Electra (or Elektra) by Sophocles

1/ Nobody told me about the parallels between Electra and Hamlet. 

“ELECTRA […] There is my mother: she,

My mother! has become my bitterest enemy.

And then, I have to share my house with those

Who murdered my own father; I am ruled

By them, and what I get, what I must do

Without, depends on them. What happy days,

Think you, mine are, when I must see Aegisthus

Sitting upon my father’s throne, wearing

My father’s robes, and pouring his libations

Beside the hearth-stone where they murdered him?

And I must look upon the crowning outrage,

The murderer lying in my father’s bed

With my abandoned mother—if I must

Call her a mother who dares sleep with him!

She is so brazen that she lives with that

Defiler; vengeance from the gods is not

A thought that frightens her! As if exulting

In what she did she noted carefully

The day on which she treacherously killed

My father…” 

(translated by H. D. F. Kitto) 

I guess it’s my own ignorance—I knew about the myth of Oedipus but not the myth of Electra—but I can now see parallels between two of the greatest revenge plays. Like Hamlet, Electra focuses all her hatred on her mother, even though in Sophocles’s play, Aegisthus also took part in the killing. 

One of the important differences however is that the play of Electra is long after the murder. 

“ELECTRA […] I’ll not enjoy dishonourable ease,

Forget my grief, or cease to pay

Tribute of mourning to my father.

For if the dead shall lie there, nothing but dust and ashes,

And they who killed him do not suffer death in return,

Then, for all mankind,

Fear of the gods, respect for men, have vanished.” 

A few times in the play, Electra is compared to the nightingale, “bird of grief, always lamenting.” 

“CHORUS Electra, child of a most pitiless mother,

Why are you so wasting your life in unceasing

Grief and despair? Agamemnon

Died long ago….” 

Because of the time past, this speech is very different from the speeches of Claudius and Gertrude chiding Hamlet for grieving his father. Electra is consumed—and deformed—by hate. 

2/ As I have earlier noticed, the plays of the 16th century and later are (generally) about people doing things; the ancient Greek plays are about people talking, listening, and reacting to things. 

In this play, Sophocles focuses on Electra’s state of mind—he also shows the contrasting points of view of Electra and her sister Chrysothemis: 

“CHRYSOTHEMIS […] If I could find

The power, they soon would learn how much I hate them.

But we are helpless; we should ride the storm

With shortened sail, not show our enmity

When we are impotent to do them harm.

Will you not do the same? The right may lie

On your side, not on mine, but since they rule,

I must submit, or lose all liberty.” 

This is similar to the contrast between Antigone and her sister Ismene. There is some similarity in the doggedness and inflexibility of Antigone and Electra, but of course Antigone is a softer, more lovable character. There’s something perverse in Electra’s grief: 

“ELECTRA […] if I give up my grief, what should

I gain?” 

The more interesting part however is when Sophocles shows us the perspective of Clytemnestra, the mother. 

“CLYTEMNESTRA […] This father of yours, whom you are always mourning,

Had killed your sister, sacrificing her

To Artemis, the only Greek who could endure

To do it—though his part, when he begot her,

Was so much less than mine, who bore the child.

So tell me why, in deference to whom,

He sacrificed her? For the Greeks, you say?

What right had they to kill a child of mine?”

Menelaus and Helen have two sons, why not sacrifice them? 

“CLYTEMNESTRA […] Or had the god of death some strange desire

To feast on mine, and not on Helen’s children?

Or did this most unnatural father love

His brother’s children, not the one I bore him?

Was not this father monstrous, criminal?” 

There was surprise because of my ignorance—perhaps the effect would have been reduced if one had known the myth—but it is a magnificent moment to switch to Clytemnestra’s perspective after the consuming hate of Electra. It complicates things. It raises questions about Electra’s devotion to the father and indifference to the dead sister. 

3/ Like Hamlet, and unlike the revenge plays of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, Electra is not really about the revenge. Shakespeare’s play has Hamlet meditating on the meaning of existence and the point of revenge. Sophocles’s play is about an obsessive hate that deforms a person.  

I like this passage from Kenneth McLeish’s A Guide to Greek Theatre and Drama: 

“When we see Orestes follow Aigisthos into the palace to kill him and Elektra standing alone, watching them leave, we know that the ending is no ending, that the rest of the story must mean pain and suffering of which neither she nor Oreste have so much as dreamed. Although Elektra doesn’t realise it, she ends the play as alone, bereft and desolate as ever.” 

This is a magnificent play. 

4/ Another comment: I first read Electra in the translation of Robert Bagg. 

“ELEKTRA That’s what they plan to do to me? 

CHRYSÒTHEMIS Yes. When Aegisthus gets back.

ELEKTRA That’s it? Then I hope he comes soon.

CHRYSÒTHEMIS You’re crazy! What a sick wish!

ELEKTRA Let him come, if that’s what he intends.

CHRYSÒTHEMIS So you can suffer? How insane is that?

ELEKTRA It will put plenty of distance

between me and the likes of you.”

Imagine being used to the poetry of Shakespeare and having recently enjoyed Richard Wilbur’s rhyme verse translation of Molière and then reading that translation. 

This is the same passage in H. D. F. Kitto’s translation (the version I read): 

“ELECTRA Will they do that to me?

CHRYSOTHEMIS They will; it is

Decreed, the moment that Aegisthus has returned.

ELECTRA Then let him come at once, for all I care!

CHRYSOTHEMIS How can you say it? Are you mad?

ELECTRA At least,

I shall be out of sight of all of you.”

Sounds much better.  

One of the headaches of reading ancient Greek plays is finding a good translation.