Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O’Neill Jr.’s The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One

Pg. 1186 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson placed three lines at the very bottom of the page.

—

Though I have nothing in particular to say about these three lines at the bottom of this page, I figured I could take this opportunity, since this is a scan of the notes page for Euripides’ Ion and since the first part of these notes speak of the translation, to mention a perfect observation by Kate on Euripides and translation that typifies her lovely ruminations in Wittgenstein’s Mistress.

Kate discusses that once, in reading the Greeks, she sensed some influence from Shakespeare, which of course is because she’d read the Gilbert Murray Shakespearean translation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women, which is oft mentioned throughout Wittgenstein’s Mistress.

     On pg. 38 of Wittgenstein’s Mistress:
     “Once, when I was listening to myself read the Greek plays out loud, certain of the lines sounded as if they had been written under the influence of William Shakespeare.
     One had to be quite perplexed as to how Aeschylus or Euripides might have read Shakespeare.
     I did remember an anecdote, about some other Greek author, who had remarked that if he could be positive of a life after death he would happily hang himself to see Euripides. Basically this did not seem relevant, however.”

These three lines that Markson had dashed at the bottom of this page also basically did not seem relevant, however.

Who needs relevance?

Which leads me to Markson’s poem titled “Relevance,” which goes, as follows:

Coincidences undeniably imply meaning.

     I am reading Hart Crane.
     I notice that the date
     On which he stepped off that boat
     Was April 26.

     The year of his suicide was 1932.
     I was four.
     I am now fifty-one.
     One undeniable implication in this case then
     Is that the year, today,
     Is 1979.

     Afterward, Crane’s mother scrubbed floors.
     Eventually, I may or may not
     Jump overboard.

Are there questions?

Pgs. 416-417 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson underlined a number of the lines on the last two pages of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (aka Oedipus Rex).
He also placed a pound sign and an exclamation point at the end of the play.

—

     “Oedipus gouges out his eyes, Jocasta hangs herself, both guiltless; the play has come to a harmonious conclusion.
     Wrote Schiller.”
     Wrote Markson.
     On pg. 4 of This Is Not A Novel.

(So there you have it a whole month’s worth of scans from The Complete Greek Drama, and we haven’t even done a quarter of the marginalia in those two books, and I even left some of the best stuff for later—like a whole diagram Markson drew in the back…)

Pg. 992 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson underlined a few lines from The Trojan Women (by Euripides), where Menelaus curses Helen:
     “And now I seek…
     Curse her! I scarce can speak the name she bears,
     That was my wife.”

—

Oh Helen and the blame game…

     “There is no description of Helen’s beauty anywhere in the Iliad.
     Strangely like is she to some deathless goddess to look upon, being all that is said.
     Though the Trojan elders do acknowledge that no one could be blamed for having endured a war because of her.”
     – David Markson, This Is Not A Novel, pg. 29.

     “Although what one doubts even more sincerely is that Helen would have been the cause of that war to begin with, of course.
     After all, a single Spartan girl, as Walt Whitman once called her.
     Even if in The Trojan Women Euripides does let everybody be furious at Helen.
     In the Odyssey, where she has a splendid radiant dignity, nothing of that sort is hinted at at all.
     And even in the Iliad, when the war is still going on, she is generally treated with respect.
     So unquestionably it was only later that people decided it had been Helen’s fault.
     Well, Euripides of course coming much later than Homer on his own part, for instance.
     I do not remember how much later, but much later.”
     – David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, pgs. 194-195.

     “You go wherever you like. I’m not about to get myself killed for that wife Helen of yours.
     Says Agamemnon to Menelaus—essentially about commencing the Trojan War—in the little that remains of a lost play by Euripides.”
     – David Markson, The Last Novel, pg. 132.

     “And which furthermore now makes me realize that if Euripides had not blamed Helen for the war very possibly I would not remember Helen, either.
     So that doubtless it was quite hasty of me, to criticize Rainer Maria Rilke or Euripides.”
     – David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, pgs. 196.

Pg. 5 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson underlined the following in the Introduction to the Aeschylus play The Suppliants:
“It seems evident, therefore, that The Suppliants is the first play of a tragic trilogy, the second and third plays of which are now lost.”

—

O! How many great works of art have been lost over the ages!

     “Virtually beyond Writer’s imagining:
     The lost eighty or so plays, each, of Aeschylus and Euripides.
     The lost one hundred and ten of Sophocles.”
     – David Markson, This Is Not A Novel, pg. 42.

Pg. 754 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson underlined three passages in Euripides’ Medea, just after the titular character has slain her children offstage:
     1) “Thy sons are dead; slain by their own mother’s hand.”
     2) “MEDEA appears above the house, on a chariot drawn by dragons; the children’s corpses are beside her.”
     (This also gets an angular bracket marking in the margins.)
     3) “Having borne me sons to glut thy passion’s lust, thou now hast slain them.”
     (This also gets an X in the margins.)

—

The scene of Medea murdering her sons is not shown, interestingly enough.

     In fact:
     “Not one of the violent moments in Greek tragedy occurs on stage. Medea murdering her sons, for instance. Or Orestes bloodying Clytemnestra.”
     Wrote Markson on pg. 70 of Reader’s Block.

The last page of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson has made a list of various books on the Greeks, and placed dashes and angular brackets next to some of them.

     The list is as follows:
     “- R. C. Flickinger: The Greek Theater + Its Drama
        T. H. Gaster: Thespis
   – W. C. Greene: Moira—Fate, Good + Evil in Greek Thought
   > Moses Hadas: A History of Greek Literature
        A. E. Haigh: The Tragic Drama of the Greeks
     – P. W. Harsh: Handbook of Classical Drama
     – Gilbert Highet: The Classical Tradition
        H. D. F. Kitto: Greek Tragedy
A. M. G. Little: Myth + Society in Attic Drama
     > G. Norwood: Greek Tragedy
        G. Norwood: Greek Comedy
        A. W. Pickard-Cambridge: Dithyramb Tragedy + Comedy
        J. T. Allen: Stage Antiquities of the Greeks + Romans
     – M. Bieber: The History of Greek + Roman Theater
        A. W. Pickard-Cambridge: The Attic Theater
     > H. W. Smyth: Aeschylean Tragedy
     > Gilbert Murray: Aeschylus, The Creator of Tragedy
        G. Thompson: Aeschylus and Athens
     > C. M. Bowra: Sophoclean Tragedy
        T. B. M. Webster: An Introduction to Sophocles
        W. M. Bates: Sophocles, Poet + Dramatist
     > G. M. A. Grube: The Drama of Euripides
     > Gilbert Murray: Euripides and His Age
        W. M. Bates: Euripides, Student of Human Nature
     > Gilbert Murray: Aristophanes, A Study
        Croiset: Aristophanes + the Political Parties at Athens
        P. E. Legrand: The New Greek Comedy
        A. Koerte: Hellenistic Poetry”

—

As Markson told Joseph Tabbi in his interview in 1989:
“Some while back I must have spent, oh, two full years reading and rereading all the Greek and Latin stuff, not just the authors themselves but any number of commentaries, cultural histories, and so on.”

(I am fortunate enough to not only have his two volumes of The Complete Greek Drama, from which I’ve been taking scans this entire month, but also I own three of the books listed in the above list that were once Markson’s and are themselves marked up with some of his marginalia.)

Pg. 401 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson underlined most of the lines on the page in an exchange between Oedipus and Messenger in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King).
(And placed an X next to one line.)

—

One of the lines underlined in the above scan is the Messenger saying to Oedipus:
“Found thee in Cithaeron’s winding glens.”

     “Cithaeron.”
     Markson hauntingly brings up on pg. 117 of Reader’s Block with no other reference to the play in the general vicinity to give hint to meaning or to anchor one’s reading of the allusion.
     As is often the case with Markson…

Markson is everything that is the case?

Pg. 826 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson underlined part of a speech by the eponymous character in Euripides’ Hecuba:
“I may be a slave and weak as well, but the gods are strong, and custom too which prevails o’er them, for by custom it is that we believe in them and set up bounds of right and wrong for our lives. Now if this principle, when referred to thee, is to be set at naught, and they are to escape punishment who murder guests or dare to plunder the temples of gods, then is all fairness in things human at an end.”

—

“The first writer known to condemn slavery is Euripides.”
Markson notes on pg. 175 of his novel Reader’s Block.

Pgs. xxiv and xxv of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson underlines the passages which include Aristotle’s attempts at defining “tragedy”:
     “Aristotle defines it in these words: ‘Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these and similar emotions.’”
     And:
     “Hence Aristotle defines the ideal tragic hero in these words: ‘A man who is highly renowned and prosperous, but one who is not pre-eminently virtuous and just, whose misfortune, however, is brought upon him not by vice and depravity but by some error of judgment or frailty.’”

(There is also the beginnings of a bracket mark at the bottom of page xxv, which continues onto the next page at much greater length.)

—

Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is utilized by Markson, in simplified form, in Reader’s Block:
“In a dramatic and not narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and terror.” (Pg. 177).

This is then repeated in This Is Not A Novel on pg. 171:
“In a dramatic, not narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and terror.”

Pity.

Terror.

Tragedy.

Pg. 163 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson placed a bracket in the margin and underlined various phrases on the first page of the Introduction to the Oresteia of Aeschylus.

—

     This is often considered to be “Aeschylus’ masterpiece” (one phrase Markson underlined in the above scan).
     Yet he was no spring chicken when he wrote it.
     Like Markson, his best and most acclaimed work came later in life:
     “The Oresteia. Aeschylus was sixty-seven.”
     – David Markson, This Is Not A Novel, pg. 139.

Yes, the Oresteia, “Aeschylus’ masterpiece.”

Perhaps why “Karl Marx reread the Oresteia once every year.”
(According to pg. 73 of Markson’s Vanishing Point.)

     Or:
     “Did the theorist of class struggle reread the Oresteia to immerse himself in a world that stayed coherent in spite of its being torn apart?”
     – Françoise Palleau-Papin, This Is Not A Tragedy, pg. xxxi.
     (As I considered last week…)