3.5
Clever Helen

Fucking nothing happens in this play it feels like reading a sparknotes summary but I'm so fascinated by the idea of it that I'm still giving it 3 stars

عمل مسرحي ليوربيديس اليوناني تعود فيه هيلين للواجهة مرة أخرى بعد حرب طروادة في محاولة من قبل يوربيديس و آخرين لتشكيل صورة مختلفة عن هيلين - أم المصائب- و التي بسببها سالت الدماء بين طروادة و هيلاس و دُمرتْ طروادة عن بكرة أبيها.

أي لعنة جلبت هيلين للطرواديين و الهيلانيين بعد أن قررت أفرودويت (ڤينوس) أن تهبها لپاريس، أساطيل اليونانيين ضربت حصاراً دام عشر سنوات كله من أجل استرداد هيلين التي لم تكن مبالية بأي شكل من الأشكال عدا استمتاعها بلحظات الحب مع باريس.

في المقابل تدور هذه المسرحية التي بطليها هما هيلين و زوجها ميلانوس عن ما بعد حرب طروادة و ما بعد مغادرة لطروادة و ما حل بأساطيل الاغريق القافلة في عودتها للوطن.

سوف نكتشف قصة جميلة لهيلين مختلفة عن تلك التي نعرفها من الالياذة

عبدالله عواجي
٣ نوفمبر ٢٠١٧

It is often felt that men are more indulgent to a woman with a pretty face, but one of the more unusual instances of this is Helen of Troy, a woman of unusual beauty who never existed outside of fiction. Nobody has ever really seen her, yet men act as if they have.

A savage and prolonged war was fought after Helen eloped with Paris, the son of the Trojan king, leaving her Spartan husband Menelaus behind. That alone might seem to be cause for condemnation, but a number of male writers have been surprisingly lenient to Helen, making excuses for her behaviour or assigning a happy ending to her. There are other less happy outcomes, including one where she is hanged, but the woman whose actions caused so many deaths is often excused as if her reputed beauty is itself enough to soften hearts.

The Odyssey shows Helen safely back home in Sparta living happily with her husband, and expressing regret for her actions, which are viewed sympathetically by the men. A belated and bizarre example lies in Goethe’s Faust where Helen has returned to Sparta only to discover that the meal her husband is preparing on his return will include herself as the main course. This version makes Helen the sympathetic intended victim, and Menelaus the villain.

In another play, The Trojan Women, Euripides’ treatment of Helen was ambiguous. There Menelaus came across as oafish and brutal, dragging Helen away by the hair to punish her. This may reflect the fact that Sparta was unpopular in Athens at a time when the two states were at war with one another. It seems strange that Menelaus should fight a war for ten years only to savagely treat the woman that inspired his fighting, but it possible that the conflict and the death of so many men has embittered him.

As for Helen, it is uncertain how we should regard the famous beauty. Euripides presents two countering arguments. The first is from Helen herself, who suggest that she could not control her actions because they were the work of the goddess Aphrodite. If this is the case, then Helen is as much a victim as any of the other Trojan women who are reduced to servitude by the conquering army.

By way of countering her views, her vindictive mother-in-law Hecuba pours scorn on Helen’s far-fetched story about the gods, and seeks to undermine the idea that Helen was a reluctant bride to Paris. In this play, Euripides does not firmly take sides but merely presents the two views.

It is when we get to the play simply called Helen that we get a more sympathetic view of its titular character, and a storyline that competes with Goethe’s version for sheer oddness. In this account, Helen is blameless for the events that happened at Troy for a simple reason – she was never even there. Instead she was spirited away to Egypt, and forced to live there while a second Helen made out of air took her place.

While Helen is not an anti-war play, it certainly builds on the negative depiction of war in Women of Troy. That play showed the atrocities of war, but this one shows its futility. Men were literally fighting over air. The Chorus at one point suggests that the whole conflict could have been resolved by courteous diplomacy. Whether it was fought for a woman or for air, the war hardly seems justified.

Menelaus reappears in this play, and he too is a more sympathetic character. He is still trying to return home from Troy, but has been detained by the gods for 17 years. He is shipwrecked in Egypt where he discovers the real Helen, a chaste woman who has been true to him all these years. However a further problem arises. The Egyptian king Theoclymenus wishes to marry Helen for himself, and he kills Greeks who pass into his country.

The couple finally find a way to escape by duping Theoclymenus into believing that Menelaus is dead, and that Helen needs to carry out funeral rites for him at sea. They then take over the ship, kill the Egyptians and escape. This bloodthirsty finale shows that Euripides is no pacifist.

The play is regarded as a comedy, and some elements can be treated that way. Its final happy ending offers reassurance too. However there are tragic elements underlying it. Helen has been trapped in exile for many years, and the Greeks and Trojans have fought for nothing.

At the root of this is the arbitrary will of the gods. They had decided to take Helen away and provoke the war, but gods are changeable. Just as the Greek-loving Athene turns against the victors in The Trojan Women, so Hera, the defender of the Trojans, suddenly comes out in favour of Menelaus in this play. It may be a reflection of decline in the beliefs in the old gods that dramatists such as Euripides provide a constant critique of them.

Helen is essentially a rewrite of Iphigenia in Tauris, another Euripides play. It is astonishing that two figures connected with the Trojan Wars should apparently turn up again many miles away from the conflict, but too late to prevent the revenge killings done in their name, but there it is.

It is a peculiar play that vindicates Helen by the most improbable means. However there is something strangely comfortable in the idea that the husband and wife are able to achieve a reconciliation that cancels out the apparent reasons for their separation.

Honestly? Vivan las tragedias! Posta que me entretienen mucho y es interesante leerlas con la nueva información que voy adquiriendo a lo largo de la carrera.

Læst til antikkens hovedværker

Building upon Stesychorus’ version, in this play Helen is in Egypt and has been there for the entire Trojan War, while the Helen at Troy was only an ειδολον, so we know right from the prologue that things are not as they appear to be and as a result the whole play is contradictory. Segal counts more than 30 times in which appearance is contrasted with reality and you can interpret it you want: haste might explain imperfection, or it could be a signal that we could be going towards the trope of the double that will later appear in the New Comedy. I personally choose to believe that the play is elusive because it offers a multifaced answer.

I’m really invested in the phantom Helen – did she know she wasn’t real? what happens to her next? what effect has this knowledge on her? what if she loved Paris? will she be reunited with him in the underworld? why no one ever noticed anything? why does this reminds me of AI? – but aside from this, if appearance and reality are not the same, what are the implications?

The obvious one is that the Trojan War was fought over nothing and many died in vain. The play’s pacifist message indeed could be a direct response to the recent failed Sicilian expedition. However, does this correspond to the reality of the characters’ actions? Menelaos once again goes against a foreign kind to have his wife back, which can be both a parallel with him going against Troy (human actions are the same, the outcome is different only thanks to changed behaviour of the gods) but also a parallel with Paris ‘stealing’ Helen if we assume that he did so because she loved him back even if that mean starting a war. So, even if the characters agree that the war was pointless, they don’t seem to have learned the lesson (this easily applies to different periods and different players, even today).

Menelaos is indeed faced with a very human dilemma: he has invested so much in getting Helen back, he could save himself and not risk another war by letting it go and accepting that he spent years fighting a pointless war (or rather, not pointless, but a war in which the trigger and objective of it was not real); or, he could persevere as to assign some meaning to his quest, possibly dying trying. Well, for him this is not a dilemma, he has already chosen what to do, and many of us make the same choice in our daily life.

Another implication is Helen’s innocence: much like in Gorgia’s Encomium, Euripides redeems Helen. But what will happen once they return to Greece? How can you convince everyone of what happened?

A few other things of interest are Theonoe, who knows everything (she possess the truth, we might say) and yet is still capable of lying, and the chorus, which in case of Antigone doesn’t intervene even though the Old Thebans are somewhat sympathetic towards her and her cause while here we hear the chorus saying “I am, if I judge better” in response to Theoklymenos “You are not my judge”

n  Many tales might be clear, and yet not true.n

The story of Helen that has her sailing off to Troy with seducer Paris, leaving behind her husband and home, is clear; but is it true? In Helen, Euripides provides an alternative version of Helen’s tale, one that was suggested by Herodotus some thirty years earlier. Helen never went to Troy. Instead, after rivalry among gods over Paris, Hermes whisks her off to Egypt while a phantom takes Helen’s shape to accompany Paris to Troy. While Troy falls, Helen remains in Egypt, faithfully awaiting the arrival of her lawful husband Menelaus, under especial protection of king Proteus. Proteus dies - and this is where the play begins.

The back cover of my collection of Euripides’ plays describes Helen as a comedy, which I find strange. Sure, there are moments of lightheartedness, and Euripides parodies himself in several places; but the overall impression one receives, which is solidified in the beginning of the play, is one tragedy. While the play does end on a rather happy note (depending, to be fair, on your sympathies), Helen’s early despair is symptomatic:

n  Strong griefs ask strong lamenting. Who shall be
Pattern and partner to my crying soul?
What tearful song can match the toll
Of deep pain paid by silent misery?n

I adore these lines, and this play so far is my favorite by Euripides.

theoclymenus you gullible motherfucker! helen tricked your ass good

3.5 stars

Helen is an post-Trojan war alternate history: we being with Helen alone in Egypt explaining that after Paris came for her at Sparta Hera whisked her off to Sparta and sent Paris off with some sort of copy that he thought was Helen:

"But Hera, hating having lost,
turned my affair with Paris into wind.
She gave king Priam's on an empty image,
not me but something like me, made of air
but breathing. So he thought that he had me,
but it was just an empty false appearance."

Helen was safe in Egypt until the king died and his son wants to rape and marry her. At this moment Menelaus shows up having spent seven years at sea following the war and after an initial lack of recognition they pair up and formulate a plan of escape--which is made more difficult because the king's sister is omniscient. Ultimately through disguises and a burial trick (almost identical to the plot of Iphigenia among the Taurians) and a bloody escape/chase scene they make it out--with a bit of deus ex machina by Castor and Pollux to help them along.

All of it feels like a light action/adventure story more than a fully fledged tragedy. There is a little of the lessons around politics and duty (namely that the new king's sister was right to betray him because he was doing something wrong in the eyes of his own late father and the gods), but mostly it is about the suspense of whether and how Helen and Menelaus will escape.

I should add that seeing Helen portrayed this sympathetically, hearing so much from her, and having her resist the entreaties and worse from men was an interesting twist on her general invisibility in the set of poems, plays and stories that ultimately center around her in important respects.

(Note: I read the translation by Emily Wilson in The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.)

باورم‌ نمیشه کسی که هلن و هیپولیت رو نوشته همونی هست که مده‌آ رو نوشته. این دوتا نسبت به مده‌آ خیلی ساده بودن. هیپولیت ولی باز قشنگ‌تر بود.