A bold new translation of this shockingly modern classic work by Forward Prize-winning poet, Robin Robertson
Euripides is thought to have lived between 485 and 406 BC. He is
considered to be one of the three great dramatists of Ancient
Greece, alongside Aeschylus and Sophocles. He is particularly
admired by modern audiences and readers for his characterization
and astute and balanced depiction of human behaviour. Medea is his
most famous work.
Robin Robertson is from the north-east coast of Scotland. He is the
author of three collections of poetry: A Painted Field (1997),
winner of the 1997 Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection),
the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and the Saltire Society
Scottish First Book of the Year Award; Slow Air (2002); and
Swithering (2006). He is also the editor of Mortification: Writers'
Stories of their Public Shame (2003). In 2004, he was named by the
Poetry Book Society as one of the 'Next Generation' poets, and
received the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts
and Letters. Robin Robertson's third poetry collection, Swithering
(2006), was shortlisted for the 2005 T. S. Eliot Prize and won the
2006 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year). In
2013 Robin Robertson was awarded the Petrarca-Preis. He lives and
works in London.
The purpose of translation is to set a play free. This is just what
Robin Robertson does. In his lucid, free-running verse, Medea's
power is released into the world, fresh and appalling, in words
that seem spoken for the first time.
*Anne Enright*
The greatest works demand constant re-translation to meet the
changing culture of the age, and Robin Robertson has given us a
Medea fit for our times; his elegant and lucid free translation of
Euripides' masterpiece manages the trick of sounding wholly
contemporary but never merely 'modern' - and will be an especially
lucky discovery for those encountering the play for the first
time.
*Don Paterson*
Robertson is master of the dark and wounded, the torn complexities
of human relations, and Medea offers a perfect match for his
sensibilities. This is an urgent, contemporary and eloquent
translation
*A.L. Kennedy*
This version of Medea is vivid, strong, readable, and brings
triumphantly into modern focus the tragic sensibility of the
ancient Greeks
*John Banville*
His version of Medea feels newly minted thanks to the pitch
perfection of his linguistic choices. Robertson's skill lies in
bringing the words of a long dead Greek to life, not merely to live
but to cavort in the mind's ear
*Scotland on Sunday*
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