One of which is Medea. A brief summary of this tragedy will take you deeper into the atmosphere of Ancient Greece and tell you about the complexities of human relationships and human vices.
Philosophy of Euripides
The ancient Greek playwright Euripides argued that man is wiser than the gods, therefore he was one of the first to decide on a critical attitude towards the inhabitants of Olympus. Any supernatural force, as he believed, is a figment of human imagination.
Euripides writes his famous tragedy called "Medea", reviews of which are still very mixed. The author's main merit is to depict not ideal person, but the vicious one who suffers and commits terrible crimes. The characters in the play are negative. Events develop in such a way that human suffering comes to the fore.
Characters. Excerpts from the biography
For Euripides, the heroes of tragedies could be gods, demigods or mere mortals. Medea is the granddaughter of the sun god Helios, the daughter of King Aeetes and the Oceanid Idia, whose parents are Oceanus and Typhis. It is curious that in the tragedy the sorceress is not able to correct the situation without bloody reprisals, because if she had punished Jason and his bride without the intervention of the children, the end would have been less tragic. However, Medea becomes a humanoid bearer of vices.
The main characters were married for twelve years and gave birth to two boys - Mermer and Feret. Their marriage was organized with the participation of magical power: the gods cast a love spell on Medea and she helps Jason and the Argonauts get the Golden Fleece. In gratitude, the hero marries her. Although Jason was not a god, he came from a noble family and was the son of King Eson, ruler of the city of Iolka.
After meeting with Jason, Medea immediately shows her cruelty: she flees from Colchis with him and, in order to detain the angry Eetus, kills her brother Apsyrtus, who was her traveler. Pieces of the body were scattered on the seashore - because of this cruelty that Medea showed, reviews of this legend are very mixed.
Glauca is the daughter of the Corinthian king Creon. According to Jason, he marries her not out of great love, but in order to provide his sons with a happy future. Having become related to the royal heirs, the boys could later live among noble people.
"Medea": a summary of the tragedy of Euripides
The king of Corinth invites Jason to take his daughter Glaucus as his wife, to which he agrees. The actions of his wife Medea sometimes begin to frighten the hero, and he is not averse to leaving her to her fate. Angry woman calls ex-spouse ungrateful, because it was with her help that he obtained the Golden Fleece and regained his former glory. However, Jason says that he did his duty to her. He gave her two sons, and now he can live out his life as he pleases. Perhaps this position will seem incomprehensible to women, so reviews of Jason about the tragedy “Medea” may be negative.
The Corinthian king expels Medea, but she tries to take revenge on her ungrateful husband and decides on a desperate act - to kill the children so that Jason will die of despair. The villainess persuades her boys to take it to Glavka wedding gift- a poisoned crown that instantly eats away the face of the beautiful queen. A desperate father, determined to save his daughter, dies after her. Medea condemns her children to death: the angry Corinthians would tear them apart, so the unfortunate mother herself decides to kill them and does not even allow Jason to say goodbye to them.
About the main character
Medea is not able to put up with humiliation, so she begins and looks for a way to take revenge. She does not immediately decide to kill the children, but the boys’ teacher instantly guesses her plans. Creon appears to Medea - the father of Jason's future wife orders her to leave Corinth along with his offspring.
She makes the final decision to kill after meeting with the childless Athenian king Aegeus. She understands how a man without offspring suffers, so she decides to take away the most precious thing from her husband. Medea and Jason were once a happy married couple, until the fateful day came when the leader of the Argonauts made his harsh decision. The main character is thinking about leaving the city alone - Aegeus offers her refuge, but the thirst for revenge is much stronger: with the help of her little ones, she wants to take revenge on her rival. According to the myth, Medea's children were killed by the inhabitants of Corinth, and Euripides changed the ending and depicted the unfortunate mother taking this sin upon herself and reassuring herself that the boys died a less terrible death. In the play, Medea changes her decision four times - this is where Euripides’ exceptional psychological skill is demonstrated, which shows the complexity of human nature.
The trial of Medea or how the heroine was punished
Euripides' contemporaries criticized the tragedy "Medea", the reviews were most often unflattering. The main opponent was Aristophanes, who believes that a woman had no right to kill her children. If Greek comedians and tragedians tried the heroine, the charges would be as follows:
Everyone knows that even the most recent traitor,
Keeps and protects his child,
And she is ready to throw herself into the mouth of a formidable beast for him.
But the granddaughter of Helios, the accused Medea,
He considers his anger higher than life
Their little ones - two sons.
She killed four at once:
Corinth lost its king and his heir
And her unborn Jason descendants.
Murder is the most terrible sin,
Kill four at the same time
And ruin the life of the fifth
For my own satisfaction -
The decision is rather crazy,
Than reasonable, therefore bear
Medea must be severely punished.
The further fate of Medea
Despite the bloody crimes committed, the killer was not executed and disappeared into distant lands. In Athens she married Aegeus and gave birth to his son Medus. Soon their home is visited by Theseus, famous for his fight with the bull Minotaur. Medea wants to kill the guest, but Aegeus recognizes him as his son in time and makes sure that the villainess Medea leaves their country. Summary doesn't talk about future fate heroines, but other works talk about this.
On the island of the blessed, the exile becomes the wife of Achilles. The sorceress lives long life, which is the most terrible punishment for her. She constantly lives in exile, suffers from the mere thought of the crime committed, everyone despises her. Maybe this is a punishment worse than death- such is the fate of the granddaughter of Helios.
Coursework plan
on this topic
“The problem of the suffering personality in the works of Euripides.
Analysis of "Medea"
1. Some points of the author’s biography. Features of his creativity. Relevance of the problem. Followers of Euripides. What is Euripides unhappy with? The poet's reasoning. general characteristics and place in the historical and literary context. History of the development of the topic in literary circles.
2. The image of Medea. Comparison of the myth of Medea with the tragedy of Euripides. Similarities, differences.
4. The main idea of the text. Has the image of Medea changed? Show the dynamics of characters, fluctuations and suffering of characters in a tragedy.
5. Main conclusions on the work carried out.
6. List of used literature.
Euripides (also Euripides, Greek Εριπίδης, Latin Euripides, 480 - 406 BC) is an ancient Greek playwright, a representative of the new Attic tragedy, in which psychology prevails over the idea of divine fate.
The great playwright was born on Salamis, on the day of the famous victory of the Greeks over the Persians in a naval battle, September 23, 480 BC. e., from Mnesarchus and Cleito. The parents ended up on Salamis among other Athenians who fled from the army of the Persian king Xerxes. The exact connection of Euripides' birthday with the victory is an embellishment that is often found in the stories of the greats by ancient authors. Thus, the Court reports that Euripides’ mother conceived him at the time when Xerxes invaded Europe (May, 480 BC), from which it follows that he could not have been born in September. An inscription on the Parian marble identifies the year of the playwright's birth as 486 BC. e., and in this chronicle of Greek life the name of the playwright is mentioned 3 times - more often than the name of any king. According to other evidence, the date of birth can be attributed to 481 BC. e.
Euripides' father was a respected and, apparently, rich man; Cleito's mother was engaged in selling vegetables. As a child, Euripides was seriously involved in gymnastics, he even won competitions among boys and wanted to get into Olympic Games, but was rejected due to his youth. Then he took up drawing, without much success, however. Then he began to take lessons in oratory and literature from Prodicus and Anaxagoras and lessons in philosophy from Socrates. Euripides collected books for the library, and soon began to write himself. The first play, Peliad, appeared on stage in 455 BC. e., but then the author did not win due to a quarrel with the judges. Euripides won the first prize for skill in 441 BC. e. and from then on until his death he created his creations. The playwright's social activity was manifested in the fact that he participated in the embassy in Syracuse in Sicily, apparently supporting the goals of the embassy with the authority of a writer recognized throughout Hellas.
Euripides' family life was unsuccessful. From his first wife, Chloirina, he had 3 sons, but divorced her because of her adultery, writing the play “Hippolytus”, where he ridiculed sexual relations. The second wife, Melitta, turned out to be no better than the first. Euripides gained fame as a misogynist, which gave the master of comedy Aristophanes a reason to joke about him. In 408 BC e. great playwright decided to leave Athens, accepting the invitation of the Macedonian king Archelaus. It is not known exactly what influenced Euripides' decision. Historians are inclined to think that the main reason was, if not bullying, then resentment of the vulnerable creative personality against fellow citizens for non-recognition of merit. The fact is that out of 92 plays (75 according to another source), only 4 were awarded prizes at theater competitions during the author’s lifetime, and one play posthumously. But only 19 have survived to this day.
Euripides criticized demagogues, political speakers and praised rural workers; was guided by the patriotic ideals of the heroic era of Pericles, when democracy triumphed. Euripides' innovation and realism did not immediately find recognition among the audience. His tragic pathos was ridiculed by Aristophanes in his comedy “Frogs”.
The Athenians asked permission to bury the playwright in hometown, but Archelaus wished to leave the tomb of Euripides in his capital, Pella. Sophocles, having learned about the death of the playwright, forced the actors to play the play with their heads uncovered. Athens placed a statue of Euripides in the theater, honoring him after his death. Plutarch tells a legend ("Lycurgus"): lightning struck the tomb of Euripides, a great sign that he was awarded from famous people only Lycurgus.
The new forces of Euripidean drama are civil realism, rhetoric and philosophy. Reflection philosophical problems in his work Euripides earned the nickname “philosopher on stage.”
His work presupposes a certain educational atmosphere and society, to which it addresses itself, and vice versa - that this poetry for the first time helps to break through to the one striving for the light new form a person, and puts before his eyes an ideal reflection of his essence, in which he feels the need for his justification, perhaps more than ever before.
The bourgeoisification of life for the time of Euripides means approximately the same thing as for us proletarianization, which it sometimes resembles when on stage instead of tragic hero In ancient times, a beggar tramp appears. It was against this humiliation of high poetry that Euripides' rivals rebelled.
The crisis of the Athenian polis, which sharply worsened during the Peloponnesian War, was reflected in many ways in the tragedies of Euripides. Growing individualistic tendencies in society, reflected in theoretical sphere in the sophists’ desire to see in man “the measure of all things” (Protagoras) in the field artistic creativity manifest themselves in increasingly close attention to the individual, his individuality, and the world of his feelings. In the dramas of Euripides tragic conflict unfolds as a conflict of opposing feelings in the hero’s soul, as a psychological conflict. For the first time, human psychology receives a detailed artistic embodiment. Euripides portrayed people as they really are, rejected Sophocles’ idealization and glorification, striving to show true reality without hiding its shortcomings (In his comedy “Frogs,” Aristophanes condemns Euripides for his desire to show in the theater dark sides life).
In the tragedies of Euripides, one can easily recognize a penchant for depicting especially acute and tragic situations and conflicts, for tragic pathos, for which Aristotle called him “the most tragic of poets.” At the same time, the conflicts depicted at the same time take on the features of everyday ones, occurring in the sphere of purely personal relationships. The development of the everyday element leads to a contradiction between the mythological form and the content of the tragedy, which acquires the features domestic drama. In some later tragedies Euripides (“Ion”, “Helen”) there are moments anticipating a new type dramatic work new Attic comedy.
The tragedies of Euripides, responding to the most important events in the political and spiritual life of Athens, sometimes acquired a purely journalistic character: discussions about social problems sometimes they are only externally related to the depicted plot. In the tragedies of Euripides, there is criticism of the traditional worldview: religion, views on the position of women and slaves, on the political structure of society: noting many shortcomings of Athenian democracy, Euripides speaks out in support of the democratic system, condemns autocracy (tyranny). In several tragedies (“The Trojan Women”, “Hecuba”) he protests against wars of conquest, their tragic senselessness, which only brings suffering to man. Moreover, these sufferings are devoid of moral meaning, leading to knowledge of the truth, as was the case in the tragedies of Aeschylus (“suffering teaches”).
Some characters in his tragedies reflect the social mood of the crisis era for Athens - the desire to escape from public life, to look for the ideal in one’s inner world, in communication with nature. But in his tragedies it is fashionable to find heroic images that reflect the civic pathos and patriotism of the poet.
IN artistically Euripides' tragedy marks a crisis in the genre of heroic tragedy. This is evidenced by the discrepancy between the mythological form and the content that is acquiring everyday coloring, the decline in the role of the choir, which turns from the main structural element tragedy into an optional element, losing organic connections with the whole, since the center of gravity moves to the actor (the image of the hero’s inner world leads in Euripides’ tragedy to the appearance, along with the monologue, of a monody (solo musical aria).
The tragedy of Euripides paves the way for the drama of modern times with its deepened interest in the inner world of man, depicted in all its contradictions.
In the tragedy "Medea" the political and spiritual freedom of the individual grows, the problems of human society and the connections on which it is based become increasingly clear, the human self declares its rights when it feels constrained by bonds that seem artificial to it. With the help of persuasion and the means of reason, it seeks indulgences and outlets for itself. Marriage becomes a subject of debate. The relationship between the sexes - for centuries noli me tangere conventionality - is brought into the light of God and becomes public knowledge: it is a struggle, like everything else in nature. Does not the rule of the mighty reign here, as elsewhere on earth? And so the poet discovers in the legend about Jason leaving Medea, passions today, and encloses in this shell problems that the legend does not even suspect, but which it can make relevant for modern times with magnificent plasticity.
The Athenian women of that time were not Medeas at all; they were either too downtrodden or too refined for this role. Therefore, a desperate savage who kills her children in order to hurt her traitorous husband and break all ties with him turned out to be opportunity for the poet to depict the elemental in female soul, without being embarrassed by Greek morals. Jason, an impeccable hero in the perception of all Greece, although not at all a natural husband, becomes a cowardly opportunist. He acts not out of passion, but out of cold calculation. However, it must be such as to make the murderer of his own children in ancient legend a tragic figure. All the poet’s participation is on her side, partly because in general he considers women’s fate worthy of pity and therefore does not consider it in the light of myth, blinded by the heroic brilliance of male valor, which is valued only by exploits and glory; but first of all, the poet consciously wants to make Medea the heroine of the bourgeois tragedy of marriage, which often played out in Athens of that time, although not in such extreme forms. Its discoverer is Euripides. In the conflict between boundless male egoism and boundless female passion, "Medea" is a true drama of its time. That’s why both sides play it out in a petty-bourgeois spirit, that’s how they argue, condemn and resonate. Jason is completely imbued with wisdom and generosity, Medea philosophizes about the social position of a woman, about the dishonorable oppression of sexual desire for a strange man, whom she must follow and whom she must also buy with a rich dowry, and declares that childbearing is much more dangerous and requires greater courage than military exploits.
It is not without reason that the tragedy of Euripides was called the discussion club of all the movements of his era. Nothing stronger proves the problematic nature of all things for the consciousness of this generation than this disintegration of all life and all tradition in discussions and philosophizing, in which all ages and classes, from the king to the servants, take part.
The image of Medea attracted many creators different types art: artists, composers and writers (mainly playwrights), and, wandering from work to work, this image underwent significant changes.
Actress Maria Callas as Medea
Medea is a figure of mad, frantic passion. In Greek and then in Roman literature, she is a type of witch (and then an evil sorceress). There are two main tragedies dedicated to Medea: Greek - Euripides, Roman - Seneca. Euripides did not limit himself to one episode of the legend; in his tragedy he collected all the vicissitudes of Medea's long life, right up to the final crisis. The legend is this: Jason was the son of King Iolkos; he lived on the Thessalian coast. His uncle Pelias took the throne from his father Iolcus, and sent Jason to look for the Golden Fleece, guarded by a dragon, in Colchis, on distant shores Black Sea, hoping that he will not return. Jason sailed on the ship of the Argonauts, passed the rocks of Symplegada and arrived in Colchis, in the possession of King Aeetes.
Aeetes had a daughter, Medea. Her grandfather was Helios the sun himself. Circe, the king's sister, Medea's aunt, was also a sorceress (in Homer she turns men into pigs, lions and wolves) and Ulysses loved her. He spent a sweet month with her, and she gave birth to his son Telegon (who later founded Tusculum, where Cicero lived and where his daughter Terence died in childbirth). Seeing Jason disembark from the ship onto the shore, Medea fell in love with him at first sight, madly and forever. “She looks at him intently. She doesn't take her eyes off his face. It seems to her, in the madness that has overcome her, that these are the features not of a mortal, but of a god. She is unable to take her eyes off him” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 86).
Then the king gives Jason instructions that are impossible to fulfill. And every time Medea saves him from death, helping him deal with fire-breathing bulls, helping to sow dragon teeth on the field of Ares, from which warriors are born who immediately take up arms.
So, thanks to Medea, Jason receives the Golden Fleece. As the ship prepares to sail, the Argonauts are threatened by Medea's brother, Ascylt, and she kills him. She boards the ship; she gave herself to Jason in “a fit of feverish desire.” Jason promised to marry her.
He returned to Thessaly, but Pelias refused to return his father's throne to him. Then Medea convinced Pelias to plunge into a vat of boiling water to regain his youth, and he was boiled alive.
The murder of Pelias forced Medea and Jason to flee from Iolcus. They settled in Corinth, with King Creon.
Medea looks at her two children, born from Jason, when they still loved each other. For his sake, she betrayed her father, killed her young brother and destroyed Pelias. She gave him two sons, and now he rejects her. Anger strangles Medea. She enters her sons' room. One of them is called Mermer, the other is Feret. She says to their slave-teacher: “Go, prepare for them what they need for every day,” knowing that these things will go with them to the underground abode - the grave. She looks at the children. Now she will kill them. This is the moment of painting.
In the fresco in the house of the Dioscuri, boys play dice under the supervision of a slave teacher. Medea is standing on the right. A long, pleated tunic falls from the shoulders to the legs. Right hand feels for the handle of the dagger held in his left hand. Her gaze is fixed on the children, who are absorbed in their play with all the fervor and carefreeness of their age. One stands with his legs crossed and slightly leaning on a cubic table, the second sits on the same table. Both hands are stretched out to the bones that they themselves will soon become. Medea's fury is calm. This is the very stillness, the same frightening silence that serves as a harbinger of an explosion of madness.
On the fresco in Jason's house, on the contrary, the children meet their mother's gaze. The slave looks at Mermer and Feret. There are two possible explanations for Medea's behavior and gaze. Either, concentrating her thoughts on the upcoming act, she oscillates between two contradictory feelings - pity and revenge (mother and woman are fighting in her, fear of what is planned and a furious desire for this double infanticide), or in her, frozen before the completion of this bloody act, an irresistible anger rages, an irresistible thirst for ferocious retribution. The first interpretation is from the field of psychology. The second has nothing to do with psychology, it is physiological and tragic. This is the only possible interpretation, because it explains the text depicted on the frescoes. For this is the interpretation of Euripides.
Euripides' Medea describes the breakdown of civilized communication due to a woman's passion for a man. Love turns to hate, frantic lust for a lover turns into murderous rage towards the family.
Passion is a disease. In madness, the soul succumbs to a frantic impulse. A diver who has jumped into the water can no longer stop his fall. Even running is the “madness” of movement: a running person is unable to stop and freeze in a single moment. Aristotle said: people who throw stones cannot bring them back. Cicero in “Tusculan Conversations” (IV, 18) wrote: “A man who has thrown himself (praecipi-taverit) from the top of the Leucadian Cape into the sea will not be able to stop halfway to the water, even if he wants to.” Praecipitatio is falling headfirst into the abyss. In his treatise “On Anger” (I, 7), Seneca the Younger repeats this image of Cicero - the image of a man falling into an abyss - and comments on this “deadly leap” as follows: he who has thrown himself down is not only unable to return back, but he is “incapable of not get to where you might not throw yourself.”
Medea is a woman who throws herself into the abyss. There is no other way out and cannot be. Here we are not talking about Cornelian heavy hesitation, about a clash of psychological motives. Like a plant or an animal, madness goes through three stages - birth, flowering and death. Madness is growth; it is born and grows, it becomes irresistible, it strives for its end, happy or unhappy.
The fresco clearly expresses the most famous verse of antiquity, put into the mouth of Medea: “I understand what atrocity I dared to commit. But my thymos (life force, libido) is stronger than my bouleumata (things I want).” Medea sees ,
what did she decide to do? she sees that a wave of desire has overwhelmed her mind and threatens to take everything with it. The moment captured on the fresco cannot be called psychological: the heroine is not torn between madness and reason. This moment is tragic: Medea is helpless in front of the stream, which in a moment will carry her into action. The moment is so non-psychological that Euripides accompanies it with a purely physiological explanation: all the misfortune comes from the fact that Medea’s insides - her brain, heart and liver - are inflamed. This is exactly what the nurse says: “What should she do when her whole nature is inflamed (megalosplangchnos), when misfortune torments her, giving her no rest (dyskatapaustos)?” Euripides describes all the signs of a serious disorder that befell Medea: she no longer eats, avoids the company of people, children inspire horror in her, she cries incessantly, or stubbornly looks down at her feet, or her gaze is filled with malice, like that of an angry bull, she is deaf to human speech and listens to the words of loved ones no more than a rock listens to the “sound of sea waves.”
Seneca's Medea is even more precise. His play not only concentrates all the action, in the Roman style, on the final moment, but goes further: at the end of the tragedy, Medea announces that she will rip open her womb with a dagger in order to make sure that a third child from Jason does not grow in it. This tragic device shows what is the cause of her rage (inflamed entrails), what is the cause of her love (lust, irrepressible carnal passion, which she proved by her previous actions) and, finally, what are the fruits of this passion (a child in the womb). Two verses that convey this state are magnificent (Medea, 1012 and 1013): “In matre si quod pignus etiamnunc latet, scrutabor ense viscera et ferro extraham” (If another pledge of love remains hidden in the womb of the mother, I will cut this womb with a dagger and throw the embryo away). Medea again and again goes through three reasons for her misfortune, which will grow in her troubled soul until they lead to the act of murder. With this act, her “insides” will take revenge on her womb, destroying the fruits that she spewed into the light of God - little Mermer and little Feret.
Seneca’s Medea will finally be able to say: “Medea nunc sum” (From now on, I am Medea) and explain it this way: “Saevit infelix amor” (Unhappy love gives rise to madness). There is no individual conflict between what a person wants and what he wants. But there is a natural ocean that breaks through the dam and lifts all the bodies depicted in the fresco onto the crest of a growing wave of fury. “I do not know what my wild soul has decided in the depths of me” (Nescio quid ferox decrevit animus intus).
What is Medea's view? A motionless, frozen gaze precedes a storm, an explosion, during which a person who has fallen into a frenzy seems to be hallucinating, but does not see the action he is performing, the crime he is committing, does not even see his own hallucination. His gaze is numbly directed into space. He sees something different. Cicero uses a striking expression when he says that in a darkened mind “all the windows are covered” (Tusculan Conversations, I, 146). After this explosion, the view clears up to such an extent that, for example, the hero Oedipus tears out his eyes: the windows of his mind, opening wide, revealed to him what he had done. Madness itself is cured in the act of madness, as soon as the madman admits his hand in the committed act. The act of rage is nothing more than the highest, culminating point, followed by decline and pacification.
Having killed the children, Medea flees to Athens. There she marries Aegeus and gives birth to his son Med, whom she loves so dearly that she helps him kill the Persian in order to take over his kingdom.
Let's compare the ancient Medea with the modern one. The ancient frescoes describe a concentrated maturation in which there is absolutely nothing dramatic: they show the moment that sums up this tragedy, and in no way reveal its end. In our era, Delacroix wrote Medea. In 1855, Théophile Gautier became acquainted with the painting, formulated its aesthetics and most decisively contrasted it (no matter how much he argued to the contrary) with the spirit of ancient painting: “Delacroix's Enraged Medea is painted with the ardor, enthusiasm and generosity of colors that Rubens himself would have approved. The gesture of the lioness gathering her cubs near her, with which Medea holds back the frightened children, is a magnificent invention of the artist. Her face, half hidden in shadow, resembles a serpentine expression. Not resembling the heads of marble or clay sculptures, it nevertheless looks truly antique. Her children, frightened, crying, not understanding what is happening, but guessing that something terrible awaits them, rush away from under the hand of their mother, who is already clutching a dagger. From the convulsive efforts to free themselves, their short tunics rode up, revealing children’s bodies in fresh pink tones, which form a sharp contrast with the bluish, again snake-like pallor of the mother.”
So, in Paris, gestures are important, in Rome, glances are important. In Paris, children worry, cry, resist. In Rome they play, completely absorbed in this activity. In Paris, the situation is expressed by the hysterical Medea. In Rome, Medea, plunged into a vengeful rage, thinks more about it than acts. In Paris, the act of murder itself is depicted. In Rome - the moment preceding it. And not only this one previous moment, but also the entire text of Euripides as a whole is concentrated in one moment, which has frozen, not to mention what it is going to become.
In Paris - a spectacular operatic scream. In Rome there is a frightening silence (obstupefactus).
The Romans saw a wonderful plot in this terrible reflection of Medea, insulted by Jason and frightened by her own inevitable desire to kill Mermer and Feret at the very moment when they were playing. All ancient world admired Medea, painted by Timomachus. Caesar found the painting so beautiful that he bought it and paid for it in gold. The entire ancient world unanimously praised Medea's eyes. This look is truly a miracle. The eyelids are inflamed. Anger is emphasized by frowning eyebrows. Pity is in the flashing moisture. Ausonius wrote: “In the picture painted by Timomachos, the threat is expressed in tears, a dagger glints in his hand, not yet stained with the blood of her sons... Timomachos’s hand hurts in the same way as the dagger that Medea clutches in her left hand, meeting her gaze with Mermer and Feret "
Apuleius also created his Medea. This amazing Medea, separating the death of children from vengeance, connects the scene of the first intercourse with birth in an even more concrete way than the entrails ripped open by Medea's dagger in Seneca's play.
Let us consider the image of Medea in tragedy of the same name Euripides:
Aristotle considered it impermissible for a poet to change the essence of a myth and cited “Medea” as an example of such preservation of the grain of a legend. From different options In the myth of Medea, Euripides chooses the one in which she is most cruel: hiding from her father’s persecution, Medea kills her younger brother Aspirtus and scatters pieces of his body so that her father is delayed in collecting them; Medea kills her own children; Medea, not Jason, copes with the dragon. Medea Euripides did everything for the sake of Jason, to the most terrible crimes, and in tragedy she is not as powerful as she was in some myths (according to one myth, she is the daughter of the king of Colchis Eetus and the oceanid Idia, the granddaughter of Helios and the niece of Circe, and according to another, she is the mother Medea is the patroness of sorceresses Hecate, and Circe is her sister).
Euripides chooses the myth that explains the root cause of the collapse of the family of Medea and Jason: Eros, at the request of Athena and Hera, instilled in Medea a passionate love for Jason, but her love was unrequited and he married her only because he made a promise in exchange for her help. Those. on Jason’s part, it was a marriage of convenience, which is why it was so easy for him to abandon Medea and children for the sake of the royal throne of Corinth.
The tragedy opens with a monologue by the nurse, where she briefly outlines the situation (Aristotle considered the prologue of “Medea” to be an example of the prologue of a tragedy):
And she wouldn’t have to be in Corinth now
Seek refuge with children and husband.
Let the citizens have time to please
She is in exile, left to her husband
A submissive wife...
...destiny
Medea became different. They don't like her
And the tender heart suffers deeply.
Clear children with his wife in exchange
I decided to give away the bed for a new one,
Medea was insulted, and her own
She doesn't want to stop the screaming.
We learn a lot about Medea’s character from the nurse’s first monologue:
Refusing food, night and day
Having given the body to torment, the heart melts
The queen gives in tears from then on,
How the bad news of resentment settled
In her soul.
...Misfortune revealed her price
Lost homeland.
Children even
She became hated, and on them
The mother can't look. I'm kind of scared
What a crazy thought didn't come
To her head. Can't stand insults
A heavy mind, and such is Medea.
This way the identity is immediately identified main character tragedy: smart, daring, with a strong character, not used to forgiving, immensely loving and driven to despair by the betrayal of her only loved one, for whom she sacrificed so much, a woman.
Knowing her mistress, the nurse is afraid of how much trouble she can create out of revenge:
Yes, Medea's wrath is formidable: not easy
Her enemy will have victory.
The nurse feels a threat to the lives of the children of Medea and Jason.
Medea is still moaning behind the stage, but we can already clearly imagine her, how she moans and calls the gods to witness Jason’s reckoning. Medea's suffering is immeasurable:
The caress of no one, not a single friend
She is not warmed by affection.
She calls for death, unable to bear the insult and curses herself for having taken an oath to an unworthy husband, together with Jason she lost the meaning of life:
Oh God! Oh God!
Oh, may heavenly Perun
It will burn through my skull!..
Oh, why else should I live?
Alas for me! Alas! You, death, untie
My life is in knots - I hate it...
Medea describes the unenviable social status the Romans of that time and the female lot, which cannot arouse any compassion. In many ways, this problem has not lost its relevance today:
There are no more unhappy us women. For husbands
We pay - and not cheaply. And if you buy it,
So he is your master, not your slave.
And the first and second grief is greater.
And most importantly, you take it at random:
Whether he is vicious or honest, as you find out.
Meanwhile, leave - shame on you,
And you don’t dare remove your spouse.
And now the wife, entering a new world,
Where morals and laws are alien to her,
We have to guess which one she is with
The bed is divided by creation. And enviable
The wife's lot if the husband is yoke
He carries his own obediently. Death is different.
After all, the husband, when the hearth grew tired of him,
On the side love pleases the heart,
They have friends and peers, and we
You have to look into your eyes with disgust.
But they say that we are after our husbands,
It’s like behind a wall, and they say they need spears.
What a lie! Three times under the shield
I would rather stand than
One to give birth.
Medea's suffering intensifies when King Creon comes to her, demanding that she and her children immediately leave the city, he is afraid that the sorceress Medea will harm his daughter. Answering him, Medea describes herself very accurately, explaining the reasons bad attitude people to her:
Medea is smart - that's why she's hated
She is one, others are like you,
Insolence is considered dangerous.
Medea asks Creon to allow her to stay with the children in the city for at least a day, because she has neither the funds nor friends to shelter them. Being a rather gentle man, Creon agrees, not suspecting that Medea needs one day to deal with him and his daughter, for she is “cunning and her mind has comprehended a lot of charms.”
Medea plans the murder of Creon and the princess in cold blood, without any doubt about the correctness of the chosen decision:
So that father, and daughter, and husband with her
We turned the hated... into corpses...
There are many ways...
Which
I will choose, I don’t know yet:
Hall to set fire to brides or copper
I have to drive it sharp into the liver...
The only thing that confuses her is that “on the way to the bedroom” or “getting to work” she could be “captured... and the villains could mock her”
Do not change our straight path,
And, fortunately, he has been tested - poison on stage...
Yes, it's decided...
Medea is prudent, logical and consistent in her plans and thoughts:
Well, I killed them... And then what?
Where is the city and the friend who is the door
It will open for us and, sheltering us, for us
Will he guarantee?
There is no such thing... Patience
At least for a little while longer.
If the walls
Protection will open before me,
On the secret path of murder in silence
I'll step right away.
Let's get to work! ..Medea, all art
You call for help - every step
You have to think about it down to the smallest detail!..
Go for the worst! You, heart,
Now show your strength.
Medea wins the verbal duel with Jason brilliantly:
That you are not a husband, not a warrior - worse, angrier
You can’t be what you are to us, and to us
You still come... This is not courage...
Is courage needed to, friends
Having done so much harm, look it in the eye? Otherwise
Our name for this disease is shamelessness...
Yes, be proud
Can I be a faithful husband, that's true...
And the glory of the happy newborn
It will not turn pale, if, for sure,
Thrown out of the city, alone
And with defenseless children, wandering,
And with the beggars, the one who saved him,
He will go to surprise people with his misfortune.
O Zeus, oh god, if you could for gold
Fake to reveal signs to people,
So why didn't you burn the brands?
On a scoundrel, so that it catches your eye?..
Medea remembers everything she did for him, she exposes him as a complete nonentity and a scoundrel:
The father of my children
You started a new marriage. Let the seed
Yours was fruitless, I thirst for a bed
I would understand something new...
Where?
Where are those sacred oaths?
And Jason, in response, openly admits that in his marriage to the Corinthian princess he is looking for material gain, but to justify himself, he says that he is doing this to “raise children... through their brothers.” Medea understands that Jason did not want to remain married to the barbarian princess.
Which exile is happier?
I could even dream about it than a union
With the princess?..
...Married
I, to arrange myself, so that my needs
We can't see - I know from experience
That even a friend shuns the poor.
I wanted yours worthy of the family
Raise children, for your own happiness,
Through their brothers who will be born.
Medea is sharply different from the Hellenes, and even after living with Jason among the Greeks, her character has not changed at all: she is hot, passionate, emotional, driven by feelings and instincts, proud, harsh, unrestrained and immeasurable. Medea is immeasurable in everything: in love, hatred, revenge. It is because of this that other characters in the tragedy do not understand her (Medea says about herself: “Oh, in many ways, it’s true, I am different from people and many...”), which is why the tragedy was not appreciated by Euripides’ contemporaries (she was awarded the third place). Born for a different life, Medea is outraged by the conditions of unfreedom in which Hellenic wives live, who do not know who they are marrying, vicious or honest, and what the suffering of those who are unlucky suffers.
The image of Medea reaches true tragedy when, together with the bride and the king, she plots to kill the children. Having found a future shelter with Aegeus, Medea thinks over a murder plan: she makes peace with her husband and begs him to persuade the princess to leave the boys in Corinth; Together with the children, she sends peplos and a diadem soaked in poison to the palace. And here Medea’s most severe torment begins: maternal instinct fights with the thirst for revenge, hatred with love, duty with passion. Medea changes her decision four times: first she wants to kill the children in order to destroy Jason’s family:
There is no longer a tragic contradiction, the image of Medea again acquires integrity.
The ending of the tragedy is very bright: Medea appears in a chariot drawn by dragons, which Helios sent her. With her are the corpses of her children. Her last dialogue with Jason takes place, which somewhat changes the nature of the drama: the accusations against Medea are fair, it may indeed seem that if Skilla has a heart, she is kinder than Medea, her cruelty knows no bounds, but all of Medea’s arguments also seem plausible: she is to blame Jason, his sin killed them, and a woman’s jealousy gives her the right to any action:
The gods know the culprit of misfortunes...
And your damned witchcraft.
You can hate. Just be silent...
Don't cry yet: it's too early -
You will mourn your old age.
Beloved children!
For mother, not for you.
This strong woman is true to herself to the end: she doesn’t even let her touch dead children. ex-husband, despite all his pleas.
Tragedy carries within itself a sense of the absurdity of existence: there is no justice in the world, no boundary between good and evil, no measure, no truth, no happiness. Medea makes you doubt the highest values, the existence of the gods (she calls for their help, but they do not help her in any way), and her view of the world.
Euripides does not introduce moral teachings, does not insist on moral principles. He simply depicts human destinies. And the reader himself makes the choice which of the heroes to sympathize with and which side to take.
The author's position is manifested only in the choice of myths (in which Medea did more for Jason), the composition of the tragedy (Medea, her cries, monologues, and torments are given most of the drama) and the system of characters (Creon is shown as a weak but cruel person, the princess - Medea's rival - exists only in the retellings of other heroes, the chorus is on the side of Medea, and Jason is pitiful and mercantile).
Medea is the undoubted center of the work, the world of tragedy revolves around her, she focuses on herself all the emotional and psychological content of the drama. Willy-nilly, you begin to empathize with her, her tossing causes a reciprocal storm of feelings. It seems that Euripides himself was fascinated by the image of this amazing inner strength of a woman.
List of used literature:
- Euripides. – “Medea”, Hippolytus, The Bacchae. - St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 1999
At first glance it seems that the drama, as was in keeping with tradition, was written in mythological story. However, it is noteworthy that the playwright chooses that fragment of the myth when the heroic past of the heroes is behind him, and depicts the personal, family drama. The dynamics of feeling and passion are one of Euripides’ favorite themes. It's his first time in ancient literature clearly sets himself psychological problems, especially the problems of female psychology, and the significance of Euripides for world literature is based primarily on his female images.
Among the most powerful tragedies of Euripides is “Medea” (431).
Medea is a mythological figure from the cycle of tales about the Argonauts, the granddaughter of Helios (the Sun), a sorceress capable of the most terrible crimes. In 431, he turned to the image of Medea and gave the tragedy of a woman who passionately loved, but was deceived.
And as the bearer of a new attitude towards marriage, Medea gives a speech to the choir of Corinthian women about the difficult position of women in the family, about unequal morality, which requires fidelity from a woman, but does not extend this requirement to a man. Jason, whose second marriage was dictated by the desire to create a “support for the home” and ensure the future of his children, follows traditional views on the tasks of the family, but Euripides does not spare colors in order to depict his baseness, cowardice and insignificance. Jason's response to Medea's reproaches of ingratitude is an example of the sophistic art of “proving” any position and defending an unjust cause.
"Medea" is indicative of Euripides' dramaturgy in many respects. The depiction of the struggle of feelings and internal discord is something new that Euripides introduced into Attic tragedy. Along with this, there are numerous discussions about family, marriage, fatherhood, and the perniciousness of passions: not only Medea, but also the choir, and even the old woman-nurse discusses.
The heroine does not consider her fate to be exceptional; she expresses sad reflections about the subordinate, dependent fate of a woman, her defenselessness and lack of rights:
However, Medea herself, in accordance with the nature and integrity of her character, is not able to put up with humiliation. with the same force that she loved, she begins to hate Jason and look for a way to take revenge on him. The idea of infanticide is finally suggested by a meeting with the childless Athenian king Aegeus. In a conversation with him, she understands how a childless man suffers, and decides to take away the most precious thing from Jason. But this blow is simultaneously directed against herself, so Medea does not immediately and with terrible agony decide to take this step. The heroine changes her intention several times, conflicting feelings fight within her, and yet gradually a terrible decision matures within her.
Before Euripides, the prevailing version of the myth was that children were killed by angry Corinthians upon learning of the death of their king and young princess. Euripides left it to the heroine herself to do this, convincingly showing that, no matter how terrible this act is, Medea, who belongs to proud, powerful natures, unable to forgive insults, could have done this. The viewer cannot accept and forgive Medea for her actions, but understands by whom and how she was driven to the crime
At first glance, it seems that the drama, as is in keeping with tradition, is written on a mythological plot. However, it is noteworthy that the playwright chooses that fragment of the myth when the heroic past of the heroes is behind him, and depicts a personal, family drama. Before us is the grief of a lonely, deceived, abandoned woman. Deviations from traditional mythological versions are often found in the tragedies of Euripides. A certain tendency is noticeable behind this: for Euripides, myth is not the sacred history of the people, but material for creativity. In fact, Euripides constrains the framework of myth: the new social and everyday content of his tragedies comes into conflict with the old mythological form. Essentially, Euripides would need to abandon myth, but this would be too bold and decisive a violation of tradition, however, he certainly brought closer the destruction of the mythological basis of the tragedy. Euripides was one of the first to turn to the depiction of a love conflict in drama and made love passion driving motive of events. For Medea, her passion is the main basis of life. She sacrificed her loved ones, her homeland, and her good name as a sacrifice to her passion, but after a number of years life together Jason treacherously neglected her for the sake of low calculation.
Medea plans the murder of Creon and the princess in cold blood, without any doubt about the correctness of the chosen decision; the only thing that “confuses” her is that “on the way to the bedroom” or “on business” she can be “captured... and the villains will get to mock,” and the conversation with Jason only strengthens Medea in her intention to do this .
In a verbal duel with Jason, she exposes him as a complete nonentity and a scoundrel. Medea is hot, passionate, emotional, driven by feelings and instincts, proud, harsh, unrestrained and immeasurable. Medea is immeasurable in everything: in love, hatred, revenge. It is because of this that other characters in the tragedy do not understand her. Medea acts out the scene of reconciliation with Jason
Medea's egoism: she does not think about what is better for her children, to live or die, to stay in the city or wander with her, she is driven only by her own feelings and her own desires.
The ending of the tragedy is very bright: Medea appears in a chariot drawn by dragons, which Helios sent her. With her are the corpses of her children. Her last dialogue with Jason takes place, which somewhat changes the nature of the drama
Tragedy carries within itself a sense of the absurdity of existence: there is no justice in the world, no boundary between good and evil, no measure, no truth, no happiness. Medea makes you doubt the highest values, the existence of the gods (she calls for their help, but they do not help her in any way), and her view of the world.
Medea is the undoubted center of the work, the world of tragedy revolves around her, she focuses on herself all the emotional and psychological content of the drama; willy-nilly you begin to empathize with her, her tossing causes a reciprocal storm of feelings. It seems that Euripides himself was fascinated by the image of the murderous sorceress.
Innovation: The duality of her character - she mourns and takes pity on children, and kills. Before E., the inner world of man was not depicted. The depiction of the struggle of feelings and internal discord is something new that Euripides introduced into Attic tragedy. Along with this, there are numerous discussions about family, marriage, fatherhood, and the perniciousness of passions: not only Medea, but also the choir, and even the old woman-nurse discusses.
"Medea"
One of Euripides' most remarkable tragedies, Medea, was staged on the Athenian stage in 431. The sorceress Medea is the daughter of the Colchis king, the granddaughter of the Sun, who fell in love with Jason, one of the Argonauts who came to Colchis for the Golden Fleece. For the sake of her loved one, she left her family, her homeland, helped him take possession of the Golden Fleece, committed a crime, and came with him to Greece. To her horror, Medea learns that Jason wants to leave her and marry the princess, heir to the Corinthian throne. This is especially difficult for her because she is a “barbarian” and lives in a foreign land, where there are no relatives or friends. Medea is outraged by the clever sophistic arguments of her husband, who is trying to convince her that he is marrying the princess for the sake of their little sons, who will be princes, heirs of the kingdom. A woman offended in her feelings understands that driving force The husband's actions are the desire for wealth and power. Medea wants to take revenge on Jason, who mercilessly ruined her life, and destroys her rival, sending her a poisoned outfit with her children. She decides to kill the children too, for the sake of whose future happiness, according to Jason, he is entering into a new marriage.
Medea, contrary to the norms of polis ethics, commits a crime, believing that a person can act as his personal aspirations and passions dictate to him. This is a kind of refraction in everyday practice of the sophistic theory that “man is the measure of all things,” a theory undoubtedly condemned by Euripides. As a profound psychologist, Euripides could not help but show the storm of torment in the soul of Medea, who planned to kill the children. Two feelings are fighting in her: jealousy and love for children, passion and a sense of duty to children. Jealousy prompts her to decide - to kill the children and thereby take revenge on her husband; love for the children forces her to abandon the terrible decision and make a different plan - to flee Corinth with the children. This painful struggle between duty and passion, depicted with great skill by Euripides, is the climax of the entire chorus of the tragedy. Medea caresses the children. She decided to let them live and go into exile.
But the involuntarily escaped words “with the last laugh” express another, terrible decision, which has already matured in the recesses of her soul - to kill the children. However, Medea, touched by their appearance, tries to convince herself to abandon the terrible intention dictated by insane jealousy, but jealousy and offended pride take precedence over maternal feelings. And a minute later we see the mother again, convincing herself to abandon her plan. And then a disastrous thought about the need to take revenge on her husband, again a storm of jealousy and the final decision to kill the children...
The unfortunate mother caresses her children for the last time, but understands that murder is inevitable.
Euripides reveals the soul of a tormented man internal struggle between duty and passion. Showing this tragic conflict without embellishing reality, the playwright comes to the conclusion that passion often takes precedence over duty, destroying the human personality.
The prologue explains the reason for the current situation, then the heroines are shown in the grip of a painful conflict between duty and passion, on this high voltage the entire tragedy is constructed, realistically revealing the secrets of the heroines’ souls. But the outcome of the tragedies is mythological: Medea will be saved by her grandfather, the god Helios, and she flies away with the corpses of the murdered children in his chariot.
Euripides in his tragedies posed and resolved a number of pressing issues of his time - the question of duty and personal happiness, the role of the state and its laws. He protested against wars of conquest and criticized religious traditions, carried out the ideas of humane treatment of people. His tragedies depict people of great feelings, sometimes committing crimes, and Euripides, as a deep psychologist, reveals the fractures of the soul of such people, their painful suffering. No wonder Aristotle considered him the most tragic poet.
Course work
Course work
The problem of the suffering personality in the works of Euripides
Rox Redhead
Coursework plan
“The problem of the suffering personality in the works of Euripides.
Analysis of "Medea"
Some points of the author's biography. Features of his creativity. Relevance of the problem. Followers of Euripides. What is Euripides unhappy with? The poet's reasoning. General characteristics and place in the historical and literary context. History of the development of the topic in literary circles.
The image of Medea. Comparison of the myth of Medea with the tragedy of Euripides. Similarities, differences.
The main idea of the text. Has the image of Medea changed? Show the dynamics of characters, fluctuations and suffering of characters in a tragedy.
Main conclusions from the work carried out.
List of used literature.
Euripides (also Euripides, Greek Εριπίδης, Latin Euripides, 480 - 406 BC) is an ancient Greek playwright, a representative of the new Attic tragedy, in which psychology prevails over the idea of divine fate.
The great playwright was born on Salamis, on the day of the famous victory of the Greeks over the Persians in a naval battle, September 23, 480 BC. e., from Mnesarchus and Cleito. The parents ended up on Salamis among other Athenians who fled from the army of the Persian king Xerxes. The exact connection of Euripides' birthday with the victory is an embellishment that is often found in the stories of the greats by ancient authors. Thus, the Court reports that Euripides’ mother conceived him at the time when Xerxes invaded Europe (May, 480 BC), from which it follows that he could not have been born in September. An inscription on the Parian marble identifies the year of the playwright's birth as 486 BC. e., and in this chronicle of Greek life the name of the playwright is mentioned 3 times - more often than the name of any king. According to other evidence, the date of birth can be attributed to 481 BC. e.
Euripides' father was a respected and, apparently, rich man; Cleito's mother was engaged in selling vegetables. As a child, Euripides was seriously involved in gymnastics, even won competitions among boys and wanted to get to the Olympic Games, but was rejected due to his youth. Then he took up drawing, without much success, however. Then he began to take lessons in oratory and literature from Prodicus and Anaxagoras and lessons in philosophy from Socrates. Euripides collected books for the library, and soon began to write himself. The first play, Peliad, appeared on stage in 455 BC. e., but then the author did not win due to a quarrel with the judges. Euripides won the first prize for skill in 441 BC. e. and from then on until his death he created his creations. The playwright's social activity was manifested in the fact that he participated in the embassy in Syracuse in Sicily, apparently supporting the goals of the embassy with the authority of a writer recognized throughout Hellas.
Euripides' family life was unsuccessful. From his first wife, Chloirina, he had 3 sons, but divorced her because of her adultery, writing the play “Hippolytus,” where he ridiculed sexual relations. The second wife, Melitta, turned out to be no better than the first. Euripides gained fame as a misogynist, which gave the master of comedy Aristophanes a reason to joke about him. In 408 BC e. the great playwright decided to leave Athens, accepting the invitation of the Macedonian king Archelaus. It is not known exactly what influenced Euripides' decision. Historians are inclined to think that the main reason was, if not bullying, then the resentment of a vulnerable creative personality towards his fellow citizens for non-recognition of his merits. The fact is that out of 92 plays (75 according to another source), only 4 were awarded prizes at theater competitions during the author’s lifetime, and one play posthumously. But only 19 have survived to this day.
Euripides criticized demagogues, political speakers and praised rural workers; was guided by the patriotic ideals of the heroic era of Pericles, when democracy triumphed. Euripides' innovation and realism did not immediately find recognition among the audience. His tragic pathos was ridiculed by Aristophanes in his comedy “Frogs”.
The plots of Euripides' tragedies are mainly mythological, but characters written out by him realistically, with positive and negative traits, sometimes contradictory. After the death of the great playwright, his works became increasingly popular. They influenced Roman authors, as well as the development of drama in Europe. And it’s not surprising, because Euripides’ heroes are very lifelike, their remarks are accurate, smart and witty, and their actions are sometimes unexpected, as is often the case in reality.
The Athenians asked permission to bury the playwright in their hometown, but Archelaus wished to leave Euripides' grave in their capital, Pella. Sophocles, having learned about the death of the playwright, forced the actors to play the play with their heads uncovered. Athens placed a statue of Euripides in the theater, honoring him after his death. Plutarch tells a legend (“Lycurgus”): lightning struck the tomb of Euripides, a great sign that only Lycurgus among the famous people was awarded.
The new forces of Euripidean drama are civil realism, rhetoric and philosophy. The reflection of philosophical problems in his work earned Euripides the nickname “philosopher on stage.”
His work presupposes a certain educational atmosphere and society, to which it addresses, and vice versa - that this poetry for the first time helps to break through to the new form of man that is rushing into the light, and puts before his eyes an ideal reflection of his essence, in which he feels the need for his justification , perhaps more than ever before.
The bourgeoisification of life for the time of Euripides means approximately the same thing as for us proletarianization, which it sometimes resembles when a beggar tramp appears on the stage instead of the tragic hero of antiquity. It was against this humiliation of high poetry that Euripides' rivals rebelled.
The crisis of the Athenian polis, which sharply worsened during the Peloponnesian War, was reflected in many ways in the tragedies of Euripides. The growing individualistic tendencies in society, reflected in the theoretical sphere in the sophists’ desire to see in man “the measure of all things” (Protagoras) in the field of artistic creativity, are manifested in increasingly close attention to the individual, his individuality, and the world of his feelings. In the dramas of Euripides, the tragic conflict unfolds as a conflict of opposing feelings in the soul of the hero, as a psychological conflict. For the first time, human psychology receives a detailed artistic embodiment. Euripides portrayed people as they really are, rejected Sophocles’ idealization and glorification, striving to show true reality without hiding its shortcomings (In his comedy “Frogs,” Aristophanes condemns Euripides for striving to show the dark sides of life in the theater).
In the tragedies of Euripides, one can easily recognize a penchant for depicting especially acute and tragic situations and conflicts, for tragic pathos, for which Aristotle called him “the most tragic of poets.” At the same time, the conflicts depicted at the same time take on the features of everyday ones, occurring in the sphere of purely personal relationships. The development of the everyday element leads to a contradiction between the mythological form and the content of the tragedy, which acquires the features of an everyday drama. In some of the later tragedies of Euripides (“Ion”, “Helen”) there appear moments that anticipate a new type of dramatic work of the new Attic comedy.
The tragedies of Euripides, responding to major events political and spiritual life of Athens, sometimes acquired a purely journalistic character: discussions about social problems are sometimes only externally related to the plot depicted. In the tragedies of Euripides, there is criticism of the traditional worldview: religion, views on the position of women and slaves, on the political structure of society: noting many shortcomings of Athenian democracy, Euripides speaks out in support of the democratic system, condemns autocracy (tyranny). In several tragedies (“The Trojan Women”, “Hecuba”) he protests against wars of conquest, their tragic senselessness, which only brings suffering to man. Moreover, these sufferings are devoid of moral meaning, leading to knowledge of the truth, as was the case in the tragedies of Aeschylus (“suffering teaches”).
Some characters in his tragedies reflect the social mood of the crisis era for Athens - the desire to escape from public life, to look for the ideal in one’s inner world, in communication with nature. But in his tragedies it is fashionable to find heroic images that reflect the civic pathos and patriotism of the poet.
Artistically, Euripides' tragedy marks a crisis in the genre of heroic tragedy. This is evidenced by the discrepancy between the mythological form and the content that acquires everyday coloring, the decline in the role of the chorus, which turns from the main structural element of the tragedy into an optional element, losing its organic connections with the whole, since the center of gravity moves to the actor (the image of the hero’s inner world leads to the appearance in Euripides’ tragedy along with a monologue is also a monody (solo musical aria).
The tragedy of Euripides paves the way for the drama of modern times with its deepened interest in the inner world of man, depicted in all its contradictions.
In the tragedy “Medea,” the political and spiritual freedom of the individual grows, the problems of human society and the connections on which it is based become increasingly clear, the human self declares its rights when it feels constrained by bonds that seem artificial to it. With the help of persuasion and the means of reason, it seeks indulgences and outlets for itself. Marriage becomes a subject of debate. The relationship between the sexes - for centuries noli me tangere conventionality - is brought into the light of God and becomes public knowledge: it is a struggle, like everything else in nature. Does not the rule of the mighty reign here, as elsewhere on earth? And so the poet discovers in the legend about Jason leaving Medea, the passions of today, and encloses in this shell problems that the legend does not even suspect, but which it can make relevant for modern times with magnificent plasticity.
The Athenian women of that time were not Medeas at all; they were either too downtrodden or too refined for this role. Therefore, a desperate savage who kills her children in order to hurt her traitorous husband and break all ties with him, turned out to be a convenient opportunity for the poet to depict the spontaneous in a woman’s soul, without being embarrassed by Greek morals. Jason, an impeccable hero in the perception of all Greece, although not at all a natural husband, becomes a cowardly opportunist. He acts not out of passion, but out of cold calculation. However, it must be such as to make the murderer of his own children in ancient legend a tragic figure. All the poet’s participation is on her side, partly because in general he believes woman's destiny worthy of pity and therefore does not consider it in the light of myth, blinded by the heroic brilliance of male valor, which is valued only by exploits and glory; but first of all, the poet consciously wants to make Medea the heroine of the bourgeois tragedy of marriage, which often played out in Athens of that time, although not in such extreme forms. Its discoverer is Euripides. In the conflict between boundless male egoism and boundless female passion, Medea is a true drama of its time. That’s why both sides play it out in a petty-bourgeois spirit, that’s how they argue, condemn and resonate. Jason is completely imbued with wisdom and generosity, Medea philosophizes about the social position of a woman, about the dishonorable oppression of sexual desire for a strange man, whom she must follow and whom she must also buy with a rich dowry, and declares that childbearing is much more dangerous and requires greater courage than military exploits.
It is not without reason that the tragedy of Euripides was called the discussion club of all the movements of his era. Nothing stronger proves the problematic nature of all things for the consciousness of this generation than this disintegration of all life and all tradition in discussions and philosophizing, in which all ages and classes, from the king to the servants, take part.
The image of Medea attracted many creators of different types of art: artists, composers and writers (mainly playwrights), and, wandering from work to work, this image underwent significant changes.
Actress Maria Callas as Medea
Medea is a figure of mad, frantic passion. In Greek and then in Roman literature, she is a type of witch (and then an evil sorceress). There are two main tragedies dedicated to Medea: Greek - Euripides, Roman - Seneca. Euripides did not limit himself to one episode of the legend; in his tragedy he collected all the vicissitudes of Medea's long life, right up to the final crisis. The legend is this: Jason was the son of King Iolkos; he lived on the Thessalian coast. His uncle Pelias took the throne from his father Iolcus, and sent Jason to look for the Golden Fleece, guarded by a dragon, in Colchis, on the far shores of the Black Sea, hoping that he would not return. Jason sailed on the ship of the Argonauts, passed the rocks of Symplegada and arrived in Colchis, in the possession of King Aeetes.
Aeetes had a daughter, Medea. Her grandfather was Helios the sun himself. Circe, the king’s sister, Medea’s aunt, was also a sorceress (in Homer she turns men into pigs, lions and wolves) and Ulysses loved her. He spent a sweet month with her, and she gave birth to his son Telegon (who later founded Tusculum, where Cicero lived and where his daughter Terence died in childbirth). Seeing Jason disembark from the ship onto the shore, Medea fell in love with him at first sight, madly and forever. “She looks at him intently. She doesn't take her eyes off his face. It seems to her, in the madness that has overcome her, that these are the features not of a mortal, but of a god. She is unable to take her eyes off him” (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 86).
Then the king gives Jason instructions that are impossible to fulfill. And every time Medea saves him from death, helping him deal with fire-breathing bulls, helping to sow dragon teeth on the field of Ares, from which warriors are born who immediately take up arms.
So, thanks to Medea, Jason receives the Golden Fleece. As the ship prepares to sail, the Argonauts are threatened by Medea's brother, Ascylt, and she kills him. She boards the ship; she gave herself to Jason in “a fit of feverish desire.” Jason promised to marry her.
He returned to Thessaly, but Pelias refused to return his father's throne to him. Then Medea convinced Pelias to plunge into a vat of boiling water to regain his youth, and he was boiled alive.
The murder of Pelias forced Medea and Jason to flee from Iolcus. They settled in Corinth, with King Creon.
King Creon invited Jason to marry his daughter. Jason agreed, because she was Greek, and expelled Medea the foreigner.
Medea looks at her two children, born from Jason, when they still loved each other. For his sake, she betrayed her father, killed her young brother and destroyed Pelias. She gave him two sons, and now he rejects her. Anger strangles Medea. She enters her sons' room. One of them is called Mermer, the other is Feret. She says to their slave-teacher: “Go, prepare for them what they need for every day,” knowing that these things will go with them to the underground abode - the grave. She looks at the children. Now she will kill them. This is the moment of painting.
In the fresco in the house of the Dioscuri, boys play dice under the supervision of a slave teacher. Medea is standing on the right. A long, pleated tunic falls from the shoulders to the legs. The right hand gropes for the handle of the dagger held in the left. Her gaze is fixed on the children, who are absorbed in their play with all the fervor and carefreeness of their age. One stands with his legs crossed and slightly leaning on a cubic table, the second sits on the same table. Both hands are stretched out to the bones that they themselves will soon become. Medea's fury is calm. This is the very stillness, the same frightening silence that serves as a harbinger of an explosion of madness.
On the fresco in Jason's house, on the contrary, the children meet their mother's gaze. The slave looks at Mermer and Feret. There are two possible explanations for Medea's behavior and gaze. Either, concentrating her thoughts on the upcoming act, she oscillates between two contradictory feelings - pity and revenge (mother and woman are fighting in her, fear of what is planned and a fierce desire for this double infanticide), or in her, frozen before the completion of this bloody act, an irresistible anger rages, an irresistible thirst for ferocious retribution. The first interpretation is from the field of psychology. The second has nothing to do with psychology, it is physiological and tragic. This is the only possible interpretation, because it explains the text depicted on the frescoes. For this is the interpretation of Euripides.
Euripides' Medea describes the breakdown of civilized communication due to a woman's passion for a man. Love turns to hate, frantic lust for a lover turns into murderous rage towards the family.
Passion is a disease. In madness, the soul succumbs to a frantic impulse. A diver who has jumped into the water can no longer stop his fall. Even running is the “madness” of movement: a running person is unable to stop and freeze in a single moment. Aristotle said: people who throw stones cannot bring them back. Cicero in “Tusculan Conversations” (IV, 18) wrote: “A man who has thrown himself (praecipi-taverit) from the top of the Leucadian Cape into the sea will not be able to stop halfway to the water, even if he wants to.” Praecipitatio is falling headfirst into the abyss. In his treatise “On Anger” (I, 7), Seneca the Younger repeats this image of Cicero - the image of a man falling into an abyss - and comments on this “deadly leap” as follows: he who has thrown himself down is not only unable to return back, but he is “incapable of not get to where you might not throw yourself.”
Medea is a woman who throws herself into the abyss. There is no other way out and cannot be. Here we are not talking about Cornelian heavy hesitation, about a clash of psychological motives. Like a plant or an animal, madness goes through three stages - birth, flowering and death. Madness is growth; it is born and grows, it becomes irresistible, it strives for its end, happy or unhappy.
The fresco clearly expresses the most famous verse of antiquity, put into the mouth of Medea: “I understand what atrocity I dared to commit. But my thymos ( life force, libido) stronger than my bouleumata (things I want).” Medea sees ,
what did she decide to do? she sees that a wave of desire has overwhelmed her mind and threatens to take everything with it. The moment captured on the fresco cannot be called psychological: the heroine is not torn between madness and reason. This moment is tragic: Medea is helpless in front of the stream, which in a moment will carry her into action. The moment is so non-psychological that Euripides accompanies it with a purely physiological explanation: all the misfortune comes from the fact that Medea’s insides - her brain, heart and liver - are inflamed. This is exactly what the nurse says: “What should she do when her whole nature is inflamed (megalosplangchnos), when misfortune torments her, giving her no rest (dyskatapaustos)?” Euripides describes all the signs of a serious disorder that befell Medea: she no longer eats, avoids the company of people, children inspire horror in her, she cries incessantly, or stubbornly looks down at her feet, or her gaze is filled with malice, like that of an angry bull, she is deaf to human speech and listens to the words of loved ones no more than a rock listens to the “sound of sea waves.”
Seneca's Medea is even more precise. His play not only concentrates all the action, in the Roman style, on the final moment, but goes further: at the end of the tragedy, Medea announces that she will rip open her womb with a dagger in order to make sure that a third child from Jason does not grow in it. This tragic device shows what is the cause of her rage (inflamed entrails), what is the cause of her love (lust, irrepressible carnal passion, which she proved by her previous actions) and, finally, what are the fruits of this passion (a child in the womb). Two verses that convey this state are magnificent (Medea, 1012 and 1013): “In matre si quod pignus etiamnunc latet, scrutabor ense viscera et ferro extraham” (If another pledge of love remains hidden in the womb of the mother, I will cut this womb with a dagger and throw the embryo away). Medea again and again goes through three reasons for her misfortune, which will grow in her troubled soul until they lead to the act of murder. With this act, her “insides” will take revenge on her womb, destroying the fruits that she spewed into the light of God - little Mermer and little Feret.
Seneca’s Medea will finally be able to say: “Medea nunc sum” (From now on, I am Medea) and explain it this way: “Saevit infelix amor” (Unhappy love gives rise to madness). There is no individual conflict between what a person wants and what he wants. But there is a natural ocean that breaks through the dam and lifts all the bodies depicted in the fresco onto the crest of a growing wave of fury. “I do not know what my wild soul has decided in the depths of me” (Nescio quid ferox decrevit animus intus).
What is Medea's view? A motionless, frozen gaze precedes a storm, an explosion, during which a person who has fallen into a frenzy seems to be hallucinating, but does not see the action he is performing, the crime he is committing, does not even see his own hallucination. His gaze is numbly directed into space. He sees something different. Cicero uses a striking expression when he says that in a darkened mind “all the windows are covered” (Tusculan Conversations, I, 146). After this explosion, the view clears up to such an extent that, for example, the hero Oedipus tears out his eyes: the windows of his mind, opening wide, revealed to him what he had done. Madness itself is cured in the act of madness, as soon as the madman admits his hand in the committed act. The act of rage is nothing more than the highest, culminating point, followed by decline and pacification.
Having killed the children, Medea flees to Athens. There she marries Aegeus and gives birth to his son Med, whom she loves so dearly that she helps him kill the Persian in order to take over his kingdom.
Let's compare the ancient Medea with the modern one. The ancient frescoes describe a concentrated maturation in which there is absolutely nothing dramatic: they show the moment that sums up this tragedy, and in no way reveal its end. In our era, Delacroix wrote Medea. In 1855, Théophile Gautier became acquainted with the painting, formulated its aesthetics and most decisively contrasted it (no matter how much he argued to the contrary) with the spirit of ancient painting: “Delacroix's Enraged Medea is painted with the ardor, enthusiasm and generosity of colors that Rubens himself would have approved. The gesture of the lioness gathering her cubs near her, with which Medea holds back the frightened children, is a magnificent invention of the artist. Her face, half hidden in shadow, resembles a serpentine expression. Not resembling the heads of marble or clay sculptures, it nevertheless looks truly antique. Her children, frightened, crying, not understanding what is happening, but guessing that something terrible awaits them, rush away from under the hand of their mother, who is already clutching a dagger. From the convulsive efforts to free themselves, their short tunics rode up, revealing children’s bodies in fresh pink tones, which form a sharp contrast with the bluish, again snake-like pallor of the mother.”
So, in Paris, gestures are important, in Rome, glances are important. In Paris, children worry, cry, resist. In Rome they play, completely absorbed in this activity. In Paris, the situation is expressed by the hysterical Medea. In Rome, Medea, plunged into a vengeful rage, thinks more about it than acts. In Paris, the act of murder itself is depicted. In Rome - the moment preceding it. And not only this one previous moment, but also the entire text of Euripides as a whole is concentrated in one moment, which has frozen, not to mention what it is going to become.
In Paris - a spectacular operatic scream. In Rome there is a frightening silence (obstupefactus).
The Romans saw a wonderful plot in this terrible reflection of Medea, insulted by Jason and frightened by her own inevitable desire to kill Mermer and Feret at the very moment when they were playing. The entire ancient world admired Medea, painted by Timomachus. Caesar found the painting so beautiful that he bought it and paid for it in gold. The entire ancient world unanimously praised Medea's eyes. This look is truly a miracle. The eyelids are inflamed. Anger is emphasized by frowning eyebrows. Pity is in the flashing moisture. Ausonius wrote: “In the picture painted by Timomachos, the threat is expressed in tears, a dagger glints in his hand, not yet stained with the blood of her sons... Timomachos’s hand hurts in the same way as the dagger that Medea clutches in her left hand, meeting her gaze with Mermer and Feret "
Apuleius also created his Medea. This amazing Medea, separating the death of children from vengeance, connects the scene of the first intercourse with birth in an even more concrete way than the entrails ripped open by Medea's dagger in Seneca's play.
Let us consider the image of Medea in the tragedy of the same name by Euripides:
Aristotle considered it impermissible for a poet to change the essence of a myth and cited “Medea” as an example of such preservation of the grain of a legend. From different versions of the myth about Medea, Euripides chooses the one in which she is the most cruel: hiding from her father’s persecution, Medea kills her younger brother Aspirtus and scatters pieces of his body so that her father will be delayed in collecting them; Medea kills her own children; Medea, not Jason, copes with the dragon. Medea Euripides did everything for the sake of Jason, to the most terrible crimes, and in tragedy she is not as powerful as she was in some myths (according to one myth, she is the daughter of the king of Colchis Eetus and the oceanid Idia, the granddaughter of Helios and the niece of Circe, and according to another, she is the mother Medea is the patroness of sorceresses Hecate, and Circe is her sister).
Euripides chooses the myth that explains the root cause of the collapse of the family of Medea and Jason: Eros, at the request of Athena and Hera, instilled in Medea a passionate love for Jason, but her love was unrequited and he married her only because he made a promise in exchange for her help. Those. on Jason’s part, it was a marriage of convenience, which is why it was so easy for him to abandon Medea and children for the sake of the royal throne of Corinth.
The tragedy opens with a monologue by the nurse, where she briefly outlines the situation (Aristotle considered the prologue of “Medea” to be an example of the prologue of a tragedy):
And she wouldn’t have to be in Corinth now