When Aristotle talked about somebody who could write a good tragedy, he was talking about Sophocles. These plays (The 4 extant plays outside of the Theban Plays)are a testament to this fact. While the "Women of Trachis" is perhaps weak, the other three plays are all knockouts. Sophocles' treatment of the Electra myth is worth getting this copy of translations alone. Quite good, and highly recommended to people interested in Greek Tragedy.

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

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

Rereading it with an eye toward how it is similar and dissimilar to Hofmannsthal. I had always read that Hofmannsthal stayed close to the Sophocles. Doesn't seem like it to me.

On to Euripides.

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

On kerrassaan uskomatonta, että melkein 2500 vuotta vanhoja näytelmiä on säilynyt meidän päiviimme asti ja jopa oikein mukava määrä. Antiikin Kreikassa oli kaksi näytelmäkirjailijaa ylitse muiden, Aiskhylos ja Sofokles, joista jälkimmäinen herra lahjoitti maailmalle mm. Oidipus-kompleksin nimen, vaikkakaan se ei kuulu tähän kokoelmaan. Muuten tässä neljän näytelmän kokoelmassa pelataan samoille teemoilla kuin aikansa tragedioissa yleensäkin ja tärkeintä tuntuu olleen kosto. Tuo karmea kreikkalainen ja mielellään myös naisen kosto. Totta kai kaikki muutkin kostivat kokemansa vääryydet aina kentaureista lähtien ja jumaliin asti eikä oikeastaan kukaan voinut uskoa olevansa turvassa, jos oli jotain asiatonta joskus innostunut tekemään. Lisäksi vuosikaudet riehunut Troijan sota antaa hyvän lähtökohdan tarinoille, mitä kaikkea epätoivoista onkaan tehty sodan voittamiseksi. Näiden kansien sisällä seikkailevat Odysseus, Ajax, Elektra ja kumppanit eikä teksti ole suinkaan niin puisevaa kuin voisi ensihätään kuvitella. Vuorosanat solisevat vaivattomasti ja välillä jopa humoristisesti. Tua Korhosen, Tommi Nuopposen ja Vesa Vahtikarin teos on erinomainen portti muinaiseen maailmaan, siinä on neljän klassikon ensimmäiset suomennokset sekä huolellinen perehdytys antiikin Kreikan teatteriin itseensä ja kuhunkin näytelmään eri tulkintoineen. Täältä lähti se kaikki, mitä nykyään katsotaan iltaisin televisiosta.

Well, 2020 has unequivocally been a year of tragedy. A quarter million dead Americans and the imminent death of the Republic. I, for one, find the bone-deep cynicism of ancient Greek culture comforting. Whether in the Iliad or Herodotus or Sophocles, one incessantly runs into some version of the aphorism with which Solon warns Croesus, "Never account a man lucky until he reaches the end of his days."

I suppose I shouldn't've been surprised by the (relative) wealth of tragedy broadcast online this spring and summer, including a live performance of  at the ancient theater at Epidauros put on by the National Theatre of Greece, a rebroadcast of Antigone in Ferguson, and several Zoom productions of Sophocles by the Theater of War. The Theater of War, founded in 2009 by writer, director and translator Bryan Doerries, presents dramatic readings- mostly classical tragedy to begin, but they have expanded their repertoire to include Shakespeare, the Bible, plays by O'Neill and Williams, speeches by Frederick Douglass and Sermons by Martin Luther King among other texts - followed by town-hall type discussions about salient issues in the readings.

As the name indicates, much of their work initially was directed toward providing programs to combat veterans suffering from PTSD, but they have expanded their audience as well to include other communities wrestling with trauma. Many first-rate actors have volunteered their participation over the years, including Martin Sheen, Paul Giamatti, Adam Driver, and Frances McDormand, whom I was lucky enough to see this year as both Jocasta and Heracles. When the pandemic began, they moved their operation to a Zoom meeting format, which was sometimes powerfully intimate and at other times too rhythmically off (due to bandwidth freezing) to really work emotionally. I'll take what I can get, though.

I love all four of these plays. I had read them before, when I was learning Greek (I read them in translation; I've only read Hippolytus in the original); I even wrote a paper about Ajax and have since believed it to be my favorite tragedy (because it's all about self-regard with me)*. So I wasn't expecting to be as moved as I was on this reading. I think it's because they're all, in some way, about the frustrations and humiliations of inhabiting a body - Philoctetes' festering foot; the shameful, paranoid delusions in the roiling brain of afflicted Ajax; Electra, barred from redemptive action by the severe social limits imposed on her sex; Heracles' skin, blistered and ulcerated by the lethal Hydra poison- and I've reached the age when my own body "misses the mark" in some way or another on an almost hourly basis.

*Even so, on that reading I missed something fundamental about this play. I had thought that Ajax was the essentially blameless victim of Athene, who drives him mad on behalf of Odysseus, with whom he is locked in a power struggle. Ajax is punished, though, for his impious independence. The messenger relates how, when Ajax left Salamis for the war, his father counseled him to strive for victory "always with God's help." "With God's help," Ajax had replied, "even a worthless man could triumph. I propose, without that help, to win my prize of fame." This perverse individualism isn't limited to Sophocles' perspective on this character. In fact, as translator John Moore points out in his introduction, Ajax is the only major hero in the Iliad who never gets assistance from the gods. At one of the dramatic climaxes of the poem it is he, and he alone, who saves the Greeks. So now I have a better reason for loving this play best. Ajax is Existential Man, going it alone to his own destruction like a boss.

Read Philoctetes for Freshman Seminar 2010.
Read Ajax in 2011 before a performance of it at American Repertory Theater in Boston. Re-read Philoctetes for pre-lecture Seminar/lecture on 4/08/11.
Re-read Philoctetes and Ajax in 2011. Wrote this essay on Philoctetes: http://mwfogleman.tumblr.com/post/189...

I don't know what impulse buy this book was, I don't know why I thought I would like it

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...).

I like Sophocles version of the character Electra. She was my main unanswered question after reading the Oresteia. Read Philoctetes and I wish the other versions of this play by other authors survived. I like that it ties into other legends and stories.

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.