Profanity, Obscenity and the Media by Melvin J. Lasky

Author:Melvin J. Lasky [Lasky, Melvin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies, Language Arts & Disciplines, Communication Studies, Journalism
ISBN: 9781412832014
Google: dAFaBAAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 2014-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

Thus, in Gilbert Murray’s famous translation of The Trojan Women by Euripides, Cassandra gives her view of the Greeks as: “One love, one woman’s beauty, o’er the track of hunted Helen, made their myriads fall.” At the Olivier Theater’s recent production Benedict Nightingale heard: “For one woman’s sake, one f***, they hunted Helen, squandered a million lives.” This daring and inspired turn-of-phrase on the part of the translator (Kenneth McLeish) is, in the judgment of the Times man, helping to bring “a new boldness and, at times, brilliance to Greek drama.”

Equally bold is the epithet “Bastard!” that Orestes hurls at Menelaus; and the real autochthonous New York “Wow!” with which Ion greets evidence of his divine origins. Brilliant is the blue air in which the Troll King in Peer Gynt boasts that “our cows shit cakes and our bulls piss wine,” after which Peer describes an Arab dancer as “a tasty bit of meat, that girlie.”

The Times offers an invaluable compendium of the fruits of its investigative cultural journalism, all in support of its pathbreaking conclusion: “Can a translation actually be better than the original? Sometimes.” Candidates for the better prizes are the following:

Trevor Griffith’s version, in Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard, of Firs’ riposte to a fellow-servant. Instead of “Eh, you’re daft”— “Up yours, butterballs!”

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