Oedipus the King

A New Translation

Sophocles, Robert Bagg

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9780062132086
• eBook ISBN:
  9780062132093
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Drama
• Index: Literature

Award–winning poet Robert Bagg presents a dynamic translation of Sophocles's celebrated play of ancient Athens, Oedipus the King.
Praised by Aristotle as the pinnacle of Greek drama, Oedipus the King is one of seven surviving dramas by the great Greek playwright, Sophocles. The ancient world's most shocking and memorable tragedy, it is the story of Thebes's resilient hero and his royal family brought to hellish ruin by fate, manipulation of the Olympian gods, and all-too-human weakness.

OEDIPUS THE KING

INTRODUCTION
“SOMETHING . . . I REMEMBER . . . WAKES UP TERRIFIED”

The story of a man named Oedipus who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother goes back at least to Homer.¹ Epic poets and Athenian playwrights in classical times found the story irresistible, and scores tried their hands at it, including Sophocles’ contemporaries Aeschylus and Euripides, whose versions survive only in scattered lines or lists of plays produced. Aristotle was fascinated by Sophocles’ version. He referred to it often, analyzed its craft astutely, and cited it as the finest example of the playwright’s art. Its centrality continues. Because so much of our cultural tradition radiates from it, and because the nerves it touches are so sensitive and its issues so immense, Oedipus the King still provokes passionate debate. Is Oedipus, prophesied by Apollo to commit patricide and father children with his mother, truly innocent or in some sense guilty? What does the play imply about the nature of divinity, the family, and the human psyche? If this is the ultimate tragedy, how should we define tragedy? Answers to these questions fill many splendid books that discuss the qualities underlying the play’s greatness. Such scholarship has been indispensable to me in making this translation, particularly Richard Jebb’s and Thomas Gould’s translations with commentary.

In Sophocles’ time, most Greeks believed the fate of an individual was bound up with a daimon, a divinity that presided over every person’s life. The Greek word for happiness, eudaimonia, meaning “well-daimoned,” implies that a person so blessed might be permanently protected. But a daimon could quickly and just as often devastate an individual or an entire family. One abiding question Oedipus the King asks is whether Oedipus controls his own destiny or whether Apollo and/or a personal divinity, or daimon, does.

Sophocles deploys two metaphors to establish his own implicit answer. The first is a common Greek metaphor for a king, general, or statesman—he’s a helmsman facing trouble in a storm. This image supports our confidence that a resourceful leader can handle threats from gods or mortals. Oedipus and (initially) all the characters, except the seer Tiresias, view Oedipus as a courageous sailor who can weather problems churned up in his stormy life. But Oedipus’ superior intelligence proves of no use in riding out the diabolical dangers he confronts.

The second metaphor appears in a succession of images that show the daimon as a dynamic force: it leaps, strikes, or plunges directly at its target. As Oedipus commits each act of violence throughout the play, the daimon destroying him would be seen by a Greek audience as present in each blow Oedipus delivers or receives. This audience would also understand that each blow Oedipus struck would, as his life played out, be seen as a blow he struck against himself. Thus Oedipus’ consultation with the Delphic oracle, his fatal attack on his father, the sexual mounting of his mother/wife, and his self-blinding near the play’s end (when he plunges the pins of Jokasta’s brooch into his eyes), as well as the search he undertakes for his true father and for Laios’ killer, are all physical aspects of one divine intent: they are blows Apollo struck through Oedipus’ own actions that guilefully manipulate Oedipus’ proactive nature until it destroys him. Apollo has made Oedipus both his weapon and his victim. Throughout the play, t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• When Theater Was Life: The World of Sophocles
• Oedipus the King
• Notes to the Play
• Works Cited and Consulted
• Acknowledgments
• About the Translator
• Back Ad
• Also By Robert Bagg
• Credits
• Copyright
• About the Publisher