February 2006

'The Hidden Orestes' : A Euripidean Reading of the Orestes' myth?
Elina Dagonaki, St. Hugh's College, University of Oxford

In the late years of his life, Ted Hughes turns to the myth of Orestes. In translating Aeschylus' Oresteia for the stage, Hughes was initiated into the fascinating world of intra-familial vengeance and criminality that embraces the tragic destiny of the House of Atreus. As Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra venture onstage, each one in pursuit of their own notion of righteousness, their fates are precariously intertwined into an endless trail of bloody steps. The subjectivity of justice and the assumption of self-sufficiency in dealing with the twists of fate are bluntly negated as utterly deceptive. The characters are finally entrapped in patterns already predestined by their myth and in a torturing cycle of self-destructive violence, from which there seems to be no way out.

These ideas, though not always so explicitly articulated in Aeschylus, are particularly stressed in Hughes' version of the trilogy: 'Where is the right and wrong in this nightmare? Who can reason it out? Reason fails, mind is a casualty of this bloody succession',[1] the Chorus bitterly admits in his 'Agamemnon', whilst the same desperate question dominates the closing lines of the 'Choephori' as well: 'Can Orestes solve the arithmetic of the unfinished that shunts this curse from one generation to the next? Who can bring it to an end? When can it be brought to an end? How can it be brought to an end?'[2] The happy resolution of Aeschylus' 'Eumenides', i.e. Orestes' acquittal on divine behest, which gloriously restores him to his homeland and the throne, thus proposing a more systematic response to the deadlock of feud violence via institutionalised justice, seems convincingly to seal all these questions in the triumphant transformation of the 'unappeasable Goddesses' [3] of darkness to the 'kindly'[4] ones, who 'will return kindness for kindness':[5] there is an end to vendetta violence after all, the Oresteia seems to suggest, and Hughes' version can only but comply with the 'joyous' finale of its Aeschylean model.

The myth of Orestes re-appears only once in Ted Hughes' poetry, as it informs the narrative of one of his late poems in the posthumously published collection Howls and Whispers. 'The Hidden Orestes' draws on the mythical figures of the Agamemnonidae, and yet offers a completely novel reading of their myth. In this paper I will argue that the obscure singularity of Hughes' treatment in 'The Hidden Orestes' may be attributed to Euripidean influence. In fact, this poem may be shown to allude to specific narratological patterns that Euripides first introduced to the dramatized versions of the Orestes' myth. The playwright's surviving Orestes' plays, i.e. the 'Electra' and the 'Orestes', will thus constitute the textual nucleus of my argument.

'Tragedies of the House of Atreus / Exclude Electra's husband'. The bitterness of this statement which frames the opening of the poem seems at a first glance unrelated to the established mythological tradition. After all, ever since its first literary treatments, the myth of Electra has denied her the joys of matrimony and has bound her to a state of prolonged virginity which has served to accentuate her woes. Indeed, Electra's unmarried state has been so decidedly pressed upon her mythological persona, that it has even been considered to account for her name. In the scholion [6] to one of the surviving fragments of the melic poet Xanthus , it is stated that

Agamemnon's daughter was initially called 'Laodice'; because she grew old unmarried, however, i.e. deprived of a husband and a marital bed, the Argives re-named her to 'Electra', so that her name would be indicative of, and even stress her unmarried status.

Electra generally remains the desolate virgin of tradition in the surviving dramatic accounts of her myth. It would seem, however, that the references to her unmarried state in tragedy gradually increase as Electra is drawn deeper into the plotted revenge as Orestes' active accomplice. Hence, in Aeschylus' Oresteia , where Electra's share in the execution of revenge is that of a supportive but weak by-stander, who utters desperate prayers to the gods, and awaits for 'justice after injustice' (398), her marital status is only once briefly alluded to in the 'Choephori', 486–7. In Sophocles' 'Electra', however, where Electra is determined to act on her own initiative, even when the deceptive announcement of her brother's death seems to shatter all her hopes for salvation, the references to her single status are by contrast no longer subtle or implicit: as soon as the Sophoclean Electra enters the stage, she bewails the unlucky fate which has brought her steps onto a sad path, as she is 'pining away' (187) 'unwed, childless and bathed in tears' (164–6). Euripides' 'Electra' and 'Orestes' seem to move along the same lines. In Euripides' 'Electra', the heroine bemoans her 'hard toils and hateful life' (120–1), as she drags along 'being a maiden' (311); so too is the case in Euripides' 'Orestes', where right from the start Electra is scornfully denounced as a 'long unwed, poor creature' (72–3). Just like her Sophoclean counterpart, this 'hapless' Electra-figure of the Euripidean versions is actively involved in the realization of an implacable revenge against her bitterest foes.

Notwithstanding the seeming affinities of Electra's portrayal in Euripidean tragedy, Euripides' treatment of the myth–especially in his 'Electra' - constitutes a singular digression from tradition. In no other extant Greek tragedy is the heroine's fate as complicated by marriage as in Euripides' 'Electra'. Could Ted Hughes' adaptation of the same myth in 'The Hidden Orestes' be mirroring Euripides' innovative deviations in the 'Electra'? Hughes' dismissive introduction of 'Electra's husband', whom the 'tragedies of the House of Atreus exclude' seems to match the opening scene of Euripides' 'Electra', where the first character to enter the stage is that 'poor man' (253) - 'some crofter maybe or some cowherd' (252), as Orestes later points out -, who soon declares to everyone's surprise that, though a 'weak man' (39), he is Electra's lawful husband: 'Aegisthus gives Electra to me to keep as wife' (34–5). In a series of telling affinities, the same rumours which haunt Electra's husband in Hughes' version ( 'gossip has it / He's a befogged buffoon' ), are the ones which his Euripidean counterpart strives to ward off in his almost comical desperation: 'Now if anyone calls me a fool , when I take a young maiden into my home and do not touch her, he can be assured he is using base measures of judgement to size up right-mindedness, and is a fool himself as well' (50–3).

In 'The Hidden Orestes', we are bluntly told that Electra's husband 'can't make out what's eating his wife'. Likewise, however, the farmer in Euripides' 'Electra' appears unable to understand Electra's motives in 'labouring so' and accepting everyday toils, though finely raised before'. 'Why is it you labour so for my sake ?' he asks her (64–5). As much as Electra rushes to assert her altruistic devotion to a friend 'she rates equal to the gods' (67) and to admit that she feels 'she ought to share her husband's toils with him and lighten his labours' (72–3), we know these are by no means her true motives. She herself had earlier confessed to the 'sombre Night' ( 54) that it is her flaming hatred against the 'insolent Aegisthus' (59) and the 'fiendish child of Tyndareus' (60) which urges her to perform tasks unfitting to her true status, though 'she has not come to this degree of want' (57). How close really is the controversy which rules Electra's disposition in Euripides' play to Hughes' confident assertion of 'The Hidden Orestes' that 'Every woman / Who sits in her home, no matter how friendly, / She hates '.

Furthermore, in Hughes, Electra's husband ' is not to know that Orestes / Is padding up the long trail / Like a black panther / In inky darkness'. Similarly, his Euripidean counterpart in the 'Electra' is never informed of Orestes' return. Indeed, although in Euripides the farmer shares in Electra's toils with admirable compassion throughout, and rejoices at the 'valuable words' (358) which seem to have replenished her hopes for her brother's return, ' he is not to know ' that the stranger conversing with him on stage is Orestes. Electra's husband in Euripides has no share in the contemplation of revenge; nor is he actively involved in its execution; as if this prize was meant only for the 'twin lions' (E. Or. 1555) of Argos. 'So he can't guess', as in Ted Hughes' version, 'What incognito killer / Pulls on her face, of a sudden, / At a knocking, and leaves their bed / To let in the banshee, the death-shriek of her own mother Clytemnestra'.

'The uncanny masculine voice ' of this Electra 'That now and again, before she's aware of it, / Bursts from between her lips / With a demonic snarl' adds to her overall Euripidean posture. Euripides was the first to put on stage an almost 'masculine' Electra, whose unfittingly venomous ideas and firm decisiveness in pursuing her vengeful plans counter bluntly the reluctance of the male characters surrounding her–especially Orestes - and manage to spur the action towards already known patterns. The implacable brutality of Electra's responses to Orestes' hesitant questions in Euripides' 'Electra' as to the course of action they must follow in avenging their father's murderers and, especially, as to whether this would necessitate the murder of their own mother, gradually increases throughout the play to find its utmost expression in her outraged final command: 'won't you stop falling so cravenly into cowardice, and go lay the selfsame trap against her?' (982–3). It is because of Electra's fury that Orestes–though most unwillingly - succumbs to his murderous fate, and the play follows its mythologically ordained course.

Likewise, in Euripides' 'Orestes', Electra is praised for having 'the mind of a man' (1204), when to the surprise of Orestes and Pylades she voices an equally venomous alternative to Helen's murder: 'When Helen is dead, if Menelaus tries to do anything to you or to any of us, tell him you're going to kill his daughter Hermione' (1191–3). The suggested hostage-taking of an innocent victim stresses Electra's unsettling decisiveness and authority in Euripides. Scholars have generally been in awe of the excessive baseness of Electra's plan, which does indeed seem unnecessary. Likewise, her self-indulgent murderous cries, as soon as the unsuspected and innocent Hermione follows helplessly the treacherous trail that leads her right into the trap ( 'Ahoy, my sworded comrades within, won't you seize the prey?', 1345, 'Hold her, hold her! Set the sword at her throat and take it easy!', 1349–50) resound as bitterly cruel and, one would say, almost pointless ; just as 'the uncanny masculine voice' which 'bursts from between the lips' of Hughes' Electra 'while she watches a cricket, at dusk, / crawling in over the windowsill' ' seems aimless, maybe '.

One should mention, however, that Ted Hughes has attributed the same 'uncanny' masculinity that now appears to dominate the voice and disposition of his otherwise 'Euripidean' Electra to the Clytemnestra of his Oresteia , following perhaps the Aeschylean pattern of the Queen's negative characterisation in the trilogy, and, especially in the 'Agamemnon'. 'Queen Clytemnestra', we read in his translation, 'who wears / A man's heart in a woman's body, / A man's dreadful will in the scabbard of her body / Like a polished blade. A hidden blade'.[7] 'She speaks like a man',[8] is the Chorus' alarming warning, whilst the Queen herself strives to convince everyone of the opposite: 'I speak as a woman, hear me'.[9] The strange affinity that seems to unite Electra of 'The Hidden Orestes' to Clytemnestra of Hughes' Oresteia is particularly stressed throughout the poem and could be explored even further. After all, in a final twist of expectations, 'The Hidden Orestes' leaves Electra's husband in eternal puzzlement, as a torturing verdict is decreed for him: 'he will never get clear / How that body (meaning Clytemnestra's) murdered by Electra, / Comes to be her own'. In Hughes' 'Choephori' Electra denies in desperate agony any relation to her mother stressing that 'All I ask for myself / Is to be unlike my mother / Hands, heart, thoughts clean, / Unlike my mother / Conscience clean, undarkened by blood, / Unlike my mother'; [10] Euripidean. In the 'Electra', Euripides was the first to pinpoint and meaningfully stress the affinities between Clytemnestra's much resented and the disposition of her most severe critic, Electra, thus postulating a self-contradictory association.

The last part of Hughes' poem encourages this psychoanalytical approach. It creates an interesting complex of reversed identities, which seems to fracture the mythological surface of the poem, and leaves space for Hughes' personalized message. As shown above, Electra's pre-destined vengeful lust against her mother turns out to be fatally self-destructive: besides destroying Clytemnestra, Electra's insatiable hatred victimizes her own self, 'As if a tracker / Had swerved onto the wrong spoor / At the last moment'. In a stunningly similar twist, with her venomous passion against Agamemnon in the Oresteia , Clytemnestra had earlier invited her own death upon herself: 'Me, murder you?' Orestes asks her in self-indulgent irony. 'Mother, you have already murdered yourself.[11] I merely hold the sword as you fall'. Furthering this self-destructive pattern of reversals, 'the maternal Furies' of 'The Hidden Orestes', these 'monsters from a different world / To be cursed by God and men',[12] as we read in Hughes' translation of the 'Eumenides', whom in the myth Clytemnestra's ghost fiercely summons to track down 'the guilty one', are curiously detracted from their mythical trail: instead of pursuing her son Orestes, they are driven against Electra's unsuspected husband, 'carrying, fiery / And furious as a torch, the corpse of Electra, / And coming for him '.

As mythical victims and slayers are disquietingly mingled at the end of the poem, 'The Hidden Orestes' acquires an almost meta-theatrical stance, which is, however, once again deeply Euripidean. In Euripides' 'Orestes', the principal characters are shown assuming qualities opposite to their mythological archetypes and boldly negating their mythological identity, as if acting in a side-performance which unfolds in parallel with the original plot. This 'meta-theatrical' course of self-negation accrues in the finale of the play, when in a final twist of crazed vindictiveness, Orestes, Electra and Pylades venture on the stage of the REPLACE , threatening to burn down themselves and the edifice of their myth. Here too, in assuming the qualities of their mythological rivals, Electra and her husband are almost extended to a secondary level, which unfolds in parallel with the central narrative. In bearing the fate of her targeted victim, Electra becomes a Clytemnestra in disguise; just as her unsuspecting husband discovers in himself a 'hidden Orestes', 'the guilty one', whom the avenging spirits of the 'maternal Furies' will track down with relentless impunity, in a cycle of reciprocal violence to which there seems to be no possible end. As Electra is identified with Clytemnestra and Electra's husband with Orestes, the archetypal strands of the crime that had initiated the horrendous violence surrounding the myth of Orestes in the first place are once again in the foreground, ready to fuel a new wave of retributive recriminations.

This ceaseless course of perpetual entrapment, to which Electra and her husband seem helplessly chained, is cunningly elevated to a powerful autobiographical device, which reflects with caustic precision the deadlocks of Hughes' own life. It would thus seem that with his acutely Euripidean reading of 'The Hidden Orestes', Ted Hughes ventured to defy the confident resolution of the Oresteia and to declare in bitter pessimism that there can be no end to the 'bloody succession' ruling the myth of Orestes, just as he himself could see no escape from the torturing succession' of the irreversible facts haunting his own life. After all, 'Where is the right and wrong / In this nightmare? / Each becomes the ghost of the other. / Each is driven mad by the ghost of the other',[13] as his Chorus had pointedly declared in the 'Agamemnon'.

Endnotes

[1]T. Hughes (1999), Oresteia , F & F: 77

[2]Op. Cit., 143

[3]Op. Cit., 190

[4]Op. Cit., 191

[5] Op. Cit., 192

[6]700 Aelian, v. h. iv 26, ii 71 Hercher, in D. L. Page (1962), Poetae Melici Graeci , Oxford

[7]T. Hughes (1999), Oresteia , Faber & Faber: 3

[8]Op. Cit., 21

[9]Ibid.

[10]T. Hughes (1999), Oresteia , Faber & Faber: 95 - 6

[11]Op. Cit., 135

[12]T. Hughes (1999), Oresteia , Faber & Faber: 149

[13]T. Hughes (1999), Oresteia , Faber & Faber: 77

RESPONSES

Michael Ewans
University of Newcastle , Australia

Elina Dagonaki is to be congratulated on a lucid and concise paper, which convincingly establishes her main thesis, that Hughes' poem The Hidden Orestes is influenced by the versions of the myth in Euripides' Elektra and Orestes. The affinities are deftly established by citation of many passages in Euripides, which clearly provided the springboard for Hughes' take on the myth.

I am always suspicious of rhetorical questions, and when Elina asks “How close really is the controversy which rules Electra's disposition in Euripides' play to Hughes' confident assertion…that 'Every woman/ who sits in her home, no matter how friendly, she hates '[?]”, I am inclined to answer 'not much', since the relationship between Euripides' Elektra and the women of Argos ( choros ) is certainly not hostile; they are her philai (175). The only woman she hates is Klytaimnestra.

There is a rare lapse in documentation for the statement: 'in the Electra , Euripides was the first to pinpoint and meaningfully stress the affinities between Clytemnestra's much resented ethos and the disposition of her most severe critic, Electra, thus postulating a self-contradictory association.' This could, I think, be supported by a discussion of the speeches by the two women in the agôn in Euripides (1011ff.); uncharacteristically, Elina on this occasion fails to provide references to support her claim.

I think the penultimate paragraph goes too far. Elina claims affinities between the end of Hughes' poem and the appearance of Orestes, Electra and Pylades on the roof of the skene (Elina confusingly refers to this as 'the stage of the theologeion ') in the finale of Orestes. Maybe I lack Elina's imagination, but I simply don't see a parallel between the simple, if utterly shocking, hostage-taking and pyromania which are the logical culmination of the behaviour of Elektra and Orestes in Euripides' play, and the complex identifications between Electra and Clytemnestra, Electra's husband and Orestes, in the closing lines of The Hidden Orestes. In Euripides' Orestes , unlike Elektra or Hughes' poem, Elektra's husband makes no appearance – or rather, to be more exact, she finds herself given a husband by the gods at the end of the play; not a 'befogged buffoon' as in Hughes and in Elektra , but Pylades (1658-9 - as also at the end of Elektra , 1249). This paragraph needs either to be cut or to be reargued.

However, there is no doubt about the conclusion, in which Elina convincingly argues that the close of his poem 'reflects with caustic precision the deadlocks of Hughes' own life'.

Jane Montgomery Griffiths
Monash University , Australia

Elina, thanks for your paper, which I found very interesting. I've just a couple of questions I'd like to ask that I suppose are only the tip of the iceberg of what could be a huge debate about the limits and uses of intertextuality and intentionality.

I'd like to ask whether you see your research as moving the methodological frame of Classics and reception studies. You bring out the resonances between Hughes' poem and his life - we can imagine he'd sympathise more than most, perhaps, with Electra's excluded husband who 'can't make out/ What's eating his wife' as she potters down Azalea path - and I found that thinking about Hughes and Euripides together made me think afresh about them both individually: a surprising but interesting juxtaposition that has, in a strange way, also had a knock on effect to thinking about the 'Oresteia'. Do you see this sort of intertextual study as a model for interpreting Hughes' (and indeed Plath's) work/biography, through its Classical resonances; or as a fresh way of looking at Euripides/Aeschylus through a 20thC connotative frame which acknowledges the echoes of intertextuality with Hughes ? Or, indeed, as both? Or is it actually a way of shaking up the reader to acknowledge the importance of other ghostings and resonances in our interpretative frame?

Lorna Hardwick,
The Open University, UK

I really enjoyed this paper which prompted me to think again about the various ways in which we can describe and analyse the relationships between ancient and modern texts. Elina has some interesting things to say about possible types of relationship and I expect she will want to explore these further when she writes up the full version for publication. It seems to me that Hughes' writing in general and this poem in particular tests our analytic frameworks to the full. There is a particular issue about the extent to which, and especially HOW the possible biographical affinities between Hughes' life and this poem can be explored. There are also questions about the psycho-analytic frames and their relationship both to Hughes' own life and to archetypes. However, in the end it is surely the textual analysis that makes or breaks any discussion about the relationships between ancient and modern. I thought that Elina made some helpful suggestions about the theatrical structures and idiom of Hughes' poetry and I wonder if its worth taking further the question of how the poem relates to his other work. So, Elina, I'd like to ask a question about your reference to 'this underlying intertextuality symmetry of motifs'. The example you gave is of an image form nature – 'a cricket at dusk'. Would this intertextual symmetry between ancient and modern also extend within Hughes' ouvre, especially perhaps to his use of the imagery of the natural world? And might this even bring together the biographical and psychoanalytic frames of reference? I know this isn't a question that suggests or indeed requires an easy answer! I suppose I'm really meditating on the extent to which analysis of any classical reception also needs to be situated in the context of the modern poet's work as a whole, including its poetic strategies and techniques. I'd be interested to hear your views on whether Hughes' poetics in his classical receptions are 'different' or similar to those in his work as a whole; does working with classical material make a difference to him poetically as well as in terms of content and psychological approach?

George Theodoridis
Australia (for Translations by George Theodoridis please see http://www.tonykline.co.uk/Browsepages/Greek/Greekhome.htm)

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this excellent essay and to express my views on it. This type of work should be profusely encouraged. I wish to let it be known, however that I put up my own words for criticism and would happily accept them at my address below.

Interpretations of works of art are treacherous exercises. Why else would there be such extremes of them, held by some of the most revered classical scholars, so far as Euripides is concerned? Comparing one poet with another is even more treacherous and yet more so still when one examines the different milieus which each of them inhabit: Two and a half millennia apart, two very different languages, two very different poetical genres (though I admit, Hughes often asked to have his poetry read as a play) and, to a large extent, two different philosophies and world views. And therein lies the imperative for one to take a scrupulous measure of the contrasts, the differences between the two authors and to provide one's reader with the result of that measure. Hughes, it must be added, familiarised himself with the ancient Greek language and the 5th C. Milieu at least in his later years by translating and publishing his own version of Oresteia.

Elina's essay, therefore is a brave effort indeed when, apart from the exercise of comparisons, she has also attempted to prove that the latter poet was influenced by the former. This is not to say that it cannot be done nor does it mean that anyone living today cannot be influenced by someone who has spent his existence a million years ago - were he to find some remnants of his mind's workings still extant. But to try and prove that one poet was influenced by another, one has to dig a little further beneath the surface of similar turns of phrase or of even of the occasional epiphany of similar emotions - though emotions are even more fraught with treachery than are mere literary devices.

Euripides in his Electra says a great deal more than what Hughes says in his Hidden Orestes and vice versa, because each poet is driven to write by a different need and a different aim. Euripides' need (among other things) was to teach the Athenians of his time that (as Moses Hadas puts it so eloquently) “he (ie Euripides) thought that the smug Athenian presumption of a masculine superiority and the Athenian depreciation of foreigners were unfair, that he hated religious obscurantism… and understood how personality might be dangerously, warped by wrong conventions.”

Euripides has the most direct criticism of his city in line 904 where he has Electra say, “Dysarestos hemon kai filopsogos polis” ie “Our city has difficulty in praising and finds it easy to condemn.”

We therefore should take prodigious care to at least make sure that what compares well is not offset too harshly by what is distinct and unique in the each of thee authors. At the very least, we might say that whilst Euripides' eyes and ears were directed outwards, towards his society, his city (he was, after all a politician ie if we are to take Aristotle's words 'anthropos politicon zoon en,' seriously.) Hughes' senses are more introspective and more involuted, if we are to take Germaine Greer's words that “Hughes is born to suffer,” seriously and, like most of his poetry, verging on the self indulgent.

Yet Hughes, we might say still, is influenced by Euripides. Not to the extent that he was influenced by the drawings of Baskin's Cave Birds (particularly since these two men closely collaborated in their work) but there are some touch points between Hughes and Euripides which Elina made an excellent job of pointing out: The inability, for example, of Electra's nominal husband to understand why Electra is working so hard for him (since she's really a princess and manual work is far too undignified for her) or why others might call him a fool; Hughes, in his Hidden Orestes says as much about Electra's husband but he stops short of mentioning what Euripides does and that is that peasant has a strong sense of self dignity, of what is his own right place on earth, his honesty, lack of hubris and false standards. This does not suit Hughes at all. (ll 50-53). On the contrary, to Hughes, it is enough that “Gossip has it/He's a befogged buffoon.” And there, I think, stops the comparison, the similarity between the two husbands. Elina does mention the fact that Orestes points out that even though the husband is asthenis (ie without sthenos, strenth) he is still an honourable man.

I was somewhat disappointed that Elina has not gone at least a little ways towards explaining the meaning of this paradoxical –if not oxymoronic- phrase, “tas phrenas arsenas kektemene,” l 1204, (possessed by a man's mind). What does it mean? What do these words, used by all tragedians inclusing Aristophanes, in fact, mean? What twists must a “woman's mind” so as to be no longer regarded a “woman's mind” but, indeed a “man's” This is a transexualization of mind which the present-day reasonable mind cannot fathom very easily, nor can it accept as a dismissed given. And if acting roughly, forcefully, belligerently are the criteria for such transexualization then how do we explain W.N. Bates' observation that “She –ie Electra- shows a certain amount of resentment against her mother and Aegisthus, as is natural, but no vindictiveness even when she urges the wavering Orestes to persevere in his purpose of avenging his father by slaying his mother. After the dreadful deed is done she feels remorse and takes the blame upon herself.”

This, of course is far different statement to Elina's whose views are at odds with the above. To Elina and Hughes, Electra is nothing short of a venomous freak. Elina concludes that Hughes' “uncanny masculine voice,” “adds to her overall Euripidean stance.” She explains that “Euripides was first to put on stage an almost (sic) 'masculine' Electra,” by which she means possessing “unfittingly venomous ideas and firm decisiveness in pursuing her vengeful plans…” I'd like, if I may, ask her to take a look at Prof Thomson's views on the precedence of men over women in a democracy.

Elina's description –and Hughes' for that matter- are more properly directed to Lady Macbeth, perhaps even to Medea, if we wish to try and prove that Euripides liked to turn women into very disturbing (thus male) creatures and banshees on his stage but I am with Moses Hadas (and a great many others, of course) on this one: "The Electra (of Euripides) is as shot through with wit (in the full sens of that word) as a play of Shakespeare and it carries a heavier charge of social criticism than anything in Shakespeare.”

The explanation that she is “abnormal” is made clear by R.P. Winning ton-Ingram: “But Clytaimnestra, it will be said, is an abnormal woman, in that she has the mental characteristics of a man. This is true, and it is the cause of a personal tragedy which is almost Sophoclean… since it was impossible in Clytaimnestra's own society, and equally impossible in democratic Athens, for a woman of dominating will and intelligence to exploit her gifts to her own satisfaction and for the advantage of the community.”

So, Electra, who is in an identical situation must also feel out of step with her own community and must try and adopt men's ways (their mind's turns) if she is to survive.

Hughes, I believe was more influenced by Hughes himself, ie, by his own milieu –whether he was its creator or its victim is another question altogether- than by Euripides. There is a long distance between influence and inspiration. Poets are notorious for cannibalising, for acting like starving foxes outside an inky night, trying to get in (as in his The Thought-Fox) If we are to use the word “influence” then perhaps we should be talking about Plath and his mistress, Assia Wevill, both of whom were terrified that he might leave them and so both committed suicide and their daughter (Wevill and Hughes') Shura was also “made to suicide” –her mother gave her sleeping pills to sleep through the gas poisoning which Wevill made happen by turning the oven's gas on.

He might have also been influenced by Plath's own poetry, particularly her “Daddy” which, real or imagined, shows an enormous fear of her father who had died while she was only 8 years old. And, to make certain of the veracity of our literary examination, we must include every detail of Hughes' biography!

Elina's essay gives me the impression that she herself, was “influenced” (what does the word mean now?) by Hughes, Hughes by himself –but cannibalised the works of others and none of the above was influenced by the ancient master himself.

David Wiles,
Royal Holloway College , London University , UK

Thank you, Elina, for introducing me to this poem. You mention only in passing the autobiographical aspect. I'm sure you're right in arguing that Hughes has been looking at the peasant husband in the Euripidean Electra , and that the mental breakdown of Orestes in Orestes is related to the poem. The implication to me is that Hughes was the detached bystander, powerless to intervene, when Sylvia Plath had her mental breakdown(s). Now Hughes feels the same sense of terror/breakdown/the demonic coming towards himself. He is not the overt Orestes of the plot, but though only husband and genetically unrelated, is nevertheless the hidden Orestes, because he feels the Furies coming, the destructive forces of guilt.

Biographical criticism is not altogether respectable, yet Hughes clearly does invite this sort of reading. The question I'd put to you is whether this poem legitimates a similar biographical reading of the Oresteia ?

Final Response from Topic Leader Elina Dagonaki

Please allow me to thank all the participants for such intriguing comments and remarks, which – I must admit - have spurred my thoughts and ideas towards new pathways. I shall attempt an individual response to each (or several) of the comments posted, with the hope that I will thus illuminate most of the issues raised. I would of course welcome further discussion with any of the participants via my electronic address (given above).

A. Michael Ewans

I am very grateful to Michael Ewans for his generous and acute commentary; there are, however, two points that I would particularly wish to comment on, as I believe they were seen from a slightly different point of view:

1. My rhetorical question with regard to Hughes's 'Every woman / Who sits in their home, no matter how friendly / She hates' was rather aimed at this line as a proverbial-like statement of female 'insincerity' - treating 'every woman' as the subject of 'she hates' -, rather than as a specific claim on the relation of the poem's Electra with the women of her household, which, of course, as you mention, was, even in Euripides, not wholly founded on vengefulness and hateful outrage.

2. You are right to remark that I have not drawn Clytemnestra's 'sympathetic' characterization - especially as postulated by her rhetoric in the agon of Euripides' Electra (998 – 1138) – too much into my discussion. But this, I must say, was done intentionally, as I have tried to show that, although Hughes's Electra is strikingly 'Euripidean', his Clytemnestra is much closer to the Aeschylean model, the 'androgynous monster' of the Agamemnon and the Choephori.

B. Jane Montgomery Griffiths and David Wiles.

A special thanks to Jane Montgomery Griffiths and David Wiles for their very interesting remarks.

One cannot, I believe, set with precision the 'limits of intertextuality and intentionality' when studying the reception of a classical text in a modern genre (such as Hughes's poetry); and I am certainly the last one to claim that I could bring about the 'refiguration' of the borders between the two fields of study. There are always 'grey zones' to be detected, and these inevitably hinder our clear perception of 'intertextuality' and its limits.

Nevertheless, I do see telling affinities between Euripides' and Hughes's treatment of the Orestes' myth, in particular, and I dare say that, if explored further (i.e. to include the very interesting question of how Euripidean Hughes's 'Oresteia' actually is - as raised by Professor Wiles), they could shed new light on our understanding of how the classical myth works through Hughes's poetry and life (although I do indeed agree with David Wiles that 'biographical criticism is not altogether respectable', a question also raised by Lorna Hardwick, who remarks that 'there is a particular issue about the extent to which, and especially HOW the possible biographical affinities between Hughes' life and this poem can be explored'). However, I must confess I am rather cautious as to whether 'decoding' the classical resonances in Hughes's poetry, and 'looking at Euripides/Aeschylus through a 20thC connotative frame which acknowledges the echoes of intertextuality with Hughes', could in any way affect our understanding of Aeschylus' and Euripides' dramaturgy.

C. Lorna Hardwick

My special thanks to Professor Lorna Hardwick for her intriguing remarks, which – I must admit - have prompted my thought a step further. It would be extremely interesting to further one's exploration of the use of the 'classical' – and in specific 'Euripidean' - elements of Hughes's treatment in 'the Hidden Orestes' with a view to relating them to their ( 'archetypal'?) reception in his other works as well. And this would inevitably bring in the question of if and to what extent the special features of Hughes's poetics (such as, for instance, his particular inclination towards the imagery of nature) can also be seen as somehow adjusted to this (his own) frame of reception. I am hoping to do so in an extended version of this paper.

D. George Theodoridis ( Australia )

I would like to thank George Theodorides for his extensive reading of my paper and for his very interesting remarks. I would nevertheless like to make some points in reply:

Indeed, one does risk reaching oversimplifying conclusions about the treatment of a particular motif in the work of a poet - such as the 'classical myth' in Hughes's poetry - by relying solely on one text, and, as of this case, on one poem. And I more than agree that 'to try and prove that one poet was influenced by another, one has to dig a little further beneath the surface of similar turns of phrase or of even of the occasional epiphany of similar emotions'. But my aim was not to restrict myself (and my arguments, for that matter) to superficial 'linguistic' similarities that would indeed deem my effort as an 'exercise of comparisons', but to go a bit further: what I intended to show is that beneath the - more or less obvious mythological nuances -, which relate Hughes's poem to Euripides' play, one may also detect stark affinities of poetic treatment - to come back to Professor Hardwick's notion of the 'poetics' and its reception - as well as a common pattern of psychological (psycho-analytical, if you wish) characterisation. Within this frame of interpretation, I would think – though with every precaution - that the certainly diverse demands and expectations of the member - of - a 'democratic polis' fifth-century Athenian spectator and the 'introspective' Hughes himself are quite 'irrelevant'.

As for my perception of Electra as a 'venomous freak', I am afraid that I do opt for an extremely negative characterization of Electra throughout the play, which, I believe, is again part of the acute reversal of the prescribed cultural identities that Euripides has in general attempted in this play (and which we do find – though from a different perspective – in Hughes as well). The fact that Electra's authoritative voice is somewhat 'silenced' after the realisation of the matricide (cf. the sudden limitation of her lines as opposed to Orestes' 'lengthier wails' right after the deed, i.e. in 1198–1200, 1224–6, 1230–2), and the fact that she immediately turns to what seems to be a remorseful acceptance of responsibility, do not, in my opinion, signify any major change in the pattern of her up to that point 'venomous' and selfish characterisation. Electra's mournful cries of remorse are as self-centred as her earlier calls for vengeful action to Orestes. Once again, her REPLACE is decidedly present (1198–1200).

As for your final comment, I do indeed agree that there is a very fine line between 'influencing' and 'inspiring', which could misdirect one's approach of classical reception and thus render 'interpretations of works of art as treacherous exercises'. I do hope to explore it further myself, and hence go beyond the deadlock of this 'treachery'!