Medea [Paperback]

Witch, vindictive wife, child-murderer: Medea's reputation throughout the ages has been a nasty one, but she has always fascinated. The brave and controversial writer Christa Wolf abandons the more usual, cautious approach to writing fiction based on myths, instead coming from the perspective of what else might have happened to make people create such a story.

In other words, a cover-up. Wolf's Medea never committed any of the crimes she has been charged with; she is, however, a very convenient scapegoat when things start to go wrong and she becomes too inquisitive about what lies beneath the surface of Corinthian society. Married to Jason, a man from a culture already substantially different from her own, she has fled her home island of Colchis, only to find that the royal house of Corinth hides a secret as horrifying as that of Colchis. In addition to knowing too much, she is foreign to the point of alienness, accompanied by her band of fellow Colchian refugees, and, as a well-respected healer and once powerful princess, a dangerous role-model in a society that prefers its women not to look up or speak. Her explosion into the delicate, corrupt world of Corinth can only lead to frightening results.

Wolf lifts the Medea myth far beyond the story of sexual jealousy and women's rights you will find in Euripides and other sources - with all due respect to Euripides and co., for in fact Wolf has considered them carefully and uses several quotations, from ancient writers to anthropologists, in her multi-faceted approach.

It is a fable about power and the workings of power, political scapegoating, cultural relativism (the passage where a scandalised Jason describes Colchian burial customs is particularly thought-provoking), and even its historical references to a time when the old matriarchal religions were being ousted by male rulers do not stop it resonating throughout the ages. East Germany and the Holocaust come to mind in particular, but it is reminsicent of any country that has not been entirely welcoming towards its immigrants, or has bloody clawing for political power carefully buried behind the scenes, or has tried to quieten its protesting poor and women.

It is also about love, trust and betrayal, not only between men and women but also between women and women; about grief and the terrible need to blame someone when things start to go off the rails. Wolf writes with extraordinary compassion and courage, and although the stream of consciousness style (the story is told by several "voices", ranging from Medea and Jason to Medea's ex-pupil, the court astronomers, and even the Corinthian princess intended as Jason's bride) takes a little work, it is absolutely worth it. Her prose has a wonderful steely strength and light to it; her characters are engrossing in all their shades of humanity and cruelty; her background of ancient Greece is at once glittering in its remoteness and starkly familiar.

Margaret Atwood's Introduction is well worthy of the novel it precedes, discussing the literary background as well as the historical and social themes with her usual wit and thoughtfulness. To quote the end of her introduction,

"'Medea' is no two-dimensional allegory. Like a tunnel full of mirrors, it both reflects and echoes. The question it asks the reader, through many voices and in many different ways, is: What would you be willing to believe, to accept, to conceal, to do, to save your own skin, or simply to stay close to power? Who would you be willing to sacrifice? Hard questions, but the posing of them is the troubling yet essential task of this tough, ingenious, brilliant and necessary book."

A brilliant novel and a novel view of an old myth. Christa Wolf wants to make it acceptable, possible and probable. She corrects the extremeness of some elements in the myth to make the myth believable.

The first particularity of the novel is purely stylistic. She tells the story from various points of view and the contradictions between the versions are interesting. This is deeply post-modern and it reveals the political situation in Corinth, the plotting, the abuse of power, the conflict between a past of human sacrifice still remembered and a present of a political state of law, and Corinth still has a long way to go and is attracted if not fascinated by a regression. Change is hard. Progress is accidental. It is good to be reminded that this society was a slave society far from the culture we have derived from it.

The second originality of this novel is the existence of two crimes, two human sacrifices performed to protect the power of the two kings of Colchis and Corinth. In the first case a tradition is revived to bring the king's son on the throne in the place of his father after two seven year terms. But then the tradition leads to the ritual and traditional sacrifice of the son due to a manipulation of some old women by the king himself.

In the case of Corinth the king Creon had his elder daughter sacrificed to protect his own future. In both cases there had been some maneuvers by Medea on one side and by the Queen, Creon's wife, on the other side, to get the king out and replace him with the son of the king, Medea's brother, or by Creon's elder daughter. The reviving of the sacrificial tradition is the answer of the two kings to that danger.

Buried secrets of facts that blocked a rather democratic change in the name of tradition: both the attempts and the final turn of events are in the name of that tradition. We must keep in mind that in both cases the "democratic" society must have concerned some 10 to 20% of the population, maybe less. The others were slaves or free but deprived of political rights. What's more in both cases the ruling group was limited to a few people and was severely closed and dominated by even less people, no more than two or three.

The whole myth then becomes a sacrificial purification by burning out the canker of the disease, because this society is sick due to its crimes. The author adds an earthquake that causes a plague due to negligence and the refusal to take care of the dead bodies under the crumbled rubbles. She also adds a lunar eclipse. The first event is dramatic and explains the necessity for the king to defend himself against criticism. The second event amplifies the drama by making people want a human sacrifice to pacify the gods. One refugee in the temple of Artemis is thus sacrificed by a mob. Only one because Medea intervenes. And that is her mistake. She will pay dearly the consequences of that intervention of hers.

You add to that the presence of Colchians and Medea. They are hated and accused of witchcraft. They are the perfect scapegoats and this will run right to the end. Medea is accused of the murder of her brother and witchcraft. She is banished without her children. That makes Creon's younger daughter, who is promised to Jason in marriage, crazy because she was against the staying of the children because she considered them as dangerous and meaning she was seen as unable to produce a descendant with Jason. Her epilepsy could very well justify her vision. Crazy she commits suicide, immediately covered up as an assassination by Medea with magic.

Finally a mob manipulated by the first astrologer and adviser of Creon will stone the two children to death. Jason is left alone behind for an unspecified fate and Medea escapes into exile. As we all know the Golden Fleece is a symbol of power and success. Obviously. The regression is total since the crimes are no longer politically minded but pure superstitions. We have regressed to a magical vision of life and power. We have recreated Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini, and a few others. Christa Wolf is speaking of the fate of Germany since 1870.

Finally the novel centers on the difference between Colchians and Corinthians without specifying what it is. It is slightly superficial when we know that the Colchians are Caucasians of Turkic tradition and agglutinative language whereas the Corinthians are of Greek Indo-European tradition. This difference is never mentioned. That's probably a shortcoming in the novel that presents things in a slightly limited way. We must understand the Indo-European Greeks are the newcomers and invaders and their ideology, culture and social organization is seen by the Greeks themselves as superior to that of the Turkic Georgians or Colchians. We must keep in mind the indo-Europeans invaded and colonized Hatti Anatolia of Turkic tradition to establish the Hittite empire mentioned in the novel. Hence the Golden Fleece has quite a different and vaster if not cosmic dimension. This division still exists.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

The plot follows Medea and Jason (and his argonauts) after the quest for the golden fleece. There is a lot of action in the book, murder, suspicion, plotting and secrets lurking in castle dungeons. This book is full of intrigue, murder and mythology. Wolf has rewritten this myth from the perspectives of the characters, a tactic which involves the reader and also highlights the nature of the way stories and this myth are subjective. She seems to be redressing the way that medea is the evil mother, daughter and wife in the myth by giving the storytelling to many different characters giving a more balanced perspective. The combination of the action scenes and the different perspectives of the characters really makes this a book which is hard to put down. A bit out of the ordinary and off the beaten track but a really enjoyable read.