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Title: Phaedra, by Racine by Richard Wilbur ISBN: 0-15-675780-X Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 04 September, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Not my favorite of Wilbur's translations
Comment: The play is a good one. Racine manages to make a classical tragedy very real and very resonant (to 17th Century France and to us.) Many translators have tried their hand at it recently, including Ted Hughes.
I'm a big fan of Richard Wilbur's translations of Moliere, so I thought I'd give this one a try. Wilbur manages to reproduce the rhyme-scheme and metricality of the original, but compared to some of his other translations, this one is pretty dead. Where you expect high-flying rhetoric, Wilbur never modulates out of his fusty base tone. The play is almost completely devoid of comedy, which is a shame, since Wilbur is so good at it. You almost get the sense he was disappointed too.
This is all just quibbling. The bottom line is that this translation is quite readable and accurate, if not perhaps definitive. Those with access to a library might want to compare all the new translations and see which one suits them best. Fans of Wilbur are advised to stick to Moliere.
Rating: 4
Summary: Racine's version of the myth of Phaedrus and Hippolytus
Comment: This year I am using Jean Racine's "Phaedra" as the one non-classical text in my Classical Greek and Roman Mythology Class (yes, I know, "Classical" makes "Greek and Roman" redundant, but it was not my title). In Greek mythology, Phaedra was the half-sister of the Minotaur who was married to Theseus after the hero abandoned her sister Ariadne (albeit, according to some versions of what happened in Crete). Phaedra fell in love with her step-son Hippolytus, who refused her advances. Humiliated, she falsely accused him of having raped her.
My students read "Phaedra" after Euripides's "Hippolytus" as part of an analogy criticism assignment, in which they compare/contrast the two versions, which are decidedly different, to say the least. In the "original" Greek version Hippolytus is a follower of Artemis, and the jealous Aphrodite causes his stepmother to fall in love with him. Phaedra accuses Hippolytus of rape and then hangs herself; Theseus banished his son who is killed before Artemis arrives to tell the truth. In Racine's version Hippolytus is a famous hater of women who falls in love with Aricia, a princess of the blood line of Athens. When false word comes that Theseus is dead, Phaedra moves to put her own son on the throne. In the end the same characters end up dead, but the motivations and other key elements are different.
While I personally would not go so far as to try and argue how Racine's neo-classical version represents the France of 1677, I have found that comparing and contrasting the two versions compels students to think about the choices each dramatist has made. Both the similarities and the differences between "Hippolytus" and "Phaedra" are significant enough to facilitate this effort. Note: Other dramatic versions of this myth include Seneca's play "Phaedra," "Fedra" by Gabriele D'Annunzio, "Thesee" by Andrea Gide, and "The Cretan Woman" by Robinson Jeffers.
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Title: The Misanthrope and Tartuffe by Richard Wilbur ISBN: 0156605171 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 20 October, 1965 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Phedre by Jean Racine, Ted Hughes ISBN: 0374526168 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 28 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Mother Courage and Her Children by Bertolt Brecht, Eric Bentley ISBN: 0802130828 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Tartuffe, by Moliere by Richard Wilbur ISBN: 0156881802 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 10 January, 1968 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: The Oresteia by Aeschylus, Robert Fagles, W. B. Stanford ISBN: 0140443339 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: February, 1984 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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