ترجمه از : محمد سعیدی
که بسیار ترجمه روان و دلنشینی است.
جایگاه تراژدی های سوفوکل و به طبع دیگر تراژدی‌نویسان هم دوره او و به کل دوران طلایی یونان باستان که اسطوره های قدیم را از دل ایلیاد و ادیسه هومر بیرون میشکند در قامت پند دهنده هایی ادیبانه سطحی بالا در تاریخ ادبیات کهن قرار میگیرند که بعد ها جنس فارسی و آشنا تر آنها برای ما را میتوان به قصیده سرایی حافظ تا سنایی و حماسه‌سرایی های فردوسی اشاره کرد.
همچنین
سوفوکل گویا در هنر های نمایشی ابداعاتی در دوران خود هم داشته که تصور نشستن در پرده نمایش او میتواند برایم جذاب باشد‌‌.

آژاکس
زمستان با پای برف‌آلود از مقابل تابستان گرم می‌گریزد. شحنه شب از گشت شبانه خود باز می‌ایستد تا چابک‌سوار صبح بر سمند نقره فام نشیند و عالم را منور کند. طوفان باد توقف می‌کند تا امواج خروشان دریا اندکی بیارامد. حتی خواب که قادر مطلق جان آدمیان است دریچه‌ی خود را گاهی می‌گشاید و گاهی می‌بندد و هرگز نمی‌تواند زندانی خود را تا ابد در بند نگاه‌ دارد.

Αν μπορείς να διαβάσεις τον Αίαντα στο πρωτότυπο, γεύεσαι μια διπλή εμπειρία θεατρικής τέχνης και γλωσσικής μυσταγωγίας.

Few works manage to capture the entire breadth of human emotion in a short 30-40 pages, fewer less do it well. Though these works benefit from an established base of characters and events, the craftsmanship of the Attic poets still shines through. Ajax, of the four, remains one of my favorite pieces of drama, peculiar among Sophocles works for having active participation of the Gods despite not being the source of resolution. Either way, incredible stuff.

can we be content
when we scan the divine and find the gods are evil?

honestly, i finished this largely out of spite. i'm glad i did, because the last play was the best of all four, but this was so hard to finish. the language and structure seemed so average (and i'm not sure if that's a translation thing or not), but i usually find greek plays so lovely.

women of trachis: 3 stars
- i didn't feel bad for hercules at all which probably took away a lot
- the most interesting character was probably hyllus, or poor iole who didn't get a single word
- interesting premise, and i liked it more when i explained it to somebody else

ajax: 2 stars
- super disappointed because this was the one that i was most anticipating, but in reality it was kind of stupid
- felt like i was skim-reading most of menelaus' speeches
- and then ajax i couldn't find any sympathy for at all, because he wanted to kill the greeks even before his madness?
- although it did have one really beautiful passage:
"The winter's snow-strewn paths make room in time
For summer's fruits; and night's eternal round
Resigns for day's white steeds to light her flame;
The breath of awesome winds can lay to rest
The roaring sea; and sleep that conquers all
Unlocks its chains and cannot keep its hold.
Must we not also learn to know our place?

electra: 2 stars
- i just really hate agamemnon
- like really
- and electra was really annoying too
- the sister was my favourite

philoctetes: 4 stars
- my favourite of them all!!!
- the premise was good, the characters were likeable
- odysseus was a sneakly little shit as usual
- this is the first time ever in my life i've felt even a slither of anything nice towards neoptolemus (in fact, i really liked him):
"Double-dealing is not my nature,
Neither, they tell me, was it my father's way."

so all in all, they weren't awful, but there was just so much to dislike.

Morals of the story:

Don’t be a bitch to Athena or you’ll pay

Tomorrow – what is tomorrow?
‘Tis nothing, until today is safely past.
--
Are we not all,
All living things, mere phantoms, shadows of nothing?

Shakespearean tendencies seem to flow through Sophocles, in some form or another (Oedipus and Lear tread the same prints), though Sophocles is remarkable for his centrifugal force. There is little distraction in his drama: one or two braziers will be established, and their flames awed at for the breadth of the play. Ajax of Ajax burns most savagely: he misses the irony of his pompous and tricksy hosts being morphed into livestock – much though he has been baffled and humiliated, it seems Athena’s equivalence for Menelaus and co. is neither kind nor honourable. There is then a Homeric kind of justice in Troy itself – the earth and dust – wielding Hector’s sword and piercing through its persecutor; not unlike Achilles at war with the river, fighting the very terrain. Even among Greeks the Trojan war is waged endless; Priam and his soldiery appear quite unnecessary against a conception of time (or Time) that defies all permanence, and so ensures there can be no forever peace. Electra makes a curious sibling to Aeschylus’ great work – it is more human, and afroth with more choler. Electra herself has little agency but almost total narrative attention, her rage and anguish, her encouragement of Orestes (who, post-matricide, appears shaken: ‘… if Apollo was right.’). In her is both the virtue and vice of the revolutionary; another Antigone; a blazing dart of self-destruction (though badged with honour). Perhaps destruction can go too far – Sophocles closes the play before such ichor can seep through. Women of Trachis is probably, of the extant Sophocles plays, the least effective in dramatic terms but is almost premised on that notion. In that expectant dramas do not play out, or at least expectant according to the characters of the play; instead all grand designs fall foul before they can even be arranged. There is no conflict of brides, there is no marital strife dramatized on the stage. The binary-orbit of the play is defined by orbital dicta: the bodies can never meet, though the motion of each is defined by the other. A great tragedy of the ignorant and the misconstrued, though perhaps the effect of ignorance should not be entirely overstated. Heracles committed some minor inconstancy (by the Grecian standards, at least), but through this deed brought upon his own doom. A morally strident situation announces itself. From the small comes the great. Long-suffering Hyllus becomes the play’s noble centre, he who acquiesces to his father’s unusual demands, and makes show of loyalty and integrity. He is not devious; he is not commanded by lust nor by jealousy, even if he discovers conflict in his instruction. A smudge of optimism in tragic postscript. Philoctetes presses on a Hyllus-type character more profoundly. Neoptolemus appears as a callow, but fundamentally honest soldier. He is so honest that, through a sense of duty, he is forced to lie. But of course he is not so much a liar: there is a sweet irony to his speech to Philoctetes, whose contents one might readily assume to be – in all but the obviously fabricated details – entirely true. Neoptolemus has buttressed his situational deceit with a host of his own discontents; I sense his kinship with Philoctetes to be legitimate in its broad carriage, an alliance only surmounted by his promise against Troy. It is late in the play that Neoptolemus reverts: he is willing to surrender Troy (and himself, and perhaps the Grecian whole) for the confidence of his friend. Again – as in Electra, as in Antigone – an almost suicidal commitment to what appears the most righteous path. A god intervenes to save all, but it seems an intervention shaped as divine reward; this is not Heracles encouraging the cooperation of an old friend, but Heracles rewarding the Greek who kept his mettle despite all. An optimism, shared in part by Sophocles’ final Oedipus play, for the constitution of man.

Great translation of the text. Very readable. Introductions to each play were helpful. Would have preferred footnotes or endnotes to expand, but great translations.

Super good play very interesting characters Odysseus is a dick fuck that guy. Has a weird ending that requires some thought and high key a little bit of re reading to get

Excellent translations make the reading of the four plays easy. Fascinating to see the concerns of then being paralleled today. Good to read the forgotten Ajax (not a cleaning product!) and Philoctetes as well as the more famous Electra.

There is something about Greek literature, Sophocles and Homer most especially, that buries itself in the mind so that it remains unforgettable. The moaning, groaning, wailing, and suffering becomes “your own heart’s speech.” It’s more than a little eerie to identify so well with ancient mythological figures, but their grief and agony articulate the distant voices of the collective unconscious.

Perhaps I’m easy to please, but I found all the plays in this edition extraordinarily compelling. My favorites are the Ajax and Philoctetes, about two great warriors fallen low, so exquisitely low that their contemplations of suicide become existential commentaries on the significance of life.

Like the ancient Greek audiences, most readers who choose this book already know the basic plots of each play, but there are surprising turns in the language and in the nuanced depiction of the characters. In general, I was surprised how much hate is directed at Odysseus, although I felt a little sorry for him in the Ajax. And even though he is hard and tricky in Philoctetes, Odysseus, who at one point says “What I seek in everything is to win,” is simply obeying the gods’ directives in deceiving the maimed and suffering hero out of his famous bow.

The agony is monumental in each play. Ajax suffers as a result of his wounded pride and shame. Deianira unwittingly becomes the cause of her husband Heracles’ physical torment and death. Electra’s moaning is the result of her long-enduring desire to revenge her father’s murder, and Philoctetes’ physical torment from a festering, odiferous wound results in his ten-year abandonment on a desert island. All the plays express human truths and reveal Sophocles’ great understanding of the behavior that results from a human mind and heart after intense trauma. It seems that Ajax has the line that speaks for all: “No, none, to ease my pain. / For God’s sake, help me die!” Death, it seems, is the only cessation to suffering.

نمایشنامه اسطوره‌ای اونم از نوع یونانیش مختصات خاص خودش را داره. با یکسری معیارها میشه سنجید که چقدرش اصیله و چقدر دست خورده. حقیر هم با توجه به مطالعات اندکم به نظرم میاد که به یکسری از نمایشنامه‌های کتاب خطشه وارده. البته هنوز شرح‌ها رو نخوندم و اگه متوجه بشم که اشتباه میکنم، این یادداشت رو اصلاح خواهم کردم.
یکی از نشانه‌های نمایشنامه‌های یونانی حضور خدایان تو نمایشنامه‌ست. البته این حضور معمولا به نحو تجلیه*. به این صورت که مثلا وقتی جنگجویی خوب میجنگه میگن آرس درش متجلی شده. یا در وقت عشق آفرودیته متجلی میشه و قس علی هذا. اما ما تو نمایشنامه فیلوکتتس و آژاکس میبینم که هرکول و آتنا خودشون ظاهر میشن! مخصوصا تو پرده اول آژاکس این برام خیلی عجیب بود.
در کل فیلوکتتس و زنان تراخیس کمتر بوی یونان میداد و آژاکس و مخصوصا الکترا بیشتر.
.
خیلی برام جالبه که بدونم چرا یکی از پروژه‌های انتشارات فرانکلین، آثار اسطوره‌ای یونان بوده. جالب‌تر از اون اینه که مترجم این کتاب، محمد سعیدی، نخست‌وزیر زاهدی و از سناتورهای زمان پهلویه!
علی ای حال ترجمه‌ش خیلی خوب نیست و مشخصه که سنت ترجمه هنوز خیلی شکل نگرفته. با توجه به سیاق جملات، احتمال میدم که مترجم جرح و تعدیل‌هایی هم اعمال کرده که از اصالت نمایشنامه کم کرده.


* میدونم این کلمه در سنت ما بار معنایی خاصی داره. با تساهل و تسامح بپذیرید.