Poor Pentheon

Well, I just finished plowing my way through "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" today, which had been occupying a lot of my attention. I don't really have a lot to write about it, as I couldn't process a lot of the ideas it presented in just one reading. It's a book I would really like to actually study, and I'm frustrated that I could only give it a sort of cursory glance at the moment. But I think that's the stage of learning I'm in - I need to just throw a whole lot of ideas at myself, read as much as I can, absorb whatever sticks, and go back and sift through the stuff that didn't take the first time at some later date. Like grad school. Which is hopefully just around the corner.

Meanwhile, I'm nearing the end of "Tales from Ovid" - got through several LONG tales today, including "Bacchus and Pentheus." Another very disturbing ending, similar to Actaeon (and even invoking that myth as well, proving there's some pattern to the gods' madness). I was much more sympathetic to Actaeon than I was to Pentheus, though - I mean, come on, Tiresius told the guy what was going to happen and he paid no attention. You would think at some point these guys would figure it out. If a god tells you not to do something, you better the fuck NOT DO IT.

The thing I liked best about "Bacchus and Pentheus" was that Pentheus's transformation was not as overt as the previous metamorphoses had been. Usually, it's pretty obvious what's happening; Ovid comes right out and says it. But this time, the reader is united with Pentheus in not realizing what has occurred until it's too late.

As Pentheus is climbing up the mountain to Citaeron, he's going completely crazy with rage -


... his brain temperature
Rose a degree. Something insane
Behind his eyes
Tore off its straitjacket.


So it is not surprising to read that his lust for blood grew


When he heard the unbearable howls
And ululations
Of the Bacchantes, and the clash of their cymbals.
And when he stumbled in his fury
And fell on all fours,
When he clutched the sod and felt their stamping
Shaking the mountain beneath his fingers,
When Pentheus saw the frightened worms
Twisting up out of their burrows
Then the red veil came over his vision.


So far, this reads just like the reaction and physical negligance one would expect of a crazed, wronged man. But then, brilliantly, unexpectedly, we hear his mother yell:


"It's the boar that ploughed up our gardens!
I've hit it! Quickly, sisters, now we can kill it!
I've hit it."


And we realize what has occurred. The final painful twist occurs as Pentheon sobs for his mother to recognize him, to look at him. And for just a moment, the reader thinks she has understood.


Agave stares, she blinks, her mouth wide.
She takes her son's head between her hands
And rips it from his shoulders.
She lifts it, like a newborn baby,
Her red fingers hooked into the hair
Letting the blood splash over her face and breasts


Oh well.

The irony in "like a newborn baby" really is eloquent.