From dlupher@ups.edu Sun Apr 16 17:50:43 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 RAA25610 for ; Sun, 16 Apr 2000 17:50:42 -0700 Received: from mail.ups.edu (mail.ups.edu [192.124.98.111]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id RAA22760 for ; Sun, 16 Apr 2000 17:50:41 -0700 Received: from [10.80.1.53] (howarthdhcp53.ups.edu [10.80.1.53]) by mail.ups.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id RAA24852 for ; Sun, 16 Apr 2000 17:50:40 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200004160819.RAA17237@ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 17:51:25 -0700 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: David Lupher Subject: Re: More Euripidea: interpretation & translation of _Alcestis_ Steven J. Willett writes: >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. And his "Oresteia" is, as I recently noted, a "version," which I take to be a term which promises less---or should one say more?---than a "translation." >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. Is this perhaps a side-swipe at Seamus Heaney's "Beowulf," which, though it has been published as an independent volume in the US by FSG, is now the version printed in the Norton Anthology? Since I suspect that Heaney falls into that capacious Willettian category of poets who owe their reputation to logrolling by the poetic guild, I would predict that Heaney's "Beowulf" does not meet with Steve's fullthroated approval. Am I right? (I have no opinion of my own to offer yet, having paused at the first word. "Hwaet" is "So"? I just need to think about that for a while before I proceed.) > 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. This sounds in many ways like a description of "Delos: A Journal on and of Translation," founded by Carne-Ross and Arrowsmith back around 1968. It folded a few years later, but I believe that it was resurrected in the late '80's. What happened to it? SJW writes that Daniel Mendelsohn views the "Alcestis" : > 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, I haven't read Mendelsohn's review yet, but I note that Steve has transferred the adjective "rambunctious" from Herakles to his arrival. It is pretty hard, I should think, to deny Herakles the adjective "rambunctious" after he settles in to being a guest. How many other drunks have stumbled onto the Greek tragic stage, I wonder? Offhand, I can't think of one. I would agree that Mendelsohn's idea that the play is "bifurcated" into a tragic half and a comic half is not a very helpful notion. But there are tonal oddities in this play, and it is not unnatural to appeal here to the play's anomalous status as a "prosatyric" play (it was produced in 438 in the fourth slot, after "Cretan Women," "Alkmaion through Psophis," and "Telephus.") This fact may account for the relative brevity of the play. It is longer than the "Cyclops," to be sure, but probably shorter than any other surviving play of Euripides. (I say "probably" because we don't know how long the lacuna near the end of "Herakleidai" was.) But it may also help explain such oddities as the drunken Herakles. Note that Dale, though she rightly insists that they play is "flawlessly constructed" and "is meant, together with all the characters, to be taken seriously," also argues that "the pro-satyric element gives the "Alcestis" a wider range of mood than any other extant Greek tragedy" (p.xxi. of her Oxford commentary). In a footnote she offers as parallels "perhaps some scenes of the Helen, and the episdoe of the Nurse in the Choephori." Perhaps one might add the pooping-bird-shooing scene of the "Ion"? >There is nothing even the slightest comic from here [sc. 831] to the end >of the play, [snip] Well, this is of course a matter of taste, but I have to say that I always smile when I come to the passage where Admetus, returning from the burial, indicates the depth of his loss by his sudden realization that now he's going to be faced with a dirty floor (947). (Recall how at 364 he had told his dying wife to get their house in Hades nice and neat for his arrival.) >3. Much modern criticism of the play centers on Admetus, [snip] > 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) Yes, but even Dale points out the negative connotations of the verb "ekpheretai" there: "ekpheresthai is more often used of undesirable impulses, cf. S. El. 628 pros orghn ekperhi, the metaphor suggesting a chariot plunging off the course. Nobility tends to carry its chivalry almost too far." True, she goes on to note that "the Chorus are confident that this apparent excess is really good sense," but excess it is nonetheless. Arrowsmith's "his courtesy and grace exceed all human scale" gets it a bit better than Lattimore's "the noble strain comes out, in respect for others." >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). I agree that Herakles is not criticizing Admetus here for a selfish regard for his own reputation for philoxenia. That kind of criticism comes very easily to my students, as I was just reminded a couple of weeks ago, which just goes to show how anachronistic it is. The tension in Admetus' action is not between heartfelt grief and a more superficial sense of his own reputation, but between two equally intense social imperatives for a conscientious Greek. But the lines of Herakles' speech just before these that Steve cites (1008-1016) are cast in the form of more serious reproach (momphh, 1009) than Steve seems willing to allow. He comes pretty close to suggesting that while Admetus has been the perfect xenos, he has been a less than perfect philos. He begins by saying that he's not going to hide his criticism, for one should speak out freely to a "philon andra." But this latter is precisely what Admetus himself had failed to do, for, though Herakles deserved to be treated as a philos (1011), Admetus disguised the true state of affairs in the house. So Euripides seems to have wanted to set up a kind of triple tension here in the social expectations made upon Admetus: he should be 1) a conscientious husband, mourning a wife who has made the supreme sacrifice for him; 2) as always, the perfect xenos, a role which won him the "gift" of extended life in the first place; and 3) a true philos who cares enough for the feelings of his philos to tell him the truth, even if it means that in so doing he might tarnish his reputation as exemplary xenos. Of course, the irony of Herakles' "reproach" is that, if Admetus had been a better philos, he wouldn't have gotten his wife back! > The judgements >of Apollo, the chorus and Heracles on his essentially noble >character are surely decisive. He is indeed "essentially noble," but he is also a character with human failings. He is, after all, a Euripidean character. David Lupher Classics Dept. Univ. of Puget Sound .