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Phèdre is a tragedy theatrical play written in 1677 by Jean Racine. In Phèdre, Racine again chose a subject already treated by Greek and Roman tragic poets, this time, Euripides' play Hippolytus.
Due to the ridicule it received, Phèdre was Racine's last play until 1689, when he wrote Esther at the request of Madame De Maintenon, the mistress of Louis XIV.

Synopsis
In the absence of her husband, King Thésée, Phèdre falls in love with Hippolyte, son of Thésée of a preceding marriage.
Act 1. Hippolyte, son of Thésée and of an Amazon, announces to his confidant his intention to leave the city of Trézène to flee his love for Aricie, the only living descendant of an enemy clan of Thésée. Phèdre, wife of Thésée, is dragging herself around the palace wanting to die, and is pleaded with by Oenone, her confidante, to try and live. Phèdre confides to Oenone the passion that she feels for her stepson Hippolyte. The death of Thésée is announced.

Act 2. Aricie confides in her confidante, Ismène, that she is in love with Hippolyte; he then arrives and unveils his own similar feelings. Phèdre comes to see Hippolyte in order to uphold the right of her son to succeed Thésée as ruler; she then, under the influence of Oenone to do so, declares her love to Hippolyte.

Act 3. Thésée, who is not dead, comes back to Trézène and is astonished to receive so cold a welcome: Hippolyte wants to flee his mother-in-law, Phèdre is destroyed by the guilt she feels at having revealed her love to both Oenone and Hippolyte.

Act 4. Oenone, who fears that Hippolyte will denounce Phèdre for her admission of love, declares to Thésée that Hippolyte attempted to seduce Phèdre. Thésée banishes Hippolyte and asks the god Neptune (who owes Thésée a favor) to kill his son. Phèdre wants to convince Thésée that he is mistaken until she learns that Hippolyte is in love with Aricie. Furious to have a rival, she renounces him and leaves him to his father's wrath.

Act 5. Hippolyte leaves after having promised Aricie that he will marry her outside the city. Thésée begins to have doubts about the guilt of his son, but it is too late; Théramène soon reports to the king that Hippolyte is dead. Phèdre, after having banished Oenone for her advice and manipulation, confesses to Thésée that Hippolyte was innocent. Having taken poison before this, she collapses. To make up for his judgment, Thésée, following the last words of his dying son, forgives and decides to adopt Aricie.

Influence
Certain lines from Phèdre have become classics. The musicality of the alexandrine verse "la fille de Minos et de Pasiphaë" was celebrated so much that it became the object of mocking imitations.
Phèdre's influence was far-reaching. During Racine's own life, Phèdre was the title of another play on the same subject by Jacques Pradon. In the nineteenth century, Émile Zola loosely based La Curée, one of his books from the Rougon-MacQuart series (an exploration of genealogical and environmental influences upon characters) on Racine's Phèdre. In his work Le Dieu caché, Lucien Goldmann extrapolates social theories of the role of the divine in French consciousness from thematic elements in Phèdre.

Although Phèdre is perhaps less often studied at high school level than Britannicus or Andromaque, it is still performed today.

The late British poet laureate Ted Hughes produced a highly regarded free verse translation of Phèdre in 2000. This version was produced shortly before his death with Diana Rigg playing the title role.

The title character of the Kushiel's Legacy Trilogy by Jacqueline Carey is named Phèdre. It is continually noted throughout the story that this name brings with it a curse.

Dame Edna Everage has repeatedly declared her desire to play Phèdre. A personality more distant from Racine's guilt-ridden heroine is difficult to imagine.




Dolphin


My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise,
a captive as Racine, the man of craft,
drawn through his maze of iron composition
by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre.
When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body
caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines,
the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . .
I have sat and listened to too many
words of the collaborating muse,
and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,
not avoiding injury to others,
not avoiding injury to myself--
to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction,
an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting

my eyes have seen what my hand did.

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http://forum.wordreference.com/archive/index.php?t-20499.html


I've been looking at the poem and have some ideas but since you're on a deadline and you and the others have probably been thinking along similar lines, I'll just mention one that I haven't seen in the posts:
The "glassy bowing" refers to a bowing technique called "sul ponticello" . Bowing close to the bridge of a double bass produces a peculiar, glassy sound. So "[glassy] bowing and scraping" is a multilevel
play on words--bowing and scraping, as in subservience, with the bow pronounced "bough"; and bowing and scraping, with it pronounced "beau" having to do with playing a stringed instrument with a bow. And then the level of "glassy" is added in...

I hope this helps a bit--good luck with your translation!

p.s. Did you know that Lowell translated Racine?
*
**1* My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise,
**2 * a captive as Racine, the man of craft,
**3 * drawn through his maze of iron composition
**4 * by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre.
**5 * When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body
**6 * caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines,
**7 * the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . .

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A man entangled in a net against which, eel-like, he struggles. It was an image to which Lowell returned again and again in one form or another: the Roman retiarius with net and trident fighting against crushing odds. From his mid-twenties on he would suffer many times over from a full-blown bi-polar disorder; again and again it turned out to be poetry and the care of Hardwick and a handful of devoted friends which allowed him to swim back to the surface of reality. Somehow, against the odds, he managed to write (and rewrite) hundreds of extraordinary poems in the time given him, finding consolation and even what he called joy, in being preoccupied with the intricate mesh of language. "My dolphin," he wrote in his last years, addressing the ever-virgin, ever-ancient muse that had siren-like called to him across forty years of writing.

Also, I now think that Artrella is right and that 'you made for my body' means 'you came to me' because in a version of the poem I found, the next line starts with a capital letter and so is a new sentence.

Caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines,
the glassy bowing and scraping of my will....

So...
When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body (which had) the glassy bowing and scraping of my will caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines.

Which I think means: You came to me at a time when my weak will was caught/enmeshed in my carnal/bestial urges.
Pretty dark…

I'm certainly no expert when it comes to poetry so if anyone can offer a better analysis I'd be very interested to read it.



Helicopta I agree with your interpretation, and taking into account (as you said in the PM) that he suffered from bi-polar personality... I think we are on the right track.

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'To bow and scrape' means 'to be subservient to' so i would interpret it as:

You made my will succumb to the desires of my body.

In which case, the third line is the object of 'made'.

I'm not sure why 'glassy' though.


I think this excerpt means: When I'm down, you come to my body, which is caught in some pain that keeps my will submitting me. Well, I don't know exactly the words to use in English. But it seems his will is domineering him, that's why he is depressed, he cannot fight his own mind.

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Glassy is used to depict your eyes when they show no expression and seem not to see anything.