Tragèdies (vol. IX/1). Les bacants

by Euripides, Jordi Pàmies Massana (Translator)

Aquest volum presenta Les bacants, una de les tragèdies més emblemàtiques i representades d’Eurípides. Escrita els últims anys de la seva vida, quan l’autor s’havia traslladat a la cort macedònia d’Arquelau, formava part juntament amb la Ifigenia a Àulida i la desapareguda Alcmeó a Corint d’una tetralogia que va guanyar el primer premi a les festes dionísies de la ciutat. En Les bacants, una de les obres més inquietants del dramaturg atenès, Eurípides porta a escena el càstig de Dionís contra els habitants de la ciutat de Tebes, la pàtria de Sèmele, la seva mare, que es neguen a acceptar-lo com a déu. El volum, a cura de l’hel·lenista Jordi Pàmias, presenta, a més d’una introducció en forma de Notícia preliminar, el text original en edició crítica acarat amb la traducció catalana, que ha estat àmpliament anotada i comentada, amb notes a peu de pàgina i notes complementàries al final, que ajuden al lector a entendre tots els aspectes de la tragèdia, des dels textuals fins als literaris, socials o religiosos.

191 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2022

About the author

Euripides (Greek: Ευριπίδης) (ca. 480 BC–406 BC) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, 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. He also became "the most tragic of poets", 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 William Shakespeare's Othello, Jean Racine's Phèdre, of Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.
His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism. Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes. Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia, but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources.

Reviews

[SócUnaFada · Rating 5 out of 5]

4
"Saber no és saviesa. I meditar sobre allò que no és dels mortals significa una vida breu. És per això que ¿qui empaitaria grans projectes, si no aconseguia el que té a mà? Aquestes maneres, a mi em sembla, són les pròpies dels homes folls i que han perdut el senderi."
DAMN. Parteix-me en dos i arrenca'm el cap com si fóssim Àgave i Penteu, posats a fer.

(Estrella extra per les anotacions i l'introducció)