Euripides Augmented: Yannis Ritsos's Phaedra

EURIPIDES AUGMENTED: YANNIS RITSOS'S PHAEDRA Minas Sawas The character of Phaedra in Euripides' Hippolytus has fascinated and inspired viewers and critics since the time Aristophanes satirized her as a pornh with his character Sthenoboea and in the figure of Melanippe in his Thesmophoriazusae. Aristophanes, of course, had in mind the first, bolder version of Euripides' tragedy where the shameless heroine, it is said, shocked the tastes and morals of the Athenians. Yet the Phaedra of the second version did not cease to inspire writers from Seneca and Racine to D'Annunzio to O'NeiU and Robinson Jeffers—each of whom has dramatized the legendary heroine in his own fashion and for his own times. Yannis Ritsos, though not a playwright as such, has added his name to the emulators of his compatriot Euripides with one of his many dramatic monologues based on a mythological theme. After 40 years and more than 70 volumes mostly of short poems, the poet pubUshed Tetarti Dhiastasi (The Fourth Dimension) in 1974. Comprising 17 primarily mythic monologues (Persephone, Orestes, Ismene, Ajax, etc.), this volume intertwines poetry with drama and the ancient with the modern. Though Ritsos had tried his hand at dramaturgy and had previously written some monologues and choral odes, he made a serious effort to fuse the lyrical with the dramatic with Tetarti Dhiastasi. Ritsos's Phaedra is, in fact, a lengthy poem in which the titular heroine deUvers a long speech to Hippolytus, evidently sometime after his own misogynistic outburst to the horrified Nurse and just before Theseus appears to find his wife hanged and his son accused. The scene is set by means of a 40-line prologue in which Phaedra, "a woman, perhaps over forty, sits in a wicker rocking chair. . . . She keeps her eyes shut. Her hands, crossed on her breast, caress her nipples, at first through the material of her dress, but later directly, flesh to flesh." Halfway through the prologue, Hippolytus arrives and greets Phaedra "respectfully, but also with a certain degree of awkwardness" (Fourth Dimension 275). Trying to appear less nervous than she is, and as "the room is changing from red to golden violet" (275) , Phaedra—in one of the deUberate anachronisms of the poem—"with an inexpUcable provocative gesture, Ughts a cigarette . . . and blows out smoke from nostrils and mouth" (275). This prose-prologue is foUowed by the approximately 500-line dramatic apologia of the Queen, a verse confession of her unbearable passion, which, in turn, culminates with an epilogue (about 30 lines of prose) in which Hippolytus departs to take a bath and Theseus arrives to find his wife hanging from a roof beam with the accusatory message "tucked in her girdle" (293). It is evident from the start, then, that Ritsos's Phaedra adheres to the intent ofEuripides' original, uncensored portrayal ofthe unfortunate Vol. 19 (1995): ZO THE COMPAKATIST Queen ofTroezen who confessed her passion to Hippolytus herself, even if the body of his monologue foUows the existing, revised version of the ancient dramatist. Ritsos borrows from the extant version, for instance, a quotation which he places on top ofhis monologue only to underUne his intent, which owes more to Euripides' original: '"It's natural,/ When the gods so WÜ1 it, for men to err.' Euripides, Hippolytus, 1433" (275). The Phaedra of Ritsos, not unlike the heroine in Seneca's imitation, indeed fits Peter Bien's description of Ritsos's modernized mythic heroes as "common people" who, upon being "confronted with the threat of extinction , react not with paralysis and withdrawal but rather with sexual vitaUty or vulgarity—with increased bodily energy in defiance of the worst that life can do to them" (Bien 18). It is this "common" quaUty ofPhaedra, that contemporary, plausibly modern quaUty, that Ritsos seeks to capture and accentuate with his forthright, passion-sick queen. This is a Phaedra who, in the prologue, watches lustfuUy Hippolytus' muscular thighs; this is a Phaedra who tells Hippolytus that she would like to follow him on his hunting sojourns ; who steals a cross from her stepson only to get sexually excited when he angrily tries to find it, as "the blood rushed to your cheeks" and moved "to your...