BMCR 2009.05.35: Gregory on Matthiessen, Euripides. Hekabe. Griechische Dramen

Kjeld Matthiessen (ed.), Euripides. Hekabe. Griechische Dramen.
Berlin/New York:  Walter de Gruyter, 2008.  Pp. x, 294.  ISBN
9783110188097.  $71.00.

Reviewed by Justina Gregory, Smith College ([email protected])
Word count:  1643 words
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No fewer than three commentaries on Hekabe were published between 1991
and 2005.[[1]] This new edition and commentary may thus seem a late
arrival at the feast, but in fact Matthiessen has been engaged with the
play for more than forty years. Upon the appearance of Studien zur
Textueberlieferung der Hekabe des Euripides (Heidelberg, 1974)
Matthiessen's research on the play's manuscript tradition entered the
bloodstream, so to speak, of Euripidean studies and has been
circulating there ever since; notably, Diggle's Oxford Classical Text
of the play (1984) draws on Matthiessen's collations. Furthermore,
Matthiessen summarized his interpretation of the play in Die Tragoedien
des Euripides (Munich, 2002). Euripideans will therefore encounter in
this volume a mixture of the familiar and the fresh.

Matthiessen's Hekabe inaugurates a series of translated and annotated
editions of Greek tragedy, published by de Gruyter under the editorial
oversight of Jens Holzhausen and Bernd Seidensticker and evidently
conceived as a German counterpart to the Aris and Phillips series of
bilingual (Greek/ English or Latin/ English) texts. The double-paged
layout is designed to eliminate paging back and forth between text and
notes.  On the left side appears a line-by-line prose translation
reflecting the Greek as closely as possible. Beneath the translation is
printed as much Greek text as the facing commentary will accommodate,
and beneath the Greek text appears a selective apparatus criticus
written in German that also offers linguistic and grammatical pointers
for students reading the play in Greek. On the right side is a more
wide-ranging commentary intended to be accessible to readers without
Greek. Ancillary matter includes a translation of the play's two
hypotheses, a list of textual divergences from Diggle, and a selective
bibliography. Regrettably, there are no metrical schemes and no
indices.

The double-paged format has the advantage of providing a great deal of
information and instruction at a glance. The drawback is that the text
is broken up into distractingly small segments; moreover, the
distinction between the left and right commentaries is not consistently
observed. At 783, for example, Euripides uses a causal genitive, and
the right commentary lists five additional Euripidean examples of this
construction-- examples that will hardly interest the notional
audience. The format entails the risk that general readers may feel
overwhelmed by the amount of detail bearing on the Greek text, even as
scholars feel shortchanged.

Matthiessen's 45-page introduction covers Euripides' biography and the
play's mythical background, structure and production, while also paying
careful attention to interpretative issues. The account of Euripides'
career reaches the traditional conclusion (p. 3) that the poet's
relatively few victories (as compared to Sophocles') testify to
Athenian reservations about his work. One could object that an
alternate interpretation is possible: that the three finalists chosen
by the eponymous archon to compete at the City Dionysia had already
survived a rigorous selection process, and that to be guaranteed
funding, production, and exposure for one's plays was an accomplishment
more significant than winning first prize.

The introduction gives particular attention to the vexed question of
the play's unity. Hekabe notoriously contains two distinct actions, and
Matthiessen notes its episodic nature according to Aristotle's criteria
(p. 12), even as he acknowledges that the fourth-century, prescriptive
Poetics is not the ideal guide to fifth-century tragedy. Matthiessen
regards the play as unified both by the corpse of Polydoros, which
provides a tangible transition from the first part to the second) and
by the figure of Hekabe herself (p. 41). He sees the two actions as
unevenly weighted (p. 13), with Hekabe's vengeance on Polymestor
occupying more lines and affecting the spectators more powerfully than
the sacrifice of Polyxene; the ancient spectators, in his view, would
not have been disturbed by the young woman's death but would have
accepted human sacrifice as a given of the myth. This interpretation
does not give sufficient attention to the doubts cast on Polyxene's
sacrifice within the play. It is not the case, as Matthiessen claims
(p. 16), that Hekabe alone objects to her daughter's fate; when the
chorus leader summarizes the debate in the Greek assembly, it becomes
clear that sentiments for and against the sacrifice were "about equal"
(<greek>i)/sai pws</greek>, 131) until Odysseus intervened to sway the
crowd. The anachronistic references to fifth-century procedures that
cluster around the sacrifice of Polyxene--the allusion at 287-88, for
example, to the possibility of reconsidering a decision previously
voted by the assembly--would surely have encouraged the spectators to
regard the sacrifice from the perspective of their own time. Polyxene's
death would thus have been more disturbing to the ancient spectators
than Matthiessen acknowledges--a conclusion he should in fact welcome
as contributing to the overarching tragic effect (which he emphasizes,
p. 41) of the play.

I have no quarrel with Matthiessen's interpretation of the
Polymestor-action. As he observes (p. 20), the king of Thrace is
presented from the outset as a consummate villain, and his small sons
are not sufficiently characterized (by being allowed to speak for
themselves or by having other characters comment on their youthful
innocence, two pathos-inducing techniques exploited by Euripides in
Medea) for the audience to experience their deaths as wrenching.  I
also find much to applaud in Matthiessen's account of the main
character. Reacting against critical assessments of Hekabe as a monster
of vengeance whose prophesied transformation at the end of the play
into "a dog with burning eyes" (1265) symbolizes her loss of humanity,
Matthiessen stresses her consistency from beginning to end of the play:
the same energy that leads her to argue strenuously with Odysseus on
Polyxene's behalf (251-95) and to express the wish that Helen could
share her daughter's fate (441-43) manifests itself in her vengeance on
Polymestor. Matthiessen does not regard Hekabe's shift from suffering
to vengeful action as anomalous, for he can point to other Euripidean
female protagonists who undergo the same transformation: Medea,
Alkmene, Phaidra (p. 23).  He emphasizes what an accomplishment it is
for Hekabe to gain Agamemnon's even partial cooperation in her scheme
of vengeance, suggests that her revenge would have struck contemporary
spectators as problematic only insofar as she is a woman and a slave,
and interprets her death as both victory and liberation.  If there is
anything lacking in his account of the central character, it is that he
underplays the psychic cost of her suffering and loss as revealed at
the end of the play.  "Too long a sacrifice/ will make a stone of the
heart," says Yeats in "Easter 1916;" few characters in ancient
literature illustrate this outcome as powerfully as Euripides' Hekabe.

As a textual critic Matthiessen is steadfastly conservative; repeatedly
he rejects emendations or re-orderings championed by Diggle. At 824,
does Hekabe worry that it will be "useless" (<greek>keno/n</greek>, as
per the manuscripts) or "irrelevant" (<greek>ce/non</greek>, Nauck's
emendation, adopted by Diggle)? for her to mention Agamemnon's sexual
relationship with Kassandra? Matthiessen opts for the former, noting
that the emendation does not improve the sense. At 1162 the Trojan
women who have warmly welcomed Polymestor abruptly seize and immobilize
him; do they act in the manner "of enemies" (<greek>polemi/wn</greek>,
as per the manuscripts) or "of octopuses" (<greek>polupo/dwn</greek>,
Verrall's emendation, adopted by Diggle)?  Again Matthiessen opts for
the manuscript reading, citing Euripidean parallels to justify his
choice. He retains the traditional ordering of the lines at 415-20 and
defends the general reflections at 599-602  and 831-32--all excellent
decisions in my view (it's to be expected that I would think so, since
they coincide with the choices I made in my own edition).   Sometimes
to be sure, he defends the indefensible (that is, he opts for readings
I rejected): the awkward double comparison involving
<greek>o(poi=a</greek> and <greek>o(/pws </greek>at 398, for example,
or (at 974-75) Hekabe's self-contradictory explanation of why she
cannot look Polymestor in the eye. At other times Matthiessen seems
excessively laissez-faire, as when he assumes despite striking metrical
parallels that there is no responsion between Hecuba's monody (154-74)
and Polyxene's (197-210).  Matthiessen's textual choices are carefully
considered, however, and he usually (though not invariably) explains
his reasoning. His Hekabe is less tidy and stylish than Diggle's, but
it may well be closer to what Euripides wrote.

Matthiessen's learning and experience are in evidence throughout. On
easy terms with the entire classical tradition, he cites Scaliger from
1561 as readily as Hose from 2008.[[2]] His approach is refreshingly
relaxed; rather than belabor every detail he is content to let some
problems remain unresolved, as when he comments (in connection with the
chorus' puzzling description of reflections in a mirror at 925) that he
"prefer[s] to let the expression stand, in all its mysteriousness." He
has a preference for straightforwardness that extends even to
punctuation; at 875, for example, he decides against the dashes that
would mark <greek>tha/rsei </greek>as parenthetical. Common sense and
suspicion of what he deems over-subtlety is a hallmark of his method.
In the introduction he evinces skepticism that some of the secondary
themes detected by critics (Schlesier[[3]] on Dionysiac elements, for
example, or Kovacs and Gregory[[4]] on the role of the winds) are
relevant or significant. In the commentary itself he warns (on 1017 ff.
and 1267 f.) against attempts to see inside characters' minds or
reconstruct their histories. He expresses doubt (e.g. on 1003f.) that
the spectators would have been capable of recalling prior allusions or
putting together the verbal patterns detected by ingenious critics--but
surely this is to underestimate the sensitivity to language of the
fifth-century spectators, denizens of a culture that was still
primarily oral. Matthiessen's consistent and laudable aim is to
reconstruct the perspective of the contemporary spectator, but as
happens to many a critic, that reconstructed perspective coincides with
the critic's own insights and limitations.

This is not the major edition of the play Euripideans have been waiting
for; that, according to Matthiessen (p. 45), is still to come. In the
meantime this commentary will ensure that Hekabe continues to receive
the attention it deserves.

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Notes:


1.   C. Collard, Hecuba  (Warminster, 1991); J. Gregory, Hecuba
(Atlanta, 1999); K. Synodinou, Hekabe (Athens, 2005).

2.   J. C. Scaliger, Poetices Libri Septem  (Lyon, 1561); M. Hose,
Euripides, Der Dichter der Leidenschaften (Munich, 2008).

3.   R. Schlesier, "Die Bakchen des Hades," Metis  3 (1988) 111-35.

4.   D. Kovacs,  Euripidea Altera (Leiden, 1996) 63-64; J. Gregory,
Hecuba  (Atlanta, 1999) xxix-xxxi.