Tag Archives: Agamemnon

Got a Problem? Call a Poet

By Robin Bates | Published: October 8, 2023

Tragedy, it turns out, is a powerful literary form for dealing with posttraumatic fear.

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Kundera Understood Authoritarianism

By Robin Bates | Published: July 12, 2023

The late Milan Kundera understood the authoritarian mindset in a deep way. “Book of Laughter and Forgetting” and “Eternal Lightness of Being” capture the mindset.

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Our New President Understands Suffering

By Robin Bates | Published: November 7, 2020

America has elected a president who understands suffering. A passage from Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon” seems right.

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Covid Costs Us Loved Ones’ Final Words

By Robin Bates | Published: July 12, 2020

Among the many tragedies related to Covid is how family and friends are missing out on final words. Many literary works touch on the importance of this last encounter.

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#MeToo: A New Day for Cassandra

By Robin Bates | Published: December 27, 2017

The prophetess Cassandra wasn’t listened to, but the #MeToo movement is changing that.

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Climate Scientists, Our Cassandras

By Robin Bates | Published: October 24, 2016

Our climate scientists must feel like modern day Cassandras, as she appears in Aeschylus’s “Agamemnon” or Robinson Jeffers’s “Cassandra.” The prophetess knew what would happen but no one believed her. As a result, Troy fell.

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Germany vs. Greece, a Greek Tragedy

By Robin Bates | Published: September 27, 2015

Novelist Tim McCarthy argues that the economic collision between Germany and Greece reenacts a number of the classic Greek tragedies, most notably “Oedipus” and “The Oresteia.” But Athena may not intervene in this instance.

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