The Oresteia of Aeschylus

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The following year, in 2016, playwright Zinnie Harris premiered her adaptation, This Restless House, at the Citizen's Theatre to five-star critical acclaim. [31] Chronology of adaptations [ edit ] T he​ comparison of Mulroy’s and Bernstein’s versions with the infinitely stronger work of Ruden and Taplin is a useful demonstration of how hard it is to produce a good literary translation. This is certainly true of translations of ancient Greek and Roman texts, but it is also true of literary translation in general: it is very difficult. Most readers of foreign languages are not translators; most writers are not translators. Translators have to read and write at the same time, as if always playing multiple instruments in a one-person band. And most one-person bands do not sound very good. There are all too many moments when the choices in the weaker versions are reminiscent of A.E. Housman’s brilliant comic parody, ‘Fragment of a Greek Tragedy’. ‘Ah, how miserable!’ Bernstein’s Clytemnestra laments. It is hard not to agree. Mulroy’s Agamemnon, preparing to get his shoes taken off, calls: ‘Undo/my shoes, the servile mats beneath my feet.’ Attempts at more colloquial language fall flat: ‘Bull’s eye! The latter’; ‘they’re a violent lot’ (Mulroy). The consistent thoughtlessness about linguistic register includes, predictably, an obliviousness to exclusive language and contemporary usage; Mulroy regularly uses ‘man’ and ‘mankind’ when the Greek refers to all, not half, of the human race. Cassandra (the enslaved woman who is twice labelled Agamemnon’s ‘mistress’ by Bernstein) makes a final heartbreaking expression of pity, not for her own imminent murder, but for all mortal circumstances: βρότειαπράγματα. Mulroy renders this ‘Alas for men’s affairs!’ Taplin, far more effectively, has ‘This is the way it is for humans.’

Oresteia | Penguin Random House Higher Education The Oresteia | Penguin Random House Higher Education

MacLeod, C. W. (1982). "Politics and the Oresteia ". The Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. 102. doi: 10.2307/631132. JSTOR 631132. pp.124–144.Years later, Sartre stated: "The real drama, the drama I should have liked to write, was that of the terrorist who, by ambushing Germans, becomes the instrument for the execution of fifty hostages." [3] Noted Sartre biographer Annie Cohen-Solal views this statement as an allusion to a series of events that occurred in occupied Paris in 1941: a German officer was killed at the Métro Barbès and in retaliation the German military forces executed eight prisoners in September and then 98 prisoners in October. [4] However, the German censors would have banned such a play, so Sartre was forced to look for other subjects. He settled on the idea of using the story of the Atridae as a vehicle. [5] De Beauvoir says that the first act was inspired by the town of Emborio, "the village on Santorin which had presented so sinister at atmosphere to us when we first reached it [during a holiday] -- all those blank, shuttered houses under the blazing noonday sun." [6] She also says that she, after reading a book about the Etruscans, informed Sartre about the Etruscans' funeral ceremonies, and he found inspiration in this for the second act. [7] Sartre's philosophy [ edit ] But in this particular case, the similarities between these three translations, especially in the paratextual material, suggest a partial correlation between the translators’ social positions and their readings of the Oresteia. All have inadequate introductions or afterwords, which make magniloquent statements about Aeschylean ‘greatness’ but treat the complex ethical and political questions entangled in his trilogy with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Bernstein, for instance, assures the reader that The Eumenides‘ends with the triumph of democracy’, without providing any discussion of the characters in the play – the women and the Furies – who are excluded from the new politics, on the stage as in real-life Athens. This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. ( February 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

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This is so far from the underlying reality of the situation that the speech may even have raised a laugh from its audience. For Clytemnestra’s eagerness is not to welcome her lord, but to murder him. And she is certainly not ‘just as he left her.’ She has taken a lover, Aegisthus, and spent ten long years brooding over her beloved daughter’s untimely death. Clytemnestra is no Penelope, the wife of Odysseus who spent twenty years weaving away her life till his return from Troy. She is a bold and resolute woman who wreaks what she sees as rightful revenge on Agamemnon. In this play, the Chorus are neutral observers of the action, responding with apparent belief and trust in what she says – a counter-weight to the dramatic irony of the exchanges between the central characters with their, ‘Lady, you speak the good sense of a wise man.’ And they are ambivalent towards Agamemnon:Kells, J. H. (1966). "More Notes on Euripides' Electra". The Classical Quarterly. Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association. 16 (1): 51–54. doi: 10.1017/S0009838800003359. JSTOR 637530. S2CID 170813768. The Flies also shows the effect of Nietzsche on Sartre. Orestes represents the idea of the overman, as described in works such as Thus Spoke Zarathustra; the ability to free one's mind from dogma and the impressions of others, and instead think on a higher level. Like Zarathustra, Orestes feels he must "go down" to the people and open their eyes (though unlike Zarathustra, Orestes does it out of compassion). When debating Zeus, Orestes also talks about being "beyond" the moral yoke others allow to be placed on them - an idea explicitly discussed in Beyond Good and Evil, and implicitly described in other works by Nietzsche. Orestes is not bound by the false dichotomy of "good" and "evil," and instead accepts what has been done, choosing to focus on the present and the future. Ruden echoes the riddling strangeness of Aeschylus’ language but makes the puzzle more or less possible to solve.

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a b Hester, D. A. (1981). "The Casting Vote". The American Journal of Philology. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 102 (3): 265–274. doi: 10.2307/294130. JSTOR 294130.

The Oresteia of Aeschylus

The play opens to a watchman looking down and over the sea, reporting that he has been lying restless "like a dog" for a year, waiting to see some sort of signal confirming a Greek victory in Troy. He laments the fortunes of the house, but promises to keep silent: "A huge ox has stepped onto my tongue." The watchman sees a light far off in the distance—a bonfire signaling Troy's fall—and is overjoyed at the victory and hopes for the hasty return of his King, as the house has "wallowed" in his absence. Clytemnestra is introduced to the audience and she declares that there will be celebrations and sacrifices throughout the city as Agamemnon and his army return. [ citation needed] But even if Taplin loses some of the original’s linguistic complexity, he has created an English version full of sonic and metaphorical wealth, as when the Chorus sings of an obscure fate that should be spoken, but is not: