Huntington Library, Pasadena, California, USA: in the rose gardens (photo (c) Ulrike Boehm; all rights reserved)
On the level of classic mythology and theatre, Ophelia's ravings resemble those of the unhappy Cassandra, such as, for example, reflected in the tragedies of Aischylos and Euripides. Being King Priam's daughter, after the fall of Troy Cassandra was claimed as bounty by King Agamemnon of Mycenae, the leader of the Greek forces and brother of Menelaos, the "offended" first – or real – husband of Helen. However, jealous and infuriated over Cassandra's arrival, Agamemnon's wife Clytaemnestra, Helen's sister – who herself had engaged in an extramarital affair with Mycenae's former ruler, Agamemnon's kinsman Aegisthos, while her husband was at war – killed both him and the unfortunate priestess, who had prophecied these events; albeit, as always, in vain. Cassandra's life thus ended in a triple catastrophe: not only was she punished with madness by a god – Apollo – for rejecting his love, but thereafter also raped by her homeland's conqueror and ultimately murdered by his wife and the wife's lover.) And all the associated flower imagery be damned; compared to Cassandra's fate, Ophelia's "muddy death" in a brook near Elsinore castle sounds downright peaceful to me ...
Euripides: The Trojan Women.
[...]
And this unhappy one – would any eyes
Gaze now on Hecuba? Here at the Gates
She lies 'mid many tears for many fates
Of wrong. One child beside Achilles' grave
In secret slain, Polyxena the brave,
Lies bleeding. Priam and his sons are gone;
And, lo, Cassandra, she the Chosen One,
Whom Lord Apollo spared to walk her way
A swift and virgin spirit, on this day
Lust hath her, and she goeth garlanded
A bride of wrath to Agamemnon's bed.
[...]
There is no fire, no peril: 'tis my child,
Cassandra, by the breath of God made wild.
Lift, lift it high:
Give it to mine hand!
Lo, I bear a flame
Unto God! I praise his name.
I light with a burning brand
This sanctuary.
Blessed is he that shall wed,
And blessed, blessed am I
In Argos: a bride to lie
With a King in a King's bed.
Hail, O Hymen red,
O Torch that makest one!
Weepest thou, Mother mine own?
Surely thy cheek is pale
With tears, tears that wail
For a land and a father dead.
But I go garlanded:
I am the Bride of Desire:
Therefore my torch is borne –
Lo, the lifting of morn,
Lo, the leaping of fire! –
For thee, O Hymen bright,
For thee, O Moon of the Deep,
So Law hath charged, for the light
Of a maid's last sleep.
Awake, O my feet, awake:
Our father's hope is won!
Dance as the dancing skies
Over him, where he lies
Happy beneath the sun! ...
Lo, the Ring that I make ...
Apollo! ... Ah, is it thou?
O shrine in the laurels cold,
I bear thee still, as of old,
Mine incense! Be near to me now.
O Hymen, Hymen fleet:
Quick torch that makest one!
How? Am I still alone?
Laugh as I laugh, and twine
In the dance, O Mother mine:
Dear feet, be near my feet!
Come, greet ye Hymen, greet
Hymen with songs of pride:
Sing to him loud and long,
Cry, cry, when the song
Faileth, for joy of the bride!
O Damsels girt in the gold
Of Ilion, cry, cry ye,
For him that is doomed of old
To be lord of me!
O hold the damsel, lest her tranced feet
Lift her afar, Queen, toward the Hellene fleet!
O Fire, Fire, where men make marriages
Surely thou hast thy lot; but what are these
Thou bringest flashing? Torches savage-wild
And far from mine old dreams. – Alas, my child,
How little dreamed I then of wars or red
Spears of the Greek to lay thy bridal bed!
Give me thy brand; it hath no holy blaze
Thus in thy frenzy flung. Nor all thy days
Nor all thy griefs have changed them yet, nor learned
Wisdom. – Ye women, bear the pine half burned
To the chamber back; let your drowned eyes
Answer the music of these bridal cries!
O Mother, fill mine hair with happy flowers,
And speed me forth. Yea, if my spirit cowers,
Drive me with wrath! So liveth Loxias,
A bloodier bride than ever Helen was
Go I to Agamemnon, Lord most high
Of Hellas! ... I shall kill him, mother; I
Shall kill him, and lay waste his house with fire
As he laid ours. My brethren and my sire
Shall win again ...
But part I must let be,
And speak not. Not the axe that craveth me,
And more than me; not the dark wanderings
Of mother – murder that my bridal brings,
And all the House of Atreus down, down, down ...
Nay, I will show thee. Even now this town
Is happier than the Greeks. I know the power
Of God is on me: but this little hour,
Wilt thou but listen, I will hold him back!
One love, one woman's beauty, o'er the track
Of hunted Helen, made their myriads fall.
And this their King so wise, who ruleth all,
What wrought he? Cast out Love that Hate might feed:
Gave to his brother his own child, his seed
Of gladness, that a woman fled, and fain
To fly for ever, should be turned again!
So the days waned, and armies on the shore
Of Simois stood and strove and died. Wherefore?
No man had moved their landmarks; none had shook
Their walled towns. – And they whom Ares took,
Had never seen their children: no wife came
With gentle arms to shroud the limbs of them
For burial, in a strange and angry earth
Laid dead. And there at home, the same long dearth:
Women that lonely died, and aged men
Waiting for sons that ne'er should turn again,
Nor know their graves, nor pour drink-offerings,
To still the unslaked dust. These be the things
The conquering Greek hath won!
But we – what pride,
What praise of men were sweeter? – fighting died
To save our people. And when war was red
Around us, friends upbore the gentle dead
Home, and dear women's heads about them wound
White shrouds, and here they sleep in the old ground
Beloved. And the rest long days fought on,
Dwelling with wives and children, not alone
And joyless, like these Greeks.
And Hector's woe,
What is it? He is gone, and all men know
His glory, and how true a heart he bore.
It is the gift the Greek hath brought! Of yore
Men saw him not, nor knew him. Yea, and even
Paris hath loved withal a child of heaven:
Else had his love but been as others are.
Would ye be wise, ye Cities, fly from war!
Yet if war come, there is a crown in death
For her that striveth well and perisheth
Unstained: to die in evil were the stain!
Therefore, O Mother, pity not thy slain,
Nor Troy, nor me, the bride. Thy direst foe
And mine by this my wooing is brought low.
I swear, had not Apollo made thee mad,
Not lightly hadst thou flung this shower of bad
Bodings, to speed my General o'er the seas!
'Fore God, the wisdoms and the greatnesses
Of seeming, are they hollow all, as things
Of naught? This son of Atreus, of all Kings
Most mighty, hath so bowed him to the love
Of this mad maid, and chooseth her above
All women! By the Gods, rude though I be,
I would not touch her hand!
Look thou; I see
Thy lips are blind, and whatso words they speak,
Praises of Troy or shamings of the Greek,
I cast to the four winds! Walk at my side
In peace! ... And heaven content him of his bride!
And thou shalt follow to Odysseus' host
When the word comes. 'Tis a wise queen thou go'st
To serve, and gentle: so the Ithacans say.
How fierce a slave O Heralds, Heralds! Yea,
Voices of Death; and mists are over them
Of dead men's anguish, like a diadem,
These weak abhorred things that serve the hate
Of Kings and peoples! ...
To Odysseus' gate
My mother goeth, say'st thou? Is God's word
As naught, to me in silence ministered,
That in this place she dies? ...
No more; no more!
Why should I speak the shame of them, before
They come? ... Little he knows, that hard-beset
Spirit, what deeps of woe await him yet;
Till all these tears of ours and harrowings
Of Troy, by his, shall be as golden things.
Ten years behind ten years athwart his way
Waiting: and home, lost and unfriended ...
Nay:
Why should Odesseus' labours vex my breath?
On; hasten; guide me to the house of Death,
To lie beside my bridegroom! ...
Thou Greek King,
Who deem'st thy fortune now so high a thing,
Thou dust of the earth, a lowlier bed I see,
In darkness, not in light, awaiting thee:
And with thee, with thee ... there, where yawneth plain
A rift of the hills, raging with winter rain,
Dead ... and out-cast ... and naked ... It is I
Beside my bridegroom: and the wild beasts cry,
And ravin on God's chosen!
O, ye wreaths!
Ye garlands of my God, whose love yet breathes
About me; shapes of joyance mystical;
Begone! I have forgot the festival,
Forgot the joy. Begone! I tear ye, so,
From off me! ... Out on the swift winds they go.
With flesh still clean I give them back to thee,
Still white, O God, O light that leadest me!
Where lies the galley? Whither shall I tread?
See that your watch be set, your sail be spread.
The wind comes quick! ... Three Powers – marks me thou! –
There be in Hell, and one walks with thee now!
Mother, farewell, and weep not! O my sweet
City, my earth-clad brethren, and thou great
Sire that begat us; but a space, ye Dead,
And I am with you: yea, with crowned head
I come, and shining from the fires that feed
On these that slay us now, and all their seed!
Aischylos: Agamemnon (Part II)
Woe, woe, alas! Earth, Mother Earth! and thou
Apollo, Apollo!
Peace! shriek not to the bright prophetic god,
Who will not brook the suppliance of woe.
Woe, woe, alas! Earth, Mother Earth! and thou
Apollo, Apollo!
Hark, with wild curse she calls anew on him,
Who stands far off and loathes the voice of wail.
Apollo, Apollo!
God of all ways, but only Death's to me,
Once and again, O thou, Destroyer named,
Thou hast destroyed me, thou, my love of old!
She grows presageful of her woes to come,
Slave tho' she be, instinct with prophecy.
Apollo, Apollo!
God of all ways, but only Death's to me,
O thou Apollo, thou Destroyer named!
What way hast led me, to what evil home?
Know'st thou it not? The home of Atreus' race:
Take these my words for sooth and ask no more.
Home cursed of God! Bear witness unto me,
Ye visioned woes within –
The blood-stained hands of them that smite their kin –
The strangling noose, and, spattered o'er
With human blood, the reeking floor!
How like a sleuth-hound questing on the track,
Keen-scented unto blood and death she hies!
Ah! can the ghostly guidance fail,
Whereby my prophet-soul is onwards led?
Look! for their flesh the spectre-children wail,
Their sodden limbs on which their father fed!
Long since we knew of thy prophetic fame, –
But for those deeds we seek no prophet's tongue –
God! 'tis another crime –
Worse than the storied woe of olden time,
Cureless, abhorred, that one is plotting here –
A shaming death, for those that should be dear
Alas! and far away, in foreign land,
He that should help doth stand!
I knew th' old tales, the city rings withal –
But now thy speech is dark, beyond my ken.
O wretch, O purpose fell!
Thou for thy wedded lord
The cleansing wave hast poured –
A treacherous welcome
How the sequel tell?
Too soon 'twill come, too soon, for now, even now,
She smites him, blow on blow!
Riddles beyond my rede – I peer in vain
Thro' the dim films that screen the prophecy.
God! a new sight! a net, a snare of hell,
Set by her hand – herself a snare more fell
A wedded wife, she slays her lord,
Helped by another hand!
Ye powers, whose hate
Of Atreus' home no blood can satiate,
Raise the wild cry above the sacrifice abhorred!
Why biddest thou some hend, I know not whom,
Shriek o'er the house? Thine is no cheering word.
Back to my heart in frozen fear I feel
My wanning life-blood run – The blood that round the wounding steel
Ebbs slow, as sinks life's parting sun –
Swift, swift and sure, some woe comes pressing on.
Away, away – keep him away –
The monarch of the herd, the pasture's pride,
Far from his mate! In treach'rous wrath,
Muffling his swarthy horns, with secret scathe
She gores his fenceless side! Hark! in the brimming bath,
The heavy plash – the dying cry –
Hark – in the laver – hark, he falls by treachery!
I read amiss dark sayings such as thine,
Yet something warns me that they tell of ill,
O dark prophetic speech, Ill tidings dost thou teach
Ever, to mortals here below! Ever some tale of awe and woe
Thro' all thy windings manifold Do we unriddle and unfold!
Ah well-a-day! the cup of agony,
Whereof I chant, foams with a draught for me
Ah lord, ah leader, thou hast led me here –
Was't but to die with thee whose doom is near?
Distraught thou art, divinely stirred,
And wailest for thyself a tuneless lay,
As piteous as the ceaseless tale
Wherewith the brown melodious bird
Doth ever Itys! Itys! wail,
Deep-bowered in sorrow, all its little life-time's day!
Ah for thy fate, O shrill-voiced nightingale!
Some solace for thy woes did Heaven afford,
Clothed thee with soft brown plumes, and life apart from wail –
But for my death is edged the double-biting sword!
What pangs are these, what fruitless pain,
Sent on thee from on high?
Thou chantest terror's frantic strain,
Yet in shrill measured melody.
How thus unerring canst thou sweep along
The prophet's path of boding song?
Woe, Paris, woe on thee! thy bridal joy
Was death and fire upon thy race and Troy!
And woe for thee, Scamander's flood!
Beside thy banks, O river fair,
I grew in tender nursing care
From childhood unto maidenhood!
Now not by thine, but by Cocytus' stream
And Acheron's banks shall ring my boding scream.
Too plain is all, too plain!
A child might read aright thy fateful strain.
Deep in my heart their piercing fang
Terror and sorrow set, the while I heard
That piteous, low, tender word,
Yet to mine ear and heart a crushing pang.
Woe for my city, woe for Ilion's fall!
Father, how oft with sanguine stain
Streamed on thine altar-stone the blood of cattle, slain
That heaven might guard our wall!
But all was shed in vain.
Low lie the shattered towers whereas they fell,
And I – ah burning heart! – shall soon lie low as well.
Of sorrow is thy song, of sorrow still!
Alas, what power of ill
Sits heavy on thy heart and bids thee tell
In tears of perfect moan thy deadly tale?
Some woe – I know not what – must close thy pious wail.
List! for no more the presage of my soul,
Bride-like, shall peer from its secluding veil;
But as the morning wind blows clear the east,
More bright shall blow the wind of prophecy,
And as against the low bright line of dawn
Heaves high and higher yet the rolling wave,
So in the clearing skies of prescience
Dawns on my soul a further, deadlier woe,
And I will speak, but in dark speech no more.
Bear witness, ye, and follow at my side –
I scent the trail of blood, shed long ago.
Within this house a choir abidingly
Chants in harsh unison the chant of ill;
Yea, and they drink, for more enhardened joy,
Man's blood for wine, and revel in the halls,
Departing never, Furies of the home.
They sit within, they chant the primal curse,
Each spitting hatred on that crime of old,
The brother's couch, the love incestuous
That brought forth hatred to the ravisher.
Say, is my speech or wild and erring now,
Or doth its arrow cleave the mark indeed?
They called me once, The prophetess of lies,
The wandering hag, the pest of every door –
Attest ye now, She knows in very sooth
The house's curse, the storied infamy.
Yet how should oath – how loyally soe'er
I swear it – aught avail thee? In good sooth,
My wonder meets thy claim: I stand amazed
That thou, a maiden born beyond the seas,
Dost as a native know and tell aright
Tales of a city of an alien tongue.
That is my power – a boon Apollo gave.
God though he were, yearning for mortal maid?
Ay! what seemed shame of old is shame no more.
Such finer sense suits not with slavery.
He strove to win me, panting for my love.
Came ye by compact unto bridal joys?
Nay – for I plighted troth, then foiled the god.
Wert thou already dowered with prescience?
Yea – prophetess to Troy of all her doom.
How left thee then Apollo's wrath unscathed?
I, false to him, seemed prophet false to all.
Not so – to us at least thy words seem sooth.
Woe for me, woe! Again the agony –
Dread pain that sees the future all too well
With ghastly preludes whirls and racks my soul.
Behold ye – yonder on the palace roof
The spectre-children sitting – look, such things
As dreams are made on, phantoms as of babes,
Horrible shadows, that a kinsman's hand
Hath marked with murder, and their arms are full –
A rueful burden – see, they hold them up,
The entrails upon which their father fed!
For this, for this, I say there plots revenge
A coward lion, couching in the lair –
Guarding the gate against my master's foot –
My master – mine – I bear the slave's yoke now,
And he, the lord of ships, who trod down Troy,
Knows not the fawning treachery of tongue
Of this thing false and dog-like – how her speech
Glozes and sleeks her purpose, till she win
By ill fate's favour the desired chance,
Moving like Ate to a secret end.
O aweless soul! the woman slays her lord –
Woman? what loathsome monster of the earth
Were fit comparison? The double snake –
Or Scylla, where she dwells, the seaman s bane,
Girt round about with rocks? some hag of hell,
Raving a truceless curse upon her kin?
Hark even now she cries exultingly
The vengeful cry that tells of battle turned –
How fain, forsooth, to greet her chief restored!
Nay then, believe me not: what skills belief
Or disbelief ? Fate works its will – and thou
Wilt see and say in ruth, Her tale was true.
Ah – 'tis Thyestes' feast on kindred flesh –
I guess her meaning and with horror thrill,
Hearing no shadow'd hint of th' o'er-true tale,
But its full hatefulness: yet, for the rest,
Far from the track I roam, and know no more.
'Tis Agamemnon's doom thou shalt behold.
Peace hapless woman, to thy boding words!
Far from my speech stands he who sains and saves.
Ay – were such a doom at hand – which God forbid!
Thou prayest idly – these move swift to slay.
What man prepares a deed of such despite?
Fool! thus to read amiss mine oracles.
Deviser and device are dark to me.
Dark! all too well I speak the Grecian tongue.
Ay – but in thine, as in Apollo's strains,
Familiar is the tongue, but dark the thought.
Ah, ah the fire! it waxes, nears me now –
Woe, woe for me, Apollo of the dawn!
Lo, how the woman-thing, the lioness
Couched with the wolf – her noble mate afar –
Will slay me, slave forlorn! Yea, like some witch,
She drugs the cup of wrath, that slays her lord,
With double death – his recompense for me!
Ay, 'tis for me, the prey he bore from Troy,
That she hath sworn his death, and edged the steel!
Ye wands, ye wreaths that cling around my neck,
Ye showed me prophetess yet scorned of all –
I stamp you into death, or e'er I die –
Down, to destruction! Thus I stand revenged –
Go, crown some other with a prophet's woe.
Lookl it is he, it is Apollo's self
Rending from me the prophet-robe he gave.
God! while I wore it yet, thou saw'st me mocked
There at my home by each malicious mouth –
To all and each, an undivided scorn.
The name alike and fate of witch and cheat –
Woe, poverty, and famine – all I bore;
And at this last the god hath brought me here
Into death's toils, and what his love had made,
His hate unmakes me now: and I shall stand
Not now before the altar of my home,
But me a slaughter-house and block of blood
Shall see hewn down, a reeking sacrifice.
Yet shall the gods have heed of me who die,
For by their will shall one requite my doom.
He, to avenge his father's blood outpoured,
Shall smite and slay with matricidal hand.
Ay, he shall come – tho' far away he roam,
A banished wanderer in a stranger's land –
To crown his kindred's edifice of ill,
Called home to vengeance by his father's fall:
Thus have the high gods sworn, and shall fulfil.
And now why mourn I, tarrying on earth,
Since first mine Ilion has found its fate
And I beheld, and those who won the wall
Pass to such issue as the gods ordain?
I too will pass and like them dare to die!
Portal of Hades, thus I bid thee hail!
Grant me one boon – a swift and mortal stroke,
That all unwrung by pain, with ebbing blood
Shed forth in quiet death, I close mine eyes.
Maid of mysterious woes, mysterious lore,
Long was thy prophecy: but if aright
Thou readest all thy fate, how, thus unscared,
Dost thou approach the altar of thy doom,
As fronts the knife some victim, heaven controlled?
Friends, there is no avoidance in delay.
Yet who delays the longest, his the gain.
The day is come – flight were small gain to me!
O brave endurance of a soul resolved!
That were ill praise, for those of happier doom.
All fame is happy, even famous death.
Ah sire, ah brethren, famous once were ye!
What fear is this that scares thee from the house?
Pah!
What is this cry? some dark despair of soul?
Pah! the house fumes with stench and spilth of blood.
How? 'tis the smell of household offerings.
'Tis rank as charnel-scent from open graves.
Thou canst not mean this scented Syrian nard?
Nay, let me pass within to cry aloud
The monarch's fate and mine – enough of life.
Ah friends!
Bear to me witness, since I fall in death,
That not as birds that shun the bush and scream
I moan in idle terror. This attest
When for my death's revenge another dies,
A woman for a woman, and a man
Falls, for a man ill-wedded to his curse.
Grant me this boon – the last before I die.
Brave to the last! I mourn thy doom foreseen.
Once more one utterance, but not of wail,
Though for my death – and then I speak no more.
Sun! thou whose beam I shall not see again,
To thee I cry, Let those whom vengeance calls
To slay their kindred's slayers, quit withal
The death of me, the slave, the fenceless prey.
Ah state of mortal man! in time of weal,
A line, a shadow! and if ill fate fall,
One wet sponge-sweep wipes all our trace away –
And this I deem less piteous, of the twain.
Copyright 2002 – 2009: Ulrike Böhm, all rights reserved.
