Hecuba.
Beautiful Letters| N° d'inventaire | 4043 |
| Format | 11 x 18 |
| Détails | 132 p., paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 1999 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782251799490 |
Classic bilingual collection. The Trojan War has taken place: the Greek ships and their procession of captives are about to return home from the shores of Chersonesus. But the shadow of Achilles, the "best of the Achaeans," demands that he be honored with the blood of a virgin (a response to the inaugural sacrifice of Iphigenia?): the victim will be Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba. In the meantime, another shadow has appeared, the ghost of Polyxena's brother, Polydorus, killed by the Thracian king Polymestor, to whom his parents had entrusted him with many a sum of gold. Everything then converges on Hecuba, the old queen of Troy, who seems powerless, but is assisted by the resources of cunning and the complicity of the women of the chorus: her vengeance will spare the Greeks, against whom she can do nothing, and will be fully exercised on Polymestor and her children. Far from any Manichaeism, Euripides' play is a reflection on the effects of war, which reveals the hearts of men at least as much as it shapes them: subtly, but inevitably, the boundaries between Greeks and Barbarians, between victims and executioners, between humanity and bestiality waver. The adequacy of words, thoughts, and actions is unraveled, and for a long time. Euripides is decidedly a capital contemporary.
Classic bilingual collection. The Trojan War has taken place: the Greek ships and their procession of captives are about to return home from the shores of Chersonesus. But the shadow of Achilles, the "best of the Achaeans," demands that he be honored with the blood of a virgin (a response to the inaugural sacrifice of Iphigenia?): the victim will be Polyxena, daughter of Priam and Hecuba. In the meantime, another shadow has appeared, the ghost of Polyxena's brother, Polydorus, killed by the Thracian king Polymestor, to whom his parents had entrusted him with many a sum of gold. Everything then converges on Hecuba, the old queen of Troy, who seems powerless, but is assisted by the resources of cunning and the complicity of the women of the chorus: her vengeance will spare the Greeks, against whom she can do nothing, and will be fully exercised on Polymestor and her children. Far from any Manichaeism, Euripides' play is a reflection on the effects of war, which reveals the hearts of men at least as much as it shapes them: subtly, but inevitably, the boundaries between Greeks and Barbarians, between victims and executioners, between humanity and bestiality waver. The adequacy of words, thoughts, and actions is unraveled, and for a long time. Euripides is decidedly a capital contemporary.