Three Plays of Racine: Phaedra, Andromache, and Britannicus - Paperback

by Jean Baptiste Racine (Author), George Dillon (Translator)

"George Dillon has elected for speed and clarity; his speed, of which short quotations can impart no notion, is his equivalent for Racine's impetuous dexterity with the French Alexandrine. . . . Momentum, in such a version, is everything. It stands as a homage to Racine's strength of construction . . . and to the expressive power of his themes, on which Mr. Dillon's prefaces have eloquent and sensible things to say."--Hugh Kenner, National Review

"His literal and flexible blank verse actually forms the nearest thing in English to the longer-measured rhymed couplets of Racine; even an ordinary reading aloud of so faithful a rendering provides something of the experience that Proust described."--Elliott Coleman, Poetry

"A superb introduction . . . flawless translations, infused with poetic fire and charm."--Margaret Carpenter, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot

Author Biography

George Dillon (1906-1968) was the editor of Poetry and author of two collections of poems, Boy in the Wind and The Flowering Stone. In 1931 he won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Dillon was co-translator, with Edna St. Vincent Millay, of Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil.