Oedipus the King (8 page)

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Authors: Sophocles,Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles

Tags: #Drama, #Ancient & Classical, #Literary Collections, #Poetry, #test

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of this work. I am further in Professor Gould's debt for his edition of
Oedipus The King
, from which I have learned a great deal. I am grateful to both Richard Wilbur and Richard Trousdell who each offered timely encouragement and asked exactly those questions that pointed the way to useful revisions. Pam Campbell of the University of Massachusetts Press substantially improved the introduction, text, and notes by her editorial suggestions. My thanks also to the Department of Theater at the University of Utah, for encouraging this translation when it was hardly begun, and for producing it in August 1980. The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation supported the translation with a Fellowship that enabled me to work without interruption until it was complete. I am grateful also to the American Academy in Rome and its director, who welcomed me as a Visiting Writer to that remarkable institution, whose opportunities for stimulation and productive work are more than equal to the distractions of Rome.
ROBERT BAGG
AUGUST 30, 1981

 

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Oedipus the King
 
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SPEAKING Oedipus, King of Thebes
CHARACTERS Priest of Zeus
Kreon, Jocasta's brother
Chorus of older Theban men
Leader of the Chorus
Tiresias, blind prophet of Apollo
Jocasta, Oedipus' wife
Messenger from Corinth
Herdsman, formerly of Laius' house
Servant, from Oedipus' house
SILENT Delegation of Thebans, mostly young
CHARACTERS Attendants and maids
Boy to lead Tiresias
Antigone and Ismene, Oedipus' daughters
SCENE Before the Royal Palace in Thebes. The palace
has an imposing central double door. Two altars
stand near it; one is to Apollo. The delegation
of Thebans enters carrying olive branches wound
with wool strips and gathers by the altars and stairs
to the palace. The light and atmosphere are oppressive.
Oedipus enters through the great doors.

 

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OEDIPUS My children, the newest to descend
from ancient Kadmos into my care:
why have you rushed
here
, to these seats,
your wool-strung boughs begging
for god's help? Our city is oppressed
with incense smoke and cries of mourners
and prayers sung to the Healing God.
I thought it wrong to let messengers
speak for you, my sons, I must hear
10 your words myself, so I have come out, I,
Oedipus, the name that all men know.
Speak to me, old man. Yours
is the natural voice for the rest.
What concerns drive you to me?
Fear? Reassurance? Be certain
I will give all the help I can.
I would be hard indeed if I didn't
pity those who approach me like this.
PRIEST You rule my country, Oedipus, and you see
20 who comes to your altars, how mixed
we are in years: children too weak
to travel far, old men worn down by age,
priests like myself, the priest of Zeus,
a picked group of our best young men.
More of us wait with wool-strung boughs
in the markets, or at Athena's two temples,
or watch the embers at Ismenus' shrine
for the glow of prophecy.
You can see for yourself
30 our city going under, too weak to lift
its head clear of each deadly surge.
Plague is killing our flowering farmland,
it's killing our grazing cattle. Our women
in labor give birth to nothing.
A burning god
rakes his fire through our city;
he hates us with fever, he empties
the House of Kadmosbut he makes
black Hades rich, with our groans and tears.
40 We don't believe you are the gods' equal, King,
but I, and these children, ask help here,
at your hearth, because we put you first, of all men,
at handling troubleor confronting gods.
You came to Thebes, you broke us free

 

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of the tax we paid with our lives
to the rasping Singer. No one prompted you,
you were not taught by any of us.
We tell ourselves, you had a god's help
when you pulled us back to life.
50 Once more, Oedipus, we need your power.
We beg you, each in our own pain
find our lost strength!by learning
what you can from a god's voice
or what some man can tell you.
I know this:
advice from men proven right in the past
will meet a crisis with the surest force.
Act as our greatest man! Act
as you did when you first seized fame!
60 Our country believes your nerve saved us then.
Don't let us look back on your rule, saying,
once he raised us, but later let us fall. Lift us to safety!so that no misstep
ever again will bring Thebes down.
Good luck came with you, a bird from god's will,
the day you rescued us. Be that same man now.
If you are going to rule us, King, it's better
to rule the living than a lifeless waste.
A walled city is nothing, a ship is nothing,
70 when there's no one aboard to man it.
OEDIPUS I do pity you, children. Don't think I'm unaware.
I know what need brings you: this sickness
harms you all. Yet, sick as you are,
not one of you suffers a sickness like mine.
Yours is a private grief, you feel
only what touches you. But my heart grieves
for you, for myself, and for our city.
You've come to wake me to all this.
There was truly no need. I haven't been asleep.
80 I have wept tears enough, for long enough;
my thoughts have raced down every twisting path.
The only cure all my thinking found
I've set in motion: I've sent Kreon,
my wife's brother, to Phoebus at Delphi,
to hear what action or what word of mine
will save this town. Already, counting what day
this is, I'm anxious: what is Kreon doing?
He takes too long, more than he needs.

 

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But when he comes, I'd be the criminal
90 not to do all the god shows me to do.
PRIEST Your words have just been made good: your men
are now signaling me that Kreon's here.
OEDIPUS O Lord Apollo,
may the luck he brings save us! Luck so bright
we can see itjust as we see him now.
(Kreon enters from the countryside, wearing a laurel crown.)
PRIEST Only a man whose news is sweet comes home
wearing a crown of laurel speckled with berries.
OEDIPUS We'll soon know, he's within earshot. Prince!
Brother kinsman, son of Menoikeos!
100 What kind of answer have you brought from god?
KREON A good one. I call nothing unbearable
if luck can straighten it, and bless the outcome.
OEDIPUS But what did the god say? There's nothing in your words
so farto cheer me or to frighten me.
KREON Will you hear it in front of these men?
If so, I'll speak. Otherwise we go inside.
OEDIPUS Speak here, to all of us. I suffer more
for these men than for my own life.
KREON Then I'll report what I heard from Apollo,
110 who did not hide his meaning.
He commands we drive out what corrupts us,
what makes our land sick. We now harbor
something incurable. He says: purge it.
OEDIPUS Tell me the source of our trouble.
How do we cleanse ourselves?
KREON By banishing a manor by killing him. It's blood,
it's kin-murder that brings this storm on our city.
OEDIPUS Did god name this man whose luck dooms him?
KREON You know, King, that our city was ruled once
120 by Laius, before you came to take the helm?
OEDIPUS So I've heard. Though I never saw him.

 

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KREON Laius was murdered. Now, to avenge him, god
wills you to strike down with your own hands
those men whose hands struck Laius down.
OEDIPUS Where do I find these men? How do I track
vague footprints from a bygone crime?
KREON The god said: look here, in our land.
Nothing's caught that we don't chase
what we ignore goes free.
130 OEDIPUS Was Laius killed at home? Or in the countryside?
Or did they murder him on foreign ground?
KREON He said when he left that his journey would take him
into god's presence. But he never came home.
OEDIPUS Did none of his troop see and report
what happened? Is there no one
to question whose answers might help?
KREON All killed but a single terrified
survivor, able to tell us but one fact.
OEDIPUS What fact? One fact might point to many,
140 if we had one small clue to raise our hopes.
KREON They had the bad luck, he said, to meet bandits
who struck them with a force many hands strong.
It wasn't the violence of one man.
OEDIPUS What bandit would risk such a huge crime
unless somebody here hired him to do it?
KREON That was our thought, but fresh trouble
obsessed us. With Laius dead,
who was to lead our revenge?
OEDIPUS But here was your kingship murdered!
150 What kind of trouble could have blocked your search?
KREON The Sphinx's song. So wily, so baffling!
she forced us to forget the dark past
to confront what lay at our feet.
OEDIPUS I will go back, start fresh,
and clear up all this darkness.
Apollo was exactly right, and so were you,
to turn our minds back to the murdered man.
And now it's time I joined your search
for vengeance, which our land and the god deserve.

 

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