An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides
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SLAVE : The doorposts we crack with crowbars and a yell
and run out into the room pell-mell,
stones and slings and swords in hand
but Pylades comes at us like a monster man.
Then we join swords and things get
embarrassing
(we’re no match for Greeks at military
harassing)—
some fled, some dead, some begging for
their lives
and amidst all this Hermione arrives!
They lunge at her, yelling,
then remember Helen—
who at that very moment simply vanishes
from sight!
O Zeus! O Light! O Dark of Night!
I know not how!
Truth is, at that point I made my bow.
Panicked a bit, took to my heels.
You know how it feels.
CHORUS : The weirdness goes on. It just goes on.
Here’s Orestes. Got his sword out. Looks pretty excited.
[Enter ORESTES.]
ORESTES : Where is that man who ran out of the house?
SLAVE : I bow before you, King, right to the ground in barbarian style.
ORESTES : This isn’t Troy, we’re in Argos.
SLAVE : Everywhere is a sweet place to escape death.
ORESTES : Have you been shouting for help for Menelaos?
SLAVE : No, no, no—help for you! I’m on your side!
ORESTES : So it was right and just that Helen perish?
SLAVE : Right and just three times over.
ORESTES : Your tongue wants to gratify. You don’t really believe that.
SLAVE : Don’t believe Helen screwed Greece as well as Troy? Please.
ORESTES : Swear you do, or I’ll kill you.
SLAVE : I swear on my life! Is that convincing?
ORESTES : Was it like this at Troy—you Trojans all cringing in fear?
SLAVE : Please remove your blade from my throat. I don’t like the glare.
ORESTES : Afraid of turning to stone? Like people who see the Gorgon?
SLAVE : Afraid of turning to corpse. What’s a Gorgon?
ORESTES : Interesting, even a slave fears death—yet you could escape misery!
SLAVE : Every man, slave or free, loves to look upon the light.
ORESTES : Very poetic. Your eloquence has saved you. Go indoors.
SLAVE : You won’t kill me?
ORESTES : Go.
SLAVE : Fabulous.
ORESTES : Unless I reconsider.
SLAVE : Not fabulous.
ORESTES : Oh you idiot, I can’t be bothered cutting the throat of a eunuch.
I only came out to stop you setting up a hue and cry.
But I’m not afraid to fight Menelaos!
Bring him on, with his big blond hair and fancy looks!
If he leads the Argives against me he’ll find two dead bodies, his wife and his daughter both.
[Exit TROJAN SLAVE into the house.]
CHORUS : Look how things fall!
Into agony, into another agony the house plunges
dreadful and deep for the children of Atreus.
What should we do—take the news to the town?
Or keep silence—that’s safer isn’t it?
Look at the housefront how it dissolves—
smoke rising high in the air.
They are lighting the torches, setting the fire
and they do not shrink back though the
work is dire!
But some god controls all human outcomes.
And vengeance is an overwhelming force.
This house is finished.
Here comes Menelaos on sharp feet.
He must have heard what is happening.
Bolt the doors, Orestes. You’ve got the upper hand now!
[Enter MENELAOS from a side entrance.]
MENELAOS : I hear drastic deeds have been done by those two lions—
they aren’t human beings!
That my wife is not dead but vanished away.
Some silly rumor. Some tactic of Orestes’.
Ludicrous.
Open the doors!
I’ll rescue my daughter at least from murdering hands.
[Enter ORESTES onto the roof of the house with PYLADES and HERMIONE.]
ORESTES : Don’t touch those doors!
You there, Menelaos—you of the towering indignation, yes I mean you!—
or I’ll smash your skull with a copingstone. The doors are bolted fast. You’re not rescuing anyone.
MENELAOS : EA! What’s this! I see torches blazing, people looming on the roof and there’s my daughter with a sword at her throat!
ORESTES : Do you want to ask questions or listen to me?
MENELAOS : Neither. But I guess I better listen.
ORESTES : It may interest you that I plan to kill your daughter.
MENELAOS : And you’ve already killed Helen?
ORESTES : I wish. No, the gods snatched her away.
MENELAOS : You mock me!
ORESTES : Unfortunately not. In fact I heartily regret—
MENELAOS : Regret what?
ORESTES : I didn’t knock that unclean thing all the way to hell.
MENELAOS : Your mother’s blood wasn’t enough for you?
ORESTES : I could never tire of killing evil women.
MENELAOS : Return my wife’s body so I can bury it.
ORESTES : Petition the gods. Meanwhile I’ll go ahead with your daughter.
MENELAOS : The mother killer seeks to pile murder on murder!
ORESTES : The defender of a father, whom you betrayed to his death.
MENELAOS : And you, Pylades, you’re part of this too?
ORESTES : Yes he is.
MENELAOS : And how will you get away? Intend to sprout wings?
ORESTES : We won’t be leaving. We’re going to set the house on fire.
MENELAOS : Lay waste your own ancestral home?
ORESTES : So you can’t have it. And I’ll slaughter your girl over the flames.
MENELAOS : Go ahead, kill her. I’ll get my revenge.
ORESTES : So be it.
MENELAOS : No don’t do it!
ORESTES : Oh be quiet. Endure what you deserve.
MENELAOS : And what do you deserve? To go on living?
ORESTES : Yes. And rule this land.
MENELAOS : Which land?
ORESTES : Argos.
MENELAOS : Oh that would be dandy wouldn’t it, to have you touching sacred vessels!
ORESTES : Why not?
MENELAOS : And dispatching holy victims!
ORESTES : Whereas you’d be more suitable?
MENELAOS : My hands are clean.
ORESTES : Your mind is not.
MENELAOS : But who would want to have anything to do with you?
ORESTES : Anyone who loves his father.
MENELAOS : And those who respect their mother?
ORESTES : Lucky them.
MENELAOS : Doesn’t apply to you.
ORESTES : I don’t care for bad women.
MENELAOS : Take your sword away from my daughter.
ORESTES : You’re a tricky one aren’t you.
MENELAOS : You will really kill her!
ORESTES : You got that right.
MENELAOS : OIMOI! What should I do!
ORESTES : Go to the Argives and plead—
MENELAOS : What?
ORESTES : For our lives.
MENELAOS : Or you’ll murder my child?
ORESTES : That’s it.
MENELAOS : O poor Helen—
ORESTES : What about poor Orestes?
MENELAOS : I brought you back from Troy unto death.
ORESTES : If only it were so.
MENELAOS : After all those toils—
ORESTES : None of them for me.
MENELAOS : I suffer terrible things.
ORESTES : Well, you screwed up.
MENELAOS : You’ve got me now.
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br /> ORESTES : You got yourself. You’re no good, Menelaos. A born coward. Elektra, start that fire down below! Pylades, you light the parapet here.
MENELAOS : O Argos, O citizens of Argos,
won’t you come to my rescue?
This man is forcing his will upon your whole community—hanging on to life though he’s soaked in his mother’s blood!
[Enter APOLLO with HELEN, above somewhere.]
APOLLO : Menelaos, soften your temper—
I am Phoibos Apollo, son of Leto, who calls you close at hand—you too, Orestes, with your sword at this girl’s throat.
I have this to say.
Helen, whom you were so hot to kill, is here. In the heavens. I saved her from your sword. Zeus’ orders.
She is after all Zeus’ daughter. Can’t die.
She will sit in the folds of the sky beside Kastor and Pollux.
Sort of a savior for sailors.
Find another wife, Menelaos.
This one, by her beauty, was a mechanism of the gods to kill off a lot of Trojans and Greeks, lighten the burden of excess population on the earth.
So much for Helen.
Now you, Orestes, get out of this country. Cross the border, go to Parrhasia, stay there a year.
They’ll call the place Oresteion after you. Then go to Athens and stand trial for matricide.
Trust me, you’ll win.
And this girl whose throat is being grazed by your sword, Hermione, you’ll marry.
I know she’s supposed to marry somebody else (Neoptolemos I think) but I’ll see to it he dies.
Give your sister to Pylades, as you agreed. His life will be happy. And Argos—Menelaos—let Orestes rule it.
You go rule Sparta.
Enjoy your wife’s dowry.
She’s finished philandering now.
I’ll fix up Orestes’ relations with Argos—it was me made him murder his mother after all.
ORESTES : Apollo of oracles! So you were no false prophet!
But I admit I was getting nervous.
Those voices, I thought they were demons of vengeance, not you!
Still, it’s all turned out well. I do obey you.
See, I’m letting Hermione go. And will marry her as soon as her father says yes.
MENELAOS : Helen, daughter of Zeus, I hail you!
And congratulate you on your promotion to heaven!
Orestes, I give you the hand of my daughter. As Apollo ordains.
Noble bride, from a noble father,
I hope you prosper. I hope I do too.
APOLLO : Go your ways as I’ve assigned them. End these differences.
MENELAOS : No choice but to obey.
ORESTES : So it is.
I make my peace with circumstances, Menelaos, and also with your oracles, Apollo.
APOLLO : Go then, honoring Peace, most beautiful of gods.
I will lead Helen to the halls of Zeus crossing the starry bowl of the sky. There, with Hera and Herakles and Hebe, she will preside as a god, honored by humans, queen of the deep running sea.
CHORUS : O great Victory, holy god, may you inhabit my life and never cease crowning me with beautiful success!
A NOTE FROM THE TRANSLATOR
Thunder only happens when it’s raining.
—STEVIE NICKS
Not my idea to do this. It was the inspiration of the artistic director of the Classic Stage Company in New York City, Brian Kulick. Let me say how it came about.
I translated Sophokles’ Elektra in 1987 and Euripides’ Orestes in 2006 for different reasons: Elektra was commissioned by Oxford University Press for a series called The Greek Tragedies in New Translations; Orestes was presented as a staged reading at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. To translate Aiskhylos’ Agamemnon had never crossed my mind. But in 2007 Brian Kulick approached me with the notion of trying my hand at Agamemnon and putting together an Oresteia that combined the three playwrights, which he would then undertake to produce. I said, “Who needs this?”—meaning, Aiskhylos has already given us an Oresteia richer than rubies, of which lots of good translations exist. Why monkey around with it? But Kulick persisted in thinking it a good idea to make a non-foundational Oresteia. He spoke and wrote to me about this on several occasions. As I understand it, the project interested him first of all historically. To hear the same legend (the story of the house of Atreus) told by three different playwrights at three different vantage points of Athenian history would offer “a unique perspective on the Athenian moment,” he said. Kulick saw a trajectory “from myth to mockery” in the three treatments.
In Aiskhylos’ hands the story of the house of Atreus is designed to end in a valedictory celebration of Athenian democracy and its newborn sense of justice; when Sophokles takes over the tale it becomes more complex and contradictory; with Euripides the design is completely turned on its head. We follow a trajectory from myth to mockery. What happened to effect this? History happened. Aiskhylos composed his Oresteia shortly after Athens’ victory at the battle of Marathon, which marked the height of Athenian military and cultural supremacy; Euripides finished his Orestes almost a hundred years later as Athens headed for ruin, due to her protracted involvement in the Peloponnesian War … The house of Atreus, for these tragedians, was a way of talking about the fate of Athens.14
He was also intrigued by a stylistic differential in the three plays.
I always think of these three tragedians as being associated with different times of a metaphoric day. Aiskhylos is dawnlike, with iconic ideas, images, and action emerging into the light of consciousness. Euripides presents a twilight where everything is susceptible to tricks of a fading light, where tonalities are hard to grasp, where one moment is an azure sunset, the next a starless night. Between them, Sophokles, under the glare of a noon sun that leaves nothing unexposed.15
You can see Brian was persuasive. Anyway, the idea of another Oresteia grew on me, partly because I like big translation projects; partly because it seems important to get Greek plays performed more; partly because, as John Cage says, “There are things to hear and things to see and that’s what theater is.”16
ALSO BY ANNE CARSON
Eros the Bittersweet
Glass, Irony and God
Short Talks
Plainwater: Essays and Poetry
Autobiography of Red
Economy of the Unlost:
Reading Simonides of Keos with Paul Celan
Men in the Off Hours
The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos
If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho
Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera
Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides
Notes
1 Scholars do not agree on what this cloth is exactly—a carpet, several carpets, a pile of garments or just bolts of fabric. From what Agamemnon says, it is clear he thinks the cloth something exorbitant with which gods should be honored, not men. See J. D. Denniston and D. L. Page, eds., Agamemnon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 148.
2 David Sylvester, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 56.