Eleou kai Fobou

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Misotheoi: Agememnon by Aeschylus line 1069ff

I have compassion for her, I am not angry.
Come suffering one, off this desolate carriage retire
And to the new yoke submit yourself.

Ot ot ot otoy popoy da!
Opollon Opollon!

Why all this breaking into lament about Loxias?
For he is not pleased with lamentations.

Woe Woe Woe Woe Shame and Sorrow Earth!
Apollo Apollo!

Again these words of ill omen
To the god she calls.
The one not present in weeping

O Apollon, Apollon
Guardian of the ways.
You scour me. And utterly
You destroy me this second time.

She shall chant visions as fitting her distress.
For divine passion ever flows her enslaved soul.

O Apollon, Apollon
Guardian of the ways, you destroy me.
Ah! where have you brought me? Under what roof?

The house of Atreus, if you cannot perceive,
I tell you: and you can not say I lie.

Misotheoi!
A God-hating house
Many are aware evil beheading of kin.
A charnel house, a bowl for catching the blood
Of slaughtered children.

Fitting keen dog sensing female guest.
She seeks and so discovers murder.

Bearing witness to this I come to know:
Lament butchered new-born
Roasted flesh Father served eaten.

Rumours your prophetic learning
Reach us. A prophet we do not desire.

Oh! Sorrow! What does she intend?
Some young great pain,
Great evil she intends.
Intolerable beloved, implacable, boldness.
Far off help stands aloof.

Of these oracles, ignorant I am;
Others I come to know:
All of the city sings out.

Alas! Wretched, this she will fulfil,
Her bed-partner husband
Bath making bright - How I see the end
Speed - for this it will be:
She holds out her hand - her hand stretching out.

Not yet is brought together: no more than riddles
A film covers the eye,
Obscure decrees of God.
I am at a loss.

Woe! Sorrow! What is this appearance?
The net of the grave?
By the net of the bed-partner sharing guilt,
Stained they are with blood.
Standing and instantiate kin cry out!
Fit only for stoning.

How now cries Strife - this building up urged,
Set upright? Not for me a clean reckoning.
Upon my heart blood runs sallow
Still. In equal time fallen,
And arrived together in life
Plunging the glow sunset:
Swift and reckless
Sin becomes.

Ah! Ah! Look! See there!
Keep away the bull the mate:
In woven robes
Black-horned seizing cunning work
She strikes in the cauldron.
Slaying by treachery.
This act, you I show.

I can not boast to understand
The highest from god spoken sign.
Being evil compare this.
Pure airs of pure voiced
Pour Gods from heaven
How much I misunderstand?
Of and through the evil
Wordy arts singing prophetic
Fear they learn and carry.
Oh! Oh! Oh me! Suffering Ill-fated fortune:
I cry out, cry aloud my suffering.
Why this place wretched
Have you me carried?
Am I to with him die? For what end?

She is, her mind distracted
Possessed of a God.
With him you cry aloud.
A song - no song,
And a nimble insatiate cry, alas!
Humming tawny suffering spirits
Calling out Itun, Itun.
Moans abounding on all sides
Drear nightingale sorrow.

Sorrow! Sorrow!
My clear fate as the songstress
Thrown about her the feathered form
The Gods sweet span of life
A weeping without:
My end, a cleaving two-edged spear.

From whence this rushing
Gushing god bearing
Inspiration you have?
Vain human misery.
Whence the frightful
Unutterable cries
You chant?
High-pitched custom.
What is the boundary
Horizon of this marvellous
Road ill-omened.

---

Afterword

If Aristotle was right and tragedy is imitative language to provoke Pity and Fear then there are few better examples of this than the prophecy scene of Kassandra in Agamemnon. If the Philosopher was wrong than all we have are whirling words, and the scene is stunning none the less.

For reasons that we need not discuss I had only a week to translate this scene. As my skills are the skills of tyro, in that week, which really turned out to be only two days, I was not able to translate the entire scene. So this excerpt starts with the Choros asking Kassandra to leave her chariot, and ends with her first vision of her own death.

There are some interesting points in this piece. There is the pun made from the name of the god Apollo and the folk etymology that the god's name is derived from the verb Apollumi, which means to kill, or to destroy utterly. Apollo is called by his epithet Loxias, which may mean obscure, from the word Loxos, literally crosswise, and extended metaphorically to mean ambiguous. Obviously from the God's role as a oracle, one that give ambiguous answers. There is also some puns around the name Klutaemnestra , which is used to mean she is renowned for her intentions, for her plans.

The house of Atreus was a cursed house, a house of slaughter and rust. The family was founded by Tantalus, who for some obscure reason decided to test the knowledge of the gods by killing and cooking up his son Pelops. All the gods rejected the offering,. Demeter, as she was distraught at the abduction of her daughter ate the shoulder of the poor child. The gods damned Tantalus to suffer in Tartarus, while the son was resurrected with his shoulder replaced with an ivory prosthesis. He later killed his father in law by sabotaging his chariot.

Pelops and Hippodamia had two sons: Atreus and Thyestes. Thyestes had an affair with Aerope, the wife of his brother. In revenge Atreus cooked up the sons of the adulterer and served them to Thyestes. Exiled in shame Thyestes consulted, and was told by an oracle to father a child with his daughter, and the resulting son would kill Atreus. Aegisthus, the son, did kill Pelops. Pelops had two sons himself, Agamemnon and Menalaus. Agamemnon later sacrificed his daughter Iphegenia to allow the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. This understandably annoyed his wife Klutaemnestra , who in revenge killed Agamemnon on his return from Troy. This being the subject of the Aeschylus play which is the source of this scene. Later Orestes kills his mother and is harried by the Furies. In the end there is a trial overseen by Athena, in which he is acquitted.

A horrible series of events, but in metaphorical terms we see the movement from darkness to the light, form blood feud to the rule of laws. The Erinyes (Furies) move from being the avengers to becoming the Eumenides, the kindly ones. So showing the movement to the rule of law. The trilogy would start in the early morning darkness, and end in the bright light of the afternoon , so making clear this movement from darkness of blood feud to the light of the law.

With all this drama and excitement how could I resist? This translation is not the best ever, but it conveys the main points, and as it was written for an afternoon of poetry and jazz at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart I thought it best to keep it relatively short. Any failings or errors are completely my own. And I used the translation of Browning as a guide, as some passages are obscure though corruptions of the text, and my own weak skills in Ancient Greek.

The Sons of the Son of Kronos

Sing, Muse, with your high clear voice
Of Kastor and Polydukes.

The sons of Tyndraeus,
Fathered of Olympian Zeus.

Brought into being august Leda
Below the crest of Taygetes.

With treachery she was subdued
Cloud shrouded son of Kronous.

Hail! Sons of Tyndraeus
Riders of swift horses.

---

Damazo - a transliteration of the Greek word used in this hymn to
describe Zeus stealthy conquest of Leda. This word also is used to
describe the taming of a horse, the submission of a young wife, it is
also used to describe the captured enemy, or the young men in society
who do not yet have authority. Many more coy translations will use
some sort of euphemism. Or better some sort of self censorship. But we
should call a spade a spade or in this case let us call a rapist a
rapist. We are all familiar with the story of Zeus in the guise of a
swan 'seducing' the Lacedamonian queen Leda. Most laws in the modern
world see using disguise to have sex means that consent can not be
given, and therefore can be prosecuted as rape.

After this event the story becomes more confused, and unpleasant. One
tradition has it that Leda went home and made love (was this a case of
spousal rape?) to her husband Tyndraeus. From this Leda 'gave birth'
to an egg. Adding to the confusion. Most agree that after this day
Leda 'gave birth' to an egg. Some traditions say this egg was only
with the Dioskouri, others that it also contained the sisters as well,
Helen and Klytaemnestra. This explains the strange situation in the
poem where the Disokouri are described as beings sons of Zeus, as well
being sons of Tyndraeus.

The Disokouri were popular heros among the ancient Greeks, as they are
shown as being friends and protectors of mortals. They often appear to
sailors as St. Elmo's Fire, or to landlubbers as bees. In this hymn
they are described as being riders of swift horses. The brothers, who
still exist in our culture as the foundation of the zodiac symbol
Gemini, were very popular. So much that many families would leave
plates set at the table for the twin sons of the son of Kronos.

The tale of Leda and the Swan has been popular with artists, which is
why I was able to find a Cezanne painting of the rape, and well a
including this link to a Yeats poem on theme. Of course Yeats is
better able to tell this story than my own poor efforts.

http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/865/

The Old Men of Argos Huddle in Terror

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From Aeschylus tragedy Agamemnon, Line 1020.

Over the weekend there were two football grand finals on television. On the Saturday Geelong and Collingwood struggled in a close run thing for three quarters until the Cats skipped away and won the game. On the Sunday Manly defeated the Warriors. On the Sunday night, for reasons which had nothing to do with football, I was unable to sleep. Having not much else to do, I read the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. More exciting than football, the creative spark forced me from my bed. I am not fluent in my translations, one could compare my technique to a person attempting to solve a cryptic crossword. My lack of skill or fluency does not stop me, for my main goal is to learn and to gain fluency. In this instance the only way to learn is to read.

This piece is from Agamemnon, the first part of the Oresteia. A wonderful, brutal, strange and powerful work. Agamemnon has just returned home from the long war against Troy. Home to Argos and to his wife Klutaimnestra, who has set herself on killing him. She feels she is in the right, as he sacrificed (murdered) their daughter Iphigeneia. She was sacrificed to allow the Greeks to launch their campaign against Troy. For ten years the war dragged on, and for ten years Klutaimnestra, the wife of Agamemnon and mother of Iphigeneia, nurtured her hatred and desire for vengeance. Who could blame her? Even the old men of Argos agree 'blame is present against blame, difficult it is to judge. He endures who is enduring, the killer has to pay.'

Using flattering words, a warm bath, and a krater of drugged wine, wielding her sword and a net, Klutaimnestra rolled out the wine dark carpet for the returning hero. She stabbed him twice and killed him. Splattered with blood she plunged the sword a third thrust to convince herself that the deed had been done.

This passage is from one of the songs of the Chorus of Old Men. The old men sense that something is amiss, but unlike the audience they do not know what is to come to pass. They are fearful for Agamemnon as he strides across the barbaric carpets. He seems to be taking on the manners of the East, of the Trojan king Priam. Klutaimnestra appeals to his vanity by telling him that the feet of a hero should not touch the dirt. The old men see this an affront. The red carpets flow from the palace doors and across the stage. The Phoenician carpets call to mind the wine dark blood which has flowed across generations of the House of Atreus and which will soon flow again. The old men are scared and they sing a long passage, of which I cut out a bit to make a (hopefully) nice little poem. In ripping fifteen or so lines out of a much larger poem I can only do violence to the original, but I have endeavoured to minimise the harm.

Robert Browning is not much spoken abut these days, but he was insightful in many ways. I agree with him in the spellings that he uses, for instance I much prefer Klutaimnestra to Clytaemnestra, Kassandra to Cassandra. He did some very literal translations from the Greek. He did this in opposition to current ideas about the beauty of the Greek language. In this he showed ancient Greek to be a highly flexible, and at the same time sparse language. This sparseness, which is increased by the heightened language of the tragic form, is a peg that allows the translator to hang any garment desired, be it gaudy or plain. I think this was the point that Browning tried to make in his, even to this day, despised translation of Agamemnon.

As a example let us look at the last line of this passage (line 1034), in Greek it reads, Zopuroumenas frenos. From the dictionary we find out that Zopuroumenas means kindle into flame and frenos meaning midriff, or breast and by extension heart, mind, sense etc. (As an aside Zopuroumenas can also mean kindle into life, as in the quickening of the embryo.) In Browning we get 'the enkindling mind.' From E. D. A. Morshead we get 'my soul is prophecy and flame' which Robert Fagles in turn translates as '...and the brain is swarming, burning.' Which is best? Which is most correct? Which is nearest to the mind of Aeschylus?

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The Old Men of Argos Huddle in Terror.

Once upon the earth
One's life blood black.
Can anyone with charms
Sing it back?

Once there was one who rightly knew
How to call back the dead.
Fearful Zeus struck him
Thunderbolt dead.

Had not the deathless
Arrayed our portion
Against another,
Bright laughter
Would burst forth.
Outracing
My heart.

Now
However
The lower gloom
Beneath the darkness.
Sick at heart,
I murmur and grumble.
Unable to hope
For that opportune day
To unravel, and so
Bring to an end.

Kindled my heart leaps into flame!

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The pic is from http://www.theoi.com/image/F6.1Artemis.jpg