A Handbook to the Reception of Greek Drama by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2016-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

The Nineteenth Century

After a century of neglect, Bilderdijk’s translations of Sophocles were the harbingers of a new interest in ancient drama. In rhyming verse, the Dutch scholar and poet tried to bring Greek poetry closer to his audience, an audience that he himself did not estimate to be very large. After all, modern theatrical taste was still dictated by French classicism. In the Low Countries, the impact of innovations such as bourgeois drama (which Diderot’s Le Fils naturel had launched in 1757) was not so great. In the preface to De dood van Edipus (The Death of Oedipus, after Oedipus at Colonus), Bilderdijk underlined that these translations were not intended for the stage, but were only composed for his personal pleasure (1789: x). In fact, he even conceded that if ever he were to write a tragedy, it would be the modern French example that he would follow, not that of the Greeks (1779: 31).

Why, then, did Bilderdijk translate those anachronistic Greeks? His poetical arguments reveal a surprisingly political tone. Dutch drama appeared to be under the threat from “the intrusion of novelties” (1779: 31). French classicism was seen as nothing less than an epidemic from abroad. Furthermore, the structure of French tragedies was related to the authoritarian form of government that characterized the country. That made the presence of a chorus into a structural impossibility in a French play. On the Greek stage, by contrast (just as in many Dutch imitations, e.g., in Vondel), the continuous presence of the chorus was considered by Bilderdijk to be an echo of Athenian democracy. “The People was thus an inextricable character in all of their Tragedies: a character, in whose presence all events should occur, and therefore a character that should continuously occupy the stage” (Bilderdijk 1779: 6–7).

Greek drama had to function as an example, that nevertheless offered very little practical guidance or inspiration. In Bilderdijk’s own later historical dramas, such as Floris V (1808) and Kormak (1808), there are no structural elements from Greek drama (such as the chorus). These plays are much closer to the “detested” French example than to the more contemporary, German model of historical tragedy. A similar path was taken by playwright Samuel Iperusz Wiselius and by the Classicist P.A.S. van Limburg Brouwer (Haak 1977: 16–17). Their interest in ancient drama remained essentially theoretical. Only Wiselius indeed translated excerpts from Euripides and Seneca in order to insert these in his drama Polydorus (1813).

As in other Western European countries, interest in Greek drama was the exception rather than the rule. The formal language of tragedy was at odds with all the major genres of nineteenth-century serious drama: French classical tragedy, romantic tragedy and melodrama. Greek comedy had an even smaller presence in Dutch-language culture. At the time when Bilderdijk wrote the remarks quoted above, only three translations of comedy were available in print. An instructive tool for examining the general attitude towards Greek theater is the bibliography of Dutch translations of foreign dramas published during the nineteenth century, which was compiled in 1907 by theater historian J.

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