pick3.75/5 🌕🌕🌕🌖🌑
Reading greek plays in Greece. 🇬🇷 🏛️🏺
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Intro. to Euripides' Orestes. This is the reading of the play that I took from the deus ex machina ending.
Intro. to Euripides' Orestes. This is the reading of the play that I took from the deus ex machina ending.
pickHaving read Medea a few years ago & watched on TV a theatrical performance of Euripides' play, I've been wanting to see Pasolini's 1970 film version starring Maria Callas, and finally managed to do so.
It's a phantasmagorical mix of mythology, historical drama and folk horror, surreal in places, bloody in others, and with amazing cinematography, locations and costumes. Callas is appropriately spellbinding in the title role.
pickThis is a story that once again traverses familiar ground, but I found this one really quite moving. It revolves around Agamemnon & his choice to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to appease the goddess Artemis whom he has previously offended, to grant the Greek troops safe passage to Troy. We get the perspective of Iphigenia as someone coming to terms to why she has to be forsaken, from someone pleading with her father to live because
pickStrange, chilling, & brutal. Makes you think about what you're really doing when you think you're having a wild time 🙃 Makes me want to gather everyone in ancient society in a group hug because they were wrestling with the same demons as us—mental illness, the inscrutability of human actions, unexplained anguish & evil—& turning to the gods. This will be forever linked to Donna Tartt's The Secret History in my mind. Perfect for spooky October.
pickIt's such a wild, uncontainable tragedy full of revenge, pain, guilt, & madness. How are these issues resolved in real life? It's impossible, & makes you understand why the ancient Greeks turned to the plot device of the deux ex machina. The otherworldly ethical solution seems to be the only way to get around the problem of sons killing mothers, wives killing husbands, & daughters either cheering the violence on or being subject to it.
pickWhen I first encountered Polyphemus the Cyclops in The Odyssey, I pretty much felt like he got what was coming to him. Now that I‘m older & wiser 🙃, I was rooting for the one-eyed giant. His monologue in Euripides' rendering, where he rants about the human civilisation, the gods, & his father's shrines, is too funny. In this only extant satyr play from Greek antiquity, the Cyclops is almost a Rabelaisian philosopher. It's short & entertaining.
pickThis tragedy is packed to the brim with the mythological events it references. It takes some of the main concerns of the Aeschylus' play Seven Against Thebes but with key twists; Jocasta is still alive & sees her sons die, then proceeds to kill herself. Oedipus, having blinded himself, is also still alive. Despite the hectic nature of the play, this felt poignant, especially towards the end with Antigone rallying with her cast-out father, Oedipus.
pickEuripides is the king of screwball tragicomedy, & that's a compliment. He is the one tragedian that reads like proto-Shakespeare. I like the screwball element. The twist here is that the Helen that drove foolish men to wars is a mirage, while the real Helen bides her time & reveals a sharp mind by degrees. Helen & Menelaus get to work like a sweeter, nonviolent Bonnie & Clyde, & then Euripides sends in the demi-gods to give us a "happy" ending.
pickThis is a really interesting version of Electra by the youngest of the three tragedians (the other two being Aeschylus & Sophocles). It's hard not to psychologise these characters based on our modern tendencies but this Electra does *feel* modern, in a way: the twist here is that Electra has been married off to a farmer, & the matricide plays out like a 21st-century rural noir. How I can best describe Euripides: more human folly, less godliness.
