Electra

1Chorus Ah, Electra, child of a most wretched mother, why are you always wasting away in this unsated mourning for Agamemnon, who long ago was godlessly ensnared in your false mother’s wiles and betrayed by her corrupt hand? May the one who did that perish, if I may speak such a curse without breaking the gods’ laws. Electra Ah, noble-hearted girls, you have come to relieve me in my troubles. I know and feel it: it does not escape me. Still I cannot leave this task undone, nor abandon this mourning for my poor father. Ah, friends whose love responds to mine in every mood, allow me to rave as I am, oh, please, I beg you!

1Chorus But never by weeping nor by prayer will you resurrect your father from the pool of Hades which receives all men. No, by grieving without end and beyond due limits you will find cureless misery and your own ruin; in these actions there is no deliverance from evils. Tell us, why do you pursue such suffering? Electra Foolish is the child who forgets a parent’s piteous death. No, closer to my heart is the mourner who eternally wails, Itys, Itys, that bird mad with grief, the messenger of Zeus. Ah, all-suffering Niobe, you I count divine, since you weep forever in your rocky tomb!

2Chorus Not to you alone of mortals, my daughter, has sorrow come, though you face it with less restraint than those girls inside, Chrysothemis and Iphianassa, whose parents and blood you share. They still live, as he, too, lives, sorrowing in his secluded youth, yet happy in that this famous realm of the Mycenaeans shall one day receive him as a noble lord, if with the blessing of Zeus’s escort he, Orestes, returns to this land. Electra Yes, I await him with unwearied longing, as I walk my sad path from day to day childless and unwed, bathed in tears, bearing that endless doom of evils. But he forgets all that he has suffered and learned. What message comes to me that is not proven false? He constantly desires to be with us, but though he desires it, he does not choose to appear.

2Chorus Courage, my daughter, courage; Zeus in the sky is still mighty, and he sees and rules all. Leave your oversharp anger to him; be neither excessively hostile to those you hate, nor forgetful of them, since Time is a god who brings ease. Neither the son of Agamemnon, who dwells by Crisa’s cattle-feeding shore nor the god who reigns beside Acheron is unmindful of you. Electra But the best part of life has passed away leaving me in hopelessness, and I have no strength left. I waste away without children and have no loving husband to champion me, but like some despised foreign slave, I serve in the halls of my father, wrapped in shabby garments and standing to eat scanty meals.

3Chorus Mournful was the voice heard at his return, and mournful the voice amidst your father’s reclining banquet when the straight, swift blow of the bronze-jawed axe was sped against him. Deceit was the plotter, Lust the slayer, two dread parents of a dreadful phantom, whether it was god or mortal that did this deed. Electra O that hated day, hated beyond all that have come to me; O that night, the terrible grief of that unutterable feast, the shameless death-strokes my father saw from their twin hands, hands which took my life captive by treachery, which cast me to ruin! May the great god of Olympus create for them sufferings in penalty, and may they never have enjoyment of their splendor since they have committed such crimes!

3Chorus Be advised to say no more; do you not see by what actions under the present circumstances you plunge so shamefully into self-made miseries? You have far excelled in achieving misfortune, ever breeding wars in your hardhearted soul. But such strife should not be pushed into a conflict with the powerful. Electra I have been forced to it, forced by a terrible compulsion. I know my own passion; it does not escape me; but, under such terrible compulsion, I will not restrain these disastrous cries of frenzy, so long as life is in me. Who indeed, my noble friends, who that keeps what is appropriate in mind, would think any word of comfort right for my ears? Let me be, let me be, my comforters! For these ills will be reckoned with those which have no cure; I will never know a respite from my pains, or the sum of this wailing.

1Chorus If I am not a deranged prophet and one who lacks wise judgments, Justice, the sender of the omen, will come, winning the just victory of her hands’ might. She will come in pursuit before long, my child. Courage is mine, since I heard just now of this sweet-blowing dream. Never does the lord of the Hellenes, your producer forget, nor does the axe of long ago forget, striking with bronze on its jaws, which in most shameless disgrace annihilated him.

1Chorus She, too, will come, she of many hands and many feet who lurks in her terrible ambush, the bronze-shod Erinys. For an unwed, unbetrothed passion for a marriage polluted by murder seized the pair, though divine law forbade it to them. Therefore I am confident that the portent—a wonder which I will never blame—will draw near to the criminals and conspirators. To be sure, mortal prophecy from fearful dreams or divine signs exists no more, if this vision of the night does not find due fulfillment.

1Chorus Where are the thunderbolts of Zeus, or where the shining Sun, if they look upon these things and quietly cover them over? Electra Ah, me, ah, me! Chorus My child, why do you weep? Electra Oh! Chorus Give no cry of bad omen! Electra You will break my heart! Chorus How do you mean? Electra If you suggest that I keep hope for those who have surely passed to Hades, you will trample even harder upon me as I waste away.

1Chorus No, for I know that the prince Amphiaraus was ensnared by a woman’s chain of gold and swallowed up. And now beneath the earth— Electra ah, me, ah, me! Chorus —He reigns supreme with the wits of the living. Electra ah, me! Chorus ah, me, indeed! For the murderess— Electra Was slain. Chorus Yes. Electra I know it; I know it. For a champion arose to avenge the grieving dead. But for me no champion remains: he who yet remained has been snatched clean away.

2Chorus Unhappy are you, unhappy your destiny! Electra How well I know that, all too well, with my life swept through all the months by abundant terrors and horrors! Chorus We have witnessed the events for which you mourn. Electra Cease, then, to divert me from it, since no longer— Chorus What do you say? Electra —Since I no longer have hope in my brother, the seed of our shared noble line, to aid me.

2Chorus Nature ordains death as the destiny of all mortals. Electra What, a death like the one which that ill-fated one died beneath a race of swift hooves, entangled in the cutting, dragging reins? Chorus The mutilation is beyond thought! Electra Yes, so it is, when in foreign soil, without being tended by my hands— Chorus Ah, no! Electra —he has been buried not receiving from me either burial or lamentation.

1Chorus Why, though we see the birds above, most thoughtful creatures, taking care for the sustenance of those from whom they derived life and enjoyment, why do we not pay these debts in like measure? No, by the lightning-flash of Zeus, by Themis throned in the sky, we are not long unpunished. O Voice of the underworld that reaches to mortals, shout for me a piteous cry to the sons of Atreus below. Carry the reproaches not appropriate to my dancing!

1Chorus Tell them the affairs of their house, how it is now diseased; how among his children, double-sided strife has overwhelmed their loving manner. Electra, betrayed, braves the storm alone. In misery she bewails her father’s fate without pause, like the all-grieving nightingale. She cares not at all about death, but is ready for that eternal blindness, could she but subdue the double Erinys of her house. Who could grow to be so noble a daughter of so noble a father?

2Chorus None of the good willingly clouds his fair repute and becomes nameless by leading a corrupt life, my child. Similarly, you, too, have chosen a lifetime of shared mourning and have armed against dishonor, so that you might win in one breath a twofold praise as wise, and as the best of daughters.

2Chorus May I yet see you live exalted in might and wealth above your enemies by as much as you now dwell beneath their hand! For I have found you enjoying no prosperous estate, yet for observance of nature’s highest laws you win the noblest prize by your reverence toward Zeus.

1Electra O seed, seed of the person to me most dear, you have just now come, you have come, and have found and seen her whom your heart desired! Orestes I am with you; but keep silence and wait. Electra What do you mean? Orestes It is better to be silent so that no one inside may hear. Electra No, by ever-virgin Artemis, I will never think it right to tremble before eternally house-bound women, that useless burden on the ground! Orestes Yes, but remember that Ares dwells in women, too. You know this well by experience, I believe. Electra oh, no! ah, me! You have reminded me of my sorrow, one which by its nature cannot be veiled, cannot be done away with, cannot be forgotten! Orestes I know this, too; but when occasion prompts, we must recall those crimes.

1Electra Each moment of all time, as it comes, would be a proper occasion for me to make these just complaints. Scarcely now have I had my lips set free. Orestes Yes, I agree; therefore guard your freedom. Electra What must I do? Orestes When it is inopportune, do not want to speak too much. Electra No, who could exchange due silence for speech, when you have appeared? For now my eyes have seen you, beyond all thought and hope! Orestes You saw me when the gods moved me to come. Electra You have told me of a grace higher still than the first, if a god brought you to our house; I acknowledge in it the work of the divine. Orestes On the one hand I hesitate to curb your gladness, but on the other I fear that you may be overwhelmed by too much joy.

1Chorus Behold how Ares stalks onward, breathing bloody vengeance that is hard to oppose. Just now have the hunters of wicked crimes passed beneath that roof there, the hounds which none may flee. And so not long shall the vision of my soul hang in suspense.

1Chorus The champion of the spirits infernal is ushered on guileful feet into the house, the rich, ancestral palace of his father, and he bears keen-edged death in his hands. Maia’s son Hermes, who has shrouded the guile in darkness, leads him right to his goal and delays no longer.

2Enter Electra from the house. Electra My dearest friends, in a moment the men will do the deed. But wait in silence. Chorus How do they fare? What are they doing now? Electra She is decking the urn for burial; the two of them stand close to her. Chorus And why have you hurried out? Electra To guard against Aegisthus entering before we are aware. Clytaemnestra Within. Oh! Oh! Our house is empty of friends and filled with murderers! Electra Someone shouts inside. Do you not hear, friends? Chorus I heard, ah, me, sounds unfit to be heard, and I shudder! Clytaemnestra Within. Ah, misery! Aegisthus, where, where are you? Electra Look, once more someone cries out! Clytaemnestra Within. My son, my son, have pity on your mother! Electra Why? You had none for him, nor for the father that begot him. Chorus Wretched city, wretched race, now the fate that has held you day by day perishes—it perishes! Clytaemnestra Within. Oh, I am wounded! Electra Stab her doubly, if you can! Clytaemnestra Within. Ah, wounded again! Electra Would that Aegisthus, too, were wounded! Chorus The curses bring fulfillment: those who are buried live. For men long dead are draining their killers’ blood in a stream of requital.

2Enter Orestes and Pylades from the house. Chorus And now they are here! The red hand drips with sacrifice to Ares, and I cannot blame the deed. Electra Orestes, what happened? Orestes All is well within the house, if Apollo’s oracle spoke well. Electra The miserable woman is dead? Orestes Have no more fear that your haughty mother will ever again trample on your rights. Chorus Quiet! For I see Aegisthus in plain sight. Electra You, young men, get back inside! Orestes Where do you see the man? Electra He is at our mercy walking from the suburb, full of joy. Chorus Go with all speed to the vestibule, so that, just as your first task prospered, so this one again may prosper now. Orestes Have courage. We will accomplish it. Electra Hurry, then, to wherever you wish. Orestes See, I am gone. Electra Things here will be my concern. Exeunt Orestes and Pylades, into the house. Chorus It would be well to whisper into this man’s ear some few words of seeming gentleness, so that he may rush blindly upon his trial before Justice.