O despedaçamento dos corpos: uma leitura de As Bacantes de Eurípides

Abstract

The Bacchae, by Euripides (484–406 BC), a play first performed in 405 BC, is not only one of the oldest accounts of the rites of Maenadism, but also deals with themes such as violence and power. This work proposes to analyze it through dismemberment, understood not as the exact moment when the body is torn apart, but as a process, its effect being proportional to the tension that prescribes it. The term sparagmós, in Ancient Greek, designates a semantic field that, although vast, is marked by the sense of violence, whether committed by humans or animals. The erasure and silencing of the body result in the appeasement of the collective. Finally, the body that is mourned is the body that, regaining reason, perceives its own violence. It is in the process in which joy and glory are transformed into mourning that the play ends. Perceiving a system of equivalences inserted in the tragedy The Bacchae, this work is based on the proposal of René Girard (1990) and configured as a bibliographic review research. It is observed that violence, in the form of dishonor and outrage, is the event that will trigger the need for another action on the formal level, which, in the case of The Bacchae, is Dionysus' revenge. For the myth, it is the resolution, it is what finds its explanation in the preceding lineages. For the action, it is continuity and throws us into another game, that of violent ambiguity. Therefore, we conclude that dismemberment can be used as a key to interpreting the play. In addition to the aforementioned Girard (1990), Aristotle (2008), Dodds (2002), Eagleton (2013), Pereira (2001), Eliade (1972), Vernant (2006), Lesky (1996), Foley (2019), and Otto (2017) are used as a theoretical basis.