they are; but I thought it essential to translate high poetry into something which suggests its lofty and arresting style. The language of Greek tragedy was not that of everyday speech, and I had rather turn it into bad verse than into pedestrian prose. In the earlier Preface I stressed how much this book owed to the inspiration and to the help of Colin Macleod. Since his death in December 1981, at the age of 38, everything that preserves his insight, however diluted, has become that much more concentrated. If this study succeeds at all in getting beneath the surface, that is owed to him. Magdalen College, Oxford March 1985 Oliver Taplin viii 1 The visual dimension of tragedy Behind the dialogue of Greek drama we are always conscious of a concrete visual actuality, and behind that of a specific emotional actuality. Behind the drama of words is the drama of action, the timbre of voice and voice, the uplifted hand or tense muscle, and the particular emotion. The spoken play, the words which we read, are symbols, a shorthand, and often, as in the best of Shakespeare, a very abbreviated shorthand indeed, for the actual and felt play, which is always the real thing. The phrase, beautiful as it may be, stands for a greater beauty still. This is merely a particular case of the amazing unity of Greek, the unity of concrete and abstract in philosophy, the unity of thought and feeling, action and speculation in life.
The Odyssey, the Black Sea, and an Endless Voyage to a Utopian Destination
This paper examines an aspect of the broader issue of the geography of the Odyssey, the primary stimulus being the references of the poem to places that could be associated with the Black Sea, namely the Aeaea and the entrance to the Underworld. As we shall see, while these particular places are indeed relevant to the Black Sea region, they do not belong to the context of a specific journey with specific halts in a specific geographical sequence. The Odyssey is a synthesis of many different episodes, and there is no point in trying to trace a complete geographical course for Odysseus' voyage.
(EN) Reading remote places in Aeschylus’ early tragedies
Being freed from theoretical and formal restrictions, the theories relating to Greek tragedy now took into consideration several new aspects of the genre that go beyond the notions of verbal text, space, plot and character. Greek tragedy recalls the imagination of the spectator who would be able to see afar the stage territories and phenomena of imagination, clandestinely coded in the text.
Space, place, and the metallurgical imagination of the Prometheus trilogy. Emmanuela Bakola Prometheus Bound opens with a long scene featuring awesome aural effects and unparalleled stage action: the god Hephaestus enters with his blacksmith’s tools and, at the order of Kratos, starts hammering the steel (PV 6, 64, 133, 148) that will chain Prometheus on the rocks (PV 1-81). In this ‘wasteland at the ends of the earth’ (PV 1-2), the repeated sequences of metal being hammered (at PV 56, 63, 66, 68, 72, 75, 78, 81; cf. 133) fill the scene with elemental power. In the open spaces of any fifth-century theatre where this trilogy was produced, these sequences would have undoubtedly made this opening scene even more striking and longer than the verse count suggests; the scene may have been as iconic as the Iliadic scene of Hephaestus hammering the ‘cosmic’ shield of Achilles (whose sensational visual quality was likened to theatre already in antiquity: schol. bT 18.476-7). As the very first line tells us, the setting is somewhere in the north of the Black Sea, in the vast wastelands of Scythia, the land which elsewhere in the Aeschylean corpus (Sept. 728-30) and in the Prometheus itself is called ‘mother of iron’ (PV 301-02; cf. PV 714-15). In Prometheus’ narratives, this northern wilderness and desolate rocky land is also constructed as incorporating the land of the Chalybes, famous iron-workers of antiquity (PV 714-15; cf. Il. 2.857; E. Alc. 980-1), as well as Colchis, the proverbial mythical source of metals (PV 722-4; cf. PV 415-16). This suggests that in the fluid geography of the play, the lands that surround the Black sea to its east and south, have been re-imagined as parts of Scythia. Many commentators have noticed the play’s free spatial approach to geography (e.g. Griffith 1983: 161; Finkelberg 1998; Podlecki 2005: 201-7) but the interpretations offered so far have not settled the problem. In this paper, I wish to examine the possibility that the evocation of metalworking in the opening scene of PV and the choices of location throughout the trilogy suggest that a certain theme might have been key: namely, metallurgy. As the rich Argonautic mythic cycle suggests and the archaeological record confirms (cf. Treister 1998; Vassileva 1998: 73-6; Bolton 1962: 48), the Black sea was perceived by the Greeks as rich in mineral ores and even richer in the knowledge of the wondrous art of metallurgy. The possibility that metallurgy was a running theme in the trilogy becomes even more attractive if one considers how the setting moved from play to play: there are strong reasons to believe that the setting of the first play (which was, most likely, Prometheus Pyrphoros) was Hephaistos’ forge on the island of Lemnos in the mouth of the Black Sea (cf. Pohlenz 1954: 77f.; West 1979; Griffith 1983: 282-4). In the Prometheus Desmotes, the setting was the ‘iron-bearing’ Scythia where Prometheus was chained and then ‘swallowed’ in its depths (PV 1080-93). In the final play, the Prometheus Lyomenos, the action would have ended up on the rugged lands of Caucasus, which was located by the poet as north of the Black Sea (PV 719-21). There, he was finally released from his chains and, probably, given a metallic symbol (ring or crown) to wear in memory of his bondage (cf. fr. 202 TrGF; Athen. 672f; Griffith 1983: 303). The trilogy thus moved through lands constructed in the Greek imagination as having a rich metallurgical tradition. In the light of heavy symbolism that, for millenia, collective imagination had attached to metallurgy (cf. Blakely 2006) and especially to the role of metals in the creation of civilisation, the choice of spaces in the Prometheus trilogy might shed important light to the way the Black sea was imagined by the fifth-century Greeks.