{"id":658,"date":"2022-12-04T08:21:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-04T08:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/?p=658"},"modified":"2022-12-11T18:45:00","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T18:45:00","slug":"phedre-deuripide-a-racine-de-seneque-a-sarah-kane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/phedre-deuripide-a-racine-de-seneque-a-sarah-kane\/","title":{"rendered":"Ph\u00e8dre, D\u2019Euripide \u00e0 Racine, de S\u00e9n\u00e8que \u00e0 Sarah Kane"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Octavian Saiu<\/strong>
Parike, Belgium: Lansman Editeur, 120 pp.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed by Alba Simina Stanciu<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes Phaedra \u2013 a dramatic character born in the theatre of ancient Greece, endowed with archaic pathos and eroticism beyond control, doomed and consumed by demonic, self-destructive and shameful desires \u2013 feel our contemporary? What helps her retain her unaltered fascination? What are the qualities that continue to make her a symbol of incongruence between desire and social normativity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such key questions, and many others, are answered by Romanian scholar Octavian Saiu in his latest book, Ph\u00e8dre, D\u2019Euripide \u00e0 Racine, de S\u00e9n\u00e8que \u00e0 Sarah Kane<\/em> (Phaedra from Euripides to Racine, from Seneca to Sarah Kane<\/em>). Written in French, Phaedra\u2019s uniqueness, deriving from her ties with ritual theatre, cruelty, introspection, and self-sacrifice, constitutes the subject of Saiu\u2019s multi-layered analysis. His study is based on a complex reference system that incorporates valuable titles and authors into dense textual consistency. The essay exudes both sensitivity and intellectual accuracy, as it offers the powerful impact of cultural images that affirm Phaedra\u2019s theatrical and human substance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saiu\u2019s text is an argument for Phaedra\u2019s redemption while simultaneously exploring her dramatic existence and stage avatars through an erudite and meticulous scrutiny. He begins by revealing a substantial and surprising connection between Phaedra and Hamlet, two characters brought together by their desire to risk everything in order to follow obsessive thoughts. However dark her theatrical and mental universe is, Phaedra\u2019s shadowy existence exists at the border between eroticism and death. This Freudian dimension is rendered by Saiu through analytical explorations that combine scholarly argumentation, sensitivity and a sense of cathartic density. All these qualities \u2013 focused here on the effervescent and impulsive essence of one single female character — give this long essay a specific intellectual elegance, which fluctuates between the coloratura <\/em>of subtle metaphors and the rather sanguine tone of critical discourse. The author\u2019s strategy is to find the motives behind the impulse of uncontrolled passion, to uncover the reasons behind the incestual erotic dementia with which Phaedra is generally associated. All this followed by unbearable guilt \u2013 the underlying thread of Phaedra\u2019s literary manifestations — pain caused by uncontrollable instincts counterpoised by the nobleness of her dignity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Phaedra through plays created by Euripides, Seneca, Racine and Sarah Kane \u2013 Saiu underlines this leitmotif of irreconcilable guilt, a feeling expressed in resonance with different historical stages, starting from the \u201craw\u201d architecture of social rules in ancient Greece, continuing with the excessive theatrical cruelty of Seneca, going through the emotional exacerbation of Racine\u2019s classicism and ending with the carnal degradation of Sarah Kane\u2019s In-Yer-Face <\/em>theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saiu regards Euripides\u2019 Hippolytus<\/em> as a courageous text due to Euripides\u2019 willingness to confront Athenian audiences with a subject considered \u201cindecent\u201d \u2013 incest. His process evokes Nietzsche\u2019s contrasting concepts of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, as well as the Freudian antagonism between the conscious and the unconscious, the divide between physical lust and mental justice. In this context, Phaedra endures the curse of her own family, being as doomed as her mother who gave birth to the Minotaur: a combination of bestiality and femininity. Phaedra fluctuates between grief, delirium and silence, an inner torment that exceeds the explanatory power of her words, a form of Dionysian pulsation that defies any possibility of appeasement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The increasing emphasis on Phaedra\u2019s feelings in Seneca\u2019s Roman version leads to an unleashing of the brutal forces of the unconscious mind. Seneca insisted on the character\u2019s need to express the inexpressible, generating what Saiu calls an \u201calmost masochistic voluptuousness\u201d when she expresses her pain and unchains her rage through words. Her inner nature becomes chaotic because of what he refers to as a \u201cvocation of suffering,\u201d a dimension not found in Euripides. The play\u2019s conclusion is determined by the differences between two rites of death \u2013 while Phaedra is destined for burial (putrefaction of the flesh), Hippolytus is incinerated, thus purified by fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saiu follows Phaedra into the religious milieu of the seventeenth century with Racine, reading his text through a lens dominated by strict Catholic morality. He correlates Racine\u2019s tragedy with the leitmotif of free will as well as with the obsessive fear of eternal damnation. Her choice to commit suicide leads to her damnation as much as it provides her with an implausible redemption. Here, Saiu employs a framework connected to New Criticism, the most important one being Lucian Goldman\u2019s essay, Le Dieu cach\u00e9. <\/em>From this perspective, the character\u2019s passion is explained as a form of admiration, a pattern of masculinity created by her own desires and aspirations. Through her rebellious attitude, Phaedra opposes all societal laws which oppress and seek to control womanhood, laws dictated by the patriarchal hierarchy around her. The play\u2019s soliloquies, inspired by rationalist philosophy, lead to Phaedra\u2019s contemplation of her own emotional impulses and eventually to a form of pure introspection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 1990\u2019s play Phaedra\u2019s Love, w<\/em>ritten by Sarah Kane, depicts a Phaedra overwhelmed by what can be called Artaudian delirium, \u201ca woman, suicided by society\u201d \u2013 an original parallel drawn by Saiu to highlight the presence of madness as the imprint of a new era. Kane\u2019s text is irreversibly oriented towards Phaedra\u2019s individual \u201capocalypse\u201d. Vulgarity is mixed with cruelty in Kane\u2019s approach, carnal self-destruction with hopelessness, everything being distilled through the cultural codes of In-Yer-Face <\/em>theatre (the colourful term coined by critic Aleks Sierz). Saiu creates a necessary link between this approach and Martin Esslin\u2019s notion of the Theatre of the Absurd<\/em>. Both terms prove essential for interpreting this new theatrical universe that completely redefines the character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kane\u2019s text also reaches to extreme levels of the grotesque, of both \u201cworldly ugliness\u201d and galloping brutalisation, appropriating qualities of an \u201cinfernal poetry\u201d. In this context, <\/em>Phaedra\u2019s evolution becomes the \u201capocalypse of being\u201d. Her love, \u201cviolated, mutilated, compromised, but impossible to obliterate\u201d. Phaedra\u2019s theatricality is here an architecture captured by a triangulation between Beckett, Ionesco, and Genet. Her damnation culminates with absolute chaos, an echo of the disorientation and the violence of the nineties. Once royal and elegant, her context has become suffocated by waste and disease, the landscape of a post-human world. Spiritually bankrupt, this state of existence leads to her self-annihilation, a logos<\/em> devoid of purpose. Even her love is meaningless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One striking point in Saiu\u2019s analysis is the idea that Kane herself felt close to this Phaedra, to a point of almost self-identification. Kane\u2019s suicide, he claims, was inspired by the character, a most improbable personal tribute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saiu\u2019s conclusions underline the main theme of his analysis: the question of guilt. Phaedra seems doomed because of her excessive passion, which can be regarded as a rejection of domesticated love and emotional routine. For this she has been stigmatised, considered irredeemably culpable, treated as contemptible for her unnatural and demonic temper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saiu ends his study not by rephrasing the old questions but by asking new, incisive ones, creating new arguments to counter the solidity of the accusation of incest. Is Phaedra truly guilty as charged? This ancient character — modern through her defiance and authenticity — could not have hoped to have a better or more convincing lawyer, one who manages to balance fine scholarship with genuine thoughtfulness. Her innocence may still not be proved but her guilt has been at least partially erased in a study that should be read by not only scholars but also by actors and directors approaching the realization of any of these Phaedras on a stage. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

*<\/a>Alba Simina Stanciu<\/strong> is an Associate Professor in tthe Department of Theatre at Lucian Blaga University in Sibiu, Romania, where she teaches theoretical courses on contemporary performing arts, dance history and aesthetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2022 Alba Simina Stanciu
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> e-ISSN:2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Creative<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2022\/12\/Phedre-Saiu.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":793,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658\/revisions\/793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}