The Oresteia: A Translation of Aeschylus' Trilogy of Plays (Faber Poetry)

The story of the Trojan War and its aftermath are timeless, and have intrigued countless generations since they were first sung and performed by the ancients. The stories are well catalogued and have been dealt with in many guises by some of the greatest literary minds of successive generations, and here at last is one full of power and majesty for our own. In this translation of the original Greek texts Hughes has managed to blend the arts of the story teller and poet with the original moral philosophy of the Author, at once a narrative account of the aftermath of the fall of Troy and an insightful probing into the moral attitudes and ideas of all mankind. The book searches for universal truth and like Oedipus recalls the suffering inherent in the human condition, touching us all with the rawness of its subject matter. The verse itself is driven by a strength I have only seen echoed in Heaney's Beowulf it is written with such unstoppable and relentless power that the building of climax is almost unnerving, and possesses in its conscious lack of subtlety some of the greatest extracts of modern written English, whilst still leaving the reader under no illusion of its primeval and darkly shrouded origins. The book is immediately accessible both to non-poets and non-Hellenists alike and will draw the reader back time and again, this is the umpteenth version I have bought, probably to be lent and not returned, again. Add a Zero to the price and it would still represent a bargain. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Translation is probably the most difficult of all the poetic arts, but in this work Ted Hughes carries it off marvellously. His poetry is always characterised by supreme command of language and his gift is rarely employed better than here; the verse is tight, controlled and violently evocative. Hughes captures the ritualistic character of the play and presents us with an apocalyptic litany entirely appropriate to a story that still holds almost unparallelled power to appal. Initially this air of ritual makes the work difficult to read, since unlike other translators Hughes does not try to make the characters comprehensible or accessible to modern readers. Once this aspect of the translation was adjusted to, though, Hughes' purpose becomes clear. By forcing us away from seeing these plays as stories about people, he lets us glimpse a strange, dark, archaic world where even the great are just froth on the current of Fate. And doesn't it frighten us.