TRACHINIE by Sophocles – Critical analysis by Natalia Di Bartolo – The much discussed dichotomy of the Sophocles masterpiece does not exist.
Reading the Greek text of suffering Heracles, who complains of atrocious pain and talks with his son Illo, in the second part of the Tragedy Tραχίνιαι, "Trachinie", or "The women of Trachis", in Thessaly, by Sophocles, can only come in mind that sort of dichotomy that has always characterized this play: the never meeting of Deianira, the wife of Heracles, with her husband, during the tragedy; when Heracles suffers, Deianira is already dead, without having seen him again.
This not indifferent fact, has always divided scholars in giving more or less artistic value to the late Sophoclean Opera, dating back to 429 BC, considered "split" and, therefore, lacking that unity of development and content that has always it is taken as an example of the best production of the great Greek Tragedian. In reality, unity exists and, therefore, the much-complained dichotomy can be considered a false problem.
The tragedy in question has been undergoing intense study for several years and finally it has been possible to draw from it what mysterious Sophocles wanted to conceal from it, pulling on the arrows of a millenary criticism. Among the latest in-depth studies in chronological order, the study and its translation (used in the XLIII Cycle of Classical Shows in 2007 at the Greek Theater of Syracuse) made by Prof. Salvatore Nicosia, Professor Emeritus of the University of Palermo, an illustrious Greek scholar.
His "reinterpretation" led, in addition to a clarification of the Sophocles artistic intentions, also to a simplification of the courtly terms usually used for the lexicon and to the syntactic relaxation of the period; which, while not falling into the sloppiness of an everyday language, while maintaining the verse, allowed a limpid and clear "flow" of the text, all in favor of the performance of the stage action.
The translation of the Greek text is always and in any case of extraordinary importance: it is in verse. Bringing it to an Italian transposition always in verse, adequately understandable and modern, or to a prose that is moderately "daily", but which does not ignore the rhythm of a metrically codified versification, is the work of chisel and many scholars have try your hand, with more or less valid results.
The excess of modernity could, in the opinion of the writer, distort the original versification and bring on the lips of modern interpreters news of excessive contemporaneity: this must not happen, just as, unfortunately, it begins to happen today on our historic stages. But, having overcome the obstacle of refinements of meaning and interpretation, which must not escape a careful linguistic reading, through an equally careful, indispensable critical reading of the text of "Trachinie", one can guess the real core of the question, finally declaring and The much repeated accusation of dichotomy is definitively false: the profound, occult correspondence that exists between husband and wife, between a brutalized and humanly suffering Heracles and a Deianira transformed by Sophocles into an exemplary Greek woman for customs and devoid of that morbid jealousy, has finally emerged and vindictive that Greek Mythology hands down to us.
In fact, according to legend, Deianira was a woman of a violent and vengeful character, jealous of her husband Heracles to the point of knowingly killing him. Mythology tells us that the mortal chiton given to Heracles was not only soaked with the blood of the centaur Nessus, but also with his semen and that Deianira was aware of the danger and had used the poison knowing he was killing. Also in mythology, Deianira was a sensual, carnal woman, whom eros had permeated with violent passion and jealousy. She felt not only the wife, but above all the lover of Heracles.
From an acute directorial reading by Walter Pagliaro, in 2007, at the Greek theater in Syracuse, a wooden bed dominated the scene and it was not there by chance, but it was the "designated place" for life and death, for love and to suffering, conception and suicide as well as the "trait d'union" that unified the stage action and drew from it what a mature Sophocles had deliberately hidden there. On that bed Deianira stabbed herself beside her, committing suicide; Dying Heracles was placed on that bed, but as if it were two different stories in a single context: husband and wife, willy-nilly, were now strangers to each other: this is the true reason for the apparent dichotomy of the tragedy .
But, beyond the single directorial invention, they still remain the two sides of the same coin: human and far from heroism and sacredness, both die; and that the death of Heracles has no connotation of elevation to the state of deity, for him, the son of Zeus is only the first and only fundamental defeat: Heracles loses precisely against the ultimate and invincible enemy: death.
Deianira, therefore, in "Trachinie" wise, loving and farsighted wife, does not take revenge, as mythology always handed down, for the betrayal of her husband who imposed on her the beautiful and silent Jole, daughter of the king of Ecalia and a prisoner of war. of whom he is carnally in love, but makes the fatal mistake of believing in the centaur Nessus, killed years earlier by Heracles, who had revealed to her how his own blood was a very powerful love potion; it, which instead was a deadly poison, had been jealously preserved by her, waiting to use it in case of attenuation of marital love by her spouse.
Deianira, an honest and faithful woman, now could not really bear that her husband imposed on her the lover on duty at home. What better occasion, then, to naively resort to the much jealously guarded blood of Nessus? But her plot for a good purpose will lead her, under violent accusation also by her son Illo, to realize the fatal mistake that is killing Heracles and, therefore, to suicide, as the end of all moral and material imprisonment, which annihilate herself in oblivion. of the failure of wife, mother, woman.
The story, recited by the nurse of Deianira, which Sophocles makes of the mortal act performed by the protagonist on the nuptial bed, is splendid; her stripping one breast and one side to reach death as the end of all evil and error is almost disturbing and, perhaps, one can read a last, definitive and destructive embrace with Dionysus, god of eros, which she has always brought in itself, unaware, and which Sophocles attributed to it, endowing it with a very well hidden lasciviousness. This is how carnality is part of tragedy much more than deity or heroism: Dionysus, god not only of eros, but also of representation and theater, after all, is the master and governs the facts that Fate has arranged to be anything but heroic for both protagonists.
Heracles asks his son to be burned at the stake to put an end to his atrocious sufferings: nothing heroic even in that death, which seeks peace from unbearable physical pain. He, who had faced the immense hardships, succumbs to the deception that corroborates the oracle that had predicted "death by a dead man" and humanly asks to die: a kind of euthanasia, cruel and touching, even if it came out of the same lips that do not regret the love for Jole; rather, they impose the promise of marriage to the child.
Dionysian carnality, in the triumph of the death of the body. And if we think that the two characters of Heracles and Deianira, at the time of Sophocles, were interpreted by the same actor, even the long "stasimi" of the Chorus of Trachinian women, to which the tragedy, not surprisingly, is entitled, take on a significance absolutely theatrical, to be left intact deliberately in its a-temporal expansion.
The stàsimo of the choir and the monologue of the nurse (in the whole space of 120-130 lines) between the death of Deianira and the apparition of dying Heracles, for example, were used by the ancient actor to change the woman's costume and reappear in the male cloths of Heracles (the masks then used in the tragedy allowed this metamorphosis even more easily); these monologues and monologues, today, serve to transport the viewer into a "suspended" dimension, which makes him reflect on what happened and envision the sequel.
Therefore, the extended times are not useless, even in other moments of the tragedy: they are precisely those of Sophocles; and respecting them is essential. Following the song-declamation-dance of the Choir, one is distorted, almost hypnotized, and one also comes out of the rhythm of the story narrated on the stage, also allowing space for silences, which, at times, are more eloquent than words.
So? Therefore Deianira and Heracles are, as mentioned above, the two sides of the same coin: human and far from heroism and sacredness, both die; and that the death of Heracles has no connotation of elevation to the state of deity, for him, son of Zeus, is only the first and only fundamental defeat: Heracles loses precisely against the ultimate and invincible enemy: death.
Difficult tragedy, therefore, "Trachinie", late, of an elderly Sophocles and tried by life, but who only then could give breath to such an original inspiration. A genius can betray himself, from time to time, by producing something less interesting than his average, but an elderly Great Sophocles could not have given birth to something that was inferior to his own production. And "Trachinie" is a masterpiece. The tragedy in question is not inferior to any other: only "different" and of controversial interpretation.
It is difficult to understand it and even more difficult to make the public understand it. Examining the above and handing it out with the utmost clarity as possible to the viewer awaiting tragedy, can only, with the utmost attention to the author's themes, facts, characters, clear or hidden intentions, lead to handing him tragedy; also in this case, therefore, as always in Sophocles, a great and very human tragedy.
© Natalia Dantas
Photos from the web – INDA, Syracuse