Recommended Translations of Works referred To

Link to Albrecht Dürer's Adoration of the Magi (1/7/03)

Structure of Act I

Recommended Translations of Works referred To

Greek

Mythology: There are innumerable mythological handbooks available in the bookstore and in the library. I like to use Robert Graves'The Greek Myths (Pelican); it reads well and gives a good sense of the different versions. Goethe used a mythological dictionary by Benjamin Hederich, which our library owns in reprint. It is full of fascinating information, but you have to be able to read German.

Homer: Iliad and Odyssey. There are many good translations available. My favorite Iliad is the translation of Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press) and my favorite Odyssey that of Robert Fitzgerald (Anchor).

Tragedy: I read Greek tragedies in the collected edition The Complete Greek Tragedies edited by Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press). The translations are by several different people. They include seven tragedies by Aeschylus (vol. 1), seven by Sophocles (vol. 2), and nineteen by Euripides (vols. 3 and 4). Chicago has issued and re-issued the plays in a variety of smaller combinations. Euripides is the most important of the tragedians for Goethe, who based his own play Iphigenia in Tauris on Euripides' play of the same name; Act III of Faust II draws heavily on Euripides' Helen. Goethe doubtless, however, had read all of the extant Greek tragedies at some point or other. Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (also called Oedipus the King) is considered the best known and most typical of all Greek tragedies; Goethe plays off it especially in the last act of Faust II.

Aristotle: Poetics. This has been the most influential treatise on tragedy in Europe from the 4^th century BC until the present. I use the translation by T.S. Dorsch in the Penguin volume Classical Literary Criticism. This volume also contains Horace's Ars poetica, the next most important discussion of drama. All the dramatists we are reading knew both.

Herodotus: The Histories. There is a perfectly useable translation by Aubrey de Selincourt (Penguin).

 Aristophanes: The Frogs. I particularly like the translation by Dudley Fitts (Harcourt), but there is also a good one by Richmond Lattimore (Mentor). There are eleven extant comedies by Aristophanes and they are all hilarious.

Latin

 Vergil: Aeneid. The best translation I know is that of Alan Mandelbaum (Bantam).

Ovid: The Metamorphoses. I like the translation by Horace Gregory (Mentor). This was the most common source of knowledge of classical mythology for any one with anything beyond the most primitive education from the Middle Ages to the 20^th century.

Other

 Dante: The Divine Comedy. I find Mark Musa's translation the most accessible. There are also good translations by Alan Mandelbaum and by John Ciardi.

Calderón de la Barca: The Great Stage of the World. There is an adequate translation into English by George W. Brandt (out of print). CalderÓn also wrote several hundred commercial stage plays, of which the most famous in Life is a Dream. The best translations of his serious plays, I think, are those of Edwin Honig. There are not a lot of English translations, so you have to take whatever you can find. If you read German, there are excellent translations of the Corpus Christi plays by Joseph von Eichendorff, and many good translations of the commercial plays.

Berlioz: The Damnation of Faust (opera). My favorite recording is that conducted by Igor Markevich (Deutsche Grammophon).

Link to Albrecht Dürer's Adoration of the Magi (1/7/03)

Structure of Act I (2/6/03)