The woke and unwoke ways of relating to the classics

The Orestia, Emily Wilson, and Nietzsche

My coworker was reading “The Orestia” for a community college course. She asked me if I’d read it before. As it happened, I had just reread it a couple months prior. “Did you like it?” she asked me. I could tell that she hated it but wanted to hear my honest opinion without her influence. I said I liked the language and that the art of the Greek tragedy was interesting to me because it is so… weird. The stories do not unfold in the typical dramatic fashion of contemporary theater and film. By that, I’m referring to how contemporary stories portray characters that act like real people and through their dialogue and actions, the stories organically develop. In contrast, in Greek tragedies, strange masked figures take the stage of the amphitheater and muse about what is going on— and the audience has already heard the tale told several times before and know what is going to happen.

“But it’s so boring,” she said, finally revealing her opinion. A fair enough assessment. These tragedies do not build anticipation for what is going to happen, which is what we like in contemporary theater and film. Instead, the heroes and chorus keep talking about what is happening and why. Oftentimes, this can get a little repetitive. In “The Eumenides,” the conclusion to the Orestian trilogy, it seems to me that the entire play, everyone is talking whether or not the Furies (i.e. the Eumenides) have the right to punish Orestes for his matricide of Clytemnestra. He was commanded by Apollo to commit the murder because Clytemnestra killed Agamemnon— and she did that because he sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia. But at the same time, ancient law commands that the Furies must punish anyone who commits matricide, regardless of their justification. The gods just keep ordering mortals around to kill each other, repeatedly contradicting the laws they claim to uphold. That’s greek tragedy for you.

In Philip Vellacott’s introduction to The Orestia, he bemoans that a true introduction to the plays would require volumes because “their subject matter is so near to the core of human feeling, to the central experiences of of life.” One would have to skip from philosophy to theology to theater history just to make sense of them. Clearly, the plays did not seem to touch the core of my coworker’s feelings, or else she’d find them interesting. Perhaps she could take Vellacott’s advice and study a wide range of supplemental material so that she likes them. Somehow, I don’t find it likely she’ll do that, since she didn’t even find it interesting in the first place. A brief introduction to Nietzsche’s thought might be better.

One of the fundamentals of Nietzsche’s thought is this concept of “master morality vs. slave morality.” In “The Genealogy of Morals” as well as “Beyond Good and Evil,” he distinguishes two threads of morality that have developed throughout the course of human history. For the masters, the people who were strong enough to conquer the others, there was “good and bad.” Anything that was good for them was good. Anything that was bad for them was bad. He examines the history of class relations, demonstrating how the powerful class always refer to themselves with moral epithets, e.g. “the truthful ones.” Consequently, what is considered “true,” “noble,” or “moral,” is what the powerful class does. What is considered “bad” is what the weak do.

In retaliation to the morality of the powerful class, the weak developed their own moral language. For them, it is no longer “good vs. bad” but rather “good vs. evil.” All humans have a responsibility to all of humanity. What one does for the good of all is “good.” What one does for oneself is “evil.” His theory is that this is how the Jews, and later the Christians, reclaimed power, or at least a feeling of power, in the face of persecution by the strong (alternately the Egyptians, the Romans, etc.).

Greek tragedies were written and performed for the strong. Only citizens, i.e. property owning men, i.e. the powerful, were allowed in the Dionysian festivals. Their subject matter makes a lot more sense when we consider it in the context of Nietzschian master morality. What the gods do is ipso facto good. They are the powerful. Artemis commanded Agamemnon to sacrifice Iphigenia. As it was commanded by the gods, it was a good deed according to master morality. In contrast, Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon not because a god commanded her to but because she wanted to exact revenge on him for killing their daughter (and so that she could be with her hot lover and make him king, both of which motivations are relatable even if one is a bit less crass than the other). Because it was not the will of the gods, it was bad. They considered Agamemnon a good king. Clytemnestra got in the way of their will. Therefore, no other than the god of truth, Apollo, commands Orestes to kill Clytemnestra, thereby restoring himself (Agamemnon’s bloodline) to the throne. When he does that, the Furies seek to exact their vengeance, as commanded by ancient law that they must punish familicides. But the Furies are not on the same level of power as the Olympian gods. Therefore, it is Athena, goddess of justice, who finally determines to save Orestes from their punishment. The gods may break the rules because they set the rules.

I did mansplain all this to my coworker because it is a lot more detail than she would probably care to hear (and harder for me to communicate off the cuff rather than in writing). Instead, I related it to our everyday experience. We work at a cafe in Century City, a hub of rich people whose wealth has been inherited for generations probably going back to the time the Orestia was written. They are the master class. And for these people, whatever they do and whatever they want is good. Whatever contradicts what they want is bad. Everyday, we experience people who do not seem to understand that there are other people waiting in line and expect us to take their order as soon as they enter the restaurant. It can be difficult to explain that we cannot take their order because this other person was first and it would be unfair to the other. There is no other to them. There is only them. Much like the gods giving conflicting orders, our customers give conflicting demands, one pulling us away from the other.

My coworker nodded her head at what I said. If she was not won over to loving the Orestia, she could at least see where I was coming from. It related it to our lived experience. The classics do have the power to help us understand the core of human feeling. Since they were written by and performed for the masters, what they really reveal is the honest hearts of the master class. We all exhibit master morality in one way or another because its influence has been so powerful throughout history. Reading the classics can help us gain access to that part of ourselves.

Emily Wilson’s “The Odyssey”

There has been much discussion on X about Emily Wilson’s translation of “The Odyssey,” in anticipation of her upcoming release of “The Iliad.” As is typical of X discussions, it is not exactly enlightened, with a seething resent lying beneath the posts. Despite that, the haters do make some good points. I have not read Wilson’s translation of “The Odyssey” in its entirety but when we compare her translations of the opening lines to other translations, we can get a good sense of her take. One of the central themes of this Substack is that what is true for the opening paragraphs of a work will continue throughout the rest of the work. I intend to read Wilson’s “The Odyssey” as well as her upcoming translation of “The Iliad,” but for today let’s just look at the beginning.

Let’s consider what the resentful Max Meyer points out about Wilson’s opening lines. Here’s Wilson:

“Tell me about a complicated man.

Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost

when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,

and where he went, and who he met, the pain

he suffered in the storms at sea, and how

he worked to save his life and bring his men

back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,

they at the Sun God’s cattle, and the god

kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,

tell the old story for our modern times.

Find the beginning.

What we first note is the very first line. “Tell me about a complicated man.” One of the things she is doing here is delaying the invocation of the Muse to the next line. Most translations begin with some form of “Speak in me, Muse.” Wilson’s translation creates a more casual tone. With just that first line, it could just be two friends gossiping about someone they know. “Tell me about it,” they say to each other. This tone speaks to Wilson’s strategy in how she is making Homer relevant to contemporary readers. She makes the poem speak more like everyday people. We’ll keep that in mind.

We also notice the description of Odysseus as a “complicated man.” Meyer takes insult with this translation and compares this to the great twentieth century translations of “The Odyssey,” which render the line: “the man of twists and turns,” “the man of many ways,” “the cunning hero, the wanderer.” While I don’t take the same insult as Meyer does, I do find the other three translations to be much more artful. Odysseus is a man of many ways whose travels are blown in many directions. His life speaks to the human experience. We are constantly trying to trick our way ahead and meanwhile life is constantly tricking us in turn. Life is a great confused sea and we are the nifty Odysseus trying to tack his sails into clear waters. I don’t get that from “complicated man.”

“Complicated man” has a moral valence to it. Some of the things Odysseus does are good, others are bad. He is complicated. It brings to mind Kendall Roy. But this moral valence is one influenced by slave morality, which has much more influence over modern morality that it once did. Odysseus is trapped on Calypso’s island and, while he never fully commits himself to her, he does sleep with her despite his marriage to Penelope. This behavior is immoral by modern standards. At the time “The Odyssey” was performed, however, it was not so immoral. Kings kept several concubines to supplement their sex lives with the queen. They were the powerful, therefore they could dominate women as they pleased. According to master morality, what they do is good.

I’m not saying that men have the right to sleep with women outside of marriage. But to dismiss this aspect of men is to ignore something that still lies within the hearts of all men. To ignore it is to let it fester. We must look at this aspect of men in the light. To describe this aspect of men as “complicated” is to bring judgement to it in a way that “a man of many turns” does not. Judgement obscures.

While Nietzsche spends much time deriding slave morality, he acknowledges that we live in a heterodox moral landscape. While our power used to be controlled only by the tenets of master morality, today we must also abide by the rules of slave morality. Ultimately, the goal of every human is to attain more power. Morality is simply the rules by which we may attain power. There is no God that offers a moral standard to live by. There is only the will to power. It is what it is.

The other translations Meyer hails do offer a more balanced and artful look at the character of Odysseus; however, I don’t think Nietzsche would approve of Meyer’s critical strategy. It is the seething resentment that Nietzsche would not like. Resentment is characteristic of the weak. In “The Genealogy of Morals,” while examining the priest class, i.e. the ones who have developed slave morality, Nietzsche says: “It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions.” Meyer’s opening tweet, with its pictures of Wilson looking rather unsightly (a caricature of a “rabid woke librarian” or something of that sort) speak to the monstrous hatred within Meyer’s heart. The noble, Nietzsche, are those who are “incapable of taking one’s enemies… seriously for very long.” The strong are not threatened by the weak, therefore they do not threaten them. It appears that Meyer is threatened by Wilson and what she represents. Therefore, the resentment, therefore the monstrous hatred.

It is true that Wilson and the woke crowd she signals really do have power in today’s publishing industry. It seems like everything published today is just what confirms the liberal worldview acquired in college by the educated class who buys the books. But that’s just what it is. Publishing is a business and a business ought to give customers what they want. If the woke books bother you, the Nietzchean path forward would be to dismiss them and instead create what it is you want to create. There are a lot of people who are looking for books that are, if not resentfully “anti-woke,” at least “unwoke”— the success of Ottessa Moshfegh attests to this and I’m hearing buzz about Allie Rowbottom’s “Aesthetica” that seems to be in a similar vein as Moshfegh. The advice I would gain from Nietzsche and the classics is that, whatever your politics are, do not exhibit those politics from a place of resentment, but rather from power.