frorn SOPHOCLEAN TRAGEDY

Transcription

1 son. In the Oedipus Rex Sophocles had already tween these two ideal conceptions nanimous man of the Ethics, ideal for life, the tragic hero of the Poetics, ideal for death. Ac direct his own impulses in accordance with rea called into life throughout the high, clear heaven, whose father is Olympus alone; their parent was Neither interpret sees in all their aspects the facts or the forces fect happiness in the world is the wise man who the mag with which he is dealing, and can balance and cording to Aristotle, the man who attains per laws which the gods have made. clearly expressed in the drama itself. May des deeds sanctioned by those laws of range sublime, fall takes. But evc niably connected the praise of reverent purity in all words and pitiful and terrible, in accordance with the great tiny still find me, sings the Chorus, winning to the truth. For possible that he mc This philosophy of Aristotle and Sophocles is things wrongly. F a fault of charact $ A tyrant [1. 831] Insolence it is that breeds rhey express their fears in guarded and general nd afraid that he may prove to be a tyrant. spiracy (380 if.) [II. 366 ft.] or wishes to kill scenes Oedipus transgresses the Mean and is al as he certainly shows himself in the scenes with The view that Oedipus is punished for inso omitted; and the line numbers of the Fitts-Fitz lent pride can, however, be stated and defended gerald version of Oedipus Rex have been inserted the play and his line references to the Greek present editor s. punished not for the single act of killing Laius but for being in general proud and aggressive, and brings positive advantages. For in these mind. He may not yet be a full-fledged tyrant, 2. Arietot1e Nicomacka Ethics. III, I,; V, vi1. Podics, Cbapter 23. Bowra s Sophoclean Tragedy (Oxford: Clar in brackets following Bowra s quotations from These passages are taken from Chapter 5 of endon Press, 1945). Bowra s footnotes have been in a difterent way. It can be claimed that he is most swept away in a blind frenzy of pride when he accuses Teiresias of fomenting con Creon on a baseless suspicion (623) [ it is easy to conclude that they have Oedipus in text. The footnotes which appear here are the Teiresias and Creon. This is more persuasive Moreover, the Chorus are distressed by Oedipus terms, but when they sing view of Oedipus fall when it comes; Oedipus these theories is Aristotle s, that Oedipus falls return to their suspicion but form a diiferent /165/ Proud he may be, but pride is not the di if they were a punishment; the Chorus do not himself, in the horror of his humiliation, does Teiresias does not speak of his coming woes as rect cause of his fall. More subtle and more persuasive than any of to be punished for aggressive insolence. Even doubt whether Sophocles intended his Oedipus would lead to Oedipus acquittal. For he says means Sophocles Oedipus, but his admiration for the play is so great that it is hard not to think mistake. If he means simply an intellectual mis pravity but in ignorance of fact or circumstance, norance that Laius is his father, and this is the plague, the curse, the discovery of the truth, and take Oedipus changes from good to bad fortune. Oedipus blinding of himself. Because of his mis he makes a mistake of this kind. He acts in ig take, an error of judgement, his own views are not voluntary, and should be forgiven. 2 Now but he shows the signs. Yet despite this, we may not think that it is a punishment for pride. it is perfectly true that when Oedipus kills Laius beginning of his downfall. For it leads to the through a mistake. that he does. The question is what he means by that such mistakes originate not in vice or de 1 He does not say that he by Cecil Maurice Bowra frorn SOPHOCLEAN TRAGEDY with that imperfect vision, meets a fate most side of a matter, and straightway, driven on by his uncontrolled emotions, acts in accordance ever lay them to sleep: the god is mighty in shown the reverse. The man who sees but one them and grows not old. /4/ no race of mortal men, no, nor shall oblivion 184 I his father leads his own a display t of what he of judp lence, is not poet s leaves him a ] wi King r have ordaineda he may be The act his view. For th discuss it in his fixed before hs disbelief v That that he will is understandable see that he g the rise and fall says nothing abo vitally important Whichever we po ordained by ti /167/ tragic mistake m interested in thi the poet s, casta s and g developme the final (io8o if.) power of Oedipus does which their origin, li and prosp work is take Inc. King (, different kind of i It is, however, po

2 niably connected with the form that his down tragic mistake meets all the facts of the play. if.) [ if.], possible that he meant it. If so, he came very near discuss it in his Poetics. But it seriously impairs his father leads to other disasters, it is itself fore fixed before his birth. his view. For though Oedipus mistake in killing is understandable since he was, apparently, not says nothing about the part taken by the gods in vitally important element in King Oedipus. He fall takes. But even this is not quite adequate. to the truth. For Oedipus character is unde things wrongly. He does not say this, but it is Whichever we prefer, Aristotle still missed one a fault of character which leads a man to see different kind of mistake, something more like the rise and fall of Oedipus. His omission /z66/ interested in this aspect of tragedy and did not ordained by the gods. The tragic career of Oedipus does not begin with it. His doom is It is, however, possible that Aristotle means a /167/ see that he gets it. He is even the instrument by have ordained a life of horror for him, and they Neither interpretation of Aristotle s view of a The activity of the gods is an essential part of King Oedipus. Oedipus is their victim. They Oedipus.... it naturally raises questions about the gods may destroy it. It is a warning not so qualms, but he sees the difficulties of his theo This is kept till the end of the play when the much against pride as against any confidence or not like this that we expect the gods to act. in which much is concerned beside the general main lesson. There is above all the individual provide means of reconciliation by which he, polluted as he is, can make his peace with them and restore the breach in the divine order which find again a place in the ordered system of his father and marries his mother, they should come the gulf between himself and the gods, to also the first steps by which he begins to over pus they create a situation of great complexity he has made. Sophocles was conscious of this pus and reveals to him that he is polluted but the justice of the gods, who treat Oedipus simply Sophocles, perhaps, might not have felt our possible critics. When the gods humiliate Oedi shows not only the crisis which humbles Oedi need and took steps to meet it. /176/ The play to break their own laws, as he does when he kills prob1m of Oedipus himself. If they force him as a means to enforce a lesson on others. It is From the very beginning he has been chosen to sense of security. To drive this warning home they display it, man may draw a salutary lesson. the gods have made an example of Oedipus. show by his misfortunes the need for modesty logical scheme and does something to answer 185 is not deserved; it is not a punishment for inso King Oedipus shows the humbling of a great poet s theological intention. (io8o if.) [ii if.] which comes just before display their power because they will. But since ] which precedes the revelation of his true his own dismissal of the oracles (971 72) [II. lence, nor in the last resort is it due to any fault he may be the slayer of Laius (o7 disbelief which leads to Oedipus discovery that the final shattering truth. The play shows the casta s and Oedipus scepticism. It is Jocasta s of judgement or character in the man. The gods take in events but by the dramatic effects which the poet secures by displaying the futility of Jo origin, his wild hope that he is the son of Luck power of the gods at every important turn in its and prosperous man by the gods. This humbling development and leaves no doubt about the That Sophocles intended to show the gods at leaves him no escape. He fulfils it in ignorance of what he is doing, but he must fulfil it. which their plans are fulfilled. The prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother work is seen not only by the part which they man s fortunes.... /z/ [Bowra then cites the spirit which rules his actions for him. The word god and is closely concerned with an individual a supernatural power which is inferior to a true spirit. It has something of all these in it. It is ously translated fate, destiny, god, and has no exact equivalent in English and is vari prompted and guided by a daimón, a divine action in blinding himself.... things. In this the gods help him. This reconciliation is the meaning of Oedipus when Oedipus blinds himself, he is sonal form, is the theological scheme in King Such, reduced to its most abstract and imper in times of success. Its lesson is that men must be modest in Chorus, or perhaps Oedipus himself, point to the extent of his fall, and comment [Bowra quotes here the last four lines of the play]. /175/ prosperity and remember that at any moment

3 i86 passages where the term daim6n occurs: these are ii , , 1211, 1213, 1253, 1265, 1285, and 1458 in the Fitts-Fitzgerald version. He claims (p. i8i) the daim6n is a kind of su pernatural power, and it is assumed by the Mes senger, the Chorus, and Oedipus himself to be at work at least when he blinds himself, and probably also throughout his life. He then says that Sophocles makes the daim4n an instru ment of the gods to carry out their demands, and continues:] Sophocles hints this at first vaguely, when Oedipus realizes that he has killed Laius and breaks out in the terrible words 0 Zeus, what is it thou wilt do to me? [1. 697] Here he ascribes to Zeus the fate which later he ascribes to a cruel daim6n. This by itself carries little weight, but later Oedipus makes the posi tion clearer. In the first moment after his appear ance from the palace he claims that Apollo is really responsible for what has happened: Apollo! Twas Apollo, friends, Willed the evil, willed, and brought the agony to pass! And yet the hand that struck was mine, mine only, wretched. [ ] /i8i/ The hand that works the destruction is that of Oedipus, but the power behind the action is Apollo. This does not contradict the part as signed elsewhere to the daimon. The daim6n bridges the gulf between Apollo who decides and dictates and the human agent Oedipus who carries out the decision.... /182/ Oedipus blinds himself because of his curse. He does it both deliberately and by divine prompting. The Greeks would make no real dis tinction between the two and would certainly praise /184/ Oedipus for acting as the gods de sire and see that the daimón s pressure on him was part of their scheme. As a parricide and in cestuous he will exile himself from Thebes which he pollutes and from human society with which he can have no normal relations. To carry out his curse he inflicts a fearful injury on him self. The curse has still to finish its course. Oedi pus knows this, makes no attempt to resist it, rather does his best to help it. There is no ques tion of guilt and its punishment, but once pollu tion has been incurred, once the powers of heav en have been invoked with such solemnity, they cannot be countermanded. The gods have chosen Oedipus for this fate. In so far as he is to be an example to others it is enough that he is a great king. But the lesson that he himself has to learn must be suited to his own nature. The man who is to be taught his own utter insignificance must be endowed with special gifts of character and intellect; for only in such conditions is the lesson worth learning. Such Oedipus undeniably is.... But the same characteristics which brought him to success make his downfall more tragic and are almost instruments to it. It is because he is such a supe rior being, angry when attacked, capable of brief and brilliant action, self-confident and /i8/ rapid in decision, that his discovery of the truth takes so tragic a turn. His fated life is his own life. It is his character, his typical actions, that make his mistakes so intelligible and fit so nat urally into the god s plan to humble him. /i86/ Yet, just because Oedipus is a great king, he is exposed to great perils both from the gods and from himself. Because he is after all a monarch who acknowledges no mortal superior and no law above himself, he is liable to presumption and pride. He illustrates the question which He rodotus makes Otanes ask: How can monarchy be a well-adjusted thing when it allows a man to do what he likes without being answera ble? All is well with his character so long as he prospers, but when his will is thwarted, his kingly temper verges on the tyrannical. Both with Teiresias and with Creon he steps far be yond the bounds of decency and humanity, blusters, abuses, and threatens. His threats fail. Teiresias departs unharmed, having said the last, most deadly word; Creon is saved by the intervention of Jocasta and shows later that he bears no malice. But the great and good king shows how small is the barrier between royalty and tyranny, between authority and pride. He has lost some of his nobility, forfeited some of our admiration. He has even come nearer to Aristotle s tragic hero who is not pre-emi nently virtuous or just. Consequently his suffer ings stir compassion but do not awake an in tolerable indignation against the gods as /i88/ they might if he had shown no human faults. And for him these outbursts of unbridled tern. ilclqdotus, Th4 Pei, w, in, lm.

4 per add to the horror of his collapse. Because he is furious with Teiresias, he is unable to grasp the seer s message and fails to see that he himself has killed Laius, so that the revelation of the truth is postponed and comes with all the greater effect when it finally breaks on him. Oedipus high position has been given to him by the gods, and what the gods have given, they can take away. He is insufficiently aware of this. The Priest modestly says to him: Your own wit, touched by some god, Men say and think, raised us and gave us life. [ ] Oedipus himself admits no such divine help; in his view he answered the Sphinx by his own unprompted intelligence: 1, the fool, Ignorant Oedipus no birds to teach me Must come, and hit the truth, and stop the song. [ ] /189/ To the audience this confidence and this power would certainly seem fraught with danger. They would know that anyone so highly placed was liable to fall, and that it was a bad sign in Oedi pus to be unconscious of his risks. Oedipus royal gifts are a source of danger to him. The same may be said of his intelligence. He solved the riddle of the Sphinx. On his own claim,he did it through his wits (398) [1.384], but whether the gods helped him or not, he suc ceeded where others failed. So Sophocles makes him a man of powerful intelligence and shows that it is of the kind to solve problems. Just as he must have answered the Sphinx by a sudden stroke of insight, so now the gift of reaching rapidly the answer to a problem, of asking perti nent questions, of finding his own answers to them, is still with him. His energy in looking for the murderer of Laius, his courageous and un flinching desire to know the truth about him self, belong to his vigorous mental equipment. But by a hideous irony, this time the answers are all wrong. They are based on some kind of evidence; they sound plausible. But they do not touch the truth.... The predominant quality of Sophocles Oedi pus is his high temper, his Ou6s. This was an ambiguous quality. On the one side it worked for good and made men active and enduring. So Plato gave it a prominent place in his psychol 187 ogy and made it the ally of tht reason against the appetites. As the self-assertive principle whose object is honour it is part of the mental equipment of any active man and especially of a king and leader like Oedipus. In his earlier ca reer he has shown it in full measure, and it is no less strong when he sets to work to stop the plague by finding the murderer of Laius. But it had another side. It was not necessarily nor al ways allied to reason. As Plato saw, it could have a destructive side when it was allied to un reasoning violence. So in Oedipus, his high spirit and temper, admirable when the end is good, are liable to get out of control and to do dam age.... /192/ Such anger is not kingly but tyrannical, and can do Oedipus no good. Nor is there any justification for it. Neither Teiresias nor Creon is really plotting against Oedipus. He accuses them unjustly because he is angry and finds it hard to abandon his suspicions. His whole be haviour is dominated by his high temper both for better and for worse. It is the clue to his ac tions, and to his mistakes. In the past it has not harmed him; it has even served him well. But now it turns on him, spoils his character, and adds to his troubles. It has blunted his insight and encouraged what there is of the bully in him. We might apply to him Heraclitus saying, It is hard to fight against anger; for whatso ever it wishes, it buys at the cost of the soul. When Oedipus indulges his angry temper, he pays for it with the loss of judgement and de cency. But the intellectual aspects of the struggle are more important than the moral. For the play what counts is that Oedipus tendency to anger prevents him from seeing the truth, even when it is told him, and induces a state of illusion in which he lives until reality is forced upon him.... /i/ By modern standards the gods who decide on Oedipus fate before he is born and then inflict it on him without mercy treat him cruelly. But this is not a view that Sophocles would have held or admitted. He would more probably hold that men cannot judge the gods and might even agree with Heraclitus that For God all things are beautiful and good and just, but men think some things unjust and others just. For he states emphatically that the gods must be hon 4. Heraclitus was an early Greek philosopher who flourished about xo a.c.

5 oured, and shows that their word must be be deserve his fate. At least one modern classical x. This is taken from Chapter z of the Poelk,. though this plan determines all that happens, edge. The horror of his fate and his fall is fore The gods humble Oedipus as a lesson to men to recognize that his own judgement may be which man lives. He can only do his best to un the lesson of King Oedipus... /o/ is nothing and that he knows nothing. This is too, arises from the ignorance and blindness in word is sometimes hard to understand. That, derstand the gods by what means he possesses, wrong. The gods, who know everything, are right. Nor may man complain of them. He must humble himself before them and admit that he not to trust in their happiness or their knowl ther and marries his mother the inviolable laws must be healed, the order restored. Before this and Heilman s Understanding Drama (N.Y.: ing of the play. He tends to ask what Oedipus Henry Holt, 1948). The section headings have that Oedipus is not a guilty man not does can be done, the evil that has been, albeit uncon of the gods are broken and the divine order of ic and Sophoclean. When Oedipus kills his fa the actual events follow a pattern which is trag ordained that others may learn from it. But This passage is taken from the last two sec pear here are the present editor s. things sustains a grievous wound. The wound tions of the discussion of Oedipus Rex in Brooks reader may remain dissatisfied with the mean could have done to avoid the fate which over reader may also share a closely related feeling, passive, helpless victim of fate. The modern has not been reprinted. The footnotes which ap Yet, as we have remarked, the modern step indicated, he feels that Oedipus is simply a takes him and, if he can find no such preventive 5. The problem of Oedipus s guilt and Robert B. Heihnan from UNDERSTANDING DRAMA by Cleanth Brools his peace with the gods. He does what is right, to punish himself for his past actions, he makes state. Such a condition cannot last, and it is accepts his position, knows the truth. Through fury, his moments of scepticism, his certainty Polybus. As Oedipus comes to see the truth and lusions he moves to dangerous acts. His fits of when the plague forces a crisis on him. From il both to others and to him. Democritus words, lieved. Nor is it legitimate to argue that their been retained, even where the complete section This it does in the growth of Oedipus illusions that he is right, are the natural products of his broken by the events which follow the death of resignation and suffering the rightful harmony sciously, committed, must show its full force. 188 BROOKS AND HEILMAN: UNDERSTANDING DRAMA The Question of Focus. In the first place it is important to see that Sophocles might have writ that she ought to leave him, has yielded to the though her husband is a libertine and she feels ple, has such a focus. In that play Mrs. Alving, causes his own ruin. Ibsen s Ghosts, for exam on some decisive act by which the protagonist depends upon our disposition of the other ob ten his play so as to have put the principal focus jection, that Oedipus is a passive character. canvassed somewhat. But a final account of it The nature of Oedipus s guilt has already been a virtuous man brought from prosperity to ad important elements in tragedy. As we have said These possible objections relate to two very versity (see Aristotle s Poetics 12, Appendix 1). scholar has recently put this view forcefully. (pp. iio, ), the protagonist must not be 5. Democritus (c B.c.) was a Greek philosopher. ing. /215/ has been /210/ taught modesty through suffer been foolish in his mistakes and illusions and may be applied to Oedipus, who has indeed the foolish learn modesty in misfortune, at the beginning. His humiliation is a lesson pus at the end of the play is a better man than of things is restored. By divine standards Oedi