The Oresteia [antikvár]

FOREWORD My thanks to Aeschylus for his companionship, his rigours and his kindness. I found him a burly, eloquent ghost, with more human decency and strength than I could hope to equal. As I tried to approach him, I remembered what they said ofthe ghost of Hamlet's father* We do it wrong, being so majestical. To offer it the show of violence.' Translation has its violent moments, and I suppose it must. It begins with attraction, then a kind of attack, and it ends, if you are lucky, with a strong impersonation of your author. Whatever the jnd, at any rate, it is meant to be a thing of love and homage. So in thanking that proud old spirit, I would also ask for his forbearance, if he should ever hear what I have written in his name. Now it is time to let this version of the Oresteia speak for itself, without apologies or statements of principle (petards that will probably hoist the writing later). A translator's best hope, I think, and still the hardest to achieve, is Dryden's hope that his author will speak the living language ofthe day. And not in a way that caters to its limits, one might add, but that gives its life and fibre something of a stretching in the process. In translating Aeschylus I have also tried to suggest the responsion of his choral poetry - the paired, isometric stanzas that form the dialectic dance and singing of his plays in Greek - but I have done so flexibly, and using English rhythms. The translation has its leanings, too, yet they are loyal to Aeschylus, at least as I perceive him, and loyal to the modem grain as well. There is a kinship between the Oresteia and ourselves; a mutual need to recognize the fragility of our culture, to restore some reverence for the Great Mother and her works, and especially to cmbrace the Furies within ourselves, persuading them, perhaps, to invigorate our lives. I hope this kinship can be felt in the English text and supported by the introductory essay. The essay begins and ends with broader, general sections; in