Medea

Hurt is unrelenting, yet something subsists in spite of it.

Betrayed by her thankless husband, the witch exacts retribution. She slays her offspring, then dispatches Jason’s lover a golden coronet and dress, both barbed with poison. All protagonists perish save for the sorceress, who flees and inaugurates a further chapter of her life in Athens. Later, she returns to Colchis or – if Herodotus is to be believed – settles among the Aryans. All is forgotten.

It cannot but be a waste, an incomprehensible gesture, a spell of folly. To slaughter one’s own kin to wipe out any remaining specks of semen; to quell the body of he who bore half your progeny. Yet the deed had to be done. No other path would have been as satisfactory.

This is a tale not of vengefulness, but of justice. Against those who would have her believe that the sting of betrayal can be overcome; against those who would have her believe that a feigned turn of the other cheek (an anachronism) could have led her down the path of tameness and civility, she quickens her will with a purity of intent stark enough to obliterate the past, beyond forgetting and forgiveness.

As for us, contentedly pacing to and fro amid our century’s quagmire, we quake at the mere thought of defiance. ‘Our debts are heavy enough as is! We cannot so much as dream of shaking off their yoke!’ We cannot conceive of existence beyond our burdens, yet each and every one of us knows this to be the truth: there is bad blood between we, the weak, and those to whom we’ve lost and to whom we still yield, day after day.

Solely immolation can reverse such an affront. Solely folly.