Vale a pena trazer Alceste de volta à vida? Eurípides e Gonçalo M. Tavares

Abstract

Alcestis, the oldest of the remaining works of Euripides and one of the less loved, is able to raise the most diverse interpretations and to surprise by an ambiguity that leaves the contemporary reader completely disarmed. This is also why it was unexpected that the Portuguese writer Gonçalo M. Tavares presented, in 2014, Os velhos também querem viver (Old people also want to live), a work that draws its inspiration from Euripides Alcestis. Placing the events in the surrounded city of Sarajevo (that means between 1992 and 1996), Tavares reproduces in full the intrigue of the Greek text, but subjecting it to the filter of a narrator who follows the events with a detached look, sometimes driven by mistrust, sometimes by irony - and this mechanism of (re) reading the words of the Greek play is able to refresh the way we look to the original text of Euripides.