Part 7 (1/2)

_El._ Alas, Pylades! Why dost thou not answer?

_Or._. Speak! What hath been?

_Pyl._ Slain--

_Or._ And by whose hand?

_Pyl._ Come!

_El._ (_To_ ORESTES.) Thou slewest her!

_Or._ I parricide?

_Pyl._ Unknowing Thou plungedst in her heart thy sword, as blind With 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 me To life and matricide? Give me my sword!

My sword! O fury! Where am I? What is it That 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!

IV

Alfieri himself wrote a critical comment on each of his tragedies, discussing their qualities and the question of their failure or success dispa.s.sionately 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 pa.s.sion, than an implacable revenge; but the pa.s.sion of revenge (though very strong by nature), having become greatly enfeebled among civilized peoples, is regarded as a vile pa.s.sion, 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 circ.u.mstances 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, enn.o.bles 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 pa.s.sion 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 att.i.tudes and expression.