Imagism: hilda doolittle, ezra pound

Chapter 2. The plays of Euripides

2.1 Hilda Doolittle, Ezra Pound

The dates of production of nine of Euripides’ plays are known with some certainty from evidence that goes back to the official Athenian records. Those plays whose dates are prefixed by c. can be dated to within a few years by the internal evidence of Euripides’ changing metrical techniques.
Though tragic in form, Alcestis (438 BC; Greek Alkēstis) ends happily and took the place of the satyr play that normally followed the three tragedies. King Admetus is doomed to die shortly, but he will be allowed a second life if he can find someone willing to die in his place. His wife, Alcestis, voluntarily dies in place of her husband, who sees too late that the fact and manner of her dying will blight his life. But Admetus’ old friend Heracles shows up and rescues Alcestis from the clutches of Death, restoring her to her happy and relieved husband.

Medea

One of Euripides’ most powerful and best known plays, Medea (431 BC; Greek Mēdeia) is a remarkable study of the mistreatment of a woman and of her ruthless revenge. The Colchian princess Medea has been taken by the hero Jason to be his wife. They have lived happily for some years at Corinth and have two sons. But then Jason casts Medea off and decides to marry the Princess of Corinth. Medea is determined on revenge, and after a dreadful mental struggle between her passionate sense of injury and her love for her children, she decides to punish her husband by murdering both the Corinthian princess and their own sons, thereby leaving her husband to grow old with neither wife nor child. She steels herself to commit these deeds and then escapes in the chariot of her grandfather, the sun-god Helios, leaving Jason without even the satisfaction of punishing her for her crimes. Euripides succeeds in evoking sympathy for the figure of Medea, who becomes to some extent a representative of women’s oppression in general.