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Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (New York Review Books Classics) Paperback – September 16, 2008

by Euripides (Author), Anne Carson (Translator, Introduction)
4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 118 ratings
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Euripides, the last of the three great tragedians of ancient Athens, reached the height of his renown during the disastrous Peloponnesian War, when democratic Athens was brought down by its own outsized ambitions. “Euripides,” the classicist Bernard Knox has written, “was born never to live in peace with himself and to prevent the rest of mankind from doing so.” His plays were shockers: he unmasked heroes, revealing them as foolish and savage, and he wrote about the powerless–women and children, slaves and barbarians–for whom tragedy was not so much exceptional as unending. Euripides’ plays rarely won first prize in the great democratic competitions of ancient Athens, but their combustible mixture of realism and extremism fascinated audiences throughout the Greek world. In the last days of the Peloponnesian War, Athenian prisoners held captive in far-off Sicily were said to have won their freedom by reciting snatches of Euripides’ latest tragedies.

Four of those tragedies are presented here in new translations by the contemporary poet and classicist Anne Carson. They are Herakles, in which the hero swaggers home to destroy his own family; Hekabe, set after the Trojan War, in which Hektor’s widow takes vengeance on her Greek captors; Hippolytos, about love and the horror of love; and the strange tragic-comedy fable Alkestis, which tells of a husband who arranges for his wife to die in his place. The volume also contains brief introductions by Carson to each of the plays along with two remarkable framing essays: “Tragedy: A Curious Art Form” and “Why I Wrote Two Plays About Phaidra.”
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    312 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    NYRB Classics
  4. Publication date
    September 16, 2008
  5. Dimensions
    5.39 x 0.65 x 7.96 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1590172531
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1590172537
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The amazing poet Anne Carson offers a new translation of four plays by Euripides, each of which unfurls in searing, plainspoken English. Her essays and introductions are priceless." -Time Out NY

"In Grief Lessons, the contemporary poet and classicist Anne Carson's spare and beautiful new translation of four of Euripides' lesser known tragedies, we have a kind of primer on the intrinsic dangers of blind devotion to ideology." -The New Yorker

"An eclectic selection that provides an excellent introduction to Euripides's range. Ms. Carson's Euripides is bleak, moving, and provocative, offering a painful reminder of the resonance of these ancient plays with our own times." -The New York Sun

"Grief Lessons...reminds us that the difference between competent and inspired translation is more than a matter of even bravura technical competence. It involves a kind of discreet union between writer and translator, a certain convergence of aesthetic impulse and intellectual inclination. The issue of such a union can take a reader's breath away because it just seems so right--a work that stands firmly on its own but is somehow contented to be the sum of its parts. Carson's is, in other words, an altogether worthy heir...It's a reasonable and reasonably provocative contemporary reading." -The Los Angeles Times

"Writing with a pitch and heat that gets to the heart of the unforgiving classical world, Carson..is nothing less than brilliant--unfalteringly sharp in diction, audacious and judicious in taking liberties...Worth the price of admission alone is Carson's blistering essay afterword, written in Euripides's voice...This amazing book gets very close to the playwright's enigmatic answers." -Publishers Weekly*

About the Author

Euripides (c. 485—406 BCE) wrote ninety-two plays, of which eighteen survive–more than twice as many as survive from any other Greek tragedian. They include Medea, Andromache, Cyclops, Electra, The Trojan Women, Helen, The Phoenician Women, Orestes, and The Bacchae.

Anne Carson was twice a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; was honored with the 1996 Lannan Award and the 1997 Pushcart Prize, both for poetry; and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2000. In 2001 she received the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry (the first woman to do so), the Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She currently teaches at the University of Michigan.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYRB Classics; Main edition (September 16, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 312 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1590172531
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1590172537
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.39 x 0.65 x 7.96 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars 118 ratings

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  1. Euripides

    Euripides

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    Euripides (/jʊəˈrɪpᵻdiːz/ or /jɔːˈrɪpᵻdiːz/; Greek: Εὐριπίδης; Ancient Greek: [eu̯.riː.pí.dɛːs]) (c. 480 – 406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. He is one of the few whose plays have survived, with the others being Aeschylus, Sophocles, and potentially Euphorion. Some ancient scholars attributed 95 plays to him but according to the Suda it was 92 at most. Of these, 18 or 19 have survived more or less complete (there has been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds) and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes and Menander.

    Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. Yet he also became "the most tragic of poets",[nb 1] focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of...that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello, Racine's Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg," in which "...imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates", and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

    Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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  2. Anne Carson

    Anne Carson

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    Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living. Her awards and honors include the Lannan Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Trust Award for Excellence in Poetry, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the MacArthur “Genius” Award.

    See more on the author's page
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Customer reviews

4.8 out of 5 stars
4.8 out of 5
118 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Original Translation of Four Great Euripides Plays
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2022
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This volume contains original translations of four of Euripides' greatest plays by Anne Carson, the amazingly talented poet and Greek scholar. Also included are several of Carson's commentaries -- insightful and thought-provoking!
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And You May Find Yourself
5.0 out of 5 stars Great translations. But I came here for the introductory ...
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2018
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Great translations. But I came here for the introductory texts, and they do not disappoint. Favourite passage:
"Aeschylus looked at the story of Agamemnon and saw a parable of human grandiosity and tragic katharsis, leading through bloodshed and strife to an eventual restoration of civilized order. Euripides looked at the same story and saw smeared makeup."
7 people found this helpful
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5.0 out of 5 stars My comments are only on "Herakles, " which is ...
Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2016
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My comments are only on "Herakles," which is very rarely produced and known to be problematic and "divided" in plot.
But I found it amazingly compelling and pertinent to our times, in which mental illness causes family murders then huge trauma and guilt, with the question of suicide to follow -- or the courage to carry on... It also shows the complexity of heroism, fame, fate, and friendship.
9 people found this helpful
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GR
5.0 out of 5 stars You've never known love until you read Grief Lessons
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2021
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Oh, Anne... destroy me again, why don't you.
One person found this helpful
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The Huntington Book Depository
4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful translation, but introductory materials were a turn off
Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2020
I continue to be impressed by the New York Review Books series. They are handsome little paperbacks that look striking when lined up on the bookshelf, and I've rarely come across one at the used book store that doesn't end up upon reading being an interesting little window into literature. This one was no exception.

It took a little bit to get acclimatized to reading Greek drama, but it's much more accessible than some of the other more modern plays in terms of its structure and prose, and there's a few very powerful lines in the various plays about love, life, and loss that you'll likely find particularly striking to you personally. With four plays here in this book, you'll likely have your favorites. It was my first time reading these, and I happened to enjoy Hekabe the most given it's post Trojan War setting and theme of revenge.

One of the more hit and miss aspects of the New York Review Books lineup is its use of a more contemporary author to provide some context of the piece you're about to read. Most of the time I find that really useful which is why I prefer these editions. Here however, and I differ from many of the other reviewers, I found the Anne Carson introductions to the various essays to be both pompous and strange at the same time. I want you to explain to me a little of what I'm about to read, not show me how smart you think you are by making a long comparison to something else (I haven't read the piece so I don't know how apt a comparison you're making) or drop a bunch of other esoteric references so I know you're well read (I'm aware of that, you're writing the introductions, just please tell me about what I'm going to read). I just didn't find them to be helpful or particularly interesting, more "well that was weird, I guess I can read the play now" of an aftertaste in my mouth. So enjoy the plays and the well done translation, but feel free to skip the extra materials in this one!
One person found this helpful
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Q in PA
5.0 out of 5 stars Ann Carson...always a pleasure !
Reviewed in the United States on March 26, 2016
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You can never go wrong with any book by Ann Carson. I love her erudition, but this is actually her easiest to read & absorb. Great to revisit Greek tragedy in an easy to read and enjoyable format.
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Jesse Sublett
5.0 out of 5 stars but this is a great piece of work by one of our weirdest
Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2015
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If they published Anne Carson's grocery lists I'd probably buy them, too, but this is a great piece of work by one of our weirdest, most intelligent and creative artists.
8 people found this helpful
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Lucky
5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you Ms. Carson
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2017
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I really, really like how Anne Carson does everything.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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RAJESHWARI
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
Reviewed in Canada on June 11, 2023
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Book: it came safely and without damage
Contents: beautifully translated plays. I really enjoy Anne Carson’s work. A must-read!
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Daniela
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful
Reviewed in Germany on August 30, 2023
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..as with most of Anne Carson's work. She offers me perspectives I have never thought of or ones I didn't know I had. Love her!
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Verónica Ontiveros
5.0 out of 5 stars Confiabilidad
Reviewed in Mexico on May 1, 2020
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El libro llego en perfectas condiciones y antes de lo esperado. Gracias
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Anne Connolly
4.0 out of 5 stars Carson is in unchartered territory, a magician.
Reviewed in Australia on November 5, 2022
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These carefully chosen extracts from Greek masters are so wonderfully selected and translated. I would suggest that writers from any background can be influenced by her writing.
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Pete
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful translations. Wonderful plays.
Reviewed in Canada on August 2, 2019
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Wonderful translations. Wonderful plays.
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