Medea

Medea is a representative of those who live at the fringes of civilization. Like the wolf, her intelligence, ferocity and ability to live outside the bounds of civilized society strike terror in the hearts of regular man as well as kings such as Creon. Her association with Hecate affords her further status as an outsider much as the Maenads and Satyrs who compose the retinue of Dionysus.

As Hecate was often a protective figure, it makes sense that Medea was able to protect Jason. Unfortunately the methods that Medea used further alienated her from her family and any other representatives of civilized society. It is also ironic that her willingness to achieve victory at any cost is seen as negative, especially when it is an honored trait of other heroes such as her husband.

The crimes that Medea finally commits in the pursuit of her revenge seem to be against nature as well as the laws of man and would make an audience of any time shudder. Her unyielding focus on revenge finally overcame her mother's heart as she killed her own children to spite her husband. Medea gets away in the end of the play and that may seem unfair; but remember that she is allied with the gods and seems to have different set of rules to play by. Overall it seems more cautionary towards oathbreakers such as Jason. He was really only a hero by the help of his wife Medea and her powers. Without her and her aid he is just a man, and not a very good one.

What makes this play a tragedy is the emphasis on love denied or unfulfilled between Medea and Jason as well as between Jason and his new wife. Also of great importance is the finality of the deaths that occur here. We know that these children as well as Jason's new wife all met a a terrible end and there is no consolation for that. Overall the tragedy is obsessed with dissolution, loss and grief. Ultimately it is the shattering of life's temporal forms here that causes such intense grief because of the intensity of our attachment to children. In the classic sense this is a tragedy because of Jason's fall from a state of high position and happiness to his ultimate end in obscurity. It is my opinion that the mythological perspective of the tragedy here is really more relevant to most readers. Most readers probably don't feel much sympathy for Jason as it seems he brought his troubles down upon himself through his own poor judgement and selfishness.

Regardless of the interpretation, it is a chilling remindder of the power of the goddess to destroy as well as create. It also shows the fear that most people have of such a remoreseless killing. So it sometimes is in nature that the mother cat will devour her kittens or leave them to die. It happens in the natural world and this play reminds of that destructive power the goddess holds.

Medea

What do you think of Medea so far?  What about Jason??  There is no doubt that this play is unique and without equal in the ancient world.  Perhaps the Welsh counterpart to Medea would be a goddess such as Ceridwen.  She was a powerful woman who possessed great knowledge and was able to create and destroy.  She was the creator of the famous bard Taliesin which means "Shining Brow" in Welsh.  He later had adventures with other heroes and found himself intertwined with Arthurian Legend. 

Like the primordial waters of creation, Medea has the power to create, transform and kill; a famously female role in myth.  Because of their powers these women became the archetypal witch or hag lurking in the shadows dealing in petty evil.  Remember the beginning of Macbeth with the three hags, or if you have seen Clash of the Titans, Perseus must face the three sisters with one eye between them.  Clearly there has been a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of their function and power for these great women to be so maligned.   The aged woman who has lost her beauty or "hag" has moved fro the realm of generativity and creation of life to post menopausal sterility and becomes in her wisdom a threat to men in western culture.  Her domain is that of death.  Thus she is feared and reviled in our culture.  Others would revere her wisdom and the natural function she represents and serves.

Remember, there is no journal entry today but be sure to do the one for Medea tomorrow.

The Tragic

For tomorrow you will get a little break as you will be exempt from the journal entry.  Please make a comment here on how the reading is going but no journal necessary.

I felt we needed to continue with tragedy here because it is the realm if Dionysus and directly inspired by him. The tragic stories we will read emphasize the suffering attached to the human condition as opposed to comedy which focuses on the human spirits triumph over suffering. It is very interesting to think about Medea as a heroine, albeit a tragic one. She was prone to lose control as we will see, but her power as a woman was not respected. There were definitely two sets of rules for men and women. Medea was not the usual character depicted by the Greeks and her bold action would even catch attention, and possibly scorn, today.

As you begin to read the play keep in mind that the Greeks did not allow violence to occur onstage. Therefore the gruesome acts you read about are embellished simply because they cannot be shown. As the text suggests, this allows violence to retain its noble character when the context is "appropriate". However, in this case the descriptions you will read will hardly ennoble anything or anyone. In fact the story of Medea remind a little of the story of Job who could not catch a break by following his heart. Sometimes heroes are ahead of their time, or even not of this world and their actions attract censure because they are not understood. We will get more into that next week when we begin our exploration of the monomyth and talk more about Joseph Campbell and his work.  For now, keep your eye on Medea and stay focused on tragedy.

Also think about why this might have been as popular as it was: The festival of Dionysus attracted as many people as a modern NFL game would attract. This was thousands of years before flush toilets, modern food convenience etc. Why would people come from all over Greece for this festival and to see this theater?

Dionysus

The sculpture above is called Michelangelo's Green Man and is one representative example of Dionysus in art.The two images below are also folk representations carved into Christian churches by the non-Christian stone workers in early Britain.  Most of the churches built in the first millennium in western Europe are covered with such images which are all folk interpretations of a god similar to the Greek Dionysus.  The natives never really gave up their old ways of worshiping nature and the unconscious aspect of man.

Maybe one of the least known and most misunderstood of the Greek gods, Dionysus is a god whose influence most of us have first hand experience of and enjoy greatly. As the god of the vine, grapes, wine and all the things that result from its consumption, i thank Dionysus every night when i sit down with a glass of Cab or Shiraz. Somehow that long, bad day at work seems a little less bad, my spirits rise, and the world seems a bit brighter. My neighbors also seem to enjoy the Dionysian things in life and much to my detriment as they stay up late partying and keep me awake.

The loss of control facilitated by alcohol was one of the trademarks of Dionysus and his retinue. The Maenads would often reach a spiritual ecstasy through dancing and loss of control. In this Dionysus is the opposite of Apollo. One way of gaining the religious experience is through structured ritual, prophecy and following the rules (Apollonian), the other way is through a complete dispensation of any type of rule and an embrace of the irrational. Through giving in to unconscious desire and impulse, Dionysus allows the taboo acts which are normally forbidden to be acceptable. St. Patrick's Day or New Years Eve, are perfect examples of times when the usual rules of polite society do not apply. One can get drunk, wear a lampshade and the next day face fellow office workers with little more than a smirk.

If Apollo is the god of civilized society and the conscious and rational mind, then Dionysus is the patron of the wild forest where the unconscious mind is free to play out its own agenda of conflicts. Most fairy tales mirror this convention, placing the realm of unconscious action in the forest which is historically representative of the unknown. Dionysus would have you "know your self" through this avenue rather than Apollo who would have you "know your place".

Because Dionysus is a vegetal god he is also a god who is capable of resurrection and his rites very closely resemble those of Christianity. He was destroyed and resurrected and his followers eat of his flesh and drink his blood in similar rites to attain the mind and mystery of God. If you look back at page 284 in the text you will find a great comparison sheet between the two makes clearly links their stories and worship.

For the coming week we will be looking deeper into tragedy and getting a sense of its importance to myth and life. We will start be revisiting a tragic female figure in "Medea" and then move further into the story of Dionysus in "The Bacchae". Since the theater of Dionysus allowed for the creation of the Greek stage, (different from our modern stage) it was a great vessel for the collective purgation of negative emotion. It seems as though it was a natural creation in the progress of a healthy society.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my favorite of the gods, and we'll see you tomorrow for review of tragedy.