Pallisades Fires and Cassandra
Dear Jolene,
I know we are both sitting here checking our phones to see what news from our loved ones in the LA region, both thinking about the volatile organic compounds they're breathing in with each breath that, in entering their bloodstream, are now part of their bodies and brains, so they are now and forever made of wildfire, just as we're made of plastics, both wondering about the moment you are in a drowning when you recognize that's what happening, both thinking about our love letters to the future and wanting to say, boy you sure fucked it up.
Funny we both turned to Cassandra. I was surprised and not surprised to see this character, cursed with vision of past present and future that nobody can believe, was framed in relation to hope in the ancient world. Seth Schein writes:
In Prometheus Bound, when the chorus question Prometheus about what he did for mortals that so offended Zeus, Prometheus says, 'I stopped mortals from foreseeing death' (248). When the chorus ask what sort of 'cure' he found for this 'illness', Prometheus replies, 'I settled in them blind hopes' (250), and the chorus comment, 'This is a great benefit you gave to mortals' (251). What is so affecting about Cassandra is that she is a mortal for whom this 'illness' has no 'cure'; she has no hopes, blind or otherwise, and the prophetic knowledge that for some might be a blessing only serves to enhance the pain of her existence. Her prophecies are not believed and are therefore fruitless - a punishment for breaking her agreement with Apollo to have children (1203-8)” (Schein, 1982, p. 12)
-Monique
Schein, Seth L. “The Cassandra Scene in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.” Greece and Rome, vol. 29, no. 1, Apr. 1982, pp. 11–16. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1017/S0017383500028278.