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253 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
It's possible they sense my unbelief, my lack of faith in anything. It's possible they can't bear that. When I ran over the field where the frenzied women had strewn your dismembered limbs, when I ran over that field, wailing in the deepening darkness, and gathered you up, poor, broken brother, piece by piece, bone by bone, that's when I stopped believing. How could we be meant to come back to this earth in a new form. Why should a dead man's limbs, scattered over a field, make that field fertile. Why should the gods, who demand from us continual proofs of gratitude and submission, let us die in order to send us back to earth again. Your death opened my eyes wide, Apsyrtus. For the first time I found solace in the fact that I don't have to live forever. And then I was able to let go of that belief born out of fear; to be more exact, it repelled me.
Do we let ourselves go back to the ancients, or do they catch up with us? No matter.A great deal of fan fiction is written to the tune of reacting to earlier material bloated with populist credibility with "What the fuck is this shit." Sometimes it'll be the politer shade of Shakespeare smoothing out and filling in the gaps of his stolen histories with nary a trace of his authorial human self. Other times an I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem will rise out of the words of a Maryse Condé and run roughshod over evidence and genre and reality in equal measure. Milton preferred shitting on everything and trusting that his prose would save him, which it and his pasty skin and cisnormative dick did in the long run, canonically speaking, but that doesn't make his Paradise Lost any more fundamentally original. The most emphatic, however, would have to be Wolf (not Woolf, although I adore her works as well) and her kind. Ancient Greeks were chosen by Europeans as heralded ancestors for more reasons than the vainglorious and nonsensical theory that is "race", and to an Anglocentric reader such as I, this is easily explained by when, at a particular point in history, Englanders could sing "The Queen is dead. Long live the King."
Do you know what they're looking for, Medea? she asked me. They're looking for a woman who'll tell them that they're not guilty of anything; that the gods, whom they worship by chance, compel them in their undertakings. That the track of blood they leave behind is proper to their male nature as the gods have determined it.There are a lot of people who believe the world is only five hundred years old. They wave away the rampant normalization of the white male as the norm as a biological destiny, throw tantrums when you point out how said biology breaks down the "white" and the "male" and then some, then nod solemnly to themselves when you decide you're better off talking to people whose nightmares are of oppression and fear rather than immigrants and increased taxes. Very few of that sort would pick up a book like this, but you can rest assured they were too busy being threatened by what it had to say to do the customary thing of clinging tightly to "objectivity" in the fact of castration and the other breeds of damage the maenads can wreak. Look, the woman who tore men to pieces were just a facet of the times, and the way in which the narrative uncritically portrays this is just the author embodying the mindset of the character as all authors rightfully should. If you're threatened by this past fiction mirroring certain aspects of your modern day reality: sucks for you.
For the first time I found solace in the fact that I don't have to live forever.It's not as triumphant as that, of course. The point of tragedies isn't to solve them. The only way that happens is when the tragedy no longer strikes a common chord, and what with the word "common" becoming ever increasingly more complicated by the fact that "common" once meant "top dog", tragedy is accordingly becoming increasingly more complicated by a lack of both the refrigerators and the bodies of Others with which to fill them. Medea has her share, but in Wolf's take, the boy may have been disemboweled in an incestuous way, but not in the way you think you know. The daughter may have disappeared, but not for the power of any who end the narrative in exile. The wife may have been driven to her doom, but there is a vast different between accursed and escape. The children are gone, long live the children, but there is more than one species in the animal kingdom wherein the father eats their young.
Incidentally, she then asked me, I don't know why, whether human sacrifice existed among us in the lands of the setting sun. Of course not, I said indignantly, she tilted her head to one side and looked at me searchingly. No? she said. Not even when the going is toughest? I still answered no, and she said thoughtfully, Well. Maybe that's really true.
Aeson, king of Iolcus in Thessaly, had his throne usurped by this half brother Pelias. Aeson’s son Jason was saved, and sent away to be educated by the centaur Cheiron. Grown to manhood, he arrived at the court of Pelias to claim his birthright, but Pelias said he would surrender the throne only on condition that Jason bring back the Golden Fleece from Colchis – a demand which was thought to be the equivalent of a death sentence, as Colchis, situated at the extreme end of the Black Sea, was thought to be unreachable….
Jason had either to refuse the quest and give up all hope of the throne, or accept it and endanger his life. He chose the latter course, and summoned fifty heroes from all over Greece to his aid. These were the Argonauts – named after their ship – who after many perils and adventures arrived at last at Colchis…. There Jason demanded the Golden Fleece as his by inheritance.
Aeëtes, King of Colchis, set more impossible conditions…. Jason was ready to admit defeat when he was seen by Princess Medea, daughter of Aeëtes, granddaughter of Helius the sun god, priestess of the Triple Goddess of the Underworld, and a powerful sorceress…. Overcome by her love for Jason, she used her occult knowledge to help him surmount the various obstacles and to obtain the Fleece, in return for which Jason swore by all the gods to remain true to her forever. Together with the Argonauts, the two lovers set sail by night; but once the alarm was raised, King Aeëtes and the Colchians followed them….
Some say Jason killed Medea’s younger brother Apsyrtus… others, that Medea herself murdered the boy, dismembered him, and scattered the pieces in the ocean…. After several more escapades… the two, now lawfully man and wife, were welcomed at Corinth by its King, Creon….
Jason, forgetting both his debt of gratitude and his vows to all the gods, forsook his loyalty to Medea. Some say he was swayed by the insinuations of Creon… others, that he was overcome by a new love; others, that he was impelled by ambition; but in any case he decided to repudiate Medea, and marry Creon’s daughter Glauce, thus becoming the heir to Corinth. Medea herself was to be banished from the city.
Medea, torn by conflicting emotions… concocted a horrible revenge. Pretending to accept Jason’s decision and to wish for peace between them, she sent a bridal gift to Glauce – a beautiful but poisonous dress, which, when the rays of the sun hit it, burst into flame, whereupon Glauce in agony threw herself into a well. Some say that the people of Corinth then stoned Medea’s children to death; others, that she herself killed them, either to save them from a worse fate or to pay Jason back for his treachery. She then disappeared from Corinth, some say in a chariot drawn by dragons. Jason… abandoned by the gods whom he had foresworn, became a wandering vagabond and was at last crushed by the prow of his own rotting ship. (pp. ix-xi)
We spoke not a syllable about what this desired result might be. We made a game of our plans, which grew more and more refined, and played it in an unreal atmosphere, as though no one could be affected by our playing. If one wishes to think freely and effectively at the same time, this is a very useful method. It’s a kind of thinking, moreover, that we in Colchis haven’t yet recognized, and supposedly given only to men; but I know I have a talent for it. Only I practice it in secret. (p. 64)
What man, even if he’s her father, would want to touch a girl’s pallid unclean skin, her thin lank hair, her awkward limbs, even if she’s his daughter, isn’t it so, yes, the first thing I knew for certain was that I’m ugly; the woman whose name I don’t want to say anymore can laugh at me as much as she wants, she can teach me tricks, how I should carry myself, how I should wash and wear my hair, naturally I was taken in by all that, and I would almost have believed her, would almost have felt like any other girl; that’s my weakness, believing those who flatter me, though it wasn’t actually flattery, it was something else, something cleverer, it went deeper, it touched the most secret spot inside me, the deepest pain, which up until then I was able to display only to the god and will be able to display only to the god again from now on, forever and ever, that’s my sentence, I dare not think about it, it makes me sick, she taught me that, it makes me sick when I keep recalling to my mind those images of myself as an unlucky person, as a poor soul, but why, she said, laughing as only she can laugh…why, she said, do you want to suffocate your whole life under all this black cloth, she took off the black clothing I’ve worn as long as I can think…. She sewed the clothes for me…I ran through the halls with downcast eyes, one of the young cooks didn’t recognize me and he whistled at me after I passed, unheard-of, unheard-of and wonderful, oh how wonderful, but her black magic was just that, she let me feel something that wasn’t real, isn’t real, all of a sudden my arms and legs became graceful, or anyway that’s how it felt, but that was all deception, ridicule…and proof of all this is that now, when they’ve taken me away from her corrupting influence and given me back the dark-colored clothes I belong in, that now my arms and my legs, too, have lost their deceitful gracefulness again and no apprentice cook, no matter how stupid, is even going to think about whistling at me….
[S]he was the one who tried to persuade me that I was free to think, I hate my father, and nothing would happen to him because of that thought, there was no need to feel guilty about it. That’s how her wicked influence on me began, today it seems incredible to me, outrageous, that I surrendered myself to it, that I reveled in my surrender to it, that was the wickedness in me, all at once it was free to present itself as my best side, my obsession with fancy dress, the pleasure I took in trivial diversions and in those childish games she made me play with Arinna. (pp. 106-9)
Then again the woman, the one who came up to us in Aeëtes’s vine-covered court, was the opposite of the horrible corpse-fruit, or maybe it heightened the impression she made on us. The way she stood there, stooped over, in that red and white tiered skirt and close-fitting black top they all wear, and caught the water from the spout in her cupped hands and drank. The way she straightened up and notice us, shook her hands dry, and approached us frankly, taking quick, strong steps, slender, but with a well-developed figure, and showing off all the virtues of her appearance to such advantage….
Of course it was odd, how she greeted us with her hands raised in the sign of peace, a sign proper only to the King or his envoys; how she openly gave her name, Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes and High Priestess of Hecate; how she desired to know our names and our destination, as though it were her right to do so, and I, taken by surprise, revealed to this woman what was meant for the King’s ears only. (pp. 32-3)
I see plainly what will happen to her. I shall have to stand by and watch the whole thing. That is my lot, to have to stand by and watch everything, to see through everything, and to be able to do nothing, as though I had no hands. Whoever uses his hands must dip them in blood, whether he wants to or not. I do not want to have blood on my hands. I want to stand up here on the roof terrace of my tower, observing the milling throngs below me in the narrow streets of Corinth by day and bathing my eyes in the darkness of the heavens above me by night, while one by one the constellations emerge like familiar friends….
Medea says I am a man who fears pain. I should like her to fear pain more than she does. (pp. 125-6)
"Sai cosa cercano Medea? Cercano una donna che dica loro che non hanno colpe; che sono gli dei, oggetto casuale di adorazione, a trascinarli nelle loro imprese. Che la scia di sangue che si lasciano dietro fa parte della mascolinità così come gli dei l’hanno determinata. Grandi bambini terribili Medea. [...] Ma nessuno di loro sopporta la disperazione, hanno addestrato noi a disperarci, qualcuno, o qualcuna, deve pur portare il lutto. Se la terra fosse riempita solo dal rumore del macello e dalle urla e dal piagnucolio dei vinti, semplicemente si fermerebbe, non credi?"