by Sophocles
OEDIPUS
She gave the child to you?
HERDSMAN
She gave him, King.
OEDIPUS
To do what?
HERDSMAN
I was to let it die.
OEDIPUS
Kill her own child?
HERDSMAN
She feared prophecies.
OEDIPUS
What prophecies?
HERDSMAN
That this child would kill his father.
OEDIPUS
Why, then, did you give him to this old man?
HERDSMAN
Out of pity, master. I hoped this man 1330
would take him back to his own land.
But that man saved him for this—
the worst grief of all. If the child
he speaks of is you, master, now you
know: your birth has doomed you.
OEDIPUS
All! All! It has all happened!
It was all true. O light! Let this
be the last time I look on you.
You see now who I am—
the child who must not be born! 1340
I loved where I must not love!
I killed where I must not kill!
OEDIPUS runs into the palace.
CHORUS
Men and women who live and die,
I set no value on your lives.
Which one of you ever, reaching
for blessedness that lasts,
finds more than what seems blest?
You live in that seeming
a while, then it vanishes.
Your fate teaches me this, Oedipus, 1350
yours, you suffering man, the story
god spoke through you: never
call any man fortunate.
O Zeus, no man drew a bow like this man!
He shot his arrow home,
winning power, pleasure, wealth.
He killed the virgin Sphinx,
who sang the god’s dark oracles;
her claws were hooked and sharp.
He fought off death in our land; 1360
he towered against its threat.
Since those times I’ve called you my king,
honoring you mightily, my Oedipus,
who wielded the great might of Thebes.
But now—nobody’s story
has the sorrow of yours.
O my so famous Oedipus—
the same great harbor
welcomed you
first as child, then as father 1370
tumbling upon your bridal bed.
How could the furrows your father plowed, doomed
man, how could they suffer so long in silence?
Time, who sees all, caught you
living a life you never willed.
Time damns this marriage that is
no marriage, where the fathered child
fathered children himself.
O son of Laios, I wish
I’d never seen you! I fill my lungs, 1380
I sing with all my power
the plain truth in my heart.
Once you gave me new breath,
O my Oedipus!—but now
you close my eyes in darkness.
Enter SERVANT from the palace.
SERVANT
You’ve always been our land’s most honored men.
If you still have a born Theban’s love
for the House of Labdakos, you’ll be crushed
by what you’re about to see and hear.
No rivers could wash this house clean— 1390
not the Danube, not the Rion—
it hides so much evil that now
is coming to light. What happened here
was not involuntary evil. It was willed.
The griefs that punish us the most
are those we’ve chosen for ourselves.
LEADER
We already knew more than enough
to make us grieve. Do you have more to tell?
SERVANT
It is the briefest news to say or hear.
Our royal lady Jokasta is dead. 1400
LEADER
That pitiable woman. How did she die?
SERVANT
She killed herself. You will be spared the worst—
since you weren’t there to see it.
But you will hear, exactly as I can
recall it, what that wretched woman suffered.
She came raging through the courtyard
straight for her marriage bed, the fists
of both her hands clenched in her hair.
Once in, she slammed the doors shut and called out
to Laios, so long dead. She remembered 1410
his living sperm of long ago, who killed Laios,
while she lived on to breed with her son
more ruined children.
She grieved for the bed
she had loved in, giving birth
to all those doubled lives—
husband fathered by husband,
children sired by her child.
From this point on I don’t know how she died—
Oedipus burst in shouting,
distracting us from her misery. 1420
We looked on, stunned, as he plowed through us,
raging, asking us for a spear,
asking for the wife who was no wife
but the same furrowed twice-mothering Earth
from whom he and his children sprang.
He was frantic, yet some god’s hand
drove him toward his wife—none of us near him did.
As though someone were guiding him, he lunged,
with a savage yell, at the double doors,
wrenching the bolts from their sockets. 1430
He burst into the room. We saw her there:
the woman above us, hanging by the neck,
swaying there in a noose of tangled cords.
He saw. And bellowing in anguish
he reached up, loosening the noose that held her.
With the poor lifeless woman laid out on the ground
this, then, was the terror we saw: he pulled
the long pins of hammered gold clasping her gown,
held them up, and punched them into his eyes,
back through the sockets. He was screaming: 1440
“Eyes, now you will not, no, never
see the evil I suffered, the evil I caused.
You will see blackness—where once
were lives you should never have lived to see,
yearned-for faces you so long failed to know.”
While he howled out these tortured words—
not once, but many times—his raised hands
kept beating his eyes. The blood kept coming,
drenching his beard and cheeks. Not a few wet drops,
but a black storm of bloody hail lashing his face. 1450
What this man and this woman did
broke so much evil loose! That evil joins
the whole of both their lives in grief.
The happiness they once knew was real,
but now that happiness is in ruins—
wailing, death, disgrace. Whatever misery
we have a name for, is here.
LEADER
Has his grief eased at all?
SERVANT
He shouts for someone to open the door bolts:
“Show this city its father-killer,” he cries, 1460
“Show it its mother . . .” He said the word. I can’t.
He wants to banish himself from the land,
not doom this house any longer
by living here, under his own curse.
He’s so weak, though, he needs to be helped.
No one could stand up under a sickness like his.
Look! The door bolts are sliding open.
You will witness a vision of such suffering
even those it revolts will pity.
&
nbsp; OEDIPUS emerges from the slowly opening palace doors. He is blinded, with blood on his face and clothes, but the effect should arouse more awe and pity than shock. He moves with the aid of an Attendant.
LEADER
Your pain is terrible to see, 1470
pure, helpless anguish,
more moving than anything
my eyes have ever touched.
O man of pain,
where did your madness come from?
What god would go
to such inhuman lengths
to savage your defenseless life?
(moans)
I cannot look at you—
though there’s so much
to ask you, so much to learn, 1480
so much that holds my eyes—
so strong are the shivers of awe
you send through me.
OEDIPUS
Ahhh! My life
screams in pain.
Where is my misery
taking me?
How far does my voice fly,
fluttering out there
on the wind? 1490
O god, how far have you thrown me?
LEADER
To a hard place. Hard to watch, hard to hear.
OEDIPUS
Darkness buries me in her hate, takes me
in her black hold.
Unspeakable blackness.
It can’t be fought off,
it keeps coming,
wafting evil all over me.
Ahhh!
Those goads piercing my eyes, 1500
those crimes stabbing my mind,
strike through me—one deep wound.
LEADER
It is no wonder you feel
nothing but pain now,
both in your mind and in your flesh.
OEDIPUS
Ah, friend, you’re still here,
faithful to the blind man.
I know you are near me. Even
in my darkness I know your voice.
LEADER
You terrify us. How could you 1510
put out your eyes? What god drove you to it?
OEDIPUS
It was Apollo who did this.
He made evil, consummate evil,
out of my life.
But the hand
that struck these eyes
was my hand.
I in my wretchedness
struck me, no one else did.
What good was left for my eyes to see? 1520
Nothing in this world could I see now
with a glad heart.
LEADER
That is so.
OEDIPUS
Whom could I look at? Or love?
Whose greeting could I answer
with fondness, friends?
Take me quickly from this place.
I am the most ruined, the most cursed,
the most god-hated man who ever lived.
LEADER
You’re broken by what happened, broken 1530
by what’s happening in your own mind.
I wish I had never even known you.
OEDIPUS
May he die, the man
who found me in the pasture,
who unshackled my feet,
who saved me from that death for a worse life,
a life I cannot thank him for.
Had I died then, I would have caused
no great grief to my people and myself.
LEADER
I wish he had let you die. 1540
OEDIPUS
I wouldn’t have come home to kill my father,
no one could call me lover
of her from whose body I came.
I have no god now.
I’m son to a fouled mother.
I fathered children in the bed
where my father once gave me
deadly life. If ever an evil
rules all other evils
it is my evil, the life 1550
god gave to Oedipus.
LEADER
I wish I could say you acted wisely.
You would have been better off dead than blind.
OEDIPUS
There was no better way than mine.
No more advice! If I had eyes, how could
they bear to look at my father in Hades?
Or at my devastated mother? Not even
hanging could right the wrongs I did them both.
You think I’d find the sight of my children
delightful, born to the life they must live? 1560
Never, ever, delightful to my eyes!
Nor this town, its wall, gates, and towers—
nor the sacred images of our gods.
I severed myself from these joys when I
banished the vile killer—myself!—
totally wretched now, though I was raised
more splendidly than any Theban.
But now the gods have proven me
defiled, and of Laios’ own blood.
And once I’ve brought such disgrace on myself, 1570
how could I look calmly on my people?
I could not! If I could deafen my ears
I would. I’d deaden my whole body,
go blind and deaf to shut those evils out.
The silence in my mind would be sweet.
O Kithairon, why did you take me in?
Or once you had seized me, why didn’t you
kill me then, leaving no trace of my birth?
O Polybos and Korinth, and that palace
they called the ancient home of my fathers! 1580
I was their glorious boy growing up,
but under that fair skin
festered a hideous disease.
My vile self now shows its vile birth.
You,
three roads, and you, darkest ravine,
you, grove of oaks, you, narrow place
where three paths drank blood from my hands,
my fathering blood pouring into you:
Do you remember what I did while you watched?
And when I came here, what I did then? 1590
O marriages! You marriages! You created us,
we sprang to life, then from that same seed
you burst fathers, brothers, sons,
kinsmen shedding kinsmen’s blood,
brides and mothers and wives—the most loathsome
atrocities that strike mankind.
I must not name what should not be.
If you love the gods, hide me out there,
kill me, heave me into the sea,
anywhere you can’t see me. 1600
Come, take me. Don’t shy away. Touch
this human derelict. Don’t fear me, trust me.
No other man, only myself,
can be afflicted with my sorrows.
LEADER
Here’s Kreon. He’s come when you need him,
to take action or to give you advice.
He is the only ruler we have left
to guard Thebes in your place.
OEDIPUS
Can I say anything he’ll listen to?
Why would he believe me? 1610
I wronged him so deeply.
I proved myself so false to him.
KREON enters.
KREON
I haven’t come to mock you, Oedipus.
I won’t dwell on the wrongs you did me.
KREON speaks to the Attendants.
Men, even if you’ve no respect
for a fellow human being, show some
for the life-giving flame of the Sun god:
don’t leave this stark defilement out here.
The Earth, the holy rain, the light, can’t bear it.
Quickly, take him back to the palace. 1620
If these sorrows are shared
only among the family,
that will spare us further impiety.
OEDIPUS
Thank god! I feared much worse from
you.
Since you’ve shown me, a most vile man,
such noble kindness, I have one request.
For your sake, not for mine.
KREON
What is it? Why do you ask me like that?
OEDIPUS
Expel me quickly to some place
where no living person will find me. 1630
KREON
I would surely have done that. But first
I need to know what the god wants me to do.
OEDIPUS
He’s given his command already.
I killed my father. I am unholy. I must die.
KREON
So the god said. But given
the crisis we’re in, we had better
be absolutely sure before we act.
OEDIPUS
You’d ask about a broken man like me?
KREON
Surely, by now, you’re willing to trust god.
OEDIPUS
I am. But now I must ask for something 1640
within your power. I beg you! Bury her—
she’s lying inside—as you think proper.
Give her the rites due your kinswoman.
As for me, don’t condemn my father’s city
to house me while I’m still alive.
Let me live out my life on Kithairon,
the very mountain—
the one I’ve made famous—
that my father and mother chose for my tomb.
Let me die there, as my parents decreed. 1650
And yet, I know this much:
no sickness can kill me. Nothing can.
I was saved from that death
to face an extraordinary evil.
Let my fate take me now, where it will.
My children, Kreon. My sons.
They’re grown now. They won’t need your help.
They’ll find a way to live anywhere.
But my poor wretched girls, who never
ate anywhere but at my table, 1660
they’ve never lived apart from me.
I fed them with my own hands.
Care for them.
If you’re willing, let me touch them now,
let me give in to my grief.
Grant it, Kreon, from your great heart.
If I could touch them, I would
imagine them as my eyes once saw them.
The gentle sobbing of OEDIPUS’ two daughters is heard offstage. Soon two small girls enter.
What’s this?
O gods, are these my children sobbing?
Has Kreon pitied me? 1670
Given me my own dear children?
Has he?
KREON
I have. I brought them to you
because I knew how much joy,
