Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

prepares mentally and physically for his disintegration and re-assembly
within the universal womb of origin, experiences the transitional yet
inchoate matrix of death and being. Such an actor in the rote of the
protagonist becomes the unresisting mouthpiece of the god, uttering
sounds which he barely comprehends but which are reflections of the
awesome glimpse of that transitional gulf ••• (30).
During the symbolic sparagmos, the Slave Leader, possessed by the god, takes on the
qualities and attributes of the god and grants freedom and release to his worshippers.
Soyinka superimposes the tragic character in African ritual drama on the
western concept of the tragic hero. The ancient Greek actor masked himself to portray
the god and in anci ent Yoruba drama, according [Q Soyinka, the actor is possessed by
Ogun in order to re-enact the god's tragic disintegration and re-assembl y of his night
of transition through the gulf to reunite the gods with men . In his essay . The
DevelopmentofAfrican Drt111I4, Michael Etherton suggests that Soyinka's reference to
the connection between the mock struggle of the head priest and his acolytes for
Ogun's sacrificial dog which is literally tom limb from limb and the dismemberment
of Zagreus is unclear because it was Pentbeus, not Dionysos , who was dismembered
in the play (134) . Etherton is obviously unaware of the forms of ritual drama in which
Ogun possesses the sacrificial animal and so goes through the process of disintegration
and re-assembly during which the earth is renewed and the community cleansed and
restored. This transformation, which occurs gradually during the scene that Dionysos
holds up his hand as a mirror for Pentheus to see his beast -like reflection. culminates
in the scene during which Dionysos leads him. out [0 the mountains reminding him of
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