Camino de Colonos

by Kay Cicellis, Juan A. Ramió (Translator)

In a contemporary reconstruction of three Greek tragedies - Oedipus at Colonons, Electra, and Philoctetes - Kay Cicellis is concerned with the universal motives of human behaviour. Whether it is in the story of Atigone's filial obedience and devotion in her terrifying journey of self-banishment, the return of Orestes to a dissolute household held together my mutual hatred, or the exile of a political prisoner to a bleak island where he experiences the agony of isolation - Miss Cicellis always depicts emotions which move people as irrevocably to destruction today as they did in the days of Sophocles.

Genres: Classics

218 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Greek: Καίη Τσιτσέλη

Reviews

[Ryen Sylvester]

Good job Rachel Cusk for offering the most white and useless forward I've ever read. Who does this British boomer cup think she is, starting the forward with "this savage little book..." And then doing nothing to offer why it is so "savage". Who is that forward even for? The teenage crowd Cusk attempting to blend in with? All right, I forgot that all Greek people especially the ancient Greeks were all white and Western so we can say s*** like "savage" when describing associated culture. Nothing superficial about that.

The book is not bad, but reading them alongside the original plays, there is overall for me a struggle to understand what the purpose of the rewriting and modern retelling is. Nonetheless there our moments are very good writing.

I wanted to give a higher review just to balance out some of the awkwardly negative ones here, one guy said he's skimmed the second short story and skipped the third one, and yet still thinks that he should write a review.

But the book simply just doesn't provide what the hype promises.

[Matt Finley · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOWZA so beautiful. Spare and, in that way, faithful to the original. All of these are so, so stunning. Klytemnestra as a lazy housewife … Philoctetes as a political prisoner facing down the void … Oedipus as a truly pitiful old man in a wheelchair, refusing responsibility, refusing love. Beautifully written, and fascinating recastings of the plays.
The other 10 Philistines who have reviewed this work have obviously not read the originals, or do not appreciate the originals, because what they complain about is precisely the strength of these odd, beautiful tales.

[Patrick King · Rating 3 out of 5]

“This woman’s life must have been divorced from the material world, yet with none of the freedom, the detachment of the abstract. Her emotions were her daily routine, a routine as obsessively monotonous as a morning at the office.”

If nothing else, this is a great snapshot of a moment in time, rendered through the smudged lens of myth. The setting (1960s, Greece) is evocative and brought to mind Ferrante’s descriptions of postwar Italy. While so much of the prose did work for me, because these were also “translations” of Sophocles’ tragedies they tended towards long stream-of-consciousness monologues rather than dialogue, which sometimes worked but mostly didn’t. All-in-all, glad I read it, not sure I’d recommend it.

[Robert (NurseBob) · Rating 1 out of 5]

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.