Concerning the chorus in Euripides by Osip Mandelstam

The shuffling elders: a shambles

of sheep, an abject throng!

I uncoil like a snake,

 

my heart an ancient ache

of dark Judaic wrong.

But it will not be long

 

before I shake off sadness,

like a boy, in the evening,

shaking sand from his sandals.

 

by Осип Эмильевич Мандельштам (Osip Emilyevich Mandelshtam. His surname is commonly latinised as Mandelstam)

(1914)

translated by James Greene

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Fun facts: Euripides (Εὐριπίδης), c. 480 – c. 406 BC, was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom a significant number of plays have survived. There are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined —he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.

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