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Sophokles' Elektra has yielded perhaps the most controversial interpretations of any of the ancient Greek tragedies, except Euripides' Bacchae.16 The interpretations range from seeing in Sophokles an endorsement of the vengeance depicted as in Homer, to seeing the brother and sister as an avenging duo, monsters who effect a mixture of matricide and merriment.17 Many modern interpretations see Elektra as a character between these extremes: she represents both the civilized incentives leading to justice and of the darker drives of human nature which actually delights in murder.18 This is also the "structuralist" position, which sets up and sometimes synthesizes polar opposites in an uneasy equilibrium. |
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My view of Elektra, both in Sophokles and Strauss, is more positive than negative. Strauss and Hofmannsthal distill and vary the information about Elektra so that she appears truly heroic. Like other Sophoklean heroes, she has alienating characteristics and commits anti-social acts, but nevertheless achieves the acme of human fulfillment through passion.19 We never like this Sophoklean heroine, but we must admire her. She is a late romantic superwoman modelled on the heroic figures of Victor Hugo, Ibsen and Nietzsche. |
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16 The following is a typical reaction towards this play: "Sophokles' Elektra has posed innumerable problems for critics and remains the Sophoklean play that most resists a standard or 'canonical' reading," Kitzinger (1991) 298. Kitzinger concentrates primarily on the play's dramatic necessity, partially effected by the "speech act" of the extended lie about Orestes' death. She sees the play as a conflict between logos and ergon ending negatively "in an all too telling silence," (1991) 327. The Strauss/Hofmannsthal opera eliminates the speech by the Paidagogos in favor of an ariatic exchange between Orestes and Elektra. The "Trugrede" becomes "Singspiel,'' culminating in a heroic ergon. |
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17 For the "Homeric," positive interpretation see e.g., Whitman (1951); Adams (1957); Linforth (1963); for the negative response, see Kells, saying of Sophokles' Elektra, "The play is a continuous exercise in dramatic irony," and, "Electra" is "herself a Fury . . . straining to catch her mother's dying cries, hissing in her venom (1410f), gloating in hideous triumph" (1973) 11. See also Sheppard (1918), (1927a) and (1927b). Murray's view is that this drama shows a "combination of matricide and good spirits" (1914) II.vi Introduction to Electra. For a general bibliography on the varying positions, see Segal (1981) 461, n.3. Another good summary of positions which refutes the interpretation of the play as ironic, and is thus critical of what Orestes and Elektra do, is Szlezak (1981). He points out that R. Dawe athetized the last words by Orestes and the chorus which endorse the act of killing transgressors, and the freedom gained thereby (1981) 4. He claims that Sophokles in this play shows Orestes and Elektra "helping friends and harming enemies" according to the ancient tradition. Grene says, "The Electra is perhaps the best-constructed and most unpleasant play that Sophocles wrote," (1992) II. 336. |
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18 See Segal (1981). For a variation of this interpretation, see also Blundell (1989) 183, and the interesting chapter by Winnington-Ingram (1980) 217247. |
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19 This is the hero so well described by Knox (1966) 56: "The thing that distinguishes nearly all of them is their irreconcilable temper: the greatness of their passion brought them into conflict with men and even with the gods, and rather than accept the slightest diminution of that high esteem their pride demanded, they were ready to kill and die." |
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