#ancient tragedy

[ieatyellowsnow]

I like to believe that the messengers and couriers from all of the old plays like in euripedes' or Shakespeare's plays are all just the same guy transcending time and living in the background of all these amazing tales.

[gemsofgreece]

This is from the summer but I always only found short videos this is a little longer (still not the whole song). Marina Satti performing in the Suppliants of Aescylus in the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus.

[theoi-crow]

"Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse."

-Sophocles

Saw this quote on a documentary about Social Media designed to keep us from being productive called "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix right after I asked Hermes how I can be more productive.

[curious-trickster]

Me reading the Orestie from Aischylos: Ah yes, Orestes. A struggling young man who had to kill his mother as Apollo ordered it as revenge for her murder of Agamemmnon. He is the main character and I might not agree with his motifs, but I understand his struggles.

Electra and Phylades? They aren't really around for long but seem like the 'nice but troubled' kind of young people.

The ending? Fine, everyone is happy and a satisfying solution was introduced.

Me reading Orestes from Euripides: Oh no Orestes, the one who killed his mom because she was an 'evil woman' and uses his mysogonistic mindset to justify murder on women.

Electra and Phylades? Whoo boy those kids clearly have a knack for planning murder and they seem to really hate Helen of Troy. Also Phylades gave off some pretty gay vibes when he told Orestes that he could not go on living without him.

The ending? Felt like reading a two thousand year old LSD Trip. First the three kids want to murder Helen before Electra and Orestes have to commit suicide as retribution for the killing of their mom, because Helens Hunsband wasn't any help in saving them from their fate. Second the decide to take Hermione, Helens daughter, hostage and threaten to kill her. When Menelaos, Helens Husband and father of Hermione, comes and tries to get them back, Orestes orders Electra to set fire to the house. The house is burning. Helen has mysteriously disappeared after the attempted murder. Orestes is still standing on the roof, holding a sword to Hermiones neck, all the while screaming at Menelaos. Who the hell knows what Phylades is up to.

And then, before everyone can die, Apollo appears. Together with Helen, who be has saved from murder. He declares the perfect solution: Orestes will go into exile for one year and then he will go to Athen where his case will be judged. When he is done with that he can come back to Argo and reign as a King. Oh yeah, and he can marry Hermione, the girl whose mother he nearly killed amd who he held hostage.

Helen will become a star and chill with the gods. Oh yeah Menelaos, guess you will need a new wife. But hey, you can keep Sparta, as it kinda was Helens dowry.

Phylades and Electra - the couple who is so good at planning murder it is a wonder no one locked them up yet - they should marry each other.

And you know what's even more messed up than whatever is going on in Apollo's head? The fact that everyone just agrees with this solution. And that's the end.

What the hell, Euripides.

[itshybridqueen]

“Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”

- Euripides, Medea

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

If one were to envisage a rebirth out of ancient tragedy, then every individual would have to be concerned about his own rebirth, not just in the spiritual sense, but in the definite sense of a rebirth from the womb of family and race.

from Either/Or: A Fragment of Life by Søren Kierkegaard

[artaftertrauma]

Ieri sono stata al teatro a vedere una messa in scena delle Baccanti di Euripide.

La violenza sublime del teatro classico ha riscattato settimane e settimane di astenia. Una messa in scena così potente, curata in ogni dettaglio, torna a farmi credere nella forza del mito e dell’intuizione artistica. 

Sento di potermi salvare, in un frammento del mio sogno. Ricordo come di aver portato con me dal passato quei canti, quei momenti di dramma. È una scoperta e al contempo un ricordo antichissimo disseppellito. 

[arbiterofdepravity-blog]

Of all things with life and understanding,                                    we women are the most unfortunate.      First, we need a husband, someone we get      for an excessive price. He then becomes      the ruler of our bodies. And this misfortune      adds still more troubles to the grief we have.      Then comes the crucial struggle: this husband      we’ve selected, is he good or bad?                                              For a divorce loses women all respect,      yet we can’t refuse to take a husband.      Then, when she goes into her husband’s home,      with its new rules and different customs,      she needs a prophet’s skill to sort out the man      whose bed she shares. She can’t learn that at home.                             Once we’ve worked hard at this, and with success,      our husband accepts the marriage yoke      and lives in peace—an enviable life.      But if the marriage doesn’t work, then death                          is much to be preferred. When the man tires      of the company he keeps at home, he leaves,      seeking relief for his distress elsewhere,      outside the home. He gets his satisfaction      with some male friend or someone his own age.      We women have to look at just one man.      Men tell us we live safe and secure at home,      while they must go to battle with their spears.      How stupid they are! I’d rather stand there      three times in battle holding up my shield                              than give birth once.

Euripides, Medea, 431 BCE (trans. Ian Johnston). No matter how much one knows about Classical Athenian misogyny and its brutal depths, no matter how many times one side-eyes Euripides for the things he does to women and has women do, there’s nothing in classical literature, full stop, that’s anything like this speech, in which Medea - a woman given voice by a man, a male playwright, a male actor - lays out with shattering clarity the double-binds that structure a woman’s existence in a society where she is a token, stripped of agency, stretched in Procrustean fashion between father’s house and husband’s house. Euripides’ Medea ghosts Gayle Rubin’s Traffic in Women.

In some manifestations of the tradition, Medea is an irredeemable evil witch, associated with the uncanny and the divine. Euripides’ Medea is penetratingly human. Of course, Athenian women’s lives were variegated; not everyone was an aristocrat, not everyone *could* become a token, there were untold masses whose comings and goings and affairs and marriages and loves and losses and griefs and desires are forever lost, because they didn’t matter to the literary record, with its skewings, its biases, its generic categories. But despite the complexity of the context, one senses some faint hint of a ghost of a dream of rebellion brewing at the edges of these words.