Euripides, Medea

Euripides, Medea            Seminar Overview to GLS

Stephen introduced a bit of the background and context surrounding Medea during the seminar, and it is widely available elsewhere (i.e. Wikipedia), so I won’t go over it again here for the sake of brevity .

Medea is a mythological character and would have been well known to the Ancient Greeks. She is also the main character in Euripides play. In Euripides play, the action begins once in Corinth. Euripides chooses to present Jason, the great hero, as a bit of a dupe; and Medea had killed her brother Aspyrtus. Euripides major alteration is in adding Medea’s killing of her children. There are wide and varied opinions as to why he did this. Otherwise the play opens, as mentioned, once Jason and Medea are in Corinth and ends when she flees after killing Jason’s new bride, Glauce; her father, the king, Creon; and, both their children. She flies away in the dragon driven chariot sent by her grand-father.

My introduction to the class.

                This play is interesting in that, on the one hand, it is about very extreme actions and reaction combined with primal emotions culminating in enough blood and gore to keep even the most devote George Romero fans glued. On the other, because it has been told and re-told well into our own era and across multiple media’s: from theatre, to opera, to dance, to film; and, across a wide variety of cultures.

                The play touches of issues of revenge and vengeance, justice and oaths (taking, making, and breaking); the Other (foreignness, exoticism, gender, etc); all within the malleable mythological form. 

In Euripides day, the characters and the story would have been well known, so why Euripides chose to make such provocative changes is intriguing. For my part, and beyond the questions I sent around, I was interested not just in what was said, but what the characters—especially Jason—seemed to want left un-said.

This reminded me a bit of how Aristophanes chose to present the god, Dionysus, in his comedic play, The Frogs—where Euripides and Aeschylus must ‘prove’ which of them is the most worthy tragedian, with Dionysus as the judge. In his play, Dionysus is presented, granted more light-heartedly, weaker than we would traditionally see him. He is a bit of a buffoon, and it is his slave-servant, Xanthias, who is presented as strong, just, wise, and honourable.

At one point, Euripides is presenting his case as to why he should be considered the greatest of tragedians. He argues that it is because he is more democratic than Aristophanes, having given voice to the otherwise voiceless: slaves and women.

Dionysus responds: “Leave that issue alone, my friend. That is not a direction in which I would take the discussion if I were you.” 

Dionysus’ stated appeal is ironic. Things which are supposedly best left unsaid should be, well, unsaid—unless, of course, your purpose is to do the opposite and draw attention to it (irony). I am reminded of the concept of ‘ironic processing theory’, introduced by the linguist Geroge Lakoff, and popularized in the play/film, Six Degrees of Separation (also, more recenlty, in Inception). At one point in the play, the characters are talking about events in a day when one, Flan, turns to the audience and says: “It’s like when people say ‘Don’t think about elephants’ and all you can think about is elephants.”

This drew me back to Eurpides, Medea. At least twice, when Jason is attempting to rationalize his decision to marry Glauce to Medea, he starts a line of ‘reasoning’ only to prematurely end it with: “I do not propose to go into all of the rest of it.”

Absence denotes presence.

As stated, Euripides version differs at several points from traditional retellings. I think he does so to create a situation where we are at times attracted to the characters (both Jason and Medea) and then repelled by them (usually, they’re polarized from one another in this, too). In so doing Euripides moves Medea from a relatively two-dimensional character to an incredibly complex character; a Medea  we ‘love to hate’.

I also believe that Euripides is presenting Medea (and Jason) as mirrors upon which to reflect the underbelly of Greece; the un-spoken things that exist between the myth and the reality that is Greece. The hypocrisy and paradox where, on the one hand, all the high and lofty ideals that ring through Greece—of knowledge, of justice, of bravery, and fidelity—are shown to be, at least in part, a façade; while, on the other hand, illustrating that no matter how far Grecians attempt to distance themselves from the ‘barbarians’, their actions illustrate that this distance between the civilized and the barbarian is uncomfortably close—especially in the face of Medea, a ‘barbarian’, whose presence and demeanor challenge these notions.

Certainly Medea is ‘the other’, but we can also go one step further and see here as another half; perhaps of the whole. Here, I am reminded of Aristophanes (again!) in the Symposium when he presents the story of humans as once being whole (what we would see as two people in one: four legs and arms, and two faces), but split in two by Zeus’ thunder bolts as punishment.  Aristophanes reminds us “[e]ach of us when separated is but the indenture of a man, having one side only like a flat fish, and he is always looking for his other half”

When the Greeks (and when we) look at her we are confronted with those things we may not wish to see in ourselves: “there, but for the grace of God,” goes the saying. 

Or, perhaps a more fitting, but far less comforting, thought: “We have seen the enemy, and he is us…”

Her mere presence challenges some, and shatters other, stereotypical images and paradigms that some Greeks would hold: as a woman, she is independent; as a wife, she is strong; and before we can simply admire her: as a mother, she commits filicide.

Medea’s presence illustrates that the line between Grecian ‘civilization’ and the barbarian is a line neither fixed nor impermeable. Euripides presentation of her heralds another doppelgangerwho will challenge where evil rests: Jekyll and Hyde.

Just as Stevenson’s creature challenges the reader to wonder which is which (and who are we), Euripides Medea brings us—and probably his Grecian audience—very close to uncomfortable truths.

Some of the comments from the class.

                The questions sent around were not discussed directly, although I do think the sentiments of many of them came up, were mulled over, and out of this came some interesting observations and, of course, more questions!

• Considering the reality that it would be unlikely that Medea’s children would be left alive irrespective of Jason’s (naïve?) efforts, how do we/would we consider Medea’s filicide in light of:

o   Killing a wounded fellow soldier out of compassion in the face of an advancing enemy?

o   The case of Robert Latimer and mercy killing?

• How do we think about Medea’s filicide in light of similar events occurring even quite recently (and for very similar reasons)?

• What effect was Euripides trying to evoke in the audience (if any) in his presentation of Jason as conniving, or as naïve, or as an example of hubris? What about Jason’s breaking of oaths in a culture where oath are tantamount?

o   Think of Aegeus’ comments to Medea regarding Jason’s actions stating “[s]urely he would not dare to do a thing like that” and, shortly after this, holding that he “cannot approve of this” (both speaking to Jason’s decision to take Glauce as a wife).

o   Interestingly, Aegeus, although at first shocked by Medea’s request to take an oath to support his promise to help her, does so—perhaps Aegeus is meant to be a stand-in for the ‘Jason’ most of the audience would know (an, perhaps, expect). In this sense, Aegeus is an ironic foil to Jason.

• What can we say about Medea when we consider that she follows a similar pattern in regards to marrying Aegeus, then trying to kill his son, Theseus? Is it simply another case of murderous intent? Or, is it a case of survival and a representation of the common plight of women in this time?

• Are Medea’s actions a case of justice or of revenge? Where is the line between the two..?

• Given Medea’s heavenly blood-line, and the fact that she’s mythological, should we interpret her actions more literally or more figuratively and/or symbolically? What are the different ramifications of each interpretation upon the ‘message’?

• Is Euripides asking whether or not the gods are worthy of devotion given, on the one hand, how they play with humans; and, on the other, how, being immortal, morality may not even come into this

o   Here I was reminded of an episode from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the god-like creature known as Q. When Picard speaks to him of morals Q reminds him that morals are relevant only to creatures who are confined by mortality.

• In regards to ‘reason’: Medea certainly uses ‘reasons’ and ‘reasoning’. But she does so, more often than not, for ulterior ends. Jason, on the other hand, does more ‘rationalizing’ than ‘reasoning’. In the end, there appears to be little or no ‘critical reasoning’.

o   Interestingly, Jason in his attempts at compromise leaves himself compromised. He has, in this sense—wittingly or unwittingly—entered into a Faustian bargain;

o   Or, Proverbs: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall” (16:18). In the Proverbs sense, we can see Medea’s manipulation as a case of saying what others want to hear.

• I also found a little bit of Jason in the character Mr. Incredible, from the modern Pixar film, The Incredibles Both are characters trying to reclaim the ‘glory days’ and rebuild their (self)importance. This is also apparent in Bruce Springsteen’s song, Glory Days:

o   “Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
a little of the glory of, well time slips away
and leaves you with nothing mister but
boring stories of glory days.”

·          

And then, one day, out of the blue while you're lolly-gagging about, a log falls on your head: end game. There's irony for ya!

[...Sappho...]

Reading Sappho's poetry brought to mind, among other things, one of my favorite authors, Isak Dinesen. To me, Dinesen's prose reads like poetry. The beauty of her prose comes in its ability to shift between telling the stories to presenting the images accompanying them. Her descriptions of the people, the land, and the animals she encounters heavily emphasis sensory experiences. Some passages have a musical quality about them that when read aloud unveil hidden--almost visceral--responses that would be lost if read in silence, or simply as words on a page--as prose.

For example, in her novel, Out of Africa ("Natives and Verse"), she recounts her experience engaging the Swahili--who have a "who have a strong sense of rhythm, [yet] know nothing of verse--to her European experience of poetry. As the Natives became accustomed to her poetry with its own rhythmic qualities, they began to seek out opportunities to her more of it. On one occasion, an occasion that I think speaks to the sensuality of language irrespective of its form, the Natives ask her to "[s]peak again. Speak like the rain." Although Dinesen feigns ignorance at why the Natives would associate verse to rain--even going so far as to provide a merely practical reason why the Natives would do this in stating that "in Africa rain is always longed for and welcomed." However, when she responds that such a perspective must be "an expression of applause," she is illustrating that she is fully aware of this as being a sensory--and sensual--experience.

  

I have always been dubious about the idea that poetry is supreme in regards to its ability to convey sensory experiences better than prose. I find it simply different in form as to how it does so. Good writing, in any form, aims to evoke multiple senses in the reader. I find it difficult to imagine how anyone could reduce, for example, the very sensory and visceral experiences conveyed in the prose of Dashiel Hammet's and his 'mean streets'; or, in Chandler who conveys in his noir stories that 'smell of fear'...I cannot imagine anything more sensory (or poetic) than his image, in Trouble is my Business, that "the streets were dark with something more than night."

This isn't to suggest that poetry is better or worse, simply that I think such dichotomies are either pretentious or naive...or both. Poetry is perhaps seen as an approach more akin to the prose experiment of writer's, like Hemingway, who aimed to say the most with the least amount of words.

In this sense, I see much in common with the effects someone like Chandler was seeking to evoke beyond the words on the page, and the imagist project of poets like Ezra Pound:

In A Station Of The Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

The imagist toying with the haiku was, like Hemingway, a means to bridging experiences without leading the reader by the proverbial nose. We can see such an approach from another perspective and via a different project by poets known as 'found poetry'. Here the project is to alter the form of prose pieces (non-literary) into the form of poetry. The sources tend to be either innocuous, like those from a textbook:

Hence no force, however great,

can stretch a cord, however fine,

into a horizontal line

which is accurately straight.

(William Whewell from 

"An Elementary Treatise on Mechanics")

Or, in the great tradition of poetry as subversion, the rearranging of speeches, or other similar documents, to re-arrange the implication from the original intent as to undermine (subvert) that intent. For example, the following is from a Department of Defense transcript quoting Donald Rumsfeld speaking on "The Unknown": 

As we know,

There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.

We also know

There are known unknowns.

That is to say

We know there are some things

We do not know.

But there are also unknown unknowns

The ones we don't know

We don't know.

Another source of inspiration for found poetry comes from translations. Monty Python popularized this in their "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook" skit. Where the intent, in the skit, is to say, "Can you direct me to the station?" The result translated is, "Please fondle my bum."

Some of the more memorable examples from this skit:

• "Do you want to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?"
• "I am no longer infected."
• "Drop your panties, Sir William; I cannot wait until lunchtime!"

Folks can try this on their own, however, using Yahoo's 'Babelfish' translator and then finding a source in both a foregin and English version. Use the foreign language version and translate it in Babelfish and see what comes out. I tried this recently using the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

The English version reads: "Greece may make the headlines, but Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition faces a greater danger: a tax cut battle between her CDU and its CSU sister party. CSU head Horst Seehofer is furious with Merkel over being sidelined in the debate -- to the point that some in his party would like to see him let the coalition collapse. By SPIEGEL Staff"

The translation from Babelfish is:

"Ran last nothing more in Merkels troop - nevertheless now has blackyellow some important decisions pleases: The taxpayers are relieved around six billion euros, the care money come, and for dementia patient it gives more assistance. It was a hard fight - around giving and taking." 

As it is, it is a little like the Python skit, somewhat humourous; however, by changing the form it doesn't take much imagination to see imagist and sensory aspects to this otherwise poor translation:

Ran last 

nothing more

in Merkels troop 

nevertheless now has blackyellow some important decisions 

pleases: 

The taxpayers are relieved 

around six billion 

euros, 

the care money come for dementia patients 

gives more assistance. 

It was a hard fight - 

around giving 

and taking.  

What I found evocative about Sappho's poetry was similar to much of this, if for different reasons. There is much to uncover beneath the surface of Isak Dinesen's prose if readers choose to 'read between the lines' or to read beyond the words seeking broader sensory images. Equally so, with translations, or with complete or whole documents much can be drawn out of them that is not, at first glance, within them to those who seek an adventure in reading. With Sappho's poetry much is lost or unknown of the original; so, where 'found poetry' takes something whole and edits and/or re-arranges it, Sappho's poems are missing pieces and, thus, read as fragments.

This is perhaps best captured in Anne Carson's following quote:

“I emphasize the distinction between brackets and no brackets because it will affect your reading experience, if you will allow it. Brackets are exciting. Even though you are approaching Sappho in translation, that is no reason you should miss the drama of trying to read a papyrus torn in half or riddled with holes or smaller than a postage stamp--brackets imply a free space of imaginal adventure.”

Anne Carson

[emphasis added]

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

I emphasized this last comment because it seems to highlight this adventure in reading which I previously spoke of; and, reading Sappho's poetry is, in this sense, certainly an adventure if we allow it to be so.

In addition to reading into these fragments there is the problem of translation. Although I said previously that I do not hold that poetry should reign supreme and alone in regards to its ability to create images and/or sensory experiences over prose, I would not be so naive as to suggest that, where ambiguity--especially semantic ambiguity--is a significant problem in the translation of prose, if we return to the idea that poetry is a project seeking to say the most with the least amount of words, certainly the issue of ambiguity and translation in poetry looms even larger.

Take, for example, the last lines of Sappho's "Fragment #31", as done by several different translators (NOTE: I have left the line breaks as they are in the original editions):

Anne Carson:

"But all is to be dared, because even a
person of poverty"

Stanley Lombardo:

"But I must bear it, since a poor"

Sasha Newborn:

I must feel all, since I am poor."

Ambrose Phillips (c. 1711):

"I feinted, sunk, and died away..."

John Hall (c. 1652):

"Yet, since I'm wretched must I dare..."


With each of these translations the resolution of the speakers experiences in altered--often radically--between one and another translation of the same Fragment 31. Take, for example, even the otherwise benign use of punctuation between that of Anne Carson's, containing no end punctuation, to that of Sasha Newborn's inclusion of the period making this a complete thought. In Carson's we know that "all is to be dared," but we not what comes next--we're left either with a grammatical sentence fragment, or a rhetorical device (ellipsis) leaving us hanging. Contrast this with Newborn's rendition which, as it is presented, is a declarative sentence ("I must") conveying a propositional attitude ("feel all...since...") in respect to the condition of the speaker (poor).

Between each translation we're presented with very different conditions for the speaker: from the "wretched" of Hall, to the fading of Phillips, to financial emphasis in Carson's "poverty", and the more broader ambiguous use of Newborn's "poor."

In the end, I believe that unless one wishes to read simply to finish--as though literature and art are to be simply consumed to have served their purpose--then we should aim to read more deeply into prose to tease out and engage other senses, or read varieties of translations to re-imagine different effects and perspectives. Otherwise we 're robbed of potentially great insight simply because an obstacle is placed in our path...

And, So It Begins...Thoughts on Reason and Passion

...Reason and Passion...

Notice the devilishly mis-leading use of the supposedly non-contrasting co-ordinating conjunction 'and'...Is this proof that grammarians are the minions of Satan..? Or, is it a case of my blog's namesake at work..?

Above, for example, I can provide a simple hyper-link to 'reason', but for 'passion', at the very least, I must distinguish between passion as emotion and passion as a philosophical concept.

A quick perusal of these two terms and we're immediately plunged into worlds of contrasts and dichotomies; sometimes in violent opposition, but almost exclusively polarized into camps.

I think it safe to say that not only do we come by polarizing honestly, but that it serves us to do so. To understand the world around us as well as our place within it--and amongst one another--we need to separate things, to name and identify them, so as to then understand the relationships between these things.

We learn by analogy, by referring one thing to another; by simile, metaphor, and allegory...even, by stereotype.

And, this has, for the most part, served us well; this heuristic approach.

Where it appears to fails us (ah, personification) occurs when we forget to put the artificially--however necessarily--parts back together again. The heuristic has not failed us, we have failed to fully and properly used the heuristic.

Sometimes the effect of this error--when we take something apart and forget to put it back together again--ends in one of the things becomes an Other.

Out of this, great suffering and harm has been inflicted by ourselves upon ourselves. But, let's not throw the proverbial baby out with the bath-water. Discarding an ill-used device only ignores the part we have played in it, and, ironically, this causes further harm. In so doing, we not only deny ourselves the device but also the opportunity to see into ourselves, to learn from our errors, to grow. By mis-placing the blame we enslave ourselves.

Furthermore, discarding an otherwise powerful device for a lesser one is also a colossal waste of time. At the danger of sounding like Mr. Spock: "It is inefficient. It is ill-logical." More to the point: it is digressive, if not regressive.

If one fails to read a compass properly, throwing away the compass is more than ill-advised.

Dichotomies, as such, are commonplace: 'good and evil', 'night and day', 'friends and foes', 'male and female', 'black and white', 'freedom and slavery'...'beginning and end'...

In a journey (cliches aside)--any journey--one need know where one is to know where one wishes to begin before knowing where one desires to end; however, it is only the most timid explorer whose 'journey' is seen only through the lines on a map; who myopically sees the 'start' and 'end' through longitudes and latitudes; who measures success through confirmation of place as determined via triangulation.

Here, there is no 'journey' at all. Remember: "All work and no play [made] Jack a dull boy..."

Yet a journey without preparation or goal is, equally, no journey at all. If one has no idea of where one is going, nor plan as to how to get there, he or she cannot lay claim to have found anything nor arrived anywhere, rather to have merely stumbled upon. "Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning" opens the journey of Peter and his companions to Neverland. It should also be remembered that Peter made this up to impress Wendy, and they only found Neverland because Neverland was looking for them....

Somewhere in between lies balance: somewhere between 'purpose and purposelessness'.

'Reason' and 'Passion' then are perhaps best seen as symbolic of something much larger than the sum of their parts, and certainly best understood far beyond their dictionary definitions. Individually, they are dissected only to be better understood.

We could call this 'exploratory surgery', I suppose.

We separate these two ideas so as to better understand them. We then move--converge--to re-assemble them. Out of this we hope to know--to have learned--something greater than that which we started with.

E.O Wilson referred to this as 'emergence'; and in history it is akin to conjuncture. Joyce simply called it 'epiphany'. It is the moment when we realize that, once reassembled, the thing is more than we had known, and more than we could ever have imagined. The whole is now greater.

Here, I am reminded of T.S. Eliot from Little Gidding: "We shall never cease from exploration/ And the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time."

Yet, read the fine print: there will be struggle and tension in this project.  

It is the very tension between the 'known' and the 'unknown', the need to dissect tethered to the struggle to reassemble, and the necessity of not leaving well enough alone, where treasure hides: "Here there be dragons."

So: 'reason and passion', the Odd Couple, perhaps, but at least together again.

In re-assembling the two, and keeping the symbolic nature of each in mind, I found myself reminded of several images that, in coming to understand them, I also came to understand 'reason' and 'passion' a little better.

First, there is the Taoist symbol for the concept of Taiji (yin and yang), called the Taijitu:

The purpose of this symbol is to represent contrasting, yet inter-connected and inter-dependent, forces within the universe and, thus, within ourselves.

It is important to avoid the trap of seeing this symbol two-dimensionally and statically. It is better to imagine it as fluid, dynamic, ever-changing...even elusive.

By elusive I imagine myself trying to touch a point within the taijitu as akin to my attempt to understanding a concept, yet, when you are about to make physical contact the thing moves. It is still present, you can still see it, and you can certainly reach for it, but you can never fully make contact with it.

This isn't futile--quite the opposite. In inter-acting with it you come to connect with it, to engage it, to develop a relationship with it. This is, then, similar to relationships. As you get to know another person, you connect with them, you engage with them, you're developing a relationship with them--yet, you will never fully understand them, let alone become them. But, no one would see this dynamic as futile.

Clearly, this most common version of the symbol is neither the property of a specific worldview or religion anymore than it is to be understood and engaged with in such a static manner:

And, such adaptation and re-investigation, is no less meaningful than the so-called original.

Art is, after all, taking the commonplace and re-presenting it uncommonly--even shockingly--to force us into engaging with what we have forgotten or have taken for granted (my definition of art).


The second symbol is M.C Escher's "Humanity":

In this print we're presented with two all too common dichotomies: woman and man. The tension and contradiction of the Odd Couple pales in comparison! Yet, when you follow the 'rinds' in the hopes of finding the 'end' there is none: they are as inter-connected (notice the rind on their fore-head), as they are inter-dependent (one rind) upon one another.

Wrap them together and you have a whole; a complete being (I would like to believe that Escher would, if he were alive today, have absolutely no difficulty in presenting another version representing same-sex unions and marriages).

At the same time--viewed as they are disconnected--we can fill in the gaps to discern a complete individual yet, paradoxically, cannot do so without realizing that there are gaps. These 'gaps' are, perhaps, simply the recognition that even though we can identify ourselves, we can never completely identify ourselves.

Again, like the taijitu, we need to see this at once static and dynamic to understand my previous comment. When we stop time and see this as static and two-dimensional, we see the aforementioned inter-connectivity, inter-dependency, and incompleteness.

If we see this as dynamic (also), we see that not only can we never know ourselves completely (that is, in regards to the picture, see it without gaps), but that to do so is as impossible as it would be inadvisable. That is to say, we would have reached an 'end-game', or 'zero-sum' point. We'd cease to develop...I believe we call this death.

Seeing ourselves as 'complete' as such we'd have nowhere to go to. We must keep an eye on the past, yet not be prisoners to it; we must look to the future, yet not forget the past. If we exist too much in one or the other we're living a lie as it were--our identity, our perception of ourselves, would be false, or at least oblique and obscured.

The final symbolic image I am reminded of is also from Escher. It's called the Mobius Band, and it has many incarnations (and for good reason); it is also an excellent segue from the previous image:

And, so we emerge.

In Escher's pictures the concept of time is a paradox. It is sublime in "Humanity," but it is at the forefront in the Mobius Band.

Here, time is a double paradox. On one level, as a static picture, the picture--and time--are impossible. The picture represents movement, yet there is no movement. It also represents, two dimensionally, a paradoxically three-dimensional situation--equally impossible. Yet, there it is. The ants, painted upon a two-dimensional canvas, are above and below one another. They're going forward, but nowhere. They're doing so ad infinitum without ever actually moving.

Yet, the second level, we the viewers are the third dimension--possible and yet impossible. We, by our very engagement, are existing in an impossible situation. We're giving dimension, movement, and time to that which cannot posses any of these qualities, and yet it does.

Perhaps then not so much impossible, as improbable..?

Here, although in as much danger of going cross-eyed as Austin Powers was when faced with the potential of visiting himself when time-travelling, I hear Sherlock Holmes whispering into my consciousness: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"

...Reason and Passion...night and day....good and evil....woman and man....things of little meaning alone.

But, combined, representative of unimaginable struggle highlighted by epiphanies unknown yet wonderous on a journey never-ending.

If we accept this, if we adjust it to reflect these perspectives, and if we remove the non-contrasting, co-ordinating conjunction, do we emerge with a new and more meaningful way of expressing what the paradoxical  inter-section of 'reason' and 'passion' is?

Or, do we already have a phrase for it?

Is this not a 'terrible beauty'..?