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The Rebirth of Tragedy: Protest and Evolution in Modern Greek Drama

1987; Western Michigan University; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/cdr.1987.0028

1936-1637

Stratos E. Constantinidis,

Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies

The Rebirth of Tragedy: Protest and Evolution in Modern Greek Drama Stratos E. Constantinidis Is the "closet" drama of Angelos Sikelianos, Nikos Kazantzakis , and Kostis Palamas "inferior" to their poems and novels? The poor stage history of their plays supports the critical opinion to date that gives an affirmative answer to the above question. When one or two of their plays received a production or a stage reading, they reaped disapproval rather than applause from audiences and critics. Linos Politis, for example, considered Sikelianos' first complete tragedy, The Sibyl (1940), as a "genuinely inspired" work, but, because of its difficult language and symbols which stand beyond the grasp of general audiences, Politis was reluctant to call it a tragedy or even a play. In Sikelianos' subsequent tragedies the high (if difficult) symbolism of The Sibyl becomes an easier symbolism of social and political clashes (people and rulers). In The Death of Digenis (his last and feeblest tragedy, which has also the unwarranted title of Christ Unbound) Digenis, leader of the Manichean heretics, is a revolutionary against the emperor Basil, and the defender of the weak and poor against the rich and rulers.l Politis concluded that Sikelianos is excellent when he writes lyric poems; even his most outstanding tragedies do not show him at his best (p. 199). Politis' reading of Sikelianos' poetic drama is, however, unjustly reductionist and misleading. To begin with, the "unwarranted " title Christ Unbound makes perfect sense in the context of both (a) the dionysiac protest of Digenis against the human condition in authoritarian societies, and (b) the concept of purposeful evolution which, according to Sikelianos, would STRATOS E. CONSTANTINIDIS, an assistant professor of theater at Ohio State University, teaches in the areas of dramatic theory, criticism, and literature. 156 Stratos E. Constantinidis157 eventually lead people to achieve divinity. Second, Sikelianos' plays do not lack in tension. They call for a different type of performance which in recent years has been called ontological theater. Sikelianos' plays entail a disruption and unification of concepts and images which create polar thematic tensions. The non-verbal aspects of such tensions have been explored by auteurs such as Antonin Artaud (alchemical theater), Jerzy Grotowski (poor theater), Peter Brook (holy theater), and Richard Foreman (ontological hysteric theater)—to name only a few.2 Unfortunately, Greek directors failed to read Sikelianos' polar themes in their intended context, and the critics of modern Greek drama have not helped them to discover them. In his Birth of Tragedy, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that the dionysiac spirit reaffirms the union between man and man. Nature—which has become alienated, hostile, or subjugated— celebrates once more her reconciliation with her prodigal son, man.3 In German, the prodigal son reads the "lost son" (der verlorene Sohn). Sikelianos, Kazantzakis, and Palamas became the "prodigal" sons of the modern Greek stage because their plays were "lost" for a great many of their contemporaries who failed to see them in the context of a radical form of theater. After Nietzsche, Sikelianos, Kazantzakis, and Palamas believed that the dionysiac dithyramb incites man to exalt all his symbolic faculties: We need a new world of symbols; and the entire symbolism of the body is called into play, not the mere symbolism of the lips, face, and speech but the whole pantomime of dancing, forcing every member into rhythmic movement. Then the other symbolic powers suddenly press forward, particularly those of music, in rhythmics, dynamics, and harmony. To grasp this collective release of all the symbolic powers, man must have already attained the height of self-abnegation which seeks to express itself symbolically through all these powers—and so the dithyrambic votary of Dionysus is understood only by his peers. With what astonishment must the Apollonian Greeks have beheld him! (pp. 40-41) With what astonishment, suspicion, and rejection the Greeks of the 1940's beheld the poetic drama of Sikelianos, Kazantzakis, and—three decades earlier—of Palamas! Finally, Politis' bias that plays should use a language and symbols that can be understood by anyone overlooks the fact that theater has addressed elitist audiences at several periods of its long history. The American educational theater, for example, stages Shakespeare's seventeenth-century language...