Bøger af Euripides

Forblændet af kærlighed har Medea forladt sit hjem ved Sortehavet og er rejst til Grækenland med den charmerende Jason. Lykken viser sig dog at vare kort: Efter at have fået to børn med Medea beslutter Jason sig for at sikre sin fremtid ved at gifte sig ind i den græske kongefamilie. Fornedret, rasende og ydmyget af den mand, hun har ofret alt for, står Medea nu over for landsforvisning, og hun og hendes sønner går en usikker fremtid i møde. Hvordan kan hun finde en hævn, der er grusom nok?Euripides' tragedie er en dramatisk milepæl, og Medea er prototypen for stolte og kompromisløst hævngerrige kvinder i europæisk kulturhistorie.

Herakles er uden tvivl den største græske sagnhelt og i mange henseender en succeshistorie. Han optræder i adskillige myter, hvor han nedlægger en lang række forbrydere og monstre, og efter et langt og anstrengende liv udødeliggøres han som en gud. I tragedien Herakles viser Euripides imidlertid en anden og anderledes grusom side af heltens liv og enorme styrke: Ligesom kun de magtfulde guder ville kunne modstå Herakles, når han udfører sine heltegerninger, ville kun guderne være i stand til at forhindre ham i de største ugerninger. En af dem er sågar ansvarlig for, at helten i pludseligt vanvid vender sig imod sin egen kone og sine egne børn, mens de andre guder blot ser passivt til. Euripides beskriver på den måde en verden, hvor mennesket aldrig kan føle sig sikkert, og hvor ikke engang de største bedrifter altid værdsættes, men til tider endda straffes, uden at omverdenen reagerer. Trods de evigt aktuelle emner, som Herakles behandler, har den kun haft begrænset indflydelse i senere tider, og denne oversættelse er den første i godt 140 år.

Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy, has come to Thebes, and the women are streaming out of the city to worship him on the mountain, drinking and dancing in wild frenzy. The king, Pentheus, denouces this so-called 'god' as a charlatan. But no mortal can deny a god and no man can ever stand against Dionysus.

This is the fourth volume of Euripides plays in new translation. The four plays it contains, Ion, Orestes, The Phoenician Women and The Suppliant Women, explore ethical and political themes, contrasting the claims of patriotism with family loyalty, pragmatism with justice, the idea that 'might is right' with the ideal of clemency.

Now in paperback.Euripides, the last of the three great tragedians of ancient Athens, reached the height of his renown during the disastrous Peloponnesian War, when democratic Athens was brought down by its own outsized ambitions. “Euripides,” the classicist Bernard Knox has written, “was born never to live in peace with himself and to prevent the rest of mankind from doing so.” His plays were shockers: he unmasked heroes, revealing them as foolish and savage, and he wrote about the powerless–women and children, slaves and barbarians–for whom tragedy was not so much exceptional as unending. Euripides’ plays rarely won first prize in the great democratic competitions of ancient Athens, but their combustible mixture of realism and extremism fascinated audiences throughout the Greek world. In the last days of the Peloponnesian War, Athenian prisoners held captive in far-off Sicily were said to have won their freedom by reciting snatches of Euripides’ latest tragedies.Four of those tragedies are presented here in new translations by the contemporary poet and classicist Anne Carson. They are Herakles, in which the hero swaggers home to destroy his own family; Hekabe, set after the Trojan War, in which Hektor’s widow takes vengeance on her Greek captors; Hippolytos, about love and the horror of love; and the strange tragic-comedy fable Alkestis, which tells of a husband who arranges for his wife to die in his place. The volume also contains brief introductions by Carson to each of the plays along with two remarkable framing essays: “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form” and “Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra.”

Medea/Hecabe/Electra/HeraclesFour devastating Greek tragedies showing the powerful brought down by betrayal, jealousy, guilt and hatredThe first playwright to depict suffering without reference to the gods, Euripides made his characters speak in human terms and face the consequences of their actions. In Medea, a woman rejected by her lover takes hideous revenge by murdering the children they both love, and Hecabe depicts the former queen of Troy, driven mad by the prospect of her daughter's sacrifice to Achilles. Electra portrays a young woman planning to avenge the brutal death of her father at the hands of her mother, while in Heracles the hero seeks vengeance against the evil king who has caused bloodshed in his family.Translated with an Introduction by PHILIP VELLACOTT

Heracles/ Iphigenia Among the Taurians/ Helen/ Ion/ Cyclops: Of these plays, only 'Heracles' truly belongs in the tragic sphere with its presentation of underserved suffering and divine malignity. The other plays flirt with comedy and comic themes. Their plots are ironic and complex with deception and elusion eventually leading to reconciliation between mother and son in 'Ion', brother and sister in 'Iphigenia', and husband and wife in 'Helen'. The comic vein is even stronger in the satyric'Cyclops' in which the giant's inebriation and subsequent violence are treated as humorous. Together, these plays demonstrate Euripides' challenge to the generic boundaries of Athenian drama.

Medea has abandoned her family and homeland of Colchis for the love of the great hero Jason, and her loyalty, cunning and talents in witchcraft have repeatedly rescued him. Now, after bearing him two fine sons and settling in Corinth, Jason announces that Medea is to be cast aside, freeing him to marry royalty. Finding herself not only abandoned but banished from Corinth and driven beyond madness, a desperate Medea commits an unspeakable act of vengeance against her former husband. This English adaptation of Euripides' classic play is in rhymed verse to create a close approximation of the rhythms and poetry of the original Greek text.