Unit 9

English 201:    Masterpieces of Western Literature

Who is the greatest of the ancient Greek dramatists?  When Regis asks me, I won't need a Lifeline.  My final answer is Aeschylus.  The theme illustrated in the Orestia trilogy is that: we suffer into wisdom.

The first play in the trilogy, Agamemnon, presents the malefactor (AG) & the act of justice that hopes to erase the outrage & re-establish the balance of logos. KLY says that AG's crime is that:
1442    he sacrificed his own child, our daughter,
           the agony I labored into love

There are 2 problems with KLY's indictment.  AG had reasons for what he did. (Abraham was also ready to knife Isaac or Ismail.)  Secondly, KLY's moral outrage is not pure.  By executing AG she can keep her lover Aegisthus &, more importantly, retain sovereignty of Argos.  She will continue to be "the man," the power.  Our first question is what compels us to do the important things in our lives, especially those things that are fraught with many dimensions or decisions that remain equivocal.  Sometimes we hesitantly perform important acts almost watching ourselves do them as though watching someone else.  If we are so reluctant, why do we go through with such awesome acts: sacrificing innocence (Iphegeneia), repudiating love (AG), cutting off compassion (OR executing KLY)?  The opening scene speculates on the force that drives us:
683     what power named the name that drove your fate?
5         I know the stars by heart,
           the armies of the night . . .
           the ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer,
           bring us all we have

What is the force or power that brings us all we have?  The guards are talking about the stars & they speculate that astrological forces cause our behavior.  One of the names of that force is libido: desire that oscillates from love to hate.  Thus one of the images that Aeschylus uses is the marriage bed that morphs into a funeral bier:
59       the bed of pain,
           the  young are lost forever
68       all for a woman manned by many
70       the manhood drains [not in semen, but blood]
           the spear snaps in the first blood rites

"The first blood rites" sounds like a euphemism for the the loss of virginity, but it refers to virginal young men sacrificed for the lust (pride) of "a woman manned by many" (Helen).  This kind of ambiguity is precisely what Aeschylus wants to create, because it illustrates that libido remains ambivalent & pre-logical.  Our emotions are more primal & more powerful than out thoughts.  This is why:
177      the Helmsman [of fate] lays it down as law
           that we must suffer, suffer into truth.

Because we act before we know:
201    Artemis (Innocence) must have blood!

The chorus presents AG's dilemma:
205    I still can hear the older warlord [AG] saying,
         "Obey, obey [fate], or a heavy doom will crush me--
         Oh but doom will crush me
         once I rend my child . . .
         a father's hands are stained,
         blood of a young girl streaks the altar.
         Pain both ways & what is worse?
         Desert the fleets, fail the alliance?"

How different is this from Abraham's terrible choice?  AG decides to sacrifice his personal love in order to do his social duty.  He is not only the General of the army, he is responsible for having assembled it.  But:
218    once he slipped his neck in the strap of Fate,
         . . . once he turned he stopped at nothing,
         seized with the frenzy
         blinding driving to outrage
         wretched frenzy, cause of all our grief!

We remember AK's frenzy: "though you love me, you cannot make me listen.  I am determined to do what I will":
228    no innocence moves her [Iphegeneia] judges mad for war.
235    slip this strap in her gentle curving lips . . .
         here, gag her hard, a sound will curse the house

Guilt is not so easily throttled:
179   We cannot sleep . . .
        the pain of pain remembered comes again,
        & we resist, but ripeness comes
250   Justice turns the balance scales,
        sees that we suffer [for what we have done]
        & we suffer & we learn.

When KLY hears that the Greeks have finally taken Troy, she prays that they do their military duty without losing control:
344    let no lust, no mad desire seize the armies
         to ravish what they must not touch

This sounds good.  But what does it mean? Men are suppose to go to battle -- as we saw in The Iliad -- & feel nothing?  Our first question rises again: are we most fundamentally moved by reason (including temperance, prudence, piety) or emotion (love/hate)?  Would anyone go to war for purely logical reasons?  Frenzy & reason are mutually exclusive.  When one prevails, the other is exiled.  We are not, however, overly concerned about being too dispassionate & analytic. There are limits to how far emotion can drive us.  Beyond that limit (of hubris) lies punishment for:
375    men
         who trample the lovely grace of things
         untouchable

The lovely grace of things is beauty.  Why is it inviolable?  Why is it sacred & untouchable?  Because it is beauty & its destruction is indefensible.  The vandal who mars beauty does not release Truth.  He simply diminishes & pollutes the world.  Do we need to be commanded not to eat this apple?  Who will listen?  Only those who have already suffered into wisdom, lamenting the loss.  The chorus doesn't so much explain how human nature works, as it does illustrate it:
420    it is pain to dream [of beauty] & see desires
         slip through the arms,
         a vision [of beauty] lost forever
         winging down the moving drifts of sleep.

The cause was to rescue beauty:
426   All through Greece . . . those who flocked to war [frenzy]
        they are holding back the anguish now
431   They knew the men they sent,
        but now in place of men
        ashes & urns come back

To the extent that beauty is innocence, it cannot be rescued.  It cannot be saved.  That is why it is so fragile. It is fleeting.  Iphegeneia grows up to be Helen.  Innocence wants power.  Power is not power until it tramples innocence.  & we know this only when it is too late; only when we are holding the urn.

Power is awesome, but not so awesome as it was with the splendor of AK & HK.  There is something tawdry & evasive in AG.  The herald tries too hard to convince us (the chorus, the citizens) of AG's virtue:
513    He comes, he brings us light . . .
         AG lord of men
521    The man is blest.
523    Neither Paris nor Troy, partners to the end,
         can say their work outweighs their wages now.
         Convicted or rapine [Paris], stripped of all his spoils,
         & his father's house & the land that gave it life--
         he's [AG] scythed them to the roots.

Here we feel Aeschylus' fusion.  We know that we should celebrate the hero's return.  The cause was just.  Yet we feel dread, guilt.  Our hero is not the magnanimous HK, but an experienced thug.

Our attention turns to the deception of KLY.  She is no innocent either.  In fact, she almost drips with invective & we feel that AG would know what she implies & what her speech barely veils -- if he, himself, were not so vain.  As though she were a newlywed, KLY innocently talks to herself (obviously meaning for the chorus to hear her lies):
593    Now for the best way to welcome home
         my lord, my good lord
600    the people's darling--how they long for him.
         & for his wife,
         may he return & find her true . . .
         just as the day he left her, faithful to the last.

Like OD, AG returns home without his troops, who perished.  As you are finding out, Aeschylus has a talent for fusing beauty with horror.  After a night of storm at sea:
657    when the sun comes up to light the skies
          I see the Aegean heaving into a great bloom [of flowers?]
         of corpses
floating in the water, their colorful robes suggesting a garden of flowers.  We anticipated beauty & ran into the arms of terror.  We were joyful at the news that our sons & husbands were returning home & stood stunned with an urn of their ashes in our hands.  Helen is the predominant image of the outrage that life offers: promising innocence & joy only to deliver outrage & death.  Beauty:
733   the first sensation Helen brought to Troy [so innocently we fell in love] . . .
        call it a spirit [divine, rapture]
        shimmer of winds dying [the goose bumps delicious on our arms]
        glory light as gold
        shaft of the eyes dissolving, open bloom
        that wounds the heart with love.
        . . . she whirled her wedding on to a stabbing end
        . . . a bride of tears, a Fury.

When we say that will give anything to Love, we don't expect her to take it.  & when she does, innocence is the victim.

As our introduction says, AG's homecoming is one of the most effective visual scenes in theater. Reversals & irony abound.  The chorus says the reverse of what they feel:
783    That day you marshaled the armies
          all for Helen . . .
          I drew you in my mind in black;
          you seemed a menace at the helm,
          sending men to the grave . . . .
          But now from the depths of trust & love
          I say Well fought, well won

AG hardly hears this, he is so eager to chant his name, assert his power:
795     with justice I salute my Argos & my gods,
          my accomplices who brought me home & won
          my rights
808     For their mad outrage
          of a queen we raped their city--we were right.

Rape & righteous in the same sentence?  Made equivalent?
824     My comrades . . .
          they're shadows . . . ghosts of men
          who swore they'd die for me.  Only OD
          I dragged that man to the wars . . .
          he gave his all for me.
          Dead or alive, no matter, I can praise him.

& by the way, I want more blood:
831    We must summon the city for a trial

Aren't you happy that this guy came home?  He almost makes KLY preferable.  If KLY were as devoted to justice as she says, wouldn't she comment on AG's vanity?  In some way point out that many in the chorus are holding urns even as they fawn over the power that reduced their innocent children to ashes.  Instead, KLY is another egomaniac who eagerly goes to battle with AG, who thinks his homecoming is about to take a bad turn:
865    our child is gone
        [obviously, AG thinks that KLY is referring to Iphegeneia],
        not standing by our side,
        the bond of our dearest pledges, mine & yours;
        by all rights our child should be here . . .
        Orestes

& why isn't Orestes there?  Because father & son may be too much for mom to handle.  Or Aegisthus may get out of hand . . . what with all the butchery.  Predictably, KLY suggests that she is cleaning up another of her husband's messes:
872  You risk all on the wars--& what if the people
        rise up howling for the king, & anarchy
        should dash our plans?

KLY implies that she knew AG would come home without many of the young men he lead to battle.  She implies that she is taking care of her husband, that they are allies.  To further illustrate this, KLY commands:
901    Pave his way with tapestries
         . . . Let the red stream flow & bear him home
         to the home he never hoped to see  --Justice,
         lead him in!
         Leave all the rest to me.

Literally the "red stream" refers to "rolling out the red carpet."  Figuratively it refers both to the rivers of blood that the warrior waded through on his way to glory & the red stream of his own blood that KLY will soon let flow, the current taking AG to that home he never hoped to see in the undergloom.  AG objects, saying:
915     only the gods deserve the pomps of honor
          & the stiff brocades of fame.  To walk on them . . .
is to:
376    trample the lovely grace of things
         untouchable

Obviously, this is an arrogation, a ritual act of hubris that AG thinks unnecessary after his speech about "my Argos & my gods" & "my rights."  How does KLY entice him?  She implies that he has done far more outrageous acts in the past, such as, letting the red stream flow from his daughter's throat:
928     Would you have sworn this act to god in a time of terror?
          [AG] Yes, if a prophet called for a last, drastic rite.

Ironically, AG gives into his wife as an act of endearment, asking:
937    Victory in this . . . war of ours, it means so much to you?

Don't miss the stage direction in this visual scene:
p.639     He [AG] steps down from the chariot
             to the tapestries & reveals Cassandra
AG casually mentions that she is:
951    The gift of the armies

A long scene ensues in which the chorus dances to illustrate the theme of whirling & loss of balance that prevents them from comprehending what is happening off stage: the slaughter of AG.  If you didn't previously look Cassandra up in your Dictionary, do so.  In this scene she accurately informs the chorus of the king's assassination.  Why is the chorus so thick-headed about this when they are otherwise so philosophically deep?  This will be a Chat question.

Cassandra carries on Aeschylus' fusion of sex & death (love/hate):
1108    The lord of your bed,
            you bathe him . . . his body glistens, then--
            how to tell the climax?--
            comes so quickly . . .
            then lunge
This sounds like a description of sex, but it is actually a description of AG's murder.  Why are they fused or confused with each other?  To illustrate that the primal force that drives our life is not reason, but libido:
683    what power named the name that drove your fate?
Libido is alternately manifest as love & hate.  One cannot exist without the other.  Cassandra might have told her brother Paris very much the same thing she tells the chorus:
1118    she is the snare,
           the bedmate, deathmate

Neither listens.  Paris might have said very much the same thing that the chorus says:
1210    We spoil ourselves with scruples,
            [as] long as things go well.
What does this mean?  Tell us in the Chat session.

After executing AG, KLY addresses the chorus, claiming that she has served justice.  She explains that for the previous 10 years she has lied & deceived, but can now tell the truth:
1392     Words, endless words I've said to serve the moment!
            Now it makes me proud to tell the truth.
1396     I brooded on this trial, this ancient blood feud
            year by year.
1399     & here my work is done.
            I did it all.  I don't deny it, no.
1420     It is right & more than right.  He flooded
            the vessel of our proud house with misery.
1427     Praise me,
            blame me as you choose.  It's all one.
            Here is AG, my husband made a corpse
            by this right hand--a masterpiece of Justice.

"My husband made a corpse" & this is "a masterpiece of Justice"?  These 3 images are not congruent; no more so than AG's disturbing claim:
808      For their [Troy] made outrage
           of a queen we raped their city--we were right.

In both cases, what is claimed as an act of justice repels us.  Rape & treacherous murder are not convincing as masterpieces of justice.  Can they qualify in any way as acceptable to justice?  Don't all of us feel that these extreme violent acts need to be publicly discussed at great length, & even then we suspect that they will remain controversial & contentious.  This is precisely Aeschylus' point: that justice is spoken by the city, by the consensus of morally engaged citizens.  The act of one person who has the power to remain immune from social judgment is tyranny, not justice.  Thus KLY cannot make both claims: (1) "Praise me, blame me . . . I don't care what you think."  (2) "I know this is just."
     How would she (or us) know an act is just?  By intuition?  By instinct?  Morality is social, grounded in the super-ego.  One must first possess language before one can use it to form judgments about our experience.  No single person can invent language.  Language forms us.  We learn what to think & feel about our experience by fitting our experiences to the structures offered by a specific language.  Even if you do not concede that the power here is all on the side of society or the super-ego to stamp out, let us say, a typical Confucian Japanese, most of us will agree that moral judgments are not instinctive or intuitive.  In fact, what we most desire when we are confronted with morally confusing dilemmas, is someone to talk to.  In fact we are rarely satisfied with one confidante's judgment.  We tell the story again & again, soliciting multiple judgments.  Aeschylus suggests that this process is the masterpiece of Justice.  Judged by this emerging civic standard, AG & KLY are equally primitive & repugnant.  KLY as much as AG sought to serve Justice by offering human sacrifice.  How primitive!
1355    the lust for power never dies--

KLY reveals how much her masterpiece is motivated by Oedipal rejection & the subsequent will-to-power:
1466     He brutalized me.  The darling of all
            the golden girls who spread the gates of Troy [for him].

The first play concludes on 2 perceptions.  First, justice is not stark, obvious, nor immediate.  The chorus recognizes:
1588    Each charge meets countercharge.
            None can [authoritatively or absolutely] judge between them.
Justice is an argument, a text, an institutional product.  If we reject this as too arbitrary or too abstract or too ambiguous, then we are stuck with the second perception: power will decide.  When it operates in someone other then ourselves, power without (social) principle is repugnant:  What do we think of KLY when she says:
1427     My heart is steel . . . .  Praise me,
            blame me as you choose.  It's all one [to me].

We feel that she is wrong.  There must be a higher, objective standard of justice than the depths of revenge.  & what do we think of KLY in the last lines of the play?
1707     Let them [the people of the city] howl--
            they're impotent.  You & I have power now.
            We will set the house in order once for all.

We feel smug, knowing how disastrously juvenile this is.  Power will "set the house in order"!  Power (desire) rules the world of the id, the world of dreams, which (above all else) cannot be set in order, because power wants what it wants.  That is to say, power is ambivalent.  I love AG (my husband).  I hate AG.  Neither sentence, by itself, speaks the truth.  If there is to be any order or stability in the city (or the unified personality of a person), morality/justice must be a choral song, not a tyrant's command.
 

Go to the top & click on the next section: Questions.