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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.
I cannot not grieve.
I ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way.
I live in a place of tears. And he simply forgets. Forgets what he suffered, forgets what he knew.
Do not breed violence out of violence.
Evil is a pressure that shapes us to itself.
I must not violate Elektra.
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.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : I tell you we have masters, we must bend. ELEKTRA : You bend—you go ahead and lick their boots. It’s not my way. CHRYSOTHEMIS : Don’t ruin your life in sheer stupidity. ELEKTRA : I will ruin my life, if need be, avenging our father.
Pray that his son Orestes live to trample his enemies underfoot.
But they had no business to kill what was mine.
If we made it a rule to answer killing with killing, you would die first, in all justice.
The thought is obscene—to bed your enemies and use a daughter as an alibi!
You have your one same answer ready: “That’s no way to talk to your mother!” Strange. I don’t think of you as mother at all. You are some sort of punishment cage locked around my life.
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.
But when a god sends harm, no man can sidestep it, no matter how strong he may be.
KLYTAIMESTRA : To give birth is terrible, incomprehensible. No matter how you suffer, you cannot hate a child you’ve borne.
ELEKTRA : Nemesis! Hear her! KLYTAIMESTRA : Nemesis has heard me. And she has answered.
To exist is pain. Life is no desire of mine anymore.
You are a woman marked for sorrow.
Death exists inside every mortal.
Death made him a stranger—
One hand will have to be enough. One hand is enough.
CHRYSOTHEMIS : You don’t hear a single word I say. ELEKTRA : Oh it was all decided long ago.
I sent you out, I get you back: tell me how could the difference be simply nothing?
I am already nothing. I am already burning.
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.
ELEKTRA : No one else has ever pitied me, you know. ORESTES : No one else has ever been part of your grief.
KLYTAIMESTRA : Oh child my child, pity the mother who bore you! ELEKTRA : Yet you had little enough pity for him and none for his father!
KLYTAIMESTRA : OMOI. I am hit! ELEKTRA : Hit her a second time, if you have the strength!
ORESTES : Uncover it yourself. This isn’t my corpse—it’s yours. Yours to look at, yours to eulogize.
AIGISTHOS : Caught! But who set the trap? ORESTES : Don’t you realize yet that you’re talking to dead men alive?
As for our father, well, Klytaimestra disposed of him. Trapped him in a rug and slit his throat. Motive? I’m an innocent girl. Let’s leave her motives blank.
Apollo had us kill her. Orestes did it, I helped. Kudos were not universal.
ELEKTRA : Apollo made us sacrificial victims in his murder exchange of father for mother.
To live or die with you—it comes to the same thing for me anyway.
MENELAOS : You look like a wild animal. You poor man. ORESTES : It’s my deeds not my looks that shame me. MENELAOS : Your eyes are terrible. ORESTES : Forget the body. I still have my name. MENELAOS : I really hadn’t expected to find you in this condition. ORESTES : Mother murderer. Yes that’s me.
MENELAOS : What’s wrong with you? What sickness wastes you away? ORESTES : Conscience. I know what I’ve done. MENELAOS : How do you mean? ORESTES : Grief is killing me.
ORESTES : We are slaves to the gods. Whatever gods are.
Listen, I have one question for you, Menelaos. Suppose one day Orestes’ wife should kill Orestes and then Orestes’ son murder his mother in revenge. And then his son pay off that murder with another one—where will it end?
All this killing, it’s like animals. How can civilization survive?
I’m a fortunate man in other ways but not in daughters.
CHORUS : Women always complicate things don’t they.
There are times when silence is better than speech, times when speech is better than silence.
Where is she, that weapon of mass destruction?
PYLADES : My father drove me out of the house. ORESTES : On what charge? PYLADES : That I joined in your mother’s murder and am unholy. ORESTES : O poor man! My troubles are really your troubles, it seems. PYLADES : But I’m no Menelaos. I can bear this.
PYLADES : I’ll take care of you. ORESTES : It’s rotten work. PYLADES : Not to me. Not if it’s you.
Death breeding death out of death is the law of our house. It all comes down on me.
To love life is a pitiful thing but all mortals do.
We’re going to die together, so let’s confer:
