damn these greeks stay wildin!

You can't go wrong with Anne Carson. These four tragedies are a really great introduction to Euripides as it is, but her introductions are an incredible addition.

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

3,5/5
The writing is goodn as always with Anne Carson, but some of the plays didn't work for me.

A great read tbh! And I really valued Carson's prefaces!

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.”

—Read Hippolytus for SJC Weekend Classics session

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.

For the last few years, I’ve read Greek Tragedies every winter. It’s cathartic, and Anne Carson understands that implicitly. “Isn’t that why they are called actors? They act for you.” They do indeed.

Carson's translation here really sings. If you've wanted to explore old Greek plays, she seems a good guide. I'm looking forward to reading more.

But I'm also looking forward to reading more Euripides! These plays, structurally, are fascinating. Gripping. So much of good literature / art (through the millennia!) is finding ways to make us look, make us see, the moments and parts and people and emotions that we usually look away from, or turn away from, or flee. All these plays do this in weird and powerful ways.

this woman is insane in the best way possible, my g-d.

Strangely, I enjoyed reading this. I can't say I understood it all, but, like reading Shakespeare, it flowed into my consciousness. The writing was beautiful: "Breeze, breeze of the sea calling quick ships over the open ocean, where will you take me, hopeless as I am...as things are, God sends no Wind and we must wait and watch. Somehow, I hope, it will all turn out well in the end. This is common to men and cities--to hope that evil will falter and decency win." Hekabe.

I liked the fact that these plays about grief and loss were watched by ancients in giant, open-air theatres, millennia ago. I felt a connection with their tragedies, especially since we are dealing with war and pestilence, today. Like the saying in French: "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose:"
"O mankind, so deluded! So pointlessly deluded! Yet you do not know this one thing and cannot grasp it: how to teach a mindless man to think." Hippolytos.

For Euripedes, "the Peloponnisian War began in 431 BC and lasted beyond... (his)..death. It brought corruption, distortion, decay and despair to society and to individual hearts." Anne Carson. This book helps us understand that, despite all our technological advances, we still live with the same stupidity of war. There was something sad, but strangely comforting for me, in that.