{"id":8471,"date":"2021-03-20T15:28:00","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T14:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=8471"},"modified":"2021-07-01T16:50:21","modified_gmt":"2021-07-01T14:50:21","slug":"the-bacchae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=8471","title":{"rendered":"The Bacchae"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-spotify wp-block-embed-spotify wp-embed-aspect-21-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Spotify Embed: The Bacchae\" width=\"100%\" height=\"232\" allowtransparency=\"true\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"encrypted-media\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/episode\/0u11jRmjRodQpdFQ28jz7k?si=FCQu0hsGT8eqTfPnIyImNA\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><figcaption>Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Euripides&#8217; &#8220;The Bacchae&#8221; in the March 18th 2021 episode of &#8220;In Our Time&#8221;.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Listened to this week, and with (Dionysian!) pleasure: Melvyn Bragg&#8217;s<em> BBC Radio 4<\/em> program &#8220;In Our Time&#8221;, and his conversation about Euripides&#8217; tragedy <em>The Bacchae<\/em> with Emily Wilson, Edith Hall and Rosie Wyles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mention of Donna Tartt&#8217;s novel <em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Secret_History\" target=\"_blank\">The Secret History<\/a><\/em> from 1992, led to some moments of reflection. A few years ago after reading <em>The Gold Finch<\/em>, and remembering the hype surrounding the publication of Tartt&#8217;s first book (I guess it became a bestseller), I read <em>The Secret History<\/em>, and whilst I would have recommended it as a good enough read, I recall my expectations for literary fiction were not really fulfilled. (By the way, similarly so, my opinion of <em>The Gold Finch<\/em>.) A likeable enough but vacillating narrator and his capricious bunch of classics cohorts at an elite college, certainly sucked one into their vortex of deceits, large and small, but I had the feeling at the end of having been chewed up and spat out &#8211; unsatisfied, left cold. That the story&#8217;s murder and mayhem was created in the pursuit of Dionysian pleasure and dabbling in bacchanalian ritual, I had all but forgotten; rather, what stayed with me was the disturbing ease in which the accoutrements of privilege could be weaponised by an amoral didactic, catapulting young lives into the abyss (in the novel: both in a real sense and an allegorical).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But back to Bragg&#8217;s program&#8230;On the website there is <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/m000t6kp\" target=\"_blank\">further information<\/a> &#8211; both concerning the subject matter and the guests.  <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/scaife.perseus.org\/reader\/urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0006.tlg017.perseus-eng2:0-125\/\" target=\"_blank\">The text can be found here at Perseus<\/a>; not as easy reading as the above discussion is to listen to, but the theatre of life rarely is &#8211; the truth being in the performance, and the borders of pleasure and tragedy fluid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">To set the stage, so to say, and to understand the context of Ancient Greek performance, I recommend <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.gresham.ac.uk\/lectures-and-events\/theatre-dionysus\" target=\"_blank\">Edith Hall&#8217;s Gresham Lectures of 2018<\/a>, of which the following video is part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Theatre of Dionysus\" width=\"840\" height=\"473\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7cjPtH5vA5I?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listened to this week, and with (Dionysian!) pleasure: Melvyn Bragg&#8217;s BBC Radio 4 program &#8220;In Our Time&#8221;, and his conversation about Euripides&#8217; tragedy The Bacchae with Emily Wilson, Edith Hall and Rosie Wyles. Mention of Donna Tartt&#8217;s novel The Secret History from 1992, led to some moments of reflection. A few years ago after reading &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?p=8471\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Bacchae&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"audio","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[220,217,59,216,218,214],"class_list":["post-8471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-audio","hentry","category-classics","category-greece","tag-bbc-radio-4","tag-edith-hall","tag-emily-wilson","tag-euripides","tag-rosie-wyles","tag-the-bacchae","post_format-post-format-audio"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8471"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10047,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8471\/revisions\/10047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}