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The Way to Colonos: A Greek Triptych
Not yet published
Expected 30 Dec 25A modern Greek classic “written in an ageless prose that instantly strikes the reader as the work of a master.” (Rachel Cusk, from the foreword)
First published in 1961, The Way to Colonos reworks three plays by Sophocles in a modern-day setting, probing their characters with savage intimacy. Antigone, wheeling her father onto the ferry to Colonos, is a stylish woman in her thirties, disgusted by her father’s self-absorption, guilt, and evasions. A suburban Electra dreams of a bloody confrontation with her mother that may never come to pass. The myth of Philoctetes, the castaway soldier, is reframed as a story of shifting allegiances in a guerrilla war that divided Greece after World War II.
As Rachel Cusk writes in her foreword to this new edition, the first in sixty years, Cicellis was a woman before her time, whose work—written in English, her second language—offers “shocking insight into the secret lives of young women” and is only now “free to reach readers with an appetite for female artistic authority, who wish to see the world through sharp fresh eyes.”
First published in 1961, The Way to Colonos reworks three plays by Sophocles in a modern-day setting, probing their characters with savage intimacy. Antigone, wheeling her father onto the ferry to Colonos, is a stylish woman in her thirties, disgusted by her father’s self-absorption, guilt, and evasions. A suburban Electra dreams of a bloody confrontation with her mother that may never come to pass. The myth of Philoctetes, the castaway soldier, is reframed as a story of shifting allegiances in a guerrilla war that divided Greece after World War II.
As Rachel Cusk writes in her foreword to this new edition, the first in sixty years, Cicellis was a woman before her time, whose work—written in English, her second language—offers “shocking insight into the secret lives of young women” and is only now “free to reach readers with an appetite for female artistic authority, who wish to see the world through sharp fresh eyes.”
175 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1960
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October 30, 2024
I tried to get into these three short stories, even reading synopses of the ancient Greek plays on which they were based in order to better understand them. In the end, however, I felt like I was reading the diary of a petulant 15-year old girl who was angry with her father...or her mother...or her brother. Barely made it through the first story, skimmed the second, skipped the third entirely.
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