Grief Lessons

Just finished Anne Carson's translations of Euripides--I wish there were more than these four. Such a fabulous combination of good stories tied perfectly to form, characters I know well but not quite in this setting (all of Greek mythology is like an enormous epic soap opera with recurring characters, with endless episodes told from every different point of view--you're like, "Oh, Herakles again, except this time he's just making a guest appearance in someone else's drama!" like if the Pirates of the Caribbean stopped off at Gilligan's Island [sort of]), and translations using language so well. The prefaces to each play are also fabulous--I don't remember ever savoring a preface like this. For example, who knew that aidos, the Greek word for shame, "is a vast word in Greek"? She talks about the different meanings and implications, saying in part that in Greek, "Shame vibrates with honor and also with disgrace, with what is chaste and what is erotic, with coldness and also with blushing. Shame is felt before the eyes of others and also in facing oneself" (163-164). Also, I continue to savor reading books that I will NOT be using (at least directly) in the classroom.


Amphitryon observes in Herakles:

Time does not know how to keep our hopes safe,
but flutters off on its own business. (lines 487-8)


Herakles ranting in his play:

I don't believe gods commit adultery.
I don't believe gods throw gods in chains
or tyrannize one another.
Never did believe it, never shall.
God must, if God is truly God,
lack nothing.
All the rest is miserable poets' lies. (1316-22)


A servant's wisdom in Hippolytos:

If someone who is stretched tight inside himself
talks reckless talk, best not to listen. (150-1)


Theseus in Hippolytos:

What human beings need is some clear index
of who is a friend and who is not--
a diagnostic of soul--
and every man should have two voices,
one righteous and the other however it happens to be,
so that the righteous voice could refute the unrighteous
and we would not be duped. (1009-15)