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The Ancestry of the Demonic 25ness is a daimon’s doings; 8 in Hippolytus Phaedra believes that her senselesslove is spurred by some malevolent daimon – when the audience is informedby Aphrodite herself that the “terrible Eros” is a divine punishment, directedtowards Hippolytus. 9 The Furies, or Erinyes, haunt those who havecommitted violence towards blood relatives, such as Orestes in Aeschylus’trilogy. Cassandra, cursed with the gift of prophesy, sees them dancing onthe rooftops as vampiric spirits, swollen with blood. 10 Clytaemnestra, on theother hand, does not feel herself to be the wife of Agamemnon, but as theincarnation of an avenging spirit. 11 These ancient characters are constantlysurrounded by spiritual beings, embodiments of forces that operate in theirthoughts and actions.Theseus and Pirithous as prisoners and bound by an Erinys(from an Etruscan vase; Carus 1900/1996, 203).8Med. 115-130. (Unless otherwise noted, I have used the Greek editions and Englishtranslations accessible as electronic texts through the Perseus Project; www.perseus.tufts.edu .)9Hip. 27, 241.10 Agam. 1186-97.11Ibid., 1497-1504.
26Demonic Texts and Textual DemonsThe particular effect of tragedies (pity and fear, followed by a catharsis, asAristotle characterised it) is often based on violent conflicts that oppose different,but equally justified, interests or values. Jean-Pierre Vernant hasstudied this aspect of tragedies, and paid special attention to the relationshipbetween ethos and daimon. 12 He has noted how difficult it has been for moderncritics to understand such characters as Eteocles, in Aeschylus’ SevenAgainst Thebes; in the beginning of the play Eteocles embodies all the virtuesof a rational citizen – only to rush madly into a deadly fight with his ownbrother. As the chorus comments: “For the spirit of madness brought themtogether, / And their understanding was taken from them.” 13 Vernant claimsthat conflicts at various levels of tragedy significantly contribute to its specialeconomy. Such characters as Eteocles conform to different models ofsubjectivity simultaneously. They present human existence as a painful vacillationor conflict between the rational course of homo politicus and the irrationaltwists of mythical action (muthos).At every moment the life of the hero will unfold as if on two planes, ofwhich each, taken in itself, would suffice to explain the episodes of drama,but which in fact the tragedy aims at presenting as inseparable: each actionappears in the line and the logic of a character, of an ethos, at the same timethat it reveals itself as the manifestation of a power from beyond, of adaimôn. 14Neither ethos or daimon by itself would be enough to produce a tragedy.Both are needed and tragedy’s specific artistic power relies on the tensionbetween these two incompatible models. It should be noted here, thatmuch of contemporary horror is an inheritor of this double logic (even if itis otherwise derived from much later sources). The action and characters ofancient tragedies or modern horror should not be interpreted under oneterm – irrational or rational – but perceived in its conflicting movement betweenthe opposites. Vernant illustrates this nicely in his double translationof Heraclitus’ famous formula “man’s ethos is his daimon”: “(1) man’s characteris what is called a demon; and, inversely, (2) what is called man’s characteris really a demon.” 15Many of the above mentioned features of the daimon can be gatheredtogether under the topic that is named liminal in the anthropological literature;the daimon has a borderline character, it is categorically interstitial, it isfrightening and fascinating, something acting in person but not recognisedas a part of his or her self, and positioned in a conceptual scheme with internaltensions and ambiguities. Arnold van Gennep introduced the term“liminal” in his classic study The Rites of Passage (1909) and applied it to describethe transition periods in various cultures. Anthropologists have de-12 Vernant 1969; for a fuller treatment see Vernant - Vidal-Naquet 1973.13Seven 756-7; Aeschylus 1961, 111.14 Vernant 1969, 112.15Ibid., 113. See also below: Vernant’s reading strategy is discussed in page 72.
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PART II
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114Demonic Texts and Textual Demons
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The EpilogueIf there are answers to
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BibliographyA note on this bibliogr
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Index2001: A Space Odyssey; 207abje
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