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Whether or not you can bear 'The Libation Bearers' (Choephori), the Radio 3 Forum has so far been stunned into silence by 'The Oresteia'. Aeschylus's seminal trilogy moves from chaos to order, from conflict to reconciliation; and it moves on two planes at once, the human and the divine. In 'Agamemnon', we see one of the moral laws of the universe, that punishment must follow crime, fulfilled in the cruellest possible way: one crime evokes another crime to avenge it, in apparently endless succession, but always with the sanction of Zeus.
In last night's 'Libation Bearers' (Choephori), this series of crimes reaches its climax when Orestes avenges his father by killing his mother. He does this with repugnance, but he is commanded to do so by Apollo, the son and mouthpiece of Zeus, but why? In murdering Agamemnon the King and her husband, Clymenestra has committed a crime which, unpunished, would shatter the very fabric of society. It is the concern of the Olympian gods to defend order. But Orestes's matricide outrages the deepest of human instincts; he is therefore implacably pursued by other deities, the Furies. The Furies have no interest in social order, but they cannot permit this outrage on the sacredness of the blood-tie, which it is their office to protect. 'In Our Time', Melvyn Bragg discussed the drama over on BBC Radio 4:
'The composer Richard Wagner recalled the visceral sensations of reading Aeschylus's great trilogy for the first time. "I could see the Oresteia with my mind's eye ... Nothing could equal the sublime emotion with which the Agamemnon inspired me; and to the last word of the Eumenides, I remained in an atmosphere so far removed from the present day that I have never since been really able to reconcile myself with modern literature."
Aeschylus' audience were all familiar with the tale of one man's return home from the Trojan War. Homer's Odyssey recounted Odysseus' perilous journey home, the forceful ejection of the suitors from his household and his reunion with wife Penelope and son Telemachus. Aeschylus had a very different tale of homecoming to tell in his Oresteia. Agamemnon arrives home from Troy to a murderous welcome from a vengeful wife and a cycle of atrocities unfolds in his household.
The Oresteia has inspired some of the greatest artists and thinkers of the modern world. From Richard Wagner and Friedrich Nietzsche to T.S. Eliot and Simone de Beauvoir – the ‘Oresteia’ has fired the modern imagination.
Why did Aeschylus make the family the subject of his bloody revenge tragedy? How did his trilogy make a contribution to the development of Athenian legal institutions? And why has the Oresteia had such a powerful hold over the modern imagination?'
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time - The Oresteia
In next Sunday's 'Furies' (Eumenides), there is a terrifying conflict between the ancient Furies and the younger Olympians over the unhappy Orestes. The solution is that Athena comes with a new dispensation from Zeus. A jury of Athenian citizens is empanelled to try Orestes on the Acropolis where has fled for protection, the first meeting of the Council of the Areopagus. The votes on either side are equal; therefore, as an act of mercy, Orestes is acquitted. The Furies, cheated of their legitimate prey, threaten Attica with destruction, but Athena persuades them to make their home in Athens, with their ancient office not abrogated, as they first think, but enhanced, since henceforth they will punish violence within the polis, not only within the family.
To the classical Greek playwright, Aeschylus, therefore, the mature polis becomes the means by which the Law is satisfied without producing chaos, since public justice supersedes private vengeance, and the claims of authority are reconciled with the instincts of humanity. The trilogy ends with an impressive piece of pageantry. The awful Furies exchange their black robes for red ones, no longer Furies, but 'Kindly Ones' (Eumenides); no longer enemies of Zeus, but his willing and honoured agents, defenders of his now perfected social order against intestine violence. Before the eyes of Athenian citizens assembled in the theatre just under the Acropolis, the Eumenides pass out of the theatre to their new home on the other side of the Acropolis. Some of the most acute of man's moral and social problems have been solved, and the means of their reconciliation is the polis. A few minutes later, on an early spring day in 458 BC(E), the citizens too would leave the theatre by the same exits as the Eumenides. Yet in what mood?
In an imaginary conversation between a classical Greek and a member of the Athenaeum in London, the Radio 3 Forum, or even perhaps a Friend of Radio 3 (FoR3), french frank, the member regrets the lack of the political sense shown by the Greeks. The classical Greek replies, "How many clubs are there in London?" The member, at a guess, says about a thousand. The classical Greek then says, "Now, if all these combined, what splendid premises they could build. They could have a club-house bigger than the Royal Albert Hall, as big as Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Proms in the Park?" "But," says the member, "that would no longer be a club." "Precisely!" says the classical Greek. So it is with BBC Radio 3?
People who don’t listen to BBC Radio 3 have an idea that it is a club for snooty people, by snooty people, fenced off from casual listening. On the other hand, people who grew up listening to Radio 3, don’t always care for it now. Too much flimsy chat, they say, too much jazz and film and world music, not enough harpsichords. There is justification for either attitude. Writing in 'The Daily Telegraph', Gillian Reynolds admits to both:
The Daily Telegraph - How Alan Johnson found comfort in Charles Dickens' ... I love the jazz, even the Monday late night avant garderie, yet I dote on Donald Macleod and Composer of the Week (currently Schubert) and rarely miss The Choir or Words & Music (Sundays). I am, however, rather cross with the present Drama on 3 sequence, The Oresteia of Aeschylus in versions by various hot new writers. Why does Orestes have a Northern accent straight out of Shameless? Why do we hear the killings? Aren’t such things supposed to happen offstage? Yet at the same time listening to last Sunday’s The Libation Bearers, I started wondering whether its mother-stepfather-son tangles might have been an influence on Shakespeare when he wrote Hamlet. I will listen to this Sunday’s The Furies (adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz) because Niamh Cusack is the narrator. I won’t listen to Cusack next week, when she is the guest on Essential Classics because she’s talking to Sarah Walker who, in my view, can’t interview ... '
Let us hope that 'The Furies' can do rather more than that!Last edited by Guest; 25-01-14, 17:22. -
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A most accessible version of The Furies - recommended whilst still on iPlayer.Comment
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