소포클레스 <엘렉트라> 리라이팅 프로젝트
CHARACTERS
Daughter Electra — She focuses on the absence of the father and the sense of alienation within the domestic house.
Sister Electra — She focuses on the class disparity between herself and Orestes.
Girl Electra — She focuses on individual identity that has been oppressed by gender norms and tries to break through patriarchy.
Act 1
Daughter Electra
My life in ruins, in utter hopelessness.
Wasting away, I am merely a girl, refusing to grow up, slaving in my father’s shadow.
I slave in my father’s house in shabby clothes and stand to eat at tables with no food.
I slave wherever I go, I never know what I am.
Across the Styx, across the deep dark black, I wander helplessly drowning in memories.
Sister Electra
My brother chooses not to come, and I am left in ruins.
Ah yes, Orestes— whom I’ve been waiting for with a desire that never tires, in ceaseless wandering.
What message do I get that does not disappoint me?
He always yearns to be here, but even so, for all his longing, he chooses not to come.
Girl Electra
I am a ruin on my own.
Not knowing how to grow up, not knowing what I am, wasting away.
I have no children, no loving husband as my champion,
and, like a despised foreigner, cheeks bathed with tears in this miserable state,
carrying a destiny of pain that never ends.
Act 2
Sister
How can I approve of what she’s done? I despise the fact that I was born of her.
But she is my mother. I don’t want to consider that woman my mother, but it is the undeniable truth.
I raised Orestes instead of her, and so he held punishment for her actions.
Alas, to be a girl forever! To be weak, to be something less than a man!
And thus, I love and despise my mother all at once.
I have these trembling emotions, and now I learn to embrace them.
Daughter
You love your mother as much as you love your father.
You stalk these hollow rivers, dreaming of what you could or could not have been.
For if I naturally possess the skill to act like that,
then given who you are, I am a credit to the one who bore me.
People say things, that I’m disloyal, abusive, and absolutely shameless.
And now I do not care about these words, as they are not what I am.
Girl
May I never share in such men’s honour, and if I ever live a prosperous life, may I not have a single moment’s ease.
I forever live in the shadow of my father and brother, but now I know how to stand as who I am.
Remember, father. Remember what I have done to mother.
Remember, Orestes. What I have taught you and what I have made you do.
Blood for blood, then let men’s sense of piety and shame completely fade away!
Act 3
All
We stand in ruins.
We form a ruin on our own.
We no longer have a father nor a mother nor a brother, and a husband or child we never had.
How can it be a noble act to neglect who I am?
I lay down my clothes. My hair, my skin, my blood.
I am no longer a tool for my ghost’s revenge.
I stop wandering, I find my heart here, beating stronger than ever.
I now face myself.
In the river Lethe, brightly dark and feverishly cold.
I am now ready to finish my acts of life.
Not by his sword, not by her poison,
But by my own whispers.
My ruin is my own.
And from this ruin, I can finally finish what I am.