(Non)typical Role of the Ancient Greek Tragedies’ Translator Ancient Greek tragedies were written by their authors to be performed on the Athenian stage and the shape of this stage with its technical devices was included in characters’ lines. However, there is a fundamental difference between the stage those plays were written for and the modern stage on which any drama translation may potentially be realized. The time span too poses a great difficulty for a translator as those plays belong to a culture we probably cannot truly access any more. According to Jerzy Ziomek, every text from the past needs to be adapted nowadays. But does it mean that a translator of any ancient drama aware that those plays were written to be performed on stage, can for various reasons, whether literary or theatrical, take on the role not only of the first reader, but also of the first producer of a given play, thus adapting it to the modern theatre stage?
Stage directions in the translation of drama (in the Aeschylus’ Oresteia)We all know that in the ancient tragedies there are no written stage directions. But it does not mean that there are no stage instructions. Without no doubts the fifth century BC tragedies were the theatre productions. And they were influenced by the Athenian theater of the day – its natural location, architecture, theatre equipment and stage design. In every age the drama is influenced by the theatre of its days. The authors of the translations I am interested in this article inserted the stage directions in their translations. And I would like to examine what kind of staging they suggest. And whether they are devoid or not of the influences of or the references to the stages and theatres of authors’ time.
Christian Antigone
Sophocles’ Antigone is one of the most famous ancient tragedy in Polish culture and it is also most often translated one into Polish. In 1939/1940 Juliusz Osterwa, famous actor, director and leader of the Reduta theatre, translated Sophocles’ Antigone into Polish. The outbreak of the II World War, that moved Osterwa very deeply, and his ideas of the Christian roots of European culture as well as the ideas of the crisis of spirituality in modern culture, that crystallized at that time, caused that he filled his translation of Greek tragedy, on its every possible level, with as many elements connected with Christian religion as possible. It makes Osterwa’s Antigone one of the units in the long translation chain, in which Greek Antigone becomes Polish Antigone. But most of all it makes Osterwa’s Antigone very significant and characteristic witness of its own time.
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