Cassandra (German : Kassandra) is a 1983 novel by the German author Christa Wolf. [1] [2] It has since been translated into a number of languages.
Swiss composer Michael Jarrell has adapted the novel for speaker and instrumental ensemble, and his piece has been performed frequently.
Cassandra's narrative begins by describing her youth, when she was Priam's favorite daughter and loved to sit with him as he discussed politics and matters of state. Her relationship with her mother, Hecuba, however, was never as intimate, since Hecuba recognized Cassandra's independence. At times their interactions are tense or even cold, notably when Hecuba does not sympathize with Cassandra's fear of the god Apollo's gift of prophecy or her reluctance to accept his love. When she ultimately refuses him, he curses her so that no one will believe what she prophesies.
When Cassandra is presented among the city's virgins for deflowering, she is chosen by Aeneas, who makes love to her only later. Nonetheless, she falls in love with him, and is devoted to him despite her liaisons with others, including Panthous — indeed, she imagines Aeneas whenever she is with anyone else.
It is Aeneas' father Anchises who tells Cassandra of the mission to bring Hesione, Priam's sister who was taken as a prize by Telamon during the first Trojan War, back from Sparta. Not only do the Trojans fail to secure Hesione, they also lose the seer Calchas during the voyage, who later aids the Greeks during the war.
When Menelaus visits Troy to offer a sacrifice, he rebukes the impertinence of Cassandra's brother Paris, who has recently returned to Troy and been reclaimed as Priam and Hecuba's son, though as a child he was abandoned because of a prophecy. His words provoke Paris, who insists that he will travel to Sparta, and if Hesione is not returned to him, he will take Helen. The tension increases when Cassandra experiences a sort of fit and collapses, having foreseen the war and fall of Troy. By the time she recovers, Paris has sailed to Sparta and returned, bringing Helen, who wears a veil.
Cassandra soon begins to suspect—but does not want to believe—that Helen is not in Troy, after all. No one is permitted to see her, and Cassandra has seen Paris' former wife Oenone leaving his room. However, she is unable to accept that Troy—that her father—would continue to prepare for a war if its premise were false. When Paris finally tells her explicitly what she already knows, she protests to her father, but he rejects her plea to negotiate peace and orders her to be silent. Thus Cassandra's traditional role—as the seeress who tells the truth but is not believed—is reinterpreted. She knows the truth, but Priam knows it too; she cannot persuade anyone of the truth, but only because she is forbidden to speak of it. Although she feels miserable, she still loves and trusts Priam and cannot betray his secret.
Although Priam's political motives ostensibly drive Troy to war, the palace guard Eumelos is the true force behind the conflict. He manipulates Priam and the public until they believe the war is necessary and forget that the stakes are nothing but Helen. Gradually he increases the pressure on the Trojan population, including Cassandra. Anchises explains that Eumelos, by convincing the Trojans that the Greeks were enemies and inciting them to fight, made his own military state necessary and was thus able to rise to power.
One of Eumelos' guards, Andron, becomes Polyxena's lover, but when Achilles demands her in exchange for Hector's body, Andron does not object—rather, he offers her to Achilles without remorse. Later Eumelos plans to lure Achilles into a trap by stationing Polyxena in the temple. For Polyxena's sake Cassandra refuses to comply with his scheme, threatening to reveal it. Priam promptly has her imprisoned in the heroes' graveyard. Eumelos executes his plan after all, and Achilles is killed, requesting as he dies that Odysseus sacrifice Polyxena at his grave for her betrayal. Later when the Greeks come to take her away, Polyxena asks Cassandra to kill her, but Cassandra has discarded her dagger and cannot spare her sister.
When the defeat is imminent, Cassandra meets Aeneas for the last time, and he asks her to leave Troy with him. She refuses because she knows that he will be forced to become a hero, and she cannot love a hero.
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Cassandra's experience during the Trojan War parallels Christa Wolf's personal experience as a citizen of East Germany:[ citation needed ] during the Cold War, a police state much like Eumelos' Troy. Wolf, too, was familiar with censorship; in fact, Cassandra was censored when it was initially published. The novel, besides criticizing repression, emphasizes issues of marginalization as well. Cassandra is of course a marginalized figure because of her role as seeress, but Wolf focuses more on her role as a woman. It is not until Cassandra lives in a community with other women, literally at the margin of the city, that she identifies with a group and includes herself in it by the pronoun "we." Cassandra is certainly interesting as a reinterpretation of history and literature by an otherwise rather obscure character. However, the novel is truly compelling because Cassandra's individual character and her individual voice are symbolic of all female characters and their voices that have been underrepresented by past writers.[ weasel words ]
Cassandra is narrated from the perspective of Cassandra, seeress and daughter of King Priam of Troy. Not only is this representation of Cassandra distinct from those in classical works [3] because of her unique narrative voice, but also this version of the story of the Trojan War, through its contradiction or reversal of many of the legends that are traditionally associated with the War. Cassandra's narration, which is presented as an internal monologue in stream-of-consciousness style, begins on Agamemnon's ship to Mycenae, where—as Cassandra knows—she will soon be murdered by Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra. As she prepares to face her death, she is overwhelmed by emotions, and both to distract herself from and to make sense of them, she occupies her thoughts with reflections on the past. Throughout the novel Cassandra spends a good deal of time in introspection, examining and even critiquing her personality, her perspective, and her motives as she was growing up in Troy. She particularly regrets her naiveté, and more than anything her pride. Although it becomes clear that she was ultimately powerless to oppose the political forces supporting the war and thus to prevent the disaster at Troy, she nonetheless feels that she is to blame—and if only indirectly for the war, then quite directly for her sister Polyxena's death. She is also remorseful that her final disagreement with Aeneas ended on an angry note, even though she thinks Aeneas—on a rational level—understood her motives. As Cassandra reminisces about Troy, her complex relationships with Aeneas and Polyxena—relationships without precedent in the classical canon—serve not only to contextualize her experience of the Trojan War within the broader tradition, but also to humanize her, as do her interactions with Priam, Aeneas' father Anchises, and Panthous, the Greek priest. Aeneas, though his presence both in Troy and in the novel is scarce, is perhaps the most significant of these, and in several of the brief moments when Cassandra's thoughts return to the present, they are addressed to him. Her narrative finally seems to represent Cassandra's desperate effort to justify, both to Aeneas and to herself, her fate.
Cassandra or Kassandra in Greek mythology was a Trojan priestess dedicated to the god Apollo and fated by him to utter true prophecies but never to be believed. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate a person whose accurate prophecies, generally of impending disaster, are not believed.
The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BCE. The war was waged by the Achaeans (Greeks) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most notably Homer's Iliad. The core of the Iliad describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus, one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems, which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid.
In Greek mythology and later art, the name Hesione refers to various mythological figures, of whom the Trojan princess Hesione is most known.
Hecuba was a queen in Greek mythology, the wife of King Priam of Troy during the Trojan War.
In Greek mythology, Polyxena was the youngest daughter of King Priam of Troy and his queen, Hecuba. She does not appear in Homer, but in several other classical authors, though the details of her story vary considerably. After the fall of Troy, she dies when sacrificed by the Greeks on the tomb of Achilles, to whom she had been betrothed and in whose death she was complicit in many versions.
In Greek mythology, Helenus was a gentle and clever seer. He was also a Trojan prince as the son of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy, and the twin brother of the prophetess Cassandra. He was also called Scamandrios, and was a lover of Apollo.
In Greek mythology, Polymestor or Polymnestor was a king of the Bistonians in Thrace. Polymestor appears in Euripides' play Hecuba and in the Ovidian myth "Hecuba, Polyxena and Polydorus". Polymestor was also the name of a Greek king of Arcadia.
In Greek mythology, Deiphobus was a son of Priam and Hecuba. He was a prince of Troy, and the greatest of Priam's sons after Hector and Paris. Deiphobus killed four men of fame in the Trojan War.
Talthybius was herald and friend to Agamemnon in the Trojan War. Talthybius is a Greek soldier who serves as both a messenger and a herald during the time of the Trojan War. Only two mortal men are present in Euripides’ play The Trojan Women, and Talthybius is the one who interacts with the Trojan women the most. Although he represents a hostile nation, he surprisingly shows his vulnerable side and affection towards these women. Even though he must obey orders he does make an effort to lessen their suffering. Talthybius is a complex character who tries to be empathetic despite enabling the rape and enslavement of Troy's women.
The Trojan Women, also translated as The Women of Troy, and also known by its transliterated Greek title Troades, is a tragedy by the Greek playwright Euripides. Produced in 415 BC during the Peloponnesian War, it is often considered a commentary on the capture of the Aegean island of Melos and the subsequent slaughter and subjugation of its populace by the Athenians earlier that year (see History of Milos). 415 BC was also the year of the scandalous desecration of the hermai and the launch of the Athenians' second expedition to Sicily, events which may also have influenced the author.
Paris is a rock musical written by Australian rock musician Jon English and David Mackay between 1987 and 1990, based on the myth of the Trojan War. A concept album was released in Australia in 1990 with the first stage production taking place in Sydney in 2003.
Helen of Troy is a 2003 British-American television miniseries based upon Homer's story of the Trojan War, as recounted in the epic poem, the Iliad. The series was entirely shot on location in Malta.
Hecuba is a tragedy by Euripides, written c. 424 BC. It takes place after the Trojan War but before the Greeks have departed Troy. The central figure is Hecuba, wife of King Priam, formerly queen of the now-fallen city. It depicts Hecuba's grief over the death of her daughter Polyxena and the revenge she takes for the murder of her youngest son, Polydorus.
There are a wide range of ways in which people have represented the Trojan War in literature and the arts.
The Posthomerica is an epic poem in Greek hexameter verse by Quintus of Smyrna. Probably written in the 3rd century AD, it tells the story of the Trojan War, between the death of Hector and the fall of Ilium. The poem is an abridgement of the epic poems Aethiopis and Iliou Persis by Arctinus of Miletus, and the Little Iliad by Lesches, all now-lost poems of the Epic Cycle.
Whom the Gods Would Destroy is a novel written by Richard P. Powell. It was published in 1970 by Charles Scribner's Sons in New York City. The title is currently out of print but available as an Amazon Kindle book.
Polydorus or Polydoros is the youngest son of Priam in the mythology of the Trojan War. While Homer states his mother is Laothoe, later sources state his mother is Hecuba. Polydorus is an example of the fluid nature of myth, as his role and story vary significantly in different traditions and sources.
The Firebrand is a 1987 historical fantasy novel by American author Marion Zimmer Bradley. Set in the ancient city of Troy, the novel is a re-telling of Homer's epic poem, the Iliad. The Firebrand is written from the point of view of Kassandra, the prophet daughter of King Priam of Troy, and also features other prominent characters from Greek mythology. As in the Iliad, Kassandra foresees catastrophe for her city but few pay heed to her warnings. In Bradley's story, Kassandra is presented as a strong and insightful woman, rather than as a sufferer of insanity.
Troades is a fabula crepidata of c. 1179 lines of verse written by Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
Wolf, Christa. Cassandra. Transl. Jan van Heurck. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.
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