Page 12 - GALIET EURIPIDES´MACARIA´S GIFTS: The Angel IV

Galiet & Galiet
My character. To know there is no resuscitation. To be an exile: not to have a land. To be persecuted. Displaced. Rejected. Not to be. To be an outcast and maiden. To be in danger because of high birth. Still to be driven out, expulsed, and wander from land to land, from Argos to Marathon, in this frame of time, of space, with grandmother, Iolaus and siblings to avoid being stoned to death. To have lost it all, lest our name: the name that curses and yet might save. To become exhausted, to fear, to hold unto her feeble hands. Vagabonds. To suffer and in this suffering, learn. To face the shutting of doors on one’s face, to be shun, yet to move on, to go on, to seek permanence, a refuge 3⁄4 a land to land on 3⁄4 with tears hanging on one’s throat, foreign as it must be, to hope for it, it is to find a place, in time, a place to call home. A home that becomes a land, a landcoming, a homecoming, a coming home. A sanctuary, a land-escape becoming a landscape. This knowing is a temple, Zeus,’ and we supplicate and pray, day and day, and implore, more and more, for some mercy, some hope. Yes, Demophon’s mercy: an embrace for weary, tormented souls. Yet, not to be Macaria, to remain inside the temple, unseen, invisible, silenced, hearing (478) only partially what transpires. To remain within, with Alcmene and sisters, secluded, because it is improper. Not proper for young maidens to be near. Near them, a crowd taking a stand at an altar (42-43). To supplicate, and in this supplicating, understand. To half exist. Until there comes a time one must gather fragments and be who one is, and stand, and stand for something like an olive tree. That is to exist.
To be constructed, made, to have Euripides piece me in Children of Heracles2, to be blessed, to know what the audience yet unknows of me, Macaria. First, this essay is to show the importance of Iolaus in understanding my background. Then, it shall speak of many of my character constructions: my name, my actions and my language, my sacrifice. A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, till thy
2 Euripides. Heracles and Other Plays. Trans. Waterfield, Robin. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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