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

by Anne Carson

Dangerous to be big or famous—there strikes the thunderbolt of Zeus!

Let me keep my little life to myself.

never dreamed that at my death I’d be buried in the place I love best.

bride as disaster. Bride as Fury.

Make his path crimsoncovered! purplepaved! redsaturated!

God looks graciously upon a gentle master—and no one wants to be a slave.

Who could drive the curse out of this family? These people are glued to ruin.

Never will I leave off lamenting, never. No. As long as the stars sweep through heaven. As long as I look on this daylight.

CHORUS : Your mother is evil but oh my child why melt your life away in mourning?

CHORUS : Not from Hades’ black and universal lake can you lift him. not by groaning, not by prayers. Yet you run yourself out in a grief with no cure, no time limit, no measure. It is a knot no one can untie. Why are you so in love with things unbearable?

Don’t hate so much. Nor let memory go. For time is a god who can simplify all.

Do I not live? Badly, I know, but I live.

Well: he had gone to the spectacle at Delphi,

To exist is pain. Life is no desire of mine anymore.

CHORUS : You are a woman marked for sorrow.

ELEKTRA : Yes. Death made him a stranger— CHORUS : PAPAI. ELEKTRA : Laid out somewhere not by my hands. Not with my tears.

Bad luck can’t last forever. Long have we lived in shadows and shuddering: today I think our future is opening out.

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

she’ll see no glow on my face. Hatred put out the light in me a long time ago.

ORESTES : We are slaves to the gods. Whatever gods are.

CHORUS : Lucky the man who gets good children. What a lottery.

PYLADES : Where is she, that weapon of mass destruction?

PYLADES : I’ll take care of you. ORESTES : It’s rotten work. PYLADES : Not to me. Not if it’s you.

ORESTES : You won’t shrink back? PYLADES : A friend does not shrink back.