1 The Living Art of Greek Tragedy Marianne McDonald, Ph.D., MRIA ...

lamp burning out in a room of waiting shadows.” This is a combination of Nietzsche and Freud.
Jealousy and envy are at the root of the action in this play, besides a self-reliance devoid of God.
This differs from Aeschylus’ grim tale of crime and divine retribution, followed by a resolution
that allows for hope. This is Crime and Punishment, with most of the guilt internalized, and
drawn out to eternity. One can imagine the restless ghosts. O’Neill’s poetic language and
haunted insights into a dysfunctional family create another type of masterpiece, and rehearsal for
his even more poignantly autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Mourning Becomes
Electra was performed as an opera composed by Marvin David Levy in 1967.
The 1936 production in Germany by Lothal Müthal of the Oresteia was notoriously pro-
Nazi with its emphasis on centralized authority. It was pro-Agamemnon, so the play provided
pro-Hitler propaganda as a good leader for the people.
In the same year there was possibly the first translation of the Agamemnon by an Irish
writer: by Louis MacNeice. His Agamemnon was performed in England at the Westminster
Theatre in 1936 with music by Benjamin Britten. Aeschylus and MacNeice have in common a
lack of sympathy for Helen and Clytemnestra, unfaithful and murderous women, but this
antipathy leads to felicitous poetry: the poetry of hatred can sometimes be more splendid than the
poetry of love. Clytemnestra lies to the returning Agamemnon, "I know no pleasure with another
man, no scandal, /more than I know how to dye metal red." This is one of the best translations I
have found, for both its accessibility and poetic sweep. We all know how Clytemnestra will dye
a sword red.
MacNeice’s primary reason for doing the Agamemnon was respect for the brilliant
poetry: he could read the original Greek. In this play, MacNeice speaks often of god as if he were
the Christian God, and there are ritual allusions, "To share our holy water," or "asperging"
something, or Helen as a lion cub "sent by God as a priest of ruin."
MacNeice wrote of his own concerns about class as he grew up. We find allusions to
Cassandra as "a fortune-teller, a poor starved beggar-woman," and to Orestes: "exile, and tramp
and outlaw."
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