Bakkhai

by Anne Carson, Euripides

Overview

A stunning, new translation by the poet and classicist Anne Carson, first performed in 2015 at the Almeida Theatre in London

Anne Carson writes, “Euripides was a playwright of the fifth century BC who reinvented Greek tragedy, setting it on a path that leads straight to reality TV. His plays broke all the rules, upended convention and outraged conservative critics. The Bakkhai is his most subversive play, telling the story of a man who cannot admit he would rather live in the skin of a woman, and a god who seems to combine all sexualities into a single ruinous demand for adoration. Dionysos is the god of intoxication. Once you fall under his influence, there is no telling where you will end up.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811227100
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	12/12/2017
Pages:	96
Sales rank:	77,686
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1400L (what's this?)

About the Author

Anne Carson was born in Canada and teaches ancient Greek for a living.

Editorial Reviews

11/20/2017
Multidisciplinary poet-scholar Carson (Antigonick) unveils a stripped-down and faithful “new version” of Euripides’s classic tragedy. Though she has been known to take liberties with her interpretations of classical Greek literature, here the Dionysian “desire/ before the desire,/ the lick of beginning to know you don’t know,” appears much in the vein of her previous translations of classic dramas. The dialogue is imbued with a minimalist, almost rustic conversationalism that’s countered by gripping and dramatic choral odes, a slithering Bakkhic entrance song, and the crazed fragmentation of Agave’s awakening from the Bakkhic spell. At times, Carson puts forth a kind of affectless droll, a mode that might serve the dialogue but falls flat in the work’s opening and closing moments (“Here I am./ Dionysos.”; “That’s how this went/ today.”). Otherwise, this rendition is a hilarious and razor-sharp romp full of sex, violence, and drink-guzzling (Dionysos: “They say he gave the gift of wine to men:/ why, without wine we’ve no freedom from pain./ Without wine there’s no sex./ Without sex/ life isn’t worth living.// .”). In traversing the eternal pull between what humans call reason and what that reason deems primal, Carson’s trademark simplicity allows this work to feel simultaneously ancient and contemporary. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"Her translation of this Greek tragedy, first performed in 405 BC, reawakens the original’s sublimity and gives us the opportunity to be absorbed and shocked anew by the story of Dionysus."

Lit Hub

"As a translator, Carson is well aware that her work must issue from the ever-changing afterlife of the original, an approach that requires cultural and textual fluidity. In short, Carson, like Euripedes, is unafraid to take risks."

Bomb

"The poetry in her translation is light, swift, and beautiful."

The New Yorker

"Anne Carson is a daring, learned, unsettling writer."

Susan Sontag

"Anne Carson is, for me, the most exciting poet writing in English today."

Michael Ondaatje

"For two decades Carson’s work has moved—phrase by phrase, line by line, project by improbable project—in directions that a human brain would never naturally move. The approach has won her accolades and an electric reputation in the literary world."

The New York Times Magazine - Sam Anderson