The Complete Aeschylus: Volume I: The Oresteia (Greek Tragedy in New Translations)
Category: Books,Literature & Fiction,History & Criticism
The Complete Aeschylus: Volume I: The Oresteia (Greek Tragedy in New Translations) Details
About the Author Peter Burian is Professor of Classical and Comparative Literatures and Theater Studies at Duke University.Alan Shapiro is Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A winner of the prestigious Lila Wallace Reader's Digest award 1992-95, he is the author of several poetry collections, including Tantalus in Love, Song and Dance, and The Dead Alive Busy. Read more
Reviews
These plays are among the founding documents of Western Civilization, dramatizing the movement from bloody tribal revenge to a community of justice based on law. A good translation is essential to understanding them, and these translations are good.Compare the first lines of the Agamemnon from the older Lattimore version published by the University of Chicago:"I ask the gods some respite from the weariness of this watchtime measured by years I lie awake elbowed upon the Atriedaes' roof dogwise to mark the grand processionals of all the stars of night burdened with winter and again with heat for men. dynasties in their shining blazoned on the air, these stars, upon their wane and when the rest arise."with the same lines from that of Alan Shapiro in this Oxford University Press volume:"I beg the gods to deliver me at last from this hard watch I've kept now for a year upon the palace roof of the Atreidae, dog-like, snout to paws, night after long night, studying the congress of the stars, the unignorable bright potentates that bring down through the night sky to us here below, the summer now, and now the winter, eternal even as they wane and rise."I don't know which version is more faithful to the original, although I understand that Ancient Athenian Greek is so different from Modern English that any attempt at translation is highly problematic, some would even say impossible. Still, most of us aren't going to learn Ancient Greek, so if we are to read these plays at all we need translations, approximate as they may be. The best a translator may be able do is to render the original into a version that is understandable and can be enjoyed by the educated reader. Shapiro's Oxford version is quite clear and understandable Modern English poetry, and I have enjoyed reading it, which was definitely NOT the case with Lattimore's.The copious end notes in this edition are also quite helpful.epops
