A READING OF EURIPIDES’ “HELEN” IN THE LIGHT OF ARISOTLE’S “POETICS”

A READING OF EURIPIDES’ “HELEN”  

IN THE LIGHT OF ARISOTLE’S “POETICS”

by Harlem Jude P. Ferolino

            “Helen” is an ancient tragedy written by Euripides in 412 BCE. In this play, Euripides created his own version of the story of Helen, showing that she was never unfaithful to Menelaus, her husband. She never abandoned Menelaus and went to Troy with Paris unlike what the common myth says– it was her fake double who did – because she was just supernaturally transported to Egypt by Hermes, on Hera’s command, where she was patiently waiting for her husband to find her. When the shipwrecked Menelaus appeared in Egypt, things got complicated.

According to N.S. Gill,

“Euripides wrote about women and mythological themes like Medea and Helen of Troy. He enhanced the importance of intrigue in tragedy. Some aspects of Euripides' tragedy seem more at home in comedy than in tragedy, and, indeed, Euripides is considered to have been a significant influence on the Greek creation of New Comedy, a development in comedy that comes later than Euripides and his contemporary, the most familiar writer of Old Comedy, Aristophanes.” (2013)

 In this paper, we will determine the quality of Euripides’ “Helen” as a tragedy considering the principles in Aristotle’s “Poetics”, focusing on the two important parts, namely the Plot and Character. The paper will also discuss Thought, Diction, Song, and Spectacle as other parts of Tragedy.

            By Aristotle’s definition,

 “Tragedy... is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude, in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, effecting the proper purgation of these emotions…. Every Tragedy, therefore, must have six parts, which parts determine its quality – namely Plot, Character, Diction, Thought, Spectacle and Song.” (Part VI)

Plot

            The Plot, as the first principle in Aristotle’s Poetics, is considered as the most important feature of Tragedy, for in the definition given – Tragedy is an “imitation of an action” (mimesis) – it is also an imitation of life which is presented on the actions in the plot. A tragic plot must be “complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude” (Aristotle, VII). In addition, a tragic plot must imitate “actions which excite pity and fear” (Aristotle, XIII).

For a plot to be whole, it must have a beginning, middle, and end, all of which contribute to the cause-and-effect chain of life, from which tragedy is imitated. In “Helen”, the beginning action which starts the chain of events is the part where Helen mourns for her misfortunes after Teucer told her the bad news, then it lead to Menelaus, dressed as a ragged man, and Helen who were finally reunited in Proteus’ Palace in Egypt and then devices a plan in escaping to Sparta. It lead to pleading to Theonoe, the sister of King Theoclymenus (Proteus’ son), to be in favour with them and not tell Theoclymenus that Menelaus is back to take away Helen from him, or else Theoclymenus will order his men to kill Menelaus and Helen will be forced to marry the King without having been fully reunited with her husband in their home in Sparta. Theonoe agreed based on moral intent. Using deception and the rumor of Menelaus’ death at sea, Helen wished Theoclymenus to allow her to do the burial rites for her husband and then she could be married to him (the King).  These events caused the event in the middle action where Theoclymenus finally agreed to allow Helen do the rites at sea far away from the shores of Egypt with the company of the disguised Menelaus for he was said to have a full knowledge of this Greek custom. This event from the middle action caused the end or the denouement of the play where Helen and Menelaus were finally sailing away from Egypt, but when Theoclymenus discovered it, he intended to kill her own sister for betraying him. However, Theoclymenus was prevented from doing the crime by a slave who wants to risk his life in nobility in exchange of Theonoe’s life. When Theoclymenos was about to kill the slave, it was again prevented by the miraculous intervention of the Dioscuri (Helen’s brothers and Zeus’ and Leda’s sons), thus ending the play with Theoclymenos accepting the fate.

For a plot to be complete, it must have a “unity of action”. This means that the actions must lead inevitably to the next without any outside intervention. In “Helen”, the ending did not present a unity of action because the killing of Theonoe and the slave were prevented by outside intervention. Theoclymenus was first prevented by his slave from killing his sister Theonoe, after which the slave offered his life instead.  When Theoclymenus was about to kill the slave, a deus ex machina was established on the stage presenting the Dioscori, stopping the supposed murder of the slave and also of Theonoe. A deus ex machina is a:

“Stage device in Greek and Roman drama in which a god appeared in the sky by means of a crane (Greek, mechane) to resolve the plot of a play. Plays by Sophocles and particularly Euripides sometimes require the device. The term now denotes something that appears suddenly and unexpectedly and provides an artificial solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty.” (The Free Merriam Webster Dictionary, 2013).

The Dioscori, from the deus ex machina, explained that Theonoe was just respecting the words of the gods thus letting the fate of Helen happen – to be with Menelaus in their home in Sparta after Troy had been destroyed. This makes the play less of a tragedy because of its incomplete plot caused by a deus ex machina in the denouement.

For a plot to be of a certain magnitude, it must contain a certain length, “and a length which can be easily embraced by the memory” (Aristotle, VII). “Helen” contains a certain length which is comprised of 1,692 lines but it can also be easily remembered because of being non-episodic (or having no other extensions of the plot through episodes that is not necessary for the main plot) unlike the epic poetry. It consists only of the plot of Helen and Menelaus’ reunion and escape from Proteus’ palace.

A tragic plot, as an imitation of an action, must also imitate events inspiring fear or pity. In “Helen”, the long lamentations of Helen and the speech of Menelaus about his misfortunes after he was shipwrecked aroused the audience’s pity for the characters, as in Helen’s line:

“Ah me! what piteous dirge shall I strive to utter, now that I am beginning my strain of bitter lamentation? What Muse shall I approach with tears or songs of death or woe? Ah me! ye Sirens, Earth’s virgin daughters, winged maids, come, oh! come to aid my mourning, bringing with you the Libyan flute or pipe, to waft to Persephone’s ear a tearful plaint, the echo of my sorrow, with grief for grief, and mournful chant for chant, with songs of death and doom to match my lamentation, that in return she may receive from me, besides my tears, dirges for the departed dead beneath her gloomy roof!”

The Chorus helped excite the audience’s pity as they sympathize Helen while she was lamenting over the destroy of Troy and other Greeks, the reported death of her mother, her brothers, and her husband – for it is all because of her:

“Ah, misery! Alas! for thy grievous destiny! Woe for thy sad lot, lady! Ah! ’twas a day of sorrow meted out for thee when Zeus came glancing through the sky on snowy pinions like a swan and won thy mother’s heart. What evil is not thine? Is there a grief in life that thou hast not endured? Thy mother is dead; the two dear sons of Zeus have perished miserably, and thou art severed from thy country’s sight, while through the towns of men a rumour runs, consigning thee, my honoured mistress, to a barbarian’s bed; and ‘mid the ocean waves thy lord hath lost his life, and never, never more shalt thou fill with joy thy father’s halls or Athena’s temple of the “Brazen House.”

When Menelaus was begging for food from the palace, the old woman (a King’s servant) was throwing Menelaus away and that arouses pity from the audience for the ragged Spartan King, especially because he  was just being heard lamenting his misfortunes after the Trojan War:

“And now a wretched, shipwrecked mariner, my friends all lost, am I cast up upon this shore; and my ship is shattered in a thousand pieces against the rocks; and its keel was wrested from its cunning fastenings; thereon did I with difficulty escape, most unexpectedly, and Helen also, for her had I rescued from Troy and had with me. But the name of this country and its people I know not; for I blushed to mingle with the crowd to question them, anxious for very shame to hide my misfortunes which reduce me to these sorry rags. For when a man of high degree meets with adversity, he feels the strangeness of his fallen state more keenly than a sufferer of long standing. Dire want is wasting me; for I have neither food, nor raiment to gird myself withal; behold the facts before you to judge from-I am clad in tatters cast up from the ship; while all the robes I once did wear, glorious attire and ornaments, bath the sea swallowed; and in a cavern’s deep recesses have I hidden my wife, the cause of all my trouble, and have come hither, after straitly charging the survivors of my friends to watch her.”

 As to the events inspiring fear, the event where Helen plans for her death through rope or sword because of the bad news she has heard from Teucer excited fear from the audience. The complication of the reunion of Helen and Menelaus at Potreus’ Palace in Egypt created the fear that suggests that they might be discovered by the cruel King Theoclymenus and Menelaus will be killed. Fear was most excited from the play during their conversations with Theoclymenus while Menelaus was still in disguise as a shipwrecked warrior and Helen was acting out his fake grief of her husband’s death, because at any time, if Theoclymenus finds out that they are tricking him out, a murder will follow right after. Aristotle points out that actions inspiring fear are very effective if it happens between two persons especially if it occurs “between those who are near or dear to one another” (XIV). In the play, the tragic incident occurred between Theoclymenus and Theonoe, and Theoclymenus and a slave, although the killing was not realized. Those were the scenes of King Theoclymenus intending to kill his sister, Theonoe, and where Theoclymenus almost kills the slave. Most of all, fear sprouts from the idea that what happened to the characters may also happen to us. As in the case of Helen and Menelaus, we may fear that we might be also separated from our loved ones for a long time and undergo several misfortunes in life during the search. In the case of King Theoclymenos, we may fear that we might also be hoping for a marriage with someone who will just deceive and leave us. However, the final events in Helen do not create fear if we consider Helen and Menelaus’ fate after the play because they lived happily in the end. The only fearful act was that of Theoclymenus’ intention in killing his sister because it may also happen to us with a member of our family.

There is another particular Aristotelian principle of Tragedy called the katharsis or the “purgation of emotions” (Aristotle, VI). After the play arouses the emotions of pity and fear, there is a katharsis that will follow. The katharsis will purify or purge those feelings away from the emotional system of the audience. As in the “Helen”, the katharsis happened when the fear of discovery and punishment was purged away from us during the successful escape of Helen and Menelaus. In the case of Theoclymenos, the katharsis happened when he finally accepted his fate that he will not be able to marry Helen and will not have to kill her sister for she is just following the gods’ desire.

A Tragedy, as an imitation of action, may have a simple or complex plot; a complex one is more desirable. For a plot to be complex, it must have a “reversal of the situation” (peripeteia) and a “recognition” (anagnorisis), which is not present in a simple plot. “The best form of recognition is coincident with a Reversal of the Situation” (Aristotle, XI), that is, the peripeteia leads directly to the anagnorisis. These, in turn, create a “change of fortune” (catastrophe) for the characters. The catastrophe then leads to the “Scene of Suffering” (pathos).  

Reversal of the Situation or peripeteia is “a change by which the action veers round to its opposite” (Aristotle, XI). In Euripides’ “Helen”, the peripeteia was found in the scene where a Messenger tells the bad news to Menelaus that all his troubles have come to nothing for Helen has vanished. He reported that Helen rose up into the thin air and disappeared into the night sky. By this, the Messenger had reversed the situation because he instead told a good news to Menelaus, confirming that the woman in front of him is really her real wife, Helen. What happened was that the peripeteia had lead directly to the anagnorisis or recognition in the play.

Anagnorisis or Recognition is a “change from ignorance to knowledge” (Aristotle, XI). In the play, the anagnorisis was first presented as a recognition of the true Helen resulted from the Messenger’s bad news. Not only does the Messenger help to the recognition of the true Helen but he also helped recognize that the Greeks and the Trojans fought for nothing in the whole Trojan War because of Hera’s trick in making another image of Helen out of ether. Therefore, the peripeteia caused two desirable and undesirable anagnorisis. The peripeteia and anagnorisis initiated by the Messenger created a catastrophe or the “change of fortune” to the characters of the play.

The catastrophe happened among Menelaus and Helen and King Theoclymenos. Menelaus and Helen finally found each other and is bound to go back home, while Theoclymenus becomes a victim of trickery and defeated hope in marrying Helen. The catastrophe of Helen and Menelaus creates the complication in the plot for if they will be discovered right away by the cruel King, Menelaus would be killed for he was a Greek. This catastrophe, as the plot continues to the climax where Helen and Menelaus finally escaped, lead to a pathos or “scene of suffering” in the stage.

The pathos of the play shows Theoclymenus being defeated by the trickery of Helen and Menelaus. In the case of the protagonist, the ending seems a happy one for her and Menelaus. However, there is a dark connotation behind their happy ending which can be considered also as pathos. From the fact that Helen was lamenting earlier about her being the reason of the massive deaths in the Trojan War, her escape with Menelaus from Egypt just produced additional numbers of death due to her, thus adding additional reasons for her to lament. Helen, therefore, also experienced suffering at the end, though it is not exhibited on stage. In other words, the Scene of Suffering was not within the play’s plot for, according to Aristotle, “The Scene of Suffering is a destructive or painful action, such as death on the stage, bodily agony, wounds and the like” (XI). Helen, although, may suffer from the unnecessary slaughter of the Egyptian warriors in their escape ship as additional reasons for her lamentations, she did not appear to be suffering within the plot, the antagonist did instead. It will be a good tragic ending if the suffering of Helen is seen within the action of the play. The play instead leads the audience into rejoicing because of the happy ending the heroine had experienced and the misfortune the antagonist had received at the end, thus making it a non-typical tragic ending.

Character

The second most important principle, next to Plot, is Character. According to Aristotle, the effective characters for a Tragedy are those who are “highly renowned and prosperous” (XIII). Like in Euripides’ “Helen”, the main characters are Helen and Menelaus, who are undeniably renowned characters of Greek Myth; Helen, being addressed as “The face that launched a thousand ships” in the Trojan War, and Menelaus, being a “King of Sparta” and the “Brother of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae”. In addition, a Tragedy must have characters who have the following qualities: good, appropriate, true to life, and consistent.

First of the qualifications of a character in Tragedy is that a character must be good. Helen in Euripides’ play is a good character. Euripides presents Helen differently from the other accounts which present her as a prostitute and unfaithful to her husband. In “Helen”, she is characterized as a completely faithful wife to Menelaus. Second, a character must be appropriate. For example, valor is appropriate for men, not for women. In “Helen”, Menelaus is presented as a brave character who survived amidst his misfortunes and even killed many Egyptian warriors at the end of the play. Helen, on the other hand, is presented as a woman who is not warlike because it is only appropriate for men. Third, a character must be true to life. By “true to life”, it means being realistic. If Helen was imitated from a myth, she should have a semblance on that character. Helen in Euripides’ play, still have some of the attributes of Helen on the common myths like her majestic beauty, but the playwright changed the character of Helen from being an unfaithful wife to being a faithful one. Finally, a character must be consistent. Being consistent, Helen was eager to escape with her husband from the start of their reunion until the end.

In a Tragedy, the hero must experience a downfall “as the result not of vice, but of some great error or frailty” or hamartia (Aristotle, XIII). In “Helen”, we do not find the heroine’s hamartia because Helen did not also experience downfall at the end. She only had her suffering at the start. Euripedes’ “Helen”, though classified as tragedy, does not create much tragic events especially to the protagonist of the play. Unlike many Tragedies, the heroine’s downfall was not shown in the play. The play instead showed a happy reunion of the heroine and her husband and their successful escape from a cruel king who wanted to marry the heroine. Such kind of ending, where the hero of the play is shown to have a change of fate from bad to good, is never mentioned as an effective ending for Tragedy in Aristotle’s “Poetics”: “The change of fortune should be not from bad to good, but, reversely, from good to bad.” (Aristotle, XIII). Helen, as the heroine of the play, underwent the change of fortune from bad to good, therefore making her as a non-typical tragic heroine.

Thought

The third principle is Thought. Thought must be produced through speech. Aristotle points out in his “Poetics” that “the incidents should speak for themselves without verbal exposition; while effects aimed at in should be produced by the speaker, and as a result of the speech.”(XIX). This means that in order for the effect of pity or fear be understood by the audience, the actor need not to express verbally to the audience that they should pity her like having lines such as: “Have pity on me” or “It frightens me”. Examples in “Helen” where the effect of pity is produced through speech is from the soliloquy of Menelaus outside the palace: “For when a man of high degree meets with adversity, he feels the strangeness of his fallen state more keenly than a sufferer of long standing.”. The audience will feel pity on Menelaus as he is stating that line without verbally exposing it.

Diction

Fourth of the principles that Aristotle points out for a Tragedy to have is Diction. Diction is “lofty and raised above the commonplace which employs unusual words.”(Aristotle, XXII). He explained that by “unsual”, he means “strange (or rare) words, metaphorical, lengthened- anything, in short, that differs from the normal idiom” (XXII). In “Helen”, we can find those unusual words in the lines of Helen and other characters.

Euripides used these metaphorical words in the lines of Helen: “her youthful prime”, “the age for wedded joys”, “Earth’s virgin daughters”, “twin glory of their native land”, and etc. In the lines of Menelaus, metaphors were also seen. These phrases are: “a sufferer of long standing”, “a fresh piece of ill-luck”, “the pillars of burnt sacrifice”, “minister of evil”, and etc.

As to the use of strange words, Euripides shows it in the “Helen”. According to Aristotle, “For by deviating in exceptional cases from the normal idiom, the language will gain distinction; while, at the same time, the partial conformity with usage will give perspicuity.”(XXII). Euripides uses a diction that deviates from the ordinary speech. These phrases and sentences reflect such diction: “the river that waters Egypt’s tilth”, “how Zeus winged his way”, “brought to naught my marriage with Paris”, “with its royal bulwarks”, “One of those hapless Achaeans am I, lady.”, “A wanderer I, an exile from my native land.”, “Many a weary month, till through ten full years the moon had held her course.”, and etc.

Song

Fifth of the principles of Tragedy is Song. Tragedies should have Choral Songs and as Aristotle argues, the Chorus should be integrated into the plot.

The Chorus too should be regarded as one of the actors; it should be an integral part of the whole, and share in the action, in the manner not of Euripides but of Sophocles. (Aristotle, XVIII)

Although Aristotle himself stated that Euripides’ manner of presenting the Chorus in his Tragedies is not an ideal one but of Sophocles, Euripides’ Chorus in the “Helen” is different. The Chorus in “Helen” interacts with Helen and even sympathizes with her as she was lamenting of the bad news she received from Teucer. They even pleaded to Helen to stop lamenting over the bad news of her husband’s death because it was just a rumor and it may not be true. Euripides made his Chorus an integral part of the whole that shared in the action, not just mere interludes between speeches.

Spectacle

The last principle is Spectacle. This spectacle is connected to the emotions such as pity and fear, for according to Aristotle, “Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means” (XIV). In “Helen”, the spectacular means of arousing pity and fear were shown involving slaves, because Tragedy rarely gives highlight to lowly characters such as slaves like in Comedy (“although less rare in Euripides, who is well known for breaking conventions and using innovative techniques in his plays”) (Mastin, 2009). The first spectacle featured a slave who was the one who pointed out to Menelaus that the whole Trojan War was fought in vain.  The second spectacle focused on the final part of the play where another slave grabs the King’s robe preventing him from doing a crime involving siblings. These can be considered spectacular because slaves are but inferior characters but they create powerful interventions inside the plot.

Conclusion

“Helen” by Euripides, based on Aristotle’s principles in “Poetics”, does not present a typical Plot and Character for a Tragedy. It is again because of its happy ending and a heroine without a frailty and a downfall, which are non-tragic elements for Tragedy.

As to the events inspiring pity and fear, these emotions were not effectively established in the play for they are presented, not with the heroine’s actions, but with the antagonist’s. This was because of the good fortune that the heroine experienced at the end. She did not suffer – only her villain. We did pity Helen because of her lamentations at the start of the play, but we did not pity her at the end because she was saved by her husband from marrying the cruel king. We only pity Theoclymenos at the end because he was betrayed by her own sister and his future wife. We did fear that Helen and Menelaus’ misfortunes at the start of the play may befall unto us because of their long sad speeches, but we did not fear that their happy escape may happen to us because it was not fearful. We only fear that Theoclymenos’ fate at the end might befall unto us because he was betrayed by his sister and his future wife. These events are not of a typical Tragedy according to Aristotle:

“Nor, again, should the downfall of the utter villain be exhibited. A plot of this kind would, doubtless, satisfy the moral sense, but it would inspire neither pity nor fear; for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves. Such an event, therefore, will be neither pitiful nor terrible. There remains, then, the character between these two extremes,—that of a man who is not eminently good and just,yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous,— a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.” (XIII)

“Helen” by Euripides, therefore, can be read as a bad or a weak Tragedy in the light of Aristotle’s “Poetics” for it does not contain or has not used properly most of the good qualities that a good tragedy must have.

Bibliography:

“Helen By Euripides Translated by E.P. Coleridge”. Classical Wisdom Weekly. © 2013. 11 June 2013. [http://classicalwisdom.com/greek_books/helen-by-euripides/].

“The Poetics of Aristotle Translated by S.H. Butcher. The Pennsylvania State University. © 2011.

Gill, N.S.. “Euripides - An Athenian Playwright Who Wrote Greek Tragedy”. About.com. 18 June 2013. [http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/medeaeuripides/p/Euripides.htm]

Mastin, Luke. “ANCIENT GREECE - EURIPIDES – HELEN”. Classical Literature. © 2009. 28 June 2013. [http://www.ancient-literature.com/greece_euripides_helen.html]

“Deus ex machina”. The Free Merriam Webster Dictionary. 26 June 2013. [www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deus%20ex%20machina]