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Elektra: Sophokles, Von Hofmannsthal, Strauss

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

Michael Ewans
Michael Ewans*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle, N.S.W.
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Extract

The Romantics usually placed originality at a high premium, downplaying or disguising wherever possible their debts of theme and form to previous literature. But in other periods the ideal of imitation, of re-creating for the new poet's own generation the essence of a great drama from the past, has been more highly regarded; and where the Greek tragedians are the source on which the more modern playwright draws, the results are always of interest, whether they be a deliberate narrowing from the scope of the original to a precise contemporary purpose such as Anouilh's Antigone, or a complex reshaping like Racine's Phèdre, which places the values of Louis XIV's France in a stimulating dialogue with the tragic vision of the Greeks.

In this essay on the relationship between the Elektra of Richard Strauss and that of Sophokles, the idea of dialogue is central. The relationship of Hofmannsthal's Elektra to Sophokles' has been treated by only a handful of writers; only one of these (Hans-Joachim Newiger) exhibits a knowledge of Greek and a familiarity with the range of twentieth century Sophoklean scholarship; and the relationship with Sophokles discussed in these works is always that of Hofmannsthal's play, never that of Strauss's opera.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , 1984 , pp. 135 - 154
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1984

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References

1. A full bibliography may be found in Newiger, H.-J., ‘Hofmannsthals Elektra und die griechische Tragödie’, Arcadia 4 (1969CrossRefGoogle Scholar), 138ff., nn.2 and 12.

2. Translations from Sophokles follow the text edited by R. Dawe (Leipzig 1975). Citations from the opera are referenced by the rehearsal figures of the orchestral and vocal scores published by Boosey and Hawkes. (Note that Strauss echoed the structure of Hofmannsthal’s drama by beginning a new sequence of rehearsal figures with la at the half-way point, the re-entry of Chrysothemis.) The translations from both works are my own.

3. The cartoon is reproduced (unfortunately without a source credit) on p.6 of the booklet accompanying the Decca recording of 1967 (SET 354–5). This, the only complete recording of Elektra, has Solti conducting, with Nilsson, Resnik and Collier in the three leading roles—and must be regarded as virtually definitive.

4. Geschichte der griechische Literatur III (Munchen 1940), 501Google Scholar. Cf. Newiger (n.l above), 138f.

5. This interpretation was pursued to the fullest extent by Harry Kupfer, in his 1977 and 1978 productions for Netherlands Opera and the Welsh National Opera. See the interview in the programme booklet for the WNO production.

6. E.g. von Hofmannsthal, Hugo, Briefe 1909–09 (Wien 1937), 127Google Scholar.

7. Cf. Newiger (n.l above), 149.

8. Cited by Hofmannsthal, at Aufzeichnungen (Frankfurt 1959), 131Google Scholar.

9. Hofmannsthal (n.6 above), 383f. Cf. Mueller, M., Children of Oedipus (Toronto 1980Google Scholar), 93f.

10. Goethe, Iphigenie auf Tauris II.i.1030.

11. English version in vols. 1–2 of Ashton Ellis, W. (tr.), Richard Wagner’s Prose Works (London 1892-9Google Scholar). A discussion of the main ideas which Wagner developed from his consideration of Greek tragedy appears in chapter two of my book, Wagner and Aeschylus: the ‘Ring’ and the ‘Oresteia’ (London 1982Google Scholar).

12. Cf. e.g. Ellis (n.ll above), i.153–68.

13. Apollo: ibid. 32. Dionysos: ibid. 33.

14. Cf. Ewans (n.ll above) passim; on the Athena/Brünnhilde contrast, see 226–33 and 245–54.

15. The influence of Wagner on Nietzsche is not given adequate recognition by M. Silk and Stern, J.P. in their exhaustive exposition, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge 1981Google Scholar).

16. From paragraph XXIV, cited in the translation by F. Gollfing (New York 1956).

17. The documents of the controversy are collected in Gründer, K. (ed.), Der Streit über Nietzsches ‘Geburt der Tragödie’ (Hildesheim 1969Google Scholar).

18. A strange choice for idealists, since Thucydides clearly re-created the speech for posterity (2.35–46) at least in part as an ironic example of that tendency to overreach themselves which he diagnosed earlier as a basic part of the Athenian character (1.70.2–3). Many of Perikles’ statements about the achievements of Athens would, if actually stated, have been barely tolerable to Greeks from any other polis; cf. especially chapter 37 passim, and 40.4–41.1. It is surely no accident that the very next event which the historian chronicles after this self-celebratory speech is the plague of 430, which fatally undermined Perikles’ strategy for the war and began, in Thucydides’ judgement (2.65), the social and moral disintegration which eventually led to the defeat of Athens.

19. Rohde, Erwin, Psyche (reprint Darmstadt 1961Google ScholarPubMed).

20. Cf. esp. Snell, Bruno, Die Entdeckung des Geistes 4 (Göttingen 1975Google Scholar) and Dodds, E.R., The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951Google Scholar).

21. Aufzeichnungen 131; cf. Newiger (n.l above), 150.

22. Aristophanes, Frogs 82; cf. Plato, Republic 329b-f.

23. The teleological view is implicit even in Nietzsche’s book. It ignores salient facts about our knowledge of Greek tragedy; in particular, that Sophokles died after Euripides and that most—possibly even all—of his surviving plays were composed after the first surviving play of Euripides (Alkestis, 438 B.C.). Although Sophokles was born much earlier and competed successfully in his youth against Aischylos, as far as we are concerned Euripides is effectively a younger contemporary of Sophokles.

24. Cf. e.g. Gellie, G.H., Sophocles: A Reading (Melbourne 1972Google Scholar), Winnington-Ingram, R.P., Sophocles: An Interpretation (Cambridge 1980CrossRefGoogle Scholar) and Segal, C.P., Tragedy and Civilisation (Cambridge, Mass., 1981Google Scholar), all with extensive bibliography.

25. Jebb as vol. 6 (Cambridge 1894), Kamerbeek as vol. 5 (Leiden 1974).

26. Cf. 261ff., 310ff., 328ff., 516ff.

27. For example, when Homer’s Odysseus dons rags and pretends to be a beggar, he is treated as the lowest of the low (and not merely by the suitors) even though the Ithakans accept all the stories he tells, in which he states that he was once an agathos. His claim to have once been an agathos does not endow him with nobility now; for the Greeks, the outward condition is all. The extreme contrast is with Hofmannsthal’s New Testament-inspired Fifth Maid, for whom the very fact that Elektra is in rags is itself the guarantee of her (to the modern dramatist, inner) nobility (Strauss Elektra 16ff.).

28. 147aff.; cf. 45. Strauss demanded additional lines from Hofmannsthal to allow a full lyrical and symphonic development of this theme at the moment when Elektra has recognised Orest: Correspondence between Strauss and Hofmannsthal, Eng. tr. (London 1951Google Scholar), 16f.

29. Cf. e.g. Aristophanes Clouds 889ff. (the argument between Right and Wrong); Euripides Hekabe (passim); Thucydides (also passim, but note especially the Mytilenean debate in Book 3 and the Melian Dialogue, 5.84ff.); and Plato’s depiction of Kallikles (in Gorgias) and Thrasymachos (in Republic 336b-354b).

30. Chrysothemis’ name is taken from Homer (Iliad 9.145, 287); but there she is nothing more than a name.

31. Against the post-Romantic tradition which values Elektra’s defiance more than Chrysothemis’ expediency, see Adkins’, A.W.H. exposition of the values of the period in Merit and Responsibility (Oxford 1960Google Scholar), chapters 9–13.

32. Cf. the essays ‘The Retreat from the Word’ and ‘Silence and the Poet’ in Steiner, G., Language and Silence (London 1967Google Scholar).

33. That Aigisthos is inferior is Elektra’s view—but not the audience’s. When he actually appears, Aigisthos in Sophokles (as opposed to Aischylos) has nothing ignoble about him. In the opera he is a development of the Aischylean stereotype; Hofmannsthal and Strauss make him into a pompous neurotic to assist the audience towards feeling that his death is unequivocally right (as it is in the Libation-Bearers [989f.], but not in Sophokles).

34. The poet keeps Elektra’s sexuality as a theme in reserve for the deeper use later on—in the recognition scene, 155aff.

35. The concept that a son’s infantile love for his mother is a basic part of human sexuality was first formulated by Freud in 1897 (Wollheim, R., Freud [London 1971], 119Google Scholar); Freud first termed it the Oedipus complex in 1910 (Standard Edition 11 [London 1957], 171Google ScholarPubMed). In a 1922 article, Freud rejected the use of the term ‘Elektra complex’ for the feminine Oedipus complex (SE 18 [London 1955], 155Google ScholarPubMed); but by then it had already gained popularity (doubtless in part thanks to the opera).

36. Winnington-Ingram (n.24 above), 236; cf. Segal (n.24 above), 281. I read the speech as a subtle critique of sophistic rhetoric, to be set alongside the writings cited in n.29 above.

37. Segal (n.24 above), 282.

38. Cf. Kells, J. (ed.), Sophocles’ Electra (Cambridge 1973Google Scholar), 11f.

39. Cf. e.g. Athena at Aias 79.

40. Cf. e.g. Thucydides 2.67.4.

41. Pace Winnington-Ingram (n.24 above), 226.

42. A messenger-speech would have been incongruous in the anti-rhetorical style of Hofmannsthal’s play; and if there had been one, Strauss would undoubtedly have cut it from the opera.

43. But cf. Sophokles 1177; as in the other instances noted earlier (above, 142f.), Hofmannsthal’s most important innovation has a slight, but definite, basis in the original Sophokles.

44. Gellie (n.24 above), 118.

45. This theme is explored by Segal (n.24 above), 262–67. Cf. Newiger (n.l above), 156 (on Hofmannsthal). Segal should perhaps have made more of the prologue; Sophokles’ play is framed by two scenes dominated by Orestes, and he exhibits the same complacency in the last as in the first.

46. This aspect is explored further in Corrigan, R., ‘Character as Destiny in Hofmannsthal’s Electra’, Modern Drama 1–2 (1958-60), 17–28Google Scholar.

47. Cf. Newiger (n.l above), 150f., and Hamburger, M. (ed.), H. von Hofmannsthal: Selected Plays and Libretti (New York 1954), xxv–xxxiGoogle Scholar.

48. Quoted by Hamburger (n.47 above), xxvii.

49. Strauss/Hofmannsthal Correspondence (n.28 above), 18–22.

50. I am convinced that Strauss was influenced, in his musical conception of Elektra, by the ruins of Mykenai and Tiryns, whose excavation Schliemann had begun in 1874. Almost all designers of the opera have (rightly) felt that the music was conceived with the massive blocks of stone and the oppressive portals of these fortresses in the composer’s mind. (Cf. Mann, W., Richard Strauss: A Cntical Study of the Operas [London 1964], 74Google Scholar). The visual influences on Strauss are a large theme, which I intended to pursue elsewhere.

51. In addition to the role played in the final bars by the motif formed from Agamemnon’s name, note also the formidable combination of Agamemnon-related motifs in Elektra’s dance. Then, in the bars just before she falls, the brass fanfares, which in her initial monologue accompanied the coming to her of the ghost of Agamemnon (42–44), return to take Elektra’s life from her (260a-261a).

52. Kells (n.38 above), 1–12, and his commentary, passim.

53. Cf. Trilling, L., ‘Freud and Literature’, in The Liberal Imagination (London 1951), 34Google Scholar.

54. Sheppard, J.T., in CR 41 (1927), 2–9Google Scholar. The main authors who revive Sheppard’s approach are Kells (n.38 above), Gellie, Winnington-Ingram and Segal (n.24 above).

55. In English cf. e.g. del Mar, N., Richard Strauss (3 vols, London 1962-72Google Scholar), Mann (n.50 above), and the anonymous essay in the booklet accompanying the Decca recording.