Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Orestes
    Orestes
    Orestes
    Ebook125 pages52 minutes

    Orestes

    By Voltaire

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    François-Marie Arouet wrote under the nom de plume of Voltaire, and produced works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works. Orestes was produced in 1750, an experiment which intensely interested the literary world and the public. In his Dedicatory Letters to the Duchess of Maine, Voltaire has the following passage on the Greek drama: "We should not, I acknowledge, endeavor to imitate what is weak and defective in the ancients: it is most probable that their faults were well known to their contemporaries. I am satisfied, Madam, that the wits of Athens condemned, as well as you, some of those repetitions, and some declamations with which Sophocles has loaded his Electra: they must have observed that he had not dived deep enough into the human heart. I will moreover fairly confess, that there are beauties peculiar not only to the Greek language, but to the climate, to manners and times, which it would be ridiculous to transplant hither. Therefore I have not copied exactly the Electra of Sophocles-much more I knew would be necessary; but I have taken, as well as I could, all the spirit and substance of it."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWilder Publications, Inc.
    Release dateJun 10, 2015
    ISBN9781627557504
    Orestes
    Author

    Voltaire

    François-Marie Arouet (1694 1778), known by his nom de plume Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit, his attacks on the established Catholic Church, and his advocacy of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state. Voltaire was a versatile writer, producing works in almost every literary form, including plays, poems, novels, essays, and historical and scientific works.He wrote more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. He was an outspoken advocate, despite the risk this placed him in under the strict censorship laws of the time. As a satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.

    Read more from Voltaire

    Related to Orestes

    Related ebooks

    Performing Arts For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Cul-de-Sac

      Dec 1, 2021

      That old rage for order: how my father drove a square mouthed mower over-and-back, over-and-back, each row of neatly trimmed grass cut just like he told his barber: boy’s short, regular. O pioneer, taming this joke bit of prairie, no bindweed or dog

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Island (catullus 64)

      Mar 1, 2022

      Back then the evergreens tumbled downriverfrom the glaze-white runoff to the boot-stirred puddlesof amber young men who fulfilled our destiny,who clambered into ships, on horses, and in wagonspainting the newfound landscapes ours.Our calling was nobl

      9 min read

    • Article

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work

      Dec 15, 2018

      HERNAN BAS New and Recent Work
      6 min read

    • Article

      In The Middle Of Even This: Poetry

      Jan 1, 2020

      To be brought from the bright schoolyard into the house:to stand by her bed like an animal stunned in the pen:against the grid of the quilt, her hand seemsstitched to the cuff of its sleeve—although he wantsmost urgently the hand to stroke his head,a

      7 min read

    • Article

      Jan Morris

      Jun 15, 2018

      I have always rather envied the poet Ovid, who was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus, you may remember, to a remote place called Tomis on the shores of the Black Sea. There he died, ten years later, and his exile has gone into legend and int

      17 min read

    • Article

      Wonderful Things

      Sep 7, 2023

      SHORTLISTED IN WM’S TUTANKHAMUN POETRY COMPETITION WERE: Guy Carter, Petersfield, Hampshire; Christine Griffin, Hucclecote, Gloucester; Sarah Das Gupta, Mamuden, Essex; Tracey Kitchen, Daventry, Northamptonshire; Lesley Mason, Norwich, Norfolk; Julie

      5 min read

    • Article

      From: “Gravity Archives”

      Sep 3, 2024

      1. Jetlagged visitor in London dark awry with first light catastrophic: tender welts and bruises, smears of iodine, bare bones scraped fleshless, fallen anyhow. What disaster fell and welters out of sight? But day distracts. Cold tube train wheels sq

      3 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Feb 28, 2023

      Dear C, At first Virgil’s poem is quite dull; equivocalnames of products at The Container Store: Elfa White Medium Drawer, Mesh NarrowRolling Cart (Medium Solution), Narrow Classic Mesh Box and the number of pirouetting starseach product attained. An

      5 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: January 2019

      Jan 8, 2019

      Online we are dead, alive, temporary, and permanent. Mao’s serene descriptions are masterfully unsettling. Each poem bears careful reading. The post Must-Read Poetry: January 2019 appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      AUSTRALOPITHECA1 & STARMAN2

      Sep 1, 2019

      The countdown to you begyns with me, deere Starman, when I wander, dumbly, deep into a space hospittable to Hunger. Now, all’s desert. No milk in syte. Just pitifull sand, what shushes as it slydes through your hande to rejoin itself. I’d join myself

      7 min read

    • Article

      from BLACK PASTORAL

      Nov 1, 2023

      somewheres, some lifetimes ago I have run so far, so long.There is nowhere I haven’t beenBut here, in this field, a bodyLength from the ragged brinkThat gives way to forest.I collapsed here, the thin, hard slipOf me whittled at both ends.I want badly

      4 min read

    • Article

      Uncharted Waters

      Jun 28, 2024

      Uncharted Waters
      3 min read

    • Article

      Fredericksburg’s Wounded Warriors

      Jul 11, 2023

      Fredericksburg’s Wounded Warriors
      6 min read

    • Article

      Days Of Shattered Faith

      Dec 3, 2024

      Welcome to Alkhalend, Jewel of the Waters, capital of Usmai and tomorrow’s frontline in the Palleseen’s relentless march to bring Perfection and Correctness to an imperfect world. On the ship, as it tacked in past the sea wall, she was in her coffin

      6 min read

    • Article

      Sweet Shop Selection

      Jul 4, 2024

      Sweet Shop Selection
      6 min read

    • Article

      Sleepwalking In Venice

      Mar 15, 2018

      Two kinds of imagination: the strong, the promiscuous. —Leopardi Watching a boneless nymph’shalf-hearted resurrectionfrom a spout in the pavementover and over; catching a glimpseof the source of my exhaustion,as if my gaze all this time had lent musc

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Sep 1, 2024

      after a cycle of paintings by the Meister des Marienlebens, Munich What begins: everything. Size of a crumb,indiscriminate bundle of cells. It’sa barnacle with a dream inside. Cloudin-sewn with seed pearls. Radiant shapethat in theory she’s always ca

      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium on Desire

      Sep 1, 2019

      A Symposium on Desire
      23 min read

    • Article

      Playing for Time

      Oct 18, 2024

      Playing for Time
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Devil’s Dictionary

      Jul 6, 2021

      Select entries from Ambrose Bierce’s lexicon of cynicism, bitterness, and humor, produced over a 30-year period beginning in 1881. APOLOGIZE, v.i. To lay the foundation for a future offence. BARD, n. A person who makes rhymes. The word is one of the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      — After the New York Times newsfeed from the week of May 6–11, 2018 This week in which faculty members at the University of Floridashove black graduates offstage for dancing in honor of what is regularly denied them; in which Nordstrom Rackapologizes

      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Jun 16, 2021

      Great Read
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Wisdom of Women Shines in Najla Jraissaty Khoury’s ‘Pearls on a Branch: Oral Tales’

      Oct 22, 2018

      Long, long ago These things happened or maybe no. Let’s start with the image on the cover. Three women sit in a courtyard. One holds a long-handled pan over a coal brazier; the other two, one of whom has her back to us, hold small cups. They wear ide

      7 min read

    • Article

      Wide Open Wordsmiths

      May 5, 2022

      Wide Open Wordsmiths
      5 min read

    • Article

      Bard In The Woods

      Nov 30, 2020

      Bard In The Woods
      4 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: April 2018

      Apr 3, 2018

      Here are seven notable books of poetry publishing in April. Eye Level by Jenny Xie An excellent debut. Xie is particularly gifted with precise description; I want to linger on these poems. “Phnom Penh Diptych: Wet Season” is masterful and patient, ex

      6 min read

    • Article

      Missing The Point

      Oct 26, 2023

      ● REALLY, YOU’D THINK THEY MIGHT have learned the lesson by now, the opera apparat: don’t show off, keep your head down, everything will probably be fine. Alternatively, make like the late unlamented chief exec of ENO, wave your arms around and shout

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Orestes

    3.5/5

    28 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
       Goodness, this is blood drenched. And I'm not sure I follow the logic behind it.

    Book preview

    Orestes - Voltaire

    ACT I.

    SCENE I.

    Scene, the seashore, a wood, a temple, a palace and a tomb, on one side: on the other, Argos at a distance.

    Iphisa, Pammenes.

    Iphisa

    Sayest thou, Pammenes? shall these hated walls,

    Where I so long have dragged a life of woe,

    Afford at least the melancholy comfort

    Of mingling sorrow with my dear Electra?

    And will Ægisthus bring her to the tomb

    Of Agamemnon, bring his daughter here,

    To be a witness of the horrid pomp,

    The sad solemnity, which on this day

    Annual returns, to celebrate their crimes,

    And make their guilt immortal?

    Pammenes

    O Iphisa,

    Thou honored daughter of my royal master,

    Like thee, confined within these lonely walls,

    The secrets of a vile abandoned court

    Do seldom reach Pammenes; but, ’tis rumored,

    The jealous tyrant brings Electra here,

    Fearful lest Argos, by her cries alarmed,

    Should rise to vengeance; every heart, he knows,

    Feels for the injured princess, therefore much

    He dreads her clamors; with a watchful eye

    Observes her conduct, treats her as a slave,

    And leads the captive to adorn his triumph.

    Iphisa

    Good heaven! and must Electra be a slave!

    Shall Agamemnon’s blood be thus disgraced

    By a barbarian? Will her cruel mother,

    Will Clytemnæstra bear the vile reproach

    That on herself recoils, and all her race?

    Perhaps my sister is too fierce of soul,

    She mingles too much pride and bitterness

    Of keen resentment with her griefs; alas!

    Weak are her arms against a tyrant’s power:

    What will her anger, what her pride avail her?

    They only irritate a haughty foe,

    And cannot serve our cause: my fate at least

    Is milder, and this solitary state

    Shields me from wrongs which must oppress Electra.

    Far from my father’s foes, these pious hands

    Can pay due offerings to his honored shade:

    Far from his murderer, in this sad retreat

    Freely I weep in peace, and curse Ægisthus:

    I’m not condemned to see the tyrant here,

    Save when the Sun unwillingly brings round

    The fatal day that knit the dreadful tie,

    When that inhuman monster shed the blood

    Of Agamemnon, when base Clytemnæstra—

    SCENE II.

    Electra, Iphisa, Pammenes.

    Iphisa

    O my Electra! art thou here? my sister—

    Electra

    The day of horror is returned,

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1