Justice and Violence (An Oresteia)
Carson’s unique telling of the Oresteia trilogy which is dependent upon three different original playwrights to tell a coherent family drama is based around what she views as a unifying theme: how all the violence which erupts from this tragic miniseries is primarily the result of a search for justice. Noticing that justice is a word which appears almost more than any other in the original texts, she fashions her particular interpretation around a translation that seeks to highlight the many different ways people can look at the same situation and arrive at a different conclusion as to how justice would best be served.
Loss (If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho)
The theme which Carson takes in her approach to the poetry of Sappho is manifested physically. The volume features wide expanses of empty space and a particularly fascinating decision on how to present the author’s writings which have been lost to time in a tangible way capable of forcing readers to think about what they are not reading as much as what they are. In place of the missing text from the fragments that Carson has translated are brackets which separate the writings as if the missing lines were there. When one reads the book, it becomes impossible to ignore or escape the persistent thematic foundation that not only is one reading a translation from the original language, but only a partial translation of what was originally composed.
Dealing with Grief (Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides)
The theme of Carson’s translations is partly provided by the title. It may be misleading, however, and one can interpret it to suggest that these four are actually about the lessons that characters learn from dealing with grief. That may be true to a point, but Carson’s translation seems particularly designed not so much to illustrate how these tragedy teaches characters, but rather to pursue thematically the ways in which tragedy can instruct an audience. What comes through in plainer, less poetic and more straightforwardly spoken language of Carson’s English is how one can learn to deal with overwhelming loss by retaining their pride like Hecuba or by choosing to persevere rather than cave in to suicidal tendencies like Herakles
