Czułość piastunki. Jakie emocje wyraża Kilissa z Orestei Ajschylosa w polskich przekładach – i co z tego wynika?

Oresteia by Aeschylus is the only extant trilogy from ancient times. In the second part of the trilogy, in Choephorae, there is a scene, when – after having received a message about the alleged death of Orestes, the only son of Clytemnestra, the queen of Argos, and her husband, Agamemnon, whom she had murdered in the first part of the trilogy – Cilissa, the Orestes’s nurse, appears in front of the palace. The scene (epeisodion), although quite short, is an extraordinary and important one. Firstly, it impacts the further action and influences the denouement of the Choephorae (it means the avenging Agamemnon’s murder). Secondly, it raises doubts mainly about the motherhood of Clytemnestra and her feelings towards her son. In this tragedy of revenge, Cilissa sounds emotional and tender. And it is particularly this aspect of tenderness and emotions on which I would like to take a threefold look concerning: linguistics (the original Greek, but mainly Polish translations with the subjectivity, creative, and active role of the translators in the process of translating taken into account), imagery (in the perspective of the cognitive linguistics approach), and interpretation (Polish translations were given in different times, starting from the 19th century, and the way Polish translators rendered relations between the play’s characters slightly differs, which influences the readers or spectators’ reception of the trilogy).