The challenge of translating a family lineage of blood and liver as father and son

Barcelona"As children, he already enticed his children with stories taken from theOdyssey and the Iliad"Maybe it had its effect," he recalls. Miquel Desclot, pseudonym of Miquel Creus (Barcelona, ​​​​1952), with whom the veteran translator, poet and narrator has signed dozens of books. At his side he has Eloi, with whom he has ended up sculpting together an exceptional and illustrious verse version of theOresteia by Aeschylus (Eleusis, 525-524 BC - Gela, 456-455 BC), the only trilogy of Greek tragedies that has come down, almost intact, to us today.

"It's the first time we've met, and it wasn't meant to be. My intention was to make my own way, not follow in his footsteps," admits Eloi Creus (Castellar del Vallès, 1992). "I studied classical philology at the University of Barcelona and specialized in Greek, a language my father doesn't know." While studying for his degree, Creus realized two things. First, "that Carlos Riba had not had many followers when it came to approaching translations with a more literary than philological intention." The second, that there are still "many texts of ancient literature that are missing", either because we have translations that could be improved or because, simply, they have not been done yet. The first gap he filled was the translation ofThe ill-tempered one, by Menandro, for Adesiara (2020). After dealing with Sappho of Lesbos, with And I wish and burn (Proa, 2022), published a new Catalan version of the Winged comedies ofAristophanes –Peace, Clouds and The birds– in Editions of 1984 (2024).

It was thanks to his devotion to classical Greek theatre that Eloi Creus came to theOresteia by Aeschylus, one of Miquel Desclot's weaknesses for decades. "I read it for the first time when I was very young, and I was fascinated by its poetic potential," explains Desclot. "The more versions I knew, the more I was surprised that in Catalan we didn't have a Oresteia literarily digestible. Carles Riba's, which is from 1934 and is in prose, has many successes, but it does not work as a great poem." Half a century after Riba, Manuel Balasch offered a second Catalan translation, this one in verse, in Edicions 62 (1986), which is even less convincing to both Desclot and Creus. they say.

Despite the continuity of the already century-old Bernat Doctor –currently part of the Abacus Futur group– and new publishers that have opted for Greco-Latin classics, such as Adesiara and Ela Geminada, it is not common to find authors like Aeschylus on the new releases counters of bookstores. Nor in Catalan theaters. "The tragedies most frequently performed here are Oedipus the King and Antigone, both by Sophocles –says Desclot–. That there have not been many productions of theOresteia is influenced by the fact that until now there was no translation that took into account that it is a dramatic text." Father and son have made theatre one of the axes of their translations: Eloi Creus has dealt with Aristophanes and Menander; Desclot, with several works by Molière and Shakespeare, but also with Tiresias' udders, by Guillaume Apollinaire, and byThe fan, by Carlo Goldoni. The last time the film was seenOresteia in a Barcelona theater It was in the Lliure almost a decade ago, in 2016, in an Italian production directed by Luca de Fusco and performed by the Teatro Stabile Napoli company.

A translation full of "winged words"

The project to translate theOresteia in Catalan began a few years ago, when father and son collaborated on an anthology of classical Greek texts promoted by the University of Barcelona. "I translated the fragments from Greek and Dad put them into verse," says Eloi Creus. It should be noted that, in addition to their love of literature and their dedication to translation, both Desclot and Creus are poets and have also translated poetry into Catalan: Waking up when I'm not sleeping, the father – who has also published a lot of poetry aimed at children – received the 2020 Carles Riba Award, and thanks to the version of the Song book Petrarca (Proa, 2016) was awarded the Ciutat de Barcelona prize; his son debuted last year with Like a fly hooked on honey (Godall, 2024) and won the Jordi Domènech prize for the translation ofAt an uncertain time, a volume that brought together poetry written by Primo Levi (Café Central, 2023).

"When Raül Garrigasait told us that we had the opportunity to translate theOresteia for the collection Bernat Universal Physician, we opted for a different working strategy," they say. Eloi Creus explains the procedure in one of the volume's epilogues: "There wasn't just one person responsible for literally translating the text and another who had to put it all into verse, but I acted as the architect and guide; I made some of the parts sung and semi-sung, with indications of how the rhythm of the original verses worked. And this is the material that the poet turned into verse and turned into winged words of truth."

Greek tragedies alternate recited parts—those spoken by the characters who move the action of the work forward—and semi-sung and sung parts, delivered by the heart, more reflective. one of the central characters in the entire trilogy: "I will hurry to receive the best I know how / the illustrious husband who returns me. What light / can be sweeter for a woman to glimpse / than that of opening the door to her husband, whom a god / returns from war?" A little earlier, the heart has warned the spectator and the reader of Clytemnestra's real intentions: "Anger with memory, she cunningly lies in wait for the woman of a vengeful house."

The story that tells theOresteia It is bloody and gory, a collection of revenges within a family clan that begin in the generation before the marriage of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. "It's curious that a father and a son have been tasked with translating a family lineage of blood and heart like this," Creus comments. "The only tensions we've experienced are rather cordial arguments," Desclot promises. The beginning of the chain of revenges that the trilogy presents occurs outside the action of Aeschylus' tragedy. Atreus, the father of Agamemnon and Menelaus, had a twin brother, Thyestes, who commits the imprudence of seducing his wife, Aerope. To make him pay for his sin, Atreus kills two of his sons, cuts them into pieces, cooks the meat, and serves it at the brother's table. When the sacrilege is discovered, Thyestes must end up going into exile with his young son, Aegisthus, who will never forget his uncle's crime, and will end up taking revenge through Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's future wife, a hero who hides a bloody atrocity. To get the winds to fill the sails of his fleet and reach Troy, Agamemnon must sacrifice one of his daughters, Iphigenia.

Clytemnestra has a compelling argument for killing her husband—the sacrifice of her beloved daughter Iphigenia—when he returns home a hero after winning the Trojan War. Aegist teams up with her to avenge Thyestes by killing Agamemnon. "Clytemnestra is not bound by the laws of the Gods, which oblige her to avenge certain actions," comments Eloi Creus. "She is the outsider in the Atrides' household. She ends up making the decision to kill her husband, even though there is no blood relationship." A generation later, Orestes, who along with Electra are the two surviving sons of Agamemnon, will once again turn the wheel of revenge. "It is the god Apollo who demands that Orestes avenge his father: the only way to do so is by killing his mother, Clytemnestra, and her ally, Aegist," adds Miquel Desclot. After the murders are committed, Orestes submits to trial in the third part of the trilogy.

If Agamemnon It stars the boy's father and The implorers, or Coephorae, details the vengeful adventures of Orestes, in The benign ones, or Eumenides, the question is whether the relentless justice demanded by the gods should be replaced by mechanisms more appropriate to humans. "After reading and rereading it in multiple editions, and finally having translated it, it is the moral, political and philosophical significance of theOresteia "What I value most," explains Miquel Desclot. "The trilogy proposes a shift from an eye to an eye in the defense of the family, a savage and archaic justice, to a collective and civilized justice. Aeschylus sets limits to the murderous instincts of our species." And he does so two and a half millennia ago, in a trio of tragedies that can now be reread with fascination thanks to the impeccable work of the duo of translators.