Three Plays of Euripides: Alcestis, Medea, The Bacchae by Paul Roche (review)

REVIEWS Paul Roche, translator. Three P lays o f E uripides: A lcestis, M edea, The B acchae. New York: W. W. Norton Co., 1974. Pp. xii + 126. $6.95 (clothbound), $1.95 (paperbound). Euripides’ A lcestis, M edea, and the B acchae reflect, as Paul Roche claims, two of the main themes which preoccupied the ancient Greek dramatist: woman and the gods. But these plays illustrate only tangential­ ly the third theme—war—which, Roche properly asserts, engaged Euri­ pides; that might better have been illustrated by H ecuba or A n drom ach e, especially if Roche wanted to stress the analogy of the Vietnam War to Athens’ struggle with Sparta. But the plays well demonstrate Euripides’ “range, manner, and style,” his “grasp of individual psychology,” and “his humor.” To say that they also reveal Euripides’ “ability to depict actual life” is somewhat misleading. In fifth-century Athens the dead did not come back to life, granddaughters of the sun did not exist, much less fly from their bloody deeds in dragon-drawn chariots. But Euripides, like all great artists, presents a wholly unified world in his dramas, and thereby creates for the audience the illusion of actuality, through which the artist discloses the psychology of human motivation. These remarks on Roche’s reasons for the choice of these plays to translate suggest that he slightly misses the mark in his explanatory intro­ duction, and in the translations themselves he frequently, but not always, does miss the mark. He states in his introduction his principles of trans­ lation, and for this fact one should be grateful to him. He argues that translations should recreate the original, not imitate it, that the second language should not aim at identification with the original but at its esthetic equivalent, and that the translation should approximate the pace of the original. Laudable principles, all. On the matter of pace, he ob­ serves that the use of consonants is at the root of the problem, for “Eng­ lish uses almost twice as many as Greek does”; to illustrate he compares the Greek “sophos” with English “knowledge.” The illustration is not wholly persuasive, yet Roche is almost right, for English does emphasize consonants much more than does Greek. But it seems doubtful that this has much to do with the quantity of consonants employed. Roche recognizes the fluidity of Greek which is both spontaneous and formal; and to implement his second principle, that of esthetic equivalent in the second language, he employs what he calls “The Freewheeling Iambic,” which is “a line that expands and contracts at will, following the contours of the voice.” His solution is frequently successful, espe­ cially in passages of monologue, e.g., the Herdsman’s description of the bacchantes in the B acchae, and often in passages of dialogue. His decision 87 88 Comparative Drama to subordinate the formality of the Greek spares us the superfluousness which accompanies some translations which try to reproduce mechanically the regularity of the Greek meter. “The Freewheeling Iambic” is in accord with his third principle of recreating the original in the second language by remaining faithful to the genius of the second language. In practice this quite sound notion eliminates the tone of translationese and suggests that the ancient Greeks did not employ contrived gnomic utterance as a matter of course, thereby helping to convey to the Greekless something of the immediacy of the plays. Roche also observes that rhyme appears in the dramas, a point little observed by most translators. That he recog­ nizes it is commendable. But his use of English is sometimes unnerving, as when Alcestis rhymes “babies” with “Hades” (p. 8, lines 268-270). Roche recognizes, too, that “tragedy operates through the ear,” and he concludes his introduction with a plea for the translations to be spoken. In his notes on various passages he clearly envisions actual production (see note 1, p. 126), a point stressed too by the frequent stage directions he incorporates in his translations. But now let us consider the translations themselves. In general they are adequate. He does not make egregious mistakes in translating, though one questions the appropriateness of some of the diction, e...