The Translation of William Shakespeare’s Plays and the Changing
Concept of Womanhood in Greece (1875-1955)
by
Dalpanagioti Dimitra
Thesis submitted
to the Department of English Language and Culture,
School of English, Faculty of Philosophy,
In fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
November 2020
Acknowledgements
For the completion of this thesis I am most indebted to my supervisor, Professor
Emerita Tina Krontiris, for inspiring me, patiently guiding me and unfailingly encouraging me to keep going. She has always been a role model for me for her integrity, impartiality and diligence. I also wish to thank Professor Emerita Efi Avdela and Professor Alexandra Lianeri, the members of my Supervisor Committee, for their feedback and encouraging comments on my work. I have also enjoyed the generous support of my sister, Thomai Dalpanagioti, and my brother-in-law, George Vlachos; I thank them both for their kind remarks, editorial input and assistance with the collection of bibliographic resources. I am grateful to my husband, Vasilis
Papakyriakou, and our two-year-old daughter, Katerina, for bearing with me during the research and the stressful months of finishing the thesis. Finally, I express my deepest gratitude to my parents, Vasilis and Anthoula Dalpanagioti, to whom I dedicate this thesis in acknowledgement of their whole-hearted and unconditional support at every level during the long years of my research.
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Abstract
The present thesis engages in the ongoing academic debate about translation and gender by exploring the representation of William Shakespeare’s female dramatic characters in Greek translations of his plays. The study covers the time span of eighty years (c.1875-1955), an important period in terms of the changes that profoundly affected Greek women’s identity and social position. Five chapters constitute the main body of the thesis; each focuses on the translation of one or two Shakespeare plays and includes parallel comparative examination of preceding translations of each play.
The exploration of the transformations of Shakespeare’s women begins with
Dimitrios Vikelas’s appropriation of Desdemona (1875) and Lady Macbeth (1882) according to the model of womanhood suggested by the ideology of the upper-middle class mercantile diaspora. The study then focuses on Konstantinos Theotokis’s progressive reading of Desdemona (1915), which was influenced by his socialist, woman-friendly views. Next comes Nikos Velmos’s reconstruction of Cleopatra
(1924) as a sympathy-triggering victim of love in the context of the experimentations of the 1920s. The final two main chapters examine Vasilis Rotas’s representation of
Gertrude and Ophelia (1938) before World War II, and his portrait of Cleopatra
(1954-1955) after World War II. My analysis of the above translations proves the adaptability of Shakespeare’s women and demonstrates that in being recurrently translated they are also reinterpreted in ways that, among other things, reflect the changing concept of womanhood in Greece and the translators’ attitude towards the woman issue. The reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s women seems to move, though in a non-linear fashion, from a conservative perspective of womanhood towards more
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progressive images of women, which criticize patriarchal conventions, and even reach the point of embracing androgyny.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction: Theoretical and Historical Considerations 1
i. The study of Shakespeare translation abroad and in 4
Greece
ii. The historical context of the study: the woman issue 12
in Greece
iii. Theoretical and methodological considerations 16
iv. The time span of the study and the selection of 36
translators and translations
Chapter 2 Dimitrios Vikelas’s Foundations for the Characters of 41
Desdemona (1875) and Lady Macbeth (1882)
i. Gender issues in the newly-established Greek state 42
ii. Vikelas as Shakespeare translator and his views on the 47
woman issue
iii. Desdemona: interpretative cruxes, her reception in 56
Greece and Vikelas’s sources
iv. Desdemona in Vikelas’s translation of Othello (1875) 60
v. Lady Macbeth: interpretative cruxes, earlier reception 70
in Greece and Vikela’s sources
vi. Lady Macbeth in Vikelas’s translation of Othello 76
(1882)
vii. Conclusion 86
iv
Chapter 3 Konstantinos Theotokis’s (Re)presentation of Desdemona 89
(1915)
i. The woman issue in early 20th-century Greece 89
ii. Theotokis as Shakespeare translator and his views on 94
the woman issue
iii. The reception of Desdemona in Greece before the 100
time of Theotokis’s translation
iv. Desdemona in Theotokis’s translation of Othello 103
(1915)
v. Conclusion 124
Chapter 4 Nikos Velmos’s Reimagining of Cleopatra (1924) 126
i. Gender politics in the 1920s 127
ii. Velmos as Shakespeare translator and his views on the 137
woman issue
iii. The translational challenge posed by Cleopatra and 150
her reception in Greece prior to Velmos’s adaptation
iv. Cleopatra in Velmos’s adaptation of Antony and 155
Cleopatra (1924)
v. Conclusion 171
Chapter 5 Vasilis Rotas’s Revision of Gertrude and Ophelia (1938) 173
i. The woman issue during the Metaxas regime (1936- 174
v
1941)
ii. Rotas as Shakespeare translator and his views on the 180
woman issue
iii. Gertrude and Ophelia: interpretative issues and their 191
reception in previous translations
iv. Gertrude in Rotas’s translation of Hamlet (1938) 197
v. Ophelia in Rotas’s translation of Hamlet (1938) 204
vi. Conclusion 215
Chapter 6 Rotas’s Reinterpretation of Cleopatra in the Post-War Era
(1954-1955) 217
i. Greek women in the early 1950s 218
ii. Rotas as Shakespeare translator and his views about
women in the 1950s 224
iii. The reception of Cleopatra prior to Rotas’s translation 232
iv. Cleopatra in Rotas’s translation of Antony and 237
Cleopatra (1954-1955)
v. Conclusion 262
Chapter 7 Conclusion 263
Bibliography 268
vi
List of Further Reading Resources 319
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1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Chapter 1
Introduction: Theoretical and Historical Considerations
This thesis contributes to the scholarly dialogue that is in progress concerning
Shakespeare translation and gender by investigating what it means for Shakespeare’s women to be recurrently translated in the changing environment of the Greek society.
I argue that in the Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays the female dramatic characters are continuously reinterpreted and transformed in a way that, among other things, reflects the changing concept of womanhood in Greece, the translators’ stance on the woman issue and their views on femininity. Hence, I propose that the Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays at different historical and social times have enabled the metamorphosis of his women and their coming closer to the translators’ gender value system and to their target readers’/ audience’s universe. In this way, translation as a process has enabled not only what German intellectual Walter
Benjamin calls the Űberleben (survival) of Shakespeare’s women, but also what he calls their Fortleben, i.e. their continuous progression and renewal in radically different linguistic, geographical, social and temporal contexts, which is the key to the everlasting charm they exercise upon the reader/ spectator.1
The originality of the present study lies in the fact that it covers the extensive time span of eighty years (c. 1875-1955) and it examines the representation of more than one of Shakespeare’s women in translations undertaken by different translators at different points in time. In this way, the study unearths the history of the reception of
1Benjamin develops his thoughts on translation in his famous essay “Die Aufgabe des Űbersetzers” [The Task of the Translator] written in 1923 (253-263). Caroline Disler offers an interesting discussion of how Benjamin’s concept of Fortleben has been mistranslated as “afterlife” and explains the meaning of the term (183-221). 1
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Shakespeare’s women in Greece, the part of their reception which relates to translation up to 1955. The idea of “retranslation” and the scholarly discussion surrounding it prove useful in discerning the motives behind the decision to produce new translations of Shakespeare’s plays and in making comparisons between chronologically close or distant translations of the same play. Although there is a growing volume of scholarly work that is concerned with Shakespeare translation in relation to gender, to my knowledge, there is no other study at a national or at an international level that offers the history of interpretation of Shakespeare’s women in translations. Most existing research concerns small-scale studies, which focus on one translator or on one play and most of the times the comparison, if any, they make among chronologically adjacent or distant translations is not extensive.
Consideration of issues of gender has been incorporated in the study of translation since the 1980s. In 1992 Susan Bassnett had a “definitive feeling that women were starting to propose alternative theories of translation” as early as in the mid-1980s and she cited as an example Myriam Diaz-Diocaretz’s Translating Poetic
Discourse: Questions of Feminist Strategies in Adrienne Rich (1986) (“Writing in No
Man’s Land” 67). The so-called “Cultural Turn” in Translation Studies, which
Bassnett and André Lefevere advocated in a chapter jointly written in their book
Translation, History and Culture (Bassnett and Lefevere, “Introduction” 1-13), acknowledged the influence of culture and underlying ideologies over the study and practice of translation. Since then the restricted focus on questions of equivalence and fidelity of translation to the original text has been abandoned, and the view of translation exclusively in terms of a linguistic transaction has been revised. A cultural perspective of the act of translation has been acquired and scholarly attention has been turned to phenomena pertaining to translation, culture and ideology, like the 2
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
importance of the context of translations, the function of translations in the target culture, the patrons of translation activity, the translator’s subjectivity and his/her role as a manipulator and interpreter of texts and as mediator between cultures. It is in the context of this theoretical and methodological shift in Translation Studies that gender issues in the examination of translations have come to matter more decisively.
As Luise von Flotow observes, “[o]ver the course of the 1990s, translation studies scholars brought feminism, women’s studies and gender studies into their research, and then numerous books and articles ensued” (Flotow and Scott 350). The road was paved by the historical study of Lori Chamberlain “Gender and the
Metaphorics of Translation” (1988), and the influential monographs of Sherry Simon
(Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission) (1996) and Flotow (Translation and Gender. Translation in the Era of Feminism) (1997). In
2001 Flotow asserted that “the combination of gender and translation is still a productive and stimulating area of research” and that “the topic is not only hard to kill but can provide material for impassioned discussion and strategic manoeuvring”
(“Gender in Translation”). In her recent article “Gender Studies and Translation
Studies. ‘Entre Braguette’ – Connecting the Transdisciplines,” in which she provides a foreword and an afterword that frame Joan Scott’s essay on the problems of translating the English term “gender,” Flotow still endorses this view and underlines
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1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
the connections between the two “transdisciplines” of Translation Studies and Gender
Studies (Flotow and Scott 349-353, 366-373).1
i. The study of Shakespeare translation abroad and in Greece
The examination of issues of gender has reached the study of Shakespeare translation, although not very extensively yet.2 Most of the times we encounter small-scale studies
1 Recent important publications of research conducted at the intersection of these two disciplines are the following: Gender, Sex and Translation: The Manipulation of Identities edited by José Santaemilia (2005), Gender and Ideology in Translation: Do Women and Men Translate Differently? edited by Vanessa Leonardi (2008), Translating Women edited by Flotow (2011), Translating Gender edited by Eleonora Federici (in collaboration with Manuela Coppola, Michael Cronin and Renata Oggero) (2011), Audiovisual Translation Through a Gender Lens by Marcella de Marco (2012), Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice in Translation and Gender Studies edited by Vanessa Leonardi and Eleonora Federici (2013), Re-Engendering Translation: Transcultural Practice, Gender/ Sexuality and the Politics of Alterity edited by Christopher Larkosh (2014), Translating Feminism in China: Gender, Sexuality and Censorship by Zongli Yu (2015), Translating Women: Different Voices and New Horizons edited by Flotow and Farzaneh Farahzad (2017), Translation, Ideology and Gender edited by Carmen Camus Camus, Christina Gómez Castro and Julia T. Williams Camus (2017), Foreign Women Authors Under Fascisn and Francoism: Gender, Translation and Censorship edited by Peter Godayol and Annarita Tarona (2018). 2 This is despite the fact that there is a vast body of literature analyzing the way Shakespeare interpreted and described men and women and their relationship. Relevant studies have been conducted since the 1980s until today. For example, I cite the by now classical studies of the 1980s and the 1990s, like Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare by Coppélia Kahn (1981), Comic Women, Tragic Men: Study of Gender and Genre in Shakespeare by Linda Bamber (1982), Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare, Hamlet to The Tempest by Janet Adelman (1992), Shakespeare and Gender: A History by Deborah Barker and Ivo Kamps (1995), and Shakespearean Tragedy and Gender by Shirley Nelson Garner and Madelon Sprengnether (1996). Research on Shakespeare and gender has continued in the first two decades of the 2000s as proved by publications such as Shakespeare on Masculinity by Robin Headlem Wells (2000), Distracted Subjects: Madness and Gender in Early Modern Culture by Carol Thomas Neely (2004), Shakespeare Redressed: Cross- Gender Casting in Contemporary Performance edited by James C. Bulman (2008), Crossing Gender in Shakespeare: Feminist Psychoanalysis and the Difference Within by James W. Stone (2010), Shakespeare and Gender in Practice by Terri Tower (2015), Masculinity and Marian Efficacy in Shakespeare’s England by Ruben Espinosa (2016), Screening Gender in Shakespeare’s Comedies: Film and Television Adaptations in the Twenty-First Century by Magdalena Cieślak (2019), Shakespeare’s Body Language: Shaming Gestures and Gender Politics on the Renaissance Stage by Miranda Fay Thomas (2019), Roman Women in Shakespeare and his Contemporaries edited by Domenico Lovascio (2020), and Shakespeare and Queer Representation by Stephen Guy-Bray (forthcoming 2021). In Encyclopedia Britannica David Bevington offers an illuminating overview of feminist criticism and gender-study research conducted in relation to Shakespeare’s plays (https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Shakespeare/Feminist-criticism-and-gender-studies). Interest in issues of gender representation in the reception of Shakespeare’s plays seems to arise more frequently in studies that investigate Shakespeare’s theatre afterlife. For example, I cite Michael Mangan’s (139-158) and Elizabeth Richmond-Garza’s (217-234) contributions to The Globalization of Shakespeare in the 19th Century, Marcela Kostihova’s contribution to World-Wide Shakespeares: Local Appropriations in Film and Performance (87-94) and Irena R. Makaryk’s essay in Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance (178-194). 4
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
that focus on one translator or on one play and the comparison they make among chronologically close or distant translations is limited. In her contribution to
Shakespeare and the Language of Translation, Bassnett draws attention to the fact that translations, stage productions, films, and paintings re-interpret Shakespeare’s female dramatic characters in the light of contemporary sensibilities and ideologies
(“Engendering Anew” 53-67). Aimée Boutin discusses the appropriation of
Shakespeare’s women by 19th-century French women poets and examines not only the poems inspired by Shakespeare’s heroines but also the small-scale translations that they undertook (505-529). In The Shakespearean International Yearbook of
2006, Daniel Gallimore examines Japanese translations of A Midsummer Night’s
Dream with respect to aspects of accentual rhythm and only briefly considers aspects of Puck’s characterization (346), pointing out that such a task requires a broader range of examples.
In Found in Translation: Shakespeare’s Cleopatra in English and Chinese
Laura Jane Wey investigates the various cultural and linguistic elements that come to light “when the complex figure of Cleopatra passes through the prism of the Chinese language, and shows how such a process not only illuminates the translations, but offers a new understanding of Shakespeare’s original text itself” (Wey 16). The volume of essays Translating Shakespeare for the Twentieth Century offers two contributions to the study of Shakespeare translation from the perspective of gender.
Fátima Vieira explains her decision to offer a masculine Ariel in her translation of The
Tempest (217-223), and Rui Carvahlo Homem discusses how Portuguese translations have rendered Cleopatra’s complex combination of “an Egyptian magnificence and a lowly gipsiness” (225-241).
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1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Eleonora Fois sets out to do justice and pay proper critical attention to the translations of Shakespeare’s plays by Giustina Renier Michiel, who was the first and only woman translator of Shakespeare in Italy until the Fascist time (134-158). By focusing on Renier Michiel’s translation of Othello (1797), which the translatress undertook (along with that of Macbeth and Coriolanus) in order to contribute to her daughters’ education, Fois proves that she was an active agent of her translation; it was not a mere indirect translation based on Pierre Le Tourneur’s French rendering of the play and neither was it shaped by the Italian poet, translator and philologist
Melchiore Cesarotti, a view that has been supported in other studies on Renier
Michiel.1 Finally, the very recent collection of essays Cultural Conceptualizations in
Translation and Language Applications (2020) includes Tanya Escudero’s essay on the way Spanish translators deal with the homoerotic element in Shakespeare’s sonnets (137-150). The scholar analyzes a corpus of Spanish translations of selected sonnets from the “Fair Youth” sequence and the translators’ prologues in order to determine the extent to which and the way in which the translators’ values and views about homoeroticism affect their translation.
In Greece, there is a rich bibliography on the translations of Shakespeare’s works, but studies dealing with questions of gender and translation are scarce. In the overview of the studies on Greek translations of Shakespeare’s works that follows I point out which ones examine aspects of gender. Most of the studies up to 2000 are concerned with the translatability of forms and meanings of the Bard’s plays with or
1 Fois cites two more studies about Renier Michiel’s translations of Shakespeare’s plays which are written in Italian, one by Francesca Bianco “Shakespeare: Le Traduzioni Veneziane di Giustina Renier Michiel e Melchiorre Cezarotti” [Shakespeare: The Venetian Translations by Giustina Renier Michiel and Melchiorre Cesarotti] and one by Alessandra Calvani “Le Donne in Traduzione: Le Tradutricci di Shakespeare dal 1798 al primo decennio fascista” [Women in Translation: Women Translators of Shakespeare from 1798 to the First Fascist Decade] (Fois 154). 6
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
without consideration of contextual factors. After 2000, the relevant studies shed light on the ideological factors that pertain to Shakespeare translation. Except for a couple of instances, most of the times they are small-scale studies that offer either brief comparative analyses of Shakespeare translations or case studies of individual translators.
Yannis Sideris, the theatre historian whose seminal work was published in the journal Theatro [Theatre] and should be the starting point of any scholarly work that deals with Shakespeare’s reception in Greece, offered an overview of the Greek translators of Shakespeare’s plays until the 1960s and distinguished them into
“illuminated” and “barren” ones on the basis of the language mode they used in translating Shakespeare, i.e. Demotic Greek or Katharevousa (“O Saixpir stin Ellada
III” 21-28).1 In his doctoral thesis in 1976 Karagiorgos examined an impressive number of Shakespeare translations as to their technical features.2 Two decades later
K. G. Kasinis compared a number of translations of The Tempest at a microlinguistic level in order to determine the extent to which they were influenced by Iakovos
Polylas’s translation (“I Trikymia tou Polyla” 275-312).
1 The Language Question was a highly controversial issue in 19th- and 20th-century Greece and it had to do with which type of language should be the official one of the Greek state – Demotic Greek, i.e. the language of the people, or Katharevousa, a cultivated imitation of ancient Greek. More information on the Language Question in Greece is offered in the collection of essays To Glossiko Zitima: Sychrones Proseggiseis edited by Georgios Babiniotis (2011). Sideris offers more information on Shakespeare translation in his article “O Saixpir stin Ellada I.” (27-32). In addition, he lists the available translations for each of Shakespeare’s plays which were completed by the year 1964 and noted which were used in each stage production (O Saixpir stin Ellada II.” 56-62). He also sheds light on Shakespeare’s reception on the stage in a series of articles dedicated to the actors/actresses and directors of Shakespeare’s plays from the 19th century to mid-20th century (“O Saixpir stin Ellada IV.” 28-38; “O Saixpir stin Ellada V.” 35-46; “O Saixpir stin Ellada VI.” 23-35; “O Saixpir stin Ellada VII.” 22-38; “O Saixpir stin Ellada VIIIA.” 21-34; “O Saixpir stin Ellada VIIIB.” 23-35). 2 At around that period, Karagiorgos briefly examined some aspects of the context and the reception of the Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays in his article “Greek Translations of Shakespeare’s Plays” (223-238). In a more recent study he also briefly considers aspects of the context of the creation of Shakespeare translations (“O Polylas kai o Theotokis” 226-241). He has also conducted research in other areas of Shakespeare’s reception in Greece, such as his influence on modern Greek literature (“Shakespeare’s Presence” 331-354; “I Parousia” 735-739), while he has also listed the Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays until 2000 (“Vivliografia ton Metafraseon” 673-696). 7
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
In the early 2000s a change is noticeable in the method of analysis of the
Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays because it is enriched with consideration of issues of context. This change in the analysis of Shakespeare translations took place after the publication of the collection of essays I Prosarmostikotita tou Saixpir
[Shakespeare’s Adaptability], which was edited by Tina Krontiris and contains the proceedings of an international symposium organized by the School of English of
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH). Krontiris set the example of contextualized research on Shakespeare translation in Greece in her articles on how
Rotas appropriated Shakespeare’s plays as a result of his socialist ideology and his fervent support of the vernacular language (“I Metafrasi” 143-167; “Translation as
Appropriation” 208-219).1
In her book Shakespeare’s Travels: Greek Representations of Hamlet in the
19th Century, which explores how Shakespeare participates in the larger process of social and national formations,2 Mara Yanni compares four Greek translations of
Hamlet and offers a contextualized explanation of their technical features, such as use of language, rhythm, verse and degree of fidelity and performartivity. At some points, she also offers valuable information on how the character of Hamlet was received in the translations of Vikelas and Polylas (Yanni, Shakespeare’s Travels 112-130).3
1 Krontiris has also extensively researched the reception of Shakespeare’s plays in the Greek theatre and her findings are available in her book O Saixpir se Kairo Polemou [Shakespeare in Time of War] and in a series of articles. A full list of her publications on Shakespeare in Greece is available in the website of AUTH (www.enl.auth.gr/staff/krontiri.htm). 2 A similar perspective is adopted by Dora Mavropoulou in her doctoral thesis in which she discusses how the stagings of Shakespeare’s plays relate to the processes of the formation of the national identity. At certain points Mavropoulou briefly refers to issues that pertain to the translations that were used in these stagings (38-41, 64, 66-67, 96-97, 103, 209-214, 232, 244-247). 3 Information on the context of the first Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays is also offered by Yanni in her article “Shakespeare and the Greeks: A Hundred Years of Negotiations” (197-200). The scholar has also edited the first reprinting of Polylas’s translation of Hamlet (2000) and the first edition of Konstantinos Theotokis’s translation of King Lear (2005). 8
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Aikaterini Douka-Kambitoglou’s book on Yiorgos Heimonas’s translation of
Hamlet is one of the few studies that focuses exclusively on the representation of
Shakespeare’s dramatic characters. The scholar explicitly states that she does not intend to systematically explore linguistic issues of the translation, such as vocabulary, syntax, deviations from the source text and comparison with other Greek translations (Douka-Kambitoglou, O Amlet 34). Her aim is to read Heimonas’s translation intertextually, in relation to his primary works and his theory about the birth and demise of tragedy as a literary genre (Douka-Kambitoglou, O Amlet 34).1
On the occasion of the presentation of Douka-Kambitoglou’s book at Tellogleio
Institution in 2008, Krontiris gave a lecture which touches upon issues of gender representation in Heimonas’s translation of Hamlet (“I Metafrasi tou Amlet Apo ton
Y. Heimona).2
In her doctoral thesis Vasso Yannakopoulou discusses the habitus of four translators and analyzes their translations of Hamlet microlinguistically as to their technical features. Her intention is to demonstrate that consideration of the translators’ habitus, which Pierre Bourdieu defines as the system of dispositions that causes individuals to think and act in certain ways (Yannakopoulou 72), is as important as that of the norms, especially when it comes to explaining their idiosyncratic choices.
The scholar also briefly discusses how Hamlet is represented in each translation.
In 2000 Dimitris Polychronakis edited Polylas’s translation of Hamlet. In his introductory note he unravels the romantic context within which Polylas translated
Shakespeare’s play. He pays particular attention to the influence of Dionysios
1 Douka-Kambitoglou has also compiled a valuable list of Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays, of Greek books influenced by Shakespeare and of articles and treatises about Shakespeare which have been written or translated in Greek (I Parousia tou Saixpir stin Ellada). 2 I would like to thank prof. Krontiris for providing me with a copy of her unpublished lecture. 9
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Solomos and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel on the translator’s interpretation of
Hamlet’s inaction, as well as on his decision to use a 13-syllable line and a language form that combines Katharevousa and Demotic Greek (Polychronakis, “I Metafrastiki
Ithiki” 11-61).1
In her doctoral thesis Lito Alexaki reads Polylas’s translation of Hamlet in the context of the historical and literary background of its creation, as well as in the context of the translator’s primary works, critical writings and linguistic-philosophical views. She, then, proceeds to compare Polylas’s translation with seven other translations of the play as to technical aspects such as wordplay, imagery and humor, to name just a few.
Vassilis Letsios studies the translations of The Tempest in relation to the intellectual trends of the time and Polylas’s own oeuvre. In a recent collection of essays on Troilus and Cressida Paschalis Nikolaou explores the Greek translations and performances of the play (165-188). The scholar is interested both in the technical aspects of these translations, such as the use of Katharevousa or Demotic Greek, and in aspects of the context of the translations.
In her book review on the latest Greek translation of Shakespeare’s sonnets by
Lenia Zafeiropoulou (2016), Maria Athanasopoulou offers an interesting comparative reading of Greek translations of the sonnets (“Metafrazontas ta Soneta tou Saixpir”
54-58). Her examination of the translations is multi-faceted. It sheds light on technical issues, like the choice of meter, rhyme and vocabulary, and the implications of these decisions for the interpretation of the sonnets. At the same time, it also touches upon
1 Polychronakis discusses the metrical aspects of Polylas’s translation of Hamlet more extensively in his article “O Erasitechnismos tou Iakovou Polyla” (313-337). Vaggelis Athanasopoulos also offers interesting insight into the influence of romantic critics on the way Polylas translated Hamlet (“O Kritikos Polylas” 183-194). 10
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
issues of gender, especially the way the translators handle the homoeroticism of the sonnets of the “Fair Youth” sequence and the sexual connotations and wordplay of the sonnets of the “Dark Lady” sequence.1
Finally, there are other studies that do not examine Shakespeare translations microlinguistically, but they only discuss aspects that pertain to the context of their creation or the paratextual elements that accompany them. For instance, Areti
Vasileiou discusses how Rotas’s views on Shakespeare are also reflected in the translator’s primary works (“Vasilis Rotas kai Ouilliam Saixpir” 73-107). Her article can be read as complementing Krontiris’s aforementioned articles on this translator
(“I Metafrasi” 143-167, “Translation as Appropriation” 208-219). Maria Verdiaki records the books which Vikelas had in his library and which pertain to Shakespeare, thus offering valuable help in determining the sources the translator had at his disposal when translating Shakespeare’s plays (48-75). Stavroula Tsouprou discusses
Vikelas’s intermediary role as a translator of Shakespeare’s plays and his attempt to restore the prestige of Greece among the other nations of Europe, and then she proceeds to an analysis of the notes Vikelas appended to his translation of King Lear
(“O Politistikos kai Diamesolavitikos Rolos” 213-227).2
1 In her contribution to a volume of essays in honour of David W. Holton, professor of Modern Greek at the University of Cambridge, Athanasopoulou examines the impact of Shakespeare on the poet C. P. Cavafy in terms of ideas, themes and style (“Shakespeare/ Cavafy: Preliminary Investigation of a Changing Relationship” 196-213). 2 There is also a series of small-scale articles by Tsouprou published in online journals like Diasticho and Philadelphus in which she does not consider contextual factors, but compares Kosmas Politis’s translation of King Lear and Dionysis Kapsalis’s translation of Hamlet with other translations (“Ouilliam Saixpir: Amlet,” “Alita i Disepilita ‘Zitimata’ ston (Metafrasmeno) Amlet”). Finally, it is worth mentioning that Tsouprou edited Politis’s translation of Hamlet which was used by the actress Marietta Rialdi in the stage production of the play in 1971-1972. The edition contains Tsouprou’s notes in which, on the basis of the Arden edition of Hamlet, she compares Politis’s translation choices to those by twelve other Greek translators (Politis, Amlet 79-110). The edition of Politis’s translation also includes an extensive analysis of the intertextual references to Shakespeare’s plays which are traced in Politis’s primary works (Politis, Amlet 123-154). 11
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The above overview of the existing bibliography on translations of
Shakespeare’s works suggests that aspects of gender have only recently attracted scholarly attention both abroad and in Greece. The present thesis is innovative because it is the first study to shed light on the history of interpretations of more than one of Shakespeare’s female dramatic characters in translations undertaken across a broad chronological spectrum.
ii. The historical context of the study: the woman issue in Greece
The historical context of the study refers to the social, cultural, economic and political conditions surrounding the translations that I study. In the present thesis these conditions are examined in order to determine how far they influence the process of translation and the translated text as a cultural and ideological product.
By the term “woman issue” I refer to the preoccupation of the Greek society with definitions of proper womanhood and the persistent attempt to determine women’s nature, desires and social roles and establish their difference to men. The study covers the time span of eighty years (c. 1875-1955), which includes periods of national reconstruction, economic crisis and war, as well as major social changes, all of which affected the lives of Greek women and the negotiations about their identity and roles. Throughout the period I study, the notion of femininity arises as a dynamic concept that changes over time. Each era puts forth a different definition of womanhood, foregrounds different traits in women, forms different expectations of them, charges them with different responsibilities and roles, and allocates different rights to them.
The first period to be examined is the late 19th century. In the newly established modern Greek state (1830), female virtue that was based on the idea of 12
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
chastity was the measure of their and their family’s honour, and an integral part of constructs of femininity. In the course of the 19th century, there was the impending need for the Greek nation to dissociate itself from the East and to come closer to
European standards, while also preserving its cultural roots. It was required of women, especially those that belonged to the new urban classes that nurtured
European aspirations, to facilitate the process of Europeanisation and not constitute a residual element of the past (Varika 58, 60-61). Their style of living involved receiving education that was decorative and complementary to the dowry, doing the housework tasks, or supervising the maid in the house, while they were not encouraged, or allowed, to pursue profitable occupation outside the house
(Fournaraki, “Epi tini Logo” 185; Fournaraki, Ekpaidefsi kai Agogi 23-27; Varika 46-
48, 96; Ziogou-Karastergiou 193, 223-224). As a rule, they were defined as the negative side of men: weak and sentimental beings, rather than rational ones, who led a parasitic life dependent upon men as demonstration of their financial prosperity
(Varika 58). The literary production of the time, particularly the romantic poetry and the historical novels, massively projects this model of womanhood that is mentally and bodily fragile and morally vulnerable.
The second period that concerns this study includes the first two decades of the 20th century. At the dawn of this century, the expansion and differentiation of the middle social classes and the irredentist agenda of the Greek state led to a positive redefinition of womanhood (Varika 98-102, 122; Avdela and Psarra, “Engendering
‘Greekness’” 67-79; Repousi 189-190). This involved the appraisal of women’s domestic and maternal roles and their endowment with redemptive qualities necessary for bringing up virtuous citizens (Varika 87; Avdela and Psarra, “Engendering
‘Greekness’” 67-79; Repousi 189-190; Anastasopoulou 4). At the same time, a circle 13
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
of intellectuals highlighted the discrepancy between the idealized image of women as mothers and wives, on the one hand, and their true living conditions which involved humiliation and violence, on the other. These intellectuals were authors of social novels and local-color short stories, or playwrights that wrote plays which belong to the so-called “theatre of ideas.” These texts expose the ills of society, including the oppression and violence exercised upon women, and they employ the image of the woman who rebels against oppression but who is ultimately victimized by male power in traditional patriarchal structures, like marriage and family. This representation was quite progressive for the time, and scholars like Georgia Ladogianni (165, 177-178,
214) and Thodoros Grammatas (141, 144) see a form of empowerment and the light of social change in women’s persistent victimization. Indeed, life for the Greek women of the middle social strata began to change. In Athens, a group of middle-class women led by Kallirrhoe Siganou-Parren, gradually obtained female awareness and entered the public sphere, which had not been easily accessed until then by women
(Varika 133-204). The road was gradually paved for the emergence of the organized feminist groups of the 1920s.
The study then proceeds to an exploration of the 1920s. The harsh living conditions which the Greek society had to endure at that time after a period of intense war activity and the collapse of Megali Idea [The Great Idea] favoured the emergence of social movements that claimed life improvement. The feminist organization O
Syndesmos gia ta Dikaiomata tis Gynaikas [SDG – League for Women’s Rights] was founded in 1920 and put forth demands for the legislation of political, social, and civil rights for women (Avdela and Psarra, O Feminismos 38-41). The interwar Greek society was not mature enough for the women’s strong presence in the public sphere.
The greatest part of the political world and the press reacted strongly to this prospect, 14
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
while the literary and dramatic production of the time affirmed traditional models of womanhood and satirized women’s struggle for enfranchisement. There was, however, a circle of young socialist and communist writers and intellectuals who were interested in the marginalized members of society and voiced the demand for social revolution. They were also interested in affirming love desire, subverting social and moral conventions, and exploring “forbidden” sexualities, androgyny and role reversals (Dounia, “I Peripeteia Enos Romantzou” 224, Logotechnia kai Politiki 30-
38). Hence, they offered more enabling representations of femininity.
The negotiations of female identity during the national crisis of the 1930s are also subject to close examination in the present study. According to scholars like
Tasoula Vervenioti (Oi Synagonistries 134-156, “Oi Gynaikes” 121-138), Eleni
Machaira (70-76), Marina Petraki (145-156, 276-288), Aggelika Psarra (“Chroniko”
29-36), Margaret Poulos (Arms and the Woman 141-148) and Giota Papageorgiou
(276-277, 285-288), it seems that a version of androgyny, of a hybrid femininity that combines female qualities, like tenderness, with masculine ones, like bravery, was quite popular in the 1930s. It was embraced, for different reasons, by the Metaxas regime (1936-1941), and by progressive intellectuals with socialist and communist ideas, and hence it arose both in the historical plays with patriotic content that propagandized the ideas of the regime, and in the works of socialist and communist intellectuals.
The last period that is examined in the present thesis includes the decade of the
1950s, i.e. the period that followed the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). Discussions about women’s roles and identity continued in the postwar Greek society, which was urged by commitment to European standards to legislate favourable regulations regarding women’s voting, vocational, educational and familial rights. Nonetheless, 15
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
sex discrimination in the fields of work and education was not eliminated. Literary representations of women in this period are varied, and include characters that resemble Helen of Troy, Odysseus’s loyal wife Penelope, or belong to the category of unmarried yound women who dream of meeting the perfect man (Meraklis 197-218).
There also survives the image of the androgynous woman that fights against the national enemy or participates in the reconstruction of the society after the war
(Meraklis 210). This image seems to be a residual cultural element of the 1940s and it was employed to a limited extent by authors and/ or dramatists of the 1950s.
Throughout the time span of 80 years (c. 1875-1955), Shakespeare translations closely follow and participate in the negotiations about female identity and roles in society I have just discussed. My intention is to examine the extent to which and the ways in which Shakespeare’s women have been reinterpreted in relation to the Greek images of femininity in the process of being translated.
iii. Theoretical and methodological considerations
From a linguistic perspective translation is “the replacement of textual material in one language (SL) by equivalent textual material in another language (TL)” (Catford 20).
The present thesis, however, adopts a cultural perspective, according to which translation does not only consist of transferring meaning from one language to another, but it inevitably involves ideology and is shaped by power relations.
Lefevere’s definition of translation as “probably the most radical form of rewriting in a literature, or a culture” (241) is fitting here. As he and Bassnett have famously argued, “[a]ll rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and as such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way” (Bassnett and Lefevere “General Editor’s Preface.” vi). Translation therefore 16
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
becomes a powerful tool in cultural practice and can be used in the development and shaping of identities, gender identities in the case of the present study. As far as the concept of retranslation is concerned, it is defined as any new translation of a part or the entirety of a text which has already been translated into the same language
(Gambier 413), while it is also the case that it has come to denote both the product and the process of rendering a text anew (Gürçağlar 233). All kinds of texts can be retranslated, like popular fiction and technical texts, but it is mostly sacred texts, like the Bible, and canonical literary works that retranslation is related to (Sancakatoğlu
Bozkurt 95).
According to Isabelle Vanderschelden, it is a matter of time before a literary translation is challenged or replaced by another one, the normal interval between new translations of the same work being no more than twenty or thirty years, i.e. classics are translated once for each generation (1). Vanderschelden’s observation as regards the frequency of new translations appears to hold true for the Greek translations of
Shakespeare’s plays. During the period which extends approximately from the 1870s to the 1950s, the Bard’s most popular plays seem to have been translated anew regularly, at least every twenty or thirty years. For instance, according to the lists of the Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays compiled by Karagiorgos
(“Vivliographia ton Metafraseon” 673-695) and Douka-Kambitoglou (I Parousia tou
Saixpir), Macbeth has been translated almost every twenty years, or even sooner
(Andreas Theotokis 1842, N. K. 1862, Dimitrios Vikelas 1882, Aggelos Vlachos
1905). Regular intervals of forty years also exist between translations of Antony and
Cleopatra (M. N. Damiralis 1881, Nikos Velmos 1924, Manolis Skouloudis and
Dionysia Skouloudi 1948) and of twenty or thirty years between translations of
Hamlet (Nikos Pervanoglou 1858, Vikelas 1882, Vlachos 1905, Vasilis Rotas 1938). 17
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Nonetheless, we also have to take account of what Antony Pym calls “active retranslations” (82), i.e. cases in which the intervals between translations are isochronous, which means that translations are almost simultaneous. For example, the late 19th century and the early 20th century witnessed three chronologically close translations of Hamlet (Vikelas 1882, Iakovos Polylas 1889, Damiralis 1890), and of
Othello (Vlachos 1905, Konstantinos Theotokis 1915, Markos Avgeris 1917) and four almost simultaneous translations of Macbeth (Theotokis 1911, Avgeris 1917, K.
Karthaios 1924, Damiralis 1929). It took no more than six years for Rotas’s translation of Antony and Cleopatra (1954-1955) to appear after the translation of the play by Manolis Skouloudis and Dionysia Skouloudi (1947-1948). Finally, within the time span of a decade three translations of The Tempest were published (Yiannis
Oikonomidis 1948, Rotas 1950, Proestopoulos 1958).
There can be “a web of multiple causation” explaining why literary works become translated again and again (Paloposki and Koskinen 297). In 1990 Berman
(“La Retraduction” 1-8) and Bensimon (ix-xiii) formulated the so-called
“Retranslation Hypothesis.” Berman argued that new translations of a literary work aim at improving the way a source text has been rendered because successive translations come closer to conveying the essence of the source text (“La
Retraduction” 1-8). Bensimon further explained that earlier translations are usually domesticating because they tend to adapt the text to the norms and conventions of the target culture, while later translations are undertaken in order to “pay more attention to the letter and style of the source text and maintain a cultural distance between the translation and its source” (Tahir Gürçağlar 233).
Most researchers tend to think that the “Retranslation Hypothesis” oversimplifies the rather complex phenomenon of translating literary works anew, 18
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
because the reasons behind it cannot be reduced to a single factor. The motives may range from narrow ones, like the translator’s personal wish to translate a text, to wider ones, like linguistic, aesthetic, ideological, and economic reasons. Lawrence Venuti argues in this respect that new translations may be motivated merely by the translator’s personal appreciation and understanding of the source text regardless of transindividual factors (“Retranslations” 30). At the same time, Venuti acknowledges that wider motives may be at work. He believes that new translations are “likely to be motivated by a cultural political agenda in which a particular ideology guides the choice of an author or text and the development of a retranslation strategy”
(“Retranslations” 28).
Tahir Gürçağlar (234-236) and Outi Paloposki and Kaisa Koskinen (296-297) detect more motives behind the act of translating the same literary work anew: the changing social contexts and the evolution of translation norms, the need to update the language of a translation, or to correct the mistakes and misinterpretations. It might also be that the translators are unaware of previous translation(s) or that they wish to prove themselves, while it is also the case that new translations help texts achieve canonicity and when this is achieved further translations of the same text are produced
(Tahir Gürçağlar 234-236; Paloposki and Koskinen 296-297). Susam-Sarajeva gives her own explanation for the occurrence of new translations of literary works. She believes that they are not necessarily the consequence of the ageing of translations and of changing times, but that they may have “to do with the needs and attitudes within the receiving system” (Susam-Sarajeva 5). In Greece the phenomenon of frequent new translations of Shakespeare’s plays is equally complex and each case should be examined separately in order to determine the exact motives that lie behind
19
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
it. Nonetheless, certain generalizations can be made with regard to the translators’ motives.
After the establishment of the independent modern Greek state in 1830 the native literature was particularly poor. It was widely believed that the translation of foreign masterpieces in the Greek language would provide the native authors and dramatists with appropriate models so as to write new works and enhance the Greek literature and dramaturgy (Kasinis, Diastavroseis 29-30). The practice of translation was also expected to offer the opportunity to exercise the Greek language and prove the effectiveness of Katharevousa and of Demotic Greek to render canonical literature in Greek (Kasinis, Diastavroseis 29-30).1
Initial translations of Shakespeare’s plays in the late 19th and early 20th century by translators such as Vikelas, Polylas, Vlachos and Theotokis were the result of an effervescent situation in the receiving system, which was struggling to shape the national literature, dramaturgy, and the native language. Julie Tarif, who studies
French translations of Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, notes in this respect that translations proper and adaptations of a work are not only a way of “not forgetting the literary legacy of other cultures, but also […] a way of regenerating the body of literature of the translating culture,” a process which she calls “re-memberment” (38-
39). Nineteenth and early twentieth century Greek translators of Shakespeare’s plays acknowledge the renewing and enriching potential of their translations. For example, in his introduction to his translation of Shakespeare’s tragedies in 1876 Vikelas openly stated his intention to contribute to the enrichment of the modern Greek stage
(Romaios kai Ioulieta δ΄). The same hope was also expressed by Vikelas’s publisher,
1 Katharevousa is a cultivated imitation of the ancient Greek language, while Demotic Greek is the language of the people. 20
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Andreas Koromilas, in the 1882 edition of his translation of Hamlet. Similarly,
Vlachos hoped that he would cultivate the uncultivated dramatic land, educate everyone involved in the theatre (technicians, dramatists, actors/actresses) and establish a proper national theatre (Romaios kai Ioulia 6). Theotokis did not reveal his motives in paratextual elements accompanying his translations of Shakespeare’s plays. As discussed in the corresponding chapter, scholars argue that he was similarly motivated by the wish to enrich literature and help the Greek language develop
(Grollios 290-296; Mpalaskas 203-215; Yanni, Shakespeare’s Travels 10-11;
Yannakopoulou 74).
The translation of foreign masterpieces was also thought to have pedagogical value at a time when didacticism of varying intensity was a prominent feature of the
19th- and 20th-centuty literature. Dimaras informs us that didacticism in literature manifested itself because ideas of the Enlightenment were popular during the late 18th and early 19th centuries (28-29). Didacticim in literarure and theatre was also necessary because of the social conditions that prevailed in Greece at that time, i.e. the rebirth of the Greek nation which had been enslaved to the Turks for a long time and the rise of a new social class which was in need of moral guidance (Dimaras 28-
29). Dimaras further notes down a large number of books which entail the word ηθική
[ithiki – morality] in their title (29). Similarly, other scholars recognize the fact that didacticism appears particularly pressingly in literature in the first decades after the establishment of the modern Greek state (1830). Thodoros Hatzipantazis discerns it in the comic plays of the time (71-88), while Vicky Patsiou (25, 36, 77 et passim) and
Irini Tsirogianni (3, 85, 87 et passim) trace it in children’s literature and magazines like Diaplasis ton Paidon [Children’s Edification] (1879-1948). The aim of didactic literature was to promote appropriate personality traits and models of behavior both in 21
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
the family and in the social life of the Greek men and women so that the Greek state would have proper moral foundations and rise to the height of the civilized European societies. What is more, didacticism was conspicuous in the current European literary production as well, so that the Greek one followed at its footsteps (Polatidou 19-34;
Tsirogianni 80-102). At the beginning of the 20th century didacticism changed orientation and emphasis shifted towards teaching national ideals (Polatidou 31).
Gradually, it became milder and faded but it never disappeared completely.
It was in this context of long-standing didacticism that early Shakespeare translations took place in Greece. Although Shakespeare’s plays were appreciated very much for their aesthetic beauty, they were more valued for their teaching merits.
For example, in 1876 Vikelas argued that Shakespeare’s verse is equivalent to the maxims and proverbs of the Holy Scriptures (Romaios kai Ioulieta ζ΄). Three decades later, the moralizing power of Shakespeare’s plays was still in full force. In 1905
Vlachos insisted that the more exact understanding of Shakespeare’s plays would save the nation from contemporary French literature which tended to worship the flesh
(Romaios kai Ioulia 5). Theodosis Pylarinos explains the pedagogical value that
Corfian Shakespeare translators, like Polylas and Theotokis, attributed to
Shakespeare’s plays (151-159). Yanni argues that the very first Greek translations of
Shakespeare’s plays were produced “in the spirit of the Enlightenment, i.e. as literature with educational value, rather as texts for performative purposes”
(“Shakespeare and the Greeks” 197).
The motives of enriching the native language and literature and morally educating the nation continued to trigger Shakespeare translations in later periods as well. The decision made by translators such as Velmos, Rotas and Manolis
Skouloudis and Dionysia Skouloudi to translate Shakespeare using Demotic Greek 22
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
with idioms and allusions to the popular culture was in itself an exercise in the cultivation of the popular language. At the same time, they aspired to educate the lower classes by making Shakespeare accessible to them. In a prose poem dedicated to Shakespeare in the 1920s Velmos reveals what Shakespeare is for him: “the teacher of arts, the critic of everything, the only son of wisdom, the mother of science”
(Velmou Erga 29). In a lecture on Shakespeare, while fascism was raging in Europe, just before Italy declared war against Greece in 1940, Rotas described Shakespeare as the greatest star in the Galaxy of human society whose love still illuminates all the world and whose plays emanate an elevated teaching that is purgative and is based on the principles of Christianity (Theatro kai Glossa 360-363).
Since the 1920s commission by the National Theatre, commercial theatre groups or publishing houses has offered translators further motivation to render
Shakespeare’s plays anew for the stage and/ or the page. Tahir Gürçağlar notes that new translations for the theatre are “not only desirable but also often inevitable: with each staging of a foreign play a new translation is normally required” because each new professional stage production of a foreign-language play may be an opportunity to collaboratively develop a new script that will help the production make a difference in relation to previous productions (233). In 1924 Velmos himself translated Antony and Cleopatra again, offering a simplified adaptation in order to create a script that would be accessible and comprehensible to his theatre group and his audience. At a time when at least seven more translations of Macbeth existed, Karthaios translated the play once more (1924) because he was commissioned by the actress Marika
Kotopouli, who wished to stage the play with her theatre company. In the introduction to his translation Karthaios reveals that the translation is reverentially dedicated to her who is “a great mistress of art” (O Makveth 7). Rotas translated Hamlet (1938) 23
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
because he was commissioned by the National Theatre, as he himself reveals in the edition of his translation by the publishing house Ikaros (Amlet 149). In the period from the 1950s to the early 1970s Rotas completed the translation of the whole of
Shakespeare’s oeuvre because of the contract he signed with the same publishing house (Krontiris, “Translation as Appropriation” 209).
Personal motives also led the translators to render Shakespeare’s works anew in the Greek language. Vikelas and Theotokis suffered the loss of a wife and a daughter respectively and saw Shakespeare translation as a comforting process.
Theotokis translated Shakespeare’s plays in order to also support himself financially
(Yannakopoulou 81). Vlachos, who translated Shakespeare at a time when “his symbolic capital had waned” and “new norms gained ground” making him feel frustrated and bitter, saw translation as a way to “defend his neoclassicist aesthetics and his Katharevousa at the face of the changes taking place around him”
(Yannakopoulou 29). The reasons why Rotas translated Shakespeare’s plays are also related to his wish to restore his reputation as a literary figure and as a Shakespeare translator because after the end of the German Occupation he had been marginalized as a result of his leftist ideology.
According to Kristiina Taivalkoski-Shilov, who has studied the translations of
Daniel Defoe’s Robinso Crusoe in Finnish, if there are previous translations of a source text, one of the motives for translating it again may be to replace or outdo the previous versions (Taivalkoski-Shilov 62). Shakespeare translators in Greece seem to have been rather modest and did not openly express competitive attitude towards preceding translators by accusing their translations of aging, outdatedness or wrong interpretation. For example, in 1855 in the edition of his translation of The Tempest, which was the first translation of the play in Greece, Polylas asked the readers to 24
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
appreciate his work despite its many drawbacks, until another translator offered a better rendering (I Trikymia 58). In 1881 in the short note with which Damiralis accompanied his translation of Antony and Clopara in the journal Parnassos he wholeheartedly wished that more potent translators would render Shakespeare’s plays in the Greek language (“Antonios kai Kleopatra” 914). Even Rotas admitted that his translation of Hamlet in 1938 was not definitive, even though he expressed some confidence in his translation and stated that it had to be superior to preceding ones in terms of language, precision, completion and interpretation in order for it to have reason to exist (Amlet: me Prologo kai Kritika Sholia 7-8, 12).
Despite the fact that Greek Shakespeare translators were not antagonistic, by translating Shakespeare’s plays they inevitably inscribed them with different interests, values and interpretations which were specific to the translating language and culture at the time of the translation, and which were compatible with their own views.
Venuti explains in this respect that texts with great cultural authority, like the Bible, the Homeric epics and Shakespeare’s plays, “solicit retranslation because diverse readerships in the receiving situation will seek to interpret it according to their own values and hence develop different retranslation strategies that inscribe competing interpretations” (Venuti, “Retranslations” 26-27). New translations of the same work, therefore, may be said to reflect, among other things, changes in ideologies, norms, and in interpretations of the source text. Siobhan Brownlie, who examines the extent to which the study of translation can benefit from Narrative Theory, reminds us that the “main types of norms that affect translation are linguistic, literary and translational” (150). The present thesis suggests that gender norms and the translator’s stance on them can also affect translation.
Translation scholar Gideon Toury describes norms in general as follows: 25
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Sociologists and social psychologists have long regarded norms as the
translation of general values or ideas shared by a community –as to what is
right and wrong, adequate and inadequate– into performance instructions
appropriate for and applicable to particular situations, specifying what is
prescribed and forbidden as well as what is tolerated and permitted in a certain
behavioral dimension. (54-55)
Toury further positions norms on a scale between rules and idiosyncrasies (54) and underlines the fact that they are never fixed, but inherently unstable and have sociocultural specificity (62). This means that norms do not apply across cultures, or to all the subsections of the same culture.
Gender norms in particular are defined by the European Institute for Gender
Equality as “standards and expectations to which women and men generally conform, within a range that defines a particular society, culture and community at that point in time. […] Internalized early in life, gender norms can establish a life cycle of gender socialization and stereotyping.” Changes in gender norms may reflect changes in ideology and, along with other contextual factors, they may influence the interpretations of the literary texts and cause new readings to arise. According to
Bronwlie, “reinterpretation occurs at all textual levels,” as short as a phrase or sentence, and as long as a passage or chapter in a novel (152). The re-interpretation and re-presentation of characters is an important aspect of the re-reading and re- processing of literary texts. The present thesis focuses on the re-interpretation and re- presentation of Shakespeare’s female dramatic characters in the Greek translations of
Shakespeare’s plays.
Shakespeare’s women –as well as Shakespeare’s plays in general– lend themselves to reinterpretation and multiple re-readings because of their ambiguity. 26
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Semir Zeki, the famous neurobiologist, who explores the neurobiological principles that underlie creativity in art, literature, love and human happiness, has formulated an interesting “neurobiological definition” of ambiguity, which is often used in literary studies.1 He describes ambiguity “not [as] vagueness or uncertainty, but rather [as] certainty of different scenarios, each one of which has equal validity” (qtd. in King
140). In this sense, ambiguity is associated with indeterminacy. The concept of indeterminacy in literary works was developed in the early 1930s by Roman Ingarden
(1893-1970) in his book The Literary Work of Art: An Investigation on the
Borderlines of Ontology, Logic and Theory of Literature. According to the Polish phenomenologist, indeterminacy posits that textually created objects never attain full determination and have gaps. In other words, the meaning of a text is indeterminate or ambiguous, leaving space for the readers’ imagination to take over and fill the gaps through a process called “concretization.” In the case of the present study the role of the reader is occupied by the translators, who in translating Shakespeare’s plays build a textual concretization of the many potential meanings that the plays carry.
In his book The Act of Reading Wolfgang Iser shares Ingarden’s observation that texts offer points of entrance that invite the readers’ active participation. He gives a new direction to the idea by introducing the term “Leerstellen,” i.e. blanks. As he himself states,
[w]hat we have called the blank arises out of the indeterminacy of the text, and
although it appears to be akin to Ingarden's “place of indeterminacy,” it is
different in kind and function. The latter term is used to designate a gap in the
1 In her contribution to the collection of essays Shakespeare and Consciousness Ros King uses Zeki’s definition of ambiguity in order to argue that, maybe most clearly in Hamlet, Shakespeare creates multiple, often contradictory meanings, between which actors, readers and audiences change, ultimately discovering the mysteries of their own consciousness (139-161). 27
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
determinacy of the intentional object or in the sequence of the “schematic
aspects”; the blank, however, designates a vacancy in the overall system of the
text, the filling of which brings about an interaction of textual patterns. In
other words, the need for completion is replaced here by the need for
combination. It is only when the schemata of the text are related to one
another that the imaginary object can begin to be formed, and it is the blanks
that get this connecting operation under way. They indicate that the different
segments of the text are to be connected, even though the text itself does not
say so. (182-183)
In other words, as Ralf Hertel observes, “while Ingarden’s spots of indeterminacy denote ‘holes’ in the text that the reader has to fill with his imagination, Iser’s Leerstellen refer to the possibility of combining various textual elements” (213).1 In the present thesis, both concepts, together with the concept of ambiguity, are important because they prove the depth and complexity of
Shakespeare’s plays, which the translators are invited to explore and use their imagination in order to produce meaning and recreate the dramatic world.
Ambiguity or indeterminacy in Shakespeare’s plays may arise in relation to the plot, characters or setting. For example, the truthfulness of Lady Macbeth’s fainting upon hearing the news of the King’s death (II.iii.) and her status as a bereaved mother (I.vii.) is left to the reader to decide. Desdemona’s part in the
1 Ingarden’s and Iser’s theories are further compared and contrasted by Menachem Brinker in his essay “Two Phenomenologies of Reading: Ingarden and Iser on Textual Indeterminacy” (203-212). Akin to Ingarden’s and Iser’s theories of textual openness is Roland Barthes’s idea of “readerly” and “writerly” texts. As explained in his 1970 book S/Z, the first term refers to straightforward texts that do not place great demand on the reader for comprehension. The second term describes texts in which there is proliferation in meaning and which require of readers to take an active role in its construction. In her book Critical Practice Catherine Belsey lucidly explains Barthes’s views on the relationship of readers to literary texts (85-102). 28
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
wooing and elopement with Othello (I.i., I.iii) and her manner of death (V.ii.), whether Cleopatra deliberately betrays Antony during the sea battles (III.x, IV.xii), and the degree of Ophelia’s consent to allow Laertes and King Claudius to overhear her conversation with Hamlet (III.i.) suggest ambiguous points that invite different interpretations depending on the translators’ wider approach to the play.
Uncertainty of meaning or connotation in Shakespeare’s plays also extends beneath the surface to the very language the Bard uses and it may be magnified due to the cultural, historical and linguistic distance between Shakespeare’s plays and the translators’ time and culture. The linguistically rich microcosm of Shakespeare’s plays involves subtleties, wordplays, coinages, imagery, figurative language and polysemous words that create insinuation and multiplicity in meaning. For example, in Macbeth the polysemous word “bold” is used in relation both to Macbeth and his wife (II.ii.3, III.iv.75-76, IV.i.94). The word has both a positive meaning, which denotes an individual who is daring and fearless before danger, and a negative meaning, which refers to an impudent, presumptuous individual.1 Depending on which meaning of the word the translators choose to render in their language they construct quite different images of the protagonists.2
Finally, indeterminacy is strengthened due to the fact that there are often two
(and in some cases more) available versions of Shakespeare’s plays deriving from the
1 Throughout the present thesis, I have consulted Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary for the definition of the English words under consideration. This is a standard, unabridged dictionary with frequent updates since 1828. 2 In her contribution to The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s Language Alysia Kolentsis defends Shakespeare from recent charges according to which Shakespeare’s language was in fact average, and she discusses the ways in which Shakespeare manipulated the existing resources of his language and rendered common words fresh (20-34). Isabel De la Cruz-Cabanillas discusses lexical ambiguity and wordplay in Shakespeare (31-36). While I was examining the issue of ambiguity in Shakespeare I came across Annabel Patterson’s concept of “functional ambiguity,” which was formulated in 1980s and which posits that Shakespeare and many of his contemporaries tactically employed indeterminacy in order to avoid the scrutiny of censor (18, 52-127). 29
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Quartos and the 1623 Folio, which contain variations in wording, punctuation and interpretation of different passages.1 For example, Othello exists in two early printed versions, the 1622 Quarto and the 1623 Folio, which present the translator with many textual variants. Depending on the choices the translators make regarding these alterations, they construct a very different Desdemona in their translations, i.e. a sexually inviting one if they follow the Quarto and a reticent one if they follow the
Folio.2
Shakespeare translators in Greece seem to have showed acute awareness of this ambiguity and openness of Shakespeare’s plays, and they counted it among the greatest difficulties that they had to deal with in rendering Shakespeare’s plays in
Greek. For example, in his translation of Antony and Cleopatra in 1881 Damiralis warned the readers that many points of Shakespeare’s plays are open to multiple interpretations (“Antonios kai Kleopatra” 914). In addition, he drew attention to the fact that Shakespeare was fond of wordplay, which he tried to translate accurately, although this was often impossible (Damiralis, “Antonios kai Kleopatra” 914).
Vlachos, too, argued that besides the fact that there was not a definitive source text for
Shakespeare’s plays, there were many ambiguous and corrupted passages which remained incomprehensible despite the critical and interpretative work that had been undertaken until that time (Romaios kai Ioulia 7). Hence, he pointed out that no two
1 Eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays were first published in Quarto format before becoming available in the First Folio edition in 1623. However, John Heminges and Henry Condell, editors of the First Folio, deemed these plays fraudulent and established the First Folio as the only authoritative Shakespearean manuscript. Their claim was not challenged until the late 19th century when scholars like A. W. Pollard began to reassess the validity of the Quartos. Today it is believed that ten of the Quartos are corrupt, while the rest are authentic. More information on the printing history of Shakespeare’s plays is offered in Stephen Greenblatt’s “General Introduction” to The Norton Shakespeare (65-75). 2 Similarly, differences arise in the representation of the dramatic character of Othello, such as in his closing lines in which he presents himself as a “base Indian” in the Quarto or as a “base Judean” in the Folio (V.ii.348-349). 30
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
translations of a Shakespearean play are alike (Vlachos, Romaios kai Ioulia 7-9).
Velmos was also aware of the complexity and multilayer meaning of Shakespeare’s plays and he simplified Antony and Cleopatra in order to stage the play and make it more accessible to lower social classes. In the 1930s Rotas made similar observations as regards corrupted passages in Shakespeare’s plays, but he also acknowledged the ambiguity that results from the evolution of the English language and the use of imagery, simile or metaphor (Amlet: me Prologo kai Kritika Sholia 9).
Early translators of Shakespeare’s plays in Greece dealt with this problem by resorting to one or a combination of the following strategies: they looked up French,
Italian and German translations, they read the commentaries of foreign scholars, they consulted more than one edition of the play they translated each time, or they used editions with rich explanatory notes, like Horace Howard Furness’s Variorum editions of Shakespeare’s plays which included the text of each play, extensive textual notes, and an overview of critical traditions. For example, while translating Romeo and
Juliet Vikelas consulted the translation of the play in French by Victor Hugo and in
Italian by Michele Leoni, as well as the commentaries by critics like François Guizot
(Shakespeare et Son Temps), Georg Gottfried Gervinus (Shakespeare Commentaries) and Alphonse de Lamartine (Shakespeare et son Oeuvre) (Romaios kai Ioulieta 167-
168, 171, 180). In his translalion of the same play, Vlachos consulted the German translations of the play by Johann Heinrich Voss and August Wilhelm Schlegel, as well as Alexander Schmidt’s Shakespeare Lexicon and Quotation Dictionary, and editions of the play by K. Deighton and Nicolaus Delius (Romaios kai Ioulia 200,
204-205). Later translators of Shakespeare’s plays, like Rotas, Karthaios and
Skouloudis, had the additional option of consulting previous Greek translations. This is evident in the fact that they often chose solutions suggested by their predecessors as 31
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
far as ambiguous points and polysemous words are concerned. Yet, even when they translated in a similar manner the context of the translation changed, and the same solution acquired different connotations in each translation of the same play. As
Flotow so aptly puts it, every new translation is a “new understanding and representation of the source text, in another time and space and culture, and by another individual, who chooses to and is able to, read differently” (“Tracing the
Context of Translation” 37).
Underlying the above views on Shakespeare translation is the assumption that a work of literature, including literary translation, is not an object that stands by itself and offers the same view to each reader in each period. I agree with Françoise
Massadier-Kenney who believes that the Derridean infinite openness of literary texts extends to their translations. As the scholar notes,
the literary text is not a closed space (a site of ‘truth’ to which the translation
must conform), but a site of iterability; that is, it does not ‘possess a core of
uniqueness that survives mutability, but rather a repeatable singularity that
depends on an openness to new contexts and therefore on its difference each
time it is repeated. (Massardier-Kenney 76)
Hence, the event of producing new translations should not be considered as being mimetic, but as constituting a new reading, a new interpretation of the text
(Massardier-Kenney 76-77). As Alexandra Lianeri and Vanda Zajko point out in relation to the translation of classic texts, which “[live] on beyond the conditions of
[their] constitution,” translation is not a process of “recovering a source text,” but “a process of interpretation and production of meaning through which the past enters the present, while being at the same time powerfully expelled from it” (7-8).
32
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Through the process of translation Shakespeare’s plays and their dramatic characters are illuminated from different angles and these angles are determined by broad social forces, like changing ideologies, linguistic and translational norms, and by the translator’s preferences and idiosyncrasies. The present thesis sheds light on the conditions of the reception and the history of interpretations of Shakespeare’s female dramatic characters as they become translated in the context of the changing
Greek gender norms. It suggests that the changing concept of womanhood in the
Greek society and each translator’s stance on this issue are among the contextual factors that affect the representation of Shakespeare’s women in translation and cause classic texts, Shakespeare’s plays in this case, to be reinterpreted every time they are translated.
My methodology in studying the proposed translations is informed by a number of concepts developed by theorists that work within the descriptive, socio- culturally oriented branch of the field of Translation Studies. To begin with, translation is not only a matter of crossing linguistic barriers. Neither is it a secondary or derivative activity that takes place in a cultural vacuum. As Flotow puts it,
“translation is a deliberate act, eminently social, historical and personal […] and as such it is context-bound” (“Tracing the Context of Translation” 39). Together with many other translation scholars like Lefevere, Venuti, and Sherri Simon, to name just a few, Flotow insists that a study of translation should take account of many –if not all– of the contextual elements that shape a rewritten text, or what Berman terms
“l’horizon de la traduction – the personal, political, social, aesthetic conditions under which a translation is produced and received” (Flotow, “Tracing the Context of
Translation” 44).
33
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Borrowing it from philosophers, like Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, H.
G. Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur, and Hans Robert Jauss, Berman applied the notion of
“horizon” to the hermeneutics of translation. In Berman’s own definition, the horizon of the translation is “the constellation of all the linguistic, literary, cultural and historical parameters that ‘determine’ how a translator feels, acts and thinks” (Pour une Critique des Traductions 26). He further explains that
[t]he notion of the horizon is twofold. On the one hand, it designates the-point-
from-which the action of the translator is meaningful and can unfold; it plots
out the open space of his action. On the other hand, it marks what closes things
off, what encloses the translator in a circle of limited possibilities. (Berman,
Pour une Critique des Traductions 28).
Put simply, the horizon of a translation comprises the environment in which the translation is produced and the constraints it impinges upon the translators, as well as the subjectivity and personal politics of the translators themselves. The combined examination of the socio-political context of the translation and the personal lives and views of the translators is necessary because the translator’s “perception” or
“conception” of the translation is not “purely personal since the translator is informed by a whole body of historical, social, literary, and ideological discourse on translation” (Berman, Pour une Critique des Traductions 20). What is more, the
“translator’s position is a ‘compromise’ between the perception of the task of translation that is held by the translator as a subject, driven by the urge to translate, and the way the translator has ‘internalized’ the contemporary discourse on translation
(the norms)” (Berman, Pour une Critique des Traductions 20-21). As Reine
Meylaerts also points out, in order to truly understand translation choices, the researcher should examine the dynamics between collective norms and the individual 34
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
preferences of the translators (91-102). The belief in the translators’ subjectivity, in their status as agents who have assumed power in the formation of literary canons and identities and in the fact that they “govern norms as much as their behaviour is governed by them” (Siméoni 23-24) underpins this study.1 In the present thesis these issues are studied from the perspective of gender.
In studying the context of the translations I have constantly kept in mind
Itamar Even-Zohar’s idea that the literary polysystem to which translations belong forms part of the larger polysystem of a culture (“The Position of Translated
Literature” 45-51). What this means is that it is important to study the intricate correlations within this large cultural system which involves political, social, economic and ideological considerations, while also investigating translations in their systemic relationship with the surrounding literary polysystem.
These views on translation inform the method I follow in examining the Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays. Each chapter begins with a macrolevel description of the context of the translations. This includes, first, a section on the gender norms that prevailed at the historical moment at which the translation came into being, and then a section on the translators’ life trajectory, their inculcation, their ideology and their views about the woman issue, which may be explicitly stated by themselves or implicitly deduced from their oeuvre. Then, follows a section on the ambiguities and other interpretative cruxes about Shakespeare’s women and their history of interpretation in Greece in previous translations and stage productions.
When the horizon of the translation is discussed in detail, I proceed with the microlevel analysis of the translations which unravels the way in which the translators
1 In her study of Greek translations of Hamlet Yannakopoulou has used Bourdieu’s term “habitus” to refer to all this information regarding the personal context of the translators. 35
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
re-present Shakespeare’s female dramatic characters. In this section I examine the translators’ interventions in the source texts as well as the way they treat the indeterminacies and blanks of Shakespeare’s texts. I also study the paratextual elements of the translations, such as introductions, notes and statements by the translators themselves, the editors or the publishers, where available.
iv. The time span of the study and the selection of translators and translations
The present study examines Shakespeare translation in Greece in the course of eighty years, i.e. from 1875 to the 1955. This time span has been chosen because it includes the first systematic attempt to translate Shakespeare’s plays in Greece and it extends almost until the time that the whole Shakespearean oeuvre was rendered for the first time in the Greek language by Rotas.1 In addition, the starting point of the study approximately coincides with the time that Greece became an independent state and tried to define women’s identity and roles. The study ends in 1955, i.e. before the worldwide cultural revolution and the second-wave femininism of the 1960s, echoes of which reached Greece by the mid-1960s.2
Within the time span of the study I have tried to examine in more or less detail both translators who share a conservative background, like Vikelas, Vlachos and
Damiralis, and translators who endorse a progressive, socialist or communist worldview, like Theotokis, Velmos, and Rotas. Another criterion for the selection of
1 Actually, Rotas completed his translation of Shakespeare’s plays in the early 1970s, but his gender views underwent a slight change of focus only once as a result of his intense engagement with the National Resistance (1941-1944). 2 The cultural revolution reached Greece in the 1960s. Kostis Kornetis describes the cultural spring that Greece experienced around the mid-1960s and which was violently interrupted by the coup of 21st April, 1967 (1-36). The second-wave feminism, on the other hand, emerged in Greece after the end of the Colonels’ Dictatorship (1974) and it was not so dynamic as women’s feminist activity from 1880 since the end of World War II and the Civil War (Sakellaridou 312-314). 36
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
the translators was the degree of their preoccupation with Shakespeare and his oeuvre.
The translators I study either translated a considerable number of Shakespeare’s plays and/or they engaged critically with Shakespeare. In addition, from Shakespeare’s large collection of female dramatic characters I have chosen those that seem to challenge patriarchal stereotypes and images of ideal femininity, like Lady Macbeth,
Desdemona, Cleopatra, Gertrude and Ophelia.
In the course of the thesis I compare both passive and active retranslations of the same play. Pym notes that in the first case retranslations are chronologically or geographically separated, while in the second case they virtually share the same cultural generation (82-83). Pym dismisses the comparison of passive retranslations as redundant because it only provides information about historical change in the target language which could be obtained without translation research (82). He underlines the historical importance of the second set of retranslations because they reveal the conflict between people or groups within the target language (Pym 82). Nonetheless, I examine both types of retranslations because this method helps trace the history of the reception of Shakespeare’s women in Greece in a more complete and comprehensive manner. For example, I read Theotokis’s translation of Othello (1915) in parallel with
Vikelas’s (1876) and Vlachos’s (1905) translations. Rotas’s Gertrude and Ophelia are compared and contrasted with Pervanoglou’s (1858), Vikelas’s (1882), Polylas’s
(1889), Damiralis’s (1890), and Vlachos’s (1905). I compare Rotas’s translation of
Antony and Cleopatra (1954-1955) with the distant first translation of the play by
Damiralis (1881), and also with the chronologically closer adaptation of the play by
Velmos (1924) and the translation by Manolis Skouloudis and Dionysia Skouloudi
(1947-1948).
37
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Finally, Lefevere’s definition of translation as a form of rewriting, along with criticism, reviewing, summary, anthologizing, and adaptation has enabled me to include in the collection of translations that I examine Velmos’s adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra (1924). I use the definition of “adaptation” formulated by Daniel
Fischlin and Mark Fortier, according to which “adaptation includes almost any act of alteration performed upon specific cultural works of the past and dovetails with a general process of cultural recreation” (4). I consider the close examination of this text necessary as a reliable source for drawing conclusions on the history of the reception of Shakespeare’s women in Greece. This is because an adaptation is bound to reveal its author’s effort to recreate an established text, blow new life to it, freshen its perspective and bring it closer to contemporary audience or readership. As Yana
Meerzon aptly puts it, adaptations reveal the adaptors’ “sense of agency,” i.e. their
“clearly identified need to use their new texts to change something in themselves or in the world.”
The study is organized in five main chapters, each of which explores how
Shakespeare’s women were received and/or appropriated in Greece in the period from
1875 to 1955. More precisely, Chapter 2 sheds light on one of the first attempts to translate Shakespeare’s plays in Greece which was undertaken by Vikelas. The chapter discusses how the translator’s middle-class values, which were popular in the newly constituted Greek state and abroad, informed his reading of Shakespeare’s women and led him to read Desdemona’s fatherly disobedience as an instance of uncontrollable female sexuality that deserves to be punished (1875), and Lady
Macbeth’s ambition as wifely devotion (1882).
Chapter 3 takes a look at Theotokis’s translation of Othello (1915) and his radical revision of the image of Desdemona. It examines how the translator’s 38
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
philogynism and socialist views led him to reinterpret Desdemona’s decision to marry without parental consent in more positive terms. Theotokis ultimately came to replace
Vikelas’s and Vlachos’s tainted image of Shakespeare’s heroine with an image of her as an outspoken daughter that is yet sexually innocent and a victim in her marriage to
Othello.
Chapter 4 investigates Velmos’s adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra (1924) in the context of the sexual experimentation and spirit of decadence of the 1920s. It sheds light on Velmos’s representation of the Egyptian Queen as a victim of love, who by the end of the play, grows into an admirable androgynous figure.
Chapter 5 turns attention to Rotas’s translation of Hamlet (1938), which was commissioned by the National Theatre. It explores the translator’s rejection of
Gertrude and his unprecedented hatred for Ophelia in the 1930s, at a time when he focused his energies on criticizing the members of the bourgeois classes. Rotas rejected Gertrude because she did not follow the tradition of mourning, which was an important duty of women in the Greek folk tradition that he supported. In addition, he read Gertrude as misunderstanding her own son and mistaking him for mad. Rotas also dismissed Ophelia due to the fact that she could not fit the model of active womanhood that was supported at that time not only by the Metaxas regime (1936-
1941), but also by the intellectuals of the so-called generation of the 1930s.
Chapter 6 takes particular interest in Rotas’s favourable reinterpretation of
Cleopatra (1954-1955). It provides insights into the ways in which his translation makes her fit his socialist ideology and his androgynous vision of femininity. By that time Rotas had shifted his attention away from the criticism of the bourgeois values and turned to the literary reworking of impotant events of the Greek history.
39
1. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS
The thesis closes with a conclusion which points out the findings of the study and its social ramifications. It is thus made abundantly clear that the present study can set a new benchmark for future research conducted at the intersection of Shakespeare translation and gender. A wide bibliography chapter follows which includes the works cited throughout the thesis and a list of further reading resources containing helpful recommendations of recent criticism and scholarship and the works I consulted during my research.
The source texts are mostly derived from the H. D. Furness Variorum edition of Shakespeare’s plays and it is stated in each chapter. All back-translations of the renderings discussed and all renderings of Greek quotes are mine, unless stated otherwise. Finally, I have used the modern single-stress system even in the cases of translations published in the multi-stress system.
40
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Chapter 2
Dimitrios Vikelas’s Foundations for the Characters of Desdemona (1875) and
Lady Macbeth (1882)
On February 3, 1830, Britain, France and Russia signed the London Protocol and officially established Greece as an independent, sovereign state. After four centuries of Ottoman rule, the Greeks were free to lay the foundations for a modern country. At this historical moment, the woman issue was mainly shaped by the struggle of the
Greek nation to define itself in both an extrovert and an introvert manner. By this I mean the Greeks’ attempt to dissociate themselves from the East and the regressive practices of the Ottoman Empire, to associate themselves with the European urbanization and civilization, while remaining in contact with their own cultural roots, traced back in the glorious ancient past and the folk tradition.
Women were mainly restricted at home to fulfill the duties that were believed to suit their nature: those of the mother, the wife and, when the process of urbanization evolved, those of the domestic ornament. Their dominant representations in the contemporary literary production support these roles, and irreversibly condition their value upon their virginity, modesty and domesticity. Vikelas, one of the main translators of Shakespeare’s plays at this time, seems to have translated his female dramatic characters with a didactic function in mind in order to promote these values.
He translated Shakespeare’s plays according to his middle-class ideology, the result being that he read Desdemona as a rebellious daughter that deserves death as punishment, and Lady Macbeth as a selfless, devoted wife.
41
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) i. Gender issues in the newly-established Greek state
Researchers who examine the 19th-century developments in the woman issue in
Greece, and the politics of the period in general, consent that the agenda of national self-definition imposed contradictory demands upon women and that female action and/or reaction was almost totally absent. Sasa Moschou-Sakorrafou explains that in the immediate post-revolutionary period the Greek women’s social position did not differ much from that which they occupied before the Revolution (1821): instead of a new Civil Code, it was the Roman-Byzantine law, as decreed by the Palace in 1835, that was transplanted in the modern Greek state (88-92).
Later, in the mid-19th century, Eleni Varika observes that the public sphere was still being configurated without the Greek women (36-37). They were invisible and uninvolved in the re-arrangements of the new Greek society. Efi Avdela
(“Between Duties and Rights” 117-143), Eleni Fournaraki (“Epi Tini Logo” 183) and
Dimitra Samiou (Ta Politika Dikaiomata ton Ellinidon) examine the issue of women’s voting rights and confirm the prevalent tendency to perceive women as a special category of non-citizen which was founded on their supposedly natural role as mothers.
Not only did women hold a legal position, but they were also condemned by informal customs to constant male supervision. Kostas Ouranis vividly describes the situation of the middle- and upper-class women in the following terms: “as a rule married and unmarried women never went out on their own, but they were always escorted by a father, a husband, or a brother – in the same fierce and suspicious manner as a police officer accompanies the transportation of gold of the state bank”
(Zoras 56).
42
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Scholars, certainly, admit that the period 1830-1880 witnessed an embryonic female expression and a sort of awakening of feminine consciousness, which progressively strengthened as we move toward the 1870s.1 Yet, we are still far before the first period of “systematic women’s questioning,” which Avdela and Psarra place in the period 1887-1920 (O Feminismos 15). The Greek women’s roles in society were continuously being negotiated in the framework of the discussion about the national identity. The general spirit of incongruence and indeterminacy about what constitutes Greek nationhood left women in an in-between state of non- belongingness. Varika provides an enlightening account of the turbulent trajectory of women in the course of the 19th century that highlights the contradictions imposed on them (29-71). Initially, they were used as a stabilizing factor in the rapidly changing environment that was established after the national liberation. The society as a whole, irrespective of class barriers, obtained cohesion through the generalized demand for the preservation of female virtue and modesty. As Varika so vividly puts it,
The elegant bourgeois, who read his newspaper every morning in the café ‘Bella Grecia,’ had at least one common point with his compatriot that wore foustanella and sold watermelons at the opposite sidewalk: both of them found
1 Varika mentions that in the late 1840s a limited number of journals published women’s texts, and she agrees with Aggelika Psarra (“Gynaikeia Periodika” 3-20) that in the early 1860s women began to publish their own, though short-lived, journals mainly in Athens and Constantinople, the most well- known being Thaleia and Evridiki (Varika 66-67). Fournaraki (Ekpaidefsi kai Agogi 42-48) and Marietta Ioannidou (14-17) note that in the 1870s some leading female figures emerged, like Sapfo Leontias and Kalliope Kechagia, who exceeded the confines of the domestic sphere. Denisi draws attention to the progressive increase in the number of women translators (“Oi Logies Ellinides” 9-13). All scholars link women’s intellectual engagement to the access of increasingly more women to education. 43
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
incompatible with the native mores the idea that their wife could go shopping by herself at the grocery on the corner of the street. (39)1 Later, as the processes of urbanization and bourgeois consolidation progressed, and the Greeks strived to attain an image as European citizens. The Greek women, who belonged to the new social class, which Varika describes as “a European class, purified from the eastern residual elements and re-baptised in the western savoir-vivre” (30), were asked to transform themselves in a fitting manner that would serve the aspirations of this class.2 In an attempt to imitate the rich Greek men of
Diaspora, who introduced and disseminated models of style and behavior in the Greek society, the members of this new class pursued financial success and social elevation and they used the Greek women as proofs of their prosperity (Varika 29, 45-46, 49).
To this end, a whole code of rules for women’s lifestyle and proper behavior was established. The Greek women of the urban social classes avoided any sort of profitable occupation, because their domesticity “was a question of pride and a sign of social status for bourgeois and petty bourgeois families” (Karamessini 68). They also had to wear western clothes and receive education that was of decorative function and complementary to the dowry (Fournaraki, “Epi tini Logo” 185; Fournaraki, Ekpaidefsi kai Agogi 23-27; Varika 46-48; Ziogou-Karastergiou 193, 223-224). They were
1 Although this restricted female social position was reminiscent of the Eastern past, at the same time it was desirable. With the help of Williams’s theory of “selective tradition,” which is discussed in his book Problems in Materialism and Culture (1980), Varika explains the perpetuation of the Greek women’s pre-revolutionary state of exclusion from the public sphere at a time when the new national ideal involved systematically rejecting all elements associated with the Eastern mores. As she argues, in order for the dominant culture to achieve stability and preserve its hegemony it needed to appear like the legal carrier of tradition (Varika 38). This link with tradition, as well as the sense that the Greeks resisted the intrusion of foreign modes of living and that they protected their cultural inheritance, was offered by the perpetuation of women’s exclusion and inferiority (Varika 38-39). 2 This new class emerged as a result of the homogenization of the disparate social classes which Varika calls “mesaia stromata” [middle strata] (22) and which made up the immediate post-revolutionary Greek society. The formation of this social group coincided with the development of free trade, the spread of education, the rise of the civil service, and the increase in the number of clerks, petit- bourgeois merchants and shopkeepers (Varika 22). 44
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) restricted in the domestic sphere. There they were charged with the responsibility of child-bearing and doing the housework tasks, which, due to their unpaid status and irregular schedule, were not regarded as a regular form of work (Varika 42-43). At the same time, middle-class women pursued a “decorative education,” read, sewed, undertook philanthropic activities (Varika 96-97, 102), or worked as teachers, which was “the first and only public sector occupation they were allowed to enter”
(Karamessini 68). Hence the women of the new urban class and the lower middle classes came to be dependent upon men and were associated in the collective conscience with a parasitic state of being (Varika 55).1
As the Greek society pended between a conservative agenda and a progressive one, so did women’s roles. Soon enough, they were accused of being residual elements of an old world which impeded progress and Europeanization. Conversely, they were accused of corrupting the Greek society by coarsely imitating western models of behavior (Varika 58, 60-61). Theirs was a liminal position that could be ideologically validated neither by the traditional values, nor by the new bourgeois values of work, productivity and rationality (Fournaraki, “Epi Tini Logo” 188).
These views of women were linked to each other by the consent that women are the negative side of men and that they should be defined by reference to everything that does not constitute manhood (Varika 58). Hence, women came to be thought of as weak, parasitic, illogical, but at the same time beautiful, innocent and
1 According to Maria Karamessini, only “women of poor social origin would work outside their home and even these women only in the case of economic need and when work would not interfere with their roles as wives and mothers, that is, before marriage and when widowed” (68). Important studies on female work in the period 1870-1922 is Zizi Saliba’s Gynaikes Ergatries stin Elliniki Viomichania kai sti Viotechnia (1870-1922) [Women Workers in the Greek Industry and Artisan Production] and Lida Papastefanaki’s Ergasia, Technologia kai Fylo stin Elliniki Viomichania. E Clostoyfantourgia tou Peiraia (1870-1940) [Work, Technology and Gender in the Greek Industry. The Textile Industry of Piraeus (1870-1940)]. 45
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) angelic beings. A basic dimension of the mid-19th century definition of womanhood in Greece is that women were viewed as morally feeble and sexually susceptible, in need of male guidance and supervision. The literary production of the period is replete with such images of mentally and bodily fragile, morally vulnerable, ready-to- collapse, immaterial, unworldly women. Varika supports this view with examples drawn from the dominant genre of the time, namely romantic poetry (55-57).
In her book Eros (Ant)Enthnikos [Love (Anti)National], in which she investigates the national stereotypes with respect to sex and race that arise in the context of love in the literary texts of the 19th century, Mary Mike demonstrates that similar representations are entailed in the other popular literary genres of the period, romantic historical novel and drama. In the chapter tellingly titled “Lefcheimones
Kores Antikeimena tou Pothou” [Whitely Dressed Daughters Objects of Desire], the scholar shows that there were two dominant trends in female representations at the time: the idealization of the obedient and chaste daughters or wives and the elimination from the human context of women that succumb to illicit erotic desire
(Mike 172). In the case that women exhibit the proper behavior, they are endowed with outer beauty, which is commonly described in texts through metaphors of the flower, the ancient statue, the shining star and the angel (Mike 149-150, 170). Their outer beauty matches their inner beauty which consists in virginity, modesty and respectfulness to familial, Christian and national mores (Mike 170).
My examination of contemporary Greek gender politics and literature shows that 19th-century Greece cultivated a fixation on women’s domesticity, purity, chastity, fragility and weakness and nurtured fear of female sexuality and immorality,
46
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) thus necessitating that women live under constant surveillance.1 It was this image of femininity that loomed large in the horizon of the first Greek translations of
Shakespeare’s plays. At that time the most systematic attempts to render Shakespeare in Greek was undertaken by Polylas (1825-1896), Pervanoglou (1831-1911) and
Vikelas (1835-1908).2 I have chosen to focus on Vikelas, and particularly on his translations of Macbeth and Othello, because he set the basis for the reception of
Shakespeare in Greece.
ii. Vikelas as Shakespeare translator and his views on the woman issue
Vikelas (1835-1905) was a member of the rising middle class and his main occupation was the trade. Alongside being a merchant, he was interested in poetry and prose writing, his literary fame being established when he wrote his novel Loukis
Laras (1879).3 In 1852, in the age of seventeen, young Vikelas settled in London in order to follow the long merchant tradition that ran in his family. At the same time,
Vikelas developed social and national activism and he is most known for his involvement in the revival of the Olympic Games in Athens in 1896.
1 As Varika perceptively observes, it was not out of mere imitation of the European romantic trend that this image of femininity dominated in 19th-century Greece. It was because Greek thought came to structure and view the two sexes in a bifurcated manner that this specific strand of romantic representation of women was favored over others which moved along the lines of Shelley’s androgyny or which highlighted the liberating power of female emancipation (Varika 56). 2 By “systematic” I refer not only to the number of plays that they translated but also to the informed method of translation and the diligent editions of their translations, which included an introduction and end-notes or analyses of the plays and their dramatic characters. Other translators of the period are K. Ionidis, A. R. Ragkavis, M. N. Damiralis, D. P. Antonopoulos, A. G. Skalidis, Alexandros Pallis, and Panteleon Kavafis and Alexandros Meymar. The latter two translators published their translations in Constantinopli and Paris respectively. More information on editions of translations of Shakespeare’s plays is provided by Douka-Kambitoglou (I Parousia tou Saixpir 11-30), Karagiorgos (“Vivliografia ton Metafraseon” 673-695) and Sideris (“O Saixpir stin Ellada II.” 56-62). 3 Details about his life are amply provided by Vikelas’s himself in his autobiography I Zoi Mou. In addition, enlightening accounts of Vikelas’s life are offered in his biography written by his nephew, Alexandros Oikonomou, as well as the timeline of the events in his life put together by Maria Terdimou. 47
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Vikelas was a systematic translator and profound student of Shakespeare, his era and his plays, as well as of his reception worldwide. In the course of nine years
(1875-1884) he translated six Shakespearean plays.1 He kept himself updated with regard to editions, interpretations and translations of Shakespeare’s plays,2 while he also translated and published, or appended to his translations, studies of other scholars.3 He also expressed his own critical views on the Bard’s works and their ambiguous points.4
Vikelas’s scholarly diligence regarding Shakespeare is also confirmed if we take a look at the editions of his translations. All of them are thorough works, meticulously prepared for publication. After the completion of each translation he assigned a sort of editing and proofreading to his sister in Greece (Oikonomou 224,
279). In addition, the editions of his translations include an extensive commentary with references to contemporary scholarly studies on Shakespeare,5 while the edition
1 In chronological order, these are King Lear (1875, published 1876), Romeo and Juliet (1875, published 1876), Othello (1875, pubished 1876), Hamlet (1881, published 1882), Macbeth (1879, corrected 1881, published 1882) and The Merchant of Venice (1883, published 1884) (Oikonomou 226, 262, 287). It was not his intention to render the whole of the bard’s oeuvre in the Greek language. In his short introductory note to his translation of Makveth (1882), he explicitly states his hope that other, more able translators than him would accomplish this feat. 2 Verdiaki notes down 47 books on Shakespeare in Vikelaia Library. Among them, there are various editions of Shakespeare’s plays, like that of W. & R. Chambers (1857), H. Staunton (1858-1860), W. G. Clark and W. A. Wright (1873), and H. H. Furness (1879); French, German and Italian translations, such as those by Μ. Leoni (1820), A. de Vigny (1830), and A. W. Schlegel and L. Tieck (1867); a copy of Shakespeariana 1564-1864 (1872) and the volumes I-VI of the journal New Shakespeare Society’s Transactions (1874-1883) (Verdiaki 73-75). 3 This is the case with Paul Stapfer’s analyses of Macbeth and Hamlet included in his book Shakespeare et l’ Antiquité (1879). Vikelas’s translation of the first piece of Stapfer’s criticism on Macbeth, titled “To Yper Fysin en to Makveth kai en ti Tragodia en Genei” [The Supernatural in Macbeth and in the Tragedy in General], was first published in the magazine Athinaion (1880) and then appended to his translation of Makveth (128-158) (Oikonomou 278). His translation of Stapfer’s analysis on Hamlet, titled “O haraktiras tou Amletou” [The Character of Hamlet], was published in the journal Estia (1881) (Oikonomou 280). 4 For instance, he exchanged a series of letters with his friend, the German Shakespearean scholar, Wilhelm Wagner, on Desdemona’s manner of death (1878) (Oikonomou 245-247, Vikelas Romaios kai Ioulieta ιε΄). 5 For example, appended to his translation of Makveth (1882) is a 40-page chapter titled “Semeioses” [Notes] which includes information on Shakespeare’s sources and explanations of the ambiguous points of the play and the poet’s allusions, as well as similarities to Aeschylus’s and Sophocles’s 48
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) that contains his first three translations in one volume includes a 15-page prologue
(Vikelas, Romaios kai Ioulieta ζ΄-ιε΄). Finally, Vikelas proceeded to re-translations, not just re-editions of his translations, because he aimed at improving his texts
(Verdiaki 71-72).1
An interesting combination of motives lies behind Vikelas’s decision to engage in Shakespeare translation. To begin with, he set out on this endeavour on his mother’s encouragement at a painful period of his life: his beloved wife, Kalliope, was institutionalized as a result of being diagnosed with a kind of psychopathic illness, while she also tried to commit suicide more than once (Oikonomou 204-221).
This intellectual activity offered him consolation, and he also traced common features between Shakespeare’s tragic characters and his own unfortunate condition
(Oikonomou 224).
The full dimension of Vikelas’s translation activity becomes obvious not only by reference to his personal motives but also by reference to its context. Vikelas joined the tradition of literary translation which had emerged in Greece since early
19th century and which reached its peak in the period 1845-1895. Kasinis offers an enlightening overview of the status of translation in Greece in the course of the 19th century – its moralistic orientation, its supporters and the reactions caused as a result of the flood of translations of the so-called “corrupting French novels” (Diastavroseis
11-30). He concludes his study with a list of the ways in which 19th-century Greece
tragedies (118-158). The same practice of notes holds for the rest of the translations too (Romaios kai Ioulieta 163-180, Othellos 211-228, O Vasilefs Lir 211-230). 1 This observation probably pertains to Vikelas’s translation of Hamlet, which was published for the first time in 1882 and then published again after it had undergone corrections in 1888. As far as my study of Othello and Macbeth is concerned, there has been no corrected edition of Vikelas’s translations, just re-publications. My conclusion is based upon comparison of the 1876 and the 1885 editions of his translation of Othello and the 1890 and the 1896 editions of his translation of Macbeth, which are the first and last editions of his translations while Vikelas was still in life. 49
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) benefitted from the extended literary translation activity. Among other things, literary translation educated the young people, cultivated the native language, enriched the native literature with great works, produced translation theory, and promoted models of literature so that through paraphrasis and imitation the Greeks would gradually achieve independent creation (Kasinis, Diastavroseis 29-30).
Vikelas himself and his biographer state three similar reasons why he was motivated to translate Shakespeare in Greek. Firstly, through successful intellectual activities, like Shakespeare translation, he wished to restore the image of Greece abroad and trigger praise for his home country and its people (Oikonomou 247).1 This is what Dimitris Tziovas calls Vikelas’s role as a “cultural ambassador” of Greece
(255) and Tsouprou calls his “cultural mediatory role” (“O Politistikos kai
Diamesolavitikos Rolos” 213-214). Secondly, he aimed at enriching the native literary production and theatre stage (Vikelas, Romaios kai Ioulieta ιδ΄). As Susam-Sarajeva has pointed out in relation to Turkish translations of Roland Barthes’s theoretical texts on structuralism and semiotics, 19th-century Shakespeare translations were too “the concequence of the receiving system’s official openness towards, and dependence upon, imports from the West” (6) due to the poor status of the native literature and theatre. Lastly, Vikelas wished to contribute to the spreading of Shakespeare’s works among the Greek readership (Vikelas, Romaios kai Ioulieta ιδ΄).
Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays were scant. Around late 1870s, when Vikelas set out to translate Shakespeare, not all of his plays had been rendered in Greek and the tragedies had been translated only once and in fact not too long ago.
1 The expression of positive feelings for Greece by the Europeans at that historical moment was necessary to boost the nation’s morale because it was undermined by many sides. The Greeks were not only facing a Turkish threat without receiving any support from the Great Powers of Europe (Oikonomou 247). They also had to deal with the questioning of their association with their glorious ancient ancestors, a theory which was formulated in early 19th century by Jacob Philipp Fallmerayer. 50
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Hamlet had been translated by Ioannis Pervanoglou in 1858, Macbeth by N. I. K. and
Meymar in 1862 and 1875 respectively, Othello by Ioannis D. Manolis in 1873, while
King Lear had not been translated before (Karagiorgos “Vivliografia ton
Metafraseon” 675-681). According to Piet Van Pouck and Guillermo Sanz Gallego,
“the concept of retranslation is closely related to […] that of canonization” (15) and that is what Vikelas was striving for by retranslating Shakespeare’s plays in such a short time span since his predecessors: to help them achieve the status of a classic in the Greek literary canon.1
Closely associated with his wish to canonize Shakespeare’s plays was his didactic approach to literature in general, and to Shakespeare in particular, and the idea that the Greek readership would benefit from his plays in moralistic terms. As already mentioned in Chapter 1 of the present thesis, Vikelas insisted that
Shakespeare was as popular as the Holy Scriptures among the Anglo-Saxon races and that his verses were used as maxims or proverbs in the orations and speeches of all who speak the English language (Romaios kai Ioulieta ζ΄). Vikelas further saw Romeo and Juliet, Othello and King Lear as a true trilogy of human life: the first play exemplifies the passions of young love, the second one dramatizes the passion of jealousy and the third one illustrates the hardships of old age (Romaios kai Ioulieta
ιβ΄).
1 There were of course those who expressed reservations against staging and translating Shakespeare’s plays for fear that this would corrupt the native literary and dramatic production. A notable case was Dimitrios N. Vernardakis. Under the influence of German Romanticism and its immense admiration for Shakespeare, he began his carreer in letters as an enthusiastic admirer of Shakespeare and strongly imitated him in his early works in late 1850s. Upon returning to Greece, however, his love for Shakespeare gradually declined and was replaced with his fervent support for ancient Greek dramatists, most notably Euripides. By offering an enlightening account of Vernardakis’s trajectory, Konstantina Georgiadi encapsulates an interesting detail in the initial reception of Shakespeare in Greece (197-242). Valuable information in this respect is also provided by Sideris (Istoria 45-53) and Yanni (“Shakespeare and the Greeks” 199-200). 51
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Vikelas followed the dominant 19th-century trend, which was observed both in Europe and in Greece, and which necessitated that books combine delight with didacticism. Of course, early in his life Vikelas had been widely exposed to the popular French romance novels, such as those written by Alexander Dumas the father, which were heavily criticized for their corrupting influence upon young people (Ditsa
66). Later, however, he came to deter others from pursuing this reading activity because it “excites juvenile imagination and diverts attention away from more serious studies” (Oikonomou 104). He also served this vision of didactic literature actively through his own literary works. Tziovas argues that Vikelas “marks the transition from the ideal to the real, expressing the movement from the intense individualism and the melodramatism of the period 1830-1880 toward the development of a prosperous and well-governed urban society founded on the values of hard work, discipline and family cohesion” (250). In an interesting account of this trend of didactic literature Kasinis refers to Vikelas’s long-lasting vision of establishing a club that would publish books conducive to the education of the nation (Diastavroseis 119-
148). Vikelas conceived of this idea in 1869 and implemented it in 1885 by founding a club for the dissemination of useful books, called Syllogos Pros Diadosin Ofelimon
Vivlion [Club for the Dissemination of Useful Books – SOV].
Vikelas spent a considerable part of his life in London. As far as the woman issue is concerned, mid- and late-19th-century London was a place of considerable turmoil. In her exploration of English women’s lives in the 19th century, Susie
Steinbach notes that “the tension between the restrictions imposed upon women and women’s response to them was a key feature of English society” (297). On the one hand, custom, law, religion and science imposed limits on women’s actions
(Steinbach 297). For example, girls received poorer education than boys, unmarried 52
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) women were regarded as a burden to society, while married women lost many of their legal rights and could not initiate divorce as easily as men (Steinbach 297). In addition, the ideology of the separate spheres was firmly consolidated (at least on the level of beliefs, for actual life often proved otherwise), and it supported the view that
“[m]en and women were two radically different beings who inhabited ‘separate spheres’” (Poovey ix). The private sphere, which was domestic and family-centered, was assigned to women, and the public sphere of work, commerce and politics was assigned to men. On the other hand, the mid-19th-century society of London witnessed the first appearance of an organized women’s movement in Britain. Jane
Rendall acknowledges the formation of groups and associations, which campaigned
“on different fronts for improved education, more employment opportunities, moral reform and women’s full citizenship” (34).
Vikelas witnessed these negotiations about women’s identity and social roles and later in his life, when he repatriated to Greece, he openly supported the necessity of women’s education.1 Since 1852 and for the next two and a half decades, however, he interacted with and was integrated in the grand mercantile circles of the Greek diaspora that lived in London. The Greek mercantile diaspora embraced the protestant ethics which emphasized the values of hard work, discipline, frugality and family life
(Ditsa 44-48; Athanasopoulos, “Eisagogi” 58-66; Tziovas 250). These ideas were also highlighted in the literary genre that dominated that period in England, the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott and Charles Dickens, of which Vikelas was very fond, and
1 In 1904 Vikelas wrote Gynaikeia Agogi [Female Education]. This was a comparative study of educational systems and teaching methods in European countries which he presented in the first Greek Educational Conference. In this text Vikelas noted that it was a period of change in the social position of women whereby they were increasingly involved in the struggle to earn their living (Gynaikeia Agogi 4). For this reason, but also in order for Greece to reach the civilized states of Europe and in order for the Greek children not to be brought up by illiterate and uneducated mothers, Vikelas deemed it necessary for women’s education to be reformed (Gynaikeia Agogi 4, 6, 12-13). 53
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) which he followed in writing his own historical novel Loukis Laras (Ditsa 113-114;
Tziovas 257). Strongly didactic pieces of literature were also written by members of his immediate family circle: Leon Melas, his uncle from his mother’s side, wrote two novels –Old-Stathis (1858) and Christoforos (1869)– which praised the values of hard work, parcimony and frugality (Ditsa 47-48).
The role that was reserved for the Greek women of the upper-middle-class mercantile diaspora, to which Vikelas belonged, was predominantly domestic.
Although in reality many of them often “penetrated the borders of the male public domain” (Pepelasis Minoglou 523, 524-527), their life was organized according to the cultural norm of the separate female and male spheres. Motherhood was considered their natural vocation, while the only acceptable career open to them was teaching because it was perceived to be an extension of child-rearing (Varika 46; Pepelasis
Minoglou 521). Diaspora women also cultivated cultural skills, like proficiency in music and in some western European language, most often French, the attainment of which, together with their lack of occupation, “reflected the socioeconomic power and status of their merchant father, brother, or husband” (Pepelasis Minoglou 522). As a member of the upper-middle class of the Greek diaspora, in both his life and his literary works, Vikelas promoted a model of femininity that put forth women’s domestic role and such virtues as naivety, placidity, sweetness, innocence, grace, peacefulness and decency (Oikonomou 144-147 and passim).
According to Athanasopoulos, in Vikelas’s literary works rarely are there any sexually attractive female characters (“Eisagogi” 58). In his short story “The Two
Brothers”, Helen, the mysterious female figure that triggers the protagonist’s curiosity is constructed according to the precepts which Varika (55-57) and Mike (149-175) trace in popular 19th-century literary genres; she is beautiful and deeply immersed in 54
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) melancholy, while everything about her implies that “she does not belong to this world” (Vikelas, Loukis Laras kai Diigimata 411). In the unique case that there is a potentially sexually attractive woman, she is eliminated from the narrative and the male hero gets to marry a woman who is highly desexualized (Athanasopoulos,
“Eisagogi” 58-64). This is the case with Vikelas’s popular historical novel Loukis
Laras that gained him his literary fame in the first place (Oikonomou 261). As
Athanasopoulos argues, Vikelas seems to have experienced an internal process of censorship which abolishes female sexuality and any reference to erotic passion
(“Eisagogi” 58-64).
It was through his middle-class value system of the Greek diaspora with its emphasis on female purity, family life, discipline and the didactic function of literature that Vikelas read and translated Shakespeare’s plays. This filter created policies and moulded norms for Vikelas to follow in translating Shakespeare’s women and adjusting them to the requirements of the recipient culture. In rendering
Shakespeare’s plays in Greek, Vikelas tried both to translate faithfully, remaining close to the source texts, and to give a Greek form to them in order to render them comprehensible to the Greeks (Romaios kai Ioulieta ιδ΄).1 In his letter to the French intellectual Emmanuel Miller, Vikelas reveals that he could have followed the source
1 The intention to popularize Shakespeare led Vikelas to a series of decisions that concerned the formal characteristics of his translations. For instance, Karagiorgos notes that Vikelas quickly realized that the prevailing puristic form of Katharevousa would prove inadequate and produce an inappropriately comic effect (Greek Translations 119). To both facilitate the readers’ comprehension and keep the dignity of the Greek language, he tried to keep a middle path by translating in the vernacular as it was spoken at his days (Karagiorgos, Greek Translations 119; Vikelas, Romaios kai Ioulieta ιδ΄). Karagiorgos provides the same explanation for Vikelas’s use of 15-syllable iambic meter. It was quite familiar to the Greeks because it was used in the composition of the Greek folk songs (Karagiorgos, Greek Translations 120). At the same time, it served the simplification of the source text because its five syllables more than Shakespeare’s pentameter provided room for extension of the dramatist’s compressed diction (Karagiorgos, Greek Translations 121). Finally, it was probably the same consideration for his readers’ comprehension that led Vikelas to clarify the allusions in Shakespeare’s plays in explanatory notes. 55
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) text with even greater servility sacrificing clarity and simplicity (Enepekidis 71).
However, producing a word-for-word translation was not his intention. As Vikelas himself further makes clear, he wished to offer his readers an “echo of the source text
(weakened of course)” so that he “gave Shakespeare the right to be nationalized”
(Enepekidis 71).
As Venuti so aptly puts it, “translation is an inscription of the source text with intelligibilities and interests that are specific to the translating language and culture, even when the translator maintains a strict semantic correspondence” with the source text (“Retranslations” 26). Venuti’s statement is truer when the translator is required to deal with ambiguous points that invite his own interpretation. That is the case with
Vikelas’s translation of Shakespeare’s women. Both when he strives to translate faithfully and when he encounters ambiguous points that require his own reading and invite his intervention, he inscribes the source text with his middle-class ideology.
This results in an interesting issue: Desdemona is condemned for her disobedience to her father and for taking initiative in choosing her husband on her own without her father’s consent, while Lady Macbeth is favourably represented as a selfless wife that exceeds the limits of law and of her sex because she loves her husband and is devoted to him.
iii. Desdemona: interpretative cruxes, her reception in Greece and Vikelas’s
sources
Desdemona presents the translator with a complex case because there are significant differences between the Quarto and the Folio version of the play, which affect
Desdemona’s representation. In addition, irrespective of these differences,
Desdemona herself is not a unified character. 56
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
To begin with, critics like Alice Walker (138-162), Ernest Honigmann, and
Lois Potter (81-94) point out I.iii, II.i and IV.iii as passages that heighten the tension over Desdemona because they construct different portraits of her. For instance, two of the most famous examples of variants between the Quarto and the Folio versions of
Othello are whether Desdemona kisses Othello (Folio) or she sighs (Quarto) after she has heard his adventures (I.iii.1821), and whether she is dedicated to Othello’s utmost pleasure (Quarto) or to his quality (Folio) (I.iii.262).
According to Potter, one could argue that “the Folio shows a consistent pattern of trying to make Desdemona less susceptible to charges of talking too much, too vaguely and too impulsively” (84). However, “the pattern of ‘protecting Desdemona’ is less apparent in later scenes” (Potter 85). In Folio, in II.i, the scene during which she awaits Othello in Cyprus, Desdemona is vividly sexualized in Cassio’s physical phrase “make love’s quick pants in Desdemona’s arms” (II.i.94). At this point, the
Quarto contains a more neutral phrase: “And swiftly come to Desdemona’s arms”
(II.i.94). At the same time, Desdemona herself challenges Iago to engage in dialogue with her, by calling him “Fie upon thee, slanderer” (II.i.), a phrase included only in the Folio.
Potter further supports that in Folio, IV.iii, the so-called “Willow Scene,” can hardly be said to protect Desdemona, who with no prompting suddenly begins to praise Lodovico (Potter 87-88). In sharp contrast, Quarto omits Desdemona’s song, a great part of the dialogue between her and Aemilia, and the latter’s long final brave speech on the emotional brutality and shortsightedness of men (IV.iii.95-112) (Potter
87). Hence, Potter concludes that Folio and Quarto “work in both directions –making
Desdemona sometimes more sensual and sometimes less so” (92). Besides their moral implications, the Folio/ Quarto variants point to the difficutly of achieving a “balance 57
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) between Desdemona’s sexuality and her innocence” and of establishing a clear, polarized charaterization of her as either innocent or sensuous (Potter 92).
Krontiris contextualizes this complexity of the character of Desdemona by reference to the contradictory early modern discourses upon which Desdemona’s characterization is constructed, such as domestic discourse, love poetry and romance
(“Tragic Hero” 202, 206). As the scholar explains, Desdemona sets off as the heroine of romance, who defies social conventions by disobeying her father, eloping with her exotic lover and marrying secretely (Krontiris, “Tragic Hero” 202). She develops into a loving wife that eroticizes and idealizes her husband (Krontiris, “Tragic Hero” 202).
By the end of the play, she has become a faithful and obedient wife that remains silent
(Krontiris, “Tragic Hero” 202, 206).
While editors of Othello have observed the complexity of Desdemona’s character and the textual difficulties, literary critics seem to have focused mainly on
Desdemona’s virtues. Before Vikelas translated the play, the most popular interpretations of Desdemona abroad insisted only upon Desdemona’s timidity, dedication to love, capacity for compassion, lack of suspiciousness, innocence and angelic nature. This stance is encountered in the texts of William Hazlitt (33-43),
Anna Jameson (194-204), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (174-186) and Algernon
Swinburne (180-184).
Around the time that Vikelas took up the translation of Shakespeare’s play, scholars that approached Othello from a moralistic standpoint identified a moral message against daughters’ indiscipline to paternal power – a message that is communicated through the character of Desdemona. In 1875, Gervinus found the
“prosaic truth” in the play that young women should not marry against their father’s will (507). Some years earlier, in 1860, Alfred Jean-Francois Mézières (1826-1915) 58
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) had reached the point of stating that Desdemona provides occasions for suspicion to
Othello by fervently supporting Cassio (281-283).
Vikelas, who was in favour of a didactic approach to literature, was attracted to this strand of criticism and relied heavily on Gervinus and Mézières, who placed
Shakespeare’s works on an exclusively moralistic platform.1 The way he exploited the points of indeterminacy of Shakespeare’s play, which arise as a result of the differences between the Folio and the Quarto versions, indicates that he incriminates female sexuality and refuses to combine Desdemona’s innocence with her sensuousness. Vikelas’s text systematically plants suspicion in the readers’ minds about how the ideally passive and naïve Desdemona is also full of sexual guilt. At the same time, it points out that she is rightly punished for her disobedience to her father in eloping with Othello.
In 1875, when Vikelas translated Othello, there was only one more translation of the play published two years earlier in Constantinople by Ioannis D. Manolis
(Karagiorgos, “Vivliographia ton Metafraseon” 681).2 Besides, relying on such critics
1 In fact, extracts from Gervinus’s and Mézières’s analyses were translated by Vikelas into Greek and were appended to his translation in order for key points of the plot to be elucidated (Vikelas, Othellos 223-226). Vikelas turned to foreign criticism not only because he could easily access it by virtue of his living abroad, but also because Shakespeare’s plays were just being introduced in Greece and there were scarsely any native analyses of them. Stage performances of the Bard’s plays were just beginning to appear. Sideris mentions that in the decade 1866-1875 four Shakespearean plays were staged (“O Saixpir stin Ellada: IV. Skinothetes kai Ermineftes” 28). In addition, all the stakeholders involved in the theatrical experience –directors, actors, audience and critics– had not systematically studied Shakespeare and had but a blurred view of him. Sideris neatly encapsulates this general situation: “defective acting, unformed criticism, uninformed audience” (“O Saixpir stin Ellada: IV. Skinothetes kai Ermineftes” 29). As early as 1876, Wagner described the situation in Greece in a similar manner. But for Spyridon Vasileiadis’s essay on King Lear there was no other Greek study on Shakespeare’s characters (“Shakespeare in Griechenland” 49-50). In addition, Wagner found that everything in Greece was “in the making: the artistic and aesthetic perceptions of the nation [remained] unfinished, so [was] the language in which the poet’s plays [were] to be translated,” while up to that moment “the foundation of notable Greek theatre [was] doubtful” (Wagner, “Shakespeare in Griechenland” 55). 2 Information on the native reception of Desdemona was poor. Sideris cites only two reviews of a 1869 staging of Othello by the troupe of Pantelis Soutsas, each of which is totally preoccupied either with the character of Othello or with the character of Iago (Sideris “O Saixpir stin Ellada: IV. Skinothetes kai Ermineftes” 31). Desdemona’s already pale character is found to pale even more before the two 59
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) as Gervinus and Mézières, in translating Othello Vikelas probably consulted the wide range of Italian, French and German translations of the play he had in his library, like those by M. Leoni (1820), Alfred de Vigny (1830), Ignazio Valletta (1830), François
Guizot (1862), and G. Carcano (1866) (Vikelas, Othellos 211-228; Verdiaki 28-30).
The edition of the play that was located in his library is H. Staunton’s edition (1859-
1860), while there was also Furness’s New Variorum edition (1879), which was posterior to Vikelas’s translation. Hence, he probably relied on Staunton’s edition for his translation (Verdiaki 28-30).
iv. Desdemona in Vikelas’s translation of Othello (1875)
Vikelas partly follows the dominant trend of representing Desdemona virtuous and chaste, but, as this section shows, Staunton’s edition of Othello does not leave much room for an alternative. This edition is not very enlightening about the Quarto/ Folio variants of the play, and chooses to underline Desdemona’s virtue. Nonetheless,
Vikelas did not accept Desdemona as fully innocent. His middle-class ideology prevented him from coming to terms with female sexuality and dissociating a woman’s innocence from her sensuousness. This stance interfered with his representation of Desdemona and caused him to compromise her virtue and attribute destructive sexual instincts to her, thus making her show disrespect to her father’s authority.
In Staunton’s edition of Othello, in the wooing scene Desdemona responds with “a world of sighs” (I.iii.182) to Othello after hearing his narrative of his
male protagonists (Sideris “O Saixpir stin Ellada: IV. Skinothetes kai Ermineftes” 31). In his 1870 study on King Lear, Spyridon Vasileiadis briefly refers to Desdemona in idealizing terms as fair and pure, a fragile flower that bears beauty and myrrh but not human voice and blood (23). 60
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) adventures. The editor chooses the Quarto version and only fleetingly in a very brief note acknowledges that the Folio replaces the word “sighs” for the word “kisses”
(Shakespeare The Plays 656). Thus, Vikelas follows the Quarto and he translates in the following way:
και όταν ετελείωσα, μ’ επλήρωσε τον κόπον
με ένα κόσμο δάκρυα και αναστεναγμούς της. (Vikelas, Othellos 28, emphasis
added) 1
[and when I finished, she paid my toil
With a world of tears and sighs]
A little later, when Desdemona publicly submits to her husband’s authority the
Folio reads
My heart’s subdu’d
Even to the very quality of my Lord (Folio, I.iii.278-279, emphasis added),
while Quarto reads
My heart’s subdued,
Even to the utmost pleasure of my lord (Quarto, I.iii.279, emphasis added)
1 Quotes from Shakespeare’s Othello refer to Horace Howard Furness’s Variorum edition by scene, act and line numbers (Philadelpia 1886). Quotes from Vikelas’s translation of Othello refer by page number to the 1876 edition in Athens by the publishing house of Brothers Perri. For the analysis of the words I have used the Dictionary of Greek Language edited by Athanasios A. Sakellarios (1886).
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2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Staunton’s edition of the play does not cite the alternative offered in the Quarto version. In a note the editor explains the meaning of the word “quality” as profession and cites Malone’s explanation of Desdemona’s lines, “I am so much enamoured of
Othello, that I am even willing to endure all the inconveniences incident to a military life, and to attend him to the wars” (Shakespeare The Plays 657-658). Translating from Staunton’s edition, Vikelas adopts the Folio version and rejects the sexual implications that are entailed in the Quarto. Vikelas’s Desdemona is dedicated to her husband’s fate, which is dictated by his dangerous military life:
Την καρδιά μου
εγώ την αφιέρωσα ‘ς την τύχην του ανδρός μου. (Vikelas, Othellos 32,
emphasis added)
[I have dedicated my heart to my husband’s destiny]
Some lines later Vikelas presents his version of Desdemona’s feelings about the alternative domestic life that she rejects for Othello’s sake. She sees herself as a
“moth of peace” (I.iii.284), which implies that she attributes a parasitic dimension to her peaceful domestic life while Othello is at war. Vikelas makes a crucial intervention and replaces this image with the image of Desdemona as a butterfly (32), a fragile and beautiful creature that is associated with delight and pleasure. This choice adapts Desdemona further and makes her fit better in the dominant 19th- century bourgeois perception of women as beautiful, fragile beings that experience pleasurable feelings in their domesticity.
Vikelas’s appropriation of the figure of Desdemona according to acceptable models of femininity of the period reveals itself in the notes appended to the 62
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) translation as well. He translated and included in his notes an excerpt from Mézières’s book titled Shakespeare, ses Oeuvres et ses Critiques (1860), in which Desdemona appears completely naïve and innocent. She is seen to lack the dexterity of Italian women, as well as the cunning that women are often shown to develop when they are in love (Vikelas, Othellos 225). In this excerpt, Desdemona is further viewed as passively innocent and totally guileless (Vikelas, Othellos 225-226). According to
Mézières, she retains these ideal features even to her final moments: she feels no bitterness at Othello’s offensive treatment of her publicly, neither does she complain when she is being killed by him. In fact, what is praised is her selflessness in trying to invent excuses for Othello and to cover up his murder (Vikelas, Othellos 226).
Nonetheless, Vikelas seems to have been unable to come to terms with
Desdemona’s sensuousness and with the fact that she disobeys her father and marries secretely. His middle-class values caused him to follow such moralizing critics as
Gervinus, Mézières and Wagner, and he likewise incriminated female sexuality.
Hence, he came to mar the dominant portrait of a perfect Desdemona by attributing to her sexual agency at multiple levels throughout his translation, most notably in the elopement (I.i), in the wooing scene (I.iii) and in her defense of her right to be with
Othello (I.iii.). Marrying secretely was legally inappropriate both in England and
Greece. In Victorian England, where Vikelas spent a great part of his life, the law required parental consent for marriages taking place under the age of 21 (Phengley
36). In Greece things seem to have been even stricter. The current civil law was based on Exavivlos, compiled by Konstantinos Armenopoulos back in the 14th century. This prescribed that marriage without parental concern is powerless and that those married secretly would be punished (Armenopoulos 230-231, 233).
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2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Vikelas underlines that, in marrying Othello without her father’s consent,
Desdemona acted her own initiative. In translating Roderigo’s description of how
Desdemona left the fatherly house to meet Othello, Vikelas presents her as rather willing to surrender herself to Othello:
… your faire Daughter,
At this odde Even and dull watch o’th’night
Transported with no worse nor better guard,
But with a knave of common hire, a Gundelier,
To the grosse claspes of the Lascivious Moore (I.i.135-139, emphasis added)
Η ωραία κόρη σου εδιάλεξε την ώρα
‘ς τα βάθη μέσα της νυκτός, με μόνην συνοδείαν
Ενός ανθρώπου μισθωτού, ενός κοινού βαρκάρη,
κ’ επήγε να παραδοθή ‘ς την αγκαλιάν του Μαύρου. (Vikelas, Othellos 11,
emphasis added)
[Your beautiful daughter chose the time
in the depths of the night, with only accompaniment
a paid man, a common boatman,
and went to surrender herself to the embrace of the Black]
In addition, he interprets Desdemona’s highly ambiguous wish that “heaven had made her such a man” (I.iii.161-162) as νύξι, i.e. a consciously uttered insinuation
(Vikelas, Othellos 29). This implies that Desdemona is courting Othello in a camouflaged manner by means of hinting at her image of the ideal man.
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2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Later, at the point at which Desdemona claims her wifely right to escort
Othello to his military expedition to Cyprus, Vikelas chooses to follow William
Warburton’s recommendation for changing the word “rites” into its homophonous word “rights” (I.iii.285) (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Othello 71):
So that (deere Lords) if I be left behind
A moth of peace and he go to the war,
The rites for which I love him are bereft me,
And I a heavy interim shall support
By his dear absence. (I.iii.283-287, emphasis added)
Κι’ αν απομείνω ‘γω εδώ, ειρήνης πεταλούδα,
ενώ, αυθένται μου, αυτός πηγαίνει ‘ς τους πολέμους,
θα μου φανεί πως αφαιρούν από τον έρωτά μου
τα δίκαιά του, κ’ η ζωή βαρειά θα μου ήναι
χωρίς εκείνον. (Vikelas, Othellos 32-33, emphasis added)
[And if I stay here, a butterfly of peace,
while, my lords, he goes to war,
it will seem to me that they are taking away from my love
its rights, and life will be hard for me
without him.]
Staunton’s edition of the play is silent about this point, but the learned Vikelas, who had access to a large number of studies on Shakespeare and other European translations of his plays, probably made some research about this ambiguous point. If
65
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) he had adhered to Staunton’s edition and translated the word “rites,” Vikelas would have placed emphasis on the ritualistic aspect of the Othello-Desdemona marriage.
His choice of the word “rights,” however, is sexually charged because it alludes to the right of a married woman to engage in sexual activity with her husband.
Vikelas’s intensification of Desdemona’s sexuality has wider reverberations in the interpretation of the play as a whole. Her father’s warning to Othello that she might deceive him, as she has deceived her father, is made to echo throughout the play. Also, her conduct with other male characters, like Iago, Cassio and Lodoviko, is rendered suspicious of being flirtatious. A notable example is traced in the Iago -
Desdemona dialogue upon arriving in Cyprus, whereby she tries to entertain her anxiety for Othello by asking Iago to comment on her and pressingly demands praise for her virtues. In a note Vikelas adopts and cites the analysis of Italian translator
Leoni (Vikelas, Othellos 216-217). According to this view, despite being virtuous,
Desdemona is but a woman that cannot restrict her natural inclination to coquetry even at the grave moment of waiting for her storm-tossed husband.
Vikelas’s representation of a sexually active Desdemona removes her from the realm of idealized womanhood and brings her closer to the second stereotypical female representation that is often found, according to Mike, in the literary production of the period: the woman that overrides social prohibitions because she succumbs to illegal sexual passions and is punished for this transgression (Mike 172). In the case of Desdemona, the sexual vulnerability that Vikelas identifies in her makes Othello’s murder of her to appear lighter, because it implies that not only Iago, but also
Desdemona herself provides some basis for it. In his notes, Vikelas adopts Wagner’s and Gervinus’s views that Othello’s conduct is motivated by his sense of honour and duty (Vikelas, Othellos 224, 227). Hence, Desdemona’s death is not a murder, but an 66
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) homage to justice (Vikelas, Othellos 224, 228). Let us not forget that double standards applied in Victorian England in the case of adultery. Although as a criminal offense it was abolished by the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act, adultery provided ground for divorce only to men and not to women. To obtain a divorce, women had not only to show their husbands unfaithful, but also to prove them engaged in incest, bigamy or excessive cruelty (Horstman 79). In Greece Exavivlos defined adultery primarily as the corruption of the married woman, and secondarily as the extramarital affairs of men (Armenopoulos 353). In addition, the law for adultery applied only to cuckolds for whom crimes of honor seem to have been legally tolerated (Armenopoulos 354-
355).
What is interesting to note is that in Vikelas’s translation Othello violates his initial decision not to shed Desdemona’s blood because this would destroy the perfection of her skin:
Yet ile not shed her blood,
Not scarre that whiter skin of hers, then Snow,
And smooth as Monumental Alabaster (V.ii.5-7)
Αλλά, το αίμα δεν της χύνω,
και το κορμί δεν της χαλνώ, το άσπρο ’σαν το χιόνι,
τ’ αφράτον και υαλιστερόν ’σαν μαρμαροκολώνα! (Vikelas, Othellos 183)
[But, I don't shed her blood,
and I don't spoil her body, white as snow,
fluffy and shiny like a marble column!]
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2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
In Vikelas’s translation, the emotionally charged Othello changes his mind and stabs
Desdemona:
What noise is this? Not dead? not yet quite dead?
I that am cruell, am yet mercifull,
I would not have thee linger in thy paine?
So, so. (V.ii.109-112)
Τι είν’ ο θόρυβος αυτός; - Ακόμη ζη; Ακόμη;
Εγώ, ο άγριος εγώ, θα δείξω ευσπλαχνίαν.
Ιδού· την αγωνίαν σου δεν σου την προμακρύνω.
Να, να!
(Την μαχαιρόνει.) (Vikelas, Othellos 190)
[What is this noise? – Is she still alive? Still?
I, the savage, I will show mercy.
Behold· I do not prolong your anguish.
There, there!
(He stabs her)]
Othello’s means of killing Desdemona is a controversial issue that has preoccupied critics’ attention a great deal (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Othello 302-
308). In the Quarto version of the play Othello stifles Desdemona, while in the Folio he smothers her (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Othello 302). Staunton’s edition follows the Folio version (Shakespeare The Plays 703). Vikelas, however, did not adhere to the edition of the source text he used. 68
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
The issue of Desdemona’s death was of particular interest to Vikelas and he exchanged a series of letters with Wagner in which he developed his reasoning
(Oikonomou 245-246). While Wagner believed that it would be inconsistent if
Othello stabbed Desdemona because then she could not revive and utter her last words to Emilia, Vikelas supported the view that Othello did stab Desdemona. For him, this manner of death harmonizes with the demands for truthfulness and medically justifies Desdemona’s ability to utter her last words (Oikonomou 246). In addition, it could be argued that stabbing is a more masculine way of killing.
Interestingly, Vikelas does not seem to think that Othello’s violation of his initial decision not to mar Desdemona’s skin jeopardizes his honour as a man. It never occurs to the translator to criticize Othello and takes his argument for showing mercy to Desdemona (V.ii.110) at face value. He, thus, in turn attributes compassion to
Othello which he sees to originate in his wish not to prolong Desdemona’s torture
(Vikelas, Othellos 224-225).
In his notes, Vikelas further justifies the righteousness of Desdemona’s death by viewing it as an appropriate punishment for her first trespass, namely her disobedience to her father. It is through Desdemona that Shakespeare’s play is made to fulfil its didactic function, which Vikelas appreciated so much in literature. He turns her into an example to be avoided. For him, as for Mézières, whom he quotes, the innocent yet sexually active Desdemona teaches us a double lesson: one that concerns the fate that is in store for the daughter that chooses her husband on her own without parental guidance or consent, and one that concerns the ending of a psychic passion that shatters social binds and overrides familial duties (Vikelas, Othellos 226).
69
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) v. Lady Macbeth: interpretative cruxes, earlier reception in Greece and Vikela’s sources
Lady Macbeth is one of the most challenging women of Shakespeare’s plays. Her part in the play and the lines she speaks contain cruxes for the translator to solve, like ambiguous and polysemous words, corrupted lines, more than one versions of the source text (Quarto, Folio), culture-specific terms and incomplete information, to name just a few. All these are points of indeterminacy and blanks that invite the translator to enter the text and interprete it.
For example, it is not clear if the idea of regicide is Lady Macbeth’s and if she has discussed it with Macbeth sometime before the plot begins. In addition, her motives in urging Macbeth to commit regicide are unclear and it is a matter of dispute whether she is motivated by personal political ambition. What is more, her “unsex” speech presents the translator with various dilemmas; for instance, it is not clear whether Lady Macbeth wishes to get rid of her female sex and to be turned into a man or to become a sexless figure. In addition, it is a matter of dispute whether she calls the evil spirits to change her breast milk into gall or whether she invites the evil spirits to feed on her breast milk which has already been turned into gall. Lady Macbeth’s status as a bereaved mother is also left to the translator to decide, and so is the case with the sincerity of her fainting upon hearing the news of Duncan’s murder (II.iii).
Finally, the actual cause behind her somnambulism is open to discussion with the main interpretations being that it results either from pangs of consciousness or from losing the power she strived for so much.
The critical reception of Lady Macbeth has not been stable and the determinants of interpretation have changed over time. Half a century before the publication of Vikelas’s translation of Macbeth Anne Jameson published her 70
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) influential treatise Shakespeare’s Heroines (1832) which established a domesticated version of Lady Macbeth that fitted the accepted gender norms of Victorian England I discussed above. In her book Jameson wished to redress the critical injustice, which she thought Lady Macbeth had suffered, by changing the prevailing view of her as
“nothing but a fierce, cruel woman, brandishing a couple of daggers, and inciting her husband to butcher the poor, old king” (288-289). She certainly admitted the cruel aspects of Lady Macbeth’s character and her contribution to her husband’s downfall
(Jameson 291). But, in her highly appropriative reading of Lady Macbeth she read her through the filter of the dominant 19th-century bourgeois ideology of domesticated womanhood. Jameson’s Lady Macbeth remains a woman until the end and is never dissociated from her sex and humanity (291). Her links with humanity and femininity manifest themselves even at the moments of her most savage resolution to extricate herself from her feminine frailty and maternal sensitiveness (291, 296). In
Shakespeare’s heroine Jameson found an example that illustrates what happens when
“the noblest faculties [become] uncontrolled or perverted” (289); by this she referred to Lady Macbeth’s wifely devotion which, for her, knows no measure. Jameson further imbued her with selfless ambition because she thought that all her actions are motivated by devotion to her husband (297-299).
Vikelas did not cite Jameson in the notes appended to his translation. Nor did he seem to have possessed her book.1 Nonetheless, he was probably aware of her views through cross-reference in the sources he used, like the treatises of Frederick
James Furnivall, Furness and other scholars which are recorded in his collection of
1 Jameson’s book was not catalogued by Verdiaki who noted down all of Vikelas’s books that pertained to Shakespeare (73-75). It seems that other Greek scholars were also familiar with Jameson’s book and her views on Shakespeare’s women. For example, in his theoretical writings on Shakespeare Damiralis often cites her and endorses her view that Lady Macbeth is ambitious for her husband’s sake (“Meletima” 336, “Saixpir: Vios kai Erga Aftou” (152). 71
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) books. Vikelas cited and seems to have been influenced by Georg Gottfried
Gervinus’s and Sara Siddons’s accounts of Shakespeare’s heroine. Both Gervinus’s and Siddons’s views bear striking resemblance to Jameson’s arguments.1
In 1786, on the occasion of her stage impersonation of Lady Macbeth, Sara
Siddons noted down her views on the character, which were published in 1834 by
Thomas Campbell in his biography of the renowned actress (Campbell 10-39). Like
Jameson, Siddons exonerated Lady Macbeth to a great extent by using the lens of
Victorian ideology of femininity. She found Lady Macbeth captivatingly feminine, fair and fragile (Campbell 11). She also implied that Lady Macbeth conforms, without the least opposition, to Macbeth’s direful suggestions and tries to extinguish her humanity for his own sake (Campbell 12). This is why she appears affectionless, presumptuous and determined before and during the regicide, while in fact she is not naturally savage and after the crime “her iron heart melts down to softness”
(Campbell 16). In the subsequent scenes, Siddons viewed Lady Macbeth as clearly approximating the contemporary models of tender and fragile womanhood. In the banquet scene she exhibits traces of selfless wifehood that devotes all her energies to alleviate Macbeth’s suffering, support him and cover up for him by “painfully, yet incessantly, laboring to divert their [the guests’] attention from her husband”
(Campbell 27). The self-abnegating wife places her husband above herself, while she
“[writhes] under her internal agonies” (Campbell 27) and “perseveringly [endures] in silence the utmost anguish of a wounded spirit” (Campbell 33). Finally, in a highly stereotypical language that resonated contemporary views on female fragility, Siddons
1 According to Verdiaki, he owned a rich library which he kept updated with respect to Shakespeare criticism (58-59). Since Vikelas lived abroad, he could access the international criticism on Shakespeare more easily than the native critical tradition, which was after all almost totally absent. 72
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) found that Lady Macbeth’s “feminine nature,” “delicate structure” and “frailer frame” cause her to collapse under the weight of her crimes (Campbell 33).
In 1875, Gervinus repeated to a great extent Jameson’s view about Lady
Macbeth’s humanity (596-597). However, the point at which Gervinus’s appropriation of Lady Macbeth according to the acceptable Victorian model of femininity heightened is when he located the source of Lady Macbeth’s courage and ambition in her husband. In his own words, her courage rests
in her boundless confidence in this strong man [Macbeth], to whom she trusts
everything, to whom she thinks all greatness due, and on whose high qualities
she delights and leans. […] She knows she may rely on him to be the worthiest
to rule and she wishes to confer the crown upon his merit. His manly nature is
her pride and her glory. (Gervinus 597-8)
In this way, Gervinus presents Lady Macbeth as an unthreatening woman whom we must regard more as “a dependent wife than an independent masculine woman” because her whole ambition is for him and through him (598). As soon as she loses faith in Macbeth, she collapses. In a very telling image of dependency
Gervinus describes Lady Macbeth as an ivy that has “twined her fresh greenness around the branches of the kingly tree; when the stem totters she falls to the ground”
(598). Hence, according to Gervinus, it is through Macbeth and for Macbeth that Lady
Macbeth raises a heroic woman in herself, “beyond the sphere of her sex,” and once she doubts him she “sinks again to [the status of] a mere woman” and “shrinks silently back, a bare and leafless branch” (599).1
1 Among Vikelas’s books was found Wagner’s critical edition of Macbeth titled Macbeth von William Shakespeare Erklärt (1872). Like the aforementioned scholars, Wagner saw Lady Macbeth not only as a demonic character but as a woman, and underlined her human traits and conducts (xvii-xviii). 73
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Vikelas was certainly aware of opposite, hostile views on Lady Macbeth, which existed simultaneously, as is the case with Stapfer’s analysis (1879), which
Vikelas translated in Greek and included in the notes appended to his translation
(Vikelas, Makveth 128-158).1 Stapfer’s is a text deeply imbued with misogynistic comments. It associates Lady Macbeth with views about women’s inherent evilness, frailty and proneness to corruption (Vikelas, Makveth 150). Stapfer further confidently asserted that Lady Macbeth is a “monster of evil” (Vikelas, Makveth 150) that lacks motive in committing the crime of regicide (Vikelas, Makveth 151).
According to Stapfer, this motiveless malignity makes Lady Macbeth an incarnation of Satan, similar to the witches, just fairer in looks, rather than a real woman (Vikelas,
Makveth 151). Stapfer further took issue with the German school of Shakespearean criticism for trying to restore Lady Macbeth’s wifely and human status, and accused them of “naïve sophistries” (Vikelas, Makveth 152). For him, Lady Macbeth is a conscienceless creature whose only links with humanity are her bodily frailty, ailing mind and her insanity (Vikelas, Makveth 152-3).
While Vikelas included Stapfer’s analysis in the edition of his translation, he discreetly noted his departure from his analysis of Lady Macbeth in a footnote.2 He particularly disagreed with Stapfer’s comment that, as Lady Macbeth reads Macbeth’s
1 Vikelas had read other negative interpretations of Lady Macbeth, like that contained in Charles Knight’s 1849 book titled Studies of Shakespeare (352-362), which has been catalogued in his collection of critical sources on Shakespeare’s plays (Verdiaki 73-75). 2 It is certainly a wonder why Vikelas goes to such length to translate and cite the interpretation of a scholar he does not wholly embrace. I think that his inclusion of Stapfer had to do less with this scholar’s interpretative stance on Lady Macbeth and more with his neoclassical approach to Shakespeare and his systematic attempt to find links between Shakespeare’s plays and ancient Greek dramas in his books The Greek and Latin Antiquity in the Works of Shakespeare (1879), Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (1880) and Shakespeare and the Greek Tragedians (1888). Through such kinds of treatises the image of the glorious Greek past was projected. We should not forget, as I have already pointed out, that at that historical moment praising comments of Greece were vital to the encouragement of the low self-esteem of the nation and that Vikelas was interested in promoting a good picture of Greece abroad. 74
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) letter about the witches’ prophesies, she experiences “an explosion of wild feelings” and “asks the evil spirits to unsex her in order to wreak havoc and spread fright”
(Vikelas, Makveth 151). Vikelas opted for a favourable representation of Lady
Macbeth, one that endowed her with the virtues of wifely devotion and selflessness, which were central to his middle-class ideology.
In 1882, when Vikelas translated Macbeth the reception of the play in Greece was still at a nascent stage. The play had been staged only once in 1870 by a Greek theatre troupe, starring Pantelis Soutsas, and once by an Italian melodramatic theatre group in 1868 (Sideris, Istoria 43). In addition, there were three previous translations of the play: the 1842 unpublished translation by Andreas Theotokis, the 1862 translation by N. I. K. [Ionidis N. K.] and the 1875 translation by Meymar (Sideris,
“O Saixpir stin Ellada II: Erga, Metafrastes, Protagonistes” 58, Karagiorgos,
“Vivliographia ton Metafraseon” 679). Vikelas cited the two former translations, but he seems to have just heard of them and not to have personally studied them (Romaios kai Ioulieta ιβ΄). The Hellenist Emmanuel Miller, who reviewed Vikelas’s translations of Shakespeare’s plays in a French journal (1883), argued that Vikelas’s predecessors translated only one Shakespearean play, while their essays proved that they did not possess an interpretative method (Miller 727). For example, Ionidis, who had translated Macbeth two decades before Vikelas, did not provide an in-depth analysis of the play. After discussing Shakespeare’s biography, he only offered a short summary of the story of Macbeth –based on Shakespeare’s source for the play, i.e.
Holinshed’s Chronicles (ιγ΄-ς΄)– in which he referred to Lady Macbeth fleetingly and in a manner that underlined her ambition (ιδ΄). Contemporary scholars, like Walter
Puchner, who study the evolution of the Greek theatre, underline the fact that
Vikelas’s translations of Shakespeare’s plays constituted “the first systematic attempt 75
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) of a more profound reception of the most important of Shakespeare’s tragedies in
Greece” (Puchner 302).
Vikelas did not openly acknowledge the edition of Macbeth he used as a source text when he translated the play. Verdiaki located five editions of Macbeth in the translator’s library, namely Malone’s and Steevens’s (1790), Staunton’s (1858-
1860), Clarke and Wright’s (1874), Reverent J. Hunter’s and Furness’s New
Variorum edition (1879) (Verdiaki 28-30). Among other books owned by Vikelas
Verdiaki recorded the analysis of the play by Gervinus, Stapfer, Wagner and Sidons, as well as the translations of the play in French by Jules Lacroix (1863) and in
German by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck (1867) (Verdiaki 28-30).
Therefore, it is most logical to assume that he consulted all or some of these sources.1
vi. Lady Macbeth in Vikelas’s translation of Othello (1882)
Vikelas read Lady Macbeth through the 19th-century middle-class values and he saved her from condemnation as a malicious and ambitious woman. His Lady
Macbeth is a fragile woman and tender wife that strives to transcend the limitations of her sex and embraces evil for the sake of helping her husband fulfil his aspirations.
Vikelas does not agree with condemning analyses of her. He rather adopts a friendly attitude towards Lady Macbeth, thus bringing Shakespeare’s heroine closer to
Victorian favorable appropriations of her, like that of Siddons, Gervinus and Wagner.
Throughout his translation Vikelas tries to justify Lady Macbeth’s eagerness for the throne on the basis of her love for Macbeth so that she is not charged with personal ambition. To begin with, he turns her into an instrument of Destiny
1 Vikelas turned to foreign criticism for reasons I explained earlier in section iii of the present chapter. 76
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) demanding that Macbeth become the king. In Shakespeare’s text, although Macbeth’s coronation has not taken place yet, Lady Macbeth presents it as an accomplished fact through the use of the present perfect tense:
Fate and Metaphysical ayde doth seeme
To have thee crown’d withal (I.v.26-31, emphasis added)
It seems that Vikelas observes this discrepancy between word and stage action. He tries to harmonize them and translates the line in a way that denotes Fate’s intention to make Macbeth a king:
… τον χρυσόν τον κύκλον,
που και η Τύχη, και μ’αυτήν Δυνάμεις υπέρ φύσιν,
‘ς την κεφαλήν σου φαίνεται να σου τον βάλουν θέλουν! (Vikelas, Makveth 19,
emphasis added)1
[the golden circle,
which Fate, and with it supernatural Powers,
seem to want to put it on your head]
In this interpretation the role reserved for Lady Macbeth is that of an instrument of Destiny and that is why she urges Macbeth to claim the throne. The view that Lady Macbeth believes Macbeth’s coronation to be the wish of Destiny is
1 Quotes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth refer to Horace Howard Furness’s Variorum edition by scene, act and line numbers (Philadelpia 1873). Quotes from Vikelas’s translation of Macbeth refer by page number to the 1881 edition in Athens by the publishing house of Brothers Perri. For the analysis of the words I have used the Dictionary of Greek Language edited by Athanasios A. Sakellarios (1886). 77
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) supported in many of the sources found in Vikelas’s library. For example, in her article on Lady Macbeth published in the Transactions of the New Shakespeare
Society (1876), the Countess of Charlemont argues that
the letter telling of the witches and of their prophecy seemed to her no more
than the foreshadowing of Destiny. Then after her reading of Macbeth’s letter,
comes her Incantation to the Powers of Evil. The die is cast. The man she
loves is to be ‘King hereafter;’ and to the beekoning hand of Fate she blindly
bows herself. The throne for Macbeth by the sacrifice of a life: so be it! She
looks not beyond. (195)
This view is also supported in two editions of Macbeth owned by Vikelas, namely
Malone and Steevens’s (294) and Rev. Hunter’s (33). The first of these editions is mentioned by Vikelas in his notes (Vikelas, Makveth 123), while the second edition was found by Verdiaki among his books (73-75).
By consenting to render Lady Macbeth as an assistant of Destiny Vikelas absolves her from charges of pursuing the crown out of selfish ambition. In fact, he proceeds to turn her into a devoted wife who struggles for the fulfilment of her husband’s Destiny. It is in this light that her adoption of masculine virtues like τόλμη
[courage] and γενναία γλώσσα [brave tongue] (Vikelas, Makveth 19) some lines earlier is viewed positively. The threat posed to the conservative 19th-century Greek society by a virago is neutralized because she has undertaken the role of the helper of
Fate and her motives are dictated by her wifely duties.
Later in his translation Vikelas proceeds one step further in offering a flattering representation of Lady Macbeth. At the point at which she rebukes Macbeth for recoiling and proving coward (I.vii.42-52, 56-68), Vikelas subtly intervenes in the text and attributes the ambition to seize the throne exclusively to Macbeth. 78
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
What Beast was’t then
That made you breake this enterprise to me? (I.vii.56-57, emphasis added)
Τί ζώον
Να μου ειπής σ’εκίνησε λοιπόν τα σχέδιά σου; (Vikelas, Makveth 26,
emphasis added)
[What beast was it then
That made you break your enterprise to me?]
By translating the demonstrative pronoun “this” into the second-person possessive pronoun “your” Vikelas transfers the original aspiration to attain royalty entirely to Macbeth. Lady Macbeth cannot be accused for insisting on the crime of regicide for the sake of fulfilling her own ambition for queenship. That is why some lines later Vikelas dexterously refrains from making her complicit to the actual crime of regicide, not just the idea of it. He does this by intervening in the source text to translate Macbeth’s fear for failure as first-person singular, not plural.1
If we should faile? (I.vii.69, emphasis added)
Κι’ αν αποτύχω; (Vikelas, Makveth 26, emphasis added)
[And if I fail?]
1 It could also be argued that in the plural pronoun Vikelas reads the use of the royal “we” or majestic plural, of which Macbeth makes extensive use in the banquet scene (III.iv). 79
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
It is thus implied that the role of the main executor of the crime is reserved for
Macbeth, while the role attributed to Lady Macbeth is that of the devoted wife that glories in her husband’s greatness.
It is with this in mind that we should read Vikelas’s way of rendering Lady
Macbeth’s response to Macbeth’s fear:
We fail! (I.vii.70)
Ποιος θ’ αποτύχη; (Vikelas, Makveth 26)
[Who will fail?]
For the translation of this line he probably consulted Malone’s and Steevens’s edition
(Shakespeare, The Plays and Poems 84), as well as the New Variorum edition of
Macbeth (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Macbeth 80-81), both of which provide guidance about the history of the punctuation of the line and the critics’ views on this issue. Unexpectedly enough, however, Vikelas departs from the New
Variorum edition and the other editions which he owned and which punctuate Lady
Macbeth’s answer with an exclamation mark, while he also rejects most critics’ suggestion that the line should be punctuated with a full stop (Shakespeare, A New
Variorum Edition of Macbeth, 80-81; Shakespeare, The Plays and Poems 84;
Shakespeare, Select Plays: Macbeth 17). Instead, he follows the Folio and turns Lady
Macbeth’s answer to Macbeth into a question. This he does in awareness of the fact that the critics who are cited in Furness tend to choose the full stop because it denotes coolness, determination and dark fatalism and they reject the question mark because it denotes an impatient and contemptuous repetition of Macbeth’s line (Shakespeare, A 80
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Macbeth 80). Of course, the exact meaning of the line depends on the way it is read by the reader, or uttered by the actress in the case of a performance. In the case of Vikelas’s translation and in the light of his previous translation choices, which avoid making Lady Macbeth complicit both to the ambition for the throne and to the regicide project, Vikelas cannot have intended to turn Lady Macbeth into a scornful, impatient wife, but into a devoted one that pursues her husband’s greatness and has no further involvement than encouraging an already existing ambition out of love for him.
In this way, the cruelty of the image of infanticide that Lady Macbeth invokes in order to inspire Macbeth to action is mitigated (I.vii.63-68). Although she appears to know from experience how tender the love of the nursing mother is, the fact that she hardens herself out of wifely devotion provides, at least some, excuse for her.
Vikelas’s Lady Macbeth, therefore, is not a merely evil woman who would just dash the brains out of her baby. Her whole involvement in the crime and the harshness with which she treats Macbeth during the scenes of persuasion (I.v), of the crime (II.ii) and of the banquet (III.iv) are dictated by her strong wish to prevent her husband’s disappointment as a result of the frustration of his dreams.
This explains another kind of intervention by the translator, one that concerns the use of terms of endearment by Lady Macbeth. At the beginning of the persuasion scene, before Macbeth exhibits signs of cowardice, Vikelas changes Lady Macbeth’s impersonal manner of addressing her husband into a tender one:
Your Face, my Thane, is a Booke… (I.v.71, emphasis added)
Αλλά το πρόσωπόν σου 81
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
είναι βιβλίον ανοικτόν, καλέ μου Μάκβεθ... (Vikelas, Makveth 21, emphasis
added)
[But your Face,
is an open book, my dear Macbeth]
Conversely, Vikelas erases any possible signs of tenderness by Lady Macbeth during the crucial scene of the crime (II.ii). For instance, as soon as she sees Macbeth after the crime her line reads
My husband? (II.ii.19)
Vikelas, however, renders this phrase of tenderness or familiarity into an impersonal one:
Ο Μάκβεθ (Vikelas, Makveth 32)
[Macbeth]
In the light of the accumulated evidence, I can only explain such interventions that involve replacing tender terms of endearment with impersonal ones, and vice versa, at key points of the plot as a way of serving Vikelas’s views of Lady Macbeth as a devoted wife that hardens herself at the critical moments that Macbeth recoils from his aspirations.
A key aspect in Vikelas’s representation of Lady Macbeth is that he avoids making her question Macbeth’s manhood. Such a conduct would not become the image of the supporting wife that he builds for her. That is why he intervenes in the 82
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) source text once more and translates Lady Macbeth’s line “What? quite unmann’d in folly” (III.iv.92) into Τα έχασες ολότελα; (Vikelas, Makveth 63) [Are you completely out of your mind?]. In this way, it is Macbeth’s logic that is jeopardized, rather than his virility.
Supporting Lady Macbeth’s selflessness and devotion as a wife, and setting her free from the charge that she planned and committed the regicide are not the only
Victorian ideals that Vikelas foregrounds in his portrait of Lady Macbeth. He makes a stronger case for her by inserting evidence of her humanity and frailness throughout his translation. For example, Vikelas, like many scholars of his time, presents Lady
Macbeth’s unsexing process (I.v.45-55) as foreign to her female nature. To the question whether Lady Macbeth asks the evil spirits to turn her breast milk into gall, or whether she invites them to feed on a milk that has already transformed into gall
(I.v.52-53), Vikelas responds by choosing the first, more favorable option.
Come to my Womans Brests,
And take my milk for Gall, you murth’ring Ministers (I.v.52-53, emphasis
added)
Εσείς του Φόνου όργανα,…
ελάτε, κάμετε χολήν το γάλα των μαστών μου! (Vikelas, Makveth 20,
emphasis added)
[You murdering Ministers,…
Come, make into Gall my breasts’ milk!]
83
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
For him, the milk in Lady Macbeth’s breast does not turn automatically into poisonous substance as a result of the unsexing process. After all, the meaning that he attaches to Lady Macbeth’s urge to be unsexed (I.v.46) is to be dewomanized, rather than dehumanized:
Come you Spirits,
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here… (I.v.45-46, emphasis added)
Ελάτε σεις, Δαιμόνια, που παρακολουθείτε
τους απαίσιους στοχασμούς, ξεγυναικώστε με… (Vikelas, Makveth 20,
emphasis added)
[Come you Spirits,
That tend on awful thoughts, defeminize me]
In other words, Vikelas assumes the existence of a womanhood which is soft and tender, rather than cruel, and it is this womanly nature that he sees Lady Macbeth as wishing to expel, not her humanity altogether. Lady Macbeth’s humanity and frailness is also supported by the source text itself at the point at which she hesitates to commit the regicide herself because of Duncan’s resemblance to her father (II.ii.17-19).
On the basis of what has been said so far of Vikelas’s representation of Lady
Macbeth, his translation leaves no room for disputing the genuineness of her fainting as soon as the news of the King’s murder is spread (II.iii.144-155). Vikelas makes it clear in a note that he embraces the commonly held view according to which Lady
Macbeth truly faints (Vikelas, Makveth 123). It is further attributed to the inability of her frail nervous system to bear any further tension (Vikelas, Makveth 123).
84
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Her somnambulism is a natural concomitant of this neurological frailty.
Nonetheless, Vikelas probably saw Lady Macbeth as reaching this state as a result of experiencing pangs of conscience. For the ambiguous phrase that she utters in the sleepwalking scene, “Hell is murky” (V.i.37), which he translates as Ο Άδης είναι
σκοτεινός! (Vikelas, Makveth 99), Vikelas cites the two most common explanations at that time (Vikelas, Makveth 126). Critics thought either that she imagines herself conversing with Macbeth and repeats his words in contempt of his cowardice
(Vikelas, Makveth 126), or that she relives the incidents and experiences fear for the consequences and pangs of conscience (Vikelas, Makveth 126). Vikelas does not make it clear which explanation he prefers, as he does in other instances of ambiguous phrases.1 But it seems to me that the second interpretation fits better the image of
Lady Macbeth as a devoted wife that Vikelas constructs for her throughout his translation. The use of irony and the demonstration of contempt by mockingly repeating her husband’s words do not become this image.
Vikelas’s Lady Macbeth therefore feels remorse for the regicide. It could be argued that the translator makes sure that she expresses such feelings while she is still mentally stable. After the crime, Lady Macbeth offers her account of the consequences that Duncan’s murder has upon her and her husband:
Nought’s had, all’s spent,
Where our desire is got without content:
’Tis safer, to be which we destroy,
1 For instance, Vikelas offers a lengthy note to explain Macduff’s ambiguous phrase “He ha’s no children” (IV.iii.254) and reveals the interpretation he is more inclined to choose (Vikelas Makveth 126, note no33). 85
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Then by destruction dwell in doubtfull joy. (III.ii.8-11, emphasis added)
Κέρδος μάταιον, ωφέλεια χαμένη,
Να έχη τις ό,τι ποθεί, κι’ ανήσυχος να μένη.
Το προτιμώ να ημ’ εγώ εκείνος όπου πάγει,
Παρά να τον κατέστρεψα κ’ η λύπη να με φάγη! (Vikelas, Makveth 54,
emphasis added)
[Vain profit, lost benefit,
To have what one desires, and yet to remain restless.
I prefer to be the one that has died
To having destroyed someone, and sorrow to eat me up!]
The lines could be argued to reveal not only Lady Macbeth’s “waking acknowledgements of having mistaken life” (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Mabcbeth 190), but also her disappointment that her joy is full of doubt and in danger of being destroyed (Muir 81). The implication is that Lady Macbeth expresses selfish anxiety about the ephemeral state of the joy that she and her husband experience as a result of the criminal act. Though it may be done so for reasons of translating verse into verse, Vikelas’s translation changes the meaning of the last line and attributes feelings of regret to Lady Macbeth, rather than selfishness for experiencing precarious joy tainted with blood.
vii. Conclusion
At the dawn of the independent, modern Greek state, in which women’s identity and roles were shaped by the need of the nation to catch up with the European standards 86
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882) of urbanization and modernization, while also preserving its tradition, the Greeks read
Vikelas’s translations of Shakespeare’s plays. Since translation inscribes the values of the translator and the receiving culture in the source text, Vikelas inscribed his middle-class values in Othello and Macbeth; these values valorized female purity, family life, discipline and the didactic function of literature. As a result of the perspective he adopted, in his translation he tainted Desdemona with multiple insinuations of sexual agency and charged her with the main responsibility for marrying Othello secretly and on her own initiative without her father’s consent – an action that was legally reprehensible at the time. On the other hand, he represented
Lady Macbeth as a tender and selfless wife.
Vikelas’s middle-class ideology shaped his gender views and these in turn affected his conception of Shakespeare’s heroines in this quite unexpected manner. A completely innocent Desdemona would result in the castigation of Othello and all men who murder to defend their male honour. In fact, she would be dangerous because she could turn him into an unjustifiably jealous husband and uxoricide.
Vikelas’s tainted representation of Desdemona was the natural outgrowth of the dominant expectations of a target culture that condemns and is afraid of female sexuality. His Desdemona further fulfilled the didactic function of literature to which
Shakespere was tightly connected. She warns the readers of the lethal consequences of inappropriate conduct which involves disregard for the fatherly authority and the nurturing of sexual passion by women.
In sharp contrast, a completely idealized Lady Macbeth as a selfless, weak wife that glories in her husband’s power is quite flattering for the image of the male protagonist. At the same time, she eases the prevailing patriarchal anxieties that are associated with female ambition and she teaches appropriate wifely conduct. Had 87
2. DIMITRIOS VIKELAS’S FOUNDATIONS FOR DESDEMONA (1875) AND LADY MACBETH (1882)
Vikelas presented Lady Macbeth as a manipulating wife that is the first to conceive of the idea of regicide for the purpose of satisfying her own ambition, he would have made Macbeth her dupe, irreversibly compromising his manliness. Instead, a loving wife that is devoted to Macbeth, even to a disturbing extent, is not diminishing of him, but places him at the centre of everyone’s attention, both hers and the readers’.
Vikelas’s image of Lady Macbeth as a selfless, devoted wife remained unspoilt for a period of time, and in fact it was enhanced in the highly popular translation of the play by K. Karthaios in early 1920s. It was not until the post-Civil-
War era that the idealized image of Lady Macbeth was challenged and subverted in the translation of Nikos Proestopoulos (1958). Conversely, sexual guilt continued to spoil Desdemona’s otherwise idealistic representation in the translation of the play by
Aggelos Vlachos in 1905, but it was completely erased in 1915 by Konstantinos
Theotokis. It is to the latter’s translation of Desdemona in progressive and favourable terms in the early 20th century that I turn in the next chapter in order to shed light on the details of this turn in the representation of Shakespeare’s tragic heroine.
88
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
Chapter 3
Konstantinos Theotokis’s (Re)presentation of Desdemona (1915)
At the turn of the 20th century the expansion and differentiation of the middle social classes and the irredentist agenda of the Greek state led to a reappreciation of women’s domestic roles and their contribution to the upbringing of children. At the same time, a circle of intellectuals highlighted the discrepancy between the idealized image of women as mothers and wives, on the one hand, and their true living conditions which involved humiliation and violence, on the other. In 1915 Theotokis translated Othello and revised the sexually tainted image of Desdemona which had been promoted in the translations of the play by Vikelas (1875) and Vlachos (1905).
In his own portrait of Desdemona, Theotokis did not condemn her for her decision to marry secretely without her father’s consent. He rather welcomed this initiative on her part and he dissociated her rebelliousness against social and patriarchal conventions from sinful sexuality. Theotokis also emphasized her status as a helpless, innocent victim of Othello’s jealousy who is put to death despite her submissiveness and devotion to him. This positive redefinition of Desdemona is the result of the translator’s socialist ideology and his reading Othello through the filter of the social novel and the naturalistic local-color short stories, which were particularly popular in the early 20th century and which exposed the ills of society, including the oppression and violence exercised upon women.
i. The woman issue in early 20th-century Greece
During the governments of Harilos Trikoupis (1832-1896) and Eleftherios Venizelos
(1864-1936), life in Greece was characterized by an on-going struggle for 89
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) modernization, urbanization and the extension of the Greek borders through the inclusion of areas still under the Ottoman occupation.1 These conditions caused the previous images of women as signifiers of showy consumerism and male prosperity to fade away and to be replaced by the idealized image of women as mothers and wives.
Scholars who explore the Greek gender politics of the turn of the century trace the origins of women’s idealization as mothers and wives in the emergence of “a new domestic ideal” (Varika 86) or “cult of domesticity” (Tzanaki 80) and in the irredentist politics of the Greek state (Varika 97-103, 178-183; Avdela and Psarra,
“Engendering ‘Greekness’” 67-79; Repousi 189-190). According to Varika, the nostalgic idealization of rural Greece, its lifestyle and people was not functional in providing consolation from the anxiety that was produced in the increasingly urbanized environment of Greece as a result of the rearrangements in the social stratification (78-80, 130). A more efficient antidote to this insecurity-triggering situation was the home and the woman in it, both of which underwent idealization
(Varika 80). Hence, Greek women came to be praised as mothers and housewives, not merely for their reproductive role, but for their moralizing, redemptive and regenerative powers.
Soon enough, the emergence of irredentist politics in the form of the vision of
“Megali Idea” caused women’s domestic mission to be extended in the public sphere
(Varika 98-102, 122; Avdela and Psarra, “Engendering ‘Greekness’” 67-79; Repousi
1 Trikoupis and Venizelos dominated in the Greek political life in the period 1875-1894 and 1910-1936 respectively and each of them became prime minister of the Greek state seven times during the above periods. Nikos Svoronos (100-111, 115-117) and Yiorgos Mavrogordatos (9-19, 33-43) offer insightful analyses of the Greek politics during the premierships of Trikoupis and Venizelos. 90
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
189-190).1 Not only were they thought to be suitable for ensuring familial happiness to men who exposed themselves to the dangers of the urban society, but also they were deemed necessary for furthering “the civilizing mission of Hellenism” (Avdela and Psarra, “Engendering ‘Greekness’” 69) and for bringing up their children to become future fervent patriots who would civilize the barbaric population of the East
(Varika 87; Avdela and Psarra, “Engendering ‘Greekness’” 69-70; Repousi 189-190).
The admiration and respect for women as mothers in the traditional domestic sense and in the extended national one was founded upon the idea that women are inherently endowed with redemptive qualities, like purity, moral superiority, selflessness and tenderness, as a result of their biological sex and their ability to become mothers (Varika 87-88). Maria Anastasopoulou notes in this respect that in late 1880s the Greek society envisioned women as “messianic” figures, who came to replace the bourgeois women of “‘conspicuous consumption’ – [the women] on a pedestal adored but useless” (4). A wide variety of literary and non-literary texts idealized women as domestic and national mothers and wives (Varika 80-82, 86-88,
98-103).2
This idealized image of women did not reflect their true living conditions in the Greek society. Intellectuals of the time gradually came to notice this disparity
1 The 1897 Greek-Turkish War marked the beginning of Greek women’s massive exit in the public sphere (Varika 97-102, 108; Avdela and Psarra, “Engendering ‘Greekness’” 67-79; Repousi 194; Mpoutzouvi 287-290). Further valuable insight into the association between motherhood, nationalism and Greek women’s emancipation is offered by Tzanaki (159), Denisi (“Emfyles Taftotites” 74-85) and Palaiou (87-100). Tzanaki discerns the operation of what Jane Jenson calls “specialized citizenship,” i.e. an idiosyncratic status of citizenship based almost exclusively on women’s maternal qualities (159). Denisi offers a comparative discussion of Greek and British women’s activism during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and World War I (1914-1918) respectively (“Emfyles Taftotites” 74-85). Palaiou discusses the regressive consequences and the empowering potentials that are simultaneously involved at the intersections of motherhood and nationalism (87-100). 2 Of course, there is the view expressed by Maria Sakalaki with respect to the genre of the novel. With the exception of Theotokis and Gregorios Xenopoulos the novels written in the period 1900-1922 include maternal figures that are quite narrow-minded and inflexible, psychologically fragile, neurotic and unstable or evil shrews that cause feelings of guilt and deprivation (Sakalaki 170). 91
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) between the idealization of women and their true living conditions, which involved contempt, humiliation, violence and often public ridicule in the case of posing a challenge to male authority (Varika 113).1 As a result, in parallel with women’s idealization as mothers and wives, there was a trend that exposed and criticized the ills of society and emphasized women’s status as victims in marriage and family.
The increasingly popularized representation of women as victims of society can be traced in the emerging trend of prose literature and drama which were oriented towards social problematization, i.e. the social novel and the local-color short stories in prose writing, and the “theatre of ideas” in the theatre.2 As far as prose writing is concerned, Karvelis notes the general tendency of the Greek writers since 1880 not to
“idealize reality but to proceed to the anatomy of its social structures” (I Genia tou
1880 70). With respect to the theatre, Grammatas observes that the theatre of ideas produced criticism of traditional values, including women’s oppression, and shook various strongholds of the Greek society, most notably the purged image of the family
(141, 144). With particular reference to women’s literary representation, Georgia
Ladogianni goes into more detail and notes that since 1890, and especially at the beginning of the 20th century, “Greek drama sheds light on the dark sides of Greek
1 For example, N. K. Politis argued that women’s exploitation in the 20th century confirmed the firm grasp upon the Greek society of medieval practices and disproved the myth of urban evolution and social progress (Ladogianni 189). 2 The social novels, the local-color short stories and the theatre of ideas, which emerged in Greece in late 19th and early 20th century, belong to the trends of realism and naturalism. This trend was shaped by European realistic and naturalistic novels and plays, like Emil Zola’s novel Nana and Henrik Ibsen’s plays. Both of them shared a strong interest in social problematization and the exposure of social ills. Zola’s Nana was translated in the Greek language in 1890 and was accompanied by an influential introduction by A.G.H. (the initials standing for Agisilaos Giannopoulos Ipeirotis) that came to occupy the position of the Greek manifesto of realism. Mario Vitti (Ideologiki Leitourgia 51-55) and Takis Karvelis (I Genia tou 1880 61-74) discuss the context of the Greek translation of Zola’s novel, as well as of the other conditions that facilitated the introduction of realism and naturalism in Greek prose writing. Ibsen’s plays were introduced in Greece around the end of the 19th century and reached high levels of popularity through translations and stage productions. Nikiforos Papandreou explores Ibsen’s reception in Greece in depth. 92
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) society, shows its despotic structures” and employs female dramatic characters that die after they have revolted dynamically against the ethics of patriarchy (165). What is important is that they die after they have made society face its own authoritarianism; they thus exhibit a rising consciousness in the course of the play, indicating a desire to recover women’s ontological integrity (Ladogianni 177-178,
214). Works that employ the image of the woman-victim are Nikos Kazantzakis’s play Ximeronei [It is Dawning] (1907), Grigorios Xenopoulos’s play Stella Violanti
(1909), which originated from the short story Eros Estavromenos (1901), Dimitrios
Tagkopoulos’s play Myriella (1915) and Kostas Hatzopoulos’s short story O Pyrgos tou Akropotamou [The Tower of the Riverbank] (1913).
This literary trend is what Varika describes as “philogynist,” i.e. woman- friendly, turn in literature (113).1 The scholar further explains that this trend presented women as victims of the oppressive patriarchal society to which they could project little resistance (Varika 114-115). Psarra complements Varika’s description by arguing that since the 1880s the nerveless heroines, products of the morbid romantic imagination, had been pushed to the margins and had been replaced by more earthly female figures, which, though full of contradictions, were always heroized, mostly as victims of unjust social conventions against which they revolted in full awareness of their final crash (“To Mithistorima tis Heirafetisis” 433). Theotokis is one of the representative authors of this philogynist literary trend and it is to its precepts that he adapted Shakespeare’s Desdemona.
1 Around that time the Greek society witnessed the gradual formation of a group of men that supported women’s cause of improving their position for the sake of progress and civilization. These came to be known as γυναικόφιλοι [gynaikofiloi, i.e. women’s friends] or φεμινιστές [feminists, i.e. feminists] (Psarra, “Mitera i Politis” 90-91; Repousi 191). 93
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) ii. Theotokis as Shakespeare translator and his views on the woman issue
Theotokis (1872-1923) was a member of an aristocratic family of Corfu that spent some years of his life and a great part of his family’s fortune abroad while studying and leading an extravagant life. Initially, he built a condescending attitude towards everything that was Greek and not of high-classs, which, however, did not last long.
Upon returning to Corfu, he rejected his aristocratic origins and under the spiritual guidance of the poet Lorentzos Mavilis (1860-1912) he followed the nationalistic trend. Later, he turned to socialism. It was the time when socialism and
Marxist thought were spreading across Europe, with Greece following in its footsteps.1 According to Karvelis, Theotokis had been influenced by socialist ideology and Marxist theory already since 1897 and explored it in more detail during his brief stay in Germany (1907-1909) where he was acquainted with Konstantinos
Hatzopoulos (“Konstantinos Theotokis – Konstantinos Hatzopoulos” 262).2 However, during the moments of national crisis in World War I Theotokis came to support
Venizelos. Mpalaskas believes that Theotokis supported Venizelos not because he departed from socialism, but because he thought that the victory of the Entente, which was supported by Venizelos, would curb the spread of German imperialism, leaving more room for liberal and humanistic constitutions (67-68). In this way, Theotokis was seen by the supporters of socialism and Venizelism as belonging exclusively to neither of these two currents, so that he was regarded by both as an intruder, or as
1 The most influential early 20th-century socialist study in Greece is To Koinonikon Mas Zitima [Our Social Issue] (1907) by Georgios Skliros. 2 More information on Theotokis’s socialist activity and his idiosyncratic type of socialism, which was influenced by humanism and Christianity, is provided by Panagiotis Noutsos (177-182), Aimilios Hourmouzios (25-30) and Mpalaskas (58-64). 94
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Mpalaskas puts it, a “mulatto” who occupies an inbetween space of non- belongingness (16).1
Theotokis was also a fervent supporter of demoticism. In theory and in action, through theoretical articles and through his primary works and translations, Theotokis supported the use of the vernacular language as the true language of the Greeks that would lead to national and spiritual resurrection. What is interesting about the language of his texts is that it is a radical form of Demotic Greek that entails idioms used in his homeland, Corfu.
Finally, Theotokis came to espouse the literary movements of realism and naturalism. According to Mpalaskas, Theotokis entered realism and naturalism directly, not via its Greek version, which was the folklorist type of ethography (110).
The scholar probably refers to the fact that during the time that Theotokis was a university student in Paris, Gustav Flaubert’s realism and Zola’s naturalism were at the centre of French literature. The short stories and novels Theotokis wrote after
1898 were modeled on the trend of naturalism. For these pieces of writing Dallas coined the term “localized prose” (89). This term serves as an alternative to the older term “ethography” (or “roman de moeurs” in French), which, as Vitti points out, referred to a “silenced or dreamy realism” that did not intend to disturb the readers by blurring their idealized impression of reality (Ideologiki Leitourgia 65-66).
Hourmouzios (9) and Apostolos Sachinis (192-193) call Theotokis the introducer of the social novel in Greece because he was the first to denounce the social injustice and the unequal wealth distribution through his works.
1 Theotokis’s biography and his ideological conversions have been explored in depth by many scholars like Hourmouzios (13-50), Mpalaskas (27-72), Aggelos Terzakis (“Eisagogi” 7-24), Alkis Thrylos (135-172), Yiannis Dallas (33-53) and Filippos Filippou, to name just a few. 95
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In the course of six years Theotokis translated five of Shakespeare’s plays:
King Lear (1910), Macbeth (1911), The Tempest (1914), Othello (1915) and Hamlet
(1916). His translations appeared first in progressive journals of the time that supported demoticism, such as Noumas, Kerkyraiki Anthologia, and Grammata, which was edited in Alexandria, Egypt. Then, they appeared in book form.1
Unlike Vikelas, Theotokis rarely accompanied his translations with introductory remarks and explanatory notes about his translation method, his interpretative approach, or his motives in translating Shakespeare’s plays.2 The only thing that he himself reveals is that he wished to “leave to the Greek letters a true monument” (Savvidis 60/12).
Scholars try to elaborate on Theotokis’s motives in translating Shakespeare’s plays in the Greek language. K.H. Grollios, for example, recognizes an educative purpose behind Theotokis’s translational activity, but he also links it to other issues such as demoticism, socialism, the Ionian tradition of translation and Theotokis’s personal inclination to the letters (290-296). Recent scholars seem to express views similar to Grollios’s. For example, according to Yanni, Theotokis’s translations had a
“missionary character, i.e. they aimed at the spiritual cultivation of the Greeks” (Lear
1 Yannakopoulou observes that only his translations of Othello and The Tempest were published during his lifetime, while the rest of them were published posthumously (79). Both Yanni (Lear 29) and Yannakopoulou (79-80) link the difficulties that Theotokis encountered in getting his translations published in book form to the fact that his contemporaries depreciated his idiomatic language and his decision to translate faithfully the spirit of the source text rather than scholastically transfer the words of the plays from one language to another. 2 Only the editions of The Tempest (1930) and Makveth (1923) by the publishing house Eleftheroudakis include the translation of E. W. Rolfe’s analyses of the plays in the introduction. The translation of Rolfe’s texts was in Katharevousa and, where necessary, excerpts from Vlachos’s translations were cited. These two facts make it doubtful whether Theotokis himself translated Rolfe’s analyses. After all, the translations by Eleftheroudakis took place after Theotokis’s death. However, Alkis Thrylos, a pseudonym for the literary and theatre critic and author Eleni Ourani, insists that the publisher made Theotokis translate these introductions in Katharevousa and he in turn had no other choice due to the financial problems he faced (142).
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10-11). Kostas Mpalaskas also links Theotokis’s wish to translate foreign masterpieces to demoticism and the Ionian tradition, while also tracing personal motives like Theotokis’s multilingualism and his need for further poetic fulfilment
(203-215). Yannakopoulou elaborates on the above views and adds two more reasons why Theotokis translated Shakespeare: he wished to offer fresh translations of
Shakespeare’s plays that would replace Vikelas’s and Vlachos’s translations and he was motivated by personal competition to his forefathers Andreas Theotokis, who had translated Macbeth (1819), and Iakovos Polylas, who had translated The Tempest
(1855) and Hamlet (1889) (Yannakopoulou 74). What should be added to the above motives is the comfort that the translation activity with its studious commitment might have offered Theotokis after his daughter’s death. It was after 1917 that he started translating for financial reasons (Yannakopoulou 81).
According to Venuti there are domesticating practices that work in society when foreign literary works are translated so that the values of the source text
“undergo diminution and revision to accommodate those that appeal to cultural constituencies in the receiving culture” (“Retranslations” 26). It is very often the case that native cultural influences operate and infiltrate translated texts in a way that purposely erases traces of foreignness or alterity in the source text. Theotokis’s intention to bring Shakespeare’s works and his dramatic characters closer to the Greek popular classes should be counted among the above motives for translating
Shakespeare.1 Theotokis tried to make Shakespeare accessible to the Greek popular
1 This task of popularizing Shakespeare was a difficult one. Since the first Greek productions of Shakespeare’s plays, starring Soutsas, Tavoularis and Lekatsas, until the androgynous version of Hamlet presented by Evaggelia Paraskevopoulou in 1900, Shakespeare had indeed managed to reach out to the wider Greek audience and the popular social classes, exceeding his fame as a symbol of the financial and intellectual elite (Yanni, Shakespeare’s Travels 14-15, 63-64, 213-216; Mavropoulou 15- 19). The Royal Theatre, however, restrained Shakespeare’s extension to the people. During the seven 97
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) classes not only by translating in an idiomatic vernacular which contained words and grammatical structures from his Corfian dialect, but also by inscribing the Bard’s plays in the popular tradition of the social novel and the local-color short stories which exposed the ills of society.
A look at his works can prove that the exposure and denunciation of violence and oppression against women in the male-dominated Greek society was a central issue in his works. Scholars agree that in these stories Theotokis exposes the prevailing social ills and comments on the predicament of women who are oppressed by patriarchal structures and treated as commodities to be exchanged between men.
Kavvadias, for example, explains that Theotokis wanted to shatter the falsely idyllic picture of rural life and reveal, among other annoying things, the operation of a cruel code of morality inside an unfair and completely phallocratic social system (“Oi
Iroides” 424, 429). Hourmouzios underlines the progressiveness of Theotokis’s treatment of women and argues that he systematically protested against the limited
years of the operation of the theatre, from 1901 to 1908, its director Thomas Oikonomou produced phantasmagoric and luxurious stagings of Shakespeare’s plays for the bourgeois audience of Athens. In her in-depth examination of the politics of staging Shakespeare’s plays in the first half of the 20th century, Mavropoulou explains the motives behind the luxurious stage productions of the Royal Theatre. Every aspect of its operation –repertory, scenography, costumes, location and architectural features of the building and the room of the stage– was intended to support the ruling class, namely the King and his court, disseminate its ideology and preserve the inequalities between the classes of the Greek society (Mavropoulou 27-76). The worldview that the Royal Theatre promoted after all was in line with the wish of the Greek bourgeoisie to get rid of the misery that had been imposed upon the Greek nation by the long-term Ottoman occupation and to confirm their association with Europe (Mavropoulou 59-60, 64, 72-73). Though from a different perspective, which was indirectly associated with financial prosperity, through its limited number of Shakespeare productions that emphasized intellectualism and aesthetics, the theatre company Nea Skini [New Stage] of Konstantinos Hristomanos strengthened the elitist approach to Shakespeare (Mavropoulou 77-98). Finally, the commercial theatre groups that emerged after the closure of the Royal Theatre preserved the image of Shakespeare as a privilege of the upper social classes by means of glorious productions, which as far as possible imitated those of the Royal Theatre and addressed the wealthy members of the Greek audience. This had not only to do with the fact that the actors and actresses had been initiated in Shakespeare through the productions of the Royal Theatre. It had also to do with the fact that they saw in Shakespeare the opportunity to prove their artistic worth and to achieve their integration in the bourgeois class (Mavropoulou 100-101, 110). Sideris offers valuable information on the reception of Shakespeare’s plays in Greece in early 20th century (“Skinothetes kai Ermineftes” 35-46). Dimitris Spathis (195-212), Antonis Glytzouris (65-94) and Sideris (Istoria 202-247) further examine the poetics and politics of early 20th-century Greek theatre in general. 98
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) individual freedom of women in rural areas and expressed his sympathy “for these innocent victims of the generalized backwardness of Greek rural society” (99).1
Most of Theotokis’s female characters are victimized and end up punished or murdered, or are pushed to commit suicide because they have dared to somehow transgress from the normative ethics and acceptable female conduct.2 For instance, the female characters in Pistoma (1899) and Akoma (1904) [Still] are punished by men because of involving themselves in extra-marital relationships. Stalachti in I Pantreia tis Stalachtis (1905) [The Marriage of Stalachti] is made to commit suicide because of involving herself in a love relationship outside the legal context of marriage.3
Theotokis’s socialist novel I Timi kai to Chrima (1914) [Honor and Money] has been repeatedly praised by scholars for its dynamic female protagonist, Rini.
Karvelis insists that with Rini Theotokis creates a positive heroine who, under the pressure of circumstances, becomes combative and manages to escape her fate and
1 Theotokis’s literary works are discussed extensively by Hourmouzios (51-158), Mpalaskas (73-194), Dallas (57-213), Terzakis (14-25), Thrylos (173-188), Lucile Arnoux-Farnoux (1-10), Anna Katsigianni (11-27), Karvelis (“Konstantinos Theotokis – Konstantinos Hatzopoulos” 254-278, “Konstantinos Theotokis” 41-46), Nikos Kavvadias (“Moira kai Enstikta” 377-388; “Oi Iroides” 421- 429) and Sachinis (196-212). Though not approaching his works exclusively from the perspective of gender representation scholars generally acknowledge his sensitivity to women’s social oppression. The only study I have traced that focuses exclusively on aspects of gender in Theotokis’s works is the 2001 doctoral thesis by Glykofrydi-Athanasopoulou, which was published in book form in 2008. 2 This representation of women is traced not only in his local-color short stories, but also in his novel I Zoi sto Vouno [Life on the Mountain] (1895), which was modeled upon French romances. Ninetta, the central female figure in this novel, is the dream of many male suitors. She is inscribed in the romantic tradition of pale, fragile and immaterial femininity (Theotokis, Zoi 41, 175, 191-192, 196, 199, 201). At the same time, however, she is unexpectedly full of yearning, sexual desire and fantasies and she is active enough to elicit the desired wooer’s love confession (Theotokis, Zoi 194, 198, 202). By the end of the novel, Ninetta is kidnapped by Kostas, her father’s employee that desires her secretly, and the gang of his brother, Vasilis (Theotokis, Zoi 233-241), she is raped by Kitsos, a member of this gang (Theotokis, Zoi 326-329) and she is finally beheaded by Vasilis because he realizes that he is in danger of being arrested because of her (Theotokis, Zoi 333-334). Nonetheless, in the course of the narrative we have been offered a glimpse of Ninetta’s inner thoughts and feelings. The novel Zoi sto Vouno was originally written in French and published in Paris under the title Vie de Montagne. It was translated in Greek much later in 1999 by Giorgos Xenarios. Theotokis came to renounce the romantic novels and inscribed himself in the naturalistic mode of writing. According to Mpalaskas, he came to denounce his novel and regarded it as a sin of his youth (73). 3 Theotokis’s short stories first appeared in the progressive journal Noumas and later they were gathered in one collection under the title Korfiatikes Istories [Stories from Corfu]. 99
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) obtain human entity (“Kontantinos Theotokis – Konstantinos Hatzopoulos” 266-267).
Similarly, Sachinis underlines the fact that, despite her suffering, Rini does not succumb to a marriage with Andreas, by whom she feels betrayed, because she has confidence in her working powers (197). Glykofrydi-Athanasopoulou distinguishes
Rini from the female figures that Theotokis created in his short stories and who resort to death or marriage by blackmail (582). The scholar sees in Rini the maturation of the woman who reaches not only sexual liberation but also true emancipation, which involves the development of her own abilities to manage her life (Glykofrydi-
Athanasopoulou 575-585). Rini triggers the reader’s sympathy and is one of the few cases of fictional women whose decision to work in order to earn her living honestly is praised in the narrative (Sakalaki 144).
It was in this tradition of the local-color short stories and social novels that
Theotokis inscribed Othello and created a Desdemona that greatly differed from that of his predecessors, Vikelas and Vlachos. Theotokis’s Desdemona is a rebellious daughter, who is not guilty of destructive sexuality, but who is ultimately punished unjustly, while being a devoted and submissive wife.
iii. The reception of Desdemona in Greece before Theotokis’s translation
In 1915 when Theotokis translated Othello he had to deal with the complexities of the character of Desdemona, which, as demonstrated in Chapter 2, are due to the
Quarto/Folio variants and to the fact that she is not a unified character.
He also had to deal with the image of Desdemona that Vikelas and Vlachos had established. As I explained in the previous chapter, Vikelas had filtered
Desdemona through his middle-class ideas on femininity and had found her guilty of destructive sexuality that caused her to disregard the paternal authority. That is why 100
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) her death was a just punishment for him. As discussed in this chapter (section iv) in parallel reference to Theotokis’s text, in his translation of Othello three decades after
Vikelas, Vlachos (1838-1920) reproduced the image of Desdemona as sexually guilty in more intensive terms than Vikelas; more precisely, he intensified her role in the elopement (I.i) and in the wooing scene (I.iii). Vlachos seems to share a similar background with Vikelas.1
Shaking away previous interpretrations of Desdemona was a difficult task.
Vikelas’s translations, in particular, had gradually become quite popular in the late
19th- and early-20th-century Greece,2 as indicated by their numerous reprints and their use on the stage in Nikolaos Lekatsas’s productions (Yanni Shakespeare’s
Travels 14-15, 63-64, 213-216; Mavropoulou 15-19).3
The time spans between Vikelas’s (1875), Vlachos’s (1905) and Theotokis’s
(1915) translations of Othello are considered short in the life of a literary polysystem.
Here we have a case of what Pym calls “active retranslations,” i.e. retranslations
1 He came from an old wealthy family of Athens and was brought up with “our national traditions and our old patriarchal mores” (Sakellariadis 73). After completing higher studies of doctoral level in Law School in Athens and abroad, he was employed in a series of positions in state agencies that were characterized by conservative gender ideology and inflexibility (Roukis 425-431). In addition, he supported the use of Katharevousa, the moralizing function of literature and it is argued that in his literary creations, irrespective of genre, he made it clear that his central purpose in life is “to control, to teach and to enlight” (Sakellariadis 75). 2 Vikelas’s translation of Othello had been published four times in total until the year 1896, and it was again published in 1916, one year after the publication of Theotokis’s translation. Vlachos’s translations were not as popular as Vikelas’s. He translated Shakespeare during his service in the position of the general manager of the Royal Theatre. Out of his five translations of Shakespeare’s plays only that of Othello was used in the productions of the Royal Theatre. Yannakopoulou mentions a number of reasons, for example his use of Katharevousa at a time when the norm was changing in favor of Demotic Greek, as well as the lighter repertory of French vaudeville which the Royal Theatre preferred to stage (33-34). 3 According to Pym, re-editions “tend to reinforce the validity of the previous translation” (83). A clear picture of the re-editions of Vikelas’s translations is presented by Douka-Kambitoglou (I Parousia tou Saixpir 11-13) and Karagiorgos (“Vivliographia” 673-695) in their detailed records of Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays. In addition, Vikelas’s translations were warmly received abroad by Hellenists and Philhellenes, like Wagner and Miller, as well as the Greeks of Diaspora. Excerpts of Vikelas’s translations of King Lear and Macbeth also seem to have been chosen for use in teaching (Kambitoglou 13). More information on the reception of Vikelas’s translations can be found in his biography by his nephew Aristeidis Oikonomou (281-284). The reasons that Vikelas’s translations were chosen by Lekatsas are discussed by Andreas Dimitriadis (228-234). 101
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) which “[share] virtually the same cultural location and generation” (82). Active retranslations are usually marked and motivated by rivalry and they challenge the validity of previous translations. According to Pym, their comparative examination is likely to reveal disagreements over translation strategies (82-83). After all, as Venuti similarly argues, retranslations are “designed to make an appreciable difference”
(“Retranslations” 29). One of the most striking differences Theotokis made through his translation of Othello is the fact that he diverged from the interpretation of
Desdemona he inherited from Vikelas and Vlachos. He interpreted her “according to a different set of values [which brought] about a new and different reception of [her] in the translating culture” (Venuti, “Retranslations” 29). This set of values involved the positive redefinition of women as victims of patriarchy. The fact that Theotokis espoused these values caused a different interpretation of Desdemona to emerge.
The different set of values, according to which Theotokis translated Othello, originate in his socialist background and his intention to inscribe Desdemona in the philogynist trend of the social novel and the local-color short story, which were popular in fin-de-siecle Greece. As he did with the fictional women of his primary works, Theotokis foregrounded the fact that Desdemona experiences limitations in the strict patriarchal society of Venice and is unjustly the victim of male jealousy.
Through her figure he criticized some aspects of women’s oppression, most notably their not being granted the right to choose their husband on their own, their domestic enclosure and the violence they had to endure at home. Theotokis constructed a sympathetic and progressive portrait of Desdemona as a rebellious daughter, but he never cast doubt on her innocence and gentleness, as his predecessors did. He dissociated her rebelliousness from sinful sexuality and made it clear that she never
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3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) gives reasons to Othello to kill her because she is a truly submissive and dedicated wife.1
iv. Desdemona in Theotokis’s translation of Othello (1915)
Shakespeare’s Desdemona is quite assertive before her father and the Senate of
Venice in defending her choice to love Othello and follow him to Cyprus (I.iii.205-
287). Theotokis clings to this point and intervenes in certain parts of the play in order to underline Desdemona’s opposition to patriarchal conventions even more emphatically than Shakespeare’s text and preceding Greek translations. To begin with, he underlines her defiance to fatherly authority by reducing her respectful address to Brabantio into a mere, almost abrupt, one-word form of address:
My noble father (I.iii.180)
Πατέρα (Theotokis, Othellos 25)2
[Father]
1 A little before Theotokis’s translation of Othello, female scholars of Shakespeare’s plays abroad, like Henrietta Lee Palmer (53-59), Helena Faucit Lady Martin (45-82) and Helena Hinton Stuart (537-550), drew attention to Desdemona’s bold and dynamic personality and underlined that it does not jeopardize her innocence or gentleness. However, unlike Vikelas and Vlachos, Theotokis did not provide any paratextual information in the form of introduction or notes which could confirm that he studied these scholars’analyses. 2 Since Theotokis’s translation of Othello does not include an introduction or endnotes by the translator it is impossible to confidently determine the source text he translated from. He chose an edition that combines Quarto and Folio variants, while he also made his own interventions. I therefore agree with what Yannakopoulou says in relation to Theotokis’s translation of Hamlet, i.e. that he used some contemporary English annotated edition of the play, while he also consulted a series of source texts in English and translations in the languages he mastered, including previous translations in Greek (83). Quotes from Shakespeare’s Othello refer to Horace Howard Furness’s Variorum edition by scene, act and line numbers (Philadelpia 1886). Quotes from Theotokis’s translation of Othello refer by page number to the 1915 edition in Athens by the publishing house of G. I. Vasileiou. For the analysis of the words I have used the Dictionary of Greek Language edited by Skarlatos D. Vyzantios (1895).
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Some lines later, Desdemona “challenge[s]” that she “may profess” to Othello the same amount of “duty” that her mother had showed to her own husband, i.e.
Desdemona’s father (I.iii.210-213). One of the meanings of the verb “challenge” is to require or demand something. Theotokis translates it into κηρύχνω [proclaim]
(Theotokis, Othellos 25), which means “to announce something in public” (Skarlatos
678). He thus translates these lines in a way that foregrounds Desdemona’s acquisition of a strong, assertive public voice. The effect of Theotokis’s translation choices upon Desdemona becomes more striking as soon as we take a look at his predecessors’ translations. Vikelas and Vlachos translated Desdemona’s respectful apostrophe to her father literally (I.iii.205):
Ω σεβαστέ πατέρα μου (Vikelas, Othellos 29)
[O my respected father]
Ω πάτερ σεβαστέ μου (Vlachos, Othellos 32)
[O my respected father]
However, they intervened in order to compromise her eloquence and present her as a submissive daughter and a tactful reserved young woman who is in love. Vikelas completely erased Desdemona’s discursive defiance of “challenging” (Othellos 29) and Vlachos replaced it with the mitigating phrase ας επιτραπή και εις εμέ [let it be allowed to me], by means of which Desdemona asks for permission to submit herself to Othello (Othellos 32).
Later, however, in Desdemona’s lines Theotokis more openly attacks the patriarchal practice according to which the father decides on his daughter’s husband.
Shakespeare’s Desdemona acknowledges that she has committed “a downe-right 104
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) violence” (I.ii.277) thus breaching gender norms and traditional customs. Theotokis translates Desdemona’s act as ανταρσία (mutiny) (Othellos 27). At this point exactly,
Theotokis seems to awaken a combative feminine consciousness in his Desdemona, who knowingly opposes patriarchal customs. Not only does he exaggerate
Desdemona’s words, but through the use of this military term he also makes her inscribe herself in the field of the battle, rather than in the rear lines, which was the space traditionally allocated to women in times of war. When we read Theotokis’s translation of Othello we should bear in mind that he had fought in the so-called
“Unfortunate” war of 1897 between Greece and Turkey (Mpalaskas 55) and that he was aware of women’s wartime roles and duties, i.e. they were not involved in the battlefield. According to Avdela and Psarra, their range of activities included collecting funds, taking care of refugees, sewing uniforms, receiving and offering training to nurses, contacting women’s organizations abroad and cooperating with the
English nurses who arrived in Greece (“Engendering ‘Greekness’” 71).
Traces of this dynamic image that Theotokis builds of Desdemona are found in Shakespeare’s text, especially in Desdemona’s wish to leave her safe domestic space and follow Othello in his military operation against the Turks in Cyprus.
Nonetheless, although at the level of intention and action Desdemona is dynamic –she has after all already eloped with Othello– at the level of language she gradually exhibits a clear decrease of force. While initially quite determinedly she “challenge[s] that she may profess” her wifely duties at the expense of her filial ones (I.iii.213), by the end of her speech she seems to adhere back to the gender norms she previously undermined. She thus reticently asks the Senate to grant her permission to escort
Othello to the battlefield as she utters the line “Let me go with him” (I.iii.285).
Theotokis, however, reacts to the fact that a woman has to ask for permission to 105
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) follow her husband. He intervenes in order to change Desdemona’s plea to the Duke to grant her permission to follow Othello into a strong expression that denotes both desire and demand through the use of the first-person volition verb θέλω [I want]
(Theotokis, Othellos 28):
Θέλω
Να πάω μαζή του. (Theotokis, Othellos 28)
[I want
To go with him.]
In Theotokis’s translation, Desdemona’s urgently expressed wish to follow
Othello is justified not only by her feelings for him, but also by the way she seems to experience her domestic life. While at other points Theotokis did not opt for a word- for-word translation of the source text, at this point he adheres to it and has his
Desdemona describe herself in her domestic life as σκώρος (Τheotokis Othellos 28), which is the literal translation of the word “moth” (I.iii.284) we encounter in
Shakespeare’s text:
So that (deere Lords) if I be left behind
A Moth of Peace, And he go to the Warre… (I.iii.283-284, emphasis added)
Αν ίσως μείνω οπίσω, Κύριοί μου,
Σκώρος ειρηνικός, και κείνος πάει
Στον πόλεμο…(Theotokis, Othellos 28, emphasis added)
[If I perhaps I am left behind, my Lords, 106
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
a peaceful moth, and he goes
to the war…]
On a first reading, Theotokis’ literal translation choice seems very close to Vlachos’s decision to translate the word “moth” into κηφήν [drone] (Othellos 35). In fact, however, it is very different. On the surface, both choices seem to present Desdemona as viewing her domesticity in terms of a parasitic state of being. Yet, a note that
Vlachos appended to his translation explains the rationale that underpinned his choice.
He cites William Deighton’s interpretation of the phrase as referring to an individual that enjoys the pleasures of a peaceful life (Vlachos, Othellos 203, note 49). In other words, it is as if Desdemona’s peaceful, idle domestic existence becomes a source of pleasure for her. In this sense, Vlachos’s reading comes closer to Vikelas’s portrayal of Desdemona’s domesticity in the idealized terms of a beautiful, pleasing and fragile
πεταλούδα [butterfly] (Othellos 32).
In sharp contrast, Theotokis translated the phrase literally (Othellos 28). In this way, he had Desdemona herself confess a negative view of her domestic confinement by describing it in terms of a parasitic, harmful state of being. We can thus sense implied criticism of the prevailing idealized notion about women’s domestic enclosure and of the fact that they were obstructed from entering the public sphere.
This argument is further supported by the fact that, by the time of the translation of the play, Theotokis had already spent some time in Germany and had embraced the socialist ideology, which advocated women’s domestic liberation and active role in the labor market. As pointed out at the beginning of this chapter, it was also a period of intense deconstruction of the domestic sphere in the philogynist literature of the time, to which Theotokis participated through his local-color short stories. 107
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
Theotokis’s translation supports the dynamic potential of Desdemona not only through her but also through other characters, most notably Iago. At two important points of the plot he confirms her image as an intelligent and discursively enabled woman. The first point is located in his conversation with Roderigo immediately after
Desdemona’s outstanding eloquence before her father and the Senate. Hypothesizing the frail bond between Othello and Desdemona, Iago describes her as a supersubtle
Venetian (I.iii.385). Iago’s phrase has traditionally been taken to refer to
Desdemona’s female cunning (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Othello 87).
This was also the interpretation adopted by Theotokis’s predecessors in Greece.
Vikelas used the phrase μιας πονηράς Βενετής [of a sly Venetian] (Othellos 37) and
Vlachos μιας πανούργου Βενετής [a cunning Venetian] (Othellos 39). In other words, they translated the phrase in progressively more negative terms in order to stress
Desdemona’s supposed slyness and cunningness and compromise her intelligence.
After all, as I have already mentioned, Vikelas had openly questioned this trait in
Desdemona when in his notes he cited he Mézières’s view that love does not raise her intelligence (Othellos 225). In contrast, Theotokis translates the phrase in a positive way into τετραπέρατη [very clever] (Othellos 32) and endows Desdemona with heightened and enhanced intelligence.
Desdemona’s intellectual capacity is further strengthened in Theotokis’s translation at the point at which Iago ponders over his destructive plans and speculates that Desdemona will “plead strongly to the Moor” for Cassio’s sake (II.ii.386). At this moment of sincerity Theotokis has Iago describe Desdemona’s plea in terms of a rhetorician’s speech. Despite the ironic undertone of Iago’s phrase, it acknowldges
Desdemona’s capacity, discursive potential and ability to organize a convincing, coherent and meaningful public speech: 108
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
For whiles this honest Foole
Plies Desdemona, to repaire his Fortune,
And she for him, pleads strongly to the Moore,
Ile powre this pestilence into his eare. (II.ii.384-387, emphasis added)
…γιατί, ενώ τη Δεσδεμόνα ο τίμιος ο τρελλός
Θε να παρακαλεί να του διορθώσει
Την τύχην του κι’ αυτή θα ρητορεύει
Μπροστά στο Μαύρο, όσο μπορεί, για κείνον,
Εγώ θα χύσω τούτο το φαρμάκι
Στ’ αυτί του. (Theotokis, Othellos 61, emphasis added).
[because, while Desdemona the honest madman
will plead to correct
his fate and she will orate
in front of the Black, as much as she can, for him,
I will pour this poison
in his ear.]
In contrast, Vikelas presented Desdemona’s intervention as a burden to Othello by translating the phrase with the verb φορτόνεται [she becomes a burden] (Othellos 77), and Vlachos stressed the intensity of her speech by using the phrase θα λαλή θερμώς
[she will speak intensively] (Othellos 75).
In the first two acts of the play Theotokis’s representation of a rebellious
Desdemona seems strikingly different from the version of Desdemona to which Greek 109
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) readers were accustomed until then through Vikelas’s and Vlachos’s translations.
Venuti argues that “[t]he interpretation a translator inscribes through a discursive strategy […] carries a historical significance, since it may mirror or revise values that prevail at particular moments in the translating culture” (“Retranslations” 35). Given this insightful observation, the different representation of Desdemona in Theotokis’s translation of the play reflects the social changes regarding women’s place in the public sphere in Greece and his stance on this issue. By 1915, when Theotokis translated Othello, Greek women had entered the public sphere to a considerable extent, not only through philanthropic activities that were thought to be compatible with feminine nature, but also by gradually entering male dominated fields like the growing industry, university education and the press. As Psarra also argues, the Greek society had come to some terms with the Greek version of female emancipation, which combined domestic duties with extra-domestic activities (“To Mithistorima”
410). In addition, the philogynist literature of the period, including Theotokis’s short stories and his novel I Timi kai to Chrima [Honor and Money], was replete with the figure of the rebellious woman that opposes patriarchal oppression and the norms of male dominated society.
At the same time that Theotokis preserves and accentuates Desdemona’s rebelliousness and active personality, he is careful enough to dissociate her opposition to patriarchy from loose morality. He specifically downgrades her sexuality and enhances her voluntary submission to Othello and her passivity as his victim. Just like the female protagonists in the philogynist literature of the time, her subversion of patriarchal power, caused by her decision to disobey her father, is contained. She submits herself to and is crashed by the very patriarchal power that she defies, albeit by another representative of this power, the husband. 110
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
Theotokis’s strategy of desexualizing Desdemona manifests itself in both
Iago’s and Roderigo’s description of her elopement with Othello (I.i) and in Othello’s account of his wooing of her (I.iii). From these two scenes Theotokis removes the hints that point to Desdemona’s possession of an active sexual conduct whereby she would pursue or enjoy interaction and intercourse with Othello. We should not forget that in these scenes Vikelas insinuated and Vlachos blatantly attributed an active role to Desdemona. For instance, in the first scene of the play, in which Iago and Roderigo reveal the Othello-Desdemona relationship to Brabantio, Theotokis’s Iago presents
Desdemona as the recipient of Othello’s repressed sexual instincts (Othellos 9):
… you’ le have your Daugh-
ter cover’d with a Barbary horse (I.i.123-124, emphasis added)
θέλεις ν’ αφήκεις ένα αράπικο άτι να ξεθυμάνει με την
κοπέλλα σου (Theotokis, Othellos 9, emphasis added)
[you want to let an Arabic horse blow off his steam
with your girl]
Desdemona is reduced to a medium for Othello’s sexual relief, a mere source for the satisfaction of his suppressed sexual instincts since she seems to be unrestrainedly taken sexual advantage of (I.i.88-89). Theotokis does not only exaggerate the negative image whereby Desdemona is “covered with a Barbary horse” (I.i.88-89), but he also sharply contrasts Vikelas, who insinuated that pleasure is entailed in the act (Othellos
11), and Vlachos, who interpreted the phrase in terms of a harmonic mating (Othellos
13): 111
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
Την κόρην σου την χαίρεται έν άλογον
Αράπικον. (Vikelas, Othellos 11, emphasis added)
[Your daughter is enjoyed by a black horse]
Θέλεις να ζευγαρωθή η κόρη σου με άλογον της
Βαρβαρίας. (Vlachos, Othellos 13, emphasis added)
[You want your daughter to mate with a horse from
a barbarian land.]
A few lines later in Theotokis’s translation Roderigo reveals that Desdemona is passively being carried to Othello. In this case she is devoid of the initiative and eagerness to surrender herself to Othello which Vikelas and Vlachos traced in her at this point:
… your faire Daughter,
At this odde Even and dull watch o’th’night
Transported with no worse nor better guard,
But with a knave of common hire, a Gundelier,
To the grosse claspes of the Lascivious Moore (I.i.135-139)
Τούτην την ώρα, στην καρδιά της νύχτας,
Να κουβαλιέται η ωραία σου η θυγατέρα
Συντροφεμένη μόνο από ένα δούλο,
Έναν κοινό βαρκάρη ναυλωμένον, 112
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
Στην άσεμνη αγκαλιά ενού πόρνου Μαύρου; (Theotokis, Othellos 10)
[At this time, in the heart of the night,
your beautiful daughter to be carried
accompanied only by a slave,
a common boatman hired,
to the obscene embrace of a black male prostitute?]
…η ωραία κόρη σου εδιάλεξε την ώρα
‘ς τα βάθη μέσα της νυκτός, με μόνην συνοδείαν
Ενός ανθρώπου μισθωτού, ενός κοινού βαρκάρη,
κ’ επήγε να παραδοθή ‘ς την αγκαλιάν του Μαύρου… (Vikelas, Othellos 11,
emphasis added)
[Your beautiful daughter chose the time
in the depths of the night, with only accompaniment
a paid man, a common boatman,
and went to surrender herself to the embrace of the Black]
…η ωραία κόρη σου
Τοιαύτην ώραν, εις τα σκότη της νυκτός,
Έχουσα μόνην συνοδίαν και φρουράν ένα χυδαίον γονδολιέρην μισθωτόν, να
δράμη να ριφθή εις ασελγούς
Μαύρου τα βδελυρά εναγκαλίσματα… (Vlachos, Othellos 13, emphasis added)
[Your beautiful daughter
at this time, in the dark of night, 113
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
having as a sole escort and guard a vulgar paid gondolier,
runs to throw herself in the
abusive hugs of a black man…]
In fact, here Theotokis does not only have Roderigo and Iago desexualize
Desdemona, but he also has them transfer an incriminating, perverted form of sexuality to Othello, thus implying his seduction of Desdemona. Theotokis translates
Roderigo’s characterization of Othello as a “lascivious Moor” (I.i.139) into a πόρνο
(Theotokis, Othellos 10). This noun attributes more than lust, lewdness or wantonness to Othello. It turns him into someone that seduces and takes sexual advantage of another person.
As far as Desdemona’s part in the wooing process is concerned, Theotokis does not merely imitate Vikelas and Vlachos; following the Quarto, he has
Desdemona offer Othello “a world of sighs” (I.iii.182), rather than “a world of kisses”
(I.iii.182), which was after all the usual editorial practice in editions of Othello at that time:
My storie being done,
She gave me for my paines a world of kisses (I.iii.181-182)
Μα για τον κόπο,
Αφού την ιστορία είχα τελειώσει,
Μου χάρισε έναν κόσμο στεναγμούς (Theotokis, Othellos 24, emphasis added)
[But for the trouble,
after I had finished the story, 114
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
she gave me a world of sighs]
The view which he seems to promote is that the wooing is based on Othello’s initiative, or at best on mutual eagerness and equal participation. In this framework, he enhances Othello’s dexterity as a wooer and underlines that it is his artfulness that triggers Desdemona’s wish to hear more of his adventures:
found good means
To draw from her a prayer of earnest heart
That I would all my piligrimage dilate (I.iii.174-176, emphasis added)
Και μ’ επιτήδειους τρόπους αφορμή
Της έδωκα να με παρακαλέσει
από καρδιάς, να της ειπώ μία μία τες περιπέτειές μου όλες (Theotokis,
Othellos 23, emphasis added)
[And with shifty ways
I gave her occasion to plead me
from her heart to tell her all my adventures one by one]
What is more, Theotokis is careful enough to retain the suggestiveness of
Desdemona’s highly ambiguous wish “that heaven had made [her] such a man”
(I.iii.185-186), whereby it is unclear whether she wishes for herself or for her future husband to live Othello’s adventurous experience, and hence resemble his masculinity:
115
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
…επιθυμούσε να την είχε
Πλάσει ο ουρανός κ’ εκείνην τέτοιον άντρα. (Theotokis, Othellos 24)
[she wished that
heaven had made her such a man]
In contrast, Vikelas (Othellos 28) and Vlachos (Othellos 31) opted for the second interpretation and read the phrase as referring to Desdemona’s wish for a specific type of husband rather than to her evolution as an individual.1 Therefore, in their translations it comes naturally that Othello interpretes her phrase in terms of a νύξη, a hint, a consciously uttered insinuation, a deliberately camouflaged description of her image of the ideal man (Vikelas, Othellos 29; Vlachos, Othellos 31). This reading strengthened Desdemona’s representation as craftly and secretly pulling the strings in the wooing process and directing Othello’s reaction. In obvious departure from his predecessors, in Desdemona’s utterance Theotokis has Othello perceive a mere
αφορμή [occasion], which he grabs in order to further his advancement on Desdemona
(Othellos 24).
After translating the two previous sentences in a manner that minimizes
Desdemona’s role in the wooing process, Theotokis uses literal translation for rendering the impression that Brabantio gets from Othello’s account, namely that
Desdemona was “half the wooer” (I.iii.175):
Αν μολοήσει
1 This deliberate allusion by Desdemona herself to her inner sexual desires was a quite provocative behavior to be adopted by a woman both in Shakespeare’s time and in fin-de-siècle Greece. The Greek gender norms are extensively discussed throughout this thesis. Valuable sources on women’s roles in Shakespeare’s time are Oppositional Voices, Women and/ in the Renaissance and O Saixpir, I Anagennisi kai Emeis [Shakespeare, Renaissance and Us] (167-184) by Krontiris. 116
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
Που έργο της ήταν η μισή μνηστεία (Theotokis, Othellos 25, emphasis added)
[If she confesses that she was half the wooer]
Once again, the translator opposes his predecessors, who intervened in the source text in order to attribute the initiative to Desdemona and insinuate that she is actually the leading wooer (Vikelas, Othellos 29) or that she extends a love invitation to Othello
(Vlachos, Othellos 31):
Αν πη ότι τον ήθελε και τον ενοστημεύθη (Vikelas, Othellos 29, emphasis
added)
[If she tells that she wanted him and she liked him]
Και αν ομολογήση, ότι πρόκλησην του έρωτος του έκαμεν αυτή (Vlachos,
Othellos 31, emphasis added)1
[And if she confesses that she offered him an invitation to love]
1 An interesting detail with respect to Vlachos’s representation of Desdemona is that even Othello himself undermines her passive innocence at certain points of the plot. The most striking example is that upon meeting her in Cyprus, Othello addresses her with the exclamation “O my fair warrior” (II.i.208), which Vlachos translates into Ω, θελκτική μου αμαζών! (Vlachos, Othellos 52) [O, my charming Amazon]. This choice implies a voyeuristic envisioning of Desdemona as combining sexual attraction with magisterial physical appearance and military capability. The unstressed phrase of Shakespeare’s play is rendered by Vlachos in a manner that accentuates Desdemona’s attractiveness and associates her in the male fantasy with the race of the Amazons, mythical female warriors, notorious, among other things, for their sexual promiscuity. In fact, in note 73 Vlachos seems to draw his readers’ attention to his own intervention by revealing the word-for-word translation of Shakespeare’s line (Vlachos, Othellos 205). Such a blatant intervention that is acknowledged is quite an unexpected gesture on the part of a translator that has already proclaimed his intention to translate Shakespeare’s plays faithfully (Vlachos, Romaios kai Ioulia 9). I can only explain it on the grounds that it comes immediately after Desdemona’s engagement with Iago in a dialogue in which she tries to extract from him praise for herself, an attempt which had caused not few scholars of the time, including Vikelas in Greece, to criticize Desdemona for coquetry and vanity, as I discussed in the previous chapter. In any case, Vlachos’s choice is indicative of late 19th and early 20th-century male ambivalence to female sexuality, which caused men to condemn it while also adopting a voyeuristic gaze upon it. 117
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
Besides freeing Desdemona of any initiative in her relationship with Othello,
Theotokis desexualizes her as a wife and exaggerates her devotion, submission and her status as his victim. She is made to elevate Othello to her object of religious worship. At the point at which she asks to follow him to Cyprus Theotokis does not follow Vikelas and Vlachos who adopted Warburton’s change of “rites” into “rights”
(I.iii.285) (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Othello 71). As already explained, Vikelas’s and Vlachos’s choice of the word “right” is sexually charged because it alludes to the right of a married woman to engage in sexual activity with her husband. In Theotokis’s translation, however, Desdemona insists that it is for the rituals of love that she should not be separated from her husband. It is a religious meaning of worship that Theotokis attributes to these rituals of love rather than the sexual meaning of the consummation of a couple’s love:
So that (deere Lords) if I be left behind
A moth of Peace, and he go to the Warre,
The Rites for why I love him, are bereft me (I.ii.283-285, emphasis added)
Αν ίσως μείνω οπίσω, Κύριοί μου
Σκώρος ειρηνικός, και κείνος πάει
Στον πόλεμο, λατρεία δε θα μπορεί
Του ποθητού μου η αγάπη να προσφέρνει (Theotokis, Othellos 28, emphasis
added)
[If I perhaps I am left behind, my Lords,
a peaceful moth, and he goes
to the war, my love will not be able 118
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
to offer worship to my beloved]
Beneath Theotokis’s representation of Desdemona’s love for Othello in romantic terms that involve religious devotion and unreserved attachment, there is also a context of submissiveness and inequality. This is evident in the fact that
Theotokis has Desdemona call Othello her αφέντης [master] at the very moment that she dynamically revolts against her father (I.iii.210-213):
Μα ο άντρας μου είναι αυτός⸱ κι’ όση για σένα
Υποταγή η μητέρα μου είχε δείξει,
Προτιμώντας εσέ κι’ απ’ το γονηό της,
Τόσην εγω κηρύχνω πως χρωστάω
Του Μαύρου που είναι ο αφέντης μου. (Theotokis, Othellos 25)
[But this is my husband⸱ and as much submission
my mother had shown to you,
preferring you to her parent,
I declare that I owe
to the Black who is my master.]
This is a word of particular relevance to the consciousness of the Greek society: among its other meanings, it was the term of address to the Sultan during the period of the Turkish occupation and it denoted submission.
More than establishing a self-effacing, sacrificial love, the use of the word
αφέντης [master] implies an unequal relationship of subordination of one lover to the other. Of course, it is Desdemona who willingly places herself in this subordinate 119
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) position in relation to Othello. Theotokis’s choice could be dictated by his wish to retain what he himself calls “the medieval color” of the source text (Savvidis 52/4-
53/5). However, at a deeper level of analysis it suggests his reaction against the eastern ideology of marriage, according to which the husband-wife relationship resembles that of the master and the servant and is founded on total inequality. As a result, in Theotokis’s translation Desdemona’s eloquence and rebelliousness as a daughter are ultimately compromised because they are made to coexist in the same sentence with a self-imposed servitude as a wife. Theotokis thus defuses the threat that the contemporary Greek audience might have sensed in encountering a revolted daughter by having her rebel against her father only in order to make her submit herself to her husband. However, it is important to note that Desdemona’s submissiveness in Theotokis’s translation is an overdetermined feature. It is not exclusively the result of the translator’s intention to contain Desdemona under the command of her husband. Theotokis probably bears in his mind that he translates within the tragic genre which prescribes a certain identity for Desdemona as a woman and as a dramatic character (Krontiris, “Tragic Hero” 209). Highlighting
Desdemona’s submissiveness, therefore, also serves the idealization that Desdemona must undergo for the sake of securing the tragic effect of his translation.
The emphasis on Desdemona’s compliance helps Theotokis make a smooth transition from the outspoken Desdemona of the first acts to the one that endures
Othello’s violent public striking almost without complaint, only with a feeling of bitterness:
I have not deserv’d this. […]
I will not stay to offend you. (IV.i.266-267, 275) 120
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
Αυτό δε μουπρεπε! […]
Φεύγω· εγώ δε θέλω
Να σε συχύζω στέκοντας εδώ. (Theotokis, Othellos 105-106)
[I did not deserve this. […]
I am leaving· I do not want to
Upset you by standing here.]
Similarly, Theotokis has prepared his readers for Desdemona’s submissive reaction when Othello unfairly doubts her morality and her wifely fidelity (IV.ii.91-101).
Through his translation choices Theotokis strengthens her resemblance to the female protagonists of his local-color short stories who are manipulated by men.
The way Theotokis departs from Shakespeare’s play in translating
Desdemona’s death heightens her submissiveness. As already explained in Chapter 2,
Othello’s means of killing Desdemona is open to dispute. In the Quarto version of the play Othello stifles Desdemona, while in the Folio he smothers her (Shakespeare, A
New Variorum Edition of Othello 302). In Theotokis’s translation Othello strangles
Desdemona to death by means of his bare hands and emphasizes his protracted contact with her dying body (Theotokis, Othellos 132). While his predecessors, especially Vikelas, attributed a sense of justice to Othello, as well as magnanimity in wishing to shorten Desdemona’s pain by stabbing her to death, Theotokis sees
Othello’s revengefulness as reaching its peak. Thus, from a willingly submissive wife that expresses her love through subservience to her husband Desdemona transforms into a martyr-like victim that is unable to counter the physical forcefulness and vindictive instincts into which Othello’s wounded sense of honor has turned. In this 121
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) framework, Desdemona’s death is no longer regarded as a punishment fitting to the daughter that disobeys her father, as in Vikelas’s and Vlachos’s translations, but it becomes the hard destiny of the submissive wife that is victimized within her marriage.
In the light of Theotokis’s representation of Desdemona, as a daughter who rebels against her father in order to become a dedicated and willfully submissive wife that is finally killed by her husband, the charges of flirtatiousness against her at certain parts of the plot seem to collapse. Her outspokenness and insistence that she gets praised by Iago during a conversation with him, while Othello is in danger
(II.i.122-202), led Vikelas to accuse her of coquetry (Othellos 216-217). Such an accusation seems out of place in Theotokis’s interpretation of Desdemona. The justification provided by herself, i.e. that she merely tries to entertain her concern for
Othello until he arrives in Cyprus is totally credible:
I am not merry: but I do beguile
The thing I am, by seeming otherwise. (II.i.146-147)
Χαρούμενη δεν είμαι κι’ όμως θέλω
Αλλοιώτικη να φαίνομαι απ’ ό,τι είμαι. (Theotokis, Othellos 39)
[I'm not happy, but I want to
To look different from what I am]
Equally credible is the argument that she insists to be described in good terms because she thinks that previous descriptions of women do not befit her, rather than out of coquetry (I.ii.139-140, 168-172). It is also important to note that not only does 122
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) she criticize Iago’s answers, but in the Folio version, which Theotokis follows at this point, she recognizes and reacts to his sexual jokes:
Oh, fie upon thee, Slanderer. (II.i.134)
Ντροπή, ντροπή σου, ψεύτη. (Theotokis, Othellos 1915, 39)
[Shame, shame on you, liar.]
Her outspokenness and her strong wish for sincerity do not surprise the reader of
Theotokis’s translation. After all, the translator has already presented her dynamic character in the scene in which she supports her love for Othello before the Senate and her father, thus showing her strength in claiming what she believes is right (I.iii).
Hence, Desdemona’s outspokenness in Theotokis’s translation cannot be linked to promiscuity. That is why she can express her admiration of Lodoviko to
Aemilia (IV.iii.42-44) without drawing suspicion to herself for loose conduct and without making herself deserve her death. Besides, a few lines earlier she rejects
Aemilia’s wish that she had never met Othello and confirms her love for him once more:
Aemil. I, would you had never seene him.
Des. So would not I: my love doth so approve him,
That even his stubbornesse, his checks, his frownes,
(Prythee un-pin me) have grace and favour. (IV.iii.23-26)
ΑΙΜ. Ω ας μην τον είχες δει ποτέ, Κυρία. 123
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915)
ΔΕΣΔ. Αυτό εγώ δε θα τοθελα! Είναι τόση
Η αγάπη μου γι’ αυτόν που ως και στους τρόπους
Τους άγριους, στες βρισιές, στα σκούντουφλά του –
Βγάλε μου, Αιμιλία, τούτες τες καρφίτσες –
Βρίσκω ωμορφιά και χάρη. (Theotokis, Othellos 118-119)
v. Conclusion
The expansion and differentiation of the middle social classes and the irredentist politics at the turn of the century led to a new domestic ideal and the appreciation of women’s roles as wives and mothers. At the same time, a circle of intellectuals drew attention to women’s true living conditions, which, far from being ideal, involved humiliation and violence. In 1915 the Greeks encountered a very different version of
Desdemona. Under the influence of socialist ideology, demoticism and a naturalistic mode of writing that exposed the ills of his social surroundings, Theotokis offered an alternative, more positive version of Shakespeare’s heroine than Vikelas and Vlachos did before him, who had charged her to a lesser or greater degree with promiscuity.
He presented her as a rebellious but not promiscuous daughter that in the course of the translation transforms into a submissive and victimized wife. His representation of
Desdemona can be said to criticize the oppression of women in society, while it also seems to have a corrosive effect upon the image of the male tragic hero at certain points of the plot. Othello’s nobility seems compromised and he often resembles the male figures of Theotokis’s short stories and novels who let their repressed instincts burst upon women.
It is to the reception of Shakespeare’s women amidst the profound social disruption caused by the Greek women’s first feminist awakening and their claims for 124
3. KONSTANTINOS THEOTOKIS’S (RE)PRESENTATION OF DESDEMONA (1915) enfranchisement during the interwar period that I now proceed in order to discuss how
Velmos adapted the provocative character of Cleopatra according to his own values and the historical moment.
125
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
Chapter 4
Nikos Velmos’s Reimagining of Cleopatra (1924)
In 1922 the Greek society had just got out of a period of intense war activity and inner reclassifications: the Balkan Wars (1912-13), the national strife between the royalists and the supporters of Venizelos (1914-17), World War I (1917-18) and the Asia
Minor campaign (1919-1922).1 The Greek people had to deal with many hardships, such as poverty, unemployment, the need to incorporate a great number of refugees from Asia Minor, and the sense of defeat after the collapse of the Megali Idea. These difficult living conditions prepared the ground for the formation of social movements like the workers’ movement, the employees’ movement and the feminist movement, which criticized social conventions and claimed life improvement (Avdela, “I
Misthoti Ergasia” 83-99). In this context, the feminist organization O Syndesmos gia ta Dikaiomata tis Gynaikas [SDG – League for Women’s Rights] was founded in
1920 and put forth demands for the legislation of political, social, and civil rights for women (Avdela and Psarra, O Feminismos 38-41). The general interwar atmosphere of social criticism provided fertile ground for the expression of feminist claims.
Conducive to this were some additional factors like industrialization, the growth of the middle classes, growing urbanization, the spreading of education, the integration of girls into the public school system and the spreading of the feminist movement.
The Greek society, however, was not totally ready for such a strong female presence in the public sphere.
1 The European interwar era is defined as the period between the end of World War I (1914-1918) and the beginning of World War II (1939-1945). The Greek interwar period, however, extends from 1922, the year of the Asia Minor catastrophe, to 1940, the year of the declaration of the Greek-Italian war. 126
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
The native literary and dramatic production most of the times reflected this uneasiness and praised women’s domestic role, while it condemned or satirized deviant female behaviour and sexuality. Nonetheless, more empowering representations of femininity were also available and came from the young socialist and communist writers and intellectuals of the 1920s. In their works they affirmed erotic desire, exercised social critique and challenged social and moral conventions.
Velmos belonged to this group of young intellectuals of the 1920s and he himself embraced a communist perspective of life, society and work. His views about women were particularly friendly and were influenced by his political views.
In the mid-1920s he adapted Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and offered a flattering portrait of the controversial queen. He placed her center-stage and he presented his own version of the trajectory of her feelings for Antony. Velmos saw her as a woman suffering from her beloved’s indifference and infidelity. He suggested that she betrays him not out of retaliation or womanly caprice, but because of her weakness as a woman. With the intention to incite not only pity but also admiration for Cleopatra, while also pointing to the potential of the suffering individual, at the end of the adaptation Velmos enhanced the source text’s representation of Cleopatra as a dynamic, androgynous figure. Formerly weak, Cleopatra comes to reject her womanly weaknesses and embraces manly virtues like decisiveness, bravery and selflessness as she rises to nobility.
i. Interwar gender politics
The interwar period, from 1922-1932 in particular, was a time of intense social, political and cultural change, which encouraged diverse social groups to put forth their claims (Avdela, “I Misthoti Ergasia” 83-99). Feminist claims started to make 127
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) themselves increasingly more visible.1 Avdela and Psarra, the first scholars to have studied the idiosyncrasies of the interwar Greek feminist movement, point out that this is the first time that “feminism” is a legitimate term to use in Greece (O
Feminismos 15). The time was ripe for the organized Greek feminist movement to emerge. The ground had been prepared by women’s activity during the previous period (1887-1920), which was marked by the circulation of newspapers and journals that exclusively addressed a female readership; that period was also characterized by women’s more active role in the public sphere in the event of the 1897 Greco-Turkish war. Generally speaking, women fought for legal rights: women’s suffrage, equality in education and working conditions, such as professional training, equal salaries and accessibility to jobs previously closed to women, revision of the Family Law, protection of motherhood, and, abolition of the state regulation of prostitution (Avdela
1 The two basic women’s groups that were active in the interwar period are the radical Syndesmos gia ta Dikaiomata tis Gynaikas (SDG – League for Women’s Rights), and the conservative group of Ethniko Symvoulio Ellinidon (ESE – National Council of Greek Women). A third group, namely Lykeio ton Ellinidon (Lyceum of Greek Women), was a residue of women’s activity of the previous era that could not overcome its initial orientation towards nationalism and adapt to the new paradigm of feminist activity. Lastly, there were many philanthropic and professional associations, while there were also the socialist and communist women who may not have formed part of the mainstream women’s movement; yet they exerted ideological influence upon it, particularly in the extent to which they tried to connect social struggles to those of women. Socialist women formed the group called Sosialistikos Omilos Gynaikon (SOG – Socialist Group of Women). Avdela and Psarra were the first to extensively study the interwar women’s groups (O Feminismos 32-54). Subsequent studies that elaborate more or less on the issue are offered by Psarra (“Feministries, Sosialistries, Kommounistries” 67-82) and Samiou (“Oi Ellinides 1922-1940” 68-70), while Samiou (“I Diekdikisi tis Isotitas” 26-28) and Maria Kyriakidou (“O Feministikos Tipos stin Ellada tou Mesopolemou” 69-105) discuss the feminist brochures published in the interwar period, like O Agonas tis Gynaikas (Women’s Struggle) published by SDG, I Ellinis (The Greek Woman) published by ESE and I Sosialistiki Zoi (The Socialist Life), published by SOG. Relevant in this respect is Eleni Nixarlidou’s MA thesis on the representation of female identity in the journal of ESE I Ellinis. 128
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) and Psarra, O Feminismos 20-25; Avdela, “Between Duties and Rights” 125-128;
Moschou-Sakorrafou 154-156; Samiou, “Oi Ellinides 1922-1940” 71-74).1
Although women activists may have used stereotypical images of femininity in order to support their claims and reassure society that feminism did not pose any threat to the institution of the family (Avdela and Psarra 94-95), they in fact often used two subversive gestures in their discourse: they reacted to the systematic praise of women’s traditional roles as mothers and wives, and they articulated the view that what was regarded as a natural, inherent female identity was in fact men’s social construction (Vasileiadis V. 301-306). Progressive liberal ideas about women were voiced in the newspaper O Agonas tis Gynaikas in the context of claiming political rights for women. For example, Roza Imvrioti, a radical interwar feminist, argued that the right to vote was the woman’s duty to herself as a member of society with her own interests and ideas (1-2). Progressive arguments about women were also used by male intellectuals of the time. In his speech on the occasion of the opening of the “Anotera
Gynaikeia Scholi” (Superior Women’s School) in 1921, Dimitris Glinos (1882-1943), one of the founding members of the school, described the new female ideal which he
1 Interwar women’s groups differed from each other in the radicalism with which they pursued the above claims, as well as in the arguments they used to support their views. Avdela and Psarra discuss the diverse views on the urgency of granting political rights to women and of establishing protective regulations for working women (O Feminismos 55-92). Nonetheless, these differences came up in the course of the feminist movement. According to Avdela and Psarra, at the outset of the interwar period there were no fixed boundaries between these organizations (O Feminismos 36). Some women were simultaneously members of opposing groups and published their views in the corresponding journals. A notable case in this respect is presented by Athena Gaitanou-Gianniou (Avdela and Psarra O Feminismos 50-51). By 1936, however, when the Metaxas regime (1936-1940) banned interwar feminist activity, this “mosaic” of women’s groups ceased to exist, and two clearly demarcated sides remained, namely the conservative and the progressive one (Avdela and Psarra, O Feminismos 53). Soon enough, feminist claims were abandoned for the sake of the anti-fascist struggle, with Kommounistiko Komma Ellados (KKE - Greek Communist Party) taking on the leading role. Besides, under the influence of the communist ideology, many members of the women’s groups, like Maria Svolou and Rosa Imvrioti, abandoned them and joined KKE in the firm belief that the fulfilment of the feminist claims would be impossible without a preceding social reformation (Avdela and Psarra, O Feminismos 53-54). 129
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) called “female humanism” (97-116).1 According to Glinos, this included neither the woman-prisoner of the patriarchal home nor the woman-doll of the bourgeoisie, whose measure of virtue was their domestic slavery and sacrifice, and who received decorative education with strictly domestic usage. This new model referred to the woman that was forced by social conditions to leave the home and earn her living by working. Education was necessary so that she gain awareness of her abilities and inclinations and cultivate them, develop initiatives and form a balanced soul that would be motivated by the love for the common good and the elevation of the society
(Glinos 97-116).
To its greatest part, however, the interwar Greek society was not ready for women’s strong presence in the public sphere. Studies of the Greek interwar gender politics reveal that the reception of women’s claims ranged from the ridicule of women and perpetual postponement of the fulfilment of their claims to the final disillusion of their expectations. For example, women’s struggle to receive political rights was met with continual sabotage and postponement for approximately a decade.
Avdela and Psarra, who offer a detailed chronicle of women’s efforts to gain voting rights and the resistance they faced, observe that Prime Minister Venizelos developed a strategy whereby he seemed to agree with women but he systematically set
1 Glinos was a teacher, author, politician and a basic member of Ekpaideftikos Omilos [Educational Group] (1910), which supported the view that the Greek education had to be organized according to the principles of demoticism. 130
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) impediments or preconditions that indefinitely deferred the allocation of political rights to them (O Feminismos 66).1
Moreover, the press was inimical to women’s political enfranchisement. In
1928 the newspaper Nea Imera [New Day] reiterated and strongly supported the view that women were mentally unstable due to their monthly menstruation. On the basis of this view, allocating voting rights to women was thought to be dangerous, since there was no guarantee that on the day of the elections all women would be in a state of intellectual and psychological normality to vote (Anonymous, “Peri tis Psifou” 1).2 In
1929 the newspaper Skrip published serially what were supported to be the most significant chapters of Michail Galanos’s study Peri tin Psifon ton Gynaikon [About
Women’s Vote] (1921), in which the author makes a strong case against women’s politicization because it would jeopardize women’s purity as well as the domestic stability. The newspaper advertised this study as the most complete treatise on the subject that should be obtained by every citizen and every family.
1 For fear that only women of the upper social classes would vote, in a brief interview in 1919, Venizelos argued that voting rights should not be allocated to women unless they worked hard in order to convince as many women as they could of the necessity to vote (Anonymous, “I Parochi Psifou” 4). Ten years later, in 1929, during a session in the Parliament, Venizelos agreed to grant women the right to vote in municipal elections, but he also admitted that he himself was not yet ready to grant them the right to vote in general (national) elections. He justified his position by saying that illiterate women voters, added to the male ones, would be a social burden, while he further supported the view that there was no necessity for introducing radical reforms so hastily (Anonymous, “I Parochi Psifou” 4). Poulos also acknowledges that although the “liberal reforms under Venizelos provided a favourable habitat for the emergence and diffusion of feminist ideology,” Venizelos’s political party “was never amongst its most avid supporters” (69). As the scholar reveals in a note, feminist claims for voting rights “enjoyed more parliamentary support from representatives of the conservative Populist Party under Gounaris, as well as the socialist-led Democratic Union Party under Papanastasiou, at different moments of the interwar period (Poulos 74). Mochou-Sakorrafou (213-234) and Fotini Nikolaidou-Stergiopoulou (121- 130) also offer interesting accounts of women’s struggle to obtain political rights. Samiou’s book Ta Politika Dikaiomata ton Ellinidon (1864-1952) [The Political Rights of Greek Women (1865-1952)] is dedicated to the history of Greek women’s voting rights. 2 This position was taken by misogynist politicians across Europe. Paul Ginsborg relates a similar situation in Spain in 1931, which, however, resulted in the triumph of women’s suffrage (232). Since the 19th century in Europe there were popular theories that supported the view that women’s menstruation is incapacitating and leads to nervous instability and dangerous alterations in their mental state, rendering them unfit for politics. Sir Henry Maudsley’s essay “Sex in Mind and Education” (1874) is a representative example. The article in the newspaper Nea Imera [New Day] is evidence that these theories had reached Greece and were popular too. 131
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Besides the impediments to women’s political enfranchisement, discriminatory policies were adopted in the field of work and professional education.
At the turn of the 1920s Greece witnessed an increasing number of regulations in public services which excluded women employees.1 As Avdela puts it, the concept of the “public servant” was first and foremost masculine and could not be conceived in its feminine version unless there was a special provision (Dimosioi Ipalliloi 15). As the scholar adds in another study, although the economic and social imperatives of the interwar period gradually brought about changes in the traditional model for women’s roles in the labor market, their true social position did not change radically (Avdela,
“Stoicheia gia tin Ergasia” 203). They never rose above the role of the “auxiliary salary”, a supplement to the family income, while the ideal social situation for them was to stay at home (Avdela, “Stoicheia gia tin Ergasia” 203-204). The justification for women’s marginalization was based on the arguments that women’s work outside the domestic sphere corrupted them, caused them to neglect their family duties and was to blame for the increase in unemployment (Avdela, “Stoicheia gia tin Ergasia”
200-203); in addition, it was often argued that women had no right to work because they did not serve as soldiers and did not have the right to vote (Tzanaki 164).
Similar arguments were voiced against women’s professional training. In 1929 the liberal politician Venizelos stated that women’s education had to be suitable for their sex because it was meant to prepare them for their most important profession, i.e. their role as mothers and housewives (Hering 1158). Six years later the
1 For example, women’s career in diplomacy, in the Upper Council of Justice, in the state laboratories or as superintendents in the Labor Inspectorate was suppressed. A well-known case is that of Agni Rousopoulou. Anna Iasmi offers a detailed account of the case in the context of the gender hierarchies in interwar Greece. In 1935, prime minister Yiorgos Kondylis, who came to power after a coup d’etat, by law deprived women of the right to be employed in public services, except for in some positions deemed suitable to their sex, such as teachers, nurses, secretaries, typewriters and maids (Avdela, “Stoicheia gia tin Ergasia” 202-203; Moschou-Sakorrafou 210-212). 132
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) government of Kondylis accompanied the law that forbade women to work in public services with the statement that the government is against women’s education and women’s work, and therefore it will make every effort to force women to return to their homes (Avdela, “Stoicheia gia tin Ergasia” 203).1
The literary and dramatic production of the interwar period affirmed traditional models of womanhood. With respect to narrative literature, Sakalaki informs us that interwar novels were still conservative and often demonized women as overtly sexual. Although it is a transitional era in which traditional values tend to be replaced by modern ones that prioritize the individual, the Greek novels tend to preserve the status-quo and reproduce traditional modes of conduct (Sakalaki 198).
Their plot rewards moral sexual behavior and criticizes relationships that take place outside the context of marriage (Sakalaki 153). It is also the case that little value is placed upon sensuality and simple sexual relationships (Sakalaki 152-154). Hence, it is not surprising that love relationships are perceived in a dichotomous manner: as pure, asexual, intellectual-platonic ones, on the one hand, and as instinctual, bestial and dirty ones that involve sexual intercourse, on the other (Sakalaki 153). Sakalaki also observes the increasing popularity of the masculine model and the virtues associated with it at the expense of femininity and female virtues (160).2
1 Generally speaking, women’s education in the interwar period underwent many important changes, but it did not challenge the idea of their biologically predestined roles. Katerina Dalakoura and Sidiroula Ziogou-Karastergiou (120-299) and Aggeliki Aggeli (11-41) examine the issue in detail. Similar restrictions on women were imposed by texts that belonged or aspired to be counted in the category of prescriptive medical literature. Kyriakidou traces one such example in the 1927 book O Symvoulos tis Gynaikeias Kallonis (The Councel of Female Beauty) (“The ‘Power of Beauty’”). 2 Eleni Lianopoulou studies the novels and short stories produced by women authors in the interwar period and she proves that they did not differentiate themselves from the ideological conservatism that Sakalaki traces in the interwar male literary production. Female authors of the time could not overcome the barriers of collective stereotypes about women. Rarely are their heroines concerned with issues of female emancipation. Indeed, they note and disapprove of the factors that condemn women to inferiority, but they ultimately communicate the deterministic view that this is the natural order of things which women cannot change. Work and love relationships are just a transitional stage in their 133
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
As far as theatre is concerned, Vasileiou informs us that in the 1920s dramatic and comic boulevard plays dominated the Greek stage (Exychronismos i Paradosi 71-
85). It is also the time when the historical and socio-political conditions in the Greek society were ripe enough for naturalistic Greek plays to appear more systematically, although obviously much deferred chronologically in comparison to Western Europe
(Vasileiou, Exychronismos i Paradosi 109).1 In these plays the image of the woman- victim of male amorality and of the socio-economic milieu which leads them to prostitution is conspicuous (Vasileiou, Exychronismos i Paradosi 81, 96-109). This same trend of female representation also survived in the still popular realistic- naturalistic problem plays of Ibsen (Vasileiou Exychronismos i Paradosi 126-128), the newly discovered plays of Anton Chekhov and George Bernard Shaw (Vasileiou,
Exychronismos i Paradosi197-203), as well as in a small number of plays written by female dramatists in the period 1925-1931 (Vasileiou, Exychronismos i Paradosi 225-
227).
Nonetheless, when women were shown to deviate from the rules of accepted ethics, they were usually condemned or satirized, rather than praised (Vasileiou,
Exychronismos i Paradosi 81-85).2 In fact, as Vasileiou reveals, the satire of women’s increasing tendency to adopt habits that were established as male had become an
lives until they return to the household, which emerges as the place that gives central meaning to their lives. In short, in interwar women’s works traditional values predominate and reveal an interesting paradox: while women authors themselves dared to overcome the domestic enclosure by publishing their works, their heroines tend to return to the domestic space as the predestined place that offers them safety. Athanasopoulou, who studies the works of women poets of the period 1911-1936, seems to suggest that they were more progressive than women authors of novels and short stories: although, initially, they responded to men’s expectations of them, they gradually opposed these expectations and defended their right to express themselves through poetry (“Isotita sti Diafora” 91-118). 1 According to Vasileiou the socio-political circumstances which triggered the emergence of naturalistic plays at this particular moment were World War I and the influx of refugees that entered the Greek society after the Asia Minor Catastrophe (Exychronismos i Paradosi 103-104). 2 Very few plays dare to proceed to social criticism and argue in favor of women’s rights (Vasileiou, Exychronismos i Paradosi 81-82). 134
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) obsession that verged on misogynism (Exychronismos i Paradosi 83). This satirical trend in the representation of women survived in the still popular Greek local-color comedies, which often satirized women’s struggle for enfranchisement (Vasileiou,
Exychronismos i Paradosi 118-119). It is also the case that the same burlesque attitude towards women is found in many new satires written in the period 1925-1931
(Vasileiou, Exychronismos i Paradosi 235-238).
Kyriaki Petrakou seems to agree with Vasileiou. Her examination of plays written in the 1920s indicates that rarely did the dramatists refer to the Greek women’s wage labor, and when they did, they often adopted a satirical tone (Petrakou
179-215). When working women were not satirized, they were presented in an ambiguous manner as a working case, not as a serious social phenomenon that merits equally serious dramaturgical treatment.1
The satirical representations of women confirm the preoccupation of the collective Greek imagination with traditional definitions of femininity that naturalized domesticity and motherhood. Any deviation from this conception was not well- received. Active female sexuality caused male anxiety, but this does not seem to have been satirized. It rather gave rise to a series of dark representations of women in the theatre. Quite a number of plays written during the interwar period, particularly those that try to integrate Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theories about sexual instincts, reflect the collective anxiety about female sexuality (Vasileiou, Exychronismos i
1 In general terms, female emancipation was a cause of reaction and concern among interwar playwrights and most of the critics agreed with them. Literary and theatre criticism in interwar Greece was also conservative. Vasilis Vasileiadis offers an in-depth analysis of the attitude of literary critics towards the so-called “male” and “female” literature of the period 1922-1936. The findings of V. Vasileiadis’s research reveal that interwar literary criticism, conducted by men or women, retained a patriarchal orientation and reacted to the change in the literary paradigm that the presence of women authors was about to effect. It sought to perpetuate the distinct categories of “male” and “female” literature on the basis of the social traits of the two sexes, which it perceived as natural and biological. 135
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
Paradosi 184-187). Such plays like Flantro by Pantelis Horn (1925) and Drakaina by
Dimitris Mpogris (1927) offer negative representations of female sexuality as being repressed and leading women to criminal behavior.
At the same time with the above representations of femininity, the interwar period witnessed more enabling images of women in the works of young socialist and communist writers and intellectuals who were preoccupied with existential and socio- political issues. According to Christina Dounia, the nightmarish situation in Greece, which was characterized by unemployment, starvation, illnesses and, the bitter sense of national defeat ensuing the Asia Minor Catastrophe, made these young writers seek refuge in the vision of social revolution (Logotechnia kai Politiki 35). They placed the marginalized, destitute and transgressive members of the Greek society at the centre of attention (Dounia, Logotechnia kai Politiki 30-38). The language and style of expression were derived from the lower social strata so that they could alert their readers to the problems, and cause concern and discomfort (Dounia, Logotechnia kai
Politiki 39-41).
Although until recently these writers and poets of the 1920s were accused of unjustifiable pessimism and a corrosive, decadent mood, their works have been re- evaluated and appreciated for their social sensitivity, criticism of the dominant ideology, rejection of the status quo, opposition to traditional values and views about women, health and nature, and appraisal of neuropathology, drugs, and art (Dounia, “I
Dekaetia tou ‘20” 65-68). Other basic traits of this circle of writers were the exploration of “forbidden” sexualities, androgyny and role reversals, the intense wish for freedom, the affirmation of love desire and the subversal of social and moral conventions (Dounia, “I Peripeteia Enos Romantzou” 224). It is worth citing Dounia’s
136
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) description of this period in her analysis of probably the first Greek novel that is preoccupied with the issue of women’s homosexuality:
It is the time that Marxist editions are multiplied, Kavafis’s poetry attracts the
young people of Athens, Lapathiotis does not hide his homosexuality and
supports the communist vision, Polydouri applies the ideas of the feminist
movement in her private life in an improvised way and Kariotakis writes his
subversive satires. (“I Peripeteia Enos Romantzou 224-225)
As Aggelos Terzakis so aptly puts it, “poetry, social revolution, love were mixed up in our mind and made us walk dizzy like sleepwalkers” (quoted in Dounia, “I
Peripeteia Enos Romantzou 225).
Velmos belongs to the above group of authors, poets and intellectuals who severely criticized social conventions and wished for freedom in love and expression.
It is through the aforementioned values shared by the members of this group that
Velmos read Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and translated her in a woman-friendly manner.
In his adaptation of the play Cleopatra is the victim of Antony’s love, and she is given the opportunity to give voice to the inner torture she experiences as a result of her unreciprocated love for Antony. By the end of the adaptation Velmos transforms
Cleopatra into an unexpectedly strong woman who is fearless in facing death.
ii. Velmos as Shakespeare translator and his views on the woman issue
Velmos (1890-1930) was an interwar intellectual with multilevel action as an actor, author, dramatist and newspaper publisher. He came from a poor family and he had not even graduated primary school, while he owed his whole education to the director 137
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
Thomas Oikonomou (Doukas 67). My decision to focus on Velmos and his adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra lies on the fact that he is a quite neglected and only recently discovered figure of interwar Greece that was a sincere admirer of Shakespeare with profound involvement with his oeuvre as an actor, director, scholar, and translator of his plays.
Velmos seems to have contributed considerably to the consolidation of
Shakespeare in the 1920s and his preoccupation with the Bard was well-known among his contemporaries. Stratis Doukas (1895-1983) reveals that the pseudonym
“Velmos,” which came to replace his real surname “Vogiatzakis” and to be used by the other members of his family, was derived from Shakespeare’s first name
“William” (67). Lambros Asteris (1871-1842) and Kleon Parashos (1894-1964) remember Velmos’s informal lectures on Shakespeare’s plays during his strolls
(Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 33-34, 36). Manolis Magkakis (1891-1918), translator of
Shakespeare’s sonnets (1911), recounts Velmos’s habit of reciting Juliet’s monologues by heart in café Neon Kentron [New Centre] (Logothetis, “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 18).
Nikos Logothetis, the first modern scholar who has systematically examined
Velmos’s life and ideological background, adds that as early as 1910s he had built his reputation as a Shakespearean actor (“Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to
Theatro” 18). Since his theatre debut around 1906, and until his withdrawal from the stage in 1926, Velmos worked with important early 20th-century theatre groups, like that of Aikaterini Veroni, Dimitrios Kotopoulis, Thomas Oikonomou and Marika
Kotopouli (Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 111, 115, 123, 125) playing in many productions of Shakespeare’s plays, most notably Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The
Merchant of Venice, King Lear, Richard III and Timon of Athens (Logothetis, 138
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
“Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 23-24; Logothetis, Nikos
Velmos 116-122). Later, in 1917, when he founded his own theatre groups
“Morfotikos Thiasos” and “Stratiotikos Thiasos,” he staged among other plays his own adaptations of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra (1917) and Othello (1918)
(Logothetis, “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 24; Logothetis,
Nikos Velmos 114-122). Such was his fame as a Shakespearean actor that in 1925 sculptor Loukas Doukas based his sculpture of Hamlet on Velmos’s figure
(Logothetis, “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 18-20). In any case, Velmos himself locates the roots of his commitment to Shakespeare in his acquaintance and close collaboration with Thomas Oikonomou (Logothetis,
“Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 21; Logothetis, Nikos
Velmos 125). It is also the case that his initiation into Shakespeare’s love poetry took place in 1910-1911, during which period he closely observed the process of translation that Manolis Magkakis followed in rendering Shakespeare’s sonnets in
Greek. Velmos acknowledged the importance of this experience in his poetic collection O Eroropathos Tragoudistis [The Lovelorn Singer] (1915) (Logothetis
“Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 21; Logothetis, Nikos
Velmos 125).
Later, Velmos developed into a Shakespearean critic and scholar of
Shakespeare’s reception in Greece. In 1920 he included in his collection of essays
Stochasmoi gia tin Techni kai tin Koinonia [Thoughts on Art and Society] (Velmou
Erga 29-46) a short essay on Shakespeare that overflows with his admiration of him
139
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
(Velmou Erga 29-31).1 In 1924 in his adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra he included a brief biography of Shakespeare in the prologue (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra
5-11). Logothetis describes him as one of the first scholars of Shakespeare’s reception in Greece because in the editions of his adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra in book form (1924) and in Fylla Technis (1927), the art magazine that accompanied his newspaper Fragkelio, he gave an account of the translated and untranslated plays of
Shakespeare in the Greek language, the translated but not staged plays and the unpublished translations, while he listed the Greek translators, actors and directors of
Shakespeare’s plays (Logothetis, “Anazitontas to Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai ton
Theatro” 26-27).2
Velmos also ventured to write adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. Doukas informs us that he adapted four of them, i.e. As You Like it (1914, 1926), Antony and
Cleopatra (1917). Othello (1918) and Hamlet (1926), of which only the first two were published (Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 79).
The motives behind Velmos’s intense preoccupation with Shakespeare and particularly the reasons that urged him to adapt his plays relate to his wish to bring
Shakespeare closer to the popular social classes. He opposed the bourgeois ideology and in this sense he seems to have joined translators, like Konstantinos Theotokis and
Alexandros Pallis, who also tried to bring Shakespeare closer to the popular classes.
Velmos strongly objected to regarding Shakespeare as the privilege of the elite and approached him according to the standards of the young communist artists of the
1920s. He saw Shakespeare as a member of the world of the poor who had to fight
1 This essay was later published in the journal Paraskinia (Logothetis, “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 25). 2 In Fragkelio Velmos completes the above bibliography with the names of actors he forgot to mention (38). 140
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) and endure hard living conditions for his survival and progress, and as a playwright who envisioned the time of social revolution and exposed the decay of society through his plays (O Antonios kai i Kleopatra 5-7; Velmou Erga 29-31). Velmos’s description of Shakespeare as a type of vagabond who lives on the margins of his society is very much influenced by the tendency of his generation to focus on the marginalized members of the society, to raise vagabonds into symbols and to believe that the best way to art is through a life that is full of unusual experiences, deprivation and pain (Dounia, Logotechnia kai Politiki 47).
Velmos’s decision to adapt Antony and Cleopatra was motivated by some more reasons. The play focuses on two of his favourite themes: the ordeals of love and death. Throughout his oeuvre, especially in his collection of prose poems O
Erotopathos Tragoudistis [The Lovelorn Singer] (1910) and O Pistos tis Apelpisias
[The Loyal of Despair] (1915) and in his collection of love letters Oi Dyo Agapes
[The Two Loves] (1923), Velmos reveals a strong preoccupation with the pain that is experienced in the process of love and often sees death as a relief. This is characteristic of the so-called “generation of the ΄20s,” who, in the wake of the Asia
Minor catastrophe and the numerous refugees, expressed fatigue, inability to adapt to reality and the feeling of dissatisfaction and decadence (Vitti, I Genia tou Trianta 42).
This fixation may also derive from Velmos’s personal experiences of rejection in love and social relationships. Logothetis refers to his unconventional life, his homosexual desires, his surrendering himself to drugs and alcohol and his frequent visits to the
First Cemetery of Athens (Nikos Velmos 34; “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Fragkelio II” 33-43).
What is more, Velmos himself explains that he adapted Antony and Cleopatra not only because the staging makes this already rich play even more complex, and 141
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) thus difficult even for the most knowledgeable spectator to watch it, but also because of the too many demands that the play imposes when being staged (O Antonios kai i
Kleopatra 12). It seems that Velmos had already undertaken the adaptation of the play in 1917 in order to stage it with his own theatre company. Given Velmos’s poor financial conditions and his group’s status as a touring theatre company that addressed the uneducated audience of the Greek rural areas of Thessaly, the multilevel simplification of the play probably seemed necessary. Here is a case of what Deborah
Cartmell calls the “democratizing effect” of adaptation, which refers to the ability of adaptation to “[bring] literature to the masses” and “the masses to literature, diluting, simplifying, and therefore appealing to the many rather than the few” (3).1
Velmos’s decision to adapt a Shakespearean play was quite provocative.
According to Vasileiou, by 1920s Shakespeare’s plays had become a common possession for most theatre groups (Exychronismos i Paradosi 137), but it seems that the way they were staged did not make them accessible to the wider audience. Both
Vasileiou (Exychronismos i Paradosi 269-271) and Mavropoulou (119-145) state that there were circles of intellectuals that opposed the modernization of Shakespeare’s plays through interventions either on the stage or in the text. While Vasileiou examines the issue from the perspective of the extent to which interwar theatre life adhered to tradition or proceeded to innovations, Mavropoulou attributes this opposition to modernization to the struggle of certain social groups to preserve the bourgeois status quo and shape the national identity accordingly. Mavropoulou explains that these intellectuals insisted that the staging of Shakespeare’s plays had to
1 Cartmell’s view of adaptation as the “art for of democracy” (4) refers to film adaptations, but it can apply in the cases of theatre adaptations, and especially to Velmos’s adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. 142
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) follow old traditional methods, which were widely accepted and which would bring a
European aura to the theatre life of Greece (144). I also associate this wish to cling to tradition with the systematic reprinting of older translations during the interwar period; for example, Vikelas’s translations of Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth were re- printed in 1921 and 1922 respectively, and Damiralis’s translations of seven of
Shakespeare’s plays were reprinted by the publishing house I. N. Sideris in the years
1928 and 1929, namely Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Richard III, Antony and Cleopatra, As
You Like It, Cymbeline and Timon of Athens, all of which were written in heavy
Katharevousa, quite outdated by late 1920s (Karagiorgos, “Vivliographia ton
Metafraseon” 673-695).
Velmos’s wish to offer simplified versions of Shakespeare’s plays to the popular classes is inextricably linked to his status as an anti-conformist social rebel.
He espoused humanistic ideals and had cultivated an idiosyncratic version of
Christianity and communism. He never stopped envisioning the time of social revolution that would demolish class barriers and categories of human beings.
Velmos’s contemporaries and modern scholars seem to agree that he was an idealist committed to social criticism. Minas Pesmatzoglou called him an “apostate of society” (2), Dionysios Devaris a “verbal bomber” (60) and Doukas a “proletarian writer” (68). Logothetis stresses his status as a utopian and romantic idealist, an anti- conformist that opposed the conventions of the bourgeois status quo, a social rebel and an anarchist with humanist ideals (Nikos Velmos 17, 34, 45, 47, 55, 57, 61 and passim). Dounia highlights Velmos’s idiosyncratic versions of Christianity and communism, according to which leaders, positions of power and any kind of dependencies are rejected (“To ‘Fragkelio’ tou Nikou Velmou” 105, 113-114).
143
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Velmos’s severe social criticism broke out first in 1920 in his collection of brief essays Stochasmoi gia tin Techni kai tin Koinonia [Thoughts on Art and Society]
(Velmou Erga 24-46) and in 1921 in To Koinoniko Vivlio [The Social Book] (Velmou
Erga 4-23), while it reached its pick in the years 1927-1929 in his newspaper
Fragkelio. Logothetis sees Koinoniko Vivlio as Velmos’s ideological manifesto that bears the traits of personal confession, moral teaching, sermon of love and revolutionary critique (“Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos os Koinonikos
Epanastatis” 14). It was a bold endeavor that reveals Velmos’s opposition to the bourgeois status quo, his aversion to what he saw as a chauvinist-like nationalism represented by Megali Idea at the time of its pick during the Asia Minor campaign
(1919-1922), and his embracing of pacifism and humanistic internationalism
(Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 57). His newspaper Fragkelio offered yet another podium from which he criticized and attacked the ill-beings of the interwar Greek society.1
The greatest part of the texts that were included in the newspaper are said to belong to the trend of the socialistic literature, or what Panagiotis Moulas calls “murky literature,” which denounces the degradation and harsh living conditions of the lower
1 The word “Fragkelio” means “whip” and is derived from an extract of St. John’s Gospel (B΄, 13-15) that describes how Jesus Christ banished the merchants from the church. This extract was cited by Velmos in the very first issue of the newspaper and, together with his programmatic statement, made it clear that the editor’s intentions were to reveal the truth and fight deception (Velmos, Fragkelio 1). 144
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) social classes (Logothetis, “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Fragkelio
II” 25).1
Velmos’s views on the woman issue were influenced by this commitment to communism and humanism. It may be that as a communist he did not recognize women’s plight as a self-standing issue that merits special treatment, and he rather saw it as a part of the wider social problem;2 yet, his writings overflow with sympathy for the women of the lower social classes, who strive to earn their living and endure the exploitation of the upper social classes.
Velmos was known for his compassion for the people of the lower social classes. He himself came from a poor family (Logothetis, “Anazitontas ton Niko
Velmo: I Oikogeneia Voyiatzaki-Velmou” 27-30). In fact, during his puberty in the years 1902-1904, he lived as a vagabond, and he thus came to associate himself and sympathize with those who lived on the margins of society. Velmos describes these years of his life in his book Istoria Enos Paidiou [The Story of a Child] (1916), which he wrote during his imprisonment as a result of his prosecution for being a supporter of Venizelos (Logothetis, “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: I Oikogeneia Voyiatzaki-
Velmou” 32). Later, after abandoning vagabondage, he used to hang out in taverns
1 Velmos’s writings, particularly his newspaper Fragkelio, have only recently attracted the publishers’ and critics’ attention. At the turn of the millennium Logothetis (“Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Fragkelio” 37-61; “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Fragkelio II” 25-52; “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai ta ‘Fylla Technis’ tou Fragkeliou” 27-62; Nikos Velmos 18, 58-61) and Dounia (“To ‘Fragkelio’ tou Nikou Velmou” 103-123) examined Fragkelio and its artistic brochure Fylla Technis [Pages of Art]. In 2016 the publishing house Farfoulas edited in book form the issues of Fragkelio that Velmos published in the first year of its circulation (1927), including two brief studies by Dimitris Pavlopoulos (Velmos, Fragkelio 214-218) and Sokratis Loupas (Velmos, Fragkelio 219-221), as well as an extract from Logothetis’s book on Velmos (Velmos, Fragkelio 210- 213), all of which discuss the structure, contents and ideological background of Fragkelio in the context of interwar Greece. 2 Similar is his treatment of the Language Question. In his essay “Gia ti Glossa, gia tous Glossologous, gia tous mathitas” [For the language, for the linguists, for the pupils], which he included in his book Stochasmoi gia tin Techni kai tin Koinonia [Thoughts On Art and Society], he made it clear that the Language Question is but a detail to the social question, whose separate solution by the “bourgeois gang” would bring no improvement in the wider social situation (Velmos, Velmou Erga 37). 145
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) that were the haunt of people of the lower social classes of interwar Athens
(Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 37-39, 41-42, 50). Out of these experiences, he wrote his book To Vivlio ton Ftochon [The Book of the Poor], which he published serially in
Fragkelio (Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 42). Doukas describes this collection of portraits of people from the lower social strata as a “shocking coax of misfortune written by the first proletarian poet” (Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 51); he also came up with the term “compassionate imagination” in order to describe Velmos’s appropriation of other people’s pain (76). On the day of his funeral, the beggars from the cemetery, whom he had befriended during his visits there, gathered at his house and mourned for him (Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 41).1
As far as his representations of women are concerned, in To Koinoniko Vivlio
[The Social Book] he praises the women who work as prostitutes because they are brave enough to endure social outcry; he sees them as rising above all other women because they are closer to nature, which Velmos admired and thought was the key to freedom, wisdom and happiness (Velmos, Velmou Erga 15). Later in the book he finds virtue in the poor women that resort to prostitution in order to feed their family
(Velmos, Velmou Erga 220).
Velmos’s sympathy for women of the lower social classes is further traced in his newspaper Fragkelio. There we find the compassionate portraits of lower-class women. In the column “Apo ton Kosmo ton Tapeinon” [From the World of the
Humble], we read about Mako a humble, sickly-looking, teethless, cross-eyed woman
1 It is in this framework of his sympathy for those who experience any kind of pain and anxiety, coupled with his wish to promote the Greek art and liberate it from commerce, that Velmos founded the “Asylo Technis” [Asylum of Art], a kind of gallery that organized and hosted art exhibitions with the works of marginal and neglected artists. Logothetis discusses important aspects of the foundation and operation of the Asylum and offers a list of the exhibitions it held (Nikos Velmos 135-146; “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Asylo Technis” 23-39). 146
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) who is constantly mocked in the village for her wish to get married and be loved, and who ultimately dies out of hunger and lack of love (Velmos Fragkelio 4). In
Fragkelio we also find the profile of a poor female passer-by that wanders begging in the cold, but it is only indifference and cruelty that she receives (Velmos, Fragkelio
31). Fragkelio also published the translation of Sully Prudhomme’s 1865 poem Les
Vénus, which underlines the narrator’s indignation at the fact that the lifeless statues of Venus deserve to be hosted in royal palaces, whereas poor girls, who are God’s creatures, are doomed to starve to death (Velmos, Fragkelio 25). Finally, admiration is expressed for Katina, a poor girl that sells lottery tickets and shares Velmos’s ideas for the true meaning of Christianity, the corruption of priests and the dream for social revolt (Velmos, Fragkelio 193).
It can also be said that in the play Ιroismos Nikiti [Heroism of the Victor]
(1917), which Velmos wrote early in his career, he criticizes the violence that women had to endure in marriage (Velmou Erga 55-68). Through the female character
Varvara he denunciates the inequality between the two sexes. This is a practice that coincides with the philogynist turn in literature which abounds with images of women as victims of male power.1
Next to the women of the lower social strata the figure of the mother also seems to stand out and inspire respect, irrespective of class restrictions. In his short
1 Expectedly, Velmos nurtures uncompromisingly negative feelings for women of the upper social classes. He sharply attacks them for uncritically adopting, and pushing to the extreme, the western habit of excessively applying red lipstick (Fragkelio 33-34). Velmos likens them to Mme Pobadour, the mistress of King Louis XV, and calls them “vromes” [filthy women] openly associating their excessive make-up to promiscuity and loose morality (Fragkelio 33). A few lines later he calls them “leches” [filthy] and blames them for using ill manners in order to gain a seat in public transport (Velmos, Fragkelio 34). Their manner of dressing does not escape Velmos’s merciless attack. He shows utter contempt for women dressed in expensive furs and laces, which poor girls make while impairing their sight (Velmos, Fragkelio 34).
147
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) story Istoria Enos Paidiou [Story of a Child] (1916), Velmos refers to the salutary power of maternal love which purifies from evil and brings the misguided individual back on the right track (88). Similarly, in the play Oi Planemenoi [The Deceived]
(1919) Pavlos feels frustrated in his secret love affair with his brother’s wife, Lavra, and reminding himself of his mother he confidently asserts that only she, out of all women, was different (Velmou Erga 76).
Even when women are shown to betray men and cause pain, frustration and feelings of misery, they are given an excuse. For instance, Markos, the central male character in Velmos’s play Oi Planemenoi [The Deceived] is aware that his wife retains a secret love affair with his brother, Pavlos. Yet he remains silent about it, he experiences Lavra’s cruelty and the corrosive effects of her betrayal, and he hopes that she will pity him and be faithful again (Velmos, Velmou Erga 73, 78-79). Despite her cruelty, Lavra is excused for betraying her husband. The text does provide some kind of explanation for Lavra’s betrayal. Twice in the course of the play she confesses that with time her marriage came to feel like slavery (Velmos, Velmou Erga 73, 78).
However, this does not purge her of the sin of infidelity. By the end of the play, influenced by her husband’s prompting to “throw the sin” from herself, she stabs her lover and reunites with her husband (Velmos, Velmou Erga 80-82).
Lastly, Velmos is quite progressive in advocating the practice of a unisex love behaviour in his collection of love letters Dyo Agapes [Two Loves] (1922). Drawn by the neoromantic trend of the 1920s, for the most part of the work the narrator recounts the emotional torture, sleeplessness, pain and self-annihilation he/she experiences in begging to receive love from a non-responsive object of affection, thus repeating ideas from Velmos’s poetic collection O Pistos tis Apelpisias [The Loyal of Despair]
(1914). What is quite progressive is the fact that the sex of the narrator and of the 148
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) beloved one is never made clear in the course of the collection, so as to see with which of the two sexes Velmos identifies the torturer and the victim in love relationships.1 In the end, the sexually unidentified narrator finds relief in a new kind of love. He/she goes through a process of purification, rises above his/her essence and moves away from the lustful, demanding, selfish love that he/she experiences in most of the letters. This new kind of love involves intellectuality, asceticism and bodilessness instead of lust, sentiments and sexuality (Velmos, Dyo Agapes 70-86).
By now it should have become clear that Velmos’s views on women were mediated by his commitment to the members of the lower social strata and his vision for social revolt. It is through these filters that he read Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and adapted her in such a way that the Bard’s notorious queen came to represent Velmos’s views and speak to his target audience, which was made up of popular classes, with the urgency of their own time and place. Hence, it seems that Shakespeare’s women in Greek translations were once more adapted according to the translator’s values, which were in turn determined by the interwar politics and ideological turmoil.
Velmos’s values and ideology led him to divest Cleopatra from her pompous royalty, deceitful and capricious nature, provocative sexuality and voluptuousness. In this way, not only did he bring her closer to his own standards of acceptable femininity, but he also offered a version of her which was very different from the one that had been established by that time in Greece, and which was more accessible to the lower classes of interwar Greece.
1 In his introductory note to Dyo Agapes Giorgos Markopoulos takes it for granted that the receiver of the letters is either a woman or Velmos himself, who addresses them to his inner self (Velmos, Dyo Agapes 7). A careful reading of the collection however indicates no sign of the sexes of the narrator and the addressee. 149
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iii. The translational challenge posed by Cleopatra and her reception in Greece
prior to Velmos’s adaptation
“What do we make of a play in which our modes of vision lead us to several contradictory meanings?” wonders Janet Adelman in her book The Common Liar: An
Essay on Antony and Cleopatra (11). She concludes that it is more or less impossible to reach a definite consensus about the play’s meaning: “No one interpretation of
Antony and Cleopatra can hope to account for the complexity of its experience”
(Adelman, The Common Liar 170). The play owes much of its complexity to
Cleopatra, one of the most challenging women Shakespeare ever constructed. The interpretative challenge which she poses to the translator has to do with the fact that she is consistently inconsistent, i.e. unpredictably changeable and with a wide range of opposite features: she is magnanimous as a lover but also a self-serving schemer, she exhibits sincerity but also theatricality, bravery but also weakness and cowardice.
It is certainly true that this “infinite variety” of hers, to use Enobarbus description of
Cleopatra (II.ii.246), renders her perennially fascinating, but also ambiguous and difficult to grasp, especially as far as the motivation behind her actions is concerned.
It is highly ambiguous, for example, whether or not she is genuinely attracted to Antony. In addition, it is left to the reader-translator/-adaptor to decide whether fright and womanly weakness or conspiracy with Caesar made her abandon Antony at the sea batlle (III.x). It is also a matter of personal interpretation if it is a deception on her part when she speaks flatteringly of Caesar and offers her submission to him
(V.ii). What is more, one wonders what her motive is behind giving an incomplete list of her possessions to Caesar (V.ii). Does she really wish to save her life or does she wish to disorientate him from her wish to die? The text itself does not provide clear
150
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Cleopatra.
In 1924, when Velmos reimagined his own Cleopatra, the translational, stage and interpretative history of the play in Greece was very poor. It had been translated only once by Michail N. Damiralis. His translation was first published in the journal
Parnassos in 1881 and then it became available in book form in 1911.1 The play was staged once in Egypt in 1902 (Sideris, “O Saixpir stin Ellada: II. Erga, Metafrastes,
Protagonistes” 60) and once by Velmos’s own theatre group in 1917 in the form of adaptation (Logothetis, “Anazitontas to Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 24).
Critical commentary on the play in the Greek language at that time was scarce, but it revealed that Shakespeare’s Cleopatra was approached with ambivalence or she was interpreted as a voluptuous and dissembling woman. In the edition of Damiralis’s translation in book form2 the translator included a prologue in which he cited scholars who analyzed the play during the Romantic period and who expressed quite diverse views about Cleopatra (Antonios kai Kleopatra γ΄-ζ΄); thus Damiralis was reproducing the ambivalence that was typical of the criticism on Cleopatra at that period. The views Damiralis cited range from Arthur Symons’s unrestrained admiration to the realist Georg Brandes’s reluctant admission that she is the greatest appeal in the play, and to William Hazlitt’s recognition that she possesses faults for which she is redeemed through death (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra γ΄-ε΄).
1 Information on the editions of the Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays are derived from Sideris (“Erga, Metafraseis, Protagonistes” 60), Douka-Kambitoglou (I Parousia tou Saixpir 14-16) and Karagiorgos (“Vivliografia ton Metafraseon” 687-688). 2 The first time that Damiralis published his translation in Parnassos he accompanied it with a brief prologue in which he acknowledged those who urged him to translate the play and explained the technical aspects of his translation, such as his intention to translate the meaning of the play as faithfully as possible and the difficulties inherent in the task of translating Shakespeare’s plays because of the ambiguous lines and wordplay they contain (Damiralis, “Antonios kai Kleopatra” 913). 151
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Then, Damiralis also offered a brief analysis of the dramatic characters of the play. With respect to Cleopatra he exclaimed that she is a masterpiece (Damiralis
Antonios kai Kleopatra δ΄). He described her as φιλήδονος, επιδεικτική, μεγαλαυχούσα
δια τα θέλγητρά της, αλλαζών, τυραννική και άστατος [lustful, ostentatious, boastful of her charms, arrogant, tyrannical and changeable] (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra
δ΄). He further argued that the whole of Cleopatra’s personality is the triumph of licentiousness and sensuality, which are the dominant passions in her and prevail over any other thoughts (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra ε΄). Lastly, echoing Hazlitt’s view, Damiralis warned his readers that although her mistakes are great and unforgettable, they are redeemed by the grandeur of her death (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra ε΄). In his actual translation Damiralis does not seem to have been prejudiced against Cleopatra, but it seems that his use of Katharevousa, an archaic and formal variant of Modern Greek, enhanced Cleopatra’s aura of pomposity and detachment.1
In a literature contest in 1876 Timoleon Ampelas (1850-1929) won a prize for his play Kleopatra – Drama Eis Prakseis Tesseras [Cleopatra – Play in Four Acts].
The play seems to have been published in book form in 1916 and 1920 and, as
Vasileiou notes, it was among the few late 19th-century romantic dramas that survived on the Greek stage in the period 1918-1924 (Exychronismos i Paradosi 140).
The edition of the play includes a prologue on Cleopatra’s political life in which
Ampelas expressed his strong opposition to the marginalization or disparagement that
Cleopatra had undergone in historical books and art (“I Vasilissa Kleopatra” 104-
1 More details on Damiralis’s representation of Cleopatra are given in Chapter 6 in the course of its comparison with Rotas’s translation that took place in the 1950s. 152
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
105).1 According to Ampelas Shakespeare’s play participated in the disparagement of
Cleopatra. Much to his disappointment, he noted that she is described in “the most humiliating of the ignominious adjectives” by Shakespeare’s dramatic characters in the course of the play; while these adjectives lay emphasis on her voluptuousness, she is made to utter the “cheapest confessions” that confirm her betraying nature and her conspiracy with Octavius (Ampelas, “I Vasilissa Kleopatra” 108-109). For Ampelas,
Shakespeare’s Cleopatra perpetuates the humiliation of the historical person (“I
Vasilissa Kleopatra” 109).2
Velmos was certainly aware of Damiralis’s translation of Antony and
Cleopatra, as already pointed out. Despite the almost total absence of translations of
Antony and Cleopatra by that time, he decided to adapt Shakespeare’s play, rather than translate it. As already explained, his decision had to do with the democratizing mission that adaptation can serve, which involves making literature approachable to a wider audience (Cartmell 10). Additionally, Velmos’s decision had to do with the degree of freedom, intervention, interpretation and experimentation with the source text that the process of adaptation offers to the adaptor. Translation and adaptation differ from each other in the degree of fidelity to the source text. What Venuti argues in relation to film adaptation seems to be true in the case of theatre adaptations too.
According to the scholar, both translation and adaptation involve decontextualization and recontextualization of materials from the source text, but these processes are far
1 An extract of Ampelas’s prologue to his drama was published in 1889 in the journal Poikili Stoa (“I Vasilissa Kleopatra” 103-111). In this text Ampelas revealed that he had not pursued the publication or the stage production of his play by then (“I Vasilissa Kleopatra” 110-111). 2 Ampelas was a so-called katharologos [purist] that intended the Greek language to acquire its former archaic form. In his analysis of the historical person of Cleopatra we notice that his admiration for her and his disappointment with Shakespeare’s version of her are based on nationalistic criteria, most notably on the fact that he sees in her not only Greek origins, but also a profoundly Greek conscience and the only representative of the “headless Greek civilization” in East and West that decisively influenced the fortune of the Greek people (Ampelas, “I Vasilissa Kleopatra” 104-108). 153
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) more extensive and complex in adaptations than in translations (Venuti, “Adaptation,
Translation, Critique” 29-30). As Venuti futher notes, an adaptation might depart widely from the source text submitting it to various kinds of manipulation and revision, like “selection, amplification, concretization, actualization, critique, extrapolation, popularization, reaccentuation, transculturalization” (Stam 68, qtd. in
Venuti, “Adaptation, Translation, Critique” 27).
These operations suggest that adaptation is a highly hermeneutic discursive practice that attempts to inscribe an interpretation on the literary work it adapts. In her influential monograph Adaptation and Appropriation (2006), Julie Sanders suggests that adaptations are “reinterpretations of established texts in new generic contexts or perhaps [involve] relocations of an ‘original’ or source text’s cultural and/ or temporal setting, which may or may not involve a generic shift” (19). Venuti reminds us that this reinterpretation “is overdetermined by the cultural situation and historical moment in which the adaptation is produced, so that in interpreting prior materials the adaptor intervenes in a specific conjuncture of social relations and developments,” even if he/ she does not intend to intervene in political struggles or take sides in social divisions (Venuti, “Adaptation, Translation, Critique” 27).
With this idea in mind, we proceed to examine the conditions of Velmos’s adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra. We will focus on the ways in which his communist ideology and his wish to speak to his interwar audience of popular classes with the urgency of their time and place led him to reinvent Shakespeare’s Cleopatra and construct her in very different terms from the pompous queen, whom Damiralis seems to have constructed by virtue of his use of Katharevousa, and whom Ampelas clearly discerned in Shakespeare’s play. Velmos turned Cleopatra into a sympathy- triggering woman that nurtures genuine love for Antony, suffers from his indifference 154
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) and infidelity, and abandons him during his military confrontations with Caesar not out of revenge or caprice, but because of her frailty as a woman. He unexpectedly transformed this woman, who has been tormented by her beloved’s indifference, into a strong individual. In her new state Cleopatra renounces her adherence to the consuming and selfish, yet sincere, passion, and embraces an androgynous state of being, whereby she reaches a higher kind of love which has masculine traits. The protagonistic figure in Velmos’s adaptation is Cleopatra because it is in her, rather than in Antony, that he saw the dramatic character that could best exemplify the ordeals of passion and the progress to a higher kind of love, as well as incite sympathy in the audience/ readership. After all, she could better fulfil the demand of the time for sexual freedom and freedom in expression.
iv. Cleopatra in Velmos’s adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra (1924)1
In adapting Antony and Cleopatra, Velmos introduced a series of changes which simplified the play, kept the momentum and placed emphasis on the love-theme: he omitted the scenes with political relevance, reduced the number of characters, did not include intervals and divisions of the play into acts and scenes, and divided the play into two parts titled “Prologue” and “The drama” (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 15, 18).2 These changes were intended to structure the play exclusively around Cleopatra and give voice to her inner thoughts and feelings.1
1 Velmos’s adaptation was first published in book form in 1924 with a brief introduction that contains his biography of Shakespeare and the reasons why he deemed the adaptation of the play necessary (Velmos, O Antonios kai i Kleopatra 5-12). In 1926, during summer vacations with Doukas and Spyros Papaloukas, the text of the adaptation and the prologue were processed by Doukas and wood- engravings were added by Papaloukas. This joint product formed the first issue of Fylla Technis [Pages of Art] in 1927, the artistic brochure that supplemented Fragkelio (Logothetis, “Anazitontas to Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai ta Fylla Technis” 29-30). 2 As a fervent demoticist and supporter of folklore art (Logothetis, Nikos Velmos 18), Velmos used the vernacular language in his adaptation, in contrast to his predecessor Damiralis who had employed 155
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
The “Prologue” that precedes the “Drama” constitutes an exposition of the differing views that circulated about Shakespeare’s controversial heroine. It is a dialogue that takes place between Thyrsus and Enobarbus, with the former representing the moralizing view and the latter the romanticizing one.2 Thyrsus’s speech is a collage of the lines spoken by Enobarbus in Shakespeare’s text (II.ii.235-
238, 240-245). He repeatedly associates Cleopatra with witchcraft and he insists that she possesses the unnatural abilities to resist age and custom, reconcile contradictory states of being and present as gracious those features that are essentially inappropriate
(Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 15). He finally argues that Antony should leave her, or he will face calamities (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 17).
Enobarbus’s speech, on the other hand, contains his own description of
Cleopatra at Cydnus (II.ii.224-240) and some of Agrippa’s lines (II.ii.233-234). In
Shakespeare’s play Enobarbus’s admiration for Cleopatra is often tinged with cynicism (Rosenberg, The Masks of Antony and Cleopatra 171).3 In Velmos’s
Katharevousa in translating. Damiralis had gained for himself the reputation of a serious scholar of Shakespeare, but he was criticized for translating into Katharevousa. Palamas described him as a tireless translator and lover of Shakespeare and acknowledged his effort to translate faithfully, but he could not overlook the unsuitability of his choice of strict Katharevousa for literature (7). Much later, Sideris accused him of exhibitionism which destroys any attempt to simplify Shakespeare (“O Saixpir stin Ellada III” 24). Velmos joined the supporters of Demotic Greek, like Pallis and Theotokis. He seems to have been aware of the evolution of language and the need to simplify works of literature and theatre written in Katharevousa. This is one of the reasons why in 1916 he produced the interlingual translation from Katharevousa to Demotic Greek of the poems of Dimitrios Paparrigopoulos. Logothetis argues that Velmos was the first to undertake such an endeavour, which was received with mixed reviews both as an innovative act and as a sacrilege of a 19th-century text which was considered inviolable (Nikos Velmos 86-89; “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: Velmos of Poikolografos” 23-26). In addition, in 1918 he restaged Galateia by Spyridon Vasileiadis after he rendered it from Katharevousa to Demotic Greek because in the first staging the incomprehensive language of the play did not move the audience (Logothetis, “Anazitontas ton Niko Velmo: O Velmos kai to Theatro” 31-33). 1 Velmos himself acknowledges the central importance that Cleopatra has for him. In advertising his adaptation in Fragkelio, he refers to it as “e Kleopatra tou Saixpir” [Shakespeare’s Cleopatra], omitting Antony’s name, which in fact precedes Cleopatra’s in the title of Shakespeare’s play (35). 2 The character of Thidias comes under many names – Thidias, Thyreus or Thyrsus – depending on the editor (Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra 6). Velmos opted for Thyrsus. 3 Victor L. Cahn (47-48) and Carol Thomas Neely (Broken Nuptuals 151-153) discuss Enobarbus’s ambivalence towards Cleopatra. According to Cahn, Enobarbus enjoys “the salacious humour of Cleopatra’s court, and even participates with his own coarse remarks” (47). Cahn further observes that 156
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) adaptation, however, he becomes Cleopatra’s supporter: he openly opposes Thyrsus’s charges against her, he sees her as a heavenly creature, associates her with love and compares her with Venus only to find her more beautiful (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 16-17).
Having presented the prevailing competing views about Cleopatra in the prologue, in the main play Velmos lets his audience find out which of them holds true. The rest of the adaptation seems to be structured in a manner that is reminiscent of his collection of love letters Dyo Agapes [Two Loves]. For the most part, he entangles Cleopatra in her consuming love which involves her own emotional torture and her betrayal of Antony (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 18-56), while the last pages dramatize her attainment of a nobler kind of love (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 57-72). The way Velmos handled Shakespeare’s play, the alterations he effected, and the way he rearranged and translated the lines he retained from the source text, suggest that he paints a sympathetic portrait of Cleopatra. For the most part, he presents her as a woman that experiences the ordeals of love and is desperate to keep Antony close to her. It is in these terms that the fluctuations in her conduct are perceived by Velmos, rather than as mere caprices, which critics have traditionally associated Cleopatra with.
Velmos does not open his adaptation, as Shakespeare opened his play, i.e. with
Demetrius and Philo introducing the two protagonists. His prologue serves this function. In the main play Velmos presents how the two lovers behave separately in
Enobarbus “jests with Antony about Cleopatra’s sexual inclinations (I, ii)” (47). Nonetheless, he also offers eloquent tribute to Cleopatra in response to Maecenas’s belief that she will tire Antony (Cahn 47). Cahn also insists that, “although Enobarbus lives without romantic attachment, he appreciates the depth of feeling such passion can inspire in Antony” (48). Thomas Neely, on the other hand, posits that initially Enobarbus is a witty, detached misogynist who degrades Cleopatra and mocks Antony’s attachment to her, but he comes “to turn his cynicism against Roman pretensions to honor and the practice of realpolitik” (Broken Nuptuals 151-153). 157
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) each other’s absence. The very first thing we hear from Cleopatra upon entering the stage is that she is anxiously looking for her man:
ΚΛΕΟΠΑΤΡΑ. μπαίνοντας. Μήπως είδατε τον άντρα μου; (Velmos, O
Antonios kai I Kleopatra 21)
[CLEOPATRA. entering. Have you seen my man?]1
Shakespeare’s text uses a similar phrase with a totally different effect to denote
Cleopatra’s search for Antony, i.e. “Was he not heere?” (I.ii.85). This line lends
Cleopatra a more abrupt, commanding aura. The line Velmos uses, as wells as the fact that it is the first thing that we hear from Cleopatra, enhances her emotional attachment to Antony and suggests sincerity in looking for him.
Velmos reveals more sympathy for Cleopatra later in his adaptation as well.
He strengthens our impression of Cleopatra’s genuine feelings for Antony by having the secondary characters confirm them. In Shakespeare’s text, Charmian advises
Cleopatra on how to make Antony desire her:
Char. Madam, me thinks if you did love him deerly,
You do not hold the method, to enforce
The like from him. (I.iii.9-11, emphasis added)
1 Quotes from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra refer to Horace Howard Furness’s Variorum edition by scene, act and line numbers (Philadelpia 1907). Quotes from Velmos’s adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra throughout this study refer to the 1924 edition by page numbers, because this was exclusively produced by Velmos, while the 1927 one was the product of Doukas’s intervention. 158
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
According to Furness, “the irregular sequence of tenses here is due to the stress which
Charmian wishes to lay upon the fact that Cleopatra could not possibly love Antony”
(Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra 4). Charmian’s conditional sentence in Shakespeare’s play casts doubt on the sincerity of Cleopatra’s feelings.
Velmos replaces it with a causative sentence which leaves no room for uncertainty:
ΧΑΡΜ. Θαρρώ κυρία, πως επειδή τον αγαπάς πολύ, δεν ξέρεις τον τρόπο για
να τον φέρεις στα νερά σου. (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 24,
emphasis added) [I think, madam, that because you love him greatly, you do
not know the way to make him behave the way you want]
Hence, Enobarbus’s confident assertion that Cleopatra’s “passion is pure, purest love” gains ground over opposing views that it is cunning (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 23).
In sharp contrast, Antony’s love for Cleopatra seems to be severely questioned throughout the adaptation. To begin with, since Velmos cut the first scene of Act I, which presents the lovers together, he omitted the exaggerated declarations of
Antony’s limitless love for Cleopatra, i.e. that she will have to discover uncharted territories –“new Heaven, new Earth”– if she is to set the boundaries of his affections
(I.i.23-27). Neither did Velmos translate Antony’s contemptuous scorn of earthly life and political power for the sake of his passion for Cleopatra (I.i.43-56). Velmos’s
Antony does not speak in the high language that is typical of Shakespeare’s hero. He never admits that his world is defined by Cleopatra’s presence so that he could stand indifferent to the prospect of Rome melting into Tiber (I.i.43).
159
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As opposed to Cleopatra who is anxiously looking for him, Antony expresses sorrow at Fulvia’s death and seeks a way to free himself from Cleopatra and the enchantment that he feels she has cast over him:
ΑΝΤ. Ψυχή ευγενική παράτησε τον κόσμο· Κι’ όμως άλλοτε το ευχόμουν.
Έρχεται μέρα, που ζητάμε ν’ απολαύσουμε κείνο που με περιφρόνηση άλλοτε
αποδιώχναμε. – Πρέπει να γλυτώσω πια απ’ αυτή τη γόησσα. Χίλια δεινά πιο
μαύρα απ’ όσα με βρήκανε, μου δουλέβει τ’ αποκοίμισμά της. […] Πρέπει να
φύγω από δω το γρηγορότερο. […] Πρέπει να φύγω είπα. (Velmos, O
Antonios kai I Kleopatra 22-23)
[ANT. Gentle soul has abandoned the world. Yet there was a time I wished for
it. There comes a day that we ask to enjoy that which with contempt we used
to repel. – I must get away from this enchantress. A thousand ills more black
than those I have experienced, her lulling has worked upon me. […] I have to
go from here as soon as possible. […] I said I must go.]
With this in mind, Antony’s warm terms of endearment addressed to
Cleopatra, such as πολυαγαπημένη μου βασίλισσα [my most loved queen] and γλυκειά
βασίλισσα [sweet queen] (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 25, 26, 27), as well as his vows and his repeated reassurances that his heart remains with her despite his departure (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 25, 26, 28), sound mere sweet nothings used by him to manipulate her. After all, they are uttered only after he has revealed his view that she possesses πανουργία [cunning] (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 23) and after he has confessed to Enobarbus that he will find a way to make her accept his will to leave (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 23). Hence, Antony 160
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) departs from Egypt to go to Rome leaving the reader/spectator with the impression that he feels no sorrow for having to part from Cleopatra. We are convinced that he tries to deceive her into believing that he loves her so that she does not impede his plans of leaving.
So far, Velmos’s adaptation has established Cleopatra’s genuine feelings for
Antony and has exposed the scheming nature of his behaviour. In this light, in
Cleopatra’s call for Charmian to help her or she will faint, we can only detect her true confession of her frailty and inability to endure the emotional pain that is caused by her constant attempt to win Antony’s love:
Cleo. Helpe me away deere Charmian, I shall fall
It cannot be thus long, the sides of Nature
Will not sustaine it. (I.iii.21-23)
ΚΛΕΟΠ. Βοήθησε να βγω καλή μου Χάρμιον·
Θα πέσω. Δεν μπορεί να βαστάξει αυτή η κατάστα-
ση. Δεν αντέχουν η φυσικές μου δυνάμεις. (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 25)
In addition, it is only bitterness, rather than irony, that we should discern in her responses to Antony as he tries to explain the exigencies of his departure (Velmos, O
Antonios kai I Kleopatra 25-28).
There follow more instances in which Velmos heightens the sympathy for
Cleopatra. Immediately after Antony’s departure and without any interjecting scenes
Velmos dramatizes the incidents that show Cleopatra being solely preoccupied with 161
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) issues of her love for Antony in his absence. Velmos follows the demand of his generation for freedom in the expression of one’s feelings, and the tendency to embrace weak individuals that experience pain. Hence, he gives voice to Cleopatra and her inner torture. He brings together her lines from I.v and II.v, he opposes the established image of Cleopatra as a manipulating woman, and replaces it with that of a woman that suffers in her beloved’s absence. He further casts an aura of romantic recollection on her narrative. We witness her wish to sleep during Antony’s absence so that she spares herself the painfully slow passage of time (Velmos, O Antonios kai
I Kleopatra 29-30). We also watch her nostalgic recounting of the moments she spent with him while fishing and cross-dressing with him when she robbed him of his sword and attired him in her robes (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 30-31). Finally, she confesses her womanly insecurity because of the erosive effects of time upon her
(Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 31). Velmos offers further insight into the character of Cleopatra by dramatizing her exultation at hearing from Antony (Velmos,
O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 31-33), her rage and repeated violence against the messenger that brings the news of his marriage to Octavia (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 35-36) and her cross-examination of the messenger about Octavia’s physical appearance (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 39-41).
In sharp contrast, Velmos is not at all interested in Antony’s feelings, at least at this point of the plot. His adaptation is silent about the emotional dilemma that
Antony experiences in marrying Octavia and his decision to sacrifice his political interest for the sake of his passion for Cleopatra:
Anth. I will to Egypte:
And though I make this marriage for my peace, 162
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
I’th’East my pleasure lies. (II.iii.43-45)
In other words, Velmos does not reveal Antony’s perspective of the events, he casts irreversible doubt over his love for Cleopatra and he condemns him in the conscience of the reader/ spectator. As a result, he makes it impossible to sympathize with anyone else but Cleopatra, whose emotional torture is fully delineated, while she is spared the capriciousness that the Shakespearean heroine is noted for. Τhe only moments that
Velmos seems to let Antony express genuine feelings for Cleopatra is when he feels betrayed by her (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 53) and when he thinks her dead and he is on the verge of dying (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 54).
Immediately after the news of Antony’s marriage to Octavia Velmos places a series of events that show Cleopatra potentially betraying Antony and the latter approaching catastrophe: she abandons him for a second time during the battle
(Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 41), she meets Caesar’s envoy, Thyrsus,
(Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 48) and she surrenders her ships to Caesar one after the other (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 51-52). However, Velmos does not perceive the above incidents as Cleopatra’s betrayals of Antony. His text excuses her by reproducing traditional views of female frailty. In other words, Velmos appropriates weaknesses stereotypically attributed to women, like fear and hesitation, in order to provide Cleopatra with a justification for abandoning Antony and to acquit her of charges of betrayal. It is in this context that Velmos omits Enobarnus’s warning to Cleopatra to abstain from the battle, as is the case in Shakespeare’s play (III.vii.4-
18). Hence, Velmos also omits Cleopatra’s vehement rejection of his advice and her insistence to “appeare there for a man” as the ruler of her kingdom (III.vii.22). In
163
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) addition, Enobarbus clearly blames only Antony for enslaving his logic to his passion for Cleopatra:
ΚΛΕΟΠ. Για πες Αινόβαρβε, πιος φταίει για όσα γίνηκαν; Εγώ ή ο Αντώνιος;
ΑΙΝΟΒ. Μονάχα ο Αντώνιος, που σκλάβωσε στο πάθος του, το λογικό του.
Και τι βγαίνει αν πήρες σα γυναίκα τα μάτια σου απ’ την αντάρα του πολέμου;
Αυτός τ’ ήθελε ναρθεί από πίσω σου; (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 47,
emphasis added)
[Cleop. Say, Enobarnus, whose fault is it for all that happened? Mine or
Antony’s?
Eno. Only Antony, who enslaved his logic to his passion. What if you, as a
woman, took your eyes away from the rage of war? Why should he follow
you?]1
This explicit reference to Cleopatra’s womanly frailty is Velmos’s addition and is not encountered in Shakespeare’s text (III.xiii.4-8).
In the other two cases of her supposed betrayal Cleopatra is shown both to express bitterness that Antony has not yet come to know her and distrusts her, and to exhibit genuine shock at his attack:
1 Following Shakespeare’s text, Velmos has already hinted at Cleopatra’s womanly weakness. In commenting on the power of her rage in the event of Antony’s marriage to Octavia, Alexas argues that not even Herod dared to look at her (III.iii.6-7). Velmos retained Cleopatra’s confession that she is impotent without Antony:
Cleop. That Herods head, Ile have: but how? When Antony is gone, through whom I might command it. (III.iii.8-9)
ΚΛΕΟΠ. Και το κεφάλι του ίδιου του Ηρώδη κόβω…Μα με πιο τρόπο, αφού έφυγε ο Αντώνιος που με τη δύναμή του θα το κατόρθωνα. (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 39) 164
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
ΚΛΕΟΠ. Ακόμη δε μ’ έμαθες… (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 50)
[You don’t know me yet…]
ΚΛΕΟΠ. Γιατί ο άνδρας μου τάβαλλε τόσο με
την αγάπη του; (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 52)
[Why has my husband got angry with his love?]
Given the fact that Velmos has presented her so far as sincerely in love with Antony and has excused her abandonment of him on the basis of her female frailty, he leaves no room for questioning the truth of her reaction to Antony’s harshness.
Velmos brings together Antony’s lines from IV.xii and IV.xiv in order to form a monologue in which Antony dismisses Cleopatra violently and expresses bitterness at her betrayal and his loss of power (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 52-53).
After that, in reaction to the news that Cleopatra is dead Antony begs Eros to kill him and, due to Eros’s refusal to do so, he wounds himself fatally with his own sword
(Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 54-56). In Shakespeare’s text Cleopatra follows on stage Charmian’s advice to lock herself in the monument and send a message to
Antony that she has killed herself so that she is spared his rage. In fact, she is presented as so flippant and scheming that she even dictates the piteous manner in which the news of her death should be announced to Antony:
Cleo. To’th’Monument:
Mardian, go tell him I have slaine my selfe:
Say, that the last I spoke was Anthony,
And word it (prythee) piteously. Hence, Mardian, 165
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
And bring me how he takes my death to’th’Monument. (IV.xiii.1-13, emphasis
added)
In Velmos’s adaptation it is on her own initiative that Charmian utters the lie of
Cleopatra’s death, which in turn causes Antony’s death, and Cleopatra is totally uninvolved:
ΧΑΡΜ. Ο θάνατος είναι ένα χρέος που μονάχα
μια φορά ξοφλιέται. Η κυρία μου ξόφλησε αυτό το
χρέος. Ότ’ ήθελες να κάμεις γίνηκε χωρίς εσένα.
Πέθανε· Πάει· Στα τελευταία της είπε «Αντώνιε…
πολυαγαπημένε μου Αντώνιε….» (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 54)
[Death is a debt that is paid off only once. My Madam paid for this debt. That
which you wanted todo has been done without you. She has died· She is gone·
Her last words were “Antony…my dearest Antony…”]
This is to the benefit of Cleopatra and further reveals Velmos’s sympathy for her. One could argue that it might be off stage that the ordering takes place, but given
Cleopatra’s representation so far there seems to be no room in Velmos’s adaptation for such a plotting Cleopatra.
Subsequently, Cleopatra and her attendants appear on stage, hear the news of
Antony’s suicide and take him to the monument. It is the first time in Velmos’s adaptation that the two lovers exchange love words in high language, so memorable in
Shakespeare’s play, and Antony is presented as caring enough to spend his dying
166
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) breath advising Cleopatra to trust Procleius and ask Caesar to spare her her life and respect her honor (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 56-60).
In the remaining part of the adaptation Velmos follows the Shakespearean text and presents Cleopatra’s noble moments prior to dying (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 57-72). In fact, he manipulates semantically ambiguous points of the play and proceeds to a series of interventions which quite unexpectedly change Cleopatra from her state as a sympathy-triggering victim of Antony’s love into a noble, fearless, unwavering woman, an image that cannot be easily reconciled with her previous weak state. Cleopatra’s transformation in Velmos’s adaptation is quite striking also because in the course of the adaptation Velmos omits references to Cleopatra’s manliness, such as her insistence to escort her fleet to the sea battle as the male representative of a kingdom would normally do (III.vii.22). Even when a reference to Cleopatra’s manliness is retained, i.e. her act of wearing the sword that Antony used in the battle against Brutus and Cassius at Philippi (II.v.23-28), this is immersed in her romantic recollection of her intimate moments with Antony in his absence; therefore, the reference to Cleopatra’s virility may not be so clearly communicated (Velmos, O
Antonios kai I Kleopatra 30-31). However, in the last moments of Cleopatra it seems that Velmos is interested in inciting not only pity but also admiration and awe for
Cleopatra.
After mourning Antony’s death in highly personalized terms, evidenced in the repetition of the phrase άντρα μου [my man] (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra
59), and after fainting at the peak of her grief, Cleopatra recovers consciousness as a totally different person. In Shakespeare’s text, in the famous lines “No more but in a
Woman, and commanded/ By such poore passion as the Maid that Milkes,/ And doe’s the meanest chares” (IV.xv.93-95), she denies the royal titles with which Iras 167
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) addresses her in trying to bring her to her senses (IV.xv.91) and disintegrates to the state of a simple woman enslaved to her passions. In contrast, Velmos’s Cleopatra declares that she is not a mere woman:
ΚΛΕΟΠ. Δεν είμαι πια απλή γυναίκα. (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra
59)
[Cleo. I am not a simple woman any more]
The reference in Shakespeare’s text to her being a slave to passion is omitted while she goes on to refer to her resolution to die (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 60).
But it is only after she and her attendants have paid tribute to Antony and burried him
“after the high Roman fashion” (V.i.107), that she gives herself to death:
Θα
τον θάψουμε όπως τους μεγάλους της Ρώμης, θα
κάνουμε ό,τι ευγενικό και γενναίο του πάει, ώσπου
κι’ αυτός ο θάνατος να περηφανευτεί και να μας
καλέσει κοντά του. (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 60)
[We will bury him like the great men of Rome, we will do whatever noble and
brave fits him, until death takes pride to call us]
In Shakespeare’s text there seems to be a double meaning in Cleopatra’s famous lines:
Wee’l burry him: And then, what’s brave, what’s Noble,
Let’s doo’t after the high Roman fashion, 168
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
And make death proud to take us. (V.i.106-108)
The lines may refer to the nobility of a Roman burial for Antony, but they might also allude to Cleopatra’s own manner of dying. This double meaning is lost in Velmos’s adaptation. In the process of abandoning her old selfish state, and rising to a nobler one, Velmos’s Cleopatra is no longer selfishly preoccupied with the nobility of her own death, but only with paying homage to her beloved Antony.
Velmos’s Cleopatra gradually comes out of her mourning state and expresses her resolution to die while she recognizes the futility of earthly power and the omnipotence of fortune:
ΚΛΕΟΠ. Αρχίζω να ξεχνώ τη θλίψη μου.
Δεν αξίζει ναναι κανένας Καίσαρας και νικητής.-
Μήπως κι’ αυτός κάνει ότι θέλει την τύχη; - Ένα
μονάχα βρίσκω εγώ μεγάλο· Το έργο που τελειώνει
τα πάντα, που φυλακίζει κάθε συμφορά και σφαλά
την πόρτα σε κάθε περιπέτεια. Το έργο που από-
κοιμίζει κι’ αποχωρίζει για πάντα τη λάσπη, που
ίδια συντηρεί και το ζητιάνο και τον Καίσαρα. (Velmos, O Antonios kai I
Kleopatra 61)
[Cleo. I begin to forget my grief. It is not worthy to be Caesar and winner.-
Lest he determines fate?- Only one thing I find great. The thing that ends
everything, that imprisons every misfortune and closes the door to every
adventure. The thing that lulls us and separates the mud, which preserves both
the beggar and Caesar]. 169
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
After this comment, and in the light of Velmos’s representation of Cleopatra so far, it is impossible to take her declaration of obedience to Caesar at face value (Velmos, O
Antonios kai I Kleopatra 62). Similarly, the incident in which she asks her treasurer,
Seleucus, to verify the possessions that she has to hand in to Caesar, seems to be engineered by Cleopatra with the aim of deceiving him into believing that she does not wish to die (V.ii.163-207; Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 66-68).
It is the first time that Velmos traces in Cleopatra some kind of cunning, while in the rest of his adaptation he deliberately effaces this element of her personality, probably because it would compromise the readers’/ spectators’ sympathy for her. It is also the case that it is a high, selfless kind of cunning that is attributed to her, one that intends to raise her nobility. After all, this incident is preceded by three other incidents which reveal that her decision to die is unwavering: her failed attempt to commit suicide (V.ii.46-49; Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 63), her subsequent proud declaration to Procleius that she intends to die instead of surrendering herself to
Caesar and Octavia (V.ii.59-72; Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 63), and her sublime panegyric of Antony (V.ii.93-121; Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 64-
65). Thus, all the way through from the point of Antony’s death to the end of the play,
Velmos leaves no doubt that Cleopatra is resolved to die and that she has totally renounced her weak feminine nature:
ΚΛΕΟΠ. Επήρα πια την απόφαση και τίποτε γυ-
γυναικείο δεν έχω μέσα μου· Απ’ την κορφή ως τα
νύχια είμαι άκαμπτη σα μάρμαρο. Πλανήτη μου
δεν έχω πια την άστατη σελήνη. (Velmos, O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 70) 170
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924)
Cleo. … My resolution’s plac’d, and I have nothing
Of woman in me: Now from head to foote
I am Marble constant: now the fleeting Moone
No Planet is of mine. (V.ii.289-292)
Like the sexually unidentified narrator in Dyo Agapes [Two Loves], Velmos’s
Cleopatra has reached a state of androgyny in which she is a woman that exhibits virtues, like altruism, stability, pride and bravery, traditionally associated with masculine qualities. The exploration of androgyny is one of the characteristic traits of the so-called decadent poets of the 1920s (Philippe Winn, quoted in Dounia “I
Dekaetia tou ‘20” 65). In this way, through Cleopatra’s transformation Velmos seems to imply that power also lies within human beings that have experienced painful situations and have found themselves in disadvantageous position.
v. Conclusion
The 1920s was a period of intense gender negotiations, during which traditional concepts of womanhood went hand-in-hand with the exploration of “forbidden” sexualities, androgyny and role reversals, as well as with progressive views about the affirmation of erotic desire, the freedom of expression and the wish to subvert social and moral conventions. Velmos, an anti-conformist intellectual, adapted Antony and
Cleopatra and re-imagined the female protagonist in positive terms to make her fit into the spirit of freedom and sexual affirmation of his literary generation.
More precisely, he moved Cleopatra away from her previous reputation which foregrounded her pomposity, manipulative skills, caprice and sensuous sexuality. For 171
4. NIKOS VELMOS’S ADAPTATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA (1924) the sake of simplification and comprehensibility to his popular audience, with a strong interest in the ordeals of love, and despite detrimentally affecting Antony’s image, he reduced the versatility that Cleopatra’s character is endowed with in Shakespeare’s play. He attempted a persistent exploration of her emotional state and he offered a sympathetic portrait of her. He did this by re-imagining her as the victim of her unreciprocated love for Antony, while he also appropriated the stereotype of womanly frailty in order to provide an excuse for her own betrayals of Antony. After Antony’s death Velmos tried to trigger admiration and awe for Cleopatra. In doing so, he did not only follow Shakespeare’s text, but he also enhanced the source text’s representation of her as a more empowered subject, probably pointing to the fact that a transformative, subversive power is hidden in suffering individuals as well.
172
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Chapter 5
Vasilis Rotas’s Revision of Gertrude and Ophelia (1938)
On August 4, 1936, Ioannis Metaxas and King George II abolished parliamentary rule, suspended the Constitution and imposed dictatorship. The Metaxas dictatorship, or the 4th of August regime as it is known, came to be associated with concepts such as anticommunism, anti-parliamentarism, authoritarianism and police violence
(Ploumidis 49-83). It aspired to elevate the Greek race and help Greece fulfill its mission of civilizing the rest of the world. This project, which was called the “Third
Hellenic Civilization” emphasized the importance of patriotism, religion and the family, while it needed healthy and hard-working young people for its implementation.1 The vision of a healthy, strong nation left room for enabling images of women as strong, dynamic, healthy and able to appropriate masculine features.
Hence, while at the practical level, after the rise of the Metaxas regime, the woman issue found itself in a state of conservatism that involved close surveillance, strict prescriptions on female conduct and violent abolishment of the feminist activities of the 1920s and the early 1930s, at the level of the discursive representation the native literary production of the 1930s often employed enabling images of women, which rejected the notion that they are weak and which indicated that they can be dynamic and appropriate masculine virtues, like bravery and preserverence.
1 The conditions of political instability that led to the imposition of the Metaxas dictatorship and the main ideological parameters of the regime have been the subject of intense scholarly research. I have consulted Spyridon Ploumidis’s (49-83) and Eleni Machaira’s (23-85) accounts .The emphasis of the regime on children’s health, who are the future of the nation, and on women’s health, who give birth to and bring up children, is discussed by Haralampos Oikonomou and Manos Spyridakis (484) and by Vasiliki Theodorou and Despoina Karakatsani (512). 173
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938)
Vasilis Rotas was one of Shakespeare translators in Greece at that time. In
1938 he was commissioned by the National Theatre to translate Hamlet. He re- interpreted Gertrude and Ophelia according to his own value system and he rejected both of them. He dismissed Gertrude because she did not mourn her husband properly and because she mistook her son for insane. He disparaged Ophelia because he thought she did not fit the popular image of dynamic women and because otherwise
Hamlet’s impeccable image would be tainted. As explained later in this chapter, Rotas revealed his interpretation of the play and its characters in the paratextual elements that accompany his translation, i.e. in the introduction and the notes which are included in the 1938 edition. He translated Hamlet as faithfully as possible and avoided making blatant interventions to the source text – a principle he shared with the commissioning institution, the National Theatre of Greece.
i. The woman issue during the Metaxas regime (1936-1941)
The Metaxas regime seems to have pursued idealism and the return to a supposed natural order of things where everyone occupies a pre-ordained position. As long as women remained faithful to their own predestined purpose, i.e. their traditional duties as wives and mothers, the regime saw in them a valuable contributor to the plans for national regeneration and used them systematically to gain popularity and promote its agenda (Petraki 278, 280; Papageorgiou 278; Poulos, Arms and the Woman 65).
According to Vervenioti (Oi Synagonistries 134-156) and Machaira (70-76), who have meticulously examined the press of the time, particularly the journal I
174
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938)
Neolaia,1 the desirable model of womanhood required of women to be modest, respectful, moderate, conservatively dressed and mindful of corrupting modernisms.
Their main task was to manage the household, dedicate themselves to their maternal role and raise their children according to the Greek-Christian traditions.2 To the extent that female paid work outside the domestic sphere was unavoidable, the Metaxas regime strived to set its limits so that the social equilibrium would not be disturbed.
Until World War II broke out, which required women to take over men’s jobs, female work was defined as complimentary to male work and only in domains where men were not suitable (Avdela, “Fysikos Proorismos” 125-152).
It is true that in this period the theatre abounded in moralizing comedies which satirized non-conforming women. Vasileiou observes increasingly frequent stagings of contemporary English commercial plays in the 1930s, like Somerset Maugham’s
Mrs. Dot (1912), Caroline or the Unattainable (1916) and The Constant Wife (1927)
(Exychronismos i Paradosi 336-337). The plots of these plays develop thanks to the figure of the smart, cunning woman that manages to achieve her goals, such as to marry successfully, win back the love of her husband, or get him promoted
(Vasileiou, Exychronismos i Paradosi 336-337). The native dramaturgy also consists of similar satirical moralizing comedies, among whose favourite targets are women, alongside plutocrats, supporters of technological advance and modernists (Vasileiou,
Exychronismos i Paradosi 341-342). Vasileiou further elaborates on this group of
1 This was the propagandistic journal of EON [Ethniki Organosi Neolaias – National Youth Organization], a youth organization in Greece during the Metaxas regime. Among the stated goals of the group were to help the youth spend their free time productively, develop a healthy body and mind and strengthen their natonal and religious spirit. More information on EON and its practices is offered by Athanasia Mpalta (631-639). Sitsa Karaiskaki (1897-1987) was a regular columnist in I Neolaia that was in charge for the so-called “I Selis ton Koritsion” [The Girls’ Page]. 2 Through a series of protective regulations, the Metaxas regime systematically strived to protect and encourage working and non-working women to seek motherhood (Karaiskaki, “I Thesi tis Gynaikos” 1400). 175
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) plays and discerns a pattern of female representation whereby women are shown to neglect their wifely duties and indulge themselves in eccentric modernisms and flirtings, while in the end they are restored back to their proper place by their husbands (Exychronismos i Paradosi 354).
For all the conservatism and adherence to a traditional view of women, the emphasis that the Metaxas regime placed on the vision of a healthy, strong nation, which would restore Greece to its ancient glory (Oikonomou and Spyridakis 484;
Theodorou and Karakatsani 512), led to some enabling representations of women.
What I am referring to is the high frequency of images of women who appropriate features like bravery and strength, stereotypically associated with masculinity. Petraki cites the hymn of Phalaggitisses, the female members of EON, and argues that the primary intention of the regime, as far as women are concerned, was to create a force of active and vigorous young women who would be adequately prepared to fulfil their tasks and “destiny,” always within the boundaries of the ideology of the regime (279).
Poulos agrees and argues that the image of the heroic woman warrior was often employed and it encouraged women to exhibit dynamism and appropriate masculine features in order to reinforce their sacrifice and commitment to the nation (Arms and the Woman 67).
The moralizing historical plays with patriotic content also offered enabling representations of women. These plays, which became increasingly popular during the
Metaxas regime for purposes of propaganda,1 promoted the value of motherhood and
1 Petraki, who examines the various means of propaganda through which Metaxas tried to indoctrinate the masses, explains the grave importance he paid to the theatre (210-286). As she informs us, Metaxas allowed the staging of prestigious foreign plays, like Shakespeare’s, but he insisted that the priority was to build a purely Greek repertory with plays that transmitted the ideals of the regime and contributed to the regeneration of Hellenism and the enlightenment of the masses. This explains why a great number of plays with nationalistic themes, which extol the heroic past and the great achievements of the Greek 176
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) the virtues related to it by means of employing dynamic women. Vasileiou mentions four older historical plays –Mpoumpoulina, O Kolokotronis eis Thanaton
[Kolokotronis to Death], Maria Pentagiotissa and Rigas Feraios– and four contemporary ones - O Kaimos tis Smirnis [Longing for Smyrna], Yperano Olon i
Patris [Above All Homeland], Patrides [Homelands], and Na Zei to Messologgi
[Long Live Messologgi]– which were staged in the 1930s (Exychronismos i Paradosi
326-327, 365-366). Petraki discusses six more patriotic plays –Mprosta sto Thanato
[Facing Death], Ta Souliotopoula den Pethanan [Children from Souli Have not Died],
Hrthe Mia Mera [The Day has Come], I Ieri Floga [The Sacred Flame], Pentheseleia and To Xanazontanema [The Revival]– which were staged on the occasion of the celebration of the War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire (1821) on 25th
March and on the occasion of the anniversary of the regime on 4th August (145-156).
It is Penthesileia and Ta Souliotopoula den Pethanan [The Kids from Souli Have Not
Died] that the scholar singles out for promoting the regime’s view of dynamic womanhood (Petraki 276-288). The staging of Penthesileia in Greece was meant to teach women that the superior virtue of all and the right way for them to help the
Greek nation was through motherhood (Petraki 281-3; Machaira 72). The play communicates its message by underlining the importance of such values as female heroism, self-sacrifice, and the ability of women to successfully combine femininity with masculine virtues. The second play, Ta Souliotopoula den Pethanan, which in
1940 was awarded the first state prize in the category “School Plays,” attributes a central role not only to the 12-year-old male hero who sacrifices himself for his
nation, were staged during the Metaxas dictatorship. Besides offering guidelines for the content of proper plays, Metaxas also established a network of censorship so as to monitor the theatre activity more closely (Petraki 118-120).
177
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) homeland, but also to his mother. She is a proud female figure who prefers seeing her son die as a hero fighting for Greece to seeing him living dishonestly and as a slave to the enemy (Petraki 266).
The image of the dynamic woman arose also in the works of socialist and communist intellectuals. One possible explanation for this is that by the mid-1930s although the official rhetoric of the Communist Party in Russia about women “had begun to emphasize women’s domestic, especially reproductive, responsibilities in the nuclear family,” at the same time the “Soviet discourse still challenged ingrained sexist beliefs such as the notion that women lacked technical and military abilities”
(Harsch 490). Additionally, it was strong women that needed to be recruited in order to oppose fascism and ensure good living conditions for their children (Psarra,
“Chroniko” 30). Another explanation is that in reaction to the intense pessimism of the intellectuals of the 1920s, the new generation of intellectuals of the 1930s tried to show faith and confidence in human potentials and inscribe valuable virtues in the members of the society (Kotzia 28-30). As Kotzia puts it, it was believed that “the healthy mentality of the robust individual is that which will make the national incision and will overturn the social facts” (33).
A representative example of the image of dynamic womanhood in the works of socialist and communist intellectuals comes from Yiannis Ritsos’s poem Miroloi
[Dirge], in which the poet projects the idea of female strength through the figure of the mother. Deeply moved by the picture of a mother that laments over the body of her dead son, who was killed by the police during the massive strike of the tobacco factory workers in Thessaloniki in 1936, Ritsos, himself a member of the Greek communist party since 1934, composed a folk requiem of the bereaved mother to her son. The mother in Ritsos’s influential poem combines the traditional figure of the 178
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) mourning mother that sinks into a lament for her lost child with the dynamic mother figure that the Greek communist party wished women to be in order to contribute to the antifascist and anticapitalist struggle. Scholars, like Gail Holst – Warhaft (145-
149), Rick M. Newton (5-11) and Bruce Merry (131) agree that at first the mother in
Ritsos’s poem echoes the tenderness of Virgin Mary’s lament at the tomb of the crucified Christ from the Epitaphios service in the Greek Orthodox Church. However, they admit that she actually possesses a very powerful female voice that ends up in seeking vengeance for her son’s unfair and untimely death. She stands up against social injustice and extends a revolutionary call to arms by raising her own fist and carrying herself her son’s trifle as she marches with the crowd.1
The present chapter focuses on Rotas. He was a translator, playwright, theatre practitioner and a fervent supporter of Demotic Greek and the folk culture in general.
His oeuvre includes plays with patriotic content, moralizing comedies and theoretical articles which indicate the traits that ideal womanhood has for him: masculine virtues like patriotism, courage and fearlessness, combined with traditional feminine virtues, like tenderness. It is according to these values that he reinterpreted Gertrude and
Ophelia in his 1938 translation of Hamlet.
1 Here I use the very first version of Ritsos’s poem which was published in the Athenian newspaper Rizospastis two days after the tragic event in Thessaloniki, on May 12th, 1936. The first version of the poem consisted of 44 verses arranged in three sections and it was titled “Miroloi” [Dirge]. A month later the poem was expanded to 224 verses arranged in 14 stanzas and was published in book form under the title Epitaphios [Epitaph]. In its final form, the poem consists of 20 stanzas and it was published in 1956. In its first publication in book form in 1936 the poem sold out almost all of its 10,000 copies, except for 250 copies which were burnt along with other books deemed dangerous by the newly established regime of Metaxas in front of the temple of Zeus. John Lucas offers an enlightening account of the prolonged state of censorship imposed upon Ritsos from 1936 until 1974 (2040-2043). Valuable information on the publishing history, form and content of the poem is also offered by Gail Holst – Warhaft (145-149), Rick M. Newton (5-11) and Bruce Merry (131). 179
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) ii. Rotas as Shakespeare translator and his views on the woman issue
Rotas was brought up in a poor family, he had four more siblings and spent his childhood in Hiliomodi Korinthias, in rural Greece. In 1903 his family moved to
Athens where he graduated Varvakeio High School with honours. For a short period of time he attended the Medical School in the University of Athens, and then he registered in the Philosophical School of the same university without ever graduating.
He was acquainted and closely associated with supporters of the demoticist movement, like Kostis Palamas, Alexandros Pallis, Argyris Eftaliotis and Yannis
Psycharis, and he took active part in “Foititiki Syntrofia” [Students’ Company], a progressive youth group whose members wished to decisively participate in the ongoing social struggles. Rotas collaborated with the journal Noumas for almost a decade (1908-1919), probably the most important literary magazine in early-20th- century Greece which supported the establishment of the Demotic Greek language and offered a communication portal with the intellectual developments in Europe. He learnt English, German, French and Russian while translating literary works from these languages in Greek. He also translated ancient Greek plays in modern Greek language.1
Rotas (1889-1977) was a fervent supporter of the Demotic Greek language and the folk culture. He was influenced by Marxist thought without however characterizing himself as a Marxist (Karagiannis 45-46). Krontiris, who explores how
Rotas’s notion of Λαός [the People] influenced his views on the Language Question as well as his theatre theory, observes that for Rotas, “‘the people’ took on a romantic
1 Biographical information for Rotas is derived from the work of Thanasis Karagiannis (40-49) and Voula Damianakou (“Eisagogi” 15-16). More insight into “Foititiki Syntrofia” [Students’ Company] is provided by Rena Stavridi-Patrikiou (657-665). 180
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) rather than a communist aura” (“Translation as Appropriation” 212; “I Metafrasi”
159). It was a “homogenizing term” that hosts a number of lower social groups, all of which shared a “lack of sophistication and formal learning – villagers, dwellers of poor urban neighborhoods, plain people who have retained their origins” (Krontiris,
“Translation as Appropriation” 212). He also excluded the educated elite, who were ignorant of and condescending to the native tradition. During the decade of the 1930s
Rotas became intensely preoccupied with criticizing the members of the urban classes or the members of the lower social classes who nurtured similar aspirations and pursued a bourgeois style of life.
In 1938 Rotas was commissioned by the National Theatre of Greece to translate Hamlet. Given Rotas’s ideological background, his collaboration with the
National Theatre during the Metaxas regime has to be explained. It probably has to do with the fact that the Metaxas regime was not an exact copy of the Italian and German fascist regimes, and that it never reached ideological maturity as a fascist establishment (Ploumidis 62-63). In fact, the Metaxas regime did not abolish all the principles of individuality and allowed some freedoms (even if limited ones)
(Ploumidis 63). In addition, it pursued social stability and national unity, while it wished to put an end to the struggle between the social classes (Ploumidis 63). Hence, although the dissemination of political ideas was severely punished by means of arrests, tortures and deportations, intellectuals with ideas different from the regime were offered work by the regime.1
1 For example, Aggelos Terzakis, Stratis Myrivilis and I. M. Panagiotopoulos, took charge of important positions in the state and they shared with the regime the enthusiasm for cultural rectification, the youth and the indestructible spirit of Greekness (Kotzia 42). 181
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938)
In the case of Rotas in particular, there are some more reasons that explain his collaboration with the fascist establishment. For example, both of them supported the
Demotic Greek language and the folk tradition. Rotas also shared with Dimitris
Rondiris, the artistic director of the National Theatre, a romantic approach to
Shakespeare and the dedication to his language (Mavropoulou 210). Finally, by the time he was asked to translate Hamlet, Rotas had already began to built his reputation as a Shakespeare translator who was meticulous in his translation method and whose interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays were based on thorough study of the source texts and critical sources.1 In the course of almost a decade he translated six of
Shakespeare’s plays. Before the Metaxas dictatorship he translated A Midsummer
Night’s Dream (1928), and during the Metaxas dictatorship he translated King Lear
(1933), Twelfth Night (1935), and Much Ado About Nothing (1937).2
Rotas’s translation of Hamlet in 1938 was not the first one in the Greek language. There is a combination of motives behind his decision to translate
Shakespeare in general, and Hamlet in particular. To begin with, in Shakespeare’s plays Rotas saw “a kind of archetypical folk tradition in which he recognized the
1 Rotas’s interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays were revealed in the editions of his translations or in the theatre programs of the National Theatre. This is the case with his translation of Twelfth Night in 1935 (Rotas, “I Dodekati Nychta” 7-19), of King Lear in the 1933 and 1938 editions of his translation in the journal Mousika Chronika (Rotas, “Kati Stochasmoi” 145-155) and in book form (Rotas, Vasileas Lir 11-15) respectively, and in the 1938 edition of his translation of Hamlet (Amlet me Prologo 7-36, 201-239). 2 Rotas’s translation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was published in the journal Ellinika Grammata [Greek Letters]. His translation of King Lear was first published in the journal Mousika Chronika [Music Chronicles] immediately upon being completed and later in book form in 1938. Rotas’s translation of The Twelfth Night was published much later in 1949 both in the journal Angloelliniki Epitheorisi [English-Greek Review] and in book form, while his translations of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing were published in 1938 and 1949 respectively (Douka-Kambitoglou, I Parousia tou Saixpir 23-28; Karagiorgos, “Vivliographia ton Metafraseon” 686-687, 690). Rotas’s translations were received with warmth among the circles of intellectuals. In 1938 the politically like-minded Ritsos dedicated his poetic collection Oneiro Kalokairinou Mesimeriou [Dream of a Summer Noon] to Rotas. Theatre reviewers reacted to his exaggerations with Demotic Greek and his use of a simplified intonation system, but they repeatedly praised his translations for their diligence and literacy (Rodas, “I Dodekati Nychta” 2; Mamakis, “I Dodekati Nychta” 2). 182
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) forms of his native language” (Krontiris, “Translation as Appropriation” 212). He read in them a mosaic made up of elements of popular narrative, fairytales and legends, popular songs, verses and spells, and where other critics saw indications of
Shakespeare’s romanticism he saw allusions to Byzantine hagiography (Rotas,
Theatro and Glossa 424, 429). His wish to emphasize this feature of Shakespeare’s plays constituted a central motive that urged him to engage in their translation. By translating Shakespeare Rotas strived both to enrich the native literature and support the popular culture (Krontiris, “Translation as Appropriation” 210). As Krontiris describes it, for Rotas Shakespeare translation was a “patriotic act” that proved to be an antidote to the prevailing xenomania and the “indiscriminate adoption of foreign styles and obeisant attitudes toward the ‘protective’ superpowers (England and France at that time)” (“Translation as Appropriation” 210).
The didacticism that Rotas discerned in Shakespeare’s plays provided him with further motivation to translate Shakespeare. The educational role of literature was strongly advocated by the intellectuals of the 1930s, both those who espoused communist and socialist ideas and those who embraced liberal ones (Kotzia 31-32,
119). According to Rotas, Shakespeare built his oeuvre upon a moral basis, so that every play is a “moral and political lesson for every individual, from the uneducated person to the most knowledgeable one, even for the most expert moralist or politician” (Theatro kai Glossa 419). Their inherent value is that they are not propagandistic in the sense of promoting a particular ideology, as for instance the
Christian doctrine. Instead, they teach the Christian values of humanism, love, forgiveness, charity and philanthropy, which set human life on a correct basis and purge the audience of dogmatic fanaticisms and individualistic traits (Rotas, Theatro kai Glossa 363, 393). Rotas went so far as to trace Shakespeare’s sources of 183
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) inspiration in the New Testament, and particularly the “Sermon on the mountain”, the text that contains the central tenets of Christian discipleship (Theatro kai Glossa 363).
In addition, he compared Shakespeare’s plays to the parables of the Gospel; both of them “enthrall and touch and fill the soul of the spectator with fear and pity,” so that he/she undergoes catharsis and is purer after the end of the performance (Theatro kai
Glossa 365-366).
As far as Rotas’s translation of Hamlet is concerned, what motivated him to produce the sixth Greek translation of the play, after Pervanoglou (1858), Vikelas
(1882), Polylas (1889), Damiralis (1890), and Vlachos (1905),1 is that he wished to produce a translation of Hamlet which, in his own words, would supersede the previous ones in the vivaciousness of its language, and its precision and completeness, and in the way it would render Shakespeare’s style (Rotas, Amlet: me Prologo 7-8).
According to Hanna, attending to textual deficiencies and translation losses in previous translations is one of the “marks of distinction” through which retranslators try to assert the position of their own translation in their rivalry with synchronous and earlier translations (135, 140, 151-153). In other words, retranslators “seek to gain legitimacy in the field of drama translation by flagging their distinction from earlier translations” (Hanna 166). It is in a similar way that Rotas tries to legitimate and mark the necessity for his translation of Hamlet.
Another motive behind rendering Hamlet in Greek is that he was commissioned by the National Theatre. Rotas himself provides this information in the edition of his translation by the publishing house Ikaros (Amlet 149). In fact, as
1 There was actually one more translation of Hamlet in the Greek language. It had been undertaken by Theotokis in 1916. Extracts from this translation were published in Kerkiraiki Anthologia in 1916, but it was not until 1977 that it was published in book form (Yannakopoulou 79-80). 184
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Krontiris observes, in the 1930s Rotas established himself as one of the two main
Shakespeare translators commissioned by the National Theatre (“Translation as
Appropriation” 209).1
Rotas’s translation of Hamlet has a special function to fill in the target language, i.e. to be used in a stage production. Commissioning is one of the five reasons that Vanderschelden presents in discussing the potential motives behind retranslation (4-6). Dimitris Rondiris, the artistic director of the National Theatre, probably found existing translations of the play unsatisfactory, unable to be reused efficiently, and outdated stylistically and linguistically. The more recent translation was completed two decades earlier in 1905 by Vlachos. After all, it is generally the case that translations of drama get older more quickly than translations of novels or poems probably because the dramatic text consists of dialogues and is performed for the contemporary audience and hence it has to fit “the established theatrical conventions and cultural expectations of the target audience” (Mateo 105).
As far as Rotas’s stance on the woman issue is concerned, it was shaped by
Marxist ideas and the love for the popular tradition. His ideal model of femininity
1 Rotas’s translations of The Twelfth Night and King Lear were used in the production of the plays by the National Theatre in 1935 and 1938 respectively. In addition, according to Krontiris, Rotas had been commissioned to translate King Lear in the 1930s when Fotos Politis was the director of the National Theatre, but the production of the play was delayed due to the latter’s death (“Translation as Appropriation” 209-210). His translations of Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing were used for the stage productions of the National Theatre in 1938 and 1947 respectively. The information about the translation of Much Ado About Nothing is revealed by Rotas himself in the edition of the translation by the publishing house Ikaros in 1950 (I Trikymia & Poly Kako gia to Tipota 205). Karthaios was the other translator who was commissioned by the National Theatre to translate Shakespeare’s plays. Karthaios translated Romeo and Juliet, Richard II and The Taming of the Shrew in 1936, 1946 and 1948 respectively. The translations of these plays were published for the first time in 1950, 1947 and 1955 respectively (Douka-Kambitoglou, I Parousia tou Saixpir 18-19; Karagiorgos, “Vivliographia ton Metafraseon” 683). Mavropoulou argues that Karthaios translated The Merchant of Venice and that the translation was used in the staging of the play by the National Theatre in 1940 (213). The information is not confirmed neither by the digital archive of the National Theatre [http://www.nt- archive.gr/playDetails.aspx?playID=310], nor by Douka-Kambitoglou (I Parousia tou Saixpir 18-19) or Karagiorgos (“Vivliographia ton Metafraseon” 683). It was Pallis’s translation that the National Theatre used, while it seems that Karthaios never translated this play. 185
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) required of women to embrace patriotism and appropriate masculine virtues like courage and heroism when needed. At the same time, as a result of his unwavering devotion to the common Greek people [λαός] and the folk culture, Rotas developed particular sympathy for lower-class women and satirized women of the upper social classes, or women who pursued independence for their own sake.
Rotas encountered the image of the traditional domestic women, who struggled to earn their living by working both inside the house and outside in the fields, during his childhood in rural Greece. These women were also close to the popular cultural tradition, organized collective festivities with feasts, demotic songs and dances, and produced hand-made artifacts, food and household products.
Karagiannis offers an enlightening description of the mode of living in the rural society of Hiliomodi, from which we derive the information about women’s roles (40-
43). The most immediate example of such female conduct was provided to Rotas by his mother who was hard-working and had a passion for popular legends and demotic songs (Damianakou, “Eisagogi” 13). Damianakou neatly describes the image Rotas had of her spinning in the loom and singing a demotic song of a man who envies another for being married to a woman that honours him (Vasilis Rotas 13).
Rotas’s views about women arise throughout his oeuvre. In 1929 he wrote the play Ta Koritsia Epanastatoun [The Girls Revolt], which satirizes the rebellion of three middle-class daughters at puberty – Toto, Kaiti and Foula – and their attempt to modernize their humble and conservative cousin Areti. These girls misdefine emancipation in terms of changes in physical appearance, sexual liberation, the involvement in such activities as card-playing and nightly entertainment, and the adoption of disrespectful behaviour to parents. Thanks to the intervention of aunt
Marigo, Areti’s mother, the play ends with the suppression of the revolution, the 186
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) restoration of the renegades to proper female behavior and their expressed wish to move from Athens to the village.
Remaining faithful to his socialist views, in the play O Syzygos Trelainetai
[The Husband Goes Crazy], which Rotas wrote a year later, he dramatizes the destructive consequences of women’s emancipation when it serves the satisfaction of personal desires and individualism, rather than the social well-being.1 Two middle- class wives, Loukia and Masigka, live rather immorally by getting involved in extramarital flirting, lying and nightly entertainment without their husbands. Again, here is a case of middle-class women who misconstrue personal liberation for marital infidelity, uninterrupted fun, manipulation of men and sexual liberty. The victim of this situation is Loukia’s husband who bears witness to her flirtatious behavior and suffers mental breakdown from which he never recovers. By the end of the play
Loukia becomes completely unemotional and morally corrupt and resorts to a parasitic way of life whereby she remains married but has extramarital affairs with wealthy men that support her financially. Although the women in this play are heavily satirized, it is important to note that Rotas is not silent about the male share of responsibility for women’s degeneration. He underlines that they too are to blame for the decadence of marriage because they stopped expressing their love for their wives
(Rotas, O Syzygos 123-5). In addition, he represents bourgeois men as frivolous,
1 Rotas wrote both plays Ta Koritsia Epanastatoun [The Girls Revolt] and O Syzygos Trellainetai [The Husband Goes Crazy] for his own theatre company, the “Laiko Theatro Athinon” [Popular Theatre of Athens] which operated from 1930 to 1937. More information on Rotas’s theatre company is provided by Karagiannis (63-82) and Vasileiou (Exychronismos i Paradosi 63-64). There seems to be a dispute regarding the reasons why it closed down. Vasileiou argues that it was due to financial difficulties (Exychronismos i Paradosi 63-64), while Damianakou insists that it was closed down by the Metaxas regime (Ouilliam Saixpir 157). This is not surprising given Rotas’s provocative decision in 1935 to offer his theatre to the Greek Communist Party to use it for their campaign election rally (Karagiannis 71). Nonetheless, even after this incident, throughout the 1930s Rotas remained one of the two main Shakespeare translators of the National Theatre, for reasons I explained earlier in the chapter. 187
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) hypersexual and amoral in so far as they are interested only in temporary sexual satisfaction and renewal of sexual interest even through affairs with married women
(Rotas, O Syzygos 148-9, 185-8).
In these two plays Rotas presents the undesirable ways into which femininity was thought to evolve due to the fact that women pursue independence for their own sake and not for the common good. Just before writing these two plays he expressed his revulsion for Grigorios Xenopoulos’s female characters, the “nauseating Stellas” as Rotas calls them (Theatro kai Glossa 134). For him good role models are offered in plays such as I Tychi tis Maroulas [Maroula’s Luck] (1889) and O Agapitikos tis
Voskopoulas [The Shepherdess’s Lover] (1891) by Dimitrios Koromilas (1850-1898) and To Fyntanaki [The Sappling] (1921) by Pantelis Horn (1881-1941) (Theatro kai
Glossa 134). Besides being rich in moral lessons, these plays praised women of the lower social classes for their morality and honesty.
Some years later, in 1943 Rotas wrote an article about Palamas’s Trisevgeni
(1902). In this text he criticized the homonymous female protagonist of the play and at the same time he indirectly elaborated on the issue of women’s emancipation. He pointed out the double standard exercised by patriarchy when it comes to issues of men’s honour and set himself against the “old social ethics,” as he calls it, according to which women were the exclusive keyholders of family honour, were imprisoned at home to preserve their chastity and were tortured or even put to death, like animals, when they failed to do so (Theatro kai Glossa 140-141). Given his humanitarian and socialist principles (Yannakopoulou 134), it is not surprising that he sided with women’s struggle for improvement of their predicament. However, through his rejection of the character of Trisevgeni, he once more set the basic precondition for female emancipation, i.e. not to be pursued for individualistic purposes but for the 188
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) benefit of the society. Otherwise it is a “womanly” use of freedom that equals coquetry and selfishness (Theatro kai Glossa 141).1
Rotas developed and enhanced his portrait of ideal womanhood in the historical plays with patriotic content that he wrote, particularly in Rigas o Velestinlis
(1936).2 Rigas Velestinlis (1757-1798) was a Greek writer and political thinker commemorated as a national hero and a pioneer of the Greek War of Independence
(1821). In this play Rotas uses a mixture of real historical information and fictitious events in order to dramatize how Rigas Velestinlis was betrayed by the bourgeois members of the Greek diaspora. The second most important role in the play belongs to the character of Katinka. She is a beautiful young woman of aristocratic descent, who is married to a much older and rich tradesman of diaspora. The first impression we get of her is that of a spoilt young lady and of a wife dissatisfied because she does not get to widen her social circle through her marriage. In the course of the play, however, she develops into a praiseworthy character. This is because she demands to participate in her husband’s social and business life, so that she does not only exercise
1 That Rotas was sensitive to the gender matters that arose in his era, and particularly the social position of women, is also confirmed later in his life. In 1976 he was interviewed for the magazine Gynaika [Woman]. In this interview he outlined the living conditions of Greek women back in the first decades of the 20th century with obvious sympathy and humour (Mpakomarou 350-355). For example, he recalled the measure adopted in 1925 by the dictatorship of Theodoros Pagkalos, according to which women were not allowed to publicly wear skirts which were higher than 30 centimeters above the ground (Mpakomarou 351). He further offered a telling description of the exhibition of women for the purpose of marriage (nifopazaro – marriage bazaar), which took place in Athens in the area extending from Stadiou street to Klafthmonos street: young women went there escorted by their mothers and they were dressed in long dresses that were too tight around the ankle. In order to get on the tram to go to Stadiou street, in the area of Syntagma, they had to lift up their dress, thus becoming the object of the voyeuristic gaze of men who gathered at the starting point of the tram for that purpose (Mpakomarou 352). 2 At around that time Rotas wrote two more plays with nationalistic content: Na Zei to Mesologgi (1927) and Se Gnorizo Apo tin Kopsi (1928). Later, he wrote two more, namely Ellinika Niata (1946) and Kolokotronis (1955). He was motivated to write these plays not only because of the trend of the time, but also because he nurtured patriotism. Information on this aspect of his personality is offered by Karagiannis (84). Yannakopoulou discusses this issue from a new point of view and explains why he seems to exhibit a form of “moderate multiaxial nationalism” according to which Greekness was understood as a bridge between European humanism and classical Greek thinking (126-128). 189
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) her inherent talent in diplomacy and politics, but also in order to contribute to the liberation of her homeland, a passion she comes to share with the male protagonist,
Rigas. Her wish to escape domestic enclosure, not just for the sake of her personal desire, but also for the sake of a common cause, is congruent with Rotas’s view of the social use to which female emancipation should be put. Given this development in her character, the progressive ideas she utters in relation to women gain acceptability.
Rotas turns her into the mouthpiece of his socialist ideals. Hence, he criticizes the bourgeois treatment of women as products of exchange between men, useful only as ornaments or objects for men’s social satisfaction (Rotas, Rigas o Velestinlis 129). By the end of the play, she comes to feel emotionally close to Rigas, struggles heroically to save him, but since he is executed, life is too bleak for her to live: she takes poison and dies.
Yannakopoulou, who studies how Rotas’s habitus relates to his translation of
Hamlet, rightly points out that Rotas assimilated the discrepancies of his time and encompassed a variety of ideologies, as for instance Marxism and Christianity, patriotism and humanism (137). My analysis of Rotas’s oeuvre indicates that this amalgamation of ideologies influenced the way he treated the woman issue, as well as his representations of proper female behavior. Hence, the model of acceptable womanhood that he promoted is a humanistic one with Marxist and patriotic overtones. For him, women are not nameless objects of exchange among men or the symbols of their social advancement and sexual pleasure. Women are human beings worthy of political rights, education, work and sexual gratification; yet they should keep in mind that it is only for the benefit of the society that they should try to emancipate themselves, and not out of selfish and individualistic motives, as in the case of the bourgeois women of urban Greece. When the need arises, Rotas’s ideal 190
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) woman is also imbued with patriotism and appropriates masculine virtues, like bravery, without however compromising her innate tenderness. Gertrude and Ophelia could not fit his views of ideal womanhood and that is why they were rejected. It is also the case that a more favourable representation of Gertrude and Ophelia would jeopardize Hamlet’s image.
iii. Gertrude and Ophelia: interpretative issues and their reception in previous translations
Gertrude is one of the most mysterious main characters in Hamlet. According to
Rosenberg, “[c]ritics have traditionally judged her in two ways: by her silences, and by what others say of her” (The Masks of Hamlet 70). In the first case, on the basis of her silences, they have deemed her weak and passive. In the second case, when critics rely on Claudius, King Hamlet and her son, they have seen in Gertrude a woman of some power that can be described by such adjectives as “cunning, deceptive, sensorial, erotic, loving, shrewd, urbane, hard, conscienceless, lustful, sexy, the epitome of falseness, corrupted” (Rosenberg, The Masks of Hamlet 70-71).
Shakespeare does not give Gertrude any soliloquies to present her inner thoughts. She appears in half of the play’s scenes, all very important ones, and she takes a significant part in them, and yet she speaks only 157 lines (Rosenberg, The
Masks of Hamlet 70). As a result, considerable indeterminacy and ambiguity arise in relation to the nature of her character. Uncertainty is detected particularly with respect to the following issues: whether she is Claudius’s accomplice in killing King Hamlet or is cognizant of the crime before marrying Claudius, whether she has committed adultery, whether she mourned her dead husband enough or she married too soon after his death, her motives in remarrying, the seriousness of the incest she committed by
191
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) marrying her brother-in-law, whether she feels guilty and for which reasons, her devotion as a mother (Rosenberg, The Masks of Hamlet 70-80).
Ophelia is an equally enigmatic character. Most interpretations of her stress the sweetness of her personality, her obedience as Polonius’s daughter and Laertes’s sister, her timidity as Hamlet’s lover, her inexperience in resisting manipulation and the traumas forced upon her as a result (Rosenberg, The Masks of Hamlet 239). There is also an alternative view of her, which is rarely expressed and which stresses her agency, rebelliousness, disruption and sexuality over her sweetness, passivity and innocence (Rosenberg, The Masks of Hamlet 238). Rosenberg neatly summarizes some of the key questions about Ophelia: Is she truly submissive to her father and her brother in the beginning of the play? Or, Hamlet speaks the truth when he implicitly charges her with promiscuity and warns her father not to let her walk around in public and attract men because she could get pregnant by some randomn man (II.ii.184-
186).1 Does her song in IV.v.48-55 give reason to suspect her of extramarital intercourse? How truly does she love Hamlet? How willingly does she decoy Hamlet in the nunnery scene? Why does she return his gifts? Equally questionable are the circumstances of her death. Are there in her traces of madness from the start, which intensify gradually, or does the accumulation of sorrowful events suddenly push her to madness? Is her death an accident or does she actually commit suicide?
(Rosenberg, The Masks of Hamlet 238).
The text provides no firm answer to the questions about Gertrude or Ophelia.
In fact, these questions can be answered in a variety of ways. Given the fact that translation is an act of interpretation, the translator can step into the text and construct
1 Quotes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet throughout this study refer to Furness’s New Variorum Edition by scene, act and line numbers (Philadelpia 1918). 192
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) his/her own version of Gertrude and Ophelia. Before examining the way Rotas treats
Gertrude and Ophelia in his own translation of the play, we should briefly take a look at the history of the reception of these two dramatic characters in Greece, because, as
Venuti notes, “a translation is simultaneously linked to other texts written in the translating language” (“Retranslations” 31). It is also the case that in his prologue to the translation Rotas himself acknowledged the fact that he was aware of the existence of previous translations and that he evaluated them as well (Amlet: me
Prologo 7-8).
Hamlet seems to have been one of the most frequently staged and translated of
Shakespeare’s plays in late-19th-and-early-20th century Greece. Important and up- and-coming actors and actresses played the key roles, like Pantelis Soutsas, Dionysios
Tavoularis, Nikolaos Lekatsas, Dimitris Myrat, Evaggelia Paraskevopoulou,
Aikaterini Veroni, Aikaterini Veroni, Eleni Fyrst and Marika Kotopouli (Sideris, “O
Saixpir stin Ellada II.” 56-57; Sideris, “O Saixpir stin Ellada IV.” 28-38; Sideris, “O
Saixpir stin Ellada V.” 35-46). In their reviews of the stage productions of Hamlet, which took place in the period 1866-1924,1 most of the critics focused on Hamlet, only occasionally on Ophelia, and almost never on Gertrude. I have traced only one reference to Gertrude which characterizes her as μοιχαλίδα μητέρα [adulterpus mother], whom Shakespeare, however, allows to hope for catharsis (Bobb 7-8).
Similarly, Gertrude did not draw the Greek translators’ attention very often.
Out of the five translators prior to Rotas only Polylas attempted a short analysis of her. His view of her is not totally condemning. At various points throughout his
1 In 1866 there was the first production of Hamlet, starring Pantelis Soutsas, while in 1924 there was the last production of Hamlet prior to Rotas’s translation, starring Marika Kotopouli and Mytsos Mirat (Sideris, “O Saixpir stin Ellada II” 56-57). 193
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) analysis of the play Polylas notes Gertrude’s moral degradation in marrying Claudius and her failure to live up to Hamlet’s view of her as a model of prudence (Amletos ιβ΄,
ιγ΄, ιε΄, ις΄). Nonetheless, he confidently asserts both that she was not Claudius’s accomplice to her husband’s murder and that she had no idea of it (Polylas, Amletos
κε΄). Polylas acquits her by noting that it is due to her initially naive and unformed nature, which is inherently weak and prone to pleasure, that she falls victim to
Claudius’s trap (Polylas, Amletos μδ΄). Yet, despite the interpretation that she is morally too weak to put an end to her affair with Claudius, Polylas asserts, she at least reaches awareness of her moral wretchedness and repents truly, almost to the point of expiation (Polylas, Amletos κς΄, λθ΄, μδ΄).
If some reservations had been formulated in relation to Gertrude, Ophelia had earned the uncompromising sympathy of the Greek theatre critics and translators.
When the theatre critics of the period 1866-1924 turned their attention to Ophelia, they did so exclusively in laudatory terms. All seem to have agreed on her virginity, innocence, fragility and the pain she experiences because of Hamlet. For example, the critic Kalivan of the newspaper Min Hanesai [Do not Lose Yourself] described her as
αθώα, μελωδική ακανθυλλίδα1 [innocent, melodious goldfinch] and imagined her as having blond hair (1-2). A few lines later in his review the same critic described the relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia as similar to that between the δήμιος
[executioner] and θύμα [victim], or as that of the eagle that threateningly flies above the nest of a young bird (Kaliban 2). In 1924, a few days after the premiere of Myrat’s and Kotopoulis’s staging of Hamlet, in the newspaper Ethniki Foni [National Voice] the critic Wilhelm Meister (pseudonym for G. Lampridis) expressed his utter
1 Ακανθυλλίς or ακανθίς is a goldfinch that is distinguished for its sweet chirping, its briskness and liveliness (Zevgolis 118). 194
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) admiration for Kotopouli and insisted on his view that she impersonated Ophelia ideally thanks to her physique, lightness of movement, and gentleness (3).
The paratextual elements of the translations of Hamlet seem to provide more details about Ophelia’s reception in Greece. In his brief introduction to his 1858 translation of Hamlet and the comments he appended to it, Pervanoglou reveals his idealization of Ophelia in romantic terms as a young, beautiful lady that is also tender, innocent and pious (ι΄). He also cites a critic’s view that the most touching part of the tragedy is traced at the moment of Ophelia’s selflessness and indifference to her own plight when Hamlet treats her harshly, which causes the audience to commiserate with her (Pervanoglou 249). Pervanoglou further states that her sad madness fills our heart with pity and tender feelings (η΄) and that her death is untimely and unjust (ι΄).
Three decades later, in 1889, when Polylas published his translation of
Hamlet, the reception of Ophelia was still the same. In fact, Polylas enhanced
Pervanoglou’s romantic portrait of Ophelia.1 He used images of nature and light to describe how Hamlet sees her and how she feels when she is in love with him. In the first case, she is presented to impersonate the freshness and simplicity of nature and to combine physical beauty and grace with pure heart and intellect (Polylas, Amletos ιζ΄,
μβ΄). In the second case, when Ophelia is in love with Hamlet and trusts him fully, she seems to sprout and her sensitive heart is warmed and radiates (Polylas, Amletos
μβ΄). For Polylas, there is no doubt that Ophelia is capable of appreciating Hamlet’s merits (Amletos ιζ΄) and she is certainly worthy of being his companion (Amletos ν΄).
At no moment, does he question her innocence in avoiding Hamlet or accuses her of
1 It is interesting to note Yanni’s view Polylas idealized Hamlet not by relying solely on 19th-century romantic notions of him as an introspective and melancholic individual, but rather by combining them with 18th-century views of him as manly, sensitive and conscientious (Shakespeare’s Travels 124). 195
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) consciously plotting against him with her father and King Claudius. Above all,
Ophelia is seen as the victim of a degenerated society and its generalized wickedness, while the possibility that her conduct is a “ruse of hypocritical purity” is completely ruled out (Polylas Amletos ιη΄, ιζ΄).
In the 1882 edition of his translation of Hamlet Vikelas himself drew
Ophelia’s idealization to its extreme. In the twenty-two pages of notes included in this edition alone and not in subsequent ones, he focuses mostly on Hamlet, but it is
Ophelia’s modesty and spotlessness that he defends from Ludwig Tieck’s charges that she had lost her virginal innocence long before the play began (Vikelas, Amletos 202-
203).1 Although Vikelas shows understanding for Hamlet’s harshness towards
Ophelia on the grounds that it is with her consent that King Claudius and Polonius overhear them (III.i), he firmly believes that Hamlet murders Ophelia, and indeed after he has tortured her to the extreme by scorning her, speaking harshly to her and causing her to cry (Vikelas, Amletos 211). Her father’s death is not the true reason of her madness and suicide (Vikelas, Amletos 211). Vikelas further casts doubt on the verity of Hamlet’s love for Ophelia and argues that his feelings are mere figments of the imagination (Amletos 212). That is why in killing Polonius he does not spend a thought for Ophelia, but only for his own personal security (Vikelas, Amletos 211-
212). It is only in competition with Laertes’s love during her funeral that Hamlet cries
“I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers/ Could not, with all their quantity of love,
/Make up my sum” (V.i.257-259). For Vikelas Ophelia’s murder is Hamlet’s greatest sin in a series of crimes that prove his moral decadence, mental derangement and his
1 Tieck (1773-1853) was a German poet, translator, novelist and editor. He edited the translation of Shakespeare’s plays by August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845). 196
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) status as a true criminal, who, nonetheless, does deserve our pity and forgiveness
(Amletos 211, 213).
The present study is anchored in the premise that retranslation is an act of reinterpretation. Rotas himself acknowledged that he interpreted the play differently and saw the whole of it in a brighter light after carefully examining it (Amlet: me
Prologo 10). Given both the fact that the socio-political conditions had changed since the last translation of Hamlet by Vlachos in the 1900s, and the fact that Rotas had a different background from his predecessors, it is expected that he read and interpreted the play in a very different way. As Venuti so aptly puts it, “[r]etranslations deliberately mark the passage of time by aiming to distinguish between themselves and a previous version through differences in discursive strategies and interpretations”
(“Retranslations” 35). It is to these differences in the interpretation of Gertrude and
Ophelia that I now turn. The following sections proceed to shed light on the details of the translation of Gertrude and Ophelia in the time of Metaxas dictatorship by a socialist translator who was commissioned to translate Hamlet for the National
Theatre, but he did not subsume his values to those of the commissioning institution.
iv. Gertrude in Rotas’s translation of Hamlet (1938)
Rotas does not seem to consider Gertrude a complex character. In his introduction and notes to his translation he does not provide any extensive analysis of her, as he does with Ophelia, and of course Hamlet. He makes no systematic attempt to explicitly disambiguate unclear points about Gertrude, like those I discussed above. He focuses almost exclusively on her decision to remarry. Rotas unquestionably adopts Hamlet’s point of view of Gertrude, whom he trusts as a reliable narrator, admires immensely
197
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) and defends against charges of madness and procrastination (Rotas, Amlet: me
Prologo 35-36, 216-217, 230-232).
In his prologue and notes to his translation Rotas follows Hamlet’s perspective and repeatedly accuses Gertrude of insensitivity to her husband’s death (Amlet: me
Prologo 18, 20, 32, 35, 203, 212). Like Hamlet, Rotas too finds fault with her marriage to Claudius. He specifically argues that this marriage is too hasty and that she has not mourned her husband enough (Rotas, Amlet: me Prologo 22). Rotas further openly sympathizes with Hamlet’s plight. This involves the loss of his ideals, including that of the ideal woman, which was represented by his mother until she married her brother-in-law (Rotas, Amlet: me Prologo 20-21).
Although in his introduction and notes Rotas does not express sympathy for
Gertrude and he does not recognize any mitigation for her decision to remarry, he never accuses her of adultery. What he accuses her of is lustfulness and insensitivity, which cause her to leave the state of widowhood too soon and not mourn for the loss of her husband properly. Rotas seems to find fault not so much with the fact that it is with her brother-in-law that she remarries, but with the fact that the transition from widowhood to married life is too brief for her to mourn adequately. Rotas’s strong objection to Gertrude’s remarriage should be seen in relation to the marriage practices in Greece and the ritual of mourning one’s deceased husband. According to Vasilis
Gavalas, “[f]amily reconstitution studies have shown that in the beginning of the 20th century [in Greece] remarriage was rather unusual for women but not for men” (10).
Exploring death rituals in areas of rural Greece, which Rotas came from, Loring M.
Danforth offers information about the restricted lives that women in mourning, particularly widows, were expected to live:
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They do not go to the city to shop, nor do they attend social events such as
village festivals, weddings, baptisms, or the like. […] A woman who stops
mourning too quickly or who fails to live up to the expectations of other
women in any aspect of mourning behavior is certain to be the target of much
gossip and ill will. (54)
Given the fact that Rotas came from Hiliomodi, a rural area in Greece, as well as the fact that he was strongly attached to the Greek folk tradition, Gertrude’s short period of grief seems to violate the practices of marriage and mourning to which Rotas was accustomed in his homeland.
Rotas does not bother to disambiguate other dark aspects of Gertrude in the paratextual elements of the translation. However, it seems that his strong objection to her remarriage influenced his whole representation of her in his translation. One important aspect of the image he constructs of her is that she mistakes Hamlet for insane. She is thus grouped together with the other characters of the play who misunderstand Hamlet and judge him superficially as mad. While Rotas makes it perfectly clear in his prologue and notes that Hamlet is not mad, throughout his actual translation of the play he repeatedly draws attention to the fact that Gertrude mistakenly believes her son to be insane.
Early in the play, in scene II of Act II, Claudius and Gertrude welcome
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of Hamlet’s friends from Wittenberg, whom they have invited to Elsinore hoping that they will manage to cheer Hamlet or discover the cause of his melancholy. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern agree to help and Gertrude
199
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) orders attendants to take them to her “much changed son” (II.ii.36).1 Rotas made an interesting intervention in translating Gertrude’s description of her son, which affects the way the reader of his translation sees her. He did not translate the adjective
“changed” in a way that denotes alteration from a previous state of being, which is the basic meaning of the word and the way his predecessors rendered it in Greek (Polylas,
Amletos 59; Vikelas, Amletos 53; Vlachos, Amlet 63; Damiralis, Amletos 59).2 Polylas and Vlachos translated the adjective “changed” literally into άλλαξε, while Vikelas and Damiralis opted for some form of the verb αλλοιώνομαι [I am altered] in order to indicate the deterioration in Hamlet’s state. Rotas, on the other hand, intervened and translated the adjective into αλλοπαρμένος [barmy] (Amlet: Me Prologo II.ii36), a word which is used to refer to someone who has lost his senses, who finds himself/herself in a state of confusion and has lost control of himself/ herself. That is not a very flattering way for a mother to speak of her son in front of his friends and
Rotas apparently thinks that it predisposes us negatively towards her.
Later in the play, in the closet scene, on the occasion of Gertrude’s question to
Hamlet “Have you forgot me?” (III.iv.13) Rotas once again discerns Gertrude’s mistaken interpretation of Hamlet. In a note appended to the translation Rotas reveals that behind Gertrude’s bewilderment at Hamlet’s offensive conduct he sees again that
Gertrude shares the other characters’ belief that Hamlet is insane. She attributes his insanity either to his love for Ophelia or to his father’s death (Rotas, Amlet: me
Prologo 232). Two of Rotas’s predecessors, Pervanoglou (135) and Vlachos (Amlet
1 Quotes from Rotas’s translation refer to the 1938 edition in Athens by Vivliopolion tis Estias by scene, act and line, which Rotas tried to keep the same as his source, Furness’s Variorum edition. For the analysis of the words I have used the online version of Lexiko tis Koinis Neoellinikis [Dictionary of Standard Modern Greek], unless noted otherwise. 2 Pervanoglou left the phrase untranslated (71). 200
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60), translated Gertrude’s question in a way that clearly shows that she is amazed at
Hamlet’s disrespectful behavior towards her given the fact that she is his mother.
Gertrude continues to describe her son as “mad” after the closet scene. She immediately reports the death of Polonius to King Claudius, ascribing the committed crime to Hamlet’s madness. She describes him as “mad as the sea and wind, when both contend / which is the mightier” (IV.i.7-8) and as finding himself in a “lawless fit” (IV.i.8). The adjective “mad” is a polysemous word. Among other things it is used to refer both to someone that suffers from a mental disorder and to someone who is completely unrestrained by reason or judgement and has moved to uncontrollable rage. The noun “fit” is similarly a polysemous word and it denotes a paroxysm, i.e. a sudden but transient attack of a physical disturbance, and a violent outburst of laughter, tear or rage. Rotas’s predecessors did not take account of Hamlet’s order to
Gertrude to persuade Claudius that her son is insane (II.v.186-188). They translated
Gertrude’s lines as referring to excessive rage rather than to madness. For example,
Pervanoglou (147) and Vlachos (Amlet 139) rendered “mad” into μαίνεται [is raging] and “fit” into παραφορά [furor] both of which denote emotional violence and vehemence. Polylas, Vikelas and Damiralis, on the other hand, used a combination of phrases like τρελός [mad], μανίζουν [they are furious] and παροξυσμόν [paroxysm]
(Polylas, Amletos 137), τρελός [mad] and ασυλλόγιστη ορμή [reckless momentum]
(Vikelas, Amletos 122) and παράφορος [passionate] and ακρατήτω παροξυσμώ
[unrestrained frenzy] (Damiralis, Amletos 131) to describe Hamlet’s state and denote his attitude and vehemence.
Rotas translated the two phrases systematically in such a way as to have
Gertrude once more underline Hamlet’s insanity:
Τρελός σαν θάλασσα κι αγέρας που μαλώνουν 201
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ποιος είναι δυνατότερος· στην αλαλιά του,
ακούοντας πίσω απ’ την κουρτίνα κάποιο σάλεμα,
τραβάει σπαθό, κράζει «ποντίκι, ένα ποντίκι!»
και στου μυαλού του την παραίσθηση σκοτώνει
τον γέρο τον καλό, που δε φαινόταν. (IV.i.7-12, emphasis added)
Τρελός means mad and αλαλιά denotes a foolish act and thought. In Shakespeare’s text the reason for describing Hamlet as mad is different at this point: Gertrude may be protecting Hamlet from Claudius. But this does not seem to be the case in Rotas’s translation. Rotas sees no change in Gertrude towards Hamlet after the closet scene and he offers no explanation or reminder to the reader that she acts like this upon
Hamlet’s command, or that she tries to mitigate his crime. In fact, in his notes with respect to the closet scene, Rotas singles out Hamlet’s line “almost as bad, good mother, / As kill a king, and marry with his brother” (III.iv.28-29). He supports the view that the line points to Gertrude’s viciousness by calling attention to the fact that the word “bad” is very close to the phrase “good mother” (Rotas, Amlet: me Prologo
232). As Rotas further underlines, he is the only one to have read Shakespeare’s play in such a detail, while previous translators ignored this important point and focused on the rhyme between the words “brother”and “mother,” which he finds incidental and rather unsuccessful (Rotas, Amlet: me Prologo 232). Equally important is the fact that
Furness’s Variorum edition of the play, which Rotas consulted for his translation, cites Clarke’s analysis, which traces in Gertrude not only obedience to Hamlet but also maternal ingenuity when she tries to justify Hamlet’s murder of Polonius
(Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet 311-312). Rotas does not share this view.
202
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Rotas paints a particularly unfavorable portrait of Gertrude during the closet scene. Not only does he underline her lustfulness, wickedness, and lack of maternal feelings, he also recognizes no true feelings of remorse in her; rather, he draws attention to the fact that she is afraid of her son, by adding some stage directions about how Gertrude shrivels in fear and sits down immediately upon Hamlet’s command “[p]eace! sit you down!” (III.iv.34) (Amlet: me Prologo 233). Therefore, it seems that in Rotas’s translation Gertrude’s following lines in the closet scene are uttered out of fear before Hamlet’s threatening behavior, without really meaning them: “O, Hamlet speak no more;/ Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul,/ And there I see such black and grained spots/ As will not leave their tinct” (III.iv.88-91) and “O, speak to me no more;/ These words like daggers enter in mine ears./ No more, sweet Hamlet!” (III.iv.94-96).
Rotas’s treatment of Gertrude so far affects the way her death is interpreted.
As other things about Gertrude, the circumstances of her death are surrounded with obscurity. It is never openly admitted if it was an accident or a suicide. In other words, when she drinks from the goblet intended for Hamlet, does she know that there was poison in it? And, does she suspect Claudius of poisoning the cup? Does she die to save Hamlet? It seems to me that Rotas’s translation rules out the possibility that
Gertrude willingly commits suicide in order to protect Hamlet. To be more specific,
King Claudius demands that she does not drink from the goblet. “Gertrude, do not drink” (V.ii.277), says Claudius and she answers “I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me” (V.ii.278). Most of Rotas’s predecessors translated the phrase “pardon me” literally so that Gertrude asks Claudius to forgive her for drinking (Polylas, Amletos
206; Vikelas, Amletos 181; Damiralis, Amletos 198; Vlachos, Amlet 206,). Rotas, however, followed Pervanoglou (216) and translated the phrase as άσε με, σε 203
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938)
παρακαλώ [let me, please] (Amlet: Me Prologo V.ii.278), taking it to mean that
Gertrude asks for Claudius’s permission to drink. After Gertrude has drunk the poison she dies exclaiming “No, no, the drink, the drink, — O my dear Hamlet,- / The drink, the drink! — I am poison'd!” (V.ii.296-297). Rotas does not recognize maternal feelings in Gertrude and he draws no special attention to the event of her death, which is overshadowed by the ensuing events of the play.
Gertrude’s decision to remarry is what determines Rotas’s view of her. Her inadequate mourning and her refusal of the state of widowhood ran counter to Rotas’s
Greek popular values, which counted mourning among women’s main duties. As a result, it was magnified in Rotas’s conscience and overshadowed her maternal role and her possible tenderness to Hamlet. Rotas did not distinguish between Gertrude the widow and Gertrude the mother. For Rotas, it is as if her erotic desire for Claudius could not coexist with her maternal love for Hamlet.1
v. Ophelia in Rotas’s translation of Hamlet (1938)
Rotas seems to have dedicated more space to explain the character of Ophelia than that of Gertrude, and he offered an unprecedented moment of rejection in the history of her reception in Greece. His condescending attitude towards Ophelia is related to two issues. Firstly, he associated her with a weak image of femininity that had become outdated by the 1930s. The notions of youth, health and acme acquired significance at that time (Kotzia 51). In the journal I Neolaia it was firmly established
1 The character of Gertrude only fleetingly concerned the author of the program of the stage production of the National Theatre, and the theatre reviewers in newspapers of the time. They all seem to share Rotas’s condescending view of her. The author of the program described her as a “false type of woman that is incapable of thinking” (Anonymous, “O Syggrafeas” 11, translation is mine). One critic called her “unpleasant” and a “shrew,” while it was thanks to the actress Athanasia Moustaka that Gertrude was rendered more likeable and triggered the audience’s pity (Anonymous, “O Amletos tou Ellinikou Theatrou”). 204
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) that the girls of EON had nothing to do with the “atrophic creatures, pale Ophelias and princesses that wait for the fairy-tale prince to raise them from the sleep of spiritual inactivity” (quoted in Vervenioti, Oi Synagonistries 140, emphasis added).
This “doctrine of youth,” as Mario Vitti calls it, was not the exclusive property of the
Metaxas regime, but it was shared by other intellectuals, such as Seferis and Ritsos, who reacted to the pessimism of Kariotakis (I Genia tou Trianta 46-49, 187-188). As
I have already shown with reference to Rotas’s primary works, he too appreciated female dynamism as long as it did not embrace corrupting modernisms.
The second reason why Rotas rejected Ophelia has to do with his profound admiration for the figure of Hamlet. In her detailed analysis of Rotas’s exceptional praise of Hamlet, Yannakopoulou reveals that this bears obvious humanistic and
Marxist overtones (174-179). He defends him against charges of procrastination and madness, both true and feigned, and establishes him as an idealist who struggles between the demands of his conscience and the passion for revenge. For Rotas,
Hamlet ultimately fulfils the didactic function of dramatic art. He argues that
Shakespeare’s protagonist voices the Christian principles which forbid killing and taking one’s own life and which prioritize forgiveness and love (Rotas, Theatro kai
Glossa 369).1 By associating Ophelia with frailty and corruption, Rotas intended to enhance Hamlet’s nobility and underline his isolation from all the other corrupted characters of the play.
1 The didacticism of Shakespeare’s plays and the projection of Christian and humanitarian ideals was one of the reasons why Rotas admired Shakespeare (Yannakopoulou 135-136, 138). Krontiris (“Translation as Appropriation” 208-219; “I Metafrasi” 143-167) and Yannakopoulou (135-136, 138) neatly summarize the other virtues that Rotas appreciated in Shakespeare: his popular dimension as a dramatist, his revolutionary attitude towards fighting treason and tyranny and encouraging justice, love and freedom, his ability to combine realism with lyricism and, finally, his being a direct descendant of classical Greek theatre. Rotas expressed his views on Shakespeare in his collection of essays titled Theatro kai Glossa [Theatre and Language], especially in the second volume (357-600). 205
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Instead of turning Ophelia into a worthy match for Hamlet, as his predecessors had done and as he himself did later with the provoking character of Cleopatra in his translation of Antony and Cleopatra (1954-1955), Rotas rather turned Ophelia into a tool that serves the elevation of the male tragic hero through her own degradation. He constantly compromised her morality and intellect and attributed her supposed deficiencies to her female sex.
Important clues about Rotas’s attitude towards Ophelia are derived from paratexts, i.e. his introduction to his translation and the notes appended to it.
According to Venuti, “retranslations are designed to challenge a previous version of a foreign text […] and call attention to their competing interpretation” (“Retranslations”
32). Paratexts can often “make explicit the competing interpretation that the retranslation has tried to inscribe in the source text” (Venuti, “Retranslations” 33).
This is true in the case of Rotas. It is in his introduction and notes to the translation that he reveals his treatment of Ophelia.
The translation does not offer much evidence of Rotas’s stance on Ophelia, because Rotas was deeply committed to translating the Bard as faithfully as possible
(Amlet: me Prologo 8, 201-202). He refrained from making blatant interventions so as to express his preferred reading, at least at this point in his career as a Shakespeare translator.
The same observation seems to be true not only in relation to Ophelia, but also in relation to Hamlet. Yannakopoulou notes that Rotas’s “idiosyncratic reading of
Hamlet in accordance with his humanist ideals […] [was] expressed only in his prologue [and endnotes] to his rendering […] [and not] in his TT [target text]” (179).
As the scholar further explains, “his Marxist ideology surfaces at times, but all in all,
206
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) what outweighs all other facets in his rendering is his allegiance to his source writer and his choice of an affected Demotiki” (Yannakopoulou 179).
Refraining from making interventions in the translations of Shakespeare’s plays was not only due to Rotas’s own commitment to the Bard. It was also the main principle promoted by the decision-makers of the National Theatre, particularly the manager of the theatre Kostis Bastias (1901-1972) and the artistic director Dimitris
Rondiris. In 1936 in the theatre program for the staging of Romeo and Juliet, Bastias concluded his analysis of the play by siding with the critics who believed that no one has the right to make changes in such great plays as Shakespeare’s, even if it is for their improvement (18). According to Bastias, the correct thing to do is to present the dramatist and his works as they are, so that both their merits and drawbacks can be revealed, for both of these elements truly and rightly characterize every intellectual creation (16). The manager of the National Theatre seems to have supported the basic tenet of the romantic idea of logocentrism which treats the artist as the absolute authority, superior to the common human beings, thanks to the ability to comprehend the truth and reveal it to the rest of the world. As Mavropoulou clearly explains,
Rondiris also adopted this view (196-197)1 and pursued “transcendental stagings,” as she calls Rondiris’s approach to Shakespeare (199). This approach did not embrace blatant interventions in the translations of Shakespeare’s plays which could alter its
1 Rondiris’s dedication to the language of Shakespeare’s plays is also praised by Terzakis in his tribute to him which was included in the theatre program of the honorary performance of Hamlet on 7/2/1940 for the director’s twenty years of theatre activity (“D. Rondiris” 2). In her book Saixpir se Kairo Polemou, in the chapter that explores the stagings of Shakespeare’s plays during the Civil War, Krontiris further associates Rondiris’s non-interventionist stagings to the formalistic theoretical trend in literature, according to which Shakespeare should not be linked to contemporary circumstances because this would mar the idea of his universality (150). 207
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) identity.1 Therefore, in this chapter, I have no other choice but to unravel Rotas’s approach to Ophelia by paying attention to how he interprets her mainly in the introduction and comments appended to his translation and then discuss the limited number of choices which reveal his interpretation.
In the introduction to his translation Rotas confidently asserts that she will prove a liar due to her girly naivety, that she is vacillating between different views due to her womanly immaturity, and that she is a “small stupid female animal” who blindly obeys her father and betrays Hamlet (Amlet: me Prologo 25-26, 31). Rotas also makes it clear that for him Ophelia never manages to live up to Hamlet’s ideals of purity, sincerity, selflessness, noble-mindedness and love, nor does she appreciate his noble virtues (Amlet: me Prologo 30-32, 227). Thus, in so far as she does not match Hamlet’s temperament and his worldview, she is an unsuitable companion for him. She never inspires high feelings in the reader, only sorrow. It is with Hamlet that we commiserate for falling in love with this μπεκάτσα [woodcock], as Rotas calls her, who causes him to lose his faith in love (Amlet: me Prologo 26). Literally speaking,
μπεκάτσα [woodcock] is a type of bird. However, there is a metaphorical meaning used in slang language. According to Lexiko tis Laikis kai Perithoriakis mas Glossas
[Dictionary of our Folk and Marginalized Language] compiled by Yiorgos Katos, the
1 Nonetheless, Rotas’s linguistic extremities with Demotic Greek, which added extra popular flavor to Shakespeare’s play and resulted from Rotas’s strong urge to serve the language and culture of the people through his translations, were tolerated. Given the intention of the Metaxas regime to make Shakespeare accessible to the wider masses so as to create the illusion that they too, like the educated bourgeoisie, were initiated in Shakespeare’s greatness (Mavropoulou 205), these interventions might even have seemed convenient. Along with the romantic approach to Shakespeare, this dedication to the Bard’s language was the most important element that made the collaboration between Rotas and Rondiris possible, despite their different ideological background, as already mentioned (Mavropoulou 210-213). 208
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) word μπεκάτσα [woodcock] refers to an old-aged mistress. Rotas probably needed a pejorative characterization for Ophelia and did not intend to allude to her age.1
The way Rotas describes Ophelia in II.i.87-100, the scene in which she tells her father about Hamlet’s unexpected visit in her room while she was sewing, is full of ironic remarks about her supposed innocence. For Rotas, she is not different from anyone else around Hamlet, i.e. hypocritical, or, still unflatteringly, naive to the point of silliness (Amlet: me Prologo 213-214). In other words, Ophelia is either immoral or stupid and naive. It is Hamlet’s utter disappointment with Ophelia that Rotas reads behind Hamlet’s gesture of shaking his head thrice as he leaves Ophelia’s room
(Amlet: me Prologo 26, 213-14). Rotas sharply differentiates himself from his predecessors at this point. For example, in this scene Polylas had traced Hamlet’s despair and sorrow in the idea that his beloved has fallen victim to the prevailing wickedness (Amletos ιη΄).
Rotas attacks Ophelia harder for her conduct in scene I of Act III, where she obeys her father and King Claudius and acquiesces to meet Hamlet under their secret supervision. Rotas admits in passing that she feels moved for seeing Hamlet, but he mainly loads her with unflattering gendered characterizations. In his notes he charges her with female hypocrisy and false modesty in coming to meet Hamlet with an elaborate outer appearance – for no woman, according to Rotas, goes out without paying attention to her external appearance, let alone when she is in love (Amlet: me
Prologo 225-226).2 She pretends innocence in asking Hamlet how he has been all this time that they have not met, while in fact she is well aware of his not being well
1 After all, Ophelia’s age is not mentioned in the play, but she must be in her middle to late teens (Hulbert 207). 2 Let us not forget that in his prologue he referred to her as a woodcock, a bird notable for its impressive colours. 209
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) and of the fact that she is the cause of his misfortune by having avoided him without explanation (Rotas Amlet: me Prologo 225-226).
Another important clue to Rotas’s condescending attitude towards Ophelia is traced in his decision to supplement his literal translation of Pollonius’s direction to
Ophelia “Read on this book” (III.i.44) with a clarifying note about the kind of book which Ophelia holds: a prayer book (Rotas, Amlet: me Prologo 224). This detail about the kind of book Ophelia is holding in this scene is not included in Rotas’s source, the
Variorum edition of Hamlet (III.i.44). Rotas probably borrowed the idea from Polylas, but Rotas uses it in a very different manner.1 Polylas did not discern the slightest trace of hypocrisy in Ophelia at this point. He rather argued that Hamlet sees a saint in
Ophelia and confesses to her all his human weaknesses, magnified as he sees them, because he comes to doubt even his own integrity (Polylas, Amletos κβ΄). Quite on the contrary, especially if we keep in mind his charges against Ophelia in the note, Rotas intends to enforce the impression on the reader that Ophelia behaves hypocritically.
Further down, in Ophelia’s act of returning Hamlet his tokens of love, Rotas sees κουτοκοριτσίστικες παράταιρες [silly, girly pompous tricks] and insincerity that do not fit this grave moment (Amlet: me Prologo 225-226). This, coupled with the fact that Ophelia is not seen as brave and sincere enough to defend her love for
Hamlet, is the reason why Rotas insists that she deserves his harsh treatment (Amlet: me Prologo 226). The translator totally justifies the fact that Hamlet mistreats Ophelia and questions her chastity (III.i.103, 105, 107-108). Rotas does not even offer Hamlet the mitigation that he behaves in this way because he has realized that they are being
1 A comparative analysis of the Greek translations of Hamlet reveals that Vikelas clearly stated in the text of his translation that Ophelia’s book was a προσευχητάριον [prayer book] (Amletos 82), while Polylas translated it literally and clarified it in his notes (Amletos 223). The other three translators rendered the phrase literally and added no clarification about the kind of book Ophelia is supposed to read (Pervanoglou 110; Damiralis, Amletos 88; Vlachos, Amlet 94). 210
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) overheard by Polonius and King Claudius (Amlet: me Prologo 226-227). It is
Hamlet’s sudden realization of the lonely helplessness of Ophelia that triggers his question about where Polonius is (Amlet: me Prologo 227).1 Prior to Rotas, Vikelas questioned Hamlet’s love for Ophelia. Rotas, however, never casts doubt on the
Prince’s love for her despite her supposed cheap tricks on him (Amlet: me Prologo
225-226). It is Ophelia who never ascends to the heights of Hamlet’s love; she is incapable of appreciating his noble merits.
Rotas admits that Ophelia feels profound pain as a result of Hamlet’s harsh treatment of her in III.i. Nonetheless, she manages to live through this pain thanks to what Rotas describes as her mistaken conviction that Hamlet behaves in this way because he is in the state of madness and does not really mean anything of what he says (Amlet: me Prologo 226). At this point Rotas offers a much weaker account of
Ophelia’s sensitivity compared to his predecessors. For him, Ophelia does not only wrongly take Hamlet for mad, but she is also almost impervious to his abrupt conduct and totally unaware of her own supposed faults, while it is her father’s loss that causes her to reach madness (Amlet: me Prologo 236). In sharp contrast, in Ophelia’s conduct in III.i Polylas saw that her mind is overwhelmed, and this foreshadows her forthcoming mental havoc (μβ΄). Polylas further argued that the last strike on
Ophelia’s λεπτοϋφαντον οργανισμόν [finely woven bodily organism] is caused not merely by her father’s murder in itself but by the fact that this is effected by her
1 The arguments that Hamlet is aware of being spied are cheap directorial ruses not worthy of this grave moment, Rotas argues (Amlet: me Prologo 227). In fact, both Hamlet and the audience must forget of Polonius and King Claudius altogether, otherwise the scene will lose its gravity and emotion, probably causing the audience to laugh (Amlet: me Prologo 227). Almost four decades after the first publication of his translation, Rotas edited his translation for the publishing house Ikaros in 1974, and he changed his mind. In the notes appended to the translation he states that from the moment Hamlet perceives the two hidden men he treats Ophelia with sarcasm, particularly for the way she answers his question about where her father is at the moment, because her answer proves her a liar (Amlet 150). 211
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) beloved, so that she is not allowed even to turn her eyes on Hamlet any more (Amletos
μβ΄).
Rotas feels no compassion as Ophelia plunges into madness and he does not trace any connotations in her songs. He merely underlines their popular origin and he is preoccupied with the technical aspects of translating them, such as maintaining the musical scale provided by Furness in his Variorum edition of Hamlet (Shakespeare, A
New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet 234-237). Contrariwise, Polylas recognized that Ophelia undergoes an unexpressed psychic plight, just like Hamlet, and she is similarly undone by it (Amletos μβ΄-μγ΄); the reason is that Hamlet, who was her “Ideal,” transforms into a wicked demon that hurts her most sacred feelings.
(Polylas, Amletos μβ΄-μγ΄). Hence, in Ophelia’s lines, as she plunges into madness,
Polylas discerns evidence both of her love for Hamlet and of her sorrow for her father’s loss (Amletos μγ΄).
Rotas’s main translation strategy in translating Hamlet is literal translation backed up by comments. Yet, there are some cases in which he intervenes in the source text. It seems that he is carried away both by his contempt for Ophelia and by his attachment to the popular culture and the corresponding linguist forms. I now proceed to discuss the limited number of interventions Rotas made when he translated
Hamlet; these instances fill in his negative portrait of Ophelia and confirm his condescending attitude towards her. Again it is only in combination with his comments in the prologue and endnotes that these points enforce his contempt for
Ophelia.
The first intervention has to do with the word “lord” (I.iii.99, I.iii.104,
I.iii.110, I.iii.113, I.iii136, II.i.75, II.i.85, II.i.108), which is used by Ophelia to address her father. The word is translated into αφέντη [master] (Rotas, Amlet: me 212
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938)
Prologo I.iii.99, I.iii.104, I.iii.110, I.iii.113, I.iii.136), but also into πατέρα [father]
(Rotas, Amlet: me Prologo II.i.108) and into its endearing diminutive πατεράκη
[daddy] (Rotas, Amlet: me Prologo II.i.75). This may constitute an attempt on the part of the translator to underline the bond between Ophelia and her father, for whom
Rotas repeatedly expresses his contempt (Amlet: me Prologo 25, 32, 203, 207, 213,
214-215, 227). He also draws attention to their likeness in character, as Rotas accuses them both, and Laertes too, of being liars (Amlet: me Prologo 25).
The second instance of Rotas’s intervention is traced at the end of Ophelia’s encounter with Hamlet while they are being overheard by Polonius and King Claudius
(III.i). According to Furness’s Variorum edition of Hamlet, in Q2, Q3, and Q4 editions of the play there is the stage direction that Ophelia exits after the end of her monologue (III.i.150-161) (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare:
Hamlet 222). It is also the case that other 19th-century scholars, like Karl Elze, agree and note that it is highly improbable that Ophelia should be present during the King’s speech addressed to his confidential counsellor (Shakespeare, A New Variorum
Edition of Hamlet 222). Other scholars disagree and think that Ophelia is still present but “lost in painful thoughts until she is addressed by her father” (Shakespeare, A New
Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet 222).
Rotas does not choose the option of Ophelia’s exit immediately after her soliloquy and his translation indicates that Polonius and King Claudius reenter the stage while she is there too (Amlet: me Prologo III.i.160). The meticulous Rotas, who has the habit of providing ample directions on how we should read Ophelia’s lines and on how she should behave on the actual stage, provides no comment at this point
(Amlet: me Prologo 227). His predecessors in translating the play in Greek agreed that
Ophelia remains on the stage after her monologue (Pervanoglou 116; Polylas, Amletos 213
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938)
96; Vikelas, Amletos 85; Damiralis, Amletos 93; Vlachos, Amlet 99). But this decision may take a whole different meaning in the context of Rotas’s obvious grudge against
Ophelia.
By forcing her to be present in the discussion between Polonius and King
Claudius, Rotas underlines Ophelia’s complicity with them and her betrayal of
Hamlet’s love. This accusation of betrayal is consistently made against Ophelia throughout his prologue and endnotes (Amlet: me Prologo 25, 31, 32, 213-214, 225).
After all, Rotas is not at all convinced of the verity of Ophelia’s feelings for Hamlet expressed in her soliloquy (III.i.150-161). In these lines Ophelia reveals her view of
Hamlet, i.e. that he used to be “The courtier’s, scholar’s, soldier’s eye, tongue, sword;/ The expectancy and rose of the faire state,/ The glass of fashion and the mould of form,/ The observed of all observers” (III.i. 151-154). While scholars like
Coleridge, whose comments are included in Rotas’s source, find that “Ophelia’s soliloquy is the perfection of love – so exquisitely unselfish” (Shakespeare, A New
Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: Hamlet 221), Rotas reads in her lines evidence of her frivolity and her unsuitability as Hamlet’s companion. In a note he points out that in Ophelia’s lines “The glass of fashion, and the mould of form” (III.i.153) he does not read her conviction that Hamlet is the only perfect form, “the model by whom all endeavored to form themselves” (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of
Shakespeare: Hamlet 221). In these lines Rotas reads her inadequacy to recognize and appreciate lofty virtues in Hamlet as well as her superficiality since she is interested only in his outer appearance (Amlet: me Prologo 227). He seems to overlook the fact that at the very beginning of her soliloquy Ophelia mourns for the “noble mind” that has lapsed into madness (III.i.150).
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Ophelia’s frivolity is further reinforced in Act III in which Hamlet puts up a dumb show to prove Claudius’s perfidy. Gertrude invites her son to sit beside her to watch the play (III.ii.102). Hamlet chooses instead to lie down on Ophelia’s lap. He asks her “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?” (III.ii.105). The simple, unstressed term of address “lady” in Rotas’s translation is rendered into Κοκόνα μου (III.ii.105). The
Greek phrase may function as an informal term of address referring to a woman of noble origins, but it may also be an ironic term of address referring to a woman who is used to living in comfort and luxury. Given Rotas’s antipathy towards Ophelia, it is the second meaning that he probably has in mind when he chooses to use the word
κοκόνα in relation to Ophelia. Thus, by means of a simple term of address Rotas manages to reinforce his view of Ophelia as a spoilt rich lady that exploits Hamlet. 1
vi. Conclusion
In the 1930s the vision of a healthy, strong nation gave space to images of dynamic women who can appropriate masculine virtues when the need arises. Rotas, a fervent supporter of Demotic Greek and the popular culture, who was influenced by Marxist thought, and was one of the two main translators commissioned by the National
Theatre to translate Shakespeare, supported this image of women in his primary works. When in 1938 he came to translate Hamlet on commission by the National
Theatre he rejected Gertrude and Ophelia. The cause of this rejection should be traced
1 The extent to which Rotas’s degrading view of Ophelia persuaded his contemporaries is quite debatable. On the one hand, there seems to be some agreement between Rotas and the author of the program for the stage production of the National Theatre with respect to Ophelia. Like Rotas, the author of the program admits Ophelia’s simple-mindedness in consenting to her father’s order to spy on Hamlet, while he also cites Masefield’s view that Ophelia is a doll without thought (Anonymous, “O Syggrafeas” 10-11). On the other hand, however, reviewers of the production reproduced the romantic view of her to which no alternative had been presented in Greece until the time of Rotas’s translation. For example, Rodas describes her as “a flower of youth and love” (“Almet” 2) and P. R. underlines the purity, psychic gentleness and virginal fragrance which emerge out of her (2). 215
5. VASILIS ROTAS AND HIS REINTERPRETATION OF GERTRUDE AND OPHELIA (1938) in his personal value system through which he read, translated and interpreted Hamlet.
His attachment to the Greek popular culture, which deemed mourning an important duty for women, caused him to reject Gertrude for not mourning the loss of her husband. He also dismissed her as an unsuitable mother because she mistook her son for mad. His support of an androgynous type of woman and his admiration for Hamlet caused him to reject Ophelia as well and underline his view that she is an unworthy match for Hamlet. In contrast to previous translators of Shakespeare’s plays, like
Vikelas, Theotokis and Vlachos, who appropriated Shakespeare’s heroines to make them fit their views of ideal womanhood, Rotas could not make Gertrude and Ophelia fit into his ideal of androgynous women.
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Chapter 6
Rotas’s Reinterpretation of Cleopatra in the Post-War Era (1954-1955)
In the 1950s the Greek society was trying to recover materially and psychologically from World War II and the civil strife, and reach the life standards of European countries. The life of Greek women was very different from what it had been before the war. Important changes were implemented, such as the legislation of voting rights for women, but sex discrimination in the fields of work and education was not eliminated. Literary representations of women in this period are varied. Among them, there survives the image of the androgynous woman that fights against the national enemy or participates in the reconstruction of the society after the war (Meraklis 210).
This image seems to be a residual cultural element of the 1940s and it was employed to a limited extent by authors and/ or dramatists of the 1950s.
Rotas, one of the two main Shakespeare translators of the National Theatre in the period before the war, was marginalized after the war, because of his leftist political views. In the 1950s, for financial reasons, he signed a contract with the publishing house Ikaros to render the whole of Shakespeare’s oeuvre in the Greek language. In the framework of this collaboration, Rotas produced a new translation of
Antony and Cleopatra in 1954-1955, the fourth one in Greek language. After his intense participation in the National Resistance (1941-1944), in the 1950s he turned his attention away from criticizing the members of the urban classes and focused on the reprocessing of glorious moments of the Greek history, primarily those that related to the Greek National Resistance (1941-1944) or the Greek Revolution of
1821. In his primary works of the 1950s he embraced –even more enthusiastically than before– the vision of an androgynous womanhood that presents bravery, 217
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) autonomy and self-assertiveness as acceptable elements of female behavior. His translation of Antony and Cleopatra seems to be based exactly on this affirmation of androgyny, which harmoniously combines opposing features in Cleopatra – tenderness, sexuality and charm with strength and dynamism– while leaving no room for charges of immorality and promiscuity against her.
i. Greek women in the early 1950s
In the first postwar period, Greek women across the social spectrum experienced changes in their social position and roles. The most significant change was the fact that the law about women’s voting rights in community and regional elections was validated by the Greek Parliament in 1952. Greek women’s political enfranchisement was important despite the circumstances under which it was effected, i.e. with marginal majority and amidst the voicing of regressive arguments against it, as well as after pressure from Europe and so that Greece would improve its image abroad and prove its being a democratic country because the executions and oppression of the communists continued until 1953 (Samiou, “Ei Gynaikes ston Emfylio” 268-269;
Samiou, “Ta Politika Dikaiomata ton Ellinidon” 387-389; Pantelidou – Malouta 38,
40; Papageorgiou 285-288). Symbolically important is also the fact that in the elections of 1956 Lina Tsaldari became the first female minister in Greece, serving as the Minister of Social Welfare in Konstantinos Karamanlis’s government
(Katsimardou 15-16). In addition, there was progressive legislation in the fields of women’s work, education and familial rights. For example, by 1954, with the exception of ecclesiastical and army offices, Greek women could be employed in all the positions of the public sector (Papageorgiou 295-297).
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It should be noted, however, that, despite these improvements, sex discrimination was not eliminated and traditional views about women still prevailed.
Scholars insist that women were still nailed to the lowest and most poorly-paid working positions and had very poor career prospects (Avdela, Dimosioi Ypalliloi
153; Avdela, “Between Duties” 128; Papageorgiou 303-304). As Avdela also points out, the gendered division of labour was an established, irreversible reality and, despite the fact that the international regulation about equal payment between men and women was signed in Europe in 1951, the Greek parliament validated it two and a half decades later (Dimosioi Ypalliloi 57).
Papageorgiou notes another instance of subtle discrimination suggested by the fact that the course of Home Economics was still taught only to female students, who were directed to avoid scientific courses in the Secondary Education and the
University because of the prevailing myth that women were not good enough at mathematics (299-300). Scholars further insist that, despite the fact that women’s voting rights were legally established, the traditional, conservative prewar value system was still strong and the desirable model of femininity still promoted women’s supposedly natural capacities as mothers and wives (Samiou, “Ei Gynaikes ston
Emfylio” 269; Papageorgiou 288, 293). Hence, the idea that marriage is women’s destiny, in which they were supposed to obtain their identity, still prevailed, and divorce stigmatized them morally (Papageorgiou 296-297). Lina Tsaldari warned women not to neglect their “sacred” family duties as a result of their involvement with politics (Pantelidou – Malouta 46-47). Equally telling is the fact that dowry was still required for women to enter marriage, while the power relations inside marriage favoured men (Papageorgiou 297-298).
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The literary production of the 1950s is polymorphous and there was not only one dominant image of women that was employed, but there were several trends in the representation of women. M. G. Meraklis offers an overview of the prevailing images of femininity that one encounters in postwar prose literature (197-218). The most preferred image of woman is that which resembles Helen of Troy, the erotic woman that subverts the established conventions (Meraklis 208). Greek postwar bourgeois prose literature abounds in erotic triangles; yet, adultery does not lead to official divorce because the characters adhere to social conventions and wish to avoid scandals (Meraklis 208).
The next image of women that Meraklis discernes is that of the woman that resembles Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, the ancient epitome of loyal wife and high- principled woman (203-204). This image evolved in that the Greek postwar counterparts of Penelope are not exclusively concerned with the affairs of the house and work outside the home. This representation of womanhood is found in the local- color short stories and novels written by leftist authors, like Themos Kornaros, Kostas
Kotzias, Zisis Skarosand Efi Panselinou (Meraklis 203-208).
The stereotype of the unmarried young woman who dreams of meeting the perfect man that will appreciate her gifts and ignore her low socio-economic status was also still popular (Meraklis 206-207). It was mostly encountered in postwar films and the paraliterature, like the serial literature published in popular magazines of the time. It was also encountered in the works of Aggelos Terzakis, who belongs to the previous generation of authors, but who still published works, like the novel Mystiki
Zoi [Secret Life] (1957) (Meraklis 206-207).
Finally, according to Meraklis, since 1945, and even as he wrote this short- scale study on women’s literary representations in postwar literature (1986), both 220
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) leftist and bourgeois authors, employed the image of the woman that is as capable as man of fighting against the national enemy and of participating in the construction of a new world after the end of the war (210). It seems that this image is not encountered as often as the aforementioned representations of women, probably because after the end of the Civil War the supporters of the political Right took the image of the androgynous woman to be synonymous with the perversion of women’s nature. The image of the fighting woman seems actually to be a residual element of the 1940s that survives to a limited extent in the next decade.1 Meraklis traces this image in Mitsos
Alexandropoulos’s collections of short stories Armatomena Hronia [Armed Years]
(1954) and Mia prosfati Istoria [A Recent Story] (1956), in Sotiris Patatzis’s collection of short stories Neraida tou Vythou [Fairy of the Seabed] (1954), in the works of Voula Damianakou and in Petros Haris’s more recent novel Imeres Orgis
[Days of Rage] (1979) (Meraklis 213). I also trace the image of the fighting woman in paraliterature, i.e. in the highly popular magazines O Mikros Iros [The Little Hero] and Maska, which were easily accessible to the wider reading public.2
1 In 1943, when the Germans were defeated in the battle of Stalingrad and the morale of the Greek nation was strengthened, Greek poets and prose writers started turning to glorious wartime moments of the modern Greek history in order to promote heroism (Kastrinaki 55). Vitti cites several novels and poems with patriotic content: the novels Plati Potami [Wide River] by Yiannis Beratis (1946) and Armatomenoi [Armed] by Loukis Akritas (1947), the short story To Mnima tis Grias [The Old Woman’s Grave] by Aggelos Vlachos (1949), the poems Paramones Iliou [In Expectation of the Sun] (1943) by Yiannis Ritsos, Bolivar by Nikos Eggonopoulos (1944), and Asma Iroiko kai Penthimo gia ton Hameno Anthipolochago tis Alvanias [A Heroic and Elegiac Song of the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign] by Odysseas Elytis (1945) (Vitti Istoria 418-420). In these works, the Greek readers and theatre goers often encountered heroic women who fight for the national liberation with manly bravery. Kastrinaki finds dynamic female characters in the novels Aioliki Gi [Aeolian Land] by Ilias Venezis (the last part written in 1943), Oi Teleftaioi [The Last Ones] by Petsalis Diomidis (1946), Fotia [Fire] by Dimitris Hatzis (1946), and To Lykofos ton Anthropon [The Twilight of People] by Aggelos Terzakis (1947) and in the collection of short stories Pera stin Thalassa [Away at the Sea] by Thanasis Petsalis (1944) (170, 491-497). 2 O Mikros Iros [The Little Hero] was created by Stelios Anemodouras, it was published for fifteen consecutive years (1953-1968) and it narrated the adventures of three heroic children (Yiorgos Thalassis, Katerina and Spithas) during the German Occupation and their struggle against the German, Italian and Bulgarian enemies. Katerina is a teenage girl that participates in the National Resistance. She is a fervent patriot, a dynamic fighter with knowledge of martial arts, while at the same time she is 221
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
In the 1950s the image of the woman who fights against the national enemy and participates in the construction of a new world after the end of the war, and any reference to the recent war past, seem to be almost absent from the theatre and the cinema.1 In the first half of the 1950s the National Theatre of Greece staged classic plays with an educational purpose and did not opt for contemporary Greek or foreign plays with social content (Mavromoustakos 69-71; Stamatopoulou 212-243). A refreshing role in the cultural life of the period was played by Karolos Koun’s theatre company, “Theatro Technis” [Art Theatre], which reopened in 1954 after a temporary shut down (Mavromoustakos 80). Its repertory consisted both of older American and
European classic plays written by Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and Luigi Pirandelo, and of postwar and contemporary plays written by Bertold Brecht, Samuel Beckett,
Arthur Miller and Thornton Wilder (Mavromoustakos 81). “Theatro Technis” [Art
Theatre] seems to have had a strong preference for Tennessee Williams, choosing to stage one play each year after the second year of its operaration.2 According to Louise
Blackwell, “Tennessee Williams has chosen to feature women as major characters more often than men” and has tried to present their predicament and the underlying reasons for their behaviour (9). Hence, the audience of Koun’s productions had the
sensitive, immaculate, pure and secretly in love with the supernatural hero of the comics, Yiorgos Thalassis. The magazine Maska had been published since 1946 and presented the adventures of Miss Ghost, a secret agent that sabotaged the German enemy. “Miss Ghost” was the pseudonym for Aggela Markatou, a fictional character created by Nikos Marakis, a journalist and author of popular crime novels (1904-1973). 1 Giorgos Andritsos demonstrates that during the three periods that he studies (1945-1949, 1950-1957, 1958-1962) the references to the National Resistance and the Civil War are very limited (89-101). This is mainly for two reasons: a) the 1950s was a time of intense anti-communism and strict censorship which forbade any reference to the social character of the resistance and the role of the left and caused progressive intellectuals to remain silent, and b) the audience needed a chance to entertain themselves and escape the recent painful memories of Katochi and the Civil War (Mavromoustakos 71-72; Stamatopoulou 323; Andritsos 92). 2 Tennessee Williams’s plays which were staged by the “Art Theatre” are the following: Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen (1955-1956); Rose Tattoo (1956-1975); Summer and Smoke (1956- 1957); Suddenly Last Summer (1958-1959); and, Sweet Bird of Youth (1959-1960). 222
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) chance to witness the brutal patriarchal world in which Williams’s women live and experience oppression.
Commercial theatre groups staged Greek and French farces, boulevard with erotic themes, English love comedies and comedies with detective plot
(Stamatopoulou 323). The most popular genre was the Greek love comedies which were also used for the production of films (Delveroudi 80; Mavromoustakos 68-88).
The most popular playwrights of comedies were Alekos Sakellarios, Christos
Giannakopoulos, Asimakis Gialamas, Kostas Pretenderis, Nikos Tsiforos, Polyvios
Vasileiadis and Dimitris Psathas (Mavromoustakos 85-86), while some of the comic plays that were transferred to the cinema are Enas Ippotis gia ti Vasoula [A Knight for Vasoula], Madam Sousou [Madame Sousou], I Hartopaiktra [Woman Gambler] and Ziteitai Pseftis [Liar Required] (Mavromoustakos 85-86).
The examination of these comedies yields valuable information about the cultural representation of women in the 1950s. Delveroudi explores them with respect to five basic fields of the life of young men and women: family, education, love and marriage, work and free time. For example, she observes that parenting differs according to the sex and the class of the young individual; young women, in particular, are supervised by their parents and they themselves too should safegueard their morality which is inextricably linked to their sexuality (Delveroudi 148). In addition, in the comic films and plays of the 1950s as a rule working women belong to the lower social classes, they work in order to order to earn their living, or to ensure their dowry, and they stop working as soon as they get married (Delveroudi 329).
They usually do not work in positions which require professional training or education, as tailoresses, saleswomen, typewriters, singers, actresses and dancers
(Delveroudi 329). Furthermore, they are always available for marriage, while men 223
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) may or may not decide to marry depending on whether they can support their family financially (Delveroudi 274). Generally speaking, Delveroudi observes that the Greek comic films and plays of the 1950s confirm the importance of the values of female virginity and monogamy, but as the decade draws to its end the responsibility for safeguarding these values is placed upon women themselves (274).
In the 1950s Rotas translated Antony and Cleopatra in the framework of his contract with the publishing house Ikaros. At that time Rotas wrote his memoirs from the Resistance1 and produced literature with patriotic content in which he offered very positive representations of women as fighters for the national liberation. It is participation in the National Resistance and his wish to transform this experience into literature in combination with his socialist ideology, which caused him to foreground
Cleopatra’s androgyny and present it in a positive light, despite the fact that the image of the fighting woman was a residual cultural element of the 1940s and survived to a limited extent in the 1950s.
ii. Rotas as Shakespeare translator and his views about women in the 1950s
In 1950 due to his being a leftist intellectual Rotas was accused of anti-national activity and in 1951 he was brought before the Military Council and faced the penalty of dismissal (Karagiannis 39; Damianakou, “Prologos” 9; Damianakou, “Eisagogi”
1 In 1944 Rotas interrupted the operation of his drama school “Theatriko Spoudastiri” [Theatre School] and accepted the invitation of PEEA to work for the cultural cultivation and spiritual encouragement of the people of the rural areas and the fighters of the Greek Resistance (Karagiannis 88). PEEA (Politiki Epitropi Ethnikis Apeleftherosis – Political Committee of National Liberation), or “Kyvernisi tou Vounou” (Government of the Mountain), was a governmental committee formed under the initiative of EAM a few months before the liberation from the German Occupation. It was intended to organize the administration of the liberated areas. At first he was appointed manager of arts and letters. Subsequently, he led the theatre group of EPON Thessalias which was called “Theatrikos Omilos EPON Thessalias” [Theatrical Group EPON Thessalias] (Damianakou, “Prologos” 5). It toured the areas of Thessaly and organized theatre performances and events that encouraged the people and the army to endure the struggle for liberation. 224
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30). He was acquitted and withdrew with his partner in life, Voula Damianakou, to his house in Nea Makri, where he resumed his writing activities.1
Already since 1947 the director of the National Theatre Dimitris Rondiris had limited his collaboration with Rotas, who, together with Karthaios, had been one of the main Shakespeare translators for the National Theatre before the war.2 Krontiris attributes Rotas’s marginalization to two reasons: first, the National Theatre would probably wish to avoid any connection with a leftist intellectual who had actively participated in the National Resistance as a member of EAM; and, secondly, Rotas’s use of an idiomatic form of Demotic Greek was not only outdated but also incompatible with the intentions of the right-wing government of the period 1946-
1950 (O Saixpir se Kairo Polemou 144; “I Metafrasi” 161-167).
At this time of his almost total banishment from the National Theatre Rotas signed a contract with the publishing house Ikaros in order to complete the translation of the whole of Shakespeare’s oeuvre in Greek (Krontiris, “Translation as
1 His political adventures, however, were not over. In 1967 during the Colonels’ Dictatorship, in the age of 70 Rotas was exiled in the island of Yiaros. He was allowed to return home after a while (Damianakou, “Eisagogi” 35-6). 2 In the 1950s the National Theatre chose a new translation by Rotas only once, i.e. in the case of the staging of The Winter’s Tale in 1952. Out of his previous translations the National Theatre used only those of King Lear (1933) and Hamlet (1938) in the staging of the plays in 1957 and 1955 respectively. Karthaios was still the most frequently commissioned Shakespeare translator for the National Theatre. He translated Othello (1951), The Merry Wives of Windsor (1955) and Cymbeline (1957), which were used by the National Theatre in the stagings of the plays in 1958, 1955 and 1957 respectively. Out of his older translations the National Theatre now used those of The Taming of the Shrew (1948), Richard III (1932), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Macbeth (1924) in the staging of the plays in 1959, 1960, 1961 and 1967 respectively. This information is derived from the digitalized archive of stage productions of the National Theatre [http://www.nt-archive.gr/]. Some of Karthaios’s older translations, like that of Romeo and Juliet (1936) and The Taming of the Shrew (1948) were published for the first time in the 1950s, while others, like his influential interwar translations of Macbeth (1924), Julius Caesar (1932) and Richard III (1932) were reprinted, often more than once (Douka-Kambitoglou, I Parousia tou Saixpir 18). An up-and-coming translator of the National Theatre was Yiannis Oikonomidis whose translations of The Tempest and A Midsummer Night’s Dream were used in 1949-1950 and 1951-1952 respectively. The National Theatre also used Skouloudis’s translation of As You Like It in the staging of the play in 1950-1951. 225
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
Appropriation” 209).1 The exact terms of the contract between Rotas and the publishing house, as well as the ideological commitments, if any, placed upon the translator, are not known. Nonetheless, Rotas’s collaboration with Ikaros at a time that he was persecuted for his political convictions by the state and marginalized by the National Theatre was an acknowledgement of his worth as an intellectual in general, and of his skills as a Shakespeare scholar and translator in particular.2
Therein therefore may lie one important motive for Rotas’s translations of
Shakespeare in the 1950s: through his association with the name of Shakespeare, which was very high across Europe, he wished to prove himself and his ability as a translator after his rejection by the National Theatre. Further recognition of Rotas’s status as Shakespeare translator and scholar also came from the fact that many of his translations at the time were published with the collaboration of the British Council in
Athens and they were prefaced by William Arthur Sewell, who was appointed Byron professor of English at the University of Athens in 1946. Rotas’s translations of
Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, The Tempest, Winter’s
Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Truilus and Cressida belong to this category.
Some of these translations, like Rotas’s translation of Twelfth Night, Winter’s Tale,
1 Ikaros gradually managed to gather around it the representative intellectuals of the so-called “generation of the ‘30s.” The literary generation of the 1930s includes the authors, poets and artists that were born in the early 20th century and reached the peak of their creativity in the 1930s. Some of its representatives are Ilias Venezis, Yiorgos Seferis, Odysseas Elyris, Yiorgos Theotokas, and Aggelos Terzakis. Vitti dicusses the literary generation of the 1930s in his homonymous book I Genia tou Trianta but also in Istoria tis Neoellinikis Logotechnias (367-392). By the time that the publishing house Ikaros signed the contract with Rotas, it had already published for the first time in Greece the so- called Cavafian Canon, i.e. the 154 mostly brief poems that Cavafy considered as representative of his work as a poet (1948). 2 Another instance of the recognition of Rotas’s worth as an intellectual is traced in the fact that M. Pechlivanidis, owner of the publishing house Atlantis, appointed him general supervisor of the series Klassika Eikonografimena [Classics Illustrated]. These were very popular illustrated comics that were published in the period 1951-1965 and presented works of world literature or adapted into comic stories about the Greek history. Rotas wrote 47 issues, while there are more issues without signature that are believed to have been written by Rotas or by Sophia Mavroeidi-Papadaki (Karagiannis 279- 289). 226
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) and Truilus and Cressida, had already been published in the journal of the British
Council Aggloelliniki Epitheorisi [English-Greek Review], which addressed social groups with higher education and was intended as a means of communication between the British and the Greek cultures (Kokkinidou 49-65).
Rotas did not translate Shakespeare’s plays only because he wished to confirm his worth as translator. As in the 1930s, he translated Shakespeare in order to enrich the native language and literature, and to foreground what he took to be the popular origins of the bard’s plays and their didactic dimension. For example, in his essay
“Athinaioi Tragikoi kai Saixpir” [Athenian Tragedians and Shakespeare] written in
1952, Rotas underlines the superior spiritual and purifying power of Shakespeare’s plays and the fact that, like the ancient Greek tragedies, they present evil and its consequences, and they suggest laws for salvation, prosperity, and social and political virtue (Theatro kai Glossa 414). He further insists that Shakespeare’s plays teach the basic Christian virtues: love and forgiveness (Rotas Theatro kai Glossa 422). In his essay “Ouilliam Saixpir Gnisio Tekno tis Anagennisis” [William Shakespeare,
Authentic Offspring of the Renaissance], which was published in the journal Theatro in 1964, Rotas shares Sergei Yesenin’s view that the Bard is the greatest folk poet
(Theatro kai Glossa 438) and proves it through reference to biographical information about the Bard.
Rotas preserved his view of Shakespeare and his concept of ideal femininity.
As explained in Chapter 5 by reference to Rotas’s essays and literary works, he supported an androgynous version of womanhood, which was influenced by his socialist ideology and his love for the popular tradition. Ideal womanhood for Rotas would combine tenderness with patriotism and appropriation of masculine virtues like courage at critical moments. After his active involvement in the National Resistance 227
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) against the Nazis, it seems that he came to support such a model of femininity even more openly.
In 1945, Rotas published the poem “Douleve, Douleve Gynaika” in the newspaper I Foni tis Allileggiis [The Voice of Solidarity] (Rotas, O Agonas 206). The poem celebrates female androgyny. It urges women to be courageous and endure the hardships of the struggle for survival, freedom, peace and honour, but at the same time it reminds them that they are the “flower of love,” the gentle caress of life, the laughter and the song for the fighting ones (Rotas, O Agonas 206).1
The next year, in 1946, Rotas included a slightly different version of this poem in his play Ellinika Niata [Greek Youth]. The play dramatizes the struggle of two siblings, Annoula and Yiorgis, against the German invaders in rural Greece, and it supports the view that in the event of national crisis all young people are united and fight for freedom, regardless of their sex (Rotas, Ellinika Niata 203). Among other things the play reveals the complex role of women in national struggles, the discriminations they face on account of their sex and the contradictions they have to solve as they are required to demonstrate manly courage while retaining their feminine nature.
Annoula is called λεβέντισσα [leventissa - courageous woman] and
συντρόφισσα [syntrofissa - comrade] and she is praised for fighting among men as courageously as they do (Rotas, Ellinika Niata 216). Although she says that struggles are not fought only with weapons and admits that she often has to resort to womanly means –i.e. sweet smiles– in order to escape the danger, she also presents herself as
1 A slightly different version of the poem is included in the play Ellinika Niata [Greek Youths]. The two poems differ in the last stanza, in place of which the poem of the play repeats the second stanza which emphasizes women’s feminine side. 228
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) strong enough to have suppressed the fear and weakness that are traditionally viewed as being typical of women (Rotas, Ellinika Niata 217). Later, when she and her mother meet Yiorgis after an almost lethal incident, she is the one who avoids emotionalizing by saying that “there is not time for sentiments, hugs and warm words” (Rotas, Ellinika Niata 238). Because of this hardness she has developed, she demands that during the war she and other women like her be treated equally and trustfully, for if the need arises her “hand can strike with fury and bring death” (Rotas,
Ellinika Niata 217). Annoula is even made to verbally attack her mother for preferring to sacrifice her own life and her daughter’s in order for her son to be saved. Upon this occasion she utters a short feminist manifesto criticizing the subjective state of women, who are reduced to nameless and propertyless beings, mere accessories to men who are αφέντες [afendes - lords] and νοικοκύρηδες [noikokyrides - masters at home] (Rotas, Ellinika Niata 230).
A feminist manifesto is also discernible in the poem “Lambo,” which was written in 1953. The homonymous female narrator refuses to change her name and subject herself to any man (Rotas, Kithara 35). She is proud of her strength, which allows her to earn her living by working, and she shatters the myth of women as easily deceived by love words. She demands from her partner equal expression of love.
Rotas’s experience in the National Resistance inspired him to write a series of poems brimming with images of dynamic women. These poems are included in his poetic collection Kithara kai Garoufalο: Erotika kai Alla Poiimata [Guitar and
Carnation: Love and Other Poems] (1953) and in the book Vasilis Rotas 1889-1977 prologued by Voula Damianakou (1979).
229
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For example, in his poem Sto Lefkoma tιs L.K. 1941 [In the Album of L.K.
1941] (Rotas, Kithara 130-31), the narrator initially declares women to be the target of insatiable male imagination and describes them as “the bud […] that promises a beautiful flower” (Rotas, Kithara 131). However, by the end of the poem he embeds her in the phallic image of the bare sword that is ready for murder, thus urging her to join the struggle for freedom (Kithara 131).
In the poem Otan se Protoeida [When I First Saw You], by virtue of her participation in the battlefield the woman has become an “armed goddess,” who is ready to fight, despite all obstacles, pains and calamities, and to walk over every catastrophe (Vasilis Rotas 110). In a combination of sexualized and harsh language, after the day’s labour, her “tender body” is only seemingly dead, while in fact it is always ready to rise again and take up work like “the ox that pulls the plow” (Rotas,
Vasilis Rotas 110).
In his memoirs of the Νational Resistance, O Agonas sta Ellinika Vouna: O
Vasilis Rotas sti Dekaetia 1940-1950, which was published posthumously in 1982, in an entry under the title “Gerakines kai Aetopoula” [Female Falcons and Eagles],
Rotas expressed his awe at the courage exhibited by the women of the rural Greece, which came like an “apocalypsis” to him (O Agonas 84). The women in Thessaly were worthy successors of Souliotisses.1 Their activities were not determined exclusively on the basis of their sex: not only did they involve themselves in traditional female domestic activities inside the house, but also on their own initiative they undertook harsher duties accomplished under adverse weather conditions, while
1 Souliotisses were women from Souli that fought in the 1821 Greek Revolution against the Ottoman Occupation. They became famous for their suicidal dance off the hill of Zaloggos, where they killed themselves and their babies in order to spare themselves the disgrace and slavery to the Turks. 230
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) they even reached the point of fighting (O Agonas 84). In addition, Rotas expressed intense admiration for their eloquence, outspokenness and practicality. Their ability to discuss in public the issues that concerned the struggle for liberation could teach the suffragettes a great lesson in practical female activism (O Agonas 84). Hence, the socialist Rotas concludes that these women, these “winged falcons,” as he describes them, deserve to be granted the right to vote, in contrast to what was the belief shared by the “servile creatures of the city,” the allegedly educated women, who without meeting the rural women in person deemed them immature for politics (O Agonas
86). For Rotas, these women were mature enough to face their violent death in the battlefield with courage and ask to be commemorated for their worth and loyalty in the struggle (O Agonas 200).
Finally, around the year 1954 Rotas finished the play Kolokotronis which he had started in 1945 and which constituted a fictional reworking of Kolokotronis’s victory against Dramalis.1 The central figure of the play is Kolokotronis, who becomes a symbol of popular leadership that can guide the degraded people in their struggle for freedom (Vasilis Rotas 359). Although the play does not contain any woman in a leading role, it abounds in scenes that praise women’s man-like bravery.
For example, the figure of Bouboulina that serves as a guest star in some scenes functions as a symbol to indicate the role that women should undertake in the national struggle: Bouboulina is represented as a beautiful a woman that transgresses her traditional gender role and comes to be a ship captain.2 She is full of λεβεντιά [levedia
1 Theodoros Kolokotronis 1770-1843) was one of the most prominent leaders of the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829). Mahmut Ali Pasha Dramalis (1770-1822) was an Ottoman general that was sent to Peloponnese in 1822 to quell the Greek Revolution. Eventually his campaign failed and his army was defeated at the battle of Dervenakia. 2 Laskarina Pinotsi (Bouboulina) (1771-1825) was the most well-known woman to have taken part in the Greek War of Independence in 1821. 231
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
– courage], a Greek word used to describe male courage, and has emotionally hardened herself after her son’s death for the sake of homeland (Rotas, Kolokotronis
84). What is more, the play includes a brief scene of transvestitism with Elenio, a young woman that has been disguised as a man in order to convince Kolokotronis to take her in the battlefield. Immediately, after the revelation of the fact that Elenio is a woman dressed as a man and her admission in the army, the scene concludes with another example of female courage. A woman called “Horiatissa,” whom Rotas keeps nameless on purpose so that she functions as a symbol, appears before Kolokotronis and hands over her coward husband who preferred staying at home to fighting. The two successive incidents cause Kolokotronis’s awe and his wondering comment
“Mother of God, you send me good omens! Women turn into men!” (Rotas,
Kolokotronis 103).
iii. The reception of Cleopatra prior to Rotas’s translation
Between Velmos’s adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra in 1924 and Rotas’s rendering of the play three decades later, in 1954-55, the translation history of the play in
Greece was enriched with a translation by Manolis Skouloudis and Dionysia
Skouloudi.1 Their translation was published serially in the journal Poiitiki Techni
[Poetic Art] in the last four months of the year 1948 (issues 12-21/1948). Its publication together with the translators’ skills had already been advertised in the previous issue of the journal: they were praised for their ability to subdue the twisted and difficult Shakespearean verse to their extraordinary poetic feeling, for their subtle
1 From now on, the translators Manolis Skouloudis and Dionysia Skouloudi are referred to as “the Skouloudises.” 232
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) understanding and for their unparalleled linguistic expression which managed to present the play as a Greek text (Krontiris, O Saixpir 160).
According to Krontiris, the translation of Antony and Cleopatra by the
Skouloudises was quite timely and interventionist in the late 1940s. This is owed to the fact that it used a radical form of Demotic Greek at a time when the debate on the
Language Question was rekindled due to the proposal of some politicians to abolish
Katharevousa as the official language of Greece in the impending constitutional amendment (O Saixpir 160, 173). This very use of radical Demotic Greek affected the image of Cleopatra. It made her much more abrupt in comparison to both Damiralis’s royal and pompous Cleopatra and Velmos’s timid victim of Antony’s love. In the translation of the play by the Skouloudises Cleopatra’s rude bluntness is magnified.
For example, they use the phrase Καλά, ντε! ξέρω. Να, έτσι. (Skouloudis and
Skouloudi 370) [Ok, take it easy! I know. Yes, that's right.] in order to translate
Cleopatra’s response “Sooth,la, Ile helpe: Thus it must bee” (IV.iv.12) to Antony after he has affectionately called her “the Armourer of my heart” and has corrected her in the way she ties his armour (IV.iv.10-11). In addition, the Skouloudises translated
Cleopatra’s question “Where is the fellow” (III.iii.1), which she uses with reference to the messenger that brings her the news of Antony’s marriage to Octavia, with the discourteous phrase Πουν αυτός ο χαμένος; (339) [Where is this loser?]. At the same time, the translators seem to enhance the misogynistic views that are often voiced in the play about Cleopatra, persistently linking her sexuality to immorality and destruction. More details about this aspect of the representation of Cleopatra by the
Skouloudises are provided in the following section of the present chapter, in the course of its comparison with Rotas’s translation of the play.
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The serialized publication of the translation might have prevented the reader from getting a clear picture of how the Skouloudises perceived Cleopatra. The translators’ unflattering view of the Egyptian Queen seems to have been reinforced by means of appending Eleni P. Kartali’s translation of José-Maria Heredia’s poem
“Antoine and Cléopâtra” [Antony and Cleopatra] (1884). This is the last in a group of three interrelated sonnets that focus on Antony and Cleopatra. This final sonnet describes a scene of the famous lovers after the act of love as they embrace each other on a terrace overlooking Egypt. Antony is described as both a warrior and Cleopatra’s captive [πολεμιστής και αιχμάλωτος μαζί] for her secret perfume has got him insanely drunk and deprived him of his wits [μέθυσε τρελά με το κρυφό άρωμά της] (Kartali
402). As he bends over her to respond to her invitation for a kiss, he senses that she will betray him and in her eyes he sees the dynamics of his defeat:
Κι’ ο φλογερός Imperator μες στο βαθύ τους χρώμα
Βλέπει, σκυφτός, απέραντη μια θάλασσαν, ακόμα
Γιομάτη απ’ τα καράβια του που φεύγουν νικημένα. (Kartali 402)
[And the fiery emperor in their deep color
Sees, bent over, a vast sea, still
Full of his ships that leave defeated]1
1 The actual poem in French is: Et sur elle courbé, l'ardent Imperator Vit dans ses larges yeux étoilés de points d'or Toute une mer immense où fuyaient des galères. (Heredia 278-279) 234
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
This climactic last line alludes to the fact that Cleopatra’s ships will desert Antony at the naval battle at Actium. Cleopatra’s role as a fatal seductress is the image that is left to the reader of the poem.
The unfavourable representation of Cleopatra by the Skouloudises seems to have been further reinforced by the performance of the actress Katerina Andreadi, whose theatre company used the translation in the production of Shakespeare’s
Antony and Cleopatra (1949-1950) under the direction of Sokratis Karantinos.1 In his memoirs Titos Vandis, the actor who played the role of Caesar, argues that due to her physical appearance and her height (1,72m) Katerina Andreadi could not successfully impersonate an affectionate Cleopatra, which was exactly the critics’ expectation of
Shakespeare’s Egyptian Queen (Kantiros). Katerina Andreadi’s Cleopatra fluctuated between a lady of the bourgeoisie and a teacher of Physical Education (Kantiros). The production of Antony and Cleopatra was not successful. According to Krontiris, the failure of the production was partly due to the fact that it undermined the idea of catharsis and the idea of a great and redemptive love, which was exactly what the critics and the audience needed to see on stage immediately after their painful experience of the Greek Civil War (O Saixpir 168-169, 172-173; Antonios kai
Kleopatra 103-104).
The fact that Rotas retranslated the play within a short time from the
Skouloudises does not have to do merely with his publishing contract. After all, he had not translated yet more popular plays like Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and the
Taming of the Shrew. The six years that intervene between the translations by Rotas
1 According to Krontiris, since the liberation from the German troops and during the Civil War Katerina Andreadi’s theatre company used to stage plays which focused on dynamic women and the relationship between the two sexes, like Henric Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Putain Respectueuse [The Respectful Prostitute] (O Saixpir 157-158). 235
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) and the Skouloudises is a short time in the life of a literary polysystem. As in the case of Theotokis’s retranslation of Othello (1915), we have a case of what Pym calls
“active retranslations,” i.e. retranslations that coexist and share the same cultural context (82). Pym further argues that the existence of active retranslations means that there is active rivalry between the different versions of the source text (82). Venuti, who elaborates on the nature of this rivalry between retranslations, argues that retranslations mark a negation of or challenge to interpretation(s) of previous translations (“Retranslations” 26). This is the case with Rotas’s translation of Antony and Cleopatra. Rotas’s espousal of romantic and socialist ideology, as well as his experience during the Greek Resistance and his preoccupation with patriotic literature, led him to produce a very different interpretation of the play. He highlighted exactly those elements that were undermined both in the Skouloudises’ translation and in the staging of the play by Katerina Andreadi’s theatre company.
Rotas reinterpreted the play as a larger-than-life love story in which the contemporary readers could find relief from the painful memories of the recent past. In his translation Cleopatra is an exemplary androgynous figure that harmoniously blends masculine and feminine qualities, while she is also systematically protected from charges of immorality, promiscuity and cowardice.1
1 This is not the first time that Rotas admires a Shakespearean heroine for her androgyny. In 1935 he wrote a brief analysis of Twelfth Night which served as the theatre program for the production of the play by Dimitris Rondiris at the National Theatre. This text overflows with his admiration for the main female characters of the play, Olivia and Viola. Both are praised for being virtuous, pure, innocent and loyal, but Viola is additionally commended for fighting for her love for Orsino and exhibiting self- restraint in that she rules her passion for him heroically (Rotas, “I Dodekati Nychta” 11). In Viola, therefore, Rotas discerns the perceptive combination of masculine virtues, like heroism, courage and self-restraint, with feminine ones, like purity, innocence and constancy. In Rotas’s treatment of Viola we find early evidence of Rotas’s tendency to trace masculine virtues in Shakespeare’s heroines, an inclination which reaches its peak after the war in his translation of Antony and Cleopatra (1954-1955) and Macbeth (1962). It seems that other intellectuals with leftist views shared a similar understanding of Shakespeare’s women. In 1943 the actor and director Pelos Katselis published his book Gyro Ap’ to Saixpiriko Theatro [About Shakespeare’s Theatre]. In his analysis of Romeo and Juliet he took issue 236
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) iv. Cleopatra in Rotas’s translation of Antony and Cleopatra (1954-1955)
As already discussed in Chapter 4, it is to the inconsistent and unpredictable character of Cleopatra that Shakespeare’s play owes much of its complexity. Cleopatra brings together opposite, often irreconcilable, features, and she has evoked widely contrasting responses, ranging from those that praise her as a goddess to those that condemn her as a wanton temptress. Keith Linley, who examines how a Jacobean audience would have interpreted the story of Antony and Cleopatra, neatly lists a series of questions that the character of Cleopatra invites the reader (in this case, the translator) to answer:
Is she to be admired, pitied or condemned? Or all three? Is she an archetypical
femme fatale like Delilah or Jezebel? Is she a woman of towering attraction
and unique qualities? Is she a clever actress who plays the part of a woman in
love while performing a charade and looking all the time for her own
advantage? Is she just an insecure, promiscuous neurotic whose emotional
instability is frustrating to the audience and fatal to Antony? (167)
In this section I examine which of the aspects of Cleopatra’s multifaceted personality
Rotas chose to highlight and how he coped with the challenges and complexities that she poses to the translator.
In the introduction to his translation of Antony and Cleopatra Rotas glorifies the protagonists’ love as great and redemptive. He describes it as an “erotic passion which leads people to the sweet union of marriage and renews the human race,” while it also produces “the best erotic music” and “the most beautiful harmony ever given
with idealist critics and philosophers that perceived Juliet as a dreamy creature, a soul without a body that lives and breathes under the moonlight, a wax doll, an abstract creature (Katselis 88-89, 93). He insisted that Juliet develops from the status of a child to that of a mature femininity that αντρώνεται [reaches manhood] and comes to possess manly traits, such as unmitigated determination and power, heroic stability and bravery to face increasing isolation and death (Katselis 102-104). 237
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) by the mating of two people, a man and a woman” (Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra 9-
10). According to Rotas, Antony’s and Cleopatra’s love entails such grandeur that it reaches “apotheosis” (Antonios kai Kleopatra 11-12). It is no ordinary love, but it involves the transcendence of common limits, so that when they kiss each other, this kiss is like “a shock to the universe” (Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra 11). Rotas admits that this love involves death and a fire-like, self-consuming passion, but this death is celebrated as the only way for the lovers to continue their love dream (Rotas,
Antonios kai Kleopatra 9, 11). So, Rotas argues, Antony’s and Cleopatra’s love is elevated into the symbolic realm and becomes an idea (Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra
11).
In the introduction to his translation Rotas also explains that fatally excessive love causes Antony and Cleopatra to “flee the world of decency” and place their will above their reason (Antonios kai Kleopatra 10). Especially Antony is made to neglect his duties as a member of the triumvirate and become disloyal to his soldiers, even to the point of abandoning them at Actium following Cleopatra’s flight (III.x). Οne would expect the socially-minded Rotas to condemn Antony’s and Cleopatra’s love because it undermines the common good in the play.1
Yet, he manages to make the lovers fit into his socialist worldview by presenting them as rebels to the higher order. This higher order is represented by
Octavius Caesar, who prioritizes interest and calculation above everything. After all,
Rotas insists that it is Caesar who proposes the marriage between Antony and his sister, Octavia, in order to further his political schemes, and he thus seems to clear
1 Rotas’s opposition to individualism which operates at the expense of collectivism is repeatedly and systematically demonstrated in his theoretical writings on language and drama, which are compiled in the collection of his essays Theatro kai Glossa [Theatre and Language] (172-208, 215, 229-230, 251- 255, 562-570, 572-575, et passim). 238
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
Antony of any responsibility in accepting to marry her. Rotas sharply criticizes this manipulative way of thinking and asserts that when “love is evaluated by other principles —wealth, social position, fame, intentions— it becomes circumspection”
(Antonios kai Kleopatra 11). Also, he attributes jealousy to Caesar and every other character of the play, such as Philo, Pompey and Enobarbus, who judge the lovers harshly by rational criteria and insist that Antony’s love for Cleopatra is a dotage and
Cleopatra’s love for Antony is a mere carnal lust (Rotas Antonios kai Kleopatra 12).
These views of the Romans are unacceptable to Rotas.
In fact, in his introduction Rotas defends Antony’s and Cleopatra’s decision to follow the precepts of love at the expense of their political duties, and he even argues that this decision does not deprive them of reason altogether (Antonios kai Kleopatra
10). Due to experiencing passionate love in an older age, rather than in their youth, as
Romeo and Juliet, Rotas argues that Antony and Cleopatra possess “precisely weighed knowledge, acquired by people who have been tested and burned again and again in the strongest furnaces, and have reached the zenith of life’s curve” (Antonios kai Kleopatra 10).
Within this romantic interpretation of Antony’s and Cleopatra’s love the
Egyptian Queen is presented in a very positive way. In his introduction to his translation, Rotas describes her in particularly empowering terms, as possessing beauty, bravery and femininity, the ideal combination for Rotas, as it has been explained in the previous section of the present chapter by reference to his primary works. Particularly his characterization of Cleopatra as γενναία σαν γυναίκα (Rotas,
Antonios kai Kleopatra 11) [brave as a woman] is an iconoclastic phrase, quite powerful exactly because it attacks the cherished belief that courage is a manly virtue.
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Throughout his actual translation of Antony and Cleopatra Rotas seems to systematically build a positive image of the Egyptian Queen that rests upon androgyny. James J. Greene defines androgyny as “an ideal of human conduct [that] rejects as restrictive those traditionally assigned, arbitrary gender roles in favor of a new view of human experience which combines the best and richest of both kinds of sexual traits” (25). Along with other scholars of the 1980s, Greene argues that “the lovers exchange masculine and feminine qualities, rather than simply inverting them, thereby showing a capacity for crossgender identity” (Munson Deats 22). Hence, while “Antony strives to escape the domination of the exclusively masculine Roman world” (Lewis 354), Cleopatra is a commanding presence that exceeds her female role. Robin Cameron traces some instances in which Cleopatra fills the role of the dominant male. For example, her violence against the messenger that brings the news of Antony’s marriage to Octavia is a “predominantly male trait which exemplifies her role crossover and her authoritative nature” (II.vi) (Cameron). In addition, she is very assertive in her decision-making as for example when she insists on being present like a man in the battle against Caesar, despite Enobarbus’s advice to stay behind
(III.vii.19-24). Finally, her decision to die and avoid being made a spectacle is the ultimate gesture by which a Roman proves his manhood (Cameron).
Cleopatra’s androgyny was probably a source of admiration for Rotas, who had supported such a vision of femininity in his primary works, especially after his participation in the National Resistance. In his translation of Antony and Cleopatra his portrait of the Egyptian Queen celebrates feminine traits such as sensuality, sensitivity, affection, sincere love for Antony, insecurity at his absence, but it also praises her appropriation of masculine features and roles. At the same time, Rotas systematically tries to save Cleopatra from charges of immorality, promiscuity and 240
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) cowardice. Hence, after Antony’s death, Cleopatra’s transformation into a brave woman who defies the Roman enemy and chooses death does not come as a surprise to the reader of Rotas’s translation. This is because the translator has manipulated
Shakespeare’s text all along in order to draw attention to Cleopatra’s androgyny and to show how harmoniously she unites a feminine and a masculine side.
Rotas manages to construct a positive portrait of an androgynous Cleopatra, both by means of making subtle interventions in the source text, and by means of interpreting ambiguous words and lines in a way that is favorable to Cleopatra. His translation of Antony and Cleopatra therefore seems to effect a recuperation of
Shakespeare’s Egyptian Queen, especially after the vulgar representation of her by the
Skouloudises some seven years earlier. So far I have spoken about Rotas’s view of
Cleopatra as expressed in his paratextual comments. In what follows I proceed to discuss how Rotas represents Cleopatra in his actual translation of the play.
Mark Antony, one of the triumvirs of the Roman Republic, spends his time in
Egypt and has neglected his duties after being beguiled by Egypt’s Queen, Cleopatra.
When a message arrives informing him that his wife, Fulvia, is dead and that Sextus
Pompey is raising an army to rebel against the triumvirate, Antony decides to return to Rome. In his translation Rotas underlines Cleopatra’s sensitivity and her anguish to keep Antony in Egypt. At one point she notes:
something it is I would:
O, my oblivion is a very Antony,
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and I am all forgotten (I.iii.111-113).1
Critics have proposed two different meanings for these lines. In the Variorum edition of the play, which Rotas consulted for his translation, Furness shows that most critics believed that Cleopatra is pretending to forget what she intended to say in order to show that her memory is as deceptive as Antony has been (Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra 55). However, there is also Samuel Johnson’s alternative interpretation according to which we feel sympathy for Cleopatra because she is forlorn, “deserted and undone” (Shakespeare, The Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra
54).
Prior to Rotas’s translation, the Greek translators of the play opted for the first reading of the lines (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra 12; Velmos, O Antonios kai i
Kleopatra tou Saixpir 28; Skouloudis and Skouloudi 275). None of them revealed the edition of the source text they used; therefore, we cannot check to see if it acknowledged the ambiguity of the lines. However, Damiralis, the first translator of the play in Greek, shows awareness of the controversial meaning of Cleopatra’s words. In a footnote he states that, although the actual line uttered by Cleopatra reads
“I am all forgotten,” critics take it to mean “I forget everything” (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra 12). It seems that Velmos and the Skouloudises adopted the same interpretation as Damiralis. Rotas, however, made the difference. He was the first
1 Quotes from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra refer to Horace Howard Furness’s Variorum edition by scene, act and line numbers (Philadelpia 1907). Quotes from Rotas’s translation of Antony and Cleopatra refer by page numbers to the 1957 edition in Athens by the publishing house of Ikaros. For the analysis of the words I have used the online version of Lexiko tis Koinis Neoellinikis [Dictionary of Standard Modern Greek], unless noted otherwise.
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Greek translator to follow Johnson’s suggestion and translate Cleopatra’s phrase literally:
κάτι θα ’λεγα, μα τι –
ω, η μνήμη μου είναι ίδια Αντώνιος, όλα με ξεχνάνε (Rotas Antonios kai
Kleopatra 33, emphasis added).
[something it is I would:
Oh, my memory is like Antony, everything forgets about me]
Of course, much depends on the actual actress that impersonates Cleopatra and how she performs the line. Nonetheless, Rotas seems to add a touching detail in
Cleopatra’s portrait; he replaces the previous translators’ view that she ironically hints at Antony’s deception with the view that she points to her state as an abandoned woman.
While Antony is away in Rome and Cleopatra is at a loss, she jests with
Mardian, the eunuch, about his physical inability to please her. During their conversation Cleopatra wonders whether the eunuch has affections, to which question
Mardian responds affirmatively and addresses Cleopatra as “gracious Madam”
(I.v.17). The word “gracious” is generally used to denote kindness, courtesy, charm and good taste, or, alternatively, it can be used to address royalty and high nobility.
The word “Madam” is also a form of respectful or polite address to a woman. Rotas renders Mardian’s apparently unstressed form of address with the emphatic phrase
αφέντρα μου χαριτωμένη (Antonios kai Kleopatra 38) [my gracious mistress]. Rotas’s translation choice points towards an image of Cleopatra that combines feminine grace
243
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) with the masculine strength to rule and control. At the same time, by means of this simple form of address Rotas’s translation creates an interesting antithesis between an attractive and dynamic Cleopatra and a castrated Mardian who has been stripped of his manhood. Rotas’s translation is markedly different from previous translations of
Shakespeare’s play which rendered the phrase literally and unemphatically as
χαριτωμένη βασίλισσα [gracious queen] (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra 15;
Skouloudis and Skouloudi 278).1
Another example of Rotas’s conceptualization of Cleopatra in androgynous terms is traced in the famous cross-dressing scene (V.ii), where Cleopatra reminisces about the things she and Antony did together. She describes the time when she and
Antony got drunk, went to bed and in the morning she dressed him up in her garments while she wore his “sword Philippan.” Cleopatra admits that
Oh times:
I laught him out of patience: and that night
I laught him into patience” (II.v.24-25).
In Rotas’s translation the phrase is rendered in the following way:
Τη μέρα εκείνη – ω χρόνια! - τον κορόιδεψα ώσπου
αγρίεψε· και τη νύχτα τον κορόιδεψα ώσπου ημέρωσε
1 Velmos excluded Cleopatra’s dialogue with Mardian from his adaptation. 244
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
[That day – oh years! – I fooled him until he got wild· and the night I fooled
him until he was tamed] (Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra 60).
Rotas’s translation places Cleopatra in the role of the tamer, who manages to harness a man’s wildness and anger and domesticate him thanks to her charms. Feminine beauty and masculine strength unite wonderfully and effectively in Rotas’s image of a charming Cleopatra who is involved in sexual games with Antony, but who is also armed with his sword and manages to tame his anger. But for Velmos, who translated the lines in a manner similar to Rotas (O Antonios kai i Kleopatra tou Saixpir 30), the rest of Rotas’s predecessors translated Antony’s recovery of patience towards
Cleopatra’s tricks rather unemphatically.
Rotas’s emphasis on the androgynous side of Cleopatra arises very clearly in scene iv of Act IV, in which Eros arms Antony immediately before the decisive confrontation with Caesar, and Cleopatra insists on helping. Antony acknowledges her deep affection and addresses her as “the Armourer of my heart” (IV.iv.11). At this tender moment between the protagonists, Rotas seizes the opportunity to draw attention to Cleopatra’s masculine side. As Antony is donning his armour he scolds
Eros for being clumsy and praises Cleopatra for her skillfulness in the following way:
“Thou fumblest: Eros, and my Queenes a Squire/ More tight at this, then thou”
(IV.iv.20-21). The word “squire” is a polysemous word that is used to refer to a man of high social standing, or to a nobleman that is an attendant to a knight. In their translation of the play seven years before Rotas, the Skouloudises translated the word into ιπποκόμος [groom] (370), which denotes the person that is in charge of taking care of and cleaning horses. This choice degraded Cleopatra and placed her in a very
245
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) inferior position in relation to Antony. In sharp contrast, Rotas followed Damiralis’s rendering and he also translated the word into υπασπιστής [aide-de-camp]. This choice immediately promoted Cleopatra to the position of the officer who helps another officer of higher rank. Antony is still Cleopatra’s superior, but this time the distance and the power difference between them is much less.
The downgrading of the implications of Cleopatra’s sudden retreat during
Antony’s battle with Caesar forms part of Rotas’s attempt to build the image of a strong Cleopatra. After the event Cleopatra asks Enobarbus if the defeat was truly
Antony’s fault or if it was hers (III.xiii.4). Enobarbus answers that it was solely
Antony’s fault because he made “his will/ Lord of his Reason” (III.xiii.5-6), and that it is not Cleopatra’s fault that she “fled,/ From the great face of Warre, whose seuerall ranges/ Frighted each other” (III.xiii.6-8). Damiralis (Antonios kai Kleopatra 54) and
Velmos (O Antonios kai i Kleopatra tou Saixpir 47) translated the latter phrase in a way that justifies Cleopatra’s fleeing from the battle on account of the severity of the war. In fact, Velmos added the phrase σα γυναίκα [like a woman] in order to attribute
Cleopatra’s abandonment of Antony in the middle of the battle to the frailty that is supposed to be inherent in women (Velmos, O Antonios kai i Kleopatra tou Saixpir
47). The Skouloudises downplayed the harshness of the battle and emphasized
Cleopatra’s lack of bravery by rendering the verb “fled” into το ‘βαλες στα πόδια [you ran away], an idiomatic phrase which underlines one’s fear and cowardice (361).
Rotas followed the interpretative line set by Damiralis and Velmos, underlined how scary the experience of the war is and translated the verb “fled” rather unemphatically into έφυγες μακρυά [you went away] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 107).
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Besides underlining Cleopatra’s androgyny, another important aspect of
Rotas’s representation of the Egyptian Queen is that he systematically celebrates her sexuality and tries to protect her from accusations of immorality and promiscuity.
This is a particularly progressive gesture, which is encountered in the works of some
Greek female authors of the mid-1940s (Kastrinaki 497-502). It also takes place at a time when, despite the progress in women’s enfranchisement, the Greek society still incriminated female sexuality. According to Avdela, who has studied the crimes of honour that were perpetrated in the Greek society of the 1950s and 1960s, women’s honor was highly contingent upon their sexual discipline. What defined a woman’s honor was the success with which she responded to the gendered division of labor and avoided morally questionable modern practices, like moving to the city and exposing herself to accompanying dangerous liberties, such as paid work, make-up, socialization with men outside the family circle and consumption of alcohol (Dia
Logous Timis 137, 141-142).
Rotas’s positive attitude towards Cleopatra’s sexuality arises very clearly in the way he translated Enobarbus’s famous description of the Egyptian Queen as she was sailing in her extravagant barge. One of Antony’s most loyal supporters,
Enobarbus, describes to Maecinas and Agrippa, friends to Caesar, the first time that
Antony saw Cleopatra (II.ii.224-240, 242-254). His description creates a setting of luxury and pleasure, suitable for the seductive, goddess-like queen: her barge was like a “burnish Throne,” bright with the sun’s reflections (II.ii.225), “the Poope was beaten Gold” (II.ii.226), the sails were dyed purple and so heavily perfumed that the
“Windes were Love-Sicke” (II.ii.227-228), “the oars were silver” (II.ii.229), and her pavilion was “cloth of Gold” (II.ii.234). From therein Cleopatra emerges as a goddess, more beautiful than any portrait of Venus (II.ii.235-236), wrapped in the “strange, 247
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) invisible perfume” that was emitted from the barge and reached the people on the wharves (II.ii.247-249). Rotas translated Cleopatra’s seductive world for his Greek readers, retaining its luxury, but it is this last detail about the “strange, invisible perfume” (II.ii.248) that is of interest.
Rotas did not opt for a literal translation of the phrase. In his translation the perfume that surrounds Cleopatra is θυμίαμα [incense] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 54).
Here, Rotas seems to follow Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, i.e. Shakespeare’s main source in writing Antony and Cleopatra, rather than Shakespeare’s text itself. In Plutarch’s biography of Mark Antony we encounter the following description of the odour emitted from Cleopatra’s barge:
Οδμαί δε θαυμασταί τας όχθας από
Θυμιαμάτων πολλών κατείχον (1106, emphasis added)
[Wondrous odours from countless incense-offerings
diffused themselves along the river-banks] (Bernadotte 195)
Rotas was the first Greek translator to use the Bard’s source, Plutarch’s Lives, as an intertext in his translation of Shakespeare’s play. This decision cast positive light on
Cleopatra and her sexuality. Rotas’s use of the word θυμίαμα [incense] creates a religious ritual, the centre of which is the goddess-like Cleopatra. Θυμίαμα [incense] was burnt in ancient Greek religious rituals for the sake of the gods. Previous translators of the play also resorted to some degree of intervention. Damiralis (οσμή
υδητάτη) [smell sweetest] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 24) and Velmos (γλυκειά μυρουδιά)
[sweet smell] (O Antonios kai i Kleopatra tou Saixpir 17) underlined the sweetness of the odour and they left the word “strange” untranslated, while the Skouloudises 248
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
(μοσκοβολιά υπερκόσμια) [fragrant unworldly] (289) tried to combine the pleasing odour with a mystifying aura. Rotas’s predecessors do not seem to have been negatively predisposed towards Cleopatra at this point, but Rotas surpassed them all; he sanctified Cleopatra’s sexuality and enhanced it with a sort of devoutness that rendered it harmless. 1
Further positive aura is cast on Cleopatra’s sexuality in the way Rotas represented her attendants on the barge. According to Enobarbus, she was surrounded by Cupidesque servants and female attendants like “Nereides” and “Mer-maides”
(II.ii.242-243). In Rotas’s translation Cleopatra’s gentlewomen are νεράιδες και
γοργόνες (Antonios kai Kleopatra 53) [fairies and mermaids]. In the Greek folk tradition νεράιδες [fairies] are imaginary female creatures of wonderful beauty that live near the water and spend their time singing and dancing (Neoteron
Egkylopaidikon Lexikon 385). They are good to good people and teach them a lot of things (Neoteron Egkylopeidikon Lexikon 386). Etymologically the word νεράιδα derives from the word Νηριήδες [Nereides] who were goddesses of the calm sea and were friendly to humans (Neoteron Egkylopeidikon Lexikon 385; Papachristoforou
181-210). Γοργόνες [mermaids] are beautiful, aquatic female creatures with the head and upper body of a woman and the tail of fish that are malevolent or beneficent according to the circumstance (Neoteron Egkylopeidikon Lexikon 597-598).
1 My supervisor, Prof. Krontiris, drew my attention to the fact that the word θυμιάματα [incense] is used by Plutarch in his portrait of Antony, and she suggested the possibility that Plutarch’s description of Cleopatra served as an intertext in Rotas’s translation. Rotas studied Greek Philology in the University of Athens for three years (1907-1910), without managing to graduate because he was preoccupied with many other things like theatre, and because he had to deal with many hardships like war and illness (Karagiannis 35). Still, however, he had an excellent background on ancient Greek culture, and translated Aristophanes’s Ornithes [Birds] for the historical production of the play by Karolos Koun in 1961.
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Metaphοrically speaking the word γοργόνα [mermaid] describes a woman with a very beautiful body.
Cleopatra’s attendants were not very harmless in the translations of Rotas’s predecessors. Velmos (O Antonios kai i Kleopatra tou Saixpir 16-17) and the
Skouloudises (289) followed in the footsteps of Damiralis (Antonios kai Kleopatra
24) and translated the word “mermaids” (II.ii.243) into Σειρήνες [Sirens]. These were dangerous female creatures of ancient Greek mythology, who lured the sailors with their enchanting singing voices and led them to death in a deceptive way. In Modern
Greek culture the word Σειρήνες [Sirens] is used metaphorically to refer to a deceptive woman that is endowed with dangerous charm. It could therefore be argued that Rotas was the first translator in Greece to cast a positive light on Cleopatra’s attendants on the barge and by extension on Cleopatra herself. The image he created of Cleopatra veiled in θυμίαμα [incense] and surrounded by νεράιδες και γοργόνες
[fairies and mermaids] is non-threatening and very different from the image of the
Egyptian Queen surrounded by Σειρήνες και γοργόνες [Sirens and mermaids], which was invoked by his predecessors.
Some lines later in the same scene, Enobarbus describes Antony’s first meeting with Cleopatra in the dinner she had invited him as her guest and he notes that for that simple meal he paid with his heart “For what his eyes eate onely”
(II.ii.263). In response, Agrippa calls Cleopatra a “Royal Wench” (II.ii.264) and adds a vulgar pun about Cleopatra sleeping with Caesar and conceiving his child (II.ii.265-
266). The word “wench” can be used in three ways: to denote a young woman, a female servant, or a wanton woman. Damiralis (Antonios kai Kleopatra 24), followed by Velmos (O Antonios kai i Kleopatra tou Saixpir 16), translated Agrippa’s characterization of Cleopatra positively as ουράνιο πλάσμα [heavenly creature]. The 250
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
Skouloudises broke with the tradition set by Damiralis and Velmos and rendered
Agrippas’s words with the phrase Πόρνη, με κορώνα! [Prostitute, with a crown!]
(289). Their choice directly associated Cleopatra’s sexuality with immorality. Six years later, Rotas restored Cleopatra’s honor and salvaged her from such a vulgar characterization. In the Variorum edition of Antony and Cleopatra, which Rotas consulted when he translated the play, Furness warns that the word “wench” is “by no means always a derogatory term” (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of
Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra 119). With this in mind, and out of admiration for Cleopatra, Rotas translated the phrase “Royal Wench” (II.ii.264) as
Βασιλοθήλυκο [royal woman] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 54), a word that he coins to stress Cleopatra’s royal status and at the same time underlines and assesses her sexuality positively.
This is not the first time that Rotas tried to save Cleopatra and her relationship with Antony from the Romans’ slander. In scene i of Act II Sextus Pompey, a rival general of the Triumvirate, discusses with the sea pirates Menas and Menecrates their strategy about how to attack Caesar and his allies. Pompey believes that there is some truth in the rumor that there are hard feelings within the Triumvirate and he hopes that he will be able to take advantage of this situation and overwhelm his enemies. At the same time, however, he is aware that it is highly possible that the threat of an invasion might spur Antony to leave “the lap of Egypts widow” (II.i.47). “Lap” is a polysemous word: it refers to a protective piece of cloth, but also to the thighs of a seated person. Rotas opted for the first definition. In his translation of Antony and
Cleopatra Pompey hopes that
ο αγώνας μας μπορεί απ’ την ποδιά της Αιγυπτίας χήρας να τραβήξει 251
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
τον πάντα ακούραστο στις ηδονές Αντώνιο (44).
[our stirring Can from the lap of Egypt Widdow, plucke The neere Lust-wearied Anthony (II.i.46-48)]
Rotas seems to have been aware of the different meanings of the word “lap.” In 1938 in his translation of Hamlet he had translated Hamlet’s request to Ophelia, “Lady, shall I lie in your lap” (III.ii.105) as να ξαπλωθώ στα γόνατά σου [to lie on your knees] (Amlet me Prologo III.ii.105). In the case of Antony and Cleopatra, however, it seems that he wishes to avoid any reference to some part of Cleopatra’s body in order to downplay the sensual, promiscuous element of their love, while also remaining faithful to Shakespeare’s text. His decision to translate the word “lap” into ποδιά contrasts sharply with his predecessors’ choices. Damiralis rendered the word with a pun on the word κόλπους (Antonios kai Kleopatra 18) which both refers to
Cleopatra’s hug and alludes to her genitals. The Skouloudises translated the word
“lap” into πόδι [leg] but they added the adjective λάγνα [lustful] as an epithet to
Cleopatra in order to underline her carnal lust (283).1 All three translations communicate the same meaning: Antony’s seduction by Cleopatra. But they do so in very different ways and Rotas’s version seems to be the friendliest to the lovers.
There are more examples which prove that Rotas protected Cleopatra from the
Romans’ vicious comments in the play. In one of these cases, he also helped her come out relatively unscathed in the comparison with Octavia, who embodies all the characteristics of a proper Roman wife: beauty, grace, wisdom, obedience to her husband. Caesar informs two of his officers, Mecaenas and Agrippa, about Antony’s recent activities (III.vi.). Antony has settled back in Egypt and he has formerly
1 Velmos seems not to have included this incident in his adaptation. 252
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) appointed Cleopatra Queen of Egypt, lower Syria, Cyprus and Lydia (III.vi.9-11, 13-
17). Caesar’s briefing is interrupted by Octavia’s arrival. Towards the end of the scene Mecaenas addresses Octavia and tells her that she is loved and pitied by everyone in Rome, but for “th’ adulterous” Antony (III.vi.101) who has rejected her and has given his “potent Regiment to a Trull” (III.vi.103). With two defensive moves
Rotas carefully protects Cleopatra and her relationship to Antony from Mecaenas’s attack. His first protective measure involves hushing up the adulterous nature of
Antony’s and Cleopatra’s relationship. I have already discussed the meanings of the word “adultery” in the previous chapter in reference to Gertrude’s relationship to
King Claudius. The primary meaning of the word refers to a married person’s violation of his/her marriage bed by means of voluntary sexual intercourse with another individual, whether married or unmarried. The second meaning of “adultery” refers to adulteration and corruption. As in his translation of Hamlet, here too Rotas translates the word “adulterous” in a way that does not refer to an illegal affair. He translates it into αισχρός [obscene] (93) so that the reader’s attention is drawn away from the fact that Antony and Cleopatra had an affair while Antony was married to
Fulvia and now that he is married to Octavia.
The second protective measure for Cleopatra has to do with the translation of the word “trull” (III.vi.103). The word “trull” means prostitute, strumpet. The
Variorum edition of Antony and Cleopatra cites two opposite interpretations of the word. It notes Johnson’s view that “‘trull’ was not, in our author’s time, a term of mere infamy, but a word of slight contempt, as wench is now” (Shakespeare, A New
Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra 206).
Furness’s edition also quotes Malone, who argues that “‘[t]rull’ is used in I Henry VI :
II.ii.28 as synonymous to harlot. There can therefore be no doubt of the sense in 253
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) which it is used here” (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The
Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra 206). Rotas was not convinced by Malone.
Johnson’s view fit better his romantic conceptualization of the love between Antony and Cleopatra and his admiration for Shakespeare’s Egyptian Queen. Therefore, he translated “trull” (III.vi.103) as mild as possible into τρελογυναίκα [crazy woman]
(Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra 93), in sharp contrast to Damiralis and the
Skouloudises who had translated the word into ποταπή εταίρα [contemptible strumpet]
(Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra 47) and βρώμα [obscene and immoral]
(Skouloudis and Skouloudi 345) respectively. In Rotas’s translation, Agrippa comments on Cleopatra’s unstable, unpredictable personality rather than on her lack of morality, which at this point would seem blatant in comparison to Octavia’s moral integrity.1
Rotas’s translation is very protective of Cleopatra even in the case of Antony’s verbal attack to her. After the first disastrous sea battle, Thyreus, Caesar’s messenger, arrives to gain Cleopatra’s trust. This scene has often been read by critics as a proof either that Cleopatra “is deserting Antony and is preparing to entangle Caesar in her
‘toils of grace,’” or that she intends to deceive him (Mills 151-152). Rotas’s manipulations of the scene in his translation rule out both interpretations.
At the end of the conversation between Cleopatra and Thyreus, just as Antony and Enobarbus enter, Caesar’s messenger kisses Cleopatra’s hand (III.xiii.99). Seeing this, Antony becomes enraged; he orders Thyreus’s punishment for his impertinence and rages at Cleopatra’s faithlessness. “Favours?”, he questions her at first
(III.xiii.105). The word refers to a friendly regard or an act of kindness. Prior to
1 The scene is not included in Velmos’s adaptation of Antony and Cleopatra. 254
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
Rotas’s translation, Damiralis’s Antony had charged Cleopatra with nothing more than εύνοιας δείγματα [signs of favor] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 56), while Velmos’s
Antony had accused her of ύποπτες λοξοδρομίες [suspicious swerving] without specifying the nature of Cleopatra’s swerving (Antonios kai Kleopatra 49). Six years before Rotas’s translation of the play, the Skouloudises added sexual content to
Thyreus’s handkissing and their Antony was made to accuse Cleopatra of exchanging
χάδια [caresses] with Thyreus (362). When Rotas rendered the play in Greek, he exculpated the interaction between Cleopatra and Thyreus. In his own translation of the play the Egyptian Queen is merely accused of making φιλίες [friendships] with the
Romans (Antonios kai Kleopatra 111). The sexual connotations added to Thyreus’s gesture by the Skouloudises were eliminated in Rotas’s translation.
Some lines later in the same scene Antony laments that he is “abus'd/ By one that lookes on Feeders” (III.xiii.132-133). The Skouloudises punctuated the phrase both with a question mark and with an exclamation mark in order to underline
Antony’s indignation and they made him again openly accuse Cleopatra of having a sexual relationship with Thyreus. In their translation we read the phrase για ν’
απατηθώ από μια άλλη/ που πάει με δούλους;! [in order to be deceived by one that lies with servants?!] (Skouloudis and Skouloudi 363). Rotas, on the other hand, rendered the phrase literally in the following way: να με ντροπιάζει μία που ρίχνει τα βλέμματά
της στα τσανάκια; [to be ashamed by one that casts her eyes on scoundrels?] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 112). Like Damiralis (Antonios kai Kleopatra 57) and Velmos (O
Antonios kai i Kleopatra tou Saixpir 50) before him, Rotas avoided openly levelling charges of sexual nature against Cleopatra. It is particularly important that he protects her from such accusations at exactly this point because it is after she has abandoned
255
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
Antony at the sea battle and it would seem that she uses her sexuality in order to ally with the enemies.
Later in the same scene, Antony calls her “a boggeler” (III.xiii.135). The word is used to characterize someone who hesitates because of doubt or fear. In his
Variorum edition of Antony and Cleopatra Furness cites similar definitions suggested by critics like Johnson (Shakespeare, A New Variorum Edition of Shakespeare: The
Tragedie of Antonie and Cleopatra 249). Rotas deviated from the definitions provided in his source text, and made Antony accuse Cleopatra of mere shallowness, rather than cowardice and fright. In his translation we read the line Φτερό στον άνεμο ήσουν
πάντα (Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra 113) [You were always a feather in the wind], an idiomatic phrase which is used to refer to someone who is frivolous. All three translators prior to Rotas made Antony accuse Cleopatra of hypocrisy, thus casting doubt on her feelings for Antony (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra 57; Velmos,
Antonios kai Kleopatra 50; Skouloudis and Skouloudi 363). Hence, Rotas saved
Cleopatra not only from the insinuation of the source text that she is a coward,1 but also from the Greek translators’ charge that her love for Antony is not sincere. Taking
1 Rotas’s attitude towards Cleopatra as far as her abandonment of Antony during the naval battles is concerned is very progressive and corrective of her profile, especially at that time that increasingly more critics abroad expressed the view that Cleopatra abandoned Antony out of cowardice which originates in her sex. Stapfer (405), Brandes (186) and MacCallum (422) are only a few of the critics that hold this view. It seems that Rotas is equally protective towards Antony, even in the cases that his manhood is seriously questioned. For example, after Cleopatra’s exit from the first sea battles and his ill-considered decision to follow her, his men discuss his flight and indeed they do not mince their words. Scarus accuses him of shameful, dishonorable and unmanly behavior:
I never saw an action of such shame. Experience, manhood, honour, ne’er before Did violate so itself. (III.x.30-32)
“Manhood” is a polysemous word. It denotes both the condition of being a human being, and the state of being a man as opposed to childhood and womanhood. Rotas’s predecessors perceived the word to refer to Antony’s manly vigor. Damiralis had Scarus accuse Antony of lack of ανδρεία [bravery] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 50) and the Skouloudises of lack of αντρισμός [masculinity] (357). In Rotas’s translation, however, Scarus charges Antony with lack of ανθρωπιά [humanity] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 100) and does not jeopardize his manliness. 256
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) account of Rotas’s manipulations in this scene, it is sheer surprise, rather than silent agreement that we should read behind Cleopatra’s much-discussed “Oh” (III.xiii.69), with which she responds to Thyreus’s comment that she stayed with Antony out of fear of him and not out of love (III.xiii.67-68).
Rotas seems to be protective of Cleopatra even when she abandons Antony for a second time during the sea battle (IV.xii). The translator takes advantage of the polysemy of certain words in order to downplay Antony’s attack and his negative representation of her as far as possible. For example, Antony uses words that relate
Cleopatra to witchcraft. According to Theresa Kemp, “[w]hile Cleopatra is not given supernatural powers in Shakespeare’s version, traces of her witchlike qualities remain in the power she exerts over Antony in general — and in particular, in Antony’s attempt to break free of her after the failed naval battle” (97). At one point, he dismisses her calling her “Spell” (IV.xii.37). A little later, in the same scene the embittered Antony resolves that “The Witch shall die” (IV.xii.55, emphasis added).1
The word “spell” denotes a mysterious power or influence with fascinating or enthralling charm.” The word “witch” refers to a female magician or sorceress.
Rotas avoided the negative connotations inherent in these words. The effect of his choices becomes once again clearer when his translation is compared to previous translations of the play, especially the almost contemporaneous translation by the
Skouloudises. In the case of Cleopatra’s characterization as a “Spell” (IV.xii.37),
Rotas followed Damiralis to some extent (Antonios kai Kleopatra 69) and translated the word into μάγισσα [witch] adding the word αναθεματισμένη [damned] before it in order to communicate Antony’s anger (Antonios kai Kleopatra 137). The effect of his
1 Similar epithets have been applied to Cleopatra by Antony and others throughout the play: enchanting queen, great fairy, cockatrice, witchcraft (Wills 188). 257
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) translation is clearly milder in relation both to the source text and to the
Skouloudises’s translation. In the latter case, Cleopatra is characterized as a στοιχειό
(Skouloudis and Skouloudis 377). In Greek this word denotes a supernatural being in general, but it also has a more specific meaning which refers to a ghost. Rotas avoided the implication of the Skouloudises’s choice, i.e. that Cleopatra has haunted Antony.
In translating the description of Cleopatra as a “Witch” (IV.xii.55), Rotas again differed from his predecessors, who rendered the word literally into μάγισσα [witch]
(Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra 69; Skouloudis and Skouloudi 377).1 He translated it into γόησσα [enchantress] so that Antony’s reference to witchcraft is replaced with reference to Cleopatra’s beauty. As a result, in Rotas’s translation
Cleopatra’s hold over Antony’s affections and appetites is not so much due to witchcraft but because of her charming appearance.
By this point in his translation of Antony and Cleopatra, Rotas has made it abundantly clear that he has high regard for the Egyptian Queen. He has systematically presented her as exemplifying a perfect blend of feminine and masculine qualities, which he admired in women. Simultaneously, he celebrated her sexuality (a very progressive gesture for his time), he protected her from charges of immorality, promiscuity and cowardice, and underemphasized the source text’s association of Cleopatra with witchcraft.
Within such a redemptive translation of Cleopatra, her nobility and her inner resolve to die in the last act of the play after Antony’s death must not come as a surprise to the reader. What is more, certain ambiguous incidents in the play can only be interpreted in a way that is favourable to her. For example, although Rotas did not
1 Velmos does not translate these words in his adaptation (O Antonios kai I Kleopatra 52). 258
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) openly state it in his introduction or notes to his translation, and although he did not offer any sign in his actual translation of the play, it is only fitting to his positive image of an androgynous Cleopatra that her declaration of obedience to Caesar is not taken at face value (V.ii.142-143). What is more, the incident with Seleucus (V.ii.167-
188) should be read as an indication that she intends to fool Caesar into believing that she cares about her life, not that she indeed wishes to ensure good living conditions under his rule. Rotas’s Cleopatra cannot be open to any political compromise; her ultimate intention is not to prolong her life, but to make sure that her plan to die is successful. After all, through death she will be able to avoid being carried in triumph by Caesar, to
foole their preparation,
And to conquer their most absurd intents. (V.ii.270-271)
να ρεζιλέψουμε
ό,τι έχουν ετοιμάσει και να θριαμβεύσουμε
πάνω στα σχέδιά τους τα ανοητότατα. (Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra 165)
[to fool
what they have prepared and triumph
on their plans which are the most foolish]
For Rotas’s androgynous Cleopatra, it is not at all strange that she comes to openly denounce her womanly features of feebleness and changeability, a much admired potential that Rotas discerned in women and highlighted in his own plays:
259
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
My Resolution’s plac’d, and I have nothing
Of woman in me: Now from head to foote
I am Marble constant: now the fleeting Moone
No Planet is of mine (V.ii.289-292)
Η απόφασή μου εβγήκε και δεν έχω τίποτα
γυναικείο μέσα μου: είμαι τώρα απ’ το κεφάλι
ως την πατούσα στέρεο μάρμαρο· η σελήνη η πλάνα
δεν είναι πια το αστέρι μου. (Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra 166)
[My decision came out and I have nothing
female inside me: I am now from head to foot
solid marble; the deceiving moon
is no longer my star]
As a result of this marble-like constancy, Cleopatra will be able to pursue her
“immortal longings” (V.ii.333), which, as Rotas states in his introduction (Antonios kai Kleopatra 11), is her union with Antony in afterlife. After that, she reaches the point of transformation into fire and air, lending her “other elements” to a “baser life”
(V.ii.341-2).
The final image we get of Rotas’s Cleopatra is quite memorable. Charmion describes her as a “Lasse unparallel’d” (V.ii.371). Rotas translated the phrase into
“μια γυναίκα δίχως ταίρι” [a woman without a match] (Antonios kai Kleopatra 170).
A couple of issues are involved in his choice, which is very revealing of the way he perceived Cleopatra and the way he wished her to be registered in the Greek readers’ mind. Firstly, Rotas did not interpret the word “lass” as “young woman” or 260
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955)
“sweetheart,” which are the main meanings of the word. He rather opted for the word
γυναίκα [woman] (Rotas, Antonios kai Kleopatra 170). There is a double gain in this choice for Cleopatra. On the one hand, Rotas lent her the sense of maturity and self- respect, which women are supposed to have acquired as opposed to girls. On the other hand, Cleopatra is not commemorated for her role as Antony’s mistress, which would reduce her to a mere object of sexual affection. Secondly, by using the phrase δίχως
ταίρι (Antonios kai Kleopatra 170) to render the adjective “unparallel’d” (V.ii.371),
Rotas created a pun that both presents Cleopatra as unsurpassable, unique in kind and draws attention to the fact that she is left on her own, without Antony. Once again,
Rotas differentiated himself from preceding translators of the play who argued that the lines refer to Cleopatra’s peerless beauty (Damiralis, Antonios kai Kleopatra 103;
Velmos, O Antonios kai E Kleopatra 72). In line with his brief comment on
Cleopatra’s beauty in the introduction (Antonios kai Kleopatra 11), Rotas did not place emphasis on her extraordinary appearance. The last thing he wished for
Cleopatra was to be remembered only for her beauty.1
1 Rotas’s translation of Antony and Cleopatra was used in the staging of the National Theatre in 1963. It is interesting to note that there is incongruence between the translator’s views about the play and its characters and the way the play was interpreted by Alexis Solomos, the director of the production, and by Terzakis, who edited the theatre program for the production. Solomos and Terzakis adopted the rather bleak perspective of the play as a whole, of the love between Antony and Cleopatra, and of Cleopatra in particular, which had been popular in international criticism abroad since the 1950s (J. F. Danby 1949; L. C. Knights 1949; Harrold Goddard 1951; Daniel Stempel 1956; J. A. Bryant 1961; John Holloway 1961; Ernest Schanzer 1963; Brents Stirling 1964). The play was interpreted as a political tragedy, rather than as a love tragedy. Terzakis insisted on the non-centrality of love in the play, and in Shakespeare’s whole oeuvre as a matter of fact (“To Iliovasilema” 7). Where Rotas saw idealized love between the protagonists, which reaches the heights of apotheosis and which defeats Caesar’s order of calculation and self-seeking, Solomos, under influence of the realist critic Brandes, discerned the end of love and the end of Roman Republic. In an interview, Solomos placed Antony at the central position, excluded Cleopatra from the tragic scheme and scapegoated her for Antony’s downfall (Psyrrakis 4). Terzakis also accused her for causing him to be absorbed in private affairs and “this is where the sin lies,” for “men like Antony have no right to be absent from the proscenium of History, their life belongs to her” who “like a woman, is revengeful when neglected” (Terzakis, “To Iliovasilema” 11). Terzakis further uses highly essentializing language to describe Cleopatra in a manner that associates her to fatal femininity and decadence, while also reproducing orientalistic views about her: 261
6. ROTAS’S TRANSLATION OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA IN THE POST-WAR ERA (1954-1955) v. Conclusion
The Greek readers of the 1950s had a chance to read a very different version of
Shakespeare’s Cleopatra in the translation of Antony and Cleopatra by Rotas as a part of his contract with the publishing house Ikaros. In contrast to previous translators who underlined Cleopatra’s pomposity (Damiralis 1881), her emotional torment as a result of her unrequited love for Antony (Velmos 1924), or her rudeness, hypocrisy, immorality and fatal sexuality (Skouloudis and Skouloudi 1948), Rotas read the play as a legendary love tragedy, highlighted Cleopatra’s androgyny in positive terms and systematically defended her from charges of immorality, promiscuity, deceitfulness, cowardice, and destructive sexuality. He offered an optimistic reading of
Shakespeare’s play and its protagonists, particularly Cleopatra, one that could ease the tormented Greek readers, the majority of whom had gone through the hard decade of wars, and could help them restore their faith in the ideal of love. Rotas’s image of
Cleopatra did not correspond to the dominant images of femininity of the 1950s. It was rather associated with the image of the fighting woman that was particularly popular in the mid-1940s.
Cleopatra is a mixture of queen and whore. Sensual, serpentine, has the playfulness of flame and its flare. She is Egypt, the East, with all the mystique of a continent full of desert and jungles. She is also, by blood, Greece, the Greek race in its glorious decline, with the feebleness of the spirit and the senses which have reached the apotheosis of self-destruction. Dangerous crossbreed. (“To Iliovasilema” 12-13) Solomos’s dark view of the play as dramatizing the end of love and of democracy, with Cleopatra being the basic agent in this catastrophe, was embraced and extensively reproduced in contemporary theatre reviews, such as in those by Babis Klaras, Marios Ploritis, Kostas Oikonomidis and Kleon Parashos (http://www.nt-archive.gr/playMaterial.aspx?playID=27#programs). Krontiris offers an overview of the limited stage history of the play in Greece and discusses the 1963 production by the National Theatre (Antonios kai Kleopatra 103-106). 262
7. CONCLUSION
Chapter 7
Conclusion
Translation Studies and Gender Studies are two interdisciplinary areas connected at many levels (Flotow and Scott 349). Their basic analytical categories “translation” and “gender” contribute to the understanding of issues pertaining to power, ideology and culture. In addition, both of them are historically conditioned and open to negotiation and change. Insofar as translation involves the transfer of ideology and has come to be synonymous with interpretation, it has the power to shape identities, including gender identities. As agents with interests, motives and values, which they consciously or unconsciously serve as they render a text from one language into another, translators effect new readings of texts. The social, political and cultural conditions, under which translators produce meaning, as well as their own worldview, beliefs and values, including those that relate to gender, should necessarily be considered in order to better grasp the intricacies of translation. In line with these postulates, this thesis has attempted to explore the reception of female dramatic characters in Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays in the period c. 1875-1955 in
Greece. More precisely, I have demonstrated that the specificities of the woman issue in the country and the translators’ stance on it shape the representation of
Shakespeare’s women, causing them to transform in order to meet the shifting social needs and the translators’ different attitudes and values.
In late 19th- and early 20th-century translations by Vikelas and Vlachos, Lady
Macbeth and Desdemona were appropriated to fit contemporary middle-class gender ideology which emphasized chastity, domestication, virtue and obedience to the father, brother, or husband. In their reading, Desdemona was condemned for marrying 263
7. CONCLUSION secretly and death was deemed to be the suitable punishment for her breach and her disobedience towards paternal authority. Conversely, Lady Macbeth was excused for her ambition because it was taken as a proof of her profound wifely love and devotion to Macbeth. Only half a decade after Vlachos’s translation of Othello, the character of
Desdemona proved flexible enough to accommodate Theotokis’s socialist, woman- friendly views, which defended her right to choose her husband on her own, dissociated her rebelliousness from sinful sexuality and drew attention to the domestic violence she undergoes.
Greek translators also tested the limits of Cleopatra’s adaptability to the changing concept of womanhood. In late 19th century Damiralis expressed his ambivalence for her and portrayed her as a pompous, manipulative, capricious queen who is redeemed from her flaws through death. In the 1920s Velmos filtered her through his communist vision, his compassion for women of the lower social strata, his interest in the ordeals of love, his desire for sexual freedom and freedom of expression; he constructed her as a sympathy-triggering woman that suffers from unreciprocated love for Antony, but rises to heights of nobility, probably pointing to the fact that subversive power hides itself in suffering individuals too. In the mid-
1950s, as a result of his socialist views and his intense participation in the National
Resistance (1941-1944), Rotas painted a very different portrait of Cleopatra. In sharp contrast to the Skouloudises, he exculpated her sensuality, confirmed her sincere love for Antony and praised her combining of both feminine and masculine features and roles.
In the 1930s, Rotas had already rejected Gertrude because she does not mourn her deceased husband, a custom that formed an integral part of women’s life at least in the rural areas of Greece which he came from, and because she mistakes her son for 264
7. CONCLUSION mad. He also exhibited unprecedented hatred for Ophelia because she seemed to him too frail and corrupt both to be a suitable companion for Hamlet and to fit the ideal of dynamic women that was popular at that time. Once again, Shakespeare’s women,
Gertrude and Ophelia in this case, proved quite adaptable in different contexts;
Rotas’s predecessors, like Pervanoglou, Polylas, Vikelas and Vlachos, had merely some reservations towards Gertrude and felt uncompromising sympathy for Ophelia.
Besides the affirmation of the adaptability of Shakespeare’s women to different contexts, the present study makes another important observation as to the nature of their adaptability. There seems to be a movement from their being adapted to a conservative perspective of womanhood (in translations by Vikelas, Vlachos,
Damiralis and the Skouloudises), towards their being adapted to more progressive images of femininity which criticize patriarchal conventions (in the translation by
Theotokis), and which even reach the point of embracing androgyny (in the translations of Velmos and Rotas).
This movement is by no means linear, or continuous, but entails fluctuations.
For example, between Velmos’s and Rotas’s progressive translations of Cleopatra intervened the Skouloudises’s translation, which enhanced the misogynistic views that are often voiced in the play about Cleopatra, and linked her sexuality to immorality and destruction. In fact, there are more examples of translations which I have not included in this study and which point towards this view of fluctuation in the history of the reception of Shakespeare’s women in Greece.1 Nevertheless, it seems that the instances of translating Shakespeare’s women in terms of more progressive
1For example, Rotas’s appraisal of Lady Macbeth in terms of androgyny (1962) is almost simultaneous with the unflattering representation of her in terms of a dangerously ambitious woman in Nikos Proestopoulos’s translation (1958). 265
7. CONCLUSION understanding of womanhood emerged in Theotokis’s translation of Othello (1915) and became more frequent since the 1920s. They are mainly detected in the translations of socialist and communist intellectuals, like Theotokis, Velmos and
Rotas; yet, further research is required in order to see if this is a binding rule that regulates the translators’ decisions and interpretation of Shakespeare’s women.
The progressive conceptualization of Shakespeare’s women in Greece, in terms which criticize patriarchal conventions and embrace a fluid identity of women that encompasses both masculine and feminine features, does not correspond to the dominant mode of female representation in the target culture, but to some emergent
(Theotokis), marginal (Velmos), or residual (Rotas) elements in the target culture.
Hence, the Greek case suggests that the translation of Shakespeare’s plays did not necessarily promote the mainstream views about womanhood;1 instead, it often constituted a platform for the negotiation of female identity in more radical terms which were not expressly stated, or which were marginally voiced, in the target culture. Such discursive and sociocultural patterns could not have been revealed without (cross-)examining a large number of translations in their socio-political context – over fifteen Greek translations of four Shakespeare plays.
Finally, what do these findings mean to a researcher of culture and society?
The purpose of the study has been to read gender ideologies that inform Greek translations of Shakespeare’s plays in order to trace the history of the reception of
Shakespeare’s women in Greece. The conclusions of the present study confirm the power of translation to participate in the process of identity formation; its power to
1Shakespeare translation also did not always promote Katharevousa, the official language of Greece until 1976, but it endorsed Demotic Greek, often in vernacular forms, as in the case of Theotokis, Pallis, Avgeris, and Rotas. 266
7. CONCLUSION
“[form] particular cultural identities and [maintain] them with a relative coherence and homogeneity, but also […] [to create] possibilities for cultural resistance, innovation and change at any historical moment” (Venuti, The Scandals of
Translation 68). There is thus the need to study translations in a way that is much more aware of this capacity.
267
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I Genia tou Trianta: Ideologia kai Morfi [The Generation of the 1930s: Ideology and Form]. Athens: Ermis, 2011. Wagner, Wilhelm. Macbeth von William Shakespeare Erklärt. Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1872. ---. Shakespeare und die Neueste Kritik. Hamburg: G. E. Nolte, 1874. ---. “Shakespeare in Griechenland.” Jahrbuch der Deutschen Shakespeare- Gesellschaft 12 (1877): 33-56. Walker, Alice. Textual Problems of the First Folio: Richard III, King Lear, Troilus & Cressida, 2 Henry IV, Hamlet, Othello. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953. Wells, Robin Headlem Shakespeare on Masculinity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Wey, Laura Jane. Found in Translation: Shakespeare's Cleopatra in English and Chinese. Diss. Harvard University, 2010. 317 Williams, Raymond. Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays. London: Verso, 1980. Wills, Garry. Witches and Jesuits: Shakespeare’s Macbeth. New York Public Library, 1996. Yannakopoulou, Vaso. Norms and Habitus in the Production of four Greek translations of Hamlet. Diss. Ethniko kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon, 2010. Yanni, Marianthi, ed. Shakespeare William Hamlet. Iakovos Polylas, transl. Athens: Ideogramma, 2000. ---. “Shakespeare and the Greeks: A Hundred Years of Negotiations,” in Shakespeare Yearbook 14, edited by Douglas Bruce. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2004. 193-214. ---. Shakespeare’s Travels. Greek Representations of Hamlet in the 19th Century. Athens: Parousia Journal Monograph Series, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 2005. ---, ed. Shakespeare William King Lear. Konstantinos Theotokis, transl. Athens: Dodoni-Ideogramma, 2005. ---. “Shakespeare and the Audiences of the Greek Travelling Actors.” Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 15 (2007): 175-192. Yu, Zhongli. Translating Feminism in China: Gender, Sexuality and Censorship. London and New York: Routledge, 2015. Zeki, Semir. Splendors and Miseries of the Brain: Love, Creativity, and the Quest for Human Happiness. John Wiley & Sons, 2011. 318 Ziogou-Karastergiou, Sidiroula. I Mesi Ekpaidefsi ton Koritsion stin Ellada (1830- 1893) [The Secondary Education of Girls in Greece (1830-1893)]. Athens: Istoriko Archeio Ellinikis Neolaias, 1986. Zoras, G. Th. O Ellinikos Romantismos kai oi Fanariotai [Greek Romanticism and Fanariots]. Athens, 1975. List of Further Reading Resources Déprats, Jean-Michel. “Retranslating Shakespeare for the Stage: An Overview.” Through Other Eyes: The Translation of Anglophone Literature in Europe. Richard Trim and Sophie Alatorre, ed. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. 77-86. Dimaras Neoellinikos Diafotismos [Modern Greek Enlightenment]. Athens: Ermis, 1989. Dirk Delabastita and Lieven D’Hulst, ed. European Shakespeares: Translating Shakespeare in the Romantic Age. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1993. Even-Zohar, Itamar. “The Position of Translated Literature Within the Literary Polysystem.” Poetics Today 11 (1990): 45-51. Gounelas, Charalambos-Dimitris. E Sosialistiki Syneidisi stin Elliniki Logotechnia 1897-1912 [The Socialistic Conscience in Greek Literature 1897-1912]. Athens: Kedros, 1984. Heylen, Romy. Translation, Poetics and the Stage: Six French Hamlets. Rouledge, 2014. Hoenselaars, Ton, ed. Shakespeare and the Language of Translation. London: Bloomsburry, 2014. 319 ---, ed. Shakespeare’s History Plays: Performance, Translation and Adaptation in Britain and Abroad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Homem, Rui Carvahlo and Ton Hoenselaars, ed. Translating Shakespeare for the Twenty-First Century. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, 2004. Jauss, Hans Robert. “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory.” New Literary History 2 (1970): 7–37. Kazamias, Alexander and Stouraiti Anastasia. “The Imaginary Topographies of the Megalia Idea: National Territory as Utopia.” Spatial Conceptions of the Nation: Modernizing Geographies in Greece and Turkey. Ed. Diamandouros N., Dragonas T. and Keyder C. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010. 11-34. Kinnedy, Dennis ed. Foreign Shakespeare: Contemporary Performance. Cambridge: Cambrisge University Press, 2004. Lefevere, André. Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. New York and London: Routledge, 1992. McCarthy, John A, ed. Shakespeare as German Author: Reception, Translation Theory, and Cultural Transfer. Leiden and Boston: Rodopi, 2018. Mathijssen, Jan Willem. The Breach and the Observance: Theatre Retranslation as a Strategy of Artistic Differentiation, with Special Reference to Retranslations of Shakespeare's Hamlet (1777-2001). Utrecht, 2007. 28 May 2020 Toury, Gideon. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1995. Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility. U.K.: Routledge, 2008. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. 320 ---. Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays. London: Verso, 1980. Zevgolis, G. et al, ed. Epitomon Egkyklopaidikon Lexikon tis “Proias” [Concise Encyclopedic Dictionary]. Athens: Ekdoseis Proias, 1932. 321