BMCR 2009.02.38, Andrea Rodighiero, Una serata a Colono

Andrea Rodighiero, Una serata a Colono: fortuna del secondo Edipo.
Ka/toptron / Universita\ degli studi di Verona, 1.  Verona:  Fiorini,
2007.  Pp. xiii, 127.  ISBN 9788887082661.  EUR 18.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Cressida Ryan, University of Nottingham
([email protected])
Word count:  2212 words
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[Table of Contents are listed at the end of the review.]

In this book Andrea Rodighiero has attempted an enormous task in
surveying the reception history of the Oedipus at Colonus (henceforth
OC) since its ancient Greek inception right through to the modern day.
In so doing, he has made some useful observations about the play itself
and about the processes by which a work of reception is fashioned. In
such a short book with such a wide brief, his analysis is necessarily
restricted, but is nevertheless often incisive and pertinent. He may
not deal with any work in great depth (and points where this is
particularly relevant are noted below), but he treats the OC
sensitively, and opens our eyes to a rich vein of material which has
hitherto been largely ignored.

In the introductory chapter I, Rodighiero sets out his main interest in
studying the OC, framing it as a set of final questions, wondering what
it was that made the play decrease in esteem, and the central issue of
how authors deal with the mysterious death of Oedipus, in terms of
staging, dramaturgy and allegorical potential. Rodighiero discusses
works in a variety of languages: Latin, German, French, Italian and
English, but his focus is on the French and Italian material and
transalpine connections and differences in the form and treatment of
the myth across the centuries. This enables him to discuss a set of far
less well-known works, alongside some of the better known contributions
to the reception history of the OC, most notably the relatively long
(six page) discussion of Lee Breuer's The Gospel at Colonus.

Chapter II charts the brief history of the play from antiquity until
the end of the medieval period. The ancient context of the OC is given,
noting the different Oedipal death narratives that run through epic and
tragedy (and assigning them some generic significance), and their
conflation by Pausanias. Some reference is made to the contribution of
Seven against Thebes and Phoenician Women in the fifth century, and
then to Seneca and Statius' Latin versions. There is then a gap until
the AD 1150 anonymous novel Roman de The\bes.

Chapter III covers the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, dealing
with works by: Pier Jacopo Martello, Jean Franc,ois Ducis, Nicolas
Franc,ois Guillard, Antonio Simone Sografi, Ugo Foscolo, Giovann
Battista Niccolini, Gioacchino Rossini and Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
The development of interpretations of ancient drama and aesthetics is
demonstrated by examining the different ways in which Oedipus dies,
particularly regarding whether he can die on stage or not. For
Martello, an onstage death was impossible; for Guillard, in
pre-Revolutionary France where the play takes on a more political tenor
regarding the nature of kingship, Oedipus does not die, but is
reconciled with Polynices.

Chapter IV is considerably longer than the other chapters, at
thirty-six pages, and covers material from the twentieth century, by:
Roger Re/gis-Lamotte, Olivier Bournac and Auguste-Jean Boyer D'Agen,
Rudolf Pannwitz, Edmond Fleg, E. M. Forster and T. S. Eliot, Elsa
Morante and Pier Paolo Pasolini, Giovanni Testori, Lee Breuer, Henry
Bauchau, and Ruggero Cappuccio. The works discussed in this chapter all
depart more obviously from their Greek model, including reducing the
number of characters (e.g. Re/gis-Lamotte), or setting the action in
contemporary times and places (e.g. Morante, Forster). The book takes
its title from Morante's play, La serata a Colono (1968), which
receives the longest treatment of any work covered by this book
(57-66). In his discussion of the Morante work, Rodighiero demonstrates
how some of the more unusual features of the piece make it more
obviously a text not meant for performance. The difference made by
genre to the presentation of the text continues to be discernible
throughout his discussion; Rodighiero explains the lack of films based
on the OC partly to the static nature of the play (and the genre) and
the conflict between its unity of place and the more diverse settings
of films. A similar sense pervades his discussion of Bauchau's novel;
the idea of a novel as a journey makes it ideal for charting the
(supposedly circa) twenty years between Oedipus' expulsion from Thebes
and arrival in Athens. The death of Oedipus on or off stage, and the
appearance of the Furies on stage or imagined in Oedipus' head are the
two main examples of content, discussed at various points throughout
the text.

The final chapter, V, takes a more generic (albeit also temporally
specific, that is, twentieth century) approach, focussing on film and
poetry. In just nine pages Rodighiero mentions eight different works,
in a less systematic manner than in the other chapters, but again
covering well-known individuals such as Jean Cocteau and Derek Walcott
alongside less familiar names such as Alessandro Fo. Given the
constraints of space, very little is said about each example, but it is
exciting to have such a varied set of material presented to us. The OC
may not have inspired many film adaptations, but there was yet more
material for Rodighiero to use than he acknowledges. The BBC's 1984
dramatisation of the Theban plays is just one example of the wider
dissemination of the tragedy through the popular media. A good further
example of the way in which film and the media have manipulated Greek
tragedy (here to provide a basic and unsubtle cultural reference point)
is the 167-word publicity material for the 2005 film Romance and
Cigarettes, which includes the statement: 'Like Oedipus at Colonus, he
[the protagonist] is sent into exile and searches to find his way back
through the damage he has done'; the OC is invoked as nothing more than
the story of an old man, providing a paradigmatic representation of a
life lived too long. I would hope that further research could include
an even broader scope in order to include such works.

As befits the theme of the book, the final section is an appendix on
the OC and its Christianised history. This is perhaps the most
analytical part of the book, and is a very welcome addition, drawing
together a large range of accounts of how the OC can be read as a
Christian tale of reconciliation, good death and a blessed afterlife,
from Hegel to the present day, and where such readings may be
misguided. He focusses in particular on the exchange of views between
Di Benedetto and Vernant / Vidal-Naquet. His presentation of the
readings is grounded in the ambiguity over interpreting lines 1583-1584
and Zachary Mudge's conjectural emendation. The introduction of some
philological discussion at this point is helpful in exemplifying the
integrated nature of reception and scholarship, a theme which could
have been emphasised more throughout the book. No final conclusion is
reached, but the reader is left to re-read the play in a more nuanced
way with a range of informed positions in mind. This short (nine page)
but illuminating appendix feels as though it provides the theoretical
framework underpinning the ideas behind the rest of the book, and
consequently might have been better placed as a part of a more
methodological introduction.

The focus of the book may be on the representation of Oedipus' death,
but it highlights a far greater range of interesting aspects to the
play. The political resonances of Greek tragedy are emphasised, with
particular reference to the French Revolution (ch. III on Ducis and
Guillard), but other texts are also discussed, particularly Cappuccio
(82). The political aspect of Greek tragedy is increasingly topical in
modern scholarship, and it is refreshing to see this applied to
material earlier than the usual post-Colonial targets. The curse
uttered against Polynices, and consequently the nature of father-son
relationships provides a further way in to reading the works discussed,
and it becomes clear that this theme can be manipulated in a great
variety of ways. The importance of place, in particular the influence
of the Colonus ode, is also felt throughout the book; the grove is
specifically referred to as a locus amoenus (27 on Martello) or even
Eden (70 on Breuer). The relationship between the sacrality of both
Oedipus's death and the place is made relevant to most of the works
discussed.

In terms of allegory, Rodighiero has gathered an interesting range of
potential analogues for Oedipus, beyond references to Christ,
including: Moses, Lear, Prospero, Don Giovanni and Faust, demonstrating
the flexibility of the myth in modern hands. Oedipus is likened to
Orestes, pursued in derangement by avenging Furies (e. g. 30 on Ducis,
52 on Fleg). Rodighiero continues to draw parallels between Oedipus and
other figures from Greek tragedy. The play by Ducis sets the story of
the OC within the wider framework of the Alcestis story, linking
Oedipus with Admetus, while several works discussed bring Hercules on
stage with Oedipus. In collecting and collating such extraordinary
examples, Rodighiero enables a modern reader to appreciate   some
ideological overlaps between works of reception which enrich our
reading of the OC as well as making the works novel and worthy of study
in their own rights.

Generically, Rodighiero has gathered an interesting range of texts,
covering novels, plays, film, poetry, and libretti. This collection
would have benefited from demonstrating some awareness of the other
kinds of material there is based on the OC. The painting on the front
cover, of Oedipus and Antigone, by Harriet Fulchran-Jean (a student of
David's) is part of a set of French paintings of scenes from the OC,
none of which are discussed in the book. There are a large number of
works of art, including paintings, lithographs and sculptures, created
from 1776 onwards. Rodighiero does not shrink from mentioning the
iconographical tradition, but comments are largely relegated to
footnotes, and the complex relationship between the (sparse) ancient
material and the more copious modern items and their respective
artistic contexts therefore goes unexamined. The frequent references to
opera (particularly in chapter III) are welcome, but some discussion of
the role of the music would have enhanced the discussion. This is
particularly evident in the final section of chapter III, which deals
with both Rossini and Mendelssohn in under a page, under the title of
their names, where for Guillard, for example, it is the librettist and
not the composer (Antonio Sacchini) whose name heads the section; the
composer-librettist dynamic deserves more attention.

The book would also have benefited from more analytical framing
comments. Each work is introduced and discussed, at varying length, but
neither individual works nor chapters are set in a greater
argumentative context. This abruptness is felt most obviously at the
end of chapter V, where a quotation drawing directly on the OC closes
the book; while this supplies a fitting tribute to the play, it leaves
the reader hanging in expectation of a conclusion over the page. The OC
is, however, set in its aesthetic and theoretical context, with
references made to Longinus and sublimity throughout (e. g. 24 on
Martello, 58 on Morante). Aristotle and the supposedly Aristotelian
unities are also brought in at various relevant points (not noted in
the index). In the appendix Rodighiero introduces Freud and Kristeva;
after making infrequent references to psychoanalysis throughout the
book, he uses Kristeva's analysis of Freud to demonstrate how the OC
does not fit with standard Freudian analysis.

The book is clearly presented and well-structured. Two typographical
errors were more obvious. The footnote referrers on p. 66 have come out
as full-size text. On p. 79 an extra period appears between 'con lei.la
sua morte'. I might also question the translation policy. Rodighiero
mainly offers both original language and Italian versions of any
quotation offered, which works well, as no quotation is so long as to
make it a cumbersome strategy. Occasionally he provides only the
Italian translation, however, particularly in footnotes quoting
secondary sources, where the original would seem more natural (for
example E. M. Forster, p. 55). He also translates titles into Italian,
when again, maintaining the original title might have been more
obvious. The end matter includes a useful index locorum. A
chronological appendix of works discussed would have been helpful,
however, especially if it also included some of the further works based
on the OC which Rodighiero does not discuss. The index of modern names
might also be more useful as a more general index so that one could,
for example, look up individuals such as Orestes and Polynices, or
themes such as the curse.

It is rare to see a whole book dedicated to the OC, and Rodighiero's
enduring interest with the play is much appreciated by those of us who
also find it a fascinating and stimulating text on which to work. This
book collates a range of fascinating material, some well-known, some
barely known, and provides a starting point for scholars who want to
conduct further research in diachronic reception studies, or into
individual case studies.

Table of Contents

Presentazione, p. VII

Nota al testo, p. VIII

Introduzione di Guido Avezzu\, p. IX

I. Premessa. Il modello 'Edipo', p. 1

II. Dall' antichita\ al Medioevo, p. 7

III. Tra Sette a Novecento, p. 23

IV. Il Novecento, p. 47

V. Il cinema, la poesia, p. 83

Appendice. L'Edipo cristiano e la filologia, p. 93

Abbreviazioni, p. 103

Bibliografia, p. 105

Indice dei passi degli autori antichi, p. 119

Indice dei nomi moderni, p. 123