| Title | : | An Oresteia |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 086547902X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780865479029 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2009 |
In this innovative rendition of The Oresteia, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson combines three different visions—Aischylos’ Agamemnon, Sophokles’ Elektra, and Euripides’ Orestes—giving birth to a wholly new experience of the classic Greek triumvirate of vengeance. After the murder of her daughter Iphegenia by her husband Agamemnon, Klytaimestra exacts a mother’s revenge, murdering Agamemnon and his mistress, Kassandra. Displeased with Klytaimestra’s actions, Apollo calls on her son, Orestes, to avenge his father’s death with the help of his sister Elektra. In the end, Orestes, driven mad by the Furies for his bloody betrayal of family, and Elektra are condemned to death by the people of Argos, and must justify their actions—signaling a call to change in society, a shift from the capricious governing of the gods to the rule of manmade law.
Carson’s accomplished rendering combines elements of contemporary vernacular with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up the plays to a modern audience. In addition to its accessibility, the wit and dazzling morbidity of her prose sheds new light on the saga for scholars. Anne Carson’s Oresteia is a watershed translation, a death-dance of vengeance and passion not to be missed.
An Oresteia Reviews
-
PYLADES: I’ll take care of you.
ORESTES: It’s rotten work.
PYLADES: Not to me. Not if it’s you.
Making the Anne Carson Oresteia an edition of the same book as the Aeschylus Oresteia is a mistake. This is not the Aeschylus Oresteia: it is a mashup of three chapters of the Oresteia by the three extant Greek tragic authors. There is Agamemnon, by Aeschylus, on Clytemnestra's killing of Agamemnon; Electra, by Sophocles, one of three takes on Electra and Orestes' killing of Clytemnestra; and Orestes, by Euripides, a tale meant to take place before the Eumenides of Aeschylus: not a conclusion, but the buildup to one (and which I somewhat prefer to that tale).
This composed story has a different effect and a different moral to give than any individual play. In the composition, we receive different takes on the same characters. These three plays are all focused on a character study in a way the second two of the Aeschylus Oresteia are perhaps not: Clytemnestra gets her due, Electra gets her chance to speak, and finally Orestes gets his chance at fighting for redemption. Characters shift: the Orestes of Electra is sharp, turned in one direction, while the Orestes of his play is sick with grief.
It is also a story that shifts: the Agamemnon's turn from joy to violence, the Electra's deep sorrow, and the Orestes' shift again to redemption. This play begins with a house stained by blood: the legacies of death within the house of Atreus hang deep over the play, whether any is willing to acknowledge them or not. As Tyndareas asks Orestes: where should it end? Where does justice end, and redemption begin?
The idea of assembling an Oresteia based on plays by the three great tragedians, in chronological order, is brilliant, and a translation project I fully loved. But the selections must also be reviewed. Or, I’m going to review them, anyway. Quotes are at the bottom of the review.
Play by Play Reviews
→Agamemnon ★★★★★ Aeschylus←
“Every character in the Agamemnon sets fire to language in a different way,” as Anne Carson once so wisely said in her introduction to this play. And indeed they do. The play begins with a messenger speech that blends past and present, and then quickly switches to action.
The translation of Cassandra’s lines as lowercase and out of poetic meter; one section allows Cassandra to shout repeatedly, before coming back to articulate lines.
A motif runs through the play of violence against women as the taking away of voice. Notably, the chorus explicitly references the rape and cutting of the tongue of Philomela, who was turned into a nightingale, a creature with voice. The play is, in a way, about the silencing of women: Iphigenia, who had a ‘bit’ forced into her mouth, and Cassandra, deprived of belief by a god. Clytemnestra, by killing Agamemnon, takes these back.
The brilliance of this play is that it may be read with sympathy to so many. Agamemnon is often brash, hard to grasp, yet sometimes sympathetic: what is my duty, he asks, towards daughter or country? (Although this is also hypocritical, as I just tweeted ‘I'm on the side of everyone in the Oresteia except for Agamemnon’ last week. And I stand by it.)
Clytemnestra is by no means a morally good character, but it is hard not to sympathize with her, hard not to root for her. She is a power player of the highest magnitude; the scene of stychomythia with regards to the red cloak feels deeply visceral, despite the fact that the consequences are simply the trampling of a symbol. Subtext takes the highest power here: she drags him into hubris, walking the path of a god, dooming him in the eyes of the gods as well as in hers. Clytemnestra, in her two murders, believes she ends the cycle Agamemnon started; she is the only one left alone to tell the story. Is Clytemnestra in the right? Perhaps not. May we blame her? Not that, either.
Cassandra is the most aware character of the play: in fact, aware of not just her fate, but Orestes & Electra’s as well. Her language is scattered, wild, compared to the others; but with that, she is no fool.
When Cassandra enters the court, Clytemnestra tells her the court is kinder than a rich one (Carson has cut this). But what life is there, truly, in living as a slave to the murderer of those you love? Cassandra’s death is, in its own way, a mercy killing. Well. Depending on your translation.
A note on translation: Carson’s translation simplifies much of Agamemnon, cutting the chorus’ monologues, specifically, down a significant amount. While I am no fan of the elaborate nature of certain choral monologues, reading the Carson translation second, I almost felt it lacked some of the viciousness I got from the first play. I think the slow build lends nuance to Clytemnestra’s plan, more time for our minds to percolate around it. Clytemnestra has bite, yes, but not patience. In Ruden’s translation, her words are less sharp, but her machinations more powerful. From the Sarah Ruden translation, my first, I came away most sympathetic to Clytemnestra. With Anne Carson, my second, I came away far more sympathetic to Kassandra. Take that as you will.
Agamemnon is my favorite of all Aeschylus’ plays and one of my favorite tragedies period. This is not my favorite of the translations.
→Electra ★★★★★ Sophocles←
Aeschylus’ Oresteia was already a classic by the time of Sophocles and Euripides, so they each picked things to focus on. In the Electra of Sophocles, she is decidedly more defiant, decidedly more confrontational, a creature of voice as Anne Carson describes her.
Sophocles, always obsessed with the psychology of his heroes, deproblematizes the murder, making Electra and Orestes easier to sympathize with. The killing is brutal, harsh, but less sympathetic to Clytemnestra, in comparison to Libation Bearers. Orestes is specifically brutal to Aegisthus, leaving out Clytemnestra’s body ot haunt him. Yet he also gives Electra a more active role: indeed, it is she who confronts Clytemnestra face-to-face, not Orestes. While Orestes does the doing, Electra does the speaking.
Electra, too, is developed in motivation here. We are introduced to her not in laying libations, but in fighting with her sister. Like Antigone, she loves the dead above the living; she is past childbearing, and without a husband, and resents that. She feels that her childlessness is a sign of a frozen life. She also feels she cannot unfreeze. “By dread things I am compelled… I know what I am” (295); “I must not violate Electra” (495), she tells the chorus. Joy would violate her. Why would it not? She has saved her brother and her sister and is thus hated by her mother.
The most important dynamics of the show, however, are between Electra and her siblings. Chrysothemis, Electra’s sister, enters the play, working to contrast the headstrong Electra. Their relationship works in the same way Ismene and Antigone’s does. Chrysothemis does not love her mother, but does not sacrifice for her justice. Her relationship with Orestes hit me even harder. As Electra begins the play, she believes that Orestes is dead: this relationship is stronger, more necessary. The recognition scene, by the way, made me tear up.
→Orestes ★★★★★ Euripides←
In her intro to this play, Anne Carson calls Euripides a “clown, but a dark clown”. On Twitter, I said he did the Ancient Greek equivalent of smoking crack. I stand by all of these statements. Euripides is at once obsessed with death, with punishment, and with brutality, but also willing to offer redemption at the wildest of times. This is a play defined by chaos: by ups and downs that seem almost random at first. We discuss Helen; we beg Menelaus for help; we see other opinions on incoming deaths; we see Menelaus will help; we see that he will not offer help after all. The final decision to murder Helen and either force Menelaus to acquiesce or go out in a blaze of glory is random, brought up with no buildup. It is a purposeful kind of chaos to offset the real madness of the play.
For indeed, this is a play defined by human madness: directly in front of a home, Orestes goes mad while Electra and Pylades are forced to watch, forced to pick their sides and their battles. Here, the Eumenides are not real spirits who come onstage, but spirits of the mind, Orestes’ guilt found manifest in spirits. This is the human: the relationships between them, and the madness that is hard to cure. Watching Electra attempt to care for her little brother once more is the most emotional part of the play.
This is the only play of any of the extant Orestes-focused works in which the relationship between Orestes and Pylades is at all relevant to our canon. One of the notes in the margin of my notebook when we read the Aeschylus Oresteia was, and I cannot stress this enough, the phrase “oh to be a paradigm of friendship with my same gender best friend in Ancient Greece.”
Anne Carson calls this ending clownlike, almost a ridiculous sense of the deus ex machina. But I almost feel this works. In the house of Atreus, “death begets death” : as opposed to Antigone’s family, where they consume each other. It takes an act of a god to fix it.
Quotes from the Book
→Agamemnon ★★★★★ Aeschylus←
Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation):
AGAMEMNON: You’re like a bulldog. It’s not very feminine. (634)
CLYTEMNESTRA: There is the sea and who shall drain it dry? (650)
CHORUS: No one taught me this song and it has no music, all the same it shakes me. (678)
CHORUS: Why do you mix up Apollo with “woe?”
This god does not ever near sorrow go. (739-740)
CASSANDRA: I with my thermonous
thermonous means hot soul, burning mind, brain on fire (780-782)
CHORUS: Out comes death.
(Outcomes? I’m not sure where this will end.)
CLYTEMNESTRA: And this man has the libation he deserves.
He filled this house like a mixing bowl to the brim with evils,
Now he has drunk it down. (1048-1050)
CLYTEMNESTRA: And why get angry at Helen?
As if she alone made this wound in us. (1105)
Notable Lines (Sarah Ruden translation):
CHORUS: (on Iphigenia) She was like a painting’s central figure. (241)
CLYTEMNESTRA: I think the shouts don’t blend as they rise up. (321)
CLYTEMNESTRA: That’s what they made me out to be: unhinged.
I sacrificed, no matter. (593-594)
CLYTEMNESTRA: Just as he left her, like a household dog. (607)
CHORUS: (to Agamemnon) You hardly were acting a part that invited applause. (801)
AGAMEMNON: A lion in its raw hunger bounded past the tower
and licked up all the tyrant blood it wanted. (827-828)
CLYTEMNESTRA: I’m not ashamed to tell you how attached to a man I am, by nature. (856-857)
CLYTEMNESTRA: And if his deaths were tallied with the stories, he’d be a second Geryon, three-bodied; (869-870)
CLYTEMNESTRA: And justice will lead him to the home he scarcely hoped for. (911)
AGAMEMNON: Surely a woman shouldn’t long for battle.
CLYTEMNESTRA: It’s gracious for the fortunate to lose. (940-941)
(this is the same line as 634 in Carson’s translation)
CLYTEMNESTRA: Zeus is crafting wine from bitter grapes. (970)
CHORUS: Try on your new yoke. (1071)
CASSANDRA: God of the highway—leading to my death—
destroying me once more—destroying me merely in passing. (1081-1082)
CASSANDRA: Soon now, I think, I’ll chant my second sight. (1161)
CASSANDRA: Yes, I see clearly what their father tasted. (1222)
CHORUS: Poor thing! Now sing your reckless mouth to sleep. (1247)
CASSANDRA: I speak your language better than I’d like to. (1255)
CLYTEMNESTRA: Though all I said before was right for then, I’m not ashamed to state the opposite. (1372)
CHORUS: Where shall I turn, while the house falls? (1532)
→Electra ★★★★★ Sophocles←
Notable Lines (Mary Lefkowitz translation):
CHORUS: Why do you seek such unbearable suffering?
(I didn’t note down a lot of lines here.)
Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation):
ELECTRA:
Friendship is a tension. It makes delicate demands.
Let me go mad in my own way. (183)
ELECTRA:
That day tore out the nerves of my life. (271)
CHRYSOTHEMIS:
If I want to live a free woman,
there are masters who must be obeyed. (461)
ELECTRA:
Call me
baseminded, blackmouthing bitch! if you like—
for if this is my nature
we know how I come by it, don’t we? (814)
CLYTEMNESTRA: No shame at all.
ELECTRA: Ah now there you mistake me.
Shame I do feel.
And I know there is something all wrong about me—
I am the shape you made me.
Filth teaches filth. (828)
CLYTEMNESTRA:
There is something grotesque
in having my own evils save my life. (1039)
CHRYSOTHEMIS:
There are times
when justice is too big a risk. (1370)
→Orestes ★★★★★ Euripides←
Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation):
ELECTRA:
His mother’s blood comes quaking howling brassing bawling blacking
down his mad little veins. (29)
ELECTRA:
No marriage, no house, no children, just time. (159)
ELECTRA:
All the women of that family are trouble. (184)
ORESTES: Grief is killing me.
MENELAOS: She is a dread goddess. But curable. (297)
ORESTES:
I am unholy. A mother killer.
At the same time pious and lawfuk. A father avenger. (422)
TYNDAREUS:
It was Electra set the house ablaze, not using fire. (471)
PYLADES: I’ll take care of you.
ORESTES: It’s rotten work.
PYLADES: Not to me. Not if it’s you. (639)
I know these are iconic but they are also very good.
CHORUS:
The life of mortals is a line no ruler can draw. (775)
PYLADES:
Hold on, hold on, I have to protest.
Do you think I would choose to live without you? (831)
SLAVE:
Another quaint barbarian idiom is real bad shit happening. (1075)
SLAVE: You won’t kill me?
ORESTES: Go.
SLAVE: Fabulous.
ORESTES: Unless I reconsider.
SLAVE: Not fabulous. (1159)
Blog |
Twitter |
Instagram |
Spotify |
Youtube |
About | -
Here are three of the most iconic lines from the
Oresteia—one from each play, first in Anne Carson’s English translation, then in the original Ancient Greek, then a word-for-word English translation, and then finally my own translation.
***I.
Otherwise my heart would race past my
Agamemnon, Aiskhylos
tongue to pour out everything.
Instead I mumble,
I gnaw myself.
I lose hope.
And my mind is burning. [1033]
[εἶργε μὴ πλέον φέρειν,]
προφθάσασα καρδία
γλῶσσαν ἂν τάδ᾽ ἐξέχει.
νῦν δ᾽ ὑπὸ σκ ότῳ βρέμει
θυμαλγής τε καὶ οὐδὲν ἐπελπομέν-
α ποτὲ καίριον ἐκτολυπεύσειν
ζωπυρουμένας φρενός.
outrun | heart
tongue | if | this | stand out
now | but | under | darkness | roar
heart-grieving | both | and | not one | have hopes of
← | at some time | in | wind off or bring to an end
light on fire | heart or mind
my heart would outrun
that which my tongue speaks
but now, in the dark, roars
that distressing grieving, not having hope of
ever bringing this to an end
and my heart ignites.
Notes: The phrase τε καὶ (or τε … καὶ) is essentially impossible to gloss, since interpretations can vary so widely; here, it literally means “both … and,” and signifies emphasis of contrasting situations. The word ἐπέλπομαι is an Epic poetic verb meaning “to have hopes of…,” “to hope that…,” etc.
***II.
I am the shape you made me.
Elektra, Sophokles
Filth teaches filth. [837]
αἰσχροῖς γὰρ αἰσχρὰ πράγματ᾽ ἐκδιδάσκεται.
shameful | for or since | shameful | acts or affairs or doings | teach
for shameful acts teach other shameful acts
Notes: The verb ἐκδιδάσκω means “to teach thoroughly”; it makes relatively frequent appearance in Sappho. The adjective αἰσχρός is from αἶσχος, meaning “shame, disgrace; ugliness, deformity,” or “disgraceful deeds” when in the plural (e.g. the Epic αἴσχεᾰ or Attic αἴσχη). It is generally associated with shame, dishonour, or reproach. The word πράγματα (plural of πρᾶγμα)—from πρᾶγμα (“deed, act, fact; occurrence, matter”), and the root of modern “pragmatic,” itself from πράσσω (“to do”; cf. practical)—can mean anything from “circumstances, affairs, conditions” to “state-affairs, business, government” to “fortunes, cause” to (in a negative sense) “troubles, annoyances, issues.”
***III.
PYLADES: I’ll take care of you.
Orestes, Euripides
ORESTES: It’s rotten work.
PYLADES: Not to me. Not if it’s you.
ΠΥΛΆΔΗΣ: ἀλλὰ κηδεύσω σ᾽ ἐγώ.
ὈΡΈΣΤΗΣ: δυσχερὲς ψαύειν νοσοῦντος ἀνδρός.
ΠΥΛΆΔΗΣ: οὐκ ἔμοιγε σοῦ.
PYLADES: but | care for | you | I
ORESTES: difficult | touch | sick | man
PYLADES: not | (to) me | you
PYLADES: But I’ll care for you.
ORESTES: It’s difficult to touch a sick man.
PYLADES: Not to me, if it’s you.
The noun κῆδος can mean “care for others,” “troubles” (in the plural), “care for the dead” (i.e., “mourning rituals”), or “an object of care.” The adjective νοσέω means “sick,” “suffering,” “insane.” The verb ψαύω means “to touch,” especially lightly or gently (as in feeling for a pulse); the verb κατέχω means “to hold [fast/back]” or “to inhibit.” The verb νοσέω (“to be sick”) can refer indiscriminately to an affliction of the body or mind (i.e., madness or a physical ailment), and generally means “to suffer.” The adjective δυσχερής also has a variety of meanings, ranging from “annoying, vexatious” to “contradictory, captious” (of arguments or discourses) to “ill-tempered, unfriendly, fastidious” (of persons) to “unpopular” to “unpleasant, offensive, disagreeable, difficult” (generally), but my personal favourite translation is “hard to take in hand.”
***
Dr. Anne Carson’s interpretations—and they are, indeed, more interpretation than translation—continue to be one of my favourite versions of the Oresteia, despite their polarising position amongst translators. If you’re looking for an English version that stays true to the original text, then this is not the way to go; if, however, you want an accessible, humourous, and lively adaptation that makes clear how much respect and love the Carson has put into her work, then I’d recommend this unequivocally. Elektra, Kassandra, and Klytaimnestra are particularly incredible in Carson’s interpretations of them.
I also have a lot of admiration for the way she adapted the “untranslatable” noises of the play(s), such as when Kassandra screams “OIMOI,” for example, which has been historically rendered as a stage direction, i.e., “[scream]” or “[she screams],” etc. in her essay on Sophokles’s Elektra,
Virginia Woolf wrote:Electra stands before us like a figure so tightly bound that she can only move an inch this way, an inch that. But each movement must tell to the utmost, or … she will be nothing but a dummy, tightly bound. Her words in crisis are, as a matter of fact, bare; mere cries of despair, joy, hate. … But it is not so easy to decide what it is that gives these cries of Electra in her anguish their power to cut and wound and excite.
One of the problems of reading this text in translation is that we don’t directly experience those “cries of … anguish”; often they have been translated as “alas,” “woe is me,” “ye gods,” and suchlike. The conundrum of whether or not it is possible to read, understand, and appreciate a work in translation when you are not directly reading the words originally written but rather the translators’ versions of those words is something Carson specifically addresses in her foreward, saying that:(…) the presence in Greek drama of bursts of sound expressing strong emotion (like OIMOI or O TALAINA or PHEU PHEU) furnishes the translator with a very simple and intractable problem. It has generally assumed that they represent a somewhat formulaic body of ejaculatory utterance best rendered into English by some dead phrase like Alas! or Woe is me! … it is not easy to decide what gives the screaming of Elektra its power. Sophocles has invented for her a language of lament that is like listening to an X-ray. Elektra’s cries are just bones of sound.
In contrast to the methods of previous translations, Carson renders these cries in phonetically transliterated representations of Elektra’s vocalisations:
AIAI
EE IO
IO GONAI
IO MOI MOI
OIMOI MOI
TALAINA
PHEU PHEU
OIMOI TALAINA
OTOTOTOTOTOI TO TOI
IO MOI MOI DYSTENOS
and so on; all of which are, consequently, entirely alien to an English speaker. And Elektra is not alone in her untranslatable lamentations; Antigone cries out
similarly:“Oimoi katauda,” Antigone screams—“Shout it to the skies!”—when Ismene urges her to keep her plan secret. That “oimoi,” a cry of pain both mocking and sincere, gives vivid insight into Antigone’s state of mind; lines like this are the best argument one can find for learning Greek. It’s untranslatable, yet translate we must. Our textbook offers either “alas” or “woe is me,” and there’s little to choose between the two. The sarcasm of “katauda”—“shout it out”—is lost without a better sense of “oimoi.”
In a sense the process of translation is similar to the law of input and output. The end result will always be lesser than the original, but that doesn’t mean something productive and ultimately valuable can’t be gained from the process itself. -
I wish Anne Carson would translate every single Ancient Greek tragedy because every other translation now feels subpar.
-
It's been about ten years since I last read the more traditional translations of these plays so I'm not really in a position to compare and contrast. I also don't know what the original Greek is like, or what the original language was like in relation to the quality of everyday speech at the time. I mean were the original plays written in a highly polished 'intellectual' style, did they sound like how people on the street talked? When Helen is called a weapon of mass destruction in Carson's translation of Orestes was this a similarly vogue and loaded term in the original Greek? I have a feeling it wasn't, but maybe it was something that similar, which in a way she was--an excuse for the armies of the West to go invade those people in the East and lay waste to them. In that case she was something of a WMD.
The translations are quite fun to read, they are in a modern language but one doesn't feel like they are reading a dumbed down version of the plays. At times some of the word choices are a bit jarring, just because they are so contemporary.
The juxtaposing of these three plays is quite interesting though. The different styles that each playwright uses, with the different tone they set adds to the element of tragedy running through the cycle, Aiskhylos (is this an affectation on her part? I do like the aesthetic quality of her spellings) writes in what could be considered in modern day America as a 1950's style, optimistic, loving of the country, even with the tragedy running through it, there is something good about the setting. By the time that Eurpidies comes we are in a contemporary America (to drag this analogy probably beyond it's breaking point), there is a weakness to the people, a corruption, mob-rule and deference to superstition and sophistry over rationality and doing what one thinks is morally right. It's not the same Argos as the one presented in Agamemnon.
In my opinion, it's the middle play for the trilogy that really shines in this collection. Carson's treatment of Elektra is great, in the long wailing speeches of Agamemnon's mournful daughter the use of contemporary language shines and gives her pain a reality that might not get nearly as illuminated in a more stilted and formal semantics. -
"For there lives in this house
a certain form of anger,
a dread devising everrecurring everremembering
anger
that longs to exact vengeance for a child."
anne carson is utterly phenomenal. these are the best translations of any classical work i have ever read in my life, and now i need to read everything she has ever translated and written.
also, because the above quote is rather heavy, here's a lighter moment:
"MENELAOS: I suffer terrible things.
ORESTES: Well, you screwed up.
MENELAOS: You've got me now." -
I intended to write about each of these plays individually, but the power of the famous stories and the language as rendered by Anne Carson's stunning translation job, meant that I devoured the whole volume in three sittings and never got the chance to sit down at my computer before the book was over. I've gushed about Carson's
own work and her beautiful
Sappho translation, and this alternate Oresteia lives up to all my high expectations of her offerings.
But first, a little background: the original Oresteia is a tri-play cycle—Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides—by ancient Greek playwright Aiskhylos (often transliterated Aeschylus), which chronicles the murderous fall of the house of Atreus after the Trojan War. Carson's alternate play cycle tells the same basic story and begins with the same play, Aiskhylos's Agamemnon (c. 458 BCE), but then diverges, offering a progression through time: the second installment of the cycle is Sophokles's Electra (c. 401-9 BCE), and the third is Euripides's Orestes (c. 408 BCE). Thus the reader can sense the shifting attitudes toward the same myths over the course of fifty-odd to a hundred years, as Athenian society became less optimistic, darker, more corrupt. Carson writes that the idea for the alternative cycle was originally brought to her by Brian Kulick, artistic director of the Classic Stage Company in New York City, who wrote:In Aiskhylos' hands the story of the house of Atreus is designed to end in a valedictory celebration of Athenian democracy and its newborn sense of justice; when Sophokles takes over the tale it becomes more complex and contradictory; with Euripides the design is completely turned on its head. We follow a trajectory from myth to mockery. What happened to effect this? History happened. Aiskhylos composed his Oresteia shortly after Athens' victory at the battle of Marathon, which marked the height of Athenian military and cultural supremacy; Euripides finished his Orestes almost a hundred years later as Athens headed for ruin, due to her protracted involvement in the Peloponnesian War...The house of Atreus, for these tragedians, was a way of talking about the fate of Athens.
Kulick makes a fascinating case, but I was concerned that, as a relative novice in ancient Greek literature, I wouldn't be able to pick up on the progression he outlines here. I needn't have worried. The stylistic differences among the three plays are so pronounced that, despite Agamemnon's messy end and Orestes's ostensible resolution, the reader is left feeling much surer of herself and the universe after finishing Aiskhylos's inferno of a play, than after making one's way through Euripides's altogether more ironic, darker offering.
For those not familiar with the famous story being told, it goes thusly: after Paris abducts Helen, her husband Menelaos and his brother Agamemnon, king of Argos, gather their forces to sail to Troy and get her back, beginning the Trojan War. But the goddess Artemis refuses to send the desired wind until Agamemnon sacrifices his own child, continuing a long history of child murder in his family. Agamemnon kills his daughter Iphigenia, earning the hatred of his wife (her mother) Klytaimestra, and the ships set sail. Fast forward ten years, and Klytaimestra receives word that Troy has fallen; she and her lover Aigisthos, both intent on revenge for their own reasons, murder the returned Agamemnon and his prophetess sex-slave Kassandra, planning to rule Argos themselves in Agamemnon's stead. These are the events of Aiskhylos's Agamemnon.
As I mentioned, despite the bloody murder that makes up the body of this play, Aiskylos's language as rendered into English by Carson is such a bonfire blast of virtuosity that I finished it feeling almost giddy. The sense of gut-clenching foreboding and inevitability is pitch-perfect. The malignant patrimony lurking in the House of Atreus is a force of nature, and all the stories anyone tries to tell—be they about the war, or an allegorical tale, or a supposedly happy homecoming—are infected by it. The Greek invaders at Troy "beached in blood"; the chorus claims of one man's pet lion "That thing was a priest of ruin Bred in the / house. Sent by god." When the Chorus tells the story of Paris and Helen, the image of a house cursed by a phantom resonates between Klytaimestra and Agamemnon:
Alas for the house! Alas for the house and the
men of the house!
Alas for the marriage bed and the way she loved
her husband once!
There is silence there: he sits alone,
dishonored, baffled, mute.
In his longing for what is gone across the
sea
a phantom seems to rule his house.
The idea of infection, of seepage from one evil to another, is everywhere in Agamemnon. Klytaimestra, after she convinces Agamemnon to enter the house on a red carpet, against his wishes, gives this masterful speech suffused with rage and grief for the "roots and leaves" of her own family that will never return, a vision of a happy homecoming that is irrevocably perverted by Iphigenia's murder and the consequent murder Klytaimestra herself is planning; a vision of perfection that only infuriates by its distance from the truth.
There is the sea and who shall drain it dry?
It breeds the purple stain, the dark red dye
we use to color our garments,
costly as silver.
This house has an abundance. Thanks
be to gods, no poverty here.
Oh I would have vowed the trampling of
many cloths
if an oracle had ordered it, to ransom this
man's life.
For when the root is alive the leaves come
back
and shade the house against white dogstar
heat.
Your homecoming is warmth in winter.
Our when Zeus makes wine from bitter
grapes
and coolness fills the house
as the master walks his halls,
righteous, perfect.
Zeus, Zeus, god of things perfect,
accomplish my prayers.
Concern yourself here.
Perfect this.
There are so many amazing and exhilarating passages in Agamemnon that I could continue quoting them all day, but in brief: the predominant feelings are of white-hot fury and dread, and of conflicting, equally strong concepts of justice. Everyone in Agamemnon believes with absolute certainty that he or she knows what justice is, and the tragedy comes out of the clashes between these mutually exclusive justice concepts.
In Sophokles and especially Euripides, on the other hand, people struggle to decide what is just, or sometimes knowingly act in opposition to what is just. In a few cases, they even seem to stop caring about justice, or about the tragedy unfolding all around them. (In the second two plays of the cycle, Agamemnon and Klytaimestra's son Orestes returns from exile, and he and his sister Elektra murder their mother and her lover. The citizens of Argos then must decide what to do with the two siblings.) Elektra, for example, finds the title character arrested, unable to either marry out of her mother's household or avenge her father on her own, crippled by her never-ending grief, which she admits is excessive by any social definition. "There is no pity / but mine, / oh Father, / for the pity of your butchering rawblood death," she cries, and "Lament is a pattern cut and fitted around / my mind" Unlike her mother before her, she witnesses herself becoming the next tool of the curse of the house of Atreus, but cannot avert the coming disaster:
By dread things I am compelled. I know
that.
I see the trap closing.
I know what I am.
But while life is in me
I will not stop this violence.
"Evil is a pressure that shapes us to itself," Elektra says. At the end of Agamemnon Klytaimestra believes she has ended the cycle of violence; she attempts to call a truce with the lineage's curse. But Elektra has no such illusions; part of her grief trap is that she recognizes she has been shaped to evil by the evil around her. The fact that Klytaimestra may deserve to die for the deeds she has committed, doesn't absolve Elektra and Orestes from their own guilt; there seems no escape from the cycle. But because the house's cycle of violence has become part of Elektra herself, to break it would be to go against her own selfhood; "I need one food," she says: "I must not violate Elektra." And to Klytaimestra:
Shame I do feel.
And I know there is something all wrong
about me—
believe me. Sometimes I shock myself.
But there is a reason: you.
You never let up
this one same pressure of hatred on my life:
I am the shape you made me.
Elektra's tragedy is that of someone who has been made into the wrong shape, but who cannot now act against her nature.
From Aiskhylos's cleansing fire and Sophokles's self-regenerating corruption, Euripedes's vision seems almost farcical in its irony. Instead of an Elektra wracked by grief, her opening monologue in Orestes seems almost bored:
It's a known fact,
when the gods asked him to dinner he shot
off his mouth.
So Tantalos begot Pelops, Pelops begot
Atreus—
you know all this don't you? the strife, the
crimes...
We've heard it all before, she seems to say, and here we go again. Whereas Sophokles's Elektra is often sickened or horrified by the ways in which her evil situation has shaped her to itself, Euripides's Elektra is either too broken or too cynical to continue surprised at her family's bloodbath. Elektra and Orestes's tragedy in this last play seems, not so much that they have been sentenced to death for their mother's murder, but that the world in which they live is devoid of any overarching meaning or justice. Even the deus ex machina that saves them in the end seems ridiculous and almost random, much like the further murders they're attempting when Apollo arrives to sort them out, or the messenger's report on the democratic meeting called by the citizens of Argos to decide the siblings' fate. It's a far cry from the savage yet conflicting visions of justice held by the cast of Aiskhylos's Agamemnon.
There's far more in these three plays than I can do justice in a single blog entry, but suffice to say I fell utterly in love with the entire cycle, and can't wait to look into Carson's other Euripides translations, published in Grief Lessons. A note on her translation: as you can tell from the many excerpts above, it has a very modern feel, yet (I think) also gives the impression of agelessness. I've heard a few criticisms of places where people feel the language gets too modern, but I found it absolutely galvanizing; I could read Anne Carson's Aiskhylos all month and never wish myself elsewhere. That said, I believe in the usefulness of having multiple translations, especially of works as influential as these plays. If you love the excerpts above, you will love the whole book. If you prefer a different, more Victorian or Modernist feel, you have
many translations to choose from. Personally, I only regret that Carson has not yet translated the rest of Aiskhylos's original Oresteia, as I would love to compare and contrast with this alternate version. -
CHORUS: Can you tell me what's happening inside?
SLAVE: Where I come from people say bad shit happening when they mean death. Another quaint barbarian idiom is real bad shit happening—that covers blood on the floors and a houseful of swords.
Для тих, хто призабув класичні сюжети: цар Мікен, Агамемнон, зголошується допомогти своєму брату Менелаю повернути Єлену Троянську з, власне кажучи, Трої. Військо ніяк не може відпливти, бо боги спинили вітер - і, щоб задобрити богів, він приносить у жертву свою доньку Іфігенію. Військо випливає, відбувається Троянська війна, проливається багато іншої крові, у свої права вступає геть інша історія, а про маленьку Іфігенію, першу жертву цієї кампанії, всі й думати забули - крім її матері, Клітемнестри. Fast forward на десять років уперед, Троянська війна завершується, Агамемнон повертається додому, навіть не здогадуючись, що там на нього чекає помста.
Це видання - історія про Агамемнона, Клітемнестру і їхніх дітей, зібрана з трьох дуже різних п'єс дуже різних періодів - "Агамемнон" Есхіла, який творив у розквіт афінської демократії й утверджував важливість справедливості; "Електра" Софокла; "Орест" Евріпіда (це вже занепад Афін і девальвація міфу до фарсу на рівні оповіді). Читається прямо дуже здорово; багато речей, які я вважала б сучасним ревізіонізмом, насправді є в оригіналі. Скажімо, коли Клітемнестра вбиває Агамемнона, й хор вимагає справедливості, вона натомість говорить про справедливість для Іфігенії, і це не сучасна спроба вчитати жіночий досвід у чоловічу культурну спадщину, це реально є в тексті - чому ми вважаємо, що життя полководця цінне, а життя дівчинки ні?
При цьому прекрасний, дуже розмовний переклад Енн Карсон - це окреме задоволення:
SLAVE: You won't kill me?
ORESTES: Go.
SLAVE: Fabulous.
ORESTES: Unless I reconsider.
SLAVE: Not fabulous.
(Ось, наприклад, як це звучить у конвенційнішому перекладі:
PHRYGIAN: Thou wilt not kill me after all?
ORESTES: Thou art spared!
PHRYGIAN: O gracious words!
ORESTES: Come, I shall change my mind-
PHRYGIAN: Ill-omened utterance!)
(Між іншим, нарешті вперше побачила в природньому середовищі існування, а не в мемчику, діалог "I’ll take care of you" - "It’s rotten work" - "Not to me. Not if it’s you". Це якраз з "Ореста".) -
Ah, it kills me to do this: An Oresteia is not that great.
What it wants to be is great. It wants to weave the three great Greek tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) into a collaboration about the House of Atreus that will allow its readers to get a feel for all three, as well as a coherent story. And by a terrific poet and translator, to boot! Sweet!
And it gets off to a promising start, too, with a terrific rendition of Agamemnon. I've read two other translations - Fagles and Hughes - and this one stands up just fine with them. Closer to Fagles: more accessible than Hughes, with the occasional terrific punch of a line that people never seem to acknowledge when they talk about Fagles.
But it goes downhill from there. Elektra just isn't Sophocles' best; it's a retelling of Aeschylus's Libation Bearers, and it's not as good. Not the fault of the translation, just the way it is.
And by the time we get to Euripides' Orestes (again, not his best work)...I kinda felt like Carson was losing interest. Euripides is a brilliant playwright - sly, nasty, modern, complicated and brash - but Carson picks up on his impish habit of upending themes and tropes and takes it as simple mischief, instead of the deadly serious commentary Euripides intended it to be. She includes modernizations that are badly out of place. (I marked one or two, but my book's not with me - will try to get them in later.)
So in the end I think Carson's Oresteia more or less fails. It's fine to read, but its goals are higher than its reach. -
If I was smarter I’d do a review comparing Elektra to Hamlet but instead I’m just rotating her in my head at very high speeds. She compels me.
-
I just. Fuck. Wow. Holy shit. Beautiful.
(Hopefully I manage to come up with a longer, more coherent review.) -
The first thing Carson does is deny credit: “Not my idea to do this.” Despite this deflection she clearly warmed to the idea and these three plays by three different playwrights brilliantly tackle the progression of the Oresteia into deeper tragedy. In the first play Agememnon returns from the Trojan War and is murdered by his wife for the crime of sacrificing their daughter en route to Troy. In the second play Orestes and Elektra murder Klytaimestra for murdering their father. In the third play the Furies plague Orestes who, along with his sister, faces a death sentence for murdering their mother and her husband. The Oresteia is a cycle about revenge and a very cursed family. The question is by whom are they cursed—the gods or their own predilection toward rash self-righteous action? Despite an unfortunately forced usage or two (Helen described as a “weapon of mass destruction” as the most egregious example—though her actions did launch a thousand ships and most of the men on it and the city they besieged were reduced to dust), this is a masterpiece of a translation. Carson succeeds on two reinforcing levels that more traditional translators often don’t. First, she achieves immediacy with a fluent, vibrant, aggressive dialogue that fully involves the reader in the characters’ motives and actions. Second, her intent was for the translations to be performed, not just read, so the directness of the language plays better than more formal, highly stylized line renderings that clank and moan like Marley’s ghost when performed or read aloud.
Brad Leithauser in The Times took issue with Carson’s translation, saying it risked “a fatal diminishment” of the characters, reducing them to “merely life size” and their actions and consequences “mere grist for the tabloids” and not “the stuff of immortal literature.” The literature is not immortal because the characters are heroes and royal, soaring above the sordid until their tragic descent, but because they are “life size” and only imagine themselves to be more than that. We are not tabloid voyeurs when we see them as “life size” but when we see them as the celebrities of their age (warrior kings, god-blessed heroes), individuals apart from us and our world. Britney and her posse are not different from Elektra and her Chorus in that sense, but more importantly they are not different from us and our world. The traps they fall into—vanity, anger, desire, ambition, confusing one’s perceptions with the world’s, our sense of grievance or entitlement with absolute, or societal, justice—are our own traps as well. The cases are extreme but the temptation, impulse, and faulty reasoning common to us all. Carson’s rendering of the plotting of Orestes and Pylades could sound like a giddy (if we can imagine that) Dick Cheney and Karl Rove plotting strategy for war in Iraq, what it will be and how it will be perceived, or the Columbine killers talking up to themselves their mad violence in closed, reinforcing loops that take the avoidable and turn it into the inevitable. All of us are capable of deluding ourselves into a view of reality that has lost touch with reality—self-righteousness, self-interest, passion for an end at all costs will do it to us if we allow it. Pylades summarizes his plot to escape the city’s death sentence, “…here’s my reasoning: if we were assassinating someone respectable it would be different. But all Greeks want this whore taken out. She’s virtually a mass murderer. They’ll call us heroes! No more ‘matricide’ label for you.” At a higher level of rendering, one that leaves them soaring in fact, rather than in illusion, it’s Fate that brings them down, not their actions or false reasoning. The tragedy is empty, a product of their programmed fall. The literature is not immortal, but a museum piece. In Carson’s translation the tragedy is in their thinking, in how they respond to disturbing circumstances in ways that ensure continued violence and sorrow. They think they can swoop down from their soaring heights into the sordid and emerge free of consequence or contamination. It is the cursed reasoning of the Madoffs of the world, of the Osama bin Ladens, of the Craigslist killers, of anyone who thinks he or she can do evil for good, sin on behalf of righteousness, serve themselves at the expense of those who don’t matter, or simply get away with something because they can and deserve to do so.
Carson’s powerful translation brings out the universal in these three classic dramas, which is what makes them immortal and the reading of them so compelling a pleasure. Anne Carson is a critic, poet, and a teacher of classical Greek, so it’s no surprise that her work here is so successful, nor that it has also moved me to pick up the Lattimore and the Fagles translations of The Oresteia. It’s insightful, illuminating, and inspiring. -
I truly loved this translation and loved going through this story line with three different playwrights. Before each play there was an introduction that was beautiful and worth reading. It was a little jarring to see the word "shit" translated in the last play lol but other than that! Absolutely recommend.
-
Not the best selection of plays about the Atreidae, and I prefer Aeschylus' trilogy instead of this edition for which the editor cherry-picked one play by each of the three major tragedians to replace the ones by Aeschylus, keeping the first one by him (I suspect only because there is none other with the same subject).
For this, the editors:
- Kept Aeschylus' Agamnemnon, the first play of the Orestiad.
- Replaced The Libation Bearers, the second play, with Electra by Sophocles.
- Replaced Eumenides, the third play, with Orestes by Euripides.
The result is . . . rather insipid. Aeschylus' trilogy has stylistic and narrative consistency, which disappears with these replacements, as Sophocles and Euripides have very different styles that not even these new translations can smooth out, so it's very glaring that each play is by a different playwright, and while narrative coherence is mostly kept, stylistically it's a mess.
Sophocles is the big loser in this experiment. With Aeschylus, if you don't like Anne Carson's idea here, you can always return to his trusty Oresteia and be content, and with Euripides, you can run to read his Electra to go with his Orestes, and be content as well. Plus you can then compare and contrast, and decide whether you like Aeschylus' or Euripides' take on the Atreidae. But poor Sophocles? He has nothing but his Electra to show for his troubles, and that play doesn't mesh in well with any of the two others it's sandwiched with. It fares better as an standalone.
Ah, well. I'm giving this 4 stars from averaging the scores for each individual play, not for the edition's layout I am not fond of. -
I was tempted by the fifth star. These three translations are wild. They stretch uncomfortably between courtly speech of ancient greek dynasties and the idioms we hear on the street in New York City. Therefore it isn't easy to just experience these plays as rendered by Carson. We are constantly aware of them as spectacle, even as they exist before us as text. They are uneven, raw, and sometimes hilarious. And these things make for a reading experience full of surprise. I would careen from a moment where a line lays me out flat on my bedroom floor, into another moment where I'm laughing at the audaciousness of an idiomatic snark. Such is the genius of these translations, which is to say little about the genius of the source plays themselves. Only four stars, but only because the final selection by Euripides unraveled a bit too much for me to say, "Perfection!" Exceedingly close, though, to the point where I still give my most unreserved recommendation, and where I may need to revise my rating after I've let the words rest a bit longer in my own uneven mind.
-
4.5
This was beautiful. I adored it and I reckon on a re-read it could become a 5 star (I'm just fussy with giving out 5 star ratings). Carson has breathed such life into these plays and it was an utter joy to read. -
funny, stupid, vaguely cringe... good... the oresteia if it was written by a tumblr user. oresteia fanfic?
-
the three tragedians has vastly different imaginings of these characters and the ambiguities of justice. aeschylus gets at the violence of preverbal emotion, sophocles at the righteousness of grief, euripides at an absurdity not unlike king lear. all set in this cursed house that remembers blood long run cold. that demands retribution.
-
a whore for Greek tragedies really, i read elektra and the whole sophocles set last year but this was such an eye opener. I regret nothing. Great literature and the translation was easy on the eyes (&mind).
Fun read<3 -
they’re just like me
why grief in advance? whatever turns up, i hope it’s happy -
One could review three aspects of this book:
1. The pairing of Aeschylus's Agamemnon with Sophocles' Electra and Euripides's Orestes. I loved this grouping and calling it "An Oresteia". In doing this it upends THE Oresteia is by Aeschylus (a trilogy), starting with the original about the return of Agamemnon after the Trojan war and his murder by his wife Clytemnestra but then going to Sophocles' alternate version of the second about the events following the murder as Agamemnon's son Orestes returns, joins his sister Electra, and they murder Clytemnestra and her lover and finally going to Euripides' Orestes which covers a very alternate version of the events around/after the third play in the original Aeschylus trilogy. The three work well together because they are the same characters, the same story, and one follows from the next. But they provide different perspectives, both a growing maturity of theater able to depict multiple characters and actors and, more importantly, a darker and more complex vision of politics, revenge, and murder, perhaps mirroring Athens falling from its golden age into defeat by Sparta (the short introductory essay speculates on this).
2. The translation. I mostly hated the translation. It took too much license, had too many contemporary idioms, too many made up words that were formed from smashing other words together (in Agamemnon), and overall found it really distracting. Something like this worked fine with
Anne Carson's
Antigonick which was meant to be a reinterpretation but really wasn't what I wanted here. I much preferred
Oliver Taplin's translation of
The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Women at the Graveside, Orestes in Athens (which had Agamemnon) and have not read other translations of Electra and Orestes but suspect that I would prefer many of them to this.
3. The plays themselves. I already reviewed Agamemnon (in the Taplin translation). I liked Electra with its timeless themes of revenge, individually administered justice. But did not think it was better than Aeschylus's version which had the amazing scene with Orestes and his mother. I also did not love Electra which dwelled too much on her sitting around being depressed and mostly passive while speaking a lot but mostly being manipulated and directed by others, particularly her brother's dead-alive-dead-alive sequence with her. But obviously a lot to like and it created a certain amount of action/thrills with the way in which he kills Aegisthus. I found Orestes to be the most novel of the plays, less of a simple timeless story but richer theatrically in the way it develops. It focuses on Orestes' madness as he is pursued by the Furies (not acquittal for him like in the third play in the original Oresteia), his sister plays a much bigger role, and it is also set in the complicated politics of Argos as Menelaus and Helen return and people blame Helen for all of the death and destruction caused by the Trojan war. The plot gets more complicated as they attempt to murder Helen but don't succeed. And I found it fun that Apollo shows up as a deux ex machina to resolve all of the plot strands--something that doesn't actually happen as much as you would think in Greek tragedy. -
Carson opens with Aeschylus' Agamemnon, but replaces his Libation Bearers and Eumenides with Elektra by Sophocles and Orestes by Euripides. The Oresteia in its original form is a monument I can admire but can't imagine sitting through with anything resembling pleasure. Carson's substitutions and remarkable translations makes this a viable evening -- maybe more likely a weekend -- at the theater.
We know very little about the mechanics ancient Greek acting and stagecraft, but it's unlikely that modern expectations could be satisfied with a production that adhered to them. And we do know that literal translations of the originals are disasters. Aeschylus is the most unapproachable of them all, but Carson's chorus of quavering, gossiping, intrusive old men are dramatically viable. Her rendering of the Kassandra scene makes it once again the showstopper it no doubt was in Athens over 2000 years ago.
Sophocles' Elektra is a great play that translates well into modern productions. This was my first encounter with Euripides" Orestes. It's a nutty show, and Carson has fun with it.
Although I wouldn't wish this complete Oresteia on the actors or the Chief Financial Officer of any contemporary theater, I would definitely buy my ticket. -
Anne Carson always seems to know what she's doing. She has structured this trilogy so well. The first play feels the most conventional of Greek Tragedy though its primary structuring around Kassandra already gives you a hint that you're in store for something different. Then there's "Elektra" which is wild and unhinged, where next to nothing happens besides a painful study in grief and complacency. Her complication of gender and its connection to violence in Elektra the character, and all of three of these plays is fascinating. Finally, there's "Orestes" which was certainly my favorite, it is bitter and sarcastic, its ending horribly Brechtian allowing not a bit of real resolution. Through this, Carson (and Euripides) paint a terrifying portrait of a blood-soaked world that cannot truly be salvaged in any satisfying way. As someone who is not a fan of Greek plays, Carson has fully changed my perspective.
-
ANNE!!!! the gorgeous juxtaposition of generally incongruous texts creates arcs and marks that make this work something wholly original
-
this is the perfect level of drama for me. anything less than that and I just don't see the point
anyway, I love love love this translation -
my favourite, of course, was Elektra
-
La idea de hacer una nueva Orestíada espectacular y la traducción pues bueno, una traducción de Carson, no os esperéis una traducción literal del griego (ni falta que hace cuando se trata de esta señora). Lo único malo es que al lado del Agamenón toda otra tragedia palidece, y más las que aquí figuran, así que para mí iba perdiendo un poco el fuelle según avanzaba. En conclusión, que viva Esquilo.
-
خیلی ترجمهاش رو دوست داشتم. مورد علاقهام هم از بین سه تا نمایشنامه که واضحا خود orestesئه.
-
gay men r like a tiny bit evil , wdym “i never get tired of killing women”
