Robinson Jeffers offers us a distilled version of the
Euripides play, Medea. In his version
the language gets trimmed to its most essential parts making the rhetoric more
straightforward and profound. Again, like Cawdor,
Medea deals with the question of
agency in a world governed by predestination. While Fera has ingested the curse
of Aphrodite, unbeknownst to her, it has slowly trickled into the recesses of
her soul and consumed her. She then becomes a sort of automaton, exacting justice
in her wake; but while Fera seems to lack even an approximation of free will,
Medea is full of agency. At any moment she can leave and walk away from the
pain and heartache she is about to inflict, but like Fera she is consumed, only
this time instead of love, our heroine is consumed by hate.
While Jason was running around completing feats of heroism,
such as retrieving the Golden Fleece, he comes across Medea, the daughter of
King Aeetes of Colchis and granddaughter of
the sun god Helios. She decides to help Jason with his tasks, but only if he
promises to marry her and take her with him. He agrees and in the first act she
reminds him of what she has done for him:
Medea:"...you might remember whether I cheated my
father for you and tamed the fire-breathing Brazen-hoofed bulls; and whether I
saved your life in the field of the teeth; and you might remember whether I
poisoned the great serpent and got you the Golden Fleece; and fled with you,
and killed my brother when he pursued us, making myself abominable in my own
home; and then in yours I got your enemy Pelias hacked to death by his own
daughters' hands- whatever these fine Corinthian friends of yours say against
my rapid and tricky wisdom; you it has served, you it has served well: here are
five times, if I counted right..."
But time has passed. And Jason now has the gall to refer to
his marriage with Medea as nothing more than a "barbarian mating and not a
Greek marriage..."
Jeffers presents Medea as a fierce daughter of a king, not
someone to be tampered with; unlike the heroine of Euripides she is not a
hapless wife, wringing her hands in sorrow, occupied with grief, she instead
contemplates the best, most destructive revenge she can render on Jason.
While both Jeffers and Euripides give the nurse shuddering
premonitions in her entry monologue of the terror that is about to be
unleashed, Jeffers paints a more detailed picture of Medea's crazed hatred.
Nurse: "She is like a stone on the shore or a wave of
the sea, and I think she hates even her children. She is learning what it is to
be a foreigner, cast out, alone and despised. She will never learn to be
humble, she will never learn to drink insult like harmless water. O I'm in
terror of her: whether she'll thread a knife through her own heart, or whether
she'll hunt the bridegroom and his new bride, or what more dreadful evil stalks
in the forest of her dark mind..."
As the nurse's monologue comes to an end, in Euripides
version she says: "Would I were as thou art! the mischief is but now
beginning; it has not reached its climax yet," while Jeffers' nurse
nervously, hands wringing says "This evil is not declining, it is just at
dawn. I dread the lion-eyed glare of its noon..."
Medea's first line is also telling of the woman each poet is
creating. In Euripides version Medea is chanting within another room and we
hear her voice cry "Ah, me! A wretched suffering woman I! O would that I
could die!" Jeffers Medea is much more sinister:
Medea: "Hear me, God, let me die. What I need: all
dead, all dead, all dead, under the great cold stones. For a year and a
thousand years and another thousand: cold as the stones, cold, but noble again,
proud, straight and silent, crimson-cloaked in the blood of our wounds."
This is obviously not someone to cross, unhappily for Jason
he has become inured to her strength, vitality and cunning. What was once so
necessary for his very survival is now standing in the way of his happiness as
he prepares to wed Glauce, the daughter of Creon, the king of Corinth . While Jason attempts to offer a
pragmatic reason for his infidelity to Medea (ie. once married into the family
of the king he will be better able to provide for Medea's sons...) it is clear
that he has used Medea and cares little for her happiness or wellbeing. And now
Creon has decided to banish Medea and her sons and Jason sits idly by waiting
for this cursed women to leave his house.
Medea begs Creon for one day, one part of a day even to pack
what little things she can carry and try to make provisions for her sons.
Weepingly, cunningly, she begs Creon not to send them to their deaths, but to
simply allow them a few hours. Creon, aware that there is something sinister
lurking in this wolf from Asia , but unable to
deny a weeping woman agrees to allow them to stay until morning. As Creon
leaves, wondering if he's been made a fool Medea turns to her women:
Medea: "...this man...this barking dog...this gulled
fool...gods of my father's country, You saw me low on my knees before the great
dog of Corinth; humble, holding my heart in my hands for a dog to bite- break
this dog's teeth! Women: it is a bitter thing to be a woman. A woman is weak
for warfare, she must use cunning. Men boast their battles: I tell you this,
and we know it: It is easier to stand in battle three times, in the front line,
in the stabbing fury, than to bear one child."
While Euripides also uses the "child bearing" line, it is said in
a more deferential tone almost as if Medea is sorry to even bring it up, she
begins her stanza with how difficult it is for a woman, hapless creatures that
they are, after buying a husband at great expense to then keep him. Or what if
he be a tyrant? Marriage is a chancy gamble, with all but the fewest
exceptions, ending in sorrow. While a woman can not divorce her husband, at the
slightest provocation the husbands may grow either bored or incensed and issue
a writ of divorce at a moments notice.
Medea: "But when a man is vexed with what he finds
indoors, he goeth forth and rids his soul of its disgust, betaking him to some
friends or comrade of like age, whilst we must needs regard his single
self..."
A woman's position is precarious at best. Euripides ends
Medea's soliloquy thus:
Medea: "For though a woman be timorous enough in all
else, and as regards courage, a coward at the mere sight of steel, yet in the
moment she finds her honor wronged, no heart is filled with deadlier thoughts
than hers."
Jeffers Medea is far from timorous and hardly a coward.
While this is an anguishing moment to live through, to be the serpent that
exacts vengeance on all that have wronged her, is a role she has always been
destined to play.
And it is destiny that Jason uses as his alibi:
Jason: "As to those acts of service you so loudly
boast- whom do I thank for them? I thank divine Venus, the goddess who makes
girls fall in love. You did them because you had to do them; Venus compelled
you; I enjoyed her favor. A man dares things, you know, he makes his adventure
in the cold of death; and if the gods care for him they appoint an instrument
to save him; if not, he dies. You were that instrument."
As one would expect, this does not go over well. Medea,
apoplectic, frothing at the mouth with rage tells Jason he better leave before
his vulgarity of invoking the gods becomes contagious. But it already has.
Medea has given up everything for Jason, she has sweated, called down curses,
murdered family members, given birth to two sons and all the good she has done
him over the years is now being accredited to Venus? Well, two can play at this
game. She immediately calls on Hecate, the patron saint of all that is evil.
Medea: " No: I have subtler means, and more deadly
cruel; I have my dark art that fools call witchcraft. Not for nothing I have
worshipped the wild gray goddess that walks in the dark, the wise one, the
terrible one, the sweet huntress, flowers of night, Hecate, in my house at my
hearth.
Medea's plan is to feign reconciliation. A ruse that someone
only very stupid or very hopeful could believe. She calls for Jason again and
expresses her wish to reconcile with the young bride and offer as peace
offerings a crown and a robe...gifts inherited from her grandfather, the sun
king. While Euripides' Jason is quickly
appeased, attributing her mercurial emotions to what is only the natural
response of the female sex ("to vent their spleen") when their
husband "traffics in other marriages besides his own," this Jason is
so full of himself that he is incapable of recognizing the somnambulating beast
hiding in the breast of his ex-wife. Jeffers's Jason seems a little more
practical, while intensely suspicious at first, he reluctantly comes to believe
Medea is in earnest. As she offers him
her gifts she asks: "Her sun is rising, mine going down - I hope to a red
sunset. - The little gold wreath is pretty isn't it?" Jason replies,
"It looks like fire..."
Obviously these gifts do not bode well. But Glauce, being a
one dimensional foil for the plot to progress, dutifully postures as the vain
and impetuous young bride; upon being given the gifts she immediately puts them
on and goes to the mirror to have a better look, only to discover that both the
cloak and the crown are like melting lava, and as she screams in pain, she is
slowly burned alive. Her father, Creon, in an attempt to put out the flames
smothers her with his body only to then find himself unable to extricate
himself, he too, now thrashing in pain as the searing hot cloak envelops him.
In Euripides version the cloak and the crown are poisoned. I
think having Medea's nemesis devoured by fire seems more poetic and horrifying.
If only she had let the fire assuage her hatred, the vengeance being sufficient
to make her grief bearable, but alas, we all know how the story ends, and
Jeffers must dutifully follow the plotline.
Having destroyed Glauce, "that robe of bright-flowing
gold, that bride-veil, that fish-net to catch a young slender salmon- not mute,
she'll sing: her delicate body writhes in the meshes, the golden wreath binds
her bright head with light: she'll dance, she'll sing loudly: would I were
there to hear it, that proud one howling. - Look, the sun's out again, the
clouds are gone, all's gay and clear..."
She moves on to the next objects of affection that Jason
holds dear to his heart: their two sons. Euripides was the first poet to have
Medea commit filicide, much to the horror of the Athenians, who awarded him
only third place at the Dionysia festival in 431 BC. Traditionally the
Corinthians would have killed the boys after Medea makes her escape. As such,
she wrestles with her unpreventable actions, she hems and haws and begs herself
not to commit such a horrific deed, she cries after her children, pleading with
them to let her kiss their hands and feet and finally, nervously, filled with
dread utters: "At last I understand the awful deed I am to do; but passion
that cause of direst woes to mortal man, hath triumphed o'er my sober
thoughts."
Euripides quickly has the chorus explain that to lose a
child is a grief surpassing all others; for Medea to truly injure Jason to the
quick of his soul, she must enact this one last horrific deed.
Jeffers version is better; Medea is evil incarnate. Her one
purpose is to destroy Jason and there is none of that "weaker-sex",
complicated maternal business to limit the capacity she has for destruction.
Medea: "Be silent! Look at him: he loved them-ah?
Therefore his dear children are not going to that city but a darker city, where
no games are played, no music heard.- Do you think I am a cow lowing after the
calf? Or a bitch with pups, licking the hand that struck her? Watch and see.
Watch this man, women: he is going to weep. I think he is going to weep blood,
and quite soon, and much more than I have wept. Watch and keep silence."
Um...yikes!
As her women cohorts beg her to rescind her decision, she
blithely tells them "I do according to nature what I have to do..."
the die has been cast and she hastens to fulfill her destiny, even a grim one
such as it is. The women beg and plead, one woman says "I dreamed that
someone gave good for evil, and the world was amazed." Medea spits back,
"Only a coward or a madman gives good for evil,- Did you hear a thin music
like a girl screaming? Or perhaps I imagined it..."
As she makes her way to follow her sons into the house, she
pauses to ponder whether the boys have their father's eyes, and from within we
hear a child's voice cry "Mother Ai-!"
Again, Jeffers makes no pretense of apology for his
language, it is gritty and visceral.
Elder Child's Voice: "You've hurt him! The blood. The
blood. Oh, Mother!" (then clear, but as if hypnotized) "She is
hunting me...She is hunting me...She is hunting...Aah!"
And now for Euripides:
First Son: "Ah me; what can I do? Whither fly to escape
my mother's blows?"
Second Son: "I know not sweet brother mine; we are
lost."
First Son: "Yea, by heaven I adjure you; help, your aid
is needed."
Second Son: "Even now the toils of the sword are
closing round us."
In Euripides version, the play ends as Jason, running up to
the house, is told by the Leader of the Chorus that his sons are dead by their
mothers own hand. Jason cries out, having been finally brought low by
unthinkable anguish:
Jason: "O God! what sayest
thou? Woman, thou hast sealed my doom."
As he runs hither and thither to
find out more details, Medea, now transformed into a veritable she-demon taunts
and goads him, this is what he has brought upon his own head, with little help
or intervention on his behalf by the gods. They blame each other for what has
happened; Medea was not going to stand by while her marriage bed was defiled
and her husband laughed at her; Jason is appalled at how far Medea is capable
of going in the name of vengeance. They continue to spar, until at last Jason
begs just to be able to touch his sons, their tender skin, but gleefully, Medea
refuses even this last request and as she leaves with their sons' bodies,
Jason, defeated, departs to bury his young bride and the chorus sings:
Chorus: "Zeus on Olympus , dispenses many things. Gods often contradict our
fondest expectations. What we anticipate does not come to pass. What we don't
expect some god finds a way to make it happen. So with this story."
The character development of
Medea seems a little hurried, it takes until the murder of her children before
her vengeance is palpable, she has spent 90% of the play in anguish/ sorrow and
the last 10% in hatred/anger/vengeance, unlike the Medea of Jeffers who is comprised
primarily with hatred and vengeance and only partially with anguish and sorrow.
This is a Medea who offers no apology for what she has become and Jeffers gives
her the last lines of the play; as Jason begs to touch his sons' dear flesh and
dear hair she ruefully spits out:
Medea: "No. They are mine.
They are going with me: the chariot is in the gate. You had love and betrayed
it; now of all men you are utterly the most miserable. As I of women. But I, a
woman, a foreigner, alone against you and the might of Corinth- have met you throat for throat, evil
for evil. Now go forth under the cold eyes of the weakness-despising starts: -
[it is] not me they scorn."
