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What I'm pasting below has taken me the better part of nine hours to produce. It's actually a quite nice play, even if the chorus parts are nearly incoherent. (Music, man! One only expects so much sense from the singing and dancing bit.) I have attempted to render it coherently below, though my diction varies overmuch.
I am nowhere near done with this week's translations, but I wanted to get this posted before my replacement netbook crashes again. (Three times so far today!) Or before I exceed the character limit here.
Orestes:
Give me my curved horn bow, the gift of Loxias, which Apollo told me to use to defend myself against goddesses, if they should frighten me with mad fits. Someone divine will be harmed by a mortal hand, if she doesn't get out of my sight!
Aren't you listening? Don't you see the feathered arrows flying from the far-shooting bow? Oh, oh, why are you about to act? Skim the upper air with your wings! But blame the divine commands of Phoebus!
Oh! Why am I wandering in mind, panting air from my lungs? Where did I leap to from my bed? I see still water again and again after stormy seas. Sister, why are you crying, with your head covered by your veil? I shame myself, involving you in my deeds and handing over a crowd of troubles to a maiden, by my sickness. Don't waste away on account of my evils; for you approved them, but Mother's murder was performed by me. And I blame Loxias, who--when he urged me toward that most unholy deed--supported me with words, but not with actions.
And I think that my father, if I was asking him if there were a need to kill my mother, would lie down with many entreaties to my face that I never thrust a sword towards the slaughter of my mother, if he would not thereby return to the light and I would be a suffering man filled up with these troubles.
And now, dear sister, uncover your head, and leave off crying, even if we fare very miserably. But whenever you see me despairing, curtail the terrible destruction of my mind for me, and comfort me; and whenever you're sighing, it's necessary for us, being here, to scold you dearly; for these are good, helpful things for loved ones.
But oh, suffering woman, go into the house, lie down, give your sleepless eyelids some sleep; and have a meal, and give your skin a bath. For if you will abandon me, or get sick yourself in sitting beside me, I'll be a goner; for I have you alone as an ally, since--as you see--I'm apart from all other men.
Electra:
It's not so; I'll choose to die along with you, and to live; for it works out the same; if you die, what can I do, as a woman? How can I save myself alone, brotherless, fatherless, friendless? But if you think it's best, it's necessary to do these things. But lie yourself down on the bed, and don't accept too much terror that'd frighten you out of bed, and stay under the covers in bed. For even if you're not ill, but imagine yourself to be, that becomes a danger and difficulty to mortal men.
Chorus:
Woe! O running winged raging goddesses, who were assigned a joyless company in tears and wailing, the dark Eumenides, who spring up in the outstretched sky, avenging blood with justice, avenging murder, I beg you, I beg you, permit the offspring of Agamemnon to be forgotten from the raging of maddening fits. Alas for troubles, poor man, the kind you struggle with, that bring harm on you, every since the heavenly voice at the tripod, when Phoebus cried, cried out, receiving it on the floor, there in the central innermost parts of the earth.
O Zeus! what pitiful thing, this murderous struggle, approaches, sending you miserable man, for whom he throws tears together with tears, some avenging spirit carrying your mother's blood into the house--what struggle maddens you? I weep, I weep. Great happiness isn't stable among mortals; and just like you knock down the sail of a swift ship, so they deluge it under furious destructive waves from the terrible works of the gods. Yet for what other house than the one from the marriage of god-kin, from Tantalus, should I feel awe?
But now this king approaches, lord Menelaus; and he may clearly be seen by his splendour to be from the blood of the Tantalids. Launcher of a thousand-ship fleet into the land of Asia, welcome. And you're personally in company with good luck, having accomplished what you were praying for.
Menelaus:
House, while I look upon you with pleasure after coming from Troy, all the same I'm in mourning; for never before have I seen any other hearth so much encircled by miserable troubles. For I knew the fate of Agamemnon, and his death, how he was
destroyed by his wife, when I brought my ship's prow to Malea; from the waves, a prophet for sailors proclaimed to me--
Nereos, a prophet of Glaucos, who's a god without deceit--and he said this to me, standing there visibly:
"Menelaus, your brother lies dead, having fallen into the final bath from his wife."*
He filled me and my sailors with many tears. But after I touched Naplian earth, my wife already having been sent here, while I was planning to wrap loving arms about Agamemnon's boy, Orestes, and his mother, as if they were still well, I heard from some sea-beaten man of the unholy fate of the child of Tyndareos.
Now tell me where he is, young ladies, Agamemnon's child, who dared this terrible evil; for he was a newborn then, in the arms of Clytemnestra, when I was leaving the house and going to Troy, since I won't know him on seeing him.
---
* Some versions have him wrapped up in a cloak and stabbed, some versions have him stabbed in the bath. I guess this play is having it both ways.
I am nowhere near done with this week's translations, but I wanted to get this posted before my replacement netbook crashes again. (Three times so far today!) Or before I exceed the character limit here.
Orestes:
Give me my curved horn bow, the gift of Loxias, which Apollo told me to use to defend myself against goddesses, if they should frighten me with mad fits. Someone divine will be harmed by a mortal hand, if she doesn't get out of my sight!
Aren't you listening? Don't you see the feathered arrows flying from the far-shooting bow? Oh, oh, why are you about to act? Skim the upper air with your wings! But blame the divine commands of Phoebus!
Oh! Why am I wandering in mind, panting air from my lungs? Where did I leap to from my bed? I see still water again and again after stormy seas. Sister, why are you crying, with your head covered by your veil? I shame myself, involving you in my deeds and handing over a crowd of troubles to a maiden, by my sickness. Don't waste away on account of my evils; for you approved them, but Mother's murder was performed by me. And I blame Loxias, who--when he urged me toward that most unholy deed--supported me with words, but not with actions.
And I think that my father, if I was asking him if there were a need to kill my mother, would lie down with many entreaties to my face that I never thrust a sword towards the slaughter of my mother, if he would not thereby return to the light and I would be a suffering man filled up with these troubles.
And now, dear sister, uncover your head, and leave off crying, even if we fare very miserably. But whenever you see me despairing, curtail the terrible destruction of my mind for me, and comfort me; and whenever you're sighing, it's necessary for us, being here, to scold you dearly; for these are good, helpful things for loved ones.
But oh, suffering woman, go into the house, lie down, give your sleepless eyelids some sleep; and have a meal, and give your skin a bath. For if you will abandon me, or get sick yourself in sitting beside me, I'll be a goner; for I have you alone as an ally, since--as you see--I'm apart from all other men.
Electra:
It's not so; I'll choose to die along with you, and to live; for it works out the same; if you die, what can I do, as a woman? How can I save myself alone, brotherless, fatherless, friendless? But if you think it's best, it's necessary to do these things. But lie yourself down on the bed, and don't accept too much terror that'd frighten you out of bed, and stay under the covers in bed. For even if you're not ill, but imagine yourself to be, that becomes a danger and difficulty to mortal men.
Chorus:
Woe! O running winged raging goddesses, who were assigned a joyless company in tears and wailing, the dark Eumenides, who spring up in the outstretched sky, avenging blood with justice, avenging murder, I beg you, I beg you, permit the offspring of Agamemnon to be forgotten from the raging of maddening fits. Alas for troubles, poor man, the kind you struggle with, that bring harm on you, every since the heavenly voice at the tripod, when Phoebus cried, cried out, receiving it on the floor, there in the central innermost parts of the earth.
O Zeus! what pitiful thing, this murderous struggle, approaches, sending you miserable man, for whom he throws tears together with tears, some avenging spirit carrying your mother's blood into the house--what struggle maddens you? I weep, I weep. Great happiness isn't stable among mortals; and just like you knock down the sail of a swift ship, so they deluge it under furious destructive waves from the terrible works of the gods. Yet for what other house than the one from the marriage of god-kin, from Tantalus, should I feel awe?
But now this king approaches, lord Menelaus; and he may clearly be seen by his splendour to be from the blood of the Tantalids. Launcher of a thousand-ship fleet into the land of Asia, welcome. And you're personally in company with good luck, having accomplished what you were praying for.
Menelaus:
House, while I look upon you with pleasure after coming from Troy, all the same I'm in mourning; for never before have I seen any other hearth so much encircled by miserable troubles. For I knew the fate of Agamemnon, and his death, how he was
destroyed by his wife, when I brought my ship's prow to Malea; from the waves, a prophet for sailors proclaimed to me--
Nereos, a prophet of Glaucos, who's a god without deceit--and he said this to me, standing there visibly:
"Menelaus, your brother lies dead, having fallen into the final bath from his wife."*
He filled me and my sailors with many tears. But after I touched Naplian earth, my wife already having been sent here, while I was planning to wrap loving arms about Agamemnon's boy, Orestes, and his mother, as if they were still well, I heard from some sea-beaten man of the unholy fate of the child of Tyndareos.
Now tell me where he is, young ladies, Agamemnon's child, who dared this terrible evil; for he was a newborn then, in the arms of Clytemnestra, when I was leaving the house and going to Troy, since I won't know him on seeing him.
---
* Some versions have him wrapped up in a cloak and stabbed, some versions have him stabbed in the bath. I guess this play is having it both ways.