I’ve been translating Ovid’s setting of Jason and Medea on and off for about two years now, when I have time, which is seldom. I hadn’t thought of it recently until today, when people began tweeting in response to a statement by some politician from Texas, something to the effect that it’d be better to let the elderly die than to have the economy suffer, which, if true, is just an awful thing to think, much less to say. Apparently, some oldsters, hearing that pronouncement, have signed up, telling their grandchildren that they’d gladly give up a few of their last years if it meant that the ones they love could depend more completely on a steady paycheck, etc. I know they mean it as a sweetness, a selfless gift, but it is completely nuts to think that any loving child would take the trade. Thinking that to myself while scrolling, I recalled why I pictured the word “obscene,” in response.
That’s when I recalled this section of the Medea story wherein Jason offers to shave off a few of his years to give to his ailing father. The gods answer in rebuke.
The Trade
14.
Glad their boys haven’t been killed
or lost to one of the hundred hazards
they must have happened on, pious
parents rejoice, and, true to their various
whispered words, oaths in hope of safety,
make good and slay the appropriate
gilt-horned bull.
One jubilant dad is absent: Jason’s.
Aeson is old and fading fast into that
last sleep. So son offers some of his
years, pressing bold Medea thus: you are virtue.
You are strength. You saved and made me.
I can’t say how deeply I’m yours, how much I trust…
Is it even possible? Can you, through some
magic blade, some potion or prayer,
shave a portion of my days and give them
to him? He pleads and weeps and she,
moved by that piety, remembers her Aeetes,
but answers with rebuke.
How dare you? Would I take even a day
from my husband? May Hecate prevent
such injustice. But I can try, leaving
yours, to lengthen his. Hecate help me realize this.
15.
When its placid face had filled out,
and the moon come full circle, Medea
went out wandering--unshod,
unkept, hair uncombed and hanging
like her robe--through the great quiet
evening. Every breathing thing
was so deep in tranquility they might
well have been underwater. Even the plants
held their breath. The only motion: the
twittering stars, and her, reaching up, then
whirling, whirling like the planets, she cupped
the stream and held it aloft, a handful
of water over her head. And again. And again.
And then, a hymn.
—an excerpt from The Medea trans. Mischa Willett 2020