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So it was Zeus—god of host, guest, strangers, hospitality—sent the sons of Atreus against Alexander for the sake of a woman with too many husbands.
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.
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.
Her father said a prayer and bid them seize her high above the altar like a goat with her face to the ground and her robes pouring around her. And on her lovely mouth—
Justice tips her scales so that we learn by suffering. But the future—who knows? It’s here soon enough.
Why grieve in advance? Whatever turns up, I hope it’s happy—
CHORUS : My tears fall for joy. KLYTAIMESTRA : Your eye is loyal.
Helen who bequeathed to her people clang of shields, press of spears, throng of ships. Helen who brought ruin to Troy instead of a dowry.
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.
If gods want me to die, I’m ready now.
The dead do not care to rise again.
You’ll find your loyal wife just as you left her, guarding the house like a good dog, enemy to your enemies, quite unchanged.
Who was it gave to that bride of blood, that wife of strife, the name Helen? For the woman is hell to ships, hell to men, hell to cities.
Trouble came to Troy. It had the name wedding, it had the name funeral.
Then Troy grew old overnight. Troy changed its tune to one of sorrow. Paris became the bridegroom of doom. And Helen made misery and death for her people just by living among them.
A man reared a lion cub once in his house. It was new at the breast, a young gentle thing, tumbling and playing with children, delighting the old. The man took it up in his arms like an infant, nuzzling his hand when its belly was empty. But time passed. It started to show its lion nature— made an uninvited feast of slaughtered sheep, spilling blood and havoc from room to room. That thing was a priest of ruin. Bred in the house. Sent by god.
She harmed the place, she harmed the people, she was sent by Zeus to the city of Priam: bride as disaster. Bride as Fury.
One unholy deed breeds another unholy deed.
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.
KLYTAIMESTRA : Gentlemen, citizens, elders of Argos, you, I am not ashamed to tell you of my husbandloving ways. Shyness diminishes with age. The fact is, life got hard for me when he was off at Troy.
What are you waiting for? You have your orders—strew the ground with fabrics, now! Make his path crimsoncovered! purplepaved! redsaturated! So Justice may lead him to the home he never hoped to see. Everything else I’ll arrange myself with my usual sleepless vigilance—exactly right, gods willing.
That stuff is for gods. I am mortal. I can’t trample luxuries underfoot. Honor me as a man not a divinity. Anyway, who needs red carpets—my fame shouts aloud.
Count no man happy until he dies happy.
AGAMEMNON : You’re like a bulldog. It’s not very feminine.
KLYTAIMESTRA : There is the sea and who shall drain it dry? It breeds the purple stain, the dark red dye we use to color our garments, costly as silver.
KASSANDRA : OTOTOI POPOI DA! Apollo! O!pollo! Woepollo! O! CHORUS : Why do you mix up Apollo with “woe”? This god does not ever near sorrow go.
Evidence evidence here they shriek children roasted on spits a father-gorged live— flesh-feast
big as the house evil in the house who can lift it who can heal it help is a world away
KASSANDRA : [scream] [scream] [scream] [scream] what is this appearing a net of hell no the wife is the net he’s married to murder here comes insatiable vengeance howling the sacrifice into place
a soft lion tumbles in the master’s bed awaiting him— how little the great general understands that bitch who licked his hand at the door of the house and what she plans to do. She has the nerve, she is a killer, female against male.
Look there—see the lioness who beds a wolf when the lion is gone? She’ll kill me, she’s mixing a cup of anger and death even now, she’s whetting her sword on her husband’s head— she’ll make him pay for bringing me home!
I am meat for sacrifice. But I won’t go unavenged.
CHORUS : That was a long speech. But your wisdom does not falter. On the other hand, if you know you have an appointment with death why stride so calmly to the altar? KASSANDRA : There is no escape.
CHORUS : Brave girl. KASSANDRA : People never say that to a lucky person do they?
KASSANDRA : One thing left. I want to sing my own dirge. I pray to the sun, to this last minute of life: let my enemies pay with blood for what they did to me— I’m just a killed slave, easy fistful of death. But you, O humans, O human things— when a man is happy, a shadow could overturn it. When life goes wrong, a wet sponge erases the whole picture. You, you, I pity.
Words can’t raise the dead.
Rejoice if you want to. I am on top of the world! And this man has the libation he deserves. He filled this house like a mixing bowl to the brim with evils, now he has drunk it down.
KLYTAIMESTRA : Don’t squawk at me. I’m not some witless female. I am fearless and you know it. Whether you praise or blame me I don’t care. Here lies Agamemnon, my husband, a dead body, work of my righteous right hand. That’s how things stand.
You’ve cast off, cut off, everything—you will be cityless, accursed, an object of hatred, toxic to your own people. KLYTAIMESTRA : Oh now you pull out your code of justice—call me accursed, demand my exile! What about them? What about him? This man who, without a second thought, as if it were a goat dying, sacrificed his own child, my most beloved, my birthpang, my own—and he had flocks of animals to charm the winds of Thrace!
KLYTAIMESTRA : Listen and keep listening: this I swear to you. By the Justice of my child, by Ruin, by Revenge— the three gods for whom I slaughtered him— hope does not walk the halls of fear in me so long as Aigisthos lights the fire on my hearth.
CHORUS : How I wish that I could fall asleep and not wake up. Our guardian is gone, the gracious man who for a woman’s sake suffered so much and by a woman’s hand is now cut down. 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.
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.
KLYTAIMESTRA : His death was nothing unworthy! Did he not bring lies and ruin on this house? My poor little green shoot Iphigeneia— she’s the one who suffered unworthy. He has nothing to complain about. He paid by the sword for what he himself began.
Her name sounds like a negative adjective: “alektra” in Greek means “bedless, unwed, unmarriageable.” Her life is a stopped and stranded thing, just a glitch in other people’s plans. Her function and meaning as a human have been reduced to one activity—saying no to everything around her. No to her father’s murder at the hands of her mother, no to her mother’s adultery with Aigisthos, no to going on with her life as if nothing were wrong, no to breaking off her lament.
The play’s centerpiece is a deception scene in which two men manipulate Elektra with lies to a point of near hysteria. She is an adult but unmarried female in the house of a mother who hates her and she has neither social function nor emotional context. She seems to squat on the doorstep of the house rather than live inside. Her sister calls her a maniac and waves her ideas away. Her brother treats her as superfluous to his plans—he finds her wild, emotional, depressing. She is a woman stranded at doorways and passivity is killing her. There is only one thing she can do. Make noise.
Can a mere story be evil? No, of course not—so long as it pays in the end.
I will stand clear of this lie and break on my enemies like a star.
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?
