( Translator: Anne Carson)
Preface
"The Hippolytos is like Venice. A system of reflections, distorted reflections, reflections that go awry. A system of corridors where people follow one another but never meet, never find the way out. There is no way out, all corridors lead back into the system." (Anne Carson)
"There are days it is foggy in Venice. You cannot quite see the person you are following. But you can hear the feet going TAP TAP TAP away down the corridor. TAP TAP TAP there he goes ahead of you. TAP TAP TAP or is she behind you? TAP TAP TAP perhaps you are following yourself." (Anne Carson)
here we are, the old story the revenge of Gods/Goddesses; I guess they never get tired of it and always can find a reason to punish a human being. Aphrodite punishes Hippolytos, cause he says No to sex and adores Artemis:
"I don’t envy it, why should I?
But for his crime against me
I will punish Hippolytos
on this day."
Aphrodite is not going to forgive Hippolytos that he doesn't care about love (which also means that he doesn't care about Goddess of love: "No god adored at night is pleasing to me.") and her punishment obviously is connected to this feeling.
Hippolytos tragedy is caused by his arrogance towards Phaedra's feelings:
"Love? I spit on that. Love is not corrupt."
"A clever female is something I hate.
May I never let into my house
a woman with a mind.
Aphrodite plants more evil in the smart ones." (well, for these words, I would punish him too :)))
If you ask me, he was a very boring man:
"I never touched your marriage bed.
I never wanted to.
I never took the thought in mind.
May I perish unknown and nameless,
may neither sea nor land receive my flesh when dead,
if I was an evil man.
What despair drove this woman to end her life
I don’t know.
I can say no more.
She was not pure but she did one pure thing.
Whereas I—my purity has ruined me."
but also he was a good man too:
I am a slave of your house, king,
yet this I will never believe:
that your son is evil.
Not even if the whole species of womanhood hangs itself
by the neck.
Not if someone turns the entire forest of Ida into written
accusations.
No. I know he was good.
but in the end I don't think that this tragedy is about Hippolytus, cause for me in this play the most tragic character is Theseus:
"Does it pierce you, Theseus, this story?
Wait.
What comes next will make you cry out more.
You know those three curses you had from your father—
you used one, you abominable man!
against your own son. You could have cursed an enemy!"
"you did not wait for oath or prophecy,
asked no questions, made no inquiry,
no, you were in haste
to curse and kill the child."
ALKESTIS
PREFACE
"There is something of Hitchcock about the Alkestis, with its big sinister central house where life becomes so confused with death as to split the architecture in two. Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt features such a house as well as a household of people blind to each other’s realities, blind to their own needs, and a killer at the heart of it all. In Euripides, as in Hitchcock, we know who the killer is from the beginning; suspense is created around the slow transaction of the crime, which is in both cases foiled. Then comes a facile conclusion that ties off the plot but leaves our emotions strangely tangled." (Anne Carson)
If you google Alkestis, you'll see that she was famous for her love to her husband:
"The goddesses agreed, you see, to let Admetos go
if he sent another instead of himself to Hades.
He canvassed all his kin and friends—father, mother, no one he
found
except his wife
willing
to die for him and leave the light behind."
"Could you visit me in dreams? That would cheer me.
Sweet to see friends in the night, however short the time."
And again for me the main character is not the most tragic person in this play, for me it's her husband Admetos, who not only feels pain (because of Alkesis's sacrifice) but also he feels betrayed by his parents and friends:
"Well, you’ve shown what kind of man you are.
I do not call myself your son.
Your cowardice stinks.
You’re old, your life is over,
yet you wouldn’t die for your own son.
You let this woman do it—not even born of our blood.
She is my mother and father now."
"there’s no such thing as life,
it's just catastrophe."
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