Alcestis (Spanish Edition)
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Alcestis (Spanish Edition) Details
Alcestis es una de las más tempranas obras supervivientes del dramaturgo griego Eurípides. La obra fue probablemente producida por primera vez en las Dionisias del año 438 a. C., estando ya avanzada la carrera del autor. A veces se la caracteriza como una obra satírica y a veces como un melodrama.Contexto:Apolo, tras matar a los Cíclopes, había quedado exiliado del Olimpo durante nueve años, que pasó al servicio del rey de Tesalia, Admeto, un hombre conocido por su hospitalidad y que trató muy bien a Apolo. En agradecimiento, Apolo consiguió para Admeto que las Moiras le concediesen vivir más allá de la fecha de su muerte. El regalo, sin embargo, tiene un precio: Admeto debe encontrar a alguien que lo sustituya cuando la Muerte venga a reclamarlo.Llega el momento de la muerte de Admeto, y no ha encontrado a nadie que lo sustituya. Su padre no desea entregarse y cree que es ridículo que le pidan abandonar una vida que disfruta tanto como parte de este raro acuerdo. Finalmente, su devota esposa, Alcestis, se muestra conforme en ser llevada en su lugar, porque no desea dejar a sus hijos sin padre o ser abandonada por su amado y, al comienzo de la obra, ella está próxima a la muerte.
Reviews
T. S. Eliot's short piece on "Euripides and Professor Murray" in The Sacred Wood doesn't spare anyone's feelings."Professor Murray has simply interposed between Euripides and ourselves a barrier more impenetrable than the Greek language."Oh snap.That was Medea, however. Surely Gilbert Murray's style of translating Greek verse into rhymes (Eliot calls it "fourth rate Swinburne"), if it suits at all, would suit this very romantic "pro-satyric" play.Nope. The verse is worse than you can imagine, often declining into greeting card jingle territory. Here are two choice nuggets:But I am one who hath no right to stayAlive on earth; one that hath lost his wayIn fate, and strays in dreams of life long past….Friends, I have learned my lesson at the last.CHORUS. I have sojourned in the Muse's land,Have wandered with the wandering star,Seeking for strength, and in my handHeld all philosophies that are;Yet nothing could I hear nor seeStronger than That Which Needs Must Be.On the other hand, the Introduction was excellent, and could serve as an introduction to the play for a college class today. I particularly liked this allusion to a theory that was "out there":... Above all there is the late Dr. Verrall's famous essay in Euripides the Rationalist, explaining it as a psychological criticism of a supposed Delphic miracle, and arguing that Alcestis in the play does not rise from the dead at all. She had never really died; she only had a sort of nervous catalepsy induced by all the "suggestion" of death by which she was surrounded. Now Dr. Verrall's work, as always, stands apart. Even if wrong, it has its own excellence, its special insight and its extraordinary awakening power. But in general the effect of reading many criticisms on the Alcestis is to make a scholar realize that, for all the seeming simplicity of the play, competent Grecians have been strangely bewildered by it, and that after all there is no great reason to suppose that he himself is more sensible than his neighbours.I was so impressed that I picked up Euripides and His Age. His translations deserve no mercy, but he was a fine scholar.