The Greek Plays
Page 12
Obey and leave your seat there in the carriage.
CLYTEMNESTRA: I don’t have time to waste with her outdoors.
Already, cattle stand beside the hearth
for slaughter in our house’s central shrine,
[…]
though we had lost all hope of such a blessing.
You! Hurry, if you’re planning to oblige me.
1060
You’re feeble-minded? You don’t understand?
Wave your outlandish hand, if you won’t speak!
CHORUS: The foreigner must need someone to translate
clearly. She’s like a newly captured wild thing.
CLYTEMNESTRA: She’s listening to her own demented thoughts;
coming here from her freshly captured city,
she doesn’t know enough to take the bit
until her strength bleeds from her foaming mouth.
I won’t waste further words on her contempt.
(Clytemnestra exits into the palace.)
CHORUS: I only pity her; I’m not provoked.
1070
Come on, poor thing, and leave the cart behind you.
Give in, since there’s no choice. Try on your new yoke.
strophe 1
CASSANDRA: (wails in grief and horror): Apollo! Apollo!*37
CHORUS: Why raise this wailing in the name of Loxias?
What has he ever had to do with mourning?
antistrophe 1
CASSANDRA: (wails) Apollo! Apollo!
CHORUS: Again, it’s him she calls on—a bad omen:
for those in grief, he’s not the proper helper.
strophe 2
1080
CASSANDRA: Apollo, Apollo!
God of the Highway—leading to my death—
destroying me once more—destroying me merely in passing.
CHORUS: Foresight about her own poor life is coming.
Though she’s a slave, the holy power remains.
antistrophe 2
CASSANDRA: Apollo, Apollo!
God of the Highway—leading to my death—
Where have you brought me, who does this house belong to?
CHORUS: The sons of Atreus. Don’t you understand?
Take it from me, then, and rely on it.
strophe 3
1090
CASSANDRA: (shrieking) A house that hates the gods, a house in
on the wicked murder of its own, of itself, a house full of nooses;
a butchery men are driven into, to spatter its floor with their blood.*38
CHORUS: The stranger’s got a good nose, like a hound’s.
She’s on the track of victims—and she’ll find them.
antistrophe 3
CASSANDRA: That’s right, and here are the witnesses I trust:
the babies wailing over the sacrifice,
and the roasted meat on which their father was fed.*39
CHORUS: We’ve heard about your gift. But we’re not looking
for anyone to explicate the gods’ will.
strophe 4
1100
CASSANDRA: Horrible! What is she plotting?
What’s this fresh suffering? Terrible,
terrible, the evil schemed in the house,
beyond its friends’ endurance, beyond healing, while help
stands to the side, far off.
CHORUS: These later prophecies are quite beyond me;
I know the rest, though; this whole city shouts them.
antistrophe 4
CASSANDRA: Monster, will you see it through?
This is your spouse, your mate you bedded with.
You wash him bright in the bath—and how can I speak of the ending?
1110
It rushes ahead. She stretches out one hand
and then the other, reaching.
CHORUS: I still don’t understand. These oracles
riddle, they cloud my eyes and leave me helpless.
strophe 5
CASSANDRA: (a prolonged shriek) What’s this in front of my eyes now?
Is it a hunting net out of the Underworld?
Yes, but a mantrap, too, that sleeps with him, helps plot
his murder. Let the mob endlessly gorging on this clan
raise a shriek over the sacrifice—on which stones will fall in their turn.
CHORUS: Who is this Fury you summon to howl
1120
over the house? This hardly leaves me cheerful!
All the blood runs to my heart, I am left
the color of men who have fallen
in battle and lie in the rays of their life as it sets;
blood drips to its finish
that same moment—then, swiftly, ruin.
antistrophe 5
CASSANDRA: (shrieks) Look at this! Look! Keep the bull
away from the heifer! She’s caught him
in her dress, her engine, on her black horn, striking.
Into the basin he falls, where the water lies.
He met his death in the bath, it lay in wait for him, I tell you.
1130
CHORUS: Well, I can’t boast perfect skill in making sense
of oracles—but evidently something’s wrong here.
What’s the good news from prophecy that ever came
to humankind? Evil alone supplies
the profession that wordily chants
the gods’ will, that brings us terror.
strophe 6
CASSANDRA: My torment! My torment, my calamity, this life!
It’s my own pain I’m now keening, new poured onto the old.
Where do you bring me in my anguish today?
What is it for, but death along with his?
1140
CHORUS: You’re out of your mind, I think—a god has seized it.
You wail for yourself
in a song without music like the trilling,
the insatiable crying from the poor, heart-piercing heart,
the moans of “Itys, Itys!” as the nightingale chants
a life overgrown with suffering.*40
antistrophe 6
CASSANDRA: Out of my reach, the shrill nightingale’s destiny!
The gods enclosed her in a body with wings,
and then her life was sweet—there were no tears.
But for me, the wide, the cleaving spearhead waits.
1150
CHORUS: Who sent you these surges of inspired anguish—
that are useless?
With an unspeakable scream you beat
fear’s time, in a rending melody.
Who marked out your prophetic road
with these evil words?
strophe 7
CASSANDRA: I mourn the marriage, Paris’ marriage
that doomed his own people—
and Scamander, the river my fatherland drank from.
On your waterside—to my grief—I was raised
and came to womanhood.
1160
On the banks of Acheron, by Cocytus,
soon now, I think, I’ll chant my second sight.
CHORUS: Why have you given us this prophecy? Yes, it’s clear—
a newborn who heard it would understand.
Like a bloody bite your miserable fate
strikes me—you shriek it, whimper it;
it crushes me to listen.
antistrophe 7
CASSANDRA: The suffering, the suffering of my city
in its annihilation!
My father’s sacrifices at the citadel’s gates,
the massacre of cattle from the field—the remedy wasn’t
1170
half strong enough to spare
Troy its allotted agony; and I,
my mind on fire, fall to steadfast Death.
CHORUS: Now you’re retracing your oracles.
Some power fills your mind with its spite
bearing you down, crushing you,
setting you tunes of wailing, death-frei
ghted torment—
out of my hands, the ending.
CASSANDRA: I’ll prophesy no longer like a new bride
timidly peering out beneath her veil;
1180
my words will be a clear, bright wind, assailing
the rising sun, surging against the rays
like a wave, which carries suffering far greater
than mine. It isn’t riddles now that teach you.
You run with me, a witness as I track,
like a hound, the crimes committed long before.
A troupe of singers squats beneath this roof,
voices in jarring and ill-omened concert.
The human blood they’ve drunk has made their gall
stronger, for endless riot in the house.
1190
You can’t dislodge these Furies, who are family.
Blockaders of the halls, they sing in praise
of primal Ruin, and they take turns spitting
on a brother’s bed and loathe the bed’s defiler.
Do I strike it like an archer? Am I wrong—
babbling, panhandling prophet of what can’t be?
First swear an oath, then certify my knowledge
of this household’s crimes, told in the ancient story!
CHORUS: How could an oath, though fixed in our pure hearts,
be healing? You amaze me, though: brought up
1200
across the sea, you’ve struck this foreign city
straight on the mark as if you were a witness.
CASSANDRA: The seer Apollo placed me in this office.
CHORUS: Though he’s a god, his longing made him helpless?
CASSANDRA: I was ashamed to tell you this before.
CHORUS: That was conceit; it comes with doing well.
CASSANDRA: The wrestler breathed his heady grace on me.
CHORUS: It came—as usual—to what makes children?
CASSANDRA: No, I gave in, but then tricked Loxias.
CHORUS: The holy art had captured you already?
1210
CASSANDRA: I was foretelling all my people’s anguish.
CHORUS: How could you be immune from his revenge?
CASSANDRA: Once I’d offended him, no one believed me.
CHORUS: We find, though, that we trust your prophecies.
CASSANDRA: No, no, the torment!
Once more, the hideous pain of a true seer
whirls me to chaos
You see these creatures seated near the house
in their first years, like forms inside a dream?
The children—as if enemies had killed them—
1220
have filled their hands with food from their own bodies,
pathetic weight of guts, the heavy entrails—
yes, I see clearly what their father tasted.*41
I tell you, someone plans the punishment.
A feeble lion, rolling in the bed,
guards the house—no! no!—from its master’s coming—
the ships’ premier and Ilium’s destroyer
will meet misfortune, ruin skulking here.
Not seen for what she is, the hateful bitch
1230
licks his hand, cheery ears prick—till she bites:
as bold as that, a female who can murder
a male! What name would strike the traitorous monster
on target? She’s a viper, she’s a Scylla
housed on the cliffs to lash at ships, possessed
Mother of Hades, breathing war—with no truce—
on her own family. Oh, her endless daring!
Her triumph-screech, as when a battle turns,
was like rejoicing at his safe return!
Believe or don’t believe me—it’s no use,
1240
since what will come, will come. Right here, right now,
you’ll say—in pity—I’m too true a prophet.
CHORUS: Thyestes’ banquet of his children’s flesh
I recognize, and horror seizes me:
I hear the truth, not some mere picture of it.
And yet the rest—I’m running off the scent.
CASSANDRA: I tell you, you’ll see Agamemnon’s death.
CHORUS: Poor thing! Now sing your reckless mouth to sleep.
CASSANDRA: The Healer’s*43 not presiding over these words.
CHORUS: If they’re fulfilled, then no—but may they not be!
1250
CASSANDRA: You’re praying, but they’re busy with their killing.
CHORUS: But who’s the man contriving this destruction?
CASSANDRA: My oracles have made a fool of you.
CHORUS: But I don’t see what scheme will see it through.
CASSANDRA: I speak your language better than I’d like to.
CHORUS: As Pytho*44 does: its oracles are murky!
CASSANDRA: Oh! Such a fire is sweeping over me!
I’m finished, finished, Lycian Apollo!
A lioness with two feet made her bed here
with a wolf—the noble lion was away.
1260
She’ll kill me—I’ll be helpless; there’s a payback
for me she pours in as she cooks her poison.
For a man she’s sharpening her sword but boasting
lethal revenge on me for being brought here.
Why do I keep these jokes about myself,
the staff, the seer’s ribbons on my neck?
I’ll put an end to you before my own.
(Throws the accouterments to the ground and stamps on them.)
Go to your ruin—where you fall I’ll follow.
Somebody else can have your rich destruction.
Look, it’s Apollo in the flesh who strips
1270
my prophet’s outfit. He was overseer
as I was laughed at—even in this finery!—
by hostile friends, so stubbornly and wrongly:
[…]
I was a crazy vagabond, in their words,*45
poor beggar, starving, half-dead—and I took it.
The prophet’s now unmade the prophetess,
dispatched me to this deadly destiny.
No father’s altar waits there, but a block—
scarlet and warm when I’m the sacrifice.
And yet the gods will send our deaths reprisal.
1280
Someone will come, with vengeance in its turn,
and kill his mother, vindicate his father.
Banished, estranged, a wandering refugee
come home will round out ruin for his family,
his father’s sprawling corpse will bring him back.
Why do I keen this stricken, lost lament?
At the start, I saw the Trojan city going
the way it went, but now the gods have judged
its sackers, and the end they have is this.
I’ll go and take this hard death in my hands.
1290
Now I address the gates of hell themselves
and pray that this blow hits me where it should,
making my blood spurt out without a struggle,
so that an easy death will close my eyes.
CHORUS: Woman, your pain is great; so is your wisdom.
You’ve spoken at some length. But with your own death
clearly in mind, how can you step so bravely
to the altar, like an ox the god is driving?
CASSANDRA: I can’t evade it any longer, strangers.
1300
CHORUS: Yet life’s last hour sits in the place of honor.
CASSANDRA: The day’s come. I could run; it wouldn’t help.
CHORUS: Your courage makes you steadfast—you must know that.
CASSANDRA: Compare that to what lucky people hear!
CHO
RUS: A famous death’s a privilege for us mortals.
CASSANDRA: Poor father—you and your pure-blooded children!
I’ll go into the halls and keen my fate
and Agamemnon’s. But life’s long enough.
Oh—strangers!
CHORUS: What is it? Why this turning back in terror?
CASSANDRA: No, no!
CHORUS: Why “No!”? What’s this repulsion in your mind?
CASSANDRA: The palace reeks of dripping blood and murder.
1310
CHORUS: What? That’s the smell of offerings at the hearth.
CASSANDRA: No, it’s the stench of tombs*46—I can’t mistake it—
CHORUS: No Syrian incense in the house, you’re saying…
CASSANDRA: I’m not a bird, who panics at the breeze
in empty scrub. Testify to my death’s words
when a woman dies to pay for me, a woman,
and a man for one who’s married to betrayal:
1320
so, as your guest, in death I call on you.
CHORUS: I pity your sad fate, decreed by heaven.
CASSANDRA: Once more I want to make a speech, or sing
my own dirge. To the sun of this last day
I pray that the avengers of my master
exact my murder’s price in this same way,
although a slave’s death caused so little trouble.
Poor mortal life! Even when greatly blessed,
it scurries when a shadow falls. Bad fortune’s
a dripping sponge slapping away what’s written.
1330
More than myself, by far, I pity them.*47
CHORUS: Nobody mortal can eat himself too full of life’s good things;
no one will keep them out, bar them from halls people point at in awe.
“Never again will you enter” will not be pronounced.
This man has sacked Priam’s city, by the blessed gods’ decree,
and the gods honor him as he comes home.
If he will now pay with blood of the bygone,
if for his own dead he dies, which will bring
1340
the retribution for still other deaths—
who among mortals, hearing about it, would boast
of having been born with a fate that cannot be broken?
AGAMEMNON: (heard from offstage, inside the palace) No! I’ve been hit! The wound is deep and deadly…
CHORUS: Quiet! Who’s shouting? What’s this deadly wound?