هرچقدر از خوبی این اثر بگم، کم گفتم. بی نظیر.

I read this for my Ancient History class. I was going to give a oral presentation on Greek Theatre and one of the great playwrights of that time Euripides and even though he really wasn't recognised as a good playwright back then, he is now remembered as one of the best playwrights from that time.

Medea is about a woman who kills her two children to get revenge on her husband, because he left her for a younger woman. That's basically the gist of the play. But damn is it an amazing play.

The monolouges. The writing. The characters. The concept and Medea's reasoning. All amazing. This is a must read for fans of Euripides or just people willing to read amazing plays.

And the cover, the childs hand print. It doesn't get creepier than that. The translation I read was easy to read but still very moving. I read it all in one afternoon and have read it a few times afterwards. It is alot to take in. But it is amazing!

-عشق‌های کهنه سست‌تر از عشق‌های نو اند، و آن مرد دیگر یار این خانه نیست.

Medeia é uma das personagens mais complexas da história da literatura. Controversa, indecifrável e única.
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Essa releitura fez com que eu ficasse boquiaberta(de novo) por ter uma personagem arriscada para escrever sobre até no momento atual, e pensar que ela foi escrita em 431 AC(+-)!!!!
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Completamente diferente de outras personagens femininas gregas, que ou se resignavam e aceitavam seus fardos e punições ou eram absolvidas pois tinham suas qualidades e bondades reconhecidas, ou ainda, eram vilãs de cabo a rabo sem possuir nenhum atributo fora a maldade; Medeia se encontra em um vão entre esses tipos.
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Como Medeia diz, ela fez de tudo para que Jasão conseguisse realizar seus objetivos, foi uma boa esposa da forma que boas esposas deveriam ser, criou inimigos e abandonou laços para apoiar Jasão e foi até mãe, sendo que a maternidade era contra sua vontade(“Melhor seria estar três vezes em combate com escudo e tudo, que parir uma só vez!”). Ainda assim, é traída e renegada. Mas, como dito antes, Medeia não é como as outras personagens. Seu amor extremo é facilmente convertido em ódio, e ela decide por tomar as rédeas de seu destino e se vingar; não é ingênua, pois sabe que a vingança custa caro mesmo para quem a executa. Depois de ter sua reputação destruída e ter escolhido acabar com Jasão, recebe conselhos para seguir em frente e deixar isso para trás. “Viver é ter desgostos e eles não nos faltam.”, ela diz a Creonte. Sabe que sua vida foi arruinada e que nunca mais se recuperará, então que derrube Jasão em sua queda; e seus filhos infelizmente serão destruídos para isso, pois a vingança quando escolhida, deve ser escolhida por inteiro.
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E mesmo sendo uma infanticida e uma assassina, é incorreto considerar Medeia uma vilã. Sua paixão, sua benevolência, a sua hesitação no último encontro com os filhos…Não dá para encaixar a personagem em uma categoria, ela é muito mais do que isso ou aquilo. Uma mulher que decidiu o seu destino, executou seu plano e arcou com as consequências de suas escolhas. É uma sorte sem tamanho que essa tenha sido a única peça que foi salva da trilogia de Eurípides, pois Medeia é uma revolução e um tesouro para a literatura.

Voices of women ringing out. Not only do they have good speeches but their experience is the subject,
Medea does not passively sit back and accept the injustice of what has been happening to her, she is definitely not silent in the face of patriarchal injustice. When she feels aggrieved by man or men she asserts her own power, assuming she has just as much right to act in this way as any man does.
When Creon wants to banish her,she assumes that she has the right to speak (as well as to act). She doesn't hesitate to argue on her own behalf, and her arguments prove persuasive.

Medea is certainly a horrifying play: the mother who kills her children, going against her nature to exact the ultimate justice on her husband, Jason “They are the sun that lights his world /So I will plunge him into darkness.” It is intimate, intense and visceral. Medea's actions are monstruous but she's not plain evil, she is vindictive and seductive when needed, arrogant, proud, manipulative and violent all these to get revenge, retaliation even. Because she has been left behind: Jason- the man she married and for who she has left land and family even comitting some deeds nobody else would - is going to marry again (leaving her for no other reason than ambition) and she must also leave her home. Medea's characterization represents an early form of feminism in that Medea sees herself as woman first. Her designation as a wife or mother are secondary to her own feelings as a woman. She appropriates an identity as an individual subject equal to the men who surround them, equally powerful and equally wrong. If she despises how Jason makes use of her until she is no longer needed she does not realize she makes use of the lives of innocent to obtain the revenge she thinks she deserves.

Thoroughly Modern Medea
Review of the Oberon Classics paperback edition (April 16, 2016) adapted by Rachel Cusk from the Ancient Greek language original (432 BC).

n  Jason: Look, you should be trying to find someone yourself. You're still an attractive woman.
Medea: Still?
Jason: For your age, yes. You should look on the internet. That's how everyone does it these days.
[his phone pings and he reads it then texts a reply.]
How's the writing going?n

Rachel Cusk's 2015 Medea is merged with the (currently) 990 editions of Euripides' play, but it is nothing at all like most of those translations and adaptations from the ancient Greek. Cusk's lead character is a modern day screenwriter, her Jason is an actor who had a breakthrough role thanks to a script by Medea, Jason is divorcing Medea in order to marry a younger woman from a rich family to further promote his career, the Aegeus is a film producer who will arrange a future production of a Medea script, Medea's new movie is a tell-all which will destroy Jason and bring about the downfall of his new family. Medea does not directly murder anyone.

It is all obviously inspired by Euripides original plot, but the text and situations are all modern day and the fates of the characters are not as in the original. 5 gossipy women are the chorus, they barely interact with Medea. There are 2 somewhat bratty boy children. Glauke (the younger woman) gets a rash from the jewellery which Medea passes on to Jason, the Nurse and the Tutor comment on the action as before. A house cleaner character is introduced to the plot as a completely new commentator on the action. The messenger character describes the off-stage action as before.


Poster for the Almeida Theatre 2015 production. Image sourced from the Almeida Theatre.

This was a thoroughly interesting interpretation of the play in which much of the suspense was the anticipation of how is Cusk going to modernize the situation without the horror of the original's ending. Really the most horrific aspect was the promotional material for the Almeida Theatre production. This was somewhat hidden in the poster above, but had a grotesque reveal in the cover of the 2nd print edition:

Image sourced from Goodreads.

Theatre Reviews
Magic in its Modernism: Rachel Cusk's Marvellous New Medea for the Almeida Greeks season by Charlotte Valori at Operissima, October 1, 2015.

Trivia and Links
There is an excerpted scene from the Almeida Theatre production with Kate Fleetwood as Medea which you can see here. Starting with the talk of a bicycle, you'll realize that this version of the play is set in modern times.

Rachel Cusk wrote an opinion piece for The Telegraph at the time of her version's staging. It is behind a paywall but you can see the headline and the beginning at Rachel Cusk: 'Medea is not psychotic, she's a realist.', September 30, 2015.

n  “I understand too well the dreadful act
I'm going to commit, but my judgement
can't check my anger, and that incites
the greatest evils human beings do.”n


- Medea about to Kill her Children, Eugène Delacroix (1838.)

As terrible as Medea’s actions are at the end of the play, I can’t help but feel sorry for her (at least is some small way.) She murders her own children, but she was pushed to the brink of despair as the knife was placed in her hand by her own husband. And Euripides plays on this dynamic beautifully.

Does one wrong justify another? She gave absolutely everything to Jason. The gods compelled her to love him, and she did more ardently that I think she ever realised. She murdered for him, she fled her own kingdom and saved him from death. She bore his children and helped him rule. She gave him everything. Without her support he would have achieved nothing. And what does he do? He betrays her. Pity the man who would attract the ire of such a woman.

n  “Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”n

Medea is passionate and volatile, without any scruples, and when the person she loved most in the world abandons her for another woman, she only thinks of how she can get him back. She doesn’t care about what she will lose or who else she will hurt: she only wants to hurt him as he hurt her. And Jason is a fool for hurting her. He must have known how she was, and he should not have pushed such a woman to the brink of despair. He drove her mad, and she struck back harder than he could have imagined.

Her actions are, of course, inexcusable but they are not entirely her own fault. Her volatility erupted and she channelled it into the most ugliest and bloodiest of revenges. And it’s difficult to read about, but it’s also important to read about. Although Euripides, through his raw and visceral language exaggerates the tempest that becomes Medea’s mind, this is surprisingly real world because this does happen: it has happened. Despair can change a person.

The play also has powerful feminist undertones. Medea shouts to the skies that she is the equal to any man and when she has been wronged she will wrong back as a man would, recognising her own crime but committing it all the same.

n  And that’s her tragedy: she cannot look beyond her own pain and anger.n

La Medea de Eurípides es una de sus obras cumbres en el competitivo teatro griego.
Medea es un personaje único en la mitología griega pues es una de las pocas heroínas que teniendo tanto contacto con Hécate puede desempeñar tal papel para luego ser una villana, pero a pesar de ello, el sofismo de Eurípides que tanto está impregnado en sus obras nos hace pensar si realmente Medea actuó sin motivo alguno.
Al final el que lo sufre es Jasón, gran héroe griego cuya perdición al final fue la mujer que alguna vez amó.

«یک زن مدرن ممکن است مده‌آ را به عنوان نمونه‌ای از تنگناهایی که زنان را در زندگیِ امروزی آزار می‌‌دهد، تفسیر کند: تنها راه دستیابی به موفقیت در این جهان زدودنِ زنانگی و مادرانگی است.»

(من نسخه‌ی بیدگل را --با آن ترجمه‌ی فوق‌العاده-- خواندم که در گودریدز به اشتباه روی نسخه‌ی سنکا اضافه شده است.)

Tragedia griega concebida por el dramaturgo Euripides, resulta no solo atmosférica y corrosiva sino brutalmente bella en su lenguaje y en la exploración de las pasiones humanas.

Medea, quien da título a la obra, es una hechicera que tras dedicar años a amar fervientemente a su marido y a ayudarlo en su cruzada por posición y poder, se ve traicionada por éste que decide tomar una nueva esposa. El lecho contaminado, el amor herido y el orgullo ultrajado desencadenan oleadas de ira, resentimiento y violencia cuyo final no podría ser otra cosa que fatal.

Euripides nos propone a una mujer poderosa, intensa, incapaz de sentir u obrar a medias. Su inteligencia, su magia, su ferocidad, la vuelven tan irresistible para el lector como letal para sus enemigos.

یکی از ساده‌ترین و دم‌دستی‌ترین راه‌ها برای اینکه ببینید یه اثر ادبی مهم بوده یا نه اینه که نگاه کنید ببینید اسم اون اثر هنوزم زنده‌ست یا نه. می‌دونم معیار کاملی نیست ولی میشه ازش استفاده کرد. در هر صورت، میشه از این راه فهمید یه اثر توی تاریخ ادبیات مهم بوده یا نه.

یکی از این آثار که نه تنها اسمش موندگاره بلکه بسیار خوندنیه، نمایشنامه مدئا از ائوریپید هست.
توی این نمایشنامه، اوریپید قراره ما رو با مدئا آشنا کنه. مدئایی که به خاطر عشقش ترک وطن کرده، باعث مرگ برادرش شده و اژدها کشته ولی الان که به عشقش رسیده و دو تا بچه د��ره، شوهرش می‌خواد ترکش کنه و برای کسب مقام با دختر حاکم ازدواج کنه. اینجاست که مدئا از همه پیز ناامید میشه و کم کم بذر انتقام توی دلش جوونه می‌زنه.

در مورد اوریپید
از زندگی اوریپید چیز خیلی زیادی نمی‌دونیم. تو جوونی نمایشنامه‌هایی نوشت و در مسابقات رتبه‌هایی آورد. مثلا تو سال‌های اولیه فعالیتش با نمایشنامه‌‌نویس بزرگ، سوفوکل رقابت می‌کرد.
اوریپید از جمله نمایشنامه‌نویسانی بود که ابتکار و نوآوری زیادی توی کارهاش داشت و آثار و شخصیت‌هایی که به دستش خلق شده، از لحاظ احساسات انسانی عمیق‌تر از نوشته‌های هم‌دوره‌ای‌هاشه.
از کل ۹۰ اثر اوریپید، حدود ۱۸ یا ۱۹ نمایشنامه باقی مونده که خب منبع فوق‌العاده‌ای برای علاقه‌مندان به ادبیاته.

اما راجع‌به خود نمایشنامه‌ی مدئا
توی این نمایشنامه، اوریپید شخصیت زن بسیار قدرتمندی به نام مدئا خلق می‌کنه. شخصیتی که در نگاه اول چیزی بیشتر از یک زن کینه‌جو به‌نظر نمیاد ولی وقتی کمی عمیق‌تر نگاه کنی، متوجه نقد اوریپید به مسائل مختلف میشی. از وضعیت و حق زن در جامعه مرد سالار یونان تا دیدگاهی که نسبت به خشم و انتقام و عشق داره.
مثلا توی این نمایشنامه، مدئا اون کسیه که تمام چیزی که ازش برمی‌اومده رو انجام داده و به قول معروف صدشو گذاشته ولی چون شوهرش می‌خواد به مقام و جایگاه مناسبی برسه این حق رو برای خودش قائل میشه که زنشو ول کنه و چیزی که مهمه اینه که جامعه هم از شوهرش حمایت می‌کنه و از نظرشون اوکیه. اینجاست که نقش زن در جامعه توسط اوریپید نقد میشه و مخاطب حتی اگه چنین دیدگاهی هم نداشته باشه، حداقل و در بدترین حالت لحظه‌ای به تفکر خودش شک می‌کنه و همین برای یک اثر هنری بسیار ارزشمنده.
مورد بعدی دیدگاهیه که اوریپید نسبت به مسئله انتقام داره. به صورتی که هم مدئا هم مخاطب خواستار انتقام و عذاب هستن. دلمون یه انتقام وحشتناک می‌خواد و البته که اوریپید اینو بهمون میده ولی کاری که اوریپید می‌کنه اینه که بعد از اون ما رو بعد انتقام ترک می‌کنه و ما می‌مونیم و جنازه‌ها و اینجاست که سوال اصلی نمایشنامه خودشو ظاهر میشه. اینکه این انتقام درست بود؟ نیاز بود انقدر همه چیز رو به تباهی بره؟ و اینجاست که اوریپید طعم شیرین انتقام رو توی دهن مدئا و مخاطب خودش، تلخ می‌کنه.

این دومین نمایشنامه‌ای هست که من اوریپید می‌خونم. اولی زنان تروا بود و دومی مدئا. نمی‌دونم از بس این چند وقته ایلیاد و اودیسه و انه‌اید خوندم به متن‌ها عادت کردن یا تاثیر ترجمه‌ی محشر عبدالله کوثریه یا اینکه خود اوریپید راحت می‌نویسه ولی هر چی که هست، نمایشنامه بسیار خوش‌خوانیه. بخونید.

۲ از ۲۰۰ نمایشنامه

Discussions brought up by this play felt so fresh and relevent. Made me wonder if we ever evolve as human beings.