Elements of Greck and Tragic Madness RUTH PADEL Madness is central to Western tragedy inall epochs, out we find the origins of this centealizy in early Greece: in Homeric insight into the “damage a damaged mind can do.” Greece, and especially tragedy, gave the West its permanent perception of madness as, violent and damaging. Drawing on her deep knowledge of anthropology, psy choanalysis, Shakespeare, and the his tory of madness, as well as of Greek language and literature, Ruth Padel probes the Greek language of madness, which is fundamental to tragedy: trans- lating, makirg it reader-friendly 0 nonspecialsts, and showing how Greek images contiaued through medieval and Renaissince societies into. a “rough tragic grammar” of madness in the modern period. ‘This intensely poetic and solidly argued book is a rare source of “knowledge that it is sad to have to know.” It focsses on the problematic relation of madness and God, dis cussing en rcute such topics as the double bind, black bile and melan choly, the Detrida-Foucault debate on writing (about) madness, Christian folly, “fine frenzy,” shamanism, psy choanalysts on tragedy, St. Paul on God's “hardening the heat,” links ‘between madness and murder, pollaion and syphilis and the lvsh for “mad.” (contin om bac flaWhom Gods DestroyWhom Gods Destroy ELEMENTS OF GREEK AND TRAGIC MADNESS Ruth Padel PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEYCopyright © 1995 by Priest Universi ess abla by Princeton Univeey Press, 41 Wiliam Suet, Princeton, New Jey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Pineston Univesity Press, Chichester, West Suse AU Rights Reserved Libary Congres Catenin Picton Data Pade, Rath, 1946— Whim Gods destroy ckimens of Greek and wage madness by Rus Pal, pom Tle ibiograpicl references and index. ISBN 0.691-033609 (CL) 1 Grek drama (Tage) —Hlscory and cecsm. 2. Literature And ment lnest—Greee, 3. Mythology, Grek i terare 4P'Mevai iin nerve, 5. God, Gree, n iterstre. 1, Tie PASISIP23 1995 882" 0109-de20 9425529 “This book has been compose in Gala ‘rinceton Univesity Press books are primed on aii paper fan mect the seine for permanence ane durability ofthe Commitee on rovction Gaieines for Book Longevity ofthe “Coun on Library Resources ‘eine in the United Sees of Ameren 13579108642 For Myles Much loveCONTENTS Preface and Acknowledgments Abbreviations Cuarren 1 Introduction: “He First Makes Mad” “Quem Deus Vault Periere® A Tiseater of Mad Gods Parr 1: Language and Timing Cuarren 2 Tragic Madness Words Normality Compound Nouns Oistros and Io Lassa and Hermes Mania: A Fie of Madnest Aajectives (Cuarrer 3 God of the Verb Maines: Verbs and “God Of Partcipes: The Pre-Eminence of he Verb Madnes Is Temporary, and Known by Lis Appearance Cuarren 4 ‘Temporary versus Long,term Madness Chronic Susceptibility To and Orestes Casandra Temporary and Long-term: The Differences Medicine Narrative Parr 2: Darkness and Vision Cuarrer 5 Inner Shadow Madness Is Black Hellebore, Black Bileviii (CONTENTS Black Anger ‘Melancholia Cuarren 6 ‘The Afterlife of Inner Blackness “Problem 30” Black Sear, Black Sum “Where There Is Lyte Light” Black Tragedy Caarren 7) Dark, Twisted Secing Dakoss; Consciousness, or Its Las? Aju: Mastnes and Sight Aj the Shadow “Destoay Us inthe Light” “Twisted” Seeing Bad as Good, Beloved os Enemy Cnarter 8 Truc Seeing War Oshers Cannot See: Cassandra, Orestes, lo “Eine Frenay” and Plasos Phaedrs Mania Classified by Human Activity Mania Glas by Gods Cnarrer 9 A Legacy of True Mad Secing, Secing “A Country of Truth”: Democritus at Abdora ‘Melancholic Divination and Christian Fally Who Gets Any “Gant fom What Madness Ses? Parr 3: Isolation: Wandering, Disharmony, Pollution Cuarrer 10 Stone: Madness Is Outside Distance Stone (On the Aleian Plas “All through Ireland?” Madness as “Wandering” Cuaeren LL Alienus”: Resonances of Mad Wandering Resonanees of Wandering Centrifugal, Centripetal: Two Patterns of Punichment 55 55 57 2 geeaa 9 100 102 103 104 107 107 12 covreNts Alienation Idios: “The Black Bird Goes Alone? Cuarren 12 Inner Wandering, Inner and Outer Para and Ek: The Mind Aside, Out of Place Ekstasis and Shamaniom Entheos, Enthousiasmos ‘The Mind Damaged, Lost Outside and Inside The Wandering Womb Charmer 13 Daemonie Dance ‘Der Rigthinus der Disharmonie? Joined-Up Dancing "The Song of Erinyes” Disorder through Order Stage Syntas: of Madness "Unmasiend Music? ‘Nonbuaman Passion Cuarrer 14 ‘Skin: Pollution and Shame Bownuaries Shin-Sover Miasma and Divine Hostility “tn the Conjunction” Purifying Shaswe (Charter 15 Disease, Passion Disease ax Dairmon Madnes as Disease Phaedra: A “Diseased Lying Down” “Bros Doubled”: Madness as Passion Panr 4: Damage (Cuarrer 16 Mind Damage before Tragedy AtG as “Harm Inner and Outer, Concrete and Alstrat, Mental and Physical us 7 10 120 120 129 157 187 158 162 163 167 167 169x CONTENTS “1 Was Damaged” Someshing Last, Something Added Cuarren 17 Homer's Damage-Chain ‘The Aré-Sequence [Ate Wing and Seep STH Hace You ax Depy as Pe Lame You” “And Thon” Ate as Consequence Paronfing the Damage Chan The Tow “Stages” and Thr Divine Option Homer versa Arcinie Weight Penalty Harret, Danghier Couarren 18 “The Two Roles of Madness [Axes Replacements: Deception, Erin, Madner—and Tragedy Tragedy a6 Ate Sequence “Mednes as Instrument nnd Puniomeneof Crime “Hyperbali? and “Rea!” Madnen cuaoren 19 “Haywire Cin” “Some Big Haars? Trae “Miteabing?” Ignoring Gas, Fighting Gods Ate, Mads, Haart Sef.Negles, Self Damage Chita Murder Carre 20 Divine Double Bind Demonic Self Conflict Divinity Is Coflie Double Bind Gauge in the Cras: Orees and To Parr 5: Madness: A Rough Tragic Grammar Cuarren 21 Mad in Another World To Feel for Bearings: Other Peoples Madness Divinity versus Moral Mionanagement ‘Self Validation: Psychoanalysis and Anachronism 169 2 174 174 175 176 178 181 182 184 185 188 188 191 191 194 197 197 201 204 207 210 210 21 214 215 2a 225 ‘conrENts Resreat from Truth ‘Mating the Smoke 5 Doo: Respecting Trngedy’ Terms ‘Cuarren 22 Knowledge That Is Sad to Have to Know “Terrors ofthe Earth In the Mai Gots Theater: Taking Tasion for Reality Tragic Fall “Disease of Heres” ‘Truth from Iusion, Trach from Pain Maaines and the Tragedy Producing Society "Phe Sera” ‘AnvenDIx Ast in Tragedy: The Thinning of the Word Acscyus: From SRoclssnes and Is Punishment t0 “Doom” ay Tostrument of Doom Sophocles: “Calamity” “Ditaster? “GrieP? Euripides: Doon? Death,” and Agent or Instrament of Destruction Disaster: The Tragic Weigh of Aes Works Cited Index 232 236 238, 238 239 241 22 246 248, 249 253 256 257 am.PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ‘Tas 18 4 book of ingredients. Not of madness, but of how madness has been seen and represented. It argues chat the grammar of Western re~ sponses to maclness is basically both Greek and tragic. That elements of madness as tragedy tepresents it are still at work in us, though we use them. differently. The societies that handed on the tradition changed things. AF. ter the Greeks, tragedy went on finding madness useful. The old images of ‘madness continued, but their resonance and value changed. ‘The book is buile ound three images that dominate Greek representa- tion of madness: darkness, wandering, and damage. It aims to lay out the ‘elements of Greek tragic thoughts about madness, and also, in some cases, 10 follow these through: to mark how Greek tragic madness struck later ‘ages, and how these other ages (especially the Renaissance and the nine: teenth century) changed the Greek picture. T consider how the images in their changed form encourage us to misunderstand the Greeks and distort ‘our reading of them. Towards the end (Chapter 21) I discuss what this ‘might mean for psychoanalysts responding to the Greck matctal. Thave written for anyone generally interested in madness ané the self in tragedy, or in Greek culture, The work is based on the Greek tragedies. T translate and transliterae linguistic material, and make this as welcoming as possible to non-Greek readers. There are a lot of words. Ive tried (0 ‘make them go down eas If you want to give language a miss, skip Chap- ters 2 and 3, the second, third, and fourth sections of Chapter 12, Chapter 16, and parts of Chapter 17. But Ihave also written for specialists: historians of madness and ideas, classicists and students of Greek society, readers of tragedy fromall epochs. ‘Also for anthropologists and psychoanalysts interested in ways of reading madness from another culture and time. ‘Many thanks for questions answered to Natsu Hatton, Jane Haynes, Roy Porter, and Francois Rigoloc. To people who read and commented on. dalis long ago, including Anne Barton, Mary Lefkowitz, Godfrey Lien- hhardt, Geoffrey Lloyd, Fgh Lioyd-Jones, Charles Rycroft, Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, and Tom Stinton. To the supervisors of my D.Phil thesis long ago, E./R. Dodds and Hugh Lloyd-Jones, and its examiners, John Gould and Toay Long. Also to Edward Fitzgerald, who frst put Foucault in my hands; my brothers Oliver and Felix; and especially my father, John Padel, who has read many drafts over many years and never fails to come up with new perceptions and new literary assoriations, a5 ‘well as guiding me through his psychoanalytic library. Thanks also to thexv PREFACE “Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakersig, where I finshed several chap- tes. Te gave me a lot of pleasure to work among the books of someone ‘who gave his life to drama, whose productions made Greek tragedy live in ssw ways, and who left his home for people making new things. Thanks abo co the Wingate Foundation, for assistance on another project that also hlped to find this one. To Jane Davies, for unfailing sympathetic help on computers, and fr the Toshiba. To the Welleome Institute, for inviting me to seminars on the history of madness and meacine that I much enjoyed. “To Broma Zeitlin, who said moja bition mena kakon at me and introduced me to Princeton University Press. And to my wondeeial copy editor, Alice Pik ‘Above all, co Myles Bumyeat. For encouragement, criticism, and rub- bong my nose in philosopher; for help with childcare, books, ucdity, and Pato, I eouldn' have done this book without him. 1 gratefully make acknowledgments to te following: Granda, for permis: sin to reprint material from lan Hamilton, Gasza Agonistes, © 1993 by Ten Fiamileon; Christopher Logue, for permission to quote from War Mu siz, © 1981 C. Logue; Penguin Books (Peters Fraser and! Dunlop], for permission to reprint material fiom James Fenton, Out of Danger, © 1993 James Renton, and Carter Dickson, The Red Widew Murder, © 1935 John Dickson Carr, Vietor Gollanz [Flenry Holt, for permission to reprint rraterial from Hannah Green, 1 Never Promised Yow a Rare Garden, © 1964 Hannah Green; Bloodaxe Books, for permission to reprint matetal from Ienden Kennelly, Breathing Spaces, © 1993 Brendan Kennelly; and Faber {Farrar Straus Giroux] for permission ro repre material from Derek Wal- ott, Omens, © 1993 Derek Walcot. ABBREVIATIONS “Tins ist contains abbreviations of periodical, authors, and editions. Fragments sometimes bave ther editor's name oF ini their number. “A. fe. ISON" means “Aeschylus,” “fragment 156 in Nauck’s cdition.” No commentaries are included either: these appear by editor's ame on particular lines specified by ad or ad le. Texts, lexicons, and ei- tions are not normally included in the bibliography. Hlomer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides are abbreviated by title, not author (excepe fragments and the plays whose ties overlap, 8. EL, E. El, A. Supp. E. Supp.). Where there is a Loeb volume of a ippoctaic work, Igve its volume and page number in parentheses; the ‘main references are co Lita’ edition, Pre-Soeratcs are referred to by DK, number, or number and page number in KRS oF KR. ‘Anaag. ~ Anaxagoras Andr. = B. Andromache ‘Ant, = 8. Antigone AP = Anibnlegia Palatina ‘Apollod. = Apollodorus Ar. = Aristophanes Ach, = Acharnians ‘Av. = Bins Fecdesiaconsne Eudemian Ethics EN = Nicomachean Ethierwi ABBREVIATIONS ABBREVIATIONS asi HA = Historia animalivon Met. = Metmplysica PA = De partibus animation Poet, = Potis De natura hominis Pol. = Politics |. = De natura mulicrum Rb, = Rhetoric Be. = B, Bachar Bac, = Bacchylides Reg. Aas: Dis. = Regimen in Acute Dirass BICS = Bulletin of the Intoute of Clsial Stuies HSCP = Harvard Ssudiesn Classical Philly Gall, = Calimachus TA = Es Iphigencia nt Aus Gio! = A. Choephorse Ti, = Fld Ge. = Cicero: Ton = E.lon TD = Tusculan Disputatons IL = E. Iphigencia among the Tasrians Ge. = B. Cyclops KR = G. Kirk and J. E, Raven, The Preveratc Philaophers (Cambridge sm. = Demosthenes 1957) DK = H. Diels and W. Kranz, Dic Fragmente der Vorskratier, 6th ed. 3 KRS = G. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Prewaatic Philo vols, (Been 1951-52) ‘her, 2d ed. (Cambridge 1983) DLL. = Diogenes Lacrtius Lag. Gort. = Gortyn Lamcoe E. = Euripides IS} = H. G. Liddell, R. Seort, and H. S. Jones, Greck-Bnglsh Lexicon EL = Blectra (Oxford 1961) ‘Empedocles Medea Epichacmus ‘Menandler Hes. Works and Days ‘8. Oxdipus at Colonus Buoenies ‘Oxford Classical Text HL = Homer H. Ossey Dem. = Hi. Hymn to Demeter Mere, = Hl, Hymn to Hermes Hat. = Herodorus Hc, = B. Heeuba PCPS = Procedings ofthe Cambridge Philalgical Society Hil. = E. Helen Bors, = A. The Persions Herne, ~ E, Horatidae Phil. = S. Phitctetes Hes, = Hesiod Phoen. E. Phoenician Women HE = E. Hercules Buren Hipp. = E. Hippolus Hip. = Hippocratic author: ‘Ane, Med. = On Ancient Meticine ‘Aph, = Apborions ‘Arche. = Peri Arthrin Embolés “AWD = Airs Waters Places Coae, = Koakai Progneses DMS = On the Sacred Disease pid. 1 = Epidemics T Epid, ILL = Epidernies 117 Hipp. Min. = Hippias MinorABBREVIATIONS ‘Maidens TABA = Transacrons ofthe American Phildlagical Asacaton Th, = Thucydides Trach. = 8. Women of Tracis Whom Gods DestroyChapter 1 INTRODUCTION: “HE FIRST MAKES MAD” “Quen Dsus Vorr PeRDERE” ‘Quam dens vale porter, dementas pins “Whom God wishes to destoy, He Fis makes mad.” Who first said that? And why? Te fel ike a translation, a reworking of something Greek and tragic Cicero maybe Sencca? I thin this is toughy right, bot T do not thik Romans had much to do with it inspite of he Latin. That ve deen: fare, “make ma,” is arin Roman authors. Cicero and Senecado n0t use itin their extane work The source was a puzzle even in Samuel Johnson's day. John Pitts wrote to Boswell discussing it, He mentioned “some gentemen of Cambridge” ‘who fora bee made a “long search” forthe origin: “They found it among the fagments of Euripides, n what translation Ido not recollect, where it is given as a translation of « Greck lambic” No one knew at Oxford, cither. Boswell and Johnson dined at University College in 1783. Boswell chullenged the company to identify the source: “A pavsc, At ase Dr Chandler said, in Horace. Another pause. Then Fisher remarked that he knew of no mete in Horace to which the words could be reduced: and Johinson ssi dictatorially “The young man is right?” In his keer, Pits produced a Greck version: Hon theas theleé apolessi, prit” apophrenai, an ‘exact rendering ofthe Latin. This Grek, he say, ws found inthe rooms fof Sir D. ,, some years ago,” after his suicide, Si D. O, was “a man of ‘lasialacqurements: he lft no other paper behind him." Was Sir D. O1s Greck the source ofthe Latin tg? Unlikely that one Brtsh suicide had such infiuene. The Greck verb aephrenat i unknown even in late Greek. His Greek look like atransaton, perhaps by an En- flishman, himself or someone els, ofthe Latin, So where docs the Latin Saying—which Pitts incidentally, gives as Quem Jupiter, not gem der come from? "As fara can rack tin Britain, the Latin is a version of some diferent (bec lines! Acoton publshe 1660 by on Englishes: Du port of a Greck fragment he atuibutes to Euripides. eis paraphrase eather than translation, Aneutral translation ofthe Greek might un " Se Bielbeck Hil 1888 4:181-82 a. 3; Biel 1906 6:19-20, m1; Bitkuck Hil 1888 2445 m1. rer 1985 shows how deply ths ie might have afc Johason himself4 CHAPTER 1 ‘When dando prepares evils for a man he ise harms the ns [ming] ‘of the man whom he advises Deport rendered this as Quem Jupiter nut perdere, dementat pris, Thircy- four years later, Joshua Barnes of Emmanuel College, in his 1694 edition Suripides, borrowed Duport’s Latin (substituting deus for “Jupiter”), and attributed the fragment to Euripides. You can find Deus quas vale per dere, dementat prins in his “Index Prior,” under D2 ‘Where does this supposedly Euripidean fragment, on which the demen- tat prius is generally thought to be modelled, itself come from? Classical “fragments do not floae to us out ofthe blue. We mect them as quotations in other ancient authors. Why, for example, is it thought to be by Euripides? Tis quoted by an ancient commentator elucidating a passage in Sopho- le? Antigone: part of the famous song on até, “blind destructiveness.” (We will meet até extensively later.) Here are Sophocles lines, on which this scholar comments: With wissom some man spo the Famous saying that evil eventually seems good to the man whose phen [mind] ‘eas (god dives to a8 “The ancient scholiast wants to explicate “the famous saying.” He gives us cour Greek fragment ("When daimon ...”) co explain what Sophocles must mean here. In other words, he himself thinks this fragment is more ancenc than Antigone, one of Sophocles’ carlier extant plays In his mind, atleast, this fragment is actually earlier chan Euripides, ites “gentlemen of Cambridge” may have amalgamated this fragment —which speaks not of destruction, but “preparing evi,” not of madness, but damaging the nous-—with Sir D. O. apophrena line, which sounds, 2 ssid, lke a seventeenth-eentury Greek version ofthe Latin tag, fale already by 1660.+ Ting sop ASSN, Soe Dut 1660.22; King 1904:298, 1AM 25 Pest Pak 199220-28, 32-94 Au see belo, Cates 6, 17, Append AP Se, he pase appears ine pk page tome tts of Pet Larose rt ancistainaly seu to Epes ase by Acenagne (ite dedi = ‘Kou ans vesn A dace ant pono oid aon | ee i pris ‘mers. There iso che to whe te ag est ted Franc’ 0% fom rms Encinas te Emons, noe Mowtige’s Ea 5 1 Inv Raine doses eps. aie Tg ws wel norm ty 1790 The helen Jan rags Boone reed with ts Se sein INTRoDUCTION 5 ‘But another iambic fragment is ako involved. This one is quoted by ourth-century 1. Athenian orator, Lycargus, who thinks itis very an- cient, and clairvoyantly wise. The gods do nothing fest bur lead aside [paragua] the unlerstanding of bad human boings. Certain ancient poets seem 0 me 10 have lef as it were oracles to those who came afte, in these iambic lines When anger of dainones harms someone it ise does this it takes away. the good nau fom phrener, and tums i to the worse opinion, thar che man may know nothing (of erors he commits © ‘There is here the same insistence on “firstness,” but the epigrammatic pith and aggression, “wishes to descroy,” is missing, These lines spell alot out. ‘They sound clumsy in translation; they do in Greek too. Taey are not ceactly the demencar prius. But they work in the same area ‘What this shows, J think, is that the urge to give to this thought a Greek iambic, specifically a Greck tragic source (Grock tragic dialogve is in iam- bic meter), has been going since the fourth century B.C. the cxntury after the extant tragedies. The urge was given new imperus in the seventeenth, century, and was widespread in the eighteenth, Te has been important to hear this chought expressed in an ancient lan- ‘guage; as if it expressed something so horribly true that we wane ie to be lncient. Ancient, Greek, and tragic: the adjectives give i a pedigree. (Our consciousness of the dementat prius derives, therefore, fiom ancient ‘comments on and consciousness of tragedy, going back to the fourth cen- tury, when tragedy was already fele co be clairvoyantly concemed with the damage gods do us: and do us “first” through the mind, CCristianity both sharpened and gentled chings here. Sharpened by the shocking thought that the God of Love could “harden the heat” to allow sin, which He Himself will punish. This thought comes early inthe Chris- tian tradition, in the internal conflict of St. Paul over his new iclationship to “my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh,” the Jews, “I have,” he says, great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart." He resolves it ‘two ways. First, human beings both are and are not what they seem. hey are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” Second, God to9 is sen in an internally divided way which mirrors the writer's conflicted loyalties “What shall we say then? Is there unrightcousness with God? God forbid. For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I © Lycans Contra Leoten 92 (= Try. dep 2968),6 CHAPTER 1 will have compassion on whom Iwill have compassion. So itis not of bim thar wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy... . He has merey on whom He will have mercy, and whom He will He hardens."* “And whom He will Fle hardens.” It is a devastating thing to say. Paul’ following questions mark bis axyst on this point: "Flas not the potter pover over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, Ancther unto dishonour?” He argues for divine justice and purpose: Isral stumbled. The Isracites did not attain righteousness, because they sought iby law not faith. But their fall may be “the riches of the world.” They are the branches broken off a tree onto which Gentiles, like the Roman Chris: tians to whom he is writing, are grafted. This is a pruning operation. God, “concluded them all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all”? Paul ends this self-conflicted passage by saying of God, “How unscarch- able are His judgements, and His ways past finding out. For who fas known the mind of the Lore? ... of Him, and through Him, and to Hlim, ateall things. ...”8 Here is the problem, conflict, and conclusion, in this most dramatic Christian questioning of the essential cause of self destructiveness. The prayer “Lead us not into temptation (peiranmon, “straggle, testing’)" has real fear behind it. Leading into tempration is something God can do, Has done.® ‘The problem is knotted into legal and moral questions raised by mad~ ness well into the nineteenth century, and also in our own time. ‘The fist British acquittal on grounds of unsound mind is in 1505." ‘The first re- corded instance of “psychiatric testimony” in British criminal courts is the trial of Earl Ferrers, in 1760. The eatl defended himself on grounds of “occasional insanity.” “My lords,” said Dr. John Monro, superintendent of Bethlem, “in some sense, every erime proceeds from insanity. There were philosophers in ancient times who held this opinion.” The Solicitor Gen- ‘ral addressed the jury on the subject of madness as exculpatory condition. But the defense was rejected, The earl was executed.!2 "The demensat prius, stressing divine responsibility for madness, is {quoted particularly in the eighteenth century, which opened up the general possibilty thae madness was intellectual delusion. 12 Yee at the same time, «Romans 9.3, 2, 6 H-I6. All Now Tetnent stations are quoted fom the English Authorized Version, tonne 71, 9.42, 1.12, 11.22, 1.82. 2 Romans 11.33-36, * Drak 195168 (wim. 12) Walker 1968-26. 2 Eigen 198537, 1 Wer 1968 ves the gal question a hisoccl perspective fom de thier ce cry enwards, Eighteenth century: Foucault 1971157, MacDonald 1981:220, Porter 1985.76-81; Porter 1987, So below, Chapter 19; see also Chapter 2, 1.27, 31. INTRODUCTION 7 “the only belie system within which people could achnamtedge themselves as ‘mad was 2 religious one.” If someone else was mad, it was another stor “Within secular values, insanity’... was wholly negative, meaningless, tunreason betokenedl ter personal and social nothingness.” As the rel gious force of madness recedes from sane educated! minds, the tag quem ile perere prins dementat, with its unfathomed history, is constantly ‘quoted. “Pethaps no scrap of Latin has been more quoted than this." ‘The problem che words raise is an area of heat and complexity in the whole history of Christian legal, medical, and social institutions. But it goes back co Greck tragic thought. A steadfast clement in Pauls conclusion to the terifying idea that God might actually cause the emotional “haed: ness” chat produces sin is that “all things are of God.” ‘This answer too is shared with tragedy, and could be said © have been influenced, via the Hellenistic philosophers, by tragedy; though that docs snot make i ess real for Iatecomers in the Greek tradition, like Paul, Ac the tnd of Sophocles’ Women of Traehis, the chorus is told You have seen huge, strange deaths, many miscries and weird safering ‘And none of these is n0t Zeus. 1® Zeus loved his sn Fras, But ll hi sfrng, for Heres and his family"? Zeus "The idea that gos contol ll human afr, not acca Kindly or for our good base Greck. “Apolo was these things,” sar Oedipus, nev sl blinded, Expression ofthe though is given partic eg in tragedy, and epialy alten in relation to mans In ater age, maces is often inked with ransresion of divin ln, But Greck raged exces in the pomiblny ref even in Christian though, that gods cms can ene trategresion Christianity, through redemption and divine purpose, car gene the shock ofthis By hardening the heart” God crest scenatio in which Fe punishes the flan part human nut: the sul wil find edcmpion ehrough slrng, toning forts crime. Grock tragedy ies the demertat, rite unsofteneds Tragedy speaks in manifold way to the divin ews of Iman desrtion (Goa plants the expe in cea when he wants to destroy a house entirely. 2 oer 1987.268, 1 King 1904-298, "5 That, 1276-794 se Easting \w OF 1829, Se bot ebb apd Eastern a Teh 12788 CHAPTER 1 ‘The “cause” is often identified with madness. In Homer, até is “sent” or “given” by gods. In tragedy, “reckless mania” is theathen, “from god.”!7 Tn the dementat prius cortidor of expressions about madness and divin ity, there is alot of looking back. We shall see how tragedy’s own uses of madness looked back to the Homeric concept of até.!® Educated cightcenth-century men chatter and die with Christian-rouched versions fof these ancient comments on their lips. Faced with madness and sclf- destruction in their own life, they found the thought consoling that such vielene lonely paths were trodden and explained in an ancient past. “An- cient poets seem as it were to have left oracles, . . .” The “suicide of fash jot” left is last lines in an ancient language. There was, perhaps sili, a reed 0 believe thar divine causality behind human self-destruction in ‘mind and life is an ancient, therefore authoritative, idea. “Each wave of poetry or theology is commenting on its own sense of a past, Past explanations of suffering come alive in you as you suffer your sel and so they scem clairvoyant. In Boswells day, dementat prins is a saying which everybody repeats, but nobody knows where to find. Contin- ually mystified by the source of madness, Western culture attributes and reatribures it co tragedy or tragic verse ‘All this eflects thtee things. The ongoing pain of the problem: what i the source of human selfdestruction? A feeling that Greck tragedians male this question their business. And a feeling that madness is central to the ways they explored it. A Tuzarer or Map Gops Images of madness have played an important role in Greek tragedy’ influ- cence on Western imagination. Yee Greek assumprions about madness are very dfferene from most around today in the Western world. They belong, ‘with a picture of emotion’s relation to self, ofthe experience of emotion, that is alien co ours, Emotion is something coming. at you from outside. ‘When thought of physiologicall, emotion is air and liquid bubbling ‘within, swelling the entrails. Emotions do not belong to individuals. They are wandering, autonomous, daemonic, outside forces.2? ‘This vision of emotion entails a chasm berween understandings of mad- ness available in fifth-century Athens and our own, which are based on ideas ofthe structure and dynamics of a personality, and are infused by a 2A fi. ISON, SION; I 19.88; OM. 4261. Ave “ent” or given in Homer: below p18, 178 See Capers 18, 19. Pal 1992:8-98, 114-61 IytRopucTION 9 nineteenth-century notion of madness as a secret presence, latent andl indi vidual to the self 20 ‘There are many further differences berween our pictures of madness and theirs. Yer our picrurings of madness ae based on these Greek beginnings. So there isa paradox in our relationship to these Greek ideas. They helped to form ours. But, due to the millenia of change in beeween, oars now are extraordinarily different. This is why I spend time (sce Chapters 16 and 117) on the background: on what came before tragedy itself. This is a book by someone from one culture, about how madness was seen in another, That operation needs a lot of disentangling. Itry to keep an anthropological strictness, as I conceive it, and place ideas of madness in the grain of the culture that produced them. But I also intioduce new clements from the centuries between “us” and “them”; new input from (Church Fathers, the Renaissance, the seventeenth of nineteenth centuries, Al ofthese added to and affected the presence ofthe Greek inheritance in us. This book is not only about antiquity and “us,” but discisses, from, time to time, elements in ideas of madness from the ages in between, rom doing this we learn more about the actual ideas (and the societies) than if we assume our ideas abour sanity, madness and the self are natural, universal, godgiven. The “human nature hast't changed” approach (sce Chapter 21) rakes our ideas of “human nacure” for the thing itself, apply- ing them to an alien culture lke silkfnish paint, which masks the textures specific to thar culture. If we emulsioned Greck temples with our awn paint, we would never know what was in che column drums. We would never learn the technology used to connect them, nor the crystal suc: tures, and hence the provenance, of the stone, The history of madness shows, in fact, how deeply wrought, through centuries, afe “our own” ideas ofthese things: what a complex and often foreign artifact “out” idea ‘of madness is. I shall go inco this a little, after exploring. Greek tragic ‘madness in, as far as possible, its own terms? One vital difference between ffth-century Grecks and “us” (or the range ‘ofjob-lot attitudes, which that word “us” represents) i that in their world seeing gods, coming into ditect contact with divinity, was not evidence of ‘madness. Or not in the way itis in ours. Our world generally tends to think seeing gods is evidence of madness because itis hallucinatory: be- cause gods do not exist. “He's been seeing things” means precisely the ‘opposite. He has nor been secing things: nor things that are really there He has been making them up, “sccing” creations of his own disturbed imagination, 2 Doster 1987.38, 2% Sc late 1975; MacDonald 1981; Shomer 1987; Pater 1947; kon Chapt 2110 CHAPTER 1 “But the play that stake our the claims of madness on Western imagina tion were produced for the precinct of a “mad” god. A real god really present in “his” theater. Dionysus’ persona connected interior violence, the violence of the mind and distorted perception, with exterior violence: the violence of tragedy’s ation, its music, dances, and murders.2? Seeing, ‘Dionysus was evidence of seeing Dionysus. That might well mean mad- ‘news, not because Dionysus was not real, but because he was. “Tragedty’s main daemonic icon was the Furies: embodiments of mur- de-ous madness, rising from relationships between people bound by promises, contracts, family blood. They are called up by blood spilled out nthe ground. They ae the murderousness with which people “see” when reltions go wrong. They cause and punish madness and bloodshed. They fre the spy in the mind. Secing them is evidence of maciness; again, not because they do not exist, bur because they do. Like Dionysus, they are ‘mutlness-makers, perceived as such by society, truly alive and at work in the ‘world, in relationships, and in the mind.28 2 Pade 1990386, 1992:175, > Pal 1992:172-77, PART 1 Language and Timing Poetry is an opening ofthe doors of rooms that are never fully known. —Rirendan Kennelly, “Introduction” to Breathing SpasChapter 2 TRAGIC MADNESS WORDS Nonaaury For practical purposes in my view, the history of mad ‘ess stands berween histories of subjects suc as plague fr death and (on the ocher hand) histories of witcherafe 1 most cat insanity, lke heare-fulure or buboes, as a physical Fc; but it needs to interpret, ike witchersf-or possesion, principally 35a socially conscructe fit —Roy Porter, Mind Fong d Manas GaEBK TRAGEDY represents normal consciousness as an inner and outer ‘multiplicity. You experience feelings as you experience the nonhuman out- side world: gods, animals, the weather coming at you, random and aggres- sive. Feelings ae other in self! Your own inwardness, the inner equipment ‘with which you feel and think, is multiple too. This equipment, like your {elings, isin some sense divisible from you. In Homer, someone’ thuomas, spirit, “commands” them to act. You may act “willingly with an unwilling ‘umes Tn. tragedy too, innards can be differently impulsive from eheit ‘owner, They may know more. They sing or prophesy. They move, tremble, knock against each other. “Heart kicks phn.” ‘These are the things that contain feling. Feeling may be represencedl as mobile in two ways: as the movement of liquid and air inside, and as the ‘movement of daimdn in you, Feclings move autonomously in you, darken- ing your innards. They stir in you, boil over, burn, destroy within ® This is tragedy’s version of normal consciousness disturbed by passion: a back- ‘ground normality very different from ours. Tt would be odd if tragedy’s ideas of madness were not very different too. T shall stare with basic madness words. Others will come in later. But hhere are the nouns and adjectives from which tragedy, and after t Westeen though, builds its understanding of madness. Comrounn Nouns For us, Greck tragedies are made only of words. To understand theie ver- sion of madness, we must begin with the medium through waich they 1 See Chapeer 1 19; Pal 1992:44-48, 14-17, 138-57, 2143, PY 8B; Pale 1992-19-33, 68-74 * Dade 1992:75-79, 81-88, 117-18, 129-32.“ CHAPTER 2 expres ithe language. Studying madness in Greek tragedy is importantly “Ghexene fom studying mans in, sy the eighteenth century. The cigh teenth century has a diferent order of evidence: contemporary documents Pal 199227, 15828 ‘CHAPTER 3 We are stuck with “god of It is part of us. So we might take i farther ani call Dionysus god of tae verb in tragie madness. Especially ofthe first ‘verbo label him in Wester literature, mainomas. But other verbs speak of hhim even more acutely: like bread, bachewd (“I rave” or, causative, “T madden”) Herodotus uses bacheu? apparently technically (“L celebrate Bacchic ries inthe story ofa barbarian king who copied everything Greek, in cluding religion. The Seythians “blame the Grecks for dnccheuein” because, says Herodotus, master of apparently artless irony, it isnot reasonable to setup a god who dives human beings mad.” In the pasiv, ina fith- Ceatiry 8, inscription from Cyme, dacewd means “Tam initiated into Dinnysian cule.” Tes normally less technical I rave, am frenzied” (of, for instance, soldiers frenzied by Ares); or even “I stagger madly” of a poi soned dove? ‘Bacchi’ seems to have even wider force. A warrior possessed by Ares “reves towards battle.” The Erinyes “madden” Orestes “with kindred blood.” Hie is “enzied by theie madnesses.” Amphieryon thinks Heracles “maddened” by his recent murder. In Trojan Women, Cassandra is bac hunosss (“raving”), mana, a “madwornan.” She “stands outside bacchic raving” enough to make a lear prophecy. Apo “drove her,” execu, “oat of her phrencs.” Yee Dion’ verb i used, as if bacchic raving isthe ‘model forall ahers. Erinyes, Ares, Apolo: whatever they do co their vie time’ minds, Dionysus isin there, in the verb. Mainas, “macnad,” onysus celebrant, means “madwoman.”™* “There are other simile verbs. Lusad (and Husain), “Lrave,” suggests the activity of luow in the mind, as dead suggests that of Bacciss. When ‘edipus learned who Jocasta was, “Some aud showed him, asi rat ing],” where she was. Creon secs Ismene “husdsas, notin control of her plrines.” Fe ass his son if he comes “raving against his father?” A less specific verb, daimonad, “Tam mad,” suggests an unknown damn acting On, or in, the mind. Ocdipuss sons kil each other “aimondnts in ai,” raving in destructive fenzy.” Cadmus family is “raving, daemon- ricden”: mad-doomed—to ruin Thebes.2° Some of this borders on “possession,” which I will not explore by ise in this book.2” These verbs suggest madness as activity of eam, faa, Fi. 4.79; Sehwyaer1923:374, no. 792 Aut, 136 (which must cho Sipe 498: both ser ad” taker on Thebes; To 1208 Sip 498; Or 41, 835; HF 960; Th, 849-50, 367, 40S See ao snimchem: i, 726, Mair bok. 28-29; Hench 1978 8 OF 1258, Ane, 492, 683; PL Rap. 329C, SRC. Lasad: Bo 981, See Chapter 12, 2.68 % Sipe, 1007; Plo, 888 (cf soma, Spe 84); cE Xen Mom. 117-9. ° eta been argued (Smith 1965) there was no concept possesion nthe ih ener. abit ace (Pael 1983: 12~14) se farther Burkert 198530 m1, and below, Chapt Tyan. 47-87, Gob OF THE VERE 29 above all Bacchus. In tragedy, his own art form, Dionysus connects inward damage with outer damage. Damage of mind, damage to fortune. You might say Dionysus becomes, in tragic codings of these mytis, god of a ‘sequence I shall discuss Inter: the Homeric “damage-chain” that stands behind tragedy. Dionysus and madness: both are rare in Homer, and found all over tragedy. Tate in the fifth century, madness verbs arose whose rooes were not daemons but organic substances, bile and hellebore. We shall mect these later (see Chapter 5). They have an important bearing on our own re- sponses to Greek images of madness, They do not appear in raged. But they were, again, verbs Parricirtas: Ta Pre-Emmvence or THe Vere Jn his early Homeric appearance, Dionysus’ verb is a participle, main. ‘ments, “being mad.” Madness, like Dionysus himself, belongs with ac tion: with verbs. This is clear even among the adjectives, which are so often verbal adjec- tives or participles. Mainas (a verbal adjective formed from the verb main- omni) is used a8 an adjective, “mad,” qualifying hus; more often it appears as noun, “madwoman,” used of Cassandra and even the Furies 2 Ie is, as i were, intransitive, participle of a verb with no grammatical object: sroving” But Furies are also maddening. Mainomai can, we have seen, come over as the passive of an active and transitive verb, “I madden [someone].” Maina: 0 can wotk like this. Pindar uses it of the wryneck, a “madden- ing” bird used in erotic spells. There is 2 similar verbal adjective lusas, raving, maddening.” Euripides’ Lyssa play is Heracles Mainomena, “Heracles being Mad”: the present participle again, There are mulkiple passive participles “having been maddened, having been struck aside,” “touched”) plus active present ones wandering.” “raving”), Images of the mad are marked by the temporary mobility of participles: by the fluid, on-the-wing nature of the verb.8? ‘Mapes Is Tearorary, AND KNOWN py ITs APPEARANCE {Hooked our in thar dark halland saw alight inthe door ff Alon’ room, Alan was caning a tele electric lamp, 24 As seeming ajcive of asm, se Se 941.4 of bb, Ba. 915. AS nou, 22 4603, ‘b.Dam 386, Ae 382; OF 212, To. 178 CE I, bkow 229. Thermals of mare is imporane ther i no male equitalent. See Pade 1983:11-17, 1992:106-13, 159-61 "Ey, 500, Pi P4216 with Pal 1992:145, Las: Timodiews 3; HF 1024 where felis mere 2 Se ore, Chapter2, 1.34; belo, Caper 10, 27-1, and Chapter 12,20, 6-11, 230 ‘CHAPTER 3 the long cylindscal kind that miners we, The wire round i mae litle shadows all over him. He looked ewice as big and broad as normal: he had on a black dressing gown with aed collar, and was peering round the hall. A litle of che light shone upon his face whem he moved ie: could sce his freckles an his bull neck, and his red hair damp with perspiration. But most of al, [could see his ‘jebals a sorcof hoor like oysters, turning from side to sie, He was not smiling, though he looked 35 though he ‘meant to, And then I knew he was mad. —Carter Dickson, The Red Widow Murer: What does tragedy’s language tell us about how madness was conceived? First, most basically, the reason why poets prefer verbs to other parts of speech when speaking of madness is, T think, an ovecriding Greek sense that madness is temporary En madness, innards are damaged but survive, like Prometheus’ liver in the myth, Inner damage lasts only while the madness is there.31 Like emo- tien, madness comes in from outside: divine, malign, autonomous. Ie does rot belong to the person. It is itself. It comes, and it will go. Iris not a long-term attribute, but temporary activity in which innards move, change, wander, twist, are goaded and filled with blackness.38 They “are mad,” in verbs (bacchao, lusad, daimonad) coded with daemon. low do other people know all this is going on inside? By watching; by inference. The mad move differently. Their external appearance changes. Observers infer inner changes they cannot see, from outer ones that they can: a principle on which Greek medicine, alot of philosophy, and tragic performances were based. “Appearances,” including the appearance of people temporarily suffering invasion of daemon, “are sight of the ob- seure.” Especially that most dark, obscure condition, madness. In later Europe too, up tothe seventeenth century, madiness was known, by its appearance. The idea that madness could be fearsomely latent was a new development, ftom the characteristically nineteenth-century desire to claim secret insight into long-hidden madness. Pifth-century observers 21 Prometheus liver model or innards art by pasion: Pade 199219, 120. Maes TENG Yooase0-8, 98, 116-32, Matos a exeme pasion: belo Chapter 15. As orhuran: Chapter 13, a 83-4 "Blanc Pde 1992:68-69, 73; below, Chapter 8, 6 Goad oiing wand ing min se Chaps 11, 1. hf Anau. fe. 214DK; sce Pal 1992:51, 5 blk below, Chaps 8,6 (67-68 Pade! 1990336, Mads a cop OF THE VERB 31 claimed insight from whae was apparent: the nineteenth century data some- thing hidden #5 In the Carter Dickson mystery quoted above, published :n 1935, an elderly sister is accusing her brother of murder, (In fact, she has been hyp- notized by the murderer to do so: another fn de sicle touch, We haven't moved on much since. The passage would still ring persuasively in the tabloids, would still mirror popular notions. OF course latent madness erupts.” Our culture generally assumes madness is a long-term function ‘ofa personality: Madness may be not apparent, yt still “there” Ie“breaks cout.” We can even accept that behavior which seems sane may {when cluci- dated by an expert) express madness manifest in other activities or aspects (ofa person, Carter Dickson is an impressionist, a master cook of the Gothic, using, ingredients that go back beyond the nineteenth century, and the Renais: ‘sanee, to Greek tragedy: co the tradition of tragic madness that fed Eu- ropean imagination. The red and the black, “shadows all over him,” tuen- ing eyeballs, the more than normal size, the sense that murder is most aptly committed by the mad: Sophocles Ajae is in there, and Euripides’ Heracles. 36 But Dickson has used these ingredients in ahorizon of expectations about ‘madness relation co the self that are absolutely different frcm those of Greek tragedy. “And then I knew he was mad” is sudlen insigh into long- hhiddlen madness. Hes the murderer! His acts came froma secret psychieden, from lurking mania. Ifsomeone in Greek tragedy said, “Then Eknew X was mad,” it would be because madness had suddenly attacked. 5? There would bbe no implications of a long-term condition. The words would simply refer to what had happened, a madness only present when apparent “To understand Greek tragic madness in its own teems, Wwe must tear out of ourselves, if we can, this nineteenth-century hold on our imagination. Historically it is an oddity Ie Ges only the last hundred and fifty years of Western ideas about madness and leaves out many cultures ard societies, including ancient Greece, which had and have deeply different views. OF course iti possible to use our terms, which assume long-term latent mad- ress, in analyzing cultures who do not share ths idea themselves. But Tam ‘exploring here how one society represented its own experience and percep: tions. T want to find the meanings of madness in is terms, 25 poner 1987.36, 2. This coincide with he dnonery that yp cam dene ang riod co GP: general paraiso the inane This ink was docanented and proved 1880 1906 (Quel 1990 162-64), ange es of latent madness. 5 Shadow: see ups 7, no, 12-19, 24, 26,30 Tsing ees: Chapter 7, 3840, 45, Heaced eyes: HF 932; abows, 18 © CL 7280-308; the watching herdsman knows when the sanger madness begins aoe el2 cuarter 3 Compare the longstanding argument about the epidemic at Athens What disease was it, really? Bubonic plague? Measles? The question ttrows up intriguing historical ironies, a8 well as reminders from within the medical community that cven physical diseases mutate. The symptoms and nature of one disease difer in different climates anc contexts. And identifying the disease tells us nothing about the people who lived and dled in the epidemic, who wrote about and remembered it. How they caperienced it; how they perceived and explained that experience; what difference it made to local images of cf: these are che more serious ques- tions. Analyzing alien experience ina closed cell of modem assumptions is an endgame on its own, nota responsible historical search, tis very hard for peychoanalysts, Their practice depends on secing ‘other (the patent) in selfs terms (ofthe tained analyst), The surface eruch ard expressed views of people ro whom they listen arc often teeated as a smokescreen, as resistance disguising a deeper, different eth Historically, psychoanalysts here are proccts not only of a particular theory (however usefil or true), but more largely of thee historical condi- tioning by a century in love with the latent. For che purpose of under standing Greek madness, I’ lke to put in a plea for them to respect the ‘way their own views have been constructed. A specific culural process of about a hundred and filty years (now analyzable, itself, by cull histo- rians and historians of science) made ie possible fora culture to formulate the idea that madness builds within a personality and breaks out, It is inappropriate to turn this idea, produced by only one of many cultures of ths world, onto perceptions of madness outside the West or ont those of the West before the eighteenth century. The notion is anachronistic for ffh-century Greece eventhough its popular tokens, which can be used, 3 la Carter Dickson, to conjure up an un-Greek picture of madness, are themselves Greek 40 Tragic madness language suggests that madness involves temporary damage to innards, Like Dionysus, madness is evident in the verb. When Jnnard are still again thei owners sane. After his fenzy, Ajax is emphnin, “in his mind,” that i, his right mind, He “seems to phroein (think, be same]” again. Tris the activity, the verbs, thac mater The judgment “Xs See Chapter 21, nn. 19,34. Showalter 1987:165-215 concerts onthe “emia ‘oof te mad, bu sill a messi eneriew ofthe making of (Beh) payehity fom 1890 co the 1960s See, ef, Clarke 1975:1—24; MacDonald 191: ch 4 Porter 1987.268-76 and poe sigan moe fall bel, Chapree 21 ‘CE Engh wc of Grec pasion and dives imagery for nan Gack physiology: Pal 196276, 88 “1-306, 344. Phra: Pade! 1992:20, 4, Mobi of il Pade 1965-68. eto, Gaps 11,13 Gop OF THE VERE 33 matinomenes,” “X mainctai “is raving,” comes only ac the moment when X is doing something abnormal. You “are mad” when and only when you do a mad act. The play we call The Maaness of Heracles is in Greck Herades Mrinomencs, “Fieracles Raving.” Heracles, Ajax, Agave, Athamas, ‘Lycargus: all do something terrible in a single mad fic and then recover sanity. Mad adjectives proliferated in the seventeenth century, a growth which implics that madness “was conceived more in terms of deeds and demeanour than of disease, or any permanent internal disposition." As if seventecnth-century English pur into adjectives what fifth-century Greek pput into participles and verbs: an intensely diverse account of madness a8 2 ‘temporary condition. 4 amas, Lycurgus: sce Chapter 4 n. 36; HE 1138-41; Aj, 306-25, Ba. 1122-28, 1280-9. * Rote 1987:22-23,Chapter 4 TEMPORARY VERSUS LONG-TERM MADNESS (Cunowic SuscerrisiLiry GGnsex cutruns ouside tragedy suggests, on the whole the sume as sumption impli by tragedy language. Mans is temporary. Antone ihowates “the condition of men under the influence of passion.” who “fave Knowege in a sense and yt do not hae it by someone alerp dank, or mainmenr. “Mad? i par of his modelof temporary aberration, Imonentay ks of normal consconsnes, Mad, drunk, asleep. “Angers td serial passions and other sch states change the bay, and in Some ten even coats mania” A contemporary medial writer impli ha you Stop being normal when you lee Ponts clear thinking, sanity, When You ge his back ou ae normal gan. "When we abanon ovr aca Cone abit our ponds is destroyed" Madness, therfore, 2 tempor yaa "sometimes, in tragedy and ouside it we geca whiff fan idea tat madness canbe lng-tcm, The house of Ocdlpu i thomandr perma rently maddened by gods” An “vl dese oro temples syn Pato, neither antrdpnen, han, orton dine, e's anh” obs, red in someone fom ancient and unpured crimes? es itm shoul ask Cue liting ete for help. Then he naa, sks” ay lesen? He rect, discussing the caus of Ckomenee mads, weighs he poss Diy oF longterm divine anger against a iclong habit of inking, un- waceed wine (Antiquity vay chough this very dangerous. Ke could il insanyrathor than gradually. “Asclpiades, son of Ananippes, an Ephe- Shr evento years ok dank in one lp large amoune of unmtsed wire and died, sping blood”) ‘One comic characte is incuraly addicted 0 jury servis: 7 cll you my master’ illness hela jrpaddice wid ro give vedi; ries ithe mises the Rone row. He mad... So now weve locked him up. + Arist, EN’ I1A7A12-18 (ae Chapee 16, 39); Hyp Bren 30 (Loeb 2250) 2 Sop 653 (tov M02 an Or, 854, whe the word denotes temporary made) Ph ag. 8548. Ost se Chaper 2, an. 9-14 Hue 6 75-84; Blain prope 20385 (1978), quae in Meier 1990.98, MADNESS IS TEMPORARY 35 His son’ aken his illness very hard. First he tried curing him with words No good. Then purifying... . Useless ‘Then he tied religion... Ava last tezore hn sailed to Aegina, put his dal to sleep the nighe chee in Asclepius' temple ‘Ac dawn he tuned up by the railings [ofthe cour] It is likely that male Athenians could take over family property if they ‘ould prove their father incapable: thae suggests ic was possible to think someone was permanently unable to act responsibly Finally, the Hippocratic author of “On the Sacred Disease,” who thinks the brain, not che guts is the center of consciousness, also thinks moistuee fon the brain eauses madness. Phlegm produces quict madness, bile makes for noisy “If people rave all the time, these are the causes." Changes in the brain cause sudden attacks of raving terror or delirium.® ‘These examples suggest that fifth: and fourth-century imagination did consider long-term madness a possibility in some contexts, often relating to an ancient curse on individuals or families. Erinyes, for instance, are divinities of relationship (especially family ones) gone wrong. They send madness: they are also primally involved with cursing,” This possiblity of the long, term does not necessarily involve, as it began todo in the nineteenth century and does for us sil the quite separate idea ‘of the long hidden. What the fith- and fourth-centory examples imply is chronie susceptibility 1 obvious, temporary mad fis ‘The sharpest model is Plato's ostras: the “gadfly” word for “madness.” Being susceptible o mad ateacks is (or, slike) being bitten bya fly. Mad ness. An external black influence governs this. You may feel this to be ‘wholly malign, as it was before Ficino turned things round, But Melan- choia’s black star is de Nerval’, Mandelshram’s, and Julie black sun. Our century is drawn magnetically to its darkness. ‘Wuers Tuens ts Lyre Licett” Good Sie Topas, do nor think Iam mad: they have lid _me here in hideous darkness Shakespeare, Toft Night 4.2 [Even in the fifteenth century, not everyone bought Ficino’ valuation of the dark. Melancholia was credited with the gift of divination, which re- late it, very problematically, co polities and to theology, and sharply di vided Renaissance thinkers. “Genial” melancholy was vehemently at- tacked, especially by doctors and churehmen.2? Luther loathed it. “All sadness,” he said, “is from Satan,” He cited examples of melancholics who needed, and found, cure for their disease. The devil’ access to imagination is through the black humor: ideas of melancholia interact with responses to witchcraft, Despite humanise enthusiasm for genial melancholy, melan- cola was still seen in the Renaissance also asa curse.2¥ As disease, dark ness of soul. [t needed cure or exorcism. Darkness must be treated by the dark. Pharmaceutically, melancholia canbe tackled with, for instance, hellebore. But enclosure in the dark will also do. In classical times, we do not hear much of this option. Any such tenclasure was not therapeutic but protective. Socrates was accused of say ing that a son could get a verdict of paranoia for his father, and then im- prison him, Xenophon’s reply is that Socrates did think it expedient for boi ‘manameno, the eaving mad, to be imprisoned, for their own sake and that Cf thee phil, ehcirfarily.?> 2 Bcino, De nt nil 3.2: Kuban, Panty and Sax 1964 158-59, 289. See abo ab 1951, Fin’ glo: Klibnsy, Poi, and Sal 1964286; Kansan 1974310. ls eiumph: Scheie 1991-25 Scar 1992:160-< chink Ficino i eleraing death ae lie 2 Accoating to Sclcner 1991-27-29, 109-122, 233-62. 2 Sahkner 199L:11-12, 31-32, 38-54, 66-72 documcats and erates ieresing [Renaissance opposition o geval melancholy which began among, the less. 28 Scene 1991-67, 1, 171-89; Schicar 1992:141-$8, 159. Xen lem, 1249-50; ct. Belycco vad fer, andthe soko shuting him sup at ume (Ar. V. 69-132) INNER BLACKNESS AFTERWARDS 6 Imprisoning the mad, for protection but increasingly ako with some (often pretty mad) ideas of cure, isa feature of early modere Europe. ‘The late Renaissance evolved moral and therapeutic reasons fer enclosing the mad in the dark. The homeopathic principles behind this are drawn from Greck magic and medicine, but the systems are homegrown: “Every man, the which is mad or lunatycke, or antycke, or demonyacke, co be kept... in_some dose house or chamber where there is. lytel light...” So Ancrew Boord, in the mid-sisteenth century! Lack of light is therapeutic, a i is pretended to be for Malvolio in Twelth Niphts a scene that parodies contemporary exorcism. *2 Even by 1400, Bedlam isan asylum but ako, ichas recently been argued, a place of attempted cure. A shift in reatment ofthe mad, fram exe to inward confinement, rows though the sixteenth entry and isaxiomaie by about 1650. The curative aspect of enclosing the mad seemsto figure in some seventcenth-century perceptions.» But Bedlam scenes in play’ from 1600 to 1650 (Dekker’s The Hone: Whore, Midleton’s The Changeling), ‘do. not show cute, only control. The Keeper whips inmars t0 keep ordee.*8 From the Grecks onward, Western culture has had a sense of women, ‘00, a8 innery dark, In Athens, women were typically relegated t a dark: ness which eontained them: the most inward, darkest, chambers of the hhouse.46 Moder Europe extended this tothe mad, who were also tradi- tionally perceived to have darkness in them, and a special relation withthe dark. “Her body was erated backer than coal,” says an anonymous mid thireeenth-century romancer, of a mad wild woman. The association of madness and blackness is a commonplace in, for example, the German mediaeval tradition. A dark body i a sgn of madness, Ine darkness is ‘expressed but maybe also cured by external darkness, in which the sane confine the mad, 2 Screed in Foucault 1971, especialy 38-64 2 Ronde 1567 2 See Schlener1991:263-74, 1 Alleridge 1985 unpacks the mythology of them a8 an achive imprisoning. place In her iw (29), the rt wien reference 9 eat» pas of ee ee 450, ' See Kinsman 19742:285~89 (follow Foveau: 1971), Soe Salkel! 1993. Seventh century "Abraham en,” ex Beanie cachange a ter year, Beggs to pay their da areas for maintenance, Tey ut on a ow a as, fF conned derangement: no one som Yo expt 2 yea Hea to eae them Th futbiogzaphicl ad ballad were an importa part Of thc show: Bele 1985:116-17; Tomer 1989-22. Pade! 198, 1997 > Quoc in Gilman 19822. (womens ninceenh-centryparadigns of madnes: Shower2 CHAPTER 6 Biack TRAGEDY ‘Alack, the night comes on Shakespeare, Ky Lear 24 [As Lear takes his first steps to madness, Gloucester says “the night comes fon “Night” marks the outer and inner gathering of dark. Storm and night mirror Lear’s madness.38 The imagination that makes them do so ‘was formed by a Greek tradition: madness as tempest, madness as black- ness, in the mind.®? “Madness is peculiarly appropriate to tragedy partly because ofits black: ‘ness. “Give me the sun,” says Oswald atthe end of Ibsen's Ghass. Before he ‘goes mad, he explains: “The disease I have as my birthright [e poner to his forea and adds very softy] is seated hee.” The play ends with him in a ‘mad unreachable state, “his face expressionless, his eyes with a glassy stare,” demanding, over and again, “The sun, The sun.™0 ‘Madness, summed up in the absence or loss of light, is appropriate for tragedy because tragedy itself runs on blackness. Grief, death, failure, loss. Tas does not know Cleopatra has been ordering the asps, but after Caesars unbearable magnaminity, she cells Cleopatra, “Finish, good lady, the bright day is done. / And we are for the dark." From Greece on, tragedy is the concentrated imagining of forces that make people do things un- thinfable to those housed in sanity, It has always imagined these forces, and the states they produce, as black. Its heroes are “for the dark.” Abso- lute tragedy is absolute black. “Black on black.” Few tragedies manage this cntirely, but even those that do not are shot through with darkness."2 “Tragedy itself isa place “where there is Iyee light.” “Astrological, cheological, ane! medical accounts of madines inthe seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries had darkness in common: madness is spit itual night caused by “noisome fumes, black and gross, vapouring up to the brain like the foot of a chimney? This darkness isa drum of ancicnt images heard repeatedly in psychiatric writing. Dark is ele to be a “natu- ral” metaphor for mad. For the Italian humanists, “the most profound analogy berween Saturn and melancholy” lay in a power to generate in the self the greatest good ‘and greatest harm. They valued this polarity. Ie gave what the historians of 8 King Lene 24.278-85, 299 Paes 19928688 4 A etl connection bercen syphilis and insanicy was prove onlin the ate wine ‘ecru cemury see Cater 3, n 35), though radon asocauons were made carer (xe (Ghagrer 14, 8 87), See Then 1957-28285, Anny and Clare 5.2.192-93 12.6 Since 190147, 150; Pde 1994 {© Deacon and Wale 1601:825; Foal 1971 104-7. INNER BLACKNESS AFTERWARDS 63 ‘melancholy call “a tragic color” to the humanist view (the foundation of ‘most modern views) of human greatness: This tragic color stands out because tragedy, I believe (not all agree), has joy as well as desolation. Light and hope pierce and illumine its black staging of the human condition.** ‘The idea that greatness comes from the same source as madness is a Renaissance input, nota fifth-century idea. For ith-century tragedy, mad- ness is a curse, an imposition from outside.*® All the same, fith-century ‘tragedy and the myths it handles gave the theory its prize evidence. “Fler des, when about to kill his children.” Many of the elements that came together in this theory are fith-cencury, epecally tragic, perceptions. ‘Whether we like it or not, the madness of Greek tragedy, the blackness ‘of Greek madness, and the blackness of tragedy are part of our own imag- ination, Human potential for greatness is tragedy’ business, we Feel, be ‘cause we owe our pocenial for greatness to our potential for blakkness. For madness. But isthe Renaissance, not the Grecks, that made this insight a tragic one. For the Renaissance, and for us, the outstanding person has special blackness within, But this very blackness, ftom which the power ‘comes, may suddenly plunge that person into bestal madness. ‘Many modem tragic works would be impossible without allthis. Con- rad’s Heart of Darknes, for example: that journey into the “eart,” the ‘maddest, most murderous part, of humanity. Into, in Hippocratic terms, the place where blood (the “part” most responsible for intelligence) is corrupted” by blackness. Conrad novel operates through Greele and me- iaeval images. An outer, corrupting dark, of place, of society, works on an. individual’ inwardness and calls up his own, inner, corrupting darkness, ‘which Hippocratics would sum up, macerilly as black bile. The “hear” is the man’, but also that of the world in which he becomes bad. Corrupting darkness, outside and inside: madness, and badness, is seen as your own blackness swamping you,4” under the influence of blackness from outside Tes a perfect Renaissance image: external blackness, working on the man ‘with “black” in him. Also a perfect tragic image ‘The Renaissance view is closer to our own than fith-century Greek ideas are, Ie used Greek ideas, both tragic and! medical: of madness as black. angry inner flood, of a balance between external and internal cause. But GGreck tragic madness is caused by gods. The Renaissance rerouted tragic blackness far ftom its Greek beginnings and expression in Greck tragedy. + unas, Panty and Sax! 1964:158-9, 247, “© Sec Pad 194, ann against Seine 1990. +6 Kwon 1974310, On century tragedy ce above, Chapter 2a. 7, and below, Chapt 15, 18, 19,22 "PCE Plait 1992:80, “8 Del 19995659,oo curren Ye the image elements ved on. You mighe say Renaissance tage rendoved a blackness bog two thousand year afr, but more sll Conscious, Madness wa pated in new ways now, ithe nee sel images avalable-® Tragedy had vo dea with blake, side and out, the blag of badness and manos, and di 90 brian Tes the color of lt nS, Bu ck was pie icy ow ak cal for greatness, The black of broken potenti, lost personal prea tess, belongs vith our chaotic ideas ofthe tage today. Du i wat Elz tan aged, not Gres that Bought hi about, exploring te ace te of haan ore (Cutis the branch that might have grown fll seraighe, ‘And burned is Apotio’ laurel bough, “That sometime grew within eis learned man 5° Greck culeure was the basis ofthe modem valuing of madness. Yer the sum ‘of Greek elements, as they operate in us today, is alien to Greek tragedy: a whole, forcign to the origin of its parts. As if you took feathers from Bricsh songbirds to make a model of an American bluejay. The result bears no relation, or at best a very skewed relation, to the original habitat ‘So black bile, a professional medical expression ofa general Greck sense thae when things go wrong inside they are black, influenced theories of ‘madness and character for two millenia; while tragedies themselves went ‘on shooting a general mad blackness, dacmonic and organic, into the ‘Wes:ern bloodstream. Icis, you might say, black ble’ faule that we think of smadhess as black. 4 Se Kinsman 1974312. “° Malone, Dacor Fours, Epilogoe Chapter 7 A eee DARK, TWISTED SEEING Danuavass: Consciousnsss, on Its Loss? Te MADNESS is inner blackness, how do the mad see? To live is normally to “ook on ight.” What do the mad look on? What does Greck tagedy think isi lke, t0 look on the word, mad? ‘We should place beside ths question a paradox thae profoundly affected ‘Wester reception of Greek ideas of madness. A paradox about darkness, implicit in Greck images of innards. Innards, ehe equipment of consci nes, and the fluids they contain, the stuff ofFecling, are dark? But las of consciousness is also dark. Seep and fainting are 2 pouring night, like ath, The darkest ofthe living. patna mind tor hs oF the underworld, world of the dead. Black isthe color of consciousness and passion and of their opposite: nonconsciousnes, death. In the Greek context, this paradox is made sense of by standard images of the blind prophet. Prophets “see” from nonlight: they are blind, they ‘inhabit caves. Danes inthe Greek world had many esonances of danger and death, a6 for us. But it was also where you might enccunter gods, “sec truths unavailable in the light. The image ofthe darkened sec, fami iac all over Greek myth, is reflected in oracular cave shrines and “incuba- tion”: institutionalized sleepin a temple through which you nd healing Greek myth, literature, and cule are fll of tuts seen or hearin the dark in caves, the night, the underworld. The easiest Greck oracles are shrines to Night. ‘This notion is iconially available, with multiple facile or stale Romantic resonances, also to us. It crops up easly in popular fction in fantasy blends of sci: and Camelot, for instance. Bue for us it has no real-life ‘underpinning such as cult experience, and contemporary inages of in- nards, gave the Greeks. For chem, the equipment of consciousness was black. Black innards: which darkened farther in pasion. Their Blackness ‘vas inseparable from what they might know, fel, or prophesy Unseen, from a eavlike darkness innards know and speak the image crystallizes Greck responses to the mysteries of insight, of where Knowing * Pade 1992:68, 75; above, Chapes 8, nn 1-2, 2 Dade 1992-78-79, 2 Pade 1992:71-75, Incubation: se Ae V. 122.66, CHAPTER? ‘comes from, Te informs the work of Greck philosophers as well as poets. In this context, darkness is an ape image for two opposing things. For death and other cancellations of consciousness, and also for the vessels and site of consciousness: the place where you “see” in the dark [both the stuff of consciousness and its negation are black, where does this leave madness, which is so particularly black? Which black is madness? ‘A lose of consciousness, like sleep, fainting, death? Or, like passion, an intensification of consciousness and its darkness: a black from which in- natds prophesy? Does it see dark, and wrong? Or, lke a blind prophet, light end right? “Tragedy’s answer, I think, is both. As the opposite of consciousness, madness sees wrongly. Darkly, as Ajax sees, But as the intensification of consciousness, madness sometimes sees more clearly than the sane. Both thoughts turn up in tragedy. Both left their mark on us; for this paradox, and the prophecy resonances that resolved it, have empowered, differently, at different times, modern understandings’ and revaluings of madness, ‘Madness isthe blackest, wrongest possibility of consciousness, a blackness wwithoat light. And itis a way of seeing in and through the dark, seeing, truths unavailable to normal minds: a dark through which someone (not always the mad person) may see more clearly. Two possiblities. Greek. tragedy set going the long echoes of both. AJAX: MADNESS AND SiGiT First, some dark, wrong, seeing, ‘After Achilles’ death, the Greck leaders must award Achilles’ armor to another champion. They choose Odysseus. In fury, Ajax plans to kill Odys- seus, and them, Athene maddens him, so he ills catle (and a herdsman) instead, For other people, his madness is a saving thing. It makes Ajax see cattle as men. For Ajax, the madness, and the absurd violence that results, is the worst humiliation, Ie is Athene’s punishment for rejecting her help; for wanting ro get glory on his own. ‘This play pivocs on madness, 2 disturbance ofthe inner world. Buc its hero is invested entirely in the outer. Like Heracles, Ajax is all body. Fle is ‘the pattern of physical strength, of the male body’ supreme possibilties® —but also of body's limits. “Bodies” fal when thinking fails: when some- ‘one “does not phronet [think] as a human being,”® 4 Pale 1992:68-69, 74,80, 12-13. | From fst ab Athene decribes hin, head dipping wea, wit mrderus hands") 0 last when his mt och the eoxpc whose “hx pipes stl Mow tei back foe": 10, 1410-14. ‘Ay 758-61. DARK, TWISTED SEEING or “Thinking as a human being” is represented by Odysseus, Ajax’ foil anc ‘opposite, the supreme ineellectual hero. The two men are opposed in Homer. Odysseus sees Ajax among the the dead: Alone and apart stood Ajax’s soul, ssl angry because I won, ‘competing against him for Achilles arms, 1 wish Ta never won the prize, since afterwards earth covered such a noble head: Aja, most beatiful ofall Grecks ater Achilles and best ae war work? Ajax, visible but mute, has “beauty and deeds.” Odysseus, through whom thhe Ody’ listeners see the dead, has compassion and understanding. He speaks. He is sorry. But dead Ajax goes off silently, “on his way to Erebos,” everlastingly angry. In this scenario of redneck versus intellectual, the narrative gives weight to both. It does value the physical: the fierce glory rooted in physical strength, Bur this valuing. comes over through a voice that the narrative implies is somehow superior. Odysseus survives by more than physicality: bby “safe-thinking.” ‘Ajax’s madness was an early part of his epic persona. Investing only in body leads to madness where body is worse than useless. Ie tuns against you. Heracles bow by which he saved his friends becomes the tool by ‘which he kills them. Ajax’s murderous hands, tools of his greatness, bring him shame that leads to suicide.* This story of physicality that turns to madness and self-destruction needs intellect, represented by Odysseus, to “see” it, Sophocles Odysseus begins ina state of not seeing, not knowing. Athene can see Odysseus. He cannot sec her.? He guesses but does not know the criminal is Ajax. An “observer” spots Ajax leaping aver ehe plain, Odysseus follows a trail and sometimes loses it. ‘We know nothing clearly: we're wandering"! In face i is Ajax who does not sce clearly. Who is “wandering,” in the sense of Smad." Athene displays him, mad, to Odysseus and the audience. She alls Ajax 7 04. 11.543-S1, Syn 3/1-/8, 32, 9/0 1001, 195-100, 1135, 1577-81; Af. 10,43, 618, 772, 908 909, his swond, 816-22. ° Aj. 1. Cements he asked “Why cau’ Odyscur ee he? I alight she inviBe>" More important this scene roe the play pater of cing and note Wj. 5, 28,2932 10 Wandering.” ised ees i. 47; Chapter 12.68 CHAPTER? cout from his tent, where he believes he is torturing Odysseus. Odysseus hhimsef asks her not to. Athene says she'll procect him by averting, “the rays” of Ajax’ eyes. Odysseus still worries. ‘Do you shrink from seeing a raving man clearly?” asks Athene. Yes, he does. Don't worry, says Athene’ ATHENE: He won't sce you now, when you'te ner, Opyssuus: How come, ihe sees with the same eyes? Arvienn: Ml darken his eyelids 36 he ses." Sophceles underlines differing ways of seeing. When the audience them- selves first “See” Ajax, his eyes have been “darkened.” The sane man sces the mad, The mad man does nor see the sane. Madness changes sight, can darken ‘The night setting, the surrounding dark, is vital to the play and colors Ajax’s whole persona, “Night-Ajax” was “captured by mania,” His mad- ness, 2 “dark-turbid storm,” is treated—rather like Lear’s—as if it were part of the night in which it came, He killed herds and herdsmen “with dark sword blades”: ac nights climas, when evening torches were no longer burning. Even divinity scems shadow here. For Teemessa, Ajax’ tal with Athene ‘was part of his madness. That dialogue which the audience saw and heard, ‘with a goddess they could see bur Odysseus could not, was to her mad “Swords with some shadow.”!5 ‘The darkness before dawn is the setting that this “shadow"—this god dess of reason and wisdom—chooses for displaying madness to Odysseus and to the audience. Athene quizzes mad Ajax on what he's done. Flas he killed Agamemnon and Menclaus, tied Odysseus to a pillar? “Don't tor ture him so savagely.” But Ajax insists. Well, go on then, if that's what you want, she says. She is playing with him, cat-and-mouse, while he thinks he’ plying with Odysseus ‘She tums to the real Odysseus See the god’ strength, Odysseus —how great i it ‘Was any man more careful chan him, beter at doing right things a¢ the right time2!® 1 4j 69-70, 81-85, 1 Ay 2AB-86, 217 (cf ale. , 47), 35-S1, 141, 208 (hens, conse with lampre E. Spp. 222, suggests dake Pal 1992:87). ey 30 way 110-20 DARK, TWISTED SEEING 0 Her lesson is divine strength. Odysseus sees the other side 0° it: human weakness, exemplified by madness. “I know no one,” says Odysseus, an- swering Athene’s question. With a slight difference in one accent, his words could also have sounded like “I know nothing."!7 Ajax mad makes Odysseus see how nearly nothing, how shadowlike, all human beings are: Although he hates me, pty him in is il-uck, yoked up 1 this eeible ae [disster/madnes: thinking of mysc ae much as him, For Isce we ae, al of us, nothing ‘bur images and an empry’ shadow. 1® Whose darkness is it? Ajax’, oF ours? This vision of the human condition is one high poine inthe plays dance of secing and not seeing. From a god hhe cannot see, Odysseus leams Scleaey” about darkness: Aja’s dak belay ios, darkened seeing, darkened life. What he does with this insight pre- cchoes, a hundsed years beforehand, Aristotle’ famous summary of what tragedy makes ts audience feel Pity: for you see other as othe, other in a mess. Fear: because you also see other a self image of a vulerability in ‘which self shares. “T think of myself as much as him.” Odysseus words in Sophocles are the frst example { know of a mosif developed in Renaissance drama: madness as tagie mieror. Aja’s madness illustrates makes ‘lear—the tragic human condition, as dark. As shadow? “Were allan empry shadow” The frst person plural i chancteritc of ‘Odysseus inthis ply. le voces “us.” At the end of the lay, he argues for community valies, common humanity. Agamemnon opposes Ajex’s Daria, but even he will come to this: he will ned burying one day. Odysseus stresses human being? need to “share,” be with each other. His word is “with."29 Aja’s lonely dark fall resonates against this communal background. All ‘of usin the light go into the dark all of us “come to ths.” Thais Odys- seus’ perception. Anyone not agrecing is més, foolish. Agamemnon, ‘who insults dead Ajax, i epirontts, “thunder struck,” “crazed,” and will pay for his uncaring stance 2" As the audience knows he wil, back home © A 121 gv mend iy den oT ere in sou uno s terwcen an ate sed gre a or dn raj 21-26. Aas mada, dre Chapter 1,2, 135 Chr 19, 395 Avpentn. TEs Chap 2, 4. Py a ea: At Pe, 1453812 28.4 21-35, 125, 1522-65 19,1384 140,187, 13431365; 1278-90 aspen wos ctr ia cnn ne staph tbe croup Sig 21-26, 1375, 1087. Olymem sees Agunernonhyperbtaly of madness sce Chae 18, 404770 Harter 7 Athene’s moral to Odysseus is Ifyou are stronger or richer than others, don’t be proud, “Don boast against the gods”: Day bends dows and iis up all human things. Gods love those ‘who ate sphron. And hate che bad. For some of the audience, this would resonate agains a familiar line from the Onpsey: such i che ows [mind] of earth-bom human beings asi day which the father of gods ane! men brings on. “Mind” and day, mind like day, depend on gods. Some might remember Archilochus's reworking of that image, in which human thusnos, spit, i, changeable as day. Some might know Parmenides oblique use of both, in which “we” are a mix of night and light. “According to their bi within us, so is our noa.”22 Whether listeners knew or remembered all ‘or not, the thought would bite erue in them from their sense of the tadi- ‘ion, Human minds are as much at gods’ mercy as human bodies. AJax THE SHADOW Ajax seeing wrong in maciness, eyes “darkened” by a goddess who seems shadow to Tecmessa—image of humanity as “shadow,” of human “day” bounded by the dark—underines the permanent presence of shadow. He is darkness visible, a shadow in the light. The brief madness on which his story pivots curms him permanently inside out. Inthe Ode, he is shade scen by the ight of understanding and compassion, He belongs in Erebos In Sophocles, who shares with his audience the “fact” that madness i dark, the shadow that marks his mind also-macks his lf. ‘Other madnesses make people do decisively terrible things. Kill theic children, for instance. Heracles did not want to murder, and does. But ‘Ajax wanted to murder, and fails. His madness makes him do something ridiculous: Ajax, “best-looking, best at deeds, ofall Greeks after Achilles.” No one laughed at Achilles. Fleracles is pollured by his murder; Ajax is darkened forever by the madness that prevents his, and continues dark ‘when sine. “O darkness, my light! O Erebos, most shining to me!” “Day.” life, will nt bring pleasure, Everything i back to front. Time inverts “un clear” and “cleat”: unclear things grow, clear ones get hidden 2? He exemplifies this in his “deception-speech” (the critics’ name for it) 24, 127-88; Of 18.136-87; Archi 131 (Wet; Pumenes 16; Fadel 1992:33, 43,71 1 Ay, 395-96, 475 (361), 647-49. DARK, TWISTED SEEING a He says he wil kill himself, while seeming to say he'll give the idea up. (Or, he says he'l give up, while seeming to us to say hell kill himself) He who called on darkness as ight now speaks truths that sound like lies hide this sword of mine digging igo earth where no one will “Let night and Hades preserve it below “The chorus think hell bury his sword in the earth. The audience knows he'll put it there to bury it in himself. Aeschylus’ Ajax-play highlit earlier the physical difficulties of ehis operation, Pindar says Ajax “stabbed his _plrén” with the sword.?5 In Sophocles, Ajax’ frst mention ofthe stabbing, ‘stresses the darkness in and surrounding him. Unvttingly, he continues ‘Achene’ theme, the instability of human “day.” The play says be is under her anger for one day:2° He does her will this day in everything, even his rhetoric. In the madness she sent, he saw wrongly, saw animals. as men, In sanity, despairingly, he saw datk as light. Now he speaks of nigh’ fleting- ness, not day’s. His language refutes him, telling of everlasting night, not light: “Te everlasting circle of night gives place to white-horsed day’ that it may bun is light ‘To say night does noc last he calls it “everlasting”: aiands. The word chimes ‘with his name, Aias, and the tragic ery aii, “alas!”2” He is everlastingly dark. He will not lighten, even in Hades. “Everlasting” brings Erinys echoes from Aeschylus Eumenies, written ten oF fifteen years earlier, in which the Erinyes, introduced to Athens as “everlasting children of Night,” say ass (disease) may spill from their an- ger as an “everlasting,” Chemobyllke pollution in human earth. Orher, ‘more hopeful things-—the Athenian court, the love of Orestes’ heirs for Athens—also last “for ever.” But “everlasting” is the Erinyes’ word first. Darkness is forever. You make terms with it, or go under. Sophocles’ Ajax uses for “night” an Aeschylean word for Erinyes, Night’ children, and for their damage they do to “ground”: to the human relationships and minds that they, the madness-bringers, rle.28 ‘When Sophocles wrote Ajax he was still much influenced by Aeschylus, His Ajax expects Erinyes, who “always sce sufferings among mortals,” to 2.4), 658-60; see Goldhil 1986:181 28, 189-92. 251T.N. 726. On Aeschylus Aja tgy, 6 Aj Jeb ed, loo. $85-7 ese; and sec below 35. BA) 753-561, 78 27 Ay 672-73; ef. 430-82, 2 Lam, 416,479, 942,572, 672; Patel 1992:189-92.n cHarTeR 7 punish his enemies, His half brother Teucer expects Zeus, “remembering, Erinys, and end-bringing Justice,” to punish Agamemnon and. Men- laus.2 When Ajax says night makes room for day, he reminds his audi- cence of an everlasting Aeschylean presence. Night and Erinyes, plus the ‘madness, deach, and pollution they incarnate, are permanent residents in dhumaa lives and minds. ‘Ajac’s madness is par ofthe play’ fabric of night, darkness, not-secing. Hii “dark” sceing is mirrored by the plays closing issue, burial. How to put his body in darkness (where no man realy will see it), now he is “no longer a man but a shadow.""0 Becoming a shadow: the audience see it happen. Uniquely for Greek tragecy, this Ajax kills himself on stage. He was the pattern of physical strength. Through Odysseus’ eyes, the audience saw his madness as image (of universal human fralty. In his suicide, they sce this image cashed. The destruction of his body was foreshadowed in that momentary destruction of mind, “Destroy Us ry Ta Lice” Sophocles could find Homeric links berween Ajax and darkness elsewhere in epic, outside the Odsey. An ancient commentator on Aja relates the hero’ darkness to a passage in Iliad 17, where Ajax keeps Trojans off the corpse of Achilles friend, Patroclus. He kills many, he rallies the Greeks, he is amzzing: but the battefcld mists up where they fight, while Trojans fight in clear ai.31 He and Menelaus cannot see the other Greeks. “They are wrapped in mist along with thei horses.” Ajax realizes Zeus i helping, the Trojans. He prays Zeus, father, draw the Greeks from under the mist! Clear the sky! Let us see with ove eyes! Destroy ws, since this is what pleases you! [Br doi a leas, in te ight! Zeus pities him and at once seatered the mist, pushed away the cloud. The sun shone All the battle was made clear? 2 Aj 836-844, 1390-91; cf Il, 19-86-87. Arby infacnes: Aj Jeb Ie. s21 ai, anes 3111 17.286, 279-80, 356-60, 368, SIL 17626, 644-50. DARK, TWISTED SEEING 73 “Ifyou are going to destroy us, do icin the light.” As the ancieat commen- ‘aor sav, this plea unites Sophocles ply with the Ajax of the iad. In the Tlinpers, “Sack of Troy” of which fragments exist, the Greek doctor as the frst co spor the lightning lashing eyes and heavy thought of Aja in his anger. Lightning, lashing cyes; “heavy” angry mind. Sophocles’ jae picks this op wos Yer another epic, the lost Aishiopis, was the source for Aja's madness and suicide. In it, Ajax killed himself “about dawn”: at the boundaty of light and dark. Pindar kepe chs timing. In Aeschylus Thomcian Women, the sccond play of his Ajax trilogy, an cyewitnessclescribed Aja’ suicide ‘Ajax could not manage it alone, Flis sword bent, lke a bow, till one of the ddaimones, being present, showed...” Here the fragment encs, Showed ‘what? Showed the sword the way in? “One of the daimonss?” Ttrmust have bbeen a female one, for the participle is feminine, This, presumably, was Athene, “Showing” a sword a way into “flesh that give no place to death. 735 Darkness, madness, suicide; dando darkening the field where Ajax fights, daimin showing death a way into the bod, dain that is “shadow” 10 other people; lightning-flashing eyes, a heavy mind: tradition drew this net of associations tight round Ajax’ name. Sophocles gathers i¢ in and. pins it to dark seeing. Athene darkens Ajax’s eyes before the audience sees him. He stays darkened through the play until, the only tragie character killed on stage, le gets destroyed in the light. Precisely as he asked to be, in Homer. “TwisreD” SEEING Panmure: Lady, you uter madness and not sora, Constance: Tam not mad: this har T tea, is mines My name is Constance; I was Geffreys wifey Young Arthur is my som, and he is lost Tam not mad;—I would to heaven 1 were! For thn, "slike T should forget mel ©, if could, what gee should I forget! Preach some philosophy to make me mad. 1 tines; omen sia, Horner OCT S:139 Scholl 1.615;4 41,257 #471338 sayshe ile hil gp onli at the nd of night.” A sbi ane saya, “Wing the Athi he sys Aj killed hima pt ro, EAT 887” (CHAPTER 7 For, being not mad, but sensible of grief, [My reasonable part produces reason Hlow I may be deliverd of these woes, ‘And teaches me t Kill or hang mysele IT were mad, [should forget my sons ‘Or madly think, a babe of outs were he: am not mad, Too well, r00 well fee! ‘The diferent plague of each calamis: Shakespeare, King Job 34 Ajax sees animals as men, sees dark as light. He is hung round with images ff ansmality as well as darkness. Other mad people do the opposite: they take human beings for animals. Agave sees her own son as a lion, Other ‘mad figures in lost tragedies killed their children secing them as some other living thing. A decr, a vine.%* Inverted vision, therefore, i central to tragic images of madness. What it inverts—animals and people, dark and light—points to Greek percep- tions of madness a8 dark, and also as nonhuman (see Chapter 13). The ‘mad are perceived as isolated (see Chapter 10) by how and what they sec. ‘They are alone in the dark, like seers. We should also notice the fact of inversion itself. The twist of it, mony (see Chapter 12) from the norm. "The mad do not look normal to other people. They are not supposed to see notmally either. Madness skews the two-way flow between what self sees and how others see scl£37 Mad eyes roll, ewist. The word is dia- strpos, “cross-turned.” Translation through Latin would give “per- verted.” Io’ shape, mind and eyes are diarropbo. In. tragedy and medical writes, diastrphoi eyes are a sign of madness.38 Mad eyes ate also blood- shot: a8 if blood is one of the things the mad sce when other people do ‘not. Perversion, in the normal toute of communication between seif and other, is blood-fled. "The mad perceive wrongly, lke the runk.#9 They take pleasure in situa tions that are desolating. Their mad joy intensifies grief others feel for them. Euripides shows us this with his own twist. Mad! Cassandra sees truly, though others do not know it, In Trojan Women, she must be 4, Stanfond elt 5A. 1, 87-6208) (Lac 2:398-401); bean mn. 8-495, Chapter 19, 58. 1 See Pal 1992:59-63 1 TV 882; HF; Ba 1128; Or. 283; Hp. Prog, 7 (Loeb 2:16); Pad! 1992:60, 1 HP 933-3; Fraenkel ad Ag. 1428. Wath Orestes the age ese hat his mds enti aig Hens who dip blond frm tet own ye: Pade 1992:60 176. “e Drusk companions fl they ak “svieing toa fale shore” Di. 124 (127 Taryn); scevar Groningen 1960/93-95, Drinkers and made. Dionysus, abowe, Chaps 3, 17-19. DARK, TWISTED SEEING 78 Agamemnon’s sex-save. Introduced as mainat, a “raving woman,” bac- (dean acid Using won il Appointee a wedding: = Bese the bridegroom! blescl am I in a royal wedding-bed .., Dance, mother! Sing the wedding-song-—ol! with happy songs. Come, daughters of Try in your lovely dresses, sing of my marriage, hymn my husband, fted for my bed.*! -Heecuba says her suffering has not made her siphrén, “You stayin the same [state].” “Give her tears for these wedding, songs of hers.” she tells the ‘chorus.2 She thinks Cassandra, embracing, humiliation and captivity as, ‘cause for joy, is seeing them wrongly. But Cassandra switches from mad lyric song to sane iambic rhythm, smarking her understanding of conventional perceptions. Her jay is not deluded but prophetic. Sex with her will be fatal t Agamemnon, (The audience knows ths. In Aeschylus, Cassandra is Clyemnestra’s extra excuse for killing Agamemnon.) “Pi kill him,” says Cassandra. She will avenge her father and brothers. Cassandra is a prophet. She does not sce wrongly, when mad, But Ajax does. He sees bad (the dead cattle) as good. The chorus is glad to hear he is sane again, but Tecmessa asks, Is it better to be unfortunate and enjoy yourself, while your frends grieve for you? Or to share awareness of your ‘misfortune with your friends? The fewer people unhappy, the better, says the chorus. Then we should wish Ajax to stay mad. When mad, he took pleasure inthe evs he had though we, who were sane, were saddened tw be wid him. Bur now he’ stopped, relieved of sickness, he grieves sind, no less than before, we're sad roo. Bap as Goo, Brzoven as ENEMY ‘Mad people sce tragically wrongly, Bad seems good. Their nearest and dearest seem enemies. Orestes suldenly sees his caring sister as “one ofthe bad ones,” initiating one of his Erinyscfts, She restrains him. “Let go!” he + Di, 307-40; 306,341. © Tn. 350-81, Spr: above, Chapter 3,» 21; below, Chapter 12, ma. 58-61 (et: Chapter 2, on 6, 33), Te. 347-60, AY 265-76,76 CHAPTER? One of my Erinyes, you clutch my waist to throw me into Tatars! [Heracles sees his own father as his enemy's father, his own children as his enemy’ children.¢5 “Themad take with joy the things thac damage them. They sce those they love as enemies, As the chorus of Antigone sings, bad seems a some times gos! to the man whose pnenes go drives to ates “The most scaring example of inverting friend and foc is Agave at the end of Bacchat, sing her sons head 38a Kon’ When she holds ie up, the moral spotlight tums, a moment, on the chorus, observers of her mad seeing, They are maenads too. Bu they fol- lowed Bacchus willing; while he made Agave a maenad to punish her Pentheus has persecuted them, they were glad of his death? Bue now they sce mad Agave glorying in Pentheuss head, and they ate shaken. “Share ‘my banquet,” she demands. “What shall Ishaee, unhappy that Iam?” re- turns the chorus leader. Tlaydn, “unhappy, wretched noe a word they used before of themselves in relation to what Bacchus did. They are “Svretehed” seving this. In thee last speech they call Agave, 0, ralaina, ‘wretched.4® Tei fast stance to her isa pity in which, you could say, they ako share. For their voiee of eclebration for wild innocence is impossible to sustain, now they see what their Dionysus made Agave do. ‘Both partes here are “maenads": that word whic means both Bacchi ‘worshippers ancl “madwomen,” Yet they ae sane, she mad. Then Cacimus, her fates, cakes over. There is a wider gui here between his secing, his relation with Dionysus, and Agave’, Though he worshipped Bacchus, he never tan mad on hills. Now he cries for her sorrows, and for his enn ‘Agave docs not know why. She explains it by Cadmus age: “Fiow biter is ‘old age, how sullen in its eyes.” “Eyes” sum up the difference berween them. Tike Teemessa, Cadmus fels che mad person would be happier if dhe ‘madness did not pass. “When you think sanely about what you have done," he says, “youll grieve with terrible anguish +8 Op 261, 264-65; HF 968, 970-1000. in 621-28; ace Chae 1. 3, al App, 43-47, Pron: Pale 1992:20- 22, diese “har” damage cain: bom Chapter 16, 17. Ar “dnawer™= Chagecr 18, Append: ha. 1020, 108. + 3a. 186, 1200 Ba 1248-52, 6.281, DARK, TWISTED SEEING ” It you stayed as you now are forever, you would not sem to be miserable ‘though you wouldn't be frunate All the same, he brings Agave back to sanity, co a life of everasting ‘guish, by making her see that head correctly. ‘The mad sce twisted. The twist may go cither way. A good thing, a beloved person, a child, seen as an enemy, a bad thing. Or a bad thing—a dead child, slaughtered shecp, sexual slavery-—scen with gle: as a slain lion, slain enemies, a wedding. Animals scen as people, people seen as animals. Maines is inner datk. The “per-version” ofits ways ef seeing is dark in the sense of dangerous, wrong, bad. 0 na. 1259-62Chapter 8 ‘TRUE SEEING Wuar Orttirs CaNNor Sex: Cassanpra, ORESTES, JO TM tell thee a miracke— Tam not ma yer, £0 my cause of soerow: “TW heaven oer my head seems made of molten brass, “The catth of flaming sulphur, yee am noe mad, Webster, The Duchess of Mal 4.2. -Mapwess inverts secing. Darkened forever by his moment of madness, ‘Ajax sees dark as light. But the inversion may not always be wrong, ether empirically or morally We, from where we are, can imagine ways in which taking dark for light can mean seeing not falsely, but more truly. Seeing, where others see nothing, Seeing in the dark. This possibility operates in fith- PY 569-76. apnoea: ome ve sogrste To head Hermes pipe charming Ares asleep kn Sophocles Indie, Argus hams sang ics (se Gif wf PY 567 "TRUE SEEING 81 the sever-mouthed city. And you—T think you go before me asa bull Horns have come up ‘on your forehead, Were you perhaps an animal ll the time? You'e certainly bull now. Drowysus: The gous with us. Before, he was not kind. Hes with us. Nw om sce as you soll In ths scene of sav-toothed ironies and double enrendees, Pentkeus has a teu ephiphany. Dionysus was known to appear as a bull Other people in the play have seen the Stranger in human disguise. Pentheus tried to dis- mantle that disguise, stripping off the long hair and thyesus. Now he sees Dionysus in «sense corectly: god as bul. Pentheus is under Dionysiss spell now. Mad. Dionysus talks to him as Athene talks to mad Ajax, when she calls him out to be mocked: god talking man into displaying himself in the tap? Penthecus sees double, ike someone drunk. The “god of drinks mad- dened hhim.!® Seeing double, secing a human shape as animal, seems ‘wrong to the sane and the sober. But Dionysus’ human shape vas a dis- guise. There ar, in a sens, ewo of Thebes: the civilized safe iy run by Fhuman beings, and the place where divine violence erupts, a broken work. ‘There are eo “suns” here: the rules chat people see and lve by. and the anarchic radiance of gods. The audience knows the disguised god's plot. ‘They see here madness seeing wrongly seeing true “Foxe Frenzy” axp Puaro's Paagpaus Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, ‘Such shaping finrasies, that apprehend More than ool reason ever compechends. ‘The lunatic, the lover, andthe poct ‘Ace of imagination all compact (One sees moce devils than vast hell ean hol. “The poet’ eye, in a fine feney rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, Shakespeare, A Midvwmmer Night Dream 5.1 For us, now, in some contexts, i isa familiar idea that mad perceptions ‘may be more, not less, true chan sane ones. The idea may feel lite ours. 5 Bn. 917-24; cf. PY 673, 382. ® See Dodds al Ba, 912-76; Aj. 89-95. God a ball: Pael 1992:144 n, 10, Peathsus tipping Dionysia, 493-95 12 Dod Ba 918. “God of: ae Chater 8, 19,2282 CHAPTER 8 Something like ic contributed, fr instance, ro the revaling of madness land pyehiary in the 1960s. Yen the Form in which we entertain i this idea immers with ingredients from many diferent centuries and societies, Ththis and the next chapter, shall isolate thre ingredients which from snedineal times through the Renaissance down to us, helped to privilege iad seeing a ec. “The fst, closet to tragedy itself is Plato Phaedra, Ie stamped on Eurepean imagination the image of divine “fine frenzy” important to ‘Montagne and the Italian humanists, in wich lovers, the mad, the poets, see tits the sane cannot"? Tn serting this kea loose in subsequent imagination, the dialog etab- lished a gulf berween ways of ceng madness in tragedy and ways OF = ing madness after it. No one in tragedy mnt to see dacmons like Brings, on se Dionysus a5 a ball. No-one wants Cassndras prophetic thls Casandra least of al. The macnad chorus of Bane may sing how wo1- deri i is, running through forests mad with your hai lose, but atthe end, faced with what Dionysus madness did, they cal themsches Syretched.” They do not value the madness in ise "Te idea that madness brought anything as postive a “blessngs”!* comes primarily from Plto, from the Phaedra. 1 8 Greck, in that iti swriven by a Greek. But i did not represent is cuture’ belies even then Teis noc fith-century. Tagedy’s spectators and poets woud not hve fai “The Phd is one ofthe mos ironic, herria, subtle of texts. Not ing in i is simple evidence for anyone’ views of madness: not those of Pee noe those of Greece general Is images of mania are makiple and seltcontraictory, and must have been staring atthe time. The dialogue intreduees chem for purposes of its own. Embedded in this lige of tnginal ideas i the statement which had such influence on the Renais- Sance and on us: that god-given mania can bring “goods.” ‘Manra Cuasstersp sy Human Acrivrry ‘The Phacdirus has two accounts of god-given madness. The first rises from 1 rebuttal of the sophistic chim that you should prefer lovers who do not 1 Sc, ep, Bateson 1978:197, 172, on 2 schizophrenic shapal in childhood by “fe snerpecti his messages when he ed something be knew wa le, whowe bens Arar Tever sated. Lang 1965:11-12 Bega, "In the eonteat of oor preci ysvsie TRGS thc we cll norma ay, ll our ames of reference are amigos an ufo Our norma dpsed? sate ro fen the aation of easy” See bows, ‘Chaser 9, 0.2L M2 See Chaper 6, mn 1, 8-9. 14 See Chaper 9, 2.21 ‘TRUE SEEING 83 truly love you to those who love you madly. Socrates argued playfully for the notion that true lovers are mad and should be avoided, Now he turns against it: Te would be true, iPie were a simple fct chat ania i bad. But in fat the sreatet goods come o us through mania, as long 3 itis given by divine git ‘When mad, the priestess a Delphi and those at Dodona did many fe things for sates and individuals. When sane, they id ltl, or nothing. By proph- «ying in divine possession, che Sibyl and others have foretold the future to ‘many people, and guided people vight.!* Proper in madoes: not quite nw ids, Heli had athe Sibyl prophesied “vith raving mouth.” But we do not know how sagt his Ss rccved in times Sorte ing with wordplay areal invoked by another pardoxil weiter (who liewie sno good evidence for what ‘Be cunie general belied). Modern langage Spurs in an xa lee” tod els prophecy “manic” Fin, uly it Was nie” Aan om god is beter han human sanity (pao) dhe mental tain which people imerpret signs. Mad tr propheey i better than augur whch sane Im onron ch bybvang The fat model of good giving godegiven mania then, i prophet cee seca aeeee a ea area o ‘This monia has broken ou in, and ako held, unspecied lis of “ina and toa ele suring nf by anit mina. A rare word, which mane, eet, “usr of anger Minaiaappeac in aon between the dying and the Uvng, Dying bar wan Ai dead pr wat iy ay hy a ome to you some mina of gods” One aged ses of Are as Seon suger? apie he ae of Cais Thebes ound, bce ‘Cadmus Killed his dralion (snake, mn”). Ares’ ménimata demand that CGreon, Thbe? prea rl,tur ave fi own som ile in the eve wthee Ars dal ey. Minot he Phd, here, must how Pano thinking with rape, perhaps especialy Theban, ais. He may Be quot ing frm the pl something Bat is known 0 do.” emg dt ni, Sc wi a lped wih hers, uch goede sentence whowe pent cal subject is mania: . hae 1 Ph Phd 244. 1 Heraclitus fe 92DK; PL Phar, 244C-D. CE. Pde 1992:167 14. 1 BP 24D-E, 27 Pion, 981-35; Linforth 1946-165. Monin 22.258, Of. 1.73; ch: Lobes onjectut ad Cho, 278; blo, Chapt 20, n. 28au CHAPTER 8 Macinss has entered in aod prophesied and found release for those who needed it, fleeing to prayers and the service of gods, from which it has found. purifications and rites elem) an made healthy forthe present and face the one who hs it [who has the mani] finding solution for presenti or the ane wha is mad inthe right way, and possessed." “The sentence is difficult: no Plato expert Ihave consulted, in commentaries or in person, is entirely sure ofits interpretation, or even punctuation. Greck often uses mania as nas, “sickness,” The dialogue has already sug _gestee mad love is sick (“the lover i sicker than the nonlover”) bur this is later corrected.19 The idea of sickness here is problematic. Is madness one of the sicknesses, or their means of cure? ‘The sentence starts as if mania is one of these “greatest sufferings” in- flicted on families because of angry gods, or angry dead. But it continues as if madness itself, like a clairvoyant, has “discovered” rituals to avert these sicknesses.20 Mania turns out to be not sick, but prophetically "These ancient families sound very lke tragic ones—the house of Laius fr Attens, for instance—where a cutse, embodied in Erinyes, makes family ‘members continue mad destructive acts.2” But in the sentence as we have it iti unclear who experiences this madness. Family members themselves? (Or elsievoyants?22 Whichever it is, they must be mad orth, “in the right way.” As in the prophecy model, the benefits of real madness are con- trasted with the flat sane exercise of human craft “The third example is poctic: madness of Muses. As in the second, mania is the grammatical agent. Madness “takes a soft, untrodden soul, and, wakes it, inspiring i [+kbacchewonaa] to songs and poetry.” Poets who think they can do without mania get nowhere. The poetry ofthe mad makes that of the sane fade ro nothing,?3 Of course others before Plato had connected poetic, like prophetic, in- spiration with madness. Notably Democritus, who said the best poems were made “with divine frenzy and holy breath.” An old idea: one that deeply engages Plato. He says elsewhere that poets clo not know what they ee ECLA 2 caper 1-17, Mad er Dh 208, ec one St eas ran eee ee eee i ‘TRUE SEEING 85 are talking about, or meaning. Poetry is du ro you yourself No one asks who gets the “goods” from madness. Inthe frst example, the clients benefit, not the mad priestesses. In the second, i is hard know who is going mad. Madness benefits families. Do they or their clair voyants go mad? It would fic the fist example if the professionals go mad, the sick families benefit The thied example is moot. Who are the benef aries of great poetry? Audiences? Poets? Plato does not ask. ‘The passage ends with the claim thar godt-given mania produces “noble works.”25 This wheels in one of antiquity’ most enduring images: the wings, chariot, and horses of the soul. Te comes in a speech on the “fourth, mania,” erotic madness, “best ofall frenzies.” Socrates describes what hap- ppens to souls who truly love. Their wings sprout: ths is salvation via mad loving. The mad lover also brings blessings fo the beloved, A sine lovers attentions “beget in the loved soul a nonfreedom [ie., meanness, petty: ‘mindedness] which the masses praise as vietue, and will make the soul roll, around the earth for nine thousand years and be axous [mindlss] under the earth.”26 A paradox. Sanity makes the beloved do what is traditionally ‘mad: wander (sce Chapter 11). It makes the beloved anous, mindless, mad. Mad lovers are better after al ‘The silence of the frst three examples, aver who receives mania’ goods, is carried on here. Who gets the “goods” of mad love, the beloved or the lover? Socrates is really gunning for the mad, actively loving soul. But the loved soul benefits too. ‘The whole piece is mad, in a way: a kind of “mythic hymn’ delivered inspitationally, like the work of mad poets. Later on, Socrates loks back fon it a “play."™7| One point important for later readers is thar the sprouting wings, the soul's development through mad love, go with “seeing ruth,” IF the greatest goods come to us through madness, their climax is true vision. Tt is love that makes wings sprout. Love is only the fourth madness, and not all madness is love. Bur this hymn on sprouting wings is embedded in a discussion of madness. ‘This image of spiritual development was magnetically comgelling. In the long reception of the Phaedrus, another, separate idea can be read, by. (0 “Muse within you," not 2 Sce Democtins fir. 17-19DK; PL. Crt. 428C. See Delite 1984:28-20; Dokl 1951:82, 101 1m. 128-26; Marie 1969; atunay 1981 DL Pdr 2448, 26 DL Phas 249D-E, 256, » Rea 1987111; PL. Phe, 2620, 28 PL Phd. 247A, 2478, 248C-D, 249,86 CHAPTER 3 association, in or from the text: madness makes your souls wings grow; madness lifts the soul to higher planes, to see truths inaccessible to the (Maw1a Cassie ay Goos “The second account of madness is a misleading description of the first. Commentators have tried to reconcile them but the differences are obvi= ‘ously part of the design. Plato is an exact, and exacting, writer.2” "This new account starts off by saying that “we” (Socrates and Phacdrus) said “here were two kinds of mania, one from human ills [uasémata}, the ther fiom a divine release from accustomed habits."29 “We” never di (On the contrary, mania was said to hells. Iehad been suggested, earlier, thar eme lovers were “sick,” but ths was set up o be knocked down. The fiese account did not say madness itself was sick. It began by saying the _Breatest goods come from madness, “as long, however, as itis god-given” and then explored god-given madness. The new account uses some of the same language, but in different places, to say different things. In the first, ‘mania brought “release” from ills. Now, there are two classes of mania, ‘one dae to ills, another that brings “release” from habit. “Release” is still a ‘good, but in a different context? So this opening warns readers that the new account may not tell it as it was about the first. ‘The main difference is in the way of classifying muni, The new way is ‘what everyone remembers (reading it back, asthe dialogue misleadingly invites us to do, into the first) from the Phaedrus. Dodds, for instance, amalgamates them in his “Blessings of Madness” chapter in The Grees and ‘he Irational 38 ‘This second account clasifies madness by the gous that inspire each one: “We divided divine madness into four parts: mantic, inspired by Apollo; mystic [or “pertaining to rites,” telestte, inspired by Dionysus; poetic, inspired by the Muses; and fourth erotic, inspired by Aphrodite and Eros, which we sad was the best.” This was not how the frst account classified things. [e was much messier; and done from the human perspective. Ex- cept for Muses, no gods appeared in it. The prophetic examples included ‘Sibyl, and priestesses ar Dodona a well as Delphi. Now everything except 2 Hackonhs commentary “amis the second ccoune is “nex se his notes | 2658, 266A. Staggering he sites the Greck to whats writer With more concer For Fer sane tht Pls wn ane made Socrates.” Fora crc sce Fear 947.6061 PPh 2658. 2 See abe, m1. 2 Bealgt 265E; cf pally, 44, 2% Dodd 1951: ch 3 PPh, 2580, “TRUE SEEING 87 for Delphi, and Apollo, is missing. No Sibyls, Dodona, of Zess (whose prophetic shrine was Dodona). Prophetic mania belongs only to Apollo. ‘The second example was ambiguous, but certainly mixed prophetic powers with healing. Prophecy is kept out here and, again, one specific god is assigned to this mania: Dionysus, ‘One thing happening here isa distorting simplification. The taxonomy is now via gods, but given spurious authority by th false claim that “we” said it before. Side issues are left out. No Zeus under “prophecy.” No prophecy in Dionysus’s mania. ‘Though it was nor his ceneral feature, Dionysus madness was in fact known to have prophetic power, “Bacchic frenzy and madness have much prophecy." As for telestikz, which means “associated with tees [rites]”: Dionysus was not che only god with rites, nor even the only ane with initiatory, mystic rites (the main fourth-century use of the word). So why Dionysus, here? ‘elestke picks up tletai from the first account, where this manta “discov- cred!” healing “vies.” Through the fifth century, tletal is used for “rites” ‘generally, in many cults: of Athene, of divine Heracles, at Bleusis, Ae the tend of the century, Aristophanes uses it of Orphic rtes.® By this time it is mainly, but not only, used for rites in mystery cults, like those of Eleuss Bucat this time, in Bacchae, Euripides Dionysus uses i of his own cule and his chorus sings, Happy is he who knows the rites of gods, bccn (raving in bachic frenzy} ‘on mountains in holy purifications 7 ‘This reflects how the word increasingly, in the late fifth century, means secret, initiatory rites, often connected with “purifications.” Plato himself, elsewhere, speaks of releases and purifications from crimes, throagh sacri fices that people ell tlc. He also connects purifications (katharmof) and certain teletas with Dionysiae dances.*# For Plato, teletaé often seems 0 ‘mean initiatory rites. In Alexandrian times, the word is increasingly at- tracted to secretness, and offen means a “rite” with some hidden philo- sophic meaning. By Philo's day ic ean even mean “inner meaning.” But for fourth-century readers of the Phacdrus, teletai might mean Ba. 299; sone. 4 56 Pi 0.342, 9.71; N. 1034; Fd. 2.171; Andocides 11; Ae Ra. 1082, Pex 18 ALIT 939, Orsted av iscomsmenorate i the "vt of the Anthesterse Pal 1992:182-85, ¥ ha 22, 73-77, Se Lnforts 196, DL Rep. 3564, Ley. $18C. 3 Sce Zire 1984; Dosa Ba. 72-75.88 (CHAPTER 8 “ites” of any Kind; or especially (but not only) “sceret rites"; or purely iniiatory, purificatory rites. At this distance, we cannot know. Whatever tiney thoughe the word meant, I suspect it reminded them also of Bacchae. Release, purification, crime and cleansing, seletai, and tragic resonances figared in the second example, in the frst account of maria. There, they ‘were not specifically associated with Dionysus. Bue they are important to Bacchee, the play that featured Dionysus himself. Its chorus connects tletai and putifications. Teiresias speaks of “goods that come through” Di ‘onysus, a line suggestively similar to Socrates claim that goods come to us through madness.40 ‘The play says tha Dionysus, by ending grief and bringing the blessed forgeting of slecp, brings pharmator ponin, “cure for sufferings. The dia logue’ frst accoune of maciness says one particular type of madness does the same thing: cure sufferings. And this type is, of course, the one that the second account assigns to Dionysus. The play says Dionysus is prophetic. So is this mania, in the dialogue’ first account:** In the play's polarization becween Pentheus and Dionysus, opposed young males, Pentheus stands for insanely sane human containment, for imprisonment. Dionysus stands for the sanely mad, for not being bind able, for divine release: physical, psychic, moral, social.2 Divine “release” is a good in the Phaedrus, whose uniquely wild setting frees its protago- nists from the colonnades, from normal civilization +® Tn the pay these cousins, one mortal, one divine, offer ewo ways of male boeing, which seem central to the Phaed?uts exposition of different ways of loving. (We mighe remember chat Bazchae starts from the desire of a god to bbe honored anid in some sense loved: to this end he has taken on mortal tides,” mortal form.) Their opposition is alive in Socrates’ turnaround. Fromarguing that the nonlover is preferable, because not mad, he ends up, saying the nonlover makes the beloved amous, which in tragedy means “mad While mad, lovers see truth. "The play, then, offers a context in which i is sane to be mad. So does Plato’ dialogue. “There were hints inthe first account that could have prepared readers for attributing the second mania to Dionysus. They pointed to Dionysus via + a 285; PL Pr. 2440. “280-82, 298; PI Pir, 2KKD-E (oe pono 2440; poptiasn,aplly,and ain nn DAR), and sce above, 0 “Oy 252, 239, 615-2, 626. 1 From Ea ten, Pl Ph 227A. On wor: Fei 198734, 2; above, a. 32,41 ‘he Pile 256E, the noolovers chip Ye axed “with mot spirit,” offering ‘Sparse moral goa,” a engender in he oer sol anata, nontetonn “which the wert praise a vie.” “HP, 257A, sce Chapter 2,38. 53 ‘TRUE SEEING 89 tragedy; specifically, wo late fifh-ceneury plays, Batbae and Phoenician Wome. "Theban plays. An itis often Thebes the offers the sharpest ex- amples of what the fist account alludes to: ancient families, mad cursed suflering, rites, release. All agedies are under the auspices of Dionysus, but Thebes is his own home town. Furthermore, Plato elsewhere connects rclease purification, and some form of prophecy with Dionysian “rites” and dance. Tragedy itsefis one of Dionysus rites and dance: rites whose effect Plato’ pupil Aristotle would later describe as kaxharss, “purication.™8 Tam not suggesting tha by “rces” Plato means tragic performances Simply tha in both accounts ofthis madness, lao is thinking with Di- ‘onysuss own violent genre; and possibly also with the most vioknt play of all, whose protagonist is tom to bloody pieces. Plato is responding, I think, to tragedy interes in madness, 38 well a8 to the madness of its godt In the frst acount, Socrates classified madness through human beings who fel it—priestesss, sick families or thee healers, poets, lvers—and hat ie made them do, In the second, madnesses are classifcd by their gods, The dialogue moves from human phenomena and felings co their divine source and meaning. Madness is one vehicle of that movement. Plato plays with traction, for his own idiosyncrati ends. Hre also, I think, makes his cwn use of madness a tragedy represents it that it may be both human, and divine. These are always two ways of seeing it? As far as later ways of seeing madness are concerned, Plato tamed a new ‘omer, The Phaedras implies that most peopl inthe fourth century think _maclnes is shameful ® But in suggesting that for those in the know there ate better ways of thinking about it, the dialogue freed European imagina- tion to value madness. Henceforth in prophecy, poet, ritual, and love, ‘madness may see “more than cool reason ever comprehends,” as Theseus, that paradigm of cool and kingly Athenian reason, says in’ Shakespeare 4 Thebes: Zn 1990, Katars, poreations: Arist Pet, 44927; shoe, 38 4 Violence: Pall 19906:386, 365 Tragedy’ intrest mad: 1981-11825; abe, Pp. 8-10, and Blow, pp 19-94, 239-48, 1” See Chap 18 39 4 PL Pdr 44D; sce Dokl 195182-83 0 2,Chapter 9 A LEGACY OF TRUE MAD SEEING ‘Satino “A Coury oF TrurH”: DEMOcRITUS AT ABDERA [Nothing but noise and fly ‘Can keep me in my right wits, whereas reason ‘And silence make me stark mad, ‘— Webster, The Ducbs of Malf 4-2 “Tus Phra ld ino Greck imagination a hieroglyph of sedocive new though about madness ‘These eould work two waj. Fit, the Way thing ar pt cnet in dhe Pdr tha tre madness may engender pete ar eng, Snel ey pe the Pianta somerest oer loving and nonlving, madnee and sar reste secing may ls notnies, ie adnes, Thee maybe nnd ways oF sting tar ether people wrongly all madness. Por tne Brat time, ten (excep pethap, for the parades of Her acl the de sre in Grek hough that nox everyone may ace what SEE Whar dhe spd or uneducated cll mes may in tbe tut ion For Plat, sever vision would men posh. In the Phase remade second acount of mania about "reas om lends hon sai He SESGy pereaed at Ing dire from normal peopl. But ltr ween oi oc onyon the idea tha in other reas well as hloso- Fincipetly the ort, acess may se more tl. ME Spiny or wo tar thi leased in a Porat of a meeting terucen ache philosopher and a donor, given noveiicweatment in eiuses of tious ltrs compove been the sid and Ba ent FEMS The Aburites, Democrats ellow cizes, ack Hippocrates to Come to Avira and eure Democritus, who is mad through too mach iidom” Hie ha thee Kinds ofeymptom’ od ideas, suomi and sl wa tio and laughter ln the Renaieance, iis laughing is De wut tlimanic age! he is "the lughing pllosopher") The Ab * Homeric characters get ace of being na when they ae sine, Bye, above, p22. Tncocs rot meandgresment over what madness Penepe jus thinks Era ‘rong ifs mad vo ay Oust has come bk, Fle opinions when mad above, p74 S'Fie ewer: in Greckplowophicl context: Temkin 1985; more rece, Smith 1990.21-22, LEGACY OF TRUE MAD SEEING a drites complain, “He laughs at everything, big and small, and counts all life for nothing.” He writes about the lower world, says the airs fall of images, listens to birdsong, sings songs to himsel, softy, at night. His complexion has gone off along with his mind, From their letter, Hippocrates doubts the madness. He thinksof melan- holies, He'd lke t0 remind Democritus there is joy as well as grief in the world, bur thinks he shows strength of sou! in ignoring mundane things like family nd property. Some unusual mental conditions, ike people pur- suing wisdom, people who look down on human affairs (allthis corre- sponds, though he does notsay’s0, to curtent philosophical postions), do need solitude. They are not morbid, but need aisrasi, freedom fiom dis turbance. A freed mind surges upward and sees “a country of truth” un- touched by relatives, nuisances, daemons, or human maxims and projects, where “the large vault of heaven is decorated with the restles stars.” IF wisdom transports Democritus there, of course the unedincated Abderites cannot understand him, (Hippocrates is not writing to the Abderites.) ‘The Abderites may be misreading desire for solitude, as madness. Maybe they need treatment In Abdera, Hippocrates’ suspicions are contirmed. Democritus is not mad, Quite the contrary. Scoring human affairs, he is writing “on mad- ness": what it is, how it begins, how to relieve it. He dissects enimals to learn about bile, the cause of madness. Impressed, Hippocrates wishes he had time for such research. Whats stopping you? asks Democritus con- temptuously, Property? Children? Money, discasc, death? Weddings? ‘Mocking Hippocrates, Democritus derides people who squander their lives on senseless things and cause their own misfortanes—at which he laughs Hippocrates disagrees, The fault is not in human beings but in the ne- cessitics of lif, and in nature, who put us here. Democritus converts him with a Cynic diatribe on the uselessness of “man.” No match for the phi- losopher, Hippocrates thanks the obtuse Abderites for the opportunity to imect this wisest of men. Yes, people waste their lives uselessy: The Cynic moral wins. In ts time, this story was elated to and comes from the complex inter action of competing, overlapping Hellenistic philosophies, plus ‘he legacy of Plato. Democritus symptoms express popular Greek images of mad- ‘ness, But that he sees truths about human life which ordinary people ean- not see. this is ulimatey from the Paras "The Norther Renaissance loved this story. Hundreds of translations, cexcgeses, interpretations, reworkings and discussions give it new values 2 Swe, Cynic input: Ren 1992:14-27, 4 See Chapter yn 12,15, 41-44