Sexes in law.[1]
My first time at the Greek Theater of Siracusa with performances by Euripides, ‘The Troyan Women’[2] and ‘Helen’[3], also proposed as part of the Conference ‘Love on Trial’ and promoted by ‘Società Amici del Pensiero – Sigmund Freud’, with the patronage of I.N.D.A. ‘Istituto Nazionale del Dramma Antico’.
“I fear the Danaans even when they bring gifts”: the wise Laocoon[4] thus warned his fellow citizens who, fearing Minerva’s wrath, made the Horse enter Troy’s walls, making themselves also the creators of their own misfortune.
In fact, there is a sidereal distance between religious thinking that invokes gifts, and above all the gift of ‘non-work’, and laic thinking which instead picks up the offer of reality and weighs it up with a view to the finish line, giving a value to one’s own elaboration, that is one’s own work.
And there is a suffering that qualifies the religious thinking in one’s own resistance to a laic imputability which doesn’t accept to generalize a human ‘essence’ and to distinguish a ‘sexual sphere’ from others, “that of work first and foremost, the sphere of friendship, the sphere of war, the sphere of politics, the sphere of the ‘private’, the sphere of knowledge and the religious sphere…”[5]
Lazily leaning on the religious thinking, Helen of Sparta - unique among Troy’s noble women who were drawn as slaves after the victory of Greeks – claims to have been the object of divine ambitions – Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera - and thus implores Menelaus, who has come in Troy as a victor. “…Punish the goddess (Aphrodite, n.b.e.), be stronger than Zeus who rules over all the celestials but is Aphrodite’s slave : and instead forgive me…”[6]
And Menelaus, who in his naivety is tempted by comparison with the gods and now falters under Helen’s flattery, in the end he will give up to judge her.
“The discovery should begin to emerge that the abstraction of a sexual sphere is the condition of perversion. The atmosphere of such a… world… is anguish…because anguish is the affection of a defect in the law of ‘motion’…”[7]
The illogical alternative to revenge is giving up one’s judgement : Euripides doesn’t so much condemn Helen’s perversion, whose pitiful words he exposes to the judgement of those present, but rather those who, as and around Menelaus, rejoice in tragedy.
But Euripides also shows how the ease with which Helen manages to ‘override’ judgement, unfortunately becomes a banner among the naive of a presumed and enviable female position which creates a following, and an ‘audience’ indeed.
The princess Cassandra in fact, virgin dedicated to the temple of Apollo and here drawn as the Agamemnon’s future concubine, chants histerically towards Hecuba, her mother :
“Mother, put on my head the crown of victory and rejoyce at my royal wedding; lead me and, if I don’t seem resolute, push me hard. If Lossia exists, the illustrious prince of Acheans, Agamemnon will have in me a wife worse than Helen. Because I will kill him, I will in turn devastate his palace, thus avenging my brothers and my father. Therefore, mother, you must not cry over your homeland, over my beds… I will destroy, with my wedding, our most hated enemies…[8]
To the laic thinking that discards revenge, Euripides dedicates the amazing dialogue between the princess Andromache, Hector’s widow by the hand of Achilles, and the queen Hecuba, Hector’s mother and widow of the ancient king of Troy, Priam, killed first after the assault on the city. Andromache, knowing that she was destined for Achilles’s son, Neoptolemus, so turns to Hecuba :
“…All the feminine virtues that have been identified, I practiced living with Hector… The news of these virtues of mine reached the Achean camp and ruined me : once a prisoner, Achilles’s son, Neoptolemus, wanted me as his wife… If I remove my thinking of dear Hector to open my heart to my current husband, I will appear cowardly to the dead husband. But if I express aversion for the new spouse, I will attract the hatred of the masters… In you, Hector, I had found the ideal husband, you stood out for intelligence, lineage, wealth, value…”[9]
“…Dear daughter – Hecuba turns to his son’s wife - stop thinking about Hector : your tears will not bring him back to life. Instead, honour your new husband, offer him your sweetness. If you act like this, all your loved ones will be happy… and maybe our city could rise again.”[10]
In 423 b.C. Euripides had already performed ‘Andromache’, a dramatic and interesting but little-known text, which presents the woman of a new era, capable of resurrecting from mourning and who had earned esteem and respect from her new husband and his court. But the work had little success at Athens because Andromache was not of Greek lineage.
Then, in 412 b.C. and again at Athens, Euripides will perform ‘Helen’, a tragedy known as ‘tragicomedy’ because the tragic element is not there, if not in the very costly consequences of a naivety neglected for too long.
Marina Bilotta Membretti / Cernusco sul Naviglio – July 4 , 2019
[1] ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B.Contri – SIC Edizioni (1998), Sez. III 'I sessi nella legge. Sviluppo dell'articolo 8', 'Un'essenza assurda : 'La sessualità', 'Il sesso'. p.131 e segg.
[2] ‘Le Troiane’ 2019 – The Greek Theater of Siracusa, translated by Alessandro Grilli, directed by Muriel Mayette-Holtz, scenic design by Stefano Boeri, costumes by Marcella Salvo, music by Cyril Giroux. With Massimo Cimaglia, Francesca Ciocchetti, Maddalena Crippa, Elena Polic Greco, Clara Galante, Paolo Rossi, Marial Bajma Riva, Elena Arvigo, Riccardo Scalia, Graziano Piazza, Viola Graziosi, Fiammetta Poidomani, Doriana La Fauci.
[3] ‘Elena’ 2019 – The Greek Theater of Siracusa, translated by Walter Lapini, scenes and direction by Davide Livermore, costumes by Gianluca Falaschi, music by Andrea Chenna. With Laura Marinoni, Viola Marietti, Sax Nicosia, Maria Grazia Solano, Maria Chiara Centorami, Simonetta Cartia, Giancarlo Judica Cordiglia, Linda Gennari, Federica Quartana
[4] ‘Eneide’ by Publio Virgilio Marone, (Libro II, 49)
[5] ‘Il pensiero di natura. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, Giacomo B.Contri – SIC Edizioni (1998), Sez. III 'I sessi nella legge. Sviluppo dell'articolo 8', 'Un'essenza assurda : 'La sessualità', 'Il sesso' - p.137
[6] The passages chosen and reproduced here are taken from ‘Le Troiane’ by Euripides, I passi scelti e riproposti qui sono tratti dal testo de ‘Le Troiane’ by Euripides, first performed in 415 b.C. at Athens during the bloody Peloponnesian War, which finally – they say - led the Greeks to question themselves about the devastating consequences of their policies. The tragedy is set in the Greek camp in front of Troy.
[7] ‘Il pensiero di natura’. Dalla psicoanalisi al pensiero giuridico’, , Giacomo B.Contri – SIC Edizioni (1998), Sez. III 'I sessi nella legge. Sviluppo dell'articolo 8', 'Un'essenza assurda : 'La sessualità', 'Il sesso' - p.137
[8] From ‘Le Troiane’ 2019, translated by Alessandro Grilli, directed by Muriel Mayette-Holtz, scenic design by Stefano Boeri, costumes by Marcella Salvo, music by Cyril Giroux.
[9] From ‘Le Troiane’ 2019, translated by Alessandro Grilli, directed by Muriel Mayette-Holtz, scenic design by Stefano Boeri, costumes by Marcella Salvo, music by Cyril Giroux.
[10] From ‘Le Troiane’ 2019, cited.