MEDEAMATERIAL - Heiner Müller – trans. Carl Weber
This text needs the naturalism of the stage. MEDEAMATERIAL can be performed at a lake near Straussberg that is muddy swimming pool in Beverly Hills or the baths of a psychiatric hospital.
MEDEA
Jason My first one and my last one Nurse
Where is my husband
NURSE
With Creon’s daughter woman
MEDEA
Did you say with Creon
NURSE
With Creon’s daughter
MEDEA
Did you say with Creon’s daughter Yes
Why not with Creon’s daughter who has power
Over her father Creon who alone
Can grant to us the right to live in Corinth
Or drive us out to other foreign shores
Right now perhaps he is embracing Jason
In supplication her unwrinkled knees
For me and for his sons whom he loves
Are you crying or laughing Nurse
NURSE
Lady I
Am older than my crying or my laughter
MEDEA
How are you living in your body’s ruins
Together with the ghosts of your youth Nurse
Bring me a mirror This is not Medea
Jason
JASON
Woman what voice is this
MEDEA
I
Am not welcome here That death would reap me
It’s three times five nights that you Jason didn’t
Ask for me With this your voice you did not
And did not with a slave’s voice nor
With hands nor with a glance
JASON
What do you want
MEDEA
Die
JASON
I’ve heard that often
MEDEA
Does this body
Mean nothing anymore to you Jason
Do you want to drink my blood
JASON
When will this end
MEDEA
When did it begin
Jason
JASON
What were you before I came woman
MEDEA
Medea
You owe me a brother Jason
JASON
Two sons I gave you for one brother
MEDEA
You Me Do you love then Jason your sons
Do you then want them back your sons
They’re yours What can be mine being your slave
All of me is your tool and all things from me
For you I killed for you I did give birth
I’ve been your bitch your whore is what I was
I but a rung on your ladder of fame
Anointed with your feces your foe’s blood
And if in memory of your victory
Over my country and my people that
Was my treason you want to make a wreath
From their entrails to adorn your temples
They’re yours I own the images of those
Who have been slain the screams of all the tortured
Since I left Colchis left my home to follow
Your bloody tracks the blood of my own kind
Into my new and only home now treason
Blind to the images deaf to the screams
Was I until you tore the tightened net
Knitted of mine and of your lust
That was our home an alien country now
I stand disjointed in its mesh
The ashes of your kisses on my lips
Between my teeth the sand of our years
On my skin only my own sweat
Your breath a stench of alien bed
A man gives death in parting to his woman
My death it has no body now but yours
If you’re my man then I am still your woman
Oh could I bite her out of you your whore
To whom you have betrayed me and my treason
That was your lust once Thanks for your treason
That gives me back both of my eyes again
To see what I saw once the images
You’ve painted with the boots of your crew Jason
Unto my Colchis ears to hear again
The music you once played upon the corpses
The bones the graves of those who were my people
With your crew’s hands and with mine
Who was your bitch and who has been your whore
And my brother oh my brother Jason
Whom I threw unto your pursuers path
Dismembered he by these my sister hands
To help you to escape from our father
You’d robbed His father and mine Do you love
Your sons You want to have them back your sons
You still owe me a brother Jason
Whom do you love more Dog or bitch
When you gladeye your father and
Later his new bitch and the king
Of the dogs in Corinth here her father
Maybe your place is there then at his trough
Take Jason what you gave to me
The fruits of treason that grew from your seed
And stuff it into your whore’s eager womb
My bridal present for your and her wedding
Go with your father who does love you So much
He kicks away your mother the barbarian
Who burdens you on your way to the top
Don’t you want to sit at royal tables
I was the milkcow now I am your footstool
You’d like to Don’t I see your eyes agleam
With the coming gladness of filled bellies
Why do you cling to the barbarian
Who is your mother and your blemish too
Actors you are the children of base treason
So sink your teeth into my heart and go
With your father who did the same before you
Leave me the children Jason one more day
And then I will go into my own desert
You still owe me a brother Jason
I can’t hate for long what you love
Love comes and goes I wasn’t prudent was I
Forgetting that No grudge shall be between us
Here take my bridal gown as bridal gift for
My lips can’t say the word with ease your bride
Who will embrace your body Who will cry
On your shoulder will sometimes moan in the heat
The gown of love my other skin
Embroidered by the hand of her who has been robbed
With gold from Colchis and dyed with the blood from
The bridal feast of fathers brothers sons
It shall adorn your new love just as if
It were my skin So I’ll be close to you
Close to your love and far away from me
Go now to your new wedding Jason go
I’ll turn the bride into a wedding torch
Watch your Mother stage a play for you
You want to see the new bride all aflame
The bridal gown of the barbarian has
The gift to weld an alien skin with death
Wounds and scars they make a splendid poison
The ash that was my heart is spewing fire
The bride is young Her hide is smoothly stretched
Not wasted yet by age nor any breeding
It’s on her body that I write my play
I want to hear your laughter when she screams
Before midnight she will be all aflame
My sun will rise at Corinth’s nightly sky
I want to see your laughter when it rises
And share my joy with you who are my children
The groom he enters now the bridal chamber
And now he places at the young bride’s feet
The barbarian’s bridal gown the bridal
Present soaked in my sweat of submission
Now see the whore she struts before the mirror
And now the gold of Colchis seals her pores
Planting a field of knives into her flesh
The barbarian’s bridal gown it celebrates
Its wedding Jason of your virgin bride
The first night will be mine It is the last one
She screams now Have you ears to hear the scream
Like Colchis screamed when you were in my womb
And still screams Have you ears to hear the scream
She burns Hey laugh I want to see you laugh
My play it is a farce Why don’t you laugh
What tears Tears for the bride My little ones
My traitors No you did not cry for nothing
I want to cut you right out of my heart
My heartflesh My remembrance My beloved
Give back to me my blood out of your veins
Back into my womb you who are my entrails
Today is payday Jason Your Medea
Will collect her debts today
Can you laugh now Death is but a present
And from my hands you shall receive the gift
I broke off forever all the bridges
To what I once called home Now I will do
The same for this my foreign shore with these
My human hands so it won’t be a home
To you a mockery to me Alas
Would I’d remained the animal I was
Before my man made me into his woman
Medea The barbarian Now despised
With these my hands the hands of the barbarian
Well steeped in lye torn by the needle skinned
I want to break mankind apart in two
And live within the empty middle I
No woman and no man What do you scream
Worse than death is to grow old You’d kiss
The hand that gives you death if you knew life
That was Corinth Who are you Who has dressed
You in the bodies of my little children
What animal is hiding in your eyes
Do you play dead You won’t deceive the mother
You’re actors nothing but liars and traitors
Inhabited by dogs rats snakes you are
It barks it squeaks it hisses I can hear it
O I am wise I am Medea I
Don’t you have blood left Now it is all quiet
The screams of Colchis silenced too And nothing left
JASON
Medea
MEDEA
Nurse Do you know this man