Hippolytus Temporizes & Ion
by Hilda Doolittle

Hippolytus Temporizes & Ion Book Cover
Hippolytus Temporizes & Ion Cover

Highlights

Adaptation

Synopsis

Brilliant reworkings of Euripides' classic dramas by the great modernist poet H.D., now available in one volume.

H.D.'s 1927 adaptation of Euripides'sHippolytus Temporizes and her 1937 translation ofIon appeared midpoint in her career.

These two verse dramas can both be considered as "freely adapted" from plays by Euripides; they constitute a commentary in action, and in this regard resemble the Oedipus plays of W. B. Yeats and Ezra Pound'sWomen of Trachis.

In the first play, the young man Hippolytus is obsessed with the virgin goddess Artemis and discovers the depth of his passion with the sensual Phaedra, his disguised stepmother: this experience brings self-knowledge and death.

The heroine Kreousa in Ion attempts to poison Ion when she fails to recognize him as her son by Apollo and sees instead an outsider and possible usurper of her throne.

H.D.'s translations of the Greek were greatly admired by T. S. Eliot.

In her reworkings, she creates modern versions of classic plays, enabling her to explore her favorite poetic themes.

Sigmund Freud (with whom H.D. was undergoing analysis just before she embarked on Ion) commended her translations; and after writing them, H.D. was able to go on to writeHelen in Egypt, "a sweeping epic of healing and integration."

These marvelous versions attest to H.D.'s claim that "the lines of this Greek poet (and all Greek poets if we have but the clue) are today as vivid and as fresh as they ever were."

Themes

Publication

Year Published
2003
ISBN 10
0811215539
ISBN 13
9780811215534
Binding
Paperback
Print Length
288 pages
Place Published
New York
Language
English
LCCN
2003014394
LCC
PS3507.O726 I6 2003
DCC
812/.52
Print
Hippolytus Temporizes & Ion is a adaptation play written by and published by New Directions in New York, 2003. The print edition has an ISBN-13 of 9780811215534 and an ISBN-10 of 0811215539.

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