Anne Carson's An Oresteia (Aiskhylos' Agamemnon, Sophokles' Elektra, and Euripides' Orestes) is an ingenious idea that makes for a completely different trilogy than THE (Aiskhylos') Oresteia, and provides a sample of the style and voice of each of the three big Athenian tragedians. The "trilogy" spans events from Klytaimestra's discovery that Agamemnon is finally returning from Troy to the deus ex machina that resolves the outrageous standoff between Orestes, condemned to death for the matricide that avenged his father's death, and Menelaos, who has shrewdly declined to support him in the Argive assembly.
Along with Carson's previous translations of four plays by Euripides (
Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (New York Review Books Classics)), these are the most vivid, moving, and even shocking, translations of Greek tragedy I have ever read. Although I cannot read Greek and cannot offer any authoritative comment on the translations as such, my impression from studying other translations and their scholarly notes is that Carson's achievement in English is not at the expense of the Greek; indeed, far from it. Her own introductions to the plays are also marvels of insight and impact.
Carson's rendering here of the extended exchange between Kassandra and the Chorus in Agamemnon is as hypnotic and simply visceral as any I know. The text is set on the page in striking arrangements (which I cannot reproduce in the Amazon review form) befitting the chaos of Kassandra's visions. Carson, who has written elsewhere on "Screaming in Translation," dispenses with the traditional Oh's and Alas's and either transliterates Kassandra's shrieks ("OTOTOI POPOI DA!") or inserts outright directions to "[scream]". And she makes a few bold decisions to completely preserve, in verse, the magic of the original Greek. Here is first Fagles, then Collard, then Carson, translating a verse where she wails at the futility of her father's sacrifices to save Troy, and at her own subsequent doom, in a terrifying state of thermonous, an enigmatic term in the original:
Fagles: "No cure for the doom that took the city after all, and I, / Her last ember, I go down with her." Collard: "But they secured no remedy / to stop the city suffering as was in fact its due; / and I soon fall to Under-Earth, with my mind heated still." Carson: "it did no good / we suffered anyway / and I am soon to hit the ground / I with my thermonous / thermonous means hot soul, burning mind, / brain on fire".
Here are the same three translators' versions of the play's famous dictum in the hymn to Zeus in the Chorus' first song. Fagles' free translation of the maxim, though poignant, is the furthest from the original Greek, which is just two nouns. Collard is awkwardly literal. Carson is clear, direct, and natural.
Fagles: "Zeus has led us on to know, / the Helmsman lays it down as law / that we must suffer, suffer into truth." Collard: "Zeus who put men on wisdom's road, / who gave 'Suffer and learn' / authority." Carson: "Zeus put mortals on the road to wisdom / when he laid down this law: / By suffering we learn."
The closest competition to any of Carson's texts that I've directly compared is Raeburn's fine new translation of Elektra, which I speculate may have been influenced by Carson's (originally published several years ago). But Raeburn's choices are sometimes a bit stilted, and again Carson's inspired directness and imagery are unsurpassed. Here is Raeburn, then Carson, with a Chorus verse from the play's brutal climax.
Raeburn: "The deadly curse is now at work - / Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. / The dead below are rising up to life, / and now the old slain / suck their killers' blood dry. // Here they come. That dripping hand is red / with blood from a sacrifice to the god of war. / I cannot condemn it." Carson: "The curses are working. / Under the ground / dead men are alive / with their black lips moving, / black mouths sucking / on the soles of killers' feet. // Here they come, hands soaked with red: Ares is happy! / Enough said."
Comparing Carson's Orestes to the Waterfield translation, I again found her version of Euripides' bizarre and violent hit the more compelling. In Edith Hall's introduction to the OUP edition, she remarks on "an informality of diction unheard of elsewhere in tragedy." Carson takes this aspect of the play to heart, and the results, exploiting contemporary reference (Helen is a "weapon of mass destruction") and colloquial speech without inhibition, are eye-opening. Here is Waterfield, then Carson, with a passage from Elektra's opening speech:
Waterfield: "Next, Phoebus - it is hard to accuse a god of injustice, but he persuaded Orestes to murder his mother, the woman who bore him. Despite the fact that some would count the deed infamous, Orestes obeyed the god and killed her, and I did what a woman could to help him commit the murder." Carson: "But it seemed to Orestes and me / there ought to be a law against a mother / like that. / Turns out there is: Apollo. / Apollo had us kill her. / Orestes did it, I helped. Kudos were not / universal."
I recommend reading multiple translations of any Greek play, but with the seven translations Carson has published so far (and I dearly hope there will be more), my advice is this: read others' versions, with scholarly notes, to study the plays, and then read Carson's versions to experience them.
