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

Tony Harrison' translation of the Oresteia in Peter Hall's masked production was
performed in London in 1981 and at Epidauros in 1982. Hall wanted to stress the primitive
ritualizing quality of the ancient drama. Tony Harrison respects the original dramatic poetry of
Aeschylus. His own translation seems at times to sink into a Beowulfian heaviness and
explicitness. Nevertheless his language is musical, filled with alliteration and the repetition of
sound, and metres which echo the heartbeat. His translation contains words which drop heavy
loads on the lines, compound words including lots of dooms, grudges and blood: "doom-drum”;
doom-ague"; "doomgroom" (for Paris); "mangrudge"; "grudge-demon"; “bloodgrudge”;
"bloodkin"; "blood-guzzling grudge-hound"; "bloodclan"; "bloodslicks"; "bloodflow"; "blood-
bride" (Helen), and many others.
Aeschylus also made up words and invented his own compounds, for example, "plotting
like a man" to describe Clytemnestra's heart. Harrison repeats phrases like: "Batter, batter the
doom drum, but believe there'll be better!" capturing Aeschylus' alliteration. Harrison translates
Aeschylus' image of the sea blossoming with corpses into it "mushroomed with corpses and
shipwreck."
There are multiculturally derived words, and slang:
Such prostrations, such purples suit pashas from Persia.
Don't come the Khan's courtiers, kowtow or cosset.
Don't grovel, suck up, salaam, and stop gawping!
Such gaudy displays goad gods into godgrudge.
His constant rhymes and hypnotic language can distract from the dramatic action. He also
omits lines, such as those in the first chorus which talk of Zeus teaching man through suffering,
the violent grace of the gods.
Agamemnon:
Harrison is more sexually explicit than Aeschylus. His Clytemnestra describes
Look at him, Shaggermemnon, shameless, shaft-happy,
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