La saga degli Atridi tra Eschilo e Littell

Abstract

One of the last examples of the long success of the plot of Aeschylus’ Oresteia in modern literature is the controversial novel The kindly ones, written (in French) by the American-born author Jonathan Littel in 2006 and translated into English in 2009. The chapter deals with the quite hidden (but consistent) connections between the mythical story as told by the Greek playwright in the fifth century BCE and the dramatic events that mark the personal and public life of the protagonist of the 1000-pages book, the SS-officer Maximiliem Aue, who eventually succeeds in escaping the pursuit of the Erinyes, the goddesses of revenge. At the end of the novel, in the town of Berlin invaded by the Russian soldiers, the Erinyes become, as in the outcome of the Greek tragedy, Eumenides – this is in fact the meaning of the title, in all the main translations (Les Bienveillantes, Le benevole, Die Wohlgesinnten, Las Benévolas, As Benevolentes, etc.).

Simone Beta is Full Professor of Greek language and literature at the University of Siena. His research centers on Greek and Roman drama, wine and symposium, epigrams and riddles, and the reception of classical antiquity. He has written Il linguaggio nelle commedie di Aristofane: parola positiva e parola negativa nella commedia antica (Rome 2004), Il labirinto della parola: enigmi oracoli e sogni nella cultura antica (Turin 2016) and Io, un manoscritto: l’Antologia Palatina si racconta (Roma 2017). With L. Della Bianca he has written Il dono di Dioniso. Il vino nella letteratura e nel mito in Grecia e a Roma (Rome 2015); with F. Puccio, Il dono di Afrodite. L’eros nella letteratura e nel mito in Grecia e a Roma (2019). He has published an anthology of Greek sympotic epigrams (Vino e poesia. Centocinquanta epigrammi greci sul vino, Milan 2006) and translated Sophocles’ Antigone (Milan 2020) and Aristophanes’ Lysistrata (Milano 2020).

Keywords: Aeschylus, Orestes, Erinyes, World War II, Nazism