Robert Kennedy Recites from Agamemnon - …

1 RRoobbeerrtt KKeennnneeddyy RReecciitteess ffrroomm AAggaammeemmnnoonnHis plane was in the airwith tentative wordIt landed in Indianapoliswhere he found out for certainHe was making a campaign stopThe Indiana primary was a few weeks aheadHe drove to the rallyabout a 1000 supporterswho hadn t yet heard the newsRFK then delivered a spontaneous encomiumin praise of Martin Luther Kingto a stunned audiencewhich included these lines: My favorite poet was AeschylusHe wrote In our sleeppainwhich cannot forgetfallsdrop by drop upon the heartuntilin our own despairagainst our willcomes wisdomthrough the awful grace of God He d first read those wordsa few months after Dallaswhen Jacqueline Kennedy had shown him Edith Hamilton sThe Greek WayHe read it carefully, also Hamilton s Three Greek King s death alert Robert Kennedy to the dangerout there in the gun-batty darkness?

2 Or did it make him more quietly fatalistic in the walled words of GreeceI decided to take a look at the ancient textwhich comes in the midst of a 223-line chantnear the beginning of the playA chorus of elderly men by the palacefills in the audienceon the Trojan wars& the karmic knots & curse-based calamitiesthat were soon to befall Agamemnonand the Trojan princess Cassandrawhose boat was about to dock at the end of the long bay near Argos on the chorus approaches Klytemnestrato learn about the news, given by a signal-firethat Troy had the original Greekthe lines that Kennedy spokeare mainly delivered in cretics and iambics plus one example of the meter known asthe dochmiac, used for times of high emotion& a spondee!

3 AAggaammeemmnnoonnlines 176-183 What ARE these vowels and consonants?The Greek is very very difficultAhh, Robert Kennedy !what a thorny cluster of linesthe bard has madehis Argive elders chant!In his translation of AgamemnonRobert Lowell elides together some 23 lines(including those the grief-numbed Kennedy spoke)into three:Glory to Zeus, whatever he is:he cut off the testicles of his own father,and taught us dominion comes from pain!And Ted Hughes in his translation does lines 176-183 as follows:(as best I can determine)

4 The truthHas to be melted out of our stubborn livesBy speaks the truth,Nothing tells us how things really are,Nothing forces us to knowWhat we do not want to knowExcept this is how the gods declare their comes with nearly as true to gnarly Aeschylusas poet who visitsthe orginal chorusruns into the wall-like obstinance of geniusYou have to pound it verb by verb, and image by imageinto your pain-hardened brainlandBut even after a long and pounding studyhow can a bard translate these lineswith their cretics, iambs and dochmiacsin the starkness of current strife & war?

5 (& did the medieval copyistsget all the verbs and endings exact?)I decided to translate a larger section of the chorusbeginning a few lines before theones Kennedy chanted that stunned afternoonto try to understand:Oh Zeus! whoever he is!(if this to him is a pleasingname to be called)This is how I name himand I am unable to come up with any otherwhen I ponder it fully except Zeus, and so it s meet tohurl this follyful ideaout of my once was greatteeming with war-hungershall not be said to have ever been alive,while he that later grew as a conqueror of landhas come and goneBut someone who sound-mindedly shoutsvictory chants to Zeus, he shall build a wisdom of the All for Zeus, by leading mortals to think things over sets them on a useful road.

6 Knowledge comes from sufferingin magisterial mightiness! It drip drip drips in sleep in front of the heart the relentless memory-pain so that even against our willa wisdom of soul comes upon us! thanks to the violent graceof our divinitiesin their sacred throne-place of rule(their ) lines 160-183Be careful, o Robert KennedyPlease do not venture forthwith the scars of Aeschylusmaking you heedless of the fatal anger Edward Sanders