CHAPTER TWO

GEORGE SEFERIS AND EURIPIDES’ BACCHAE

MICHAEL PASCHALIS

According to G. P. Savvidis, it was probably in 1952 that Seferis

conceived the idea of translating Euripides’ Bacchae. 1 More precise
information regarding his overall engagement with Euripides’ play can be
derived from the dates when he acquired the books he consulted for the
study of the play, which are now housed in the Vikelaia Library of
Heraklion.
On December 7, 1953 Seferis recorded in his diary the escape-wish of
the Bacchants occurring in the first stasimon of Euripides’ Bacchae (402-
405), a wish alluding to the poet’s own “escape” to Cyprus (see below).
According to the dates inscribed by the poet on Winnington-Ingram’s
Euripides and Dionysus (1948) and on Dodds’ Bacchae (1953), both
books were acquired on July 5, 1955 in Lebanon, where he served as an
ambassador from November 1952 to the early months of 1956 and during
which time he made his three visits to Cyprus. Vellacott’s translation of
the Bacchae (1954) was acquired in Beirut in 1955; a more precise date
(May 29, 1955) is given on p. 228 at the end of the translation. It follows
that Seferis embarked on the composition of the “Note for the prologue”
(see below) and on translating Euripides’ play some time after the dates of
the acquisition of these books. Actually his first translation attempts are
recorded in pencil on his own copy of Dodds’ Bacchae: lines 1-3 are
translated on p. 3, above the Greek text; the opening lines (1168-1171) of
the lyric dialogue between Agaue and the Chorus are translated on p. 47,
above and at the side of the Greek text (the latter translation is not
included in Yatromanolakis’ edition, on which see below). As for the
poem “Pentheus”, it must have been composed between these dates and
the publication of the Cyprus poems in December 1955.
On Friday, January 9, 1959, Seferis bought at Cambridge, England the
1957 paperback edition of E. R. Dodds’ The Greeks and the Irrational.

1
Savvidis (1962) 86.
 George Seferis and Euripides’ Bacchae 27

The pencil marks on its pages suggest that the poet showed as much
interest in this book as in Winnnigton-Ingram, especially in chapters IV
“Dream-Pattern and Culture-Pattern” and VIII “The Fear of Freedom”,
and Appendix I “Maenadism”. On p. 5 of his own copy of Dodds’ edition
of the Bacchae, right below the opening lines of the parodos, Seferis made
the following note:

“White” maenadism — ἐδῶ στὴν πάροδο ἐν ἀντιθέσει πρὸς “black”

maenadism τῶν ἀγγέλων· πρβ. Dodds-Ir(rational) p. 272-3 καὶ σημ. 18.

The note suggests that in 1959 Seferis was reading The Greeks and the
Irrational with his mind still engaged in the interpretation of Euripides’
Bacchae. Chapter IV in which Dodds examines the attitude of the Greeks
towards dreams is relevant to the poem “Pentheus” and especially its
beginning which is marked by the poet in the left hand margin of the page:

Man shares with a few others of the higher mammals the curious privilege
of citizenship in two worlds. He enjoys in daily alternation two distinct
kinds of experience—ὕπαρ and ὄναρ as the Greeks called them—each of
which has its own logic and its own limitations; and he has no obvious
reason for thinking one of them more significant than the other. If the
waking world has certain advantages of solidity and continuity, its social
opportunities are terribly restricted.2

In Seferis’ Papers, which are kept in the Gennadius Library at the

American School of Classical Studies in Athens, there are five pages of
notes in the poet’s handwriting, which contain translation drafts from the
Bacchae amounting to a total of fifty-nine lines. It is the second-longest
translation of ancient Greek poetry undertaken by Seferis after Aeschylus’
Agamemnon, which amounts to one hundred and one lines. The translation
was edited by Yorgis Yatromanolakis in 1980 (reprinted in 20002) in a
volume with intralingual translations by Seferis but an update has become
necessary for most of them, including the Bacchae one.3
In addition to the translation drafts, the file in the Gennadius Library
contains other material on Euripides and the Bacchae written or collected
by Seferis. There is a list of Euripides’ surviving plays and their dates; the
program of a performance of the Bacchae at the Cambridge Arts Theatre
in May 18-23, 1959 directed by Minos Volanakis, which contains a
synopsis of the play and a comment by E. R. Dodds; and an analysis of the

2
Dodds (1957) 102.
3
Yatromanolakis (20002) 36-43.
28 Chapter Two

Bacchae by Evangelos Fotiadis, Director General of the National Theatre,

printed in Radiotēleorasis (issue 29/9-4/10, 1969) and heavily marked by
Seferis in red ink. This is evidence that his interest in Euripides’ play
remained vivid till the last years of his life (†1971).
On the level of poetic creation Seferis’ interest in the Bacchae was
channeled into the composition of “Pentheus”, a poem in the collection
Logbook III.4 The collection was composed in the years 1953-1955 on the
occasion of the poet’s three visits to Cyprus (6/11/53-9/12/53, 15/9/54-
17/10/54, 30/8/55-3/10/55) and was published in December 1955. It
contains two more poems inspired by or relating to Euripides: “Helen” and
“Euripides the Athenian”. Seferis’ engagement with Euripides which had
begun in the 1930s became intense in the early 1950s.5
While working on the translation of the Bacchae the poet wrote two
brief notes about the play. One is entitled “Note for the prologue”
(Σημ(είωση) για πρόλογο) and the other contains comments on the Chorus.
The composition of the “Note for the prologue” suggests that Seferis was
planning to translate the whole tragedy. But the main significance of these
two notes lies elsewhere. They lead us to the source of Seferis’ inspiration,
which is Vellacott’s translation of the Bacchae and primarily Winnington-
Ingram’s Euripides and Dionysus mentioned above. The notes, Seferis’
readings and a passage from an essay he wrote in 1961 give us a good idea
of how he interpreted the play, how he personally related to it and what
kind of inspiration he had in writing the poem “Pentheus”. He may also
have consulted Winnington-Ingram in translating the Bacchae.
I quote first the “Note for the prologue”:

Σημ(είωση) για πρόλογο

Ποιό ἐπιμύθιο ἔχουν οἱ Βάκχες (αὐτὸ τὸ τελευταῖο ἔργο ἀλλὰ τὸ
ἀριστούργημα τοῦ Εὐριπίδη) κ(αὶ) ποιό συμπέρασμα; Κανένα θὰ πεῖ ὁ ….
Ὁ Εὐριπίδης μετὰ τὰ 70 ἀφοῦ ἄφησε τὴν Ἀθήνα κτλπ (δὲς Vellacott)
βρῆκε μιὰ φρέσκια ἔμπνευση στὴ Μακεδονία, ἀφοῦ παράτησε τὴν στέγνια
τῆς Ἀθήνας. Θὰ μποροῦσε ὅμως κανένας νὰ διαπιστώσει κοιτάζοντας τὸ
ἔργο καὶ τὸν κύριο διάλογο Διονύσου (Βακχῶν) – Πενθέα τούτους τοὺς
δύο χαρακτῆρες. Ὁμαδικὴ ὑστερία κι ἕνας ἀπωθημένος ἄνθρωπος.

Note for the prologue

What is the moral of the Bacchae (Euripides’ last play but also his
masterpiece)? What is its ultimate meaning [lit., conclusion]? None,
according to . . . In his seventies, Euripides, after he left Athens etc (see
Vellacott), found fresh inspiration in Macedonia, having left behind him

4
Seferis (19749).
5
Paschalis [(2010) 506-512] with earlier literature.
 George Seferis and Euripides’ Bacchae 29

the dryness of Athens. By looking at the play and the main dialogue
between Dionysus (the Bacchae) and Pentheus, one could, however,
identify these two characters. Mass hysteria and a repressed man.

The part of the “Note” about the time and the circumstances of the
play’s composition is derived, as the poet himself indicates, from
Vellacott’s Introduction to his translation of the Bacchae. I quote the
passage with the relevant lines italicised:

The Bacchae was Euripides’ last play, written when, past seventy years of
age, he had at last left behind the hectic, exhausted, war-obsessed city of
Athens, and escaped from a quarter-century of siege into the mountain-
freshness of Macedon. The emotional experience involved in this change is
hard for us to imagine; the painful act itself may have followed some years
of hesitation; there was no prospect of return. The stimulus of new air and
scenery is felt at work in the vividness of many lines describing the power
and mystery of mountain solitudes; and the theme of the play, the
Dionysiac cult, is new for Euripides; but the material in which the theme is
worked out, the nature of human character and human environment—this
has the familiar stamp; and it is almost certain that so intense and complete
a work was the result not of a sudden new inspiration, but of many years of
thought. The play grew out of the Athenian world, out of the despairing
follies of a disillusioned people, and was addressed to their ears as the last
testament of a man who knew them and their need, better than any other
man except Socrates.6

Why Seferis became interested in this particular section of Vellacott’s

eleven-page long Introduction is not hard to imagine. I assume it is
because the turn in Euripides’ life struck a personal chord. He detected in
it an intriguing similarity to the turn his own life had taken. The escape
from Athens to Macedon, “the stimulus of new air and scenery” and the
“sudden new inspiration” seem to reflect the poet’s own situation after
November 6, 1953. I mean his “escape” from the accustomed environment
and its stegnia (= dryness) to Cyprus, an island which, as I will explain
later, belongs to the world of the Bacchae; the sudden inspiration which
was channeled into a collection of poems with an entirely new subject-
matter; and the abandonment of the Ithacan Odysseus, the faithful
companion of his poetic voyage until that time, for the sake of the
Salaminian Teucer, who like the poet found in Cyprus a second home and
whose words, derived from Euripides’ Helen (148-149), provided the
epigraph for Seferis’ Logbook III: …Kύπρον, οὗ μ’ ἐθέσπισεν...,

6
Vellacott (1954) 24-25.
30 Chapter Two

“…Cyprus, where it was decreed for me…” (this quotation was actually
the original title of the collection). Did the poet also expect Logbook III to
be his “last” collection and his “masterpiece” as he says in the note with
regard to Euripides’ Bacchae (his “last testament” as Vellacott wrote about
Euripides’ play)? What is certain is that he did not expect the unfavourable
critical reception of his poems.7
Seferis begins the “Note for the prologue” with a question about the
“moral” (epimythio) and “ultimate meaning” (symperasma, actually
“conclusion”) of the play and adds that a certain person he does not
mention would have answered: “None”. These lines are derived from
Seferis’ major source of inspiration for the interpretation of the Bacchae,
Winnnigton-Ingram’s Euripides and Dionysus. The person in question
may be Thomas Babington Macaulay, the British historian, essayist and
politician. I quote two relevant passages from Winnington-Ingram:

“The Bacchae is a most glorious play ...”, wrote Macaulay. “It is often very
obscure; and I am not sure that I understand its general scope. But, as a
piece of language, it is hardly equaled in the world. […]”. Confused with
such a welter of divergent interpretations, the reader may perhaps prefer to
enjoy the play in the spirit of Macaulay.8

It is likely that the poet had also in mind the following passage from
Winnington-Ingram, which has the advantage of beginning with the word
“moral”, the English word for epimythio:

Perhaps there is no “moral”, but merely a dramatist taking the facts as he

found them and making an exciting play, or, less crudely, a poet presenting
with a poet’s fidelity the stark tragic contradiction which he saw.9

The question of the “ultimate meaning” of the play is central to

Winnnington-Ingram’s monograph. In chapter I he surveys scholarship on
this issue, in chapters II-X he provides an analysis of the tragedy and in the
last two chapters he draws his conclusions. In his view Euripides’
treatment of the orgiastic Dionysiac cult in the Bacchae is not so much
about religion as about symbols and forces: the instinctive emotional
impulses represented by Dionysus and the maenads; the liberation of
emotions in the mountains, which takes a peaceful and a violent form; and

7
See in detail S. Pavlou (20052) 207-226.
8
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 4, 6. Seferis underlined the sentence “But, as a piece
of language, […] in the world” in his own copy of the book.
9
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 5.
 George Seferis and Euripides’ Bacchae 31

what happens when sensual impulses are repressed as in the case of

Pentheus. The following brief statement renders the spirit of the book:

The Bacchae indeed implies a practical problem. That problem is, most
widely stated, how to deal with the forces of emotion, particularly as they
are generated in the associations of human beings.10

Seferis summarises the point of Euripides and Dionysus (the epimythio

and symperasma as he calls it) in the last two lines of the “Note for the
prologue”. There he sees a confrontation between “mass hysteria” on the
one hand and “a repressed man” on the other:

Θά μποροῦσε ὅμως κανένας νά διαπιστώσει κοιτάζοντας τὸ ἔργο καὶ τὸν

κύριο διάλογο Διονύσου (Βακχῶν) – Πενθέα τούτους τοὺς δύο
χαρακτῆρες. Ὁμαδικὴ ὑστερία κι ἕνας ἀπωθημένος ἄνθρωπος.

Seferis dedicated the second of the two notes to the Maenads, these powerful
and dangerous forces of emotion as Winnington-Ingram describes them.
This note is an almost literal translation of statements by Winnington-
Ingram, whose exact words Seferis quotes. I quote first the note and below
three passages from Euripides and Dionysus with the relevant lines
italicised:

Winnington-Ingram, Euripides and Dionysus = W

Ὁ χορὸς εἶναι γυναῖκες Ἀσιάτισσες ποῦ ἀκολούθησαν τὸ νέο θεὸ στὴν
Ἑλλάδα. Εἶναι φανατικὰ ἀφοσιωμένες στὴ νέα θρησκεία. Εἶναι ξένες σὲ
ξένη χώρα—σὲ κίνδυνο—ἂν ἀποτύχει ἡ νέα θρησκεία—θανάτου ἢ
φυλακῆς. Σημειῶστε τοῦτο τὸ χαρακτῆρα του.

(cf. W. 2
Bacchae = vigorous rhythm from end to end
Dionysus = power of blind instinctive emotion W. 9
Pentheus = symbol of crude asceticism W. 9

In no other extant Greek play since Aeschylus, and in Aeschylus only in

the Supplices and Eumenides, is the Chorus so prominent. For it is formed
of a band of Asiatic Bacchanals who have followed the god, in his human
disguise, to Greece. Not only are they passionate adherents of the new
religion, but their own fate is closely bound up with the god’s success at
Thebes; and Euripides does not allow us to forget that they, a band of
women in a foreign land, are in danger of bonds or death. Though they

10
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 168-169.
32 Chapter Two

have little part in the dialogue, their songs are clearly of fundamental
importance for an understanding of the play.11

In other plays of Euripides we may find halting action, dubious

characterisation, apparent irrelevancies, to be admitted or explained, but
not in the Bacchae, where a vigorous rhythm runs without break from end
to end of the play, and where the problems of criticism concern final aims
rather than defective methods.12

“Rationalism”, however, will find suspicious features in the story and will
deny that the Stranger’s account of events is a true one. But, by so doing, it
will distract attention from something which is more important than the
immediate excitement of the story, more important than the motives of an
Olympian, infinitely more important than a piece of ingenious
rationalization—it will distract attention from the symbolism of the events
described. For Dionysus symbolises the power of blind, instinctive emotion.
Seek to take him by force and imprison him in the dark, and the result is,
inevitably, catastrophic. Similarly with the binding of the bull. Its
appropriateness has always been recognised, for the bull is an avatar of
Dionysus. Here it represents Dionysus as animal (a motif that runs
throughout the play) and perhaps especially as sexual animal; and
Pentheus, as he sweats and grimaces and pants out his heart is a symbol of
crude asceticism, engaged upon a hopeless task. For the true, the essential
Dionysus is sitting quietly close at hand, biding his time (618 sqq.).13

Let me note in connection with the Maenads that forty-six out of the
fifty-nine lines of Seferis’ translation of the Bacchae refer to the Asian
Bacchants and the women of Thebes. These are: the first nineteen lines of
the parodos (64-82); the first fourteen lines of the first stasimon (370-383);
three lines from the first messenger’s speech telling how the Bacchants
swooped on the villagers like birds of prey (748-750); and the five lines of
the exodos (1388-1392).

11
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 2. In Seferis’ copy of the book the passage is marked
in pencil with a straight line in the left margin and the sentence “is the Chorus so
prominent” is underlined.
12
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 6. In Seferis’ copy the passage is marked in pencil
with a double line in the left margin and the phrase “vigorous rhythm” is
underlined.
13
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 8. In Seferis’ copy the section “it will distract
attention … emotion” is marked in pencil with double straight lines in the right
margin, the next lines are marked with a single straight line, and the phrases
“sexual animal” and “a symbol of crude asceticism” are underlined.
 George Seferis and Euripides’ Bacchae 33

In 1961 Seferis wrote an essay entitled “Delphi”. His interest in the

Bacchae was still vivid and the particular theme originates in lines 306-
309 of Euripides’ play, where Teiresias predicts that Dionysus would be
great in Greece and would be worshipped with torches and dancing even
on the crags of Delphi.
In this essay the poet talks about Dionysiac worship and Euripides’
Bacchae in terms which summarise the viewpoint of Winnington-Ingram’s
Euripides and Dionysus, and records his own reaction to maenadic rites
(the relevant lines are italicised):

Γύρεψα ν’ ἀνεβῶ στὸ Κωρύκιο, γιατὶ συλλογιζόμουν πὼς αὐτὸ τὸ

κοίταγμα στὰ μέρη τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνα ἔπρεπε νὰ συμπληρωθεῖ μὲ κάποια
αἴσθηση τοῦ Διονύσου, ποὺ τόσο ὑποστήριξε ἡ Πυθία· τοῦ νεκροῦ καὶ
ζωντανοῦ Θεοῦ, τοῦ Θεοῦ-Βρέφους· τῆς συγκινησιακῆς ἐκείνης δύναμης
ποὺ ἤθελε νὰ μὴν καταφρονοῦνται τὰ ὁρμέμφυτα τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. Στὰ
ὀροπέδια γύρω στὸ ἄντρο γίνονταν τὰ περιοδικὰ νυχτερινὰ ὄργια τῶν
Θυιάδων καὶ τῶν Μαινάδων, ὅ,τι κι ἂν δηλώνει τώρα γιὰ μᾶς τὸ ἐκστατικὸ
ἐκεῖνο ξέσπασμα τῶν γυναικῶν ποὺ κατεῖχε ὁ θεός. Συλλογιζόμουν τὸν
Πενθέα, τὸν ἀπωθημένο ἐκεῖνον Βασιλιά (Εὐριπίδης, Βάκχες). Φοβούμουν
τὸ παράδειγμα τῆς τραγωδίας του· ἔλεγα: καλύτερα ἡ φρενίτιδα τῶν
Θυιάδων στὶς ἀψηλὲς ἐρημιὲς τοῦ Παρνασσοῦ, παρὰ τὰ ὑποκατάστατά της
στὶς σημερινὲς ἀπέραντες μερμηγκοφωλιὲς ποὺ εἶναι οἱ μεγάλες
πρωτεύουσές μας. Συλλογιζόμουν τὶς ὁμαδικὲς τρέλες μας.14

Worthy of particular note in this passage are the following three points.
First the reference to Pentheus as ton apōthēmeno ekeinon Vasilia (“that
repressed King”) picks up the description enan apōthēmeno anthrōpo (“a
repressed man”) which Seferis applies to Pentheus in the “Note for the
prologue”. “Repressed”, translated by Seferis as apōthēmenos, recurs in
Winnington-Ingram with reference to Pentheus, as in the following
passage: “Well-intentioned, but proud, hot-tempered, impulsive, with a
repressed sensuality and a leaning towards violent methods”.15 Relevant to
our understanding of this passage is furthermore Dodds’ introduction to the
Bacchae, where he talks about periodic mountain dancing practiced by
women’s societies at Delphi and how it served to channel “mass hysteria” (a
term used by Seferis in the “Note for the prologue”) into an organised rite.16
The third point is that in Seferis’ view the example of Pentheus in the
Bacchae advises against repressing instinctive impulses (“the precedent of

14
Savvidis (19997) 145-146.
15
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 71. Seferis underlined the phrase “with a repressed
sensuality” and marked it in the right margin with the brace sign (}) and a cross.
16
Dodds (1953) xiii-xvi.
34 Chapter Two

his tragedy frightened me”). In the last three lines of the passage which
contrast the frenzy of the Bacchants in the heights of Parnassus to civilised
life in contemporary capitals the poet relates personally to the liberating
effect of maenadic experience. In the concluding thought he looks back
with nostalgia to his own collective outbursts of innocent frenzy.
At this point we recall that in the “Note for the prologue” Seferis
implicitly identifies himself with the poet of the Bacchae as regards the
circumstances in which the tragedy was written, and the fresh inspiration it
represented. This reaction I associated above with Seferis’ “escape” to
Cyprus. It is highly significant that during his first visit to Cyprus the poet
recorded in his diary on December 7, 1953 the escape-wish of the
Bacchants from the first stasimon of Euripides’ Bacchae (402-405) freely
rendered into English by J. F. Roxburgh. 17 I quote Roxburgh’s full
translation of the Euripidean passage (lines 3–6 of the translation are left
out in the diary) and the Greek original (from Dodds’ edition):

Love hath an island

And I would be there;
Love hath an island,
And nurtureth there
For men the Delights
The beguilers of care,
Cyprus, Love’s island
And I would be there.

ἱκοίμαν ποτὶ Κύπρον,

νᾶσον τᾶς Ἀφροδίτας,
ἵν᾽ οἱ θελξίφρονες νέμον-
ται θνατοῖσιν Ἔρωτες,
[Πάφον θ’ ἃν ἑκατόστομοι
βαρβάρου ποταμοῦ ῥοαὶ
καρπίζουσιν ἄνομβροι]

Seferis discovered in Cyprus an island where “miracles still happened”.18

In this respect the island belongs to the world of the Bacchae which “is
pervaded by the miraculous”. The description occurs in Winnington-
Ingram, who enumerates the miracles of the play, and Seferis underlined
these words in his personal copy of the book.19 The lines quoted above

17
Merminkas (1986) 116, 272-273.
18
“Ἡ Κύπρος εἶναι ἕνας τόπος ὅπου τὸ θαῦμα λειτουργεῖ ἀκόμη”: see the note on
Logbook III in Seferis (19749) 336. See also Papazoglou (2000) 179-182.
19
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 2.
 George Seferis and Euripides’ Bacchae 35

come from the second strophe of the first stasimon. Here the Chorus long
for Cyprus, the island of Aphrodite, and other places where Bacchic
worship is permitted as opposed to Pentheus’ Thebes. Lines 415-416 “and
there it is lawful to perform their rites” are underlined in Seferis’ copy of
Winnington-Ingram.20
So far we have seen that the ideas Seferis derived from Winnington-
Ingram and recorded in the two notes and the passage in the essay on
Delphi were instrumental in shaping his understanding of Euripides’
Bacchae. These ideas are important also for interpreting the poem
“Pentheus”, which I quote together with the English translation by
Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard:

ΠΕΝΘΕΥΣ
Ὁ ὕπνος τὸν γέμιζε ὄνειρα καρπῶν καὶ φύλλων·
ὁ ξύπνος δὲν τὸν ἄφηνε νὰ κόψει οὔτε ἕνα μοῦρο.
Κι οἱ δυὸ μαζὶ μοιράσανε τὰ μέλη του στις Βάκχες.

Sleep filled him with dreams of fruit and leaves;

wakefulness kept him from picking even a mulberry.
And the two together divided his limbs among the Bacchae.

Relying on the passage from the “Delphi” essay quoted above, Krikos-
Davis has argued that “One could suggest that the first line refers to
Pentheus’ repressed desires, his instinctive impulses and needs”. She
furthermore noted that fruits and leaves are symbols of earthly desires
which Pentheus can enjoy in his dreams but is unable to do so while
awake. And she concluded that the Theban king is torn to pieces because
he foolishly ignores his instinctive impulses. 21 The evidence I have
produced so far, from Seferis’ two notes and Winnington-Ingram’s
Euripides and Dionysus, reshapes and enriches this interpretation. Of
particular significance is the portrayal of Pentheus as apōthēmenos
(“repressed”) not only in the essay but also in the “Note for the prologue”.
But what about the context of sleep and wakefulness in which these
ideas are placed? Krikos-Davis reminds us that in the Bacchae sleep is a
gift of Dionysus to humanity and cites lines 282-283 spoken by Teiresias. I
quote the whole passage (278-283, Dodds’ text) with an English
translation by Ian Johnston:

20
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 64.
21
Krikos-Davis (2002) 98-102. On these points see further Papazoglou (2000)
162-166.
36 Chapter Two

ὃς δ᾽ ἦλθ᾽ ἔπειτ᾽, ἀντίπαλον ὁ Σεμέλης γόνος

βότρυος ὑγρὸν πῶμ᾽ ηὗρε κεἰσηνέγκατο
θνητοῖς, ὃ παύει τοὺς ταλαιπώρους βροτοὺς
λύπης, ὅταν πλησθῶσιν ἀμπέλου ῥοῆς,
ὕπνον τε λήθην τῶν καθ᾽ ἡμέραν κακῶν
δίδωσιν, οὐδ᾽ ἔστ᾽ ἄλλο φάρμακον πόνων.

The other one came later, born of Semele—

he brought with him liquor from the grape,
something to match the bread from Demeter.
He introduced it among mortal men.
When they can drink up what streams off the vine,
unhappy mortals are released from pain.
It grants them sleep, allows them to forget
their daily troubles. Apart from wine,
there is no cure for human hardship.22

There is also a later passage in the Bacchae that treats the same theme
and was translated by Seferis. It is lines 381-385 of the first stasimon,
which I quote from Dodds, followed by Seferis’ modern Greek translation
and Johnston’s English translation:

ἀποπαῦσαί τε μερίμνας,
ὁπόταν βότρυος ἔλθῃ
γάνος ἐν δαιτὶ θεῶν, κισ-
σοφόροις δ᾽ ἐν θαλίαις ἀν-
δράσι κρατὴρ ὕπνον ἀμ-
φιβάλλῃ.

Καὶ μᾶς γλυκαίνει τοὺς καημοὺς σὰν ἔρθει

στὸ θεῖο τραπέζι λαμπερὸ κρασὶ
καὶ στὸν ἴσκιο τῶν κισσοφόρων βλαστῶν
ρίξει τὸν ὕπνο στοὺς ἄντρες.23

to bring all sorrows to an end,

at the god’s sacrificial feast,
when the gleaming liquid grapes arrive,
when the wine bowl casts its sleep
on ivy-covered feasting men.24

22
Johnston (2008) lines 349-357.
23
Yatromanolakis [(20002) 41] erroneously prints “ρίξει στὸν ὕπνο τοὺς ἄντρες”.
24
Johnston (2008) lines 484-488.
 George Seferis and Euripides’ Bacchae 37

The advantage of the second passage is that it includes kissos (“ivy”):

sleep comes ston iskio tōn kissophorōn vlastōn (“in the shade of ivy-
bearing tendrils”), as Seferis translates kissophorois d’ en thaliais, or “on
ivy-covered feasting men” in Johnston’s translation. Ivy is Dionysus’
sacred plant par excellence and figures prominently in the Bacchae, where
it serves to wreathe the head and decorate the thyrsus. The context of the
passage may have some bearing on karpōn kai phyllōn (“of fruit and leaves”)
in the first line of Seferis’ poem, since ivy produces also clusters of berries
called korymboi or korymba. The word mouro used by Seferis and commonly
translated “mulberry” can also refer to the “berry” of the ivy. According to
this interpretation, both lines would contain references to Dionysus’ sacred
plant. To be crowned with ivy, as in this passage and in another one also
translated by Seferis (stephanōmenos me kisso, 81), meant to worship the god
and enjoy the liberating effect of this experience. Employed as a metaphor in
Seferis’ poem the appropriation or non-appropriation of the ivy may portray
two contrasting situations as regards Pentheus’ yielding or not yielding to the
world of emotion, desire and sensuality.
The problem is that in the Bacchae wine brings release from pain as
well as sleep that causes forgetfulness. There is no mention of the
releasing power of sleep as imagined by Seferis. In Winnington-Ingram’s
Euripides and Dionysus there is, however, a passage about how Pentheus
at a certain point of the tragedy (beginning at line 812) ceases to resist
Dionysus and succumbs to him. As if acting under a spell, he changes
attitude, he gradually liberates himself from inhibitions and reveals his
repressed impulses and desires. In order to portray the circumstances that
bring about this dramatic change, Winnington-Ingram uses on two
occasions the word “hypnotism”, a modern coinage based on ancient
Greek hypnos (“sleep”). Here are the passages with relevant lines
italicised:

From the first Pentheus is represented as unstable and excitable, a man of

quick temper and violent reactions. As the play develops, we learn of two
particular instinctive appetites that are strong in him—the sexual impulse
and the lust for power. Now, were he a perfect Bacchanal, he would
proceed to the straightforward gratification of these desires. As it is, the
sexual impulse is repressed, and therefore the more dangerous, like a
stream imperfectly dammed; the desire for power and glory is indeed
partially gratified, but not acknowledged. It is not until a process
comparable to hypnotism is accomplished upon him that he drops all
pretence and frankly reveals his underlying motives. He falls an easy
victim to the fascinating personality of the god-stranger, and the ease of the
god’s victory is an index of the extent to which Pentheus was already his
38 Chapter Two

unconscious follower, already familiar (as even Teiresias perhaps realised)

with his drugs!25

Has anything happened to Pentheus more than the releasing by wine, by

drugs, by hypnotism, in short by Dionysus, of the inhibitions which
concealed his true desires?26

Could the description of Pentheus’ condition as “hypnotism” have been

one of Seferis’ sources of inspiration for the poem? This is likely,
considering that Winnington-Ingram’s monograph was the main influence
on Seferis’ reading of the Bacchae, determined the focus of his translation,
and shaped the ideas at work behind “Pentheus”. The correspondence
between the sleeplike condition (“hypnotism”) of Winnington-Ingram’s
Pentheus, which causes him to reveal his repressed desires, and the
releasing sleep of Seferis’ Pentheus, which “filled him with dreams of fruit
and leaves”, is indeed striking.

25
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 159-160.
26
Winnington-Ingram (1948) 119.