Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 6)

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Go to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext and use code SUBTEXT to save 20 EUR (or equivalent in your currency) when signing up. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:00 Wes: Let's take a moment to talk about our sponsor for this episode. Lingoda I've always wanted to learn French. I took a little bit in college, but I never really became conversational and over the years I've taken a class at a language school here and there, but I always had trouble moving to the next level making progress because class is often conflicted with work or other commitments. So I take a class and wouldn't have time again for a few months and then might try again. Lingoda is an online language school that solved that problem for me by allowing me to take classes that fit into my schedule no matter how complicated it is. Whatever level I'm at, there are multiple time slots to choose from for a human led class with a native speaker every day of the week so I don't have to commit to the same day and time every week. 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Again, that's €20 off or the equivalent in your currency. By going to try.lingoda.com subtext and using 2:01 Erin: code Subtext, you're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 2:36 Wes: All right, welcome to the sixth and final part of our time discussion of Medea. We just got done talking about Medea deceiving Jason, convincing her to try to persuade Creon to let her kids stay. Really, it's a plan to of course, poison Creusa and Creon. Ultimately, after she persuades Jason and Jason leaves, the chorus realizes what's up, even though the chorus leaders seem to not really understand. But, but at this point, this is still on page 76. I think the chorus leader understands what's up and says, well, there's no more hope. The children will live. Or the bride Creusa is not going to live. And the antistrophe says she'll be persuaded by the brilliance of the gowns and quote, dress for her wedding in the company of the dead, which is a beautiful line. And she's a poor fool. She's a bridegroom of sorrow. So another nice image. And then we get a little generalization about human beings being deceived in your destiny. So we make all these plans for the future. Little do we know we're being poisoned. 3:45 Erin: Yeah. And that your own kids are going to be the agents. You know, this is an element too of the poisoning that I had neglected to mention in the previous part, which is the kids are the ones that bring the gifts too. So I mean, they don't know it, but children rarely ever know the damage they cause. But yeah, this idea of destruction coming from unexpected places, of course also to me points to what's going to happen to Jason in the end, at the end of Jason's life, not just at the end of this play. 4:17 Wes: Right. 4:17 Erin: Because isn't he killed by a falling beam from the Argo? So there's something about maybe that's connected to the children as well, that's sort of the. Of what one's legacy is or what one thinks one's legacy is. Might betray you, deceive you, might be used to false ends, or might be not much of a legacy at all. Or something along those lines. 4:39 Wes: A focus on legacy can become self destructive. 4:42 Erin: Even better. 4:42 Wes: Again, like the myth of Narcissus, because that's partly what is getting him into trouble here, is his ambitions. 4:51 Erin: Right. 4:51 Wes: The antistrophe Grieves for Medea, but it recognizes that what's happening to him is punishment for quote, unquote, lawless abandonment. 5:00 Erin: Yes. 5:01 Wes: Which is interesting. Of course, she's engaged in vigilante justice, but there is, of course, an element of justice to it. Her children ought not to have to suffer for her to get her justice. And perhaps we today would be less inclined to think of vengeance as a form of justice. But in any case, and I think this is part of the logic you were talking about earlier, there's a sense in which this is sort of the logic of Jason's behavior bringing down ruin upon himself. 5:33 Erin: Yeah. 5:34 Wes: The tutor, meanwhile, is confused. Tutor's not in on it. Tutor doesn't why. So why is she still unhappy? The gifts worked. 5:44 Erin: And I like this. The clueless tutor, just like, you know, Jason, Mr. Logic is called, as you pointed out, you know, you poor fool. Someone who's deceived and the tutor can't be taught. He just doesn't get it. Yeah. 5:59 Wes: And. And meanwhile, Medea has a really great line here. So the tutor says, then why these downcast looks, these tears you weep? Sorry. The tutor has delivered a message, which is that the gifts have worked and that the children won't be banished. I think I forgot to mention that. And then. So he expects her to be happy about that and she's not. And then he's like, was I mistaken in thinking my message a happy one? Your message was such as it was. I have no fault to find with you, the tutor. And then why these downcast looks, these tears you weep? And then Medea has a great line here. I have no choice, old man. None at all. All this is what the gods and I devised. I and my foolish heart. So you have three layers here of potential causality for action. There's the mythic layer, gods and fate, potentially. There's the psychological layer, my foolish heart. Right. I'm impelled by internal psychological forces. And then there's the free will layer. This is what I devised. This is my plan. This is my will. Wonderful, wonderful. Little bit of complexity that I think Euripides is obviously deliberately introducing there. How do we explain her behavior? Here are all the different options, and of course, they can be made to coincide. Right. So Eros is the God that corresponds to the foolish heart. 7:20 Erin: I love this, too. And it points to what she'll say on the following page, which is, I think, a very famous line, when she. The last thing she says, I think, before she kills the kids, which is, I am well aware how terrible a Crime I am about to commit. But my passion is master of my reason. Passion that causes the greatest suffering in the world. This seems to chime with that in that she's sort of acknowledging a lack of choice, which might be because this is the story and this is the way it has to go, because this is what the gods want. But also because she's overruled by her own emotion. And in a way it's like a legal defense. Like there's an argument that can be made here about provocation and the fact that she's maybe been provoked into committing this act because she can't control herself, because she's so upset. So it seems like it has. Like there are. Yeah, these layers kind of come into that. The sort of self justification statement for committing the crime as well. 8:21 Wes: Yeah. Now we get her wrestling with whether or not she's going to actually be able to do it. So we get the great little monologue which after the tutor is gone and she's just there with her children. So on top of page 78, line 1040, so she starts out the whole speech earlier by saying, oh, this stubborn heart of mine, what misery does cost me. It is all for nothing. Then, children, that I reared you. There's a lot of that that's very interesting to me in this. All the effort that you've put into creating these little beings. She'll be robbed of their company. And as she gets older, you will look no more at your mother with those eyes I love once you have passed on to another form of life. So it's a very poignant right. She has all these very tender feelings for her children. 9:12 Erin: So sick. Yeah. 9:13 Wes: Yeah. Oh, no, no. Why do you fix your eyes on me, children? Why smile at me with that last smile? Ah, the pain. What shall I do? My heart dissolves, ladies, when I talking to the chorus. When I see the shining faces of my children, I could not do it. Goodbye to those plans I made. And then a little later on, right, flips. And yet, what is the matter with me? Do I want to become a laughingstock by letting my enemies off scot free? So this is the struggle I was talking about between pride, humiliation and then love for the children. 9:47 Erin: This is literally when you read. I don't know if you can see, but I literally have goosebumps when you read. Why do you fix your eyes on me, children? Why smile at me with that last smile? Oh, yeah. 10:00 Wes: Smile at me with that last smile. Kids have got to be going. This doesn't sound promising. Last. 10:09 Erin: Well, is she Is she alone? 10:11 Wes: Last smile. 10:11 Erin: No, no, no. They are there. Yep. This is all addressed to them. This is so. It's actually so much worse. So much worse than them being on stage. 10:21 Wes: So off with you, children. Now into the house. I shall not weaken my hand. And then the next, you know, flipping again. Ah, stop, my heart. Do not do this deed. Let them be poor. Fool. Spare your children. And then, no, I will not leave my children to the mockery of my enemies. And so on. And then. Very poignant. 10, 70. Give me your hands, children. Give your mother your hands to kiss. Oh, hands I love so much. Dear, dear lips, my children, my pretty ones, with your face is so noble. Jason will say something very similar near the end of the play, actually, because he wants to touch them after they're dead and she won't let him. You have lost this world thanks to your father. And then the children go into the house. So the children, depending on how smart they are, either must be confused or they must know what's coming. 11:11 Erin: Gosh. 11:11 Wes: I know. It's terrible. 11:12 Erin: I'm sorry. This is so painful. 11:15 Wes: Wow. 11:16 Erin: It's so powerful. Yeah. And this waffling that she does. Doesn't Aristotle go after Euripides for this and say, this is why Medea doesn't really work? Because he, you know, Aristotle, in a moment of Jason, like, emotional perception, says she should just do it. Make up her mind, why does she cry about it when she, you know, decides to do it? Am I making that up? But he says that in the Poetics. I read it a few months ago. 11:44 Wes: Yeah. I don't know. That sounds right, though. I mean, that sounds familiar, what you're saying. Yeah. Which is weird, because this is. This, in a way, is the most psychologically realistic part of the play and one of the more probably more psychologically realistic depictions we get. 12:01 Erin: I mean, this is so this sort 12:02 Wes: of thing in the ancient Greek literature. Yeah. And it sort of feels very modern. Right. You could be reading something very similar in Shakespeare, for instance. Yeah. 12:12 Erin: I mean, she has to, you know, she waffles and stuff, but it's also. It's also a way of talking herself into it and psyching herself up for what she's about to do. It takes very seriously the. Rather than being unserious about the crime that she's about to commit by showing her waffling and such, which is, I think, Aristotle's part of Aristotle's accusation. And listeners can correct me if I'm wrong about this. Yeah. Take seriously the severity of the crime. She's about to commit by showing how one has to. To really self delude to do something this. This disgusting. And it really shows how disgusting it is. I mean, the. The ending lines. Oh, how I love to hug them. The softness of their skin, the sweetness of their breath, my darling ones. Oh, you know, it's really. 13:00 Wes: Yeah, it's very real. 13:02 Erin: Yeah, it's a little true crime documentary, you know. I don't know if you've ever watched one of these things. 13:08 Wes: I always think of the mother with the station wagon backing it into the lake or something. 13:13 Erin: Right, right. Yeah. And the. The diary entries where they're like, I loved them so much. You know, it's. Yeah, yeah, I love them so much 13:21 Wes: I had to kill them. 13:23 Erin: That's the way it goes, man, when you got to prove a point, you got to prove a point. 13:27 Wes: Women who love their kids to death. 13:30 Erin: It's like Darla. Is it Darla in the. In the Looney Tunes that. But I'll hug him and squeeze him and hold him tight where she holds the little animals until they can't breathe. 13:41 Wes: Oh, yeah, yeah. 13:43 Erin: Strangles them. 13:44 Wes: A little bit of Mice and Men there as well. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. So the chorus's reaction now is interesting. So we get a little bit back into the sexual commentary. Many times, or as they would call it today, gender commentary. Many times there now I have entertained thoughts more subtle and. And engaged in arguments more weighty than the female sex should pursue. Euripides hadn't heard of gender yet. We also have a me. We also have a muse, you see, who accompanies us and tutors us in wisdom. Not all of us, but a handful you might find among many who are not strangers to the muse. And I declare that in the matter of happiness, those mortals who have produced children are less fortunate, fortunate than those who have no experience at all of parenthood, and so on forth. So the childless are spared many trials and people with children are worn away each day by passing anxiety. So we get this interesting commentary from the course. It's a mixture of. On the one hand, there's the remark about. Medea has just made a remark about passion being the master of her reason. And that's a bit. The passion versus reason thing is touched upon, of course, at various points. And then there's a bit about the chorus's idea that when it gets into its own deep thoughts, into its reflection, that they are more weighty than the female sex should pursue. So this little bit of ironic commentary about sex and then the commentary about 15:13 Erin: parenthood you reading this aloud highlights for me the kind of interesting contrast between what's said and how it's expressed in a strange way. I mean, they're talking about how. How these are things that women and they are women don't really know about or shouldn't really pursue, and yet it's expressed in this sort of hyper. I mean, legalese is not quite the right word, but sort of like as a legal argument, it's almost presented in this strangely emotionally disconnected way. I declare that in the matter of happiness, in the case of people without children versus people with children, here is our verdict. So there's that element of this speech which I find find pretty interesting. And then there's the idea of who is more fortunate there. I mean, so. So what are they trying to get at here? It's better to not have children at all or just to do away with them because they're more trouble than they're worth and eventually they're going to die anyway. So that is also an argument espoused here. This is the why you shouldn't get a puppy argument. I'm not saying kids are dogs. 16:09 Wes: They're not as. 16:10 Erin: They're not as rewarding, they're not as cute. No, they're cuter, but. Well, they can be anyway. Actually, the cutest thing is a puppy and a baby together. But the friendship. You know those videos. Yeah. I don't know where I was getting 16:33 Wes: out with it, but it's like. I think maybe some of the. Part of the point of this is the children are. What? Yeah. So it's a unique form of love, obviously, and. And a unique form of worry. And there's a way in which it's as if she's. Medea has created these extensions of herself. 16:53 Erin: Maybe that's the legal argument element of this here. It's almost carrying out that kind of impulse in Medea to make the case to herself in a strange way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 17:04 Wes: It's after this that we get the tale of the poisonings, which is. This is in the text. It starts at line 1122. The messenger comes in and tells Medea to flee. And she's like, no, I don't. I don't need to worry about that. I just need you to give me all the juicy details. Then the messenger gives her all the juicy details. So he says the princess is newly dead and she and Creon. And she's like, there's a welcome piece of news. Then the messenger acts surprised. 17:33 Erin: I put in the margins there. No poker face. Exactly. 17:37 Wes: This is the one place where I didn't. In my notes it just says, ask him to tell the story of the deaths. Page 80. He does pages 80 to 82. I don't resummarize any of it in my notes. I didn't want to relive it more times than I had to. But as you said, it is deliciously 17:59 Erin: detailed and horrific and it reveals some pretty fascinating things about Creusa and what a delightful stepmom she is. 18:08 Wes: Yeah. Did you want to highlight any of this account? Yeah. Yeah. 18:12 Erin: So the two sons had come in and the people in the palace were like greeting them and being really sweet to them. One of us was kissing the children's hands, another their golden heads. As for me, such was my delight, I followed the children right into the ladies quarters. The mistress who now wins our reverence in place of you did not at first notice your two children, but kept her eyes lovingly on Jason. But then at their entrance, she showed her revulsion, covering her features with a veil and turning away a white cheek. Your husband tried to dispel the young woman's anger and resentment with these words. Do not regard my family as your enemies. Do stop feeling angry and look at them once more. Please consider worthy of your love all those who enjoy your husband's love, accept their gifts and entreat your father to spare my sons the penalty of exile for my sake. So really interesting things going on there. I think I might have suggested in a previous part that part of the problem with the Medea, Jason marriage is or might be that Medea was too in love with Jason. And that's one of the reasons why she's willing to use the children as these means of revenge, because she poured everything into Jason. It was all about Jason. Like she was too obsessed with him, maybe to the exclusion of any other, any attention paid to the kids. And that's kind of what allows her to discard them, because she sees them just less as little people in their own right and more as the evidence of the love between her and Jason and therefore of something that needs to be destroyed on that basis as too painful of a reminder of her, you know? I see. You can, you can argue that she's someone who's maybe like, has. Has a sexual obsession with Jason. That's, I think, what Pasolini tries to get at in his adaptation. And it seems that Creusa is the same way. So I don't know what Jason has going on, but he's got big. 20:00 Wes: He's got big hero muscles. That's All. 20:02 Erin: Yeah, there you go. There you go. He's a, he's a beefcake. 20:05 Wes: He's a good looking guy. 20:06 Erin: He's a beefcake. That's, that's what Pasolini does with him as well. And, and so there's a similar dynamic going on. But add to that the sort of evil stepmother quality too, you know, of the second wife who just wants nothing to do with the kids. And the kids are the reminder. And in this arrangement where you have a second wife coming in, the kids are a reminder of the same thing they are for Medea. Jason's former passion for someone else. Evidence of him having a sexual passion for someone other than you, if you're Creusa. And also I think a real deep immaturity on Creusa's part that she would treat little kids this way is indicative of all of the worst stereotypes we could throw at the second. Younger, superficial. 20:56 Wes: She's a bimbo, let's just face it. Yeah, there's a juxtaposition here to her. So, yeah, she comes across as shallow and mean. There's a juxtaposition to her being mean to the kids. And then suddenly now when she saw the finery, she could not restrain herself, but agreed to everything her husband said. 21:17 Erin: Yeah. 21:17 Wes: And then the golden coronet she placed upon her curls and began to arrange her hair in the gleaming mirror, casting smiles the while at her lifeless reflection, another great line, her lifeless reflection. So again, highlighting the vanity as the. 21:34 Erin: One of the best modern day versions of this is just the parent trap. The two kids coming in and pretending to play nice. I mean, these kids don't know that they're about to kill her, but there's something of the sort of little Lindsay Lohan quality. I know the original was Hayley Mills, but one of my favorite movies of all time is the 1998 Nancy Meyers' Parent Trap. I don't know if I ever mentioned this to you. And Meredith Blake is very much a Creusa type figure. And so if you can imagine a comic version of this where the two Lindsay Lohan twins come in with something that's designed to make her. They give her in the movie bug spray, which is just sugar water. So she gets eaten alive by mosquitoes on a camping trip. This gets some traction later in cute Disney movies. 22:23 Wes: Well, what happens here is a little bit more uncomedic, horrific. 22:28 Erin: She gets eaten alive. All right. Yeah. 22:29 Wes: But then we were exposed to a horrific sight. A horrific sight. The color left her face and with her limbs trembling, she lurched Backwards towards the throne and collapsed on it, barely stopping herself from falling on the ground. And then it gets very, very graphic. Just burning up and foam trickling from her lips and eyes rolling and screams and devouring fire. Yeah. Not a. Not a fun. Flesh melting away from the bones like resin from a pine tree. Any. Anything else we want to highlight? 23:06 Erin: Oh, how about blood congealed with fire was dripping from the top of her head. 23:10 Wes: There you go. 23:11 Erin: Just like a Roman candle. 23:13 Wes: This gets for a game of Game of Thrones here. 23:15 Erin: Yeah. And the poisons. I love this. The poison's jaws worked away unseen. The flesh melted away from it. But then the pine tree. Yeah. Because there's something. The best part about it is that it's like she's melting in front of you, but the agent that is melting her is invisible. It's like this invisible fire. So you're watching it, and she gets 23:36 Wes: up from the throne and she's all aflame and she's running and tossing her head and trying to get rid of the crown by. You know, but. But she can't. And then each time she shook her head, the flame burned twice as fiercely. 23:49 Erin: So cool. Sick. And then the father Creon. This is another element of her which is also an element of Meredith Blake in Parent Trap. She's. She's Daddy's little princess. 24:00 Wes: So 24:02 Erin: the psychology of this is really. Parent Trap is quite an ancient tale. But the father. Yeah, great description here with him, too. When he had ceased his weeping and wailing, he tried to raise his aged frame, but he stuck to her fine dress. Oh, so he's thrown himself on her. He stuck to her fine dress. As ivy clings to laurel branches. Very Ovidian. Right. There's a little bit of a metamorphosis type. His struggles appalled us. Try as he might to lift up a knee, she clung to him. Him. Save me, dad. And each time he used force to extricate himself, he tore the withered flesh from his own bones. At last, the wretched man could strive no more against his awful predicament. He. He gasped and breathed his last. Together they lie in death, old man and young daughter. There's an element to this that. That I didn't notice before, which is isn't just that he's sort of caught the flame, the invisible flame from her, but also that she's grabbing him and pulling on him. And that's part of the. Her grasping is part of what kills him. So she takes him down, too. It's sort of a reverse Medea, actually, when you think about it. She's taking some people with her. 25:17 Wes: And then we get a little moral at the end. No one in this life of ours knows happiness when fortune's tide flows toward him. One man may surpass another in prosperity, but you should not call him happy. 25:31 Erin: Yeah. When she melted all the way down, there was a fortune cookie. All that was left was a fortune cookie. He opened it, and that was on the inside. 25:38 Wes: That's amazing. 25:38 Erin: Yeah. 25:39 Wes: That's awesome. Oh, my God. It's too bad she forgot to do the fortune cookie. All right, so now we are in the final three pages of this. And Medea. 25:56 Erin: Oh, we made it. 25:56 Wes: Messenger leaves. Medea's. Well, the chorus leader says, this day it seems that heaven has rained many blows justly on the head of Jason, which is an interesting alignment. You know, the chorus has kind of resisted this plan largely. And then Medea is now very decisive. I will kill my children. 26:14 Erin: Well, and just to interrupt for one second, I mean, it really does. This really does make Jason the main character, doesn't it? 26:20 Wes: It. 26:20 Erin: It's. It's really all about Jason. People have just died, and it's like, oh, Jason's had a tough break today. You know, Actually, Creusa and Creon maybe had a tougher break, but. 26:30 Wes: Yeah, exactly, you know, so. So with the children, they must be killed. There is no other way. Come, my heart. This right, this is another. Well, is it evocative of Shakespeare at all? Come, my heart, put on your armor. We must not hesitate to do this deed, this terrible, yet necessary, necessary deed. Come, wretched hand of mine, grip the sword. Grip it onto the starting line. A painful race awaits you now. 26:55 Erin: Great stuff. 26:56 Wes: Yeah. For one day, one fleeting day, forget your children. There will be the rest of your life for weeping. For though you will put them to the sword, you loved them well. Oh, I'm a woman born to sorrow. 27:08 Erin: It's so Macbeth. You know, I'm thinking of vaulting ambition, too. Right, Right. Just got to do this and get over the hurdle to the end and then worry about other things later. 27:19 Wes: Stick your. What is it? Screw your courage. The sticking place. 27:24 Erin: Yeah, or stick your courage to the screwing place. Whichever. 27:28 Wes: Whichever works. Whatever helps you get it done. Whatever. 27:33 Erin: Yeah. Avenge the bridal bed. And anyway, Sorry, pun on the screwing place. Anyway, 27:42 Wes: all right, so now we get the infanticide. And, well, first the strophe, of course, asks the Sun, her grandfather, to restrain her. And then the antistrophe echoes something she's already said, which is gone. For nothing is a toil. You spend on your children. Why? And then why this lust for. For blood? So both sides of the chorus are, you know, are hoping to. For this somehow to be prevented. And after that, we get, I guess, a quite very brief but horrible scene of her killing the kids off stage. The kids. You know, one of the children saying, oh, help, can I escape my mother's hands? And we are about to die, or we are to die. And then, of course, what horror. What further horror could match this? Oh, how many troubles caused by the loves of women? How many sorrows you have brought on mankind before now? 28:33 Erin: That's immediately where I wanted to jump. You know, they make reference to the dark clashing rocks. Like, you went through so much to get here to this point, so why are you trying to sort of unravel, like, as though the. As though Medea getting through the clashing rocks was part of the material that went into the children. In a strange way, the story they acknowledged. Yeah. What Medea is doing, which is she's kind of rewinding the tape. She's undoing the story. And they're saying, you know, but you. You put all of this effort in for this particular plot thread, so why are you trying to undo the plot now? And it's a really interesting way of looking at it, you know, then afterwards, as. As you say, you know, how many. How many troubles caused by the loves of women? So they're. They've rewound to the beginning of where this plot thread started, which is when she first falls in love with Jason and all of this bad stuff happens. Yeah. She successfully kills off that thread of the plot and leaves the chorus to bemoan the sort of start of it all. I'm really interested in that move because it seems to take seriously what Medea does as a way to kill off Jason's future and kind of her past with him. It seems to give credence to almost to the necessity of her doing what she does, which is killing the children as a way to kind of clean up the story or something like that, you know? 29:55 Wes: Yeah. I mean, it makes this reference to Ino. So I guess it's saying there's only one other woman who's done this type of violence to her own children, which is surprising. Is that true in mythology? 30:07 Erin: Yes, it is. I looked this up, and this is supposed to be. Yeah. Ino. In the glossary in the back of the Penguin edition, we're using Sister of Dionysus, mother Semele, driven mad by Hera. She jumped into the sea with one of her children both died, but in some versions were transformed into sea deities. In some versions, she gets away with it, too. 30:28 Wes: Okay, so there's the station wagon origin story. It's the back. The station wagon end version. 30:36 Erin: This is supposed to show that this has happened. This is like a Greek has done this too. So lest you say this is a Colchian kind of problem. 30:46 Wes: Right. 30:47 Erin: We've actually been here before. 30:49 Wes: Right. Not all Colchians. Well, it's surprising if this is unique to Greek mythology. And also, we know. We're almost certain that Euripides is just making this up. Right. He's adding to the myth as it already exists. This is the first time anyone would have heard this story told this way as having her kill the children. 31:12 Erin: And he's saying there is a precedent here in Greece. 31:15 Wes: Right? 31:15 Erin: Yeah. 31:16 Wes: Right. So very interesting. 31:18 Erin: I wonder if we could tie that into this idea of unraveling the plot. Because here he's sort of. Yeah. If Medea kills the kids to undo the mythology. And here Euripides both sort of expands the mythology and contracts it at the same time by making Medea perform this action, which seeks to blot out her history with Jason. Yeah. He's both building on and destroying the myth at the same time by making her into such a monster here. 31:47 Wes: Yeah. I mean, what is he trying to do as a poet here? What motivates this retelling? Right. Why do this with Medea and put her in this role of having killed her children? There seems to be some connection to the critique of Athenian rationality said. Right. To the critique that the. That the audience would feel as a reproach to not honoring the instinctual side. Our instinctual side. Something about not honoring our instinctual side is kills off. Right. So we think of ambition in terms of legacy, of what we're going to leave to the future, whether it's our own children or our own work. But there's some sort of legacy seems to be terminated by repression or by dishonoring the instinctual. And maybe that's creative products. Right. You throttle your own. The products of your own creativity. If what. I don't think I'm making sense here. That doesn't work thematically because she's supposed to be the representation of the instinctual. But, you know. Right. So given proper. Right. Yeah. If she hadn't been. Been disrespected, if she hadn't had such injustice done to her, then the sons could flourish. So, yeah, ultimately, it's the dishonoring of the instinctual which can have these Unpredictable effects on legacy. I don't know. Can you clean that up? Can you make that sound better? 33:13 Erin: Yeah. I mean, all it's doing is making me think of, you know, to go back to this idea of Medea's sorcery and taking the children as representatives of some kind of creative act or creative gift of hers. Right. So if we want to say that Medea is herself, you know, if her sorcery is writing plays and these children are her plays, and then Jason, you know, doesn't like the fact that Medea is a better playwright than him, and she burns the plays in order to prove some kind of point. You know, that's. That's kind of. 33:43 Wes: And also. Well, he's trying to represent them as his own plays, maybe. 33:46 Erin: Right. 33:46 Wes: I don't know. Right. In a way. Or they collaborate, they collaborated on them, Quote, unquote, collaborative. 33:52 Erin: Exactly. And if it weren't for my being your muse because you fell in love with me, then you wouldn't have written such great plays, in fact. Right. Yeah. So I think that's. 34:02 Wes: Now it's starting to sound like Woody Allen. 34:05 Erin: This is, to me, the most compelling explanation for the sorcery, the giftedness, what the kids represent. It's a marriage of unequal artists. 34:15 Wes: Yeah. That's great. 34:16 Erin: And that has some really serious consequences when the one who's better is the woman. As I think I already suggested in part one, it doesn't work in this direction, unfortunately. 34:26 Wes: Yeah. There's a part where the chorus says, don't go into business with a family member. Never works out. Just thinking about it. Yeah. They kind of work together, which is part of the problem. 34:35 Erin: Right, Right. 34:36 Wes: Or they did work together when they were doing all the dragon slaying. Right. 34:41 Erin: The other question, why this story? I mean, it is that Jason is such a scumbag and there's an opening, therefore, and because he's not quite. I think there was a question of whether or not he was maybe partially divine, I think you said at some point. But, you know, you can't go after Zeus for being a scumbag. 34:58 Wes: I think he's related to the wind, ultimately. 35:02 Erin: Okay. But he's more. More. He's more normal than not. And I think that I had mentioned in a previous episode that there is another story like this, and it's Theseus's betrayal of Ariadne. And in fact, after I said that, I looked it up on Wikipedia, for what that's worth. And Theseus is the son of Aegeus, and when he returns, he finds that Aegeus and Medea are together. So actually the. So actually you have, in a very short span of time in the mythology and very. In very close quarters, two faithless oath breaking, just kind of scumbaggy men that are using women. And Ariadne, too, is, you know, is representative of a lot of elements of female creativity because of the ways in which she helps him. She's associated with weaving, for instance, because of the way she helps him get out of the. She gives him the string to get out of the labyrinth, betrays her own family to help him, and he's deeply. And he abandons her on an island somewhere. 36:02 Wes: Wow. Amazing idea. I didn't think about that. Yeah. Like a perfect repetition. 36:05 Erin: Yeah. What do you want to call it? Within the mythology, there's this little sub theme that just happens in this cluster of interlocking stories that is about faithless men betraying the women who helped them and the creative impulses that got them through trials. It was a very smart thing for Euripides to mine. 36:25 Wes: Athens is built on lies. 36:28 Erin: Yep. Yeah, well, everything is. 36:31 Wes: So it's a very subversive what Euripides is doing here as far as his Athenian audience. All right, so here we are at the final scene, the scumbag, wherein the scumbag gets his comeuppance. In all honesty, I do find this also very poignant and feel quite sympathetic 36:49 Erin: to Jason in this scene. 36:51 Wes: I think it's written in that way so that we don't. 36:53 Erin: Well, but Jason, I just. I love when he says. When he comes on, rushes on stage and says, you know, wonders if Medea has fled from Corinth. And he says, for she must either hide herself below the earth or soar on wings into the vault of heaven if she is to escape the vengeance of the royal house. And I just wrote, good guess. Those are her two choices and she will choose one of them. Thank you. 37:18 Wes: I love this way he refers to as that arch criminal Medea. 37:22 Erin: Yeah, right. This woman of. I don't know her, you know, Criminal. 37:26 Wes: Yeah. And the chorus, you know, he comes on and then he's. I fear for my children. So he's, you know. You know, But. And of course, he's just seen what's gone down with his Creusa and Creon. But chorus leader Jason, you are to be pitied. You have no idea of the depth of your misfortune. These words of yours would never have been been uttered if he knew that's when she appears in the Chariot. Yep. Or shortly afterward. 37:53 Erin: And this isn't just some chariot. This is a chariot drawn by dragons. This is. Right, of course, A Thunderbird with flames on the side. 38:02 Wes: Yeah, it's a Trans Am. It's a Trans Am. Or is that what you meant by Thunderbird? Yes, Thunderbird is a car too. Okay, why am I changing the. 38:13 Erin: Well, whichever, that's insert for a favorite car here, such as the chariot that the Sun, my father's father has given me. This is so annoying. The son, my father's father. Again with the homonyms. It's ridiculous. I wish we could just say Helios and get it over with anyway, but yeah, it's a hand me down chariot. It's a classic car, so. That's what I'm trying to say. 38:39 Wes: Yeah. And again, Euripides is famous and oft criticized for this deus ex machina on stage. It would have been really interesting. They had a mechanism to raise an actor above the stage. 38:53 Erin: It's great. 38:54 Wes: And usually, I guess they would be descending. In this case, of course, she's just going to go into warp speed and take off somewhere. So then they have, you know, while she's. While she's, I guess, hovering about of the stage in her chariot, they have this final fight in which there's a 39:09 Erin: bit of a recapitulation of how the play opens with the nurse saying, if only this had never happened. Right. If only, you know, I hadn't taken you here as part of this exchange program, you know. Ridiculous. The spirit of vengeance for your crimes has been sent by the gods to punish me. Now I see it clear. But what a fool I was before when I brought you from that house of yours, that house of yours in a barbarous land to a. To a home in Greece. I'm imagining a palace just like, ah, that little brought you out of that shack in the bayou to a home in Greece. A deadly passenger who had betrayed your father. In the country that reared you. The spirit of vengeance for your crimes has been sent by the gods to punish me. 39:52 Wes: I see. 39:53 Erin: Why would that be? Could it be because they're married and he collected her debt upon the marriage? 40:00 Wes: Exactly. Well, he collaborated with her and of course he had her commit crimes for him. 40:07 Erin: Yeah, see, the gods don't recognize divorce. 40:10 Wes: This is important, Medea. I would have spoken at some length in reply to those words, were it not that Father Zeus knew what kind of treatment you had from me and I from you. It was not for you or your princess to trample on my love and live a life of pleasure laughing at me. I think she's. It's a way of saying it's just. It's justice. Right. So nothing else was compatible with justice. Zeus saw what happened. Zeus knew what kind of treatment you have had from me. And I have had. Oh, well. So the first thing is to say that, you know, I don't need to justify myself because God knows what really went down. 40:47 Erin: The highlighting of the laughing at me and the, you know, my pain is canceled now that any mockery of yours is silenced. 40:53 Wes: We're repeatedly reminded of her motive, which is to avoid humiliation and mockery. So I guess, you know, after this point, then they get into a dispute about whether he can have the children to bury or at least be able to touch them. I guess this is on page 86. Allow me to bury my dead and weep over them. Never. I will bury them with these hands. I will not have them subjected to mockery by one of my enemies, violating their tombs. She's going to bury them elsewhere. 41:25 Erin: They're going to have a festival, which I guess was. Was a thing. They were honored after their death or something. 41:32 Wes: She'll establish a solemn festival with ritual observances to atone for this impious bloodshed in years to come. And. Yeah, so this is supposed to be at Hera of the Cape, which is Cyprus. Is that where that is? 41:44 Erin: And there is. There is a temple to the boys. There was a temple, wasn't there? 41:48 Wes: It sounds familiar. I don't remember. 41:50 Erin: Yeah, I mean, you know, all of this coming from someone who's standing in a chariot drawn by dragons really takes the whole question of right or wrong out of it or even of motivation. The visual, I suppose, would be one where. And a lot of modern day adaptations, I mean, the one that I saw, they do away with this entirely. She just walks off with the children over her shoulders, walks off into the mist, sort of. So some people do away with this, but I suppose the effect would be that ultimately Medea is just an agent of some kind of divine justice. I mean, she's almost extracted as a character from the, you know, family drama, this Albee play, right. And just becomes, you know, the hammer that falls on Jason and leaves him with nothing. She becomes something else entirely. And so one is left to. To see this as being, you know, it might have been the plague that killed the kids. It might have been the right, like the. Like she's just almost completely extracted from the play, I think, at a certain point from the drama. I mean. 42:53 Wes: Yeah. So can we save Euripides from criticism of this whole Deus ex machina thing, Is it just lazy and sloppy at the end? And does he just want to spare a tragic hero their tragic fate or is there a point to it? I guess in most plays it would be a God coming down to save the hero, right? Rather than the hero getting lent out their grandfather's thunderbird to take off in. But the same effect. So what's the point of doing this? We're remind. I mean, as you pointed out, we have gone from a kind of naturalized view of mythological figures and their psychology to this very stark reminder that this is just mythology and there's something otherworldly about it or divine. Right? So it's like watching who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And at the very end, spaceship just takes off with one of them and that's the. That's the way it's all resolved. Why do that? What's the point? Is there a point to that? I think if you're to justify. I mean, it has to be. In a way, it just seems like it must be. Be avant garde for the time. It must be kind of a weird avant garde twist on the right. It's not like Sophocles didn't do that, Aeschylus didn't do that. This is like his brand. So what is he doing? I mean, and of course, the other. The other aspect for Euripides is this kind of critique of gods as. It's almost like a critique of mythology, right? That at least the way. Or Homeric myth. Homeric accounts where the passions of the gods make them seem too human and it's hard to square their divinity with their rashness and all the misdeeds they're engaged in. And Euripides has made some rather, in various plays, rather direct critiques of that. So I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. 44:49 Erin: I love it. I mean, I think it's perfect and I can't quite express why that is. I don't know if I can even attempt it. But on 86 around line 1367 or so in this back and forth, they're still kind of squabbling. Even as she's in the spaceship, Medea says, no, it was your lustful heart. In the new marriage of yours. And that new marriage of yours, Jason says, what? You decided to kill them Because I loved another Medea. Do you think this is a minor annoyance to a woman, Jason? Yes, if she is sensible. 45:19 Wes: But. 45:19 Erin: But to you it is all that is evil. So it's like he still doesn't get it? And maybe the fact that she escapes and leaves, and leaves him with nothing and has this sort of perfect revenge rather than being. We're talking about, you know, realistic and unrealistic means and ends. Uses unrealistic means to show the quite realistic ends of your actions actually have consequences. What you do and how you behave and what you choose to ignore or not to take seriously, it does actually matter somehow. And it uses this really unrealistic device, which I love because it's just. I love it for the pure badassery of it, you know, Chariot drawn by dragons. Like, come on, that's amazing. Right? But it uses this mythological crazy image to prove the realness of realism or something like that. Like to prove it all matters in the end or something. You can't just lie to yourself and get away with things or you can't just break an oath or, you know, I mean, that's a little too simple. But do you know what I'm trying to say? Like, it kind of. Or it suggests that there's a kind of a divine tally, maybe not for the gods, but for you. For you average immortal person. Right. And in the end it'll get you. 46:36 Wes: Right. We're just about to end here. But. But what do you think of the very final line by the chorus or two lines? Which on the surface to me is a little bit lame and it's moralizing, but many are the things Zeus on Olympus has in his keeping. And many things do the gods accomplish beyond men's hopes. What men expect does not happen for the unexpected. Heaven finds a way. And so it has turned out here today unexpected things happen. 47:06 Erin: Yeah. 47:06 Wes: Best laid plans of mice and men. So it almost sounds like a justification of someone wants to say, well, that's a kind of lame way to end a play like this. The chariot picks her up and she goes off. That's not. 47:20 Erin: No. 47:21 Wes: Satisfying. 47:21 Erin: And. 47:23 Wes: And the. 47:24 Erin: Yeah, See, I don't. Yeah, I think it's too badass to be lame, as I said. But I. But I do think that this. I mean, I see these morals and maybe I shouldn't be seeing them this way, but I see them as the lip service that Euripides is paying to convention. So I'm going to do this crazy thing and then I'm going to end with my little fortune cookie thing. 47:43 Wes: Yeah, I kind of am inclined actually to see it that way as well. Including some of the commentary on women. Right. Some of the choruses. Commentary on women, even though they are women. This is beyond my ability to reason that kind of thing. I don't know. I think you'd have to know more about the context, the social context, to understand. Is that meant ironically? What is that? How is he using that rhetorically? Because, of course, so much of the play is really about Medea's point of view and obvious feminist overtones to it. 48:13 Erin: Right. And her literal divine superiority and ascent. So those sections are almost tongue in cheek on the part of the chorus. Whereas this feels more like a more private way in which Euripides is being tongue in cheek towards convention. You know, this seems like a layer deeper of commentary where Euripides is not expecting people to get that they're being a little dissed or made fun of or that the certain conventions of the plays themselves are being kind of made fun of here. Whereas maybe he's expecting some people to get the tongue in cheek commentary on women like here. It's at a level of convention so deeply ingrained in these plays that people might not even notice that they're being fed a platitude at the end, because that's kind of what they're expecting to get. It would take knowing something about knowing, knowing really deeply what people would have expected. 49:07 Wes: Right. All right, do you have anything else before we wrap up? 49:12 Erin: Not with a bang, but a whimper? Do I. Do I slink out of the. 49:19 Wes: We need our own chariots? 49:20 Erin: I'm not even allowed to see this play, so. Yeah. But, yeah, I need to hit the bricks. 49:28 Wes: All right, thank you. 49:30 Erin: Thank you, and thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast Please send your questions, feedback, and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook at Subtext Podcast and on Twitter at Enjoy Subtext.