A Feminist Act of Defiance: ‘Iphigenia says no’ by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke (2024)

Abstract

Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke’s poem ‘Iphigenia says no’ (‘Η άρνηση της Ιφιγένειας’) was published in 1963 in her first poetry collection, Wolves and Clouds (Λύκοι και Σύννεφα). Her poetic début was characterized not only by an emphasis on the female body, as has been widely (and rightly) pointed out,1 but also by a critical engagement with the ancient Greek myth of Iphigenia’s sacrifice. The most influential telling of the myth and the most formative for Anghelaki-Rooke is Euripides’ tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis, a play that explores female self-determination, free will, the struggle against an oppressive, patriarchal social order, patriotism and, of course, the sacrifice of a female body. Anghelaki-Rooke’s choice of Iphigenia is highly significant, not least because it militates against the claim that Greek women writers tend to sidestep myth and the classical tradition in response to its appropriation by a male-dominated tradition that upholds patriarchal values and imposes cultural norms unfavourable to women. Karen Van Dyck sees in Greek women’s poetry the residue of a violent struggle to resist patriarchal structures of meaning; she contends that this resistance eschews the use of myth.2 Indeed, as Christopher Robinson has pointed out, the challenge that Greek women writers face in relation to myth is precisely that of gender roles: in using myth they cannot avoid confronting and responding in some way to both the patriarchal tradition of their country and the absence or problematic representations of women in the work of male Greek poets.3

It is precisely as a part of this resistance that many women engage in the rewriting of myth, offering a fascinating Greek version of feminist reworkings — or ‘re-visions’, in Adrienne Rich’s formulation — of well-known classical stories.4 The use of the Eurydice myth by Zoe Karelli (1901–98) to challenge tradition is an earlier example of this; Maria Kyrtzaki (1948–2016) offers erudite revisions of the Oedipus story, and Jenny Mastoraki (1949–) is well-known for her deadpan mythical subversions of her namesake, Iphigenia, among others. Anghelaki-Rooke (1939–2020) is not the first (or last) to engage in revisionist mythmaking.

In ‘Iphigenia says no’ the poet uses myth to openly address the problem of gender roles in modern Greek literature and put forward a new female/feminist voice in the context of the male-dominated world of modern Greek poetry. Anghelaki-Rooke mobilizes myth to challenge the tradition from within, on her own terms. As her published essays reveal, she was deeply concerned with both the characteristics and the goals of women’s poetry in Greece and set out to create a genealogy of women poets, looking back at the work of those who came before her and positioning herself at a crossroads from which new directions could purposefully be taken. This positioning is made clear in the essay ‘Sex roles in Modern Greek poetry’ (1983). Referring to John Berger’s insightful analysis of the representation of women in the visual arts,5 she notes how important it is for women ‘to find and define their feminine identity in terms of their own consciousness and their existence in a man’s world’6; she discusses the poetry of previous women writers from a feminist perspective, arguing that modern Greek poetry reflects ‘the totalitarianism of Greek society’ and that ‘female poets have learned poetry from men and not from women’, and positing the need for a new poetic language shaped by women for women.7 Thus, by exploiting ancient Greek myth in her poetry, Anghelaki-Rooke is both engaging with and distancing herself from a long tradition of male writers who used myth to weave together personal poetics and national concerns — a process exemplified by Sikelianos, Seferis and Elytis and equally apparent in the work of Anghelaki-Rooke’s own godfather, Nikos Kazantzakis. Even so, it was Kazantzakis who supported her poetic ambitions by helping her publish her first poem, ‘Solitude’, in 1957. There is great symbolic weight in Kazantzakis’ encouragement: he is opening up the way not just to a woman but to a woman who will challenge the order that he himself actually represents. For Anghelaki-Rooke’s use of myth is inextricably bound up with the feminist poetics that she aspires to develop in her work, and her choice of Iphigenia (and later Penelope)8 is highly significant in this context, as I shall argue.

The modern reception of Iphigenia at Aulis has been extensively documented in recent studies that trace the influence of this play on literature, the visual arts and actual performances.9 The focus of these discussions is often on Late Antiquity and the Renaissance, with the lion’s share dedicated to Racine. In contrast, twentieth-century works have attracted somewhat briefer if pertinent observations, generally highlighting the political impact of the play on the work of modern poets. In their respective studies, Michelakis and Hall systematically explore subversive approaches to the play in modern theatre and cinema. Michelakis, for example, notes that ‘it is particularly since the late 1960s that Iphigenia at Aulis has been persistently interpreted as an anti-war and/or feminist play, used to expose the moral corruption and inherent contradictions of politics and patriarchal ideology’.10 Edith Hall dates a significant change in the reception of ancient Greek tragedy to the same period, connecting this with the feminist movement and the political ferment of the late 1960s and 1970s, when it gained greater momentum and visibility.11 Both scholars cite Michalis Cacoyannis’ film ‘Iphigenia’ (1977) as a prime example of the political reworking of the play in cinema — and, indeed, the only Greek example.

Poetry is beyond the scope of these studies, which focus on modern performances and film versions of Iphigenia at Aulis, and yet poetry generally shows a much earlier creative engagement with the play, foregrounding political and feminist issues as early as the 1910s (in the work of H. D., for example). In modern Greek literature, Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke’s poem, which appeared in 1963, is among the earlier ones to focus on this particular tragedy.12 It is little-known outside Greece, not least because it has never been translated and so has failed to take its rightful place in anthologies like Nina Kosman’s Gods and Mortals. But ‘Iphigenia says no’ certainly bears comparison to other, better-known modern reworkings of the myth in poetry, given that it is such a masterful appropriation of the ancient text’s message. ‘Iphigenia says no’ displays a radically feminist stance earlier than most modern reworkings of the myth, raising issues that will be later theorized in writings such as Adrienne Rich’s seminal essay ‘When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-vision’ (1972) and Hélène Cixous’ ‘The Laugh of Medusa’ (1976),13 or systematically reworked in other poems and plays from the late 1970s onwards.14 None of these later poetic reworkings, however, will rival the uncompromising stance of this poem.

In the pages that follow, I will first provide an overview of the poem for ease of reference.15 I will then go on to explore how Anghelaki-Rooke engages with two re-writings of the myth which inform the subversive feminist message of the poem: that of Euripides but also that of Seferis, a major precursor in the reception of Euripides in modern Greek poetry. Finally, I will discuss the circ*mstances that may have inspired Anghelaki-Rooke to engage with this particular myth in her first poetic collection and what such a choice tells us about her poetics.

‘Iphigenia says no’ begins in the present tense. We are at the port of Aulis, with a panoramic view of the ships, an image cinematically reproduced in Cacoyannis’ film ‘Iphigenia’ (1977). The description of Iphigenia’s appearance and the steps leading down to the sea have a certain ceremonial air: the λιβάνι (frankincense) in line 2 is a feature in Orthodox weddings as well as funerals and Sunday mass; it also highlights the ritual ambiguity between marriage and sacrifice found in Euripides’ play.16 From the very beginning, Iphigenia is associated with the wind (line 5), a motif that runs through the poem and reminds the reader of the darker circ*mstances of her presence at the port of Aulis: that for the winds to be released, and the Greek ships to sail to Troy, Iphigenia will have to be sacrificed. Stanzas 2–5 (lines 6–22) are in the past tense and describe the young woman’s life before this crucial moment, emphasizing her beauty, innocence and former idyllic life on her father’s estate. Nature imagery is used to underline Iphigenia’s coming of age and sexual awakening but also, potentially, to point up the brevity of her life. In stanza 6 (lines 23–5) we are brought back to the port of Aulis and closer to the Greek ships partaking in the festivities. The panoramic view with which the poem began is replaced here with a close up of the ships’ prows decorated with mermaids (γοργόνες).17 Stanza 7 (lines 26–41) marks the transition between Iphigenia’s earlier carefree life and her tragic fate: it turns to the myth of ‘the girl who was a friend of the winds’, describing her as bound by an old narrative that ‘holds her head captive’ and marks her destiny: the need for her sacrifice. This is the point at which the poem returns to the present tense, highlighting the contrast between the wild and violent character of the warriors and their indifference to life and its cycles, the very values represented by Iphigenia. Lines 68–9 spell out Iphigenia’s impending sacrifice. From line 70 onwards, however, the poem engages with a subversive retelling of the myth: the soldiers are restless because Iphigenia has refused to be sacrificed. She challenges the army and its unflinching support for violence, advocating life, love and human activities in times of peace. The soldiers are taken by surprise, postpone the war and are welcomed back home by Helen.

Anghelaki-Rooke’s revisionist stance may be an intellectual response to a particular celebration that year. In 1963 George Seferis was awarded the Nobel prize for literature, a mark of recognition that cemented his position as a senior figure among living Greek poets. This was a personal and national triumph that reverberated strongly in Greece. Although reactions were not universally favourable, they were fruitful, and poets such as Ritsos felt compelled to produce their own poetic responses to Seferis’ work.18 Anghelaki-Rooke was a keen reader of Seferis, as the few essays she has published indicate, and she would have followed with great interest the new editions of his poems and essays as well as his translations, which started to appear regularly from the end of 1962.19 It would be fair to say that, in this productive literary context, the young but ambitious poet and translator was shaping her poetic will and mapping out the terrain of her art.20 Seferis’ poetry was an important precedent in the appropriation of Euripides and gave Anghelaki-Rooke a point of departure from which to develop her own feminist ideas.

After prioritizing Aeschylus in earlier works, Seferis turned to Euripides in the later stages of his poetic career, in the Cyprus collection Logbook III (1955).21 As Krikos-Davis notes, not only does he include two poems inspired by well-known plays, ‘Helen’ and ‘Pentheus’, but he also engages with the playwright himself, his life and his work more generally in the poem ‘Euripides the Athenian’.22 Seferis’ anti-war sentiments and disillusionment with the disastrous effects of the politics and conflict that followed World War II and the Greek Civil War, but also the events in Cyprus in the 1950s, is encapsulated in the reworking of the myth of Helen in his well-known poem of that title, which draws on Euripides’ Helen. But if Euripides’ play absolves Helen of the blame of adultery and elopement, restoring her chastity, Seferis’ poem does little for Helen the woman, except perhaps to perpetuate some clichés relating to her erotic appeal. She is sketchily portrayed and devoid of agency or character. She is reduced to an empty tunic, reflecting Euripides’ description of her as νεφέλη, a cloud. It is worth repeating here what Seferis said in relation to her character: ‘Όσο για μένα, η «καινούργια Ελένη» μου έδωσε ένα μαθηματικό τύπο, θα έλεγα, της ματαιότητας και του εμπαιγμού των πολέμων’ (‘As for me, the “new Helen” gave me a mathematical formula, I would say, of the vanity and deceit of wars’).23 A woman seen as a mathematical formula or a symbol would not go unnoticed by the critical eye of Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke. As she wrote in 1983, by which time her feminism had become more overt:

[…] men continue to depict their poetic women more or less traditionally. […] In Seferis there are no women, only loves, lost loves and female symbols: Antigone and Eleni, for example. His almost classical poetry with its strong elegiac tone evokes a totally male world where loss and death reign and where women are the vague shadows passing over an austere landscape.24

In fact, Seferis’ poem adopts a stoic if not passive attitude in relation to human agency in general, as the Trojan war is seen as the result of the (treacherous) will of the gods: ‘έτσι το θέλαν οι θεοί’ (‘that’s how the gods wanted it’).25 Their deceitful actions seem to entrap humanity in an endless cycle of war, suffering and death. Anghelaki-Rooke’s own poem, as we shall see, is a response to both these issues of female representation and agency.

Let me turn now to Anghelaki-Rooke’s choice of Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis. The choice is significant on many fronts: it is a play that includes what Foley describes as a ‘metatheatrical image’26 of mythical rewriting and explores the tensions implicated in this. Agamemnon is writing a letter to prevent his daughter from coming to Aulis, as he has changed his mind at the beginning of the tragedy and no longer wants to sacrifice her. The oracle states that Iphigenia must be sacrificed only if the army wishes to sail to Troy. Thus, the Greeks have a choice: they can abandon the expedition and go back home. The necessity for the sacrifice is questioned throughout the tragedy; everyone tries and ultimately fails to challenge the authority of those previous versions of the myth in which she is sacrificed. Ultimately, the army’s fear, Odysseus’ rhetoric and the Panhellenic cause prevail. Ironically, it is Iphigenia herself who ‘redirects the plot to the myth with her final change of mind’ and acceptance of her sacrifice.27 The play thus clearly showcases the submission of a female mind and body to the dictates of a ruthless and meaningless patriarchal system that promotes war whatever the cost. This lays the foundations for revisionism in ‘Iphigenia says no’.

Anghelaki-Rooke both engages with and subverts significant elements of the ancient play. Through the denser and more elusive form of the short poem, the modern Greek poet highlights those aspects of Iphigenia at Aulis that offer potential for revision by aligning them with contemporary women’s views and concerns: their anti-war sentiments and their questioning of inherited wisdom, traditions and the meaning of sacrifice. Underlining this female-centred critical outlook, ‘Iphigenia says no’ has key points of intersection with the female choral parts of Euripides’ tragedy as well, including the use of voice. For most of the poem (lines 1–69), Iphigenia is addressed tenderly and intimately in the second person. This voice seems to be neither Clytemnestra’s nor Agamemnon’s because it is characterized by a mixture of detachment, which a mother would not have, and female complicity that excludes the father: in lines 1, 23 and 64 she is addressed by name, whereas in line 18, she is called Βασιλοκόρη28 (Princess; literally ‘King’s daughter’). The choice of female voices demonstrates a predilection for the lyrical side of the tragedy, which is also given prominence in the poem as the female voices make us aware of Iphigenia’s coming of age and sexual awakening. But they also foreground a similar female perspective in both the tragedy and the poem, since reflection on and criticism of what is happening is conveyed by women, a point also made by Helen Foley.29 The female perspective is enhanced by the complex spatial and temporal dimensions of the chorus which ‘shifts between a mythical past, a present and an emotionally charged projection of the future’.30

The condemnation of war is the poem’s most obvious point of intersection with Iphigenia at Aulis, and its criticism is shaped with reference to both Euripides’ tragedy and Seferis’ ‘Helen’, which I mentioned above. The second stasimon of Iphigenia at Aulis, for example, focuses on the myth of Helen and offers a prophetic vision of the destruction of Troy with an emphasis on the sufferings of women which, as Helen Foley argues ‘bracket and undercut the achievements of war’.31 Seferis’ ‘Helen’ likewise aims at a similar effect by including strong apocalyptic imagery inspired by Christian iconography.32 But unlike Seferis’ anti-war sentiment, which remains in the realm of metaphor and abstraction with the suffering centring around the warriors (collectively heard through the voice of Teucer), Anghelaki-Rooke brings out a clear Euripidean dimension as her poem focuses on the effects of war on women and blames the male lust for violence.

The imagery of destruction in the lines quoted above is gendered, as the ‘sharp weapons’ reflect male aggression, whereas references to the benefits of waiting (‘καρπούς της αναμονής’, 47), rebirth (‘αναγεννιούνται’, 50) and return (‘επιστρέφουν’, 48) reflect a female perception of time as a cycle in tune with the cycles of life and nature:

And unlike in Seferis, in both Euripides’ play and Anghelaki-Rooke’s poem, the war is the result of male choice, not divine agency. In Iphigenia at Aulis, the war is largely the outcome of Odysseus’ manipulation of the situation and Iphigenia’s change of mind; in ‘Iphigenia says no’, it results from the warriors’ lack of faith in peace: ‘δεν πιστεύουν’ (42). The deadly war consumes everything and Anghelaki-Rooke refers to the women’s cries — reminding us of the devastating consequences of armed conflict for civilians, innocent victims — something that Euripides explored in greater depth in his tragedy Trojan Women. Unfortunately, however, in Iphigenia at Aulis, the chorus’ bleak vision fails to affect the outcome of the play. Tradition remains steadfast, unswerving.

The authority of tradition is conveyed in ‘Iphigenia says no’ through the wise elders and their age-old wisdom but especially through the stories they narrate:

The reference to the elders’ rich knowledge should be read ironically: they are men, and as such they represent patriarchy as the authority that controls people; it only exists to serve and maintain the status quo. In this context, the story of the friendly relationship between the girl and the winds feels more like a trap from which the innocent, unknowing victim cannot escape, and which will prove fatal. Anghelaki-Rooke’s use of the word ‘ιστορία’ underlines this ironic dimension: its ambiguous meaning in Greek alludes both to the age-old myth of her sacrifice and the actual consequences of choices that have the power to shape history.

We must now turn to Seferis to assess the particular weight of the word γέροντες which, in his poetry, is often associated with war and its consequences. Tradition in the form of inherited wisdom was key to Seferis’ poetic vision. In a typical modernist manner, he represented art as a dialogue with the past, most often alluded to in his work through the nekyia theme. This wisdom is often transmitted by γέροντες. It is Odysseus as an old man, for instance, who gives the younger poet guidance on how to conquer his own Troy (his art) in ‘Reflections on a foreign line of verse’. Odysseus is described as having ‘ασπρισμένα γένια’ (‘whitened beard’) and looking like ‘κάτι γέρους θαλασσινούς’ (‘certain old sailors’).33 Further, in his poem ‘The last day’ (February 1939), Seferis regrets the absence of spiritual leaders in a period of increasing political oppression using the word γέροντες specifically: ‘θυμότανε κανείς γέροντες δασκάλους που μας άφησαν ορφανούς’ (‘One recalled old teachers who’d left us orphans’). The authority of tradition is a central value in Seferis’ poetry and its absence is lamented.

More importantly, in ‘Spring AD’ (16 March 1939), a political poem that comments on the unconditional surrender of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, Seferis underlines the misplaced priorities of the elders, their self-serving motives and their cowardice at the expense of innocent people.34 This opens a window of criticism on the elders that Anghelaki-Rooke would approve as it challenges the authority and reliability of their wisdom. ‘Spring AD’ also speaks of a female figure resisting this betrayal; it speaks of life and hope. This is clear in the poem’s pervasive nature imagery linked to the spring and therefore to regeneration. Hope is further foregrounded by references to love, children and grandchildren, which emphasize the power of life. There is also mention of an executioner who attacks the young woman but has no power over her. Finally, the female figure ascends into heaven, just like Iphigenia in Euripides and in Anghelaki-Rooke’s poem. All this indicates that ‘Spring AD’ may well be a poem with which ‘Iphigenia says no’ is in dialogue, presenting as it does a female figure of resistance. But in Seferis, this woman remains abstract just as Helen in the poem of that title is nothing but a symbol; her presence does not lead to any tangible results. She is a symbol of hope but nothing more: a symbol which typifies the representation of women in the male literary imagination.35 In the case of Anghelaki-Rooke, on the other hand, not only does Iphigenia have a name and a physical presence but her decision not to be sacrificed has the force to overturn the current order of things and change the historical outcome. The war is postponed, and the army bows to women’s terms.

Anghelaki-Rooke rejects the veneration of the past as presented in Euripides and Seferis and also challenges Seferis’ abstract depiction of women. Perhaps the most important point in the modern poem’s revisionist stance is the way in which it stages female restriction and oppression through the reference to Iphigenia’s sacrifice. The poem uses the following powerful image to convey this: ‘μάρμαρο το φως/δέσμια κρατά την κεφαλή σου’ (‘a marmoreal light/holds your head captive’). The word used as an attributive adjective for Iphigenia’s head is δέσμια (captive). This indicates physical but also intellectual restriction. Iphigenia is held prisoner by a light that is compared to marble. The metaphor here may allude to the altar on which Iphigenia will be sacrificed. But what is that ‘light’ that holds her head captive?

I propose that the use of the phrase ‘το φως’ (‘the light’) evokes associations with tradition: together with myth and the Greek landscape, ‘light’ constitutes a ‘salient feature’ in the poetics of Greek modernism.36 Anghelaki-Rooke was aware of this, as her essay in the Iowa Review marking her contribution to that year’s International Writing Programme indicates. There, she writes that ‘[t]he Greek landscape, the physical kingdom of light where, as Dionysios Solomos puts it, “every voice in motion was talking to the light,” leads one to a “process of humanisation” (Seferis)’.37 Anghelaki-Rooke thus acknowledges the centrality of light in Greek poetry quoting Solomos and Seferis (and elsewhere Elytis), and associates it with the Greek landscape and its ‘ethical, national and aesthetic values’ in the poetics of Greek modernism especially.38 It is no surprise that a young female poet would explore the poetic legacy of her country. The work of Solomos and, to an even greater extent, the influence of the literary Generation of the Thirties, was so powerful that, as Vagenas observed, ‘it [could] prevent contemporary Greek literature and criticism from breathing freely and undermine their desire to be avant-garde in their own right’.39 For the twenty-four-year-old poet publishing her first poetic collection, these lines that associate the light with the restriction of the head seem to express the binding effect of tradition on the aspirations of a modern woman writer.

The reference to Iphigenia’s sacrifice in ‘Iphigenia says no’ is associated with an experience of captivity. In Euripides’ play, Iphigenia embraces this. As Foley explains, ‘the plot unfolds until the final scene as a series of attempts and failures to change the myth as it is represented in the prologue and to save the innocent Iphigenia’.40 Ironically, it is Iphigenia’s own change of mind in the tragedy that puts an end to the tensions which, from the beginning of the play, were subverting the original myth as recounted by Agamemnon in the prologue. ‘The ultimate irony of the ending is the restoration of the sacrificial system after it has been almost exposed and rejected, when love is harnessed to imitate and serve the cause of revenge’.41 Iphigenia willingly offers herself as a victim for the glory of Greece. As a bride of Hades, her children will be the achievements of the army against the barbarians. The Panhellenic order is restored, and the old myths have re-established their power. The young woman’s free will exists only to sanction the age-old values.

It is not surprising that Anghelaki-Rooke should react to such a display of the internalization of the dictates of the patriarchy. Almost a decade after ‘Iphigenia says no’, in 1972, Adrienne Rich, a pioneering feminist writer whose work Rooke had translated, spoke of the power of re-vision as an act of survival for women who have been stifled in a world where the patriarchy has restricted their lives, or made them believe that such lives as they lived were the result of their own choices, and not that of the patriarchy. As I have been arguing, ‘Iphigenia says no’ is already a fierce and passionate challenge to such mind-sets. That Anghelaki-Rooke was writing with such vigour in 1963 reveals the striking maturity with which ideas were taking shape, at an early stage in her poetic career and before these ideas took centre stage in the theoretical writings of second-wave feminism. She rewrites the moment of Iphigenia’s decision, giving her agency a radically different outcome to that of the ancient play. Iphigenia takes a stand against the power of tradition codified in myth. The young princess refuses to sacrifice herself on the altar of a social order that perpetuates violence and death, where women become victims of male ambition and military intransigence — an altar that entraps and controls the female mind and body. Thus, ‘Iphigenia says no’ maintains the confident tone and dynamic expression of the heroine’s discourse in the original text but redirects her instructions to a different purpose:

Instead of accepting her sacrifice and adopting (as she does in Euripides) the rhetoric of the military,42 Iphigenia makes a case for peace, advocating the activities of farming, giving life a chance and children a future. The imagery of the lines quoted above should be read in contrast to the imagery used to describe the violence of war and its destructive effects (see above, p. 00 and Appendix, lines 56–62). Anghelaki-Rooke’s Iphigenia rejects the war rhetoric and the argument, dominant in Euripides, that the expedition to Troy is inevitable now that the army has gathered at Aulis. Hers is what Bonnie Honig would call an act of refusal that is ‘agonistic’ because it succeeds in bringing about change in the world.43 Iphigenia’s refusal takes the military by surprise and makes them change their plans. They postpone the war and return home to find Helen preparing dinner.

Even though in both the ancient play and the modern poem Iphigenia ascends into heaven, the outcome is very different. In Euripides, she is glorified in the name of Hellas, having embraced the military rhetoric of the war. In Anghelaki-Rooke, Iphigenia ascends to heaven as a Virgin Mary of sorts, having secured peace for the world and the blessings of everyday domestic life. The Christian colour that Iphigenia’s ascension acquires is not out of place in the poem, since the Virgin (Παναγιά) is invoked in line 37 and ‘over her son’ (‘στο γιο της’, 39) alludes to Christ. This reference expresses the sanctity of motherhood (also explored in anti-war discourse by feminists, discussed below). It also frames the idea of suffering and the sacrifice of innocents but also the hope of a new life, of resurrection. The months of April and September named in the poem are central to Orthodoxy as they mark the times when people celebrate Easter (the Passion and Resurrection of Christ) and the Elevation of the Holy Cross.

If we consider that Iphigenia’s story began ‘πριν γεννηθεί η Αφροδίτη’ (before Aphrodite was born) (30) and continues into the poet’s religious present, she can be seen as a composite figure akin to the one described in another of Seferis’ Logbook III poems, ‘Engomi’. Here Seferis stages a moment of historical transcendence using a composite female figure that merges Aphrodite and the Virgin in an image that pays tribute to critical stages in the development of modern Greek literature, especially Solomos and Sikelianos. In all these cases, the vision of the woman ascending in heaven becomes the ‘meeting point of light, life and also love’.44 In her revisionist writing of the myth of Iphigenia, Anghelaki-Rooke creates her own version of this figure that marks modern Greek literature, altering the ‘ideal order’45 of the existing literary monuments, to cite T. S. Eliot. Her feminist perspective aims at readjusting and enriching the existing canon of modern Greek literature from the perspective of a woman poet.

Finally, although the concluding image of Helen serving dinner may not sound very feminist to us today, in an anti-war context it implies the taming of passions and aggressive instincts, and the prioritizing of love and taking care of others. This precise concept has been explored in feminist writing against male violence in the context of war in particular. We should not forget that 1963 belongs to the Cold War period. International events, such as the threat of a nuclear conflict, the partition of Berlin in 1961, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the invasion of Hungary in 1956 (closely observed from Greece), marked the late 1950s and early 1960s. The argument that Iphigenia passionately articulates in her refusal to be sacrificed — for life, for love, for peace and joy — is very much in line with the anti-Vietnam war discourse of the emerging American feminist movements of those years46 (including the Strike for Peace movement), which was also adopted in Greece.47 The anti-war protests were gendered: war and violence were aligned with the idea of masculinity, whereas women represented the sanctity of life. Thus, Anghelaki-Rooke’s image of the soldiers returning home for dinner shifts the balance from the patriarchal values of violence and dominance to the matriarchal priorities of care and support.

The choice of Euripides in an anti-war context should not surprise us. His reception is often embedded in discourses related to gender and politics because his tragedies engage with subjects such as military atrocities and their impact on women. They also address modern anxieties about the abuse of power and question the possibility of objective morality in wartime.48 This is already apparent in the gendered attitudes that mark the translation of ancient tragedies in the early twentieth century. Euripides’ works were seen as more sensitive and feminine than the manly Iliad or Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. As Charlotte Ribeyrol notes, a very good example of this is T. S. Eliot’s response to the ‘Poets’ translation series’. He reproached Hilda Doolittle, her husband Richard Aldington, and Gilbert Murray who translated plays by Euripides, for preferring feminine or even decadent fin de siècle sentimentalism and for placing Euripides above Aeschylus.49 Apparently translating Euripides in 1914 was not considered a very ‘virile’ kind of Hellenism. Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke was especially familiar with American poetry which she had also translated, so the translation choices of H. D., and in particular her choice to translate only the choral parts of Iphigenia at Aulis, may not have been unfamiliar to her.50 As Gregory points out, H.D.’s ‘choice of texts and writers, in the context of modernist classicism, was politically resistant, focusing on Sappho, other Greek women poets, and male classical poets associated with a “feminine” tradition, Euripides, Meleager and Theocritus’.51

The wider cultural atmosphere in Greece in the late 1950s and early 1960s provides important contextual evidence for the poem’s feminist perspective. The reworking of ancient tragedies in modern Greek cinema is discussed by Anastasia Bakogianni, who details the impact of Tzavellas’ Antigone in 1961 and more especially Cacoyannis’ Electra in 1962.52 Cacoyannis placed the House of Atreus centre stage in his films; he is interested in Euripides for what he perceived as a pacifist, anti-military stance, and he includes strong female leads that problematize the position of women in Greek society. A renewed interest in Iphigenia at Aulis was also stimulated by archaeological excavations that brought the story of Iphigenia centre stage. The archaeological site of Aulis was systematically excavated between 1956 and 1961 by a team led by I. Threpsiades. These archaeological activities are likely to have triggered a renewed interest in the play and given impetus to its performance. Hitherto, Iphigenia at Aulis had not been one of the ‘popular’ tragedies of the modern Greek stage. After two early performances in 1910 and 1916, the tragedy began to be performed again in 1956 and this continued well into the 1990s and beyond.53 Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke would have had the opportunity to see any of the pre-1963 performances, some of which would have stood out, given that they were staged by the National Theatre in 1957, 1958, 1961 at Epidaurus or the Herodes Atticus Theatre in Athens, and also because of their extensive press coverage in the theatre review columns.54

One final contextual element may hold the key to understanding how Anghelaki-Rooke knew the ancient tragedy so well. Michelakis notes the importance of amateur school and university theatres as institutional contexts in which Iphigenia at Aulis has been revived on the modern stage.55Iphigenia at Aulis was actually taught in the Greek Gymnasium continuously after the war, and one can view online the books that Anghelaki-Rooke would have used as a student at I. M. Panayotopoulos high school. We may join Michelakis in asking ‘what ethical, moral, or political messages the young audiences of the play were invited to draw from the morally turbulent world of the play’. As schoolbook analyses of the sacrifice scene suggest, in the Greece of the 50s and early 60s such a message would have been one of patriotism and self-sacrifice. Iphigenia’s story would fit neatly into the national rhetoric that characterized the country’s ideology duly propagated through the educational system as well as in society at large. This is corroborated by publications such as the article in the newspaper Ελευθερία in 1958, which reported the discovery of the altar on which Iphigenia was sacrificed.56 Athina Kalogeropoulou, the author of the article, discusses the meaning of such discoveries that bind myth to the geographical space of modern Greece and observes how the royal houses became the subject-matter not only of the Homeric epics but also of the work of ‘the great tragedians of the fifth century’ who ‘presented in a unique and ingenious manner their terrible and unforgiving fate and taught the nation a superior (aristos) way of life, the correct stance of man before it’.57 This is a grandiose statement and although the author does not clarify what such a stance might be and how it may be adjusted to reflect this specific tragedy, it is again in the context of a nationally minded rhetoric that it should be seen.

This ideological dimension that frames the reception of ancient Greek myth in modern Greek culture is subverted in a later rewriting of the myth of Iphigenia by Jenny Mastoraki, a poet of the generation of the 70s, who addresses these questions with biting irony, highlighting the oppressive and suffocating presence of family, religion and nation. Her Iphigenia poems from the collection Kin (Το σόι,1978) take Anghelaki-Rooke’s subversive stance to extremes, dismantling the myth and completely disrupting any rational and coherent relationship with it.58 The family, the nation and religion with their rigid old-fashioned standards and demands are placed in a modern context defined by the darker chapters of history: Iphigenia lives on Ioannis Metaxas Street, a reference to the dictator who was in power from 1936 to 1940. This positions Iphigenia in the clutches of nationalism and militarism — indeed, in the poem the army is always lurking around the corner.59 This is not so far removed from the basic message of the ancient tragedy. Mastoraki is playing with her own name and chooses ‘Jenny’ as opposed to Iphigenia as a way of separating herself from a nationalist and patriarchal Greek family and society and its ambivalent, often absurd, heritage.

I have argued that Anghelaki-Rooke rewrites the myth of Iphigenia’s sacrifice in her construction of a distinctively feminine poetic voice that subverts the unexamined authority of myths. The focus on the chorus promotes the feminist stance of the poem. The choice of Euripides and the emphasis on the chorus are significant in the anti-war message of the poem. I have noted a number of contextual factors that frame her choice of myth and the direction of her rewriting. I have also shown that Anghelaki-Rooke is responding to the poetic legacy of Greek modernism. In ‘Iphigenia says no’, we are witnessing a poetic dialogue with (and subversion of) Seferis in particular. Ultimately, Anghelaki-Rooke is passionate in her wish to promote a feminist poetics that gives woman a voice and agency and rejects any kind of control or authority over the female mind and body. These values would be further explored in the 1970s in her Penelope poems.

Appendix

‘Iphigenia says no’ (1963) by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke — A translation by the author60

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Alexander Kazamias, Vasileios Balaskas, Kaiti Diamantakou and Pantelis Michelakis for the invaluable information they provided on the political, archaeological, theatrical and educational context of Iphigenia at Aulis in the Greece of the 1950s and 1960s. I am also grateful to David Ricks and Sarah Ekdawi for their feedback on my translation. Finally, the reviewers' constructive comments improved the final version of this article.

References

Dr Liana Giannakopoulou teaches Modern Greek Literature in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics of the University of Cambridge. She is the author of The Power of Pygmalion. Ancient Greek Sculpture in Modern Greek Poetry (Peter Lang 2007) and of The Parthenon in Poetry. An Anthology (in Greek, ELIA 2009). She has also co-edited Culture and Society in Crete. From Kornaros to Kazantzakis (Cambridge Scholars 2017), a selection of papers presented at an international conference held in Cambridge. From 2016 to 2022 she was the Chair of the Society for Modern Greek Studies.

1

The collection famously begins with the line ‘το σώμα μου έγινε η αρχή ενός ταξιδιού’ (‘my body became the beginning of a journey’).

2

Van Dyck (1996: 121–30).

3

See Robinson (1996: 109–20).

4

Rich (1972: 18–30).

5

See Berger (1977).

6

Anghelaki-Rooke (1983: 141).

7

Anghelaki-Rooke (1983: 146).

8

For a discussion of Anghelaki-Rooke’s Penelope poems, see Giannakopoulou (2021).

9

See Gamel (2015: 15–43).

10

Michelakis (2006: 127).

11

See Hall (2004: 1–46) and (2005: 3–41).

12

A slightly earlier one, ‘Iphigenia and her father’ (1962) by Nikos Karouzos explores Agamemnon’s psychological turmoil as he grapples with the demand of the oracle.

13

Rich (1972: 18–30) and Cixous (1976: 875–93).

14

Poems such as Yannis Ritsos’ ‘Iphigenia’s return’ (1972) and Zbignew Herbert’s ‘Iphigenia at Aulis’ (1977) spring to mind as important examples. For other examples in modern Greek poetry, the website greek-language.gr is an invaluable source of material, with a dedicated section on myth in modern Greek poetry organized by the names of mythical figures.

16

Foley (1985: 69) explains that ‘both the marriage and the war require a preliminary sacrifice (proteleia) to Artemis’ and ‘Euripides plays on the common details of these two rites’.

17

This is not unlike Euripides’ tragedy, in which the chorus of women from Chalkis admire the army and observe the sea-creatures that some of the fleets had on their prows.

18

Especially in the short poems that constitute his Μαρτυρίες (Testimonies) written between 1963 and 1969. For reactions to the Nobel prize, see Seferis (2018: 295–303) and Beaton (2003: 378–85).

19

Beaton (2003: 378).

20

I am paraphrasing here Cavafy’s poem ‘Νόησις’ (‘Perception’) (1918).

21

The collection was either ignored or criticized for its political stance in relation to Cyprus. See Beaton (2003: 329–30).

22

See Krikos-Davis (1994: 54–61).

23

Seferis (1992: 178). Elsewhere, Seferis speaks of myth and its various protagonists as symbols and names that the modern writers use to mould and shape according to their own aims.

24

Anghelaki-Rooke (1983: 145).

25

I use Keeley and Sherrard (1995) for translations of Seferis’ lines quoted in this article.

26

Foley (1985: 94).

27

Foley (1985: 95).

28

A term that the chorus is also using for her in line 592: τὴν τοῦ βασιλέως/ἴδετ’ Ἰφιγένειαν, ἄνασσαν ἐμήν. Kovacs (2002: 224)

29

Foley (2003: 1–30), p. 20.

30

Gregory (2012: 148).

31

Foley (1985: 78–84) where a detailed discussion of the choral parts may be found.

32

The imagery in Seferis comes from the early fourteenth-century fresco of the Last Judgement in the church of Asinou, in Cyprus. See Krikos-Davis (1994: 45).

33

In ‘Ένας γέροντας στην ακροποταμιά’, the persona of the old man seeks to trace a path above and beyond the ravaging effects of war.

34

This is a dimension that emerges in later reworkings of the myth of Iphigenia at Aulis, in relation to Calchas especially. Good examples are the poems ‘Iphigenia at Aulis’ (1977) by Zbignew Herbert and ‘Calchas’ (1971) by Kiki Dimoula.

35

Compare what Adrienne Rich says about this: ‘[…] woman has been a luxury for man and has served as the painter’s model and the poet’s muse, but also a comforter, nurse, cook, bearer of his seed, secretarial assistant and copyist of manuscripts […]’. Rich (1972: 19).

36

Tziovas (1997: 4).

37

Anghelaki-Rooke (1976: 215).

38

Anghelaki-Rooke (1976: 216).

39

Vayenas (1997: 47).

40

Foley (1985: 94).

41

Foley (1985: 100).

42

Iphigenia’s use of the word ‘ἑλέπτολιν’ in Euripides (line 1476) is especially revealing in this context, showing how far she has internalized the military rhetoric. Kovacs (2002: 328).

43

Honig (2021: 1–13 and 45–71) for a discussion of this matter.

44

Krikos-Davis (1994: 156).

45

T. S. Eliot (1976: 8).

46

For an introduction and overview of this topic see Small and Hoover (1992) and Ruddick (1989).

47

For information on the peace movement in Greece and details of Lambrakis’ involvement, see Gkotzaridis (2016) and Makris (2020).

48

Turkeltaub (2017).

49

Ribeyrol (2011: 21–30).

50

See H. D. (1983).

51

Gregory (2012: 146).

52

Bakogianni (2008: 119–67).

53

A complete list of performances of Iphigenia at Aulis in Greece can be found in the volume Ευριπίδης (1977: 178–98). This is vol. no. 30 of the series Αρχαίο Ελληνικό Θέατρο. The renewed interest in Iphigenia at Aulis after 1956 might have been triggered by the archaeological excavations at the site of Aulis between 1956 and 1961.

55

Michelakis (2006: 125).

56

Ελευθερία, Sunday, 23 November 1958.

58

See in particular her poems ‘Σημείωση’ (‘Note’) and ‘Ιφιγένεια’ (‘Iphigenia’) in the collection Το σόι (Kin). See Mastoraki (1978: 13 and 25).

59

It is mentioned, for example, that near Iphigenia’s flat lives the family of an army judge who keeps an eye on her. See ‘Ιφιγένεια’ (‘Iphigenia’), lines 16–22.

© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press.