If It Be Not Now, Yet It Will Come

Extract

The prolog to the Electra has sometimes been called unSophocIean. The moment is too propitious: the dawn brings a golden sunlight and the voices of nesting birds. Orestes and his friends move alertly, confidently, on the verge of deeds. The young hero prepares to act with a kind of unspoiled alacrity. As Orestes recites his assignment in revenge, while the Paidagogos listens to correct his errors, we begin to feel that the briskness and dispatch are somehow suspect and shallow. We are in the dimension of action, but the action proceeds upon a single level according to a plan whose elements are logically conceived and causally connected. Orestes will obey Time, but it is one-dimensional Time, interpreted as a succession of events leading to a mechanical and inexorable conclusion.