Sophocles

Third time read, and I couldn’t resist after reading Anne Carson’s translation of Iphigeneia Among the Taurians. The story is shocking in how a daughter wants to murder her mother, she is righting a wrong; the mother and her lover, now her step-father, murdered her father and got away with it. Electra is appalled that she is crying out for justice, here it will be her brother who will be the vengeance that she has waiting and waiting for.

What unravels is shocking, the fiery exchange show more between mother and daughter shows that there is no love between these two, their anger and resentment towards each other have erased their connection. Here, they behave like bitter enemies, giving as good as they can get, and both believing each are right.

This will also be a scene that Electra replays again with her sister, but a milder version. Electra, in wanting justice has alienated herself from her family. The way this play speak to us me is how far does a person go to show they are right? show less

I like this solid anthology of and introduction to Athenian tragedy. I know that the literary qualities were much reduced in translation, but I could tell how beautiful the originals might be from the English versions. I welcomed the deep ideas suggested by the plays but appreciated the authors of the translations and closing essays pointing out what the deep ideas were not present, i.e., Antigone is not a proto-libertarian, Medea was not jealous of a younger woman but furious at Jason’s show more breaking of his word. I like that the plays were still great entertainment: the suspense in Agamemnon, Oedipus, and Medea; the happy endings in Alcestis and Helen; the shocking, liberating blasphemy of Prometheus; the strong women; the gory violence; the angry speeches. show less

My version was translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff in 1954. I would recommend a better translation as this one softens the drama in the language. Maybe try the one by Seamus Heaney titled [Burial at Thebes], as it's highly regarded and I like the quotes other readers shared.

This was my second time reading this, and it was much better this time. Actually, it was quite magnificent. I first read it, in 2016, as one of several classical Greek plays, and it didn't stand out for me. Instead of the show more direct drama of some Sophocles plays, which is there, the power of this play lies in its implied questions and its sense of rebellion, and the convoluted sense of logic behind that.

This time I read in isolation and the dramatic elements leapt out. How Antigone is more powerful by not making any practical sense but yet remaining true to her form. How king Creon is undermined by making complete sense, because he wraps himself in pride that gets tighter and more fragile, setting up a kind of self-destruct button. The key elements here include logic, family, pride, honor, and reputation. How do we manage complexities that require us to step outside the cold logic and into a larger world of human sensibility?

2025
https://www.librarything.com/topic/375106#9035756 show less

Almost one of the all-time great dramatizations of the wounded heart and psyche. Philoctetes is rejected by his fellows for the stinking wound that he incurs committing an act of kindness that no one else will (lighting Heracles’s funeral pyre); he is exiled to an island, Homo sacer, anti-sirene, to writhe alone and scream and hear his screams echo from the cliffs, mocking his solitude, his lost humanity. But then they need him! And he can speak to people again! And then he’s a person show more again! And he weeps when Neoptolemus finds him and just sits with him for a while. But it's all a trick—sleazy Odysseus wants his mighty bow for the war effort; and while that hurts, it also puts him in the position fantasized about by everyone who ever felt alone and unloved: the one who can tell them to fuck off and have them beg him to come back and say a hundred times how sorry they are. But just like in real life, they don’t give any more of a shit than they ever did; rather than beg, they trick him again, hurt him once more, compound his trauma. It’s an unresolvable knot, and the play shows that so well—which is why it’s such a shame when Heracles deus ex machinates in to tell Mr Moral High Ground to fucking get in the boat and go kill Paris already. Cheap, I mean by “a shame.” Probably there’s some Greek drama rule why that ending is better and not worse that Aristotle could explain to us, but Aristotle’s not here right now and so this play gets a perhaps unnecessarily punitive four stars. show less