Page 17 - GALIET MUSIC´S METAPHOR: The House of Atreus IV

Despite minor imperfections, the thoughtful and provocative stage production of “The House of Atreus” vibrantly resonates and reflects the sun of its Greek Oresteia leaving us to ponder on the microcosmic and macrocosmic ramifications of justice (dike). Just as in ancient Greece the Furies represented blood feud, Athena trial by jury, and Apollo purification rites, humanity continues to experience its own furies, its own trials, its own purification rites. Our awe, at events and human nature, remains profound, sad and silent for the Oresteia is logos that expands, vast as the sea, reaching our shores and touching us deeply as if we had found a missing ostrakon or a piece of ourselves forever lost in the abyss of time. This is the gift and greatness of Aeschylean tragedy: it is deeply human 3⁄4 Dionysian and Apollonian 3⁄4 it mirrors our contemporary tensions, struggles and contradictions as much as it mirrored classical Athens in its tense and intense tripartite transitions from the rule of tribal society to the rule of landed aristocracy to the rule of democracy. We feel we can almost touch Aeschylus who 2500 years ago dreamed our dreams, that the spirit of the suffering man would be redeemed into joy and where Zeus, the Fates and the Furies might be finally reconciled. This is the sacred logos of tragedy that drowns in our soul. Yet, it is also in Aeschylean silences that the nostos for the sacred logos speaks to us with magniloquence. The musical-textual logos sings to us through the dissonant ebb so that we may hear it, revel in it, take part in it and drown in it. It sings to us so that we may feel its cadences, its harmonies and disharmonies tugging at our very centres. The logos becomes manifest “in between” the alternations of drums and lyre, speech and lyrics where presence becomes the soul of tragedy. That archetypal soul in all of us that mirrors the tensions between our Apollonian and Dionysian wills12,
12 Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. Trans. Clifton P. Fadiman. New York: Dover Publications, 1995.
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