4 Tragedy

Euripides (ca. 480-406 BC) is one of the greatest tragedians of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is the main pride of the Greek theater. Euripides' name is associated with theatrical innovations that had a profound impact on drama and continue to this day. Its main feature was that it presented traditional mythical heroes as ordinary people in unusual circumstances. This new approach led him to innovative discoveries that later authors applied to comedy, and some discoveries laid the foundation for the genre of the novel. Nevertheless, Aristotle described him as "the most tragic of poets" because he drew attention to the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way that no one before him had done. Euripides is the source from which Shakespeare, Racine, Ibsen and Strinberg originate; He has created tragedies of the highest order, in which men and women destroy each other by the power of immense love and insatiable hatred; At the same time, he was the literary ancestor of comedians as diverse as Menandros and Bernard Shaw. This book presents four tragedies of Euripides: "Alcestis" (Euripides' first play), "Electra", "Iphigenia in Tavroseli" and "Iphigenia in Avlis" (the last play). It is true that Euripides' tragedies were not banned in antiquity, but their status was the most similar to being banned: yes, Euripides was not banned by the Athenians, they simply did not like him and emphatically did not love him. They considered him a completely foreign, overly self-proclaimed and self-indulgent intellectual, a "non-popular" creator. In the end, this lack of love became mutual, and Euripides, tormented by the lack of acceptance from the Athenians, left his homeland and gave his Samare to a foreigner. The Athenians were also offended by this. The resentment of the Athenians would have been even greater if they had known how history would have behaved: ironically, not Aeschylus, who was worshiped by the Athenians and Sophocles, who was deified after his death, but Euripides, who was hated by many and the comedian of comedy writers, became the main representative of the Athenian theater in Europe, it was from him that the bridge between the ages of Rome and From Greek tragedy through Seneca to the masterpieces of Racine and Shakespeare. Levan Berdzenishvili added the translation from ancient Greek, introduction and comments.