A new voice

Women to help translate Greek drama

Web posted on: Tuesday, May 19, 1998 12:41:22 PM EDT

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) -- Women have been center stage in Greek drama ever since ancient Athens, when the daughters of Danaus in Aeschylus' play "The Suppliants" sought protection from King Pelasgus.

But only now, nearly 2,500 years later, have women been called upon to help produce a complete translation of the 49 comedies and tragedies that comprise classic Greek drama.

The University of Pennsylvania Press has included a dozen women among 40 translators for its new Penn Greek Drama Series in hopes of giving modern punch to the words of powerful female characters from Medea and Electra to Hecuba and Helen.

The 12-volume Penn series, due out in its entirety next spring, will be the first complete English retranslation of Greek drama since 1938. Penn also has made an important innovation by not requiring those chosen for the job to have formal training in ancient Greek and the classics. The key qualification instead is that they be accomplished poets.

"It takes a poet to make the poetry (of the plays) sing," David Slavitt, co-editor of the series, explained. "Classicists are the servants of the text. Poets are the partners -- they have to be -- of the original tragedians and comedians."

Strong affinity for Euripides

Some of the women selected as translators express a strong affinity for the playwright Euripides, a realist who was bitterly attacked by contemporaries because he harbored sympathy for the despised members of ancient society, specifically slaves, beggars and women.

"He is, to us, a brother-man, not a father-man," said Marilyn Wilson, a University of Connecticut English professor and Penn translator of the Euripides play "Hecuba."

"There's a difference between someone who stands in relation to us as a father rather than a brother to a sister. As a human being living in the late 20th century, it's easy to feel an affinity with Euripides, who was living in a country that began as a democracy but became imperial and corrupt."

Poet Eleanor Wilner, recipient of a prestigious MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, produced a version of Euripides' "Medea" for the Penn series, with the help of Argentinian classicist Ines Azar.

In one of the most vivid tales in Greek drama, Medea murders her children out of rage after learning that her husband, the argonaut Jason, plans to wed a younger woman in a marriage that would deprive Medea of home and social status.

Reflecting the times

Wilner said each successive translation of the play into English reflected the consciousness of the age for which it was written. So, where earlier versions called women "most helpless in doing good deeds" but "most expert to fashion any mischief," she recast the message in the light of modern feminism.

"Well, we are women, aren't we," her Medea tells the female chorus, "our best designs have made us architects of harm, for deeds of glory are denied to us -- so we must do our worst!"

Sensitivity may be a more important quality than gender when it comes to interpreting ancient works that deal with women, suggested Rachel Hadas, Rutgers University English professor and Penn translator of the Euripides play "Helen."

"It depends on whether (the translator) is the kind of woman who will bring issues of gender to the forefront. Some women will highlight certain elements but some men might, too," Hadas said.

Poet Elizabeth Seydel Morgan worked with Oxford classicist Christopher Pelling to craft the Penn series translation of Euripides' "Electra." An artist more at home with the poetry of latter-day Europe, Morgan has come to see the 5th Century B.C. playwright as more modern than the Victorians of the last century, who she said saw women as "crazy and possessed."

"As you come into the 20th century, you see that Euripides has a rare understanding of women," she said.

'Nobody knows'

Nelson, a black woman, identified powerfully with Euripides' enslaved women of Troy in her translation of "Hecuba," about the queen of Troy and widow of Priam who tries but fails to persuade the victorious Greeks not to murder her daughter in the aftermath of the Trojan War.

"I think I bring back in the pain that was originally intended and the powerful cathartic effect the play had," Nelson said. "How can (Euripides) feel the pain of a woman who is going into slavery in the way that a black woman can ... how can he feel this pain to the same personal extent that I can, having come from generations of women enslaved?"

Nelson updated "Hecuba" with the lines, "Nobody knows. Nobody knows," evoking the old Negro spiritual that made famous the line, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen."

She also reveled in the retort of the Trojan women to the Thracian King Polymestor, who curses womankind after Hecuba blinds him in retaliation for the murder of her son. "We are not woman. We are women, each unique in her worth and individual in her entrapment," they inform the wounded monarch.

"I remember thinking, 'This is incredibly wonderful,'" Nelson said.

Late last year, Penn released one volume of Aeschylus comprised of the "Oresteia" and two volumes of Euripides that included "Medea," "Hecuba," "Suppliant Women," "Andromache," "The Bacchae," "Helen," "Hippolytus," "Electra" and "Cyclops."

The next volumes, due by June 1, include a third by Euripides with "Alcetis," "Daughters of Troy," "The Phoenician Women," "Iphigenia at Aulis" and "Rhesus," and one of Menander with "The Grouch," "Desperately Seeking Justice," "Closely Cropped Locks," "The Girl from Samos" and "The Shield."

A first volume of Sophocles was published May 8 with retranslations of "Ajax," "Women of Trachis," "Electra" and "Philoctetes."

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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