Blackwood's Magazine/Volume 1/Issue 2/Remarks on Greek Tragedy (No. 2)

REMARKS ON GREEK TRAGEDY.
No. II.
(Æschyli Chœphori—Sophoclis Electra.)

When we study the history of our race, which is little else than a chronicle of crimes and follies, of blood shed in vulgar wars, and intellect wasted on unworthy purposes, the eye that wanders with disgust over the blotted page, turns with delight to the contemplation of the virtues and the genius by which it is semetimes brightened; nor are periods wanting, in which, degraded as man has generally been, he exhibits such moral and intellectual grandeur, as to make even the most cynical abate of the harshness with which he usually judges of human nature. Of these favoured times, in an eminent degree, was the age in which Æschylus flourished. Never, perhaps, did there exist at once, a greater number of men distinguished by virtue and talent. To prove this assertion, nothing more were necessary than to give a list of the honest statesmen who then presided in the councils of Athens,—of the warriors who devoted their lives to her independence,—of the architects, sculptors, painters, poets, historians, and philosophers, whose names are, even at this day, shedding a glory over her ruins, brighter than that which illumines the maturity and vigour of any other state. This age may be denominated the spring of the world, and its productions, even in their decay, retain much of the freshness, and the bloom, and the beauty, of that delightful season. Their statues do not appear so much to be imitations of nature, as nature herself, starting into life, and assuming her finest forms. The ruins of their temples give us models of the grandest design and the most beautiful execution. Socrates taught a system of the purest morals and the most sublime theology, of which he exemplified the one in his life, and sanctioned the other by his death. In history, Thucydides and Xenophon have not yet been surpassed; and the dramatic writers gave to the drama a form which their successors may have modified and improved,—never changed. War was not then waged to aggrandize one and to degrade the many—it was the generous struggle of a whole people, determined to perish amid the ruins of their country, rather than receive a foreign yoke. In the battles of liberty, in which Æschylus, and Pindar, and Socrates, fought, a little band of freemen resisted and baffled the whole power of a mighty empire; and war, that in common cases depresses talent, and extinguishes all the arts but such as are subservient to the purposes of destruction, kindled a flame of enthusiasm that cherished and developed the seeds of whatever was great and good in man; and were we asked to name a period in which he is seen in the noblest view, our minds would turn to the years that elapsed from the Persian invasion, to the extinction of the liberties of Greece by Philip. The duration of freedom, and the glory of Greece, was short; but let it be remembered, that national glory was the offspring of national independence, and that they perished together. The lovers of mankind may lament, and the abettors of despotism may rejoice, that their existence was of so short a date; but a few such years are worth myriads of ages of monkish slumber, and one such victory as Salamis or Bannockburn is of more value than the innumerable triumphs of the vulgar herd of conquerors.

Hence the curiosity which every thing connected with that extraordinary people has excited, and the enthusiasm with which the ruins of their city have been explored, and the works of their poets and sages studied; yet it has happened, unfortunately for literature and the arts, that little more than the wrecks of their genius have survived. A pillar, or a capital, or a frieze, is all that remains of the temple that was the glory of the age that reared it; and of the ninety tragedies which the fertility of the genius of Æschylus produced, only seven have descended to us, and these in a mutilated and imperfect state; yet though in many passages it is obvious that the poetry has suffered from the carelessness of transcribers, and not less, perhaps, from the ambitious learning of the commentators, we can judge of these seven as wholes; and the more narrowly we examine them, the more cause shall we find to justify the admiration of his contemporaries, and of succeeding ages.

It is not the object of the writer of this essay to indulge in verbal criticism on the Greek text, or to attempt to restore imperfect readings by conjectural emendations, much less to aim at bringing forward original views of the Greek Tragedy. His design is simply to offer such obvious remarks as are most suitable to a miscellany of this kind, and to give such abstracts, and extract such passages, as may enable the reader to judge for himself of these celebrated productions. He is now to analyze two plays written on the same subject, the Chœphori of Æschylus, and the Electra of Sophocles.

While Agamemnon was at Troy, his queen, Clytemnestra, had an illicit intercourse with Ægysthus. Fearing the punishment due to their disloyalty, they surprised him on his return to Argos, murdered him, and usurped his throne. Electra, who at the time of her father's death was arrived at womanhood, secretly sent to Phocis, under the care of an aged and faithful tutor, her infant brother Orestes, well aware that her mother and Ægysthus would soon remove this only obstacle to the secure possession of that throne which they had obtained by adultery and murder. The punishment of the guilty pair, which is the subject of these plays, is supposed not to have taken place till twenty years after the transaction of which I have been speaking. Electra, who was a woman of a lofty and unconquerable spirit, during that long interval, suffered every species of indignity from an unnatural mother, and the murderer of her father, who now sat upon his throne. The only effect of ill treatment, on such a mind, was to fix there a settled purpose of revenge. She was one of that class of beings, whom an attempt to humble exasperates, not subdues; and from the depth of her degradation, she looked forward to the return of her brother as the event that was to avenge her wrongs, and restore the honours of the family of Agamemnon. He at length appears, and a recognition takes place between him and his sister, at the tomb of their father, where they swear mutual vengeance over his ashes. With the advice of Pylades, they arrange their plans, by which it is agreed that Orestes should assume the character of a messenger from Phocis, with the news of his own death. He thus gains admittance to Clytemnestra and Egysthus, to whom this was the most welcome intelligence ; and stabs them with a poignard which he had concealed under his robe.

These are the main incidents in these dramas. In each there are slight variations, and a marked difference in the dramatic management; but in the following examination, it will be seen which of the rival poets has made the most skilful use of his materials. From this skeleton of the plan it will appear that these plays approach nearer our ideas of regular tragedy than the Prometheus.

The first scene of the Chœphori discovers Orestes at the tomb of his father, on which he lays a lock of his hair, a customary rite among the ancients; but seeing a company of females approach, whom from their appearance he supposes to be Electra and her maidens, he retires to a covert to see what was the object of their visit. He soon discovers that he was right in his conjectures. It was Electra, and a band of Argive virgins who form the Chorus. On that very night Clytemnestra, who had been disturbed by portentous dreams, had sent her to offer expiatory libations at the tomb of her murdered husband. After offering the sacrifice, as directed by her mother, Electra discovers the lock of hair left by Orestes, and from various reasons concludes that it could have been brought there by none else than him. Its resemblance to her own in colour, and the certainty that no one but a real mourner would have performed this pious office to the spirit of a prince who had been long forgotten by all except herself and her brother, carried conviction to her mind that he was at no great distance, and that the time for which she had so long and so ardently prayed was at length arrived. So completely had this idea taken possession of her mind, that even his foot-prints, which coincided with her own in measurement, to her ardour appeared proof unquestionable. She addresses the Chorus as follows:—

"E. Long has my agitated soul been pierced
By fortune's keenest arrows; grief and rage
Alternately have swayed my withered heart,
But at the sight of this small lock of hair
Large tears of joy flow from my thirsty eyes.
'Tis his! what hand but this could place it there?
Hope trembles in my bosom. Ye bright tresses!
Oh! had ye voices to allay my fears!
Orestes. ( Starting from concealment.)
Thy prayers are granted.
E. Say, what prayers are granted?
O. Behold the man for whom thou oft hast prayed.
E. Stranger, how knowest thou what my prayers have been?
O. I know that they are offered for Orestes.
E. Tell me, I pray thee, how they are accomplished?
O. Sister, I am Orestes, seek no further.
E. Oh! how may I believe thee, mayst thou not
By treachery be seeking my undoing?
O. That only were to plot my own desstruction;
This moment thou wert easier of belief,
A single hair, a foot-print, served as proof,
And now that thou beholdst me, thou reject'st me;
Look on this robe which thou thyself didst weave,
Thou doubtest me, thou wilt not that embroidery.
E. My beloved Orestes! Joy of my tears,
Light, hope, and safety, of my father's house;
Courage, my brother, and thou shalt obtain
Thy reft inheritance, thou guiding star
Of all my fortunes; father, mother, sister,
All nature's dearest names, are met in thee:
Oh! Jupiter, regard our righteous cause.

O. Father of gods and men, oh! hear my prayer;
Behold the generous offspring of the eagle,
Who basely perish'd in the hideous folds
Of a fell serpent:—now the orphan brood
Are famished and defenceless in their eyrie;
Oh! plume their wings, and give them to avenge
Their royal father, and again establish
The undermined foundations of the palace."

After a dialogue of considerable length, and, in many places, of great beauty, they invoke the ghost of Agamemnon to aid them in the work of vengeance.

"O. Open, O earth, and send my father forth
To see the conflict.
E. Proserpine, inspire
Our souls with energy—our arms with strength.
O. Oh, father, bear in mind the bloody bath
Where thou wert slain.
E. The veil with which they bound thee.
O. The toils in which, like a wild beast, they caught thee.
Why does thy spirit start not from the grave
When that thou hearest of these unnatural deeds?
E. Why liftst thou not thy venerable head?
Pity thy children sitting on thy tomb!
Oh! blot not from the earth an ancient race;
Thou livest in us, and be it to avenge thee."

He at last gains admittance to the palace, and murders, Ægysthus and Clytemnestra. At first he glories in the deed, but the power of conscience soon prevails; and in a fit of phrenzy he fancies he sees the furies of his mother.

 "O. (To the Chorus.) See there they are!
dost thou not see them there?
The dragons rear and hiss among their hair!
I can abide no longer.
Cho. My dear Orestes!
Thy fancy's vain creations do distract thee.
O. These are no imaginations. See, they come—
The dogs of hell—my mother's angry furies!
Cho. Thy hands are red with blood; in such a state
'Tis natural thy mind should be disturbed.
O. Save me, Apollo! see, they rush on me!—
The blood is dropping from their glaring eyes.—
Ye see them not—but I do see them well—
They fix their eyes on me—I cannot stay."

I shall now give a short analysis of the Electra, which is justly considered one of the finest plays of the Greek stage. Sophocles was not a man of so sublime a mind as Æschylus; but what he wants in loftiness and fire of spirit, he compensates by a delicacy of taste, and a tenderness of feeling, which, if they do not render him the greatest of the ancient poets, make him at least one of the most interesting of them. Nature had endowed him with an imagination which was ever under the guidance of a sound understanding; not overleaping her own boundaries; nor irregular and erratic in its course, and astonishing by its blaze, like the comet; but, like the evening-star, steady in its progress through the fields of light,—ever brilliant, and ever beautiful. He is always in the elementary of our nature—therefore he always takes possession of the heart; and though he does not reign there with absolute dominion, like Shakespeare or Homer, he is a guest whom we receive with pleasure, and dismiss with regret; and if he does not fill us with the idea that he is the greatest poetical genius of the dramatic writers of his country, he has certainly produced better plays than any of them. Less impetuous and less daring than Æschylus, and less pathetic than Euripides, he knew how to turn his talents to account better than either. His mind could grasp his subject, and mould it according to his will, which generally led him into the path of nature; and he seldom so far loses sight of the whole, as to say more in any one part than is necessary to the developement of his plot or his characters, nor less than is required for perspicuity. Like the statuaries, he seems to have fixed in his mind a standard of ideal excellence; and if he does not, like some of them, always reach it, he comes nearer it than any of his competitors for dramatic glory; and it is not easy for us to conceive, that the tragic art should in a few years have made such advances to perfection, as appears in some of the pieces of this elegant writer. The drama was then like a rich field newly broken up by the plough, and its fertility was amazing. Sophocles produced no fewer than a hundred and forty plays. Only seven of these have survived the wrecks of time, or the dilapidations of barbarian or monkish ignorance; but these are so skilful in design, and so beautiful in execution,—are such masterpieces of art, and yet such faithful exhibitions of nature,—as to make us greatly lament the loss of the whole.

In the analysis of the Electra, it will be only necessary to mention the incidents in which it differs from the Chœphori, as the main story is the same in both. The great difference of the dramatic management lies in the recognition; and the lock of hair, of which so important a use is made in the one, is barely mentioned in the other. Another character is besides introduced, Chrysothemis, the sister of Electra, a woman of a gentle and timid mind, subdued by the tyranny of her mother and Ægysthus, and well contrasted with Electra. Clytemnestra, who in the play of Æschylus seldom appears till the scene of her own assassination, is here much on the stage, and, by the bitterness of unmerited reproach, exasperates the haughty spirit of Electra. During a dialogue between the mother and daughter, composed of mutual recrimination, the tutor enters, and informs them abruptly that he was sent from Phocis with the intelligence of the death of Orestes, who had been killed by a fall from a chariot in the Pythian games. These tidings produced in the mind of Clytemnestra an unnatural joy, that she was at no pains to conceal, and plunged Electra into despair. She had hitherto endured life, merely from the hope of the return of Orestes and this was a blow so terrible and so unexpected, that she sank beneath it. After Clytemnestra had quitted the stage, and a conversation of some length had passed between the sisters, in which Electra, in the simple and affecting language which real sorrow always suggests, mourns the fate of Orestes, he himself appears, disguised as a traveller, and an attendant bears a small casket. I transcribe this scene, which is perhaps the finest of the Greek stage.

 
" O. Is that the palace of Ægysthus?
Cho. It is: thou hast been well directed hither.
O. Lady, wilt thou inform him that a stranger
From Phocis craves the honour of an audience?
E. Alas! he brings sad proofs of our misfortunes.
O. I understand thee not; but Strophius sent me hither
To bear Ægysthus tidings of Orestes.
E. What tidings, stranger? Fear is in my soul.
O. The little casket that thou seest contains
The ashes of the dead.
E. It is too plain.
O. These are the ashes of the young Orestes.
E. Give me that treasure, I conjure thee, stranger,
By all the gods, deny me not that boon.

(It is given to her, and she proceeds.)

Ye dear remains of my beloved Orestes,
Vain were the hopes that shone like thee in brightness,
When I did send thee hence! Then didst thou bloom,
Like a sweet flower, in infant loveliness;
Now art thou withered, not to bloom again.
Oh! would that I had died when I did send thee
Into a foreign land—did rescue thee
From murder; on that day thou might'st have lain
In the same grave with thy beloved father;
But thou hast perished in a foreign country,
A friendless exile, and I was not near thee.
Wretch that I am! I did not with these hands
Perfume thy precious corpse, nor did I gather
Thy ashes from the pile, as it became me;
But thou wert dressed by mercenary hands.
My star of hope is set. Alas! how fruitless
Were the sweet cares with which I tended thee,
While yet an infant! For I was to thee
A nurse, a mother—I was all to thee.
How joy did dance through my delighted veins,
When, hanging round my neck, thou didst pronounce,
With music in my ear, the name of Sister.
Thy death has like the whirlwind swept away
All that remained to me of love and life.
Long I have had no father who could aid me;
My enemies insult me, and my mother
Revels in joy; and thou, who oft didst send
Assurance to me that thou wouldst arise
The glorious avenger of my wrongs,
Shalt never wake to look on me again;
And for thy beautiful and manly form,
And fair affection's smile upon thy face,
And thy sweet voice,—all I receive is ashes.
But, oh! that I were with thee in that casket!
For it were good to mingle ashes with thee,
And lie in loved repose in the same tomb.
O. How shall I address her? This is more
Than I can bear: my feelings will have utterance.
E. What grievest thou for? I understand thee not.
O. Oh, lady! art thou not the famed Electra?
E. I am Electra, but most miserable.
Thou hast no sorrows, stranger; why weep'st thou?
O. Because I pity thy calamities.
E. Thou knowest but few of them.
O. What worse than these?
E. I am condemned to dwell with murderers.
O. Whose murderers?

E. My father's murderers.
O. Ill-fated lady! how I pity thee!
E. Thou art the only man that pities me.
O. For I alone feel a true sympathy
In thy misfortunes.
E. Art thou of my kindred?
O. (Pointing to the Chorus.) If these were friendly, I should tell thee all.
E. Fear not them, for they are ever faithful.
O. Lay down the casket. Thou shall hear the truth.
E. Stranger, ask not that, I supplicate thee,
By all thy hopes, oh! rob me not of that.
O. Restore the casket!
E. Brother of my soul!
How miserable were I, if bereft
Of this possession!
O. Lady, cease to mourn.
E. Shall I not mourn a brother's death?
O. Mourn not.
E. What! am I thus dishonoured of the dead?
O. Thou art of none dishonoured.
E. Are not these
My brother's ashes? And shall I not mourn?
O. They are not.
E. Where are they then? Oh! give me them!
O. The living need no tomb.
E. What meanest thou
O. I only speak the truth.
E. Oh! lives Orestes?
O. Lady, he lives indeed, if I do live.
E. Art thou Orestes?
O. Take that ring: observe it.
E. Oh! happy hour!
O. Yes, happy hour indeed!
E. Light of my life! and art thou come at last?
O. Expect no other brother.
E. Do I clasp
My brother to that heart which has not felt,
For many a lonely year, the pulse of joy?
O. Thus ever be thy joys."

From these gentle feelings, Electra rises to the true sublimity of her character, and, like a demon, instigates her brother to the murder of their mother. When their plans are fully arranged, Orestes enters the palace, and, from behind the scenes, Clytemnestra is heard crying in a loud voice.

"Cly. The royal halls are full of murderers!
Where are my friends?
E. (To the Chorus.) Hush! hear ye not a voice?
Cho. Yes, sounds of woe, that shake my soul with horror.
Cly. I am murdered! Oh! where art thou, Ægysthus?
E. Hush! again she shrieks.
Cly. My son! my son!
Have mercy on thy mother!
E. Thou hadst no mercy
On him, and on my father thy own husband.
Cly. I am murdered!
E. Again! Repeat the blow,
And strike with the unerring force of vengeance.
Cly. Murder! I die!
E. Oh! had Ægysthus fallen
By the same stroke!"