Confusion and Concealement in Euripides' Hippolytus. Vision, Hope, and Tragic Knowledge - article ; n°1 ; vol.3, pg 263-282

Charles Segal

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Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens - Année 1988 - Volume 3 - Numéro 1 - Pages 263-282
Confusion and Concealment in Euripides'Hippolylus: Vision, Hope, and Tragic Knowledge (pp. 263-282)
Du mal secret que cache le corps de Phèdre jusqu'au geste final d'Hippolyte couvrant ses yeux dans la mort, le motif de la dissimulation unit les deux protagonistes en une série de renversements qui impliquent rôles sexuels, valeurs héroïques, mortalité et divinité, vérité et mensonge. Dans une culture obsédée de clarté et de lucidité la tragédie affirme la tendance des oppositions polaires à s'anéantir. Les ambiguïtés de langage et d'action qu'elle comporte forment un modèle pour penser l'inter-relation de toutes les sphères du monde humain dans leur condition la plus instable.
L'obscurité et la dissimulation au début et à la fin d'Hippolyte remplacent le rationalisme sophistique et présocratique par la condition mortelle de la connaissance tragique.
20 pages
Source : Persée ; Ministère de la jeunesse, de l’éducation nationale et de la recherche, Direction de l’enseignement supérieur, Sous-direction des bibliothèques et de la documentation.

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• Publié par: DIALOGUES_D-HISTOIRE_ANCIENNE
• Publié le: 01 janvier 1988
• Nombre de lectures: 14
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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Charles Segal
Confusion and Concealement in Euripides' Hippolytus. Vision,
Hope, and Tragic Knowledge
In: Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens. Volume 3, n°1-2, 1988. pp. 263-282.
Résumé
Confusion and Concealment in Euripides'Hippolylus: Vision, Hope, and Tragic Knowledge (pp. 263-282)
Du mal secret que cache le corps de Phèdre jusqu'au geste final d'Hippolyte couvrant ses yeux dans la mort, le motif de la
dissimulation unit les deux protagonistes en une série de renversements qui impliquent rôles sexuels, valeurs héroïques,
mortalité et divinité, vérité et mensonge. Dans une culture obsédée de clarté et de lucidité la tragédie affirme la tendance des
oppositions polaires à s'anéantir. Les ambiguïtés de langage et d'action qu'elle comporte forment un modèle pour penser l'inter-
relation de toutes les sphères du monde humain dans leur condition la plus instable.
L'obscurité et la dissimulation au début et à la fin d'Hippolyte remplacent le rationalisme sophistique et présocratique par la
condition mortelle de la connaissance tragique.
Citer ce document / Cite this document :
Segal Charles. Confusion and Concealement in Euripides' Hippolytus. Vision, Hope, and Tragic Knowledge. In: Mètis.
Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens. Volume 3, n°1-2, 1988. pp. 263-282.
doi : 10.3406/metis.1988.916
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/metis_1105-2201_1988_num_3_1_916AND CONCEALMENT IN EURIPIDES' HIPPOLYTUS CONFUSION
VISION, HOPE, AND TRAGIC KNOWLEDGE
Deducing hidden causes and invisible truths that lie beneath the surface
phenomena of the visible world is a major intellectual concern of the late
fifth century. It is the unifying thème among authors as différent as
Anaxagoras and the Atomists, Hippocrates, and Thucydides; and it recurs
as a concern of tragedy, most notably in Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus1.
The Hippolytus has an important place in this intellectual debate. Its con
tribution is characteristically Euripidean: to demonstrate the rôle of the
passions -especially sexual désire, jealousy , and sexually motivated anger,
hatred, and vindictiveness- in leading otherwise intelligent, noble, and
high-minded people to mistake appearance for reality, falsehood for truth.
And, as is generally the case in tragedy 's version of the problem of know-
ledge, such a mistake is not just a theoretical or abstract issue. It has the
gravest conséquences for the lives of men and women. As Phaedra says play' and as the the wrong kind of discourse about passions demonstrates,
«destroys the well settled cities and homes of mortals» (vv. 486 sqq.).
When Euripides alludes explicitly to the intellectual movements of his
1. See, for example, Anaxagoras, 59 Β 21a Diels-Kranz; the Hippocratic Ancient
Medicine, 1-2; Thucydides I, 1 and I, 21. For récent discussion see M. Vegetti, «Forme
del sapere neh" Edipo re», in Tra Edipo re e Euclide, Milan, 1983, pp. 23-40 passim,
especially 26 sqq. ; G. Ugolino, «L' tragico sofocleo e il problema del conoscere»,
Philologus, 131, 1987, pp. 25 sqq. On thèse issues in the Œdipus and their relation to the
intellectual climateof the time see B. M. W. Knox, Œdipus at Thebes , NewHaven, 1957,
chap. 3, especially pp. 120 sqq. For the possible dependence of the Hippolytus on the
Œdipus see R. Newton, «Hippolytus and the Dating of Œdipus Tyrannus», Gr. Rom. &
Byz. Studies, 21, 1980, pp. 5-22, especially 11 sqq. Charles Segal 264
time, it is often with a note of warning, guardedness, or irony. Hippolytus'
wish for «some skilled sophist» who could résolve the inversion between
appearances and reality that now threatens his life (vv. 920 sqq.) is of
course only a dream and itself part of a developing split in the play between
fantasy and reality. For Euripides, the profoundest understanding of
human nature cornes not from the rationalism of the Sophistic movement
but from the poet's probing of the émotions and their contradictions, such
as those that Phaedra, despite herself, brings forth to men.
The quality of being hidden defines the important realities in the human
world depicted in the Hippolytus - the motives of men and women and the
goals of their actions. The hidden «disease» of love directs Phaedra's
movements and sets the tragic events into motion. Immediately before the
palace-doors open to reveal that disease, the Nurse generalizes on the
woes of mortals, which she traces to ignorance of what lies hidden {κρύ
πτει, ν. 192) in Hades. Our sufferings {πόνοι, ν. 190), she implies, are due
to mistaken or impossible loves: we are δυσέρωτες (ν. 194) because we
lack clear signs about the end of life and the hereafter (cf. άπόδειξις, a
«showing forth», v. 197).
Ironically , bringing «the hidden» into the light only produces further dé
ception2. The play begins with a movement from the house, where
Phaedra keeps her disease «hidden» (vv. 138 sqq.), to the «bright light»
and sky, which are among the Nurse's first words as the palace doors open
upon the lovesick queen (vv. 178 sqq.). The Nurse's first speech, cited
above, points back to ignorance, darkness, and the Underworld (vv. 191-
97). Hippolytus returns to the stage with an invocation to the unfolding
rays of the sun (v. 601) and soon makes his disastrous threat to bring into
the light what his tongue had promised to conceal (vv. 604-14; cf. 656-63).
Phaedra reluctantly émerges from the house, only to return to her
chamber for the constriction of death by the noose (vv. 776-86) and a «bit-
ter housekeeping» {οικονρημα, ν. 787). Hippolytus, for ail his love of the
out-of-doors and dévotion to the «heavenly» Artemis (v. 59; cf. 67), has
the dark doors of Hades awaiting him and is trapped in the deadly «bon-
dage» of his own reins (vv. 1236 sqq. , cf. 1225 and 1246). The pure setting
of his dévotion to his «celestial goddess» (vv. 59 sqq. , 67-72, 75-78) is oblit-
erated by a landscape where chthonic darkness blots out the light of the sky
(vv. 1205-8; cf. 1215-17). Like Phaedra, he dies with a closing gesture of
«covering» or concealing (cf. vv. 1458 and 712).
Cf. vv. 709 sqq.; also 9 and 42; Hippolytus in vv. 601 sqq. and Concealment in Euripides- hippolytus 265 Confusion
In the interchanges of rôles and suffering between the two protagonists,
the motif of concealment shifts from the world of Phaedra to that of Hip
polytus. As Hippolytus goes into exile, a condemned man, justice seems
overturned, and the chorus of his fellow-hunters laments its perversion.
The gods' concern for us, they say, when it cornes to their minds {φρένες),
removes pain; but they are troubled when they behold the flux in human
fortunes (vv. 1104-1110). This attempt to make sensé of suffering also pas
ses through an act of «concealing» , for the chorus hère says that they «hide
understanding, intelligence, by hope», ξύνεσιν δέ τι ν' έλπίδι κεύθων (ν.
1105). This condensed and difficult phrase (to be discussed more fully
below) may mean that the chorus believes in the gods' concern for men,
even in the midst of men's changing fortunes. When men allow this «un
derstanding» to be submerged in the «hope» that human life (because of
the gods' concern) would be happier than it in fact is, however, they are
dismayed at what they see, namely life's unpredictable shifts from joy to
sorrow. Alternatively , the phrase could be taken more closely with the fol-
lowing sentence, in a concessive sensé: the gods' concern for men, coming
to the chorus's φρένες, removes pain; but the chorus is disturbed by seeing
the flux of human fortunes even though it enwraps (hides or buries) in
hope its understanding about the gods' concern.
The two possible interprétations, then, may be paraphrased roughly as
follows: (1) I am disturbed when I witness the instability of human for
tunes, and thus I keep my understanding about the gods' concern for us
hidden, submerged, in the hope that they could really make our lives less
painful and our well-being less precarious. (2) Although I keep my under
standing of the gods' concern for us enclosed, protectively «hidden», in the
«hope» that this knowledge permits me to hâve, I am nevertheless di
sturbed when I witness such sudden changes in human fortunes as this unex-
pected disaster of Hippolytus.
Translators generally impute a more or less optimistic meaning to the
«concealment» of hope:
«So I hâve a secret hope / of someone, a God, who is wise and plans»
(David Grene).
«Yet that hid hope in some ail guiding Mind / falters» (F.L. Lucas).
«Sed intelligentiam aliquam divinae providentiae dum opinor possi-
dere rursus deficio» (Theobaldus Fix in the Didot édition).
Whatever translation we adopt, «concealing», κεύθειν, casts a shadow
ο v