Six Tragedies Read online

  Kings and queens — I know it well — are cruel,

  cannot hear the truth or turn, puffed up with pride.

  Whatever will be, whatever fortune sends, I bear it:

  because the old are near to freedom, they are brave.

  There are two ways to be good. First: want the right

  things, no straying.

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  The second is knowing and setting a limit to one’s sins.

  Poor woman, what are you doing? Why make worse the

  shame of your house,

  * * *

  phaedra

  7

  even outdoing your mother? Sinners are worse than monsters.

  Monsters are caused by fate, but sin by character.

  If you think that you can sin in safety, free from fear

  because your husband cannot see the upper world,

  you are wrong. Imagine Theseus engulfed in the depths of Lethe,

  imagine that the eternal Styx bears him away;

  then what about your father,* who subdues the seas,

  whose realms spread wide, who governs a hundred nations?

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  Will he let so great a crime lie hidden, do you think?

  Parents are perceptive. But still, let us imagine

  that by our cunning we can hide so great a crime:

  then what about your grandfather,* pouring his light

  on the whole world? What of him who shakes the universe,

  makes tremble the flashing fire of Etna, with his fiery hand,

  the father of the gods?* Do you think it is really possible,

  to hide in the midst of omniscient ancestors?

  But even if the holy powers favour you, and hide

  your wicked sexual acts, and if adultery

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  is guaranteed the safety that great crimes never get —

  what of your instant punishments: bad conscience and fear,

  and a guilty heart which always fears itself ?

  Women may sin unpunished, but never get off scot-free.

  I beg you, restrain the unholy flames of your passion,

  and this crime which no barbarian land has ever committed:

  not even the Getae who wander nomadic on the plains,

  nor the unfriendly Taurians, or far-dispersed Scythians:

  send in exile from your mind this dreadful act, and keep it

  chaste,

  remember your mother, and fear unusual bedfellows.

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  Do you intend to have both father and son in your bed,

  and let your tainted womb take an incestuous child?

  Do it! Overturn Nature with the fires of infamy!

  Why are there not more monsters? Why is your brother’s* palace

  empty?

  Will Nature hear of unprecedented marvels in the world,

  will she suspend her laws for every passion

  from a Cretan woman?

  phaedra

  I know the things you say

  are true: but my lust forces me to follow

  * * *

  8

  phaedra

  the worse decision. My mind knows, but it wanders,

  yearning for wise advice, and tries in vain to return.

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  As when a sailor propels an overloaded boat

  against the current, but his effort fails, he yields,

  and the ship is swept away by the gushing water.

  What can reason do? Passion, passion rules.

  One tyrant god* has mastered all my heart.

  The winged boy knows no limits, his power spreads over the earth.

  He sets light even to Jupiter with the flames which no one can

  master.

  The sturdy Warmonger has felt those terrible torches,

  and the Blacksmith god who made the triple thunderbolt,

  the one who stirs the forge of ever-burning Etna,

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  even he grows hot with such a little fire.

  Even Phoebus himself,* who aims his missiles on a string,

  is pierced by an arrow fired from a keener marksman,

  the boy who flits light but falls heavy on sky and earth alike.

  nurse The fiction that love is a god was created by base lust,

  yielding to degradation. To give more licence to sin,

  the false name of god was given to burning desire.

  You think that Venus sends her son to wander

  through all the world, and flying through the sky,

  launch savage weapons from his delicate hands,

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  and though he is the youngest, he has all this power from the gods?

  These are silly myths, fantasies of a madman,

  who invented Venus’ son, the god of sex, and his bow.

  A person who delights in too much fortune,

  who has too much already, always wants new things.

  Then comes the dangerous companion of great riches,

  called Desire. A normal dinner gives no pleasure now,

  nor ordinary, wholesome furnishings, plain cups.

  Why does this pestilence choose fancy, pretentious houses,

  and not creep so often into moderate hearths?

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  Why does a holy Venus live under lowly roofs,

  and the average sort of people keep their emotions sane,

  and practise self-restraint, while, on the other hand,

  the rich and powerful rulers want more than one should have?

  Those who have too much power want no limits to their power.

  You are the steward of a mighty throne. Think what befits you.

  * * *

  phaedra

  9

  Show fear and reverence to your husband’s sceptre. He will be

  back.

  phaedra I think the rule of love has the greatest power in me.

  I do not fear his return. No one has ever come back

  to touch the upper world, after once being drowned in the dark, 220

  after going to the house which is quiet with eternal night.

  nurse Do not put your trust in Dis.* Let him shut up his kingdom,

  let the Stygian* dog watch at the terrible gates;

  Theseus alone can find forbidden paths.

  phaedra Perhaps even he will be lenient towards my love.

  nurse He was unforgiving even to his chaste former wife:*

  Barbarian Antiope has felt his savage hand.

  But imagine that your angry husband can be swayed;

  who will persuade the inflexible heart of this boy of yours?

  He hates even the name of women, he flees them,

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  he is hard, he says he will live out his youth as a bachelor,

  he avoids marriage and sex. You know what these Amazons

  are like.

  phaedra He is the one I want to follow, even crawling over the

  ridges

  of a snowy hilltop, and leaping over the hard rocks with my feet,

  through the deep glades and through mountains.

  This is what I want.

  nurse What if he refuses to give himself to your caresses,

  if he will not exchange his chastity for sex?

  Will he lay down his hatred for you, when perhaps it is

  hatred of you

  that makes him hate all women?

  phaedra

  Can prayers not win him round?

  nurse He is wild.

  phaedra

  But love has conquered even wild beasts.* 240

  nurse He will run.

  phaedra

  If he runs even through the seas, I will follow.

  nurse Remember your father.

  phaedra

  I do. But I also remember my mother.

  nurse He shuns all womankind.

  phaedra

  So I need fear no rival.

  nurse Your husband will return.

>   phaedra Pirithous’

  companion?*

  * * *

  10

  phaedra

  nurse Your father will also come.

  phaedra

  Fine; he indulged Ariadne.*

  nurse I beg you on my knees, by my hair which is white

  with age,

  by my heart worn out with worry, by the breasts which were

  dear to you,*

  stop your passion, I beg you, and Phaedra, help yourself.

  The desire to be well is part of what makes us well.

  phaedra My noble heart has not yet lost all its restraint.

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  Nurse, I will obey. The love that will not be governed

  must be conquered. Honour, I will not let you be tainted.

  This is the only solution, the only escape from the evil:

  I will follow my husband, preventing infamy by death.

  nurse No, Mistress! Moderate the urges of your untamed heart,

  control your impulses. Even this, I think, shows you worthy

  of life, that you deem yourself deserving only death.

  phaedra My mind is set on death. The only question is how.

  Shall I end my life with a rope, or fall on a sword,

  or hurl myself down headlong from the citadel of Pallas?

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  nurse Would I in my old age allow you to fall headlong

  and die? Stop this crazy idea, give up your plan.

  No one can easily come back to life again.

  phaedra No reason can stop one from dying at will,

  when death is decided, when death is one’s due.

  So let me arm myself, let my hand avenge my chastity.

  nurse Mistress, only comfort for my tired old age,

  if such violent passion nestles in your heart,

  scorn reputation, which is never kind to truth —

  she treats the less deserving better than the good.

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  Let us test his harsh, resistant heart.

  It is up to me to approach this wild young boy,

  this cruel young man, and change his barbarous mind.

  chorus Goddess, Venus, child of the savage ocean,

  you are named as Mother by Cupid — twice born.*

  Cupid has two sources of destruction:

  fire and arrows, lustful and terrible boy-child,

  smiling, too! How truly he aims his darts!

  Passion slips inside our very bones,

  laying waste our veins with hidden fire.

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  * * *

  phaedra

  11

  Wounds from Love’s bow seem on the surface nothing:

  they suck deep within at the secret marrow.

  Never will there be peace from that boy’s raids:

  he is always busy firing his streams of arrows

  through the whole wide world: from the home of sunrise,

  on to Sun’s last goal, the Hesperides.*

  Places lying under the burning Crab’s sign,

  icy places under Arcadian Ursa,

  where the nomads roam unimpeded always,

  everywhere knows love. For the young, he rouses

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  raging flames; old men who are tired and weary

  feel again that heat which they thought extinguished.

  Fire of love strikes virgins before they know it;

  Love commands the gods to abandon heaven,

  making earth their home, in disguise, for love’s sake.

  Phoebus drove Thessalian flocks, commanded

  only sheep; he set aside his plectrum;

  blowing shepherd’s pipes he called the cattle home.*

  Often he, great ruler of clouds and heaven,

  clothed himself in shapes of inferior beings.*

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  Now he is a bird* and he flaps his white wings,

  cries with voice more sweet than the swan when dying.

  Now a young bull,* lustful, he scowls with dark brows,

  lets the girls play piggyback, lowers haunches,

  then through brand-new realms, through his brother’s ocean,

  moving fast, hoofs rowing like pliant ship’s oars,

  breast against sea’s current, he tames the ocean,

  pirate god, he fears and protects his booty.

  The shining goddess* of the darkened world

  abandons night and hands her shining horses

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  over to her brother; his driving style is different.

  Now the two-horsed carriage of night is shaken,

  taught to turn more sharply, a shorter orbit,

  nor can night-time keep to its proper period,

  day returns too late, and the dawn comes slowly,

  while the wheels shake, weighted with heavier driver.

  Hercules, Alcmena’s son, has set aside his quiver,*

  and the fearful skin of the mighty lion,

  and holds his fingers out to be fitted with jewels,

  * * *

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  phaedra

  lets the women neaten his shaggy long locks,

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  ties his legs cross-gartered with golden laces,

  dainty yellow slippers adorn his large feet.

  Hands which used to carry his mighty cudgel

  now were weaving thread with a flying spindle.

  Persia and the fertile land of Lydia saw on the rich sand

  the hide of the savage lion, flung aside.

  The shoulders which used to lift the royal dome

  of the vaulting sky

  are dressed now in a delicate frock of Tyrian weave.

  Holy the fire — the wounded believe it —

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  and all too powerful.

  Out where the earth is ringed by the salty deep

  and where the bright stars make their journey through

  heaven itself,

  Here that unsparing boy is the master

  whose arrows can pierce through the lowermost waves

  to the dark blue shoal of the Nereides,

  nor can the ocean extinguish the flame.

  Winged birds too feel the fires of love.

  When excited by the prickings of Venus, and headstrong,

  the bullock will fight for the whole of the herd.

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  If they fear for their wives then even the deer —

  cowering creatures — initiate battle

  and with lowing they signal the passion

  aroused in them.

  Then the wild boar sharpens his damaging tusks,

  frothing all over his face;

  then the forests are groaning with animal noises.

  The Phoenician lions shake their necks

  aroused by love.

  Love-struck stripy tigers terrify the dusky Indians.

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  The monster of the violent sea, too, falls in love,

  and even elephants. Nature

  takes revenge on them all, and nothing is safe,

  and hatred is dead, when love gives commands;

  old resentments yield to the fires of love.

  What more can I say? Love conquers

  even the fiercest creatures: stepmothers.

  * * *

  phaedra

  13

  ACT TWO

  chorus Nurse, tell us what you know; where is the queen?

  Have the raging fires of her passion somewhat abated?

  nurse There is no hope that such great suffering can be

  soothed,

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  nor is there any end to the flames of madness.

  She is scorched with a silent blast of heat; despite restraint,

  although she tries to hide it, her face betrays her heart.

  Fire bursts out from her eyes, her wounded cheeks

  acknowledge the spark of love. She is pleased with nothing, listless;

  now and then pain seizes her
in spasms.

  Sometimes her feet give way, she faints, seems dead,

  her neck flops down, her head can scarcely stay upright,

  sometimes she gets up from bed, forgets to sleep,

  complains the whole night long. She wants to be picked up

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  then laid down again, she wants her hair undone,

  now wants it braided again; she cannot bear herself,

  she keeps changing her clothes. She has no interest

  in food or health. She wanders, feet unsteady,

  her strength has begun to go. Her vitality is lost,

  gone is that ruddy glow from her bright face.

  Anxiety roams across her body, she trembles as she walks,

  the delicate beauty of her body is gone.

  The eyes which used to bear the marks of Diana’s torch

  have lost the glow which suits her father’s race.

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  Tears fall over her face, her cheeks are always wet,

  dewy with weeping, just as on Taurus’ slopes

  the warm rain falls on snow and makes it melt.

  But see, the gates of the palace are opening wide:

  here she is, lying back on her gilded couch;

  she is dressed just as usual, and gives no sign of madness.

  phaedra Maids, remove this quilt, woven with gold and purple,

  take from me all scarlet Tyrian dye,

  all silk* from distant China, plucked from trees.

  Let a simple belt cinch in my narrow waist.

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  I will wear no necklace, nor will snowy pearls

  * * *

  14

  phaedra

  dangle from my ears, the gift of the Indian sea;

  I want no Assyrian perfume sprinkled on my hair.

  Let loose my hair to pour down over my neck

  and over the tops of my shoulders, let it be blown about

  following the swift winds. With my left hand I will hold a quiver,

  with my right I will brandish a Thessalian spear.

  Stern Hippolytus’ mother looked exactly like this.

  As one who leaves behind the shores of the cold Black Sea

  and tramples the earth of Attica, driving her troops,

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  a woman from Tanais or Maotia,* with her hair in a knot,

  loose but for a single tie. She protects her torso with a shield,

  in the shape of a moon. Like this will I ride to the woods.

  chorus* Cease your complaints; resentment does not comfort

  the wretched.

  Pray for the favour of the countryside goddess, the Virgin.*

  nurse* Queen of the forest glades, the only one who dwells

  in the mountains, the only one who is worshipped there as a