I love Muller's Philoctetes--the only one apart from Armand Schwerner's
translation that seems adequate to both print and production--unlike
Heaney's Cure at Troy, which reads as unspeakable. The shawlie Chorus is
probably pretty effective on stage, though. Has anyone ever seen a
production of the Cure?
Candice
P.S. David's take on Hughes as at his best a poet of restrained violence
strikes me as exactly right.
> Errata - Muller never did the Oresteia, but other things like Philoctetes
> and Medeamaterial, a post-Holocaust version set in a rubbish dump - I saw
> the latter once, done by the Attic Theatre Co, from Athens, a totally
> amazing production that I've never forgotten - an astonishing moment where
> Medea killed her children, which was represented by the bursting of a bag
> of milk, sounds like nothing here but such was the intensity of the
> performances (which were approached through some sadistic avant gard ritual
> lasting hours before each performance) that it was one of the more amazing
> things I've seen on stage.
>
> Early in the morning here...
>
> Alison
>
> You know, I _like_ his Oedipus - I know it's completely ott, but it has
> this energy which for me sweeps it through. The Oresteia is in fact more
> restrained, but it has much more this air of bookishness, somehow, when
> he's looking for barbaric splendour and horror, and it feels like he's
> stretching his arm - and when you think of what's been done to the Oresteia
> in the 20C, from Martha Graham through to Heiner Muller, it's a little bit
> - um - prissy.
>
> All right, off my soapbox.
>
> Best
>
> A
>
>> I'm minded here too of Hughes's version of the Seneca Oedipus, which too I
>> found both wordy and straining for horror, I think one of the paradoxes of
>> Hughes was that he was at his best as a poet of restrained violence, indeed,
>> his sometimes sensitivity, as the Full Moon that Little Frieda saw, is his
>> real virtue, while the slightly Hammer House of Horrors garishness, and too
>> the portentous blab, do not serve him well.
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Dave
>>
>>
>> David Bircumshaw
>>
>> Leicester, England
>>
>> Home Page
>>
>> A Chide's Alphabet
>>
>> Painting Without Numbers
>>
>> www.paintstuff.20m.com/index.htm
>>
>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Alison Croggon" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Wednesday, November 14, 2001 7:39 PM
>> Subject: Re: Ted Hughes' Alcestis
>>
>>
>>> You know, I've been looking at Hughes' translation of the Oresteia again -
>>> they're attacking on the texts, but not that attacking - they're still
>>> stuck in the original. Not that radical. And surprisingly wordy.
>>>
>>> And straining for horror, which at his best he doesn't do, though some of
>>> the Chorus stuff is good. The best contemporary adaptation I've seen of
>>> the Greeks is Caryl Churchill's Thyestis.
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> A
>>>
>>>
>>>> Just to say that I listened to it on the radio tonight.
>>>> It was startingly personal from Ted.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Lynx: Poetry from Bath ..........
>> http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
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