for together they will project their bond into the most creative reaches of the Oresteia . They not only prefigure the union of Fury and justice that concludes the trilogy. They make that justice worth the suffering in the first place, stringent and compassionate in one.
For the present, however, Orestes must suffer for ‘the race of man’, and as his mission grows his trials grow as well. He appeals to Apollo, who commanded him to avenge his father and promised to purge him in return. At last a god can be held accountable for a murder in the house, and Apollo will participate in Orestes’ exoneration. But here, as he is invested with Apollo’s insignia and turns towards Delphi he may have his doubts. ‘Go through with [your revenge],’ Apollo urged, ‘and you go free of guilt.’ Perhaps, but Orestes no sooner murders his mother - lops her serpent head, as the women say - than the serpents of her Furies flash and tangle in his eyes. And they are stronger than the blood-guilt which Apollo’s arts can purge. They are the forces of conscience and would go their wild way, were it not for the nature of their source - his mother’s blood, his own life-blood that he has shed. Matricide is a kind of suicide for Orestes; at the same time matricide may expand him. The matriarchal Furies are both his punishment and, in a sense, his power. They are, above all, a terrifying reversal of the mourning women Orestes saw at first. Dressed in black, a ‘new wound to the house’, they drive him mad - they drive him into a new, more desperate flight - yet the Furies also galvanize his perceptions and, as we shall see, they force him on to Delphi, then to Athens where he is restored. As Orestes goes to meet his more climactic trials, he is equipped with all that he inherits from his mother: tragic heroism, the power to suffer into truth, and more. In the midst of terror an act of symbiosis has begun between the mother and the son. Cursed and murderous as they are, they have begun to regenerate the curse.
In Agamemnon everyone is in the grip of larger forces. The gates close; the ramparts loom. It is not a play of action. The poetry is the action, but the long casts back to Troy and forward to Argos only tighten the patterns of reprisal like a vice. Violence breeds violence, and all that can counteract it is an attitude, the will to suffer more. The Libation Bearers breaks the deadlock. Here is a new generation, a new attempt to penetrate the massive walls, a new accommodation with the gods. The tone of the play is deeply inward. The Furies, once an expedition sent to Troy, are assaults within the brain. Aeschylus probes his sources. Scenes that stir with an Odyssean quiet may even tell us more; here at the grave, the dead father hears what he never heard in Homer, the voices of his children. And within the atmosphere of the hearth, the baths, the old nurse and the traveller’s ingratiating talk, lies a re-creation of the Odyssev at least as psychological and expansive. The hostess welcomes a stranger - the son who returns for vengeance but must kill his mother together with her suitor. Homer’s story of revenge turns tragic, yet the family expands with humanity as well. Clytaemnestra rivals her suitor in treachery and Penelope in maternal strength. Orestes rivals Odysseus in savagery, Telemachus in maturity. In terms of Homer he is both the father and the son. He is his own father, one might say: more self-determined than predetermined, his character may improve upon his destiny. That is the purpose of Orestes’ play-within-a-play: to create his own identity so fully that, when he enacts his ruthless, destined part, he can recast it with dignity and insight. Orestes is a prophet, as the chorus sees him, because he has a vision of himself.
If people are demonized in Agamemnon, here they personalize their gods. The gods remain in Delphi or Olympus, but ‘the rough work of the world is still to do’, and men who go about it
For the present, however, Orestes must suffer for ‘the race of man’, and as his mission grows his trials grow as well. He appeals to Apollo, who commanded him to avenge his father and promised to purge him in return. At last a god can be held accountable for a murder in the house, and Apollo will participate in Orestes’ exoneration. But here, as he is invested with Apollo’s insignia and turns towards Delphi he may have his doubts. ‘Go through with [your revenge],’ Apollo urged, ‘and you go free of guilt.’ Perhaps, but Orestes no sooner murders his mother - lops her serpent head, as the women say - than the serpents of her Furies flash and tangle in his eyes. And they are stronger than the blood-guilt which Apollo’s arts can purge. They are the forces of conscience and would go their wild way, were it not for the nature of their source - his mother’s blood, his own life-blood that he has shed. Matricide is a kind of suicide for Orestes; at the same time matricide may expand him. The matriarchal Furies are both his punishment and, in a sense, his power. They are, above all, a terrifying reversal of the mourning women Orestes saw at first. Dressed in black, a ‘new wound to the house’, they drive him mad - they drive him into a new, more desperate flight - yet the Furies also galvanize his perceptions and, as we shall see, they force him on to Delphi, then to Athens where he is restored. As Orestes goes to meet his more climactic trials, he is equipped with all that he inherits from his mother: tragic heroism, the power to suffer into truth, and more. In the midst of terror an act of symbiosis has begun between the mother and the son. Cursed and murderous as they are, they have begun to regenerate the curse.
In Agamemnon everyone is in the grip of larger forces. The gates close; the ramparts loom. It is not a play of action. The poetry is the action, but the long casts back to Troy and forward to Argos only tighten the patterns of reprisal like a vice. Violence breeds violence, and all that can counteract it is an attitude, the will to suffer more. The Libation Bearers breaks the deadlock. Here is a new generation, a new attempt to penetrate the massive walls, a new accommodation with the gods. The tone of the play is deeply inward. The Furies, once an expedition sent to Troy, are assaults within the brain. Aeschylus probes his sources. Scenes that stir with an Odyssean quiet may even tell us more; here at the grave, the dead father hears what he never heard in Homer, the voices of his children. And within the atmosphere of the hearth, the baths, the old nurse and the traveller’s ingratiating talk, lies a re-creation of the Odyssev at least as psychological and expansive. The hostess welcomes a stranger - the son who returns for vengeance but must kill his mother together with her suitor. Homer’s story of revenge turns tragic, yet the family expands with humanity as well. Clytaemnestra rivals her suitor in treachery and Penelope in maternal strength. Orestes rivals Odysseus in savagery, Telemachus in maturity. In terms of Homer he is both the father and the son. He is his own father, one might say: more self-determined than predetermined, his character may improve upon his destiny. That is the purpose of Orestes’ play-within-a-play: to create his own identity so fully that, when he enacts his ruthless, destined part, he can recast it with dignity and insight. Orestes is a prophet, as the chorus sees him, because he has a vision of himself.
If people are demonized in Agamemnon, here they personalize their gods. The gods remain in Delphi or Olympus, but ‘the rough work of the world is still to do’, and men who go about it
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