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Double the Vision: a Reading of Euripides' Electra

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

W. Geoffrey Arnott
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Extract

Controversy about the evaluation of Euripides' Electra still rages as fiercely as empty tigers or the roaring sea. ‘Euripides’ play is a singular instance of poetical – or rather unpoetical – obliquity … perhaps of all Euripides' extant plays the very vilest'; ‘as a drama of character, Electra is supreme … in its own genre, this is undoubtedly Euripides' masterpiece'; it contains ‘a power of sympathy and analysis unrivalled in ancient drama’; its characters are ‘involved in a persisting interpenetration of merit and status which accords some measure of tonal unity to this indifferent play.’ When a play earns judgements as contradictory and incompatible as these, one important stimulus to the verdicts is usually the critic's subjectively emotional response to a play whose views about society and society's values are provocative; more reliable (because less subjective) criteria of literary merit, such as the interplay of plot, character, structure, imagery, and ideas, are then subordinated or comparatively neglected as elements in the evaluation. Euripides' Electra is just such a play. It attacks, both openly and implicitly, some of the traditional values still held by many Athenians in 413 B.C., the probable date of the play's production, with a commitment that has engaged a great deal of scholarly attention. The techniques which Euripides deploys in his attack, however, have not been adequately studied. They provide the rationale, as well as the title, of this paper. Before the ‘double vision’ can be explained, however, it will be as well to outline briefly those traditional values subjected to the Euripidean vitriol.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , October 1981 , pp. 179 - 192
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1981

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References

Notes

1. Lines 27–8 of the poem ‘With Happiness stretch'd across the Hills’, found in a letter to Thomas Butts dated 22 November 1802.

2. The quotations are from A. W. von Schlegel, Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature, translated most conveniently in Donaldson, J. W., The Theatre of the Greeks 10 (London, 1887), pp. 179 f.Google Scholar; Murray, Gilbert, Euripides and his Age (London, 1913), p. 154Google Scholar; Grube, G. M. A., The Drama of Euripides (London, 1941), p. 314Google Scholar; and Jones, John, On Aristotle and Greek Tragedy (London, 1962), p. 244Google Scholar; respectively.

3. Cf. England, E. T., CR 40 (1926), 97f.Google Scholar

4. This (the traditional) dating has been challenged (especially by Zuntz, G., The Political Plays of Euripides (Manchester, 1955), pp. 64 ff.Google Scholar, and Ada Congressus Madvigiani I (Copenhagen, 1955), p. 159)Google Scholar, but it has recently been convincingly defended by Leimbach, R., Hermes 100 (1972), 190ff.Google Scholar Cf. also Matthiessen, K., Elektra, Taurische Iphigenie und Helena (Göttingen, 1964), pp. 66ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Theiler, W., WSt 79 (1966), 102ff.Google Scholar; and Donzelli, Giuseppina Basta, Studio sull' Elettra di Euripide (Catania, 1978), pp. 27ff.Google Scholar

5. Especially Merit and Responsibility (Oxford, 1960)Google Scholar, and Moral Values and Political Behaviour in Ancient Greece (London, 1972)Google Scholar. Cf. also J. D. Denniston's edition of the play (Oxford, 1939), commentary on line 253; and Long, A. A., JHS 90 (1970), 121ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. The translation, which aims at as literal a rendering as possible of Pindar's Greek, is my own.

7. E.g. Adkins, , Merit and Responsibility, pp. 176f.Google Scholar; Jones (n. 2), pp. 242 ff.; Benedetto, V. Di, Euripide: teatro e società (Torino, 1971), pp. 207f.Google Scholar For a dissentient voice see Vellacott, Philip, Ironic Drama (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 49ff.Google Scholar

8. Classical expositions of it will be found in von Wilamowitz, U., Hermes 18 (1883), 226Google Scholar; and Adams, S. M., CR 49 (1935), 120ff.Google Scholar Cf. also (for example) Lattimore, Richmond, The Poetry of Greek Tragedy (Baltimore, 1958), pp. 105, 109 f.Google Scholar; Webster, T. B. L., The Tragedies of Euripides (London, 1967), pp. 143ff.Google Scholar; and Knox, Bernard, in The Rarer Action: Essays in Honor of Francis Fergusson (New Brunswick, 1971), pp. 70ff.Google Scholar

9. Cf. the remarks prefaced by Emily T. Vermeule to her translation of Euripides' Electra (in The Complete Greek Tragedies, edited by Grene, David and Lattimore, Richmond, IV (Chicago, 1958), p. 391)Google Scholar: ‘Aegisthus we see from two angles: in Electra's prejudiced testimony, as a drunken bully and seducer; in the Messenger's speech, as an affable, pious host. Indeed this double vision is true of the whole play, as Electra's image of the truth, and the truth itself, stubbornly refuse to match. The astigmatism is deliberate.’ I lit upon this quotation after completing my own paper; it gives me confidence.

10. Cf. (for example) Sheppard, J. T., CR 32 (1918), 138f.Google Scholar; Adams (n. 8), 120 ff.; Denniston's edition, pp. xxvi f.; Friedrich, W., Euripides und Diphitos (Munich, 1953), p. 83Google Scholar; and Stoessl, F., RhMus 99 (1956), 52ff.Google Scholar

11. This, and other translations from the Electra in this paper, are my own. They have no literary pretensions, aiming only at accuracy of detail.

12. Cf. England (n. 3), 101.

13. Cf. Grube(n. 2), p. 298.

14. Cf. Steidle, W., Studien zum antiken Drama (Munich, 1968), p. 66Google Scholar.

15. Cf. (for example) Komo, M., HSCPh 71 (1966), 25ff.Google Scholar; and Karsai, G., Homonoia 1 (1979), 15ff.Google Scholar

16. The position (as well as the authenticity) of these lines has been much debated. Their diction is unimpeachably Euripidean, but there do seem to be strong grounds for removing them from their present place in the manuscript tradition to after line 1131. See Denniston's note, ad loc.

17. Cf. (for example) Wilamowitz (n. 8), 229 ff.; Sheppard (n. 10), 138 ff.; Grube (n. 2), pp. 302 f.; Zürcher, W., Die Darstellung des Menschen im Drama des Euripides (Basle, 1947), pp. 109ff.Google Scholar; Barlow, Shirley A., The Imagery of Euripides (London, 1971), pp. 92ff.Google Scholar; and Froma Zeitlin, J., TAPhA 101 (1970), 647ff.Google Scholar

18. The three latest discussions are Bond, G. W., Hermathena 118 (1974), 1ff.Google Scholar (with a useful summary of previous discourses); Ronnet, G., REG 88 (1975). 63ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and G. Basta Donzelli (n. 4), pp. 102 ff. I take it for granted that this scene is authentic (cf. Lloyd-Jones, H., CQ 11 (1961), 171ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, countering the arguments of Fraenkel, E. in his edition of Aeschylus' Agamemnon III (Oxford, 1950), pp. 821ff.Google Scholar).

19. This particular token goes back at least to Stesichorus' Oresteia (fr. 40 Page PMG = fr. 87 Page LGS). Cf. Solmsen, F., ‘Electra and Orestes’, Med. Kon. Ned. Akad. van Wet., Afd. Letterk. 30/2 (1967), 31Google Scholar.

20. Cf. L. Parmentier's Budé edition (Paris, 1925), pp. 184 ff.

21. Cf. Friedrich (n. 10), pp. 80 f.; Ludwig, W., Sapheneia (Diss. Tübingen, 1954), pp. 126f.Google Scholar; and H. Lloyd-Jones (n. 18), 180.

22. See (for example) Fraenkel's commentary on Aeschylus, , Agamemnon 41Google Scholar; Segal, C. P., HSCPh 70 (1965), 117ff.Google Scholar; and Winnington-Ingram, R. P., Euripides and Dionysus (Cambridge, 1948)Google Scholar, index s.v. Bacchae: hunt.

23. G &R 20 (1973), 49ff.Google Scholar; cf. Mus. Phil. Lond. 3 (1978), 2ff.Google Scholar

24. An effect which film-makers have not been slow to exploit: e.g. the murder in the shower in Hitchcock's Psycho.

25. See above, p. 183.

26. In line 843 I read ἠλλιζε (Schenkl) with δυσθσκον (so L). See Denniston's commentary, ad loc.

27. Vickers, Brian, Towards Greek Tragedy (London, 1973), p. 561Google Scholar. Cf. also the paper by Adams (n. 8).

28. Cf. here the brief but percipient remarks of Zeitlin (n. 17), 655 ff.

29. Cf. the editions of Denniston and Parmentier, ad loc.

30. It is dangerous to read into this – and other famous comments on athletes and athletics in Euripidean drama (e.g. Orestes' remark at Electra 387 f., and fr. 282 Nauck2 from the Autolycus) – expressions of the dramatists's own personal view. After all, Euripides is not opposed to athletics in his portrait of Hippolytus, and just before he wrote the Electra he composed an epinician hymn to celbrate Alcibiades' victory in the chariot race at Olympia in 416 B.C. (Plutarch, Alcibiades 11). Alcibiades' defence of his athletic interests, before the Athenian assembly in 415 B.C., is reported by Thucydides (6.16); it implies a contemporary groundswell of criticism against athletic extravagances in current conditions. On the history of such criticism, which goes back at least to the time of Xenophanes (fr. 2 West), see especially Norden, E., Jahrb. f. kl. Philologie, Supp.-B. 18 (1882), 298ff.Google Scholar, and Finley, M. I. and Pleket, H. W., The Olympic Games (London, 1976), pp. 113ff.Google Scholar

31. In Sophocles' Electra, of course, the messenger's masquerade has Orestes competing in the chariot race at the Pythian Games. Which of the two plays came first? It is impossible to say with any degree of confidence, although much has been written on this question (good bibliographies in Solmsen (n. 19), 52 n. 1; and Conacher, D. J., Euripidean Drama (Toronto and London, 1968), p. 202Google Scholar n. 9. Cf. also Schwinge, E. R., Die Verwendung der Stichomythie in den Dramen des Euripides (Heidelberg, 1968), pp. 300 ff.)Google Scholar.

32. Cf. Finley and Pleket (n. 30), pp. 27 f.

33. Ernest Hemingway's speech on receiving the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature; cf. Burgess, A., Ernest Hemingway and his World (London, 1978), p. 106Google Scholar. Professor Richard Kannicht and Mr J. D. Smart were kind enough to read and comment helpfully upon an earlier draft of this paper. To both of them my thanks are owed and most gratefully given.