Carson grief lessons euripides pdf download

It is a play which, like others E. Hecuba is one of several by E. 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. 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.

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. Now listen to my dying wish.

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.

Why does tragedy exist? Anyway, the concept of catharsis has never been more explicitly on display than in Carson's interpretations of the tragedies. View all 3 comments. 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 char 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.

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.

I wouldn't consider it. Please come into my house. 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. 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.

Jul 06, Marcus rated it liked it Shelves: classical-antiquity. 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. Dec 05, Mubaraka rated it it was amazing Shelves: books-i-live-in.

Read in one sitting! Somehow I always read Anne Carson in one sitting. Something palatable about her. Mar 18, Dorotea rated it it was amazing Shelves: read-in-english , theatre-plays , ancient-greek-lit. Anne Carson is amazing as always at translating Ancient Greek. Aug 30, Ellen rated it it was amazing Shelves: historical , classics. 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? Carson's translations are beautiful, as usual. 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 I really enjoyed these translations. 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. Jun 20, Nicole rated it really liked it Shelves: women-playwrights , plays. Anne Carson and Euripides keep things moving at a brisk pace here through all four plays even when the plot is at its most absurd. Herakles is on point, Hekabe is perfectly drawn, Hippolytus stumbles a bit, and Alkestis the only one I was unfamiliar with was the strangest mix of comedy about tragedy I've ever encountered, in it, Euripides really lets it rip, making everybody, even Apollo, look like fools.

Alkestis herself stands out as bad-ass but by the end I was just rooting for her to ascen Anne Carson and Euripides keep things moving at a brisk pace here through all four plays even when the plot is at its most absurd. Alkestis herself stands out as bad-ass but by the end I was just rooting for her to ascend to the throne of heaven and smite everyone, most of all her husband, the biggest prat in all of classics.

The book hit its zenith right in the last three pages, I could read Anne Carson wax poetic as Euripides for days. Jun 10, hayden rated it really liked it. 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. May 13, cristina added it Shelves: anne-carson , plays , ancient-greece-rome , loved-the-translation.

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. It breaks experiences open and they waste themselves, run through your fingers. It is a theater of sac Myths are stories about people who become too big for their lives temporarily, so that they crash into other lives or brush against gods.

It is a theater of sacrifice in the true sense. Jul 11, Elizabeth marked it as to-read. View 1 comment. Jan 04, Adam Hasan rated it really liked it Shelves: plays.

Nothing fucks me up like remembering that Euripides has over 90 plays but only 18 survived :. May 28, Aaron Thomas added it.

These are elegant, beautiful translations of Euripides. The book includes four plays — like a tragic performance event in Athens in the classical period. The plays are Herakles, Hekabe, Hippolytos , and Alkestis. Carson has even engineered it so that the tetralogy here ends with one of Euripides' satyr plays: the Alkestis was originally performed in the fourth slot, the same one in which it is placed here, in place of the traditional satyr play.

One can see from the titles here that Carson is comm These are elegant, beautiful translations of Euripides. One can see from the titles here that Carson is committed to more accurate English transliterations of Greek names rather than the usual Latinized ones.

I love this about her. What I love even more is her commitment to the transliteration of mournful cries that occur so frequently in these four plays. True to this book's title, Carson is actually exploring Grief Lessons here. The characters in Euripides' plays don't simply wail or cry; they mourn in different shades. Their grief is not only layered it changes, deepens. It literally sounds different.

She continues, describing the women engaged in the ritual worship of Dionysus: This is the world before men.

Then the posse arrives and violence begins. What does this tell us? Dionysus does not explain or regret anything. He is pleased if he can cause you to perform, despite your plan, despite your politics If life is a stage, this is the show. Exit Dionysus. Girard divides his attention between readings of Greek tragedy on the one hand and intervals of an imperialist epistemology on the other, documenting social practices in the global colonial periphery.

But even this stratum is an arch-ideological effect, a colonialist imaginary that equivocates between some Conradian heart of darkness supposedly animating Greek tragedy and a pre-civilizational violence presumed to characterize the objects of European imperialism. Still, Carson varies from Girard to the degree that sacrifice in her version offers no resolution to a social crisis but only initiates its anarchic unfolding.

What does this have to say for her translational practice? Or, to rephrase this question: how does Carson situate her poetics in the vortex of her historical sensibility?

Carson marshals a narrative of vertiginous collapse implicating her own moment: a direct line advances, she writes, from Euripides to reality TV. Athenian empire. If this is the function of the avant-garde in an unfolding crisis, then in the privileged figure of drag that we may now name without qualification as a transphobic phantom Carson discovers all the transgressive pleasures and all the cataclysmic undertones that animate her would-be subversive classicism.

Carson therefore ignores the realities of trans lives in attempting to achieve a historical narrative via the operations of metaphor. She thereby betrays a theoretical tendency that Viviane Namaste diagnosed already in in her book Invisible Lives: The Erasure of Transsexual and Transgendered People. This, to my mind, is the most tragic misreading of all. The deployment of trans people always as a figure for something else entirely is sheer stigma raised to the level of rhetorical effect.

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