Iphigeneia at Aulis (Greek Tragedy in New Translations)

Rating:
Summary: Euripides rakes the heroes of the Trojan War over the coals
Review: "Iphigenia at Aulis" was the last play written by Euripides and represents his most cynical depiction of the mythological heroes. The subject is the sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of King Agamemnon, is order to appease the goddess Artemis, so that the Achaen fleet can have fair winds to sail to Troy and bring back Helen. I have used this play as part of large unit on the Trojan War right before proceding to Homer's epic poem the "Iliad." Not only does the play come at that point in terms of the chronology of the war, but it clearly foreshadows the initial confrontation in the "Iliad" between Agamemnon and Achilles over Briseis of the lovely arms. Euripides invests the beginning of Homer's saga with painful irony as Agamemnon rejects the pleas of Briseis's father; after all, has the Achean leader really forgotten the pain of sacrificing his daughter ten years earlier? In Euripides's play it becomes clear that Agamemnon does not care for his daughter; she is but a bargaining chip in his ploy for power. As her father and ruler Agamemnon could simply order his daughter to come to Aulis, but instead he concocts a fake marriage to Achilles, the most eligible of the young Achean heroes. Of course this brings not only Iphigenia, but her mother Clytemnestra, which allows Euripides to bring into play the murder of Agamemnon by his wife when he returns from the Trojan War. When Achilles finds out he has been a pawn in this deadly little game he is incensed, but in the end he turns out to be as foolish and as wicked as the rest of the characters. All of the sympathy goes towards Iphigenia, the only true hero in the drama since she alone acts selflessly. Any one teaching the "Iliad" should at least provide the gist of "Iphigenia at Aulis" as background material, along with the story of the judgment of Paris. The supplementary material talks about the play's meaning in the context of the Peloponnesian War, so there are other contexts in which Euripides's play is of interest.

Rating:
Summary: First rate, modern translation
Review: Finding first rate translations can be a hit and miss affair. However, this it definitely a "hit". Merwin's translation of Euripides' tragedy is masterful and deserves the glowing reviews it has received here as elsewhere. Readers of this review might be interested to know that it is part of a series called "The Greek Tragedy in New Translations". And while it is out of print, good used copies are freely available in the Amazon marketplace -- which is where I secured mine.

Merwin has rendered a taut, readable version in modern English. And the volume is supplemented with an extremely interesting introduction by George Dimock -- with which I am not sure I entirely agree -- though he does a fine job of fitting the play within the context of the Peloponnesian War.

For me, the riveting aspect of this work is the treatment that Achilles gets (Agamemnon, of course, gets a good drubbing, which is satisfying -- but hardly unexpected!). We see him at Aulis, a young man as yet unbowed and unbloodied by the years of warfare at Troy. Dimock makes a rather startling remark when he asseverates, "The one thing that his [Achilles] speeches do not contain is simple human feeling such as Paris might entertain: it does not seem to have occurred to him that a young girl is about to die." And he is rather critical of Achilles for this (I might even say that his introduction is suffused with "pro-Trojan" sympathies). But for me, isn't this rather the whole point? Of course Achilles is like this, it took TEN years of warfare and the death of Patroclus for him to learn (and recall that he ALONE among the Greeks appears to have absorbed the lesson) how to be "human" -- on this see Bernard Knox's introduction to Robert Fagles' brilliant translation of the Iliad. I prefer the General Editor's view on this when he says, "the play enacts the heroic education of Achilles." Well, at least it enacts the very early stages of it!

Merwin is a wonderful poet -- and I would also recommend his translation of Dante's Purgatorio and Paradiso. For readers in search of other top notch modern translations, see Stanley Lombardo's truly astonishing translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey. See also Nicholas Pevear's translation of Aias.

Here is a sample of Merwin's translation (from the Chorus's reaction to a speech of Agamemnon's):

"O Cyprian,
most beautiful of the goddesses, keep
such wild flights from me.
Let me know love
within reason and desire within
marraige, and feel your presence
not your rage.
The natures of humans
are various, and human ways of acting
are different,
but everyone knows what is right,
and teaching
inclines them at last to virtue."

Rating:
Summary: excellent introduction to greek tragedy
Review: Of the half dozen or so plays I've read in Oxford University Press's "Greek Tragedy in New Translations" series, this is the best.

An excellent synopsis and analysis of the play precedes a beautiful translation, smoothing the way for students. The play is one of the keys to understanding the Trojan War -- in addition to recapping the beef the Greeks have with Troy, there is much foreshadowing of what will happen ten years down the road.

After reading Iphigeneia at Aulis, it's difficult to cut any of those Greek heroes any slack. If the situation weren't so horrible and tragic, the interactions and reactions of some of the characters would be funny: Achilles, for example, extremely annoyed that Agamemnon would take his name in vain when tricking Iphigeneia into coming to Aulis; if Agamemnon had asked him for his help first, then tricking the girl into coming to be sacrificed would have been okay. Or Menelaos, coming around to Agamemnon's way of thinking (that it would, after all, be wrong to kill Iphigeneia), and suggesting that only he, Agamemnon and Kalchas the priest know about the need for a sacrifice to get a fair wind to Troy, and that Kalchas won't tell: "Not if he's dead."

This play, and this translation, are probably one of the best introductions a student could have to Greek tragedy.