Unit 9

English 201:    Masterpieces of Western Literature

You learned something of Aeschylus's psychology that explains why human beings do the things they do.  They are not puppets controlled by astrological forces.  Something like a Freudian dynamic is at work.  Libido projects or fixates on an object of beauty.  Because libido in the id (pleasure principle, dreams, I-want-what-I-want) is ambivalent, & because objective reality (beauty) cannot be controlled by wishes, love switches polarity to become hate.  Fury & frenzy destroy what was unresponsive to love.  Are we satisfied?  We taste ashes & grieve for our folly.

The same process can be described institutionally.  Motivated by dike to prevent outrageous crimes, we define standards of justice.  When these are egregiously violated, we punish the perpetrator.  Are we satisfied?  Not when the perpetrator is my son.  We feel guilty about serving the hard acts of justice.

The theme of how to build a city is also pursued by contrasting the sanctity of blood relationships (parent-child) with the relationships among biological strangers created by oaths or vows.  These are marriage & citizenship.

Aeschylus is interesting for the powerful images & paradoxes he creates.  For example, he impressionistically describes an experience that is sexual but ends in violence:
(AG) 70    the manhood drains [literally this would be semen],
               the spear snaps in the first blood rites
Aeschylus inverts the genders.  It is not the hymen that breaks, but "the spear snaps."  The blood of the virgin turns out to be male blood.  The loss of childhood innocence turns out to be the loss of life "in the first blood rites that marry Greece & Troy."  What are we imagining here, sex or death, love or hate?  The point is that they are two sides of the same coin.  One libidinal force is alternatively manifest as love or violence.  In any case, you read many such artistic passages in Aeschylus.

You learned something new in regard to dramatic presentation, e.g., when AG steps down from the chariot to reveal, behind him, Cassandra.  Or the litany of first person pronouns that you may not have noticed in a casual reading.  If the director prompts the actor to put a little emphasis on all the "I"s, we can't fail to notice how pompous AG is:
(AG) 795   with justice I salute my Argos & my gods,
................my accomplices who brought me home & won
................my rights . . . .

From Aeschylus you learned about moral complexity -- how a single act can have multiple meanings that do not collapse or become absorbed or annulled by other interpretations.  A faint echo of this are the double-entendres that KLY speaks, e.g., about "our child not being here (AG 867).  She knows that AG thinks that she has Iphigeneia in mind, so that when she reveals that she was supposedly implying Orestes, she can predict that AG will be relieved & therefore that much more in her control.  Or when KLY invites Cassandra in to share in the libations (prayers: AG 1032).  All 3 parties (KLY, Cassandra, & us in the audience) know that KLY means to murder Cassandra as soon as she comes in (to the presumed palace offstage).

We learned that post-traumatic stress syndrome isn't something new. How terrifying is KLY's vivid nightmare of Iphegeneia's death?   AG 205.  This is preceded by the description of the trauma:
(AG) 177       Zeus has led us on to know [our lives],
                    the Helmsman [of fate] lays it down as law
                    that we must suffer, suffer into truth.
                    We cannot sleep, & drop by drop at the heart
                    [we relive] the pain of pain remembered  . . .
                    & we resist, but ripeness comes . . . .

We have studied the first play in Aeschylus' trilogy.  Next week we will consider the remaining two plays.  See you next week.