ΜΑΘΟΥΣΙΝ ΑΥΔΩ ΚΟΥ ΜΑΘΟΥΣΙ ΛΗΘΟΜΑΙ. Fonctions dramatiques du silence dans l'Agamemnon.

Silence is an essential theme in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, a play centered on the opposition between Clitemnestra’s control of logos and a disquieting dimension of concealed truth, known to some of her subjects, who cannot however speak overtly. Their embarassed silence and reticence forebode the revelation of that truth, a task assigned by Aeschylus to Cassandra, the figure of the play most characterized by her silence. Two opposed attitudes concerning silence are thus confronted: the Old Men of Argos conclude the third stasimon in a condition of painful aphasia, confining their knowledge in the darkness of their hearth, while Cassandra, starting from silence, moves towards speech and revelation, no matter what. The interruption of her silence undermines the precarious balance between knowledge and speech that had been kept by the Watchman and the Chorus in the first half of the play. Beyond demystifying the nature of Clytemnestra’s logos, the silence of the prophetess is bound by a complex relationship to the other silences that precede it, in an articulated dramatic sequence which lets the spectators perceive and appropriate the feeling of discomfort of the characters who «know» (μαθόντες), but are subject to Clytemnestra’s kratos and dialectic superiority, and then experience the astonishment caused to them by the passage from silence to speech.