At the beginning of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon[1], the first play of his trilogy of family slaughter The Oresteia, the watchman watches for the signal-fire of Troy’s fall. He tells us that he cannot sleep. He has nightmares and doesn’t dare try in case he misses the light. Then, unexpectantly and suddenly, he sees light and happiness returns to him. His King will return. His appearance is brief and singular, he introduces the setting, announces the starting spark of plot, and then leaves; and all within forty-five lines. In that time the watchman quickly, and firmly, establishes the tone and the theme of the play of light and darkness, hope and fear mixed into one beautiful beginning speech. He has little to say but what he does say comes deep from his character. Already from his brief sketch we feel his ache of waiting, his pain of duty and, finally, his joy of having all this ended, already we feel that we’ve gone through a whole journey of his darkness into light and from a character so slight. His journey is a microcosm that every other character after him must go through. The motto for the play’s mantra is Aeschylus’ theme: ‘Knowledge through Suffering’.
The next characters on stage are the chorus and their leader. The chorus are old men too old to fight and left behind to wait, like the watchman. They are also helpless in the present, unable to prevent their King’s death. They can only witness and contemplate on what has happened and what is to come. Even in their defiance against Aegisthus’ army it is just a noble show, a sort of collective martyrdom, for we know from their first speeches they are not fighting men anymore, ‘the broken husks of men’ L80 they say ‘to prop a child’s strength upon a stick.’ L83 As with the watchman they wish for their king’s return and yet also they feel fearful. They are loyal to Agamemnon and ready to fight for their honor. Aegisthus in the last speeches can testify to this. When Agamemnon does come they wonder how to give him a praise that will ‘suit the hour’ L771 They recall a time when he was not praised but drawn in black as he sent men to their grave. (One version nicely puts it as the time ‘when you tried to win back through men’s dying a willing whore’[2]) Despite this they believe that ‘the end is worth the labor!’ L791 though this is a hypocritical moral reversal the chorus seems simply happy to see that their anxious suffering with worry has ceased and that Agamemnon has returned safely. Though they wish to be moral they mainly wish for the suffering to end. Difficult it would be if you have to suffer to be moral. Clytemnestra says of Cassandra ‘She’s mad’ L1063, but the chorus leader has a kinder opinion of her and says ‘I will be gentle’ L1069 because he pities her. In this way the chorus is consistently trying to be in the moral right. Though she is from another enemy city the leader still feels sorrow for her situation without betraying his loyalty to his King and Argos. In fact the only clearly just characters in this play are the leader and his chorus. Though they do nothing in terms of action they are always striving to understand the other characters, their motives and deeds, and hold back from judging until they have. Similarly when Cassandra says that the ‘house breaths with murder’ L1330 the chorus charitably replies ‘ No, no, only the victims of the hearth.’ L1332 It can be argued that though the chorus wishes to be moral they actually lack the moral, as well as the physical, courage to judge Agamemnon for what he has done. Another example of their useless cowardice is when their king is being killed and the leader urges the chorus to ‘close ranks now, find the right way out.’ L1374 However they merely scatter and speak not as a combined whole but as fragmented individuals. They are numbly shocked at the truth of the women, first with Cassandra then with Clytemnestra as they understand the justice of her motives and realise, or remember their attitude to Agamemnon before the war, which their king is not. ‘The plunderer plunded, the killer pays the price.’ L1590 is the awful sentence they say of him as they desperately try to find the moral ground.
Clytemnestra begins as a silent character; the chorus has no idea, or suspicions, about her intentions. But she is full of words. When Agamemnon returns she holds our sympathy as she tells of the hardships of loneliness ‘long as the siege…and more demanding’ Interesting in this comparison between war and home she declares the home much more troubling, as Agamemnon eventually finds out. As if staying at home is like a war except without anyone to fight in the hope of righting the uneasiness she feels alone. This sympathy that she creates is shaken as she returns from the house with her husband and his concubine in a cauldron. She tells the truth of her feeling to the chorus, ‘It is right and more than right’ L1420 she says and calls his death ‘a masterpiece of justice.’ L1430 She justifies her hatred by comparing the pain of maternal love to the carelessness of his care as ‘he sacrificed his own child, our daughter, the agony I labored into love to charm away the savage wind of Thrace.’ L1444 From this she feels herself above judgment since her suffering is so great, ‘Praise me, / blame me. It’s all one.’ L1428 Traditionally this attitude of high pride is normally attributed to the fact that she ‘maneuvers like a man’. L17
Philip Vellacott[3] argues that Clytemnestra is not completely unwomanly like:
‘Critics have described Clytemnestra as a mannish woman, devoid of feminine feeling. This is the chink in her amour. Under the almost physical compulsion of jealously she must come out and confront her rival, woman to woman, and dominate her. She cannot. When this is understood, it is easier to give her full credit for those maternal feelings towards Iphigenia and Orestes which many severe scholars have been at pains to deny her.’
Her last words also give us pause for sympathy as she says ‘if we could end the suffering, how we would rejoice.’ L1694 A simply line that hints at the enormous relief it would have been if there was an bloodless alternative that was equally just, but having taken this course she knows that her pain will not end. With few lines like these we may feel sorrow for her deep hurt and the anger it has caused. She was not wishing to willfully kill her husband for power but felt that she was driven to it by his absence and his sacrifice of their daughter. No wonder the old men are staggered by this crime because it reverses who they thought was on the side of justice. Clytemnestra’s crime is certainly wrong, but it is understandable why she would go through with it since Agamemnon had put her in such a terrible situation.
When Agamemnon returns his first words are words of praise for his home and for the gods, ‘long drawn out, but it is just the prelude.’ L815 He, impressed with the characters of the old men, gives his word of support to them. ‘ I understand society, the flattering mirror of the proud.’ L823 With these words we are encouraged to think Agamemnon as a blameless hero with the noble character a hero should have; particularly when he recognises the ‘enormous power’ L933 of the public. We can join the old men into saying ‘well fought, well won,’ L790 but he is, as they say, ‘harnessed to what he cannot change’ and his fate is sealed. His downfall comes from leaving the household in the hands of a woman; he has chosen war over home and now domestic life comes for him. He cannot leave the violence he has committed in Troy. When on the violent path all that will come of it is violence, which is passed down to the sons until the whole family destroys itself. It’s not without some irony that Agamemnon, after fighting ten years against enemies, is killed exactly after the war is over and by his own wife. Yet it is Agamemnon that unwittingly says ‘I feel such shame- to tread the life of the house’ L946 which he should because he has, although he doesn’t recognise his wrongs he simply states his discomfort with of having such a luxurious tapestry to walk upon ‘a kingdom’s worth of silver in the weaving.’ Surprisingly, for a play named after this character, his appearance is extremely brief having only sixteen more lines than the herald. What is said of Agamemnon and what we know of him is mainly based on what the other characters tell of him. When the man himself appears we see a powerful man happy, with a little hesitation, to be home again.
Of all of the characters Cassandra is the strongest. ‘She alone suffers in innocence.’ Vellacott says ‘She is pure.’ German writer Christa Wolf[4] says of Cassandra that ‘she was the only one in the play who knew herself’ even on the doorstep of death, ‘victimised and misunderstood’ Cassandra still tells the truth, and is herself, right to the end. Her gifts has brought the chorus ‘terror and the truth.’ and she even denounces Apollo, because of her strength of character, by saying ‘why mock yourself with these- trappings, the rod, the god’s wreath, his yoke around my throat? Before I die I’ll tread you-’ L1279 So she goes to her death ‘but not without some honor from the gods.’ Because even though she is not dominated by Clytemnestra she does, unlike Agamemnon, knowingly submit to her will only because she knows that there is ‘little to gain from flight.’ She is the one who fully characterises knowledge through suffering for she is given insight of what will be through painful visions. Her tragedy is that though she knows what is to happen she also knows that it happens because it must.
Aegisthus is the weakest of all the characters in this play. He is little more than the foil to Clytemnestra’s plans. Despite being the new master it is Clytemnestra that has the last word: ‘no more my dearest, no more grief.’ L1688 He has reason for wanting Agamemnon dead his reason are in the past, and are only attributable to Agamemnon by being a son, while Clytemnestra’s reason is because of her husband slaying of their future. The chorus accuses him of being a coward because he let a woman to commit the revenge and took not part for himself. ‘The treachery was the woman’s work, clearly.’ L1668 he says by way of an excuse. His shallow pride also shines through, as he is ready to attack a group of old men merely because they mocked him. This appetite for needless bloodshed would make him the most unjust character in the play. However the brilliance of his character in this play gives rise a question; can a man fully unjust in character actually be so if he does no action stemming from his character? What is more important here words or deeds?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aeschylus, The Oresteia, translated by Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Group,1977)
Grene, David and Doniger O’Flaherty, Wendy, The Oresteia by Aeschylus: a new translation for the theater (Chicago: Chicago University, 1989)
Schelbitzki Pickle, Linda, ‘Scratching Away the Male Tradition’: Christa Wolf's "Kassandra", Contemporary Literature, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 32-47
Vellacott, Philip, An English Reader’s Guide to Aeschylus’ Oresteia (Cambridge: Monophron, 1991)
[2] David Grene and Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Oresteia by Aeschylus: a new translation for the theater (Chicago: Chicago University, 1989)
[4] "Scratching Away the Male Tradition": Christa Wolf's "Kassandra" Linda Schelbitzki Pickle
Contemporary Literature, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Spring, 1986), pp. 32-47
"what made you change your mind?"
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