The Oresteia: Agamemnon, the Libation-Bearers & the Furies (21 page)

- What, drag out our lives? bow down to the tyrants, the ruin of the house?

 

- Never, better to die
on your feet than live on your knees.

 

- Wait,
do we take the cries for signs, prophesy like seers
and give him up for dead?

 

- No more suspicions,
not another word till we have proof.

 

- Confusion
on all sides - one thing to do. See how it stands
with Agamemnon, once and for all we’ll see -

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

Words, endless words I’ve said to serve the moment -
now it makes me proud to tell the truth.
How else to prepare a death for deadly men
who seem to love you? How to rig the nets
of pain so high no man can overleap them?

 

I brooded on this trial, this ancient blood feud
year by year. At last my hour came.
Here I stand and here I struck
and here my work is done.
I did it all. I don’t deny it, no.
He had no way to flee or fight his destiny -

our never-ending, all embracing net, I cast it
wide for the royal haul, I coil him round and round
in the wealth, the robes of doom, and then I strike him
once, twice, and at each stroke he cries in agony-
he buckles at the knees and crashes here!
And when he’s down I add the third, last blow,
to the Zeus who saves the dead beneath the ground
I send that third blow home in homage like a prayer.

 

So he goes down, and the life is bursting out of him -
great sprays of blood, and the murderous shower
wounds me, dyes me black and I, I revel
like the Earth when the spring rains come down,
the blessed gifts of god, and the new green spear
splits the sheath and rips to birth in glory !

 

So it stands, elders of Argos gathered here.
Rejoice if you can rejoice - I glory.
And if I’d pour upon his body the libation
it deserves, what wine could match my words?
It is right and more than right. He flooded
the vessel of our proud house with misery,
with the vintage of the curse and now
he drains the dregs. My lord is home at last.

 

LEADER:

You appal me, you, your brazen words -
exulting over your fallen king.

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

And you,
you try me like some desperate woman.
My heart is steel, well you know. Praise me,
blame me as you choose. It’s all one.
Here is Agamemnon, my husband made a corpse
by this right hand - a masterpiece of Justice.
Done is done.

 

CHORUS:

Woman! - what poison cropped from the soil
or strained from the heaving sea, what nursed you,
drove you insane? You brave the curse of Greece.
You have cut away and flung away and now
the people cast you off to exile,
broken with our hate.

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

And now you sentence me? -
you banish
me
from the city, curses breathing
down my neck? But
he -
name one charge you brought against him then.
He thought no more of it than killing a beast,
and his flocks were rich, teeming in their fleece,
but he sacrificed his own child, our daughter,
the agony I laboured into love
to charm away the savage winds of Thrace.

 

Didn’t the law demand you banish him? -
hunt him from the land for all his guilt?
But now you witness what I’ve done
and you are ruthless judges.
Threaten away!
I’ll meet you blow for blow. And if I fall
the throne is yours. If god decrees the reverse,
late as it is, old men, you’ll learn your place.

 

CHORUS:

Mad with ambition,
shrilling pride! - some Fury
crazed with the carnage rages through your brain -
I can see the flecks of blood inflame your eyes!
But vengeance comes - you’ll lose your loved ones,
stroke for painful stroke.

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

Then learn this, too, the power of my oaths.
By the child’s Rights I brought to birth,
by Ruin, by Fury - the three gods to whom
I sacrificed this man - I swear my hopes
will never walk the halls of fear so long
as Aegisthus lights the fire on my hearth.
Loyal to me as always, no small shield
to buttress my defiance.
Here he lies.
He brutalized me. The darling of all
the golden girls who spread the gates of Troy.
And here his spear-prize . . . what wonders she beheld!-
the seer of Apollo shared my husband’s bed,
his faithful mate who knelt at the rowing-benches,
worked by every hand.
They have their rewards.
He as you know. And she, the swan of the gods
who lived to sing her latest, dying song -
his lover lies beside him.
She brings a fresh, voluptuous relish to my bed !

 

CHORUS:

Oh quickly, let me die -
no bed of labour, no, no wasting illness . . .
bear me off in the sleep that never ends,
now that he has fallen,
now that our dearest shield lies battered -
Woman made him suffer,
woman struck him down.

 

Helen the wild, maddening Helen,
one for the many, the thousand lives
you murdered under Troy, Now you are crowned
with this consummate wreath, the blood
that lives in memory, glistens age to age.
Once in the halls she walked and she was war,
angel of war, angel of agony, lighting men to death.

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

Pray no more for death, broken
as you are. And never turn
your wrath on her, call her
the scourge of men, the one alone
who destroyed a myriad Greek lives—
Helen the grief that never heals.

 

CHORUS:

The
spirit
! - you who tread
the house and the twinborn sons of Tantalus -
you
empower the sisters, Fury’s twins
whose power tears the heart !
Perched on the corpse your carrion raven
glories in her hymn,
her screaming hymn of pride.

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

Now you set your judgement straight,
you summon
him
! Three generations
feed the spirit in the race.
Deep in the veins he feeds our bloodlust -
aye, before the old wound dies
it ripens in another flow of blood.

 

CHORUS:

The great curse of the house, the spirit,
dead weight wrath - and you can praise it!
Praise the insatiate doom that feeds
relentless on our future and our sons.
Oh all through the will of Zeus,
the cause of all, the one who works it all.
What comes to birth that is not Zeus?
Our lives are pain, what part not come from god?

 

Oh my king, my captain,
how to salute you, how to mourn you?
What can I say with all my warmth and love?
Here in the black widow’s web you lie,
gasping out your life
in a sacrilegious death, dear god,
reduced to a slave’s bed,
my king of men, yoked by stealth and Fate,
by the wife’s hand that thrust the two-edged sword.

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

You claim the work is mine, call me
Agamemnon’s wife - you are so wrong.
Fleshed in the wife of this dead man,
the spirit lives within me,
our savage ancient spirit of revenge.
In return for Atreus’ brutal feast
he kills his perfect son - for every
murdered child, a crowning sacrifice.

 

CHORUS:

And you, innocent of his murder?
And who could swear to that? and how? . . .
and still an avenger could arise,
bred by the fathers’ crimes, and lend a hand.
He wades in the blood of brothers,
stream on mounting stream - black war erupts
and where he strides revenge will stride,
clots will mass for the young who were devoured.

 

Oh my king, my captain,
how to salute you, how to mourn you?
What can I say with all my warmth and love?
Here in the black widow’s web you lie,
gasping out your life
in a sacrilegious death, dear god,
reduced to a slave’s bed,
my king of men, yoked by stealth and Fate,
by the wife’s hand that thrust the two-edged sword.

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

No slave’s death, I think-
no stealthier than the death he dealt
our house and the offspring of our loins,
Iphigeneia, girl of tears.
Act for act, wound for wound!
Never exult in Hades, swordsman,
here you are repaid. By the sword
you did your work and by the sword you die.

 

CHORUS:

The mind reels-where to turn?
All plans dashed, all hope! I cannot think . . .
the roofs are toppling, I dread the drumbeat thunder
the heavy rains of blood will crush the house
the first light rains are over -
Justice brings new acts of agony, yes,
on new grindstones Fate is grinding sharp the sword of Justice.

 

Earth, dear Earth,
if only you’d drawn me under
long before I saw him huddled
in the beaten silver bath.
Who will bury him, lift his dirge?

You, can you dare
this
?
To kill your lord with your own hand
then mourn his soul with tributes, terrible tributes -
do his enormous works a great dishonour.
This god-like man, this hero. Who at the grave
will sing his praises, pour the wine of tears?
Who will labour there with truth of heart?

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

This is no concern of yours.
The hand that bore and cut him down
will hand him down to Mother Earth.
This house will never mourn for him.
Only our daughter Iphigeneia,
by all rights, will rush to meet him
first at the churning straits,
the ferry over tears -
she’ll fling her arms around her father,
pierce him with her love.

 

CHORUS:

Each charge meets counter-charge.
None can judge between them. Justice.
The plunderer plundered, the killer pays the price.
The truth still holds while Zeus still holds the throne:
the one who acts must suffer -
that is law. Who can tear from the veins
the bad seed, the curse? The race is welded to its ruin.

 

CLYTAEMNESTRA:

At last you see the future and the truth!
But I will swear a pact with the spirit
born within us. I embrace his works,
cruel as they are but done at last,
if he will leave our house
in the future, bleed another line
with kinsmen murdering kinsmen.
Whatever he may ask. A few things
are all I need, once I have purged
our fury to destroy each other -
purged it from our halls.

 

AEGISTHUS:

O what a brilliant day
it is for vengeance! Now I can say once more
there are gods in heaven avenging men,
blazing down on all the crimes of earth.
Now at last I see this man brought down
in the Furies’ tangling robes. It feasts my eyes -
he pays for the plot his father’s hand contrived.

 

Atreus, this man’s father, was king of Argos.
My father, Thyestes — let me make this clear -
Atreus’ brother challenged him for the crown,
and Atreus drove him out of house and home
then lured him back, and home Thyestes came,
poor man, a suppliant to his own hearth,
to pray that Fate might save him.
So it did.
There was no dying, no staining our native ground
with
his
blood. Thyestes was the guest,
and this man’s godless father -

the zeal of the host outstripping a brother’s love,
made my father a feast that seemed a feast for gods,
a love feast of his children’s flesh.
He cuts
the extremities, feet and delicate hands
into small pieces, scatters them over the dish
and serves it to Thyestes throned on high.
He picks at the flesh he cannot recognize,
the soul of innocence eating the food of ruin - look,

that feeds upon the house! And then,
when he sees the monstrous thing he’s done, he shrieks,
he reels back head first and vomits up that butchery,
tramples the feast - brings down the curse of Justice:
‘Crash to ruin, all the race of Pleisthenes, crash down!’

 

So you see him, down. And I, the weaver of Justice,
plotted out the kill. Atreus drove us into exile,
my struggling father and I, a babe-in arms,
his last son, but I became a man
and Justice brought me home. I was abroad
but I reached out and seized my man,
link by link I clamped the fatal scheme
together. Now I could die gladly, even I-
now I see this monster in the nets of Justice.

 

LEADER:

Aegisthus, you revel in pain - you sicken me.
You say you killed the king in cold blood,
single-handed planned his pitiful death?
I say there’s no escape. In the hour of judgement,
trust to this, your head will meet the people’s
rocks and curses.

 

AEGISTHUS:

You say! you slaves at the oars -
while the master on the benches cracks the whip?
You’ll learn, in your late age, how much it hurts
to teach old bones their place. We have techniques -
chains and the pangs of hunger,
two effective teachers, excellent healers.
They can even cure old men of pride and gall.
Look - can’t you see? The more you kick
against the pricks, the more you suffer.