Your unpublished thesis, submitted for a degree at Williams College and administered by the Williams College Libraries, will be made available for research use. You may, through ths form, provide instructions regarding copyright, access, dissemination and reproduction of your .thesis.

-The faculty advisor to the student writing the thesis wishes to claim joint authorship in this work.

In each section, please check the ONE statement that reflects your wishes.

I. PUBLICATIONAND QUOTATION: LITERARYPROPERTY RIGHTS A student author automatically owns the copyright to hidher work, whether or not a copyright symbol and date are placed on the piece. The duration of U.S. copyright on a manuscript--and Williams theses are considered manuscripts--is the life of the author plus 70 years.

-I/we do not choose to retain literary property rights to the thesis, and I wish to1 assign them immediately to Williams College. Sclccting tilii; option will assign copyrighi ro the Col!egc. This in no way prcc!ildcs a st~rdcnt author fiorii late; pub1ishir;g hiither work; tllc tuclerit \voulri, howcue;. tteed to contzct the Archives ii~ra perr-nis.ijt>nSonn. hrchiv~:.; \voulti be free in this case to also gr';int pci?~?issio~l to anotlrcr i-esearriier to put-)iir;hsxnaii sectior~sftonr tile thesic. Rsreiy wo~rlc!there be ~IIJ:reasoil fhr thc Ari:llivi:s to grant permission to itnothcr parry ro pi~hlisl~the thesi3 in its rntiroly; ii..such a citustion :I~OSC,tile Archives woirid he irr touch with thc author to let them know that such a i-ccjircs?hati been ~n:aric.

-Ilwe wish to retain literary property rights to the thesis for a period of three years, at which time the literary property rights shall be assigned to Williams College. Sclci.iing rhii clption gives ihtr author :a feu: yc;ils io m;rkc i.xcIirsive use 1-r-frhethesis in up-cuniijlg projxts: articles; later rcqcarch, ctc.

I/we wish to retain literary property rights to the thesis for a period of 5 years, or until my death, whichever is the later, at which time the literary property rights shall be assigned to Williams College. y..i... . . L ~~tillgttiis option a!low.; the ;juthirr grc;,t flcltibili~yin estenciing c-rr .;tiorie?iir:g etie tirrlc of his/hcr a~itorilaticcopyright pcriod. .Sc?ri?e ctudcnts are interested in using tireir thesiv in g3d~atii schuti'i work. In this case; it .;\;onld makc scrisc i'nr Ihcrn ttt critcr a ntlnibc-r such as '10 years' in tile blank: and line oirl Ihc wnrtls 'or until rriy death. wl~ichcvcris the iakr.' In arty event.. it Is easier for tlic Ar-chivcc ii) adn~inistcrcopyright on a ~nantrccripiif thc period ends with tllc indivirlual's cicath--our staff won't havc to search for cslatc execnrorr in this case--but this is e:~tiri:ly irp to e;i::h stirdent.

11. ACCESS The Williams College Libraries are investigating the posting of theses online, as well as their retention in hardcopy.

__x Williams College is granted permission to maintain and provide access to my thesis in hardcopy and via the Web both on and off campus. Sdc~t~ngtR~c opt~on ‘kilos le.~,,irillcrc ,irousd tl-e uoild to ziiceic tho drgifal \cl\ion of youn work.

SON, HUGHES, HEANEY: THREE VARIATIONS ON AESCHYLUS' ORESYTEi'A

BY

Caitlin M. Hanley

David H. Porter, Advisor

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Classics

WILLIAMS COLLEGE

Williarnstown, Massachusetts

01 May 2007 To David H. Porter Table of Contents

I. Introduction

11. Aeschylus' Oresteia

111. Harrison's Oresteia

IV.Hughes' Oresteia

V. Heaney's "Mycenae Lookout"

VI. Conclusion

VII. Bibliography I. Introduction

During my junior year abroad at Oxford University, a Classics and Englislh department course offering entitled "Classical Reception in Twentieth Century

English Poetry" immediately attracted my interest. As a Classics and English double- major, the opportunity to link my passion for both ancient and modem litera~turelieft me with no doubts as to the term's tutorial selection. My background in Classics has enriched my reading of English literature, and the more I read, the more I appreciate the classical influence on our modem literary traditions. More than that, my study of

Classics has instilled in me a firm belief that life is a series of translations - links to the past are ever pertinent to both the present and future. Connecting these ancient and modem works was, for me, a constant reminder of the process of reception.

Closely examining the modem adaptations and versions reinforced the intimate experience of reading and writing. Each modem writing displayed the multi-faceted richness of the ancient work as every modem author extracted different elements for their modem versions.

As I approached the text of Aeschylus' Oresteia for the first time, I was particularly stunned by the richness of his language, and the radical variatio~nson this text that modern adaptations by Tony Harrison, Ted Hughes, and Seamus Heaney play are a testimony to this richness. Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes, both vrrriting for actual stage productions of the Oresteia, provide translations that closely follow

Aeschylus' text and plot line. Harrison produces a more dense, compound-laden

English that is reminiscent of Aeschylus' Greek, whereas Hughes' translation adopts a language more transparent than Aeschylus' but nonetheless that captures Aeschylus' musicality and metaphorical richness. Seamus Heaney breaks away from the play form entirely to create a five-part poem "Mycenae Lookout." Employing images and themes from the Oresteia, Heaney freely writes about the political turmoil in his modem Ireland. A close look at these three texts displays the unique way in1 which each author represents Aeschylus in the twentieth century.

The variations in these three modem versions of Aeschylus' Oresteia provoke several questions that I will set out to explore in the following paper. The modem works themselves present initial contrasts, as I will be working with two plays and one poem, two authors who have studied Greek and one who has not, and two authors who write towards an ending of purification that goes well beyond Aeschylus and one who more closely follows the resolution achieved in Aeschylus' text. Among the questions these differences raise for me are the following: What aspects of Aeschylus does each modem author retain, expand, or omit? How does a translator's kinowledge of ancient Greek influence a translation? How does a modem author's change in genre influence the work's reading? II. Aeschylus' Oresteia

I. Aeschylus and his Oresteia: "I Speak to Those who understand...")'

When approaching the Oresteia for the first time, one cannot help but be stunned by the density of language and the richness of imagery. One can read and re-read the text of the Oresteia only to be endlessly mystified by the complexity and infxicacy of the text, as if each rereading were like approaching the text for the first time. It is no surprise then that Aeschylus has been a source of inspiration for so many modern translations and adaptations. For one thing, Aeschylus takes the Greek language t~o new heights through his innovative compounding, persistent alliteration, and complex and often inverted imagery. Aeschylus inserts images in the very first lines of the watchman speech which both persist and transform through the end of the Eumenides.

In the following, I will highlight specific aspects of Aeschylus' language anid imagery especially pertinent to my readings of Harrison, Heaney, and Hughes. The brevity of the section will not do justice to the complexities of Aeschylus' Oresteia, but it will provide a framework for subsequent discussion of the modem works. I will lexamjne three particular aspects of Aeschylus' trilogy: A) his blood imagery, B) his treatment of gender issues, and C) his move towards resolution (or lack thereof).

11. Language in Aeschylus: "For an Ox Stands Huge Upon my T'ongueV2

Throughout the Oresteia, Aeschylus astonishes the audience with the rich

spectacle of his language, a density and compactness apparent from the outset of the

1Aeschylus, Ag. 37. Unless otherwise noted, the translations cited in this thesis I take from Aeschylus I: Oresteia. Ed. David Greene and Richmond Lattimore (Chicago 1953). ~~.35 trilogy. In the very first lines of the watchman speech, Aeschylus compresse:simages that will unfold and expand throughout the trilogy:

(I ask the gods some respite from the weariness of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake elbowed upon the Atreidae's roof dogwise to mark the grand processionals of all the stars of night burdened with winter and again with heat for men, dynasties in their shining blazoned on the air, these stars, upon their wane and when the rest arise. I wait; to read the meaning in that beacon light, blaze of fire to carry out of Troy the rumor, and outcry of its capture; to such end a lady's male strength of heart in its high confidence ordains. Now as this bed stricken with night and drenched with dew I keep, nor ever with kind dreams for company: Since fear in sleeps place stands forever at my head Against strong closure of my eyes, or any rest.. .).

In these first fifteen lines, we are immediately introduced to images and motifs that will unfold throughout the trilogy: KUVOS (images of the watchdog, hunting,%nd pursuit), bufiyup~v(images of processionals, assemblies, and meetings), hapnpoljs,

AaClnados, kpnphov~as,odppohov, aby:v nup& (light shining out of

darkness), gvdpooov (dew), ~uviv(bed, sexuality), and 8uv&o~as(power)

The same opening speech also exemplifies another feature of Aeschylus'

language, compounding: bpfiyup~v(Ag. 4), &vdp6pouAos (Ag. 1I), vUKT;T~~~~~;O~

Heath 1999. (Ag. 12). Aeschylus constantly takes the liberty of creating new words, mol~rlingthe

Greek language to precisely pinpoint a description. E.R. Earp's statistics suggest .the frequency of Aeschylus' compounding throughout the trilogy:4

Agamemnon: Dialogue: 107 in 876 lines = 1 in 8.2 lines Lyric: 171 in 797 lines = 1 in 4.8 lines

Choephori: Dialogue: 64 in 624 lines = 1 in 10.06 lines Lyric: 69 in 452 lines = 1 in 6.5 lines

Eumenides: Dialogue: 85 in 642 lines = 1 in 7.5 lines Lyric: 59 in 405 lines = 1 in 6.8 lines

Aeschylus employs various degrees of compounding: compounds that are allready

familiar in Greek, compounds commonly used in tragedy, compounds created from

familiar bases, compounds with less familiar roots, and compounds in which one or both roots are new.5 In particular, we encounter numerous Greek words that make

their debut in the text of ~esch~lus,~e.g., in just the opening sections of the

Agamemnon: txvbp6pouhos (Ag. 1 I), vu~~inhay~o~(Ag. 12), o-rpo@ob~vG

(Ag.51), hayobai-rqs (Ag. 123), nahl'vop-ros (Ag. 152), a;oXp61.rq~~S(~!g.22:2).7

W.B. Stanford attributes five reasons for Aeschylus' coinage of words: "to suit his

metres, to elevate his style (e.g. to avoid the common place or distasteful), to

emphasize significant words, to condense images and scenes, to express an original,

and previously undescribed concept or sensation."' Aeschylus' extensive

4 Earp 1949, 6-7. 5 Earp 1949, 13-14. 6 Stanford 1942, 61. "No less than 1100 words occur for the first time in extant Greek in six of his plays (excluding P.V.), about 500 in iambics and 600 in lyrics." Earp 1949,13. 8 Stanford 1942, 61. compounding inspires both Tony Harrison and Seamus Heaney, who transfer this compounding into English, as we will observe in subsequent chapters.

Another distinct feature of Aeschylus' language is his use of alliteration throughout the trilogy. Aeschylus' alliteration promotes musicality and rhythmicality throughout the text that complement his imagery, e.g.: TO pi p~paiws PA&$apa owppahfiv ~TVW(~g.15)' 610pdV0~ ~160~~ KC(\ 61o~jTT~pou (~g. 43), ITTE~~~G~V

~ET~O?DIV'E~EOOO~EVOI (Ag. 52)' K~ITAOIOI TTE~~TTET~~TI~VT\6~~6 / TT~OVWTT~~

(Ag.233)' 'Apaxva?ov d~nos,ao-ruy~i-rovas o~onas (Ag. 309)' n6vo1 nd~vo~ ndh~os6)\0p~\;as TO nav (Ag. 1167), bq~a6' iv0' Ena~o'in' ;k~~pyao~(ivo~s

(~g.1379)' upp pa -ri)ppa<~~>-rEIoal (~g.1430), ~pinouoa;noia Sup+opij npoo~~~aow;1 ndr~pa 6dpo101 nfipa npoo~upfiviov; (Cho. 12-13), no? 8fi~a

~pav~:,no? ~a~ahi5~1(Cho. 1075)' T&VTE~~EVfi8q TWV~E~EOW~T~J 66p~3v (Ezrm.

60)' n&pino&, n~piKapa. (Eum. 165), and avat "Anohho~,av'ra~ouoov 'Ev

pip^^. (Eum. 198). There are occasions when Aeschylus' alliteration clearly relates to the text, as for example in the "s" alliteration in lines 958-959 of the Agamevnnon in

Clytaemestra's speech : EOTIV 0ahaooa, iris 66 vlv ~a~aopia~~;/~pi+ouoa nohhfis nop+i)pas iaapyupov (Ag. 958-959). In choosing to emphasize the sigma sound in Clytaemestra's speech, Aeschylus perhaps suggests the hissing sound of a snake - an image that runs throughout the trilogy.

As mentioned earlier and as many critics have noted, Aeschylus' text is notable for the prevalence and complexity of its imagery. A characteristic example comes in the predatory images of the very first choral ode: *. TFTEPW~WV)E~ET~O?GIV )EPEOO~~EVOI, G~pv~o-rripq novov bp~ahixwvbhkoav-r~s (Ag. 49-54).

(Their cry of the war went shrill from the heart, as eagles stricken in agony for the young perished, hgh fiom the nest eddy and circle to bend and sweep of the wings' stroke, lost far below the fledglings, the nest, and the tendance.)

The prevalence of bird imagery is one means through which Aeschylus symbolizes the role reversals of characters throughout the trilogy. Whereas the above im.age of fledglings casts Agamemnon and Menelaus as wronged victims, the subsequ-ent image shows them as predators attacking the innocent and defenseless:

GVb KE~~IV~S,8 T')E$OTIV &pY6s, 4aviv-r~~'i~~ap p~haepwv XEPOS)EK Goprnah~ou napnpin~o~s)Ev ;Gpa~a~v, POOKO~EVOIAayivav, 'Ep1~6pova@iPIIa~~ yivvav, PAapiv~aAolaeiwv Gpdpwv (Ag. 114-20).

(Kings of birds to the kings of the ship, one black, one blazed with silver, clear seen by the royal house on the right, the spear hand, they lighted watched by all tore a hare, ripe bursting with young unborn yet, stayed fiom her last fleeting running.)

By portraying the ominous fate of Agamemnon, predator and murderer of the young and innocent ~~hi~enia,~the chorus displays how the sacrificer becomes the sacrificed. The images invoked here will remain prevalent throughout the Oresteilz:

Lebeck 1971,15. The birds circling in the upper air (GTT~TOI,51) inhabit that airy realm which is the: special province of the gods (i;naTos . . .ZE&, 55-56), like resident aliens (TWV~E~ETO~K~V, 57). Their cries are heard, their loss avenged by Zeus Xenios (61-62), the god to whom an alien prays. Similarly, at the close of the trilogy Athena, representative of Zeus, heeds the Furies' lamentation. They who previously dwelt in the sunless region sundered from the gods (Eum. 385-387) take their place as resident aliens (T~?G~E~ETO~KOIS, Eum. 1011) among the cult of Athens (Lebeck 14-15).

Such interweaving of images, beginning in the Agamemnon and continuing through the Eumenides, is a characteristic feature of Aeschylus, especially in the Ovesteia.

Use of inversion of imagery is frequent in Greek tragedy, but it too is especially characteristic of the Oresteia: "The imagery of such plays frequently reflects this state of upheaval by a profusion of 'inverted' imagery - imagery in w.hich ugly and brutal acts and emotions are described in images whose normal conmotati~ons are joyful and productive."10 In the following sections, I will explore the ways in which Aeschylus expands and inverts images throughout the trilogy.

111. Aeschylus' Blood Imagery: "Bloodstroke for the Stroke of Blood"

One of the most characteristic features of Aeschylus' text is his use o~f imagery of blood and its extension in language of flowing, dripping, dipping,,dyeing, staining, pouring, and sacrificing. Aeschylus' use of these images captured tlhe attention of Harrison and Hughes, both of whom extend these images in distinctivle ways. Though Aeschylus presents direct descriptions of bloodshed, elsewhere he uses images of robes and tapestries to symbolize the endless flow of blood - from the sacrificial robes of Iphigenia in the Agamemnon to the red robes of the metic Furies in the conclusion of the Eumenides. By highlighting particular aspects of this robe and carpet imagery, I will show how Aeschylus' imagery flows throughout the t~ilogyand how at crucial points becomes inverted. Furthermore, I will examine the ways in

lo Porter 1986, 20. " Cho. 312. which Aeschylus extends these images to highlight broader themes throughout the trilogy.

From the first choral ode, the flowing robes of the sacrificial Iphigenia foreshadow the subsequent flowing of tapestries and of blood. Aeschylus depicts the image of the innocent sacrificial victim (A) as well as of her flowing garments (B):

(The father prayed, called to his men to lift her with strength of his hand swept her in her robes aloft and prone above the altar, as you might lift a goat for sacrifice).

B) KP~KOWPa@as 6' is ni60v xiouoa (Ag. 238). (pouring then to the ground her saffron mantle)

Similar to the ominous predatory bird imagery in the pavodos, the images of

Iphigenia's sacrificial robes foreshadow Agamemnon's approaching death: '"these drops of sapphron are not Iphigenia's blood. However, the image used to describe her blood indicates that blood will be shed."12 The sacrificial Iphigenia introduces images of flowing and blood throughout the trilogy, as Lebeck points out: "l[n the interval between Iphigenia's saffron robe which falls like blood and the robe-tangled death of Agamemnon, the image of dye and flowing cloth appears as a concrete object and part of the action."13

Similar to the sacrificial robes of Iphigenia, Clytaemestra spreads robes for

Agamemnon and Cassandra as the weapon of their murder. We observe the progression of this imagery as (A) Clytaemestra orders the placement of the "carplet,"

l2 Lebeck 1971, 191. 13 Lebeck 1971,85. (£3) Agamemnon approaches the garments, and (C) Clytaemestra declares the robes as the murder weapon:

A) Gpqai, -ri pi.hh~O',ais ~TT~OT~~T~I~i.hos rri.60~KE~E~~OV o~povdvai ~~~aopaoiv; (Ag. 908-909).

(Why th~sdelay? Yow task has been appointed you, strew the ground before his feet with tapestries.)

B) ~ai~0lo6i. p' 'EpPaivov8' &Aoupy~o~v~EOV pi TIS ITP~OW~EV6ppa~os Paho~ @86vos (Ag. 946-947).

(And as I crush these garments stained from the rich sea, 1 let no god's eyes of hatred strke me from afar.)

(That he might not escape nor beat aside his death, as fisherman cast their huge circling nets, I spread deadly abundance of rich robes, and caught him fast)

The above examples display the progression of the robe and carpet symbolism. The robes spread to welcome Agamernnon and Cassandra become the net in which they are murdered. More than that, the continual flow of these robelcarpet images throughout the trilogy expands on the theme of 'blood-for-blood' revenge: "'As a darksome thing of blood, the carpet in its magnificence still bears the high hubris- value, but it has been imbued both with Clytaemestra's lethal intent and by blood which is to flow again and again before the resolution of the trilogy is reached." ""

As Clytaemestra describes the dyeing and the dipping of the crimson tapestries, slie compares the flowing robes to the flowing of the sea:

(The sea is there, and who shall drain its yield? It breeds precious as silver, ever of itself renewed, the purple ooze wherein our garments shall be dipped.)

14 Goheen 1955,116. Here Clytaemestra literally links the dye of the carpets to the sea, as it is derived ji-om a cuttle fish. However, our knowledge of Clytaemestra's intent, reinforced 'by the snakelike hissing words (';~TIv 0aAaooa. -ris 6; v~v~a-raopio~t), alerts us to her murderous intentions. She equates the dye of the sea to blood, providing the image of an endless flow of blood, and carries out her wishes with a vengeful confidence:

"there is no danger that the sources of the sea-purple will dry up; and the house has a plentiful supply in store."'5

The retributional blood flow images continue through the opening liines of'

Libation Beavers, as Orestes clearly defines the stakes of blood justice: &VT\ 6; nhqyiis $ov;aS $ovrav / nAqy{v TIV~~W(Cho. 312-313), (blood for the stroke of blood 1 shall be paid). This "endless flow of blood" motif persists throughout the trilogy: "Hence one act of vengeance requires another in atonement. And th-us kin. murder, once begun, leads to an endless flow of blood; it is a wound that will not heal, a sickness for which there is no cure."16 This is particularly evident in Libntion

Bearers when the robes reappear as the justification for Orestes' murder of

Clytaemestra in the following passages:

(Spread it out. Stand around me in a circle and display this net that caught a man.)

B) &ao~v 4 O~KE6pao~; pap~up&? 6; pol Qapos TO^', &S '@~\c/EvA'1yio80~ Ei$os. Q6vou 6; K~K\IS tdv xp6vG!{~~(3ahh~~al, wohhar; (3a4as Q8~ipouoaTOG KOIK~~~~TOS (Ch0.1010-1014).

l5 Denniston & Page 1957, 154. 16 Lebeck 1971, 80. (Did she do it or did she not? My witness is this great robe. It was thus she stained Aegisthus' sword. Dip it and dip it again, the smear of blood conspires with time to spoil the beauty of this precious thing)

The ever-changing images of carpetlrobes and their blood symbolism reflect the trilogy's progress towards a resolution, "help[ing] to develop within the trilogy one of its thematic ideas - namely since bloodshed is irredeemable, bloodshed is not an adequate solution; legal process and a willingness to reach understanding offer mlore

This inversion of imagery returns and is righted at the end of the Eumenides, as the robes reappear in the imagery but are no longer equated with blood. A choral proclamation denounces the bloodshed for bloodshed motif persistent throughout the trilogy:

pq6i mobsa K~VIS pihav a?pa ~roh~~&v 61' bpyav ITOIV&S ixv~~~ovousa~as ixp.rraAioal ITO~EWS.(Eum. 979-983).

(. . .Let not the dry dust that drinks the black blood of citizens through passion for revenge and bloodshed for bloodshed be given our state to prey upon).

More than that, the red robes are given a new function in clothing the Furies. The robes, so often associated with old justice of blood spilled on the ground, are now lifted off the ground and placed upon the agents of a new covenant: (In the investiture of purple stained robes dignify them, and let the torch go before so that the kindly company of these within our ground may shine in the future of strong men to come.)

And with the lifting of the robes, the Furies become bearers and emblems of a nCw justice that is deliberative, civilized, rational, and administered by the state. The red robes and, subsequently, justice are given a place in society.

IV. A Step Beyond: Feminism and Purification in Aeschylus?

Although the trilogy moves from chaos of bloodshed into civilized order, -in the Oresteia a number of key issues remain unsolved. Harrison's, Hughes', and

Heaney's modem versions expand and shed light on some of these unresolved issues in Aeschylus. In particular, Harrison's exploration of feminism and portrayal1 of ";sex- war"'8 in his Oresteia raise questions for me: How does Aeschylus resolve issues of gender? Do issues of gender outweigh or dominate issues of bloodshed in Aeschylus'

Oresteia? Likewise, Hughes and Heaney both end their versions of the 0res:teia with images of water and cleansing hope of purification: Does Aeschylus' resolution offer purification? Is there a "cleansing" aspect to Aeschylus' solution?

A) Gender in Aeschylus:

Let us first consider the way Aeschylus handles issues of gender throughout the Oresteia, focusing on his portrayal of Clytaemestra. Mother of the sacrificial

Iphigenia, murderess of Agamernnon and Cassandra, and murder victim herself,

18 Harrison 2002, 34. Clytaemestra exemplifies the cycle of blood retribution. She partakes in the creative and destructive effects of bloodshed. Blood symbolism is the means through which

Clytaemestra expresses her feminine strength, yet she also falls victim to blood's weakness. Clytaemestra's ambivalence in relationship to images of bloodshed should not surprise us, as clues from the beginning of the play foreshadow her androgynous nature. For example, Aeschylus' watchman alerts us to Clytaemestra's gender-reliated ambivalence: &E yap K~~TE:/ yuva~~os a~6~dpouhov khn-icov ~iap(Ag. 10-

11). (To such end a lady's / male strength of heart in its high confidence ord.ains). In the character of Clytaemestra, nothing seems straight-forward:

In the prologue we are told by the blunt, shrewd Watchman what to expect - a wo.man's (eager hopeful heart combined with certain forethought of a man. The interplay of these paradoxically united feminine and masculine characteristics is sometimes confusing, always arre~ting.'~

Clytaemestra's twisted gender characteristics foreshadow the complexities that often expand through Aeschylus' use of imagery.

One way that we observe Clytaemestra's ambivalent nature is through her deceptively warm, feminine and genteel words that are imbued with both sexual undertones and murderous ambitions. She underplays her feminine gender role, yet simultaneously maximizes its power, as exemplified by her subtle, yet potent language. Externally, Clytaemestra's words often seem to breathe a flirtatioixs seductiveness. The following three examples, complemented by Fraenkel's commentary, highlight Clytaemestra's underlying motives:

-- 19 Stanford 1942, 117. Aeschylus: ~o~aij-ra-rot yuva~~oskc kpo6 K~~EIS(Ag. 348). (Such are the thoughts you hear from me, a woman merely).

Fraenkel: "Clytaemestra is probably recalling attention to her superior, ma-n- like insight into the nature of human affairs.. .,720

Aeschylus: yuva?~a-rr~o~jv 6' 'iv 66po1~EG~OI pohdv / diavn~poh F~EIITE, (Ag.605-606) (And may he find a woman in his house as true as on the day he left her).

Fraenkel: . . .Clytaemestra is talking about her faithfulness in the weikened form of the wish and not as established fact as she must according to her whole attitude and as she does in the continuation of her s'peech with naturally high-flown definiteness.

Aeschylus: ~r~1piio0ipou yuva1~6sws &@paopovos(Ag. 1401). (You try me out as if I were a woman and vain).

Fraenkel: "She rejects the application to her of accepted ideas of wha.t is womanly."

As Clytaemestra continues to go "beyond the limits of what the sensitive Athenian society considers proper,"2' she introduces us to images of dipping and dyeing that have inverted and paradoxical characteristics, similar to those of her characttx traits.

Clytaemestra subtly presents images of dipping and dyeing that unfold into the larger theme of the endless flow of blood. For example, in the speech in Lines 598-

612, when she awaits Agamemnon's return, Clytaemestra concludes with an ambiguous metaphor: ob6' d6a T;~\C~IV ob6' krri+oyov @a~tv/ ahhou rrp6s

&v6pos pghhov fi xah~ocpa@as (Ag. 61 1-612). (With no man else have I known delight, nor any shame / of evil speech, more than I know how to temper bronze). By diverting the audience's attention to "temper[ing] bronze," Clytaemestra's referen'ce to xah~ocpa@as seems to suggest that it is "knowledge possessed by others in

20 Fraenkel 1950. Commentary on Agamenon passages found on pages 178,301,659. 2' Fraenkel 1950,300. which she has no share and can never have any." 22 AS Goheen reminds us of the

"deep reddish brown which blood takes on after it is exposed to air - or when it fi3rms stains in the dust,"23 we must link Clytaemestra's xah~o6pa@as allusion to the

;I ;I ~~TWVpa@as (Ag. 960) image in her later speech. Furthermore, her reference to xah~o6pa@as recalls the physical act of tempering bronze by plunging it :into a liquid.

More than just presenting the conflicting gender portrayals, Clytaem~estra's words, imbued with sexual undertones, continue to lead us back to the retribution of bloodshed. For example, as she reflects on her role as faithful wife, Clytaelrtestra makes her intentions sound sincere:

(What else is light more sweet for a woman to behold than this to spread the gates before her husband home fiom war and saved by God's hand?)

Despite the sweet-sounding talk, Clytaemestra now "unbars the gates" in the most

literal of ways, as she opens the doors and spreads the carpet of her husbandl's

murder. Though Clytaemestra's words express a faithful chastity, her intentions imd

actions - and even the connotations of her words - are very sexual. Clytaemestra

continues a distortion of action and an inversion of blood imagery, particularly in her

libation over the dead corpse of Agamemnon:

2' Fraenkel 1950, 304. 23 Goheen 1955,116. (and as he died he violently spattered me with the dark red and violent driven rain of bitter savored blood to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers of God in glory at the birthtime of the buds.)

This libation is particularly ironic, because the first words that Clytaemestra spealts in the trilogy are those of fertility, light, and rebirth: "may the dawn child be born to be an angel of blessing from the kindly night" (Ag.264-265). In lines 1388-1392,

Clytaemestra exemplifies her twisted sense of femininity, as Goheen points out: "In this exaltation and distortion of all that is life-giving, all previous imagery of bloold and of the womb, of fertility and death, converge. From here on Clytaemestira's fecundity is only in hatefulness."" Porter depicts the invertedness of this imagery:

"[iln what one critic has called 'as dark a piece of literary blasphemy as has ever been committed,' Clytaemestra compares the blood spurting on her from her murdered husband to the spring rains fertilizing the fields of grain (Ag. 1389 f.)" 25 This simultaneous inversion of blood imagery and gender portrayal seems convincing enough to argue that issues of gender don't outweigh the images of bloodshed that persist throughout the trilogy. Perhaps the question with which we began is unanswerable, for our analysis suggests that Aeschylus' imagery of blood and bloodshed is central to his very examination of gender issues.

24 Goheen 1955,134. 25 Porter 1986,24. B) Purification in Aeschylus?

Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney conclude their versions with a therapeutic hope of purification. Hughes hopes for a moral purification, whereas Heane:y seeks political restoration from the damages of war, but both authors employ wates imagery to express their resolution. In contrast, Aeschylus' text does no more than to hint at

'purification by water.' We have seen that Clytaemestra compares a shower of rain to the spurting blood at Ag. 1388- 1392. Aeschylus again repeats this simultaneous rain and blood imagery: 66601Ka 6' 6pPpou KT\~TTOV60poo@ahFj 1 T~Vaipa~~jp6v (:Ag.

1533-1534). (There is fear in the beat of blood rain breaking /wall and tower.) From the onset of the play, we would expect water to be tainted like all else. Unlike

Aeschylus' inverted imagery throughout most of the trilogy (e.g. lightldark, fertility, disease), however, Aeschylus' imagery of water never reaches the full purificatio~i that Hughes and Heaney evoke in their versions.

Even as the end of the trilogy moves towards resolution, Athena alludes to muddy waters: Popp6pq 6' 66wp / happ-rrov plaivwv 06TToe' E~P~OEIST~OT~V

(Eum. 694-695). (But if bright water you stain with mud, you nevermore will find it fit to drink). Even when Athena makes reference to water in the final section of the

Eumenides, its restorative or cleansing effects remain implicit at best: ~a;~aih-a yij0~v:K TE TTOVT~~S6p6oou (Eum. 904) (Let it come out of the ground, out of tlhe

sea's water.. .). This final image of water in the Eumenides in no way rivals, overcomes or transforms the intense images of bloodshed throughout the trilogy. [t is an Aeschylean omission that Hughes and Heaney will notice and will address each in his own way. 11. TONY HA ISON'S Oresteia

I. Harrison's Oresteia: "The Momentum Should Be Unstoppable and Keep the

Spectator Spellbound. .."

Shortly after he had agreed to work with Peter Hall on production folr the

Royal National Theater, Tony Harrison's Oresteia came to life in the depths of his sleep. In a dream, Harrison envisioned a long hallway with a guest-book and a queue of old men waiting to sign their names. Before signing their names in the book, eizch man rubbed his hands across the engraved cover of his book OPE'CTEIA. As the dream continued, Harrison looked at the guest book and immediately recognized all of the signatures - the names of modem comedians whom Harrison had recently watched perform live. As a spectator in his dream, Harrison observed the urdty of ancient Greek tragedy and modem comedy, which reaffirmed his belief that "[olne of the essential secrets of that theatricality, still preserved in the popular forms, is that the audience is there to be addressed, entertained, moved, accosted, not to be eavesdroppers on some private happening." 26 concerned with maintaining the

"theatricality" of the performance and the attention of the audience, Harrison also

focused on the driving energy of Aeschylus' text, which he considered of utmost

importance: "The momentum should appear unstoppable and keep the spectator

spellbound and therefore never able to interrupt or intervene to relieve the sufferer or

prevent an enacted consequence."27

26 Harrison 2002, 5. l7 Harrison 2002, 13 It is Harrison's keen knowledge and understanding of the ancient Greek tlext that enables him to engage the audience with this momentum. Mirroring and expanding on Aeschylus' language and imagery, Harrison composes a powerfully rhythmic Oresteia. Under the direction of Peter Hall, the National Theatre Company of Great Britain produced Harrison's version in the Olivier Theatre on 28 Novemlber

198 1. Not long after, the play was performed at the ancient theatre of Epidaurus ill

July 1982.~" the subsequent sections, I will analyze the ways in which Harrison extends and expands three particular aspects of Aeschylus' Oresteia: language, gender, and imagery of bloodshed and flowing.

11. Harrison's Language: A "Much Annotated Greek Text and Its

Alliterative

From the onset of the watchman speech, we observe Harrison's knowledge of ancient Greek, as his translation closely mirrors both the words and the overall flow of Aeschylus:

Harrison:

No end to it all, though all year I've muttered my pleas to the gods for a long-groped-for end. wish it were over, this waiting, this watching, twelve weary months, night in and night out, crouching and peering, head down like a bloodhound, paws propping muzzle, up here on the palace, the palace belonging to the bloodclan of Atreus - Agamemnon, Menelaus, bloodlun, our clanchiefs.

I've been so long staring I know the stars backwards, the chiefs of the star-clans, king-stars, controllers those that dispense us the cold-snaps and dogdays (41).

'*Harrison 2002,37. 29 Harrison 2002, 7. Aeschylus :

&xaAAayiv novwv @poupasii~ias pijnos, :v rolpdp,&vor o~f~a~~'ATPEI&WVay~aO~v, KUVOS &IKQV, ~OTPWVKaT016a VUKT~PWVbpiyup~v, ~aiTOGS @6pov~asxEIpa nai eipos Ppo~ols Aap~~pow~~UVM~T~S., ipnp6nov~as a'186p1 &o~tpas,8~av @~~VWOIV, &v~ohas TE TGV ~aivuv @uAaoooAapxa60~ ~6 odppohov, abyfiv ~~up6~@ipouoav i~ Tpoias @~TIV &A&o1p6v TE pa51v(Ag. 1-10).

(I ask the gods some respite from the weariness of this watchtime measured by the years I lie awake elbowed upon the Atreidae's roof dogwise to mark the grand processionals of all the stars of night burdened with winter and again with heat for men, dynasties in their shining blazoned on the air, these stars, upon their wane and when the rest arise. I wait; to read the meaning in that beacon light, a blaze of fire to carry out of Troy the rumor, and outcry of its capture.)

In this version of the language of Aeschylus' watchman, Harrison not only translates but also elaborates on characteristic images of Aeschylus' text. For example, the dog of Aeschylus' KUVO~6;Kqv becomes "like a bloodhound" in Harrison, and 6io~pc;~v in Aeschylus becomes "star-clans" and "king-stars" in Harrison. Harrison's sharpest

Aeschylean parallel occurs at the end of the watchman speech, which concludes with the mirroring of verbs pa0oGo1v and pa0oGo1in Aeschylus' text: &S \K&W kyc; /

pa0oGo1vab6G KO; pa00601Ai0opa1 (Ag. 38-39) (I speak to those who understand, but if they fail, I have forgotton everything.) Harrison similarly repeats the word "know" in his final lines of the speech: "Those who know what I lcnow,

know what I am saying /Those who don't know, won't know. Not fiom me" (42).

Through his "five-fold" repetition of "know," Harrison exaggerates what is found in

the Greek text. As he proclaims, "those who know what I know, know what I am

saying," not only does the watchman seem to speak, but even Harrison himself It is no coincidence that Harrison's language abounds in alliteration: "I brooded over my much annotated Greek text and its alliterative clusters, underlined in red for years.. ." he comments.30In the watchman speech alone, we encounter several examples of this alliteration: "Wish it were over, this waiting, this watching'" (Ag.41),

"Paws propping muzzle, up here on the palace" (Ag.41)' "An oasis like daylight in the deserts of dark!" (Ag.42), and "best let her know the beacon's been sighted" (Ag.42).

These "alliterative clusters" persist throughout the entire trilogy, e.g.: "they'll never blend in brotherly bloodbond" (Cho. 52), "This bloodsclan's benighted and he's ~!ts bright beacon" (Cho. 104)' "darts from deep darkness, shafts shot from below"

(Cho. 109), "Harried and hounded out of his homeland" (Cho. 109), "hauled From our homeland, dragged here as drudges, 1 lugged into life- lot, unloving and loathly I brought into bondage, doom's dragnet around Troy" (Cho. 101). Harrison hlmsell' comments on his reasons for focusing on this feature of Aeschylus' language: "The weight, the ruggedness of Aeschylus consists partly of craggy alliteration and compounding."3 '

In addition to adapting Aeschylus' alliteration for his own purposes, Harrison also captures Aeschylus' rich language through his profusion of adjectives, especially in the choral odes. The first choral ode exemplifies the way Harrison achiev~es momentum through his conscious spattering of participles, nouns and adjectives:

30 Harrison 2002, 8. 31 Harrison 2002. 14. Mewing warcries preybirds shrilling Nest-theft childloss wild frustration Nestling snaffled preybirds soaring Wildly sculling swirling airstreams Using broad birdwings like oars Birthpangs nothing nestcare nothng Nothing fostered nestlings nothing Crying mewing preybirds shrilling (43).

Using language that draws directly on Aeschylus' imagery of "war cries," "prey birds," "nestlings," and "rowing," Harrison piles up adjectives to describe the scene.

Through his repetition of words such as "mewing" "shnlling" "preybirds," and

"shrilling," Harrison makes the audience not only visualize the chaos, but all30 hear the "shrilling" and "mewing." A comparison of Lattimore's more literal translation suggests just how far Harrison has gone in carrying Aeschylus' profusion of description to yet further extremes:

(Their cry of the war went shrill from the heart, as eagles stricken in agony, for the young perished, high from the nest eddy and circle to bend and sweep of the wings' stroke, lost far below the fledgings, the nest, and the tendance.)

Though Harrison thoroughly (and at times over-ambitiously) captures Aeschylean adjective use and description, his translation differs from Aeschylus in one a.spect::

Aeschylus always maintains a fluid (if at times convoluted) sentence structure, whereas Harrison often presents a profuse spattering of adjectives freed from any formal syntax. In order to convey the texture of the Greek language and text, Harrison extends and expands the English language, at times sacrificing logical continuity: She-gods of life-lot ZEUS high he-god

only gods can stop the rot drag the good up out of the bad

bloodflow for bloodflow deathblow for deathblow

blood-debt for blood-debt keeping the blades wet

bloodshed for bloodshed keeping the blades red

What you do gets done back Y owhim hidyou

Hack slash slash hack three generations through

She-gods of life-lot ZEUS high he-god (1 10).

Through his extravagant use of adjectives, Harrison out-does Aeschylus by employing very Aeschylean techniques.

Harrison also uses his knowledge of Anglo-Saxon to create his own words,

just as Aeschylus too felt free to create his own compounds. In the following

example, Harrison liberally inserts into a choral ode a series of random words,

many of them compounds that have no Aeschylean counterparts:

Bedbond no not bedbond spearclash Swordhafts shattered hacked bones smashed Sparring skirmish dustclouds bloodstrom Trojans Greeks not bedbond blood bath (43).

Harrison employs these compounds throughout his translation, deriving inspiration both from Aeschylus and from the Anglo-Saxon practice: "There is something basic to English and its poetics in such 'kennings' " (Harrison 25). Thus to assemble a partial sampling, we find: "hell-netn(76), "she-snare" (76), "bed-mate" (76) "blood- mate" (76)"bull cow" (76), "robe-net" (76), "blood-crusted" (76) ,"bathblood" (76), "bloodsplash"(76), "blood-bolstered" (78), "fiend-swarm" (78), "tmthpangs" (79),

"truthpain" (79), '6doomfever" (79), "doom-ague" (79), "dream-shadows" (80),

"blood-sucker" (80) "death-dose" (81), "blood-guzzling" (89), "grudge-hound" (E19),

"gore-ogre" (90), "flesh-glutton" (90), "steele-slinger" (90), "sword-brute" (90),

"doom-chain" (9 I), "god-guide" (103), "ground-god" (103), "god-go-between" (1 03),

"bloodgrudge-fulfiller" (104), "beast-taunts" (146), "god-bond" (l72), "flesh- hungry" (1 80), "torch-beacons" (1 8 1).

Although in many ways Harrison builds on what he finds in the Greek text, he does so with considerable freedom. For one thing, Harrison often employs

Aeschylean alliteration where it is absent in the Greek text and similarly omits it where it is found in the Greek. Thus, for instance, the alliteration in the following

Aeschylus passages has no counterpart in Harrison:

A) Aeschylus: TO pip~paiws phi@apa auppah~tv Gnucl! (Ag. 15)

(against strong closure of my eyelids, or any rest).

Harrison: "Fear stays all night. Sleep gives me short time" (Ag.41).

B) Aeschylus: 'h-~vBahaooa, -ris 6; v~v~arao(3io~1; (Ag. 958)

(The sea is there and who will drain its yield).

Harrison: "The sea is there for ever. No one can drain it" (72).

Conversely, Harrison often uses alliteration where Aeschylus does not, e.g.:

A) Harrison: "paws propping muzzle, up here on the palace" (Ag.41).

Aeschylus: tv KOI~&IEVOS / o~iya~s'AT~EI~WV ay~ae~v, KUV& di~qv, (Ag. 2-3).

(I lie awake / elbowed upon the Atreidae's roof dogwise to mark.. .). B) Harrison: "Wish it were over this waiting, this watching" (Ag.41).

Aeschylus: No Parallel in Aeschylus.

Rather than diminishing the close kinship between Aeschylus' use of alliteration and

Harrison's, Harrison's highly original alliterative use further exemplifies the liberty with which he employs Aeschylus' techniques.

Harrison's close understanding of Aeschylus and his resourceful adalptation of some of Aeschylus' characteristics make his text complex, at times even impenetrable. Readers unaware of Aeschylus' Greek text may "stumble over the translation's idiosyncracies and never reach an appreciation of, for example, the tense vigour of the rhyming stichomythias, or the tight metrics and labile diction olf the choral lyrics," writes Oliver ~aplin.~~It is perhaps for these very reasons that many readers of Greek consider Harrison's Ovesteia "an achievement in poetic translation" that "has not always received the recognition it deserves.""

111. Harrison's Feminism: A Step Beyond Aeschylus

In a 20 Sept 1981 letter to Peter Hall, Harrison writes: "My own feeling is that the feminist movement is the next thing to make us reassess ow lives and our societies. Our futures depend on it."34 ~ustas Harrison exaggerates certain aspects of

Aeschylus' language, so too does he extend Aeschylean portrayals of gender-roles.

He begins this progress with the opening of the watchman's speech. Throug11 his three-fold repetition of "woman," Harrison's watchman immediately elaborates 011

Aeschylus' brief description of Clytaemestra &6~yap ~pa~fiYUV~~K~S

32 Taplin 2002,4. 33 Taplin 2002,4. 34 Harrison 1991, 280. &v6p6pouhov ih-rril;ov ~f ap. (Ag.10-1 1) (To such an end a lady's 1 male st~engthof heart in its high confidence ordains):

The woman says watch, so here I am watching. The woman's not one who's all wan and woeful. That woman's a man the way she gets moving" (Harrison Ag. 18-20).

Harrison's intense "w" alliteration in this opening scene foreshadows the "MI" alliteration in his description of Helen later in the play:

"The war-effort wants it the war effort gets it The war for one woman the war-whore the war-whore" (Harrison 48).

This "w" alliteration appears again in his description of Clytaemestra: "Wielding the weapon was no wife and no woman" (90). Harrison picks up the "w" of "woman" in these subsequent examples, presumably to remind the audience constantly, if subliminally, of the "feminist movement" that he had in mind when he wrote the text.

Harrison often composes lines almost identical to Aeschylus, but with subtle variations and additions that suggest Clytaemestra's domineering femininity. For example, in Harrison's version of the following exchange between Clytaemestra and

Agamemnon, his compounding conveys the depth of Clytaemestra's ambivalent gender characteristics:

Harrison:

Clytaemestra: ''Mangrudge is proof that a man's reached great heights"

Agamemnon: "And only he-women go loolung for fights" (70).

Aeschylus:

Clytaemestra: i, 6' oi@8ovq~osy'oir~ ini

Agamemnon: OGTOI yuva1~6sio~lv i CL~ip~l~ paxq~ (Surely this lust for conflict is not woman-like?) ( Ag. 939-940). Harrison's use of "mangrudge" and "he-man" are not only evidence of

Clytaemestra's conflicting gender nature, but also a testimony of the versatil.ity of'

Anglo-Saxon: "a compounding that helped [Harrison] clarify these sexual polarities, and underscor[ed] what the aspect of Greek gender can do and English cannot." 3ci

We see Harrison's interest in Clytaemestra's ambiguous sexuality also in lines

61 1-612, a passage where his omission of Aeschylus' powerful image of dipping bronze seems initially surprising, given Harrison's close knowledge of the ancient text. Harrison ends Clytaemestra's speech: "Tell him I have accepted no man's attentions / I'm no more a breaker of bedbond I than, as a woman, I wield a ]man's, weapon" (60); whereas Aeschylus ends: ob6' 6i6a T~P~IV0b6' )Eni+oyov @~TIV/

6AAou npos a~6~dsp6AAov fi xaA~ou^pa$as (Ag.611-612). (With no mian els~e have I known delight nor any shame I of evil speech more than I know how to temper bronze). Harrison has clearly shaped Clytaemestra's words here - "woman"

"wield[ing] a man's weapon" so as to foreshadow the post-murder description that we get from Harrison's Clytaemestra:

Spouse? No! Wife? No! What swung the swordblade's the semblance, the shape of this corpse's spouse only. Wielding the weapon was no wife and no woman but hs family's phantom, Atreus his flesh-chef, offering flayed these fully fledged victims one for each butchered and barbequed babe (90).

Clytaemestra's alliterative proclamation: "wielding the weapon was no wife no woman" (to say nothing of her "butchered and barbecued babe") not only reiterates her pre-murder words, but fwther confirms her defiance of any tame, domestic feimale role.

35 Harrison 2002,33. Aeschylean undertones are again exaggerated in Harrison's "war whore" language:

HELEN wrecker HELEN Hell The one who first named her knew what was fated - HEL - a god guided hls tongue right - EN HEL - spear-bride gore-bride war-whore - EN HEL - ship-wrecker man-breaker Troy-hacker - EN (Hanison Ag. 63).

By splitting apart "HELEN," to "HEL - EN," the chorus evokes a fear of the powerfully destructive potential of women, both visually and acoustically. This appearance of "HEY has a two fold effect: Not only are Helen's actions associated with "hell," but also "HEY is an Old Norse mythological allusion to the character of

Persephone personified as the queen of the underworld or death. Furthermore, through his repetition of "HEL," Harrison mimics Aeschylus' alliteration of \A- the aorist of aipiw (to destroy):

TUV 6opiYapPpov &~+IvEI-- KG 0' Ehivav; )EITE'I TT~ETT~VTW~ khivas, 'ihavFpos, ~~~TFTO~IS(Ag. 686-689).

(for the bride of spears and blood, Helen which is death? Appropriately death of ships, death of men and cities.. .)

Harrison's compound words such as "gore-bride," "war-whore" and "Troy knack.ern call to mind Aeschylus' compounding trilogy ofiAivas, iAavGpos, ~A~ITTOAIS.This connection between compounding and femininity recalls a comment that Froma

Zeitlin makes about the Oresteia: "If Aeschylus is concerned with word-building, the cornerstone of his architecture is the control of women, the social and cultural prerequisite for the construction of ci~ilization."~~

36 Zeitlin 1978, 150. IV. Harrison's Torrent of Blood: "Blood Everywhere Blood Everywhere"

As we have seen in the Oresteia, Aeschylus abundantly uses images of blood, robes, carpet, robes, dipping, and flowing. Aeschylus intricately weaves these images in such a way to underscore the thematic tensions of the trilogy and of its eventual resolution. Harrison employs a similar technique, again expanding and transforming the blood imagery, just as he does with Aeschylean language and gender issues.

Harrison's treatment of the Iphigenia scene is a good example of his extension of Aeschylean imagery. In the following two examples, we observe how X in

Aeschylus becomes Y in Harrison:

A) Aeschylus: "forcing a second sacrifice unholy, untasted, / working bitterness

in the blood 1 and faith lost" (Ag. 151 - 153).

Harrison: "A grudged wanting blood for the spilling of childblood" (Ag .46),

B) Aeschylus: "Pouring then to the ground her saffron mantle" (Ag. 235,).

Harrison: "her garments stream ground wards the loose flow of saffron/

clothing drifting clothing trailing" (Ag. 48).

Through his word choices of "spilling," "stream," "loose flow," "drifting," and

"trailing," Harrison elaborates on the flowing nature of blood.

As in Aeschylus' text, Harrison's chorus emphasizes these themes throughout his Oresteia, often in language that again expands on Aeschylus' images of bloodshed: "the blood a man sheds 1 smears his whole people" (Ag. 53), "Blood everywhere / blood everywhere / the whole house smirched defiled / anguish, carnage and despair / for fostering that child" (Ag. 64), "The earth loses blood as clothes lose dyestuff and the sun oozes light at its setting" (Ag.76), and "My mirtd is off its moorings. Its foundations are shaking. / No longer a drizzle, a hammering bloodstom, / Fate strops its blade for more and more blood-bouts" (Ag. 91). The continuum of bloodshed dominates the chorus' language in the Libation Bearers:

"What godsop or bribe makes spilt blood unspilt? Shed blood's shed forever"

(Cho.100). "Tears drop on your dark head / drop by drop the way you bled"

(Cho.104)' "Bloodflow for blood flow / death blow for death blow / blood-debt fcbr blood-debt / keeping the blades wet/ Bloodshed for bloodshed / keeping the blades red" (Cho.110). "Blood flow for bloodflow the doomsong goes" (Cho.114)' and "Zet fresh bloodflow now wash clean1 all the bloodflow that has been" (Cho.129:).

Harrison expands this theme especially in relationship to the charactier of

Clytaemestra. Although he omits the xah~ofipa~as imagery in Clytaemestra's speech, elsewhere he virtually inundates her words with blood imagery, often in places where Aeschylus does not. The passage when Clytaemestra spreads the carpets offers a striking example: "Carry out my commands for strewing pavestoner;, / drag the dark dye-flow right down from the door way. / Let bloodright , true bloodright be the king's escort" (69). In contrast, these motifs are far less emphatic in Aeschylus' text:

(Why this delay? Your task has been appointed to you to shrew the ground before his feet with tapestries. Let there spring up into the house, he never hoped where Justice leads him in, a crimson path).

In particular, Harrison's use of the compounds "dye-flow" "bloodright," and again

"bloodright" conveys the blood imagery inherent in Clytaemestra's language.

Throughout the Oresteia, Harrison makes explicit motifs that are implicit in the language of Aeschylus' Clytaemestra. We can see this as Harrison's Aegisthus rejoices in the robes that Clytaeniestra has used to facilitate the murder: "I am happy, so happy to see this man tangled I in robes of dark red the Furies have woven, 1 fulfilling the bloodgrudge caused by his father" (92). The "bloodgrudge" continues as Orestes uses Clytaemestra's robes to justify his own murderous deed: "Net to snare animals, shroud for a corpse, I drape for a bath trough. No, net's the best name. I Call it a hunting net, trip-rope, a trap-robe" (137). Harrison's compounding of "trip-rclpe" and "trap-robe" simultaneously conveys Orestes' vengeful animosity, while extending Aeschylus' imagery.

Even though Harrison follows Aeschylus' lead in working towards a resolution in the Eumenides, he continues to expand on Aeschylus' blood imagery, inserting images that have no Aeschylean counterpart:

Trial! Ths is the trial your trackers intend: f~stsuck the red libations from limbs which they're living, browse on your blood, all over your body, broach you all bloodless, haul your husk off below, a morsel of torment for your mother's murder (153).

As Aeschylus' chorus finally presents a proclamation of resolution, Harrison continues to extend very Aeschylean images:

Aeschylus:

This is my prayer: Civil War fattening on men's ruin shall not thunder in our city. Let not dry dust that drinks the black blood of citizens through passion for revenge and bloodshed for bloodshed be given our state to prey upon. Let them render grace for grace. Let love be their common will; let them hate with a single heart. Much wrong in the world thereby is healed (Eum.976-987). Harrison:

May faction, sedition for ever flesh hungry, civil disturbance, cycles of slaying never bray in this city, its dust never gulp the blood of its people, the state get ripped open by rages of bloodgrudge, a chainlink of murder. Let the linking be love-bonds, Common likes, common hatreds, A group bond against The troubles men suffer (180).

As he follows Aeschylus' writing towards a resolution, the texture of Harrison's language reveals how he takes the language one step further. Images such as "flesh hungry," "Its dust never gulp/ the blood of its people," "the state get ripped open,,"

"by rages of bloodgrudge," and "chain-link of murder" are reminders that EIarrison continues to extend the most vivid Aeschylean blood imagery even as the play reaches its conclusion. IV. Ted Hughes' Oresteia

I. Ted Hughes' Oresteia: "The best thing I have ever done."

From the onset of his Oresteia, Hughes' audience experiences the elegance of' his language through his fluid sentence structure and his calming tone. Unlike Harrison's translation, which extends and expands on specific linguistic characteristics of

Aeschylus, in Hughes' Oresteia one can "detect no evidence that Hughes worked from the reek."^^ Taplin even goes as fato claim: "I think it is clear that he relied heavily on the old Penguin [version of the Oresteia]" (Taplin 3). As English Poet

Laureate, Hughes focused the later years of his life on Latin and Greek literature and became "a major figure on the scene of twentieth century translation of classical poetry into ~n~lish."'~ln a private conversation, Hughes once referred to his Owstein as "the best thing I have ever done. I read it and wonder how I ever did it."3'' Not until after his death was the play performed at The National Theater in London in 1999-

2000 under the direction of Katie Mitchell. Readers and spectators alike experience

Hughes' simultaneous simplicity of language and depth of Aeschylean imagery, a~she extends the themes of Aeschylus yet creates motifs with no Aeschylean roots. In Ihe following section, I will analyze three particular aspects of Hughes: his langvage, his extension of Aeschylus' moral issues, and his imagery of flowing and his related

emphasis on purification.

37 Taplin 2002,3. 3s Taplin 2002, 3. 39 Taplin 2002, 3. 11. The Elegance of Hughes' Language: "Cleansing the Tongue, and Making the Facts Plain and ~isible"~'

In contrast to Harrison's rhythmic translation with its firm roots in A.eschylus,

Ted Hughes' Oresteia is notable for its freedom, the work of an English poet rather than of a Greek translator. Hughes' work is a reflection of his sensitivity to ]English as he "turned to central texts and felt no call to apologise in any way for his lack of contact with the works in their original languages" (Taplin 6). Unlike Harrison's at times harsh and violent spattering of adjectives with its constant reminders of

Aeschylus' Greek, Hughes provides an elegant texture of language characterized by its euphonious tone and word flow.

As in the case of Harrison's translation, Hughes displays his distinctive qualities from the very first lines of the play:

Hughes:

You Gods in heaven - You have watched me here in ths tower All night, every night for thirteen months, Thirteen moons- Tethered on the roof of this palace Like a dog. It is time to release me. I've stared long into th~sdarkness For what never emerges. I am tired of the constellations - That glittering parade of lofty rulers Night after night a little bit earlier. Withholding the thing that I wait for - Slow as torture. And the moon, coming and going - (Ag.5).

Aeschylus:

40 Hughes 1999, Ag. 82. aoTiPaS,hav +8ivwo,v1 &v-rohasTE TWV ~aivuv +uhaoow hapna805 ~6 owp~ohov, aby:v ITUPAS +ipouoav i~Tpoias +~TIV &h&otpdv TE pat,tv (Aesch. Ag. 1-10).

(I ask the gods some respite from the weariness of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake elbowed upon Atreidae's roof dogwise to mark the grand processionals of all the stars of night burdened with winter and again with heat for men, dynasties in their shining blazoned on the air, these stars, upon their wane and when the rest arise. I wait; to read the meaning in that beacon light, a blaze of fie to carry out of Troy the rumor, and outcry of its capture: (Ag. 1-10).

As we see in these lines, Hughes' language is euphonious, fluid, and very m.uch fireer than Harrison's in its rendering of the Aeschylean text. Unlike the alliteratic~n, compounds, and wordy adjectival descriptions found in Aeschylus and in Harrison's translation, Hughes7words flow gracefully across the page in a simple, yet elegant manner. This is not to say that Hughes ignores Aeschylean language and imagery.

Hughes retains Aeschylus' basic themes and motifs - the dog, the constellations, darkness, and night - but the texture of his language and the freedom of his translation are reminders that Hughes does not read ancient Greek.

One distinct aspect of Hughes7 free translation is his use of word mirroring and repetition. In the lines above, this is evident in his repetition of "You Gods in heaven - / You have watched me here in this tower" (Ag. 5), "All night, every night"

(Ag. 5), "thirteen months/ thirteen moons" (Ag. 5). Such instances of repetition recur in various forms throughout the trilogy: "No dreams. No sleep" (Ag. 5), "Troy ha:^ fallen.. .I Troy has fallen.. ./ Troy has fallen'' (Ag. 5), "Cannot be otherwise1 Cannot happen" (Ag. 8), "Playing with our dreams, / The playthings of dreams" (Ag:. 9), "She has heard.. ./ She has seen.. ./ She has looked.. ." (Ag. 1I), "A sacrifice that cannot be eaten, / A sacrifice that poisons the heart" (Ag. 1I), "Troy has fallen? That is impossible / Troy has fallen. My words say what I mean" (Ag. 18), "The war is over.

Discipline is over" (Ag. 21), "Each becomes the ghost of the other 1 Each is driven mad 1 By the ghost of the other" (Ag. 77), "If I poured this wealth out in silence / As he poured out his blood, in that silence" (Ag. 95), "All that remains of our father; / All that remains of our mother" (Cho. l04), "I thought I had done with feeling1 I thought

I could bear anything" (Cho. 128), "You cannot see them but I see them / You cannot feel their whips but I feel them" (Cho. 144),"Who can bring it to an end? / When can it be brought to an end? 1 How can it be brought to an end?" (Cho. 145), "Apollo cannot save you / Athene cannot save you" (Eum. 166), "Like heaven, not to be violatedl like heaven, holy" (Eum. 183), "Fear our anger. Fear it. Fear the law of our anger" (Eum. 183). Much of the time, Hughes' use of repetition serves primarily to enhance the musicality of his language, but he also uses repetition as a vehicle to reinforce themes, questions, or dilemmas that he wishes to convey to the audience. In

"all night, every night" and "thirteen months / thirteen moons," for instance, Hughes emphasizes the longevity and monotony of the watchman's wait through the repetition of words that has no counterpart in Aeschylus.

Unlike Harrison and later Heaney, who frequently inundate their text with

Aeschylean compounding, Hughes uses compounding sparingly, and even then the compounds he employs feel decidedly normal, e.g.: "beacon-flare" (5), "tip-top"

(19), "rubbish-heaps" (21), "stay-at-homes"(40), "Great-hearted" (44), "Dog-Star 's"

(45), "locked-up" (45), "Death-seizure" (55), "hammer-blow" (56), "lava-flow" (56),

"sea-squall" (57), "death-convulsion" (73), "war-god" (76), "death-god" (76), "sloft- headed" (1 74), "best-loved" (196), and "Torch-lit" (1 96). He does not indulge in the extreme compounds that we find in Harrison and Aeschylus, and he avoids the bombardment of adjectives and words that is so characteristic of their language.

Despite his lack of Greek and the fi-eedom of his translation, there are many ways in which Hughes nonetheless captures the qualities of Aeschylus. One: way that

Hughes does this is by creating language rich in metaphor, yet simultaneously euphonious. We can see Hughes' characteristic qualities in his version of the following passage from the third choral ode of the Agamemnon:

Aeschylus:

napau~a6' 'EA0~'ivis 'lhiou n6h1v hiyo~p'&v +p6vrlpa pkv vqvipou yahcivas, &~ao~alov&ahpa .rrholj~ou, paheaK6v bppa~mvPihos, 6qSi0upov ipw~osav0os. rrapa~hivas''E~ri~pav~v 6; yapow lTIKPa$ TE~EUT~S, Gljo~F~os~ai 6uo6ptAos oupiva Tlp1api6alotv, nopn6 AIOSc~viou, vuv+6~hau~o

(And that which first came to the city of Ilium, call it a dream of calm and the wind dying, the loveliness and luxury of much gold, the melting shafts of the eyes' glances, The blossom that breaks the heart with longing. but she turned in mid-step of her course to make bitter the consummation, whirling on Priam's people to blight with her touch and nearness. Zeus hospitable sent her, a vengeance to make brides weep.)

Hughes:

Paris brought Helen. Her beauty required a new word. The year, among its altering moments, Finds nothing so delicate, And no where such peace. Among all its medicinal herbs Nothing so healing. Among all its blossoms Nothing like her. Nowhere such sweetness. But when the fruit came - bitter. The smiles that had welcomed her to Troy Contorted in revulsion. Zeus, protector of the bonds, Transformed her bridal glance. It became an arrow - Fatal for Paris. And for the city of Troy A meteorite (Ag. 38-39).

Compression of these passages suggests that though Hughes misses something of the craggy density of Aeschylus' language, he maintains its euphony and its strength.

We can also see how Hughes extends Aeschylus' language through his repetitious description of Helen in "Nothing so healing.. .I Nothing like her. Nowhere such sweetness." In addition, Hughes expands on Aeschylus' metaphorical use through. the insertion of an image of a "meteorite," so far removed from Aeschylus' text.

Three examples from the watchman's speech further suggest the way Hughes both expands upon Aeschylus' imagery and lays the groundwork for subsequent use of these same images. In his image of the sea, Hughes establishes the motif of flowing, and may even in the "two turns" of the tide foreshadow the spiritual cleansing later associated with water:

Wearisome, like watching the sea From a deathbed. Like watching the tide In its prison yard, with its two turns In out in out. I'm sick of the heavens, sick of darkness (Ag.5).

Similarly, Hughes inserts the image of a 'blade' into the watchman's depiction of

Clytaemestra, foreshadowing the violent slaughter that will soon occur: "A man's heart in a woman's body, / A man's dreadhl will in the scabbard of her body / Like a polished blade" (5). A quick glance at the parallel passage suggests how far Hughes has diverged here from the original: &6~yap ~pa~61 yuva~~os ixv6p6~ouhov

kArr;(ov ~iap(Ag. 10-11). (to such end a lady's / male strength of heart in its high

confidence ordains). Finally, Hughes initiates in this opening speech a continuu~lof

similes containing bodily images: "Fear like a solid lump of indigestion Bere, high

in my belly - a seething" (6). Again, a short comparison with Aeschylus' passage

shows the degree of Hughes' extension: +6pos yap &v8' 6rrvou napao-ran'i

(Ag. 14). (For fear in sleep's place stands forever at my head). Hughes contir~uesto

extend these and other metaphors, as I will show in the subsequent sections.

11. Moral Issues Underscored - and Preached About: "Justice ... Seeks Out Clean

Heart and Hands. .."

Hughes underscores the moral issues of Aeschylus and highlights their presence through the use of rhetorical questions, language that simplifies and ]makes metaphorical passages more abstract, and language that becomes prophetic, ritual, and at times almost didactic.

Through his insertion of rhetorical questions, Hughes goes to special lengths

to call attention to the moral issues central to Aeschylus' trilogy. These questions are

often implicit in Aeschylus' text and expressed by indirection and metaphor. Huglhes,

however, brings them into the open by inserting rhetorical questions where they have

no Aeschylean counterpart:

A) Aeschylus:

ZE<~60~1s TOT' ~CTT~V,Ei ~68'a;- TG +iAov KEKA~~VG?, TOGTO VIV ITPOCTEVV~TTW(Ag. 160-162).

(Zeus: whatever he may be, if this name pleases hmin invocation, thus I call upon him.) Hughes:

What is good? Who is God? ...Who can say anything about it? (13).

B) Aeschylus:

(It has been made long since and grown old among men this saying: human wealth grown to the fulness of stature breeds again nor dies without issue).

Hughes:

The lucky man's great good fortune Ruins his children. This was old wisdom. Is it true? (39).

C) Aeschylus:

(Speak, if you will. My heart is in a dance of fear)

Hughes:

Why did my heart lurch when you picked that up? (Cho.99).

Even where Aeschylus uses rhetorical question, Hughes goes a step further:

A) Aeschylus:

TO 6' in\ yC(v ITEOOV 6na3 Oavaoicrov npdnap av6pos pihav aipa T~S&V nahlv ciyKahioa1-r' ina~i6wv; ob6; TOV bp006aij TWV @~I~~VWV&V&~'EIV ZEUS aninauo~vin' EbhaPEia; (~g.1019-1024).

(But when black blood and mortal blood of man has fallen to the ground before his feet, who then can sing spells to call it back again? Did Zeus not warn us once when he struck to impotence that one who could in truth charm back dead men? Hughes:

What magic or prayer Can put it back in the artery Or brighten the eye dulled in death? (49). What is life on earth worth? ... What must a murderer Pay for a human life That cannot be brought back? (50).

B) Aeschylus:

V~V6' a3 TP~TO~3A0i TTO~EVowriip, fi popov E'i-rrw; TFO? ~GTc(KPC(VE?, TO? K~TC(~~~~EI ~ET(XKOI~I~~~V!A~VOS aTqs; (Cho.1073-1076).

. . .Third is for the savior. He came. Shall I call it that, or death? Where is the end? Where shall the fury of fate be stilled to sleep, be done with? (Cho.1073-1076).

Hughes:

Is this the third the last - son against mother? How can Orestes break the ring of madness? Can the poor, scorched brains of Orestes Figure out all the factors? Can he solve The arithmetic of the unfinished That shunts this course from one generation to the next? Who can bring it to an end? When can it be brought to an end? How can it be brought to an end? (Cho.145).

As we can see fiom these three examples, Hughes appears to use such extensions of

Aeschylus' rhetorical questions to call attention to and to clarify the moral i,,c.sues at stake throughout Aeschylus' play.

Presumably for similar reasons, Hughes also often simplifies Aeschylus' language and makes metaphorical passages more abstract. For example, where

Aeschylus' herald announces, ~aixap~s TI~

581-582). (And the high grace of God shall be exulted, that did this), Hughes' herald proclaims: "Let us remember God, who gives justice" (Ag.22). In addition to retaining the herald's prayer-like supplication, Hughes inserts the word "justice," foreshadowing issues of justice that he will further highlight. In a later choral ode,

Hughes again specifically evokes justice, this time in language that has an almost biblical, even Christian feel. And once again we see that where Aeschylus uses highly complex metaphors, Hughes turns to a largely abstract language:

Aeschylus:

And righteousness is a shining in the smoke of mean houses. Her blessing is on the just man. From the high halls starred with gold by reeking hands she turns back with eyes that glance away to the simple in heart, spurning the strength of gold stamped false with flattery. And all things she steers to fulfillment.)

Hughes:

Justice lives in poverty. She survives. She measures What is necessary. She honours what ought to be honoured. She seeks out clean hearts, clean hands. She knows what wealth and power Grind to dust between them. She knows Goodness and the laws of heaven (Ag. 39).

Christian undertones seem present in the images of a "clean hands, clean heart," symbols of reconciliation, purification, and holiness. Hughes returns to similar language in the subsequent plays of the trilogy: A) Electra:

All I ask for myself Is to be unlike my mother - Hands, heart, thoughts clean, Unlike my mother, Conscience clean, undarkened by blood, Unlike my mother. These prayers are for us (Cho.97).

B) Chorus:

An evil heart Has an evil hand A good heart has a hand Blessed and able to bless (Eum. 174).

The recurrence of these images of "clean" "hands, heart, thoughts" and "conscience," as well as "good heart" and "hand blessed," further suggest Hughes' use of 1angua.ge colored by Christian undertones.

h addition to using Christian images of this sort, Hughes' tone often becomes highly didactic, e.g.: "Let him remember the blood / Emptied from my chained, s1,ave body - / Let that too be paid for" (Ag.66). "Let the tomb be our sacred witness" (Clho.

95), "Let them know nothing" (Cho. 103), "Let the Father look at it - 1 Not my father - the Father of All/ Who sees everything on earth" (Cho. 139), "Let me declare this - You who are loyal will understand me: / It was not a sin to kill my mother"

(Cho.141). Comparison of two more extended passages underscores Hughes' penchant for language far more didactic in tone and character that is Aeschylus:

Aeschylus:

TTPOS Ta6E TIS TOK~OV aCpas ~i3TTPOT~WV KC(; ~EVOT~- POUS 60pG.I~~lT10TP0@a~ ai60p~vosTIS EOTW (Eum. 545-549). (Let man see this and take care, to mother and father, and to the guest in the gates welcomed, give all rights that befall their position).

Hughes:

Everything is cause and effect. Crime creates misery. Let man cherish his father and h~smother. Let hmhonour the guest and protect hm. Whoever loves the good will live in wealth and be respected (Eum. 174-175).

Hughes' lines convey a strong sense of moral authority, but they carry the didactic elements of Aeschylus' poetry to new lengths:

You old men are about to learn something - And the lesson is going to be hard. Prison and starvation can work wonders In cleansing the tongue, And making the facts plain and visible. Thmk of it. Be careful what you say to the club That can break your teeth (Ag.82).

Lawless freedom is evil. The tyrant's penal code is evil. Freedom in one pan of the balance, Stem in the other - Where these hang in equilibrium The scales are in the hand of God (Eum. 174).

Justice is the anvil where Fate Forges the blade. Murder begets murder. A life must pay for a life (Eum. 123).

In my judgment Hughes, at times, goes too far. At its best, his reminiscences of biblical language - the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, etc. - lend gravity and

euphony. At times, however, his efforts become preachy rather than profound and

oversimplify the moral complexities inherent in Aeschylus' text.

At the end of the Eumenides, Hughes again extends elements implicit in

Aeschylus' resolution and colors them with language rife with biblical resonances: Aeschylus:

o~rov6ai6' ks TO lT6v k~ ~ETO~KWV l7aAAaFos ao~oi's.ZE~S ~rav61~~as O;TW Moi'pa TE ouy~a~iPa. ~AO~~~CITEV~Vkri poAna'is(Eum. 1044-1047).

(There shall be peace forever between these people of Pallas and their guests. Zeus the all seeing met with destiny to confirm it. Singing all follow our steps).

Hughes:

Pour out the wine. Let the pine bough crack and blaze. Zeus, Father of All, Guards the city of Athens. So God and Fate, in a divine marriage, Are made in one flesh Of all our people- And the voice of their shout is single and holy (Eum. 197-198).

By employing terms such as "divine" and "flesh," Hughes' language again fi~ters

Christain undertones in words often used to describe Christ's reincarnation. IHere again, Hughes' language seems designed to make Aeschylus' complex morality more apparent to a modem audience, but it runs the risk of undermining and diminishin;= the complexity and moral structure of Aeschylus' trilogy.

IV. Hughes' Flowing Imagery: "No Mind Can Encompass or Fathom the

Ocean ..."

The motifs of flowing, flooding, and pouring are central to Aeschylus, especially in relationship to blood. Hughes retains and extends this Aeschy1e:an imagery, bringing such images to purification in a way that Aeschylus does not.

Hughes continues to expand on and add more images of flowing, e.g.:

Hughes: "Your treasuries are overflowing 1 With this kind of wealth" (Hughles. Ag. 45) Aeschylus: niv~o0a16' O~Kkn;o-ra-rar 66~05,(Aesch. Ag. 962) (Poverty is a thing beyond its thought); Hughes: "Now his treasury flowing through my hands 1

Will help the people to love me, and obey me" (Ag. 82); Aeschylus: ;K T&V 6; TO%E xpqpa~wvn~lpaoopa~ ~PXEIV ~OAITWV (Ag. 1638-1640) (Still with this money I will endeavor to control / the citizens); Hughes: "Evil / Is pouring out evil. Ellood 1

Pours out of the body/ That expected love" (Ag. 54), Aeschylus: T; ~66~V~VaXos;

110 1 - 1103) (What is this new and huge / stroke of atrocity she plans within ithe house

1 to beat down the beloved beyond hope of all healing?); Hughes: "Pouring lout my blood into his, 1 Stirring our blood together in the same vat- Corpses together sin.ce we arrived together" (Ag.62), Aeschylus: &S 6; $aPIIa~ov / TE~XOUO~~6~06

~VTITE ioao0a I $6~0~(Ag. 1260- 1263) (as a wife mixing drugs/ she wills to shred the virtue of my punishment / into her bowl of wrath as she makes sharp the blade / against her man, death that he brought a mistress home.) By inserting such image,sof

"flowing," Hughes alerts the audience to Aeschylus' recurrent emphasis on the

"endless flow of blood."

Hughes further underscores this recurrent image in Aeschylus' text by emphasizing the sheer physicality of blood:

Hughes:

But when a man's blood is on the ground, When its flow pulses Searching in the dust - What magic or prayer Can put it back in the artery Or can brighten the eye dulled in death? (Hughes. Ag. 49). Aeschylus:

TO 6' ini yGv TTE~~V 0avaotpov np6nap &v6pos pihav &pa T~S&v nahtv aY~ah~oat~"ma~t6~v(Ag. 1019-1021).

(But when the black and mortal blood of man has fallen to the ground before his feet, who then can sing spells to call it back again.)

Using images such as "pulse" and "eye" "put[ting]" blood "back in the artery,"

Hughes vividly depicts the very physical and human element of bloodshed. More than that, Hughes employs "flowing" as a lead into the physicality. One sees this

again as the chorus describes a "knot-like" feeling of the stomach as a result of tht:

"lava flow of blood:"

Hughes:

Where is it coming &om? This outpouring of evil. This lava-flow of blood and stifling sulfur, Mouthings about God and all meaningless And that voice out of the middle of the earth making my bowels writhe and knot (Ag. 56).

Aeschylus:

(Whence come, beat upon beat, driven of God, vain passions of tears? Whence your cries, terrified, clashing in horror, in wrought melody and the singing speech?)

In Clytaemestra's famous speech ;~TIVBaAaooa.. . at Ag. 958-974, Hughes once

again stresses the physicality of bloodshed, where there is no Aeschylean counterpart: To flush our fabrics with all the colours of blood - Bright scarlet of the lungs, The liver's deep indigo, The artery's hot crimson, Inexhaustible, like life itself Teeming from the sources in the great deeps (Ag.45).

Hughes inserts the image of the "deep indigo" of the human "liver" rather than emphasizing the purple dye of the cuttle fish (~q~T6a-rray~aiv[a-rov, i\Cla~wv pcr$as [960]). In so doing, Hughes does not lose the complexity Aeschylus" metaphor but changes it to his own.

In this same passage, where Aeschylus does employ images of flowing,

Hughes chooses to emphasize the enormity of the ocean rather than the flow of blood, in the process omitting the hissing alliteration of Aeschylus' text:

Ocean surrounds the earth. Who can empty the ocean? No mind Can encompass or fathom the ocean From which pour the stream of purple dye (Hughes. Ag. 44-45).

(The sea is there, and who shall drain its yield? It breeds precious as silver, ever of itself renewed, The purple ooze wherein our garments shall be dipped).

In this passage, as elsewhere, Hughes often pays more attention to images of the sea and water than to blood. Indeed, throughout the trilogy, Hughes frequently inserts sea and ocean imagery in places where there are no traces of it in the Greek text. He begins in the very first pages of the play: "And the moon, coming and going -

Wearisome, like watching the sea I From a deathbed. Like watching the tide 1 In its prison yard, with its two turns I In out in out" (7). Similar images persist throughout the entire trilogy: "Showering the sea with glitter, 1 Bringing fish up out of tlie depths to be dazzled" (20), "The sea was a puddle of lead (31), "The smell spread over the sea, to neighboring lands" (41), "Look at me like a dolphin split open / From end to end" (55), "I'll let it go, like a sea-squall1 That heaps the ocean and piles towers / Of thunder into the sunrise" (57), The sea of tears/ That washes Troy / Is bottonnless. /

Let it wash Argos- / Salt, cold water/ Purge the blood /of Agamernnon" (Cho.98),

"the Ocean is a slow, cold eruption / Of devourers, devouring each other" (121), "'He will be tossed in the ocean" (1 75), "To see all the big words and noisy folly 1 Go off in bubbles / As huge seas of affliction / Swallow him up" (175).

At a climatic moment of the Agamemnon, Hughes' chorus compares the chaos borne of the relentless blood vengeance to a tidal wave:

Hughes:

The god of the killing fury Is inexhaustible. Like a tidal wave That swamps harbour cities He bursts From hearts of brothers Looking for justice Through eyes Blocked With blood (Ag. 76).

Aeschylus:

Pia[~~ai6' ~~OCJTT~POIS ~-rrippoa'Toiva'ipa~wv pihas" Apqs, 81~016;~av TT~OP~~VWV naxva ~ou~og6p~.rrapiS~i. (Ag. 1509-1512).

(The black ruin that shoulders through the streaming blood of brothers strides at last where he shall win requital for the chldren who were eaten).

This same image recurs in the Libation Bearers, where again there is no parallel in

Aeschylus' text: "I want bitterness and fury / Like a tidal wave at midnight ,l To overwhelm me" (100). Hughes' imagery tidal wave imagery further escalates the chaos implicit in the work of Aeschylus. As the play concludes, Hughes' emphasis on water imagery at long last arrives at a sense of purification and renewal. When late in Eumenides, Atht:na compares polluted water to the corruption of society, Hughes' imagery is allnost parallel to that which we find in Aeschylus: "Where a spring is polluted 1 By a filthy trickle / No man will drink or can drink without being poisoned." (Hughes. Eum.

182). (poppdrrc; 6' G6wp 7 Aaprrpdv p~a;vwvO~ITO~' E~~~CTEIS T~OT~V) (Eum.

694-695). (But if bright water you stain 1 with mud, you never more will finid it fit. to drink). However, as Hughes' Athena begins to establish order in society, her words go beyond the Greek text: "I open on this rock/ The pure spring of my laws. I Do not taint them / By any expedient shift for advantages" (182). Compared to the chaotic vastness of the ocean, the more circumscribed narrow "pure spring" she metaphorically creates allows for controllability and order in society. The "pureness" of this water is symbolic of the harmony that has been obtained, the laws Athena lias established.

As justice and order are established throughout the play, Hughes' Athena declares: "Let the lives of all just citizens / Flow fiom beginning to end undistorted," which in the Greek text reads: (~~ipywyap, dv6pos $ITUTTO~~EVOS6tKqv, I TO

TWV 61~a;wv~6~6' arr~v6q~ov Y~VOS. (Eum. 91 1-912) (so love I best of ;all / the unblighted generation of these unjust men). Flowing, so often negative in Aeschylus'

Oresteia, becomes optimistically positive, even hopeful. Hughes' Eumenides leaves us with the hope that the established law and order, like Athena's spring, wilil

continue to "flow" into the lives of men "from beginning to end." V. HEANEY'S "Mycenae Lookout"

I. Heaney's "Mycenae Lookout:" ""No Such Thing as Innocent By~tantling~~

Seamus Heaney's poem "Mycenae Lookout" breaks fiee of close adherence to

Aeschylus' plot line of the sort exemplified by Harrison's and Hughes' Oresteia translations. Similar to other Aeschylus-inspired modem versions, such as Jean Paul

Sartre's The Flies, T.S. Eliot's Family Reunion, and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning

Becomes Electra, Heaney does not follow the trilogy of Aeschylus closely. Indeed, though Heaney's five-part poem might seem to suggest the structure of a five-act play

,in fact his poem's design seems more akin to T.S. Eliot's five-part poem, fihe Waste

Land. Just as Eliot quotes Latin at the opening of The Waste Land, so too I-Eeaney at the beginning of his poem invokes Aeschylus' Greek: "'The ox is on my tongue'

Aeschylus, ~~amemnon.""In character too, Heaney's poem reflects the influence of

Eliot, of whom Heaney once wrote: "What one learns ultimately from Eliot is that the activity of poetry is solitary and, if one is to rejoice in it, one has to construct something upon which to rej~ice.""~Written shortly after the 1993 cease-fire in

Northem Ireland, "Mycenae Lookout" presents Heaney's "solitary," yet uplifting memoir for himself and Ireland. With the future of Ireland in mind, Heaney expalids on moral and political issues as Aeschylus does. Furthermore, the watchman fiom

Aeschylus becomes the dominant narrator of Heaney's entire poem. The watchman is simultaneously vigilant and aware, yet solitary in his impotent awareness to influence

4 1 Heaney 1991,29. 42 Heaney 1989. the situation at hand. In many ways, this watchman reflects Heaney himself as a watchman over Ireland.

11. Weaney's Freeing of Aeschylus' Ox

From the onset of the poem, we simultaneously experience Heaney's knowledge of Aeschylus' Greek and the poem's freedom from Aeschylus' text.

Some people wept, and not for sorrow -joy That the king had armed and upped and sailed for Troy, But inside me like struck sound in a gong That killing-fest, the life-warp and world-wrong It brought to pass, still augured and endured. I'd dream of blood in bright webs in a ford, Of bodies raining down like tattered meat On top of me asleep - and me the lookout The queen's command had posted and forgotten, The blindspot her farsightedness relied on. And then the ox would lurch against the gong And deaden it and I would feel my tongue Like the dropped gangplank of a cattle truck, Trampled and rattled, running piss and muck, All swimmy -trembly as the lick of fire, A victory beacon in an abattoir.. . Next thing then I would waken at a loss, For all the world a sheepdog stretched in grass, Exposed to what I knew, still honor-bound To concentrate attention out beyond The city and the border, on that line Where the blaze would leap the hills when Troy had fallen" (29).

The watchman invokes the images of Aeschylus' watchman speech such as

"sheepdog," "blaze," "ox," "web," "tongue," and "victory beacon." Heaney"~

language also displays his close knowledge of Aeschylus' extensive use of word

compounding. In this very passage for instance, Heaney uses compounding to

capture Aeschylus' tone in his poem: "killing-fest" (29), "life-warp" (29), "worldl-

wrong," (29)' "swimmy-trembly" (29). These compounds continue throughout the

poem: "love-shout9' (30)' "char-eyed" (3 l), "dropped-wing" (3 I), "Old King Cock-

of-the-Walk" (3 I), "King Kill-the-Child-and-Take-What-Comes" (3 1-32), "loft- floor" (36), "roof-posted" (36), "rope-net" (36), and "blood-plastered" (36). Heaney and Harrison, who know Aeschylus well through his Greek, extensively use compounding, whereas Hughes uses less frequent compounds.

In addition to Aeschylus' compounding, Heaney mimics Aeschylus" dense adjective-loaded language, as for instance in the following section of the opening speech:

And then the ox would lurch against the gong And deaden it and I would feel my tongue Like the dropped gangplank of a cattle truck, Trampled and rattled, running piss and muck, All swimmy-bembly as the lick of fire, A victory beacon in an abattoir.. . (29).

Heaney inundates the text with graphic and gory language - "trampled and rattled.,"

"running piss and muck," and "swimmy-trembly" - not only depicting the s'laughter and blood-shed of the war, but also evoking his own state of mental chaos aind confusion. Like Aeschylus, Heaney's rich, adjective-laden composition is both graphically and emotionally charged. For example, the following description of

Cassandra displays the watchman's emotion-filled animosity:

Her soiled vest, her little breasts, her clipped, devast-

ated, scabbed punk head, the char-eyed,

famine gawk - she looked camp-fucked,

and simple (3 1).

These adjective spattering and descriptions recur throughout the poem, for examlple:

Old King Cock- of-the-Walk was back, King Kill- the-Child- and-Take

What-Comes,, King Agamem- non's drum-

balled, old buck's stride was back (3 1-32).

This above example shows how at times Heaney's random spattering of words fails to produce complete sentences, similar to the technique of Hawison. Heaney also uses this technique in his description of Ireland: "Cities of grass. Fort walls. The dumbstruck palace" (33). For the most part, however, Heaney opts for complete sentences and adopts Aeschylus' habit of combining verbal complexity with syntactically sound sentence structure:

I'd come to with the night wind on my face, Agog, alert again, but far, far less Focused on victory than I should have been - (33).

The ox's tons of dumb inertia stood, head-down and motionless as a herm (35).

As we see in these and other passages, Heaney produces an eloquence o:l language that is reminiscent of what we find in Hughes' poetry. He discovered the poetry of

Hughes in 1962, and he speaks highly of Hughes, who "provided a contemporary source of encouragement."" At times, the words of Heaney even sound similar to those of Hughes, i.e: "Day in, Day out, I'd come alive again" (Heaney 30, italics mine), and "In out in out" (Hughes 7, italics mine). In particular, Heaney admired the

"unsentimental intimacy" that Hughes brought back into English poetry, especially

Hughes' ability to make "racial memory, animal instinct and poetic inspiration all

43 Heaney quoted in Buttel 1975, 30. flow into one another."14 In many ways, Heaney's use of simile and metaphor both reflects his appreciation of Aeschylus' penchant for imagery and also reflects the qualities that he admires most in Hughes' poetry: "I'd dream of blood in briight webs in a ford / Of bodies raining down like tattered meat / On top of me asleep" (29), "Of victory fires, the raw wound of that dawn / Igniting and erupting, bearing dawn / Like lava on the fleeing population.. ." (30), and "The roof was like an eardrum" (35). By writing such physical and animalistic images into his poem, Heaney uses metaphor and simile to provoke the "memory," "instinct" and "inspiration" that he admires in

Hughes' poetry.

111. Heaney's Watchman: "My Sentry Work Was Fate. ..'s

Unlike Aeschylus' watchman, whom we encounter only in the first thirty- eight lines of the poem, Heaney's watchman narrates the entire poem, providing an imaginative extension of Aeschylus' text. Heaney's title "Mycenae Lookout" itself carries dual connotations, suggesting as it does both the watchman's vigil or

"lookout" as well as a possible warning of the implications of the post war era:

"Mycenae, Lookout!" Perhaps, we can even go as far as to interpret "Lookout" in the sense of an outlook, or prophecy, including the optimistic revelation that we will encounter in the words of the watchman at the end of Heaney's poem.

Heaney's expansion of Aeschylus' watchman provides a new depth and dimension in the watchman's actions, feelings, and character. In the followi~rg excerpts from the watchman's speech, Heaney's creative imagination suggelsts the watchman's acute sensitivity to the implications of the events around him: "Upon my

44 Heaney quoted in Buttel 1975,30. elbows,45headback, shutting out 1 The agony of Clyternnestra's love-shout" (30);

"The king should have been told, 1but who was there to tell hidif not myself? I willed them / to cease and break hold / of my cross-purposed silence1 but still kept on, all smiles" (34); "The ox's ton of dumb"/ inertia stood, head down 1 and motionless as a herrn" (35); "My own mind was a bull-pen where homed Agamernnon / had stamped his weight in gold" " (36). The monologue of Heaney7swatchman builds on the materials of Aeschylus to evoke this spokesperson's keen awareness of the moral and political impacts of war.

In what amounts to a further extension of Aeschylus' watchman, Heaney's watchman in many ways also represents the poet himself as an alert, yet solitary observer of Ireland. Expressing his feelings after the cease-fire in Northern Ireland in

1993 and exploring the after-effects of war on both the individual and the nation,

Heaney himself wrote: "Instead of being able to just bask in the turn of [cease-fire] events, I found myself getting angrier at the waste of lives and friendships arid possibilities in the years that had preceded it.. .,748 In his role as watchman, Heaneyy conveys the psychological and detrimental impacts of war on all areas of life: as he explores themes of death, love, loss, divinity, and justice - universal themes central also to Aeschylus' Oresteia. In addition, Heaney focuses his treatment of these themes on the specific political and social issues of his contemporary Lrelancl, just as

45 Compare Aeschylus Ag.3. o~;ya~s'AT~EI~SWV S~K~~EV, KUV& 6iKqv (elbowed upon P,treidae3s roof dogwise to mark). 46 Compare Aeschylus Ag. 36-37. PO~Shi yhdooq piyas / P~~~KEv(For an ox stands huge upon my tongue). 47 Aeschylus Ag. 438 .6 xpuoapolpos 6' "Apqs 0Cd~aTCdv(The god of war, money changer of dead bodies). 48 Heaney quoted in Vender 2002, 181. Aeschylus had used the political turmoil of the years leading up to 458 B.C. as the basis for his exploration of these same universal themes in the Ovesteia.

IV. The Politics of War in Heaney's Ireland: "Cities of Grass. Fort Walls.

A Dumbstruck Palace."

Through the persona of the watchman, Heaney explores the psychological impact of war on his own Ireland in a way that itself recalls the thoughtfulness of Aeschylus' watchman - so aware of dangers he cannot fully express and is helpless to counteract:

. . .What was to come Out of that ten years' wait that was the war Flawed the black mirror of my frozen stare. If a god of justice had reached down from heaven For a strong beam to hang hs scale-pans on He would have found me tensed and ready-made. I balanced between destiny and dread And saw it coming, clouds bloodshot with the red Of victory fires, the raw wound of that dawn Igniting and erupting, bearing down Like lava on a fleeing population (30).

Through violent, war-dominated images such as the "black mirror" and "bloodshot" clouds of "red victory fires," Heaney uses imagery that recalls both Aeschyl-usand

Harrison to describe the bloodshed, injury, carnage and defeat that had dominated his

Ireland. Gunshots and bombings of modern warfare are still "igniting" and "eruptj.ng" inside the mind of the narrative persona, even though the war has ended. Referring to the "god of justice," Heaney subtly reminds us of the politics of justice that characterize the confiontation of the gods in Aeschylus' Eurnenides. A victim of the crime of war, the narrator is stuck on the "balance" between "destiny" and dread.."

Like a balance "beam"" the narrator is the silent bystander with no weight or control

49 Ths reference to the beam of justice has an Aeschylean echo: Ag. 250-251. Ai~a6; ~07s.V~V na0oiklv pa06v 1 ~TTI~P~TTEI.([The balance ofjustice so inclines] that those only learn who suffer).

58 to influence the political scene. And like Aeschylus' watchman, the persona that

Heaney adopts here does not speak out in this political turmoil, but fearfully awaits its resolution.

In his watchman role, Heaney vividly portrays the intensity of this turmoil.

Aeschylean images of bloodshed and slaughter dominate his language: "But inside me like struck sound in a gong / That killing-fest, the life-warp and world-wrong / It brought to pass, still augured and endured" (29). More than just a witness 1.0 this

"killing-fest," the watchman is a victim trapped in this inevitable cycle. As 11e describes the trauma "brought to pass, still augured, and endured," these horrific memories are all-encompassing - they are a part of his past, present, and future.

Furthermore, Heaney evokes a continuum of graphic blood-filled images: "I'd dream of blood in bright webs in a ford, I Of bodies raining down like tattered meal." (29),

"But in the end Troy's mothers / bore their brunt in alley, / bloodied cot and bed" (35-

36), "I moved beyond bad faith: / for his bullion bars," his bonus/ was a rope-net and a bloodbath" (36), "stripped to the skin, blood plastered and moaning" (36). By invoking Aeschylus' bloodshed imagery, Heaney reminds us of the physical brutalities of civil war and its potential for an endless flow of blood.

More than just the physicality of bloodshed, Heaney portrays war's physical damage to the landscape and the city's devastating turmoil: "Cities of grass. Fort walls. The dumbstruck" palace" (60). Yet even amidst the devastation of nature imagery, Heaney hints at rebirth and restoration. As Heaney reflects on the post-war destruction, he depicts the new life of grass, growing among the ruins in the slowly

50 Cf. Aes. Ag. 438ff., on Ares the gold changer. 51 Compare again Aeschylus' silenced watchman: Ag. 36-37. Po65 yhdcroq ;yay 1 P~~~KEv(For an ox stands huge upon my tongue). healing city. The "grass" also suggests the greenness of Ireland and its potential fix fertility and growth, even after the harsh and crude realities of war. Heaney further juxtaposes the delicate flowers with the war-tom state:

The little violets' heads bowed their stems The pre-dawn gossamers, all dew and scrim And star-lace, it was more through them I felt the beating of the huge time-wound We lived inside (3 1).

Heaney joins delicate, beautiful "violets" and "gossamers" with devastating images of drooped heads and scrawny bodies. By contrasting beauty with devastation, Heaney depicts the life-depriving features of war. Heaney adopts inverted nature imagery similar to that which we encountered in Aeschylus, natural images of destruction and death that will be progressively transformed into depictions of restoration and life. In addition, Heaney's allusion to a flower seems to echo a poem ascribed to Sappho one more indication of his knowledge of Greek: diav ~av~~KIV~OV EV ~~$E(sI YTO;~E,VE~

(Like the hyacinth which shepherds tread underfoot in the mountains, and on the ground the purple flower.. .).52 The image of the flower further recalls the passage: describing Gorgythion's death in Homer's Iliad: ~{KUV 6' ds ET~~WCSE poih~v,;i T' ivi K{TT~,/ ~apn6pp~qopivq vo~iqoi TE ~iap~vfjotv,I2s E~ipwo'

Cpuo~~apq rrjhq~~ Papuv8iv (Il. VIII. 306-308). "He bent drooping his head to one side, as a garden poppy bends beneath the weight of its yield and the rains of springtime; 1 so his head bent slack to one side beneath the helm's weight."53

Just as Heaney goes back to Sappho and Homer to evoke still more powerfully the brutalities of civil war and the devastation of interfamilial killing, so

-

52 D.A. Campbell 1990. fragment 105. 53 Lattimore 1951. too he reaches beyond the Oresteia to ancient Rome. He alludes to Remus' :killing to convey Ireland's civil turmoil:

Small crowds of people watching as a man Jumped a fresh earth wall and another ran Amorously, it seemed, to strike him down (34).

Heaney's reference to a "wall" and "fratricide" portray his disgust of fratem,al controversy and the murderous bloodshed provoked in Ireland, while his "a~norously, it seemed" again recalls the inverted imagery of Aeschylus in its linking of bloodtshed to love. His use of allusion reminds us of the cyclical nature of human history and that civil war is no new phenomenon: "Romulus walled it, and he or his lieutenant

Celer killed Remus for leaping over the walls."54

V. Heaney's Purification: "His Reverie of Water"

Toward the end of the poem, Heaney's tone and imagery progress toward restoration. Though Aeschylus moves towards a resolution at the end of the Oresteia,

Heaney, much like Hughes, takes Aeschylus' imagery one step further, in his hinting at purification. Even before Heaney introduces his water imagery, he sugge,,"ts a sense of hopeful optimism amid his description of the "time wound":

I felt the beating of the huge time-wound We live inside. My soul wept in my hand When I would touch them, my whole being rained Down on myself, I saw cities of grass, Valleys of longing, tombs, a wind-swept brightness(34).

Here we begin to notice hints of Heaney's move towards purification as the "rain"' of the watchman's tears both cleanse and console, as he grieves, copes, and ultimately attempts to overcome the damage inflicted by these "wounds." The vibrant life of

54 OCD 1999, 1335. "cities of grass," the hope of "valleys of longing" and the light of the "wind-swept brightness" amidst these tears bring light and hope in despair.

In what follows, Heaney inserts a profusion of water images, extending anld surpassing the restorative justice of Aeschylus by calling for a physical, spiritual, and moral purification. The final section, "His Reverie of Water," abounds in symbolism of refreshing water: "At Troy, at Athens, what I most clearly 1 see and nearly smell / is the fresh water" (36). Envisioning "fresh waters," Heaney uses water as s,yrnbolof cleansing amidst the turmoil, a form of cleansing that is absent in the conclusion of the Ovesteia. Even when Heaney evokes images of Aeschylus, he expands 'these images to enhance his notion of purification. For example, even when Heartey alludes to the hospitality baths prepared by Clytaemestra for Agamemnon, "'A filled bath, still unentered / and unstained" (36), he reminds us that bath tubs can be

"unstained," not sullied by blood. Similarly, even though he describes Aganlernnon and Clytaemestra murdered in the bath, he speaks of a "splashing dosing ofl" (36), a reminder of the pleasures of a normal bath. Then as Heaney reflects on the generational effects of the cyclical nature of destruction, he takes the water imagery to a new level: "the ladder of the future/ and the past, besieger and besieged1 the treadmill of assault1 turned waterwheel" (37). Heaney's conversion of "the treadmill of assault" into a "waterwheel" suggests a hope that water's purifying effects can triumph over the destructive brutalities of war. In addition, Heaney's words recall the final sections of T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land, in particular a passage in "Dealth by

Water": "A current under sea / Picked up his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell/

He passed the stages of his youth / Entering the whirlpool" (IV. 3 15). Here Eliot 1.00 alludes to the cyclical effects of water - its purifying capacity in every stage of lifie and its cleansing restorative impact on death. Perhaps Eliot's move towards portraying the purifying effects of water was inspiration for Heaney.

As his poem moves towards its conclusion, Heaney uses water images to suggest the washing away of the impurities and bloodshed of civil war and 13eane:y's hope for Ireland's future:

And then this ladder of our own that ran deep into a well-shaft being sunk in broad daylight, men puddling at the source

through tawny mud," then coming back up, deeper in themselves for having been there, like charged soldiers testing the safe ground (37).

Heaney's watchman hopes that the Irish people, "deeper" for "having been" "sunlk" into a "deep well-shaft" of turmoil, can embrace, the "broad daylight" and "test the safe ground." As the watchman further resorts to water, he hopes not only for purification of the damaged physical structures of the land, but also for a great purification of ethical human values and a genuine respect for life. Just as A.eschylus works toward hope and resolution, so the watchman hopes restoration will spread:

"finders, keepers, seers of fresh water 1 in the bountiful round mouths of iro-npurrlps / and gushing taps" (37). As Heaney sees it, those who are constantly aware will se:ek and find and bring themselves closer to a refreshing and a therapeutic cleansing.

5s Again, cf. Aes. Eum. 694-695. For me, the way that Heaney weaves characteristic Aeschylean images into a reflection of his modem Ireland fosters a richness and originality that surpass any close translation. The most striking features of Heaney's freedom and his creativity are in fact rooted in Aeschylus. For one thing, the subtle allusions to Aeschylus' language and imagery throughout the poem are a constant reminder not only of

Heaney's understanding of the Greek, but also of his close knowledge of Aeschylus' text. In addition, he adopts Aeschylus' word-compounding and adjective loaded language throughout the poem. More than this, Heaney's awareness of the political roots of Aeschylus' Oresteia allows him to assimilate the turmoil of his modem

Ireland with ancient Greece. For me, Heaney's way of viewing the past as a framework for the present and future makes his version endlessly fascinating. He;mey transforms Aeschylus' Oresteia to suit his own Ireland. Heaney's poem emits a clepth of language and feeling much like reading Aeschylus. When reading both Heaney and Aeschylus, I cannot help but discover something new each time I approach the text. This is not to say that Harrison's and Hughes' translations do not add new dimensions to my readings of Aeschylus. But Heaney in the very act of returning to

Aeschylus at every level of his poem transforms the Oresteia into something that feels completely new. Bibliography:

Buttel, Robert. 1975. Seamus Heaney. Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated Urliversity

Press.

Campbell, David A. 1990. Sappho and Alcaeus. Loeb Classical Library. Ed. G.P.

Gould. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Denniston, John DeWar and Denys Page. 1957. Agamemnon. Oxford: Clarendon

Press.

Earp, F.R.1948. The Style ofAeschylus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eliot, Thomas Steams. 1922. The Waste Land. New York: Liverlight.

Fraenkel, Eduard. 1950. Agamemnon /Edited with Commentary. Vol. I and 11.

Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Goheen, Robert. 1955. Aspects of Dramatic Symbolism: Three Studies in the Oresteia.

American Journal of Philology, 76:113-137.

Harrison, Tony.1985. Plays Four: The Ovesteia, Common Chorus Parts One & Two.

London: Faber & Faber.

. Tony.1991. "The Oresteia in the Making: Letters to Peter Hall." Eilood~lxe

Critical Anthologies: 1. Ed. Neil Anstley. Newcastle: Blood Axe Books Ltd.:

275-280.

Heaney, Seamus. 1996."Mycenae Lookout." The Spirit Level. New York: Farrar,

Straus, and Giroux: 29-37.

.1989. "Influences: The Power of T.S. Eliot." Boston Review, 14:

Heath, John. 1999. "Disentangling the Beast: Humans and Other Animals in

Aeschylus' Oresteia. JHS 1 19:17-47.

Hughes, Ted. 1999. The Oresteia. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Lattimore, Richmond. 1953. Aeschylus I / Oresteia. Chicago: The University of

Chicago Press.

. 1951. The Iliad of Homer. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Lebeck, Anne. 197 1. The Oresteia; A Study in Language and Structure. Washington,

Center for Hellenic Studies; distributed by Harvard University Press,

Cambridge, Mass.

Murray, A.T. trans. 1965. The Iliad. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, M,4:

Harvard University Press.

Oxford Classical Dictionary. 1999. Ed.Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. 3n'

Edition. Oxford University Press.

Porter, David. 1986. "The Imagery of Greek Tragedy: Three Characteristics"

Symbolae Osloenses 6 1: 19-42.

Stanford, William Bedell. 1942. Aeschylus in his Style. Dublin: The University Press.

Taplin, Oliver.2002. "Contemporary Poetry and Classics." Classics in Progress:

Essays on Greece and Rome. Ed. T.P.Wiseman. Oxford: Oxford University

Press: 1-20.

Vendler, Helen. 2002. "Seamus Heaney and the Oresteia: "'Mycenae Lookout' xnd

the Usehlness of Tradition" in Amid Our Troubles: Irish Version of Ckeek

Tvagedy..ed. Marianne McDonald and J. Michael Walton. Methuen: Methuen

Publishing Ltd.: 3-36. Zeitlin, Froma I. 1978. "The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in thie

Oresteiu." Arethusu 111 49-84.