Jason and Medeia

by John Gardner

A modern retelling of the ancient Greek myth depicting the love of Jason, the hero who claimed the kingdom of Iolcus, and the princess of Caechis, Medeia

Genres: Poetry, Mythology, Fiction, Retellings, Fantasy, Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction

531 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

John Champlin Gardner was a well-known and controversial American novelist and university professor, best known for his novel Grendel, a retelling of the Beowulf myth.

Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father was a lay preacher and dairy farmer, and his mother taught English at a local school. Both parents were fond of Shakespeare and often recited literature together. As a child, Gardner attended public school and worked on his father's farm, where, in April of 1945, his younger brother Gilbert was killed in an accident with a cultipacker. Gardner, who was driving the tractor during the fatal accident, carried guilt for his brother's death throughout his life, suffering nightmares and flashbacks. The incident informed much of Gardner's fiction and criticism — most directly in the 1977 short story "Redemption," which included a fictionalized recounting of the accident.

From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gar...

Reviews

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

who thinks to DO this? seriously?

what kind of mind do you have to decide, self, today I will write an epic in the style of greek tragedies, and the tone of it will emulate a very excellent translation of such a tragedy. and it will be an absolute work of genius.

this kind of thing makes me feel dramatically unsmart. why in hell is it out of print?

[Salvador · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best of Gardner that I've read. It has replaced the original Agronautica in my mind. Very poetic and destructive.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five stars with some hesitation, but the few flaws are outweighed by massive intelligence and poetic brilliance. Those might actually be the flaws too, as products of the indulgence Gardner displays here. The book explodes on nearly every page with a sesquipedalian vocabulary and sensational borrowings from Greek myths that are weaved together for effect. To write something like this, a 500 page poem which summarizes the Jason story, encrusts it with gems of philosophy, wit, and violence, and then puts it in the mouth of a twentieth-century narrator who witnesses it all behind the screen of a protecting goddess -- well, it's either appalling or utterly incredible. In the hands of a lesser author this would be horrifying stuff. But like Dizzy Dean said, it ain't braggin' if you can back it up.

[Bill FromPA · Rating 3 out of 5]

The bulk of this novel in verse is made up of translations, sometimes very free, with interpolated commentary and scene-setting, of Apollonius and Euripides. A modern day narrator tells the story as it appears to him in a “dream”. This narrative ploy reminded me of Lessingham in The Worm Ouroboros, though, unlike Eddison’s character, Gardner’s anonymous witness is present throughout the tale and sometimes seems to have a physical presence in the mythical past where the story is set. Gods and goddesses are occasionally present, visible to and sometimes interacting with the narrator, though the human characters in the story are not directly aware of them.
Chapter 2 begins:

In Corinth, on a winding hillside street, stood an old house,
its stone blackened by many rains, great hallways dark
with restive shadows of vines, alive though withered, waiting –
listening for wind, a sound from the bottom of the sea – climbing
crumbling walls, dropping their ancient, silent weight
from huge amphoras suspended by chains from the ceiling beams.
“The house of the witch,” it was called by children of the neighborhood.
They came no nearer than the outer protective wall of darkening
brick. They played there, peeking in from the midnight shade
of olive trees that by half a century out-aged
the oldest crone in Corinth. They spied with rounded eyes
through the leaves, whispering, watching the windows for strange lights,
alarming themselves to sharp squeals by the flicker of a bat,
the moan of an owl, the dusty stare of a humpbacked toad
on the ground near where the vines began.

I guess that can be considered “free verse”, though there seems to be a skeletal hexameter giving it structure. Gardner sprinkles his text with neologisms, archaic terms, and borrowings from other languages, which, along with the verse itself, gives the novel the feeling of being an artifact of a distant past and alien culture, though there are occasional intentional anachronisms, 20th century terms or references which remind the reader of both the character of the narrator and the reader's own situation.
Here’s a section that more-or-less directly translates The Argonautica, albeit treats it as a narration by Jason, from Chapter 9:

                              "But Herakles, son of Zeus,
left us to work on the feast by ourselves and set out, alone –
attended by unseen ravens, the night’s historians –
for the woods, anxious before all else to make himself an oar
to replace the one he’d broken. He wandered around till at last
he discovered a pine not burdened much with branches, and not
full grown – a pine like a slender young polar in height and girth.
When he saw it would do, he laid his bow and quiver down,
took off his loinskin, and began by loosening the pine’s hold
with blows of his bronze-studded club. Then he trusted to his own power.
Legs wide apart, one mighty shoulder pressed against the tree,
he seized the trunk low down with his hands and, pulling so hard
his temples bulged, face dark with blood, he tore up the pine
by the roots. It came up clods and all, like a ship’s mast torn
from its stays, the wedges and pins coming with it, when sudden fashes
break without warning as Orion sets in anger. When he’d rested,
he picked it up, along with his bows and arrows, loinskin
and club, and started back, balancing the tree on his shoulder.

As the Argo voyages in unknown seas, the sailors encounter visions, which seem to be of the future, huge ships following in their wake, vast seas of dead bodies, and perhaps nuclear annihilation. This is a deeply pessimistic book, telling not just of the bitter fate of Jason, but weaving in characters and incidents from Greek epic and tragedy, as well as Gardner’s own enigmatic images of apocalypse, to undermine all confidence in the honor and morality of man and the possibility of his survival.

nothing is stable, nothing – nay, not even misery – sure

The novel as a whole seems a mixture that does not quite come together: translation and re-telling,prose-like verse, modern sensibilities applied to ancient beliefs. I think the main problem was Gardner's reliance on extensive sections of translated text rather than completely re-working the material to suit his form; we don’t get the muse singing through the author, as with a true epic, but transcriptions at second-hand of the muse-inspired ancients. However, Gardner has tried something unusual, and whatever its failings, his book leaves the impression of a noble attempt at bringing a new level of grandeur and tragedy to the modern novel, aiming high, but falling short, like Icarus, one of the Greek myths not mentioned in Jason and Medeia.

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I play the chancy world like a harp tuned by a half-mad satyr on a foreign isle, finding its secrets out by feel.

Modern (1971) retelling of classic Greek myth in blank verse, complete with glasses- and hat-wearing “modern” narrator. Monumental effort—to write and to read. Countless inexcusable anachronisms. Not bad, in fact well done, but a waste of time.

“See it to the end. The gods require it.”

Modifies Greek mythology to suit his story, changing attributes of the gods and rewriting their history, a practice as old as Greek mythology itself. And, like classic Greek tales, no trivia is too small to include. The rabbit trails have rabbit trails. Leavened with modern Western and Eastern (circa 1971) philosophy, religion, and physics.

Nothing is impossible! Nothing is definite! Be calm! Be brave!

[El · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a retelling of the myth of Jason and Medea written by a modern writer for modern readers. Gardner makes a point in the beginning of pointing out that while the narrative structure of the story in poem format is similar to classic epics, the language is mostly modern. This version of the classic myth starts with Jason and Medea living in exile after taking the golden fleece. He is telling the adventure to Kreon, all the while giving Kreon's daughter, Pyripta, sex-eyes. The rest of the story is similar to the version told by Euripides in that Medea gets peeved and takes out her aggressions and frustrations on her children to get back at Jason and all live less-than-happily-ever-after.

Years ago I had read Gardner's book, Grendel, being as in love with Beowulf as I am. I was unhappy with the retelling from the monster's point of view and felt that it could in no way live up to the original story. This modern retelling of Gardner's is much stronger, much more solid and quite convincing.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brilliant epic poem written very much in the style of the Homeric Epics.
It is amazing the way Gardner is able to adapt his style - from the style of Ian Fleming when he continued the James Bond series, to himself, and to Grendel in which he successfully captured the spirit of the Middle English work he was responding to.
A brilliant writer and a great shame that this work is so difficult to buy due to it being out of print.
It will appeal to a small audience of those interested in the classics.

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reread.

[Juliette · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gardner is an academic, not a poet, and J&M is a product of academia. It is cold, calculated, sterile, and joyless. Even that most famous war epic, The Iliad (Mitchell’s translation, not Fitzgerald’s), was streaked with joy — because it was composed by a poet.

But let’s talk about the bigotry in this poem. Gardner belabors his theme of time and eternity, but J&M is horribly passé. (Or maybe we have different concepts of morality.)
J&M was published in 1973, and Gardner must have written through the Civil Rights movement, during the Stonewall riots, and after the wars in Asia. At least, he must have been aware that those events occurred or that people are human beings.
So, I am befuddled by his carefully conceived prejudices. The characters who oppose Jason are derided for their sexuality. I tried to excuse this: perhaps making him a bigot was a subtle prod for us to hate Jason? But, no, the first instance of bigotry occurs before Jason steps on the page; it comes from the 20th century speaker:

He spoke to his neighbors — a fat man,
a prominent lord out of Asia known as Koprophoros.
His slanted eyes were large and strangely luminous,
eyes like a Buddha’s, an Egyptian king’s. . . . .
he was vast—so fat he was frightening—and painted like a harlot . . . .
Not a man in the hall could be sure
if the monster was female or male—smooth-faced as a mushroom, an alto;
by all indications (despite his pretense) a transvestite, or gelded.
And yet he had come to contend for the princess’ hand—came filled
with sinister confidence.

(pp. 10-11) I concede that Gardner and I are from different generations, and time, thankfully, has helped the evolution of LGBT rights, but I am saddened that he would dislike a group of people so much that he would select them for unwarranted mockery. Is that description of Koprophoros necessary? Not in the least. The language that Gardner chooses to describe Koprophoros (e.g., “monster” and “sinister”) and the general tone of horror conveys a hatred of transgender people.
(Did you catch the racism in there as well?)
Jason’s nemesis, Pelias, was described as odious, and presumed homosexual actions were given as examples:

He’d sit with his head to one side,
lambishly timid, and he’d ogle like a girl, admiring me.
‘Noble Jason,’ he’d call me, with lips obscenely wet,
and he’d stroke my fingers like an elderly homosexual,
his head drawn back, as if fearing an angry slap.

(p. 256) Gardner does not use this description to evoke any sympathy for Pelias. His actions are “obscene” (albeit in Jason’s eyes), and Pelias behaves with contrition (“fearing an angry slap”) for his admiration. Again, I found this scene to be unnecessary to the character or plot development. It was simply another vehicle for Gardner to display his distaste for the LGBT (or the gay and transgender) community whose most famous push for fair treatment began in 1969.
In contrast, Gardner describes the relationship of Hylas and the Argonauts’ hero Herakles as strictly filial:

Herakles himself had trained the boy
in the business of a squire. He’d had the boy since the day he struck down
Hylas’ father, Theiodamas, king of the Dryopians. . . .
He took the child from the basket beside
the field and brought it up, made the boy his servant—trained him
as a shepherd trains up a loyal, unquestioning dog.

There’s no hint of the alternate myth wherein Hylas and Herakles are lovers. Here would have been a fitting place for a positive representation of homosexuality, if Gardner wanted. All representations of homosexuality are negative.

Overall, I found the poem to be boring and self-indulgent. That’s enough reason for me to rate the poem with one-star. The examples of homophobia and transphobia were jarring episodes. I chose not to write about Jason’s boasts of violently raping a slave, but I could have written about that too. I could have written about the racism. The only moments that stand-out for me are the ones when I was simply horrified.
I admit that I haven’t read much Greek literature, and John Gardner is presented as the godfather of every fawning literature student. Even so, I’ve read enough in my 28-years of literacy to know what I like, and I don’t like this.

[cheeseblab · Rating 3 out of 5]

As anyone who has read Greek or Roman poetry in translation knows, the central challenge for such translations is that those languages have radically different conventions of versification than does English poetry, and the translator needs to find a way to reflect the quantification of the older forms in a language that doesn't play by quantification rules. So it seems particularly perverse for a native-English-speaking poet to write an original poem designed to seem like a Greek epic translated into English. For most of these 10,000+ long, galloping lines, though, John Gardner pulls it off convincingly:
| Softly,
my guide, invisible around me, spoke. "Poor dim-eyed stranger,
you've understood the question, at least. Look! Look hard!
Study their eyes, windows of the world you seek and they
have not yet dreamed the price of: the timeless instant.

The narrative structure of the poem is particularly interesting, much of it consisting of Jason, politically angling for a new bride, telling the story of the Argonauts at the court of Kreon--a story that, of course, includes many smaller stories, told by many nested narrators. But then suddenly we have an "I"--and this turns out to be a twentieth-century glasses-wearing classicist much like John Gardner, an invisible observer who sometimes becomes visible, or at least spectral--or at least imagines himself to be so. And then suddenly the modern narrator is aware of an invisible and then spectral presence who resolves herself as Hekate's priestess herself. At one point there are so five nested pairs of quotation marks, plus the external narrative.

Unfortunately, the disastrous climax of the story--beautifully foreboded throughout--is itself rather flat and anticlimactic. But it's a fine ride until then.

[Judith Shadford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gardner was one of my first, earth-shaking mentors, though deceased when I discovered him. So I've kind of saved Jason and Medeia for what has turned out to be a slog. If someone else had written it, I would have dumped it. But, John Gardner...
Been thinking about it much of today and have two conclusions. It's better than I have given it credit for. I have a cheap paperback edition. So his writing the tale in epic style poetry for much of the narrative is just annoying. No line fits across the page. Just bad. Visually constructed by someone who couldn't read English and wasn't interested in trying. (Not a literal statement, just what it looks like.) One reviewer referred to Gardner's "blank verse in the freely syllabled six-beaters which Richmond Lattimore used to translate Homer" and complained that there was nothing gorgeous achieved. True.
But if I think of it, not as the story of two characters, but as the story of a universe of emotion both seduced by and at war with the universe of reason, then I get cohesion. Gods and goddesses drifting in, sometimes interested, sometimes pissed off and these two mighty forces who must lust after each other and must forever seek destruction--then I get something john Gardner wrote. But a beautiful edition would help.

[Mirek Jasinski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this epic poem some 30 years ago and for some unexplained reason I feel the urge to read it again.

[John Ferreira · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this book on my shelf for years. Don't remember when I got it. It must have been after I read "October Light" also by John Gardner. I enjoyed that book.

I didn't enjoy this book that much. I finished it. I pulled it down from my shelf because I wanted to read something I didn't need to think about much. Also, I thought it would be an easy and quick read. For the most part it was easy. Rather than read it like poetry, I read it like prose. Which made it quicker than if there were paragraphs. I also read it to clear up some of the books that have been languishing for years waiting to be read.

I now have some knowledge of the stories of Jason and Medea. I just chugged along without consulting a dictionary.

Gardner uses a lot of big or obscure words. I just chugged along without consulting a dictionary. I was at times confused at from whose viewpoint the story was being told. At times it was Jason. Others it was Medea. Then there was the omnipresent narrator, who I couldn't identify.

[Lloyd Potter · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love Classical Greek mythology, and are looking for a re telling (with an very fresh and curious narration style) of a immortal tale then you need to read this work. I’ve always admired the life in Gardners writing, and even his writing style in this, heroic verse, bursts with soul and pathos and a deeply human feeling. Not to mention the entire poem is just layered with downright beautiful images and deeply philosophical questing, both of which I appreciate greatly from a mind such as Gardners! Hail Zeus, Father of the Sky; hail Hera, Queen Goddess of Will, and hail Athena, the grey eyed goddess of Wisdom and Mind; and hail Aphrodite, She of Love who raises and lowers all.

[Evermore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tremendous

It has been a long time since I've read John Gardner. Too long. He is truly a master and this book demonstrates that fact. Enjoy it.

[Dade Cariaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://dadecariaga.blogspot.com/2011/...

[Nathan Jerpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awe-inspiring. Lights the way for what verse can do in fantasy.