Medea (Jahnn)

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Data
Title: Medea
Genus: tragedy
Original language: German
Author: Hans Henny Jahnn
Premiere: 1926
Place of premiere: State theater in Berlin
people
  • Jason , Greek
  • Medea , negress
  • Creon
  • The older boy and the younger boy
  • Boy leader , wet nurse , Creon's messenger , slaves of the house , the strange boy

Medea is a tragedy by the German writer and playwright Hans Henny Jahnn from 1925.

The drama

content

Medea , King's daughter of Colchis and priestess, helps the Argonaut Jason by sacrificing her younger brother to get the Golden Fleece . Fearing revenge, Jason and Medea flee to King Creon in Corinth . With magical magical powers, Medea gives Jason eternal youth, which she cannot give to herself. When Jason appears as a recruiter for his son at Creon's daughter, he falls in love with the king's daughter, marries her and casts out Medea. Out of spurned love, Jason takes revenge on Jason by killing her two sons with her own hands in wild anger.

Medea motif by Paul Cézanne
Jason representation by Bertel Thorvaldsen

History of origin

Jahnn had thoroughly familiarized himself with the Medea dramas by Euripides and Franz Grillparzer as well as with even older Medea myths ( Isis , Osiris ) and wrote the tragedy in a few months in 1925. When writing, he only partially adhered to the original Greek texts, for example changing and expanding individual storylines. He was then in a phase of depression; dismayed that - his future wife - Ellinor preferred his friend Harms, he let his anger and jealousy flow into the figure of Medea. Shortly before his death, Jahnn revised the text, which was mostly written in rhyming verse form; this second version has been used for the performances ever since.

reception

Thanks to the outstanding performance of Medea actress Agnes Straub, the premiere was a success, even though most of the well-known critics such as Kurt Pinthus and Alfred Kerr vehemently rejected the piece and B. wrote of “last instinctualities”. Also about the later performances, in addition to praising reviews, depending on the focus of the staging, because of the subject of boy love, the orgiastic excesses and extreme cruelty, there were sharp rejections. The critic Reinhard Kill described the drama as a “monstrous continuation” of the Argonaut saga and a “piece-monster”. From Hans Schwab-Felisch's point of view, the play has “dark, multi-layered persuasiveness. It's wild and raw and poetic. It sometimes irritates in its antiquated manner, cast in post-Expressionist language. But, it is a block, erratic, violent and powerful. ” The play, which is still controversial today, continues to attract directors to new productions.

In 1993 Hans-Jürgen von Bose composed a musical arrangement with the title Medea-Fragment .

Performances (selection)

Language, analysis, interpretations

Jahnn uses the stylistic devices of ancient tragedy for his Medea version : unity of time, place and action. The gruesome events do not take place on the stage, but are reported and portrayed by messengers. Jahnn's language is rich in images, "of austere simplicity and strict musicality" . He deals with racial prejudice and provokes the reader or viewer with the fact that his Medea is a black African. Medea is the all-embracing, boundless lover who, out of spurned love for her husband, rages against everything, not only against Creon and his daughter, but also - to punish Jason - against her sons, to whom she feels erotically drawn. It's also an anti-aging rage that she's exposed to, but Jason isn't. Jahnn portrays Medea as a “vengeful monster”, as a “demonic woman driven by elementary passions” . Siegmar Hohl sees in her a “self-portrayal of the archetype of the great mother ”. This mother goddess of the ancient legend loves as Medea in indomitable frenzy and finally destroys her own palace and the children of her innocent servant in her annoyance.

literature

Text output

  • Medea. Tragedy . Schauspiel-Verlag, Leipzig 1926
  • Medea. Tragedy . (2nd version). European Publishing House, Frankfurt / M. 1959
  • Medea. Tragedy . In: Hans Henny Jahnn. Dramas. Volume 1 . European publishing house, Frankfurt 1963
  • Medea. Tragedy . With an afterword by Heinz Ludwig Arnold . Reclam, Stuttgart 1966 (last: 1991, ISBN 3-15-008711-2 )
  • Medea . In: Hans Henny Jahnn. Works and diaries. Volume 4. Dramas . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1974, ISBN 3-455-03664-3 * Medea. Tragedy . In: Hans Henny Jahnn. Works in individual volumes. Dramas. 2 volumes, volume 1. 1917-1929 . (= Volume 6 of the Complete Edition). Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 978-3455038361
  • Médée . Traduit by Huguette et René Radrizzani. José Corti, Paris 2008, ISBN 978-2-7143-0663-0

Quote

Medea: “Woe to me, woe to me! Fate is fulfilled / the blackest. But I am given the power to do ugly things. / The power to be beautiful is used up. / I gave Jason youth, but I / gave birth myself. "

Secondary literature

  • Heinz Ludwig Arnold (ed.): Hans Henny Jahnn . Text + review No. 2/3. Munich 1980. ISBN 3-921402-78-6
  • Thomas Freeman: Hans Henny Jahnn. A biography . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1986. ISBN 3-455-08608-X
  • Walter Hinck: Movements of the beautiful person . In: " FAZ " of December 6, 1988
  • Herbert Ihering : Hans Henny Jahnn on the occasion of the "Medea" . In: "The literary world" of May 14, 1926
  • Konrad Kenkel: Medea Dramas. Demythization and remythization. Euripides, Klinger, Grillparzer, Jahnn, Anouilh . Bouvier, Bonn 1979. ISBN 3-416-01345-X
  • Siegfried Kienzle: Medea . In: Gero von Wilpert : “ Lexicon of world literature in characteristics and brief interpretations”. Stuttgart 1968
  • Reinhard Kill: Annealed embers . Rheinische Post, September 21, 1988
  • Hans Schwab-Felisch: The black Medea . FAZ from July 21, 1981
  • Christoph Vormweg: The first performance of the tragedy "Medea" by Hans Henny Jahnn on May 4, 1926 . In: " ZeitZeichen ". WDR 5 . Broadcast on May 4, 1996

Dissertations

  • Marketta Göbel-Uotila: Medea. Icon of the foreign and the other in European literature of the 20th century using the example of Hans Henny Jahnn, Jean Anouilh and Christa Wolf . Olms-Weidmann, Hildesheim 2005, ISBN 3-487-12789-X
  • Siegmar Hohl: The Medea drama by Hans Henny Jahnn. An interpretation with special consideration of the problematic of the mythical . Munich 1966
  • Andrea Mebus: Fight with the wall. The characters in Hans Henny Jahnn's early dramas between rebellion and adaptation. Peter Lang, Frankfurt 1992, ISBN 978-3631452028
  • Lu Mingjun: Madness of Medea. A study on Grillparzer's trilogy " The Golden Fleece " and Jahnn's drama "Medea". Mattes, Heidelberg 2013, ISBN 9783868090734 . Zugl. Diss. Phil. Shanghai International Studies University , 2009 content, at the German National Library . Description of contents on the publisher's website

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Thomas Freeman: Hans Henny Jahnn. A biography . Hamburg 1986
  2. ^ Jochen Meyer: Directory of the writings by and about Hans Henny Jahnn . Neuwied 1967. page 23
  3. ^ Rheinische Post , September 21, 1988
  4. ↑ The Black Madonna . In: "FAZ" of July 21, 1981
  5. ^ Elsbeth Wolffheim: Hans Henny Jahnn . Reinbek 1989. page 71
  6. ↑ ibid
  7. ↑ The Medea drama by Hans Henny Jahnn . Munich 1966. page 132
  8. ^ Text edition 1959, page 63