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and drinks from the wine that spurts out of Pentheus' severed head (97) .
Ogun and his rites of passage form the framework of Soyinka's adaptation. In
Myth, Soyinka asserts that -Ogun. for his part. is bestunderstood in Helleni c values
as a totality of the Dionysian. ApoUonian and Promethean virtues - (141). Soyinka
149
immediatel y acknowledges the superiority of Ogun as one who embodies the virtues of
a combination of all the Gree k gods. including Pro metheus me bringer of light. He
reinterprets Friedrich Nietzsche' s argument in "I'he Sinh ol Tragedy (1812) by adding
a third dimension to Nietzsche's ApollinianIDionysian concept of the origin of Gree k
ttagedy .37 Soyinka. in referring to Ogun's battle lbrough the primordial gulf , in
Myth, declares that 0100 is the first actor for he led others. "the first suffering deity ,
first creati ve energy, the first challenger, and conqueror o f transition . .. the first actor
in that battle . and Yoruba tragic drama is the re-eaacunent of the cosmic conflict"
(145, 150).
In Myth, Soyinka insists on the differences between the traditional African and
the Europeanapproach to drama:
It is representative of the essential differences between two world-views.
a difference between one cul ture whose very artifacts arc evidence of a
cohesive undersraoding of irreducib le truths and another. whose creative
impulses arc directed by period dialectics. So, to begin with. we must
jettison that fashionable distinction which tends to encapsulate Western
drama as a form of esoteric enterprise spied upon by fee-paying
strangers, as con tras ted with a comm unal evolutio n of the dramatic
mode of expression. this latter being the African (3 8) .
African drama hasevol ved from the traditional rituals of masksand masquerades.