The Eating of the Gods: An Interpretation of Greek Tragedy
About this audiobook
In The Eating of the Gods the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed Shakespeare, Our Contemporary, Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the Bacchae of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and "the joy of eating raw flesh" which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed. Whether reflecting on Prometheus or drawing a modern parallel in Beckett's Happy Days ("the final version of the Prometheus myth"), Kott's vision is brilliant, his method innovative, and his sensibility consistently new. Since this book first appeared, Kott's connections between ancient and modern have become even more compelling in their immediacy.
About the author
Jan Kott (1914–2001) was a Polish writer, activist, theater critic, professor, and expert on Shakespeare whose work greatly influenced many contemporary directors.
Boles?aw Taborski (1927–2010) was a Polish émigré broadcaster, translator, critic, author, and poet. He was born in Torun, Poland, and took part in the Warsaw uprising as a member of the Home Army resistance against Nazi Germany. Liberated from a German prisoner of war camp, he settled in Britain, where he took a degree in English literature and theater studies at Bristol University. Between 1959 and 1989 he worked as an editor and presenter at the BBC World Service. Taborski lectured and wrote in English and Polish. He translated Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and the poems of Robert Graves and Robert Lowell into Polish. He also translated Polish studies of Shakespeare and Vladimir Mayakovsky into English. One of his notable achievements was translating and editing the collected plays of Karol Wojty?a, the future Pope John Paul II. During his lifetime Taborski published eighteen volumes of poetry and six collections of his work, winning prizes in England, the United States, and Poland.
Edward J. Czerwinski (1929–2005) was a specialist in Slavic literature and culture and held two doctorates, one in English and American literature from Emory University and one in Russian and Polish literature from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He began his teaching career in 1957 at the Georgia Institute of Technology and ended it as a full professor of Slavic languages and literature at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he taught from 1979 to 1993. As founder and director of the Slavic Cultural Center in Port Jefferson, New York, Czerwinski introduced many important Eastern European artists to American audiences, presenting theater, dance, concerts, readings, and exhibitions by such artists as Witold Gombrowicz, Ivan Klíma, Jószef Szajna, and Jerzy Grotowski. He wrote and published many articles and books. Fluent in Polish, Russian, Croatian, and Czech, he also translated many Eastern European and Russian works into English.
Claire Bloom gained international fame in 1951 with her screen debut in Charles Chaplin???s motion picture Limelight. Among her many memorable films are Richard III, The Haunting, Look Back in Anger, and A Doll???s House.
Stefan Rudnicki is an award winning audiobook narrator, director and producer. He was born in Poland and now resides in Studio City, California. He has narrated more than three hundred audiobooks and has participated in over a thousand as a writer, producer, or director. He is a recipient of multiple Audie Awards and AudioFile Earphones Awards as well as a Grammy Award, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Ray Bradbury Award. He received AudioFile’s award for 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction and Fantasy. Along with a cast of other narrators, Rudnicki has read a number of Orson Scott Card's best-selling science fiction novels. He worked extensively with many other science fiction authors, including David Weber and Ben Bova. In reviewing the twentieth anniversary edition audiobook of Card’s Ender's Game, Publishers Weekly stated, "Rudnicki, with his lulling, sonorous voice, does a fine job articulating Ender's inner struggle between the kind, peaceful boy he wants to be and the savage, violent actions he is frequently forced to take." Rudnicki is also a stage actor and director.
