Julia M Perroni (University of Wisconsin)
This paper examines the use of queer emphasis in my translation of Euripides’s Helen combined with visualization of performance context to bring out queer and trans themes such as embodiment and alienated identity. The first part is a reflection on the project itself—to translate Helen’s Helen as a trans woman—and its inspiration. The paper considers previous imaginings of Helen of Troy/Sparta and the complications inherent in representing her, particularly in previous translations and adaptations of Euripides’s Helen such as that of Anne Carson, and the specifically queer/trans imaginings of Helen by Izzy Levy and Martine Gutierrez. Provoked by these versions of Helen, this paper identifies trans themes in Euripides’s text: Helen as subject to the amplified vulnerability of trans women to violence from their sexual partners and the spectacle of that violence (Prosser 2006); her deeply complicated relationship between presentation/appearance, visibility, and truth of identity (Wilchins 2006; Feder and Juhasz 2020); her unique and liminal identity (Dentice and Dietert 2015); her performance of femininity; and perhaps most importantly her discomfort with herself. In translating Helen, I was able to illuminate these themes with keen attention to the Greek; many lines remain very close to the literal because of what I discovered ripe for trans-lation: body-language, acts of gender, and the clever sidesteps of truth that are familiar to those who seek to pass beyond scrutiny.
The second part of this paper seeks to expand beyond the text of the translation through an act of radical re-imagination of Helen on stage. The translation I produced is an object with a dedicated interpretive purpose, and yet the text “is unable to provide a play’s meaning considered by itself” (Marshall 2014, 189). This translation demands the visual. However, Helen herself is a difficult figure to represent—the Greeks themselves never describe her concretely (Goldhill 2007, 203), and so in the modern day we are left to wrestle with ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’. Embodying her in any way is a purposeful choice, and putting a trans body in particular in the role of Helen evokes both positive and negative ideas. Firstly, this visualization furthers the trans resonances identified above, but at the same time, it potentially reproduces harmful tropes, such as trans duplicity/danger and the constant victimization of trans women (Koch-Rein, Yekani, and Verlinden 2020), frequently seen depicted in visual media. Thus, this paper seeks not to reconcile but to understand the two conflicting, yet mutually necessary, ideas of visualization present in this translation: the need to imagine Helen, whose character is bound to her appearance, which causes a demand for visual representation to be effective; and the difficulties in depicting Helen, desirable-yet-dangerous, as trans. As a translator, I intended to provoke the reader to view the characters in a certain way—and as a scholar, I reflect on that provocation, its potential visual(ly imagined) influence on reader interpretation, and the ability of the translation to create the meaning desired without also creating unintended harm.