Medea

A possession considered of little value up to now suddenly becomes precious to a person if another person desires it, don't you think?

I've known one thing for a long time: there's a role in the big machine even for someone who makes fun of it.

...no lie is too obvious for the people to believe if it accommodates their secret wish to believe it.

Einmal, Mutter, in einer anderen Zeit, habe ich mit meinen beiden Händen zum Abschied deinen Kopf umspannt, seine Form ist als Abdruck in meinen Handflächen geblieben, auch Hände haben ein Gedächtnis.

Where can I go. Is it possible to imagine a world, a time, where I would have a place. There’s no one I could ask. That’s the answer.

Circe: Do you know what they're looking for, Medea? she asked me. They're looking for a woman who'll tell them that they're not guilty of anything; that the gods, whom they worship by chance, compel them in their undertakings. That the track of blood they leave behind is proper to their male nature as the gods have determined it.

I ask myself what gives a person, what gave that woman, the right to confront us with decisions that we are not equal to making, decisions that tear us apart and leave us feeling inferior, incompetent, guilty.

Non sapevo che cosa è capace di sopportare un essere umano. Ora me ne sto qui seduto e sono costretto a dirmi che proprio su questa capacità di sopportare l'insopportabile, e tuttavia continuare a vivere, e tuttavia continuare a fare ciò che si è abituati a fare, proprio su questa sinistra capacità si fonda la stabilità del genere umano. Quando me lo dicevo in passato, erano parole di uno spettatore, perché si è solo spettatori, fino a quando qualcuno non ci è così vicino da spezzarci il cuore con la sua disgrazia.

I’ve seen what is interred with them so that they can get through the journey into the realm of the dead, and no doubt also so that they can buy their way in, gold, jewelry, food, even horses, sometimes servants as well; since then, I can see this whole glorious Corinth only as the fleeting reflection of that eternal necropolis, and it seems to me that they reign here too, the dead. Or what reigns is the fear of death. And I ask myself whether I shouldn’t have stayed in Colchis.

Does Medea still have the power to retaliate, or has she been rendered harmless? Fear, admiration, envy, lust and hatred waltz hand-in-hand, for whatever else she is, Medea is not a nobody: beautiful, high-ranking, reckless, intelligent and skilled, she cannot be simply dismissed.

But Medea is neither an anthropological retelling of myth in the style of Mary Renault, nor a simpleminded story of men-versus-women, of a sensuous moon-and-earth religion versus a cold and abstract sky theology. It is a study of power, and of the operations of power, and of the behavior of human beings under pressure when power squeezes them tight.

Ich habe nicht gewußt, was ein Mensch erträgt. Nun sitze ich da und muß mir sagen, auf dieser Fähigkeit, Unerträgliches zu ertragen und weiterzuleben, weiter zu tun, was zu tun man gewöhnt ist, auf dieser unheimlichen Fähigkeit beruht der Bestand des Menschengeschlechts.

Es ist so eingerichtet, daß nicht nur die, die Unrecht erdulden müssen, auch die, die Unrecht tun, ihres Lebens nicht froh werden. Überhaupt frage ich mich, ob die Lust, andere Leben zu zerstören, nicht daher kommt, daß man am eigenen Leben so wenig Lust und Freude hat.

It's really ridiculous to assume that people are improved by hearing someone tell the truth about them.