Conversations: the Divine Rage of Dionysus, a Transgender Translation of Bacchae w/ Emma Pauly
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Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv, here with another very special conversation episode. This one, god, okay, number one, I am recording this introduction before I actually record the conversation, and that's probably pretty important for what's going on, but...

I'm so excited to record this conversation because I am revisiting almost an exact same kind of conversation, basically the same topic and the same guest from one of my very earliest conversation episodes. I'm speaking with Emma Pauly, who for years now has been working on and building out this translation of...

Euripides is Bacchae, so, you know, surprise, surprise, I'm fucking obsessed. But so specifically, a reading and a translation of Bacchae, an interpretation of Bacchae, with heavily non-binary overtones, with generally genderqueer overtones. Obviously Dionysus always has these really queer overtones, but...

A direct kind of translation that plays with gender and pronouns and that kind of thing in that way is pretty innovative and so interesting. And it's innovative in this way where it's like, duh. Like, of course, Dionysus has all of these elements. And Emma and I spoke a couple years ago now. Like I said, I think, God, I think they were like my friends.

maybe fifth first conversation somewhere in that realm just so long ago. And in this way where it's one of my most memorable conversations. And yet, you know, in those years since I have grown so much in my knowledge of the background, the mythos, the sources, Euripides, and Emma has been working on this translation, workshopping it and kind of expanding it. And Emma and I have plans for this translation.

We're hoping to do something really special in relation to this translation and this podcast. I think you can guess what it is, but we're going to keep it unofficial for right now. Hopefully by the end of the year, we're going to have something in this realm, but we want to do it right. But in the meantime, I wanted to talk to Emma about Bacchae, about this kind of

queering of Bacchae, even though it is a topic and a play and a god that is so inherently queer. But, you know, we're going to go far beyond that. Talk about Dionysus as a queer god in general. Emma has just been a part of a big conference on Bacchae and has so many insights from that. And I am just, I'm so excited for what we have here.

to give you today. And so again, since I haven't even recorded it yet, that's about the most I can say. So sit back and enjoy this deeply, viscerally queer Dionysus.

Hi, just a quick additional warning for this episode. While the first half is pretty lighthearted, talking about Bacchae and queerness and a lot of angry feminism from me, sorry not sorry.

The second half does require some trigger warnings, primarily for not direct, indirect kind of talk of self-harm and suicide in relation to trans rage. We're talking a lot about that. Rather, Emma, who

appropriate to talk about that is talking about queer and and trans rage and it's really fascinating really impactful but just take care hello this is a weird way to start it normally I just jump straight into the conversation but that we were like really really on this timing um I am so excited to speak with you again Emma about hello hello hi Dionysus Bacchae just like

I mean, mostly I just want to get so deep into the queer parts of Dionysus and Bacchae, but, you know, I think you might be into that as well. Not really. It's never really been my thing. I kind of approach it from the second-sophistic angle. Sorry. I like that because I'm like, oh, God, that's a term I just have heard. Well, I mean, we...

we really, we want real classical, like, oh, gee, that guy. Because Euripides is, like, the only person I want to spend any time with in the ancient world. And it's so interesting. I was recording the introduction before we started talking. And you, this is the first time I've done another conversation with, like, a repeat guest that's on, like, the same topic, ostensibly. And, like, I know it's going to be a completely different conversation because, you know,

years have passed and my knowledge has grown like unbelievably. And I imagine yours is the same, but it's so interesting to be kind of revisiting something that you and I did. Like, I think it was like three or four years ago. I think, I think 2021, I think it, I think it's four years. Yeah. Probably around this time of year too. Cause I probably would have tried to slot it into June because I do love having enough to theme a whole month. Yeah.

I think that's correct. And I was living in a different state, and I had a different job. And yeah, a lot of things have changed. A lot of things have changed. Well, and now you're teaching, right? Do you teach Bacchae ever, or is it more just general? Once or twice I've gotten the chance to, and it's been...

Kind of like the evil version of the Kool-Aid man where I just like break through the wall and I'm like, congratulations, you're in my house now. So you are Dionysus. Evil Kool-Aid man Dionysus? Sure. Yeah. Well, that sounds like the Dionysus from Bacchae. Like he bursts in like, yeah, this is my house. I, oh my God, staging where everything is the same, but Dionysus is dressed as the Kool-Aid man. I...

but it has to be wine but like the kool-aid man in like like a like almost like a pithos pithos is the only word i'm coming with it's the wrong one like an amphora maybe kool-aid i mean like dionysus is usually holding like the confidants so like the big like two handles yeah yeah um that could be great everyone else is dressed normal the rest of the play is normal no one says anything

Maybe it's a Cantharos that features, and I know this is on, I believe it's on a Kylix, but like a Cantharos that features the, what's the word my...

a past episode on on pentheus what's the word for him getting thank you yeah that that that scene but on the conthoros and that with like just like a little head or a face that's dionysus i think this is a really rich dramaturgical vein yeah it's like mena

It's so meta. I support this entirely. I will dedicate the rest of my life to making sure that this staging is brought to fruition. Thank you so much for helping me nurture this idea. Oh my god, I'm thrilled. Thrilled to be a part of it. Please give me a free ticket. That's all I ask.

Well, there's so much with Bacchae and it's this really, it's an interesting play and we kind of dove into this before I hit record and then was like, no, no, stop. But like, it's a play that I want to

to read as, I mean, this is true for a lot of Euripides in a way that I, it's why I love him so much, but like, that guy is such a great example of one of his plays that is simultaneously so comedic and so tragic and so absurd, like in the middle, like in the middle by that, I mean, like somewhere in between, not like the middle of the play, like a Venn diagram of the play. No, totally. And one of the things that I really love about that is that

It is the kind of comedy that sits very comfortably slash uncomfortably next to horror. It's the kind of comedy that I think my best reference for like recent media that I've seen that has like evoked this feeling in me is The Substance. If you've ever, if you have. No, but it sounds familiar. Yeah.

It's real fun. The one that Demi Moore got nominated for an Oscar for the like horror movie where Margaret Qualley crawls out of her back, which is very like, Oh, it's so good. If you, I, if you have a strong stomach, I recommend it. But that's a movie that's very comfortable putting extreme discomfort and pain right next to comedy and absurdity. Yeah.

And it's something that I'm really fond of. And I think also like one of the best things I've ever seen in a live staging of Bacchae was one of those moments. And it was an accident. There was a production of Bacchae at the Getty Villa in 2018 that then went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music by City Company.

directed by Anne Bogart. And I'm glad that I said her name right on the first try because I've been talking about her for a couple of weeks now for various other things. And every single time I've tried to say her name, I have said Anne Carson. Oh, well, that's hard. Yeah. With Backeye and Anne and Anne.

I know, I know, but I'm a professional. I'm supposed to be able to do it right. And directed by Anne Bogart, who's like a big deal in the theater world, like worked with Tadashi Suzuki a lot. And this production of that guy had the head of Pentheus as like sort of a suspension of goo in a plastic bag. Like there was clearly like something head shaped in there. Like it had weight and mass, but it was like,

in plastic and you couldn't really see through all of the weird blood goo. Upsetting to start with. We're off to a great start. I got to be there on the night that... There was a moment where Dionysus had to hold it. I took it away from Agave and had to hold onto it for a sec. And I got to be there the night Dionysus dropped it. I was waiting for that. Oh my god. And the...

The horrifying, schwarping thunk that that thing made when it hit the floor was grandly comedic and also absolutely disgusting and horrifying. And I got to watch an entire amphitheater full of people visibly recoil in their seats. Wow. That's one of those moments where that wasn't supposed to happen, but it probably added so much for you. It was so...

I, you really, it told me something about me as a person because a whole room full, a whole amphitheater full of people lean back and I lean forward just going, yeah. Which is how I learned some things about myself. But, you know, it comes and it goes. Yeah. I mean, I would be, I would be right there with you for Bacchae. Like, that's one of those things, like, I'm not super, like, I can be squeamish about some things. I get about, like, really, really, like,

obviously gory like movies and stuff or whatever. Like, I mean really like just the torture porn type of stuff, those old ones. Like I don't have any interest, but like it is something Greek myth that is so like viscerally violent being shown to be just as like disgusting as it, you know, was kind of meant to be evoked. Like I'm so here for it. Well, and I think it's also a really interesting invitation to,

And I'm sure we'll get into this more. I know, I love that we're just starting with a breakdown of the Pentheus head scene. Which, to the listener, I think I'm going to re-air my retelling of this play beforehand so that people get it. It's been a while. But it ends with Pentheus' own mother carrying his head in, having absolutely no idea that it is his head and that she's just killed and torn apart her son. And like,

It's the most, you know, I think one of the most famous moments of that kind of violence on stage. Not that the actual violence takes place, but the head being there. Well, and it would have been, and this is where people get very excited about meta theater. Do you know the thing with doubling? You know, like the three actor rule doubling? Yeah. Yeah. So the way...

very likely possibility with the doubling for Bacchae in particular is that Pentheus and Agave are the same actor. Oh, I love when we have those theories. Like, oh,

oh it's good no it's fun and then I think the Almeida production abided by that so Pentheus and Agave were played by I think Ernie Carvel in 2014 at the bridge I know too much yeah I know it's impressive but yeah the dub so theoretically in the doubling I think the way the doubling usually breaks down is like Cadmus and the Messengers Dionysus and Tiresias Pentheus and Agave but for Pentheus and Agave it's

So what that means is the prop that's the head is in antiquity. That's just the mask. Yeah. The mask that the big actor would have been wearing before then. Yeah. Exactly. So this actor has to leave the stage, take their Disneyland mascot head off, put a different one on, and then come back on stage carrying their own face. Yeah. And it's so...

Yeah, there's a lot going on there. No, it's just, it's the meta theater of it, the gender. It's a very rich vein of the play. But the other, I mean, the other thing that is also really useful about like treating the head as an object of like horror, fascination, disgust, like is that gets us into like the way that violence is talked about in the play.

Or the way the violence is talked about in reception of the play and in like the... Something that I've been wrestling with recently is watching people try to find a quote-unquote clean interpretation. What? Yeah, what does that mean? Trying to find... I just got off of a really fascinating two-day conference about Bacchae, but the sort of fundamental...

the linchpin of it was like, is this a reclaimably feminist text? And I think that there's never going to be a good answer to that. And likewise, there are also a lot of conversations happening right now, or at least in the rooms that I'm in, because I'm a joke and a parody and a cartoon of a person. I'm not totally sure what you mean by that, but I'm here for it. Well, just I got one job. I do one thing.

I mean, if you think you're not talking to somebody with that exact same life description. Yeah, fair. Fair, fair, fair. No, but the conversation is, is Bacchae a liberatory queer text? And is this a play that we can take a lesson from? Is this a play that we can learn some... Is this a play that we can apply to the revolution, as it were? And...

And there's no easy answers to that. And something that I'm really interested in like kind of picking apart, and I'm not just going to like ramble for 15 minutes here, but like something that I'm really interested in looking at, which is something that I talked about a little bit four years ago, but has kind of grown is like really acknowledging the malice and the cruelty and the rage that are present in this play. And especially like,

the way that that intersects with conversations on gender and sexuality in the play and the way that that intersects with like trans liberation as just as can be and as was Euripides thinking about trans trans liberation no do I care no have you but have you ever thought about that sorry not to actually to take derail you but like yeah great

I think it was a past guest, Julie Levy, who said, who said this to me. Yes. Wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. And, and their idea was like, could Euripides have been trans and like, or non-binary or something in that realm? I believe, I believe it was Julie. And like,

It's one of those things where obviously we'll never know. There is no way to like have any kind of concrete answer, but I think it's such an interesting question given the kind of content that Euripides gives us, particularly in comparison to everything else that everyone else gives us. Yeah, it's such a weird avenue to go down because like, obviously, you know, avoidance of anachronism, like those terms did not exist in his moment. But it's not even the fact that like,

it's not even they had kind of an empty label that was waiting to be filled with a word like trans or non-binary. The ways that gender and sexuality are conceived are so fundamentally different. Yeah. Like it's not, you know, we're trying to play, you know, chess. We're trying to play checkers on a chess board. It's like, we're trying to play checkers on a pizza. Like,

It's a wild metaphor. Yeah, no, I like it. It really conveys the point. And that does not mean that we have to default to a cis-heteropatriarchal system. Yeah. Like, we can't. Yes, can we say Euripides is trans or non-binary? Probably not. By that same token, we can't also say...

Anyone in antiquity, not just Euripides, any sentient bipedal being in antiquity, plucked chickens and all. I was just going to say, now you're making me think of the Play-Doh memes. Any sentient bipedal, preferably human, we cannot apply our labels of likewise, cis, straight, heterosexual. Those labels don't, those labels also don't go here. Mm-hmm.

So I do – no, it is an interesting conversation if not to like really bind Euripides to a – Euripides or anyone to a contemporary category but to loosen the contemporary category that he is already automatically bound to. Yeah. Well, because that's kind of how I –

interpret it. Because I'm not in the realm of any kind of formal academia, I do try to make my listeners very aware. None of these things are these terms that we can

officially assign to anyone in the ancient world but at the same time you know from this perspective it's it's quite liberating to speculate on how that person might have identified today if given the terms you know and i think with euripides like the reason why i am so interested in that idea is that euripides has always been to me and like obviously to to most others who study him like

this sort of weirdo, right? Like he really, he was pushing the envelope. He was kind of, he was pushing back against the patriarchy and the patriarchal structure in ways that I think others didn't. Was it like entirely revolutionary? Absolutely not. Was he anything, you know, to be defined as a, as a modern feminist? Obviously not. But like the ways that Euripides wrote about

female rage, the ways that Euripides wrote just women in general, and then got labeled a misogynist for it because he wrote women who were terrible, women who did violent, manly things, things that women were not supposed to do, that were reserved for the men, you know, like that is so interesting to me. And then of course, Bacchae introduces all of these other things. And what's interesting to think about too, is that, that they,

you know anyone in that realm did have dionysus as an example as a of a vaguely genderqueer person right we have so many stories of dionysus being either raised as a girl or dressing as a girl or like various things where there is a pretty clear description of his fluidity and so like yeah

It's interesting that there's, you know, and of course there are stories of like transformations that can be read as transgender. And so it's like there's, it's not, it's not like they didn't have any kind of examples. And that's interesting too, to sort of just, I love a speculation about Euripides, I guess. I mean, and it's so interesting, like Dionysus as a figure in that context, as a figure that is like so interesting.

integrated into, let's say, Athenian. That's the city that we're talking about. That's where Euripides is when he's not dying in Macedonia. Dionysus as a figure within this political structure is so charged because that is maybe not what we think of as a positive example of representation. It's not...

thing where like I mean and we talk about this nowadays of like is is visibility the same thing as safety is visibility the same thing as acceptance and Dionysus as a figure like is this sort of nuclear reactor core of like all of the fear and anxiety and disgust and internal turmoil that is put into maintaining this

extremely rigid rigid but not using the same structures as we would in 2025

gender hierarchy like it doesn't turn into this thing where it's like oh dionysus wears you know quote unquote women's clothing and again those are you know even calling it just women's clothing is very complicated because there's also a very strong racial element like this is is there is this eastern clothing as well this is clothing that's not only associated with you know a sort of uncomplicated view of gender but it is yeah yeah um

Dionysus serves as a sinkhole for those fears and those anxieties and the need to put that in a thing that looks like a person. Yeah.

And a person that is right at the heart of the political life of the city. Like the city Dionysia is the play, the festival at which Bacchae was performed was that I cannot stress this enough, a political occasion as well. It is a religious occasion. It is a political occasion. It is a moment for the state, the city to tell itself what it is. And, um,

there are opportunities in there to tell the city that it is something weird. Or to point out... Yeah, I... There's... Yes, sorry. That's a different conversation is like the role of tragedy in classical mathematics. Well, and not to get too deep into that because I do want to focus on Dionysus, but have you done much work on... Because, you know, you brought up that Euripides died in Macedonia, right? He was...

Was he exiled officially or was he just like gone? I feel like he might have just left either way. He was like, no. Okay. I, yeah, I think, I mean, he was, he was definitely in, in Macedonia when he died and that guy though, and that's where this gets relevant back. I was like,

was performed posthumously and he hadn't been in Athens for years. And I think that's so interesting. And like, I'm not good at the, you know, the, the bigger historian side of, of working through that type of thing. But it's so interesting to me that a, that a play like Bacchae, which like you said, like there's,

For all we can talk about this queerness within Dionysus, there is also a very...

interesting conversation going on within the play about the role of kings and about the role of leadership in a city and and probably divine leadership in a city as well like a lot of things that could probably be viewed as like commentary on Athens at the time or Athens on like when he was there so many different interesting things and I think it's

It's also just generally interesting to think of that as this play that one, he didn't write when he was living in Athens that he wrote in Macedonia and two that like

he didn't necessarily ever intend or know that it was going to be performed. Like I, we don't know that that's true or anything, obviously, but it's really interesting thing to think about when it comes to him and just this play. So specifically like having this be the one that was performed after his death. And when he wasn't in the city, it's just really, it's interesting. Yeah. Well, and even just to think about like,

this wasn't the only one. There's a trilogy. Like this is part of a trilogy and we have one of the other men. We have one of the, you know, sisters of this trilogy. And they were completely possibly. If a Geni at Alice is the, what would have been the companion to this? Yeah. If a Geni at Alice and then there's, okay, well there's, there's a, there's a very cool scholar. Have you ever had Vanessa Stavala on here?

Yes. Yes. So Vanessa gave a conference paper. Twice I've had Vanessa, but the way you said her last name that somehow made my brain go, have I? But yes. Yeah.

has uh gave a paper at ucla a couple of years ago about like noting like metrical and like musical similarities between if janaya and how those two plays would like go next to each other with the third one is regrettably very uh you know very fragmentary it's alchmaeon at corinth um which better people than me have actually done the kind of excavatory research on um but it is

I don't know, it's so interesting to me that that doesn't exist in isolation. And, like, people have written on, like, finding kind of the...

thematic resonances between Iphigenia and Bacchae and it's just so profoundly beyond me but very fun because by trilogy you mean like the way that the three would have been performed together? Yeah I just think of as comparison to like say the Oresteia where it was like meant to be like a storyline trilogy yeah they're not plot connected yeah

But they're like the three performed together. Yeah. No, that's so interesting. And it's been a long time since I've done Iphigenia and Aulis. I've done the Torians more recently, which is like its own whole wild amazing thing. It's beautiful. It's the stupidest heist on God's green earth. I love it so much. Helen gives it a run for its money. And I love that for both of those. Iphigenia among the Torians is like,

The only example in my canonical knowledge where the trick everyone has to turn around and close their eyes works. I don't remember that, but that's so delightful. It's... I love it. It's a bonkers play. I need to read it again. I need to work on it more. Or at all. I haven't worked on it. I just am quietly fanning from the sides. Well, Euripides is just... He's so weird. And that's why, like, the fact that we, you know, I think...

I mean, obviously, I would imagine that so many other playwrights were telling stories about Dionysus, and I kind of wish we had any...

because I would be so interested to see how they interpret something like the Bacchae, particularly since we know it was a story well beyond the play. Yeah. Aeschylus did it. We just don't have it. We don't have it. Yeah. And I'm just so curious. I mean, specifically, if someone like Aeschylus did it, what are we looking at and the differences? Well, I mean, this isn't supposed to be the entire Euripides Hour, but clearly, I mean, I could always make everything the Euripides Hour, to be quite frank. But I mean, in terms of...

Yeah. I don't know quite how to dive into like, I mean, I want to talk about your translation, but I also want to talk about just generally like reading. I mean, I don't even know that maybe let's start with your translation, but I'm also just curious about the conference you went to, I guess is like the other kind of part I want to lead into. Cause I'm curious how, like, I really don't, I don't know a lot about modern scholarship of this type of stuff just because I get like my special guests and they tell me things and I love that, but like, I'm not, you know,

able to be sort of up on anything else. But to me, it feels like Dionysus is so obviously a queer God that, but then sometimes you hear of people who really interpret him as just like straight as an arrow. And I find that also so like sort of odd and I'm just, I don't know. Maybe I want your thoughts, I guess. I think I, I find less of a like quote unquote straight interpretation. Like I do. There is a,

acceptance of like, there is an acceptance of some, you know, fluid element. The thing that I find much more pushback against is viewing Dionysus as a person, right?

Really? Well, yeah, because it's like there's a very strong thread through scholarship. And like there's a there's a quote by I think Charles Siegel that like says like Dionysus is a screen on which other characters like project themselves. Dionysus is like a force, an element of personification. There is a kind of a wall that slams down when there's an understanding of someone as a god.

And like the glory and beauty of Dionysus is like, yes, entirely divine and human. Yeah. Like it's not coming from nothing. Like he is born of a mortal and has this really interesting and weird sort of story behind that. Yeah. And I mean, I would genuinely extend this to deities that aren't born of, you know, that don't have the

semily cool babies don't look at explosions um i'm really just i'm really just on a weird tear today um i'm here for it i i would extend this to other gods as well that there is a temptation to view them as not possessed of emotional life

Or at least not possessive emotional life in a way that is complementary of humanity. And I think something really beautiful and horrifying in Bokkai in particular is that you get to see both simultaneously. You get to see a sort of Lovecraftian horror, this thing in a human body that...

is so unbelievably beyond, you know, has knowledge and power and views the world in a way that is alien. And, and that is,

same, you know, kind of the meat suit, the flesh, the actor on stage, the embodied creature, the embodied person is that, and at the same time is a young, angry queer person. Yeah. And I think there's also ways that that resonates with like contemporary experiences of trans and non-binary identity is that there is this, there can be

tension between like the psychic contours of a body as it exists or even just a selfhood a selfhood external to external to the body the selfhood as it exists and this other thing it's always there and that you know like ways that trans and non-binary experience can kind of resonate with

feelings of like non-humanity. And that can arise from being treated like not human. Being told that like, not only, I mean, this is, I think this is a point that I made four years ago, but you know, for certain, for trans and non-binary identity, a lot of the time the conversation is not only about

you know, I find your choices distasteful. That's the, that's, you know, soft peddling it. Yeah. The ways that that oppression occurs is not only you're wrong, you're wrong, you're sinning, you're, uh, doing something morally impure. Um, what was that thing that was in the, um, language of the military ban? Like you, you're not living a life consistent with the

discipline but it can't yeah yeah it sucks i think i'm getting it wrong but it really sucked it um i was not anything in the american military military doesn't suck now but or is disciplined yeah for real sorry i that's a different conversation um and the way that that conversation is usually framed is your self-knowledge is invalid mm-hmm

You, you are not what you say you are not because what you say you are is wrong, but because what you say you are is not real. Um, you know, claiming, you know, set for in that rhetoric claim, you know, claiming a trans identity, claiming a non-binary identity, expressing these, expressing those features is kind of put into the same bucket as I am a dragon actually. And, um,

For a character like Dionysus where the thing on the table is I am a supernatural being. He could have said I'm a dragon actually in that case and it would have been like, yeah. Well, yeah.

Cadmus is the one that's going to get dragoned in a bit. True. Yeah. We'll get to that line. There was this thing a couple of weeks ago where I was presenting on this and I could not stop saying, I could not stop referring to the end of the play as Grandpa gets snaked.

I mean, as always, like, I'm sure I said this 10,000 times when we first chatted, but, like, Cadmus and the sort of origin story of Thebes with Harmonia and all that are, like, my, you know, like, pet obsession. And so, yeah, no, I absolutely, that's the end. I love it. Yeah.

But, I mean, and yes, no, earlier in the play when Grandpa gets snaked. And Grandma. Grandma also gets snaked. She's just not on stage. Yeah. Well, and she, yeah, she's not ever part of it. No, Harmonia's not here. It'd be a different play if she was. And I find it interesting to explore that tension between, like, Dionysus' claims being viewed as so, like, quote, ludicrous. Mm-hmm.

By Pentheus, very specifically, I should say. There's a really, really good book that was introduced to me by Nicola D'Angelo, who's a member of my cohort at UCLA, who is lovely and wonderful and a genius. And I...

I'm very lucky to be around her as much as I am. A book called The Terrible We, Thinking with Trans Maladjustment by an author named Cameron Awkward Rich. Actually, I'm sorry, can I? I think I want to get into this a little bit later. Can we maybe? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because that's like a big, naughty, messy thing. And I think I need a little more time to kind of tease that out. Yeah, yeah. Today's episode is brought to you by Factor. Summer is here. More sun, more light. I

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if I'm taking the interviewer bike for a second and turning it back. I keep opening your translation on my iPad so that we can talk about it. So it's perfect that you are bringing it back. I mean, it's a rare gift for me to get to kind of just sit down when there's not like a production on the table or I'm not, you know, doing a paper or prepping for a conference or anything. Production on the table. What? Who said that? It was a ghost.

You basically just went with exactly what I just did in the intro that I recorded. You just continued on exactly the line I'd started. So we're so here for it. Perfect. Perfect. I love it. It's rare that I get to sit down and just genuinely be like, what did you think? How did this sit with you? What did this feel like for you? It's funny for me. I read so much.

I mean, I guess it's been a while since I've read like a play in translation. I've been really deep into the Odyssey lately more than anything else. And so it's just like an interesting, I don't know. I mean, I suppose it's like there's making those connections in my head just because it's there, but I've also been working on building out, like I've written a novel and I'm doing like a big kind of rearrange on it and building out my world building and, and,

It's sort of been this reading your translation. I actually stopped doing all of that fun research stuff to read your translation. And it just kind of felt like I was just kept going with it, actually. And I pretty immediately took a bit and put it into my notes because I've been kind of pulling these sort of quotes out.

These moments from classical myth and reception, like the play is, that give us a hint of this experience beyond what we are sort of led to understand the classical world and Greek myth as. I mean, it all comes from, for me, it's coming from this like,

This feminist side of me that has become more and more furious and misandrist with every passing year that just like when it comes to Greek myth, the thing that, you know, that I talk about all the time, but also that like haunts me is just not just the way that we don't know how the woman felt, the women felt about their entire culture and their entire, like all of this, you know, all of this mythos that was,

recorded by the men and we don't know what the women thought and instead we have this mythos that treats them as if they are just these bodies to be consumed to be used to be all of these things and and even when we are when we are learning about mythology by and large from the sort of the overarching sort of

I mean, expectation, I guess, of how we're meant to read Greek myth. Like we're not meant to read into that. We're not meant to question that, you know, and I am getting back to your translation, I promise. But just like we're not meant to question how people felt about that lived reality. Like I know it's myth. It's meant to represent things. But it tends to be that when people are talking about that

Type of that part of it that the it's meant to represent something and I'm saying that in air quotes like that becomes an excuse for horrors and and for me like I see most in the women and I you know, but I am very interested in the just generally anyone who doesn't fit into.

into that like patriarchal mold right because it's the same way like the women are just being controlled by the patriarchy in that more direct way um but like anyone who doesn't fit into that mold is is so fascinating to me but particularly when it comes to myth we don't get this alternate side we're just supposed to be like oh well the reason why zeus assaults like

a hundred women and nymphs and goddesses in the mythology. Like, well, that's just because, you know, he's the king of the gods and he had to become father of all of these creatures. And it's like, well, like, why are we just meant to be like, these stories are so often like really obviously violent, but we are not, we are not sort of, we're meant to not read that as like an actual trauma. And even like, I get it, it's mythology, but we're not meant to read it as if

people, particularly people who don't fit outside of that, like binary, that male, but specifically, I mean the, the males that were in power, like we are never, we are never asked to question how those very real people might have seen these stories, these myths, these plays. And I think that's what I'm most interested in. Like,

We're sort of meant to say that, like, well, you know, because we don't have the voices of women, we're just meant to sort of assume they were just there and they were fine with everything. Whereas all I want to think about is, like, these people who were not in the ruling class, like, when they heard a myth that features that type of violence, like, how did they feel? And...

So to bring it all the way around, like that's kind of what I'm getting from that. I mean, I think it's Bacchae, but specifically your translation, because it's very accessible and self-aware and fun in a way that I want all of my Euripides, but specifically Bacchae to be. But it also just kind of, I don't know. I mean, it's still the ancient text, so it's not like it invents this new thing, but it's

But it just feels like one of very few, and I feel this way about a lot of Euripides' work more broadly, but it feels like one of very few examples where we could get a sense of how real people might have felt. This makes me think of also his play The Ion, where we actually know that

at least one writer in the ancient world saw stories of divine assault as moments of severe human trauma. And like, to me, the back eye kind of has that in it too, but in this really much more bizarre way, because you're dealing with like a very immediate divine force. And, and I love understanding the stories from myth like this with, with,

With all the gods being like how you were kind of talking about Dionysus earlier, that thing that people have trouble with, this idea that he is both a god and a human. But what I find to be most interesting about Greek myth generally is the way that the gods are presented as so human. And I think that's what I'm finding most immediate in your translation is like, this is a god who is also a human. And that's what I like in my... When I'm taking this stuff in because...

I think that the people in the ancient world, depending on time period, obviously and stuff, but like there was this understanding that at least at some point, like the gods were this very immediate force in the world. Like, I don't think that we should just believe that they all just thought like, oh no, they're all just conceptualized. Like, no, the stories make them very real. Well, and you pull, you pull one guy off the street and ask him the question, you pull a different guy off the street and ask him the question, you're going to get two different answers. Like there's no, there's no,

Unity of thought here. Sorry, I've been doing this with students a lot recently. You have to give people in antiquity the same credit as you would give a person today of being able to understand a high concept idea and being able to parse their own beliefs and have their own opinions and have takes on their world that are not

what is passed down through the very small slice of elite literature that is what we have. Yeah. That all of the men determined over centuries and centuries was worth preserving. Yeah. Well, and, and, and very specific kinds of men within that. And what I would also add to this is, you know, there's been a lot of rhetoric of like, we're meant to, we have to, this is the framework.

I really, and if there's anything that like my more recent work has, has shown me, it gets in through the walls. It gets in through the floorboards. Like the, these stories would not exist. Like let's just take Medea. I, and this is very kind of broad concept and somebody that's worked on that play more than me, please, you know, write in, send me hate mail. Please don't. Those stories,

kinds of choices don't exist in a... Those narrative choices don't exist in a society that doesn't know what it's doing. Mm-hmm. And is afraid and has complicated feelings about that. There's so much...

fear that's put into maintaining this hierarchy. There's so much, you know, it is not a given that women will behave in the way that you want them to. We have a play where they don't.

We have a play where they all run up onto the mountain and eventually do a regicide. There's a scholar named Bonnie Honig who's written a feminist theory of refusal, which is framed around Bacchae. I'm not 100% on everything in that text, but she does go out of her way to emphasize that the killing of Pentheus is also a regicide by citizen women. Hmm.

There is more going on there. It is not only a regicide, and it is also partially a regicide. And there is so much anxiety that fuels these stories. So even in something, let's go back a little earlier, like the Homeric Handed Demeter, a story that is so, in many interpretations, reifies this idea

hierarchy, reifies this system by which women are transferred from one household to another, a system by which women's sexuality is taken ownership of, not by women. And it's about a grieving mother. And it truly gets in through the walls. I think even in the most straightforward cis-heteropatriarchal narratives, there's

it gets into it you know it's coming up through the floorboards you can't get rid of it um and i the there is a joy in looking at you know maybe knowing or at least guessing that an author would be horrified with your interpretation and kind of looking them in the eye across centuries and going i actually don't care this is this is mine now i'm going to do with this what i will

I'm in favor of antagonistic readings a lot. I mean, I'm not against it. Yeah, I think just because it's what we're handed doesn't mean that's what we have to make of it. Yes, yes. That just feels like you just put into words so much of what I think about all of the time and like...

what I want to focus on on the show, but specifically what I'm kind of working on on the outside beyond the show, because I just, I think more and more, like I'm so just interested in what else was going on and just how the others saw it. And so I love this idea of that getting in through the floorboards. Like you said, like that's a delightful visual to just imagine that like,

I mean, I think it's so real. I mean, it reminds me of, you know, there's always this talk like back and forth about, you know, what we can and can't say about women in the ancient world. Like, can we say that there were no women in the audience at the city Dionysia? Like, no, probably not. Can we say that there were no citizen women? Maybe. But like, we still can't say...

with any kind of real certainty that there were none, like there's no, you know, I mean, I also think it's unreasonable. I mean, like you said, like just in this way of like, forget how you phrased it, but, but you know, the, the way we need to be thinking about ancient people as being just as real and complex as anyone today, because why wouldn't they be like, they're humans just like us. They just have different resources. And, and,

Like, I mean, I think about if I was a person living back then, like you can't really put yourself in any kind of shoes, but like, it's not unreasonable to imagine that one woman at the very least was like, I'm going to go to the city Dionysia, like a citizen woman, whatever. Like that someone, I mean, obviously there's lots, there's arguments to be made about like what type of women would have been there if there were women, blah, blah, blah. But like, there's this idea that, yeah, like the citizen women couldn't, wouldn't, whatever they never were.

That's just so impossible. Like, that's not a thing. Like, these were open air plays in the center of Athens. We, the idea that a woman never witnessed one, the idea that a woman never snuck in or, or disguise themselves a la Bacchae, like, but reverse, right? Like,

you know, it's, it's just, I think that we, I know, I understand why the academic side can't get into those what ifs, you know, they're, they're without evidence and such, but like, that's all I want to think about. I want to think about the women living in that world who might have thought like, Hey, this whole childbearing house maintaining life, like, isn't for me. Like it, it, it,

It's absolutely, you know, not... I mean, I don't even know how to... It's just like, obviously, there were women like that. Like, duh. You know, but I think there's so much hesitation. And like, I'm sorry, I keep bringing it back to women. It's just like all that I've been dealing in. You're fine. My personal side, you know, I'm very cis and it's just...

I want to, and it's just all I keep thinking about in this realm. And I think because of all of the, I mean, I think in the last couple of years alone, like I'm not, you know, even beyond the absolute horror show that's happening in your country. I'm sorry. Oh, I've been in a coma for a couple of years. What happened? What did I do? Oh, you know, just nothing, nothing much. But like, you know, even, even if you are outside, like not,

giving that the weight that it obviously also deserves but like the whole kind of west has is is going through right now this like yet another backlash to to equality gaining ground and and that applies to women and and non-men you know and and we're watching this backlash happen and so it's like all i can think about all the time is is i mean greek myth is the western origins they want to say that all the damn time right but like these are the people who gave us the west like

Though, but like, these are the men who gave us the men's West, you know, but like there were other people there. There were, there were women, there were absolutely people who we would now could define as, as non-binary and trans and all of these things. And like, what the fuck were they doing? And like, we don't know, but not because they weren't doing it. We don't know because the patriarchy didn't allow us to know. And I don't know that it just turned into a full blown rant about that. But it's just, I keep, I just keep thinking about, about how,

how other people would have seen these stories, these plays, these representations of people, like people just like them. Yeah. But like not told in the way that they ever would have or something, you know? Yeah. Well, I think I, yeah, we're probably never going to know. There is probably no way to know those that is, you know, lost to history, lost to time. And that doesn't mean that, um,

a quote-unquote like unsuccessful or Sisyphean effort is not worth it. There is... Good use of the word. Well, there is... And there's something to sitting in the loss and sitting with the... Like sitting with the absence of like... There is, you know... I mean, and it's a kind of a way to... Like I think about grief as well of like you cannot...

you can't erase grief. You cannot like fill the hole that grief leaves. And so like in looking for these voices who have been silenced in looking for these people who we know existed, who we wish could speak there is, you know, even if we cannot talk to them for them with them, there is something worthwhile in, in,

sitting with in sitting next to them and sitting in sitting beside them in acknowledging the absence that's that's the thing that really you know constantly gets to me is like there is a temptation to say like well we can't do it so we're not going to try we're just gonna you know we can't do it so yeah or we can't do it so we're just gonna like mark it as like unknown un you know unknown um not worth investigating we we've sorted that out we figured out that we can't do it and so we're not gonna we're not gonna do it anymore

And I don't know. I was just talking about this day before yesterday of like there is, you know, it's a kind of positive, not positive, but a maybe less directly harmful version of like picking at a scab. Like I think there is something to keeping the wound open. Or to like, yeah. I don't like tying things off. I don't like firm endings. Yeah. Yeah.

And I don't know, I'm a big fan of embracing you can't do it, try anyway. I love that. Well, and to bring it back to your translation, which is where I got started on, you know, this whole... Yeah, it's something I just can't stop thinking about. But I think that Bacchae is such a great resource for, like, the closest we can get to the other, to the missing, I think. Like, Bacchae...

Medea Ion like I think these are really good examples of someone else like a man who fit in with the man man mans you know that's just to really tie it up like really you know he was a man and he he fit in with that structure and he was interested in the people who didn't

And that I think is, is quite rare in the ancient world, which is sad, but it's true. And, you know, Bacchae is such an interesting examples because it's like, I mean, it's way less direct than say the Ion or even Medea, you know, which Medea is like this big question about, I mean, women's rights, but also like barbarian women's rights. And then of course the Ion is, is a big question about like trauma and,

from from divine assault and things like that but but Bacchae is like Bacchae is such an interesting look at what how they saw their gods or how at least you know Euripides considered visualizing this god it's also got to be one of the very few plays that features a god so heavily right like as kind of a start of what we have yeah it's it's

Prometheus Bound is tricky. That's the only one I was going to guess too. Prometheus Bound is weird and I love it dearly. But apart from that, in terms of extant tragedy. Because we know for a fact that there are plenty that we don't have. Like the Cadmus. I know. It might have been boring. Maybe it's fine we don't have it.

Even if it's boring, like even if it sucks, it's still worth, it's still worth talking about. We don't, these things don't have to be quote unquote good to, we don't have to like find reasons why these things are good to want to, you know, continue to investigate. It is actually fun if they're weird and stupid and bad sometimes. I mean, we've already talked about Iphigenia Among the Taurians, Helen, Ion, all of these are plays that thank,

all of the gods except for the bad ones like all that they survive not because they were deemed saved by being alphabetically convenient yes and like oh i mean that i i won't make it a whole thing because i've talked to this on the show every time euripides comes up but like yeah i those are such good examples of things we have that we're like not considered to be good and they're fucking amazing you know so it's just so interesting and like

again to get back to your direct translation which i i know but like i i just i guess i'm also just like obsessed with the main ads and and dionysus generally and and it had been a while since i'd read bacchi so i think in my head right now your translation is just like it's feeding the need i didn't know i had which was to reread bacchi but in this way it's

Which is like I okay, I've just got like a bunch of bits highlighted that I maybe can use to start a further conversation that's more directly about that guy.

But I love... Okay, so first chorus, Parados, right? Yeah. Oh my God. For one, just that Dionysus is like, Parados, you're on. That's delightful. And I'm imagining it's like in the text, but other translations don't make it quite so like quippy. I don't know, but I love it. No, it's not there. I just, no, that's a me thing. I have to, like, I will be very honest when something is, you know, not Euripidean. That was me. That's just me. Great.

um and i'm not i'm not apologetic for that i like that is it suited like it fit i mean i was ready to be like it was in there because because bakai is is like that in a way where yeah no well i i love that so then but then to the the paradox um this it's funny again because it's been so long since i've read any other translation but but yeah

it's like the second i'm also just like apparently really bad with like the ancient terms i've lost them all but the second um or i don't even know third stanza not not technically not but they say yeah the chorus sings who would stand in our way who could stand in our way anyone let them stay housebound let them clear the streets let them keep their mouths shut shut away shut off and then like a

And I just, it's things like that, that just immediately evoke everything I think about. The missing voices, the everyone else, you know? And yeah, I mean, I guess maiden ads are a good and rare example where we get this like idea of an everyone else that, you know, but they were like God inspired, mythical, but not like, there's just so much going on with them.

And that's me then just putting it to me now is not just the translation, but you know. Well, no. And I mean, I, I, the, the one kind of pin I'll drive into that is that these, these particular women of this particular chorus are not Greek. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They're meant to be these like Eastern barbarians, right? Lydian. Yeah. And there is a lot people, people better and smarter than me have done, have done a lot of really cool work with,

with that.

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to the listeners i actually you know i don't know how quite i'm gonna edit this together but we'll see but essentially i uh we could talk i think about the wider ideas forever but um the whole point of this was to talk really specifically about these dynamics between dionysus and pantheus and rage um which i honestly am so here for so we're just going to edit this so that i'm just straight

guiding us to that. So like, this is something that we talked about, I think pretty in depth last time, but I've forgotten most of it. So I want to do it all again. But like, yeah, these dynamics between, between Pentheus and Dionysus and like, what is happening and what, like basically just tell me all the things. And so I don't have to try to form a question. That was probably too much. Oh my God. No, you're fine. So like,

What I've been dealing, like, as I've discussed that there's like this trend to when this play is discussed as like a queer text. There is a tendency that Dionysus like becomes sort of an anthropomorphic personification of queerness. Like, it's just like the queer force, the queering thing. Yeah.

The thing that, like, inflicts... That's the wrong word. The thing that, like, triggers, nurtures, catalyzes, you know, the blurring and breaking of boundaries and binaries in other characters. Where things get weird and messy is if...

Yeah, is if Dionysus is allowed to exist within the text as like a fully realized like intellect and consciousness and set of emotions and emotional life. Yeah. Not just as like the, yeah, not just as the metaphor made flesh. Because where that really gets hinky is in like questions of madness.

I'm going to be very clear. Is this a sort of Euripidean rooted interpretation? No. Am I doing it anyway? Yeah. Great. Tragedies are like water. They take the shape of the container that they're in. Bacchae is in the container of this century and is for the moment and for the purposes of this conversation in the container of meat. Yeah. And

My lived experience, my personhood, I think this is the case for every translator. I think this is the case for most writers. I am not trying to put forth an unbiased, big air quotes, pure, faithful reading of Euripides. I think the only translators who would ever dare say something so silly because it's so inherently...

not a trans what like the purpose of a translation are like just the privileged old white men who think that their word about the classics is is god itself so i love i like to hear that but i also think it's yeah it's a great and important reminder like all translation is is

is uh you know subjective and that's what makes reading it interesting and reading multiple interesting yeah and yeah so there is there is this question not question dionysus is the mad god um walter otto calls dionysus like a mad god a god who is mad a god part of whose nature it is to be insane

It definitely, I'm very fine. I'm totally normal that I have that just off the top of my head. That's a very normal thing to do. Sometimes I just quote the line from Hesiod where Medusa gets assaulted by Poseidon because I've fully memorized a translation of that. So no judgment here. Yeah, like lay beside her in a meadow of spring flowers.

Yeah. Ish. Yeah. Now you're showing me up because I can't think of more. But yes, exactly. I look, I've been. Oh, and then she suffered a woeful fate. That's the line. There you go. That's the money. Yeah. Okay. No, it's so Dionysus as the mad God. And this is where.

Cameron Awkward Rich comes to the party as recommended by my dear, dear, dear cohort mate, Nicola D'Angelo, who everyone should read and follow because she is wonderful and amazing. Cameron Awkward Rich is pushing back against a trend in trans studies that leans away from questions of like sickness, madness, and mental illness. There is a very famous like moment where Susan Stryker says like very strongly, I'm not sick.

Like, you know, divorcing questions of transness from like it being an expression of mental illness or sickness. In that process, that elides aspects of the trans, aspects of a trans experience that do involve, quote unquote, awkward, which is quote, bad feelings. And like questions of disability, questions, yeah, disability, madness, mental illness, sickness, right?

that there is a need to create a publicly visible version of the trans experience that does not include those things and therefore does not include those people. For Dionysus, well, Awkward Rich mentions that these bad feelings are the result of being trans, not because being trans is in itself a sickness or a madness or an illness, but because being trans is

puts you into a hostile environment immediately. It leads you to bad feelings. Because of the hostile environment in which it is received, transness and experiences of quote-unquote bad feelings can live very close to each other, and that needs to be acknowledged. For Awkward Rich, those bad feelings are predominantly anxiety, depression, withdrawal, anxiety,

Like those are the ways that bad feelings can manifest themselves. What I find interesting about Dionysus is that I think Dionysus is, I'm not going to say I think Dionysus is, there is an opportunity to view, to build the lens through which Dionysus is suffering from trans maladjustment, is experiencing bad feelings,

Because of societal rejection, because of familial rejection. Yeah. And is very clearly hurting. And the god has a... Because Dionysus is a god, there is another option. The bad feelings are not limited to...

What people under oppressive structures are typically limited to. People under oppressive structures, there cannot be an external outlet for bad feelings. So these things go inward. You cannot effectively fight back all the time in every manner. So depression, so anxiety, so other things.

other worse things as happens so frequently to trans people, particularly trans people of color, particularly trans women of color. The way that the walls that are built around their lives until they collapse in Dionysus in the Bacchae has another option. And that option is rage and rage that does not have to go inward. And what happens to Pentheus?

Is an expression of those bad feelings and expression of that rage. And what I would also add to that is that in these queer discourses, in these discourses of like, what is trans rage? There can be a need to make it righteous. Mm hmm.

That in order for that anger to be, to be valid, to be accepted, it has to be, you know, a nurturing anger, a vital anger, an anger that builds an anger that, you know, inspires you to the revolution and pushes you forward and gets you into community organizing. Yeah. You can't just be furious. Furious in, I want to be very clear. And I was very clear last time. And I actually, I could have been clearer last time. And I,

What Dionysus does to Pentheus is cruel. Is cruel and violent and violating and malicious. In my reading. Well, he gets him torn to shreds. So I think, regardless of how you're coming for it, it's a pretty...

It's a relevant thing to say. Obviously, the angle you're coming at is very different, but like, you know. Yeah. Frankly, the Sparagbos is not the most violent thing that happens on that, in that play for me. Yeah. No, I, yeah. The most violent, malicious, cruel thing that happens in that play is, there's an article by Isabel Raffel, Raffel, Raffel, who writes about

what happens to Pentheus as a forced outing and understanding like that Pentheus, a potential transness for Pentheus is used against him. There is a dear, dear friend of mine who I was just at this, at this conference with and co-presented with, Pasqualina Breitenfeld, who spoke very eloquently about the walking through the scene where Pentheus is convinced to dress as a woman as a

where the anxiety she tracks where the anxiety and where the fear comes from for pantheist and links it back to a lot of contemporary trans theory about like um the the shame and the joy of even wanting to be seen as a woman and how pantheist experiences womanhood is so tender and almost joyful and

Like when Pentheus comes back after the roving and is like asking Dionysus all of these little detailed questions of like, how am I supposed to stand? You know, which hand do I have the Therese's in? Like, how's my posture? How's my hair? How's my skirt? Is the saddest thing in the world to me because this could be so good. And Dionysus is a hundred percent aware of that. And Dionysus is a hundred percent on, on the same wavelength.

in understanding how Pentheus is feeling and understanding the liberatory joy of being seen as a woman or even feminine and is killing him with it. And for me, that is why Bacchae is not an uncomplicatedly queer liberatory text because this is a queer person destroying

somebody else who could, who had that potential and, and destroying them deliberately and maliciously. And that doesn't mean we, that doesn't mean we walk away from the play. That doesn't mean we walk away from Dionysus. Support is different than analysis. Condoning is different than understanding. And what I would invite in that moment is like, not all anger is going to be righteous. Right.

Not all rage is generative and beautiful and good. There are going to be aspects of living as the fascist walls close in where you just want to hurt somebody. Should you? No. And, sorry, this is very like, this is a little intense. No, but I... The kinds of rage that are not generative, the kinds of feelings that are not

that are destructive, that are destructive, that are cruel, that are petty, that are big air quotes evil. Mm-hmm. Feeling the villain impulses is beautifully represented in Dionysus, beautifully and horribly represented in Dionysus, and that that is an opportunity, that is a sticking point. Mm-hmm. Dionysus is not the queer savior in this way. And if they are, that's a very complicated version of salvation. Mm-hmm.

It's not, this is, the end of this play is not either a restoration of the polis where the gender roles are reasserted and everybody goes back to normal and Dionysus leaves. Or a kind of, you know, bright shining post-revolution future. It's not going to be either of those. Because the creature at the heart of this, the god, the person at the heart of this is fundamentally wounded as we all are.

And this play is not a roadmap to revolution. This play can be a warning. Not a warning that causes you to return to hegemony, to return to structures and binaries, but that shows a possible path and gives you the decision whether or not you want to turn to it. Yeah. All right. That was really heavy. No. I mean, it was, but like...

It's just made me think so many things. And I, I mean, I think one is that what I find I enjoy, I suppose most about Euripides, but plays like this and Medea, because more on that, but is this way that like the ending isn't, it isn't like what we get in so many other Greek plays, I guess. Like it isn't,

It doesn't wrap everything up with a little bow. The expected gods don't fly in on the machine and solve all the problems. Instead, it leaves you with questions and emotions and probably some rage as well, even in the audience. And like, you know, just a lot. And I think...

That's what I like. I like this expectation that you just sit in it yourself and make of it kind of what you will. But specifically, and stop me, please, if this sounds, you know, remotely like I'm trying to, you know, hijack anything because I'm not. No.

One thing that really just was kind of coming up to me in the way you were talking about that and just the way that Dionysus, just sort of that Dionysus that you were looking at, that he isn't a savior, that he does terrible things out of this place of sort of being in such a similar situation, kind of. You said it much better, but just that element really made me think of how Euripides treats Medea.

It's so fascinatingly similar, I would say, just in this way that both of them are coming from these very sympathetic, I would say, places. And the way we are kind of meant to like them throughout the play and sympathize and kind of understand generally where they're coming from. And then they do something horrific, right?

And that something is so tied to their own trauma. Yeah. And like, and, and that's just sort of it. You know, we don't think we don't, we're not meant to think that in the end they're the good guy, nor are we really meant to think ultimately that they are the bad guy. They're just a person well, or a God, but who did a terrible thing from a very complicated place. And I just think that,

I just, yeah, I hadn't seen those connections between them before. And I find that really interesting. And again, it just reminds me of this way that I think Euripides was just really interested in the complexity of humanity in a way that I personally love. Well, and there's, I mean, there's, sorry, this is off the dome. So I might refute this later. Both of those plays end with

a character telling that Dionysus, Armadilla, you went too far. What have you done? Yeah. We have Jason and we have Cadmus. Yeah. Who is the only character in the play who stands up to Dionysus and says, that's not okay. Yeah, that's interesting. And there is, like, that chance is given and then you get to watch

your protagonist, and I don't use that word to mean good guy. I use that word to mean person who's the prime mover of the play. Yeah. Deuteragonist for Dionysus. Say, I don't care. For Dionysus, it's Zeus, my father, set this in motion. I am a god. You should have honored me. And another thing. I'm going to pivot for a second, then I'm going to come back. There is also, in contemporary interpretation, a...

discomfort or a judgment around Dionysus's like not request demand it's demand let's call it what it is um for worship and for you know cult status and divine praise

where it is difficult to then like hold a mortal conception in conjunction with that, where it's like, that feels like too much to ask. That feels like too much for somebody to ask. That feels quote unquote arrogant. That feels unnecessary. That feels too much. And I think this gets into an interesting place when we consider what in the present day is thought to be too much to ask. When a trans person asks, call me this name.

Use these pronouns. Don't refer, you know, don't use X, Y, and Z for me. Let me, you know, I'm going to dress the way I want. Let me get healthcare. Allow me to pay for the, allow me to pay for life-saving gender affirming healthcare that I cannot necessarily afford on my own. You know, give me, give me access to the tools to save my life. That can also be interpreted by

less compassionate actors as too much. As you're arrogant, you're playing God, you're usurping the role of nature, you are going too far. I'm not going to do that for you. I'm not going to help you with that. I'm not going to validate your conception of yourself financially, medically, socially, legislatively.

And I think there is something to seeing Dionysus's fixation on, it's not a fixation, like the demand for worship as the demand for being honored as a God, that is what they are. It is, you know, big air quotes, reasonable accommodation. Yeah. I also think about it in the terms of sometimes, right?

disability where disabled people need to ask the world to bend around them in certain ways or there are you know things that a disabled person cannot do you know help is needed care is needed some kind of intervention from the world around is needed and that is considered too much you know we're not going to do that we're not going to help and i would say this because i think

it aligns I mean with with this question but also the the the trans narrative that that led to this which is that so a few years back I had um Kyle Lewis Jordan on my show to talk about Hephaestus and disability yes yes yes yes Kyle does a lot of incredible work on on disability studies but also like accessibility in like museums and all of that but

One of the things that he, it was just the way he phrased it that sticks with me, which is just the way we conceptualize of disability is as something, you know, that is like inherent to the person who is disabled. Whereas in truth, it is the world that has disabled them because it is that the world does not fit them. Yeah.

And, and, you know, all of these things in the world are not made, they're, they're made for abled body. It isn't that that person is disabled, you know, and so it reminds me of the same issues I think in transness, which is that the world has made it so that it is so fucking hard. Yeah.

It's not the trans person that has made it so fucking hard. Yeah. And so, yeah, like I think that that, that that's an important connection to kind of make, because it is, it is this, this bigger world problem. It is not the individual who has done anything except try to be themselves. Yeah. I should also say as a caveat here, or like, I am, I am thinking about these questions having recently become disabled. Like,

That is something that I'm actively wrestling with at the moment as I figure out what an accommodated life looks like for me. And experiences that I've had of attempting to ask for accommodations that require other people to do something that might not necessarily, not just, you know, let me do X, let me do Y. I'm going to, you know, I can't, you know. Yeah. Something that other people actually have to do.

And be conscious of and change something about the way they live their lives. And having that be really difficult. So I have a lot of understanding, as I already did. To be very clear, my Dionysus is, there's a lot of me in there. And it's not a sort of active artistic choice. It's not...

a grand political statement. It's, it's just how it is. That's, I feel, I, I feel a great affinity for that figure. That figure is somebody that's very important to me. Yeah. And if you haven't figured that out, hello, listeners, if you haven't figured that out by now. Emma likes Dionysus. Yes. Like is probably too little a word. Emma has big feelings. Big feelings. About Dionysus. Um,

And I have a lot of sort of embodied understanding in this moment of, you know, walking up to somebody or kind of approaching an institution, whether, you know, for Dionysus, that's the city of thieves, approaching any kind of, you know, larger organization and saying, hello, this is what I need from you. This is how I can, you know, be comfortable and safe and feel like me and, you

you know institution or a family and that's you know very often the case for contemporary trans people is experiencing you know no i'm not going to help you move through the world i'm not going to give you what you need to be you i'm not going because it's also like there's this thing well and it plays against this like raging hyper individualism of like if you can't just do that for yourself

you're doing it wrong. You know, you have to be able to work this all out on your own. You are, you know, I'm not responsible for you. I'm not responsible for your feelings. I'm not responsible for your safety. I'm not responsible for your life. I'm not like there is that very American hyper individualism of like being in community or being with other people in like a system of care is seen as like parasitic or codependent.

Late stage capitalism. It's great. We're doing great. Yeah. And just, I, I, I don't find that model helpful. I don't find that model helpful. That model is uncomfortable to deal with a lot of the time. And I can, I, I can then see that in Dionysus and also see a different version of that in the chorus who are in community.

Can I use this as a moment to quote the chorus? Because I have it pulled up and I just really love this. So this is, it's, I did have to scroll through of my highlights. So I'm going to, I hope I'm getting it right of where it is, but it looks like it's right after it's when Dionysus is taken away to be imprisoned before he like blows the shit up and reveals himself. Yeah.

And so, yeah, it was like third stanza of the chorus and they just start, such rage, such rage flames up in the son of the earthborn Achaeon, the serpent's son who sprang up from dragon's teeth, sown in the earth like grain, pentheus monster, fearsome beast like none of mortal kind. And I just, I really, I was just like doing really quick highlighting of it this morning because I, yeah, and I just,

I mean, it brings up the rage. This is obviously before he's kind of made the decision to blow shit up, but...

It's so, it's interesting to me. And just what you were saying earlier about the accommodations. And I mean, I think often too, like it gets a little, we get a little caught up in the worship that he's requesting and he is obviously, but I think it's really interesting also to remember that this is, and I know you do to be clear, but like that this is also a story of, of family rejecting him, which is,

Yeah, is something that I think of a lot because I'm obsessed with his family. But also, yeah, I imagine is also something that really ties in with this sort of trans reading of him. Yeah. Well, and I'd also add here, like, Dionysus is not the only raging figure. Yeah. Pentheus is raging. Pentheus is... This is also about Pentheus's rage. And Pentheus is...

internalizing that rage and directing it outwards. And that rage comes potentially in this reading, caveat, caveat, caveat, from the desperate need to maintain structure and hierarchy and the desperate need to abide by hierarchy.

These ones. Which it causes a lot of psychic anguish and that has to go somewhere. Yeah. And I would also point out like this, and this is not just in this passage, and this is very Euripidean. The way that Pentheus in the words of the chorus is constantly made animal, made monster. Yeah. Inhuman. Yeah. And that dovetails with Dionysus. That dovetail, like Pentheus is also

being pulled around to the borders of humanity and is being seen as a creature, as a thing by the chorus. So yeah, whenever you think this play has a straightforward direction of energy or where there's only one character in Bacchae that does something or whenever there's an uncomplicated reading

It comes in through the floorboards. Yeah. Yeah. It gets in through the walls. The idea of an uncomplicated reading of Bacchae, I think, is like... It betrays a lack of interest in Bacchae. Or Euripides, or like... I don't know. That's... Yeah. But it's...

Yeah, sorry, now I got distracted because I was looking for more of my highlights to keep us on this. And I found where I've highlighted an entire, I actually can't see where my camera is, but it's on the page that it shows up in my iPad. And it's because I'm, and stop me if they're, you know, I'm not trying to interrupt, but this is an ADHD moment of like guiding elsewhere. But I was really interested in the way you kept a lot of Greek.

And whether that is, I mean, it's an interesting choice that I loved. I was like, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't know ancient Greek, but I know little bits and I can sound it out. So that's my favorite. Anytime I see Greek is like, okay, well, I'll just say it out loud and then I'll get things out of it. And, you know, it's like, that's, that's kind of all I can get out of the Greek, but I, I, I love that inclusion. I feel like it is,

I mean, it's interesting, especially from, like, where he is also coming from this barbarian aspect, which as much as we're not going to talk about that, you know, that necessarily Eastern aspect, but it is interesting to note for the listeners that, like, from a bare minimum standpoint, the...

idea of of barbarians in Greece I mean in ancient Greece was I mean on its face it's non-Greek right but specifically from the east there is this very strong um understanding in the ancient Greek world that that there is like a lot of effeminacy that that

people from the East are have all these like they're, they're woman. Like, I mean, it's also where we get the idea of Amazon's right. All of this. It's like this, this sort of, they're, they're not good at like us because they're also a feminine. And I think that's an interesting tie in. And I realized that just like also came out of just, this is my ADHD brand going wild because it wasn't really relevant here, but it is so interesting to like, look at him that way. And I'm just generally like,

interested in in the the greek like uses that you've done but also i want to i mean i i want to keep hearing more about about the rage if you have it but i just now i'm just excited and going on i i will um steal a point from somebody at this conference um there's a lovely uh wildly intelligent um

member of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. And I will have to double check if she is okay with me naming her after this. Her name is Charlotte. She's great. And she at the conference brought up that the words specifically used to describe Pentheus's clothing were

Right.

um like i think eastern king yeah um she was she was way more specific than i'm being and she had it down i'm so interested in that um and then i had to like go stare at the wall for a bit um but it was so it was so cool but yeah there is there is a lot going there is a lot of specificity there um but with regard to the greek are you talking about the earthquake

Um, I mean, maybe. Yeah. He at one it's when. Yeah. I mean, it's right when, um,

Yeah, that's shortly after we have the Dionysus. From offstage, amplified, distorted, inattentive, bellowing, defiance, a child wailing, a tree uprooting. I just love that, so I had to read it all. And then there's some Greek there, but I noticed mostly the next line, because he says that he's, like, of Semele, of the child. Yeah, which is, like, not everything I understood, so thank you. Well, you got it! You got it right! I did!

Um, no, you had that one in the bag. Um, so this is a scene, this is a scene commonly known as like either the earthquake or like the palace miracle. Uh, the moment where Dionysus is imprisoned and busts out dramatically and supernaturally. We don't see the busting out. We see the chorus reacting to it. We love offstage, like wildness. I, uh,

every so often just because there are no stage directions stage directions and tragedy I have to go a little nuts yeah you get to make them that's the whole rule and people before you have made more ridiculous ones so I'm glad that's all because I just are so wild sometimes and you see stuff and you're like this sounds risky I don't like it so I like when I'm like when I mean all of yours I was like oh I'm so here for all of these

My stage directions are...

And I did not do this on purpose. And then it's just how it happened. My stage directions are a technical team's worst nightmare because they are so abstract and weird and unstageable. And I'm so sorry to any future lighting, sound, set design. I'm so sorry, guys. Do whatever you need. I, you know, work within the constraints of your budget. I'm so sorry. I have to say, I love that especially because unlike...

a large number of other like, you know, more traditional translations, you are also a dramaturg. So I think it's funny that you're like, mine are terrible for anyone, but also I'm the person who's actually affiliated with theater. Yeah.

they're either, well, they're, I, so like, it's, it's a split thing of either they're a nightmare or they are like a fun, creative invitation. And it is genuinely up to you. Like if, if you've got a million dollars and you've got like fog machines and lightning and all, you want to go nuts, do that. If you've got a black box theater and like a thunder sheet off stage and like a couple of ribbons, great. Do that. Um,

I truly, I want to, I'm so like, I want to see the, my, my fond never going to happen dream is like, I want to see the $5 and the $5 million version. Yes. And they're both good. That's great tragedy though too, right? Like that's what's so fun about this.

I kind of what they did and didn't have back then is that it makes it so much easier for us now to, to have all these possibilities. Yeah. My, my favorite thing is like in discussions of like, you know, why is this speech so long? Why is the speech here in the play? Why is this moment being structured the way it is? And I'm just quietly in the corner going, the actor needs to go get changed. Yeah. You are buying time for a quick change backstage. Yeah.

And I just, I love it so much. With regard to the Greek in the earthquake palace miracle scene, I like when divinity leaks through. I like when the, not the mask, because it's not artificial, but I like when the Lovecraftian thing peeps through. And I think in this case, like using the Greek, using a language that

the chorus demonstrably understands and the audience may not lends the magic to the scene in a way that proves useful.

And the scene is also somewhat magical in the sense of like, there's one of my professors at UCLA, Ella Hasselsworth over this past week with the Bacchae conference was talking about how the chorus are essentially singing down the earthquake. Like this is a song between the chorus and Dionysus where they sing this miracle into being. They incant this thing into being. This is a spell.

um and there's also something really fun one of the greek lines that i i have in here say a um it's like you know shake the ground lady earthquake queen earthquake and like she is personified i'm glad you define that because those were all words where i was like okay i've got i've got the catholic i've got potnia but i needed to hear it put together in that way i yeah i

No, it's like, oh, queen earthquake, oh, lady earthquake, shake the ground below. And she is personified and she is sung into this moment. And I think for a contemporary audience, having something that feels like a spell be in a language that a given contemporary audience isn't necessarily going to understand immediately is

rocks I think it's yeah that's where my scholarship runs out and I'm just like I actually think this is just sick nasty and I thought it would be cool that's where kind of what I was taking from it because I was like oh we got this Greek like I can picture the kind of like heavy chanting of ancient Greek in that moment in a way that I yeah I'm equally obsessed with so it rocks um okay we do have to start wrapping up which okay I don't want to do but but here we are where

Okay. I... There's just another line, and then maybe this is a good... I don't want to, like... There's so much else to say. But I just have where... I think it's Dionysus speaking, but he's also kind of third-personing, and I'm just loving this. He says, then the roaring god, at least, I think it was them, but that's just my opinion, created an image in the courtyard, a phantom, a simulacrum. Hologram's good for this century. Yeah. Like, I...

And that's so interesting. And it made me think, like... I mean, generally, I'm not going to turn this into, like, a big, long thing, even though I could. But I love... I'm just loving all of this. And I'm trying to, like, okay, what else do we have to say that we could do in, like, eight minutes? But I just... I just... I love all of it. Oh, I've got the snakes all highlighted. There's just so much going on. But, like, I mean...

What kind of, if you have like a closing thing that you want to share, because I just, I want to hear everything, but also no, no pressure, but like, was there a moment or like something about the end? You, you were curious about the end earlier, which we barely really got. I mean, we got to it, but also not. Yeah. I mean, okay. First with the fourth wall breaking, I am like,

I am obsessed with, I am taken with really creating a version of Dionysus in the first half of the play that is creating community with the audience. And is warm and...

funny and sparkly and cool and sexy and all of those things. And like, and you know, genuinely like I, my, my dream in production is like, and it's happened once or twice. It's like Dionysus is on stage before the play starts, like chatting it up with the audience, like really building a relationship, building a rapport. Oh, I love that.

And, you know, constantly kind of coming back to the audience with, you know, that kind of divine fourth wall breaking. And also there's no fourth wall in antiquity because there's no proscenium. The fourth wall is really introduced with the advent of proscenium stages. Just a Dionysus that wants to be your friend. Yeah. And, and, and very, and wants to be liked. Yeah.

and accept it wants to be liked wants to be accepted and if that's not going to happen on stage it'll happen in the house and then tracking that through

what happens at the end of the day yeah and my most recent like about a year ago maybe a little more i like you know woke up in a cold sweat and was like i have to change the ending um because there is very famously this large lacuna uh where we don't have like the back we don't have agave's lament where she would most likely have like reassembled the limbs of pentheus and grieved over them and we don't have dionysus's uh final entrance which would presumably then on the crane on the mechanae uh

and revealed as a god we don't have that we pick up with grandpa gets snaked um i'm not gonna stop calling it no no i would be offended if you did um we we pick up with grandpa getting snaked and i in my translation initially in the draft that is currently published online uh at the mercurian uh a theater translation journal um

That ending is the way that that lacuna has been filled by me. Very passive voice. The way I filled that lacuna is very about semelie. It's very like, here's all of the, here's all of the ways that you screwed over my mother. Here's why I've done, you know, here's why I've done this. Fuck you forever. And the new ending that felt a little too easy. That felt like trying to get Dionysus a path. Yeah.

And this new ending, I think, this new choice to fill the lacuna leans into what I've talked about already with the spite and the cruelty and the malice and the rage. I might close by reading a little bit of it if you don't mind. Please. Where Dionysus enters. I think you might be able to read the part that I've got highlighted here too or at least close to it so I'm ready. I warned him.

I told him exactly what I was, and he said I wasn't. I told him who I was, and he didn't believe me. I told all of you who I am, and you said no. And then the stage directions very specifically say, to audience, Oh, I'm sorry, am I not fun anymore? We were having so much fun. Me and the girls and all of you. Wasn't it fun? Wasn't it cool and sexy and camp and just a little bit dangerous? Wasn't I?

But now that he's dead in 17 different pieces and she's crying, we all feel a little bit different, don't we? Well, maybe you do. You didn't have to kill him like that, though. That was cruel to fuck with his mind like that. Maybe I fucked with his mind. Maybe I didn't. You'll just have to argue that one out amongst yourselves for another couple thousand years. And it goes on. But it is...

Yeah, it is. It is everything that I previously described. Hopefully, if I've done my job right, it is cruel and malicious and petty. And Dionysus actually says that later on. He says, yes, they say, yes, it was cruel. That's the point. It was cruel and over the top and vicious. And I'm so fucking glad I did it. Whether or not you believe Dionysus in that moment is up to you.

They also say further down, again, to the audience, after building this rapport through the whole play, I don't care if you don't like me anymore. And that is the one stage direction that I will very much stick up for because the stage direction right before that just says lying. I noticed that. And then Grandpa gets snaked. And then we get back on track and then Euripides resumes and Grandpa gets snaked and Agave leaves. So, yeah. Go be a snake or whatever it was that used to be here. Yeah.

Sorry, that's just the first line of it. I love that. Thank you. I like it. I'm not at all highlighted. I like acknowledging. I feel a duty to acknowledge like, yeah, I'm playing Calvin ball here. We need to understand in the narrative that what, you know, even the narrative itself is degrading here as other things come up through the floorboards. Yeah. You know, the existence of this as a sort of snow globe narrative

starts to crack. Yeah. Because thieves can't hold this anymore. So I'm very normal. I've done a very normal thing. I have a very normal research agenda.

I mean, join the club. I normality is overrated. Yeah. I mean, I, I cannot fuck with it anymore. I don't see the point, but I think like back guy is a mind fuck of a play. And I think that's the point. So I absolutely love, I love this translation. Like,

I mean, I love Bacchae, but like, I think that a lot of times people don't lean into the mind fuck that is Bacchae and they kind of keep it like to something that resembles the other Greek tragedies in their translations. And I just appreciate when there is that sort of freedom to be like, no, this is fucked up.

And we can all love it for the piece of art and entertainment that it is. And it's fucked up. I mean, it's how I feel about Medea too. And I just, yeah. So it's. And it tells you something about the fucked up parts of you. Yeah. It speaks to, yeah, experiences that are not comfortable. It speaks to dynamics between people that are not comfortable. It speaks to ways of living in the world that

can go really horribly wrong. And I don't think of it as a, like, a sort of call to return to normalcy, a sort of caution, a warning against the other. No. I think there's more to be done. Yeah. There's just depth there. Yeah.

Well, we could talk about it forever, but we're already over the time we planned. So thank you so fucking much for this because truly like fucking delightful episode. I'm just going to keep saying fuck because Dionysus would approve. I'm going to get some things from you separately in an email, but is there anything you want to share with my listeners about where to read more or just anything?

Watch this space? You can find me on Instagram at academic main ad. I don't kind of have any other form of social media at the moment. That's really active. I'm a member of your lovely collective and will exist in some more formal way soon. Oh yeah. That's what do you mean? What do you mean? That doesn't exist. What am I talking about? That's a ghost.

A ghost said that. No, no, it is official. It's just more that I haven't had time to build it at all. I, yeah, that's, I'm, I'm just kind of living the PhD life right now. So that is my only plug is just, you know, watch this space and follow me on Instagram if you want. We got fun plans. We do. All right. Evil plan. A little of everything. Yeah. I would say. Yes.

Okay.

I just, I mean, now more than ever, obviously I find it so important to be talking about these queer versions of stories, these queer gods, these gods that are so inherently gender diverse, that so inherently are beyond the binary. Um...

The horrors persist, so generally we'll just say, you know, for as long as I can, I am just going to keep celebrating these queer stories, these queer bodies, these queer people. Trans people deserve to exist in exactly the same way that cis people deserve to exist, and it's utterly absurd that anyone dares suggest otherwise.

And maybe we just need to stick Dionysus on them. You can pull a Pentheus on Rowling and all of her terrible, hideous bunch of tarfs. Let's Talk O'Misbaby is written and produced by me, Liv Albert. Michaela Pangawish is the Hermes to my Olympians.

The podcast is part of the Memory Collective Podcast Network, where we are trying to build out historical resources that have morals and values behind them. For lack of more detail right now, the website, again, is still being created. But in the meantime, you can learn more at collectivemem.com.

And sign up for the newsletter because eventually, eventually I'll have to release one of those. Missbaby.com slash newsletter. Thank you all so much for listening. I fucking, I mean, I am Liv first. You know, I'm Liv. I'm still me. I'm Liv and I fucking love this shit.

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