by Aeschylus
CHRYSOTHEMIS : The future will judge.
ELEKTRA : Oh go away. You give no help.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : You take no advice.
ELEKTRA : Why not run off and tell all this to Mother?
CHRYSOTHEMIS : I don’t hate you that much.
ELEKTRA : At least realize you are driving me into dishonor.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Dishonor? No: foresight.
ELEKTRA : And I should conform to your version of justice?
CHRYSOTHEMIS : When you are sane, you can think for us both.
ELEKTRA : Terrible to sound so right and be so wrong.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Well put! You describe yourself to a fault.
ELEKTRA : Do you deny that I speak for justice?
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Let’s just say there are times when justice is too big a risk.
ELEKTRA : I will not live by rules like those.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Go ahead then. You’ll find out I was right.
ELEKTRA : I do go ahead. You cannot deter me.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : So you won’t change your plan?
ELEKTRA : Immorality isn’t a plan. It is the enemy.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : You don’t hear a single word I say.
ELEKTRA : Oh it was all decided long ago.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : Well I’ll be off.
It’s clear you could never bring yourself to praise my words, nor I your ways.
ELEKTRA : Yes. You do that. You be off.
But I will not follow you, no.
Never.
Not even if you beg me.
When I look in your eyes I see emptiness.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : If that is your attitude, that is your attitude.
When you’re in deep trouble, you’ll say I was right.
[Exit CHRYSOTHEMIS.]
CHORUS : Why is it—we look at birds in the air, we see it makes sense the way they care for the life of those who sow and sustain them—why is it we don’t do the same?
No:
by lightning of Zeus, by Themis of heaven, not long
free of pain!
O sound going down to the dead in the ground, take a voice, take my voice, take down pity below to Atreus’ dead:
tell them shame.
Tell them there is no dancing.
Because here is a house falling sick falling now between two children battling, and there is no more level of love in the days.
Betrayed, alone she goes down in the waves:
Elektra, grieving for death,
for her father, as a nightingale grieving always.
Nor does she think to fear dying, no!
she is glad to go dark.
As a killer of Furies, as a pureblooded child of the father who sowed her.
No one wellborn is willing to live
with evil, with shame, with a name made nameless.
O child, child, you made your life a wall of tears against dishonor:
you fought and you won.
For they call you the child of his mind,
child of his excellence.
I pray you raise your hand and crush the ones
who now crush you!
For I see you subsisting in mean part, and yet you are one who kept faith with the living laws, kept faith in the clear reverence of Zeus.
[Enter ORESTES and PYLADES with urn.]
ORESTES : Tell me ladies, did we get the right directions?
Are we on the right road? Is this the place?
CHORUS : What place? What do you want?
ORESTES : The place where Aigisthos lives.
CHORUS : Well here you are. Your directions were good.
ORESTES : Which one of you, then, will tell those within?
Our arrival will please them.
CHORUS : Her—as nearest of kin, she is the right one to announce you.
ORESTES : Please, my lady, go in and tell them that certain Phokians are asking for Aigisthos.
ELEKTRA : OIMOI TALAIN’. Oh no. Don’t say that. Don’t say you have come with evidence of the stories we heard.
ORESTES : I don’t know what you heard.
Old Strophios sent me with news of Orestes.
ELEKTRA : Oh stranger, what news? Fear comes walking into me.
ORESTES : We have his remains in a small urn here—for he’s dead, as you see.
ELEKTRA : OI ’GO TALAINA. Oh no. No. Not this thing in your hands. No.
ORESTES : If you have tears to shed for Orestes, this urn is all that holds his body now.
ELEKTRA : Oh stranger, allow me, in gods’ name—if this vessel does really contain him, to hold it in my hands.
For myself, for the whole generation of us, I have tears to keep, I have ashes to weep.
ORESTES : [To PYLADES with urn.] Bring it here, give it to her, whoever she is.
It is no enemy asking this.
She is someone who loved him, or one of his blood.
ELEKTRA : If this were all you were, Orestes, how could your memory fill my memory, how is it your soul fills my soul?
I sent you out, I get you back:
tell me how could the difference be simply nothing?
Look!
You are nothing at all.
Just a crack where the light slipped through.
Oh my child, I thought I could save you.
I thought I could send you beyond.
But there is no beyond.
You might as well have stayed that day to share your father’s tomb.
Instead, somewhere, I don’t know where—suddenly alone you stopped—where death was.
You stopped.
And I would have waited and washed you and lifted you up from the fire,
like a whitened coal.
Strangers are so careless!
Look how you got smaller, coming back.
OIMOI TALAINA.
All my love gone for nothing.
Days of my love, years of my love.
Into your child’s fingers I put the earth and the sky.
No mother did that for you.
No nurse.
No slave.
I. Your sister without letting go, day after day, year after year, and you my own sweet child.
But death was a wind too strong for that.
One day three people vanished.
Father. You. Me. Gone.
Now our enemies rock with laughter.
And she runs mad for joy—that creature in the shape of your mother—how often you said you would come one secret evening and cut her throat!
But our luck canceled that, whatever luck is.
And instead my beloved, luck sent you back to me colder than ashes,
later than shadow.
OIMOI MOI.
Pity, PHEU PHEU oh beloved, OIMOI MOI as you vanish down that road.
Oh my love take me there.
Let me dwell where you are.
I am already nothing.
I am already burning.
Oh my love, I was once part of you—take me too!
Only void is between us.
And I see that the dead feel no pain.
CHORUS : Elektra, be reasonable.
Your father was a mortal human being.
Orestes too—we all pay the same price for that.
Control yourself.
ORESTES : PHEU PHEU.
What should I say? This is impossible! I cannot hold my tongue much longer.
ELEKTRA : What is the matter? What are you trying to say?
ORESTES : Is this the brilliant Elektra?
ELEKTRA : This is Elektra. Brilliant no more.
ORESTES : OIMOI TALAINES.
It hurts me to look at you.
ELEKTRA : Surely, stranger, you’re not feeling sorry for me?
ORESTES : It shocks me, the way you look: Do they abuse you?
ELEKTRA : Yes, in fact. But who are you?
ORESTES : PHEU. What an ugly, loveless life for a girl.
ELEKTRA : Why do you stare at me? Why are you so sympathetic?
/> ORESTES : I had no idea how bad my situation really is.
ELEKTRA : And what makes you realize that? Something I said?
ORESTES : Just to see the outline of your suffering.
ELEKTRA : Yet this is only a fraction of it you see.
ORESTES : What could be worse than this?
ELEKTRA : To live in the same house with killers.
ORESTES : What killers? What evil are you hinting at?
ELEKTRA : My own father’s killers.
And I serve them as a slave. By compulsion.
ORESTES : Who compels you?
ELEKTRA : Mother she is called. Mother she is not.
ORESTES : How do you mean? Does she strike you? Insult you?
ELEKTRA : Yes. And worse.
ORESTES : But have you no one to protect you?
No one to stand in her way?
ELEKTRA : No. There was someone. Here are his ashes.
ORESTES : Oh girl. How I pity the dark life you live.
ELEKTRA : No one else has ever pitied me, you know.
ORESTES : No one else has ever been part of your grief.
ELEKTRA : Do you mean you are somehow part of my family?
ORESTES : I’ll explain—if these women are trustworthy.
ELEKTRA : Oh yes, you can trust them. Speak freely.
ORESTES : Give back the urn, then, and you will hear everything.
ELEKTRA : No! Don’t take this from me, for gods’ sake, whoever you are!
ORESTES : Come now, do as I say. It is the right thing.
ELEKTRA : No! In all reverence no please—don’t take this away.
It is all that I love.
ORESTES : I forbid you to keep it.
ELEKTRA : O TALAIN’EGO SETHEN. Orestes! What if they take from me even the rites of your death!
ORESTES : Hush, now. That language is wrong.
ELEKTRA : Wrong to mourn my own dead brother?
ORESTES : Wrong for you to say that word.
ELEKTRA : How did I lose the right to call him brother?
ORESTES : Your rights you have. Your brother you don’t.
ELEKTRA : Do I not stand here with Orestes himself in my hands?
ORESTES : No, in fact. That Orestes is a lie.
ELEKTRA : Then where in the world is the poor boy’s grave?
ORESTES : Nowhere. The living need no grave.
ELEKTRA : Child, what are you saying?
ORESTES : Nothing but the truth.
ELEKTRA : The man is alive?
ORESTES : As I live and breathe.
ELEKTRA : You—?
ORESTES : Look at this ring—our father’s—
ELEKTRA : Father’s!
ORESTES :—and see what I mean.
ELEKTRA : Oh love, you break on me like light!
ORESTES : Yes like light!
ELEKTRA : Oh voice, have you come out of nowhere?
ORESTES : Nowhere but where you are.
ELEKTRA : Do I hold you now in my hands?
ORESTES : Now and forever.
ELEKTRA : Ladies, my friends, my people, look! Here stands Orestes:
dead by device now by device brought back to life!
CHORUS : I see, child. And at this reversal, my tears are falling for joy.
ELEKTRA : IO GONAI.
You exist!
You came back, you found me—
ORESTES : Yes, I am here. Now keep silent awhile.
ELEKTRA : Why?
ORESTES : Silence is better. Someone inside might overhear.
ELEKTRA : By Artemis unbroken! I would not dignify with fear the dull surplus of females who huddle in that house!
ORESTES : Careful! There is war in women too, as you know by experience, I think.
ELEKTRA : OTOTOTOTOI TOTOI.
You drive me back down my desperation—that unclouded incurable never forgotten evil growing inside my life.
ORESTES : I know, but we should talk of those deeds when the moment is right.
ELEKTRA : Every arriving moment of my life has a right to tell those deeds!
And this chance to speak freely is hard-won.
ORESTES : Precisely. Safeguard it.
ELEKTRA : How?
ORESTES : When the time is unsuitable, no long speeches.
ELEKTRA : But how could silence be the right way to greet you—simply coming out of nowhere like a miracle?
ORESTES : It was a miracle set in motion by the gods.
ELEKTRA : Ah.
That is a vast claim and much more beautiful, to think some god has brought you here.
Some god: yes! That must be true.
ORESTES : Elektra, I do not like to curb your rejoicing but I am afraid when you lose control.
ELEKTRA : Oh but my love—now that you have traveled back down all those years to meet my heart, over all this grief of mine, do not oh love—
ORESTES : What are you asking?
ELEKTRA : Do not turn your face from me.
Don’t take yourself away.
ORESTES : Of course not. No one else will take me either.
ELEKTRA : Do you mean that?
ORESTES : Yes I do.
ELEKTRA : Oh beloved, I heard your voice when I had no hope and my heart leapt away from me calling you.
I was in sorrow.
But now I am holding you, now you are visible—light of the face I could never forget.
ORESTES : Spare me these words.
You don’t need to teach me my mother is evil or how Aigisthos drains the family wealth, pours it out like water, sows it to the wind.
We’ve no time for all that—talk is expensive.
What I need now are the practical details:
where we should hide, where we can leap out and push that enemy laughter right back down their throats!
But be careful she doesn’t read the fact of our presence straight from the glow on your face.
You must keep on lamenting my fictitious death. Time enough
for lyres and laughter when we’ve won the day.
ELEKTRA : Your will and my will are one: identical, brother.
For I take all my joy from you, none is my own.
Nor could I harm you ever so slightly at any price: it would be a disservice to the god who stands beside us now.
So. You know what comes next.
Aigisthos has gone out, Mother is home.
And don’t worry:
she’ll see no glow on my face.
Hatred put out the light in me a long time ago.
Besides, since I saw you my tears keep running down—tears, joy, tears all mixed up together.
How could I stop?
I saw you come down that road a dead man, I looked again and saw you alive.
You have used me strangely.
Why—if Father suddenly came back to life I wouldn’t call it fantastic.
