The defeat of passion and the triumph of hatred: Medea, angel of destruction

The extent to which the motive of hatred can take on a monstrous form of expression is shown by the case of the tragic heroine Medea. The complexity of this heroine's character is reflected in the multiple character profiles of her nature, her magical powers and her ability to uncompromisingly do what she sets her mind to. Medea belongs to what many saw as "bad women" or, as he defined them, Aristotel "uncompromisingly smart".

Despite the sacrifice she consciously made for the sake of her husband, killing her own brother and betraying her father, King Aeetes of Colchis, in order to help her husband Jason obtain the Golden Fleece, due to a combination of circumstances, the tragic heroine becomes, in a certain way, a victim of herself. Although she is saved at the end of the tragedy, Medea remains, paradoxically, a defeated victor. The hatred for Jason is created because of a betrayed love. Jason intended to marry King Creon's daughter, Princess Glaucus, out of interest and social status, who in the meantime became victims of Medea's sorcerous power. Both are poisoned.

The disappointment and hurt of a devoted wife and the hatred she felt towards her unfaithful husband Jason culminate in Medea's decision to kill her own children, her sons Mermer and Fereteus. What is particularly interesting from a psychoanalytic point of view is the fact that Medea does not kill her children in a fit of emotion, in some uncontrolled state of mental disorder. She kills them deliberately. This is the culmination of revenge against her unfaithful husband. Medea's complicated psychological profile from Euripides Some wanted to connect the tragedy with infanticide and define this pathological phenomenon as the "Medea complex".

I think those who do not connect Medea's crime with the so-called postpartum depression are right. Infanticide is something else entirely, which falls more under the phenomenon of psychotic depression, while Medea's case is a consciously prepared, carefully thought-out crime. This conscious murder, premeditated murder, as Medea commits, is much more complex than infanticide.

Euripides nuances the psychological states of his protagonists and sharpens their relationship in which hatred produces itself. Medea's hatred provokes Jason's hatred. He will say of his wife: "Oh, scoundrel, the most hated woman in the whole world." He will call her the criminal "Non-mother." She remains insensitive to Jason's desperate plea: "By your grave/ Let me gently touch the body/ Of a child." In their mutual accusations, Medea does not allow Jason to bury or mourn their children. She is resolute in her ruthlessness. She will say briefly and unwaveringly: "Your words are in vain."

Among the numerous studies and commentaries on Medea's fate and her complicated character, one of the most interesting analyses, in my opinion, was written by Jan Kott, in the text “Medea in Pescara” after watching the Greek theater from Piraeus perform Euripides’ masterpiece on the open-air stage in this Italian city. “Medea, writes Jan Kott, “does not address the gods. They do not exist for her, just as the world does not exist for her. Not even the children. For her, they are only Jason’s children. More than that, they embody Jason himself. She kills them not only to get revenge on him, she kills them because she cannot kill Jason. But in fact, for Medea, not even Jason exists. There is only herself, Medea and her defeat.”

The theme of Medea particularly interested me because of its aforementioned complexity and was the subject of my interest in several artistic compositions. In this case, I was faced with the problem of how to depict in an artistic way a Greek heroine imbued with hatred and crime that strongly and permanently marked her being. When a literary motif is transposed into artistic expression, a delicate and difficult problem is posed before the painter. The motif must be presented in its full expressiveness. I consciously gave up on depicting the face of the tragic heroine. Instead of facial expression, everything is reduced to the body, everything is concentrated on, if I may say so, the expression of her body. Because the inner drama of the actors of tragedy can also be effectively manifested through the expression of the body. Medea's body has become the true face of the tragic event. The naked body of cold, gray, bloodless skin is depicted with outstretched arms in a symbolic crucifixion of an intimate drama. The formal position of the hands points to this inner crucifixion, to the strength and powerlessness of the torn being of a woman, daughter and sister, wife and mother. By slaughtering her children, Medea unknowingly lives their death. The death of the children is the embodiment of her hatred, just as those same children were a confirmation of her devoted love for the one with whom they were conceived in her. The death of the children, the bodies of her body, became inseparable from the tragic mother. These innocent bodies became the permanent dark jewelry of her cruelty. Dismembered bodies are not an uncommon occurrence in brutal scenes in Greek myths and tragedies. Medea also dismembered the body of her brother Apsyrtus. (Euripides's "Bacchae" is full of brutal scenes of the dismemberment of human and animal flesh.) Medea as a tragic heroine exists in her defiant vital macabre.

Hatred has crowned her body with the agonizing decor of death, the fruits of her womb. The power of hatred for her husband and the murder of her two sons give Medea the grandeur of dark cruelty. She becomes an image of the defeat of passion and the triumph of hatred. Passionate hatred. A beautiful mythical heroine, sorceress and faithful wife, a vengeful criminal, although she managed to save herself after all by flying away in a chariot drawn by winged dragons sent by her grandfather Helios, she remains permanently marked by the murder of her own children. Medea is an image of the repulsive reality of her cruel crime.