Deinert, Herbert

English

Hochschulschriftenserver - Universität Frankfurt am Main

http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/Iphigenie.html[25.01.2010 12:53:23]                                                  The House of Tantalus                                                                  Tantalus                                                                        |                                                                   Pelops                                              ____________  | __________                                 Thyestes                                               Atreus                                        |                                 ____________ | __                                                                          |                              |                                 Aegisthus                  Menelaus           Agamemnon                          (+ Clytemnestra)            (+ Helen)         (+Clytemnestra)                                                                                  ____________ | ________________________                                                                                  |                        |                       |                          |                                                                      IPHIGENEIA       ELECTRA     ORESTES     CHRYSOTHEMIS  That is the genealogy according to Aeschylus. The atrocities begin with Tantalus who slaughters his sons andoffers them as a meal to the gods, his friends. Thyestes seduces Atreus' wife who in turn kills Theyestes' childrenand offers them as a meal to their father. Thyestes son Aegisthus kills him. Clytemnestra will not forgive herhusband Agamemnon for having sacrificed their daughter Iphigeneia (in reality Artemis saves her and takes her toTauris) and, together with her lover Aegysthus, kills him upon his return from Troy. She kills Kassandra,Agamemnon's war booty and concubine, first. Orestes grows up among peasants, where his sister Electra hadhidden him, returns home to kill Clytemnestra and her lover. The Furies torment him mercilessly. The oracle ofDelphi advises him to go to Tauris and return the idol of Artemis. He finds his sister Iphigeneia as Artemis'priestess. King Thoas expects her to sacrifice the Greeks. That's were we begin.Find additional material in Karl Kerényi, Die Heroen der Griechen. Promise yourself to read the accounts by Euripides and Aeschylus and Sophocles, eventually. Christoph Willbald Gluck (1714-1787) composed two operas based on the story of Iphigeneia: Iphigénie en Aulide (Paris, 1774) and Iphigénie en Tauride (Paris, 1779). Glimmerglass Opera nearCooperstown, NY, in association with the New York City Opera, had a splendid production of the latter in thesummer of '97. The Greeks kill Thoas in Gluck's version which is based on Euripides.Richard Strauss (1864-1949) devotes an entire bloody opera to Iphigeneia's sister Elektra's hatred of her motherClytemnestra (Dresden, 1909). The libretto, based on the tragedy by Sophocles, is by the Austrian poet Hugo vonHofmannsthal (1874-1929). Elektra's much neglected sister Chrysothemis plays an important role in this version.Carolyn C. Heilbrun, a respected scholar, offers what I believe to be an exceptionally silly reading of the text. Butjudge for yourself. "Method in Madness" in Opera News, January 22, 1994. My Letter to the Editor appeared in asubsequent edition (orig. ms):Dear Editor, reading Carolyn Heilbrun's astonishing remarks on ELEKTRA (Opera News 1-22-94) one isn't quite sure whethershe knows that this bloody family affair does not begin with the intended slaughter of Iphigenia (she is spared byArtemis), and does not end with Elektra's death after the murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, or even with thetrial of Orestes. Agamemnon "tricks his daughter Iphigenia into being sacrificed to aid the faltering Greek army."  More preciselyand worse, he tricks Clytemnestra into bringing her daughter to the port city of Aulis where the Greek army is stillstuck waiting for favorable sailing conditions. "Orest is ennobled by his act" (killing his mother).  The Erinyes certainly do not think so.  "Orestes is tried ... andpardoned."  According to Kerenyi the sources are not at all unanimous here.  And in any case, his tribulations arefar from over even after the Athenean court has spoken. And why the condescension toward "the properly timorous Chrysothemis?"  She bitterly resents Elektra's madpreoccupation with revenge and will have no part of it.  She wants out.  Among this ghastly clan that stretches backto Tantalus and whose members grow up to commit new atrocities to avenge older ones (if they are not slaughteredhttp://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hd11/Iphigenie.html[25.01.2010 12:53:23]and eaten as children) she is one who simply wants to be left alone to live her own life.  Given the thrust of herargument, this sensible woman should have Heilbrun's standing ovation.Note Iphigenie's often overlooked references to the fate of women. "Der Frauen Zustand ist beklagenswert" in heropening lines is not only a reflection of her own fate as a woman far from her kin and country. It is a pressingconcern of Goethe's time; witness the equal rights provision of the French constitution and the proverbial"emancipated English woman." "Ich bin eine freie Englaenderin," says Blondchen in Mozart's Abduction (Vienna,1782), und rotze jedem, der mich zu etwas zwingen will." Osmin is aghast. "Ihr Englaender, seid ihr nicht Toren,ihr lasst euren Weibern den Willen!" Iphigenie's somber view of heroics, namely that men survive in heroic songand saga while their women survive in grief, finds a distant echo in Brecht's Mother Courage (Zurich, 1941) whois similarly unimpressed: "Ihr vergeht wie der Rauch! Und die Waerme geht auch / Denn es waermen uns nichteure Taten!" Christa Wolf's Kassandra (1983) is informed by much the same sentiment.        

The house of Tantalus

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Hochschulschriftenserver - Universität Frankfurt am Main