Translated by Anne Carson

The book opens, the pages turn, a lone figure appears on stage. “Why does tragedy exist?” she asks, “Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.” This sort of introductory monologue addressed to the audience was a recurring element of Euripides’ works, one that dramatically enclosed the audience within the world of the play. The startling address that begins Anne Carson’s new translations of several Euripides’ dramas is none other than Carson herself, introducing the plot and explaining the moral as confidently and callously as any Euripidean god. Such aggressively penetrative speech and complex psychological insight is the clear dominion of Euripides himself, and Carson seems to be consciously channeling his style and force for her own designs (she even concludes her collection with the wonderfully poignant essay, “Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra,” ostensibly “by Euripides”). Though Carson’s purpose is obscured, it is clear that before the reader sees even a word of Euripides, he or she is as confused and defensive as any ancient spectator of this most curious of playwrights.

Seen in this light, Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides is an immensely ambitious work that seeks what perhaps Euripides himself sought from his labors; namely, to present the naked truths of men and gods, for any and all who would hear. Whatever these truths may have been for Euripides, Carson seems most concerned with showing the emotions that tear apart mortals and lord over gods, along with different, variously-successful ways of dealing with such sensations. Yet this is not simple didacticism, or uncritical moralizing. A clue to the complexity of these translations may be seen when Carson explains how:

“There is in Euripides some kind of learning that is always at the boiling point. It breaks experiences open and they waste themselves, run through your fingers. Phrases don’t catch them, theories don’t hold them, they have no use. It is a theater of sacrifice in the true sense. Violence occurs; through violence we are intimate with some characters on stage in an exorbitant way for a brief time; that’s all it is.”

For Euripides, according to Carson, the characters and the plot are subordinate elements in service of conveying a deeper truth, of fulfilling the lesson. So to with Carson’s translations. They rarely deviate significantly from the original text, but in some sense the Greek functions for Carson as the ancient myths once did for Euripides – as raw material to be used or ignored as the artist sees fit, in service of the greater project of invading and overwhelming one’s audience.

Carson’s translations are an unusual triumph. Unlike other ‘modern’ translations that merely employ contemporary idioms and slang, Carson infuses her pieces with all the dynamism and emotion of human, and thus contemporary, life. The best example of this is her treatment of Hippolytus, how she details the story of Phaidra’s elicit love for her virgin stepson. Her love is revealed to him and is angrily rebuffed, at which point she kills herself – but not before leaving a false suicide note accusing Hippolytus of rape, which causes his father and her husband, Theseus, to lay a deadly curse upon his son. The play is bracketed by the appearance of various deities, who explain and impel the entirety of the action; yet at its most basic level Euripides’ Hippolytus is not about divine machinations, but rather the terrors and turmoil of human emotion and human interaction.

Consequently, Carson’s Aphrodite begins the drama by addressing the crowd, “You know who I am. You know my naked power. / I am called Aphrodite! here and in heaven.” This is an arresting and powerful opening, yet the original Greek is quite different. Literally, the text reads, “Much among mortals I am, and not without renown / I am called the goddess Cypris [an aspect of Aphrodite], both here and in heaven” [Pollê men en brotoisi kouk anônumos / thea keklêmai Kypris ouranou t’ esô]. Though Carson’s wording is ‘new,’ still this translation has an honesty and significance all of its own, for it has been consciously shaped for a contemporary audience’s experience and concerns. Carson might argue that, even though the Olympian gods have dissolved with the erosion of their temples, Euripides’ merciless divinities endure and thrive in the modern world. Carson’s Euripides, in the book’s final essay, asserts, “Human forms are puny. Desire is vast. Vast, absolute, and oddly general. A big, general liquid washing through the universe, filling puny vessels here and there as it were arbitrarily, however it lights on them, swamping some, splitting others, casually ruinous – an ‘Aphrodite’…” It is this vast and modern catalyst that speaks to the audience at the outset, rather than a barely-remembered name. The lesson is beginning.

Yet even this is an unjust simplification. Euripides is simply a fantastic and compelling poet, and it is in this realm that Carson ultimately succeeds as a unique and evocative translator. Her words hum with a radio-intensity when her Chorus says,

Woman has a wrongturned harmony:

some evil sad helplessness

comes to dwell in her

when she has pain or despair.

That breeze shot through my womb once.

—or sparkle like a haunting and inescapable constellation when the Chorus cries,

You drive before you,

Aphrodite,

the unbending minds of gods and men,

and at your side,

flashing his wings,

quick on his wings,

Eros

nets them.

Over earth and over ocean,

Eros

flying,

gold-appearing,

rushing on their mad hearts

binds them –

all nature:

mountain creatures, sea creatures,

whatever the earth nourishes,

whatever the sun blazes down on,

and also men.

Over all these,

Aphrodite,

you alone

hold perfect power.

This book is such a success because it was the shape, and not the word, which guided Carson’s efforts in creating it. Her translations are more than a ‘modernization’ of Euripides, and instead a conscious resurrection of Euripidean spirit within our world – one that continues to be dominated by those colossal shapes of desire and pride and fear. Though it may occasionally deviate from the original text in surprising ways, Carson’s language is pure Euripides; with words baroque and bubbling, elegant and undulating, it pours over the reader in a bewildering torrent.

Reviewed by Ben Platt

Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides translated by Anne Carson
New York Review Books, 2008
Paper, 312 pgs, $14.95
ISBN-10: 1590172531