Vol. 22 · No. 1 · Issue 70 · Spring 2004

Robert Pirro, Political Science, Georgia Southern University

Download full article (115 KB) [subscribers only]

Abstract

In foregoing this opportunity of political leadership, Wolf lost the chance to bring her vision of an East German self fit for a truly democratic community directly to bear on postcommunist German politics. In her return to Greek tragic myth as literary form and subject after unification, we may nevertheless see a continuing aspiration to exert an influence upon the German "national spirit" akin to the influence of the Greek tragedians (as imagined by Werner Jaeger among many others) upon the political culture of their day.48 Of course, the political effect one might expect from the publication of a new adaptation of the Medea myth in today's mass-media saturated world is negligible, especially when one compares it to the political effect an ancient tragedy, publicly staged as the central part of a civic festival venerating Dionysus, might have had upon the inhabitants of a polis. (Even compared with Kassandra, which was a bestseller in the two Germanies and continues to be reissued in German and foreign-language editions, Medea: Stimmen has not drawn a large readership and has had little cultural resonance.49) The effort of Christa Wolf to return to Greek tragic myth as a source of reflection and creative inspiration is nevertheless noteworthy.