October 24: Did Cassandra Have It Coming?

So cute! Who's a little prophet of doom? Who's a little prophet of doom?

The fate of Cassandra is the topic of today's reading, a rather dreary translation of Aeschylus's Agamemnon (FACT: the original production was supposed to have songs written by a very young Noel Coward, but Aeschylus vetoed this. Gertrude Lawrence, however, was ravishing at Clytemnestra when it opened at, appropriately enough, the Palladium.)

The fate of Cassandra is certainly very pitable. Nobody deserves to have their native city sacked and burned, and then taken as the general's slave girl, and then killed by the general's wife. But think of how annoying she must have been. She is 1) very hot. God-besotted-with-her-hot. Plus 2) she has the gift of prophecy, so she is -- literally -- a know-it-all. And then she jilts Apollo! She has stones, that one. No wonder Agamemnon took her -- she probably reminded him of his wife Clytemnestra, who proves to be no shrinking violet either, what with committing the double murder and all. The alpha males have types, you know. The point is that she has the total package to make her not care a bit what anyone else thinks of her, and you know how appealing that is.

So then Apollo curses her by saying that no one will ever believe her prophecies. And her woes begin. Yet, perhaps to her credit, although it would have been intensely off-putting in person, apparently it pumps up her screw-all-y'all attitude even more:

Nay, then, believe me not: what skills belief
Or disbelief? Fate works its will—and thou
Wilt see and say in ruth, Her tale was true.

Confidential to Cassandra: You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. (I think that first appeared in the ancient Greek syndicated column "Hints from Hesiod.") At some level I get it, though -- it is so satisfying to be right when everyone else is wrong, that one often forgets that being right is not enough, you must be persuasive also. I also think that the Trojans actually did believe Cassandra but just couldn't man up enough to act on what they knew. I say this because I hate balancing my checkbook these days, as if the numbers will magically change for the better while I'm not looking.

The other thing I noticed in this reading is that Cassandra completely breaks it down for the Chorus -- there's going to be some blood spilled tonight -- and, even though the chorus seems to believe her, they're still surprised. Once the deal goes down, they start running around like panicky CNBC personalities:

ANOTHER

I know not what ’twere well to counsel now—
Who wills to act, ’tis his to counsel how.

ANOTHER

Thy doubt is mine: for when a man is slain,
I have no words to bring his life again.

ANOTHER

What? e’en for life’s sake, bow us to obey
These house-defilers and their tyrant sway?

ANOTHER

Unmanly doom! ’twere better far to die—
Death is a gentler lord than tyranny.

ANOTHER

Think well—must cry or sign of woe or pain
Fix our conclusion that the chief is slain?

The last one is my favorite. Agamemnon has just cried out that he's recieved a fatal blow and this guy is like, "But how do we know it's a fatal blow?" He's like a climate change denier (speaking of disasters everyone saw coming).

June 10: Riddles (or, Oedipus, P.I.)

What is it with the Thebans and their riddles?

First of all, there's Oedipus and the riddle of the Sphinx, which has happened before the action begins in Oedipus The King (released in Europe under the title "Oedipus Rex"). Now a new riddle faces Thebes -- they must de-plaguify themselves by finding the guy who killed King Laius. Oedipus cuts his way through the bureaucratic red-tape mumbo-jumbo at Thebes P.D. and gets after it with the Q&A:

ŒDIP. Yes; but where are they? How to track the course
Of guilt all shrouded in the doubtful past?
CREON. In this our land, so said he, those who seek
Shall find; unsought, we lose it utterly.
ŒDIP. Was it at home, or in the field, or else
In some strange land that Laius met his doom?
CREON. He went, so spake he, pilgrim-wise afar,
And nevermore came back as forth he went.
ŒDIP. Was there no courier, none who shared his road,
From whom, inquiring, one might learn the truth?
CREON. Dead are they all, save one who fled for fear,
And he had naught to tell but this:…
ŒDIP. [interrupting] And what was that? One fact might teach us much,
Had we but one small starting-point of hope.

I like the [interrupting] -- there are hardly any other stage directions, but Sophocles wants to make clear that Oedipus is like "The Closer" here.

Then, after some Strophes and Anti-strophes (this is where you'd put the commercials), they bring in Teiresias as the expert witness. And he speaks in riddles. So Oedipus flips over the table in the interrogation room (somehow my copy of the Harvard Classics omits this stage direction), and gets all bad-cop:

ŒDIP. Yes; I will not refrain, so fierce my wrath,
From speaking all my thought. I think that thou
Didst plot the deed, and do it, though the blow
Thy hands, it may be, dealt not. Hadst thou seen,
I would have said it was thy deed alone.

This is where Oedipus could have used the veteran partner who was one day away from retirement -- although, come to think of it, Oedipus is the guy who's one day away from retirement. And Teiresias fingers Oedipus right back, and then, after this outburst of clarity, starts talking in riddles again:

ŒDIP. [starting forward] What? Stay thy foot. What mortal gave me
birth?
TEIR. This day shall give thy birth, and work thy doom.
ŒDIP. What riddles dark and dim thou lov’st to speak.
TEIR. Yes. But thy skill excels in solving such.

A cool customer, that Teiresias. And scene! Tieresias must be well-connected, though, because Oedipus doesn't pistol-whip him (or javelin-whip him, to be historically accurate) until he tells the whole story.

I don't usually summarize to this extent, but most of the I.,i. excerpts I have to read are much duller than this. It helps Sophocles (who apparently was very graceful, the Introductory Note tells us that he was "the most perfectly balanced among the three great masters of Greek tragedy") that we're familiar with the story -- there's a lot less "as you and I both know" here, we can get Creon on with new information right away. And Oedipus is agitated right from the get-go, as befits a king of a plaguey city-state.

Apr 8: Aeschylus's difficult-to-spell telenovela

Today's reading is from Aeschylus's The Libation Bearers, but, far from being "Cheers" from the waitresses' point of view, as the title would suggest, it's actually super-intense, for in our passage Orestes comes to kill his mother (Clytemnestra, the name I think will be the next "Dakota" in popularity).

And he's not going to kill her just by not calling, either. (That was actually the subject of one of the Wordsworth poems I didn't make fun of yesterday. Hi, Mom!) He's going to kill-kill her.

CLYTEMNESTRA Fate bore a share in these things, O my child!
ORESTES Fate also doth provide this doom for thee.

Kids these days, am I right? This is not adequately explained in the DRG, but thanks to Wikipedia I learned that this is all part of the crazy Atreus family. Previously on the Oresteia, Clytemnestra had kilt Agamemnon and taken up with Ægisthus. (Aside: I hate naming characters myself, but this is too much. Can't somebody here be named "Dave" or "Coop"?) So Orestes, who's been long-lost, gets psyched up and kills Mom. Immediately (even though he's been promised by Apollo, Mafiosi-like, that it will all be taken care of) he starts to freak out:

...for what the end shall be
For me I know not: breaking from the curb,
My spirit whirls me off, a conquered prey,
Borne as a charioteer by steeds distraught
Far from the course, and madness in my breast
Burneth to chant its song, and leap, and rave—

The translation doesn't give the full effect of how crazy and telenovela-esque the whole thing is.

The funny thing is that, while I was totally gripped by the over-the-top situation while reading it, I can't imagine staging it in a way that would communicate the intensity, because I have trouble imagining an audience who would come to see ancient Greek tragedy also being irony-free enough to give themselves up to the story. The original audience had the advantage of knowing this story already, so to them it's a particularly intense variation on a familar theme, like Jimi Hendrix doing "The Star Spangled Banner". Now it's too foreign, an acquired taste, etc. You might be able to do it in the movies, but you'd have to translate everything -- it'd have to be like "Kill Bill."

Or maybe just a super-violent version of "Casey At The Bat". There's an idea...

Jan 30: Antigone...On Ice!

I’m reading this while at the Culver City Ice Arena, where the young Master Delicious is skating (my being able to take him is a collateral benefit of the strike). However, I don’t have my book with me – instead, I printed out my reading from Bartleby. Rest assured that it still looks pretty pretentious, though, what with all the white space (indicating Poetry) on my document which, depressingly is all of 11 pages.

Let me stop myself right there. None of that don’t-wanna-do-my-homework attitude. It will filter down to the children.

Anyway, because I don’t have an Introductory Note, or even access to the Internet, I don’t know who anyone is in this play going in. Will Sophocles provide the pipe (as we sophisticated sitcom writers call exposition)? I’m guessing so: after It’d been working iin sitcoms awhile I went to see “The Merchant of Venice,” which I hadn’te even read since college, and talk about expositional! The whole beginning was filled with “as you and I both know” dialogue – it was like the Pompidou Center, with all its pipe on the outside.

But I digress. To the reading! And speaking of “as you and I both know" -- this also has one of my favorite bonnet-bees, where characters who know each other well nevertheless refer to each other by name:

No tidings of our friends, Antigone,
Painful or pleasant since that hour have come
When we, two sisters, lost our brothers twain,
In one day dying by each other’s hand.

Okay, now I remember hearing about this play. Antigone is not allowed to bury her brother Polynices, but she’s going to do it anyway. Her sister counsels her to work within the system:

And think, how much more wretchedly than all
We twain shall perish, if, against the law,
We brave our sovereign’s edict and his power.
For this we need remember, we were born
Women; as such, not made to strive with men.
And next, that they who reign surpass in strength,
And we must bow to this, and worse than this.

But Antigone, she's hard :

ISM. Fiery is thy mood,
Although thy deeds might chill the very blood.

ANTIG. (lighting Marlboro -- ed.) I know I please the souls I seek to please.

A friend of mine once worked on that Method Man sitcom, and Meth apparently divided all ideas into two camps – “hard” and “corny.” Antigone is hard.

Okay, now here comes the chorus, which is divided between “Stroph I,” “Antistroph I,” “Stroph II,” and “Antistroph II”. I’m pretty sure these are parts of the Chorus’s speech, but I like to think of them as parts – like, an Athenean actor would have had “Antistroph II” as a credit on the back of his headshot (head-tablet in those days, possibly.)

One of the interesting effects utter ignorance gives me is that I don’t know what Polynices has done to deserve his punishment, so I don’t know how much I should sympathize with Antigone. What if he’s really a bad guy? The ambiguity is delicious – and it’s one that I have and the Athenean audience didn’t.

Now Creon comes in. Creon tells us that Polynices was a rebel, which in the “you’re either with us or against us” atmosphere is a v. bad thing. Also it’s apparently a huge deal to be unburied, although it seems worse for Thebes, what with the germs and all.

The guard enters:

I will not say, O king, that I am come
Panting with speed and plying nimble feet,
For I had many halting-points of thought,
Backwards and forwards turning, round and round;
For now my mind would give me sage advice:
“Poor wretch, and wilt thou go and bear the blame?”
Or—“Dost thou tarry now? Shall Creon know
These things from others? How wilt thou escape?”

I can’t tell you how much I love this ("wilt"s and "dost"s aside). The guard, after all, is a bit player – he’s not really involved in our story, he’s just telling us stuff that’s happened that we can’t afford to stage. Yet Sophocles gives him a great attitude to play – a kind of craven careerist indecision. It also helps illuminate Creon as the kind of badass you don’t want to be telling bad news to.

The guard lowers the boom (the body has been covered in dust), but, again, he gets his own little story:

…for we [the other guards] neither saw
How to oppose it, nor, accepting it,
How we might prosper in it. And his speech
Was this, that all our tale should go to thee,
Not hushed up anywise. This gained the day;
And me, ill-starred, the lot condemns to win
This precious prize.

If I may continue in the Wu-Tang mode – and I apologize for the mid-90s references, showing my age I guess – Creon replies, basically, C.R.E.A.M. (Cash Rules Everything Around Me):

No thing in use by man, for power of ill,
Can equal money. This lays cities low,
This drives men forth from quiet dwelling-place,
This warps and changes minds of worthiest stamp,
To turn to deeds of baseness, teaching men
All shifts of cunning, and to know the guilt
Of every impious deed.

Creon wants to know what guy did this. We’re ahead of Creon – even those of us who don’t know the plot going in. And now we know that he’s going to hit the ceiling when he finds out. But how hard will he hit it? I guess this seems like penny-ante criticism, but it’s exciting to me how well-constructed this is.

The guard provides the blow to the scene:

You will not see me coming here again;
For now, being safe beyond all hope of mine,
Beyond all thought, I owe the Gods much thanks.

Still characteristic, that guard. It’s very castable. I’m thinking Kevin Chamberlain.

Then the Strophes and the Antistrophes come out and talk about Man and how’s he’s like. (“Wonderful in skill,” for example.) Does anyone do this, nowadays, in art? Just opine for a page on what we’re like as a species? Radio preachers, maybe. Or Deepak Chopra.

Now they’ve found Antigone and they go get Creon, who comes in saying “this better be important” (“What chance is this with which my coming fits”). The guard tells us more about himself (“I can claim a right/To wash my hands of all this troublous coil.”) – he’s really the one who has the story in this excerpt, in fact it’s really the Guard who’s caught in the middle, like someone who has to arrest nonviolent protestors:

But this to me both bitter is and sweet,
For to escape one’s-self from ill is sweet,
But to bring friends to trouble, this is hard
And bitter. Yet my nature bids me count
Above all these things safety for myself.

This was written almost 2500 years ago. For all our chain restaurants, we don't seem to have much changed.

This was my favorite reading so far, because I appreciate what Sophocles did in his adaptation – adding a regular guy to stand between these mythic characters. Good construction, too, dude. And I think, with a little tweaking here and there, it would be perfect for ice ballet.

Jan 18 (19): Origins of Yale's "Brekekekex"

That’s right, I missed a day. I work worked all day and then fell asleep early. If you’re hoping to see me beat myself up about it, guess what: you’re barking up the wrong kettle of fish. Aristophanes waited over 2000 years for me to read an excerpt from his work, he can wait another day.

What I love is that this excerpt in the DRG is titled, “Origins of Yale ‘Brekekekex-Ko-Ax.” This is what they say at Yale, is it? Well, by all means, I must take a look! Actually, I get it; I remember doing research for a project that was set in 1962, and in Sports Illustrated and places like that there was still this patina that hung around “college” in general and the Ivies in particular; a patina that would wear away when more people got to college and failed to see what all the fuss was about.

Anyway, Xanthias and Dionysus are supposed to be “an up-to-date vaudeville team,” so it should be pretty enticing. Vol 8 pp. 439-499 it is, then….

-- I like in the introductory note that the “undoubted coarseness of many of the jests” is ascribed to the audience (festival of Dionysus, don’t you know), rather than “the individual taste of the poet.” I don’t believe it. But then I also don’t believe, as our introducer does, that this is a mark against “a man of noble character.”

-- This is from the “Frogs,” by the way, which I’ve never read (of course), but appears to be an early example of meta, which appropriately enough is a Greek prefix.

-- Indeed, they’re starting off talking about what jokes to do. I myself like the idea that a god has a slave. I thought we were all slaves (God as LBJ: “they’re all my helicopters, son.”) It’s like God having a personal copy of the Bible; what if he loses it?

-- Xanthias manages to sneaking in a joke (“I’m getting crushed”) that Dinoysus told him not to do – nice. Jack Benny would approve.

-- Dionysus (who doesn’t much seem like a god, maybe that’s why he was popular as a god) has had his heart broken by Euripedes – there’s the famous Greek man-love! Is this the kind of stuff the Introductory Note was warning us about?

-- It turns out Dionysus wants to go to Hades to find Euripedes, and there follows a long discussion of the best way to commit suicide to do so, which, while not so funny to read, would still be pretty funny in the hands of the right, indecisive actor.

-- And here’s the famous “Brekekekex.” A little disappointing. The stuff on suicide was better, honestly.

-- And then Xanthias and Dionysus are afraid, like a good comedy team ought to be (think Coen Brothers).

-- Then it ends with the chorus calling Iacchus – Bacchus, I guess.

I like the ideas of a bunch of plays around some event which the audience all knows, allowing for a bunch of references and in-jokes. Maybe there ought to be a Super Bowl drama festival in the future.

Jan 10: Where Love Lies Waiting

Okay, I read yesterday’s off the computer, and I think it just added to my modern-style ADD, so I’m going back to great-grandfather’s books for today’s reading, which is…from The Bacchae, another actual classic!

Apparently we’re going to be ringside for the fight between King Pantheus of Thebes and Dionysus…”Eurpides tells the story in a masterpiece of Greek drama.” (Vol. 8, pp. 368-372 – only 5 pages, Harvard Classics? Ha! I laugh in advance! Now it’s going to be in Greek or something)

The volume is called “Nine Greek Dramas,” and it would be great if “Seven Against Thebes” was in “Nine Greek Dramas.” On second thought, no it wouldn’t. I’m not funny anymore. At least I have my nascent liberal education to fall back on.

This is the opening of the Bacchae, which was produced after the death of Euripedes by his son in 405 B.C.

I forgot, from my religious studies training, that Dionysus was referred to as “God’s Son.” Then, in line two, we get these Paris Hilton-esque lines: “Whom the brand/Of heaven’s hot splendour lit to life.”

Who translated this, anyway? Why, Gilbert Murray, of course! Must Google it after reading.

One of the things in the opening is that Dionysus tells us 1) who he is and 2) what he’s doing here “thus I must speak clear/To save my mother’s fame, and crown me here/As true God”. See, coming out of TV, I was taught that you must disguise your exposition a little better. But Euripedies goes for it. Shakespeare does too. Is it a theater thing – you’re so interested to see these other people projecting into the second balcony that you’ll listen to them“lay pipe” (as we say in TV)? TV and movies are necessarily more intimate. Maybe it’s also that the theater is more like a conference room – we all need to be got up to speed. Watching stuff on screens is more one-to-one. Maybe.

Turns out Dionysus (and if I’ve learned nothing else today, it’s how to spell “Dionysus”) has a beef with Pentheus, who “thrusteth me away/From due drink-offering”.

Only now, because of all the enjambment, do I realize that this is in rhymed couplets. They certainly don’t write them like that anymore, except in hip-hopera, that is.

Dionysus leaves and fifteen Eastern Women come in, “the light of the sunrise streaming upon their long white robes and ivy-bound hair…Many bear the sacred Wand (heh heh – ed.) They begin their mystic song of worship and the rhyme scheme changes (and we learn that “Dionysus” rhymes with “espies us.” Wait a minute, these are the title characters – the Bacchae (or “Dreamgirls”).


The segment ends, suddenly, with the end of the story of Dionysus’ birth, so we’re not going to see King Pantheus at all in this go-round. As compensation I think I'll post this picture of Reggie Theus:


Stuff I decided to Wikipedia: 1. Bacchae (which redirects to "Maenad"):

"Their name literally translates as "raving ones". They were known as wild, insane women who could not be reasoned with. The mysteries of Dionysus inspired the women to ecstatic frenzy; they indulged in copious amounts of violence, bloodletting, sexual activity, self-intoxication, and mutilation."

Like Lake Havasu at Spring Break, right!? I disgust myself. SPOILER: the Bacchae kill King Pentheus.

2. Gilbert Murray. There's quite a sizable entry, as befits the leading classical scholar of the first half of the twentieth century (and, perhaps ironically for this project, someone involved with the temperance movement).

Great footnote from this entry: "From the 1880s onwards, amateur performances in Greek had been popular, particularly for students dramaticals." Also like Lake Havasu at Spring Break!