Wolf Kunert
I go through time again. I return to Mycenae. Questions remained unanswered. I want answer for her.I won’t find her here and now. I have to dare to travel again, to where the past is still unchanged, untouched by knowledge and fashion.There I want to see and hear the people whose fate I can only guess at.Names come to mind: Clytemnestra - husband murderer, adulteress! Other names follow: Iphigenia, Electra, Oresthes and Agamemnon too.We heard their stories and fragments are quickly at hand, which is all too easy to dismiss. These stories are old. Told often and over and over again in the same way: the ax murderer, her lover and the irreconcilably grieving daughter.Why so? Why don’t we know them differently? I want to tell it here and now, perhaps more faithfully to reality. I can’t know. I have to hope so. Excerpt - Clytemnestra:I did not act without consideration and not without consideration. What Iphigenia awakened in me and what he threatened me for forced me to make a decision. What I fought for, not without resistance, had to be protected.I took away the children’s father, that’s true. But what kind of father was he? What kind of man was Agamemnon and what kind of husband was he to me? Nobody asks about it anymore. Nobody wants to know what and how he really was. They made him my victim and even if it is true, it remains only part of the truth. Nobody, it seems, still wants to know how he ruled us and Mycenae.I was later accused of blind anger and baseless hatred. Time keeps silent about his part. At best, she allows me to be a grieving mother, avenging her child. Half truths are also half lies.Nothing bad should be said about dead people. Don’t talk after those who can no longer answer. Those who journeyed to the realm of shadows should be safe from evil speech forever. But what about me? When did I lose this right?
