Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me. Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time.

Come here, let me share a bit of wisdom with you. Have you given much thought to our mortal condition? Probably not. Why would you? Well, listen. All mortals owe a debt to death. There's no one alive who can say if he will be tomorrow. Our fate moves invisibly! A mystery. No one can teach it, no one can grasp it. Accept this! Cheer up! Have a drink! But don't forget Aphrodite--that's one sweet goddess. You can let the rest go. Am I making sense? I think so. How about a drink. Put on a garland. I'm sure the happy splash of wine will cure your mood. We're all mortal you know. Think mortal. Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life, it's just catastrophe.

Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you—may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn’t that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours.

Theseus: Stop. Give me your hand. I am your friend. Herakles: I fear to stain your clothes with blood. Theseus: Stain them, I don't care.

Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

Now every mortal has pain and sweat is constant, but if there is anything dearer than being alive, it's dark to me. We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth-- we call it life. We know no other. The underworld's a blank and all the rest just fantasy.

I went mad, a god hurt me, I fell.

Grief and rage--you need to contain that, to put a frame around it, where it can play itself out without you or your kin having to die. There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you--may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn't that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life. Within it you watch [yourself] act out the present or possible organization of your nature. You can be aware of your own awareness of this nature as you never are at the moment of experience. The actor, by reiterating you, sacrifices a moment of his own life in order to give you a story of yours.

Your grief is as great as your splendor was: some god is weighing the one out equal to the other.

Friends disappear or they are powerless. This is what misfortune means an acid test of friendship. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

Three days (so I hear) she is without food, keeps her body pure of bread, longs to run herself aground in a sad secret death. Is it a god inside you, girl?

MEGARA: You love the light so much? AMPHITRYION: I do, I love its hopes.

Look at me. This is nobility in a man: to bear what falls from the gods and not say No.

The fact is that there are people, good people who, not because they want to but all the same, fall in love with the wrong thing.

I am someone who did not die when I should have died.

Who knows what will happen if I'm alone with my grief.

DEATH . . . And now you are here to fight for this woman. You know her promise is given. She has to die or her husband won't go free. APOLLO Relax, I'm not breaking any laws. DEATH Why the bow, if you're breaking no laws? APOLLO I always carry a bow, it's my trademark.

Because my theory is, there's no such thing as life, it's just catastrophe.

Oh look, here's Death at the gate! Punctual as ever.

I will not stop singing the Muses who set me dancing.

Theseus- O mankind so deluded! so pointlessly deluded! Why investigate, study, devise ten thousand technologies yet you do not know this one thing and cannot grasp it: how to teach a mindless man to think.

what song of death, what dance of Hades shall I do?

Aidos ("shame") is a vast work in Greek. Shame vibrates with honor and also with disgrace, with what is chaste and with what is erotic, with coldness and also with blushing. Shame is felt before the eyes of others and also in facing oneself...shame is a split emotion.

Gods are stubborn. So am I.

You know who I am. You know my naked power.

MEGARA Wait for worse? You love the light so much? AMPHITRYON I do, I love its hopes.

Tragedy is not concerned with human justice. Tragedy is the statement of an expiation, but not he miserable expiation of a codified breach of a local arrangement organized by the knaves for the fools. The tragic figure represents the expiation of the original sin, of the original and eternal sin of...having been born.