لذت نبردم. دیگه وقتشه دور آیسخولوس(آشیل) و سوفوکل رو خط بکشم -_-
فقط اوریپید♡

I read Robert Fagles translation; it is accessible while retaining the powerful and subtle language and imagery of Aeschylus’ work. This (Penguin Classics) edition includes a well-written and very useful introductory essay, The Serpent and the Eagle – A Reading of 'The Oresteia', written in collaboration with W. B. Stanford (as are the notes). The introduction, about 75 pages long, gives a wealth of background information to complement the reading experience of the dramatic trilogy itself – this particular reading employs a Hegelian approach, though not too obtrusively. – "The Oresteia is our rite of passage from savagery to civilization," as Fagles/Stanford aptly puts it in the introduction. It is also one of the most fascinating works of drama I have ever read; impressive both in its breadth of scope and depth of detail. I wouldn't hesitate to call it a work of genius, and to my mind, here Aeschylus in many ways dwarfs even a younger giant such as Shakespeare. The fact that this is the only trilogy that has survived since antiquity, makes me mournful for all that has been lost – including the satyr play that originally accompanied the performances of this trilogy, Proteus. From the introductory essay: "For all its optimism [in the final part of the Oresteia], the Proteus may have reminded the Athenians that their lives were based on conflict, indeed that Athena had prevailed over Poseidon for possession of their city. So in the trilogy we reach an accommodation with the earth, but the sea, like Poseidon in the Odyssey, may remain to be placated." It's an intriguing thought - and for sure, I can easily see the use of a bit of comedy, as well as the presence of the more uncultivated and rustic satyrs, after the intense and bloody rite of passage - from a self-perpetuating cycle of vengeance to the rule of law - from chaos to order - of the Oresteia.



n  n
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

This trilogy is absolutely brilliant and a must read because it marks the origins of Western democracy and its patriarchal and patrilineal aspects and it is ever relevant. Especially today. Also, the prof who did this with us is also absolutely brilliant and attending her lectures on this text felt like receiving revelation, I'm not even exaggerating.

Probably more 3.75 rounded up!

”he’s here, somewhere, cowering like a hare....
the reek of human blood-it’s laughter to my heart!”

So I’ll do this in three parts as it is 3 plays. These plays combined are called “The Orestia” and tells the homecoming of Agamemnon, his murder, and the revenge his son and daughter take in return... and then the consequences of that.

I have read “Agamemnon“ by Aeschylus once before, in a book called “Greek Tragedy” by Penguin Books. While I can’t remember who the translator for that book was, this full recounting of The Orestia was done by Robert Fagles.

The first play, “Agamemnon” follows said character in his ‘welcome back home’ after fighting in Troy (in Aeschylus’ play this is in Argos and not Mycenae as told by Homer). Here he is greeted by his wife Clytemnestra... who is obviously still hateful and bearing a resentful grudge towards Agamemnon due to his involvement and planning in the sacrifice of their daughter, Iphigeneia. No surprises there. So being the vengeful queen she is- she gets her just revenge (in my opinion).

This play also shows Cassandra, the prophetess, and Agamemnon’s ‘spoil of war’. She prophesies all of these deaths but has the unfortunate ability that everything she prophesies will not be believed (thanks Apollo- note the sarcasm).

Anyway, next we move onto “The Libation Bearers” (play 2). Here we follow the children of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon (well... the surviving children I mean). Electra has not seen her brother, Orestes, in years and wishes to take revenge on Clytemnestra for her part in killing their father.
The first half of this play focuses on Orestes and Electra meeting again (after a long time apart) and the awful ‘clues’ Electra follows to convince herself that Orestes is at Agamemnon’s tomb. These clues consist of a lock of hair and a footprint...It is no wonder Euripides made fun of these absurd ‘clues’ in his play “Electra”.

As always, my interest picked up when there’s blood shed and when Orestes grapples with his moral thoughts. Again, Electra is also a vengeful female character (there’s a pattern to this in this trilogy).

The final play “The Eumenides” follows my all-time-favourite Furies who hunt down those who have committed crimes, such as matricide, and torment them. They are after Orestes in this one.
I enjoyed this play probably the most out of the three. This play involved the Gods too (well Athena and Apollo) and the Furies. I just loved the Furies in this, and their vengeance and torment and love for destruction.
This play also features a great court scene where you get to see Athena in her military prowess and strategy hold a trial about Orestes’ crimes.

While it was great to finally read The Orestia- I loved the powerful vengefulness in these plays, and how a family curse has effected each generation- my translation of this just wasn’t the best. I really liked the power of words of some of the passages and the emotions portrayed- it was great to imagine how an actor in a play might show this. However, I found the book layout to not be as clear as I would’ve liked it, and flicking backwards and forwards would take me out of the passages of what was being said.
In addition to this, this translation uses the word “bitch” which wasn’t really needed... and was also not a word used in Ancient Greek (I think?).

Some parts of these plays, for me, moved at a slower pace that I did lose my focus. However, most of the time it would pick up again and I’d be interested to find out what happened in the end.
I would say that The Libation Bearers was probably my least liked play of the three- I think the beginning was a little too slow for my liking, and I was eye rolling hard at the clues, however this play did eventually pick up once the killing deeds are about to begin.

First acquaintance with Aeschylus. This is oral poetry with minimum action. Themes: man has to be faithful to the gods, who goes against the law and against human traditions has to deal with inevitable doom, that curse shall pass on to the next generations. Eventually Zeus appears as the caretaker of the world. Full of symbolism. Difficult to digest

A memorable reading experience.There's something really uncanny about these plays. I can't quite put my finger on it...

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.

Let good prevail ! So be it ! Yet what is good ? And who is God?


As many deeply conservative societies have discovered time and time again - societies in which there is only one right order and this order is warranted by the highest authorities recognized by the society - when change comes, and come it always must,(*) not only do those in power tumble, but the authority of the gods/priests, ancestors, laws, whatever the highest authorities happen to be in that society, comes into question. New myths, new gods/priests, new stories must be told to justify and establish, reassure and mollify the people whose ideological or religious supports have been pulled out from beneath them. In the city of Athens during the Golden Age, this was done in the agora - the marketplace - and in the theaters.

In his lifetime Aeschylus (ca. 525 - 456 BCE) witnessed the invasion of Attica by huge Persian armies, the bold abandonment of the fortified city of Athens and withdrawal, twice, of the Athenian people behind the wooden walls of the Athenian navy, and the multiple defeats of the Persians and their allies (including other Greeks) by the hugely outnumbered Athenians and their Greek allies.(**) He also witnessed the political transition from tyranny to isonomy to democracy in Athens and the concurrent growth of Athens from just another small, unimportant Greek city-state to major power. He himself contributed greatly to the transition of Greek tragedy from a religiously inspired performance/rite involving a chorus and a single actor to something we his distant descendants can recognize as powerful theater.

During the transition from tyranny to democracy, when first the middle class (essentially landowning farmers and artisans) and then the lower class (the thetes) acquired a direct voice in Athenian politics, political activity was carried out not only in the agora, the popular assembly and the Council of Five Hundred, but it was also performed on stage.




Remains of the Theater of Dionysus Eleuthereus, where Aeschylus' dramas were performed


Indeed, the theater was so important in Athenian public life that plays were produced at all the most important public festivals and addressed conflicts troubling the Athenian policy makers; the populace flocked to see them and talk about them. In 461 BCE the last step to democracy in Athens was initiated with the stripping of all but ritual responsibilities from the Aeropagus, a body of men drawn essentially from the city's aristocracy. The lower and middle classes formed the overwhelming majority on the remaining decision making organs of the state and were therefore in power, for a while.

Curiously enough, while all this innovation was going on, in Athens one of the most damaging epithets was "innovator." So the men who willed the demotion of the Aeropagus, led by Ephialtes (who was later murdered for his trouble), had to argue that the Aeropagus had usurped its powers (quite false) and thus the removal of the aristocrats from the center of power was a return to the status quo ante (even more false - but we all know that democratic decision-making has precious little to do with the truth). The Athenians needed a more efficacious justification for this change. They also needed a soothing of the many riled spirits brought about in the populace by all these changes. In the Oresteia,(***) first performed in 458, Aeschylus did all of this and much, much more.

During this Golden Age playwrights wrote trilogies, which were intended, performed and perceived by audiences as coherent wholes. The Oresteia is the only one which has come down to us intact. The three plays are structured together with both dramatic and ideological intent.

At the end of the Trojan War, Agamemnon returns victorious to his palace. But ten years earlier, in order to thwart the will of Artemis and still the fierce winds keeping the fleet on the Greek shore, he had sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia, and his wife, Clytemnestra, has neither forgotten nor forgiven. She slays him horrifically, and now it is their son, Orestes, who is obliged by the received morality to revenge his father by killing his mother. High drama and madness ensues, but behind all that excitement is the structure of Aeschylus' purpose - justify the new order, the new morality.

At the very outset of the trilogy the chorus recalls that even the gods have changed and changed again, from the rule of Ouranos through that of Kronos to Zeus with son killing father before the father could do the same to the son. And one cannot be sure of doing the right thing by obeying a god, since the gods themselves disagree about right and wrong. Uncertainty has been established: perhaps the received ways are mutable.

I'm not going to try to summarize the complicated plot and recall the many striking characters. From this beautiful, moving and complex masterpiece I just want to draw out here the one theme I've been working on in this review. When Orestes kills Clytemnestra at Apollo's urging, the Erinyes, the Furies - representing the old order, the old morality - hasten to avenge the matricide by tearing Orestes apart. But Apollo and Athena, representing the new order and morality, intervene. The passages involving the Furies are particularly haunting, both dramatically and poetically. The new order is confirmed with a trial in which Athena casts the deciding vote - Orestes is acquitted. Athena convinces the Furies to accept the verdict, and they are then given a place of honor (though not power) and agree to ensure the city's prosperity. The old is replaced by the new, honored and bound into the polis; all's well that ends well (except for the house of Atreus). Despite Aeschylus' efforts, Athens' new democracy did not last long, but that is another story...



(*) As Sophocles has Ajax say in the eponymous play:

Long, immeasurable time brings everything hidden to light and hides what is apparent. Nothing is not to be expected. Change is the law of the world.

(**) Aeschylus was in the battle at Marathon and most probably also at Salamis. In fact, the epitaph on his gravestone, possibly written by himself, mentions Marathon and not his plays:

This tomb the dust of Aeschylus doth hide,
Euphorion's son and fruitful Gela's pride
How tried his valour, Marathon may tell
And long-haired Medes, who knew it all too well.

(***) Read in the translations of Robert Fagles and of Philip Vellacott; Fagles' is more terse and colloquial, while Vellacott's is more "literary," more redolent of older, elevated diction. Both are very readable, but I do prefer Vellacott's.

Rating

http://leopard.booklikes.com/post/118...

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.

Maybe I had built it up too much in my head! I really really wanted to love it but in the end I found it just okay. I would like to read the different Electra's at some point and see if I get more out of that. Or perhaps I need to see it performed :)

The penguin classics version is to be particularly recommended - The translation works very well and the 90 page introduction is just brilliant.

As for the plays, well...they are essential reading obviously. And like all great works in translation, one should really read 2 or 3 different versions in order to get as close as possible to the “original”. The Fagles translation should certainly be one of those versions.

Um agamemnon: eeeeelska female rage. Meira svonaaaaa. Nei sko ræða Klítemnestru um double standard karlanna um hver má og má ekki fremja morð er best í heimi. "Nú ætlar þú til útlegðar að dæma mig / og undir minnar þjóðar heift og lýðisins last / en sást þá enga sök hjá þeim, sem liggur hér, / þó barni sínu fleygði hann á fórnarstall." !!!!!!!!! SLAY. Líka svo fyndið þegar *SPOILER* Agamemnon er að vera drepinn hann að vera eih "Ó vei, ég hlaut banahögg!" "Og aftur nú! Ó, öðru sinni hlaut ég högg!"

Um Sáttafórn: ég saknaði klítemnestru… ég vildi meira af henni. Og er svo pirruð að hún er allt í einu bara vondi karlinn!!!!! Hvað varð um female rage????? Fengum frekar bara son hennar að vera með eih complexa>:( Ekki jafn gott og Agamemnon en samt alveg agætt. Lika hvað varð um show dont tell??? Ég vildi persónulega fá að sjá morðin á Klítemnestru og Ægistosi… veit ekki hvað það segir um mig en ég stend við þetta!

Um Hollvætti: What in the kvenfyrirlitning?!?!!! Afhverju er Aþena bara mesta pick me ever???? Var að tjúllast. Lika Apollon bara að HATA konur? Eina konan sem er agæt er Aþena því hún fæddist úr föður sinum en ekki móður, “en engin gyðja hefði ever geta búið til svona fullkomna konu.”

Yfirhöfuð samt alveg enjoyable. Agamemnon samt lang best<3