Traditionalists beware: An Oresteia is not a fusty, conventional translation of Aiskhylos’s (Aeschylus’s) trilogy. On another plane, Robert Fagles and Richmond Lattimore can be heard grumbling.
Anne Carson’s adaptation takes Aeschylus’s Agamemnon and matches it with Sophocles’s Elektra and Euripides’s Orestes, offering a very different arc to the cycle of vengeance. In a brief note, Carson quotes a director who persuaded her of this perspective:
I always think of these three tragedians as being associated with different times of a metaphoric day. Aiskhylos is dawnlike, Sophokles under the glare of noon, Euripides at twilight where tonalities slip and shift.
With a limited background in Greek tragedy, I can’t be certain whether combining three playwrights in this way is innovative, but it is remarkably potent.
It’s impossible to ignore Carson’s translation. Her linguistic mutations are almost Joycean: “blackmouthing bitch.” Occasionally the language veers close to incongruous modernity—one slave speaks of “real bad shit happening”—though Carson acknowledges this as a “quaint barbarian idiom.” Otherwise, the effect is exhilarating, a reminder of the continued urgency and brilliance of these ancient tragedies.
Translations of this exuberance send me not only to Carson’s other Greek translations (Grief Lessons) but also back to other versions of these plays, even if it means settling for Lattimore’s more traditional voice.
It’s true, Carson’s translations are not transparent; you can’t ignore them. When I’m shelving them or entering them into my reading spreadsheets I always hesitate as to whether the work in question is “by” Sappho/Aeschylus/etc. or “by” Carson. Plainly it’s some combination of the two. It’s a combination that works great for me, though, so I’m not complaining. 🙂
The progression she lays out in the introduction (the passage you quoted) definitely seemed apparent to me as I read through these plays, but since I haven’t read the whole of Aeshylus’s cycle I don’t feel I can fully compare. It’s on my list, though, for sure.
Hah, the same dilemma presented itself to me this morning, Emily. I opted for my tradition of putting the translator in brackets, but I could almost have given Carson full billing.
I’ve got the full Folio set of Greek tragedies, they use Lattimore’s translation, and plan a closer inspection when I have some time.