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Saturday 3 September 2016

From the Pound / Fleming Sophocles: Electra mourns over the ashes of the brother she believes to be dead

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#Syria A woman carrying a child flees after an airstrike in #Douma #Damascus @BassamKhabieh @reuterspictures: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 2 September 2016

[Electra mourns over the ashes of the brother she believes to be dead]

          Elektra's Keening


All that is left me
my hope was Orestes
dust is returned me
in my hands nothing, dust that is all of him, 
flower that went forth
  
would I had died then
ere stealing thee from the slaughter 
died both together 
lain with our father

Far from thy homeland
died far in exile
no hand was near thee
to soothe thy passing,
corpse unanointed 
fire consumed thee, 
all now is nothing, 
strangers have brought thee
small in this urn here

Sorrow upon me
fruitless my caring

I as mother and sister both 
thy nurse also ere thou hadst thy growth 
this was my past 
and swept away with thee
ever to me
this summons came. 

all in a day 
and is no more. 
Dead Agamemnon, dead now my brother
I am dead also, the great wind in passing  
bears us together. 
Mirth for our foemen.

[anger now stronger than grief, for a moment: SPOKEN]


And that bitch of a mother is laughing
and they haven't sent back even the shape of him
but a ghost that cant do its job.
Ajnn.    aihn.

[SINGS]

thou the avenger, no more avenging
born to misfortune, ashes avail not
shadows avail not

ahi,    ahi,
bodiless
brother that art not.

[SPOKEN]

The spirits love me no longer.
you kept sending messages
secretly, you would take vengeance.

[SINGS]

thy death, my dying
dred road thou goest
brother, my slayer
as ever above earth
let death divide not
 

[singing to the urn]

Oimoi     Oimoi

take me in with you
I now am nothing, make place beside thee
naught into naught, zero to zero
to enter beside thee
or fortune equal
death endeth pain.

Sophocles (c. 496 BC - 406/405 BC):  Electra (c. 410 BC) 1126 - 1170, translation by Ezra Pound and Rudd Fleming: Elektra: A Version (1949), 1989

Ἠλέκτρα
φιλτάτου μνημεῖον ἀνθρώπων ἐμοὶ
ψυχῆς Ὀρέστου λοιπόν, ὥς σ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἐλπίδων
οὐχ ὧνπερ ἐξέπεμπον εἰσεδεξάμην.
νῦν μὲν γὰρ οὐδὲν ὄντα βαστάζω χεροῖν,
δόμων δέ σ᾽, παῖ, λαμπρὸν ἐξέπεμψ᾽ ἐγώ.
ὡς ὤφελον πάροιθεν ἐκλιπεῖν βίον,
πρὶν ἐς ξένην σε γαῖαν ἐκπέμψαι χεροῖν
κλέψασα ταῖνδε κἀνασώσασθαι φόνου,
ὅπως θανὼν ἔκεισο τῇ τόθ᾽ ἡμέρᾳ,
τύμβου πατρῴου κοινὸν εἰληχὼς μέρος.
νῦν δ᾽ ἐκτὸς οἴκων κἀπὶ γῆς ἄλλης φυγὰς
κακῶς ἀπώλου, σῆς κασιγνήτης δίχα,
κοὔτ᾽ ἐν φίλαισι χερσὶν τάλαιν᾽ ἐγὼ
λουτροῖς σ᾽ ἐκόσμησ᾽ οὔτε παμφλέκτου πυρὸς
ἀνειλόμην, ὡς εἰκός, ἄθλιον βάρος,
ἀλλ᾽ ἐν ξέναισι χερσὶ κηδευθεὶς τάλας
σμικρὸς προσήκεις ὄγκος ἐν σμικρῷ κύτει.
οἴμοι τάλαινα τῆς ἐμῆς πάλαι τροφῆς
ἀνωφελήτου, τὴν ἐγὼ θάμ᾽ ἀμφὶ σοὶ
πόνῳ γλυκεῖ παρέσχον: οὔτε γάρ ποτε
μητρὸς σύ γ᾽ ἦσθα μᾶλλον κἀμοῦ φίλος,
οὔθ᾽ οἱ κατ᾽ οἶκον ἦσαν, ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ τροφός,
ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἀδελφὴ σοὶ προσηυδώμην ἀεί.
νῦν δ᾽ ἐκλέλοιπε ταῦτ᾽ ἐν ἡμέρᾳ μιᾷ
θανόντι σὺν σοί: πάντα γὰρ συναρπάσας
θύελλ᾽ ὅπως βέβηκας. οἴχεται πατήρ:
τέθνηκ᾽ ἐγὼ σοί: φροῦδος αὐτὸς εἶ θανών:
γελῶσι δ᾽ ἐχθροί: μαίνεται δ᾽ ὑφ᾽ ἡδονῆς
μήτηρ ἀμήτωρ, ἧς ἐμοὶ σὺ πολλάκις
φήμας λάθρᾳ προύπεμπες ὡς φανούμενος
τιμωρὸς αὐτός. ἀλλὰ ταῦθ᾽ δυστυχὴς
δαίμων σός τε κἀμὸς ἐξαφείλετο,
ὅς σ᾽ ὧδέ μοι προύπεμψεν ἀντὶ φιλτάτης
μορφῆς σποδόν τε καὶ σκιὰν ἀνωφελῆ.

The urn is placed in ELECTRA'S hands.
ELECTRA
Ah, memorial of him whom I loved best on earth! Ah, Orestes, whose life hath no relic left save this,-- how far from the hopes with which I sent thee forth is the manner in which I receive thee back! Now I carry thy poor dust in my hands; but thou wert radiant, my child, when I sped the forth from home! Would that I had yielded up my breath, ere, with these hands, I stole thee away, and sent thee to a strange land, and rescued the from death; that so thou mightest have been stricken down on that self-same day, and had thy portion in the tomb of thy sire!

But now, an exile from home and fatherland, thou hast perished miserably, far from thy sister; woe is me, these loving hands have not washed or decked thy corpse, nor taken up, as was meet, their sad burden from the flaming pyre. No! at the hands of strangers, hapless one, thou hast had those rites, and so art come to us, a little dust in a narrow urn.

Ah, woe is me for my nursing long ago, so vain, that I oft bestowed on thee with loving toil I For thou wast never thy mother's darling so much as mine; nor was any in the house thy nurse but I; and by thee I was ever called 'sister.' But now all this hath vanished in a day, with thy death; like a whirlwind, thou hast swept all away with thee. Our father is gone; I am dead in regard to thee; thou thyself hast perished: our foes exult; that mother, who is none, is mad with joy,- she of whom thou didst oft send me secret messages, thy heralds, saying that thou thyself wouldst appear as an avenger. But our evil fortune. thine and mine, hath reft all that away, and hath sent thee forth unto me thus,- no more the form that I loved so well, but ashes and an idle shade.

Ah me, ah me! O piteous dust! Alas, thou dear one, sent on a dire journey, how hast undone me,-- undone me indeed, O brother mine!

Therefore take me to this thy home, me who am as nothing, to thy nothingness, that I may dwell with thee henceforth below; for when thou wert on earth, we shared alike; and now I fain would die, that I may not be parted from thee in the grave. For I see that the dead have rest from pain.
Sophocles. Electra 1126-1190 trans. R.C. Jebb 
 

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2 comments:

Joe Safdie said...

That Pound translation was a real hit -- the original imagist at work. Plus the other daily world tragedies, comprehensive and stunning, as usual.

I came by because Spaceman was just on NPR and reminded me of the great pleasure I had gotten years ago from your book. Also remembered George Kimball talking about dropping acid with the Big Red Machine at Ed's house . . .

TC said...

Joe,

Pound's interest in re-investing this text with the archaic elements of shock and surprise, as though familiarity had not reduced ancient Greek drama to convenient schoolbook scale -- and, with the assistance of a devoted younger classicist, to approach it then as something still harbouring human truth and meaning, retaining as much as possible of the original rhythmic identity and range of cultural implication -- engages me in two ways.

First, as to the timing and circumstances of composition, it doesn't take too great a stretch of the imagination to get a sense of his motives, the personal burden involved in the choice of text and treatment. Keeping in mind that direct personal expression of emotion is not Pound's practise. There is always a degree of deflection and inflection. This passage gathers its force around Electra's Oimoi ejaculation, an exclamation of pain, fright, pity, anger, grief, also of surprise. The conventional translation would be Ah, me! or Woe is me! or Alas! Instead the version given here abandons 2500 years of conventional circumlocution and addresses the dramatic occasion, which calls for emotions of sorrow, grief and pity, and attempts to return the sense of Elektra's wailing lamentation to the original larger sense, not of self pity only, but also, maybe primarily, of valuation of the deceased. Distance and difference are the necessary fresheners of language. The distance and difference for Pound were very great. He was in a federal hospital for the deranged, under a lingering charge of treason. To remove himself imaginatively from the physical moment, to deflect the personal in this way, would have been useful, if not in fact necessary, both from a compositional point of view and from an emotional requirement.

Second, I'm more and more anxious, as the shades of evening come down, that the demands and urgencies of present-tense history unfolding and exploding before and around us, exposing the suffering and loss and fear for not only the majority of the people of this planet but for the actual planet itself, call for a form of discourse we no longer possess, if indeed we ever did.

Whoever we are...