that we must suffer, suffer into truth.
We cannot sleep, and drop by drop at the heart
the pain of pain remembered comes again
and we resist.
Aeschylus, “Agamemnon”
My first exposure to Greek tragedy was traumatic in itself. For some reason, my brilliant literature-teaching mother decided to tell me the entire uncensored story of Oedipus Rex when I was eight years old as a warning to be careful of sharp objects that might poke out my eyes. Thanks, mama!
I slugged through the Theban plays in high school, making my requisite remarks and writing the assigned essays, only to emerge with the belief that the real tragedy was in making me read about such a messed-up family. I thought: thank goodness my real family was nothing like these barbaric ancient Greeks! And then, my senior year of high school, a realization dawned on me.
Aeschylus, Euripides, and even Sophocles knew that the stories they told were archaic and disturbing. They knew that their stories were myths even to the original audience. Yet there was something greater to be found in them than simply a day of entertainment at the theater. Aristotle wrote in his Poetics that theater was a way to purge pity and fear from the audience, imagining theater as a cathartic experience. The only reason I had not realized this genius of Greek tragedy was that I had been looking at it all wrong. I had asked what the plays had to do with me rather than what I had to do with the plays.
The sophistication of Greek tragedy and its treatment of pain and trauma is astounding. From a chilling portrayal of post-traumatic stress in the Ajax, to haunting intergenerational trauma played as a literal curse in the Oresteia, to an unromanticized experience of so many silenced women in the Trojan Women, I firmly believe that there is a voice for all to be found in the ancient texts. To participate in reading and watching Greek tragedy is to continue to give a voice to those who have been silenced. We as the audience feel seen, validated, and healed by the acknowledgment of our own pain and the realization that we are not alone.
Greek tragedy, of course, cannot be taken literally if it is to be relatable. Even the original audience knew that. The stories brought to life through theater were not new to the ancient Greeks; they did not go to the theater the way we might go to see a new movie. They went to see how an old story would be told and retold, how the facts of a myth would be elaborated upon in terms of human psychology. They submitted to such storytelling to hear the speeches, to feel their own pain acknowledged through words, and to leave with the knowledge that they were not alone. The knowledge that the struggle they had was one common with the heroes of old – and that there was dignity and honor in their own life because of it.
Greek tragedy prefigures the power of the classics. They take essential moments of the human experience – good and bad – and reflect them back to us as unavoidable yet conquerable. They show that we are not alone, we are not silenced, and we are not the first to overcome our struggle. They provide strength, give voice to the voiceless, and stand as established pillars of human nature and the human experience. Through the dramatization of the old stories, new ones are given legitimacy, and by meditating on the words of the past, we may find words for the present.
