Poem by Oksana Zabuzhko
Translated from Ukrainian by Lisa Sapinkopf
You're not really a woman.*
Agamemnon's coming home.
He's climbing the stairs, the sun
Is behind him, he's clanging with brass
Like a war-bloated idol, the leather thongs
Of his armour are squeaking.
Take it off, I don't want it!
I don't want the animal smell of his mouth,
Or his hands with their black-rimmed nails -- those hands
Rip off my clothes as if I were some corpse on a battlefield,
And under his nails the flakes
And fuzz from the clothes and hair of the slain are probably still rotting.
Maybe I'm not really a woman.
I don't want to scream and squirm with mortal pleasure,
Pierced by that gleaming weapon of his,
Soaked in gobs of sweat stinking
Of his regal power, trapped under his body
Trickling its sticky death-juices on me; I hate
The high-pitched bitch's whimper
That will escape my throat;
I hate the wave of languor that will embrace me
And the doughy, pitted neck above me
When I open my eyes. O son of Atreus!
That's how Troy, outstretched, writhed under you.
Your arrows target anything alive, elastic, quick --
Is it the doe? Briseis? or hot female blood
Flowing down thighs that makes you the victor,
Able to draw blood from a body like a sinless man water from a stone?
It wasn't lust or beastliness, but bestiality
To have conquered Klytemnestra and the doe and Cassandra, Mycenae,
and Troy.
Maybe I'm not really a woman.
Agamemnon's coming home, and the shadows smelling of darkness and
sweat are growing longer.
I'm cold.
I'm shaking from the realization: killing is also a job!
Spinning, weaving,
**[Unweaving (like that woman from Ithaca), rubbing Aegisthus' rosy body
(what does he have to do with this?)
With soothing oil --
These are pleasures for hands,] occupation for hands -- [but not those
of a queen.
They're] no more noble [, for instance,] than fingering pockmarks.
[It would be a hundred times better to run off with some pilgrims,
Say, to Delphi, and become a priestess,
To belong at every feast to every passing cripple,
To give myself up blindly to that faceless force
Without malevolence
And omnipresent -- shifting, coursing, unseen . . .]
Oh, how cold I am!
You're climbing the stairs, backlit by the sun --
Oh godlike!
More godlike, more hateful, more compelling
Is your stride [up the stairs (each step weighs
One year of the Trojan war)] -- oh, come closer, closer . . .
Stiff with excitement,
Half-blinded by the black and white -- this graph of shadows, patches of sun on the marble tiles
--
I'm keeping in my sight, with the whole strength of my imagination,
Just this one small room
Where the curtain's like burst crimson: when you step behind it,
With a single lordly gesture
Of my hand, steady with the cold, obedient metal,
I'll outdo everything you have accomplished,
I'll establish a new kingdom,
A world without Agamemnon.
* In the version by the Ukrainian poet and playwright, Lesia Ukrainka
(1871-1913), Cassandra speaks these words to Klytemnestra when they
find themselves face to face on the threshold of the palace of
Mycenae, upon Agamemnon's return.
** all the lines in [ ] have been cut in this version of the setting.
Klytemnestra was commissioned for CONTINUUM by W. Howard Hoffman and is dedicated with profound affection to my dear friend Kenneth Hanlon, who has made my life in Las Vegas a lot more interesting than it otherwise would have been.
Klytemnestra is an operatic concert aria. It is an aria of farewell. It is a very womanly soliloquy of attraction-repulsion towards a man once much loved and now much hated, once much desired and now she desires his death. It is a soliloquy of Klytemnestra just before she, with the conniving of her paramour Aegisthus, murders the King and his most recent consort Cassandra.
When Cheryl Seltzer and Joel Sachs suggested that I write a new piece for the core ensemble of CONTINUUM (clarinet, violin and piano 4-hands) that would utilize voice. Originally, I decided to set Bohdan Boychuk's wonderful "Three Dimensional Love", but, since CONTINUUM most often works with a female voice, and Boychuk's wonderful cycle is very gender-specific in its male point of view, I turned towards Oksana Zabuzhko's "Klytemnestra". I first read it in her collection of poems "Autostop", and was immensely impressed by its raw power, melodramatic structure and intense theatricality. Here was a voice that was begging to be heard on a stage. After reading Lisa Sapinkopf's translation, I decided on this particular poem, since I wanted to have a bilingual setting from the beginning (Ukrainian and English). This particular Klytemnestra is a much more sympathetic character than traditionally pictured. For me, a defining factor as a subtext to the poem, but never really mentioned there, is the sacrifice by Agamemnon of their daughter Iphigenia prior to his leaving for Troy. Her present anger, for me, has its origin in that terrible act. Also fascinating for me were Klytemnestra's highly ambivalent feelings towards Agamemnon: her present single-minded hatred of Agamemnon was being hampered by her memories, which reeked of sensual pleasure. What was now despised was once, clearly, loved. This gave me the authority to structure the aria as a gradual unfolding: from initial hesitation, full of fear and trepidation, to the final "... world without Agamemnon". However, to reach that state, she must, nevertheless, become like Agamemnon: by slaughtering the king and his newest consort, she must assume the mantle of the slain king.
As I was writing the work, I conceived of two dramatic gestures, which identify the two sections of it. Klytemnestra begins singing in a kind of fetal position -- slowly rising out of her inner conflicts, becoming the Klytemnestra that we know. The second part begins with the words " You're climbing the stairs, back lit by the sun -- Oh godlike!" As she begins this section, Klytemnestra is preparing the net that will be thrown over Agamemnon, while he was bathing, to immobilize him before she and Aegistus kill him with a sword. Klytemnestra herself, then, kills Cassandra. Agamemnon is a warrior of mythic proportions. They have only one chance to act. This is the crucial moment, the point of no return, when she begins to prepare the instrument of capture - the net. The words of this section are set as if to some sort of lullaby/pavane which, for me, is grounded in her memory of Iphigenia. By the end of the aria "a world without Agamemnon", her resolve is fully formed. This is the heart of the matter.
The music is dominated, as is the poem, by the presence of Agamemnon. It haunts the whole aria. The motive of Agamemnon, first heard in the very beginning in the clarinet, is joined to Klytemnestra's memory of her once potent love. This motive, heard in the violin in the same first measure, is the basis of the arioso "I don't want the animal smell of his mouth", where the two feelings are most clearly spelled out. The first word and the last word of the poem are Agamemnon (in the original Ukrainian, which the English translation honors). This first word sung by Klytemnestra is set to the same pitches as those used by Richard Strauss in "Electra". For me, that Straussian motive has become a cultural trope, as a folk-song motive can be, completely identifiable. It, thus, becomes a kind of emotional cantus-firmus of character identification. It galvanizes Klytemnestra into eloquent, emotional frenzy; it also begins the transformation of Klytemnestra into a kind of Agamemnon. Throughout the aria this motive undergoes various transformations. At the culmination of the middle section "It wasn't lust or beastliness, but bestiality/ To have conquered Klytemnestra and the doe and Cassandra..." the name Klytemnestra is set to the same motive as that of Agamemnon. The circle is completed.