Book Review: "Cassandra" by Christa Wolf

The story of Cassandra is almost essential to telling the story of Troy. I have read about her many, many times over the past 15 or so years and have found her to be underwritten or ignored. Thankfully, there is now a book just about her and my gosh, it was a book. For those of you who do not know who Cassandra is, here is a bit of a background: Cassandra was a priestess of Troy, dedicated to the god, Apollo and stunningly beautiful and intelligent. She was one of the daughters of King Priam and therefore, was also a Princess of Troy. Sister to the ill-fated Hector, breaker of horses - she became known as a rhetorical device rather than a person. Versions of the myth about her state that she made a small mistake (the mistake varies from story to story) and was cursed with being able to see prophecy whilst having nobody believe her.

Cassandra's youth is an independent one, being able to discuss politics with her father and yet, being casually distant from her mother - not wishing to be an extension of the Queen Hecuba. Queen Hecuba is noted as having no sympathy for the favoured daughter of King Priam and even though there is a gift of prophecy from Apollo, there is no change from her mother's coldness towards her. The best thing about all of this of course, is the fact that it is all narrated by Cassandra herself.

Throughout the book, we see Cassandra's love affair with Aeneas and then again, her suspicions that Helen is not in Troy, she thinks about the call to war and whether what she is seeing is true and thus, we spiral into one of the greatest stories ever told: The Trojan War.

Throughout this narrative, we see flicks of familial rivalry. For example: Polyxena is King Priam's youngest daughter and, after a betrayal and a blunder of hope, Polyxena begs her sister Cassandra to kill her. The question being, can Cassandra kill her youngest sister to save her from vast and iminent torture at the hands of the enemy? A gripping tale of faithlessness and the break down of the social order, the stoic and yet introspectively anxious Cassandra will tell her story in perhaps the first time ever. Her words have never been clearer and yet, there is a settling doubt over them in everyone's minds.

A psychodrama is what I would call this book. It does not lack the tenacity of its origin story and seeks to have a similar impact with Cassandra acting as both Cassandra and a Homer-esque figure watching on against the winds. There is a lot of political backstabbing, turmoil and betrayal in this book and I think that is what makes it so timely. A passionate love affair can never just be a passionate love affair, it has to be something more. It must be politicised and used as such at all costs.

The way it is written echoes the stream-of-conscioussness novel and so, we feel her like we feel the author Virginia Woolf, introspective anxiety is everything when you never let it out upon the world. The tension is brilliant though. You feel as if the first person narrator is constantly holding their breath and waiting for something to happen or waiting for someone to be found out. All this waiting means that the prophecy is not a gift, but it is actually a curse.

Cassandra barely gets any actual time for herself in the story of the Trojan War, often just a rhetorical device to incure the wrath of the gods against the forces of Troy early on in the text and thus, an act of foreshadowing the siege of the city - Cassandra often plays the role of 'god from a machine' if the 'god from a machine' was practically ignored by everyone around. Its a very practical device but I prefer her as an active character. You really get to see how each and every thing that happens impacts the outcome of the war and how Cassandra's story also impacts it. The differences between her father and mother in her childhood impact the decisions made in the city and so, she becomes essential to the story and embodies the very city itself. She is protected but she is ignored in a time of great crisis.