Customer Reviews

Sophocles (Modern critical views)

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Researching translations is never an easy task, and in this case, where you'll have to search on Amazon for the title and the translator to find what you want, it's particularly difficult.

Here's what I've found by comparing several editions:

1. David Grene translation: Seems to be accurate, yet not unwieldy as such. My pick. Language is used precisely, but not to the point where it's barely in English.

2. Fitts/Fitzgerald translation: Excellent as well, though a little less smooth than the Grene one. Certainly not a bad pick.

3. Fagles translation: Beautiful. Not accurate. If you are looking for the smoothest English version, there's no doubt that this is it. That said, because he is looser with the translation, some ideas might be lost. For instance, in Antigone, in the beginning, Antigone discusses how law compels her to bury her brother despite Creon's edict. In Fagles, the "law" concept is lost in "military honors" when discussing the burial of Eteocles. This whole notion of obeying positive law or natural law is very important, but you wouldn't know it from Fagles. In Grene, for example, it is translated to "lawful rites."

4. Gibbons and Segal: Looks great, but right now the book has only Antigone (and not the rest of the trilogy) and costs almost 3x as much. I'll pass. But, from a cursory review, I'm impressed with their work.

5. MacDonald: This edition received some good write-ups, but I wasn't able to do a direct passage-to-passage comparison.

6. Woodruff: NO, NO, NO. Just NO. It's so colloquial it makes me gag. Very accessible, but the modernization of the language is just so extreme as to make it almost laughable. You don't get any sense of the power of language in the play. You just get the story. If you want this to be an easy read, then get Fagles, not this.

7. Kitto: Looks good, though not particularly compelling over either Grene or Fitzgerald (or Gibbons if I wanted to pay so much more).

8. Roche: Practically unreadable the English is so convoluted. Might be the most literal translation, but what's the point unless you are learning Greek and want such a direct translation.

9. Taylor: Way too wordy. Might be more literal, but again, why?

Hope this all helps. Translations can make or break the accessibility of literature. Pick wisely.

The Lattimore/Grene translations of Sophocles balance ease of reading with closeness to the original Greek text nicely. Hugh-Lloyd Jones's translation, which can be found in the Loeb edition of Sophocles's tragedies, is unquestionably superior at rendering the original Greek text, but it can come across as archaic and confusing to high school students or those unversed in Greek literature. Lattimore and Grene, unlike many modern translators, DO feel that they owe more to their readers than the loosest gist of the original text, and they deliver it.
All that said, I would advise readers to be cautious of these translations for the following reasons. First, the plays are presented in the chronological order according to the myths they portray - not in the order in which Sophocles wrote them. In other words, even though Antigone was one of the first plays Sophocles produced and Oedipus at Colonus was produced posthumously, they are presented in order of their dramatic events. This means that they are very likely translated without regard for any evolution of Sophocles's thought or any implicit commentary the poet might have made upon the works of his own youth.
Second, in his introduction, Grene states that he sees in Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles's clumsy attempt to cover over the inconsistencies of his Theban Cycle. While this is certainly not all Grene sees in Oedipus at Colonus, the judgement of anyone who takes so irreverent and shallow a view of the last work of the most technically savvy tragedian of the classic age must be called into question.
In summary: Buy this book, read it, enjoy it, but if you're going to write an important paper on Sophocles, look at his work in the Greek, or at least in the Lloyd-Jones translation of the Loeb edition.

In the movie, "Amadeus," the Austrian emperor avers that Mozart's new opera has "too many notes." The composer, on the contrary, thinks the number just right, as does even his envious rival, Salieri. The defect lay in the emperor's taste, not in the composer's art.

In Don Taylor's translation of "Antigone," published in the book, Sophocles, The Theban Plays, there are indeed too many notes, i.e., words. The defect does not lie in the art of Sophocles, nor in the requirements of translation. Taylor wrote with a contract for television performance already in hand. He fashions lines that are easy for actors to play and for audiences to understand. Having translated a character's thought, he often expands, supplements or restates the material. Thus, the audience is given a second and third bite at the apple of understanding. But this is more like a college lecturer who fears that his students won't get the point, than like Sophocles, who is famous for a clear, solid, succinct style.

Sophocles peppers his scenes, usually dialogues between two persons, with extended series of one-line "zingers," which the characters alternately thrust and counterthrust. The power and excitement of the exchanges lie in economy and pointedness of expression. To illustrate, here is a segment from the first scene between Creon and the soldier who tells him that Polynices' body has been partly buried. The first translation is by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald, available in their book, The Oedipus Cycle, and also in Greek Plays in Modern Translation, both listed on Amazon.com. The second translation is Taylor's.

SENTRY: King, may I speak?
CREON: Your very voice distresses me.
SENTRY: Are you sure that it is my voice and not your conscience?
CREON: By God, he wants to analyse me now!
SENTRY: It is not what I say, but what has been done, that hurts you.
CREON: You talk too much.
SENTRY: Maybe, but I've done nothing.
CREON: Sold your soul for some silver: that's all you've done.
SENTRY: How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

SOLDIER: Am I allowed to speak, sir?
CREON: No!
Why should you speak? Every word you say
Is painful to me.
SOLDIER: Well, it can't be earache,
Can it sir, not what I said!
It must stick in your gullet. Or further down
Maybe, a sort of pain in your conscience.
CREON: Do you dare to answer me back: and make jokes
About my conscience?
SOLDIER: Me sir? No sir!
I might give you earache; I can see that.
I talk too much, always have done.
But the other pain, the heartburn as it were,
It's the criminal causing that sir, not me.
CREON: You're not short of a quick answer, either.
SOLDIER: Maybe not. But I didn't bury the body.
Not guilty to that sir.
CREON: But maybe guilty
Of selling your eyes for money, eh sentry,
Of looking the other way for cash?
SOLDIER: I think it's a shame sir, that an intelligent man
And as well educated as you are
Should miss the point so completely.

The Fitts/Fitzgerald translation has 9 lines and 86 words; compared to Taylor's 24 and 160. Sophocles had used 9 lines and only 69 words. All the one-liner segments, occurring in almost every scene, undergo a similar transformation at Taylor's hand. But they are not alone. The same translating style appears in the major speeches of the play. Listen to part of the condemnation of Creon by the prophet, Teiresias, from Taylor first this time, then from Fitts/Fitzgerald.

TEIRESIAS: Listen Creon. This is the truth!
Before many more days, before the sun has risen
- Well, shall we say a few more times -
You will have made your payment, corpse
For corpse, with a child of your own blood.
You have buried the one still living: the woman
Who moves and breathes, you have given to the grave:
And the dead man you have left, unwashed,
Unwept, and without the common courtesy
Of a decent covering of earth. So that both
Have been wronged, and the gods of the underworld,
To whom the body justly belongs,
Are denied it, and are insulted. Such matters
Are not for you to judge. You usurp
Ancient rights which even the gods
Themselves don't dare to question, powers
Which are not in the prerogative of kings.
Even now, implacable avengers
Are on their way, the Furies, who rise up
From Hell and swoop down from Heaven,
Fix their hooks into those who commit crimes,
And will not let go. The suffering
You inflicted upon others, will be inflicted
Upon you, you will suffer, as they did.
Have I been bribed, do you think? Am I speaking
For money now? Before very long,
Yes, it will be soon, there will be screaming
And bitter tears and hysterical crying
In this house. Men, as well as women.

TEIRESIAS: Then take this, and take it to heart!
The time is not far off when you shall pay back
Corpse for corpse, flesh of your own flesh.

You have thrust the child of this world into living night,
You have kept from the gods below the child that is theirs:
The one in a grave before her death, the other,
Dead, denied the grave. This is your crime:
And the Furies and the dark gods of Hell
Are swift with terrible punishment for you.
Do you want to buy me now, Creon? Not many days,
And your house will be full of men and women weeping.

Box score, lines and words. Taylor 29:223. Fitts/Fitzgerald 11:106. Sophocles 16:94.

Are all these words really necessary? Taylor claims that his approach helps to make the text not only more dramatic and intelligible, but also more poetic. I agree that his version is easier to grasp by first-time viewers or readers. But in the process much of the Sophoclean clarity, solidity and reality are lost.

"Early on the Sunday morning of May 22, 1949, after copying out half of Sophocles' desolate poem 'The Chorus from Ajax' as a valediction ("'Woe, woe!' will be the cry . . ."), James Forrestal tied one end of his bathrobe sash to the radiator of the diet kitchen across the hall from his sixteenth-floor room, tied the other end around his neck, removed the screen from the window above the radiator and jumped."

This passage from Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun says less about Forrestal (U. S. Secretary of the Navy during the Second World War) than it does about Sophocles. It prompted me to read Sophocles' Ajax. I found Forrestal's valediction both powerful and terrifying:

". . . By painful stages came to his right mind.
And when he saw his dwelling full of Ruin,
He beat his head and bellowed. There he sat,
Wreckage himself among the wreck of corpses,
The sheep slaughtered; and in an anguished gripe
Of fist and fingernail he clutched his hair. . ."

This in turn prompted me to reread the three Oedipus plays. I remembered reading them in college. I thought that I knew the story, but to my surprise I had missed some of the best parts. Either I'm getting wiser or I'm reading a better translation. I don't recall feeling the excitement or seeing the incredible beauty of construction when I read these plays for the first time. Sophocles is much, much better than I remembered him.

Unlike Forrestal, I think that there is nothing better than a good Greek tragedy to cheer you up. David Green's superb translations reveal the Master's touch in readable, comprehensible, modern English.

"Oedipus the King" (or, "Oedipus Rex") is probably Sophocles' most famous work, first performed about 429 B. C. It should be required reading for every college Freshman. As had been prophesied, Oedipus unknowingly kills his father, Laius, and marries his own mother, Jocasta. The play has great use of irony. Jocasta (or, Iocasta) recognizes the truth before Oedipus and tries to prevent him from finding out. The play has unsrpassed use of dramatic irony. It has had a great influence on later authors. "Antigone" (probably first performed about 442 B. C.) is another tragedy centered on the flaw of stubborn pride. It also presents the conflict between secular law and divine law. A stubborn King Creon of Thebes refuses to allow the equally stubborn Antigone to bury the body of her brother Polynices despite the entreaties of Creon's wife and son. Creon orders her death but she commits suicide, as does Creon's wife and son. The play has excellent characterizations. The well-constructed "Oedipus at Colonus" (405 B. C.) was first produced after the death of Sophocles. It shared first prize in Athens along with some other plays. It is apparently a reflection of a quarrel between Sophocles and his own sons. An aged Oedipus, nearing death, curses his sons and prophesies their own deaths.

I generally do not review classics, because I find it impossible to adequately review a genuine classic with the necessary brevity. However, I plan on giving my opinion at some point on books with conflicting Amazon reviews, and it occured to me that readers ought to have a touchstone by which to assess my credibility. There are two types of books which a wide swath of readers may be presumed to have read and so may function as touchstones: popular bestsellers and classics. I made a choice from the latter category.

I note at the outset that, as my title indicates, this is *NOT* a review of Sophocles' Theban triology. It is not even a review of Antigone in its entirety. That review awaits someone with greater insight and eloquence than me to write it. I post this review on this page b/c this is the translation I used.

It is often said that the drama of Antigone consists in the conflict of divine law against human law, or, put in contemporary terms, of natural law against positive law. I believe that interpretation is mistaken. To hold to that interpretation is to see the dispute as Antigone sees it and not as Creon sees it. For various historical reasons, Creon's position no longer seems as plausible to us as it did to Sophocles' audience. It must suffice to mention only one reason here: the divine foundation of the city has lost its self-evidence for us. "We must not lose sight of the fact that, among the ancients, what formed the bond of every society was a worship ... the city was the collective group of those who had the same protecting deities" (Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City).

Creon is not a positivist b/c he does not claim that the law is simply whatever he says it is; he is not Louis XIV. The first words we hear from him eulogize the gods as the guardians of the city (lines 179-81). His basic claim is that in proving traitor to his city Polyneices also proved traitor to the city's gods, and it is not proper that the enemy of the gods be granted burial rites (lines 217-29). When Creon learns that the corpse has been buried against his decree and the Chorus asks if this might be the work of the gods, Creon retorts that it is impossible that the gods could show such consideration for one of their enemies (lines 312-20). Creon, then, is not less pious than Antigone, but his piety is essentially political whereas Antigone's is not. Antigone, of course, sees herself as obeying divine law, and Creon's decree as violative of that law. But to understand the play Antigone, one must understand more than the character Antigone; one must understand the playwrite Sophocles.

Given the contemporary manner of highlighting the basic conflict of the play, I believe one gets closer to the heart of Antigone (the play) if one shifts the focus away from the conflict b/t Creon and Antigone, toward their shared agreement. They share a passionate concern to obey the gods' wills, i.e., divine law. Creon's arguments for the priority of the city anticipate Aristotle's beginning to the Politics: the whole is prior to the part and so the city is prior to both the household and each individual. They are both fighting to do what each perceives to be his or her duty; for both of them, their understanding of who they are is intimately bound up with their understanding of the divine prescriptions. In short, they both, in different ways of course, accept the judgment formulated by Aristotle: "For just as man is the best of the animals when completed, when separated from law and adjudication he is the worst of all." The problem of Antigone, if I had to state it in one sentence, then boils down to the question, What does the law require?

I cannot compare Grene's translation with the original, as I have never read it, but, as an independent entity, Grene's work is masterful. The prose, especially in Oedipus Rex, is well-paced and dramatic. Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone, perhaps appropriately, fawn in comparison, but are nevertheless well-wrought and engaging.

This book, as, I'm assuming, all works in the Lattimore-Greene collection, lacks the in text resources to carry the laymen along. One must have an acute knowledge of Greek mythology to catch all the references, as there are no helpful footnotes or endnotes. The introductions to this text are of lesser quality than Lattimore's introduction to the Orestia.

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The three thebian plays defenetly defines irony, love, tragedy and power. For all who wonder where the term absolute power absolutely corrupts, now you know. These plays are beautifly tragic, the description of emotion, the plot twists and the story as a whole wrenches ur heart and if you are like me, this book makes you cry, laugh, and do every thing in between. This book is a book for those that trully enjoy a book.