seamus sweeney

8/14/2019 Seamus Sweeney

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/seamus-sweeney 1/4

A theatre of pure stichomythia: Twitter and the tragic

by Seamus Sweeney

[ opinion - june 11 ]

We lie in an age in which eery technological innoation or trend becomes freighted

with significance! "erhaps this is because we lie in an age of commentary and punditry!#n the opening chapter of The $apoleon of $otting %ill& ' ( )hesterton *haing begun

with one of the great first lines: +The human race& to which so many of my readers

belong& has been playing at children,s games from the beginning& and will probably do ittill the end& which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. describes a world of

incessant prognosticating in which the ordinary decent citi/enry did the decent thing and

simply ignored it all! And this was in 1023 long before Web 4! either smashed

traditional media paradigms foreer& or began an empirical test of the old saying about amillion mon5eys with a million typewriters& according to taste!

Twitter is the latest technology to hae a whole world of meaning laden on its under-12-

character-si/ed shoulders3 it is still at the stage where a homicide that somehow can belin5ed with it are described as the +Twitter murder! The impact of any gien technology

tends to be oerestimated in the short term and underestimated in the long term3 despitethe hopes of transhumanists& a 6uic5 loo5 at the trending topics on Twitter reeals that the

perennial preoccupations of humanity - loe& se7& murder& money& laughter 8 are still with

us! 9ore prosaically& a good proportion of Tweets reflect what happens to be on crustyold telly at any gien moment!

Who 5nows where Twitter will lead us *or where we will lead it. but we would all do

well to recall )harles "guy;s words: +%umanity will surpass the first dirigibles as it hassurpassed the first locomoties! #t will surpass 9 Santos-<umont as it has surpassed

Stephenson! After telephotography it will continually inent graphies and scopes and phones& all of which will be tele and one will be able to go around the earth in less thanno time! =ut it will always be only the temporal earth! And it will een be possible to

burrow inside the earth and pierce it through as # do this ball of clay! =ut it will always be

the carnal earth! 9! Santos-<umont was an aeronaut& as aiators were 5nown 8 now wesee something thrillingly old-fashioned and romantic about the pioneers of aiation and

motorsport& dashing figures as remote from us as >ulius )aesar or )harlemange& and yet

in their time they were the icons of hyper-modernity! They were the Sergey =rins and

9ar5 ?uc5erbergs of their day!

All of this& aside from being a chance to air some of my faourite 6uotes& is leading up to

a point! )an eerything be e7pressed in 12 characters or fewer@ f course& the hashtagand the hyperlin5 allow communications that transcend this barrier& and help proide

Twitter with some of its hypnotic power! #t is the internet condensed into a single

website! %oweer& the essence of twitter is breity! # alternate between reulsion andfascination& between periods of Twitter celibacy and promiscuity! This ambialence

reflects a tension between sheer wonder at the breadth of information aailable online&

and fears about its depth! 9ore to the point& do we run the ris5 of a mass attention deficit

disorder& unwilling to engage with anything more than the fabled one hundred and forty@



Bi5e most things& an answer *not the answer. lies in the classical past! #t may seem absurd

to li5en Twitter flame wars with the wor5s of Sophocles or Curipides or Aeschylus! >ustas our culture 5eeps telling and retelling the stories of Sha5espeare& we return again and

again to the +big three of fifth century Athenian drama& the deadest white males of them

all in the Western canon! We hae feminist 9edeas and Dreudian edipus Ee7es& wehae the =acchae in =aghdad and Antigone in $orthern #reland! #f there is a primal 8 in

eery sense - bedroc5 of literature& it is the slim corpus of plays which suried the

issicitudes of time to come bac5 down to us& haunting our imaginations!

Athenian drama is often staged in a manner more to be endured than anything else! ne

of the techni6ues of the Athenian stage was stichomythia 8 the sharp e7change of one

liners! A C %ousman& in his immortal parody of these plays *or& more accurately& theirtranslations. Dragment of a 'ree5 Tragedy *the whole thing is here -

http:FFwww0!georgetown!eduFfacultyFjodFte7tsFhousman!html captured the rhythm of the

thing superbly:

AB)9AC$: # journeyed hither a =oetian road!

)%EGS: Sailing on horsebac5& or with feet for oars@ AB)9AC$: "lying with speed my partnership of legs!

)%EGS: =eneath a shining or a rainy ?eus@

AB)9AC$: 9ud,s sister& not himself& adorns my shoes! )%EGS: To learn your name would not displease me much!

AB)9AC$: $ot all that men desire do they obtain!

)%EGS: 9ight # then hear at what thy presence shoots!

AB)9AC$: A shepherd,s 6uestioned mouth informed me that-- )%EGS: What@ for # 5now not yet what you will say!

AB)9AC$: $or will you eer& if you interrupt!

)%EGS: "roceed& and # will hold my speechless tongue! AB)9AC$: This house was Criphyle,s& no one else,s!

)%EGS: $or did he shame his throat with shameful lies!

AB)9AC$: 9ay # then enter& passing through the door@ There are of course far more edifying *and somewhat less absurd. e7amples from the

plays themseles! Ta5e the confrontation between )reon and his son %aemon in

Antigone:

)EC$: 9en of my age are we indeed to be schooled& then& by men of his@

%AC9$: #n nothing that is not right3 but if # am young& thou shouldest loo5 to my

merits& not to my years!)EC$: #s it a merit to honour the unruly@

%AC9$: # could wish no one to show respect for eil-doers!

)EC$: Then is not she tainted with that malady@%AC9$: ur Theban fol5& with one oice& denies it!

)EC$: Shall Thebes prescribe to me how # must rule@

%AC9$: See& there thou hast spo5en li5e a youth indeed!

)EC$: Am # to rule this land by other judgment than mine own@



%AC9$: That is no city which belongs to one man!

)EC$: #s not the city held to be the ruler,s@

%AC9$: Thou wouldst ma5e a good monarch of a desert!)EC$: This boy& it seems& is the woman,s champion!

%AC9$: #f thou art a woman3 indeed& my care is for thee!

)EC$: Shameless& at open feud with thy fatherH%AC9$: $ay& # see thee offending against justice!

There are plenty of other e7amples! Antigone seems hardly to communicate in any othermode! edipus& in the course of the amateur detectie wor5 which he will shortly come

to regret& ineitably berates his arious interlocuters who are simply trying to warn him

off for his own good in the same bar5ing& urgent& angry tone! <eil ta5e the

conse6uences! Anyone who has witnessed a Twitter spat *originally # wrote +Tweet spat& but that just sounds barbaric! The =rae $ew World perhaps has a bit of wor5 to do on

the beauty of its bu//words. will recognise the tone 8 bitter& reproing& not unwilling to

play the man and not the ball!

# am sure there are many more eleated and less parochial e7amples& but my own

faourites come from the obscurity of #rish politics! The former 'reen Senator <an =oyle*Isendboyle. and former 'reen T< *id est& 9". "aul 'ogarty *I"aul'ogartyT<&

although he has now ta5en the precaution of protecting his tweets. used to engage in all-

in Twitter rumbles with all comers 8 and gien that the 'reen party with ratherunfortunate timing joined the #rish goernment just as the Titanic sighted the iceberg&

there were 6uite a lot comers! 9ore recently& Trinity )ollege economist =rian Bucey

*Ibrianmlucey. and finance journalist prospectie Senatorial candidate 9arc )oleman

*Icolemanatlarge& and a man who wrote a boo5 on the #rish economy in 4J entitledThe =est #s Ket To )ome. engaged in an e6ually more-heat-than-light fight oer

comments )oleman made about academics proiding alue for money!

#n all these spats& there was a sense that the protagonists *especially =oyle& 'ogarty and

)oleman. had gone& in po5er terminology& all-in! All this was at a rather less eleated

literary leel than classical 'ree5& but there was a similar sense of heightened emotionand a refusal to bac5 down when perhaps more considered adice would be to leae well

enough alone! Bi5e )reon;s suggestions that& really edipus& why don;t we just leae it

there and forget the whole thing eer happened& the idea that sometimes the more

dignified and effectie form of communication it to refrain from feeding the trolls justwouldn;t ta5e!

Stichomythia can be e7hilarating! #n the great Athenian tragedies& full as they are of whatto modern ears seem stilted choruses and lengthy solilo6uies& they mar5 the cru7 of the

emotional tension! A play consisting entirely of stichomythia would not only be

e7hausting& but also lose its meaning! The relationship between Athenian drama and therituals of society was close& although the wor5 of Curipides for one shows that drama was

far more than a mere prop of the social status 6uo!



ne can only hope that the stichomythia of Twitter is only one of the modes of discourse

which the internet will bring us! The success of the longreads website suggests that the

longing for duration& for an e7perience that goes beyond what can be said in 12 *orfewer. characters& is still with us!

seamus sweeney

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