It is the hour; and sunk in slumber nowLies Agamemnon. Shall he nevermoreOpen his eyes to the fair light? My hand,Once pledge to him of stainless love and faith,Is it to be the minister of his death?Did I swear that? Ay, that; and I must keepMy oath. Quick, let me go! My foot, heart, hand—All over I tremble. Oh, what did I promise?Wretch! what do I attempt? How all my courageHath vanished from me since Aegisthus vanished!I only see the immense atrocityOf this, my horrible deed; I only seeThe bloody specter of Atrides! Ah,In vain do I accuse thee! No, thou lovestCassandra not. Me, only me, thou lovest,Unworthy of thy love. Thou hast no blame,Save that thou art my husband, in the world!Of trustful sleep, to death's arms by my hand?And where then shall I hide me? O perfidy!Can I e'er hope for peace? O woful life—Life of remorse, of madness, and of tears!How shall Aegisthus, even Aegisthus, dareTo rest beside the parricidal wifeUpon her murder-stained marriage-bed,Nor tremble for himself? Away, away,—Hence, horrible instrument of all my guiltAnd harm, thou execrable dagger, hence!I'll lose at once my lover and my life,But never by this hand betrayed shall fallSo great a hero! Live, honor of GreeceAnd Asia's terror! Live to glory, liveTo thy dear children, and a better wife!—But what are these hushed steps? Into these roomsWho is it comes by night? Aegisthus?—Lost,I am lost!Aegisthus.Hast thou not done the deed?Cly.Aegisthus——Aeg.What, stand'st thou here, wasting thyself intears?Woman, untimely are thy tears; 't is late,'T is vain, and it may cost us dear!Cly.Thou here?But how—woe's me, what did I promise thee!What wicked counsel—Aeg.Was it not thy counsel?Love gave it thee and fear annuls it—well!Since thou repentest, I am glad; and gladTo know thee guiltless shall I be in death.I told thee that the enterprise was hard,But thou, unduly trusting in the heart,That hath not a man's courage in it, choseThyself thy feeble hands to strike the blow.Now may Heaven grant that the intent of evilTurn not to harm thee! Hither I by stealthAnd favor of the darkness have returnedUnseen, I hope. For I perforce must comeMyself to tell thee that irrevocablyMy life is dedicated to the vengeanceOf Agamemnon.
He appeals to her pity for him, and her fear for herself; he reminds her of Agamemnon's consent to the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and goads her on to the crime from which she had recoiled. She goes into Agamemnon's chamber, whence his dying outcries are heard:—
O treachery!Thou, wife? O headens, I die! O treachery!
Clytemnestra comes out with the dagger in her hand:
The dagger drips with blood; my hands, my robe,My face—they all are wet with blood. What vengeanceShall yet be taken for this blood? AlreadyI see this very steel turned on my breast,And by whose hand!
The son whom she forebodes as the avenger of Agamemnon's death passes his childhood and early youth at the court of Strophius in Phocis. The tragedy named for him opens with Electra's soliloquy as she goes to weep at the tomb of their father:—
Night, gloomy, horrible, atrocious night,Forever present to my thought! each yearFor now two lusters I have seen thee come,Clothed on with darkness and with dreams of blood,And blood that should have expiated thineIs not yet spilt! O memory, O sight!Upon these stones I saw thee murdered lie,Murdered, and by whose hand!...I swear to thee,If I in Argos, in thy palace live,Slave of Aegisthus, with my wicked mother,Nothing makes me endure a life like thisSaving the hope of vengeance. Far awayOrestes is; but living! I saved thee, brother;I keep myself for thee, till the day riseWhen thou shalt make to stream upon yon tombNot helpless tears like these, but our foe's blood.
While Electra fiercely muses, Clytemnestra enters, with the appeal:
Cly.Daughter!El.What voice! Oh Heaven, thou here?Cly.My daughter,Ah, do not fly me! Thy pious task I fainWould share with thee. Aegisthus in vain forbids,He shall not know. Ah, come! go we togetherUnto the tomb.El.Whose tomb?Cly.Thy—hapless—father's.El.Wherefore not say thy husband's tomb? 'T is well:Thou darest not speak it. But how dost thou dareTurn thitherward thy steps—thou that dost reekYet with his blood?Cly.Two lusters now are passedSince that dread day, and two whole lusters nowI weep my crime.El.And what time were enoughFor that? Ah, if thy tears should be eternal,They yet were nothing. Look! Seest thou not stillThe blood upon these horrid walls the bloodThat thou didst splash them with? And at thy presenceLo, how it reddens and grows quick again!Fly, thou, whom I must never more call mother!* * * *Cly.Oh, woe is me! What can I answer? Pity—But I merit none!—And yet if in my heart,Daughter, thou couldst but read—ah, who could lookInto the secret of a heart like mine,Contaminated with such infamy,And not abhor me? I blame not thy wrath,No, nor thy hate. On earth I feel alreadyThe guilty pangs of hell. Scarce had the blowEscaped my hand before a swift remorse,Swift but too late, fell terrible upon me.From that hour still the sanguinary ghostBy day and night, and ever horrible,Hath moved before mine eyes. Whene'er I turnI see its bleeding footsteps trace the pathThat I must follow; at table, on the throne,It sits beside me; on my bitter pillowIf e'er it chance I close mine eyes in sleep,The specter—fatal vision!—instantlyShows itself in my dreams, and tears the breast,Already mangled, with a furious hand,And thence draws both its palms full of dark blood,To dash it in my face! On dreadful nightsFollow more dreadful days. In a long deathI live my life. Daughter,—whate'er I am,Thou art my daughter still,—dost thou not weepAt tears like mine?
Clytemnestra confesses that Aegisthus no longer loves her, but she loves him, and she shrinks from Electra's fierce counsel that she shall kill him. He enters to find her in tears, and a violent scene between him and Electra follows, in which Clytemnestra interposes.
Cly.O daughter, he is my husband. Think, Aegisthus,She is my daughter.Aeg.She is Atrides' daughter!El.He is Atrides' murderer!Cly.Electra!Have pity, Aegisthus! Look—the tomb! Oh, look,The horrible tomb!—and art thou not content?Aeg.Woman, be less unlike thyself. Atrides,—Tell me by whose hand in yon tomb he lies?Cly.O mortal blame! What else is lacking nowTo my unhappy, miserable life?Who drove me to it now upbraids my crime!El.O marvelous joy! O only joy that's blessedMy heart in these ten years! I see you bothAt last the prey of anger and remorse;I hear at last what must the endearments beOf love so blood-stained.
The first act closes with a scene between Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, in which he urges her to consent that he shall send to have Orestes murdered, and reminds her of her former crimes when she revolts from this. The scene is very well managed, with that sparing phrase which in Alfieri is quite as apt to be touchingly simple as bare and poor. In the opening scene of the second act, Orestes has returned in disguise to Argos with Pylades the son of Strophius, to whom he speaks:
We are come at last. Here Agamemnon fell,Murdered, and here Aegisthus reigns. Here roseIn memory still, though I a child departed,These natal walls, and the just Heaven in timeLeads me back hither.Twice five years have passedThis very day since that dread night of blood,When, slain by treachery, my father madeThe whole wide palace with his dolorous criesEcho again. Oh, well do I remember!Electra swiftly bore me through this hallThither where Strophius in his pitying armsReceived me—Strophius, less by far thy fatherThan mine, thereafter—and fled onward with meBy yonder postern-gate, all tremulous;And after me there ran upon the airLong a wild clamor and a lamentationThat made me weep and shudder and lament,I knew not why, and weeping Strophius ran,Preventing with his hand my outcries shrill,Clasping me close, and sprinkling all my faceWith bitter tears; and to the lonely coast,Where only now we landed, with his chargeHe came apace; and eagerly unfurledHis sails before the wind.
Pylades strives to restrain the passion for revenge in Orestes, which imperils them both. The friend proposes that they shall feign themselves messengers sent by Strophius with tidings of Orestes' death, and Orestes has reluctantly consented, when Electra re-appears, and they recognize each other. Pylades discloses their plan, and when her brother urges, “The means is vile,” she answers, all woman,—
Less vile than is Aegisthus. There is noneBetter or surer, none, believe me. WhenYou are led to him, let it be mine to thinkOf all—the place, the manner, time, and arms,To kill him. Still I keep, Orestes, stillI keep the steel that in her husband's breastShe plunged whom nevermore we might call mother.Orestes.How fares it with that impious woman?Electra.Ah,Thou canst not know how she drags out her life!Save only Agamemnon's children, allMust pity her—and even we must pity.Full ever of suspicion and of terror,And held in scorn even by Aegisthus' self,Loving Aegisthus though she know his guilt;Repentant, and yet ready to renewHer crime, perchance, if the unworthy loveWhich is her shame and her abhorrence, would;Now wife, now mother, never wife nor mother,Bitter remorse gnaws at her heart by dayUnceasingly, and horrible shapes by nightScare slumber from her eyes.—So fares it with her.
In the third scene of the following act Clytemnestra meets Orestes and Pylades, who announce themselves as messengers from Phocis to the king; she bids them deliver their tidings to her, and they finally do so, Pylades struggling to prevent Orestes from revealing himself. There are touchingly simple and natural passages in the lament that Clytemnestra breaks into over her son's death, and there is fire, with its true natural extinction in tears, when she upbraids Aegisthus, who now enters:
My only son beloved, I gave thee all.
All that I gave thou did'st account as nothingWhile aught remained to take. Who ever sawAt once so cruel and so false a heart?The guilty love that thou did'st feign so illAnd I believed so well, what hindrance to it,What hindrance, tell me, was the child Orestes?Yet scarce had Agamemnon died beforeThou did'st cry out for his son's blood; and searchedThrough all the palace in thy fury. ThenThe blade thou durst not wield against the father,Then thou didst brandish! Ay, bold wast thou thenAgainst a helpless child!...Unhappy son, what booted it to save theeFrom thy sire's murderer, since thou hast foundDeath ere thy time in strange lands far away?Aegisthus, villainous usurper! Thou,Thou hast slain my son! Aegisthus—Oh forgive!I was a mother, and am so no more.
Throughout this scene, and in the soliloquy preceding it, Alfieri paints very forcibly the struggle in Clytemnestra between her love for her son and her love for Aegisthus, to whom she clings even while he exults in the tidings that wring her heart. It is all too baldly presented, doubtless, but it is very effective and affecting.
Orestes and Pylades are now brought before Aegisthus, and he demands how and where Orestes died, for after his first rejoicing he has come to doubt the fact. Pylades responds in one of those speeches with which Alfieri seems to carve the scene in bas-relief:
Every fifth year an ancient use renewsIn Crete the games and offerings unto Jove.The love of glory and innate ambitionLure to that coast the youth; and by his sideGoes Pylades, inseparable from him.In the light car upon the arena wide,The hopes of triumph urge him to contestThe proud palm of the flying-footed steeds,And, too intent on winning, there his lifeHe gives for victory.Aeg.But how? Say on.Pyl.Too fierce, impatient, and incautious, heNow frights his horses on with threatening cries,Now whirls his blood-stained whip, and lashes them,Till past the goal the ill-tamed coursers flyFaster and faster. Reckless of the rein,Deaf to the voice that fain would soothe them now,Their nostrils breathing fire, their loose manes tossedUpon the wind, and in thick clouds involvedOf choking dust, round the vast circle's bound,As lightning swift they whirl and whirl again.Fright, horror, mad confusion, death, the carSpreads in its crooked circles everywhere,Until at last, the smoking axle dashedWith horrible shock against a marble pillar,Orestes headlong falls—Cly.No more! Ah, peace!His mother hears thee.Pyl.It is true. Forgive me.I will not tell how, horribly dragged on,His streaming life-blood soaked the arena's dust—Pylades ran—in vain—within his armsHis friend expired.Cly.O wicked death!Pyl.In CreteAll men lamented him, so potent in himWere beauty, grace, and daring.Cly.Nay, who would notLament him save this wretch alone? Dear son,Must I then never, never see thee more?O me! too well I see thee crossing nowThe Stygian stream to clasp thy father's shade:Both turn your frowning eyes askance on me,Burning with dreadful wrath! Yea, it was I,'T was I that slew you both. Infamous motherAnd guilty wife!—Now art content, Aegisthus?
Aegisthus still doubts, and pursues the pretended messengers with such insulting question that Orestes, goaded beyond endurance, betrays that their character is assumed. They are seized and about to be led to prison in chains, when Electra enters and in her anguish at the sight exclaims, “Orestes led to die!” Then ensues a heroic scene, in which each of the friends claims to be Orestes. At last Orestes shows the dagger Electra has given him, and offers it to Clytemnestra, that she may stab Aegisthus with the same weapon with which she killed Agamemnon:
Whom then I would call mother. Take it; thou know'st howTo wield it; plunge it in Aegisthus' heart!Leave me to die; I care not, if I seeMy father avenged. I ask no other proofOf thy maternal love from thee. Quick, now,Strike! Oh, what is it that I see? Thou tremblest?Thou growest pale? Thou weepest? From thy handThe dagger falls? Thou lov'st Aegisthus, lov'st himAnd art Orestes' mother? Madness! GoAnd never let me look on thee again!
Aegisthus dooms Electra to the same death with Orestes and Pylades, but on the way to prison the guards liberate them all, and the Argives rise against the usurper with the beginning of the fifth act, which I shall give entire, because I think it very characteristic of Alfieri, and necessary to a conception of his vehement, if somewhat arid, genius. I translate as heretofore almost line for line, and word for word, keeping the Italian order as nearly as I can.
AEGISTHUSand Soldiers.
Aeg.O treachery unforseen! O madness! Freed,Orestes freed? Now we shall see....EnterCLYTEMNESTRA.Cly.Ah! turnBackward thy steps.Aeg.Ah, wretch, dost thou arm tooAgainst me?Cly.I would save thee. Hearken to me,I am no longer—Aeg.Traitress—Cly.Stay!Aeg.Thou 'st promisedHaply to give me to that wretch alive?Cly.To keep thee, save thee from him, I have sworn,Though I should perish for thee! Ah, remainAnd hide thee here in safety. I will beThy stay against his fury—Aeg.Against his furyMy sword shall be my stay. Go, leave me!I go—Cly.Whither?Aeg.To kill him!Cly.To thy death thou goest!O me! What dost thou? Hark! Dost thou not hearThe yells and threats of the whole people? Hold!I will not leave thee.Aeg.Nay, thou hop'st in vainTo save thy impious son from death. Hence! Peace!Or I will else—Cly.Oh, yes, Aegisthus, kill me,If thou believest me not. “Orestes!” Hark!“Orestes!” How that terrible name on highRings everywhere! I am no longer motherWhen thou 'rt in danger. Against my blood I growCruel once more.Aeg.Thou knowest well the ArgivesDo hate thy face, and at the sight of theeThe fury were redoubled in their hearts.The tumult rises. Ah, thou wicked wretch,Thou wast the cause! For thee did I delayVengeance that turns on me now.Cly.Kill me, then!Aeg.I'll find escape some other way.Cly.I follow—Aeg.Ill shield wert thou for me. Leave me—away, away!At no price would I have thee by my side! {Exit.Cly.All hunt me from them! O most hapless state!My son no longer owns me for his mother,My husband for his wife: and wife and motherI still must be! O misery! AfarI'll follow him, nor lose the way he went.EnterELECTRA.El.Mother, where goest thou! Turn thy steps againInto the palace. Danger—Cly.Orestes—speak!Where is he now? What does he do?El.Orestes,Pylades, and myself, we are all safe.Even Aegisthus' minions pitied us.They cried, “This is Orestes!” and the people,“Long live Orestes! Let Aegisthus die!”Cly.What do I hear?El.Calm thyself, mother; soonThou shalt behold thy son again, and soonTh' infamous tyrant's corse—Cly.Ah, cruel, leave me!I go—El.No, stay! The people rage, and cryOut on thee for a parricidal wife.Show thyself not as yet, or thou incurrestGreat peril. 'T was for this I came. In theeA mother's agony appeared, to seeThy children dragged to death, and thou hast nowAtoned for thy misdeed. My brother sends meTo comfort thee, to succor and to hide theeFrom dreadful sights. To find Aegisthus out,All armed meanwhile, he and his PyladesSearch everywhere. Where is the wicked wretch?Cly.Orestes is the wicked wretch!El. O Heaven!Cly.I go to save him or to perish with him.El.Nay, mother, thou shalt never go. Thou ravest—Cly.The penalty is mine. I go—El.O mother!The monster that but now thy children doomedTo death, wouldst thou—Cly.Yes, I would save him—I!Out of my path! My terrible destinyI must obey. He is my husband. AllToo dear he cost me. I will not, can not lose him.You I abhor, traitors, not children to me!I go to him. Loose me, thou wicked girl!At any risk I go, and may I onlyReach him in time! {Exit.El. Go to thy fate, then, go,If thou wilt so, but be thy steps too late!Why can not I, too, arm me with a dagger,To pierce with stabs a thousand-fold the breastOf infamous Aegisthus! O blind mother, oh,How art thou fettered to his baseness! Yet,And yet, I tremble—If the angry mobAvenge their murdered king on her—O Heaven!Let me go after her—But who comes here?Pylades, and my brother not beside him?EnterPYLADES.Oh, tell me! Orestes—?Pyl.Compasses the palaceAbout with swords. And now our prey is safe.Where lurks Aegisthus! Hast thou seen him?El.Nay,I saw and strove in vain a moment sinceTo stay his maddened wife. She flung herselfOut of this door, crying that she would makeHerself a shield unto Aegisthus. HeAlready had fled the palace.Pyl.Durst he thenShow himself in the sight of Argos? Why,Then he is slain ere this! Happy the manThat struck him first. Nearer and louder yetI hear their yells.El.“Orestes!” Ah, were't so!Pyl.Look at him in his fury where he comes!EnterORESTESand his followers.Or.No man of you attempt to slay Aegisthus:There is no wounding sword here save my own.Aegisthus, ho! Where art thou, coward! Speak!Aegisthus, where art thou? Come forth: it isThe voice of Death that calls thee! Thou comest not?Ah, villain, dost thou hide thyself? In vain:The midmost deep of Erebus should not hide thee!Thou shalt soon see if I be Atrides' son.El.He is not here; he—Or.Traitors! You perchanceHave slain him without me?Pyl.Before I cameHe had fled the palace.Or.In the palace stillSomewhere he lurks; but I will drag him forth;By his soft locks I'll drag him with my hand:There is no prayer, nor god, nor force of hellShall snatch thee from me. I will make thee plowThe dust with thy vile body to the tombOf Agamemnon,—I will drag thee thitherAnd pour out there all thine adulterous blood.El.Orestes, dost thou not believe me?—me!Or.Who'rt thou? I want Aegisthus.El.He is fled.Or.He's fled, and you, ye wretches, linger here?But I will find him.EnterCLYTEMNESTRA.Cly.Oh, have pity, son!Or.Pity? Whose son am I? Atrides' sonAm I.Cly.Aegisthus, loaded with chains—Or.He lives yet?O joy! Let me go slay him!Cly.Nay, kill me!I slew thy father—I alone. AegisthusHad no guilt in it.Or.Who, who grips my arm!Who holds me back? O Madness! Ah Aegisthus!I see him; they drag him hither—Off with thee!Cly.Orestes, dost thou not know thy mother?Or.Die,Aegisthus! By Orestes' hand, die, villain! {Exit.Cly.Ah, thou'st escaped me! Thou shalt slay mefirst! {Exit.El.Pylades, go! Run, run! Oh, stay her! fly;Bring her back hither! {ExitPYLADES.I shudder! She is stillHis mother, and he must have pity on her.Yet only now she saw her children standUpon the brink of an ignoble death;And was her sorrow and her daring thenAs great as they are now for him? At lastThe day so long desired has come; at last,Tyrant, thou diest; and once more I hearThe palace all resound with wails and cries,As on that horrible and bloody night,Which was my father's last, I heard it ring.Already hath Orestes struck the blow,The mighty blow; already is AegisthusFallen—the tumult of the crowd proclaims it.Behold Orestes conqueror, his swordDripping with blood!EnterORESTES.O brother mine, come,Avenger of the king of kings, our father,Argos, and me, come to my heart!Or.Sister,At last thou seest me Atrides' worthy son.Look,'t is Aegisthus' blood! I hardly saw himAnd ran to slay him where he stood, forgettingTo drag him to our father's sepulcher.Full twice seven times I plunged and plunged my swordInto his cowardly and quaking heart;Yet have I slaked not my long thirst of vengeance!El. Then Clytemnestra did not come in timeTo stay thine arm?Or.And who had been enoughFor that? To stay my arm? I hurled myselfUpon him; not more swift the thunderbolt.The coward wept, and those vile tears the moreFilled me with hate. A man that durst not dieSlew thee, my father!El.Now is our sire avenged!Calm thyself now, and tell me, did thine eyesBehold not Pylades?Or.I saw Aegisthus;None other. Where is dear Pylades? And whyDid he not second me in this glorious deed?El.I had confided to his care our madAnd desperate mother.Or.I knew nothing of them.EnterPYLADES.El.See, Pylades returns—O heavens, what do I see?Returns alone?Or.And sad? Oh wherefore sad,Part of myself, art thou? Know'st not I've slainYon villain? Look, how with his life-blood yetMy sword is dripping! Ah, thou did'st not shareHis death-blow with me! Feed then on this sightThine eyes, my Pylades!Pyl.O sight! Orestes,Give me that sword.Or.And wherefore?Pyl.Give it me.Or.Take it.Pyl.Oh listen! We may not tarry longerWithin these borders; come—Or.But what—El. Oh speak!Where's Clytemnestra?Or.Leave her; she is perchanceKindling the pyre unto her traitor husband.Pyl.Oh, thou hast far more than fulfilled thy vengeance.Come, now, and ask no more.Or.What dost thou say?El.Our mother! I beseech thee yet again!Pylades—Oh what chill is this that creepsThrough all my veins?Pyl.The heavens—El.Ah, she is dead!Or.Hath turned her dagger, maddened, on herself?El.Alas, Pylades! Why dost thou not answer?Or.. Speak! What hath been?Pyl.Slain—Or.And by whose hand?Pyl.Come!El.(ToORESTES.) Thou slewest her!Or.I parricide?Pyl.UnknowingThou plungèdst in her heart thy sword, as blindWith rage thou rannest on Aegisthus—Or.Oh,What horror seizes me! I parricide?My sword! Pylades, give it me; I'll have it—Pyl.It shall not be.El.Brother—Or.Who calls me brother?Thou, haply, impious wretch, thou that didst save meTo life and matricide? Give me my sword!My sword! O fury! Where am I? What is itThat I have done? Who stays me? Who follows me?Ah, whither shall I fly, where hide myself?—O father, dost thou look on me askance?Thou wouldst have blood of me, and this is blood;For thee alone—for thee alone I shed it!El.Orestes, Orestes—miserable brother!He hears us not! ah, he is mad! Forever,Pylades, we must go beside him.Pyl.Hard,Inevitable law of ruthless Fate!
Alfieri himself wrote a critical comment on each of his tragedies, discussing their qualities and the question of their failure or success dispassionately enough. For example, he frankly says of his Maria Stuarda that it is the worst tragedy he ever wrote, and the only one that he could wish not to have written; of his Agamennone, that all the good in it came from the author and all the bad from the subject; of his Fillippo II., that it may make a very terrible impression indeed of mingled pity and horror, or that it may disgust, through the cold atrocity of Philip, even to the point of nausea. On the Orestes, we may very well consult him more at length. He declares: “This tragic action has no other motive or development, nor admits any other passion, than an implacable revenge; but the passion of revenge (though very strong by nature), having become greatly enfeebled among civilized peoples, is regarded as a vile passion, and its effects are wont to be blamed and looked upon with loathing. Nevertheless, when it is just, when the offense received is very atrocious, when the persons and the circumstances are such that no human law can indemnify the aggrieved and punish the aggressor, then revenge, under the names of war, invasion, conspiracy, the duel, and the like, ennobles itself, and so works upon our minds as not only to be endured but to be admirable and sublime.”
In his Orestes he confesses that he sees much to praise and very little to blame: “Orestes, to my thinking, is ardent in sublime degree, and this daring character of his, together with the perils he confronts, may greatly diminish in him the atrocity and coldness of a meditated revenge.... Let those who do not believe in the force of a passion for high and just revenge add to it, in the heart of Orestes, private interest, the love of power, rage at beholding his natural heritage occupied by a murderous usurper, and then they will have a sufficient reason for all his fury. Let them consider, also, the ferocious ideas in which he must have been nurtured by Strophius, king of Phocis, the persecutions which he knows to have been everywhere moved against him by the usurper,—his being, in fine, the son of Agamemnon, and greatly priding himself thereon,—and all these things will certainly account for the vindictive passion of Orestes.... Clytemnestra is very difficult to treat in this tragedy, since she must be here,
“Now wife, now mother, never wife nor mother,
“which is much easier to say in a verse than to manage in the space of five acts. Yet I believe that Clytemnestra, through the terrible remorse she feels, the vile treatment which she receives from Aegisthus, and the awful perplexity in which she lives ... will be considered sufficiently punished by the spectator. Aegisthus is never able to elevate his soul; ... he will always be an unpleasing, vile, and difficult personage to manage well; a character that brings small praise to the author when made sufferable, and much blame if not made so.... I believe the fourth and fifth acts would produce the highest effect on the stage if well represented. In the fifth, there is a movement, a brevity, a rapidly operating heat, that ought to touch, agitate, and singularly surprise the spirit. So it seems to me, but perhaps it is not so.”
This analysis is not only very amusing for the candor with which Alfieri praises himself, but it is also remarkable for the justice with which the praise is given, and the strong, conscious hold which it shows him to have had upon his creations. It leaves one very little to add, but I cannot help saying that I think the management of Clytemnestra especially admirable throughout. She loves Aegisthus with the fatal passion which no scorn or cruelty on his part can quench; but while he is in power and triumphant, her heart turns tenderly to her hapless children, whom she abhors as soon as his calamity comes; then she has no thought but to save him. She can join her children in hating the murder which she has herself done on Agamemnon, but she cannot avenge it on Aegisthus, and thus expiate her crime in their eyes. Aegisthus is never able to conceive of the unselfishness of her love; he believes her ready to betray him when danger threatens and to shield herself behind him from the anger of the Argives; it is a deep knowledge of human nature that makes him interpose the memory of her unatoned-for crime between her and any purpose of good.
Orestes always sees his revenge as something sacred, and that is a great scene in which he offers his dagger to Clytemnestra and bids her kill Aegisthus with it, believing for the instant that even she must exult to share his vengeance. His feeling towards Aegisthus never changes; it is not revolting to the spectator, since Orestes is so absolutely unconscious of wrong in putting him to death. He shows his blood-stained sword to Pylades with a real sorrow that his friend should not also have enjoyed the rapture of killing the usurper. His story of his escape on the night of Agamemnon's murder is as simple and grand in movement as that of figures in an antique bas-relief. Here and elsewhere one feels how Alfieri does not paint, but sculptures his scenes and persons, cuts their outlines deep, and strongly carves their attitudes and expression.
Electra is the worthy sister of Orestes, and the family likeness between them is sharply traced. She has all his faith in the sacredness of his purpose, while she has, woman-like, a far keener and more specific hatred of Aegisthus. The ferocity of her exultation when Clytemnestra and Aegisthus upbraid each other is terrible, but the picture she draws for Orestes of their mother's life is touched with an exquisite filial pity. She seems to me studied with marvelous success.
The close of the tragedy is full of fire and life, yet never wanting in a sort of lofty, austere grace, that lapses at last into a truly statuesque despair. Orestes mad, with Electra and Pylades on either side: it is the attitude and gesture of Greek sculpture, a group forever fixed in the imperishable sorrow of stone.
In reading Alfieri, I am always struck with what I may call the narrowness of his tragedies. They have height and depth, but not breadth. The range of sentiment is as limited in any one of them as the range of phrase in this Orestes, where the recurrence of the same epithets, horrible, bloody, terrible, fatal, awful, is not apparently felt by the poet as monotonous. Four or five persons, each representing a purpose or a passion, occupy the scene, and obviously contribute by every word and deed to the advancement of the tragic action; and this narrowness and rigidity of intent would be intolerable, if the tragedies were not so brief: I do not think any of them is much longer than a single act of one of Shakespeare's plays. They are in all other ways equally unlike Shakespeare's plays. When you read Macbeth or Hamlet, you find yourself in a world where the interests and passions are complex and divided against themselves, as they are here and now. The action progresses fitfully, as events do in life; it is promoted by the things that seem to retard it; and it includes long stretches of time and many places. When you read Orestes, you find yourself attendant upon an imminent calamity, which nothing can avert or delay. In a solitude like that of dreams, those hapless phantasms, dark types of remorse, of cruel ambition, of inexorable revenge, move swiftly on the fatal end. They do not grow or develop on the imagination; their character is stamped at once, and they have but to act it out. There is no lingering upon episodes, no digressions, no reliefs. They cannot stir from that spot where they are doomed to expiate or consummate their crimes; one little day is given them, and then all is over.
Mr. Lowell, in his essay on Dryden, speaks of “a style of poetry whose great excellence was that it was in perfect sympathy with the genius of the people among whom it came into being”, and this I conceive to be the virtue of the Alferian poetry. The Italians love beauty of form, and we Goths love picturesque effect; and Alfieri has little or none of the kind of excellence which we enjoy. But while
I look and own myself a happy Goth,
I have moods, in the presence of his simplicity and severity, when I feel that he and all the classicists may be right. When I see how much he achieves with his sparing phrase, his sparsely populated scene, his narrow plot and angular design, when I find him perfectly sufficient in expression and entirely adequate in suggestion, the Classic alone appears elegant and true—till I read Shakespeare again; or till I turn to Nature, whom I do not find sparing or severe, but full of variety and change and relief, and yet having a sort of elegance and truth of her own.
In the treatment of historical subjects Alfieri allowed himself every freedom. He makes Lorenzo de' Medici, a brutal and very insolent tyrant, a tyrant after the high Roman fashion, a tyrant almost after the fashion of the late Edwin Forrest. Yet there are some good passages in the Congiura dei Pazzi, of the peculiarly hard Alfierian sort:
An enemy insulted and not slain!What breast in triple iron armed, but needsMust tremble at him?
is a saying of Giuliano de' Medici, who, when asked if he does not fear one of the conspirators, puts the whole political wisdom of the sixteenth century into his answer,—
Being feared, I fear.
The Filippo of Alfieri must always have an interest for English readers because of its chance relation to Keats, who, sick to death of consumption, bought a copy of Alfieri when on his way to Rome. As Mr. Lowell relates in his sketch of the poet's life, the dying man opened the book at the second page, and read the lines—perhaps the tenderest that Alfieri ever wrote—
Misero me! sollievo a me non restaAltro che il pianto, e il pianto è delitto!
Keats read these words, and then laid down the book and opened it no more. The closing scene of the fourth act of this tragedy can well be studied as a striking example of Alfieri's power of condensation.
Some of the non-political tragedies of Alfieri are still played; Ristori has played his Mirra, and Salvini his Saul; but I believe there is now no Italian critic who praises him so entirely as Giudici did. Yet the poet finds a warm defender against the French and German critics in De Sanctis, {note: Saggi Critici. Di Francesco de Sanctis. Napoli: Antonio Morano. 1859.} a very clever and brilliant Italian, who accounts for Alfieri in a way that helps to make all Italian things more intelligible to us. He is speaking of Alfieri's epoch and social circumstances: “Education had been classic for ages. Our ideal was Rome and Greece, our heroes Brutus and Cato, our books Livy, Tacitus, and Plutarch; and if this was true of all Europe, how much more so of Italy, where this history might be called domestic, a thing of our own, a part of our traditions, still alive to the eye in our cities and monuments. From Dante to Machiavelli, from Machiavelli to Metastasio, our classical tradition was never broken.... In the social dissolution of the last century, all disappeared except this ideal. In fact, in that first enthusiasm, when the minds of men confidently sought final perfection, it passed from the schools into life, ruled the imagination, inflamed the will. People lived and died Romanly.... The situations that Alfieri has chosen in his tragedies have a visible relation to the social state, to the fears and to the hopes of his own time. It is always resistance to oppression, of man against man, of people against tyrant.... In the classicism of Alfieri there is no positive side. It is an ideal Rome and Greece, outside of time and space, floating in the vague, ... which his contemporaries filled up with their own life.”
Giuseppe Arnaud, in his admirable criticisms on the Patriotic Poets of Italy, has treated of the literary side of Alfieri in terms that seem to me, on the whole, very just: “He sacrificed the foreshortening, which has so great a charm for the spectator, to the sculptured full figure that always presents itself face to face with you, and in entire relief. The grand passions, which are commonly sparing of words, are in his system condemned to speak much, and to explain themselves too much.... To what shall we attribute that respectful somnolence which nowadays reigns over the audience during the recitation of Alfieri's tragedies, if they are not sustained by some theatrical celebrity? You will certainly say, to the mediocrity of the actors. But I hold that the tragic effect can be produced even by mediocre actors, if this effect truly abounds in the plot of the tragedy.... I know that these opinions of mine will not be shared by the great majority of the Italian public, and so be it. The contrary will always be favorable to one who greatly loved his country, always desired to serve her, and succeeded in his own time and own manner. Whoever should say that Alfieri's tragedies, in spite of many eminent merits, were constructed on a theory opposed to grand scenic effects and to one of the two bases of tragedy, namely, compassion, would certainly not say what was far from the truth. And yet, with all this, Alfieri will still remain that dry, harsh blast which swept away the noxious miasms with which the Italian air was infected. He will still remain that poet who aroused his country from its dishonorable slumber, and inspired its heart with intolerance of servile conditions and with regard for its dignity. Up to his time we had bleated, and he roared.” “In fact,” says D'Azeglio, “one of the merits of that proud heart was to have found Italy Metastasian and left it Alfierian; and his first and greatest merit was, to my thinking, that he discovered Italy, so to speak, as Columbus discovered America, and initiated the idea of Italy as a nation. I place this merit far beyond that of his verses and his tragedies.”
Besides his tragedies, Alfieri wrote, as I have already stated, some comedies in his last years; but I must own my ignorance of all six of them; and he wrote various satires, odes, sonnets, epigrams, and other poems. Most of these are of political interest; the Miso-Gallo is an expression of his scorn and hatred of the French nation; the America Liberata celebrates our separation from England; the Etruria Vendicata praises the murder of the abominable Alessandro de' Medici by his kinsman, Lorenzaccio. None of the satires, whether on kings, aristocrats, or people, have lent themselves easily to my perusal; the epigrams are signally unreadable, but some of the sonnets are very good. He seems to find in their limitations the same sort of strength that he finds in his restricted tragedies; and they are all in the truest sense sonnets.
Here is one, which loses, of course, by translation. In this and other of my versions, I have rarely found the English too concise for the Italian, and often not concise enough: