MEDEIA MATERIAL

The myth of Medeia accompanied Heiner Müller for more than thirty years, until the end of his life as a writer. The character appears in fragments written shortly after the war. H. Müller declares that he was inspired by three Medeias: that of Euripides, foundational and unrepeatable, that of Seneca, probably written only to be read, harsh, without body, and that of Hans Henny Jahn, premiered in 1926, a black Medeia. He considers that Medeia and the Argonauts symbolize the passage from myth to history, are the original moment of organized colonization. And above all, he sees in the myth the possibility of forcing his contemporaries to remake their position in the world, abandoning univocal solutions. This Medeia reproduces the sense of the myth: the love that subjugates the female by betraying and murdering her clan; the civilizations that move towards totalitarian, coercive rationality, as a demonstration of force. Müller's play maintains the primitive bloodiness: a behavior prior to reason that endures in the mystery of human instincts.