اگه سراغ این کتاب اومدین که نمایشنامه الکترا رو بخونید باید بگم الکترایی که اورپید نوشته از این الکترای سوفوکل خیلی بهتره و پیشنهاد میشه وقتتون رو برای سوفوکل نزارین برید اورپید بخونید

اورپید به داستان بیشتر شاخ و برگ داده و همین باعث شده از الکترای سوفوکل که میتونم بگم نصف بیشتر آه و ناله الکترا بود سرتر باشه

و مابقی نمایشنامه های این کتاب
زنان تراخیس و آژاکس قشنگ بودند فیلوکتتس چنگی به دل نزد حداقل برای من.

نمایشنامه الکترا را از ترجمه انگلیسی ماینک خوندم. ترجمه های ماینک، نه ترجمه های ادبی قوی بلکه ترجمه هایی هستند که برای اجرای روی صحنه پرداخته شده اند. زبان ساده و بی تکلفی دارند، بازی های ادبی را در حدی که به روانی اجرا لطمه نخورد در متن باقی گذاشته اند و در یادداشت ها هم بیشتر به نکاتی اشاره کرده اند که به دقت اجرای روی صحنه کمک کنند.
به هر حال، با وجود تمام این مشکلات ترجمه ای ساده و روان برای خواننده بی سواد غیر انگلیسی زبان (مثل من) به حساب می آیند. هر چند به منظور درک و فهم بهتر جزییات نمایشنامه سوفوکلس و مقا��سه روایت های سوفوکس، آیسخولوس و اوریپیدس از داستان الکترا، میتوان به مقدمه رابرت شاو روی ترجمه آن کارسون و یادداشت های پایانی کارسون مراجعه کرد.

I read this for a class on Sophocles, and liked both the explanatory material by the editors, and the translations of the plays themselves. My favorites were definitely Philoctetes (I had never heard of this one before) and Ajax.

Olen niin iloinen, että Teos kustantaa näitä antiikin kirjallisuuden käännöksiä. Jälleen yksi todella tyylikäs kokoelma. Nämä Sofokleen aiemmin suomentamattomat tragediat ovat huippuja (ainakin minulle ja joo... mä todella fanitan antiikin kirjallisuutta). Paljon inhimillisiä tunteita tiiviissä ilmaisussa ja lukija joutuu käymään läpi eettisiä/moraalisia pohdintoja lukukokemuksen aikana. Huvitti yksi deus ex machina loppu. Kokonaisuudessaan laadukkaasti toimitettu näytelmätekstien kokonaisuus.

Kirjoitin tästä myös blogiini: https://kosminenk.blogspot.com/2021/0...

Drugi tom tragedii Sofoklesa to kolejne cztery utwory uzupełniające zachowany w pełni dorobek siedmiu sztuk najbardziej znanego greckiego tragika. Dwie pierwsze, czyli Ajas i Filoktet są bardzo ciekawym spojrzeniem na wojnę trojańską, które skupia się nie na heroizmie jej uczestników, a na ich wadach, podłości i ciemnej stronie jej prowadzenia tym bardziej przez tak długi czas. Osobiście uwielbiam to jak przedstawiony w tych dwóch tragediach jest Odyseusz, którego dopiero co poznałem jako wspaniałą postać w Odysei Homera, która w przedstawieniu Sofoklesa okazuje się jako najbardziej śliska z bohaterów wojny trojańskiej. Na osobne wyróżnienie zasługuje genialny monolog Ajaksa w Epejsodionie II. Elektra z kolei to znany motyw zemsty, przedstawiony w bardzo interesujący sposób z perspektywy innej niż mściciela. Jest to chyba najbardziej oryginalna ze wszystkich tragedii Sofoklesa.

Najmniej podobały mi się Trachinki, być może już z winy przesytu.

Podobnie jak w przypadku pierwszego tomu tekst Libery jest niewiarygodnie plastyczny, czyta się wspaniale i daje dużo przyjemności z obcowania z antykiem.

You cannot count on tomorrow until you've survived today.
(945-946)

You can't engage in a boxing match with Love
Who'd be such a fool? Love governs even the gods
At his own sweet will. He certainly governs me.
(441-443)
-Sophocles from Women of Trachis

Order starting with my favorite below:

1. Electra
2. Philoctetes
3. Women of Trachis
4. Ajax

Oto mój ranking dramatów Sofoklesa, o który nikt nie prosił a każdy potrzebował
1. Król Edyp ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
2. Filoktet ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
3. Antygona ⭐⭐⭐⭐
4. Edyp w Kolonos ⭐⭐⭐✨
5. Trachinki ⭐⭐⭐

Electra, in Sophocles’ telling of her story, is just as single-minded and uncompromising in her quest for vengeance as she is when fellow Athenian playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides tell the same story. The daughter of Agamemnon, in every version of her story, will not rest until the blood of her murdered father has been repaid with the blood of his killers – his wife Clytemnestra (Electra’s own mother), and Clytemnestra’s lover-turned-husband Aegisthus. But Sophocles incorporates his own unique sensibility and insight into Electra’s story, as he does with of the other mythologically based plays included in this volume.

The title of Women of Trachis refers to the play’s chorus – a group of women of the city-state of Trachis in northern Greece, attending upon (and providing a dramatic counterpoint to) Deianeira, the wife of Heracles. As the play begins, Deianeira’s anxiety at her husband’s long absence is mollified when a messenger provides news that Heracles is on his way home. Yet the herald Lichas brings not only additional news of Heracles’ return, but also some unwelcome additions to the Heraclean household: captives Heracles took while sacking Oechalia, including a beautiful young woman named Iole.

Lichas tries to put a brave face on this uncomfortable situation, claiming that Heracles only attacked Oechalia under compulsion, while held in slavery by the Lydian princess Omphale; but the messenger tells Deianeira the whole truth, declaring that “It was all for that beautiful girl [Iole]/That Heracles sacked Oechalia’s lofty towers/And conquered Eurytus. Love was the only god/To charm him into this warlike expedition,/Nothing to do with penal servitude out/In Lydia, under Omphale” (p. 26). Deianeira, feeling the changes of middle age, now has it confirmed that her husband is bringing a young and beautiful mistress into the family household.

Deianeira, however, has -- or thinks she has -- a secret weapon in her romantic arsenal. When the centaur Nessus, years before, tried to abduct Deianeira, Heracles killed him. The dying centaur bade Deianeira take some of his blood and anoint some of Heracles’ clothing with it as a love charm, should Heracles’ love for Deianeira ever start to fade. Deianeira now anoints a full-length robe with the centaur’s blood, and tells Lichas to present it to Heracles as a gift from Deianeira. Poor Deianeira: she thought the centaur was sorry for abducting her and only wanted to do her a good turn, where in fact it was Nessus’ plan to exact a cruel revenge from beyond the grave. Deianeira soon senses that her plan for securing Heracles’ love may have gone awry, telling the women of Trachis that “My hopes were all for the best,/But I fear I shall soon be shown to have done great harm” (p. 37).

Deianeira’s worst fears are soon confirmed. Heracles’ son Hyllus arrives to report that the poisoned robe has eaten into Heracles’ skin and vitals, causing the hero endless, agonizing pain. The unlucky herald Lichas, who brought the robe, has been killed by Heracles, flung out against a rock that protrudes from the sea. Deianeira, overcome with grief and remorse, kills herself with a sword; and Heracles, brought in on a litter, expresses the mortification he feels at being seen in this weakened state: “Here I am, sobbing/And crying away like a girl. No one could ever say/He saw great Heracles weeping before” (p. 51).

While Heracles initially believes that Deianeira deliberately caused him this agony, exclaiming upon the news of Deianeira’s suicide that “I should have killed that woman!” (p. 53), his loyal son Hyllus quickly acquaints him with the facts of the case. Heracles accepts his fate, telling Hyllus first to burn Heracles in a funeral pyre, and then to wed Iole. Hyllus questions the ways of the gods as the play draws to a conclusion, telling the bearers of Heracles’ litter that “the hearts of the callous gods/Feel nothing in all these sorry events./They beget their sons and are called our fathers,/Yet look down calmly on our great pain. No man has a vision of what is to come” (p. 59).

Ajax of Salamis, that larger-than-life warrior who is one of the pre-eminent heroes of the Iliad, is vouchsafed a heroic death in Wolfgang Petersen’s film Troy (2004), dying after a long and heroic battle with Hector. That’s fine for the movies, but the actual circumstances of Ajax’s death, according to the original myths, were much less heroic, as Sophocles chronicles in his play Ajax.

As the play begins, Ajax has already carried out the act that will forever cloud his post-Trojan War glory. Incensed that, in a contest held to determine who would inherit the armour of the dead Achilles, he lost to Odysseus, Ajax planned to take his revenge by murdering the Greek leaders Agamemnon and Menelaus, and torturing his rival Odysseus for good measure. But the goddess Athena misled Ajax, causing him to direct his wrath against sheep and cattle captured in the war, slaughtering them instead.

Sitting among the bodies of the animals he has killed, Ajax is immobilized by his sense of his own disgrace: “Here’s Ajax the brave, the bold-hearted man,/Who never blenched in fight against furious foes,/And now he flaunts his power on poor harmless beasts!/Oh, how they’ll laugh! How I’ve been brought to shame!” (p. 87) The once-admired hero comes to conclude that he must take his own life in order to restore his tarnished honour; in one moving interlude, he holds up his young son Eurysaces and says, “My son, I pray/That you’ll be luckier than your father was” (p. 93).

One of the most famous passages in Sophocles’ Ajax involves the title character meditating on the power of time and fortune. Beginning with a reflection on how “Time, in its long uncounted course, brings forth/The hidden truth, then hides it all from the light” (p. 96), the Salaminian warrior who once considered himself all-powerful proceeds to a serene acceptance of divine will: “In future, then, we’ll know to yield to the gods” (p. 97). Such words are worlds away from the arrogance with which Ajax once spoke, as described by a messenger who is Ajax’s half-brother:

“If you’re born human, you must not entertain
Thoughts higher than a human being should.
Ajax displayed his folly the very moment
That he set out from home. His father’s parting
Words were: ‘Son, let your ambition be
To fight to win, but always with god’s help.’
He boastfully and thoughtlessly replied,
‘Father, with god’s help even a nobody
Can win a victory. I don’t need god’s help.
I trust I’ll land the fish of fame without it!’
Those were his boastful words. Another time,
When the goddess Athena was urging him on and said,
‘Ajax, now use that hand of yours and kill!
He made her this unspeakably rude retort:
‘You can assist the other Greeks, my lady!
The battle line won’t break where I’m on hand.’
That speech incurred Athena’s pitiless wrath.
His mind had flown beyond his human limits.” (pp. 100-01)

Ajax’s earlier words, here cited by his half-brother, seem a textbook example of hubris, ὕβρις, the fatal pride that, in the Olympian belief system, invites divine punishment against the human imprudent enough not to acknowledge the power and authority of the gods.

The chorus leader for Ajax (one of a group of Greek sailors) no doubt reflects the sensibilities of the play’s original audience when he tells Ajax’s half-brother Teucer that “You’d better be thinking how/You’ll bury Ajax” (p. 110); but then Ajax’s erstwhile enemy, the Greek commander Menelaus of Sparta, insists that “No one can have the power to lay his body/To rest in a grave. No, he must be thrown out/On the yellow sand to feed the hungry seabirds” (p. 111). As with Creon’s decision in Sophocles’ Antigone to leave unburied the body of Polyneices, the slain rebel commander from the Theban civil war, Menelaus’ order is a terrible profanation against the gods, as it was said that the stench of the unburied dead would rise to Olympus itself. Surprisingly, it is Odysseus, Ajax’s former enemy and rival, who successfully persuades Menelaus and Agamemnon to permit the honourable burial of Ajax, and it is left to Trucer to remark the irony of it all: “You were the Greek my brother hated most,/But you alone have offered him active help” (p. 122).

Electra is Sophocles’ take on a story that so fascinated the people of ancient Greece that both Aeschylus and Euripides also dramatized it. In Sophocles’ version of how Electra and Orestes avenged the murder of their father by killing their mother, Orestes arrives before the royal palace of Mycenae and describes how he will spread an untrue story of his own accidental death, in order to lull Clytemnestra and Aegisthus into a false sense of security: “Our crafty tale will bring them the glad tidings/That my body has been cremated and now consists/Of nothing but charred remains” (p. 137). Electra, unlike her go-along-to-get-along sister Chrysothemis, openly hopes that Clytemnestra and Aegisthus will be punished for their crimes, and therefore she is treated cruelly by the usurping royal couple. Adding to Electra’s pain is her belief that Orestes is indeed dead, and all hope of vengeance therefore gone: “My hope is gone, all that I had/Swept right away, vanished!” (p. 163).

All three of the great Athenian dramatists make a point of focusing upon the irony of the living Orestes speaking to a sister who thinks he is dead, as Sophocles does when his Orestes says to the grieving Electra that “Only I can share the pain of your suffering” (p. 176). Once Orestes has revealed himself, Electra rejoices, her devotion to vengeance renewed: “I swear, yes I swear, Artemis be my strength,/I’ll never stoop to fear my old foes again” (p. 178). Orestes urges caution, and brother and sister move carefully to the successful accomplishment of their revenge.

Yet as in Shakespeare’s revenge tragedies centuries later, Sophocles suggests that in gaining revenge against one’s enemy, one can become one’s enemy. This theme comes through with special force when Electra, hearing Aegisthus’ pleas for mercy after the killing of Clytemnestra, scornfully replies, “No, Orestes, for god’s sake….Kill him at once; kill him, and then/Throw out his corpse for the dogs and birds to bury/Out of our sight. No other payment/For all I’ve suffered could be enough for me” (pp. 188-89). As in Ajax, and in Antigone from Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, the impious act of leaving a corpse unburied shows the extent to which a character has lost all sense of ethical boundaries. And the play’s chorus of Mycenaean women sound downright existential when they conclude, addressing Electra directly, “O seed of Atreus, how much you have suffered!/But now this attack has forced you out/Into freedom. You’ve come to the ending” (p. 190). Electra is indeed forced out into freedom – compelled to live as the person she has become because of her choices and their attendant consequences.

Philoctetes is a story of war and pain – so much so that readings and stagings of this particular play have been used as a way to help modern combat veterans deal with their own wartime trauma. The background story would have been quite familiar to Athenian audiences of Sophocles’ time: Philoctetes, a great archer, was en route to Troy with the rest of the Greek expeditionary force when he was bitten by a snake on the island of Lemnos and was left behind by the Greeks, his wound stinking and festering and causing him endless pain. Nine years later, as the action of Sophocles’ Philoctetes begins, the Greeks have received a prophecy that Troy will never fall until Philoctetes rejoins the Greek army; and Odysseus has come to Lemnos with Achilles’ son Neoptolemus to get Philoctetes away from Lemnos and over to Troy.

Odysseus, depicted less sympathetically by Sophocles here than in Ajax, plans to use deceit to get Philoctetes onto the boat to Troy, telling Neoptolemus that Philoctetes “mustn’t/Realize I am here. It would wreck the ingenious/Plan I think would ensure his speedy capture” (p. 203). Odysseus knows that the ever-suffering Philoctetes is bitter at having been left behind by the Greeks, and will not want to rejoin the Greek forces; therefore, Odysseus plans to use subterfuge to seize Philoctetes’ sacred bow (a gift from the dying Heracles), and, by that means, to force Philoctetes to accompany them. Philoctetes knows only too well Odysseus’ gift for stratagems; he tells the play’s chorus, a group of Greek sailors, that Odysseus would “use his tongue to forward any/Evil scheme or villainous action, if that/Was likely to serve his wicked ends” (p. 216).

Odysseus’ plan, in brief, is for Neoptolemus to feign sympathy for Philoctetes, and by that means to get his hand on the bow. Neoptolemus goes along at first, but then becomes conscience-stricken, moved by the intensity of the stricken archer’s suffering: “Poor man, I can see you’ve been through hell” (p. 229).

Neoptolemus gets the bow for a time, and it looks as though the bow will end up in the hands of Odysseus – Philoctetes laments that his old adversary now “fondles/My whole means of life in his hands,/Wields what no man wielded before./Trusty bow, so dear to my heart” (p. 242). Yet Neoptolemus has never actually handed over the bow, and soon the all-too-clever Odysseus is shocked to discover that Neoptolemus plans “To undo the wrongs that I did before”, on grounds that “It was shameful and wrong to take [the bow]” (p. 246). The foiled Odysseus retreats from the scene. Philoctetes and Neoptolemus form a friendship and alliance based on trust, and the deified Heracles appears to inform Philoctetes that it is the gods’ will that Philoctetes join the Greek forces outside Troy: “I shall send/Asclepius to heal your wounds in Troy./The citadel must be captured by my bow/A second time” (p. 255). The play ends on a note of hope, with Philoctetes bidding farewell to the island where he lived nine years in torment; and the Athenian audience would know that Philoctetes’ unfinished business at Troy would include the killing of Paris, the man whose abduction of Helen had started the whole war.

This translation by David Raeburn of Oxford University, with introduction and notes by Pat Easterling of Cambridge University, is an excellent way to get to know the four surviving plays of Sophocles other than the better-known Oedipus trilogy.

Traakhiin neidot - Erittäin mielenkiintoinen rakenne: ekassa puoliskossa "päähenkilönä" Herakleen vaimo Deianeira, tokassa itse Herakles. Valitettavasti just tän takia lopahti mun kiinnostus näytelmään, sillä eka puolisko oli huomattavasti parempi imo. Deinaeiran tunteet ja mielenliikkeet super kiintoisia, mutta sitten Deianeiran kuoleman jälkeen näytelmä keskittyykin Herakleen ja Hylloksen isä-poika-suhteen tarkasteluun ja Deianeira unohtuu lopulta käytännössä kokonaan. Bleh.

Aias - Mua henkkoht hirveästi kiinnostava mytologinen aihe: Akhilleuksen kuoleman jälkeen hänen aseidensa aiheuttama kiista Aiaan ja Odysseuksen välillä sekä Aiaan karjansurmaamisraivokohtaus ja itsemurha. Sofokles käsittelee aihetta sinänsä ihan kivalla tavalla, mutta näytelmä ei jotenkaan tehnyt muhun sen suurempaa vaikutusta. Aiaan itsemurhan tapahtuminen näyttämöllä (eikä näyttämön ulkopuolella, kuten kuolemat yleensä antiikin kreikkalaisessa tragediassa) on jännä kuriositeetti.

Filoktetes - Toinen mielenkiintoinen mytologinen aihe: yksin sairaana autiolle saarelle hylätyn Filokteteen noutaminen Troijaan, jotta Troijan sota saataisiin vihdoinkin päätökseen. Onneksi myyttiaihetta on käsitelty kiintoisammin kuin Aiaassa. Filktotetesta noutamaan lähetetyt Neoptolemos ja Odysseus ovat monitahoisia hahmoja, joista on kiva lukea. Filokteteksen yksinäisyyden kokemuksissa on ainesta eksistentiaaliseen pohdintaan.

Elektra - Tää on ehdottomasti mun lemppari näistä neljästä Sofokleen näytelmästä, ja myöskin mun lemppari Aiskhyloksen, Sofokleen ja Euripideen samasta aiheesta (Elektran ja Oresteen suorittama äidinmurha) kirjoittamista kolmesta näytelmästä. Elektra on todella mielenkiintoinen päähenkilö (vaikkakin vihaan vihaan vihaan sitä, että hän on Agamemnonin puolella), näytelmässä kuvataan naisten välisiä suhteita (Elektra ja sisko Khrysothemis, Elektra ja äiti Klytaimnestra). Valitettavasti loppu on hiukan keskinkertainen, sillä Orestes ilmestyy paikalle ja hoitaa homman.

Hienot suomennokset ja mukana myös erittäin loistavat oheismatskut (kattavat viitteet, esseitä, kartat, nimien ääntämisohjeita...).

Philoctetes deserved better

I only read Ajax & coordinating intro. This was for a special bookclub called "Ancient Greeks & Modern Life". Ajax is a combat vet returning home & things don't go well. The connection to modern life is currently returning vets have the same troubles adapting to civilian life, perhaps more so since most their peers out of the combat zone have no idea, nor want to know what they've done to make it home. At least in ancient Greece, all (male) citizens served from 18 yrs to 60 yrs old, so peers out of the combat zone knew what being at war was like & what it could do to a mind of even the bravest.