by Aeschylus
That is the oracle.
Here is the plan:
you go into the house at the first chance.
Find out all that is happening there.
Find out and report to us. Be very clear.
You’re so old, they won’t know you.
And your garlands will fool them.
Now this is your story:
you’re a stranger from Phokis, from the house of Phanoteus (he’s the most powerful ally they have).
Tell them on oath that Orestes is dead.
An accident. Fatal: rolled out of his chariot on the racetrack at Delphi.
Dragged to death under the wheels.
Let that be the story.
Meanwhile, we go to my father’s grave, as Apollo commanded, to pour libation and crown the tomb with locks of hair cut from my head.
Then we’ll be back with that bronzeplated urn (you know, the one I hid in the bushes).
Oh yes, we’ll fool them with this tale of me dead,
burnt, nothing left but ash.
What good news for them!
As for me—what harm can it do to die in words?
I save my life and win glory besides!
Can a mere story be evil? No, of course not—so long as it pays in the end.
I know of shrewd men who die a false death so as to come home all the more valued.
Yes, I am sure:
I will stand clear of this lie and break on my enemies like a star.
O land of my fathers! O gods of this place!
Take me in. Give me luck on this road.
House of my father:
I come to cleanse you with justice.
I come sent by gods.
Do not exile me from honor!
Put me in full command of the wealth and the house!
Enough talk.
Old man, look to your task.
We are off.
This is the point on which everything hinges.
This is the moment of proof.
ELEKTRA : [A cry from inside the house.] IO MOI MOI DYSTENOS.
OLD MAN : What was that? I heard a cry—some servant in the house?
ORESTES : Can it be poor Elektra?
Should we stay here and listen?
OLD MAN : No. Nothing precedes the work of Apollo.
That is our first step: your father’s libations.
That is the way to win: action.
[Exit the OLD MAN and ORESTES with PYLADES. Enter ELEKTRA from the palace.]
ELEKTRA : O holy light!
And equal air shaped on the world—you hear my songs, you hear the blows fall.
You know the blood runs when night sinks away.
All night I watch.
All night I mourn, in this bed that I hate in this house I detest.
How many times can a heart break?
Oh Father, it was not killer Ares who opened his arms in some foreign land to welcome you.
But my own mother and her lover Aigisthos:
those two good woodsmen took an axe and split you down like an oak.
No pity for these things, there is no pity but mine, oh Father, for the pity of your butchering rawblood death.
Never will I leave off lamenting, never. No.
As long as the stars sweep through heaven.
As long as I look on this daylight.
No.
Like the nightingale who lost her child I will stand in his doorway and call on his name.
Make them all hear.
Make this house echo.
O Hades!
Persephone!
Hermes of hell!
Furies, I call you!
Who watch when lives are murdered.
Who watch when loves betray.
Come! Help me! Strike back!
Strike back for my father murdered!
And send my brother to me.
Because alone, the whole poised force of my life is nothing against this.
[Enter CHORUS.]
CHORUS : Your mother is evil but oh my child why melt your life away in mourning?
Why let grief eat you alive?
It was long ago she took your father:
her hand came out of unholy dark and cut him down.
I curse the one who did the deed (if this is right to say).
ELEKTRA : You are women of noble instinct and you come to console me in my pain.
I know.
I do understand.
But I will not let go this man or this mourning.
He is my father.
I cannot not grieve.
Oh my friends, Friendship is a tension. It makes delicate demands.
I ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way.
CHORUS : Not from Hades’ black and universal lake can you lift him.
not by groaning, not by prayers.
Yet you run yourself out in a grief with no cure, no time limit, no measure.
It is a knot no one can untie. Why are you so in love with things unbearable?
ELEKTRA : None but a fool or an infant could forget a father gone so far and cold.
No.
Lament is a pattern cut and fitted around my mind—like the bird who calls Itys! Itys! endlessly, bird of grief, angel of Zeus.
O heartdragging Niobe, I count you a god:
buried in rock yet always you weep.
CHORUS : You are not the only one in the world, my child, who has stood in the glare of grief.
Compare yourself:
you go too far.
Look at your sister, Chrysothemis:
she goes on living. So does Iphianassa.
And the boy—his secret years are sorrowful too, but he will be brilliant one day when Mykenai welcomes him home to his father’s place, to his own land in the guidance of Zeus—Orestes!
ELEKTRA : Him yes!
I am past exhaustion in waiting for him—no children, no marriage, no light in my heart.
I live in a place of tears.
And he simply forgets.
Forgets what he suffered, forgets what he knew.
Messages reach me, each one belied.
He is passionate—as any lover.
But his passion does not bring him here.
CHORUS : Have courage, my child.
Zeus is still great in heaven, he watches and governs all things.
Leave this anger to Zeus: it burns too high in you.
Don’t hate so much.
Nor let memory go.
For time is a god who can simplify all. And as for Orestes on the shore of Krisa where oxen graze—he does not forget you.
Nor is the king of death on the banks of Acheron unaware.
ELEKTRA : But meanwhile most of my life has slid by without hope.
I sink.
I melt.
Father has gone and there is no man left who cares enough to stand up for me. Like some beggar wandered in off the street, I serve as a slave in the halls of my father.
Dressed in these rags, I stand at the table and feast on air.
CHORUS : One rawblood cry on the day he returned, one rawblood cry went through the halls just as the axeblade rose and fell.
He was caught by guile,
cut down by lust:
together they bred a thing shaped like a monster—god or mortal no one knows.
ELEKTRA : That day tore out the nerves of my life. That night:
far too silent the feasting, much too sudden the silence.
My father looked up and saw death coming out of their hands.
Those hands took my life hostage.
Those hands murdered me.
I pray the great god of Olympos give them pain on pain to pay for this!
And smother the glow of deeds like these.
CHORUS : Think again, Elektra.
Don’t say any more.
Don’t you see what you’re doing?
You make your own pain.
Why keep wounding yourself?
With so much
evil stored up in that cold dark soul of yours
you breed enemies everywhere you touch.
But you must not clash with the people in power.
ELEKTRA : By dread things I am compelled. I know that.
I see the trap closing.
I know what I am.
But while life is in me I will not stop this violence. No.
Oh my friends who is there to comfort me?
Who understands?
Leave me be, let me go, do not soothe me.
This is a knot no one can untie.
There will be no rest, there is no retrieval.
No number exists for griefs like these.
CHORUS : Yes but I speak from concern—as a mother would: trust me.
Do not breed violence out of violence.
ELEKTRA : All right then, you tell me one thing—at what point does the evil level off in my life?
You say ignore the deed—is that right?
Who could approve this?
It defies human instinct!
Such ethics make no sense to me.
And how could I nestle myself in a life of ease
while my father lies out in the cold, outside honor?
My cries are wings:
they pierce the cage.
For if a dead man is earth and nothing, if a dead man is void and dead space lying, if a dead man’s murderers do not give blood for blood to pay for this, then shame does not exist.
Human reverence is gone.
CHORUS : I came here, child, because I care for your welfare as my own.
But perhaps I am wrong.
Let it be as you say.
ELEKTRA : Women, I am ashamed before you: I know you find me extreme in my grief.
I bear it hard.
But I tell you I have no choice.
It compels. I act because it compels.
Oh forgive me. But how could I—how could a woman of any nobility stand and watch her father’s house go bad?
There is something bad here, growing. Day and night I watch it. Growing.
My mother is where it begins.
She and I are at war.
Our relation is hatred.
And I live in this house with my father’s own killers:
they rule me. They dole out my life.
What kind of days do you think I have here?
I see my father’s throne with Aigisthos on it.
I see my father’s robes with Aigisthos in them.
I see my father’s hearth with Aigisthos presiding—
right where he stood when he struck my father down!
And the final outrage:
the killer tucked in my father’s bed.
Behold the man who pleasures my mother—should I call that thing “mother” that lies at his side?
God! Her nerve astounds me.
She lives with that polluted object, fearing no fury. No, she laughs!
Celebrates that day—the day she took my father with dances and song and slaughter of sheep!
A monthly bloodgift to the gods who keep her safe.
I watch all going dark in the rooms of my house.
I weep.
I melt.
I grieve for the strange cruel feast made in my father’s name.
But I grieve to myself:
not allowed even to shed the tears I would.
No—that creature who calls herself noble will shriek at me:
“Godcursed! You piece of hatred!
So you’ve lost your father—is that unique?
No mortal mourns but you?
Damn you.
May the gods of hell damn you to groan perpetually there as you groan perpetually here!”
That’s her style—and when she hears someone mention Orestes, then she goes wild, comes screaming at me:
“Have I you to thank for this?
Isn’t it your work? Wasn’t it you who stole Orestes out of my hands and smuggled him away?
You’ll pay for it.
I tell you, you will pay.”
Howling bitch. And by her side the brave bridegroom—this lump of bad meat.
With women only he makes his war.
And I wait.
I wait.
I wait for Orestes.
He will come! He will end this.
But my life is dying out.
He is always on the verge of doing something then does nothing.
He has worn out all the hopes I had or could have.
Oh my friends, in times like these, self-control has no meaning.
Rules of reverence do not apply.
Evil is a pressure that shapes us to itself.
CHORUS : Is Aigisthos at home?
ELEKTRA : No. Do you think I’d be standing outdoors?
He is gone to the fields.
CHORUS : That gives me courage to say what I came to say.
ELEKTRA : What is it you want?
CHORUS : I want to know—your brother—do you say he is coming? Or has a plan?
ELEKTRA : Yes, he says so. But he says a lot. Does nothing.
CHORUS : A man who does a great deed may hesitate.
ELEKTRA : Oh? I saved his life without hesitating.
CHORUS : Courage. His nature is good, he will not fail his kin.
ELEKTRA : That belief is what keeps me alive.
CHORUS : Quiet now. Here is your sister come from the house, Chrysothemis, of the same father and mother as you.
She has offerings in her hands, as if for the dead.
[Enter CHRYSOTHEMIS carrying garlands and a vessel.]
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Here you are again at the doorway, sister, telling your tale to the world!
When will you learn?
It’s pointless. Pure self-indulgence.
Yes, I know how bad things are.
I suffer too—if I had the strength I would show how I hate them.
But now is not the right time.
In rough waters, lower the sail, is my theory.
Why pretend to be doing, unless I can do some real harm?
I wish you would see this.
And yet, it is true, justice is not on my side.
Your choice is the right one. On the other hand, if I want to live a free woman, there are masters who must be obeyed.
ELEKTRA : You appall me.
Think of the father who sired you! But you do not.
All your thought is for her.
These sermons you give me are all learned from Mother, not a word is your own.
Well it’s time for you to make a choice: quit being “sensible” or keep your good sense and betray your own kin.
Wasn’t it you who just said, “If I had the strength I would show how I hate them”!
Yet here I am doing everything possible to avenge our father, and do you help? No!
You try to turn me aside.
Isn’t this simply cowardice added to evil?
Instruct me—no! Let me tell you:
What do I stand to gain if I cease my lament?
Do I not live? Badly, I know, but I live.
What is more, I am a violation to them.
And so, honor the dead—if any grace exists down there.
Now you hate them, you say.
But this hate is all words.
In fact, you live with the killers. And I tell you, if someone were to give me all the gifts that make your days delicious, I would not bend. No.
You can have your rich table and life flowing over the cup.
I need one food: I must not violate Elektra.
As for your status, I couldn’t care less.
Nor would you, if you had any self-respect.
You could have been called child of the noblest men!
Your own dead father, your own loved ones, you do betray.
CHORUS : No anger I pray.
There is profit for both if you listen to each other.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Her talk is no surprise to me, ladies.
I’m used to thi
s.
And I wouldn’t have bothered to speak at all, except—for the rumor I heard.
There is very great evil coming this way, something to cut her long laments short.
ELEKTRA : Tell me what is the terrible thing?
If it is worse than my present life, I give up.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : I tell what I know:
they plan, unless you cease from this mourning, to send you where you will not see the sun again.
You’ll be singing your songs alive in a room in the ground.
Think about that.
And don’t blame me when you suffer.
Too late then.
Now is the time to start being sensible.
ELEKTRA : Ah. That is their intention, is it.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : It is. As soon as Aigisthos comes home.
ELEKTRA : May he come soon, then.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : What are you saying?
ELEKTRA : Let him come, if he has his plan ready.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : What do you mean? Are you losing your mind?
ELEKTRA : I want to escape from you all.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Not go on living?
ELEKTRA : Living? Oh yes my life is a beautiful thing, is it not.
