Seneca in Cuba: Gender, Race, and the Revolution in José Triana'sMedea en el espejo

Resurrecting antiquity: Memories of Medea in the Caribbean

“…Lima (2004: 564-567). Nikoloutsos (2012) parallels the ending of Medea in the Mirror with Triana's own exile from Cuba (p. 31). 28.…”

“…The story of Medea has long been a preoccupation of both writers: Carter describes how, having seen several versions of the play, he has ‘always been fascinated by it’, and decided to write a ‘black version’ inspired by the work of Joe Papp (Nesmith, 2016: 147). Triana wrote his own version of Medea after writers like Miguel de Unamuno and Jean Anouilh (Nikoloutsos, 2012: 21) and, as we will see shortly, also drew on several classical versions of the myth besides Euripdies. 11 Personal preference aside, their choice to draw on the tale of Medea and to locate it in a postcolonial context is interesting, as Sophocles’ Antigone has often been seen to provide a set-up more easily described in the terms and with the vocabulary of a colonial regime, as it tells the story of an oppressed heroine fighting for justice against a tyrannical state.…”

“…It remains unclear whether the chorus is helping her escape her lover’s wrath, echoing the deus ex machina escape of the ancient sources, or whether the chorus has surrounded María/Medea to take vengeance for those she killed. As Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos (2012) has noted, the last word of the Spanish original is dios [god], whereby it closely resembles the way Seneca’s tragedy ends in deos (p. 31). Medea in the Mirror thus ends in a verbal echo, mnemonic in both shape and effect – no detailed deconstruction and rewriting of the ancient play’s themes, but a single-word exclamation whose sound creates and/or reinforces a decontextualised recollection of Seneca.…”

“… 15. María’s name is similar enough to ‘Medea’ for the link between the two characters to be instantly recognisable, but her name also alludes to a Christian tradition that may have influenced Triana’s conception of the play. See also Nikoloutsos (2012) for a discussion of María’s name as a possible allusion to Ernesto Lecuona’s María’s La O . These links point towards an important mixture of references and contexts within the multidirectional travel of ‘classical memories’. …”

“… 26. See also Nikoloutsos (2012), who discusses the mirror in the context of Yoruba-based religions, wherein mirrors can be used to locate missing persons (p. 25). …”