The Greek Plays
Page 74
Nature remains forever, helps in trouble.
Prosperity that lives a while with fools
briefly flowers with evil, then flies from home.
As for your women—well, it isn’t nice
for me to speak of it: I am a virgin.
I’ll hint though. You did awful things, exploiting
your kingly power and looks. For me, I’d rather
a man for husband—you looked like a girl.
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A real man’s children know the arts of Ares;
pretty ones look good in choruses.
You still don’t know that time caught up with you
and made you pay. May every criminal
see that he’ll never win the race with Justice!
He may run quick at first, but play it out:
run on, right to the finish line of life.
CHORUS: He acted dreadfully, and dreadful, too,
was what you did to him. Justice is strong.
ELECTRA: Now then, you slaves must take his corpse inside,
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hide it in darkness; when our mother comes
she mustn’t see it, till she’s dead herself.
(Enter Clytemnestra.)
ORESTES: (to Electra) We have to change the subject: look who’s coming.
ELECTRA: What is it? Helpers for us from Mycenae?
ORESTES: No: it’s my mother! Look, my mother’s coming!
ELECTRA: That’s good: she’s stepping straight inside the trap.*66
Look at her sparkly clothes, her glittering chariot!
ORESTES: What shall we do? Can we really kill our mother?
ELECTRA: You’re sorry for her now you see her? Really?
ORESTES: Yes! Oh, oh! How can I kill her? She raised me! Gave me birth!
970
ELECTRA: Easy! Kill her, the way she killed our father.
ORESTES: Apollo! What you prophesied was stupid!
ELECTRA: Who can be wise if Lord Apollo isn’t?
ORESTES: (addressing the unseen god)
You told me, “Kill your mother.” But it’s wrong!
ELECTRA: What’s wrong with taking vengeance for our father?
ORESTES: I’ll be a matricide! No longer pure!*67
ELECTRA: If you fail your father, that’s a sin.
ORESTES: I know, but won’t I pay, for killing Mother?
ELECTRA: And if you fail to take revenge for Father?
ORESTES: Maybe a demon made that prophecy.
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ELECTRA: Upon the holy tripod?*68 I don’t think so.
ORESTES: I can’t be sure those oracles were good.
ELECTRA: Don’t be so cowardly! Up, be a man!
Go on and trick her with the same deceit
she and Aegisthus used to kill her husband.*69
ORESTES: I’ll go. I’ll start to do this dreadful thing,
this horror. Yes, I will. If it’s the gods’ will,
I’ll do it. But I take no joy in it.
CHORUS: (to Clytemnestra)
Greetings, your majesty!
Queen of the land of Argos,
daughter of Tyndareus,
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sister of the hero twins,*70 the sons
of Zeus, who live among the stars
in fiery heaven, honored as the saviors
of mortals in the crashing waves of the sea.
Welcome! I worship you, just like a goddess,
for your great happiness and wealth.
It’s right to pay due homage
to your good fortune, Majesty.
CLYTEMNESTRA: (to her attendants) Women of Troy, get down, get out of the carriage
and take my hand, so I may set my feet
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down on the ground. (to the Chorus) The temples of the gods
are gorgeously adorned with Trojan spoil.
These girls are mine, to decorate my home;
nice, but small recompense for my lost child.*71
ELECTRA: Mother, this luckless place is where I live,
a slave, in exile from my father’s house.
You’re a fine lady; shall I take your hand?
CLYTEMNESTRA: Don’t bother; look, the slaves are here to do it.
ELECTRA: But I’m the same as them! You shoved me out,
occupied my home, had me enslaved,
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and left me here an orphan, fatherless.
CLYTEMNESTRA: Thanks to your father’s bad decisions, taken
against the one he should have loved the most!
I’ll tell my side—although when women have
bad reputations, no one wants to hear them.
I say it’s not my fault. Just listen, then
hate me if it seems right; or if not, don’t.
My father gave me as a bride to yours,
not meaning me to die! Nor yet my children—.
But that man told my daughter she would marry
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Achilles, just to get her from her home*72—
took her to Aulis, stretched her above the pyre,
and slit her dear white throat. Iphigenia!
If this had been to save his town from capture,
or help his house and save his other children,
by killing one, he could have been forgiven.
But as it is—since Helen was a slut
whose man did not know how to punish her
for her adultery—it was for that
he killed my child! And still despite these wrongs
1030
I kept my cool. I didn’t kill my husband.
But he came back and brought into our bed
that crazy prophetess,*73 and tried to keep
two wives at once, in just a single house.
Women are silly, yes, I don’t deny it.
But when, on top of that, a man does wrong,
and spurns the marriage bed, a woman will
do just the same, and take another man.
Then we’re the ones who are notorious.
No one speaks ill of them, though they’re to blame.
1040
What if your father’s brother had been kidnapped?
Should I have killed Orestes, just to save
my sister’s husband, Menelaus? No!
How would your father have put up with that?
Should he not die, for murdering my child,
if I must suffer tit for tat, for him?*74
I killed him and I turned for help to those
who were his enemies; I had no choice.*75
What friend of his would help me kill your father?
Speak, if you want, and freely answer me.
1050
How was your father’s death not just and fair?
CHORUS: You’ve spoken fairly, with an ugly fairness.
Wives should obey their husbands all the time,
if they are sensible. Or if a woman
thinks differently, I put her out of mind.
ELECTRA: Remember, Mother, what you said just now,
that I could have free rein to speak against you.
CLYTEMNESTRA: Of course you may, my child, I won’t deny you.
ELECTRA: Then you won’t hurt me, if my words hurt you?
CLYTEMNESTRA: Certainly not; I only wish you well.*76
1060
ELECTRA: Then let me speak, and first I’ve this to say:
if only, Mother, you’d had better sense!
Your looks are easy to admire, both yours
and Helen’s. But your natures, not so much.
Both idiots! You’re unworthy of your Castor.
She asked for it, she wanted to be raped,
while you destroyed the greatest man in Greece,
your husband, claiming it was for your child.
You fooled them: they don’t know you—unlike me.
Before your daughter’s sacrifice occurred,
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as soon as
your dear husband left the house,
you took your mirror and began to comb
your long blond hair. A woman who’s concerned
with beauty, when her husband is away
is wicked. If she wasn’t hunting harm
she wouldn’t want to look good for outsiders.
I also know that you, of all Greek women,
you were the one who smiled when Troy was doing well,
and frowned when they were doing worse—not wanting
Agamemnon to come home from Troy.
1080
And yet you could have been a model wife!
You had a husband whom all Greece had chosen
General-in-Chief, surely a better man
than that Aegisthus. And your sister’s actions
gave you the chance for glory. Wicked news
provides a clear example for the good.
You say our father killed his daughter—but
what harm had I done you? Or my poor brother?
After you killed your husband, why did you
not keep our property in trust for us?
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You sold our house to buy yourself a husband!
This husband should be exiled, not your son!
He ought to die—he’s made my life a death.
My sister didn’t suffer half as much.
If blood’s the judge and one death pays another,
then with Orestes’ help, I’ll kill you. Just
revenge for Father. If you’re right, we’re right.*77
CLYTEMNESTRA: Daughter, it’s always been your way to love
your father—so it goes. Some are like that,
while others love their mothers more than fathers.
I will forgive you, and I will admit
I’m not too comfortable with what I’ve done.
Those plots and schemes I made! It was too much,
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that rage against my husband. I regret it.
ELECTRA: Too late to feel this way: there’s no cure now.
My father’s dead. But why won’t you bring back
your son, who wanders exiled through the world?
CLYTEMNESTRA: I’m scared. I’m thinking not of him, but me.
They say he’s angry at his father’s killing.
ELECTRA: But why’d you let your husband treat me so?
CLYTEMNESTRA: It’s how he is. You’re stubborn, too, you know.
ELECTRA: Because I’m suffering. But that will end.
CLYTEMNESTRA: In that case, he’ll no longer trouble you.
1120
ELECTRA: He’s such a big-head! Living in my house! *78
CLYTEMNESTRA: Look at you! Still igniting arguments!
ELECTRA: I’ll stop, but just because I’m scared of him.
CLYTEMNESTRA: Enough! But why’d you call me here, my child?
ELECTRA: I’m sure you’ve heard that I have given birth?
Please make the usual tenth-night sacrifice
to bless the newborn, since I don’t know how.
I’ve never had a child before, you see.
CLYTEMNESTRA: But this is what the midwife ought to do.
ELECTRA: I didn’t have one; I gave birth alone.
1130
CLYTEMNESTRA: You have no friends or neighbors near your house?
ELECTRA: Nobody wants a pauper for a friend.
CLYTEMNESTRA: And you’re still unwashed, in those awful clothes?
Just getting up from after giving birth?
All right, I’ll help you; I will go and make
the sacrifice for baby’s safe arrival.
Then I’ll go meet my husband in the fields
where he is sacrificing to the Nymphs.
(to her attendants) Slaves! take the mules inside and give them food.
Come back here when I’ve done my sacrifice,
since then I’ll have to go and help my husband.
ELECTRA: Go into my poor home. But please take care:
1140
it’s thick with dirt, don’t spoil your pretty clothes.
You’ll soon be giving to the gods their due—
(Clytemnestra goes into the house.)
The basket’s ready and the knife is sharp,
which killed the bull: you, too, will lie beside him,
battered to death. In Hades you’ll stay married
to him you chose in life. My gift to you!
Your gift to me is justice for my father.
strophe
CHORUS:*79 It’s payback, fair and square: two wrongs make right.
The breezes blowing on the house have turned.
My master, my master, he fell long ago in the bath,*80
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and the palace screamed, the stone walls shrieked, as he cried,
“You witch!
You evil woman!
Are you killing me now,
after ten harvests,
when I’ve only just got back home?”
[…]*81
antistrophe
The river of Justice is flowing upstream,
to punish the woman who transgressed the bed.
She killed her husband with an ax,
she did it, when he was coming home,
after long years, to his giant sky-towering palace.
1160
She did it! She took the weapon in her hands and struck. Poor man!
I pity the husband, regardless
of the desperate woman’s motives.
She acted like a lioness, down from the mountains,
prowling through the lush meadows.
CLYTEMNESTRA: (voice heard from inside)
O, children! By the gods! Don’t kill your mother!
CHORUS: Do you hear her shouting in the house?
CLYTEMNESTRA: (from inside, screaming)
No! Don’t! No!—
CHORUS: Poor woman, she’s no more—her children killed her.
Sooner or later, justice comes from the god.
Poor woman, it’s so dreadful, what happened to you!
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But you also sinned
against your man.
(Orestes and Electra come out of the palace with the bodies of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, wheeled on a cart.)
They’re here! Soaked with blood from the mother
they just killed! They’re marching out of the house!*82
….
With their prizes—the bodies are proof
of their terrible ritual slaughter.
No house in the whole of time has known such pain,
no family ever suffered as the Tantalids have done.*83
strophe 1
ORESTES: Earth and Zeus, you see all human action.
Look at what we’ve done: pollution and blood:
two bodies:
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we struck them and there they lie.
I did it, I took revenge
for the pain they made me suffer.*84
ELECTRA: Brother, this is so sad! It’s all my fault!
I was on fire against my mother here,
the one who gave me birth. Oh, it’s so awful!
CHORUS: Bad luck, terrible luck!
This poor mother!
You suffered horribly, worse than your children had done.
But still, it was right that you paid for killing their father.
antistrophe 1
1190
ORESTES: Apollo, your oracles were riddles, but right,
and now you’ve acted openly, to bring
pain, and for me, a future of exile
far from Greece, since I’m a murderer now.
What city can I go to?
Who’d be glad to welcome me?
Who could ever meet my eyes?
I killed my mother.
ELECTRA: What about me? Where can I go?
What group of girls will want to dance with me?
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Who’d marry m
e? Who’d take me as a bride?
CHORUS: Your minds have turned back
against the wind.
Now your thoughts are pure. Before they weren’t.
Electra, friend, you did a dreadful thing
in persuading your brother to this.
strophe 2
ORESTES: Did you see what my poor mother did?
She took down her dress and showed us her breast*85
while we were killing her: oh, oh, my god!
While her body, the source of our lives, collapsed! And I melted.
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CHORUS: I know. You went through torture,
hearing the wails
of the mother who gave you birth.
antistrophe 2
ORESTES: She touched my cheek and cried to me,
“Child, my child, I’m begging you—”
She clutched at my face,
and my sword fell out of my hands.
CHORUS: Oh, the poor woman. How could you bear it,
watching with your own eyes
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as your mother breathed out her life?
strophe 3
ORESTES: I put up my cloak to cover my eyes,
then took up my sword to act out the rite,
and plunged it right in there, through my own mother’s throat.
ELECTRA: I urged you on,
I held the sword with you.
I’ve done it: it’s the worst that could happen.
antistrophe 3
ORESTES: Take this, cover Mother’s body with this robe.
Bind up her wounds.
Mother, your own children were your murderers.
1230
ELECTRA: Look, I’ll put the cloth around her,
our unkind kin, the enemy we loved.
This is the end of the sorrows of our house.
(Enter, on the roof over the palace, Castor and Pollux.)
CHORUS: But look! Up there, on the palace roof,*86
spirits have come, or
maybe gods from heaven.
No mortal moves like that.
Why are they showing themselves
to humans?
CASTOR: Listen, Agamemnon’s son. We two
are the Twins, your mother’s brothers, sons of Zeus.
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I’m Castor; here’s my brother, Pollux.
We’ve just been warding off a bitter storm,
and now we visit Argos, since we saw
your mother, and our sister’s, ritual slaughter.
Her death was right, but you were wrong to do it.
Apollo—he’s my master, so I must
keep silence—. But he gave you bad advice,
despite his wisdom. Still, now yield to Fate,