An Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aiskhylos; Elektra by Sophokles; Orestes by Euripides

In An Oresteia, the classicist Anne Carson combines three different versions of the tragedy of the house of Atreus — A iskhylos’ Agamemnon,...more

In An Oresteia, the classicist Anne Carson combines three different versions of the tragedy of the house of Atreus — A iskhylos’ Agamemnon, Sophokles’ Elektra and Euripides’ Orestes. After the murder of her daughter Iphigeneia by her husband, Agamemnon, Klytaimestra exacts a mother’s revenge, murdering Agamemnon and his mistress, Kassandra. Displeased with Klytaimestra’s actions, Apollo calls on her son, Orestes, to avenge his father’s death with the help of his sister Elektra. In the end, Orestes is driven mad by the Furies for his bloody betrayal of family. Condemned to death by the people of Argos, he and Elektra must justify their actions — or flout society, justice and the gods.Carson’s translation combines contemporary language with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up this ancient tale of vengeance to a modern audience and revealing the essential wit and morbidity of the original plays.Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches Ancient Greek for a living. She is currently a professor of classics, comparative literature and English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.In this innovative rendition of The Oresteia, the poet, translator, and essayist Anne Carson combines three different visions—Aischylos’ Agamemnon, Sophokles’ Elektra, and Euripides’ Orestes—giving birth to a wholly new experience of the classic Greek triumvirate of vengeance. After the murder of her daughter Iphegenia by her husband Agamemnon, Klytaimestra exacts a mother’s revenge, murdering Agamemnon and his mistress, Kassandra. Displeased with Klytaimestra’s actions, Apollo calls on her son, Orestes, to avenge his father’s death with the help of his sister Elektra. In the end, Orestes, driven mad by the Furies for his bloody betrayal of family, and Elektra are condemned to death by the people of Argos, and must justify their actions—signaling a call to change in society, a shift from the capricious governing of the gods to the rule of manmade law.Carson’s accomplished rendering combines elements of contemporary vernacular with the traditional structures and rhetoric of Greek tragedy, opening up the plays to a modern audience. In addition to its accessibility, the wit and dazzling morbidity of her prose sheds new light on the saga for scholars. Anne Carson’s Oresteia is a watershed translation, a death-dance of vengeance and passion not to be missed."Carson calls her book An Oresteia—as opposed to the Oresteia. This isn’t the trilogy of Aeschylus. Rather, the book consists of plays by three different authors: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Electra, Euripides’ Orestes. Each takes up some aspect of the House of Atreus, whose members, relations and dependents included not only Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and Helen, but Orestes, Electra, Menelaus, Cassandra . . . Many of them, predictably, came to a bad end. Half a century separates Agamemnon from Orestes, and Carson, who supplies an introduction to each play, offers interesting speculation about how shifts in tone and perspective may reflect developments in Athenian history. Perhaps equally striking, however, is the continuity in her trilogy. In American poetry, anyway, 50 years is a long time (it would bridge the gulf between, say, Robert Frost and John Ashbery), and Carson’s intelligent compilation—anOresteia—attests to our enduring fascination in watching the highest-born families laid low."—Brad Leithauser, The New York Times Book Review"Carson calls her book An Oresteia—as opposed to the Oresteia. This isn’t the trilogy of Aeschylus. Rather, the book consists of plays by three different authors: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Electra, Euripides’ Orestes. Each takes up some aspect of the House of Atreus, whose members, relations and dependents included not only Agamemnon and Clytemnestra and Helen, but Orestes, Electra, Menelaus, Cassandra . . . Many of them, predictably, came to a bad end. Half a century separates Agamemnon from Orestes, and Carson, who supplies an introduction to each play, offers interesting speculation about how shifts in tone and perspective may reflect developments in Athenian history. Perhaps equally striking, however, is the continuity in her trilogy. In American poetry, anyway, 50 years is a long time (it would bridge the gulf between, say, Robert Frost and John Ashbery), and Carson’s intelligent compilation—anOresteia—attests to our enduring fascination in watching the highest-born families laid low."—Brad Leithauser, The New York Times Book Review"Carson creates a new and very different resolution to the questions posed by Agamemnon's homecoming and murder. Her Oresteia includes only Aeschylus' Agamemnon, juxtaposed with plays by two younger Athenian contemporaries based on the same myth: Sophocles' Electra and Euripides' Orestes . . . A brilliant reimagining of Aeschylus' trilogy, which is far darker and more ambiguous in its resolutions than the original."—Emily Wilson, The Nation"Carson, a Canadian poet who teaches at the University of Michigan, is one of my favorites. Most people have heard of The Iliad and The Odyssey. Far fewer know the Oresteia, a story cycle that follows Agamemnon home after the Trojan War. Tragedy, blood, and caustic human blindness ensue, landing his son Orestes in an impossible dilemma. Carson translates one play each from Aeschylus (Agamemnon), Sophocles (Elektra), and Euripides (Orestes), for a brand-new cycle. Her translations are in this moment's English, drolly modern even as they remain faithful to the plays. This is not the condensed, wry idiom of Carson's personal poetry. Instead, she loosens things up, goes for the conversational, with language to work well on stage . . . A new Oresteia with rasp, sass, and pungency."—John Timpane, The Philadelphia Inquirer"It's the go-to myth: Soldier comes home from the Trojan War, gets hacked to death by wife; the kids go bananas. At the very dawn of theater, Agamemnon, Klytaimestra and matricidal siblings Orestes and Elektra were the fodder for the ancient Greeks' greatest tragedians. And now, the scholar-poet Anne Carson, at the prompting of theater director Brian Kulick, has woven a new tapestry out of the old threads, braiding together Aiskhylos' cool-headed Agamemnon, Sophokles' psychodrama Elektra and Euripides' neurotic Orestes. Why retranslate these tragedies and stick them in the same book? Perhaps because this makes for a juicier trilogy than Aiskhylos' extant one, which ends with a sober-minded trial (The Eumenides) instead of Euripides' punch-drunk kidnapping scheme. (If Aiskhylos is Ingmar Bergman, Euripides is the Coen brothers.) As a theatrical exercise, it's daring and cool . . . Carson's informal style works like gangbusters in the Orestes. Reading her idiom-rich renditions, you can bet your sandals that somewhere a moldering Euripides is hugging himself with glee . . . Carson is a master in full enjoyment of her powers, and the individual pieces can be searing, funny and bizarre."—Helen Shaw, Time Out New York "To those who would doubt the capacity of any 21st century poet to follow Ezra Pound's first commandment to 'make it new,' a constant, ever-jolting answer is provided by Anne Carson, poet, essayist, translator, professor of Greek. There is simply no such thing as an Anne Carson book that doesn't present us with something new under the sun. What we have here is, in response to a request by Brian Kulick, artistic director of New York City's Classic Stage company, to complete, as a trilogy a kind of Oresteia she'd already started with a translation of Sophokles' Elektra in 1987 and Euripides' Orestes in 2006 . . . And wait until you read the new beginning of her all-star Greek tragedians' trilogy—the newly translated Agamemnon of Aiskhylos complete with such newly coined compound words as 'dayvisible' and 'dreamvisible' and 'manminded' and 'godaccomplished'—not to mention, in the intro, references to painter Francis Bacon (subject of a 2007 retrospective at the Albright-Knox Gallery) who 'makes his painting as Kassandra makes her prophecies, by removing a boundary in himself.' Anne Carson is not one to genuflect at boundaries. This is NEW."—The Buffalo News"Imagine: only four of Shakespeare’s plays survive. The rest were destroyed by the Puritans or burned in the Great Fire. Hamlet is one of the survivors. It becomes so universal a myth that it is rewritten by every great playwright who follows. Then imagine someone today producing a Hamlet with the first two acts by the Bard, III and IV by Ibsen, and V by Pirandello. Welcome to Anne Carson’s Oresteia. Carson takes Agamemnon, the first of Aeschylus’s three plays about the house of Atreus, and follows it with Sophocles’s Elektra and Euripides’s Orestes. It’s a wonderful concept: the three great Tragedians of classical Athens collaborating for the first time, two and half millennia later. Add to the mix her bold and idiosyncratic translation of the plays, and you have a truly fresh take on th...   less