À la recherche de la paix. Des Anciens à Matéi Visniec

Abstract

This article discusses the still inexhaustible topic of war, and its consequences, with a special focus on the woman’s status amidst violent conflict. The man who goes out to fight stereotype finds its opposite in the cliché of the woman waiting for her husband/father/son to return from war, as she suffers, is wounded even killed, before falling victim to the enemies’ rapes and unimaginable aggressions. There is a significant number of women who transgress sociocultural clichés and engage in war, whatever its forms, as rebels, accomplices, militants, or redeemers. The following analysis foregrounds Hecuba, the mother torn apart by the Trojan War, after having witnessed the deaths of all her children and the ruin of her city, and Lysistrata, the woman who can put an end to the endless internecine murders of the ancient Greeks, both by ruse and by directly and courageously confronting her incurably bellicose spouse. Starting from Euripides and Aristophanes, through the medium of two particularly distinct genres, tragedy and comedy, respectively, the search for peace continues 2500 years later, this time bearing the contemporary mark of playwright Matei Vişniec – at the same time satirical, subtle, and unremitting in his denouncing both the atrocities of the warriors’ atavistic violence and the disarray of the present under the influence of various types of aggression.