An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides

by Anne Carson

Although she sees everything past, present and future, and sees it truly, no one ever believes what she says. Kassandra is a self-consuming truth. Aiskhylos sets her in the middle of his play as a difference you cannot grasp, a glass that does not give back the image placed before it.

And whenever I think to sing or hum a tune to stay awake then my tears fall. This house is in trouble. The good days are gone. How I pray for change! A happy change. A light in darkness.

Gracious as she is to the tender cubs of lions, delighting as she does in savage beasts still helpless at the breast, she calls out for this omen to be realized—both its favor and its blame. But I pray Apollo will prevent her raising adverse winds to keep the Greeks from sailing: she wants to instigate another sacrifice, a lawless joyless strifeplanting sacrifice that will turn a wife against a husband.

For there lives in this house a certain form of anger, a dread devising everrecurring everremembering anger that longs to exact vengeance for a child.

Zeus put mortals on the road to wisdom when he laid down this law: By suffering we learn. Yet there drips in sleep before my heart a griefremembering pain. Good sense comes the hard way. And the grace of the gods (I’m pretty sure) is a grace that comes by violence.

Dreams bring him grief or delusional joy—dreamvisible she slips through his hands and never comes back down the paths of sleep. Such is the sorrow throughout that house. But grief sits at the hearth of every house where a man sailed off to war. Many things pierce a woman’s heart: in place of the man she sent out she knows she’ll get back a handful of ash.

So much for Troy. There was an urn of hope but it was empty. Look, smoke still floats above that city, you can see it. Storms of ruin there. The ashes stink with wealth. For this victory we must pay the gods everlasting gratitude. We threw a noose around Troy’s arrogance and—for a woman’s sake— ground the city to powder. We are the wild beast of Argos, descended from horses, sheathed in shields, that overleapt the towers of Troy, a rawflesheating lion to lap the blood of kings!

KASSANDRA : [scream] [scream] evil life evil luck evil I am just this sound look the cup of my pain is already poured out why did you bring me here was it for this was it for this was it for

Bear me witness: I know that smell. Evils. Evils long ago. A chorus of singers broods upon this house, they never leave, their tune is bad, they drink cocktails of human blood and party through the rooms. You will not get them out. They are kin to the Furies and sing of original evil, marriage beds that stink of life gone wrong. Do I miss the mark? Am I a prophet of lies? Just babbling? Or do you admit I’m a pretty good shot. Bear me witness: I see this place I see its ancient sins.

Helen! wild mad Helen, you murdered so many beneath Troy. Now you’ve crowned yourself one final perfect time, a crown of blood that will not wash away. Strife walks with you everywhere you go. KLYTAIMESTRA : Oh stop whining. And why get angry at Helen? As if she singlehandedly destroyed those multitudes of men. As if she all alone made this wound in us. CHORUS : I call upon the evil demon who besets this house, who besets the sons of Tantalos, you whose power comes from women, whose voice is like a crow, you perch upon the corpse harshing out your hymn of joy! KLYTAIMESTRA : Now you’re making sense— to call upon the thricegorged evil demon of this family. Deep in its nerves is a lust to lick blood and no wound heals before the next starts oozing.

To “violate Elektra” would be to stop saying no to evil and filth. Sophokles is a playwright fascinated in general by people who say no, people who resist compromise, people who make stumbling blocks of themselves, like Antigone or Ajax. These characters usually express defiance in some heroic action—Antigone buries her brother, Ajax falls on his sword. Elektra has the same kind of raw, stubborn, scandalous soul, but her circumstances are different: Elektra is deprived of action.

Sophokles is a complex poet working in a complex tradition. His audience enjoys all kinds of play with masks. All kinds of uses of urns. They do not come to the theater for comfort.

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.

Anyway, the deed is done. I feel no remorse. You think me degenerate? Here’s my advice: perfect yourself before you blame others.

If we made it a rule to answer killing with killing, you would die first, in all justice.

Call me baseminded, blackmouthing bitch! if you like—for if this is my nature we know how I come by it, don’t we?

KLYTAIMESTRA : Right and wrong! What use is that in dealing with her? Do you hear her insults? And this girl is old enough to know better. The fact is, she would do anything, don’t you see that? No shame at all. ELEKTRA : Ah now there you mistake me. Shame I do feel. And I know there is something all wrong about me— believe me. Sometimes I shock myself. But there is a reason: you. You never let up this one same pressure of hatred on my life: I am the shape you made me. Filth teaches filth.

CHRYSOTHEMIS : Too bad you weren’t so resolved on the day Father died. You could have finished the task. ELEKTRA : Yes, I had the guts for it then, but no strategy. CHRYSOTHEMIS : Forget strategy—you’ll live longer.

All in all, Orestes is a peculiar customer—not exactly insane but strange and unknowable. His consciousness is entirely his own. And in this respect he is a typical Euripidean creation. Euripides introduced to the Greek tragic stage a concern for the solitary, inward self, for consciousness as a private content that might or might not match up with the outside appearance of a person, that might or might not make sense to an observer. He lived at a time when philosophers as well as artists were becoming intrigued by this difference between outside and inside, appearance and reality, and were advancing various theories about what truth is and where truth lies.

(and this Helen of yours I won’t even mention! You launched a thousand ships for that?)

RIIIIPPPPP

Death breeding death out of death is the law of our house. It all comes down on me.

ELEKTRA : Oh sorrow! I groan to see you standing, brother, at the very gates of death. I may be looking on you for the last time! I may be losing my mind! ORESTES : Quiet now. No female shrieking. It is a sad business, but still. ELEKTRA : Quiet! How should I be quiet! This may be the final daylight you and I will ever see! ORESTES : Don’t drag me down. I’m already down! Let it be! ELEKTRA : I feel such pity for you, for your boyhood, for your poor young life cut off at the roots. ORESTES : For gods’ sake don’t unman me. I forbid you to bring me to tears. ELEKTRA : We’re about to die. I cannot not groan. To love life is a pitiful thing but all mortals do.

SLAVE : Where I come from people say bad shit happening when they mean death. Another quaint barbarian idiom is real bad shit happening— that covers blood on the floors and a houseful of swords.

real shit

“Every poem is a misinterpretation of a parent poem,” says Harold Bloom in The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977). Bloom doesn’t quite believe in homage.

Yeah, well, he's an asshole, so.