I absolutely adore this book. I first read it about 8 years ago and it led me into both an Anne Carson rabbit hole and gave me an immense love and interest for ancient Greek drama. This book was one of the main reasons that I got my bachelor’s degree in ancient Greek, and every time I revisit it I fall in love again.

There’s something incredibly special about the way Anne Carson treats the source material and the way she transforms it with love and care. If you’re searching for a direct translation of Euripides’ work, Carson isn’t for you, but if you’re looking for a transformed work that brings the story to the present, her translations stand on a level of their own above the rest.

Highly recommend, even if you know very little about Greek mythology and drama.

HERAKLES: I wish I were stone! No memory!

THESEUS: Stop. Give me your hand. I am your friend.

HERAKLES: I fear to stain your clothes with blood.

THESEUS: Stain them, I don’t care.

n  "Unlucky the mother who bore me. I envy the dead—I am in love with the dead."n

· Herakles ★★★½
· Hekabe ★★★★
· Hyppolytos ★★★½
· Alkeistis ★★★★★

So many things, but let's stay with:

"You O Troy
will no longer be called one of the unsacked cities.
Such a cloud of Greeks covers you,
rapes you, spear by spear.
Shorn of your crown of towers.
Stained black with fire.
Sorrow!
I shall not walk your ways again.

Midnight my ruin began.
Supper was over, sweet sleep drifting down,
after songs and dances and sacrifice
my husband lay in our chamber,
his spear on its peg.
He was not watching
for Greek sailors
to come walking into Troy.

I was doing my hair,
I was binding my hair,
staring down into the bottomless lake of my mirror,
before I fell into bed -
a scream cut the town,
a roar swept the street:
O sons of Greece, will you ever take
the tower of Troy
and see your homes again?

I left my bed in just a robe
like a Spartan girl
to supplicate holy Artemis. Useless! Sorrow!
I saw my husband killed.
They drove me down
to the salt sea.
Then I looked back as the ship set sail,
pulling me further and further from Troy
and I fainted away.

Helen I cursed!
Paris I cursed!
Wasted my land,
emptied my home -
that marriage that was no marriage,
but some spirit of bloodvengeance crying grief down on us.
May she never cross the sea again.
May she never see her home."

This book contains analytical essays and translated copies of the plays of Euripides by the poet Anne Carson. I was familiar with her poetry work,but this was my first time reading her academic work. She writes historical backstories of Euripides,Greek culture,and the themes of his plays as a preface, then shows the translated version of said play. In her analysis of Euripides' work, she intersects theater history,the works of modern filmmakers such as Alred Hitchcock,and the evolution of the English language. Despite the academic study that backs up her translation, she still writes with the passionate flair of poetic prose that the Greek artists like Euripides would respect.

oh dear god

1. tbe two essays that carson writes for this are really good but especially why i wrote two plays about phaidra anne carson i love u i want to be u

i felt so unmoored by each of these plays. god. the herakles and theseus exchange. hekabe and agamemnon. agamemnon watching polyxena be killed in the unmoving winds as iphigenia. god. these parents are so tired of killing their children, of killing children. hekabe … theseus at the end of hippolytas. phaidra— just all of phaidra tbh god. alkestis… haunting truly haunted by this work by the way it digs its fingers into my brain and presses, molds into something else

probably shouldn’t have read this as my first reading of these plays but uh. i love anne carson so much. dear god

some things that stayed with me:

Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.

Hateful to me is a gratitude that grows old.
A friend who enjoys your prosperity
but refuses to sail with your grief.

O bitter weapons. My partners.
Should I take you with me or leave you behind?
Knocking against my ribs you will always be saying,
"This is how you slew your wife and sons,
we are your childkillers."
Can I bear that?
Can I answer?

and, finally, the funniest line in the entire goddamn book:

ADMETOS: Take me with you, for gods' sake, take me below.
ALKESTIS: Aren't there enough people dying for you.

We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing (whatever it is) that glitters on the earth-we call it life. We know no other.
The underworld's a blank and all the rest just fantasy.

Euripides is my favourite tragedian and i love being reminded why he is!!! lattimore’s translations are great in terms of being able to immerse myself in how the plays would have been heard by the audience at dionysia. cacoyannis refreshed it. but anne fucking carson makes it human and she never ever misses. starting off this book with Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief. is so insane and crazy and wretched and such an anne carson thing to do and i will love her forever

The afterword is going to haunt me forever and ever, as Phaedra has since I first read her written by Racine.. usually I don’t dwell over lost texts but god how I wish we had our hands on Hippolytus Veiled!!!!

Good to read these big old griefs. But I always found myself siding against the protagonist, on behalf of the villains. I'll take the monsters over the Herakles who kills them to "make the world safe for civilization." I'm squarely on team Hecabe and Phaedra. And Admetus -- who can stand this guy?

‘Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.’ okay queen

Every time I encounter a classical text I haven't read before, I am smacked in the face afresh by how on crack these texts are. Like, I'm USED to the crack of Homer, I'm USED to the crack of Ovid and Vergil, I'm USED to the total crack of everything I read & retained from my various classics courses. But somehow I had not encountered "Hippolytus" or "Alketis" before, and holy WOW are they on CRACK.

Like, I cannot even wrap my head around what happened in those stories. They make no sense.

Carson's translations are gorgeous, of course, as Carson's work so reliably is, and her short introductory essays are evocative and haunting. I would highly recommend this if you have a good supply of acid or a high tolerance for WTF.