From steven@sizcol1.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp Sun Apr 16 01:18:47 2000 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id BAA33366 for ; Sun, 16 Apr 2000 01:18:45 -0700 Received: from ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp (sizcol.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp [133.33.105.11]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id BAA03221 for ; Sun, 16 Apr 2000 01:18:43 -0700 Received: from steven ([133.33.106.107]) by ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp (8.9.3/3.7W-98122215) with ESMTP id RAA17237 for ; Sun, 16 Apr 2000 17:19:17 +0900 (JST) Message-Id: <200004160819.RAA17237@ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp> From: "Steven J. Willett" To: classics@u.washington.edu Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 18:03:40 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: More Euripidea: interpretation & translation of _Alcestis_ Reply-to: steven@sizcol1.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp In-reply-to: X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) On 14 Apr 00, at 8:10, Christopher Robbins wrote: > As matters Euripidean are presently at the fore (in the illuminating > exchange between, principally, David Lupher and Elias J Theodoracopoulos), > allow me to mention that the current issue of the _NYR_ (4/27/00, Vol XLVII, > No. 7) contains a review by Daniel Mendelsohn of the late Ted Hughes' > translation/adaptation of Euripides' _Alcestis_. > > There are, indeed, matters of substance and interpretation addressed in this > review, saliently among which are: Who does the canvassing for Admentos' > proxy and how is it that Alcestis becomes the designee - not to mention the > deeper and related matter of the character of Admentos himself. Storm > clouds could gather over this patch of land - and the position that Hughes > has elected in particular, if Mendelsohn's report is correct. 1. Hughes has not concealed the fact that his "Alcestis" is an adaption. The book clearly states that the play is "Translated and Adapted," so we can't really call down the wrath of Nabokov on it. But we can call down his wrath on the mass of new translations, especially the Penn Drama Series under Slavitt, that peddle their adaptions to the unwary as pure "translations." Slavitt, for example, proclaims such travesties as his versions of Statius' "The Achilleid" and Claudius' "The Rape of Proserpine" (_Broken Columns_ 1997) to be "translations" when they do far more narrative, structural and tonal damage to the originals than Hughes does to Euripides. It's always instructive one way or the other to watch a poet grapple with one of his great predecessors. In the Renaissance, a poetic career regularly began with adaptive translations, and it might be a good habit for American poets, who are generally ignorant mutatis mutandis of the English let alone the Classical or European traditions, to start rather than end there. Poet translators, unless they are mere hacks, love and respect their authors in their own way. From Catullus 51 through Hoelderlin's powerfully eccentric Pindaric recreations to mediocrities like Ferry and Pinsky, we can always learn something from the spectacle of one poet grappling with the slippery language of an earlier poet--even when that leaves, at the best, his thigh broken like Jacob. They aren't the problem. The problem lies with the publishing houses, mainly North American publishing houses, who demand that translators pitch their authors down to the lowest perceived audience denominator. In the absence of any concerted academic effort to educate both the houses and the public about the art of translation, the publishers are left in control of the medium. This is particularly true of commercial publishers like Norton that cater to undergraduate education. It is really quite essential, as I've noted half a dozen times over the past few years, that we start a public forum--whether print or electronic journal--to publish extensive, detailed reviews of new translations in all the major Western and Asian languages. Such a forum should also have the duty of running theoretical pieces on the formal aspects of translation, especially poetic translation, as part of an aggressive educational effort. The more Classics depends on translations that pander to entertainment, the less its power to give students anything more than scraps of forgettable entertainment. 2. Mendelsohn's review gives an accurate picture of Hughes' "Alcestis," but he goes seriously astray I would submit in his representation of Euripides' "Alcestis." His is a fairly conventional view of the play as essentially a kind of character study, focusing on Admetus more than Alcestis, and crudely bifurcated into a "tragic" and a "comic" half. The dividing line between the two occurs, as Mendelsohn describes it, with the arrival of the "rambunctious" Heracles at the house of mourning. There is nothing at all "rambunctious" about Heracles at his arrival, since he behaves with the greatest courtesy and circumspection, and only reluctantly agrees to stay after Admetus virtually compels him: Hr. methes me, kai soi murian 'exw kharin. Ad. ouk estin allou s' andros 'estian molein. 'hgou su twide dwmatwn exwpious xenwnas oixas, ... (544-46) But Mendelsohn wants the division here because there is no other feasible place to find a neat partition. Unfortunately, the start of the "comic" half is immediately followed by (a) Admetus' altercation with the chorus on the propriety of inviting a guest to stay, (b) a beautiful choral song about the bountiful lord of a house blessed for so long by Apollo's care, (c) the arrival of the funeral procession, (d) his violent dispute with Pheres and (e) his departure after a final curse on the parents, 'wsper axioi,/ghrasket' (735-36). This series of events takes us 270 lines from Heracles' arrival at 476 to the departure of the funeral procession at 746. There is in fact no comic half, only a brief indirect narrative of the gourmand Heracles at his cups followed by some direct drunken banter with the irritated servant. That banter quickly ends when Heracles learns the truth about who has died. Sobriety descends with celerity on the comic Heracles, who emphasizes his initial unwillingness to enter a house in mourning: Biai de thumou tasd' 'uperbalwn pulas epinon andros en philoxenou domois, prassontos 'outw. (829-31). There is nothing even the slightest comic from here to the end of the play, though Heracles' flexes his braggadocio somewhat in his determination to ambush Death or descend into Hades to petition Persephone. 3. Much modern criticism of the play centers on Admetus, who is variously described as vain, shallow, egotistical, untruthful and generally insincere if not outright despicable. The issue then becomes the nature and extent of his moral growth after he realizes what his wife's sacrifice has really brought him. But I think Dale was correct to reject such a character-driven approach to "Alcestis" as a misunderstanding of Greek dramatic technique and usage. From beginning to end Admetus is, as Apollo calls him at 10, a "holy man." The chorus makes clear, even after their doubt about the propriety of inviting Heracles to stay, that he remains true to philoxenia despite his mourning: to gar eugenes ekpheretai pros aidw. en tois agathoisi de pant' enestin; sophias agamai. Pros d' emai psukhai thrasos 'hstai theosebh phwta kedna praxein. (600-05, with punctuation after enestin suggested by Dale and adopted by Diggle) The noble may have many qualities, of which one is wisdom, but of course they may have many others, some not so admirable. Nevertheless, the chorus is clearly persuaded that the devout man will ultimately have joy. This is surely a premonition of the play's climax, which should hardly come as a quirky surprise after Heracles' determination to save Alcestis. It's important to note that he, like the chorus, stresses Admetus' noble hospitality without a hint of vanity, particularly in 858-60: Tis toude mallon Thessalwn philoxenos, tis 'Ellad' oikwn? toigar ouk erei kakon euergethsai phwta gennaios gegws. When Heracles later blames Admetus for inviting him into a house whose mistress has died, the blame underscores his embarrassment at suffering this impropriety, not the generous motive behind what is after all a very mild, quite understandable deception: kai memphomai men, memphomai, pathwn tade, ou mhn se lupein en kakoisi boulomai. (1017-18). Given such piety, generosity and hospitality, I am inclined to think that his rhetoric of lamentation before Alcestis' death is primarily a foil to the recognition of what he learns after her death. The harsh lesson he learns when he says arti manthanw (940) stands out all the more against that backdrop. The attempt to read all of Admetus' speeches for fine nuances of character, as if he spoke in a Shakespearean play, seems to me anachronistic. The judgements of Apollo, the chorus and Heracles on his essentially noble character are surely decisive. 4. Mendelsohn finds Admetus' stated intention at 348ff to make a model of Alcestis and sleep with it bizarre. Dale has already suggested that it may reflect another Thessalian story used by Euripides in his "Protesilaus," but surely the intent of the passage is to underscore the extremity of his emotion, not its grotesqueness or hysteria. Mendelsohn is completely wrong, however, to conclude from the statement that Admetus begins, "before she even dies, to seek comfort (however cold) for himself." There isn't the slightest evidence that the psukhran terpsin he will enjoy is anything other than a deadly cold bereft of life, a mere dream life as he goes on to say, and it if is imagined to lighten his burden then, it could hardly do that now. 5. Mendelsohn is also wrong in finding any significance in Alcestis' silence once she is unveiled. One could argue that the slow build-up to this event, as Heracles tries unsuccessfully to press the veiled woman on Admetus, is a kind of moral test to measure the sincerity of his fidelity to Alcestis. Heracles has after all had to wrestle with Death to rescure her, and he couldn't predict the outcome of such a dangerous contest in advance. The depth of Admetus' fidelity, backed by his sorrow-induced vow not to marry, is the measure of his philoxenia to Heracles and the justification for the encounter with Death. Her silence of course is no mystery, nor is there any particular suspense or tension in it. Admetus quite understandably, and coolly, asks: Ti gar poth' 'hde anaudos 'esthken gunh? Heracles gives the sensible and dramatically useful answer that she may not speak until purified of her consecration to the Lower Gods. And Heracles then closes with an injunction to continue his piety toward guests, kai dikaios wn to loipon, Admht', eusebei peri xenous (1147-48), which means Admetus is to continue his just behavior as in the past. ========================================== Steven J. Willett University of Shizuoka, Hamamatsu Campus 2-3 Nunohashi 3-chome Hamamatsu City, Japan 432-8012 Voice: (53) 457-4514; Fax: (53) 457-4514 Japan email: steven@sizcol1.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp US email: sjwillett@earthlink.net .