Publisher's Synopsis
ELECTRA; INFINITE VIOLENCE A new version of Electra by Sophocles revised by James Scobie, with an edited version of the original. "Would you have vengeance beget ever more vengeance, for all eternity? an infinity of violence..." CHORUS; Do not question the Gods. They hear. ELECTRA; Then why aren't they here? Why do they stand aside while those two live in their consummated bliss; they share my father's house, my father's wealth, my father's bed, when they ought to know the reward for their actions in a bronze-edged and pointed revenge. CHORUS; You lived in a state of great wealth; upon Agamemnon's wealth and title you were comforted. But these present ills are those you bring upon yourself. Besides, talk of revenge is foolish - it is no easy thing to contest with a king. ELECTRA; It is not the wealth of my father I am concerned with, nor how we have been jilted of it. I would give up all title to wealth and other comforts to have my father alive and to stand within his encompassing arms. It is harsh, unyielding fate that I am contending with; I know it. So that I cannot keep my rage under wraps; that is all. Do not reason with me for I am far beyond its ruling measure. If that is your whole counsel, then leave me. There is no end to my distress, there is no cure. CHORUS; Yet, still you add further woes upon the old. ELECTRA; Not new ills, but racked by the same lacerating torment. The blade that was sunk into him, also struck me! ... where should the limit on suffering be properly set? My grief and despair are limitless, so I grieve and despair limitlessly. Am I to forget how my father died? For he did not die naturally, he was murdered. Death strips us all of our costume of flesh; so my father was lain, too early, in his tomb. Those that swung the death-blows, those deviants, should also die. If not, and if sin is so rewarded, with such libidinous lust and wealth, then say farewell to honour, say farewell to reverence, respect and reputation, and let the city and all that is pious collapse, for the city and all life within it is desolate! Without these necessary virtues there can be no strong or steady earth for honour and reverence to stand upon. .... ELECTRA; Lustrous eye that renews day to the Sky. By the blazing regalia of your light you see how many scars I have marked upon myself. Yet your gladdening light brings no gladness to me. I always mourn my father's loss, and am forever cheerless and sleepless; only when exhaustless grief and sleepless exhaustion overcomes me, and frays at my sleeplessness, that is when I can ever rest, and can forget all troubles for a brief margin upon the lengthy page that is my life since his slaying. Then I suffer angry dreams; always bitter, without comfort. I am the captive of a bitter family, in a bitter household where honour has been routed to abject defeat. It was my mother's blade that carved the treacherous blow that struck my father's flesh with the deep lesion that insulted all ordinary honour... backed by Aegisthus, now her bed-mate. Together, each night, they lie in their adultery and, with it, they pile-up a monstrous heap of ridicule upon proper form and honour. There is no pity that flows for my father here, from any except from myself. I cannot stop from crying or bitterest sighing. My father was met with smiling hypocrisy by his adulterous wife, my deceiving mother; I call upon you, Ara, Goddess of Revenge and Destruction, help me requite the murder that shames his killers and his hearth. I, alone, can scarcely bear the burdensome weight of harrowing grief. Throw the doors of Hades open wide, and wedge them in gaping readiness for these murderers deaths; Ara, help me! To you I plead, give me revenge, or give me destruction!
