Customer Reviews

Oresteia (Oxford World's Classics)

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This translation of Aeschylus' "Oresteia" kept me reading from beginning to end. I found Alan Shapiro's rendition of "Agamemnon" with its opaque vocabulary and imagery compelling, especially the hypnotic rhythms and repetitions of the long parodos and the second choral ode. He also has captured the incantatory vocabulary and imagery of Clytemnestra's "estin thalassa" speech: "There is a sea--who will drain it dry?" I have only one tiny criticism: I do wish he had preserved Aeschylus' word order at the end of "Agamemnon", "<ego> kai su"--"I and you" [instead of "you and I will rule the house"], which to me demonstrates that the playwright is depicting Clytemnestra--with her high hopes and heart that manages like a man--as the female usurper who will continue to wield power over Aegisthus.

Nevertheless, I am using this book in the classroom, and I recommend it highly.

This is a compelling new edition of the Oresteia. It rivals all existing Oresteia's and perhaps comes closest to Lattimore's version in accuracy and completeness of text. It is my favorite Oresteian Trilogy alongside Peter Meineck's version.

Christopher Collard preserves the intricacy of Aeschylus's language while keeping the drama moving naturally. He does not force poetry or ideas into Aeschylus nor does he subtract, edit or delete words from the text (as often is done and can be seen in Fagels's and Vellacott's translations). The poetry comes out magically by itself.

How Collard wins over Lattimore's version though is through the translation. The realism of the drama, the sentences structures, and the speeches all form naturally and normally. In Lattimore, the speeches and the drama becomes congested, contricted and (unnecessarily) complicated through how he structures the wording and poetry of Aeschylus's text. Collard does not use the tired and old fashion English like Lattimore, nor does he update the idom by using modern American English or slang. You can't really pinpoint which language style he's using, but indeed it is beautiful, readible and contemporary English. It's like he has become a transparent mouthpiece for Aeschylus and not mask of his own creation.

There are also some very intriguing and very interesting touches Collard does within the plays. Throughout are descriptive italic markings, brackets and hyphens, indicating detailed stage directions and emotive expressions. He freely uses lyric, prose, and verse in his translation as Aeschylus does in various settings and scenarios.

His is the most scholarly version as it incorporates the most up-to-date findings and research into Aeschylus and the Oresteia. From original to copied manuscripts, he compared many ancient and modern editions of the Oresteia and so some of his version includes subtle changes and slight differences when compared to other translations. He informs you of missing lines and includes passages that appear as fragments in the originals, which have been glossed over or not noticed by other translators.

His explanatory notes and introduction are immensely extensive. They include so much research and attention to detail that one wonders how one man could know so much about Aeschylus and the Oresteia!

The Contents not only have 4 incredible essays on Aeschylus and the Oresteia, but also include summaries of the plots, text & translation notes, a massive bibliography, a chronology of Aeschylus' life, family trees, and even a map of ancient Greece!

I believe it is safe to say that Christopher Collard is now the leading interpreter of Aeschylus, and a milestone in the history of Aeschylean translation and scholarship.

The Shapiro/Burian translation of The Oresteia, one of the seminal texts of Western Civilization, combines scholarly exactitude with poetic intensity. Whereas other renderings seem at best like successful translations from one language to another, this one comes across as a carrying over of one poetry into another. This ought to be the standard version of this crucial trilogy for a long time to come.

Unfortunately, the ineptness of Alan Shapiro's own verse carries over into this translation. Plus we get comma splices (that often create unintentional ambiguities), mixed metaphors (one howler is the old men of the Chorus who are compared to a withered leaf that has 3 legs), and language that sacrifices both clarity and poetic texture. What Fagles translates as "we must suffer into truth," Shapiro translates "suffering is our teacher." Blah!