#aeschylus oresteia

[katerinaaqu]

Others: Hahaha Hollywood has the best catchphrases of cheeky or sneering heroes

Aeschylus: *Orestes to Clytemnestra over the body of Aegisthus like a hunter over a deer*

Orestes: I was looking for you! This one here has had enough already!

(Translation by me)

Like...DUDE! 😆👌🏻 "he has had enough"! Dude! And gets even better!

Clytemnestra: Oh no, my beloved Aegisthus! You have been slain so violently!

Orestes: Oh, you love this man? Then you will lie in the same tomb together so death will never do you part!

(Translation by me)

Dunno about you guys but THIS is the real stuff! Don't tell me you don't imagine Orestes pointing at the body nonchalant while saying that!

[mirefireflies]

“the ending is always the same”

war of the foxes - richard siken / waterloo - ABBA / euripides’ medea - the little theatre / anne carson / the three fates - luca cambiaso / the oresteia - aeschylus / road to hell II - hadestown / when i met you - mira lightner / andersen’s fairy tale anthology

[papermenageriie]

From David Grene's review of Robert Lowell's translation of Aeschylus's Oresteia, cited in Wendy Doniger's translation of the Rig Veda

[claymotif]

orpheus but he's sisyphus

Ovid’s The Story of Orpheus and Eurydice (tr. Rolfe Humphries) / Spirited Away dir. Hayao Miyazaki / @mag200 / Jenny Diski, “Housewife” / Franz Wright, God's Silence / Adrianne Kalfopoulou, “Poem in Pieces, a Log” / Jon Ware, I am in Eskew / Kazimierz Wierzyński, “A Word of Orphists” (tr. Czeslaw Milosz) / @prisonhannibal / Aeschylus, The Oresteia / Ocean Vuong, Eurydice

image ids under cut:

image 1: a quote from Ovid that reads: "And Orpheus received her, but one term was set: he must not, till he passed Avernus, turn back his gaze, or the gift would be in vain."

image 2: excerpt from the script of the film Spirited Away that reads: "Haku: But I can't go any farther. Just go back the way you came, you'll be fine. [highlighted] But you have to promise not to look back, not until you've passed through the tunnel."

image 3: a drawing, labeled in all-caps handwriting "a venn diagram of love vs. grief:". the drawing is a single circle.

image 4: an excerpt, highlighted and italicized, from Jenny Diski that reads: "People don't understand about repetition, do they? How it is at the heart (thump, thump, thump) of obsession; at the erotic centre (drip, drip, drip) of desire. You do, of course. Repetition is insatiability spelt sideways."

image 5: a quote from Franz Wright reading, "And let me ask you this: the dead, where aren't they?"

image 6: a quote from Adrianne Kalfopoulou in red text, reading, "Grief will keep you reaching back / for what is not there"

image 7: an excerpt from Jon Ware that reads, "Here's my question. If the ghost wants nothing more than to be witnessed, why would it appear behind you, not in front of you? The only answer I can think of is this: [underlined] it appears behind you because it already knows, to an absolute certainty, that you will have no choice but to look back."

image 8: a quote from Kazimierz Wierzyński that reads: "I understood the true fate of Orpheus, that [highlighted] love is a constant terror of loss."

image 9: a screenshot of a tumblr ask from an anonymous user who says, "What's the point?" user prisonhannibal responds, "of what? it's love though".

image 10: two lines from aeschylus reading, "Orestes: This was always going to happen. She's been dead since the beginning."

image 11: an excerpt from Ocean Vuong that reads, "Your absence has gone through me // Like thread through a needle. / Everything I do is stitched with its color."

end ids.

[illustratus]

An Audience in Athens during the Representation of Agamemnon by Aeschylus — by William Blake Richmond

[hlblng]

“I shall teach you old men the lesson you failed to learn when you were children” Clytemnestra in Aeschylus' Agamemnon (trans. Ted Hughes)

Clytemnestra is the wife of Agamemnon, the king of Atreus and commander of the Greek army that assails the walls of Troy. In order to placate the goddess Artemis, he sacrifices his oldest daughter Iphigenia on the goddess’ altar, spilling her blood and breaking the heart of his wife in the process. Clytemenestra, consumed by hatred and the desire for revenge after the murder of her daughter, invites Agamemmnon’s cousin and enemy Aigisthos into the palace and into her bed, while Agamemnon is away at Troy. Finally, after 10 years of waiting, Agamemmnon returns triumphant to his city, palace and wife. Finally, after 10 years of waiting, Clytemnestra gets her revenge and murders her husband in the bath. Through fear and intimidation tactics, she and her lover Aigisthos assume the throne and live happily - for a while. Years later, her now grown son Orestes, who grew up far away, and her daughter Electra conspire to kill their own mother as revenge for the murder of their father. She dies screaming, kicking, cursing and Orestes falls mad with the blood guilt of murdering your own mother. Only after the intervention of a god or two, order is restored in the house of Atreus. For now, at least.

To me, Clytemnestra is a character transcending boundaries. The adulterous wife, the villainess that kills her husband, the wronged mother revenging her daughter, the cold queen disowning her grieving children, “a man’s heart in a woman’s body”, as Aischylos puts it. She’s all that and more. In Euripides’ Electra she even is a doubting woman looking back on her life and her choices, maybe not regretting but perhaps questioning what it was all for. She’s all of these things, yet none of them wholly. You look at her and you feel for her because how could he, how could her beloved husband murder their perfect innocent daughter, all for the promise of Troy. You look at her and you revel in her bloodlust as she swings the axe at Agamemnon and gives the perfect villain speech at the steps of his, well now her, palace. You look at her and you’re repelled by the ice cold indifference towards her remaining children, abandoned like a toy no longer worth playing with. Was there only enough love for the one daughter in her? When she kills Agamemmnon does she feel relief, satisfaction, finally she has had her triumph over the one who wronged her more than any other? Or is there also a tinge of sadness, of grief, for the life she used to know, before the day her daughter’s blood got spilled in the name of a war she doesn’t care about? 

She certainly doesn’t tell us. None of the characters do.

[asoftepiloguemylove]

laika and the pain of loss

Matthew Stover Revenge of the Sith // Laika in a flight harness (via wikipedia) // Aeschylus Aeschylus: The Oresteia // Haruki Murakami Sputnik Sweetheart // Olessya Turkina Soviet Space Dogs // Haruki Murakami Norwegian Wood // Ada Limon Sharks in the Rivers // Marina Tsvetaeva from a letter to Boris Pasternak // @fateology muttnik // H.D. Loss // Lavinia Greenlaw For the First Dog in Space // Why Laika the Space Dog is All Animals (via lakia magazine)

[hauntedbythenarrative]

An Oresteia, Aiskhylos//House of the Dragon (2022-)

[dykeganseythethird]

florence welch as clytemnestra

[reverie-quotes]

Death is a softer thing by far than tyranny.

— Aeschylus, The Oresteia (tr. Lattimore)

[sop-soap]

everyone talks about anne carson's translation of oresteia because of the "it's rotten work" "not to me, not if it's you" but what about these,

[katerinaaqu]

The most beloved of all mortals, Pylades

So after my sketch of Orestes it has been some time since the last time I posted something so yeah lo and behold Pylades! Most likely (one of) my final sketch for 2024 based on Greek Mythology for now!

So as you noticed I based Pylades's design on the statue of Apollo from the Temple of Zeus in Olympia. I thought the youthful appearance fitted greatly for Pylades. What is more I remember how at the end of the Oresteia, Apollo is the god that both seems to have dictated for him to do the killing but also is the one to support him which massively fitted the role of Pylades in Eurypedes among others who both assists and enables but also helps Orestes throughout his trip! Remembering my dark and messy sketch of Orestes somehow I wanted the opposite perspective for Pylades. A calm and collected but also more ordinate look (don't let appearances fool you this guy matches the freak of Orestes too!). His long curls probably are kept well under the band on his head. I imagined him as a bit younger than Orestes for some reason. Or maybe his age doesn't show. Take your peak! Hahaha

Also the way he appears to help Orestes during his madness in Euripedes plays gives me this idea of someone who even though matches Orestes he is also there as his opposite, the one that calms him down!

[mirefireflies]

cassandra, daughter of troy

cassandra - florence and the machine / mad, mad, mad - m.c (@diradea)/ roman-pompeian wall painting, first century bce / cassandra - robinson jeffers / cassandra - evelyn de morgan / the oresteia: agamemnon - aeschylus / little girls - mira lightner (@aliralyre) / cassandra - abba / cassandra - anthony frederick augustus sandys

[drowningparty]

Aeschylus, Agamemnon.

[ditoob]

why did nobody tell me the Oresteia was so good Orestes is slowly becoming one of my faves

[the-cassandriad]

i've not written poetry in years (i'm more of a novelist) but i allowed myself some cassandra thoughts (as a treat). i actually had a lot of fun with this and i'm desperate to do more with the idea in the future so we will see.

inspired obviously by my own muses, @two-bees-poetry for the brilliant contrapuntal poems about greek myth, and anne carson, specifically when she talks about cassandra's speech being split in two and her bridging of past and future!

more of my logic in the tags because i'm annoying!