Studies of the Greek Poets (Vol 2 of 2)

by John Addington Symonds

Or. Give me my bow and arrows, Phœbus' gift,
Wherewith Apollo bade me fight the fiends,
If they should scare me with wild-eyed delirium.
Some god shall feel the fury of man's hand,
Unless ye vanish forth from out my sight!

[He threatens the phantoms.

Hear ye not! See ye not the feathery wings
Of swift, sure-striking shafts, ready to flutter?
Ha! Ha!
Why linger here? Go, sweep with outspread pinions
The windy sky! Hence, and complain of Phœbus!
Woe's me!

[Recovering his reason again.

Why waste I breath, wearying my lungs in vain?
Where am I? From my bed how leaped I—when?
'Midmost the waves once more I see fair weather.
Sister, why weep you? Wherefore veil your head?
I blush to see you partner of my woe,
Blush that a girl should suffer in my sickness.
Nay, do not pine thus, bowed beneath my burden—
All mine;—you said but yea, 'twas I who shed
Our mother's blood: but Loxias I blame,
Who urging me to most unholy deeds
Helped me with words, in act availed me nothing.
Yea, and I think my sire, if, face to face,
I asked him—is it right to slay my mother?
Would lengthen many prayers, beseeching me
Never to draw my sword on her who bare me,
Seeing he might not see the sun again,
And I am doomed to bear this weight of horrors.—
But now unveil your face again, dear sister,
And cease from weeping—even though we be
Ringed round with sorrows. When you see me downcast,
Soothe you my terror and my frenzied soul—
Soothe and caress me; yea, and when you moan,
'Tis mine to stay and comfort as I can:
For these kind services of friends are fair,
But, dear, sad sister, go into the house,
And give your watchful eyes to sleep, and rest;
Take food, and with fair water bathe yourself.
For think, if you should fail me, if by watching
You take some sickness, then we're lost: 'tis you,
You only, are my help; all else is vanished.

El. Not so. With you to die I choose, with you
To live: it is all one; for if you perish,
What shall I do—a woman? How shall I,
Brotherless, friendless, fatherless, alone,
Live on? Nay, if you ask it, I will do
Your will: but, brother, rest you on your bed;
Nor take the terror and the startling fear
For more than phantoms: stay upon the couch.
For though one is not sick, and only seems,
Yet is this pain and weariness to mortals.

This scene, for variety of motive and effect, is not excelled by any passage in ancient tragedy. The scope which it afforded for impressive acting must have been immense, though it is difficult to understand how the fixed masks and conventional dresses of the Greek stage could have been adapted to the violent and frequent changes of mood exhibited by Orestes. Adequately to render the effect of the lyrical dialogue between Electra and the Chorus is very difficult. I have attempted to maintain in some degree the antistrophic pauses, and by the use of rhyme to hint how very near the tragedy of the Greeks approached, in scenes like this, to the Italian opera. The entrance of the Chorus singing "Silence" can only be paralleled by passages in which the spies or conspirators of Rossini or Mozart appear upon the stage, whispering "Zitto! Zitto!" to the sound of subdued music. In the same way Electra's impassioned apostrophe to Night must have been the subject of an elaborate aria.

The scene which I have translated from the Orestes suggests the remark that many Euripidean plays were in fact melodramas. This is true, in a special sense, of the Troades, which must have owed its interest as an acted drama to the music and the mise en scène. It is also worthy of notice that a fair proportion of our extant tragedies are what the Germans call Lustspiele. That is to say, they have no proper tragic ending, and the element of tragedy contained in them consists of perils escaped by the chief actors. Thus the Helena and the Iphigenia in Tauris have a joyful climax. The Orestes closes with a reconciliation of all parties, hurriedly effected, that reminds us of a modern comedy. The Ion is brought to a satisfactory conclusion. The apotheosis of Iphigenia in her play at Aulis eliminates the tragic element, though, regarded as the first part of an eminently tragic series and read by the light of the Electra, this play may be regarded as the prologue to a mighty drama of crime and retribution. The Alcestis is now universally and rightly classed among the plays of a semi-satyric character; and the Andromache is not a genuine tragedy, since the death of Neoptolemus is episodical and has little to do with the previous action. In all these plays the key-note is struck by the Greek phrase μεταβόλη, which signified a revolution brought about within the limits of a certain situation. This probably attracted Euripides to the class of drama in question, since it enabled him to deal freely with character and to concentrate his attention upon the working out of striking incidents. From this point of view the Andromache is so important that it deserves more than a passing notice. The peculiar faculty and the prevailing faults of the poet are alike illustrated in its scenes—his fine and sharp character-making in the chief personages, his powerful rhetoric and subtle special-pleading, his acute remarks on politics and domestic relations, no less than his wilful neglect of dramatic unity and wanton carelessness of construction. Viewed in one light, the Andromache is a bitter satire upon the Spartan type of character, exemplified in the cruel Hermione and the treacherous Menelaus. From yet another standpoint of criticism it may be regarded as a dramatic essay on the choice of wives and the economy of the household. Thus the political and social theorist overlays the artist proper in this play; and yet the language is so brilliant, the pathos is so telling, and the lyrical episodes are so musical that we understand its popularity among the ancients. At the opening of the drama, Andromache, who has taken sanctuary at Phthia in the shrine of Thetis, describes the misery of her situation as bondwoman and concubine to Neoptolemus. Though warmly attached to herself and the father of her son Molossus, he has recently married Hermione, the Spartan princess. Thus the true subject of the play is set before us; for if the Andromache has any unity of conception, we must find it in the "nuptial choice" of Neoptolemus, who, after bringing discord into his household by the jealousy of two women, eventually meets his death as an indirect consequence of this domestic folly. The elegiac lamentations of the Trojan princess and the tender remonstrances of the Chorus, which follow the prologue, are among the most melodious passages of poetry in Euripides. Then the action begins. Neoptolemus is away at Delphi. Hermione and her father, Menelaus, remain at home, and use the opportunity for persecuting Andromache. In a long and agitating scene with Hermione, the heroine shows that she remains a noble lady, of untamed and royal soul, in spite of slavery. She disregards all threats, and maintains her station at the altar, whither she has fled for safety. One menace only makes her flinch. It is that violence may be done to her child Molossus, if she will not move. Now Menelaus enters, and the altercations are repeated, all tending to the same point of proving the odiousness of the Spartan character and the dignity of Andromache. Meanwhile our interest in her misfortunes is gradually heightened; and we tremble for her when at last Menelaus persuades her to leave the sanctuary by assuring her that the only way of saving Molossus is to sacrifice her own life. At this point the pathos of the situation becomes truly Euripidean. We have the spectacle of a tender and helpless mother in the power of a merciless tyrant, obliged to give her own life for her son, not shrinking from the sacrifice, but dreading to leave him unprotected to his future fate amid unkindly aliens. She rises from the altar; and no sooner is she in the hands of Menelaus, than he tells her that his promises were fraudulent. Molossus will be butchered after all. Then follows a great scene of high-wrought feeling. Andromache and Molossus are kneeling before Menelaus praying for their lives, when Peleus, the aged grandfather of Neoptolemus, appears and stays the execution. Euripides has drawn the character of Peleus with something of the heat and fury of the Sophoclean Teiresias. The old king does not spare Menelaus, but makes his tongue a scourge to flay him with invective. The end of the struggle is that Peleus conveys Andromache and the boy safely away; and during the rest of the drama we hear nothing of them. Meantime Hermione, who, in contrast to Andromache's noble firmness and womanhood, is the type of impotentia, as quick to self-abandonment as she was blind in selfish cruelty, begins to reflect upon her husband's anger. What will he say and do if he returns and hears of her intention with regard to Andromache? She is only just prevented from committing suicide, and lies sunk in contemptible remorse, when a new actor appears upon the scene. It is Orestes, to whom Hermione had been affianced at Argos. The treacherous Menelaus preferred to give her to a more fortunate and respectable husband; but Orestes has a mind to wed her still, and has resolved to murder Neoptolemus at Delphi because of the insult put upon himself. He therefore removes Hermione from the palace, and departs for Delphi. Peleus is now left alone upon the stage, to hear of the murder of his grandson from a messenger, and to receive instructions from Thetis as to the future of the realm of Phthia. It will be seen that the construction of this drama is defective, and that it has two separate plots, the one relating to Andromache, the other to Hermione and Orestes, which are only brought into artificial connection by the death of Neoptolemus. The speedy disappearance of Andromache from the scene, followed by the flight of Hermione and the escape of Menelaus to Sparta, leaves Peleus, who is only an accessory character, to bear the whole burden of the climax. Thus the Andromache lacks both internal and external unity, the unity of subject and form. Of material it has plenty, whether we regard the resolutions of fortune effected for the chief actors, or the variety of incidents, or the richness of reflective sentences, or the introduction of new "business" to sustain the flagging interest of the spectators. As a drama, it is second-rate. As a machine for the exhibition of specifically Euripidean qualities, it must rank high among the extant tragedies.

The Iphigenia in Aulide, the Electra, the Orestes, and the Iphigenia in Tauris might be called the Euripidean Oresteia, since each of these plays treats that portion of the Atridan story which Æschylus had handled in his three dramas. We miss the final purification of the hero, and have to infer the climax from the allusions of the Andromache, where, it may be said in passing, the noble type of his character, maintained without interruption in the Electra, the Orestes, and the Tauric Iphigenia, is deformed by a savagery and guile that must have been repellent even to a Greek audience. In the Electra Euripides comes immediately and without doubt consciously into competition with both Æschylus and Sophocles. Like Sophocles, he has painted Electra as of harder nature than her brother. When Orestes, before engaging in his mother's murder, shows signs of yielding to his filial feeling and expresses a doubt about the oracle, she, like Lady Macbeth, reanimates his wavering courage with argument and taunt. But Euripides seems to have felt that it was unnatural in the Sophoclean drama to represent both brother and sister as unterrified by conscience after the successful issue of their plot. The lyrical dialogue between Orestes and Electra, when he returns with their mother's blood upon his hands and sword, is both terribly true to nature and dramatically striking. It needs the appearance of the Dioscuri to confirm them in the faith that they had done a righteous, heaven-appointed deed of justice. By this touch Euripides proved his determination to bring even the most mysterious of legends within the pale of ordinary human experience. The situation in which he places Electra at the opening of the play, outcast from her father's palace and wedded to a farmer, ragged in attire and obliged to do the hard work of her household, is another and perhaps a less justifiable instance of his realism. The stirring of compassion by the exhibition of material misery was one of the points urged against him by Aristophanes; nor is it possible to feel that Electra's squalor adds anything essential to her tragedy. We may, however, be thankful to the poet for the democratic ideal of good manners and true chivalry, irrespective of blood and accidental breeding, which he has painted in his portrait of Electra's husband.[10] Not contented with thus varying the earlier outlines of the legend, Euripides in more than one passage directs a covert criticism against his predecessors. He shows that the tests of his identity offered by Orestes to Electra in the plays of Æschylus and Sophocles were insufficient, and that the murder of Clytemnestra in her palace, surrounded by the guard of a royal household, was improbable. The new motives invented by him for the recognition of Orestes and for the withdrawing of the queen to a place where she could be conveniently despatched are highly ingenious. Yet in the latter circumstance, what he gained in realism he lost in dramatic effect; for it was an incident of appalling terror that Clytemnestra and her paramour should be smitten in those very recesses of the palace where they had slaughtered Agamemnon, beneath the influence of those domestic Furies who, like an infernal revel, occupied the house of Atreus until all the guilty blood was shed. Throughout the Electra we feel that we are in the presence of a critical, realistic, and at the same time romantic, poet, who has embroidered the old material of heroic story with modern casuistry, and has been working less with a view to producing a masterpiece of art than with the object of asserting his ingenuity within the narrow field of an exhausted legend. Had we not the Choëphorœ and the Sophoclean Electra for standards of comparison, it is possible that we might do simpler justice to the creative power of "sad Electra's poet" in this drama. As it is, we can hardly refrain from treating it as a triumph of skill and reflective ability, rather than as a potent work of original genius.