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

by Anne Carson

CHORUS : Brave girl. KASSANDRA : People never say that to a lucky person do they?

I’m just a killed slave, easy fistful of death.

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.

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.

My poor little green shoot Iphigeneia— she’s the one who suffered unworthy.

I cannot not grieve. Oh my friends, Friendship is a tension. It makes delicate demands. I ask this one thing: let me go mad in my own way.

Why are you so in love with things unbearable?

ELEKTRA : Oh? I saved his life without hesitating.

But I tell you one thing, that murdered girl would speak for me if she had a voice.

And besides, you will find a husband, a good one: men like a woman with character.

ORESTES : Careful! There is war in women too, as you know by experience, I think.

His mother’s blood comes quaking howling brassing bawling blacking down his mad little veins.

ORESTES : I could never tire of killing evil women.

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.