The Oresteia (Hardcover)

by Aeschylus (Author), Ted Hughes (Translator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
During the final years of his life, Ted Hughes poured much of his energy into translating the classics. Given the triumph of the Birthday Letters, some readers may regret this canonical moonlighting. Yet it's hard to feel shortchanged by the work Hughes did produce: his version of Ovid was a brilliant blend of Latinate suavity and contemporary grit, and he negotiated the alexandrines of Racine's Phèdre with spectacular ease. Now we have his translation of the Oresteia, which was commissioned by the Royal National Theater in the late 1990s. Has Hughes done right by Aeschylus?

The answer would have to be yes--with a couple of qualifications. Hughes made no secret of the fact that he was after an "acting version" of the trilogy, one that would convey the power of Aeschylus's classic bloodbath to a modern audience. He has therefore taken more liberties with the text than we might expect, chopping and channeling the original to fit his own conception. Perhaps the result is closer to what Robert Lowell called an "imitation"--an attempt to capture the work's spirit without precisely mimicking its form. In any case, this Oresteia succeeds on both counts. The darkness and destructive movement of the original remain intact in the Hughes's free-verse lines:

The men of Troy are a litter of corpses,
Rubbish-heaps of corpses. Troy on its hill
Cascades with blood, as under a downpour
Of bodies from the heavens,
Shattered and entangled with each other
In every passage--mutilations,
Amputations, eviscerations. The women
Are kneeling, shoulders heaving, with eyes hidden,
Over what were yesterday
Husbands, fathers, sons.
They labour at a grief that is already
The first labour of slaves.

Yet Hughes has also left his elemental imprint on the play. Always drawn to violence in his own verse--particularly the impersonal assault and battery of the natural world--he has made his Oresteia more bloody-minded than the original (and that's saying something). There's nothing sensationalistic about this extra quantum of wrack and ruin. It's merely Hughes's personal response to Aeschylus--and a necessary preparation, perhaps, for Athena's clarifying cameo at the end of The Eumenides: "Let your rage pass into understanding / As into the coloured clouds of a sunset, / Promising a fair tomorrow. / Do not let it fall / As a rain of sterility and anguish / On Attica." Her plea for conciliation is as powerful as the horrors that have preceded it, which may (to tread on some rather thin biographical ice) reflect the poet's own final impulses. In any case, this is passionate, memorable, deeply human poetry--i.e., what becomes a classic most. --Anita Urquhart

From Library Journal
British Poet Laureate Hughes translated this great Greek trilogy before his death in October 1998. Agamemnon, Choephori, and The Eumenides, written in 468 B.C.E., tell the story of the blood feud within the House of Atreus. It begins with Agamemnon's murder by his wife, Clytemnestra, followed by their son Orestes' matricide and the final judgment by a jury of Athenian citizens. These tragedies show ancient Greek views on the power and mercy of deities in deciding human fate. Notable for its poetic beauty and compassion; Hughes's superb lyric translation is a refreshing read for a contemporary English literary and theater audience. Other earlier translations were by Robert Lowell (1978) and Richard Lattimore (1954). With production details unseen at the time of this review, this translation's claim to be another "acting version" of the trilogy remains to be validated. However, based on Hughes's literary reputation and the beauty of the text, this new English translation is a worthy acquisition for all public and academic libraries.AMing-ming Shen Kuo, Ball State Univ. Lib., Muncie, IN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 197 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (T) (August 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374227217
• ISBN-13: 978-0374227210
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #524,293 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Made Me Realish Afresh the Power of Language, May 27, 2000

By A Customer

This may not be the most literal translation of "The Oresteia," but it has to be the most linguistically sensuous and emotionally gripping of them all - conveying the full power of one of the most complex tragedies of all time. A friend of mine recently won raves for his performance of Agamemnon in a Los Angeles production of "The Greeks," so I had spent quite a bit of time re-reading Aeschylus (not in the original, I'm afraid) and was reasonably familiar with other translations, but this is the one I would read over and over, for the sheer power and beauty of it, and the way it tackles (enhances?) the emotional complexity of each situation the characters are thrust into. It's an inspiration as well as a treasure.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Made Me Realish Afresh the Power of Language, May 27, 2000

By A Customer

This may not be the most literal translation of "The Oresteia," but it has to be the most linguistically sensuous and emotionally gripping of them all - conveying the full power of one of the most complex tragedies of all time. A friend of mine recently won raves for his performance of Agamemnon in a Los Angeles production of "The Greeks," so I had spent quite a bit of time re-reading Aeschylus (not in the original, I'm afraid) and was reasonably familiar with other translations, but this is the one I would read over and over, for the sheer power and beauty of it, and the way it tackles (enhances?) the emotional complexity of each situation the characters are thrust into. It's an inspiration as well as a treasure.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great story, great translation, great read: surprises galore, December 11, 2001

By	Daryl Anderson (Trumansburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

What a story! What a bloodbath ! It leaves the catsup'y-trite bluster of the typical Hollywood slasher pic in the dust. And it is Hughes who accomplishes this through his translation. Perhaps saying "story by Aeschulus" is not offering the old-timer his due... doubtless, when read in the Greek, the original had the flash and spurt of Hughes' version. But lacking the ancient tongue you'll find some pretty tame translations scattered around the cannon. I know, I checked. (I was so stunned at one of the more brutal story elements that I went to a library copy. Sure enough, Agamemnon's father really did stew his brothers' children and serve them up to his brother - brewing up the similarly brutal chain of revenge and recriminations that the story revolves around. But in the library's vanilla version this segment read more like a particularly dry autopsy report).

Now I can be drawn into a gory tale by a good talespinner like a Stephen King just as much as any other guy... but there is more than spinning of yarn and sloshing of blood here. There is a way in which Hughes' inevitably modern take on the translation subtly exposes the deep cultural differences between those fine ancient peoples and our equally-fine selves. We haven't become more or less vicious or more or less clever - but we have changed in fundamental ways. This tale, in this telling, does suggest, over and over, how a culture's sense of self, of free- or enchained-will, of god(s), and of the inevitable whirl of the cosmic wheel can produce truly different constituents. Different versions of the "God-meme" or even the "self-meme" can deeply infect and transform a culture-centered species like ours.

We've heard for so long how our "Western" tradition sprouts from Athens, but in this telling, those folks have a sense of their place in the universe which is deeply, subtly alien. It made me think of a long ago reading of Julian Jaynes' breathtakingly-titled: "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind.", which posits that ancient minds were explicitly pre-conscious... gods as literally heard voices in the head. This is certainly an odd idea, but one that opens up the notion that radically different kinds of minds could well exist in a homo sapiens transport system.

Hughes delivers this sense of the fundamental other-ness of the Greek world-view through the powerful mix of pre-modern sense of self and of justice delivered in modern speech forms. This contrast builds, appropriately, from the underlying story of Aeschulus, to the confrontation with the deeply primal Furies near the end. It sent chills down my spine to hear their rendering of the cold heartless core of their universe... and to contrast it with the countering argument of Athena for a more reasoned and rational justice. How can Orestes be driven to matricide by the command of one god (buttressed by hair-raising threats) and then be condemned to an even more bitter doom by another group of immortals for accomplishing his mission? The degree to which my own sense of fairness was bruised by the events leading up to this denouement exposed the power of the schism between primal and modern that seems to lie at the heart of the tale.

I won't tell you how it ends, but that's saying something! A thousands-of-years-old story in free verse dramatic form that turns out to be a 'page-turner'! Its a wonderful discovery that will lead me next to Hughes' other translations from his last few years, and might grab you as well.