Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides

by Euripides, Anne Carson (Translator)

Now in paperback.

Euripides, the last of the three great tragedians of ancient Athens, reached the height of his renown during the disastrous Peloponnesian War, when democratic Athens was brought down by its own outsized ambitions. “Euripides,” the classicist Bernard Knox has written, “was born never to live in peace with himself and to prevent the rest of mankind from doing so.” His plays were he unmasked heroes, revealing them as foolish and savage, and he wrote about the powerless–women and children, slaves and barbarians–for whom tragedy was not so much exceptional as unending. Euripides’ plays rarely won first prize in the great democratic competitions of ancient Athens, but their combustible mixture of realism and extremism fascinated audiences throughout the Greek world. In the last days of the Peloponnesian War, Athenian prisoners held captive in far-off Sicily were said to have won their freedom by reciting snatches of Euripides’ latest tragedies.

Four of those tragedies are presented here in new translations by the contemporary poet and classicist Anne Carson. They are Herakles , in which the hero swaggers home to destroy his own family; Hekabe , set after the Trojan War, in which Hektor’s widow takes vengeance on her Greek captors; Hippolytos , about love and the horror of love; and the strange tragic-comedy fable Alkestis , which tells of a husband who arranges for his wife to die in his place. The volume also contains brief introductions by Carson to each of the plays along with two remarkable framing “ A Curious Art Form” and “Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra.”

Genres: Plays, Classics, Poetry, Drama, Fiction, Mythology, Theatre

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 417

About the author

Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.
Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

Reviews

[Elle (ellexamines on TT & Substack) · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a theory that watching unbearable stories about other people lost in grief and rage is good for you – may cleanse you of your darkness. Do you want to go down to the pits of yourself all alone? Not much. What if an actor could do it for you? Isn’t that why they are called actors? They act for you. You sacrifice them to action. And this sacrifice is a mode of deepest intimacy of you with your own life.

The Greek concept of catharsis is a fascinating one and one easy to misunderstand.
ORIGINAL COMMENTARY: I often struggle with tragedy, in its inevitable sad ending: to me, sadness with happiness at the end are often more cathartic. But the idea that seeing sadness at the end is the true point: that, to me, is fascinating.
UPDATED COMMENTARY: I have actually been in a Greek Tragedy class now and read fifteen greek plays (a long review can be found here), so I feel more qualified to talk about this now. As given by Aristotle, the definition of a tragedy is not actually in its sad ending: it is in experiencing human suffering. (Most of the extant plays, not by coincidence but by generations of selection, end negatively.) Catharsis, by his definition, is a type of cleaning: "we experience, then expurgate these emotions". Tragedy can attempt to make the worst experiences consumable. It is not the ending, but the process.

On Colloquial Translation

Anne Carson’s style of translation often focuses on colloquialism: making a text often translated in direct wording into something palatable for readers. This translation of this text feels… raw. Carson does not waste words: the sense of a line is conveyed, not perhaps the exact wording. (This review gives a good example of how, as does this post on the Oresteia.)

Having spent the last eight years in Latin class (I know), I have learned that to make a text as readable to modern eyes as it would have been to ancient ones is a very different skill than direct translation. To convey word for word and to convey the spirit are two different aims; to do both is difficult, nigh-impossible for some texts. Debates over the merit of certain translated works are rife in scholarly circles.

For those of you more interested in the politics of translation, here are some cool things I found while going down a rabbit hole on this topic last month:
→Cecily Fasham, on the politics of translating sappho
→a tumblr post on the politics of translation
→Emily Wilson, interview notes on The Odyssey

The Play Reviews

→Heracles ★★★★☆ Euripides← (421-416 BCE)
This was my personal least favorite of the plays I read for this collection, possibly because of how thoughtless it is: no decision is made by any character that caused this ill, simply a trickery of the gods. It feels deeply wrong and deeply unsatisfying. I believe is the point. Sometimes, the world is too evil to show mercy.

Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation):

HERAKLES: Come back! Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

→Hekabe ★★★★★ Euripides← (424 BCE)
There is a sense of inevitable death that pervades this play: taking place during a mythical war, it serves on some level as a reflection of the destruction of society that Euripides himself would have feared during the Peloponnesian Wars. The ending of this play is deeply strange and off-putting: after a play full of tragedy in her life, Hekabe is told she will be turned into a dog. This fate is horrifying, but what I found most horrifying about it was its ambiguity: she has received a prophecy about her fate, but we shall never really see the truth of it. In her new life as a Greek slave, she will perhaps become a dog anyway.

Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation):

AGAMEMNON: O poor woman. There is no measure to your evils.
HEKABE: I do not exist. There is nothing else. Not even evils.

CHORUS: Don’t sweep the whole female species together for condemnation
because of your own catastrophe.
We are many—some blameless,
some not.

→Hippolytus ★★★★★ Euripides← (428 BCE)
In her introduction to this text, Carson says two things that stuck out to me:
→[Hippolytos] seems to want to place Artemis, and himself, in a special third gender—the translucent gender—unpolluted by flesh or change.
→If you asked to Hippolytos to name his system he would say “shame”. Oddly, if you asked Phaedra to name her system she would also say “shame”. They do not mean the same thing by this word. Or perhaps they do. Too bad they never talk.
The politics of shame lie at the heart of this text. What is it to love, what is it to be ashamed of that love? It's really interesting that the male character, Hippolytos, is the one taking on this role of being in love with chastity. It's also interesting that he, like Phaedra and like Theseus, is taking on the role of his Amazon mother. Phaedra, daughter to Pasiphae, is in love with the impossible and impossibly ashamed; Theseus, son of Aegeus, takes on his stubbornness. (The family tree helps.)

A fun tidbit from my Greek Tragedy teacher, who is in love with Greek double meanings: Hippolytus derives from 'horses' and the verb λυω or 'luo', which can mean either 'to release' or 'to destroy'; it is also ambiguous whether 'hippos' is the subject or the object. Hippolyta's name would have been 'he who sets horses free'; Hippolytos' name, though, means something more like 'he who the horses destroy'. As they do.

This was my favorite of these four plays.

Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation):

NURSE: Not much profit in desire then,
If everyone touched by it has to die.

→Alcestis ★★★★☆ Euripides← (438 BCE)
This is a strange and comedic tragedy. Admetos loves his wife and yet is okay to watch her die for him: either way, however, he gets her back. It's a splitting of fate unexpected in this genre (Oedipus wishes).

Notable Lines (Anne Carson translation):

CHORUS: We all owe a debt to death, you know.

ADMETOS: if I found another savior, if I look upon this daylight, it’s her I owe.
I hate the going on of doors!

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[brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

lots of people claim to ‘love the translation’ of a text of which they don't speak the original language and I'm always feeling stupid and wondering, like, if you don’t speak the original how can you judge the translation? I mean, you can admit to digging the language but the translation? people must say this because it makes 'em sound literary, right? there’s not even an agreed upon standard of what a great translation means. is it the most accurate? (& does most accurate mean the most precise word-for-word translation? or does it mean most accurately conveying the spirit of the original? and if so, what kind of parameters are we talking about?) or the most appealing by contemporary standards?
whatever. i had to will myself through the stodgy penguin editions but these breezed by. they were riveting. and i’m in no way suggesting that easier is better – only that in this particular case, i found Anne Carson’s translation not only more readable, but with greater rhythm and fluidity and verve. who’s responsible? euripedes? carson? i don't know and i kinda don’t care. it’s great shit.

one play in particular, Hekabe, really destroyed me. euripides (who aristotle called 'the most tragic of them all' and who Carson compares to Beckett) depicts Troy after having fallen to the Greeks as a brutal and immoral civilization quickly slipping into total chaos. writing about the Trojan War (and dying civilizations) was probably pretty easy for euripides as, through the whole of his life, Greece was engaged in the Peloponnesian War. this is, of course, impossible for most of my generation to imagine. It amuses me to hear my fellow countrymen state with misty-eyed pride that "we are at war" -- total farce. we are a populace with our heads up our asses with the vague notion that our government is at war, that our government is quite engaged in torture and thuggery and the indiscriminate raining down of bombs, etc.
a semantical distinction, maybe, but an important one. there is little sense of ‘the end’ in american life – our playwrights are not writing plays such as Hekabe and our artists are not painting george grosz’s eyeless, armless, legless men…* the fallen nation-state of Troy, on the other hand, has been suddenly transformed into a moral blackhole: meaning has been sucked from anything and everything; the family unit has been destroyed; kings and queens are now prisoners, slaves, or defiled corpses; the very definition of morality has been irrevocably altered or erased and at the end of Hekabe our ‘heroine’ leaves the play with the knowledge that she will soon be transformed into the form of a mangy dog. an appropriate fate.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief."

Carson begins her preface to this collection with a seemingly naive question. But Euripides begs the question; I mean, my god! Upon returning from HELL, Herakles, a man who might be immortal, he's not sure, murders his city's usurper and then, struck stark raving mad by a jealous Hera, murders his wife and children. Immediately after committing this carnage, he snaps back to sanity, forced to come to terms with what he has wrought, which is an entirely new kind of hell. Death is not tragic enough for Herakles--after all, he might be immortal, and hey, he's already been dead! Instead, he's doomed in a much more complicated way. He renounces the gods--at this point, why not?--which is slightly weird since Zeus is his dad, sort of. The only recompense is friendship--his friendship with Theseus, in fact, saves Herakles from murdering himself.

And it continues from there. Hekabe, the fallen queen of Troy, watches her last child get slaughtered in the still-smoking ruins of Troy. Instead of entering a life of slavery and gang-rape by the Greeks, she gets turned into a dog. Which was apparently really awful, but, frankly, sounds like the better option to me.

I recommend these plays--there's nothing quite like them. And, frankly, I'm filled with rage, and a release occurs when you witness people acting out rage. You don't have to act it out, because they are doing it for you. This might explain why I'm filled with extra rage after watching a banal "we're okay, you're okay, la la la" American movie. These plays spit in the eye of anyone who claims, "It all worked out for the best," or "There's a reason for everything."

[lezhypatia · Rating 5 out of 5]

HERAKLES: I wish I were stone! No memory!

THESEUS: Stop. Give me your hand. I am your friend.

HERAKLES: I fear to stain your clothes with blood.

THESEUS: Stain them, I don’t care.

[max · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are four plays here: Heracles, Hecuba, Hippolytus, Alcestis. Why these four? Not sure but they are a nicely representative sampling of Euripides’ corpus of 19 plays (17 if you eliminate Cyclops and Rhesus, the authenticity of which many scholars have long doubted). Before you read any of these fresh and altogether brilliant translations, a word of advice: forget Aristotle’s Poetics, and forget what the critics say who continually fault Euripides for failing to meet their hidebound notions of what shape a classical drama is supposed to take.

Heracles I actually saw performed in NYC a few years ago and it was riveting. I had a front row seat and —spoiler alert — when a bare chested and blood soaked Heracles fell to his knees after recognizing that he had slaughtered (in a state of divinely induced madness) his wife and three children, the stomach grinding agony of his despair made for a thrilling theatrical experience. It is a play which, like others E. has written (including, in this edition, Alcestis and Hecuba) critics have faulted because E. didn’t have Aristotle around to tell him how to write a play — or because they were relying on certain dramaturgical assumptions which, again, were not the same rules that were guiding the work of Euripides, a brilliant innovator and modernist.

Hecuba is one of several by E. that deal with the Trojan War from the point of view of the women who were burned by it. These plays include The Trojan Women, Andromache, Helen, Hecuba, Iphigenia in Aulis and Iphigenia In Tauris. Add to this list Medea, Alcestis and Electra and you will find that nearly half of E’s corpus focuses on women. We are not even sure whether women, who were famously cloistered in their homes and played no political role in Athens, were permitted in the theater of Dionysus when the great tragedies and comedies were performed there.

Greek tragedy is not difficult to translate literally, although literal translations are often laughable. See A. E. Housman's "Fragment of A Greek Tragedy," a hilarious parody of a brutally literal translation of a segment of a hypothetical Greek tragedy.

Anne Carson is a superbly gifted translator. She takes Euripides' verses and turns them into English that is highly readable while remaining faithful to the spirit of the original Greek. To cite a random example, here are two lines from the opening of Alcestis' speech to her husband at vv. 280-81. First, my literal translation (as close to the Greek as possible):

"Admetus, since you see how my situation is,
I wish to say to you some things I want (to say) before I die."

Here is Paul Roche Ten Plays by Euripides:

"Admetus, you see how matters stand with me,
so let me tell you my last wish before I die."

Here's Carson's version:

"Admetus, you see my condition.
Now listen to my dying wish."

This is the approach she employs everywhere with Euripides. She takes the art of translation into a new dimension. Some might accuse her of taking gross liberties with the text, yet what she sacrifices in word for word renderings she more than makes up for by capturing the pacing, substance, and tone of the original. She makes Euripides a joy to read in English, and this is by no means an easy task.

[cait · Rating 5 out of 5]

thinking about how in all four of these plays, someone is always reaching out a hand, reaching out to or for help. in herakles, theseus says stop. give me your hand. i am your friend. and then later, put your hand on my neck, i shall lead you. and in hekabe, she says take hold of my old woman’s hand. and i, leaning on the curve of someone’s arm, shall press my slow foot forward. or her later proclamation of, you touched my hand once—you confess—you touched my face and fell on the ground before me. so i touch you. i do the same. in hippolytos, this conversation takes place: no, i will not give up on you / what then—force me? cling to my hand? / your knees too, i will not let go. lastly, the cry of alkestis’ son as he watches his mother die before him: look at me, look at my eyes, at my hands reaching out! the recurring themes here are not just grief, not just mourning and misery and death, but the help that comes after it. the innate human desire to touch and to be touched, to hold and to be held.

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fell in love with Euripides a couple years ago when I read Medea and Other Plays because Medea is such a bad-ass and frightening character. He convinced me of her craziness, and that's half the battle right there. Would I get up and let Medea have my seat on the bus if I saw her coming down the aisle? Hell, yes.

This collection has four of his tragedies, all of which are pretty fantastic, though maybe not as great as Medea. Or maybe I'm just blinded by love for Medea. In any case, the four characters who got their fifteen minutes of fame in this college are Herakles, Hekabe, Hippolytos, and Alkestis. Like Medea there is some infanticide, but really - what do you expect from Euripides?

What surprised me more with this collection, especially in the Alkestis, is just how funny a dude Euripides could be. Some of the dialogue in this play made me think of much more contemporary geniuses. In the scene where Herakles discovers that he's shown up during the middle of a funeral he tries to get out of it, but the deceased's husband, Ademtos, isn't hearing of it.

HERAKLES
I'll go to someone else's house.

ADMETOS
Impossible, dear man. I wouldn't consider it.

HERAKLES
A guest is a burden when people are grieving.

ADMETOS
The dead are dead. Please come into my house.

HERAKLES
It's not right to have guests mixed up with a funeral.

ADMETOS
But the guest rooms are quite separate.

The accessibility of these plays was impressive. They read quickly and I was entertained throughout - as much as one reading about infanticide and suicide can be entertained, of course. I think Euripides would have been a hoot at dinner parties. I'd put him right next to Mel Brooks and Peter Sellers.

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Also included is a short essay by Euripides about why he wrote two plays about Phaidra. Again, I was surprised at how modern his voice, which may be attributed more to the translator, Anne Carson, but his humor again was evident.

[prashant · Rating 4 out of 5]

when desire first wounded me i considered how best to bear it. i began with silence and secrecy - there’s no trusting the tongue, it loved to punish others and draw disaster in itself.

desire in grief is such an interesting concept and i love how unpleasant euripides is

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amphitryon: "Daughter, I find it hard to rattle off advice like that. We're weak, let's play for time"
Megara: "Wait for worse? You love the light so much?"
A: "I do, I love its hopes"
M: "Well yes, but there's no use expecting the impossible, old man."
A: "To delay evils is a kind of cure."
M: "This waiting gnaws at me"

^^aside from the above being the Official Mood of 2017, I've been chewing on these tragedies for a year and a half, because I go between finding it extremely comforting and extremely terrible that they are so relatable. Carson's translations are beautiful, as usual.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating translations of four Euripides plays by poet and classicist Ann Carson — read these shortly after returning from Athens and seeing the actual theater in which they would have been first staged, which added a lot to the fun of reading the,. She brings them to life in modern language, with insightful prefaces that set context well. I never really understood the function of the Greek chorus in plays before reading these. Beautifully brings an ancient world and dimly remembered stories to life. Also surprised to see that even these bleak tragedies have surprising bits of humor in them. I may be misreading but the chorus is occasionally quite funny.

[Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could read a whole book of Anne Carson's essays and the prefatory material. Her translation of Euripides' 'Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra' at the very end is electric, especially with her wonderful talent for interpretation (I wonder what the original language for 'chainsmoking nihilism' is). The plays themselves, however, are translated with much less spark.

[m]

The afterword is going to haunt me forever and ever, as Phaedra has since I first read her written by Racine.. usually I don’t dwell over lost texts but god how I wish we had our hands on Hippolytus Veiled!!!!

[Adam Hasan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing fucks me up like remembering that Euripides has over 90 plays but only 18 survived :(

[Dorotea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anne Carson is amazing as always at translating Ancient Greek.

[Anders · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread this for fun cuz I was also reading Eros the Bittersweet. Carson is a masterful translator and these 4 plays come with very short essays that give you some thoughts to ponder as you read. And theres a historical fiction-y essay in the back about Euripides in that way only Carson can write.

What about the plays? I've always liked Herakles because it inverts the normal chronology of the labors and makes an interesting point out of it. The Alcestis is weird, uniquely weird and comic. The Hekabe gives Hecuba her day like Medea, while-as usual-putting a finer point to notions of glory and honor. And Hippolytus...Ive read and taught it so many times, I don't think I have anything new to say about it, but its an old friend and like the Hekabe features great social commentary.

Every time I read Euripides, it's harder and harder to say Sophocles is my favorite tragedian

[Mack · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really really enjoyed reading these. I’ve been on a big ~ refreshing my memory of ancient greek tales ~ journey and reading plays for the first time. The Anne Carson translations and prologues and notes are a delight, she gives just the right amount of context to really give you the juice!!! Some of these are dramatic page turners, some of them are jaw droppers, the last one made me laugh out loud a lot, what fun!

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

—Read Hippolytus for SJC Weekend Classics session

[Emily Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.”

[Hayden Casey · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Anne Carson took up a sole career as a translator of Greek tragedy, I would only be slightly mad.

Of course, I haven't read the original Greek versions, so I can't say this definitively, but I feel Carson's presence here, in the phrasings and elements of wordplay. (Not quite as strongly as Antigonick, but a presence nonetheless.) Loved this entire collection, though I was a bit bored by Herakles (even though she warned me that I would be in her introduction).

[kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

the essays and prefaces were 5 stars across the board and then weirdly the plays lost a lot of their bite for me? i think my ranking would be hekabe > alkestis > herakles > hipolytos. i have a hard time with euripides because i always want to like him more than i do and when i read his plays i end up reading past them, getting stuck imagining staging possibilities and forgetting about the text itself. hekabe was my favourite because i think carson is at her strongest when translating female rage and vengeance, she excels when tasked with putting into words emotions that are simply too big, too messy to be easily translated.

[Yente Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You love the light so much?"
"I do, I love its hopes."

As a theater-enthousiast with a slight obsession for tragic stories and beautiful words, this definitely made my heart beat faster.

It's chaotic, sad, and rather disturbing, but also really powerful and beautiful.
I also loved that, although the plays were focused on misery and grief, there were always moments when someone was reaching out a hand. To take away some of the pain and make it bearable -  to offer comfort by just being. Very subtle sometimes, but still there. To me, a beautiful reminder that we are never truly alone in our pain ♡

[Elizabeth]

Not yet having read, but this quote makes me want to:

“Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods. In crisis their souls are visible.”

[Rowan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can I just be the first to say, OIMOI!

[Sammy Mylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

the preface alone rewired my brain

[Kelsy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed these translations. I had already read 2 of the plays in another edition, translated by a different translator, and I found them to be much more readable (and enjoyable) in this version. The plays themselves were also enjoyable to read, although I'm finding a lot of Euripides' work to be forgettable compared to Aeschylus and Sophocles. Curious to see if that holds true over time.

I do wish that the introduction and prefaces to each play gave more context, especially for Alkestis. Instead, they tend to be a place for the translator to discuss the theme of grief, among other things. This totally makes sense given the translator's intention in compiling these together, but as a new reader to Euripides, it would have been nice to have more context. Luckily that's what Wikipedia is for. XD

[Ilan A · Rating 5 out of 5]

W tragedies, Hippolytos especially
Anne Carson’s translation is fresh, casual
With broad middle class appeal
Very readable

A certain kind of terse academic
cloistered in a stuffy office
Would probably take offense

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

copied out the uh Absolute Banger of an opening essay, "Tragedy: A Curious Art Form" way back in like second week, early october, in the co-op, to email out to the cast & crew of a production of medea that i dramaturged. lol that i dramaturg sometimes. so that production uh happened and incompetent dramaturg that i am, i realized later that the listhost i'd sent it to was the production-team only listhost, so the actors never received it. and they were who the essay was for, really. whatever, whatever. the point is that a few weeks later i bought the book at powell's because i have no self-control. read two of the plays over thanksgiving, just read the last two on the flight home for winter break. the plays are all weird and great and not just because of the anne carson translations, i think (also tbh i think her prefaces for each play might be better than the executions of the plays themselves—it's okay anne carson you are still the love of my life—). i keep on thinking about how weird it is, what an accident of history, that these works are foundational to the western tradition but also only some of them, really. lesser-known tragedies by famous tragedians are at this weird intersection between The Canon and the plays laid bare as they really are: work specific to the culture it was born from. literary works that are both The Story, The Essence of Story, and also just, like, story. this weird balance in classical literature is something i've been obsessed with lately but whatever. and how even back then that weirdness was felt, and so you would just play in strange clashing ways with certain details of this huge megatext—compare what Euripides is doing with Heracles in Heracles and in Alcestis—but whatever. also i am obsessed with Alcestis, what a weird weird play, so weird that even anne carson patron saint of classical weirdness barely knows what do with it!! she writes a noticeably shorter-than-usual preface, acknowledges it, says not much can be said about this play. wild. the weird production of a new allegorical figure/goddess for necessity that a fate can't do the work of. the guest-host relationship has never been used as strangely as it was here.

okay a day or two later i am ~still~ thinking about alcestis//some stuff i think i forgot to mention that i'd intended to, but another thing that makes alcestis so weird and cool is how integral the more comedic elements are to the plot, to the tragedy. it is Well-Documented that alcestis is weird as hell because it was in the performance place of/was perhaps supposed to be but is very clearly not a satyr play (why? "no satyrs," as anne carson v succinctly puts it) but you can't quite call it a tragedy either. i'm thinking about how the end of the play is in a way entirely rooted in that intended-to-be-comedic, punny scene where admetos tells heracles that alcestis is both dead and alive. how could heracles have decided he was able to rescue alcestis from death if not because linguistically he originated his idea of her as a human who was inhabiting both spheres? because he doesn't quite rescue her from death untouched, she has to stay silent three days because she is already polluted by death. i'm pretty sure that's not normal! that the comedy in a tragedy wields considerable influence on the direction and action of the whole play, i mean. i could be wrong. i'm admittedly and shamefully ignorant about greek tragedy. but even just within euripides' oeuvre, i'm thinking of how, you know, that one comedic scene in medea, with aegeus—it has no real effect on what happens in the play. even if medea had never talked to aegeus, had no assurance of a place to go after leaving corinth, what happens at the end of medea can pretty much still happen. if you really wanted to, you could cut aegeus from your unrelentingly Dark And Edgy Cut-To-The-Quick version of medea, you know? it would be painful and unbearable—that play is already, even with the occasional comedy relief, painful and unbearable—but it would work. which makes sense, for a tragedy! but you couldn't do that with alcestis. that play cannot be sliced up, and the comedy and tragedy are inseparable. the divided house ultimately comes together again, heracles can carouse for only so long, heracles must end up doing what he does best, being a hero of some kind, whatever the cost, being heracles. (if i were less lazy i would read euripides' heracles in conversation with alcestis.) there's a lot of classic ancient greek screaming in alcestis but even more than euripides' other modern-feeling plays, a lot about alcestis doesn't feel ancient.

[sally · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief."

didnt enjoy all of the four plays equally but theres something i appreciated abt each one of them and despite how short they are, the pain of the characters feels palpable in all of them

[Chris Dech · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the awkward parts of reviewing collections like this is that each play's quality is independent of the other, so I can really only judge this collection on what is actually contained, and the translation work done.

In that regard, Carson does a fantastic job with these plays and has cemented herself in my opinion as the finest translator since Robert Fagles. Her word choice is simple, but raw and powerful, especially in Herakles and Hekabe.

Carson's essay on tragedy, and Euripides's open letter on why he wrote two plays about Phaidra are both fine additions to these four plays, and help round out what is presented.

As for what is contained, I am a little too lazy to fully articulate how I feel about them, but they are all well worth the read, and I'll leave reviews of those separately. The plays collected, in addition to the two mentioned above, are Hippolytos and Alkestis, all of which are great places to start when reading Euripides.

Herakles is a fantastic play that I think fully captures the tragedy of someone great brought low, and by no fault of their own. And in for the most part, Herakles really is guilty of nothing and did not ask to be born a demigod with powerful enemies. And yet, he cannot help but be the hero that he is, which perhaps indirectly leads to his demise. Perhaps here Euripides asks the viewer (or reader) to ask questions of their heroes, and to reconsider the narratives we already know about our idols. Moreover, Euripides forces the reader to consider what to do after grief and trauma, and argues that the only way out is to continue living. 9/10

Hekabe is another fantastic play where a character who is guilty of nothing (at least completely innocent, up until the end of the play) is brought low by forces beyond their control. Here, I think Euripides chooses a different route, and while he still argues that the only way to combat grief is to continue living, here he adds that to continue living is to spurn fate and destiny itself. Hekabe is a woman driven to drastic ends, but for her, any action is drastic because she has truly lost everything by this point, and cannot lose much more (besides Kassandra, but she is essentially lost to Hekabe). 10/10

I think the primary theme between these two plays is that clarity in grief exists for everyone, be it through friends, or through drastic changes brought on by oneself. Now, onto the other two.

Hippolytos is a play where the title figure is arguably not the protagonist, but rather Phaidra is. Phaidra, who cannot help her attraction; Phaidra, who cannot help but feel shame; Phaidra, who cannot help but be who she is and try as she may, loses the most in this play. And while Hippolytos himself is flawed given his obsessive abstinence, it would be hard not to see Phaidra as the heroine, who struggles between what she knows is best for everyone, and what she wants most of all. And while I think the ending falls a little flat, Phaidra really is the star of this play for me. 8/10

Finally, Alkestis, the odd one out of these plays due to being a tragicomedy. Another play where it's the gods who cause suffering, not other people, perhaps to illustrate the random misfortune of reality. Anyways, Alkestis is a fantastic character despite how little she speaks (literally, by the end), resembling Megara in Herakles. Admetos and his father Pheres are both unlikeable in this play, but Admetos is a little more forgivable due to his position being a unique one of unsure standing. Nevertheless, the tragedy and beauty of Alkestis's sacrifice despite not having to is fantastic and juxtaposed rather nicely with the dudebro attitude of Herakles. 8/10

Overall it's hard to score this, but I think I'll make it a 5/5 just because I'm feeling generous.

[kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

i’ve read bits from this so many times but rereading herakles today i realized i’ve never logged it oops. some of carson’s best work, she just gets it !! forever obsessed with her writing on the plays as well - ‘why does tragedy exist? because you are full of rage. why are you full of rage? because you are full of grief’ you will always be famous!!!!!