Like so many other things that I've been reading lately, Aeschylus's trilogy is concerned with human beings thrown into the crucible of extremest intensity, pressured from every direction my conflicting obligations, driven to violent action and violent remorse. Few poets are as willing as Aeschylus to stare into the profound darkness of human suffering and name the curse that seems to hold us to the wheel of our own violence. Yet, even fewer are ultimately as hopeful about the possibility of our breaking that wheel, of our suffering a way through to wisdom and truth. In this way, Aeschylus is a religious poet who believes in redemptive sacrifice. And by placing his faith in the power of civic institutions to domesticate the chthonic forces of our souls and turn them toward public service, he is also a political poet. At a time when it is hard for poets to be either of these things, a time when our families and our politics seem equally bound up in sterile cycles of fear and retribution, Aeschylus may have much to teach.

Robert Fagles' translation is excellent.

The Oresteia was written as a trilogy, and according to the scholars is the only Greek drama that survives as such. I would definitely recommend reading all 3 parts together, as they build one after the other. This trilogy is deceptively simple, in some ways, but the excellent introductory essay by W.B. Stanford, titled "The Serpent and the Eagle", helped me to see the much deeper issues that are explored in the play. I don't want to put any spoilers in this review, but let's say that after completing the trilogy, I feel like I have a deeper feeling for gender politics, parent/child bonds, and the transition from tribal law to Athenian concepts of democracy.

This is definitely a work that I will read again and refer to over the years.

EDIT: I re-read The Eumenides today. Much food for thought about transforming the bloodlust of primitive tribal vendetta into the more civilized concepts of justice found in a complex society based on laws, courts, and judges.

M'ha costat, he suat, però l'he acabat i m'ha agradat. A l'equip de Clitemnestra sempre!

5 ⭐

Tantalus, oh Tantalus, he really screwed the pooch!
There is no beating ‘round the bush, he’s one first order douche!
His envy of the Gods and of their immortality,
led him to try and trick them and invite them o’er for tea.

He set a cauldron boiling, he chopped up his own son,
then lobbed the morsels in the urn, and told them it was done.
As Demeter was chowing down before the food got colder,
he smiled wide and told ‘er she was eating Pelops’ shoulder!

Furious at Tantalus, Zeus sent the pest to Tartarus,
for punishment befitting one who’d do a thing so barbarous.
If t’were only this perdition, it would be no great big fuss,
but his actions, in addition, cursed the House of Atreus!

And therein lies the kernel of Aeschylus’(s) tale,
A family’s curse eternal but for one descendent male.
Cursed to repeat bouts of inter-famil-ial violence,
And suffer irrec-oncil-able moral debts in silence.

It’s a story drenched in filicide, mariticide and matricide,
parenticide or parricide, excuse my synonymicide.
There’ll be cause for wild elation, if someone was wondering,
But ‘fore recon-cili-ation, first must come a sundering

Cue the King of Argos, Agamemnon in the flesh,
Who back from killing Trojans, wants to unwind and refresh,
But faithless Clytaemnestra, Queen whom in his place took tenure,
Slaughters him in retribution for poor Iphigenia

Violence begets violence in the House of Atreus,
And forced to suffer into truth is Princely Orestes.
Instructed by Apollo to avenge one he adored,
He kills his wretched mother, through her chest he pokes a sword.

At least he only murdered his, that seems a mild affliction
Compared to Oedipus of Thebes who shagged his with conviction.
But anyway, enough of that, frivolities aside,
I mentioned some elation, you weren’t thinking that I lied?

In the end this tragedy’s concerned with transformation,
It begins with savagery and ends with civilisation.
Athena turns from force majeure to justice and compassion
The furies turn their hand from roles of vengeance to protection

It’s occurred to me just now, I’ve bitten more than I can chew,
If you’ve read this far somehow, a thanks is due from me to you.
Apologies to those real poets, to whom this seems a vile abuse,
The cause to which I think I owe it, is reading too much Dr.Seuss.

So the boys asked the Sibyl, "What do you want?"
And the Sibyl said, "I want to die!"
Petronius, Satyricon.

The God Apollo, speaking through the mouth of the Sibyl, is decrying Rome's corruption. So here, Orestes bewails his father, the King's sin. But he quickly learns you can't fight Sin with sin.

Orestes was so ME, in the Seventies. Calamity followed calamity for me, as for him. The Eumenides that Fate followed up with kept me "pinned and wriggling" on a Procrustean bed for fifty long years afterward.

That Agenbite of Inwit, in my seventies, has nearly abated, down to a faint feeling of being ill at ease. I had to sacrifice fun to find love.

The Oresteia is no fun either. Neither is life - excepting, for some, their toys, and for a few, the enduring legacy of love in their lives.

And Orestes has sinned and must do penance. As must we all.

My Prof in that Freshman Year at uni was the eminently and affably unassuming Head of the tiny Classics Department. Pity, that. Ancient Lit has much to tell us if we only had the ears to hear it.

Things about the tragedy of life, for example.

If you're not acquainted with tragedy in your life you're cruising for a bruising! Sooner or later. Tragedy breeds humility, another thing we don't believe in any more. Alas again.

So Orestes learns humility the hard way.

The hard way, unfortunately, for many of us who'd never learn about tragedy any other way, is also the best way.

And your misfortune will finally turn to love, as mine did.

There ARE Happy Endings.

But to get there, like Goldilocks, we must first go through a Dark, Evil Forest:

A LONG, LONG, LONG way from our loving Grandmother's House.

According to the Wikpedia entry for Francis Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

"...The canvasses are based on the Eumenides—or Furies—of Aeschylus's Oresteia...Bacon did not seek to illustrate the narrative of the tale, however. He told the French art critic Michel Leiris, "I could not paint Agamemnon, Clytemnestra or Cassandra, as that would have been merely another kind of historical painting ... Therefore I tried to create an image of the effect it produced inside me."

Aeschylus' phrase "the reek of human blood smiles out at me" in particular haunted Bacon, and his treatments of the mouth in the triptych and many subsequent paintings were attempts to visualise the sentiment.

In 1985, he observed that Aeschylus' phrase brought up in him "the most exciting images, and I often read it ... the violence of it brings up the images in me, 'the reek of human blood smiles out at me', well what could be more amazing than that."

Ma io povera stolta cosa posso mai scrivere di questa Opera? mi sono veramente sentita super ignorante, non ricordo piu' niente di ciò che ho studiato ....... ho fatto una fatica bestia, ma ho veramente goduto ogni passaggio della tragedia di Clitennestra e soprattutto della povera Ifigenia...
Agamennone, mi spiace, l'ho odiato da subito....( ragionando da madre del 21°sec.!!)
Per la seconda e la terza parte.....ho dovuto chiedere aiuto ovunque, persino alle figlie liceali, che fatica!! Le Coefore e Le Eumenidi le ho trovate complicate e piene di incastri e personaggi a cui il mio povero cervello non riusciva proprio a stare dietro....
Mia figlia, presa da pietà, mi ha allungato la dispensa facilitata per il Liceo...
Ho detto tutto!!
( ho proprio dimenticato tutto quello che ho studiato al Classico... che vergogna!!)

The Oresteia is a series of plays about the war of the sexes, law and order, and vengeance. It is tough to read in the modern day, because a lot of it is predicated on a very sexist view of women, and I think that view is inextricably tied to how the play is written.

Probably my favorite of the plays is Agamemnon, the first of the Oresteia. I think this play is the greatest out of the set- certainly it seemed the strongest to my modern sensibilities. Agamemnon, I am convinced, actually questions the value of the Trojan wars and the greatness of the king. The chorus spends a lot of time talking about the horrors of war, the sin of greed, and the absolute pointlessness of fighting a bloody war over a woman dismissed as a whore. Connecting the dots, it’s easy to see this as a critique of Agamemnon himself. Already obscenely wealthy and powerful, what does he need to sack and plunder Troy for? And yet, in his pursuit of glory and riches, he murders his own daughter simply so he can go fight abroad. As he comes back from the war, he brings his concubine/slave Cassandra in tow back to his home to greet his wife.

It is almost impossible for me not to empathize with Clytemnestra here. She possesses patience, nerve and strength- but as a woman, her fitness to rule will always be second guessed. Take the very first scene of the play where she finds out about the fall of Troy before everyone else. Thanks to a series of towers with pyres in them that act as a telegraph, she knows about it almost instantly. Yet her claims are met with complete skepticism- first the old men ascribe them to visions, then when they hear of the system Clytemnestra contrived, they retain an ironic distance, using scare quotes around the term “proof.” Finally, public opinion turns against her, dismissing her claim as the whims of a foolish woman. But what is so outlandish about her claim, backed not by visions, but by proof? Only when a male messenger arrives does the general public accept that the war is over. In fact, the old men are generally pretty dense- unable to understand the fairly straightforward explanation of how the flame towers work, and later unable to decipher a very straightforward prophecy that frames the rest of the play. People are inclined to see her as a tyrant, but this is never borne out by her behavior. In fact, at the end of the play she shows a great deal of mercy toward a group of people who hold her in contempt.

The Libation Bearers is the worst of the plays, completely eradicating all of Agamemnon’s wrongs and turning Clytemnestra into a villain. And yet she still has her good qualities, mourning over the death of her son and attempting to make some amends. Orestes, namesake of the trilogy makes his first appearance, but he’s really a dime a dozen Greek hero, something of a blank, boring character. This may be the first trilogy in history to exhibit the tendency of trilogies to have a weak middle chapter.

The Eumenides is not quite as strong as Agamemnon, but it has its values, as it is almost certainly the first courtroom drama in history. For the first time, I could see what Aeschylus was getting at. The true point of these plays as intended by their author is almost certainly about cycles of revenge and the rule of law. It’s not a mistake that the final problem is not resolved by bloody conflict but by persuasive negotiation. Murder upon retaliatory murder is no way to run a city, no matter how justified the reasons. Vengeance leads to more vengeance- each is justified in its own way. The only way out of such a cycle of blood is a system of justice- a jury to decide and render its verdict.

Unfortunately, Aeschylus makes up for his earlier proto-feminism in Agamemnon with a dismally sexist showing here. The case culminates in a preposterous proof that “the woman you call the mother is not the child’s true parent. She’s a nurse, rather, a stranger who shelters a stranger for the true parent, the male who mounts and sows the seed.” Astonishing. Maybe even astonishing for that era. The woman, who carries a child for nine months, and nurses it as a child, is not even a parent according to Apollo, divine fount of truth and god who cannot lie. Women are denied even their maternity. The outcome of the case provides conclusive evidence that at least 6 men in ancient Greece are wiser than the goddess of wisdom. The losing side throws a hissy fit, but eventually submits to Athena’s powers of persuasion (oh yes, and some bribery too).

All of this is a pretty political reading of a set of plays written by thousands of years ago. I’ve always tried to separate the politics of a work of art from its aesthetic qualities. I still think that’s a good way to read plays, whenever possible. Unfortunately, I find it impossible to do so with the Oresteia. When these political views inform the structure of the book to this extent, they form an integral part of the book. These views come under our scrutiny as readers as a result. All of the murders in the book are between genders. They form a clear pattern. The heroes of the plays are mostly men. The villains are mostly women. There are exceptions, but this is largely a tale of male agency prevailing over female agency. The vengeance stuff gets kind of pushed out of the way.

A note on translation: Do not read the Mueller translation of these plays. It sucks. The introduction explains that some literalness has been exchanged for poetic force- so we are not even assured of its accuracy. Generally we get a lot of swear words and no real poetic rhythm to speak of. Irritating exclamations like “E! E!”, “IOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”, “PATAI!”, “OTOTOOTOTOOTOTOOTOI! “are left in, or maybe even invented for all I know. Different cultures have different onomatopoeias, but try to imagine someone screaming OTOTOTOTOTOTI. What does that even sound like? And who would make such a noise? Lines like “The two-legged lion-bitch fucks with the wolf” are just really, really badly translated. Another nuisance is the ridiculous fucking formatting of the play in general. This pretty clearly is not only original but also extremely annoying, especially when the prophecies get going and every word gets indented differently. Translators take note: Each word does not need a new line, no matter how much you need to fill up the page count.

سه‌گانه‌ای منسجم و شکوهمند با ترجمه‌ای هنری و شگفت‌انگیز


نمایشنامه‌ی آگاممنون: چیزی که اینجا متوجه نمی‌شدم این بود که چرا هیچ‌کس به این‌که خود آگاممنون هم آدم خوبی نبود اشاره نمی‌کرد (به‌جز کلوتمنسترا که حرفش اهمیتی نداشت). اگر اورستس فکر می‌کنه جنایتش با جنایتکار بودن مقتول پاک می‌شه، کلوتمنسترا هم همین رو می‌تونه بگه. اگه الاهگان انتقام سر اورستس فرو اومدن که همخونش رو کشته، چرا سر آگاممنون فرو نیومدن که بازم همخونش رو کشته؟ آگاممنون خیلی بیش از حد لیاقتش خوب جلوه داده شد.

نمایشنامه‌ی نیازآوران: محتوای این نمایشنامه تقریباً مشابه نمایشنامه «الکترا» اثر سوفوکلس بود که من اون رو بیشتر دوست داشتم.

نمایشنامه‌ی الاهگان انتقام: چطوریه که اسم زئوس تو یک نمایشنامه انقد نشان قدرت و احترام و عدالت و «دیگه حرفی نزنی اسم زئوس رو آوردم» عه ولی یه نمایشنامه بعد (پرومتئوس در بند» نشونه‌ی شر و بدی و بی‌عدالتیه؟ :/

A “Oresteia” é uma peça relevante enquanto extensão do universo de Tróia, já que dá conta dos eventos que se sucedem à chegada a casa do vitorioso Agamémnon, o rei grego que partiu para vingar a honra do irmão Menelau. Tendo a guerra durado 10 anos, no regresso tinha à sua espera a esposa e o seu povo, mas tinha também uma provação. Agamémnon regressa na posse de Cassandra, uma das filhas do rei de Tróia, Príamo. Mas aquando da sua partida, seguindo as profecias, aceitou sacrificar a sua filha Ifigénia, algo que a sua esposa, Clitemnestra, nunca lhe perdoou.

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A primeira parte da peça, que dá pelo nome de Agamémnon, termina com o desenlace da provação. A segunda parte, Coéforas, traz para a cena os seus filhos, Electra e Orestes, que querem vingar o pai. Na parte final, a Euménides, dá-se o fechamento a elevar a racionalidade acima da emoção, depois de vingança atrás de vingança, Atena é chamada a tomar partido, mas decide pela criação de um tribunal, com direito a litigação e um júri popular.

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"O remorso de Orestes" ou "Orestes perseguidos pelas Fúrias" (1862) de William-Adolphe Bouguereau

O valor da peça é indiscutível, mas não sendo a primeira tragédia, da Grécia antiga, que leio, não posso dizer que tenha sido um prazer de ler. Ésquilo, ao contrário de Sófocles e Eurípides, parece-me ficar muito mais refém da representação. Ou seja, estas peças apesar de chegarem até nós escritas, são guiões de representação teatral. Enquanto tal, não contém em todas as dimensões do mundo-história imaginada pelos criadores. O texto de Ésquilo parece servir mais de estrutura e pauta, deixando toda a carga emocional, e corretamente, para os atores. É aos atores que cabe a dramatização, o texto per se não tem poder para sair da narração.

Julgo, também, que outro factor que pode contribuir aqui para o minorar do prazer da leitura tem que ver com a simplicidade da ação e enredo. Ésquilo apresenta uma linha de ação de cada vez, nunca se desviando dos personagens em cena, nem do que os move, fazendo parecer tudo muito estático, e por isso até menos credível. Ainda assim, acredito que o texto quando levado a cena, pela força da representação em modo trágico, possa criar todo um impacto distinto.

A peça final, ou desenlace do todo é o mais relevante e impressiona ler, porque nos dá a perceber como há 2500 anos, o berço da nossa civilização, tinha já uma concepção tão avançada de justiça e democracia, nomeadamente como forma de controlo do instinto humano.

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And the blood that Mother Earth consumes
clots hard, it won’t seep through, it breeds revenge
and frenzy goes through the guilty,
seething like infection, swarming through the brain.

I’d give this ten stars. The trilogy creates an arc, a link from blood sacrifice and burnt offerings to the nascent construct of something resembling jurisprudence. Superstition giving way begrudgingly to law. While the final trial isn’t exactly one by peers, it is amazing to contemplate. This trilogy is simply wicked in all senses of the term. The sacrifices made for good fortune in the Trojan War are a bit too close to home and an eloquent vengeance awaits the conquering hero when he returns from the trenches to rebuke accolades and be greeted instead with just desserts.

I was astonished. As I noted I’ve felt my entire life like Cassandra.

Agamemnon (Oresteia, #1):The First Strike

The Libation Bearers (Oresteia, #2): The Course of The Curse

Eumenides (Oresteia, #3): Pending