Re-translation of a Chinese Poem by Li Bai

Compare this translation with April 13th 2005's translation

獨坐敬亭山 - 李白

眾鳥高飛盡，
孤雲獨去閑。
相看兩不厭，
只有敬亭山。

Sitting Alone at Jingting Hill

The gathered birds fly through the boundless sky,
The orphan cloud trek on its lonely way.
But countergazing, inexhaustible,
Is possible with Jingting Hill alone.

What are the three things that make for "great literature"?

Apologies for this rather late reply, but the question proposed is one I found exceedingly difficult to provide a satisfying answer, especially after reading Terry Eagleton's Marxist Literary Theory: an Introduction, which argues that there is no such thing as "literature". Eagleton does have a point when he writes that defining "literature" as an object is doomed to failure because language (the most fundamental component of literature) is arbitrary and is subject to historical, material, economical and cultural changes. To define "literature" as an object is to give it ontological status. Having said that, does that mean that one should assign the same "literary" value to Homer's Achilles as Homer Simpson? To those of us who study literature, we seem to have an "intuitive" understanding of what is "literary". Eagleton argues that's an illusion, and that the English departments in universities should dissolve itself and talk about cultural studies instead. Perhaps. As an English student, I'm a little disturbed by that idea. I honestly cherish my Achilles and do not care much for Homer Simpson.

Even if this be a doomed enterprise, I am going to give my positive answer to the proposed question. The way I'm going to answer the question is this: I'm going to list out a set of almost universally acknowledged English literary works, and tried to look for three kinds of samenesses that are in all of these works.

The works are: Shakespeare's Macbeth, Milton's Paradise Lost, Austen's Emma, George Eliot's Middlemarch, Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Joyce's The Dead, Beckett's Waiting for Godot.

There are a few "essences", common answers to the proposed question, which actually do not answer the proposed question when we look at all the literature on the list. Is great literature:
1. philosophical? Nope: Aunt Jane and Uncle Oscar are hardly philosophical.
2. moral? Nope: Beckett doesn't seem to care about that.
3. English-ness? Nope: Waiting for Godot is actually French; Paradise Lost follows a Grecian tradition more than an English tradition.
4. the best seller? Nope: Austen-mania is a 20th century phenemenon; Beckett's play is hard to attract audience.
5. time-tested? Nope: True enough all these works are studied, but all of these works more or less had its ups and downs throughout literary history; they come back as "great literature" not because of any kind of time-tested values. Nobody reads Milton like one reading the Scripture like the 18th century (in the positive sense) and the 19th century (in the negative sense). Works like Wilde's play come back into the academia because of its deconstructive value, and certainly Wilde, nor the late Victorian audience and readers, had no such notion in mind.
6. Critical or conformative of an ideology? Nope: Shakespeare, Eliot, Wilde and Joyce were, but not Milton and Austen; Beckett simply doesn't care.

The following is my positive answer to the proposed question.
1. Great literature is a defamilarization of our common language. This works on both a technical and a cultural/social level, and this holds true for the list.
2. Great literature is "writerly"; this means that the reader is always part of the construction of meaning of the text. Great literature is never just a medium in which the author feeds his/her readers a message. Great literature makes room for multiple interpretations, all of them valid. Even a text like Milton's Paradise Lost, after we read it, we are beg to question not only theological questions, but Milton's treatment of these questions, and in that process we necessarily become the "writer" of the text. If you read a typical Young Adults novel, or a romance, or anything else "non-Literature" (with the capital L), it doesn't have this "writerly" dimension.
3. Great literature is taught in universities. This is the sad Marxist fact; if nobody teaches a work, there isn't ground for it to be great. Literature, as Eagleton argues, is an institution, in particular, the academia. All the works in the list are taught in universities, and are read over and over again.

So there you have it. My answer to the proposed question after a brief meditation (last night).

Good Bye Tiffy!

Thank you for everything you gave me: joy. I don't think any kind of huge crisis happened between us or to any of us, and hence our friendship is not built on critical moments. Perhaps this is why I don't have any memories of any particular events; instead, what I have is a beautiful mosaic of particular moments: remember what I told you in chem about your skirt? remember the way you sleep on the bus? remember the way you play with your sushi? remember the things I've said about your body? remember the way you sleep at the concert? remember our various dinner parties? outrageous things indeed! But the commonality between all of these things is one thing: laughter. You are truly my sunshine because we smile and laugh everytime we see each other; it is never an empty laughter, like how one laughs at a comedy show and then is suddenly conscious of one's emptiness; it is a serenade truly from the heart. I am going to miss you a lot, my dearest friend, for I must go "out there" and search for my sunshine again. As much as you have given me comfort, warmth and joy, I hope I have given you the same.

I can recall nothing said by you but three words: "No, only you." (I don't want to de-contextualize this for misunderstanding: this is from one of our sushi meetings - I have forgotten which one exactly, but you were playing with your food (and indirectly also mine) and I asked you if you do that with all your friends, and you said those words.) And it is certainly odd that I simply cannot recall other specific speeches or words. What I do remember is your voice - in G major and always in Mozartian harmonies (although oddly enough, I would also compare your voice to Beethoven's Tenth Violin Sonata, the final movement). It is the sweetest melody I have ever heard, and that I shall never forget.

Good Bye Tiffy!...until we meet again.

How does an advertising process work?

The Theoretical Answer

Our inquiry here is the mechanism of an advertisement, and hence we pose the starting question: how does an advertising process work? A simple answer might be something like this: there is a product someone is trying to sell. someone uses some means first to attract the potential consumer, then to deliver the producer's message. The advertisement is considered as successful if it achieves its goal - to persuade the consumer to buy the advertised product. This simple answer is not incorrect; however, it is all too trivial, for, firstly, it onlylists out the basic elements of advertisment: a product, an ad, and an audience; secondly, the actual, detailed process of how these elements fit together is overlooked. Specifically with respect to the process of advertising, we need to know why is it that certain means are choosen over others for delivery, and how is it that one way is more effective than another. In this essay, I want to suggest that the mechanism of an advertisment is ultimately a language game - we can abstract from the millions of advertisement "out there" a code, and via this code we can see exactly how an effective advertisement is produced.

In the analysis of an advertisement, we are not so much concerned with the product that someone is trying to sell; nor are we necessarily and exclusively preoccupied with the audience of the advertisement. What is of concern is the relationshipo between the advertisement itself and the audience who is going to decode it.

Advertisement is a language game because, like an ordinary spech or an Aesopian fable, it has a message it is trying to get across. The essence of an effective advertisement is its ability to codify persuasive arguments for a certain product within the bounds of its medium (poster, radio ad, TV, etc.). This "essence" is exactly the same as our natural (spoken and written) language. A producer for a product probably can write ten thousand words essays as to why someone should purchase his product; but very few of us have the patience to read something like that, and certainly none of us has the time. An advertisement, therefore, needs to condense those many words into one or two visual or audio symbols, and integrates those symbols into the overall design of the advertisement such as to deliver the equivalent message. A basic example would be slogans like "Got Milk?" (a rhetorical question) and "Obey your thirst" (an outright but very reasonable command). But many advertisements are non-verbal, and relies exclusively on symbols and/or sounds. The question now becomes this: how do these advertisements work? And why is it that some are more effective than others?

If an advertisement is indeed site where language games take place, then we are better off talking about the nature of language than the elements of advertisement. Well, how does language work?

Firstly, language is a relationship between a specific code and its decoder. Without a code the decoder is an animal; without a decoder the code is meaningless. The decoding process is entirely arbitrary: "someone" decided that "t-r-e-e" (the arbitrary made up code or the "signifier") means "tree" (the mental image or the "signified"). Hence every time a decoder sees the written character "tree", he would have a mental image of "tree" in his mind, and meaning is created this way.

But what we should keep in mind is that the "meaning" of a word or code is arbitrary. "Arbour", for someone else, can also trigger the mental image of a "tree". For every code to work there needs to be a specific decoder who can decode the code and have acess to the meaning of the message.

What is the significance of this digression on language for our discussion on the mechanism of an advertisement? An advertisement is just metaphorically another language. All the words, sounds and symbols in an advertisement are like signifiers of the natural language, while the mental image or the implicit message inside the audience's mind is the "signified". The key to advertisement is decoding; advertisement, like language, has a certain code. The code, however, is much less systematic, but also much more intimate than something like the English alphabet.

The code of advertisement comes from ideology. (Ideology is "the set of beliefs characteristic of a social group or individual" - OED) An effective advertisement must be readily understood. This means that the designer of the advertisement must perfectly understand the mentality of his intended audience; the designer must also understand the social values and codes of his intended audience. Only with these two pieces of wisdom can anyone design an effective advertisement, and only with a comprehensive understanding of the operation of language can an advertisement designer become "wise."

Translation of a Chinese poem by Li Bai

送孟浩然之廣陵 - 李白

故人西辭黃鶴樓,
煙花三月下揚州.
孤帆遠影碧空盡,
惟見長江天際流.

On Yellow-Crane Tower, Farewell to Meng Hao-Jan who's leaving for Yang-Chou - Li Bai; translated by David Hinton

From Yellow Crane Tower, my old friend leaves the west.
Downstream to Yang-chou, late spring a haze of blossoms,
distant glints of lone sail vanish into emerald-green air:
nothing left but a river flowing on the borders of heaven.

Farewell to Meng Hao-Ran - Li Bai; translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

My friend bade farewell at the Yellow Crane House,
And went down eastward to Willow Valley
Amid the flowers and mists of March.
The lonely sail in the distance
Vanished at last beyond the blue sky
And I could see only the river
Flowing along the border of heaven.

To Meng Hao-Ran going to Yang-Zhou - Li Bai; my translation

Departing West, a comrade leaves from Tower Yellow-Crane,
In March's floral fireworks downstreaming to Yang-Zhou.
The lonely sail's vague shadow faded through the jaded space,
But see the longest river flowing to the bounds of sky.

*Note: David Hinton's translation is by far the best I have seen. It is not only accurate, but rigid without conforming to any kind of English poetic convention. I am extremely indebted to his translation before making my own. On the other hand, I am still quite unsatisfied with my own translation. For one, "downstreaming" in line 2 is not exactly a word. The "lonely sail's vague shadow" is not a faithful translation, since "vague" should really be "far" or "distant". The last line the word "see" is not correct either; a more accurate translation should be "only see". The problem with my translation is that I confine myself to strict iambic heptameter, meaning I am restricted to 14 syllables per line with a strict pattern. That is why I am not (yet) able to get to the most accurate translation.

Translation of a Chinese Poem by Li Qi

古從軍行 - 李頎

白日登山望烽火, 黃昏飲馬傍交河.
行人刁斗風沙暗, 公主琵琶幽怨多.
野雲萬里無城郭, 雨雪紛紛連大漠.
胡雁哀鳴夜夜飛, 胡兒眼淚雙雙落.
聞道玉門猶被遮, 應將性命逐輕車.
年年戰骨埋荒外, 空見葡萄入漢家.

An Old War Song - Li Qi; translator unknown

Through the bright day up the mountain, we scan the sky for a war-torch;
At yellow dusk we water our horses in the boundaryriver;
And when the throb of watch-drums hangs in the sandy wind,
We hear the guitar of the Chinese Princess telling her endless woe....
Three thousand miles without a town, nothing but camps,
Till the heavy sky joins the wide desert in snow.
With their plaintive calls, barbarian wildgeese fly from night to night,
And children of the Tartars have many tears to shed;
But we hear that the Jade Pass is still under siege,
And soon we stake our lives upon our light warchariots.
Each year we bury in the desert bones unnumbered,
Yet we only watch for grape-vines coming into China.

*A note on this translation found on the internet: this translation has several problems. First of all, while in general the meaning is translated, a translator should not be translating "meaning" but "text". This translator, however, translated the meaning and not the text. This leads to the second point: his or her translation does not match the word order of the orignal text. The third line of the translation said "And when the throb of watch-drums hangs in the sandy wind"; that is one possible meaning, but the actual literal translation goes something like this: "Travellers military-tool (or drums) sandy-wind (or desert) dim (or dark, blurry)". Finally, the word "we" appeared in the translation actually does not exist in the original Chinese at all. "We" is an interpretation by the translator, yet the original text only assumes the "we". In the first line, saying that "Through the bright day up the mountain, we scan the sky for a war-torch" and "The whitened sun ascends the hill and views the signal fire" are equally valid, for in the original text, there is no "subject" separating the "sun" and the act of "watching for fire signal". The literal translation of the text is actually "White-sun climbing-hill watches signal-fire." It is entirely up to interpretation to say that "we" watched the for the fire signal. And the translator gets into trouble with this interpretation, for the "we" in line one (who is out at camp) cannot be the same "we" in line twelve (who is in China watching the grapes coming in).

The Ancient Army - Li Qi; my translation

The whitened sun ascends the hill and views the signal fire,
At yellow eve, the drinking horse rests by the rivers' joint.
The travellers' come near the drums in misting desert storm,
A princess plays her Chinese harp with overflowing woe.
The wild warcamps for thousand miles escape the city wall,
And show'ring snow, chaotic flurry, fills the wasted land.
The Tartar geese's mournful echoes wing for every night,
While Tartar children's flooding tears descend from every pair.
From rumours heard that Jaded Pass seems nearly overwhelmed,
All loyal soldiers' life must trail the rushing chariots.
Though every year the bones of war are buried far from town,
Yet all would see barbarous grapes flow into Chinese home.

Translation of a Chinese Poem by Tu Fu

Briefly Revised Version after the Comments

春望 - 杜甫

國破山河在，城春草木深。
感時花濺淚，恨別鳥驚心。
烽火連三月，家書抵萬金。
白頭搔更短，渾欲不勝簪。

Spring View - Tu Fu; translated by Gary Snyder

The nation is ruined, but mountains and rivers remain.
This spring the city is deep in weeds and brush.
Touched by the times even flowers weep tears,
Fearing leaving the birds tangled hearts.
Watch-tower fires have been burning for three months
To get a note from home would cost ten thousand gold.
Scratching my white hair thinner
Seething hopes all in a trembling hairpin.

Spring Yearning - Tu Fu; my translation

The nation's gone, but hills and rivers stand,
The town sees spring, the weeds and woods emerge.
Unhappy times, no flow'rs can hold the tears,
The bitter parting, birds disturb the heart.
And signal fires for three months ever burn,
A homeward word ten thousand gold exceeds.
The snowing head uncombs the melting hair
Which no hairpin can hope to gath'r and tie.

Notable things in an eventless life

(In other words, what has been happening recently...)

I

About two weeks ago, at the orientation for Vancouver Public Library's Summer Bookcamp, as my supervisor concluded her session, and as I was leaving my chair and out the door, a middle-age woman come up to me and said, "Well, I think it is going to be an awesome camp." I thought what she was saying is just some general comments as a conversation opener. I was confused because it was the end of the session! So I give a generic reply, "Yeah, I think the camp is going to be great." And then she added, "I think the kids are going to love you, Johnson. You seem like a very fun person." I smiled and nodded. In my mind, of course, I was confused. I was thinking "what???" I could not understand how she could think that I'm a "fun" person, since during the entire session I had only spoken once (to anyone), asking my supervisor a question. I don't think I had ask a particular weird or "funny" question. All weekend long I was pondering on this point: do I leak some kind of "fun" odour???

II

Well, two weeks late, meaning yesterday, Bookcamp began. I didn't think I was great or terrible on the first day as a "tent councillor". I had my share of contributions, but I had also made my errors. But today at lunch apparently a quarter of the kids smelt my "fun" odour. There was about 15 kids all surrounding me, begging me to play human knot with them. Instead I'd suggested murder wink, allowing the kids to play more and me to take a more observant role. (As a councillor, while I should have fun, I ought to always be aware of sudden things.) But a few other councillors, beholding my odd popularity, were laughing (at the situation and not me specifically, I hope). The games were fun and at the end of lunch time we went back to our workshops. By the end of the day, one of the girls (she's 10, I think) in my tent is calling me "Fluffy" like a puppy. She would cling onto my arm and would not let me go. Happily her mother arrived and my arm eventually got free. But I suspect tomorrow my arm will be imprisoned for another day.

So, do I give off some kind of "fun" odour, or is the woman hallucination and the kids just crazy?

III

Back at condomania, we have been doing various demo workshops, exploring the mindset of grade 7's to 10's. Nothing I don't know upon any kind of more serious reflection and observation. The interesting part was that the condom demo with the wooden demonstrator was repeated over and over again. I have seen it at least four times now, and I think there is going to be at least two more times. I even got to know the mechanics of the female condom. Those of you who find my experience a little weird ought to change your thinking: it's a kind of health and safe practices that everyone should know (but not necessary use), like how to use a thermometer and avoid the cold wind when you caught a cold.

All these demo presentations are supposed to train us to be ready for presentations. But honestly, compared to the beginning of the training session, I don't believe that I have changed one bit. At actual workshops, things might be a bit more difficult. (I ought to just give off more "fun" odour so I won't lose my audience's interest in the subject, eh?)

IV

This August has been the most busy of the four months of my summer holiday. And happily so, for I have been doing many cool things, like Condomania, BookCamp and writing "The Chelsiad". I'm also planning to translate five Chinese poems. All these things simply screwed up my reading schedule. I was going to prepare for school. But come to think of it, maybe I should just spend the last two weeks doing what I want to do, for I won't be doing any more "useless" stuff anytime soon. Since the translations and "The Chelsiad" is going to occupy me probably for the rest of the summer, I'll compile a little list of regrets, wishing I have time to do the following:
1. Finish the Jane Austen Cycle by reading Emma
2. Read Tristam Shandy
3. Read some Shakespeare comedies (although watching one performance of As You Like It
was already enough)
4. Not going to any musical spectacles this summer. I've missed Handel's and Carl Maria von Weber's operas as well as some chamber music concerts
5. Not reading Paradise Lost again
6. Not reading Spinoza's Ethics and Nietzsche's writings
7. Not exercising enough
8. Not seeing some of my friends at all these four months
9. Not learning German
10. Not having a job? Although that's probably a good thing; if I had a job, I would not be writing The Chelsiad

Thoughts on Shakespeare's Macbeth

I

Macbeth is Shakespeare's masterpiece because it raises many questions about human nature. One question is, what is the nature of human ambition? I think in Macbeth Shakespeare shows us three kinds of human ambition; they are embodied by the characters Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and Banquo

The first three characters' ambitions are unnatural: both Macbeth and Banquo are prompted by the witches' prophecies; Lady Macbeth violates the "nature" of her sex (as a female). The differences from the three kinds of ambition lie in their relationship to human reason. Lady Macbeth's ambition is utter un-reason-able: it is human passion running loose without any constrain. Her ambition is one that will be triggered upon the slightest suggestion. We ought to remember that she did not make direct contact with the witches; her ambition awakes through an indirect account from Macbeth. Of course, since her ambition is un-reason-able, she dies also an un-reason-able death, i.e. insanity. Macbeth's ambition has an element of rationality, but reason in his case is overwhelmed by passion. At the beginning of the play, Macbeth has doubts if he should kill Duncan; however he is influenced by Lady Macbeth's taunt of his "unmanliness". The rational factor, however, is important, for Macbeth is not insane like his wife by the end of the play; rather he displays the greatest degree of nobility once his passions extinguish. Banquo's ambition is tamed by reason. Macbeth asks him if he wants the best for his sons, and no doubt Banquo wants his prophecy (his sons becoming kings) to come true; but reason checks him, and hence he makes no ill decisions. Hence it is reasonable that Banquo's sons will actually become king because ambition with reason takes time for it to achieve its purpose, and this manifests symbolically in the prophecy, that not Banquo himself, but Banquo's sons will achieve his ambition and become kings.

It is interesting to see the degree of "naturality" of the three kinds of ambition. Both Lady Macbeth and Macbeth's ambitions are considered as unnatural, and this is reflected in the language of Shakespeare when he describes the sceneries and when he decorates the sollioquies of the two characters. Lady Macbeth wants to "unsex" herself to kill Duncan; Macbeth's killing is described as an owl killing a falcon. Banquo, on the other hand, is considered as the "root" of many kings, which Macbeth has to and does eliminate. This, of course, is a reflection of the Renaissance's belief in a hierarchy of power, or Pope's "great chain of being". Ambition is unnatural because it upsets the natural order, and it seems that Shakespeare is suggesting that it is all too easy to have unnatural ambitions (symbolized by the witches) and that only human reason can keep ambitions in check.

II

Another question that springs from Macbeth is this: is Macbeth fated to fall at Dunsinane? How much free will does Macbeth have in the play?

One thing is sure: the witches do know the future. This is not clear at first, for the four prophecies that the witches utter can be just anything anyone can say. The witches say Macbeth is the Thane of Glamis - that is already a fact; then they say Macbeth will be the Thane of Cawdor - that is already happened elsewhere and is about to happen whether Macbeth like it or not; then they say Macbeth will become King - anyone can say this, since the witches are not presenting a logical syllogism; then they say Banquo's sons shall be kings - we do not even know if this is true by the end of the play. So at first we are not clear if the witches can indeed foresee into the future. But when they say that Macbeth shall fall when the forrest moves to Dunsinane, that is a clear evidence that the witches can foresee into the future. If the witches know the future, it follows that Macbeth's actions are all inevitable - they necessary happen.

However, does that mean Macbeth has no free will? It seems that Shakespeare is suggesting a solution for Milton, who a generation later wrote Paradise Lost and had to deal with the same free-will problem (namely, do Adam and Eve have free will such that God is justified to punish them). Shakespeare's solution is this: while things can be inevitable, responsibility lies in the individual's choice of action at the moment of acting. The witches can see into the future, but it does not mean that they are the cause to Macbeth's action. Hardly the case, both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are the culpits of their crimes, and whether consciously or subconsciously, they know it very well. They cannot be or feel guilty if they do not have free will. Macbeth's final stance too is an act of free will; he consciously choose to arm himself and fight until his death. Hence we see the human condition in Macbeth: human beings are responsible for their actions regardless of divinities' foreknowledge of the future. (Hence, Milton is able to justify Adam and Eve's actions and punish them accordingly.)

III

Before reading the play, I was watching a little bit of Verdi's Macbeth. This early work of his is an adaptation of the play, meaning similiarities can be found not only in the plot, but also specifically in the liberetto. I think Verdi made a mistake in choose Macbeth as the subject for his opera because Macbeth is so much of a psychological play. The psychological-originated play is not suitable for Italian opera style, no matter how masterful Verdi's music is composed to be. His chorus music with the witches and the assassins are excellent: they are bold and colourful. But the traditional Italian aria is simply incapable of bringing out Shakespeare's psychology in full force. Lady Macbeth's sollioquy after she received Macbeth simply cannot be sung in a major key! The dark psychological force of ambition is never sustained throughout the entire opera, given the structure of the Italian opera consists in separate arias. Macbeth, if it is to be made into an opera, must be musically intense, and musically intense, I believe, means two things: continuous melody and atonality. Only with continuous melody can the opera keep up its intensity; only with atonality (or at least Wagnerian chromatic harmonies) can the psychological darkness within Macbeth's sollioquies be brought out to its full potential. Admittedly, I have not finished the entire opera, but I'm confident that these observations hold after I've finished the opera. Like Sophocle's Electra, Macbeth is made for a composer like Richard Strauss, not Verdi. Verdi, therefore, was smart in choosing Othello instead at the end of his life as the subject of an opera.

Five foot two, or five feet two?

Here are some responses:

"unless you're asking in the philosophical sense, it's 5 foot two"

"feet is used not as often in comparison to foot; usually people use when they are abotu to give teh word inches, like 5 feet two inches..."

"I think it's foot, but then people call me 5 feet tall so i'm confused..."

"I think it 5 foot 2, but my friend said it's 5 feet 2 and she is smarter, so..."

"I thought five feet two inches works, thus five feet two works; but I always say five foot two."

"FIVE FOOT TWO"

"hmm...that is a very good question. I'll have to think about that."

*The correct answer, as far as I understand, is five foot two, since "foot" in this case is an adjective; in the case of "five feet", "feet" is a noun. However, I'm not sure about this adjective/noun explanation.

The Four Kinds of Greek Tragedy: A List

From Archibald C. Coolidge Jr.'s Book Beyond the Fatal Flaw

I: Choral lament drama
- Aeschylus: The Suppliants, The Persians, Agamemnon
- Sophocles: Oedipus at Colonus
- Euripides: The Heracleidae, The Trojan Women

II: Drama of reversal
- Aeschylus: The Choephori
- Sophocles: The Trachiniae, Oedipus the King
- Euripides: Rhesus, Medea, Hecuba, Heracles

III: Drama of order
- Aeschylus: The Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, The Eumenides
- Sophocles: Ajax, Antigone, Electra, Philoctetes
- Eurpides: Iphigenia in Tauris, Electra

IV: Ironic order dramas
- Euripides: Alcestis, Hippolytus, Andromache, The Suppliants, Ion, Helen, The Phoenissae, Orestes, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Bacchae