SPACE AND PLACE IN REVISIONIST NARRATIVES: GEORG JOHANNESEN'S
KASSANDRA AND CHRISTA WOLF'S KASSANDRA
by
PATRICIA KATHLEEN BRONTE
A THESIS
Presented to the Department of German and Scandinavian
and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
Master of Arts
June 2009
-------------------------
11
"Space and Place in Revisionist Narratives: Georg Johannesen's Kassandra and Christa
Wolfs Kassandra," a thesis prepared by Patricia Kathleen Bronte in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the Master of Arts degree in the Department of German and
Scandinavian. This thesis has been approved and accepted by:
Dr. Susan C. Anderson, Co-Chair of the Examining Committee
Committee in Charge:
Accepted by:
Dr. Susan C. Anderson, Co-Chair
Dr. Ellen Rees, Co-Chair
Dr. Martin Klebes
Dr. Kenneth S. Calhoon
Dean of the Graduate School
© 2009 Patricia Kathleen Bronte
111
IV
An Abstract of the Thesis of
Patricia K. Bronte for the degree of Master of Arts
in the Department of German and Scandinavian
to be taken June 2009
Title: SPACE AND PLACE IN REVISIONIST NARRATIVES: GEORG
JOHANNESEN'S KASSANDRA AND CHRISTA WOLF'S KASSANDRA
Approved:
Dr. Susan C. Anderson
The revisionist narrative is a sub-geme ofpostmodemist literature, in which
established narratives are re-written from a perspective for which they did not account.
This term goes beyond "historiographic metafiction" to include fictional narratives,
because both historical and fictional narratives can illustrate many possible
representations for the event in question. The treatment of space and place are central
points at which revisionist narratives expose dominant power systems during the author's
own era and offer new possibilities of reality to the readers. Georg Johannesen's play
Kassandra and Christa Wolfs novel Kassandra change the perspective of landscape in
Homer's The Iliad to reveal underlying power structures and to emphasize the rejection
of absolute truths; these power structures in ancient Troy then point to parallel power
structures in the contemporary societies of the authors. In this manner, landscape within
revisionist narratives is essential for exposing the malleability of perspective in history
and fiction.
v
VI
CURRICULUM VITAE
NAME OF AUTHOR: Patricia Kathleen Bronte
PLACE OF BIRTH: Menlo Park, California
DATE OF BIRTH: December 14,1984
GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED:
University of Oregon
DEGREES AWARDED:
Master of Arts, German and Scandinavian, June 2009, University of Oregon
Bachelor of Arts, German and Scandinavian, 2007, University of Oregon
AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST:
Revisionist Texts
Gender Studies
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of German and Scandinavian, 2007-2009
GRANTS, AWARDS AND HONORS:
Philip and Teresa Hansen Germanic Languages Scholarship, University of
Oregon, 2007
Delta Phi Alpha German Honorary Society, University of Oregon, 2007
Ford Family Foundation Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2003-2007
Vll
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to express sincere appreciation to Professors Anderson and Rees for their
assistance in the preparation of this manuscript. In addition, special thanks are due to Mr.
Lucas Spiegel for his continual support and baked goods during the writing process.
For my moms.
V111
IX
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter Page
1. INTRODUCTION 1
II. CHRISTA WOLF'S KASSANDRA 20
III. GEORG JOHANNESEN'S KASSANDRA 35
IV. CONCLUSION 53
BIBLIOGRAPHY 57
1CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Revisionism is a term that has no clear ideological bent, but its use in history and
literature demonstrates an extreme split between its connotations in the two areas of
study. In history, revisionism has largely been used in reference to ideologically
conservative rewritings of narratives that concern events deemed historical truths in the
belief systems of particular cultures (Hutcheon, Politics 47). This revisionism is chiefly
connected to deniers of the Holocaust and different nations' practices of altering or
censoring historical texts in order to control their citizens (Lipstadt 31; Markwick 222).
In contrast to the negative historical use of the term, revisionism in literary studies has
been utilized mainly in order to oppose traditional cultural views and give voice to
marginalized groups, dealing with concepts such as race, class and gender, specifically
within feminist literature (Mileur 5; Mudge 245; Shawcross 18). I believe that the literary
term revisionism needs to be expanded to include narratives traditionally considered to be
history, because both types of narratives illustrate one out of many possible
representations for the event in question. My term revisionism points to the process of
taking established narratives and re-writing them from an unconventional perspective for
which the traditional narrative did not account, which then opens up the readers to the
possibility of different ways of thinking about their world. Such a term includes historical
2as well as literary texts, because both types of text are representations of something that
we can never experience as an absolute truth.
As revisionist narratives deal heavily with the notion of representation and re-
representation in every facet of society, from historical and artistic space to occurrences
in everyday life, this term finds many parallels in postmodemist theory. The endless
possibility of new interpretations of a single object, idea, or event, without reference to an
underlying concept of reality, sets the postmodemist theory apart from its predecessors,
in literature as well as history. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many historians
admitted that some historical narratives may be partial or incorrect, and "sympathies may
warp the truth" (Shotwell 9). However, for these historians, especially those in the
positivist tradition, the term history was still connected to the pursuit of an absolute
"scientific truth" (Shotwell 10- 11; Tosh 109). Leopold von Ranke's famous phrase
expresses such: historians should strive to portray history wie es gewesen ist (Eaglestone
23). Debates about historical fact have included a view of history as truth as recently as
the 1950s, as L.B. Namier demonstrates:
The function of the historian is akin to.that of the painter and not of the
photographic camera; to discover and set forth, to single out and stress that
which is of the nature of the thing, and not to reproduce indiscriminately
all that meets the eye. (Namier 8)
Even though Namier does acknowledge that historians select which historical facts to
emphasize and which to leave out, according to personal motivations, he still reinforces
the idea that these historical facts reference an absolute truth about a time period.
History's connection to the pursuit (if not attainment) of scientific truth and the "nature of
3the thing" sustained a cultural separation between historical and literary texts, thus
maintaining two categories of narrative. With the advent of such a theoretical model as
postmodemism, historians began to question the linguistic aspect of historical record and
the extent of its bearing on the real world, past and present (Tosh 109).
In postmodemist theory, the cultural categories of truth and make-believe,
scientific history and fictional literature, are called into question, and the experience of an
idea, object, or event is open to a multitude of unique representatiorls that do not follow
the established "truth" spread by the dominant or mainstream thinking in a particular
society. This idea of exposing the power structures of the dominant group is also present
in revisionist narratives such as German writer Christa Wolf s novel Kassandra (1983)
and Norwegian writer Georg Johannesen's play Kassandra (1967). By taking an
established idea, object, or event, and showing a different way to view them, revisionist
narratives allow more possibilities in interpretation. Without revisionism, the established
view is the only view presented to the reader, or to society. An important aspect of
revisionist narratives such as these works is that they expose other views that do not fit
into the dominant structure.
Examining the established social codes attached to representations of physical
places and lived-in spaces, as defined by Michel de Certeau, is an essential part of the
revisionist process. Scholars such as J. Hillis Miller correctly identify the topography of a
narrative as the point of endless representation and complex interpretation (Miller,
"Philosophy" 36), and revisionist narratives utilize this by drawing upon the wealth of
cultural knowledge from a traditional narrative to then expose the reader or audience
member to new representations of that established narrative. The representation of
---------------------- ---------
4
culturally-deemed historical and fictional spaces and places found in Wolfs novel
Kassandra and Johannesen's play Kassandra demonstrate that the concept of shaping
and re-shaping the experience of an event through a multitude of representations is a
crucial aspect of revisionism. This in tum illustrates the principles of postmodemist
narratives. Revisionist narratives play with traditional narratives by synthesizing many
different facets of both literary and historical postmodem theory, because these narratives
break down the traditional border between historical and literary narratives:
What the postmodem writing of both history and literature has taught us is
that both history and fiction are discourses, that both constitute systems of
signification by which we make sense of the past ("exertions of the
shaping, ordering imagination"). In other words, the meaning and shape
are not in the events, but in the ~ystems which make those past "events"
into present historical "facts." This is not a "dishonest refuge from the
truth" but an acknowledgement of the meaning-making function of human
constructs. (Hutcheon, Poetics 89)
Hutcheon demonstrates that postmodemist theory's focus on representation blurs the
lines between cultural concepts of history and fiction. While the cultural perceptions of
these two types of narratives will continue to separate them, revisionist narratives
illustrate through the combination of culturally-deemed historical and fictional events that
both narratives express a different version of a "reality" that is never so fixed or rigid.
These realities, whether viewed as fact or fiction, inform the readers' cultural experiences
of an event or place. Additionally, by exposing the underlying power structures inherent
in traditional representations of events, revisionist narratives then open up to the reader or
5audience member a myriad of possible representations and perspectives through which
to view the social conventions in their culture.
Before examining revisionism within the realm of postmodemist narratives, it is
beneficial to look at how representation functions in everyday life and art. The most
important feature of representation is that there is no escaping it. Representation is how
people understand the world around them, in literature and in real life (Mitchell 21). This
is due to the disconnect between the faculty to conceive and the faculty to present; the
idea that we conceive in our minds cannot be expressed in its original form to others,
because the idea goes through filters such as speech, writing, or other artistic expressions
(Lyotard 376). Speech and writing are representation~ themselves; they are systems of
symbols that we use in order to express ourselves in a manner that others will understand.
For example, when I write the letter "D," followed by "0" and "G," others in my society
know that this represents the idea of a dog, but it has nothing to do with the original
concept of a dog. Similarly in art, I can use dabs of paint to create something that is
reminiscent of a dog but not actually a dog, and still more people would understand that it
was a representation of a dog. This opens up the means of communication between
people.
While representation aids communication, it also leaves much room for
interpretation that is beyond the scope of the maker of the representation. There is a given
set of guidelines in a society that allows people to convey ideas with representations that
are deemed acceptable by the society, but these guidelines are not fixed completely.
These guidelines, or "codes," give the representation a context, without which the
representation would have no reference:
6The word "tree" represents a certain class of objects only in the context
of a language, just as a note or a musical phrase has meaning only in
relation to a larger piece and familiar systems of tonality. These "systems"
(tonality, language, representational schemes in painting) may be called
"codes," by which I simply mean a body of rules for combining and
deciphering representational signs. When something stands for something
to somebody, it does so by virtue of a kind of social agreement... the
decision to let A stand for B may (and usually does) open up a whole new
realm of possibilities for representation: B becomes a likely candidate to
stand for C, and so on. (Mitchell 13)
As W.J.T. Mitchell points out, the social agreement is usually unspoken; herein lies the
possibility for different interpretations. Since these social "codes" present us with
guidelines, not fixed rules, an idea or object can have a multitude of representations that
make up our conception of that idea or object. Representation is the ever-present
intermediary between a person's conception of an idea or object and another's perception
of that idea or object. This also means that representations can never be divorced
completely from political questions, because the conception of the maker and the
perception of the receiver are colored by their personal ideologies (Mitchell 15). The fact
that signifiers work by exclusion in order to complete the relationship with the signified
also adds political complications to representation:
It is not just language that tends to make space for some things while
excluding others. It is that words and meaning actually work because of a
process of exclusion. Take "chair" for example. We know the meaning of
7chair by learning what is not chair. In other words, we exclude all the
other close matches that aren't quite chairs: stools, chaise longues, love
seats, and so on. We create the template for chair by a process of
exclusion. This means that from its inception, the meaning of chair
depends on all those excluded things that are non-chair. (Wilchins 36)
This demonstrates that the social codes that representations use in order to grant meaning
generally work in favor of the hegemonic power in a given society, because the
representation must work within the boundaries of common codes. This means that
language favors that which is the same or similar, and what is "unique, unrepeatable, and
private tends to go unnamed" (Wilchins 35). This has special implications for written
expression, because the texts that remain after an era has passed are the only voices that
we hear from that time and place.
As representations are inherently political, so are the literary movements that
employ them to artistic effect. Literary realism, which begin in the nineteenth century
with such authors as George Eliot, Honore de Balzac, and Gustave Flaubert, focused on
depicting the "truth," according to the "correct" images and "correct" narratives that the
dominant power structure selected and distributed (Lyotard 373). This literary movement
claimed that there was a true version of events and a fixed meaning to all objects and
ideas. This privileges language, because it mistakes language for "the Real," and there is
no room for that which is as of yet unnamed (Wilchins 37). Both modernist and
postmodernist theories cast doubt on this notion; they focus on the gap between
conception and perception, where representation lies, and both question the idea of reality
in the face of so many representations. The difference is that, while modernism upholds
8the belief that there is a true meaning and reality that we have not yet found,
postmodemist theorists have given up the search for a better reality or any "truth" at all:
"The point is not exactly that the world is meaningless, but that any meaning that exists is
of our own creation" (Hutcheon, Poetics 42). One cannot escape representation and
perceive any true, original reality, so how can there be a true reality at all? The narratives
that we create to understand our world, be it through history, literature, or everyday
conversation, are simply representations of previous representations of previous
representations with no original truth. The concept of truth in the past or present is non-
existent (Hutcheon, Politics 65).
In this manner, postmodemist theories are inherently political and socially critical,
because examining the function of social codes within representation is political. The
expectation of shared meaning is in itself political, because the expectation is embedded
within a "dynamic social context that acknowledges the inevitability of the existence of
power relations in any social relations" (Hutcheon, Pelitics 4). By calling into question
established representations of truth in a culture or history, postmodemists challenge the
power structures and authorities that created those "truths." Linda Hutcheon writes:
Postmodem art cannot but be political, at least in the sense that its
representations - its images and stories - are anything but neutral,
however "aestheticized" they may appear to be in their parodic self-
ret1exivity. (Hutcheon, Politics 3)
Hutcheon asserts that postmodem art presents the facets of postmodemism through
elements such as parody and pastiche in that the representations used directly challenge
the concept of the real or true, as dictated by the dominant social group. These facets of
9postmodemism demonstrate the importance of representation and interpretation in
postmodem narrative theory: every text becomes devoid of reality or truth. I use the word
"narrative" and not "literary," because this includes narratives that are traditionally
thought to be truth or fact, such as historical narratives:
A postmodem response to history is that it is a form of fiction or, at the
very least, a narrative which has neither more nor less a claim to
authoritative status than any other competing narrative. Thus any historical
anchorage, authority, or legitimacy which may be claimed by a theoretical
school, class or institution dissolves ....Under postmodemism, language
and meaning have no one meeting point, but many ...This suggests that
multiple meanings are possible and any single meaning is suspended.
(Wain 360, 370)
In this lack of reverence for established "truths" lies the skepticism and social criticism
that is built into postmodem theory. By treating traditional historical knowledge as mere
representations of a social group's perception of that time period, postmodem narratives
subvert the categories of literature and history to show the artificiality of any claim that
the latter is truer than the former. In this manner, the barriers between historical and
literary narratives break and show that their divergences are merely the different social
perceptions of the two types of narrative.
That is not to say that there are no categories within the body of narratives; there
are different genres of representation within literature. In the book Postmodernist Fiction,
Brian McHale demonstrates that there are many genres of postmodem narratives, from
science fiction to narratives about contemporary life to historical novels (McHale 43,59,
10
73). The themes of infinite representation and re-representation, denial of objective
reality, and the condition of "an anarchic landscape of worlds in the plural," McHale
states, are what unite these narratives under the theory of postmodernism (McHale 37).
Christa Wolfs novel Kassandra and Georg Johannesen's play Kassandra could
fit into that which Hutcheon calls "historiographic metafiction" of postmodernism,
because these are narratives that expose our malleable cultural perception of so-called
historical events. Specifically, Wolfs Kassandra has often been described as a prime
example of Hutcheon's historiographic metafiction in postmodern literature (Hutcheon,
Poetics 22 - 23), because Wolf melds the two formerly rigid categories of history and
literature into one narrative that tells the story of those without a voice in the traditionally
accepted historical or legendary narrative, this being the story of the women in The Iliad:
Historiographic metafiction represents not just a world of fiction, however
self-consciously presented as a constructed one, but also a world of public
experience. The difference between this and the realist logic of reference
is that here that public world is rendered specifically as discourse. How do
we know the past today? Through its discourses, through its texts ...On
one level, then, postmodern fiction merely makes overt the processes of
narrative representation - of the real or the fictive and of their
interrelations. (Hutcheon, Politics 33 - 34)
While historiographic metafiction and historical fiction both concern history in literature,
their differences lie in their treatment of history itself. Historical fiction presents a
microcosm that generalizes with a protagonist that is a type, a synthesis of universal
human traits. Historical fiction works with history as a shaping force in the narrative and
11
in human destiny (Hutcheon, Poetics 113). While defining historiographic metafiction,
Hutcheon cites Kein Ort. Nirgends (another novel by Wolf), stating that in it the lines are
blurred between past and present, and the literary mixes with reality (Hutcheon, Poetics
109). Historiographic metafiction uses this mix of time and literary space to show that
narratives and history are not closed but rather still changing into new experiences. Both
Wolf and Johannesen change the perspective of various places and spaces in The Iliad in
order to undermine the cultural truths ascribed to the Greeks' original narrative.
Revisionism is closely connected to Hutcheon's term "historiographic
metafiction," but my concept of revisionism allows for a broader scope of what is
culturally considered historical to include other narratives that are caught between the
categories of history and fiction, such as traditional legends and epics, because these too
have become cemented in culture as a sort of "cultural truth." There is very little
information other than Homer's epic poem The Iliad from which people can obtain
knowledge about the Trojan War, and yet this event has maintained importance in history
as well as literature. From the Middle Ages to the present, explorers have used Homer's
poems to try to locate the city of Troy (Wood 36; Allen 37). Heimich Schliemann, a
wealthy retired businessman and amateur archaeologist, gave the public so-called
credible proof that Homer's poems were based in truth by claiming that he had found the
site of Troy and "Priam's Treasure" in 1868; Schliemann publicized his excavations in
Hisarlik as proof "that The Iliad was based on facts" (Allen 152). Scholars from the 19th
century until as recently as the past decade have used Schliemann's claims as well as
accounts in Homer's poems to demonstrate that the story of the Trojan War has a place in
history (Benjamin 101; Bryce 33; Ranke 120).
----------- --- -------
12
Beyond the realm of scholars, the layperson's experience of the Trojan War has
remained in the public sphere through popular culture (for example, the 2004 film Troy,
starring Brad Pitt as Achilles) and institutional education in grade schools. A survey of
several high school history textbooks, whose publishing dates range from 1964 to 1999,
demonstrates that, while the books acknowledge the legendary aspect of the Trojan War,
information about the event still remains rooted in the realm of history, or fact. In the
introductory pages of the most recent history textbook, history books are portrayed as
"more accurately" depicting what life was like "in a culture 5,000 years ago," as proven
by the use of written sources, modem science, and "digging up history" (Beck xxxvi).l
Such an introduction, as well as the textbook exercises that focus on memorizing facts,
set up the student to read the infonnation about the Trojan War in the textbook as facts
and connected to the "science" of history. An examination of the information about the
Trojan War demonstrates further that the statements ascribed by the Greeks' narrative are
to be taken as truth. The most recent textbook begins the section about the Trojan War
with "About 1200 B.c. the Mycenaean kings fought a ten-year war against Troy, an
independent trading city located in Anatolia" (Beck 113). The section then briefly
discusses the connection to legend but then ends with references to Schliemann and
historians who proved that the Trojan War probably did occur. In the teacher's edition of
a textbook published in 1990, teachers are encouraged to emphasize the details of the
Trojan War through The Iliad and The Odyssey (Perry 75). Such an emphasis on Homer's
poems as the source of historical knowledge, as well as the prevalence of these stories in
I The introduction to this history textbook does not explain to what the history books that the students now
read are compared, simply that the current history books are "more accurate."
13
popular culture, show that the public's experience of the Trojan War relies heavily on
the Greeks' narrow representation of the event. In this manner, one text has become
responsible for the majority of the public's knowledge of the Trojan War, and The Iliad
may be seen as a sort of cultural truth for the Western world.
Revisionist narratives in postmodernism such as Wolf's novel Kassandra and
Johannesen's play Kassandra demonstrate McHale's "worlds in the plural" by presenting
a different representation of The Iliad's traditional narrative. This in turn exposes the
artificiality of historical record, which can only be created by representations. The
revisionist narrative is unique in its ability to tap into a reader or audience member's
cultural knowledge of a place (gained through culturally historical or fictional texts) to
extend the scope of the narrative beyond the text the author has written. The revisionism
COllilects postmodernist theories on history and literature to show the artificiality of the
latter. History is not a representation of the past but rather a representation of our present
perception of the past (Jameson 399); in this manner, the revisionist narrative brings
together social criticism of the past and the present for the readers.
Although the figurative space of an object in one's mind applies to this concept of
compound representations, thinking about actual place and space in a written narrative,
as McHale's word choice suggests, is important in all narratives. Michel de Certeau
asserts that written narratives are led by the spatial trajectories that are formed by the
series of movements between places and spaces in the story:
Every story is a travel story - a spatial practice. For this reason, spatial
practices concern everyday tactics, are part of them, from the alphabet of
spatial indications ("It's to the right," "Take a left"), the beginning of a
14
story the rest of which is written by footsteps, to the daily "news"
("Guess who I met at the bakery?"), television news reports ("Teheran:
Khomeini is becoming increasingly isolated... "), legends (Cinderellas
living in hovels), and stories that are told (memories and fiction of foreign
lands or more or less distant times in the past). (Certeau 115 - 116)
In this manner, a written narrative is produced through the topography of the
landscape that it traverses. This can be applied to the layers of representation in
postmodern narratives through de Certeau's definitions of space and place. He defines a
place as the physical location, the stabile geometric locus that is relatively fixed. Space,
on the other hand, is a "practiced place" that humanity creates: "Thus the street
geometrically defined by urban planning is transformed into a space by walkers" (Certeau
117). By this definition, postmodern narratives play with the representation of a place in
relation to one's cultural experiences of that place as a space. McHale's use of the term
"landscape" in his description of the postmodern condition is not accidental. In fact he
uses several spatial metaphors to describe facets of postmodernism in his book
Postmodernist Fiction, for space and place in revisionist narratives and postmodern
theory are important elements. The series of representations that make up the experience
of an object or idea could be seen as different interpretations of the space that the object
or idea occupies in our minds. Places are also important in revisionism, as revisionist
narratives re-shape the traditional place to include new locations that did not exist in the
previously established narrative. This makes the land~cape of a narrative quite complex,
as it shows that one's perception of an object in a narrative is a result of compounded
15
representations that go beyond the scope of the narrative into one's cultural and
personal experience of the space in which the object resides.
J. Hillis Miller explains this further, explicitly supporting de Certeau's assertion
that stories (specifically for Miller, novels) are spatially driven:
... there is no landscape without its story. One thing novels do is to tell
such stories. These stories are not so much placed against the background
of the scene as generated by it...a novel is a figurative mapping. (Miller,
"Philosophy" 18 - 19)
Miller asserts that the landscape in a novel and the "real" landscape that it references are
both part of a series of knowledge about that space2 (Miller, "Philosophy" 19). The
narrative is furthering the figurative mapping of the given place and space. Miller argues
that there is no space without the inhabitance of the place, and the il1habitants shape and
re-shape that space through cultural mapping, formed to fit their needs. Miller's
definition of mental mapping supports the postmodem concept of representation and re-
representation in narratives, because it is through description, allusion, and naming (all
aspects of representation) that narratives change the perception of a given space or place
(Miller, "Philosophy" 36). His use of quotes for the word "real" further shows that his
theory of mental mapping in narratives builds a complex series of representations where
any original source of that space or place is absent. Referring to Borges's tale of the map
taking over the actual territory of a kingdom, Jean Baudrillard explains that spaces and
places in modem life no longer have an original truth or meaning:
2 This is using de Certeau's definition of space, which Miller does not reference. From henceforth I will be
using the terms space and place as de Certeau defines them.
16
Simulation is no longer of a territory, a referential being or a substance.
It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a
hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it.
Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of
simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory... It is the real, and
not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which
are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert ofthe real
itself. (Baudrillard 381 - 382)
Baudrillard's assertion connects to the question of truth vs. make-believe and history vs.
literature in Western society. Our view of a place or space are, as Miller states, a complex
layering of representations that makes up the knot of experience for that space, and we
can no more say where the experience first started than say where it will end. In this
manner, we are forced to accept the artificiality and social construction that makes up that
filter between conception and perception. The narratives that inform our view of a place
or space show that this experience is a layering of simulacra without an absolute truth or
meaning to form as a foundation.
The realm of space and place is where revisionist narratives are essential to
postmodern texts. Revisionist narratives highlight the process of shaping and re-shaping
spaces and places to fit the author's cultural, ideological, or aesthetic agenda by taking an
established truth about a space or place and playing with its sense of reality and fixed
meaning. As previously stated, representations rely on the larger system of
representations in a given society; this can work to subvert as well as support the
traditional view of a lived-in space or physical place. For example, the Old English epic
17
poem Beowulfis one of Western culture's canonical literary works that nearly
everyone must read in high school or at university. In the poem, the hero Beowulf must
fight two monsters and one dragon, the latter of which mortally wounds Beowulf, but he
receives a hero's funeral and remains a model of courage. The spaces in which Beowulf
proves his heroism, however, are called into question by John Gardner's revisionist
narrative Grendel (1971), which tells the story of Grendel, the first monster Beowulf kills
in Beowulf. In this narrative, Gardner changes the perspective on Beowulf's "heroic"
space, illustrating his character as simply violent, bloodthirsty, and sadistic, as well as
describing the traditional places of Beowulf(i.e. the hall, the monster's den, etc.) with a
tone opposite to the original narrative. The representations Gardner creates undermine the
representations of Beowulf created by the cultural dominant. Revisionist narratives have
the ability to juxtapose established, historical representations of space with conflicting
interpretations of that landscape to highlight the complex knot that is the mental mapping
of a space. While not every revisionist narrative subverts representations sustained by the
social dominant system, they are an essential part of ~ubversionwithin postmodem
literature.
In their revisionist Kassandra narratives, Wolf and Johannesen mix legend,
history, and fiction by playing with the places, spaces, and characters of Homer's The
Iliad in order to examine perceptions of the past and present, as well as the cultural
practices of their own eras. The story of The Iliad is itself a narrative that was shaped and
re-shaped through oral tradition until it was written down and fixed into the epic that is
one of the definitive canonical works of Western literature, as well as a source for
historical evidence about the Trojan War. Due to the very formation of the text, it is
18
impossible to tell what of The Iliad's narrative is based on actual events and what came
from the imagination of the Greeks. This makes this narrative a good example of
revisionism, because the revision highlights our inability to ever know what actually took
place, what is truth and what is fiction. A revisionist narrative rejects the notion of
objective reality and absolute truth. The very basis of the original narrative is a complex
knot of representations of a supposedly historical event, and yet this work has become the
major experience of the battle of Troy that many people have.
There exist to date only a few published scholarly works on Johannesen's play,
mainly centering around cultural themes in the play and the accusations of blasphemy
Kassandra evoked (Berg 79). However, there is a large amount of scholarship published
about Wolf's novel, and this scholarship has mainly concerned Kassandra as a
postmodernist historiographic novel and Wolf's use of The Iliad to expose underlying
patriarchal power structures in the past and the present (Beebee and Weber 264; Fox 472;
Hoffmeister 4). The revisionist narrative provides a synthesis of postmodern theories of
art and history to show that history too is a part of the literary art form. The past cannot
be the actual referent of historical narratives and therefore always relates to the social
constructions and conventions of its present time period (Zagorin 13). Exposing these
social conventions opens up the possibility of that which is yet unnamed or undiscovered
to become a part of the reader or audience member's reality. Scholars of Johannesen's
Kassandra and Wolfs Kassandra examine the intertextuality and postmodernist
elements of their works, but they largely ignore the use of place and space in the two
Kassandras. My analysis expands upon the scholarship by introducing the importance of
spatial elements to revisionist narratives in both Wolf's novel and Johannesen's play. The
19
treatment of space and place are central points at which revisionist narratives within
the realm of postmodemism expose the dominant power system during the author's own
era and offer new possibilities of reality to the readers. Wolf exposes the present-day
dominant patriarchal power system, showing how women have no place within that
system. Wolf's perspective on the spaces of Troy, along with the juxtaposition of places
from the Iliad and places Wolf has added, depict the emerging dominant authoritative
system as brutal, cold, and calculating in its destruction of the non-dominant. Johannesen
illustrates the present-day power systems of capitalism and Christianity; with the layering
of places (through stage setting) and spaces (through actors) from the past and present, he
shows these dominant systems to be violent and disconnected from humanity. Both
authors change the perspective of the places and spaces in The Iliad to expose the
underlying power structure and to emphasize the rejection of absolute truths; these power
structures in ancient Troy then point to a parallel power structure in the contemporary
societies of the authors. In this manner, the spaces and places within revisionist narratives
are an essential part of exposing the malleability of perspective in both history and
literature.
20
CHAPTER II
CHRISTA WOLF'SKASSANDRA
As Wilchins exposes words to be designations of exclusion, traditional history books
represent some perspectives of history to the exclusion of others. The portrayal of the
legendary and historical figure Kassandra that Christa Wolf gives in her novel
Kassandra, written in 1983 while Wolf lived under the oppressive regime of the German
Democratic Republic, greatly undermines the received notions about the Greeks in
relation to the Trojans, as well as the notions about men in relation to women, during the
fall of Troy. Wolf instead posits that this event marked the beginning of the patriarchy
and the loss of a voice for women in Western cultures. Through the voice of Kassandra,
Wolf works to expose the artificiality of history by challenging the established, "true"
representations of Troy, achieving this largely through the exploration of the places and
spaces of Troy. Her juxtaposition of the caves on the slopes ofMt. Ida and the palace of
Troy plays with the sense of reality and meaning that the readers obtain in their amassed
experience of the fall of Troy, because the juxtapositions of place show the plurality of
worlds that existed in Troy. As is also the case with Johannesen's Kassandra, the social
conventions that Wolf calls into question in her interpretation of Troy are applicable to
present-day conditions, creating a commentary on Wolfs contemporary society as well
as on the society of ancient Greece that is in b:eping with the element of subversion in
postmodernism. Wolfs depiction of the emerging dominant authoritative structure shows
21
that this structure promotes a certain ideal masculinity that is intent on its destruction
of the non-dominant, whose qualities are described as feminine. The brutality and
business-like manner of the dominant system opposes the feminine in this new structure
by linking the feminine with weakness and overblown emotion. This is a theme that is
pertinent to Wolfs present day, and the parallels show that Western society's
interpretation of the events of Troy speak to the present-day social perceptions of gender
relations within the patriarchal system. By using a literary narrative to show how closely
perceptions of history lie to perceptions of the present day, Wolf demonstrates the
connection between many facets of postmodernist literary and historical theory within
revisionist narratives.
Wolfs novel is an especially useful example of revisionist narrative in
postmodernism, because she accompanies her novel with four lectures that explain
Wolfs theoretical approach to discovering Kassandra's voice and story before she
demonstrates her ideas in the novel. In this manner, the reader has access to both Wolfs
postmodernist theories of history and the literary manifestation of her theories. These
four lectures also further emphasize the importance of exploring place and space in the
revisionist narrative, for much of their content centers around Wolfs experience of
places in Germany and Greece. In the first lecture, titled "Ein Reisebericht tiber das
zufallige Auftauchen und die allmahliche Verfertigung einer Gestalt," Wolf begins by
demonstrating the alienation she experiences in the capital of her own country, waiting
for her flight to Athens:
...unauffindbar, nicht registrierte Schattengestalten ohne Gepack, fuhren
wir durch die StraBen von Berlin, Hauptstadt der DDR; fremd, seltsam
22
bertihrt, unerkennbar gingen wir durch eine unerkennbare Stadt.. ..
(Wolf, Voraussetzungen 13)
While Wolf has lived near and in Berlin since 1962, she still describes the city as
unrecognizable and foreign. Her choice of words in this passage begins the discussion of
alienation that Wolf sustains in Kassandra. While it is more conventional to describe her
sense of feeling foreign and cut off from the "Geist des Ortes" in Athens, as she does
later in the lecture (Wolf, Voraussetzungen 27), her introduction to her homeland creates
a contrast that creates doubt for the reader already, be.cause Wolf s home does not evoke
the traditional feelings of familiarity. Wolf adds layers to this experience of home by
speaking directly to the modem city:
1ch verstehe: 1hr, der heutigen Stadt Bedtirfnis und das Bedtirfnis der
steinernen Madchen, die in gelassen-stolzer Haltung mehr als zweitausand
Jahre lang den Baldachin tiber dem Grab des Schlangenkonigs und
Athengrtinders Kekrops trugen, waren nicht miteinander zu vereinbaren.
Koren, die Madchen, einst die Fruchbarkeitsgottin Persephone mit ihrer
Tochter, spater zu Balkentragerinnen herabgekommen, jetzt unfruchtbar
ins Aus gestellt...Soll ich versuchen, den "Sinn" zu benennen, fUr den sie
stehn, der aber ein Unsinn ist? Die Barbarei der Neuzeit. Die Frage, die
mich aufstart: Gab es, gibt es eine Alternative zu dieser Barbarei? (Wolf,
Voraussetzungen 30)
Wolfs use of quotation marks around the word Sinn (and earlier in the lecture, her same
treatment of the word Wahrheit) demonstrates the questioning of reality and meaning that
marks on of the main principles of postmodernism. Her description of the transformation
23
of the statues from an important, "living" space to infertile supporting beams begins
her postmodern exploration of both the social convention of patriarchy and the places and
spaces of The Iliad in contrast to her barbaric modern' time. These statues, which once
had an important position in the space and experience of ancient Greece, now only mark
the reduction to place, a structural entity without humanity. Wolf uses this combination
of subverting traditional places and spaces and showing the figures' relation to these
places and spaces to create Kassandra's character in the novel. Kassandra reflects Wolfs
own doubts about the status of meaning and reality. The novel itself begins with an image
of worn-down statues that illustrates a change in perception of history, just as Wolfs
imagery achieved in her lecture: "I-lier war es. Da stand sie. Diese steinernen Lowen, jetzt
kopflos, haben sie angeblickt. Diese Festung, einst und uneinnehmbar, ein Steinhaufen
jetzt, war das letzte, was sie sah...." (Wolf, Kassandra 5). The narrator's initial
description of a specific place introduces the importance of place and space to the text.
As with the statues of the handmaidens, the stone lions and fortress have transformed
from their space in humanity (i.e. part of the oral narrative and everyday life) to lifeless
geometric shapes, mere objects of place. The importance they once held is now gone, and
their shapes have lost the meaning that once was attached to them. This introduction to
Kassandra's story depicts the doubt that surrounds the concepts of meaning and truth for
Kassandra throughout the novel, as the narrator gives way to Kassandra's own voice.
Kassandra directly addresses this place where the stone lions reside as the narrator
does, but where the narrator simply describes a place, Kassandra evokes the space that
was once created through the habitation of the place and the myth that now stands where
that space was:
24
Warum haben die gefangenen aus Mykenae ihr Lowentor noch
gewaltiger beschrieben, als es mir erscheint? Warum schilderten sie die
Zyklopenmauern ungeheurer, als sie sind, ihr Yolk gewaWitiger und
rachsuchtiger, als es ist? Gem und ausschweifend haben sie mir von ihrer
Heimat erzahlt, wie aIle Gefangenen. (Wolf, Kassandra 16 - 17)
The representation of Mykenae in Kassandra's memory and the representation of
Mykenae that its people invoke are at odds, and this i~troduces how Wolf uses Kassandra
in order to expose the possibility ofthese plural realities that exist for one place. The
people ofMykenae depict themselves as more violent and vengeful than Kassandra
perceived them; this is the reality as influenced by the new patriarchal society, a society
that upholds such traits. However, Kassandra's experience of this place before the new
society was created contrasts with this new "reality." Herein commences the theme of
truth and meaning as a farce in Kassandra.
Wolf not only subverts the traditional narrative of The Iliad by inserting the
possibility of different representations (Paris's motives other than love and Eumelos's
campaign of misinformation) within that established narrative, but she also does this
inherently by providing the perspective of the narrative through the eyes of the losers: the
Trojans. In this way, Wolf changes the reader's experience of the Trojan War to include
layers of experience from the Trojans' side. The passage in which Kassandra
accompanies Briseis to the Greeks' war camp expresses a space that is completely
different from the legendary or received place the Greeks inhabit. In this novel, the
Greeks are bestial, violent, and dim-witted. While the Trojans at first have a semblance of
respect towards women, the Greeks simply gape at Kassandra and Briseis. They are
25
easily cowed by talk of magic, and they know nothing more than war (Wolf,
Kassandra 96 - 100). While Achilles is traditionally the hero, in Kassandra his name is
"Achilles the brute," and he acts with savagery toward men and women alike (Wolf,
Kassandra 100).
Wolf uses the depiction of the heroes from The Iliad as the savage enemies to
highlight the notion that "truth" is relative. Wolf undermines the truths as established by
The Iliad in order to show the monstrous violence that lay behind them. This in tum
serves to reject the idea of an absolute truth. At the same time, Wolf also shows the
weaknesses in The Iliad's main Trojan characters. Hektor's name in Kassandra is
"Hektor dunkle Wolke," indicating his dim-wittedness, and Kassandra describes him as
sluggish and the opposite of a warrior until he finally gets into shape at the end of the war
(Wolf, Kassandra 110). Wolfs reversal of these heroes' traits opens up new possibilities
of interpretation and representation for the reader, and her similar treatment of the Trojan
men exposes the patriarchal system on both sides of the war. Wolfs perspective of the
Greek warriors varies greatly from that perspective depicted by the Greeks in The Iliad.
In this manner, she challenges the truth and reality about the Trojan war that the Greeks
established in The Iliad, and she suggests a difference of reality between the cultural
dominant (in this case, the Greek warriors) and the oppressed minority that the women in
Kassandra represent.
These doubts about the terms Sinn and Wahrheit drive much of Kassandra's
narrative in Kassandra, because she narrates what she perceives as a destructive shift to
patriarchy that the war between the Trojans and the Greeks marks. Wolf demonstrates
that Kassandra's role in the events of the Trojan War causes Kassandra to doubt reality
26
and truth, because she is caught in the transition from the old society that valued
women to the new society that silences them. Kassandra witnesses the established
traditions she thought would always sustain crumble before the new movement of
patriarchy that sacrifices humanity for the sake of appearances and valor. By
demonstrating the complete upheaval of Kassandra's reality and the new "reality" that is
not based in truth, Wolf creates the possibility of McHale's worlds or realities in the
plural for her reader. This then not only complicates the knot of experiences that make up
the reader's knowledge of the Trojan War but also bolsters the postmodern theory that the
conventional, established reality of the past and the present are simply one representation
out of a multitude of possible representations. In this manner, Wolf s novel combines
postmodern historical and literary principles.
Wolf depicts these two conflicting worlds by two places within Troy: the caves on
the slopes ofMt. Ida and the palace in the heart of Troy. The caves mark a space in which
women have always led and will always lead. The palace is a place that shows the shift
from one space where women had value to a new and different space where women have
no value and no voice. Wolf propels the narrative trajectory from these centers in Troy,
and their individual trajectories demonstrate the clashing of different realities in
Kassandra.
The images Wolf ties to the caves of Mt. Ida depict the place as dark, womb-like,
and full oflife. The reader's introduction to the caves is Kassandra's first experience
there as well. Wolf presents imagery that supports a social order that while it is already
oppositional to the palace's space, does not yet exhibit the extreme contrast that occurs
when the palace is bureaucratically overtaken by Eumelos. Wolf describes a luscious fold
27
of vegetation in the ground that leads to groves of young fig and oak trees; the entire
area is teeming with fertility and life, where women dance freely and with emotion. Wolf
then juxtaposes this image with Kassandra's experience of the palace the next morning:
"wie immer, die glatten Gesichter" (Wolf, Kassandra 25). The reserved faces Kassandra
describes introduce the constraints that already reside in the space of the palace; she is
already aware of two worlds within her own experience.
The comparisons between the caves and the palace continue, demonstrating
further the plurality of representation that exists within one city. While Kassandra
describes the silent space of the caves that "ging, nicht bedrohlich, nm eben fremd," she
soon remarks that the palace is also silent (Wolf, Kassandra 56). This silence, however,
comes from a negative space: "Hekabe, ihren Zorn unterdruckend, schwieg. Parthena die
Amme, ihre Angst offen zeigend, schwieg. Ich lernte, indem ich die Arten zu schweigen
beobachtete" (Wolf, Kassandra 58). In contrast to the peaceful silence of the caves, the
silence in the palace already comes from constrictive fear and anger, even before
Eumelos ushers in the patriarchal way of living.
The two depictions of women (those in the caves and those in the palace) already
give the reader new experiences to add to their previous layers of experience of the
Trojan War, because these new experiences uncover the women's perspective. While in
The Iliad, most of the women's characters were minor and all were depicted through the
perspective of men, Kassandra offers another representation that leaves room for many
interpretations of the Trojan War. The space that Wolf creates in the caves is important to
this new representation, for it depicts a space that does not exist in The Iliad. For this
28
reason is it important that Kassandra have the space in the caves, because it is there
that she begins to uncover different "truths" about the palace:
Wieder im Umkreis der Stadt diese Neben-, ja Gegenwelt, die, anders als
die steineme Palast- und Stadtwelt, pflanzenhaft wuchs und wucherte,
i.ippig, unbeki.immert, so als brauchte sie den Palast nicht, so als lebte sie
von ibm abgewandt, also auch von mir. Man kannte mich, gri.iBte mich
gleicbmi.itig, ich aber gri.iBte eine Spur zu eilfertig zuruck. Demi.itigend
war es mir, dorthin um Auski.infte zu gehn, die der Palast mir verweigerte.
(Wolf, Kassandra 59)
In this moment, Kassandra demonstrates her alienation from both the women's space in
the caves and her own home in the palace. Kassandra has only known the reality of the
royal space of the palace, and the caves are foreign to her. However, the caves offer
something she is missing in the representation of her world that the palace presents to her.
This alienation from both worlds reflects Wolf s own feelings of alienation from her
home of Berlin and the foreign land of Greece that she later expresses in
Voraussetzungen; in this manner, she ties Kassandra's experience from over two
thousand years ago to her experience and the experience of the reader in the late
twentieth century. By showing the holes and gaps in the reality the palace presents
Kassandra, Wolf leads the readers to think about the dominant power's representation of
reality and the veracity of "truth" in their own life. Wolf demonstrates the landscape of
worlds in the plural of which McHale writes and enhances the complex knot of
experience that Miller describes while beginning to blur the line between history and
literature (cultural truths and cultural make-believe) for the reader.
29
The doubt in Kassandra concerning truth and meaning stems from the shift in
space within the palace that spreads out to the rest of Troy during the novel, because this
is when Eumelos's campaign of misinformation and distortion of Kassandra's truths
begin. The beginning of the patriarchal society, coinciding with the beginning of the fall
of Troy, starts with Paris's declaration that he will have Helena:
[Menalaos] gab dem Sohn des Gastgebers hof1ich Bescheid, bis seine
Fragen so frech wurden, daB Hekabe, ungewoOOlich zornig, dem
ungezogenen SoOO den Mund verbot. Todesstill wurde der Saal. Nur Paris
sprang auf, schrie: Wie! Schweigen solIe er? Schon wieder? Immer noch?
Sich klein machen? Unsichtbar womoglich? Oh nein. Die Zeiten sind
vorbei. (Wolf, Kassandra 71)
This passage marks the beginning of both the women's loss ofa voice and the men's
domination of the voice. In disregarding Hekabe's word and declaring that he will no
longer adhere to his mother's words, Paris sets in motion the violation of tradition that
Eumelos then strengthens with his followers who infiltrate the inner workings of the
palace. From this point on, Kassandra's description of the palace is mixed with her
description of Eumelos, invoking the image of a being that takes away her voice and her
ability to fight effectively against the new patriarchal movement:
Denn warum schrie ich, wenn ich schrie: Wir sind verloren!, warum nicht:
Troer, es gibt keine Helena! Ich weiB es, wuBte es auch damals schon: Der
Eumelos in mir verbot es mir. 100, der mich im Palast erwartete, iOO schrie
ich an: Es gibt keine Helena!, aber er wuBt es j a. Dem Yolk hiitt ich es
30
sagen mtissen. Das hieB: Ich, Seherin, gehorte zum Palast. (Wolf,
Kassandra 83)
Wolf's representation of the events in Troy demonstrate that the established "truths"
about the historical event (Paris fell in love with Helena, Helena returned the affection
and went willingly with Paris) are not the only perspective that is possible. After Paris
makes his declaration and Eumelos begins his campaign of misinformation to the public,
the palace's space is described with such business terms as "Unternehmen" and
"Produktion"; men like Kassandra's brother Troilus were no longer trusted because they
chose their lovers out oflove and not business; and Eumelos's propaganda for the war
fractured the truth into different directions: Eumelos's truth and Kassandra's truth:
Helena. Der Name traf uns wie ein StoB. Die schone Helena. Darunter tat
es der kleiner Bruder nicht. Man hatte es wissen konnen. Man hatte es
gewuBt. Ich war Zeugin, wie im Hin und Her zwischen dem Palast und
den Tempelpriestern, in Tag- und Nachtsitzungen des Rats eine Nachricht
hergestellt wurde, hart, gehammert, glatt wie eine Lanze: Paris der
Troerheld habe auf GeheiB unsrer lieben Gottin Aphrodite Helena, die
schonste Frau Griechenlands, den groBmauligen Griechen entfiihrt und so
die Demtitigung geloscht, die unserm machtigen Konig Priamos einst
durch den Raub seiner Schwester angetan worden war. (Wolf, Kassandra
78)
This passage connects the past and the present in several different ways for the reader.
Wolf sustaining of the adjective "glatt" in connection to the palace demonstrates that the
previous space of the palace was already on a trajectory towards the patriarchal
---------- -- ---- -------
31
movement. The difference lies in the fact that the slick, smooth, glossy character of the
palace's former silence has now added an element of menace, for the slickness of the
campaign of misinformation is now that of a lance. This representation of the events of
the Troj an War is that of the established narrative of The Iliad, but the framework of the
palace's propaganda that Wolf uses to surround the representation undermines the
veracity of that perspective. In Kassandra, Wolf presents the Trojan War in a space that
appears just as valid and plausible as the traditional space, which then calls into question
the sense of reality the readers connect to their now-layered experience of the Trojan
War.
This passage concerning the palace's campaign of propaganda and
misinformation also relates to the present day in that Eumelos's growing network of
followers reflects the Staatssicherheit (the Stasi) that was an imposing and oppressive
presence in the lives of East Germans during the time that Germany was divided. The
Stasi and their civilian informants (roughly one of every 120 citizens was a member
around the time Kassandra was published) infiltrated almost every aspect of life in East
Germany (Childs and Popplewell 85). The Stasi also controlled the public by only
allowing information that supported a positive representation of the government to be
publicized (Childs and Popplewell 82). By exposing the palace-generated representation
of the Trojan War as one constructed explicitly by palace officials (i.e. not based in any
of the characters' experiences of the actual events) Wolf makes implicit commentary on
the practices of her own government in East Germany.3 In this manner, Wolfs revisionist
3 While it is true Wolf herself was targeted by the Stasi between 1969 and 1980, and she was revered later
for being a dissident of the East German government (Newsweek 41), she incurred public and scholarly
32
narrative brings the past and the present, as well as history and literature, together. The
rigid cultural border between truth and fiction is gone, and the events of the past reflect
the events of the present. This radical shift manifests·in Kassandra's description ofthe
physical palace itself. As the Trojans become further immersed in the patriarchal
movement, the palace becomes more and more like its own entity, as Kassandra describes
Polyxena's willingness to be used as a tool by the Trojan palace men in order to ensnare
Achilles:
Mit tiefem ungHiubigen Unbehagen sah ich ZU, wie die Zustande im
Palast, so als wiirde an ihnen einer drehn, uns ihre Kehrseite zuwandten,
eine liederliche Fratze. Wie sie, von einem andern Zentrum aus, ein andres
lTbergewicht bekamen. Und eins der Opfer, das sie unter sich begruben:
Polyxena. (Wolf, Kassandra 116)
According to Kassandra, the destruction of the palace began with the shift in political
space, and those silenced are the women. The palace once again embodies the
characteristics of Eumelos, as well as the patriarchy that has taken over Troy and will
lead to its eventual physical destruction, while the long-lasting destructive effects show in
the realm of women. The connection between Eumelos and the palace strengthens
towards the end of the novel:
criticism in 1993 when she publicly admitted that she was an "informal collaborator" for the Stasi for three
years, beginning in 1959. This discovery led many to declare that she had "forfeited her claim to moral
leadership," and her writings were scrutinized for portraying a "false" representation of Wolfs
involvement with the East German government (Gitlin). Kassandra's early participation in the palace
politics she rejects could be read as a reference to Wolfs earlier complicity in the system she criticizes.
33
Und in det Zitadelle schien es nur einen einzigen zu geben, der auf den
schandbaren Ubermut des Feindes die Antwort wuBte; der Mann war
Eumelos. Er zog die Schrauben an. Er warf sein Sicherheitsnetz, das
bisher die Mitglieder des Konigshauses und die Beamtenschaft gedrosselt
hatte, tiber ganz Troia, es betrafnunjedermann. Die Zitadelle nach
Einbruch der Dunkelheit gesperrt. Strenge Kontrollen alles dessen, was
einer bei sich fUhrte, wann immer Eurnelos dies fUr geboten hielt.
Sonderbefugnisse fUr die Kontrollorgane. (Wolf, Kassandra 121 - 122)
This passage speaks most directly to the practices of the Stasi in East Germany, and the
connection between Eumelos and the palace extends to include the present-day "palace"
and officials of Wolf s home. Wolf uses events in the historical narrative of Western
culture to criticize implicitly her country's government, which strangled its public with
informants, restrictions, and misinformation. While this criticism was quite dangerous to
write while living in East Germany, Wolf was an international author by the time she
published Kassandra, and it would have been difficult for the government to censor her
without garnering international attention. Still, placing her social criticism within the
framework of an older narrative allowed Wolf to express what she might not have been
able to, were she to simply write it out in a lecture.
By the end ofthe novel, the power contained within the space ofthe palace
spreads to all of Troy, so that all of Troy is shut offto Kassandra: "Nicht nur fUr den
Feind, auch fUr mich war Troia uneinnehmbar geworden" (Wolf, Kassandra 119).
Kassandra no longer has a position within Troy; the emerging patriarchal space has
dissolved the spaces she knew and absorbed the places for new use within the patriarchy.
34
The caves are no longer the sanctuary of before; the palace, her home, has become
foreign and violent; these competing spaces illustrate.·that Kassandra has no position left
in her world. Wolf s choice to frame the novel with the place where Kassandra dies could
demonstrate a sense of futility that critics of postmodernism claim is a trait of postmodern
theory. However, the last scene ofthe novel changes the quality of the place from the
way it was portrayed in the beginning passage: "Hier ist es. Diese steinernen Lowen
haben sie angeblickt. 1m Wechsel des Lichts scheinen sie sich zu rUhren" (Wolf,
Kassandra 164). Wolfs use of the verb scheinen denotes two meanings in the last
sentence. The reader could interpret the verb to mean that the lions seem to stir, to move,
and there is also the suggestion that the lions are shining. The change of light could mean
that, as the sun is fading, a new light shines upon the region where Kassandra once had a
voice. The movement of the lions also supports this s'uggestion; by stirring up movement,
the stone lions might begin the process of becoming a lived-in space in the de Certeauian
sense once more. With these last three sentences, Wolf may indicate that the plurality of
worlds may be able to shift the dominant reality yet again. By showing the different
possible spaces and places depicted in The Iliad, Wolf sustains the postmodern theory
that there is no binary opposition of right and wrong truths or realities, but rather the past,
present, and future are open to a myriad of possible interpretations, perspectives, and
representations. Inthe process, her representations of space and place expose the
dominant patriarchal power system and emphasize the way in which this system silences
the voices of those not represented in the power structure.
35
CHAPTER III
GEORG JO,HANNESEN'S KASSANDRA
Georg Johannesen's dramatic narrative Kassandra pr~sents a departure from the
philosophical models I have introduced in addition to the new perspective of Troy that he
depicts. While de Certeau and Miller's theories are helpful in demonstrating the centrality
of revisionist narratives in postmodernism, specifically in regard to space and place, they
both confine themselves to the realm of prose narrative. Miller's book does evaluate texts
other than novels, such as philosophical and poetic texts, but dramatic performances are
ignored. Similarly, while de Certeau makes a point to include other written texts that are
not considered to be novels, he nevertheless does not extend beyond the written narrative.
I use the term "narrative," because my definition of revisionism within the postmodern
genre includes other types of texts whose final products do not necessarily manifest
themselves in the written form. Specifically, theatric~l performance not only uses the
elements of a written narrative to show the series of representations that form a space but
also brings into play the visual aspect of places and spaces. In fact, the geometric locus of
a landscape plays a larger role in theatrical performance than it could in a written
narrative, because the audience is able to see the physical representation of a place before
it is turned into a space by the characters in the narrative. This is quite different in a
written narrative, because quite often the reader must rely on the description of a place
after it is already a space.
36
In his essay "Space and Reference in Drama," Michael Issacharoff argues that
in a written narrative, place and space are one-dimensional, created by language alone; in
a performance narrative, place and space are much more complex. Space and place can
be on-stage, off-stage, visible (represented visually), or invisible (described verbally), and
these elements can combine in many different ways to create the complex layers of
representation in a performance (Issacharoff 211). There is also the theater structure (i.e.
architectural design), stage construction (i.e. stage design), and dramatic space4 (as used
by the individual dramatist); all of these combine to create a visual realm of experience
that is lacking in a written narrative (Issacharoff212). For revisionist narratives in
postmodem texts, the spaces and places created by the dramatist that Issacharoff
examines are the most important element of visual perfom1ance for exposing the
intertwined layers of representation that create the landscape for the audience. Issacharoff
asserts that dramatic space is the most intangible space in the theater and therefore the
most dynamic space:
It is synchronic, since it specifically excludes from consideration the
history or sociology of previous performances; it is dynamic, since it
entails an attempt to study the mechanism of space, from one scene to the
next, as well as the relations linking space to other constituent elements of
performance. (Issacharoff 214)
This aspect of theatrical performance is indeed dynamic and pertinent as well to
revisionism in postmodem perfom1ance, because the synchronic nature of the
4 Issacharoff uses the term space for architecture, stage, and dramatic space, but this does not adhere to de
Certeau's definition of space.
37
spontaneous performance illustrates the possibility of infinite representation and
interpretation of a single space or place. No two performances are alike, although the
dialogue may be the same, and therefore the audience has the possibility of endless
experiences of the "same" event (i.e. performance). While this is not explicitly a part of
the given performance, it nevertheless reinforces the postmodern condition of the
plurality of worlds that McHale describes.
Representation in performance narratives is inherently complex, because they are
actually a synthesis of written and visual narratives. Performance narratives usually have
a theater script by which the performers learn their verbal discourse; this is auditory
language. The script also includes stage directions that indicate what visual movements
and representations should occur in the performance; this is non-auditory language. Both
auditory and non-auditory language make up the dramatic space with which the dramatist
works. As Issacharoff states,
In the theater, mimetic space is that which is made visible to an audience
and represented on stage. Diegetic space, on the other hand, is described, 5
that is, referred to by the characters. In other words, mimetic space is
transmitted directly, while diegetic space is mediated through the
discourse of the characters, and thus communicated verbally and not
visually. (Issacharoff 215)
The visual representations in performance narrative enhance the narrative trajectory by
containing modes of reference that are more varied and complex than that of simple
5 Issacharoff's italics.
38
verbal discourse. 6 Issacharoff argues that theater is the only art fonn in which the
signifier, signified, and referent are all simultaneously present in time and space
(Issacharoff 217). This creates a more complex experience of representation, because the
audience is also contributing to the conception of the space and place by experiencing the
visual representations unfettered by the mediation ofperfonners. The fact that the
signifier, signified, and referent are all simultaneously present is the perfect setting for
playing with the ideas of representation. For example, a cooking pot may be a cooking
pot in one scene and in the next become a hat. Revisionism specifically uses this to play
with the signifier, signified, and referent of historical or traditional spaces and places,
which in tum is a quality of postmodemism.
Johannesen wrote Kassandra in 1967, at a time when the experience of World
War II was still fresh in the minds of the Norwegians' who had lived through it. The Cold
War was a constant presence,? and the questioning of traditional customs that occurred in
the latter half ofthe twentieth century was still new to the public, including the rising
population of university students. University enrollment doubled between 1960 and 1965,
creating the need for more universities in Norway (Derry 437). These new universities
also ushered in a new kind of consciousness regarding authority and a new attitude
towards the dominant power structures for the university students:
6 This refers to the discourse in a written narrative as well as th~'verbal discourse in a performance
narrative.
7 Norway was the only member of NATO with a land border to the U.S.S.R.
39
At university level junior staff and students wrested some rights of
control over curricula and discipline from the formerly all-powerful
professors, and student co-operatives played a dominant role ... (Derry
438)
This new social consciousness towards power can be seen in Johannesen's Kassandra,
with its themes of exposing the dominant power and undermining its authoritative
position. Although Johannesen, born in 1931, was nof a part of this new wave of
university students, his ideas and works reflected the spirit of dissent against the
dominant power that embodied the majority of university students during the 1960s.
Johannesen had been a staunch socialist and political activist since World War II, and his
damning views on war and capitalism are quite visible in Kassandra. Johannesen's use of
The Iliad as a basis for this revisionist play is quite pertinent to the time period, because
The Iliad depicts the fall of the powerful city of Troy. This also shows that Kassandra fits
thematically into the genre of postmodem literature as well as revisionist narrative, due to
Johannesen's exposure of and challenge to dominant structures and the highly
experimental aesthetic form of his writing. Johannesen uses the story of Troy to make a
comparison between Troy and the authoritative power structures of his own time. His
problematization of both the spaces in Troy and contemporary religion, capitalism, and
politics demonstrates that his revisionist narrative accords with the postmodem
questioning of representation, the blurry history-literature border, and the commitment to
expose the underlying dominant power system. Johannesen's hybrid use of landscapes
and characters from The Iliad, images from World War II, and his social commentary of
contemporary international politics show that revisionist narratives have the possibility to
40
enhance postmodernism's examination of representation in many different ways. By
layering space and place from a highly esteemed, traditional narrative, World War II, and
his present-day world, Johannesen challenges the established representations of all tlu-ee
time periods.
Wolf preceded Kassandra with four lectures, published as Voraussetzungen einer
Erzahlung: Kassandra, which showed the work that led to the writing of her novel. While
Johannesen did not make public any discussion of his play at the time of its performance
and publication, he did write a reflective article about Kassandra in 1993 that sheds light
on many aspects of revisionism in his play. Johannesen begins his article with tlu-ee
quotes, one of which discusses Kassandra "i all sin grensel0se mangfoldighet"
(Johannesen, "am Kassandra" 220). From this quote, we see that the plurality to which
McHale refers with his "plurality of worlds" is an important theme in Kassandra.
Johannesen himself illustrates such plurality in many ways in his article. He states that
Kassandra is a play within a play, the external play being our everyday life (Johannesen,
"am Kassandra" 225). In this manner, Johannesen suggests that contemporary
Norwegian society itself is a play; this emphasizes the artificiality and socially
constructed character of what he calls "Oslo-regimet og Oslo-befolkningens
10gnsystemer og selvbedrag",8 an artificiality that he also illustrates with his stage
scenery that rejects the idea of "illusjonsteater" (Johannesen, "am Kassandra" 226,227).
In this manner, we see that Johannesen already had layers of space in mind for his play in
relation to his society in addition to the layers he creates within the play.
8 Johannesen singles out Oslo, because it is the center of political and economic power in Norway.
41
Johannesen uses his article about Kassandra to illustrate explicitly such layers
in the play, demonstrating how the layers of place in stage scenery and the layers of space
allow the audience members to create a complex mix of allusions. Johannesen explains
that the layering of the oracle at Delfi and the "Oslo-Tivoli" brings his social criticism of
the past to the present, as well as blurring the borders between fact and fiction
(Johannesen, "am Kassandra" 226). Johannesen illustrates the layering in many ways,
stating "en bil er en stridsvogn. Trikken er en trojansk hest.. ..Alt mulig er umulig. Og
omvendt" (Johannesen, "am Kassandra" 227). Here, Johannesen shows the parallels
between locations in Troy, World War II, and the present while at the same time
challenging the fixedness of reality. These layers of places and events include changes in
perspective on each location, which demonstrates the revisionism that is essential in
Johannesen's Kassandra. Additionally, Johannesen ends his article by emphasizing the
importance of simulacra in his work: "Faksjon og fiksjon kan ikke lenger bytte plass.
Oslo-Norge er blitt et simulacrum..." (Johannesen, "Om Kassandra" 237). Johannesen's
Kassandra uses events and places culturally deemed as historical (i.e. the truth) within
the realm of drama (i.e. fiction) in order to show that this binary view is artificial and
socially constructed. As Baudrillard asserts, fact and fiction are no longer separate from
each other.
The fact that Kassandra is a performance narrative complicates the
representations of place and space, as a result of the addition of visual representation that
purely written narratives cannot utilize. Unfortunately, because no recording of this
performance is available, I am not able to examine the play in its synchronic form and
must rely on the written text to analyze Johannesen's use of revisionism in his
42
postmodern play. Kassandra debuted at Det norske teatret (the Norwegian Theater) in
1967 but was quickly charged with the crime of blasphemy; while this charge was soon
dropped, the play was never again performed on stage (Berg 79); additionally, the script
was never published in any other country. Performative representations add a complexity
to Johannesen's exploration of space and place in Kassandra, and I would be remiss to
ignore this aspect of the text. It is for this reason that I will focus mainly on the non-
auditory text in the written script (i.e. scene set-up, stage direction, and use of props) to
show how Johannesen represents the different layers of space and place.
Kassandra contains twenty-one scenes in three acts, all of which have detailed
notes in the written script for the set-up and stage direction during the scenes. These notes
demonstrate how the performance narrative echoes de Certeau's principles of place and
space, because Johamlesen problematizes the spatial trajectory (a key notion for de
Certeau) of the narrative before the play has even begun. The fIrst act opens with scenery
that begins the layering of place immediately:
Et rotet rom. Halvferdig scenebilde medpreg av gammeldags tivoli. En
tykk mann sitter midt pa scenen og sover i en stygg elefantstolfra
tredvearene. Stolen kan trilles. Den tykke mannen er omgitt av oljlasker.
En ung gutt sitter pa sufflorkassen og spiller bloklifloyte. Gutten skotter
bort pa den tykke mannen, reiser seg, bukker for publikum og gar ut med
jloyten i handen og lekseboker under armen.
Fire prester kommer inn. Forst ]o.;fel i fotsid svart prestekjole, blind, joy,
tyn og melankolsk. .. Sa Sang, en tykk liten narr, han kan ha sydvest, gresk
hjelm, tuban, fez, jlosshatt eller kasserolle pa hodet...Kol kommer in etter
43
Mel og Sang. Kol er handlekraftig og i stand til adominere de
andre...Fleg kom inn samtidig som Kol, menfra motsatt side. Fleg er en
vanlig individualist, dypt engasjert i sine nevroser ogfullstendig
uinteressert i omverdenen... (Johannesen, Kassandra 9)
The props that involve the characters on stage allow the audience to interpret the scene
before any verbal discourse directs the narrative trajectory. In this manner, Johannesen
allows the audience to use the established social codes they have to make inferences
about the characters before the characters' dialogues add to their interpretation. The four
priests' actions introduce their characteristics; the schoolbooks the boy carries show that
he is a student; and the beer bottles that surround the sleeping fat man suggest his
drunkenness. At the same time, the half-finished scenery presents an immediate
artificiality, scenery that sustains throughout the entire play. The boy's position in the
prompter's box and his direct interaction with the audience, as well as Johannesen's
suggestion that the priest Sang can wear a saucepan for headgear, also demonstrate
Johannesen's deliberate decision to expose the artificiality of the play. This exposure of
artificiality is an element of postmodernism that rejects the culturally fixed, supposedly
true representations that characterize the literary movement of realism (Wain 368). The
fourth wall is broken between the characters and the audience, and Johmmesen highlights
the play aspect of this performance narrative. This then makes it glaringly apparent that
what the audience is experiencing is not based in reality. This beginning contrasts sharply
with the title of the play, and this sets in motion the first layering of representations. The
title suggests a play about a character from The Iliad, and yet the audience first
experiences a room that has no apparent connection to Troy. The audience is given a
44
place (as well as characters that create space) to interpret, and at the same time they are
forced by the paradoxical stage elements to see the artificial construct of the narrative.
The explicit layering of place and space on-stage begins shortly after the audience
is introduced to this half-finished scenery. The four priests set the layering up with their
verbal discourse, which juxtaposes images of Troy with a list of places important during
World War II. The connection between the destruction of World War II and Troy
establishes a comparison of place that Johannesen sustains throughout the play:
SANG: Det er kaldt. Jeg brenner. Det'er varmt. Jegfryser. (Han sllir
floke.) Det var kaldt i Stalingrad Det var kaldere i Hiroshima. Kaldere
enn her. Fleg! Det var kaldere i Nagasaki enn i Bikini.
KOL: Fleg!
FLEG (leser): "Den bergmte sydhavsgen Bikini skal i ar bes@kes av
turister utstyrt med ..
SANG: Badedrakter.
FLEG:Det star ikke et ord om badedrakter. Ikke her. Sitat: "Den bergmte
sydhavsgen Bikini skal i ar besgkes av turister utstyrt med spesialdrakter
da genfremdeles er radioaktiv etter va.nnstofJjJrfJvene i 1953... "
(Johannesen, Kassandra 10 - 11)
Johannesen undermines the traditional view of Homer's epic narrative, because he places
the images of Troy next to the nuclear bomb test site, which, after the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the source of heated debates about the treatment of human
life during the time Johannesen wrote Kassandra. By setting the two place descriptions of
Bikini Island and Troy so close together in the dialogue, Johannesen connects the fall of
45
Troy with the beginning of a deadly source of human destruction. He then adds a space
of lived experience to this abstract place of Bikini Ish~.nd through the discussion of
tourists on the island by the priests Sang and Fleg. While adding humor, this flippancy
about one of the sites most closely associated with the nuclear bomb also focuses
attention upon the apathy of the present-day tourists. Johannesen has now succeeded in
adding new and different layers of emotion (needless destruction, the lack of respect for
human life, the beginning of a dangerous new element in human history) to the
audience's experience of the narrative of The Iliad. By evoking a place and event in the
present that many in the contemporary world have condemned as unethical, Johannesen
calls the traditional view of a historical event into question by association.
This scene has already demonstrated the wavering border between history and
literature, a notion that is an essential principle of postmodernism, by giving the audience
a different perspective on the fall of Troy. Johannesen continues to bring together
different facets of postmodernism with his emphasis on artificiality in the next scene-
change directions:
Et bakteppe glir opp. Sang og Kol skyver ut stolen med den tykke mannen.
Over tivoliporten henger Fleg et stort skilt: DELFI (med gresk D). Kol tar
et pengeskrin som Fleg har sittet pa. Kol og Sang begynner a marsjere
mot porten... (Johannesen, Kassandra 11)
Johannesen's decision to have the characters do the scene-changing themselves reinforces
the absence of reality on stage; by momentarily stepping out of their characters, the actors
are at once both the performers and the performed. This creates a series of representations
that are tied to the characters in Kassandra, a series that becomes more complex after this
46
scene change when the four priests become Trojans without changing their costumes.
The representations of different characters in a single performer exemplify Miller's
complex knot of representations that infomls the audience's experience both of the
performer and the characters performed.
While the performers play an essential role in the layering of space on stage, they
do not convey the striking challenge to established representation in general as well as the
specific visual representation of Delphi that occurs. As this is still the first scene in the
first act, the actors remain surrounded by the space of the messy, contemporary room
with beer bottles strewn about and half-finished scenery. The only manner in which
Johannesen expresses that the place has changed is the stark sign over the door that states
plainly "DELFI." This slight scenery change that marks the beginning of this revision of
The Iliad shows the importance of place and space in challenging the traditional
narrative. The performers are still within the space of the messy room, and yet, by
changing the scenery, they create another place on top of that room with the visual
representation ofthe sign. Before the actors tum that place of Delphi into a space by
beginning their verbal discourse, the audience already has accessed a multitude of
representations of Delphi that go beyond the scope of the play to tap into other
experiences. These representations may come from cultural knowledge, personal
experience, institutional learning (i.e. from a school or university), etc. This series of
representations that the audience accesses presents Delphi as a place of reverence and
spirituality, primarily because this is the connotation that The Iliad depicts. It is therefore
quite jarring to see Delphi represented without reverence, by a plain sign and bold letters.
Set against the space of the messy, half-finished room, Johannesen's representation ofthe
47
place of Delphi erases reverence or spirituality. The experience of the messy room
carries over to the experience of Delphi. In this manner, Johannesen challenges and
subverts the power structure that created the established, "true" representation of Delphi;
this in tum plays with the sense of reality and meaning of Delphi for the audience. The
actions of the performers at the caves of Delphi also challenge the admiration of the
space by insisting that the gods are gone; the absence of spirituality at Delphi further
supports the absence of reverence for Delphi that the visual representation created.
Johannesen uses many of these signs as blunt visual representation to add layers
of place and space on stage. While they do utilize written text, they are still a large part of
the visual representation of place, because they are the only indication on stage that a new
space or place has been added to the previous layers. The signifier is thus stripped down
to a grouping of words, and the audience members must rely on their experience ofthe
signified outside of the play to fill the gap between the stark scenery and the space or
place implied. During the first act, the base representation of the messy room acquires
layers of place and space through these signs, all similarly painted severely: "DELFI,"
"TILBAKE TIL TROJA," "TROJANSK HEST U\JNEHOLDER FIENDEN
FORSIKTIG!" "EVIG FRED I TROJA. ADGANG FORBUDT!" and
"KRISTENDOMMEN - GUDS TIVOLI." It is important to state that these signs add
both place and space, because many of these sign throughout the entire theatrical
performance not only represent a place but also set the tone for the audience before the
actors begin the verbal transformation of the place into a space. For example, the sign
alerting the audience to the wooden horse containing Odysseus and other Greeks
introduces a representation of that event in which the fact that the horse is a trap is quite
48
clear. This is not simply the introduction of a place; the change from place to space is
already occurring before the verbal discourse begins. .!Eneas, played by the character Kol,
points to the sign and suggests wisely that maybe the guards should not let the horse in.
However, it is .!Eneas whom the guards (who willingly admit that enemies are in the
horse) do not want to allow access to the palace. This revision of the traditional narrative
presents the fall of Troy as something that was willingly caused by the Trojans
themselves, because they did not heed the signs that were explicitly and implicitly in
front of their faces.
Another example of space introduced by sign is the seventh scene, in which the
sign the performers post is a declaration of Christianity as God's carnival. The audience
simultaneously accesses and then associates their previous experiences with the
representations of the space of Christianity and the representations of the place of a
carnival. In this scene, Johannesen represents Christianity as a sort of entertainment that
God could either be controlling or in which God could be participating (this is an
example of the many interpretations such an ambiguous postmodernist representation can
have). By this scene, the audience has experienced representations that challenge the
traditional views of the fall of Troy, and now Johannesen brings the re-representation
challenge to the contemporary Western world by having Christianity as his focus. The
social commentary, while first introduced in his treatment of the traditional narrative, The
Iliad, is now centered on a subject that has no place in the narrative of the fall of Troy but
is present in the audience's everyday life, whether directly or indirectly.
Johannesen sustains the criticism of Christianity in the later acts, using other
visual representations in addition to signs in order to scrutinize culturally established
49
representations. For example, the tenth scene in the second act begins with the
persisting half-finished scenery as seen in the first act, but the lights become ever darker
until the only visible object is the sign which reads "HIMMELREKLAME" (Johannesen,
Kassandra 40). Using such a business term as "advertisement" with a place such as
heaven sustains the re-representation of Christianity by Johannesen. Johannesen ties
business and commerce with heaven, a combination that long-established representations
of Christianity do not support. His representation of heaven evokes representations of
capitalism and retail (i.e. advertising), which are not traditionally connected to the final
resting place of the saved Christian souls. In addition to commercial allusions, the theme
of advertising sustains the disconnection between humanity and its space. When tied to
religion, the advertising sign then alludes to a disconnect between religion and humanity.
Mark Sandberg writes that the onset of modernity and industrialization caused
advertising to become disconnected from the physical location: " ...the advertised product
might seem to have acquired a means of self-propulsion when it was no longer identified
in relation to a place and the name of a shop-owner" (Sandberg 281). This is pertinent to
Johannesen's play, as one of the main power structures Johannesen exposes is the
capitalist system in the modem age, and the layers of place on stage illustrate a
disconnection from the traditional view of these places. In this scene, the sign
HIMMELREKLAME is also quite disconnected from anything that might represent a
heaven on stage. In this manner, Johannesen challeng~s the motivations of a large power
structure existing in contemporary society through several visual allusions. As the fat
man (by this point in the performance narrative, he has represented both God and Satan)
50
appears, his verbal discourse supports and expounds upon this new representation of a
disconnected heaven:
TYKK MANN (roper): Til himmelen! Til himmelen! Ned med skyene! Vi
stiger. Vi stiger. Vi stiger. Vi vinner. Vi vinner. Vi vinner. .. Sola er seks
tusen grader pa overflaten som pa Solplassen i Japan 6. august 1945. Sola
er mnd. j a, helt mnd. Manen er mnd. Jorda er nesten mnd. Der nede til
h0yre og til venstre har vi de amerikanske englene. De flyr sa h0yt de kan.
De er gode. De er for, de er ikke i mot. De stiger. De stiger. De stiger. De
blier friere, friere og friere. Friheten er. .. (Johannesen, Kassandra 40)
The fat man's chant is an excellent example of the myriad of layers of representation that
occur within revisionist and postmodernist narratives. The chanting rhythm of the fat
man's speech, combined with the theme of heaven, evokes the tone of a sermon, an
aspect to which Johannesen explicitly refers in his article about Kassandra: "Litanier og
prekenparodier ut mot publikun gir hovedskillet mellom den greske og den kristne delen
av Kassandra" (Johannesen, "Om Kassandra" 226). The scene begins with two
contrasting representations of cultural space and place, and the fat man's advertisement
rant adds further layers of place. The images mixing in the minds of the audience are
traditionally contrasting but now uncannily combined: heaven, advertising, the sun, the
nuclear-bombed Japan, World War II, climbing American angels (fighter planes?),
freedom. These representations evoke many different experiences for the audience,
creating a complex series of representations in this one scene that forces the audience to
make connections between traditionally positive and negative images in contemporary
culture. Against the representation of places, spaces, and characters from The Iliad
51
occurring in previous scenes, Johannesen exposes his negative opinions of the power
structures that govern the world during his time.
The combination of place representations on stage, with the addition of verbal
discourse from the performers, create a platform on which Johannesen forces the
audience to compare the downfall of Troy with the current situation of the world's
powerful nations of his time. Each place and space he introduces in such a manner
challenges the traditional respect for these historical places, and the frustrating actions of
the characters serve to support the subversion. For example, the oracle's declaration that
the gods are absent at Delphi occurs after the scene in which the four priests make light
of the nuclear bomb tests at Bikini Island. The audience sees a connection between the
absence of the gods at Delphi and the absence of any voice of reason during the nuclear
bombings, which is further reinforced by the treatment of Christianity later in the first act.
These signs throughout the play that represent places tied to contemporary culture,
including heaven, hell, and Hiroshima, and the actions of the performers within these
spaces (for example, the fat man's advertisement for heaven), sustain this subversion to
include social criticism of the current situation.
Johannesen's Kassandra demonstrates the radical questioning of realities that
postmodernist narratives contain; by challenging established "true" representations of
places and spaces, he challenges the authoritative systems that sustain those
representations of "reality." Postmodernist theories include social critique and playing
with the idea of an absolute truth or reality. Postmodernist narratives therefore do not
support the attempt to find overarching universal conditions within texts. Each narrative
speaks to its own place and time period; Kassandra finds resonance with those who
52
understand the political and social situations of 1960s Europe and who contain the
cultural knowledge of Western literature.
However, this is not to say that parallels cannot be found among different
historical places and eras. The use of revisionism enhances postmodernist theory by
questioning established "truths" from the past and power structures in the present. By
using The Iliad as the basis for his revisionist narrative, Johannesen further supports the
postmodernist idea that there is no original meaning, truth, or reality behind these series
of representations. He illustrates that The Iliad itself is a representation that can be re-
shaped, and the original meaning or true reality of the events of Troy does not exist. The
borders between history and literature are therefore blurred. Representation leaves room
for many interpretations, and by adding contrasting representations of both a traditional
narrative and contemporary society, Johannesen is contributing further to the complex
knots of experience of these narratives of which Miller writes by challenging that which
is already established. Revisionism of traditional spaces and places in a narrative
reinforces the postmodernist theory of representation and enhances the possibilities of
examining the dominant systems within contemporary culture, as Johannesen has done
with his exposure of the dominant power systems of Christianity and capitalism.
53
CHAPTER IV
CONCLUSION
Postmodernism is normally tied in with calling into question the "messianic faith of
modernism" (Hutcheon, Politics 11), and revisionist narratives show that questioning the
systems of representation by the dominant power in other periods of historical narrative
applies to modern life in such a way that non-revisionist narratives would find difficult.
By taking an established narrative and challenging the "truth" thought to be inherent in its
narrative, postmodernist authors like Wolf and Johannesen can more effectively
demonstrate the power of representation in society and culture. Both authors chose one of
the oldest Western narratives to re-write, and in doing so they started their work with the
body of cultural knowledge already at their disposal. The literary and historical tradition
that The Iliad encompasses allows Johannesen and Wolf to start with an established base,
for they can assume that all Western readers/audience members have some knowledge of
the story. From there, they both operate under the assumption that the concepts of the
truth and reality cannot be contained within a binary, right-or-wrong categorical system.
Instead, they open history up to a myriad of interpretations and perspectives with
different ideological biases. Historical narratives now have the traits of literary narratives,
and the border between the two binary categories is again broken through, which exposes
the artificiality of the dominant power structur~'s established representation and allows
other representations to surface.
54
The intertextuality of these two revisionist narratives, while related to
McHale's notion of worlds in the plural, is a discussion that does not fit within the
framework of this paper. However, it is a relevant topic and deserves mention, because
the intertextuality demonstrates that revisionism is applicable not only for traditional
historical narratives such as The Iliad but also for other types of texts. The last lines of
Wolfs novel are reminiscent of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Der Panther," which
explores the destabilization of the subject-object relationship. Johannesen uses citation in
a more explicit manner, which he illustrates in his article about Kassandra:
I Kassandra fins allusjoner, 1<"m og sitater fra for eksempel Bibelen,
Luther, Shakespeare, Brorson, Blake, folkeviser og amerikansk visesang.
Her fins greske lan, fra Homer, Tyrtaios, Thukydid, Aristofanes,
Aiskhylos og Evripides. Kassandra er en modemistisk sitatmosaikk.
(Johannesen, "Om Kassandra" 229)
These references demonstrate that not only narratives perceived as historical can be
revised but also literary narratives. Both authors go beyond culturally deemed historical
events to include references from other texts such as drama, poetry, and popular songs.
This in tum further supports the notion that these different historical and so-called
fictional narratives have no difference in their relation to truth and reality other than the
dominant structure's social construction that creates the two categories.
So is it enough just to expose the dominant structure's representation? Can
postmodemist theory break out of the realm of academia and into the everyday Iives of
people? Is there a point to being aware of the power structures around us? Hutcheon
explains the paradox:
55
On the one hand, there is a sense that we can never get out from under
the weight of a long tradition of visual and narrative representations and,
on the other hand, we also seem to be losing faith in both the
inexhaustibility and the power of those existing representations.
(Hutcheon Politics 7)
This circular argument could indicate the inapplicability of the ideas that revisionist
narratives illustrate, but this is not the case. The very motivation of Johannesen and
Wolf's narratives (i.e. to criticize specific cultural c01).ventions they see in their society)
demonstrates that their works are meant to educate the public by showing alternative
ways of thinking. By experiencing that the dominant perspective is not the only valid
representation, individuals could get out from under the weight of tradition and discover
that the social conventions they have been exposed to since birth are not as fixed or rigid
as the dominant power or mainstream thinking leads them to believe. This marks the first
step in changing that dominant structure to include other perspectives. Instead of having a
cultural space that supports a binary position of "either/or" (either my reality or your
reality) revisionism supports the idea of an inclusive space (my perception and your
perception and her perception and ... ). Revisionist narratives can be the aesthetic tool
with which postmodernist theory is brought into the everyday sphere of society.
There are many different theories that fall under the postmodernist umbrella; this
is a defining trait of postmodernism (Wain 360). Revisionist narratives tie together these
different theories into literary form in order to demonstrate the connection between the
ideas. These narratives are an important tool for showing connections between
postmodern theories on history and literature, because they emphasize the idea that the
56
referent of the historical narrative is not the past but rather in the social conventions
and dominant power structures of the author's contemporary time period. As Linda Orr
asserts, authors are influenced by historical narratives of their culture, and historians in
tum are influenced by the writing of their literary contemporaries; revisionist narratives
show that these two categories are both social constructions:
Is the difference - no less important - between the two genres [of history
and novel] that historians and their readers believe in their prefaces
whereas in fiction we suspend disbelief? (Orr 13)
It is not a question of what we leam from these narratives, for the narrative is in our
everyday life in order to help us make sense of our experience in the world (Miller,
"Narrative" 70). It is rather that importance is placed upon the historical narrative simply
because this narrative is supposedly "true," and revisionism demonstrates that all
representations of an event are useful. Revisionist narratives look back on the "lives of
the obscure" in order to discover things in our own lives (Mudge 245). The narratives in
which we re-tell an established narrative express social conditions of our own
contemporary period, and exposing that our perceptions are simply aggregates of social
and cultural forces indicates that we can work toward changing our culture that
influences us.
57
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