Agamemnon

PREFACE

The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar approaches thetask of translating the Agamemnon depends directly on its greatness aspoetry. It is in part a matter of diction. The language of Aeschylus is anextraordinary thing, the syntax stiff and simple, the vocabulary obscure,unexpected, and steeped in splendour. Its peculiarities cannot be disregarded,or the translation will be false in character. Yet not Milton himself couldproduce in English the same great music, and a translator who should striveambitiously to represent the complex effect of the original would clog his ownpowers of expression and strain his instrument to breaking. But, apart from thediction in this narrower sense, there is a quality of atmosphere surroundingthe Agamemnon which seems almost to defy reproduction in anothersetting, because it depends in large measure on the position of the play in thehistorical development of Greek literature.

If we accept the view that all Art to some extent, and Greek tragedy in a veryspecial degree, moves in its course of development from Religion toEntertainment, from a Service to a Performance, the Agamemnon seems tostand at a critical point where the balance of the two elements is nearperfection. The drama has come fully to life, but the religion has not yetfaded to a formality. The Agamemnon is not, like Aeschylus’Suppliant Women, a statue half-hewn out of the rock. It is a real play,showing clash of character and situation, suspense and movement, psychologicaldepth and subtlety. Yet it still remains something more than a play. Itsatmosphere is not quite of this world. In the long lyrics especially one feelsthat the guiding emotion is not the entertainer’s wish to thrill anaudience, not even perhaps the pure artist’s wish to create beauty, butsomething deeper and more prophetic, a passionate contemplation and expressionof truth; though of course the truth in question is something felt rather thanstated, something that pervades life, an eternal and majestic rhythm like themovement of the stars.

Thus, if Longinus is right in defining Sublimity as “the ring, orresonance, of greatness of soul,” one sees in part where the sublimity ofthe Agamemnon comes from. And it is worth noting that the faults whichsome critics have found in the play are in harmony with this conclusion. Forthe sublimity that is rooted in religion tolerates some faults and utterlyrefuses to tolerate others. The Agamemnon may be slow in getting towork; it may be stiff with antique conventions. It never approaches to beingcheap or insincere or shallow or sentimental or showy. It never ceases to begenuinely a “criticism of life.” The theme which it treats, forinstance, is a great theme in its own right; it is not a made-up storyingeniously handled.

The trilogy of the Oresteia, of which this play is the first part,centres on the old and everlastingly unsolved problem of

The ancient blinded vengeance and the wrong that amendeth wrong.

Every wrong is justly punished; yet, as the world goes, every punishmentbecomes a new wrong, calling for fresh vengeance. And more; every wrong turnsout to be itself root

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