polutrope: (sleep is for pussies)
We're putting on Hippolytus in Greek, as I may have mentioned once, and I just bought a copy of Racine's Phèdre, because I love it to bits and realized that I don't own it. So of course I'm thinking about both of them a lot. It's really a shame that the Racine is based on Hippolytus; it would be much fairer to it if I could read it alone and not as an adaptation of the Euripides. It's not that I like it less, only that I keep comparing it, and weighing the interpretation of the characters.

And it's sort of on this basis that I've decided Phèdre's weaker. The addition of Aricie isn't just "lame" because she has no character at all (which she doesn't); it would weaken the play even if she were the most dynamic character imaginable. It changes a conflict of ideologies, of Hippolytus' inflexibility against Aphrodite's power, represented by Phaedra, to a choice between two women.

That is to say, there is no possibility that Hippolytus will agree to the nurse's request that he take Phaedra as a lover. He hates women and loves his chastity. By creating a Hippolyte who loves a woman, Racine makes the opposition not between two life-paths, but the more normal, and thus if not less interesting, less extreme, choice between one woman and another. There are, of course, moral differences between choosing Aricie and Phèdre - Phèdre is still Hippolyte's step-mother and the wife of his father - but it's not the choice between absolute purity and sexual activity that Hippolytus is forced to make.

Both plays, of course, are products of their time. Hippolytus, like much of Greek drama and epic, warns against the dangers of inflexibility and stubbornness. (Of course, because if Euripides wasn't an atheist, he certainly didn't like the gods, Hippolytus is also about the impossibility of pleasing a goddess who would destroy a man simply for not choosing to follow her path. Even then, Hippolytus' crime isn't only not engaging in sexual activity, it's really the long speech about the evils of women. Without that attitude, he would be acceptable; but in that speech he shows that he doesn't just choose to abstain from Aphrodite's realm, he scorns it and hates it, which is always a bad move.)

In any case, products of their time. Euripides treats subjects that Greeks were accustomed to see in the theater; Racine writes the story that a 17th century French audience wants to see - a love story, couched in the specific and formulaic language of the French Classical theater. Racine could not have written a play with no love story; it was, like someone saying "hélas" at least three times, a requirement of the form.

For me the conflict between who Hippolytus is - a man who chose chastity and Artemis - and who Aphrodite, goddess of all that he hates, wants him to be is much more interesting than a love triangle. But they're not really comparable and perhaps shouldn't be; and yet I can't help it.
polutrope: (aeneid)
Three authors I currently cannot stand:

1. Blake. Partly because he's against the Age of Reason (and the 18th is the century I'd pick to live in) and partly because of "The Clod and the Pebble", and mainly because I hate his style. (And we had to read him in English, where we have dumb conversations, like "square is a hard, unflexible shape, while circle is more forgiving." Also I sang the first verse of "Jerusalem" out loud.)

2. Sallust. No, antique constructions are not cool. Neither are long strings of infinitives. Also, don't use words in your own special way. The notes said that he was the only one who used "adepta" (I think) as active or something like that. The point is, you are not special enough to screw with Latin grammar. (Although Vergil evidently is. Latin doesn't have a middle. No, really. Nor are you writing in Greek.) Please lose your "Oh no our generation is degenerate!" attitude. Everyone thinks so; you'll live.

3. Rousseau. Emile is godawfully boring and circular. Also, I disagree with about 2/3 of what he says. Talking to children is essential, even if they don't understand what's going on. Are you just going to wait until they can speak on their own?

I ran a mile and a half yesterday. Now I am walking around like Rigoletto. I don't think I'll run anymore; my knees will thank me.

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Theodora Elucubrare

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