Sunday, August 17, 2014

TFBT: Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles


At Hour 25, the book club that just finished reading The Orestia continued on with the Oedipus at Colonus” by Sophocles.  As with The Orestia, I concentrated on the appearances of the Erinyes, the goddesses of revenge, rather than the human plot. 

If you don’t know the story, elderly, blind Oedipus accompanied by his daughter arrive at a beautiful garden on the outskirts of Athens seeking sanctuary and a place to be laid to rest.  The locales are aghast to discover who he is, because everyone in Greece knows he killed his father and married his mother.  Anyone who shelters this outcast is asking to have their land cursed by the Erinyes.  (As they threatened to do near the end of the Oresteia.)  The catch is that apparently Oedipus accidently sought sanctuary, that is, became  a suppliant at the very altar of the Erinyes themselves.  Oedipus relatives show up to claim his body. (He’s still not dead yet, by the way.)  Apollo told them that if Oedipus is laid to rest in Athens that Thebes will someday be defeated in battle by the Athenians. Not that they want to bury him at home, because then the fated curse falls on them, again.  They just don’t want him buried in Athens.  He double curses them and strolls off with King Theseus to the mysterious secret  spot where he will pass to the other world.  The last anyone sees, Oedipus disappeared into "the sacred tomb where tis my portion to be buried" and Theseus is left mumbling silent praise to the gods below and the gods above. The end. 

In The Orestia, the Eumenides are called everything, but “goddesses” until three quarters of the way through the third play.  Here they are addressed as the goddesses “The all-seeing Eumenides the people here would call them…”  around line 40

At line 85, Oedipus lets it slip out that the seeming accident of his arrival  at this “inviolable” spot, was contrived by Apollo.  Line 665 suggests that Apollo“ has been your escort here.”  In retrospect, just like in “The Oresteia” Apollo was the god that started this whole disaster by his enigmatic response to the Corinthian prince’s question about his paternity.  Just as in the Oresteia the “sweet daughters of primeval Darkness” don’t drink wine (don’t require wine libations) because Apollo tricked the sisters the Fates once by getting them drunk on wine.   We might wonder here was Loriax is up to.

The locales initiate Oedipus into the rituals to placate the dread goddesses at Lines 125 & 480; a wanderer, not a dweller in the land; otherwise he never would have advanced into this untrodden grove of the maidens with whom none may strive. Their name we tremble to speak, we pass them by with eyes turned away, mouthing the words, without sound or word,”

Another daughter arrives and the audience and chorus are told the situation in Thebes.  “At first it was their decision that the throne should be left to Creon, and the city spared pollution, when they thought calmly about the ancient blight on our family, 370  Creon is the once and forever regent of Thebes generation after generation cleaning up the messes made by the royal family.  The “ancient blight on our family” was caused by the crime of their ancestor Laius.  As Oedipus admits at Line 530, he has two blessing; his daughters and two curses; Laius’ and his own.  However, when things calmed down the royal family designed to retain the throne  And the younger son has stripped the elder, Polyneikes, of the throne, (375)"   Per primordial law as mentioned in Homer, the erinyes will support the elder brother in the fratricidal war to come.

Creon arrives around line 760 and say, “Oedipus, in the name of your ancestral gods, listen to me!”  Sort of ironic and ineffectual calling upon the very gods that laid this curse on his family and chased him to Athens.  “… consent to return to the city and the house of your ancestors, … since it was she that nurtured you long ago.”  In point of fact it was the city of Corinth that nurtured and raised Oedipus.  Creon  is driven by his need to save his people from the grief to come. His heartless stern actions reek of desperation. He is wrong. But at the same time Oedipus is just as heartless and stern. For all his whining and begging, Oedipus is not giving in to Creon’s demands. Oedipus, as "implacable, inexorable" as the Erinyes. He is willing to curse his sons and sacrifice his daughters to get his revenge. This is a battle of titans on a cosmic scale for the sanctity of human life

Next up is his Oedipus’ son who did nothing to save his father from exile, who comes for his father’s blessing in the approving war for the throne called “The Seven Against Thebes”.  Oedipus’ response is to re-double the family curse with all the power latent in his polluted self.  He is as unforgiving and unmovable as the Erinyes themselves.  His doomed son saying  “This path now will be my destiny, ill-fated and evil, because of my father here and his Furies.”  Oedipus can summon the Erinyes just like Clytemnestra did in the “Libation Bearers” of the Oresteia

The son’s parting words are “forgo your fierce mēnis against me, as I go forth to punish my brother, (1330)”  “Menis” is a Greek word for wrath and generally reserved for the gods.  It is anger of cosmic consequence.  In the Oresteia the god Apollo admits to fearing the menis of Orestes “And I will aid the suppliant and rescue him! For the mēnis of the suppliant would be awesome to mortals and gods, if I intentionally abandoned him” The menis of Orestes would have unravelled the divine plot to establish the rule of law amongst mankind.  Of what concern to the gods was the wrath of Oedipus at his sons?  The answer is what happens next in Greek mythology.  The banishment  of Oedipus ultimately ignited the Theban wars.  The Theban Wars, like the Trojan war were arranged by Zeus and Themis to lighten the load of the tribes of demi-gods upon Mother earth.  (Cypria and Works&Days ll. 156-169b)

Oedipus and Theseus go apart from the others.  Oedipus disappears and Theseus performs the required prayers “mouthing the words, without sound or word,”

 

 PS

 

A little something off topic hear I read in “Oedipus at Colonus”

 

“I say this because you, son of Kronos, lord Poseidon, have set the city on the throne of these words of praise by inventing, first of all on our own roadways, the bit that cures the rage of horses. Meanwhile the oar, well-shaped for rowing on the sea, is gliding past the land as it leaps to keep time with the singing and dancing of the hundred-footed Nereids.” 714

 

This is the clearest explantion I’ve seen as to how Poseidon could be the god of the horse and of the sea.  With horse and bit  he rules the roadway.  With boat and oar he rules the sea-ways.  He is master of horses;  the steeds of earth and ships; the steeds of the sea.  

7 comments:

  1. I think you are quite right about the characters and behavior of Oedipus and Creon.
    Your post gives an interesting explanation of something I wondered about before - why the gods allowed Thebes successful defense against the Seven just to give victory to the Epigoni a decade later. The gods of course planned the destruction of Thebes, as you wrote, using its clueless and irresponsible royals as useful idiots. The initial idea maybe was to let Polyneices return triumphantly to the throne with the support of the Erinyes, after destroying some 90% of the city. However, the curse of Oedipus against Polyneices overran any divine support he had, esp. of the Erinyes. They had to let him be defeated and killed, and transferred their support to his son.

    I find it interesting that in Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone tried to persuade Polyneices to spare their city. Because in the Antigone, which was produced earlier, Creon accuses Antigone in being a bad citizen. And he seems to be justified, for in this play there is no hint that Antigone would prefer her city to survive than to perish (her sister Ismene explicitly says that she does not care). Maybe someone suggested Sophocles that it would be nice to make his heroine a little more patriotic. Or he borrowed the idea from Euripides' Phoenician Women.

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    1. Maya, Today at hour 25 we discussed Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone's attitude came up in reference to Creon. After Colonus we will read Antigone and I am looking forward to the groups impression; loving sister or irresponsible royal. Some of us even question Oedipus attitude in this play. For the sake of his revenge he curses his sons and sacrifices his daughters. Really? That's the way a responsible royal is supposed to act?

      Bill

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    2. Oedipus may have been a good ruler during the "lag phase" after his marriage... but when he found himself in heavy trouble, his integrity succumbed and no remnant of royal/civil duty remained. As in Alcibiades (or, a closer comparison, Ajax in the Ajax). Oedipus apparently has an ego over-inflated to cosmic proportions. He wishes to lay Thebes in ruins, though the city had done nothing unduly bad to him. Sent him to exile? If you have Ebola, you get quarantined.
      Also, when our children behave badly, our very first thought is that we have failed as parents. Maybe this is cultural, but we see Creon at the end of the Antigone also take responsibility for his (adult) son's actions. Oedipus keeps complaining of his sons but never thinks of his parenting job, as if his bad sons have fallen from space. What sort of a father he was? For what we see, he apparently did not love his children and left his sons to their own devices while indoctrinating his daughters that women are on this Earth to serve their male family members. (Antigone never outgrows this indoctrination; Ismene does.)

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    3. I have read some participants at Hour 25 blame Creon and the Thebans that they wanted to bring back Oedipus not because of good feelings to him (?!) but to benefit their city. I don't understand this. What's wrong with the efforts to benefit one's city, esp. in hard times? Outside the weird cosmos of Oedipus, people usually consider this a duty.
      "Noble" Theseus, after all, wishes the same for his city. Oedipus loses no time to inform him of the prophecy, so Theseus protects him as an asset for Athens. We never know how kind would Theseus be to Oedipus if not expecting a benefit in return.

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    4. Maya,
      At some level I think the story is about the sanctity of human life, about making choices about ourselves.

      Bill

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  2. BTW, I was a little disappointed to learn that the sacred grove featured in the play was long gone by the time Pausanias described Colonus. Though this fits well to the end of my story (where, as in Tolkien, the immortals are driven out by human overpopulation and have to pack and sail away - to some obscure archipelago called Islands of the Blessed in a feat of wishful thinking).

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    1. Maya, As to the sacred grove, that is a bit of bad writing on Sophocles part. The worship of the Eumenides was established two generations after Oedipus so he couldn't have visited this beautiful shrine.; Still, beautiful description.

      As to the Tolkien ending...OMG! I thought I was the only one who caught the correlation there!

      Bill

      Bill

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