Highlights from Translation Portfolios
Spring 2021
Elise De Biasio’s “Translating Antiquity” https://elisemarie28.wixsite.com/translatingantiquity/translations
Finglass, P J. “Commentary - Sophocles: Oedipus the King.” Cambridge Core, Cambridge University Press, Mar. 2018, www.cambridge.org/core/books/sophocles-oedipus-the-king/commentary/86A16A5A910737E8CAD487AE4F06739D/core-reader.
“Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus Francis Storr, Ed.” Translated by Francis Storr, Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus, Line 1186, www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0191%3Acard%3D1186.
Steadman, Geoffrey, translator. Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus: Greek Text with Facing Vocabulary and Commentary. 2015, Wordpress, geoffreysteadman.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/oedipus-july17w.pdf.
William Lawrence’s
SPHINXRIDDLE.gif and MEDEA.gif
My first translation is essentially meant to be a word text game that replicates the scene in which the Sphinx met Oedipus and gave him the riddle. You are essentially meant to play the role of Odysseus and if you answer the question correctly you win otherwise you lose. I added a little more customization by having the Sphinx only respond in my version of Broken Italian. I chose this translation because I thought about how Professor Alessandro talked about the Matrix movie and I started to imagine the Sphinx as this sort of supercomputer. So from there I wanted to somehow integrate technology into my translation. The best way I thought to do so was creating a nice simple game. The Italian part was more of a last minute addition. I thought that by adding in the Italian it could be a sort of double translation since Computer Programming in itself is a type of language.
For my second translation (of Medea) I chose to do something that I did for the Oedipus translation. I created a short text game reenacting the scene where Medea has to make a decision on whether or not she would kill her kids. I chose this scene specifically because to me this is Medea’s make it or break it moment. This is what to me makes her no longer a redeemable character. So I decided it would be a fun little experiment to make a little game out of the moment. The player is essentially Medea and is given the choice on whether or not you will murder your kids. Based on the decision there’s a different result.
Juliette Choi’s Dark Humor Oedipus
Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex Lines 300-318
O: Teiresias! Tiresias, Teiresias, Tiresias….
You who are unaided by eyesight still has a grasp on everything,
both on things taught and on things unspoken,
both on heavenly affairs and on earthly affairs.
You have no eyes, yet you are aware
of the sort of plague that is present within our city.
Lord, you alone are our protector and savior.
If you somehow did not hear the news,
Phoebus sent back to us an answer to our question
that the only release from this plague comes
from first learning who killed Laius,
and then to kill them or expel them from our land.
[You see that we are in a tight spot here, and I’m desperate.]
Do not refuse to grant us the voice of the birds,
or any other prophetic ways that you come upon,
rescue yourself,
rescue the city,
rescue me,
rescue us all
from the stain left by the dead man.
For we are in your hands:
[Let me remind you that] the most noble work for a man is to help those in need.
T: Aaahhhhhh (cries of lament)
I shouldn’t have come…
For I know this well, but I forgot…
How terrible wisdom is when it does not benefit the one who is wise!
I translated a portion of Oedipus Rex that I have always considered to be the most tragically comedic. And in that sense, I translated the eighteen lines with dark humor seeping in. At first, I remained true to the Greek. But then I realized that I disliked my literal translation and started all over again with a more liberal approach. I am not sure if this was correctly done, or if it could even be considered a “translation”. I kept in mind Oedipus’ character as a responsible king who is desperate to find a solution to the plague running rampant in his city. And I hope his character and predicament came through in this translation.
Some things I have deliberately done is accentuate Teiresias’ blindness (“Eyesight” and “no eyes”) because I appreciate the dichotomy between the knowledge based on sense/mind and the knowledge based on sight. In addition, I referenced some Catholic phrasing (most commonly heard in mass) for some added dramatic-ness – “Lord, you alone are our savior”. This is by no means a beautiful translation, but I had a lot of fun doing this exercise. It was my first time expressing my own feelings/thoughts regarding a passage while I translate.
Below is my literal translation (just for some guidance):
O: Tiresias, unaided by eyesight, knows all/both on things taught and on things unspoken, /both on heavenly affairs and on earthly affairs./Even though you cannot see, you are aware /of the sort of plague that is present within our city. /We find you alone to be our protector and savior, Lord./If you somehow did not hear the news, /Phoebus sent back to us an answer to our question/that the only release from this plague comes /if we learn those who killed Laius,/and kill them or expel them from our land./Do not refuse to grant us the voice of the birds,/or any other prophetic ways that you come upon, /rescue yourself and the city,/rescue me,/rescue us all from the stain left by the dead man./For we are in your hands – the most noble work for a man is to help those in need.
Erin Chung’s Objects
THE ANDROID SPHYNX While studying depictions of Oedipus and the Sphinx on the Ancient Greek vases, I was struck by the being of the Sphinx and mediated on how her hybridity would be translated through a modern lens. Born out of myth and poetry, the Sphinx represents a tension between humanity and animalism. As portrayed on the vases, the Sphinx possesses the head and breasts of a human woman while the remainder of her body is characterized by features of lion, serpent, and eagle. Despite the fact that the Sphinx shares physical human characteristics and speaks the tongue of Oedipus and other men, she is categorized as a monster in Greek mythology. While this characterization may be attributed to her actions being perceived as crimes against humans or her actual parentage in the myths, it raises the question of what it means to be human in Ancient Greece. This question continues to permeate the minds of people today but is conveyed through the body of the android. Similar to the Sphinx, the android is a hybrid being with apparent human features but is also blended with human-created technology. Throughout the genre of science fiction, androids have represented a tension between humanity and technology and much like the myths that include the Sphinx, multiple modes of media have explored androids as antagonizers to humans. It seems that in Ancient Greece, monsters who were typically hybrid (the Minotaur, Echidna, the Centaur etc.) offered a vessel to project anxieties and fears into, and letting the human hero defeat the beings to assuage these feelings. In a world that is increasingly globalized and industrialized, androids seemingly take the place of these Greek hybrid creatures. As previously mentioned, we as humans have created endless literature, film, and art projecting our anxieties and fears about the future into android bodies. There are added complexities to both bodies in which hybridity isn’t always demonized but there’s always a wariness attached to human adjacent beings, especially those created by humans. Both the Sphinx and the android are created by human intelligence and imagination, and this similarity of creation contributes to my belief that the hybrid body of the Sphinx can be translated through time into the hybrid body of the android. In regards to my visual depiction of this translation, I created another form of hybridity by blending elements of a modern android with the human depiction of the Sphinx on the traditional Greek vase (pictured below). Oedipus was omitted from the visual in order to gaze upon the hybrid body without the direct association and comparison to the human body. I kept the graphics of the original vase to better contextualize my translation and emphasize the temporal aspect of the translation.
NEVERTHELESS SHE PERSISTED Of all the Greek tragedies we have read and the films we have seen, Medea is by far my favorite story due to the complexity that the titular character is given by both Euripdes and Pasolini. The betrayals by Jason and the land she now belongs to are harsh, and evoked within me a strong sense of compassion for Medea, even as she began to commit morally inexcusable acts. Though Medea is firmly rooted in antiquity, the betrayals she faces feel strangely modern down to Jason’s gaslighting and the prejudice she faces for her ancestry. With this temporal deja vu, Medea’s self-advocacy and revenge fit neatly inside the “Good For Her” cinematic universe whose origin was pioneered by “Film Twitter” and includes films like Gone Girl and Midsommer. In all respects, the GFHCU should be something to root for; in real life and life on screen female rage is often stifled and women do have a lot to be mad about. However, this universe and the attitude surrounding it is dominated by whiteness and reeks of this new wave of feminism that saturates the consumer market. With this in mind, I decided to translate Medea and the female rage infused within the story into a commodity that our hyper-consumerist society would potentially buy. Amazon was an easy choice to house my product and had over 30,000 results when “feminism” was typed into the search bar. I refocused on the phrase “Nevertheless She Persisted,” predominantly used by white women and also aptly describes Medea. No one can deny that she persisted, not stopping even after she murdered her husband’s new wife and her own children. This tagline also may reveal the blind idolization of women in any power without regard to how they ascended to the position. Like Medea, how much of that power came at the expense of others? My next refocus was on a product that seemed like an absurd product to advertise women empowerment yet continues to have a market and landed on the mug. For the very real price of $17.95 (and free shipping) someone can become the owner of a “Nevertheless She Persisted” mug and in my collections of translations one can drink their morning coffee as their favorite girl boss smirks down at them. This is not the first iteration of feminism to cause alienation among women with other marginalised identities and will in no doubt be the last. Just as the story of Medea has persisted for thousands of years with truths still relevant today, the movement for the liberation of all women will continue to exist too, hopefully without the fake empowerment mugs though.
SEARCHING FOR CASSANDRA “I call upon the Sun in prayer against that ultimate shining when the avengers strike these monsters down in blood, that they avenge as well one simple slave who died, a small thing, lightly killed.” Agemmenon, Line 1323-1326. Cassandra sat heavy in my mind as I finished reading Agenmmenon and I was dismayed to not see her mentioned again in Aeschylus’ trilogy. The backstory of Cassandra’s capture is as tragic as her demise and the lack of justice for her character brought to mind the millions of women who have been and are human trafficking victims. Like Cassandra, many of these women have never seen justice and it’s almost unimaginable to fathom the number of women who have been stolen since thousands of years ago. In a report from the United Nations Department of Drugs and Crime in 2016, it affirmed that the majority of human trafficking victims are women who are forced into marriages and sexual slavery. Though the myth of Cassandra is fictional, there is no doubt that women in that time period also experienced the abuse in which Cassandra faced and that women all over the world today face too. I translated Cassandra’s story into two mediums intertwined with each other. The first layer being the milk carton and the second layer being a photographic contextualisation. While “missing” milk cartons have been out of use for decades, they still culturally fascinate me in regards to this juxtaposition of mundanity and horror. Imagining pouring milk for my cereal while a missing child stares back at me feels unsettling while the amber alerts received now have a stronger sense of urgency. The longevity of these faces is much different than the fleetingness of amber alerts and this temporal aspect also formed a connection to the longevity of Cassandra’s missingness. These missing children would sit for a week with people or however long it took to finish a half gallon of milk, while Cassandra has sat with us for centuries. For all of these reasons, I included Cassandra’s missing person information on a finished milk carton I had at home bringing her into the present and also a forgotten past. Deciding on her photo was difficult as many visuals of her include her rape by Ajax and I did not want to focus her trauma over herself. I chose a painting of Cassandra by artist Evelyn De Morgan (Cassandra, 1898) which situates her in front of burning Troy (which still has associated trauma) but it centers Cassandra with dignity. Moving onto the second layer of the translation is the photography component and one’s interpretation of the image. I deliberately crushed the milk carton and put it in our recycling bin to mirror Cassandra’s demise and how she was essentially forgotten in the rest of the trilogy. Her quote in lines 1323-1326 Agamemnon focus on justice and remembrance which I do not think she received in the myth or tragedy. Though I was unable to watch Pasolini’s Notes on an African Oresteia, I was informed by peers that Pasolini’s Cassandra was cast as a Black woman. It is also important to acknowledge that Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color are populations that are highly vulnerable to human trafficking. In 2010, the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice reported that 3⁄4 of trafficking victims were women of color while 94% of victims were women.1 Was it Pasolini’s intention to bring light to this issue? Based on reactions to his film idea, I doubt that was in his mind. Regardless, it is horrifying the extent to which Cassandra’s story is true in real life both thousands of years ago and today. The milk carton photograph seeks to highlight this repetitiveness of stolen women throughout time.
VISUALIZING SONG Out of all the translations I’ve completed, my translation on Pasolini’s Notes Towards an African Orestes was the piece that felt most disconnected from myself. In the midst of a particularly hard day dealing with my concussion symptoms I translated the jazz session in the film visually into an abstract painting. Without viewing the video, I listened to the session helmed by saxophonist Gato Barbieri in conjunction with Yvonne Murray and Archie Savage and painted what I heard. I was excited to take on this project but slowly succumbed to the heaviness in my head and thus frustration. I bring up my feelings regarding this translation to raise questions about translations themselves. Notes Towards an African Orestes centers around Pasolini attempting to translate Aeschylus’s Oresteia into a film and also “African” culture. Pasolini’s ignorance and racism is on full display for viewers, highlighting the pitfalls of universalism. The concept of universalism is a noble one, uniting all people through ideas with universal applicability. However, it ignores the power imbalances in the way the world is constructed which in turn grossly disregards important differences. I wonder how the concept of translation fits into this narrative of universalism and partially explore that idea in my translation. In addition to playing with this idea, there were also other decisions that went into my creative vision. The choice to paint on newspaper stemmed out of my inability to find any paper I liked and was also a nod to the construction of words. When hearing or seeing the word “language,” my reactionary association are words themselves. What is language though if not the understanding of accumulated meanings through signs? I used a newspaper that is full of words, full of the English language as a backdrop against painting, a medium that can also be considered language. The choices of color were those available to me but I like the red as the performance gave off warm tone energy despite its shrillness. As the song played, I initially matched my strokes to the length of the saxophone notes but about halfway switched to painting the overall energy of the piece. At times, many of the saxophone notes were translated into red wispy tendrils that went up into the air, trying to escape. The auditory desire to escape became more desperate throughout the song, resulting in chaotic red like a geyser about to erupt. There was also a rumbling hum underneath the saxophone which I represented through the black mass on the bottom left corner. As the voices of Murray and Savage joined Barbieri’s saxophone, the tendrils became more concentrated strokes layering on top of each other. Some of the anxious strokes also appeared not from my interpretation but from my increasing head pressure as I listened to the performance. This brings me back to my interest in universalism. As I was translating the song, I began to infuse the translation with my own projections of self that were not particularly friendly to the primary material. All I wanted was for it to end and I wondered how much of that affected the painting I created. No translation across any medium can be neutral and I believe part of the beauty lies in the re-imagination of the original but there’s also danger when the projections of self are unto concepts/mediums/cultures that should not be translated. My painted translation of the performance in Notes Towards an African Orestes does not make a definitive statement on the relationship between translation and universalism as I still do not know all my thoughts myself, but it intends to ask those questions.
EXCAVATING MEMORY Sharim deserves special gratitude for this translation as his discussion in class of Marilyn Monroe as a “modern myth” is what inspired this idea. In Pasolini’s La Rabbia, his discussion of Monroe and the accompanying images of her were most salient in my mind after finishing the film. Whether this is because of her sustained cultural celebrity, the discussion being one of the last parts of the film, or it being the most accessible narrative part, Monroe sticks in the mind. In one interpretation of the film, Pasolini’s musings on Monroe’s beauty speaks to the perversion of private beauty as it is stolen by the public. When beauty is discussed in relation to Monroe, it is immediately assumed to be physical beauty but I also wonder if it can refer to beauty of the private individual. There is beauty within each person that we may never know unless it is shown but for celebrities like Monroe, it's immediately stolen as soon as one becomes a public figure. Pasolini states “the world first taught it to you, and so took your beauty as its own.” To know one’s self, one is aided by the world. Though there are inherent truths within one’s self always, there is also constant interaction with the natural world and the social world that impacts and constructs who we are as an individual. Later if one becomes a public figure, their personhood is essentially stolen from them, subjected to the projections of assumptions on their identity by other people, their beauty feteshized or scorned, and their lives becoming stories for entertainment. In this regard, Monroe’s construction as a celebrity is eerily similar to that of a Greek tragedy, playing out for the audience’s entertainment. With this in mind, I decided to translate Monroe’s celebrity through time, using a terracotta pot to represent the Greek vases and pots used to visually depict myth and tragedy. My mother graciously allowed me to hammer one of her pots into pieces so that I could mod-podge Monroe’s face to the shards. These shards were used to evoke this relationship through time, the way one might excavate ancient artifacts. The shards are also meant to represent the way Monroe’s personhood was not carefully handled, leaving her vulnerable to hurt and danger. The image was specifically chosen as one of the most recognizable images of Monroes; the same one that Andy Warhol used. Searching for her image was an interesting experience as she looks different in each one, which once again speaks to the way the public consumes her image and creates another image of her in their minds until she no longer looks like herself. There is real tragedy in this robbery and I wonder if we will ever heed this warning in constructing celebrity. Just like the tragedies read in class, Monroe’s story persists in the cultural consciousness becoming that of a modern myth.
Artemis Kassel-Venetis’ visualizations
Liam Mears
Variation on La Rabbia
Nature/Artifice
“I rise into heaven with a simple heart, great because my nation is great. Goodbye, world of uncertain fathers and certain sons! I fly to the west, and my flight absorbs in my good heart the evil that dominates the world. Rome is freed, seen from the height that is moral judgement, from the dark of incense like a gas scattered by the breeze of a spirit of pure feelings. I fly to the west, and my passing is like that of a simple swallow announcing that May is irreparable. A civilization triumphed down there. Suddenly I announce its death-agony. In Paris, in London, a human fairytale collapses, a great history with its thought and its poetry. I fly to the west, and my life as an enemy peacefully invading the sky, Washington curbs its rage against the advancing people. Rediscovers an impulse of love, under my purifying flight, that world also without hope. I land again among the simple hearts of my comrades, great because our nation is great. And with me I bear the awareness of a new sun, till today lost in the future and now won, old hope of unforeseen love.” (La Rabbia, 48:36-51:03)
For my final translation, I wanted to practice my camera and editing skills in anticipation for hopefully doing some sort of film project for the final. I really liked this excerpt from the end of Pasolini’s section in La Rabbia. This is from the scene that begins with an astronaut going into space and ends with him returning. I thought this section was a good contrast between the archaic and the future; Pasolini uses nature similes but also seems to appreciate some aspects of civilization and culture while condemning others. For my video, I tried to find short clips that match the words, showing the beauty in nature and the ugliness of modernity. I show birds when he discusses flight, I frame nature through bars when he talks about the moral judgement Rome seems to be free from. With a civilization that triumphed, I show a small statue amidst bushes and trees, a piece of culture among nature. The clip of the American flag is one of my favorites, as the sun shines bright in the sky framing the flag in darkness (this was kind of an accident, but I love how it turned out!). I also want to point out the differences between shots of the natural and shots of the material. Many of the shots of flowers and trees get very close to the objects, highlighting the immense and beautiful detail contained in such a small thing. Compare this to some of the material objects featured, that contain so little detail it was hard for me to even pick a point to focus on (i.e. the bench against a gray wall, the giant machine thing outside the KINSC). I also loved using the clip of the ant when Pasolini talks about his simple-hearted comrades (we are all just ants!!). I chose to end this short video the way I started it, by looking up at the sky through the tree branches. For this shot however, instead of looking directly up I captured the reflection of the sky in the small brook. This allows the viewer to be both looking down at earth, appreciating the beauty, the delicate and ferocious, simple and complex of our world, but also at the sky, towards the heavens and towards something beyond ultimately so much bigger and incomprehensible than ourselves. Additionally I played around a lot with the focus on the camera, which I just thought was very cool (I love the shot of the super close up on the leaves, with a focus shift to reveal the huge ugly ice-skating rink in the background). Also I put cicadas in the background, because I liked how Pasolini used them in Oedipus Rex. I thought it was really peaceful to watch all these shots of flowers and birds and such with cicadas in the background.
The Watchman’s Speech from Agamemnon, accompanied by “Aulos Improvisation on Bellermann Exercise No. 35”, performed by Callum Armstrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JFa8BZt2B0
For this translation, I chose to recite aloud the Watchman’s Speech from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. I wanted to be able to present the material in a way that was closer to the original form of performance than simply reading text is. I’m not an actor, but I tried my best to read emphatically and add character to the reading, while also trying to preserve some of the poetry in the original texts. Additionally I had been reading about recreations of ancient Greek choral music, and found a wonderful performance of improvisation on an Aulos recreation based off the one in the Louvre (this is from the same concert Elise was talking about with the “Orestes” musical reconstruction). It is performed by Callum Armstrong, and I loved the way it fit with the Watchman’s Speech. The speech itself is the first line spoken in the play, and to me serves an introductory narrative role. It’s like the voiceover in a movie intro setting the scene, and I thought the solo Aulos was perfect for a musical introduction. It begins softly and simply with a long drone, and plays somewhat troubling or eerie sounding music over the first part of the speech, which shows the Watchman’s sadness at the absence of Agamemnon. It gets more intense and chaotic after the Watchman sees the light from Troy, setting up the source of conflict for the play. I don’t think there would have been music behind this speech in Aeschylus’ performance, but I thought it fit really well and I loved to imagine what it might have looked like with background characters and scene changes as in a more modern musical with an overture.
This song may be thought of in three parts: the ancient, the transition, and the modern. Throughout I’ve tried to use motifs, as we’ve discussed the somewhat operatic nature of Pasolini, as well as the importance of motifs to improvisation in jazz. The beginning is meant to be slightly uncomfortable, and somewhat eerie. I use modal melodies on a guitar over a repeated pedal note to invoke feelings of antiquity and traditional music, however the beginning section may also contain two distinct musical phrases. The first part with guitar alone is a direct copy of the melody played at 32:20 in Appunti per un’Orestia, a theme also repeated at other times in the film. This sets up the theme for the final section of the song, which repeats this melody in the form of chord changes (Emaj-C-D-Emaj). The second part brings in the trombone and introduces a new melody using the Phrygian mode (a minor scale, in this case it is equivalent to the C Major scale but in the key of E). The distinct lowered second continues to sound like an older style of music, while the addition of the trombone makes it feel more like it could be European music from the early to mid 20th century. All of these phrases begin in the minor key and end in the Major, foreshadowing where the song is going.
The transitional section is fairly simple and straightforward in its construction, although some of the themes are maybe not explicit enough to be relevant. It is a piece of the song “My Favorite Things”, which I originally took inspiration from the John Coltrane version, because the thematic melody from Appunti per un’Orestia is also precisely the ending to “Afro Blue”, another fantastic Coltrane song. After recording it, I remembered perhaps the most famous version from “The Sound of Music”, and thought it fitting to include as a transition from ancient to modern; “The Sound of Music” provides a view of this idea of ancient to modern in that it is about fleeing from the tyrannical misappropriation of ancient Roman culture in the form of the fascist Nazi regime. Additionally, although this section is only guitar, it is layered with a reverb pedal, both to add to the eeriness as well as furthering the transition to more modern styles of music. This melody was also useful for transitioning from free-time to a structured waltz. This time instead of ending on the E Major chord, I end with a leading tone to make the beginning of the final section feel more resolved, as is very typical in the more “modern” western classical tradition (by “modern” I mean mostly the 17th-19th centuries).
The final section is not meant to be any genre in particular, but it is meant to feel entirely modern. As I mentioned earlier, it vamps on E (and Esus4) before the only chord changes, which are the thematic C to D and back to E. This section could not be more different from any of Pasolini’s other songs. The melodies are very reserved and not abstract at all, essentially using only the major scale, however here is where I follow Pasolini’s lead in drawing from jazz. The melodies and counter-melodies are improvised, using rhythmic and harmonic motifs as well as a sort of faux collective improvisation. This was done by recording the guitar improvisation first, and then recording the accompanying improvisation on the trombone. Many of these were recorded with multiple takes so it is not purely improvisational, and this was done so I could have some more creativity with reusing melodic and rhythmic motifs, but the process itself very much was improvisational.
Shantanu Dew’s
The Tableaux
For my first translation, I was inspired by both Sophocles’s play and the accompanying essay by Audréne Eloit for Pasolini’s adaptation. One thing that struck me was the idea of Sophocles taking a stance with what he was trying to say about human nature and how that actually did go against this Sophists idea of what humans can know. I thought it would be interesting to run under a different assumption than Sophocles. The essay talks about “Man” as being one singular umbrella that all people can fall under. This would insinuate there are certainties of human nature. It would almost be hypocritical to say this as one thing the play desires to show that humans cannot ever fully grasp all the knowledge there is. It is further interesting to think about this idea of universality maybe only existing within the hierarchies that humans impose on themselves, largely as a result of religion, thus creating a circle of hubris.
By translating the play/film into tableaux, I had to take on different representations. There were certain things that I had to change from the film form to the tableaux form to still capture some sort of essence but adapt it to the medium of the tableaux. One of the big ones was the idea of the brute image mentioned by Pasolini. This idea struck me as being significant as with film, there is a large amount of freedom in the images you can capture. What this means is that those immediate images you get in your dreams and in your head can be somewhat fairly replicated, as you can capture motion, audio, images, and dialogue in the film. Of course there will always be something lost when translating something from your own self into a language that others can read, but that is true about any medium. Tableaux are more limited as they are forced to have a still human subject, at least in their most basic definition. Those two ideas are not innate to film. Of course you can still change the setting and add some audio to a tableau, especially if it is a live presentation, but due to limited options I was not able to do that.
The goal was to represent emotions and/or actions (although the two are intertwined and may replace each other in actual representation in the tableaux) that could be considered universal truths. These were both emotions or themes I saw in the play and movie, but even more generally when thinking about people as a whole. Whether it be something basic like happiness or sadness, or something like a fall from grace, they all exist within some sort of context that I believe strips away their universality. While a movie may have more time or elements to work with to convey certain ideas, I had to try to do that solely through the person’s gesture and stillness. I have two tableaux for each pose: one is a straightforward picture, the other is taken through a mirror. What I want to represent here is how despite images or people or gestures looking the same, they are not. One cannot be deceived solely by the appearance of something. The mirror shot opposes its more “realistic” (this idea can be contested but for the sake of brevity I will say realistic) counterpart by showing a reversed shot (mirrored, if you will) despite having the same gesture. The mirror shot largely represents the eyes of the observer. Furthermore, it is forced to be taken at an angle, meaning there are certain parts of the person that are not visible like how they were in their counterpart. I also changed clothes between shots to emphasize the difference in context that there is between the true nature of something versus the context, or lack thereof, that someone else might see it through. Through these basic representations, I want to further question the idea of a universal man just by taking apart things that may be viewed as basic gestures or emotions. This can then further be extrapolated to think about what it means for all humans to full under the trap of their “own” hubris.
I’ve attached mini descriptions for the tableaux to provide some sort of reference for the motivations behind them, although I was still trying to be as unmediated with it as possible. Please feel free to disregard them if you do not agree with them. I would also like to acknowledge the absurdity/hilarity of many of these images. They are clearly very amateur but just bear with me.
Oresteia Collage
For my translation of Oresteia and Pasolini’s notes, I went with a collage of images. This is fairly amatuer but I wanted to do something that would capture certain ideas and thoughts I had with both. What I decided to focus on was the third play about the judgement. I found it fascinating how the power was taken away from the Furies and was placed in the hands of the people. I thought of the great potential that could lead to but also the great danger. The clear connection here for me was modernity. People sought to break the traditional ways of being and worked instead towards running through a more rational, bureaucratic system. Rational is of course up for debate, but the general principle of calculation sticks. The power of humans were greater but how would it unfold without some moral regulating force? Either that doesn’t exist or the structures of capitalism is that force. Greed and simplification with no regard for the person or locality. Or if that doesn’t stick, people just running through the motions with no sense of purpose or goal. Maybe they fall under the same umbrella. Regardless, I wanted to represent with these images a modern retelling of this idea of human centered judgement. This isn’t to imply that the way things unfolded beginning in the 17th century was bound to happen and was human nature. Rather that it just was what happened and is clearly centered around human judgement. I included an image of a juggernaut to explain the reckless, murderous nature of capitalism that has no center or steering. I used Joel Osteen’s church as an example of a manipulatory regulating force. Something that has a long historical backing but can be repurposed in a modern age. The London Fog shows the effects of the lack of scope by humans. The Discord logo was meant to be more positive. I thought it showed the potentials that have risen now with the internet for better organizing that can be safely private, yet still public in the way people are connected from different, but similar places and spaces. I’m simplifying much here, but the point is got.
Sharim Jones
Oedipus Sets
A king in clouds--
Once pierced by fate,
Illumination now runs him through.
His visage darkens.
Unhallowed and hollowed now,
By his own hands,
Light plucked
From a head in the clouds,
The son’s crown falls.
As day is slain
Night falls on Thebes.
I wrote this with the conclusive episode of the play in mind. I wanted to encapsulate the elements and themes of “Oedipus Tyrannus” that I thought were particularly prominent and interesting-- Oedipus hubris, his lack of self-awareness, and notions of sight and knowledge and their relationship to light and darkness. I believe that these elements and themes are integral to the play and translated them here. The poem also moves temporally from day to dusk, alluding to both the performance of the play and symbolizing the Oedipus’ own loss of light. As Oedipus is the main character, I believed that a piece centered around his issues, the central conflict/mystery, and one of the most prominent images would capture the essence of play.
Orestes
The shade of dusk encroaches upon stolen light.
The son of Argos descends on his own house,
Cloaked in friendship,
Brandishing bronze behind a polished smile:
Mirror of his mother’s demise
The queen appeals to the son that is her stranger;
The mother bares her breast:
Her final defense, an empty plea
Soft hands would not infect calloused heart
As numb hands lead cold bronze to its destiny.
The soft lament of a mother’s heart cleaved in two
Is a mournful curse let slip through tight teeth and quiet tears of blood
Warm with blood, the blade journeys home.
Heavy and worn from its brief war,
It returns to a hand cold and shaken, plagued by guilt.
Loxias’ lofty price was paid in full;
The bright deity retires giving way to those of the dark that come to claim their due.
The shades of Nyx steal upon him.
Summoned by the libation of his mother’s blood,
The ancient goddesses set on him.
Draped in bloody guilt,
the mantle of vengeance hangs from his neck like a millstone.
His mind receives no rest
Slithering back into his dreams, the phantasms poison his sanity
tormented by the recollection of his deed--
The discordant groan of his sword being pulled from bone,
The ironic taste of blood in the air as though it were his own,
The acceptance in the corner of his mother’s pained visage,
--as madness unhinges its jaw to swallow him whole.
For me, the Libation Bearers is the literal and narrative crux of the trilogy. As such, I wanted to vividly convey its events highlighting what I imagine would be the underlying emotions and responses of the characters. Also, considering the central role of the Eryines, I wanted to show them subtly existing throughout the piece as eidolon of vengeance, whether that would mean as shades or mirrors of vengeance.
Medea Un/Bound
ΜΗΔΗΑ
ΕΝ ΤΗ ΠΤΕΡΑ ΟΧΗΜΑΤΙ
ΔΕΙΝΑ ΚΑΙ ΒΑΡΒΑΡΑ
ΛΥΟΥΣΑ ΤΕ ΚΑΙ ΛΥΟΜΕΝΗ
Wound/ed
By infidelitous bonds,
Warped justice snaps at last
Strand/ed
In foreign home
Cords of parenthood
Twisted into little chains
Unstrung now
Released and made new in the flames
Long forgotten sun
Imprisoned in foreign past
Now unfettered by the fog
Breaks into morning again
I believe that Medea, both the play by Euripides and the film by Pasolini, endeavor to show us who she is. During my reading of the play, I was struck by the nature of Medea’s actions as someone who had been wronged. Medea does not remain in the space of the victim, rather she becomes the agent of her own justice (warped or otherwise), in a way playing the role of both mortal and god. I wrote this piece thinking about Medea’s relationship to attachment. In many ways, her character is both bound and unbound. Throughout the play and the film, Medea severs many of these bonds (whether they are all for selfish reasons is up for interpretation). These notions of severing bonds, being released, or being bound, inspired me to consider and utilize the Greek word λυειν. The word is multivalent and has a general sense of dissolution and severence, but interestingly it can also be defined as ‘to destroy’. I believe that this word describes Medea quite well in this context; she is both ‘loosening’/’releasing’ her bonds and ‘destroying’. I also believe that the word when used that way has a super-human element, almost godlike. This godlike quality is definitely present by the end of the play, as she would have been suspended above the stage in her chariot, similar to a god. In my first few lines, I wanted to hone in on both Medea’s foreignness and near godlike
Under the Sun
Screamed in the violent silences of shaking fists and flared nostrils
Paid for in pain and peasant blood
Damned to death and full to bursting
The floodgate of tears is always open
A cry for freedom owed
Weary hands reach out for comfort in the chaos
Asking for meaning
Where is the shepherd when the flock is lost in its worries
To ease their minds
Enthralling beauty,
a balm to the wounded world,
Is seized and enslaved,
Beaten and bled dry.
It’s corpse, mounted like a trophy
With prayerful eyes then look to the future
Blink away today and its tears,
Setting fresh sights on tomorrow.
The promise of the future,
Sent to die in an open field,
Sacrificed on the altar of the present
There is nothing new under the synthetic sun
Pasolini La Rabbia covers a range of topics and events as it investigates the source of anguish, discontent, and suffering in society. The most consistent element--as is often the case in Pasolini’s film--is the story of the people, the common people who would be most affected in the film’s changing world. Taking this into account, I tried to hone on some of his major subjects, such as: freedom, the relationship between the people and their leaders, beauty, and the future.
Margot de Abreu
EDIPO RE For this first experiment, I decided to reimagine and reinterpret the image and the concept of the sphinx by translating the physical image of the painted pottery into the digital realm. I was drawn to the idea of the Sphinx as a gatekeeper, which led me to think about what an equivalent modern boundary would be. Immediately I thought of Captcha. This technology is employed at entry points, asking users to assert themselves as humans and not computers or malware when logging into certain sites. It poses questions, short riddles, looking to determine the humanity of the respondent. The digital sphinx reaches out from the grid with her human arms and asks the User to perform their own translations before accepting them as human.
MEDEA The idea of Medea as alienated, as other, as coming from someplace different and startled by the strangeness of a new nature was what led me to this visual translation. Both images were taken on campus. I found the dead bird outside my dorm last year and took it as an omen. The text is from “Canção do Exílio” and reads: My land has palm trees/where the thrush sings. Written in the romantic style in 1846 by Goncalves Dias, who was in portugal studying law, it is one of the most recognizable Brazilian poems published.
ORESTEIA Both in the plays and in the notes towards an african oresteia is the theme of changing justice. I thought it would be interesting to put the erinye in the present in some way. The backdrop and poses of this drawing/collage come from a 2018 official Supreme Court portrait. I drew the figures in the style of the pottery we have been engaging with throughout the semester, translating it into my own hand. It is not a complete stylistic translation, as it is neither entirely my own or fully faithful to the Ancient Greek paintings.
LA RABBIA The visual richness of this film was at times overwhelming. I experienced it almost as a sequence of images, shifting and cutting without a clear reason but with underlying intention and a sense of comprising a whole. I wanted to somehow translate this still impression of the film that I had been left with into a permanent form. I returned to the footage and chose images that especially stood out to me, and then once I had them all together tried to assemble them. Close ups of the resulting pairs and trios of superimposed stills are included in the next few slides.
For this translation I worked on the last verse of “Il Canto Popolare”. I was curious about Pasolini’s poetry and my ability to make my way through the Italian using Portuguese. While watching the films in Italian, I was constantly hearing words of deformations of words that I knew, versions with different sounds or forms. I wanted to apply this to the written word and ended up with a mostly coherent Portuguese result.
Claire Hylton
This photo series is inspired by the sphinx riddle that plays such an important role in the film, the photo series by Ai Weiwei, and the Greek vase depicting Oedipus as a traveler with a walking stick. I started thinking about playing with chronology. Ai Weiwei’s photo set gives three distinct moments in time in a single viewing moment, compressing the passage of time into a frozen frame. I viewed the set as a single image, in which the pot is simultaneously held, falling, and broken. I imagine my photo set being seen in the same way. Oedipus is simultaneously a relatively young man and depicted (according to the sphinx’s riddle) as walking with three feet. He is a father and son simultaneously. His existence is a compression of chronology into a single man. I decided to take the sphinx’s riddle very literally, and depict someone in each “stage” of life simultaneously, but not in a traditional way. In each pose, the body is manipulated into an uncomfortable and uncommon pose, which was my translation of the oddity and discomfort associated with Oedipus’ chronological position. I also chose to start my series with a slightly blurry photo. The middle is not blurry, but it is not particularly sharp, and in the final photo, I pulled up the clarity in post-production. So even though this is a single viewing moment, I hoped to create a feeling of increasing clarity from the beginning to the end of the series. I consider this a translation because my goal was to capture not the words of the film or tragedy, but the emotions it creates. Watching the film, I was uncomfortable, and a little confused at times. Although the medium of photography is quite different, I hope that I’ve been able to translate an approximation of the reading and viewing experience of Oedipus Tyrannus.
The idea of Otherness is deeply important to the construction of the Medea, and this is especially evident in Pasolini’s version. Medea’s character is visually defined by her costuming, which is elaborate, dark, and very different from the costume of the Corinthians. The important turning points of the film are marked by distinct costume changes. On a different note, I was also struck, watching the film, with the power of individual frames accompanied by subtitles. As someone who is interested and invested in photography, I thought of some of the more drawn out scenes of the Medea as a collection of frames accompanied by writing because, as an English speaker, I read the film instead of listening to it. I decided to translate my experience of watching the film into photography. I chose some of the most striking frames and shot images that expressed the same emotion as what I felt. I tried to create a feeling of separation or distance (I hesitate to use the term Otherness, because I do not want to recreate the racial Otherness that Pasolini and Euripides use to characterize Medea) by the use of jarring light and color. In one photo, I included a “subtitle,” inverting the idea of subtitles lending clarity or giving translation, since most people don’t read Ancient Greek.
The poses are simple but based on the film entirely. There are several scenes in which a profile of Medea’s face is the focal point, telling us all we need to know. The angle of her face, what she is wearing, the light, and the color all tell the story, rather than actions. This film is
surprisingly stark in terms of character movement. We see lots of long, slow scenes, focused on the faces and bodies of the characters. These photos attempt to recreate that by setting a simple portrait into context through angle, light, color, and textile. I want the viewer to look at the photo and feel something, but I do not want it to be a comfortable or familiar feeling. I designed these images to have suggestive power, but to create a sense of surreal distance, which is how I felt watching Pasolini’s Medea.
NB: In an ideal world, I would be able to show this as a physical translation, instead of a photograph. I just wanted it to be clear that the artifact is the collage itself, not the photograph of it (although, I suppose the photograph is the translation of this piece into a medium viable for the pandemic world!).
La Rabbia was confusing and uncomfortable for me to watch. Given the vast expanse of space and time covered in the film, I wasn’t sure how I could translate the same feeling of the film into another medium. I decided on collage because I think it is the still-equivalent of montage filmmaking. It allowed me to combine many different materials into one piece. The line that stuck out to me the most from the film, which is repeated several times, is the Latin phrase vita brevis, ars longa. Life is short, but art is long. When watching this film, about a time and place completely different from where I am right now, this line was particularly true. This art has lasted and will continue to last longer than any of the lives shown in the film itself. It was a sad
phrase to be reminded of while watching, and seeing scenes of devastating pain. Although the world I live in is nothing like what I witnessed on screen, I tried to translate that sense through my use of newspaper clippings. I’ve been saving newspapers since the beginning of the election season, in order to freeze in time a little bit of what it was like to experience this political era. I’ve tried to work this time and the people living through it into art, which will live longer than I will. That felt resonant with the montage of historical moments, and I decided to use the newspaper as the building blocks for the Latin saying. The fundamental tension of the film seemed to be between the fading and violent past, and what the filmmakers see as the future. They’re quite different, but there’s overlap. I felt a sense of needing to build and create from what is left over from the past, to “create a new pre-history,” another interesting line from the film. I wanted to root this idea in classics, and classical reception. Everyone knows the Venus De Milo, and it’s been an object of fascination as well as a symbol of the archaic, and of beauty. So I drew her in simple pencil on sketch paper, without her head. There is such an emphasis in the middle part of this film on the view of the female body which I found to be a problematic but central part of the film. I used steel wires to represent the creation of modernity, while using the sculpture as a foundation. The figure has no head and no arms in this rendition, but the wires use those holes, and the pieces lost - the arms lost to time, the head lost to my imagination - to create a new piece altogether. But I also envisioned them as chains, translating the sense of an over-reliance and over-revering of classical antiquity as the basis of modernity.
Abhi Suresh
Slides and Sounds and Strangers
Fashion+Medea
1WordLecture on Notes towards an African Orestes
Oedipus vs. Una
Sindi Kaskaviqi
I decided to try something nice and sort of reverse what Pasolini did on the movie Notes on the Oresteia. I decided to translate the direct quotes from the reflections of Pasolini on Africa, African, and the nature there into Albanian. Then I recorded my reading of it and when I listened to the recording, I realized it sounded very different. The parts I have translated are from the introduction and the conclusion, where he talks about how sad, and monstrous Africa is and how it’s doomed to disappear.
Then I found a video of Italy and its nature and buildings and put the translated description of Africa on the clip about Italy. The clip is perfect because it comes with its own music and it’s in Italian, just like Pasolini used Ethiopian music for the background of the description of Africa.
My purpose for all this is to revert the colonial language and imagery that Pasolini uses, particularly on a country that Italy colonized and negatively affected beyond that. I used both the description of the generalized “Africa” and the Albanian language as tools to describe in reality Italy and its existence. All the monstrosity and the fear that Pasolini sees in people, we can see that exact same desperation and loss in Italy today. Applying the same description, in a language that has the most meaning and magnitude in me, to Italy intended to decolonize and, in some way, revert the gears on the way Italy refers to its ex-colonies. I realized that in the movie if you do not understand Italian and you do not read the subtitles, you feel like Pasolini is saying something romantic about the picturesque nature in his recordings. I tried to do the same thing with Albanian and hopefully I have reached my goal.
I think this translation is my favorite. I put together some pictures I have taken along the years in different places such as Niece, Bryn Mawr, and Washington D.C. I love photographing moments which make it seem like time is frozen, it’s a way for me to carry moments. So, there is a lot of stillness in the images included in this reflection, not just because of the subjects themselves but also because of the black and white filters I have used for them. They give a certain sense of darkness, voidness, and timeless to the scenery. I combined those images taken by me with direct quotes from the Medea screenplay by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The quotes each match the subjects of the pictures. I had this idea to translate from one form of visual art into another in this case from the stillness that I have encountered all the time in Pasolini’s movies. There are moments of journey in the movies, and in Medea too, but the destination always seems impossible, and the in-between is very still. It’s the moments when the characters seem and feel stuck. I think the images portray exactly the same thing through different visuals. The first series describes a detachment from earth and nature, even though they are all shots of nature and open air. They are all images from Nice that I captured in 2020 while I visited there. The real images are vivid in colors as it was a sunny beautiful day, but I think that the message of stillness and loss is portrayed better through the black and white filter.
The next image is again of a statue in Nice, with a beautiful seagull curiously standing on it, almost posing like the statue itself. This image was slightly darker in colors because that day was a cloudy one but still colorful because of the buildings in the beautiful and vibrant city.
Next up is an image I took after a nap in my Sophomore year at Bryn Mawr. The original is very dark as well but without the filter you can notice a bit of a mess and discrepancy in the background of my room.
Finally, the last two shots are from this Spring in Washington D.C. The black and white filter still holds them bright in color as cherry blossoms always are, but the subjects fit the description of life and death in the captions. At the first glance the flowers have bloomed and are all beautiful. After zooming in we can notice that among vivid beauty, there’s death. One of the branches is already drying up.
My brain is falling
There is fear, the drops come thicker,
Fate grinds more acts of terror.
Why did I lie, make lamentation?
Huge things lay the blessings
of tears soberly from a true heart
You fell, we bury.
There will be tears – the whirling steam and the ferry of her kiss
Il mio cervello cade
C’è del ansia, le gocce si gonfiano,
Il destino macina più atti di terrore.
Perché ho mentito, fato dei lamenti?
Cose grandi posano delle benedizioni
di lacrime sobrie da un cuore vero
Tu sei caduta, noi seppelliamo.
Ci saranno delle lacrime – il vapore vorticoso
e il traghetto del suo bacio
The translation of the play of Oresteia means a lot to me. I chose to make a poem out of the words of the play, and I chose to describe my health situation of being newly disabled due to some neurological disorder. I tried to portray how hard life has been with all the new challenges and all the physical and emotional pain I face as a result of my disorder. There are days when every bit of my body hurts, and I cannot physically get out of the bed. There are days when all my senses blackout episodically throughout the day and I lose contact with the outer world; it feels as if I don’t exist. There are days that I cannot remember at all because that part of the past just hasn’t registered in my brain. There are days when I forget what it is like to be normal. There are many days, on the other hand, when love gets me through all these hardships and makes me feel sheltered. There are days when I know I will recover.
I felt like the result of the initial translation from one text to another was beautiful and very personal so I tried to translate it into Italian as well. I kind of prefer the Italian version for some reason I cannot explain. Nonetheless, the magnitude in which this piece speaks to my soul, my body, and my heart is just indescribable.