Customer Reviews

Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite

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Actually this play by Soyinka is ENTIRELY an adaptation, and contains very little (if any) of the original ancient text. He says in the preface that he borrowed from other translations to make his adaptation. So the below reviewer is mistaken when he says that it is "a pretty faithful adaptation of it". I have studied The Bacchae for years, in the original ancient Greek and in over 8 translations of it, and can say without any hesitation that this is a completely DIFFERENT play than Euripides'. The only things that remain the same are the characters and the flavour of the structure of the original.

It is a beautiful "adaptation" nevertheless, but really, nothing can compare to Euripides's!

As a conscript to the universal workings of myth as means to replenish the psychic and physical energies of the social group- Wole Soyinka's Bacchae was a satisfying read. This man of universal letters revised Euripides' drama only in so far as he infused it with his tribal, i.e. Yoruban flavor for the congruent deity of Orgun. The Dionysian trail throughout history haunted Solyinka as it has audiences and adherents. The playwright is not alone in ascribing the immortality of the piece to a universal need to purge the soul and soil with blood and excess. (Some say cannibalism. others, communion.) If not cyclically honored, if not worshipped and given this praise, the God will avenge mankind in horror and misery. Jung, after all, believed that Nazism was Orgun's revenge. The Bacchae and other rituals of excess, blood sacrifices and orphic trance are reenacted in every culture and as May Day, have become vastly diluted to the point of being hardly recognizable. Without the order of the religious, the encoded structure, the excess is uncontained and works against the social good. (60's idealists to Weathermen, deaths, etc.)
When it was first written, it reflected a socio-economic condition in Greece. Many of the towns had imported slave labor and left the lower classes without income. Further, the cheap labor allowed for expansion of the mercantile and industrial centers so that these people's lands were being lost. Then as in the rest of its rebirths, the cult of Dionysius came to life during economic displacement and forced migrations. In other words the return to the earth and the mad episodes of discontrol provided massive antidotes and a new source of power to the earthly loss of the same. As this has been a retrograde force througout history and touches the human need to rejoin the natural forces and cycles, to sacrifice and re-enact the drama of the 'scapegoat' the force of the drama collapses time and culture. Themes are rewoven throughout the continents and the social rituals. May Day is one, as are Mardi Gras and the other 'secret' and excessive- bloody- banquets that serve some unique human and social function- a blood letting, and a rebellion against the enforced 'mysteries' or 'laws' from the state system.
A brilliant playwright and literary lion. The play is a tour de force and will touch the repressed or forgotten in all of us.

I read Euripides' original The Bakkhai, and I found Soyinka's version to be a pretty faithful adaptation of it. Soyinka's Bacchae was written as an African-influence stage play, and though I never saw it performed I think it would work wonderfully. I would recommend this play for anyone interested in either the Classics, or just Greek/Roman tragedies in general.

Soyinka's translation of Sophocles' ancient work brings new life to the piece so many have already read. His version of the poem incorporates his opinions--as shaped while growing up in Africa--into the ancient work, and the translation brings a fresh take on the play. I advise it to be read alongside a "traditional" reading of the play if in a classroom setting, so that the ancient ideas are still upheld, while fresh ones are incorporated. A lovely work.