Il mancato ritorno di Ifigenia. Euripide e Ritsos

The story of Iphigenia, an absolutely innocent victim, has been present for millennia in many expressions of civilization and represents a warning for history: she is sacrificed to propitiate a war and is also the priestess of a goddess in a foreign land. Here she suffers from the distance from her homeland and the loneliness of her loved ones. Her desire to return to Greece is thwarted by the impossibility of returning, by its constant postponement. For Hauptmann, Iphigenia continues to die in addition to the first sacrifice wanted by her father and despite being saved by the goddess because she cannot return to her homeland: her return would reveal the fiction of the sacrifice and would be covered with infamy. Even Ritsos’ tragedy, in which the return to Argos is described in detail, ends with incommunicability and silence, which in turn become the specific features of the notion of tragic.