Vicious circles of violence

We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions
of what just is
isn’t always just-ice (Gorman)

In Greek mythology, an offence against morality can result in a long-lasting curse. The best-known example is Oedipus, whose family was doomed for generations for his incestuous entanglements. But the family of the Greek king Agamemnon, who is best known for his war against Troy, also seems to have been trapped in spirals of revenge and violence for generations. Indeed, as Ruth Scodel puts it, “when a family is cursed, each generation fails to avoid its own injustices, so that evil reproduces” (Scodel 108). Over the past few months, I have repeatedly encountered theatre plays and operas in which Agamemnon's family clan, the House of Atreus, has played a crucial role. With the murder of the eponymous character, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon deals with the prequel to Richard Stauss's opera Elektra and Jean Paul Sartre's Les Mouches, which in turn depict the tragic events that haunt Agamemnon's wife and children. Finally, The Rape of Lucrece contains many references to the Trojan War. In the following, I would like to share my experiences with these performances.

Atreus and his brother Thyestes were the first to suffer from the family curse, brought about by their father’s crime against Oenomaus, a son of Hermes. They slew their father’s favourite son and were, thus, forced to take exile on the island of Argos (Stoll 289). Ever since, Atreus’ descendants ruled over the island. The most famous of these was Agamemnon, the eponymous character in the play by Aeschylus, which I saw in an adaptation at the Residenztheater in Munich. It was staged on a round revolving stage with a raised platform in the centre, where percussionists and their instruments provided the music for the piece. I perceived this choice of staging as a symbol of circular entanglements. It seemed as if the actors were constantly walking around in circles while telling their stories of war and violence. The narration of their stories was also accompanied by the percussionists’ war drums, which resounded particularly strongly during scenes in which the violent excesses reached their climax. Those toxic entanglements started with Agamemnon’s sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia, continued in the narration of the bloody Trojan War, and culminated in Clytemnestra’s revenge murder of Agamemnon and his lover, the Trojan fortune teller Cassandra. The restless and merciless wandering around stage only comes to a halt when the citizens of Argos confront Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus for their naked brutality[1]. The cruel story of Agamemnon comes to an end, but the Oresteia circle[2] and its story of violence continues.

The murder of Agamemnon triggers a chain reaction and constitutes the point of departure for Elektra as well as for Les Mouches, and the subsequent path to revenge is the central plot motif of Electra and her brother Orestes.[3] The Würzburg Mainfrankentheater's interpretation of the opera, originally composed by Richard Strauss, explicitly focuses on the question of justice for Agamemnon’s death and whether it is fair to ask an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Electra moans for her father’s death and longs for her brother’s return, as it has been prophesied that Oreste will bring Clytemnestra and Aegisthus to justice. Over the course of the opera, the protagonist does not waver from her decision to seek retaliation. However, her sister Chrysothemis does not go along with her dark plans and refuses to comply with her.

Jean-Paul Sartre's Les Mouches, which I saw at the Residenztheater in Munich, is also an adaptation of the story of Agamemnon’s children, but it is more concerned with the analysis of the characters’ psychology than Stauss’ opera. The action is set in the town of Argos, whose citizens are consumed by feelings of guilt for their crimes and are plagued in their dreams by the title-giving flies. Electra, the princess of Argos, suffers from the loss of her father, but the main character in Sartre’s play is Oreste. Inspired by Nietzsche's philosophical ideas, his capacity of morally coping with the revenge murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus is put to the test. Written in 1942, Les Mouches was intended to encourage French citizens to rebel against the Nazi occupation. It is an invitation not to give up one's self-determination through self-doubt and feelings of guilt and to have the courage to stand up to totalitarian systems. At the performance in Munich, Sartre's text was reinterpreted to draw attention to human guilt for the exploitation of our planet's resources and the natural disasters that accompany it. The tragic hero, Orestes, is not swallowed up by his guilt, but is shot at the end by the angry citizens of Argos.

The central element of Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece, which was performed by Elena Pellone at the Philosophische Institut in Würzburg, is the rape of a Roman noblewoman. Unlike Electra and Oreste, however, Lucrece does not take revenge on her tormentor, but is driven to suicide by the crime committed against her. The vicious circle of violence affects not only her, but also her close relatives and friends, who are also made to suffer because of the harm done to her. After her suicide, the aggressor is finally banished from Roman society. Their situation is compared in the play with the outbreak of the Trojan War, which was caused by the “heat of lust, fond Paris, did incur” (Shakespeare 91). It is the lust of one man that endangers a whole community. With Paris’ choice to abduct the beautiful Helen, he wreaks havoc over his hometown and with Tarquin’s rape of Lucrece, he destroys her life as well as the carefree coexistence of the community in Rome.

Watching these performances has not only helped me to revise Greek mythology, but I also had a cathartic feeling of pity and fear. I felt compassion for all those trapped in toxic relationships, and I was afraid of the pull these conflicts had on the citizens of Argos. The curse affects everyone: not only the victims themselves, but also their close relatives and friends. Agamemnon's doom is indeed highly contagious and spreads among members of his own bloodline such as Electra and Orestes. But his wife and her lover, who have no cursed ancestors, can also become infected and are dragged into the abyss with him. It is therefore a universal task for all the inhabitants of the Greek island city to take a stand and not to remain silent. This might be a remedy to reconcile the deep social split that has come over Argos. Community building can be achieved through the mutual exchange of stories. If we keep writing, reading, talking, and thinking about works like Agamemnon, Elektra, Les Mouches and The Rape of Lucrece, we can remind ourselves of the serious consequences of toxic entanglements and the importance of ensuring peaceful coexistence. We should not grow quiet and let the norms and notions of what just is become justice.

Works cited

Gorman, Amanda. The hill we climb : an inaugural poem for the country. New York: Viking, 2021.

Scodel, Ruth. An Introduction to Greek Tragedy. Cambridge UP, 2010.

Shakespeare, William. The Rape of Lucrece. Penguin, 1971.

Stoll, Heinrich Wilhelm. Die Sagen der Antike. München: Anaconda, 2021.