Dear Euripides,
My daughter studied your play, Medea,
recently, and so I read my 1952 Edward P Coleridge translation, to
get my mind around what she was expect to present in her high school
drama class.
So, first up, wow. Grim. I've heard
it said that the ancient Greek playwrights show us an unparalleled
insight into the lives of women from that era. No other historical
writers describe women like the playwrights, and despite their
fictitious nature, these descriptions are in a large way, all we have
to go on to understand what life was really like for women.
This play, Medea, is the first ancient
play I have ever read, having devoted my study thus far to reading
primary historical sources. I have read about the plays from a few
modern historians, and also from some ancient writers who refer to
these plays in order to illustrate some point, and with this as my
starting block, I can see already why your work is still in print,
still studied, and still performed on stages around the world.
You're obviously a very talented
writer, and I have begun to trace the line of influence backwards
from Shakespeare, to understand something of the development of
dramatic writing. I have discovered that Shakespeare studied the
tragedies written by Seneca, and that Seneca would have undoubtedly
studied plays like yours. In fact most of the ancient Roman writers
would have studied your work, or that of your contemporaries. Cicero
makes reference to many plays in his letters (though I could not tell
you which ones right now...), but it all boils down to this:
Dramatic thought, creative story
writing, and fiction in general, seems to have been a very refined
art by the time you were writing Medea. In the modern world, a lot
of writing makes use of continual cultural references to communicate
otherwise complex ideas that would take a lot of unnecessary
exposition. For myself, having read some of Tacitus (the Roman
Historian), I can see right away that the trope of the scorned woman
is as old as the hills, as is that of the female poisoner, and Medea
sets out these two as core themes. I offer no critique, nor
criticism, I am just tracing ideas.
But it is not those major themes that I
wanted to write to you about today. Being a musician, I am of course
always fascinated by any expressions from the ancient sources
regarding music and musicians, as well as dancers and other artists.
So, it's the following little passage that I wanted to discuss.
Wert thou to call the men of old
time rude uncultured boors thou wouldst not err, seeing that they
devised their hymns for festive occasions, for banquets, and to grace
the board, a pleasure to catch the ear, shed o'er our life, but no
man hath found a way to allay hated grief by music and the minstrel's
varied strain, whence arise slaughters and fell strokes of fate to
o'erthrow the homes of men. And yet this were surely a gain, to heal
men's wounds by music's spell, but why tune they their idle song
where rich banquets are spread? For of itself doth the rich banquet,
set before them, afford men to delight.
This passage,
uttered by Medea's nurse, is so loaded with cultural ideas that it is
a challenge to know where to begin my dissection, or even if
dissection is what I want. So, rather than opine of my own
storehouse of experience and thought, I shall share what Plutarch has
said that might offer some insight.
Why cannot music
soothe that hated grief...whence arise slauhters and fell strokes of
fate...?
...Epicurus saith, when he
pronounceth in his book called his Doubts that his wise man ought to
be a lover of public spectacles and to delight above any other man in
the music and shows of the Bacchanals; and yet he will not admit of
music problems or of the critical inquiries of philologists, no, not
so much as at a compotation. Yea, he advises such princes as are
lovers of the Muses rather to entertain themselves at their feasts
either with some narration of military adventures or with the
importune scurrilities of drolls and buffoons, than to engage in
disputes about music or in questions of poetry. For this very thing
he had the face to write in his treatise of Monarchy, as if he were
writing to Sardanapalus, or to Nanarus ruler of Babylon. ... Had the
great Ptolemy, who was the first that formed a consort of musicians,
but met with these excellent and royal admonitions, would he not,
think you, have thus addressed himself to the Samians:—
O Muse, whence art thou thus
maligned?
For certainly it can never belong to
any Athenian to be in such enmity and hostility with the Muses. But:
No animal accurst by Jove
Music's sweet charms can ever
love.
(Pindar, "Pythian,"
i. 25.)
So it
seems that Plutarch was not a fan of Epicurus, especially considering
that the above quote is taken from his essay entitled: That
it is not possible to live pleasurably according to the doctrine of
Epicurus.
I have yet to read
any of Epicurus' actual works, but I have found a lot of people who
don't like him and his ideas, everyone so far except for Seneca, who
although he is considered a sort of king among the Stoics, makes
continuous reference to the wisdom to be found in Epicurean
philosophy, but I digress. It is Plutarch's quote from Pindar that I
find interesting.
No animal accursed
by Jove, (aka Zeus), music's sweet charms can ever love. He who is
cursed by God cannot love the sweet charms of music. Or, to re-word
your passage Euripides, He who feels hated grief, cannot be soothed
by the charms of music. For who may be said to be cursed by God,
other than he who is driven to hated grief? Or to put it another
way, he who allows hated grief into his heart, is thus cursed by God,
and therefore can no longer be charmed or soothed by music.
So it is not that
music cannot soothe grief, for I believe that of all the cures
proscribed for emotional ills, music is perhaps the most universal,
it is that he who allows grief to overcome his heart, thus removes
from himself the receptacle into which music might be poured. Or
perhaps, that his heart thus filled with grief, cannot take on the
healing medicine of music.
He whose cup is
full, cannot have more wine poured into it.
Or as Epictetus
puts it, a man cannot learn what he thinks he already knows.
A heart full of
grief cannot receive any medicine, no matter how potent. The grief
must be allowed to drain away this poison before any medicine can be
administered. But what allows the heart to drain away its grief?
Time? Cicero
laughed darkly at the useless of the adage that time would heal his
grief, for it is not in the future that we live our lives, but in the
present, and the present is sometimes so painful as to make life
impossible. Yet, what else is there but to wait for a poisoned heart
to relinquish its hold on the harmful fluid of grief? What tools can
the mind grasp and use that can convince the heart of anything that
it does not wish to accept?
For Medea, it
seems, there were no solutions, and her hated grief, did produce
great slaughter.
So, thank you
Euripides. Your book now opened, must be read more fully, to the
benefit of myself, and to many others.
With Gratitude and
Respect,
Morgan.
PS...
"The sweet charms of music" ❤️
ReplyDelete