The Greek Plays
Page 32
(Oedipus remains onstage*88 while the Chorus sing their third ode.)
strophe
CHORUS: If I am a prophet
and keen in judgment,
by Olympus you shall not fail,
O Cithaeron, to see tomorrow’s full moon*89
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exalt you as home of Oedipus,
his nurse, his mother,
celebrated in our dancing
for the favors you have bestowed
on my lord.
Phoebus, invoked in our cries,
may you find this pleasing!
antistrophe
Who, child,*90 was your mother?
One of the long-lived nymphs
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embraced by mountain-pacing Pan—
who’d be your father, then? Or a bed-mate
of Loxias, lover of all the pasturing plains?
Or maybe Cyllene’s Lord*91
or the Bacchic god*92
who haunts the mountain summits took you,
a foundling, from one
of the dark-eyed Nymphs with whom
he loves to dally.
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OEDIPUS: (to the Chorus) If I, too, may guess, though I’ve never
had any dealings with him, I think I see
the shepherd we’re expecting. He’s advanced
in years—as many as the man you’ve mentioned.
I recognize, too, as my own servants
the ones who bring him here. But you would know
better than I, having seen the man before.
CHORUS LEADER: Yes, it’s him. He was a man whom Laius
trusted as much as any, though a shepherd.
(Enter the shepherd, accompanied by Oedipus’ servants.)
OEDIPUS: I ask you first, Corinthian stranger: is this
the man you mean?
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MESS.: Yes, him, the one you’re looking at.
OEDIPUS: You there, old man, look here and tell me
what I ask. Were you once Laius’ man?
SHEPHERD: I was, a slave not bought but reared in the house.
OEDIPUS: What task, what way of life, did you work at?
SHEPHERD: I tended flocks for almost all my life.
OEDIPUS: What places would you frequent, most of all?
SHEPHERD: It was Cithaeron, and the lands around it.
OEDIPUS: Do you recall, then, meeting this man there?
SHEPHERD: Doing what? And what man do you mean?
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OEDIPUS: This one. Have you had anything to do with him?
SHEPHERD: Not that I can say offhand, from memory.
MESSENGER: And that’s no wonder, master! But I’ll remind him
though he does not know me now. He’ll know
that when
of Cithaeron, he with two herds and I with one,
I kept him company for three stretches lasting
six months each—from spring until Arcturus*94 rose;
and then, when winter came, I drove my flocks
to their barns, and he drove his to those of Laius.
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Does this ring true, or did it never happen?
SHEPHERD: You speak the truth, though a long time has passed.
MESSENGER: Come, then, tell me whether you remember
that you gave me a child, to raise as my own?
SHEPHERD: What’s this? What are you getting at?
MESSENGER: Here he is, my friend: the man who was that child!
SHEPHERD: A curse on you! Will you not hold your tongue?
OEDIPUS: Don’t chastise him, old man. It’s your words,
not his, that stand in need of chastisement!
SHEPHERD: But how, O best of masters, am I at fault?
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OEDIPUS: You won’t discuss the child he asks about.
SHEPHERD: He doesn’t know what he says, and wastes his breath.
OEDIPUS: If you won’t talk to please me, you’ll talk in pain!
SHEPHERD: No! By the gods, don’t torture an old man.
OEDIPUS: Someone tie his hands behind his back!
SHEPHERD: No, no—for what? What more do you want to know?
OEDIPUS: Did you give this man the child in question?
SHEPHERD: I did. Would I had perished when I did!
OEDIPUS: You’ll come to that, if you don’t tell the truth.
SHEPHERD: But if I do I’ll perish all the more.
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OEDIPUS: (to his attendants) This man, it seems, is bent on wasting time.
SHEPHERD: I’m not! I’ve just told you I gave the child.
OEDIPUS: Whose child? Was it your own, or someone else’s?
SHEPHERD: No, not my own. I got it…from someone.
OEDIPUS: From which of these citizens here? Which house?
SHEPHERD: By the gods, master, look no further!
OEDIPUS: You’re a dead man, if I ask this again.
SHEPHERD: He was…somebody from the house of Laius.
OEDIPUS: A slave, or born into his family?
SHEPHERD: I’m close to saying what I dread to say!
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OEDIPUS: And I to hearing it, but hear I must!
SHEPHERD: His, yes, the child was his. But she within,
your wife, would best speak of it, how it was.
OED.: Was she the one who gave him?
SHEPHERD: Yes, my lord.
OED.: For what purpose?
SHEPHERD: To do away with him.
OED.: Her own child?
SHEPHERD: Yes, in fear of evil prophecies.
OED.: What prophecies?
SHEPHERD: That he would kill his parents.
OED.: Why, then, did you give him to this old man?
SHEPHERD: Out of pity, master. I thought he’d take him
away, where he himself was from. But he
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has saved him for the worst of fates. For if
you’re who he says you are, you were born doomed.
OEDIPUS: iou, iou! It’s all come out to clear. Light,
may I never look on you again! I’m the one
born to those I shouldn’t have come from, living with those
I shouldn’t live with, killing those*95 I ought not have killed.
(Exit Oedipus into the palace. The Messenger and the Shepherd exit to the side. )
strophe 1
CHORUS: iō, generations of mortals,
how I reckon your lives
equal to nothing!
For what, what man
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wins more of happiness
than to seem and, having seemed,
to seem no more?
With your fortune, yours
in mind, yours,
unhappy Oedipus, I can call
no mortal blest.
antistrophe 1
You aimed your shaft
beyond all others, and hit
success not happy
in every way, when (O Zeus!)
you killed the hook-taloned,
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oracle-chanting maiden,*96 and stood
a bulwark against my city’s dying.
Since then you are called
my king*97 and have met
with highest honors,
ruling in mighty Thebes.
strophe 2
But now whose tale is more painful to hear?
Who dwells with disasters, with pangs
more savage than yours in a shifting life?
iō, glorious Oedipus!
For you the same wide
harbor lay open
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as son and husband
fathering children—how,
how could the furrow
sown by your father*98
bear you in silence so long?
antistrophe 2
All-seeing Time has found you out against your will,
lon
g ago condemned the unlawful marriage,
the marriage that bred children
for you and offspring
of its own.*99 iō, son of Laius,
if only, if only I
had never known you!
How I grieve for you above all, the dirge
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pouring from my lips! In truth,
you gave me the breath of life,
then closed my eyes in death.
(Enter a messenger from the palace.)
MESSENGER: Men most honored in this land of ours,
what deeds you’ll hear of, what deeds you’ll look upon,
what pain you’ll feel, if you are still nobly
devoted to the house of Labdacus!
For neither the river Ister*100 nor the Phasis*101
could wash away the stain upon these walls,
the evils that hide within, and those that soon
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will burst into the light—willed, not unwilled,
self-chosen pains, which hurt the most to see.
CHORUS LEADER: What we knew before was cruel enough.
What sorrows can you add to these?
MESSENGER: The swiftest word to say and understand:
she’s dead, Jocasta’s dead, who was our queen.
CHORUS LEADER: The queen, dead! But how? How did she die?
MESSENGER: By her own hand. But the worst part of it
is missing, for you can’t see what happened.
All the same, to the extent I can describe it,
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you’ll learn what that unhappy woman suffered.
When in a frenzy she had passed inside,
straight to her bridal bed she hurled herself,
tearing at her hair with both her hands.
Once there, she shut the doors and called
on Laius long since dead, reminding him
of the seed sown so long ago, the son
who killed him, and then begot with her
children cursed in their begetting. And then
she mourned her bed, on which she bore a husband
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from her husband, children from her child.
But how she died I can’t say, for Oedipus
broke in with a cry, preventing us from seeing
her agony to the end. Our eyes were fixed
on him instead, as he rushed here and there,
calling for a sword, asking where she was,
that wife no wife but a field
that had brought forth two harvests—
him and his children. And as he raved, some god—
for it was none of us close by—showed him the way.
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As if guided to them, with a fearful scream,
he sprang at the double doors, burst them
inward from their jambs, and fell into the room.
And there we saw the woman hanging, swinging
in the air, entangled in a twisted noose.
And when he saw her, in his grief he cried out
a dreadful groan, then loosed the hanging halter.
And when the poor woman lay upon the ground,
it was dreadful to see, what happened next. He tore from her
the golden brooches that pinned her clothes, raised them up
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and dashed them against his eyes, crying out
that from now on those eyes would not see him
or the evils he had done and suffered, but see
in darkness those whom he should not have seen,
and not know those he had wanted to know.
With such imprecations, again and again he raised
the brooches and struck his eyes. The bleeding
eyeballs soaked his cheeks and did not cease
to shed not oozy drops of gore, but all at once
a hail-like rain of black blood streaming down.*102
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These evils broke forth not from one, but both,
not separate*103 but mixed together, man
and wife. The happiness of old was truly
happiness back then, but now, and on this day
lamentation, disaster, death, shame—of all
the evils with a name, not one is missing.
CHORUS LEADER: Has the poor man any respite, now, from pain?
MESSENGER: He shouts for them to open the doors and show
all the Cadmeans the killer of his father,
his mother’s—unholy words, I can’t repeat them.
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He says he’d hurl himself from the land,
not remain at home, cursed by his own curses.
All the same, he needs help, a hand to guide him—
his sickness is too strong to bear. But you
shall see as well, for just now the doors
are opening, and soon you’ll look upon
a sight even one who hated him would pity.
(Oedipus emerges from the palace, blinded.)
CHORUS:*104 O suffering terrible for men to see,
O most terrible of all that I
have yet encountered! What was the madness
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came upon you? What divinity*105 is it
that leaped beyond all leaps
upon your unhappy fate?
pheu, pheu, unfortunate! I can’t look at you,
I want to ask so many questions,
so much to hear about, so much to see.
Such is the horror you arouse in me.
OEDIPUS: aiai, aiai! Where on earth
am I swept in sorrow? Where
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is my voice flying, borne on the wind?
iō, my destiny, where, where have you sprung!
CHORUS LEADER: Into dread—not to be heard or looked on.*106
(Oedipus and the Chorus now engage in a second kommos.)
strophe 1
OEDIPUS: iō, cloud
of darkness, mine—repulsive, unspeakable, invincible
onset, blown on an evil wind!
oimoi!
There it is, again! The sting,
the goad piercing through me
with the memory of these evils.
CHORUS: No wonder if, in the midst of pain like this,
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your grief is doubled, and doubled your laments!
antistrophe 1
OEDIPUS: iō, my friend—
you alone are still beside me,
still you remain and care for me, the blind.
pheu, pheu,
I am not mistaken but know it well,
though I’m in darkness—I know your voice.
CHORUS: What horrors you have done! How could you bring yourself
to quench your sight like this? What god drove you?
strophe 2
OEDIPUS: This was Apollo, my friends; Apollo
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brought these evils to pass, my evils,
these my sufferings.
But no hand struck my eyes, none
but mine, mine alone!
For why should I go on seeing, I
who had, when seeing, nothing sweet to see?
CHORUS: All this was, just as you say.
OEDIPUS: And what now is left for me to see
or to love, what greeting
to hear with any joy, my friends?
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Take me away, out of the country
at once—away, my friends,
with the ruin of me, cursed
three times over, and more—
the mortal man most hated by the gods.
CHORUS: O ruined, ruined in mind and fortunes equally—
how I wish I had never known you!
antistrophe 2
OEDIPUS: Perish the man, whoever he was, the shepherd
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who freed me from the cruel fetters on my feet,
rescued me from death
and saved me, and did
me no favor!
For had I died then, I would not have been
so great a sorrow to my friends or to myself.
CHORUS: I, too, would have wished it so.
OEDIPUS: I would not have come as my father’s killer
or be called by men
husband to those that gave me birth.*107
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But as it is, I am
god-forsaken, son
of those I defiled*108
and father of children
with those from whom I sprang.*109
And if there is an evil yet more than evil,
it is mine, the lot of Oedipus.*110
CHORUS: I don’t see how I’d say you’ve chosen well,
for you’d be better off dead than living blind.
OEDIPUS: Don’t lecture me that any of this is not
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for the best, or give me any more advice.
For I do not know with what sort of eyes
I’d see my father when I came to Hades,*111
or my wretched mother—against them both
I have committed crimes too huge for hanging.
Or do you think the sight of my children
would be a joy to look at, born as they were?
No, never, not to these eyes of mine!
Nor would the city, nor its towers and statues
and temples. I’ve deprived myself of these,
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I, the all-daring, the one raised best in Thebes
for I commanded all to drive away
the sacrilege, the man the gods have now
shown to be unholy and the son of Laius.
Once I brought to light such a stain as mine,
could I look with steady eyes on all of this?
No! And if there were a way to plug my ears
and clog the springs of hearing, I’d not refrain
from sealing up this wretched corpse of mine,
blind and deaf to everything. It would be sweet
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for thought to dwell where evils have no entry.
O Cithaeron, why take me in, and then
not kill me outright, so I could not have shown
myself to men? Such was my origin!
O Polybus and Corinth, home I called
my native land, what a fine thing you nurtured,
lovely, with evils festering beneath its skin!
For now I’m found out—evil, and born of evil.
O threefold road and hidden glen and thicket
and narrow pathway where the three roads met—
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from these hands of mine you drank my own,
my father’s blood. Do you still remember me,