kricitt's review against another edition
challenging
dark
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Kirk has a great translation for a harrowing play.
owlette's review against another edition
5.0
I bought this edition for the introduction by Martha Nussbaum in which she wrote this memorable line,
"The dignity of the god is to smile; the dignity of these humans is to weep,"which I first came across in [b:Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character|6069|Achilles in Vietnam Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character|Jonathan Shay|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1440731180l/6069._SY75_.jpg|9416]. This line comes in Nussbaum's discussion of the final scene of the play where Agave picks up the disassembled body of her son, Pentheus, which she and the Bacchae had torn limb from limb under the trance of Dionysus. Like all Greek myths and stories, this is a story about a spited god who pays disproportionate retribution on the offending humans or, most commonly as in the case of The Bacchae, their offsprings. (Like, yes, Agave was not very nice to your mother, and Pentheus is a transphobe, but did you really have to do this to mortals that can't fight back, Dionysus?) Neither side--neither Dionysus nor Pentheus--appears heroic or right in the eyes of the modern reader, and I doubt either would have in the eyes of the contemporary Athenian audience, which is why Nussbaum's guide is all the more valuable. She she explains why the past scholarship's attempts to cast this play as a clash of the barbaric vs the polis, the spiritual vs the reason, have been dissatisfying, which affirms affirms the reader's discomfort and alienation from the gory crime-and-punishment revealed at the end of the play. Not everyone likes to have someone else's interpretation to color their reading experience, but if you read Euripides' Bacchae in any translation and felt a little lost and sad after reading it, I recommend Nussbaum's introduction. This short writing is one of her best works.
dkrane's review against another edition
4.0
What starts as your typical Greek tragedy very quickly becomes a thorny tale about gender deviancy and consent.
Agave is heartbreaking.
It's a strange read in 2017, but ripe I think for some queering up and complication of Dionysus as divinity.
Agave is heartbreaking.
It's a strange read in 2017, but ripe I think for some queering up and complication of Dionysus as divinity.
jackieeh's review
3.0
Greeks! People going nuts and attacking family members! Orgies!
I read this for my Theater and Sacrifice class, and although I enjoyed it for what it was--a great translation of a classic play--all I could really think of was all the True Blood I watched this summer. What with the crazy Maenad on the loose giving sacrifices left and right and hoping that Dionysus will show up and marry her, and the whole town going 'round the bend, True Blood owes a lot to Euripides. Which is great, and made me feel a little less guilty about my guilty pleasure show.
I read this for my Theater and Sacrifice class, and although I enjoyed it for what it was--a great translation of a classic play--all I could really think of was all the True Blood I watched this summer. What with the crazy Maenad on the loose giving sacrifices left and right and hoping that Dionysus will show up and marry her, and the whole town going 'round the bend, True Blood owes a lot to Euripides. Which is great, and made me feel a little less guilty about my guilty pleasure show.
veethorn's review
5.0
essentially copied straight from my very incoherent email to a friend and not at all edited for clarity, grammar or sense:
holy shit. this translation. this--holy shit. i'm wholly overcome, i read it straight through on the bus to and from my grandmother's tonight, and i can't--the LANGUAGE. the choruses. the dialogue of the theatrical parts that are so well translated that you understand exactly what is happening and i just. oh god. and then martha nussbaum wrote the introduction about balancing the worship of apollo and dionysus and what that means and how that is depicted in the play and now i'm basically dead of feelings. basically.
like. "oh will i, sometime, in the all-night dances, dance again, barefoot, rapt, again, in Bacchus, all in Bacchus again?
Will I throw my bared throat back, to the cool night back, the way, oh, in the green joys of the meadow, the way a fawn frisks, leaps, throws itself--"
the chorus is ALL THIS INCREDIBLE FLOW. and it's formatted beautifully, in a way that is hard to recreate here, really, but you just have to trust me that the LINE BREAKS are incredible i am in raptures over the line breaks. and dionysus. and nussbaum's introduction.
READ IT.
holy shit. this translation. this--holy shit. i'm wholly overcome, i read it straight through on the bus to and from my grandmother's tonight, and i can't--the LANGUAGE. the choruses. the dialogue of the theatrical parts that are so well translated that you understand exactly what is happening and i just. oh god. and then martha nussbaum wrote the introduction about balancing the worship of apollo and dionysus and what that means and how that is depicted in the play and now i'm basically dead of feelings. basically.
like. "oh will i, sometime, in the all-night dances, dance again, barefoot, rapt, again, in Bacchus, all in Bacchus again?
Will I throw my bared throat back, to the cool night back, the way, oh, in the green joys of the meadow, the way a fawn frisks, leaps, throws itself--"
the chorus is ALL THIS INCREDIBLE FLOW. and it's formatted beautifully, in a way that is hard to recreate here, really, but you just have to trust me that the LINE BREAKS are incredible i am in raptures over the line breaks. and dionysus. and nussbaum's introduction.
READ IT.
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