ΤΟ ΘΕΑΤΡΟ ΤΟΥ ΔΙΟΝΥΣΟΥ ΜΕΣΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΑ ΜΑΤΙΑ ΤΟΥ GUSTAVE LARROUMET

Abstract: 

Gustave Larroumet (1852–1903) , a man of letters and arts, wasa theater critic and in 1896 he came to Greece as a correspondent of the news­paper Le Temps for the Olympic games. A few months after returning to Parison October 24 , 1896 , he gave a public conference at the Institut de Franceentitled: “At the Bacchus Theater”, which was published in Le Temps thefollowing day. The present paper comments on this text by proposing a dou­ble reading: the first refers to the interest of the Frenchman in the theater,as the place where Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes pre­sented the most important works of Greek dramaturgy, and thus as the idealplace for the unification of all the virtues of Western culture; the second un­derlines the connection attempted by the author, as he considers the Frenchculture to be a continuation of that of the Greeks and Romans, of the historyof theater with major issues of arts, culture and politics of the 19th century.