The Tragic Sense of Life

Electra. Wide-ruling Agamemnon, home from Troy triumphant, straightway is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. who usurps dominion of Mycenae. Agamemnon's son Orestes is spirited to safety by his tutor, but the dead king's daughter Electra is held in duress till she comes of age, and then is wed precautiously to a poor farmer--the sons of such a man, Aegisthus reasons, cannot hope to occupy a throne, and therefore would not dare to kill him. Vain precautions. Orestes returns secretly and at Electra's furious insistence, slaughters the usurper and his evil bride. The gods approve the murder of the tyrant, but for the act of matricide the Furies fall upon Orestes and drive him into exile.

For three millennia, men have been fascinated by this grisly tale. Stesichorus recorded it, and Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides all found in it a theme for tragedy. Voltaire reworked the theme in Oreste, and in Mourning Becomes Electra Eugene O'Neill adapted it to the American scene. In this noble, ceremonious, and sometimes serenely beautiful film. Greek Director Michael Cacoyannis (Stella) has attempted an adaptation of Euripides' Electra. Up to a point, the attempt excitingly succeeds. The performers, most notably Irene Papas, who interprets Electra, move with the dignity of figures in a ritual, speak with a largeness suggesting incantation. And the settings--a bucolic vale in Attica, the rude stump of the great palace at Mycenae--breathe a legendary grandeur.

But somehow it all seems a bit unreal, a bit irrelevant; and in a sense it is--in a sense Greek tragedy is dead and can never actually be brought to life. The tragic sense of life is much too primitive a philosophy for individuals who experience God as love and death as rebirth. On the other hand, it is altogether too advanced a concept for people who take man as the measure of all things.

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