Aeschylus - Oresteia (Big Book List)

 

Fresh off the reading of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World a 20^th century dystopian future that is all about pleasure and infantilizing the populace so that they never question the developments of society, I read the ancient thing, Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Couldn’t have been any more perfectly arranged. 

Aeschylus, apparently, is the oldest of the Greek playwrights. The Oresteia is the crowning achievement for this period. The Oresteia is written in a trilogy of short plays, the first being Agamemnon, the second being The Libation Bearers, and the last The Furies. I bought a copy of this text so that I could see it on the page.

 

Translator’s Corner – I was first introduced to classic literature at the young age of 15 when I was challenged by an English teacher to read The Odyssey over the summer. I did so and fell in love with classic literature since then. The translation that I picked up at the time was Robert Fagles. I may end up rereading the Odyssey for this project but nevertheless. The classic literature version of the Odyssey that Keats wrote about and others are undoubtedly quoting or have in their minds as Coleridge or Yeats or whoever else draws from these images think of is the Fitzgerald translation which I do not like as much as Fagles. The fact that the Penguin edition of the Oresteia is translated by Fagles was such a delight to me.

 

Aeschylus takes as his subject the returning king Agamemnon back from the Trojan war. But this is almost a backdrop to the action of the play. Agamemnon brings home news that Menelaus has died though Helen is recovered. The Greeks have won the war but at a high price. Agamemnon deliberately leaves out his conflict with Achilles over a slave girl. Agamemnon though brings home a different woman, Cassandra – now enslaved to Agamemnon, who causes some problems for the king and Clytemnestra his wife. Clytemnestra rolls out a red carpet for Agamemnon to walk back into his palace upon. Maybe this is where the red carpet idea comes from. Clytemnestra kills Agamemnon in the bath and Cassandra is slain as well. The play ends there.

 The Libation Bearers introduces the audience to Orestes and Electra, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s son and daughter. Orestes argues with his sister about what to do in response to their mom killing their dad. Orestes decides to kill Clytemnestra and their uncle/step-dad Aegisthus. This brings about the result of the Furies, a horde of demi-god sort of demons that respond to when a child murders their mother.

 

The last play the Furies takes place after the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Apollo intervenes and saves Orestes and they have a trial where Athena is the judge, Apollo the lawyer for Orestes and the Furies plead their own case and the council of men are assembled to adjudicate the case. The trial is fascinating, one of lynchpins of the occasion though rests on a fairly sexist sort of reading of the weight of the murder of a father or a mother. This is feels like a weakness of the text to me but the result is fascinating.

 

Athena brings the occasion to a draw but resolves it by asking the Furies to instead of focusing on revenge what if they focused that same energy towards blessing humans, and helping the humans to avoid the murders that bring about their Fury. In this way, the grudge is reversed into a proactive helping to avoidance of the grudge. But as these offenses stack up, Athena allows for them to return to their grudge bearing ways if the humans fail to heed their help.

 

When resentment builds in a society, the Furies return and the fabric of society is torn. These seem like chilling words to our present day situation. The positioning of this circumstance though almost seems to avoid or forego who might be correct or which side was right, a father and a mother are killed, the son alone stands, which murder was more important, the idea that one came before the other is left unaddressed, blood for blood, the Furies attack. Now that the Furies are pacified, it is only the accretion of these grudges that build, no one party can say which is right. The weight of the grudge itself is all that is owed. It is fascinating stuff. I am so glad I read this play. Well, I watched a BBC production of the play with a copy of the book in my hands. The BBC play was very 80s but also very interesting.