The Novel by James A. Michener

Author:James A. Michener [Michener, James A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804151559
Publisher: Random House LLC
Published: 2014-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

Men acquire wisdom in two ways: by patient accumulation and analysis of the evidence available and by epiphanies that in an instant illuminate continents and centuries. My two-week excursion from Rome to Athens with Devlan was an example of the first sort; what happened on the fifteenth day was a stunning example of the second.

Devlan saw on a bulletin board in the office where he went to cash traveler’s checks that in the theater of Herodes Atticus, near the Acropolis, a touring German company had been invited by the Greek Cultural Commission to give an open-air performance of Agamemnon, by Aeschylus, first performed in Athens in 458 B.C. The poster explained that the play would be given in German, but with Greek flutists and drummers to accompany the chorus. Without consulting me, Devlan purchased two of the best seats and hurried back to inform me of our good luck in being able to see one of the world’s great tragedies in its proper setting.

As soon as I heard the news, at which I rejoiced, I reacted as Devlan must have expected: ‘Where can I get a copy of the play to read?’

‘I told you. It’s to be in German. You’ll understand every word and I won’t.’ But he had carried with him a book that he valued, an American volume, handsomely printed, which contained in modern translation every tragedy that has come down to us from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Since each of the dramatists had composed and put on the stage nearly a hundred plays, for a publishing house to boast ‘the complete Greek drama’ seemed arrogant until one realized that only a handful of tragedies by each of the writers had survived: seven by Aeschylus, seven also by Sophocles, nineteen by Euripides, with scattered parchments containing references by name only to well over a hundred.

Devlan, who knew the plays well, especially the great trilogy of which Agamemnon was the opening part, gladly surrendered the treasured book that had accompanied him to Greece on three previous occasions, and I spent the afternoon reading and memorizing the characters I was about to see: ‘Agamemnon, the king of kings; Clytemnestra, his adulterous wife; Aegisthus, the miserable cousin of the king, who has become the lover of Clytemnestra during the King’s long absence at the Trojan War; and Cassandra, the beautiful doomed prophetess, daughter of Priam, the defeated king of Troy, and brought back as Agamemnon’s mistress.’

Well before the time to leave for the short drive to the theater, I returned the anthology to Devlan: ‘I’m ready,’ and off we went to hear the German troupe.

As night settled over the hills in which the action of the tragedy might have taken place more than two thousand years before, the audience, composed mainly of tourists eager to see a Greek play in such surroundings, watched as the sentinel crawled out upon the roof of the palace, and lay prostrate but hunched forward on his elbows. As the sky darkened and stage lights came

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