{"id":827,"date":"2022-12-15T20:53:38","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T20:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/?p=827"},"modified":"2022-12-18T09:14:44","modified_gmt":"2022-12-18T09:14:44","slug":"human-achievements-and-transgressions-of-the-natural-order-in-greek-drama-the-literary-ancient-roots-of-a-real-current-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/human-achievements-and-transgressions-of-the-natural-order-in-greek-drama-the-literary-ancient-roots-of-a-real-current-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Human Achievements and Transgressions of the Natural Order in Greek Drama: The Literary Ancient Roots of a Real Current Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Kaiti (Aikaterini) Diamantakou<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trying to reconstruct the \u201carcheology\u201d \u03bff system-wide human achievements and transgressions of natural thresholds, the essay is mapping the early literary traces that ancient Greek drama has left behind, not just for writing the disaster but also, and mostly, for thinking about and beyond it. Greek drama, created for and staged in the literally \u201cenvironmental\u201d theatre of Dionysus in Athens, seems to have been sensitive to pro-ecological issues and prophetically conscious of a dystopian, short or long term, future for the perpetrators and for their community alike. Beginning with two remarkable examples of a holistic reflection on human achievements and their consequences for both civic and cosmic order (Prometheus\u2019 generous beneficence towards human race and the praise of the human being in Antigone\u2019s<\/font> first stasimon), we shall then focus on two specific cases of precursory ecocriticism, located in the realm of Greek tragedy and comedy, respectively: The technically impressive coupling of the Hellespont by Xerxes as depicted and valued in Aeschylus\u2019 Persians<\/font> and the more than amazing construction of Cloud Cuckoo Land by a feathered army in Aristophanes\u2019 Birds<\/font>. Both examples signal a clear human intervention in nature, provoking a temporary or permanent disturbance of the surrounding ecosystem, and both may express a germinal posthumanitarian discourse and an early ecological conception of the intrinsic value of life as a whole natural ecosystem, with no de facto, self-evident, inherited privileges for the human beings.

Keywords: <\/strong>Early eco-criticism, theatre of Dionysus, environmental theatre, anthropocentrism, biocentrism, Greek tragedy, Oresteia<\/font>, Prometheus<\/font>, Persians<\/font>, Antigone<\/font>, Greek comedy, Birds<\/font><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the present burning ecopolitical insights and concerns for the environmental crisis have their origins in the era of industrial revolution and scientific investigation in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Egan 17\u201350; Goodbody 11\u201340), ancient Greek discourse had already given shape to stories and premonitions which impacted the human being and, vice versa, of the human impact on the natural world and its more or less disastrous effects, intended or unintended, irreversible or reversible, especially and mostly for the human agent itself (Civeleko\u01e7lu; Lempert; Hardin).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a time when there was no ecological crisis, no global warming, no environmental preservation organizations, no understanding of pollution and its deleterious effects, Greek literature seems to have been intrinsically sensitive to pro-ecological issues, if not prophetically conscious, in the short or long run, of a dystopian future for the perpetrators and, alas, for their cohabitants alike. However, a not so obvious case of politicized ecocriticism, that is, analysis of ancient drama, just like the \u201cstudying of ancient myths\u201d in a broader perspective (Zekavat) or the \u201canalysis of poetry,\u201d in an even broader perspective, \u201ccan be where we wield ecopolitical insights to re-examine past representations of analogous situations, and indeed to see how past understandings of the world gave rise to the conditions of the present\u201d (Egan 50).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
\u03a4heatre of Dionysos, Athens, Greece. Photo retrieved from the official site of DIAZOMA association<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
A Literally Environmental Theatre<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Taking into account the intrinsic relationship between ancient drama and the natural surroundings, both in terms of theatrical performance and dramatic text, we could suggest that classical Greek theatre is, after all, a rather obvious space of pro-ecocriticism, appropriate for retrospectively rethinking the global ecological crisis through the intersection of literature, culture and environment. Built on the natural slope at the southeastern foot of the Acropolis hill, around the focal area of a flat earthy orchestra and with a wooden stage structure low enough not to obstruct the view of the landscape and the city, the open-air theatre of Dionysus in the fifth century B.C. was essentially and de facto inscribed into the natural environment. Its form recalled the ancestral open spaces of the threshing floors, where improvisational and primitive, proto-theatrical and ritual events were performed in the context of earlier rural Dionysian festivals (Segal 32), and at the same time, it served the evolving identity of the theatre as a hitherto semiotically coded and semantically organized specific domain of art (Aston and Savona 113; Paden 59).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite its clear tripartite division and the more-or-less distinguished practical function of its three parts \u2013 that is, the stage, a space of the actors; the orchestra, a space of the chorus, and the auditorium, a space of the audience\u2014the ancient theatre was distinguished for its fundamental sociopetal character (Elam 58), which was achieved primarily through the mediating existence of the nuclear, probably circular in the late fifth century B.C. orchestra, which connected  actors, chorus and spectators in a single, cultural and socio-political, community, illuminated by the common and uniform natural daylight (Wiles 72\u201378). Richard Schechner, author of the pioneering article \u201c6 Axioms for Environmental Theatre,\u201d in discussing the third axiom, \u201cThe theatrical event can take place either in a totally transformed space or in \u2018found space,\u2019\u201d refers to mass performance spaces such as New York Shakespeare Festival or the Avignon Festival as follows: \u201c\u0399n neither case has a negotiation been tried between the large environment and the staged event. Only the Greeks\u2014see Epidaurus\u2014knew how\u201d (Schechner 54, n. 21).[1]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within this theatrical space, which dominates and is dominated by the surrounding real space, the fictional action is always set outdoors, whether we are, according to the dramatic script, in front of one or more urban buildings, palace, mansion or temple in the case of many tragedies, everyday Athenian houses in the case of many comedies, or in a natural environment, adapted scenographically to the fairly unknown architectural conditions and aesthetic standards of the ancient skene<\/em> area.[2]<\/sup><\/a> The Caucasian rock in Scythia, where Prometheus is bound throughout the whole of the eponymous tragedy; the cave of Philoctetes in Lemnos, in front of and around which the whole action of the eponymous Sophoclean tragedy takes place; the coastal grove, where Ajax commits suicide, far from everyone, in the Sophoclean tragedy that bears his name; the aerial, even if briefly, route of the farmer Trygaeus from the earth to the heavenly dwelling of the gods in Aristophanes\u2019 Peace<\/em>; the Lake Acherousia crossed by Dionysus and Xanthia in the Frogs<\/em>; the cave of Polyphemus in the Sicilian Mount Etna in the extant Euripidean Cyclop<\/em>; but also the natural sites of action (Serifos\u2019 coast and bucolic Arcadia) in the fragmentary satyr plays Dictyulci<\/em> of Aeschylus and Ichneutae<\/em> of Sophocles; all the above are indicative green sites of tragic, comic or satyric stage action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n