The Bacchae

I have always loved The Bacchae when it was written by Euripides, I love it even more now that it has been translated by Soyinka. When I first approached The Bacchae we were using it to analyze religious ritual and its relationship to drama. But I don’t think that is why Soyinka translated it.
To me Dionysus was the forerunner of Jesus, the very first resurrection God. Having been considered twice born just as Jesus was it proffers some very interesting ideas about the originality of Christianity. Then there is the wine connection. Wine has always been connected with religious ritual. It was connected even before the Christians stole it for their rituals.
To me the ending that Soyinka has placed at the end of the play is far more hopeful than the banishment of Agave. This version posits a potential redemption for Agave in drinking the gift of wine from her sacrifice. This brings not the doom and gloom of banishment that we see from the end of the original version but a positive result from the worship of Dionysus. I don’t know how anyone could get through the original version of the play and not be terrified of the cult of the Bacchae.
Imagine if we woke up one morning and found that all the women had gotten completely trashed and headed to eastern Kentucky. Imagine if they were parading through the Appalachian Mountains tearing animals to shred and generally giving themselves over to mindlessness. I only see that in one place Spring Break. To me spring break parties sound like the perfect place for mindlessness such as this to settle in. If that makes me Pentheus so be it.
One more side note, Soyinka makes a far more militant translation out of this play. It reads as though the events of this play were taking place in Nigeria. I find it in characters such as the slave leader and most especially in Dionysus. He does appear as an effeminate beauty “When the present is intolerable the unknown harbors no risk.” Wise words that bring out the most desperate of ourselves.