Eschyle

Summary

Dominique Pagani sees Aeschylus as the most archaic of the three great tragedians. His is a theatre in which the chorus and the collective take precedence over the individual1, and he judges him more epic than Sophocles. He uses The Persians as an example of the "we" of the Greek city: the whole city gathers on the tiers on the evening of the performance23. In Prometheus Bound, he notes that it is Zeus who is made guilty, not Prometheus. He often returns to the prophecy that man will dethrone the gods as Zeus dethroned Cronus4, and he sees in it the first death, a tragic one, of the ancient gods. He links Aeschylus to hubris, the driving force of tragedies, and to Greek tragic death. For him, making mousikè means doing as Aeschylus did, whose tragic text is chanted. From the Oresteia, he retains Orestes' acquittal by Athena and his subsequent pursuit by the maternal goddesses. He sees in this perhaps the source of Parsifal's ten years of wandering5.

1. 1#10.5 The figure of Antigone, such as into herself at last…24 Nov 2021 · 12:22
2. 2Hegel on the Beach 5/52 Feb 2016 · 1:25:11
3. 3Worldliness in Clouscard: Aragon and the positivity of the negative29 Jun 2023 · 1:52:07
4. 4#4 Benefits and harms of amnesia…13 Nov 2020 · 1:12:58
5. 5The quest for the Grail, sanctimony or sacrilege?1 Apr 2024 · 2:05:06

Summary produced automatically from 30 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.