A mais bela das tragédias como citou Aristóteles na sua Poética (referindo-se a Édipo Rei) em versão completa com Édipo em Colono e Antígona.
Livro essencial, com ótimas introduções à cada peça (nao leia antes se nao quiser spoilers) e notas para situar o leitor.

اگر صرفاً اودیپوس را به واسطه‌ی فروید و عقده‌ی اودیپ می‌شناسید، پیشنهاد می‌کنم فرض کنید در این باب هیچ نمی‌دانید و اصل نمایشنامه را بخوانید.

اودیپوس شهریار، اودیپوس در کلنوس، و آنتیگنه، سه نمایش‌نامه در این اثرند که در پی و ارتباط یکدیگر می‌آیند.

Good grief, what a sorry lot.

So... not over-rated. Fagles' translation is solid, much clearer than his Aeschylus, though I actually prefer the opacity he brought to that text. Of course, that might have been in Aeschylus. I will never learn Greek well enough to tell.

Antigone was the earliest of these plays, though the last within the narrative. I can't help but read it with my Hegel glasses on: the clash between Creon and Antigone is an example of a failed conceptual grasp of the world, in which the claims on us of family/tradition/ancient gods cannot be accommodated by our living in larger, civic communities. Divine law and human law sometimes do not go together, but only a tyrant would insist on hewing to the latter alone. Removing the Hegel glasses, I can see that Creon, to his credit, does change his mind. But this being Greece, by then it's all too late. The 'lesson', if you like, is simply that one has to exercise excellent judgment in these matters.

This question of judgment works through the Oedipus plays, as well; each tyrant (Oedipus in OK, Creon in OC) fails to use good judgment; the good king Theseus does exercise it, and thus Athens rules etc etc... I know we're 'meant' to think that these plays are really about always bowing down to the gods and accepting fate, but that just doesn't square with what actually happens: Athens succeeds because of Theseus's wisdom just as much as his piety; Thebes will eventually fall because of its kings' folly just as much as their impiety. In OK, Oedipus has the chorus's support in his argument with Tiresias, because Oedipus's defeat of the Sphinx acts as proof of his regality; but when he accuses Creon without evidence, they give up on him... because by acting without evidence, he shows poor judgment. And so on.

The best play for reading is easily Oedipus the King, which is horrifying and glorious in equal measure. Also, if anyone out there knows of a good book on Tiresias, let me know.

As for Knox's introductory essays, they're not particularly thrilling. There's too much plot-summary (good news for freshmen, I guess), and his insights are so skewed ("these plays aren't depressing! They're about how we do have some control over our lives!") that it's hard to take him seriously. but they're still worth reading.

n  n    When we face such things the less we say, the bettern  n

So my review will be brief. Picking this up I was quite a bit intimidated: 3 ancient Greek plays in English translation? I nearly expected not to understand anything at all or barely managing to follow the story. I worried in vain.

The whole time Sophocles made me go like this:

7th book of 2022.

As I'm moving around the (personally) uncharted land of Greek tragedies, I get to Sophocles. I think most people know the story of Oedipus, or can at least guess with general Freud knowledge, but the subsequent two plays in the 'Cycle' were unknown to me plot-wise. Oedipus the King/Oedipus Rex/Oedipus Tyrannus is the first and famous story from Sophocles, where a man attempts to flee the prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Spoiler alert: he does not outrun it. The following play presents us with a now blinded Oedipus (he blinds himself in the first) with his daughter Antigone (what a call name), in an open landscape, waiting. It's quite clear that Waiting for Godot is a product of this play. It's the weakest of the three despite the Beckett vibes. Theseus shows up and is benevolent to the blind ex-king, but also some great action-hero dialogue [1]. The final play, moving through them without too many spoilers, shows us the lives of Oedipus' children after his death. As expected from a Greek Tragedy, a lot of people die. They are enjoyable reads and as far as my translation went, smooth ones too. What's interesting is seeing what vices were being portrayed in art this long ago that still ravish us today, and usually one can find quite a few. Here we question how much of our lives are predetermined, or even out of our control, by what comes before us, by the choices our parents make, before we have even been conceived. We do not choose where we are born, who we are born to. Our entire lives have to be carved from the position we find ourselves in.



n  

Our fires, our sacrifices, and our prayers
The gods abominate. How should the birds
Give any other than ill-omened voices,
Gorged with the dregs of blood that man has shed?
Mark this, my son : all men fall into sin.
But sinning, he is not for ever lost
Hapless and helpless, who can make amends
And has not set his face against repentance.
Only a fool is governed by self-will.

n
—Teiresias

__________________________________

[1] I make no boasts, but while my life is safe,
You need not fear for yours.

*Note: I only read Oedipus Rex and Antigone, not Oedipus at Colonus.

There is literally nothing I could tell you about these plays that you don't already know from the thousands of books and movies that have referenced or been influenced by Oedipus ever since it was first performed. Four stars for overall story and dramatic themes, two stars because I didn't find it a very engaging or enjoyable read, averaged out to a nice three. Five stars for literary importance, though.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is one of my favourite plot devices, and Oedipus delivers a shockingly good one (and it's more than the fact that he bangs his mum, for those of you who haven't read it). Very complex and interesting. I also love the theme of destiny and free will (which are also explored further in Antigone).

Damn, did those Greeks love to torture their heroes.

«ای رنج!کجا هستم ؟آیا این صدای من است که در هوا سرگردان است؟دست تقدیر مرا به کجا می راند؟»
افسانه های تبای شامل ۳ نمایشنامه ی تراژدی است که در تلاش برای به یاد آوردن قدرت تقدیر است.سوفوکلس ادعا میکند که «قوانین خدایان از آن دیروز و امروز نیست.هیچ کس آغازشان را نمی داند.اما آن ها جاودانه هستند.»
به شخصه نسبت به تقدیر گرایی شدید سوفوکلس احساس خوبی نداشتم و به طور کلی حتی برای مردی به بزرگی ادیپ قدرت اراده آزاد را حذف کرده و سعی در اثبات بی گناهی ادیپ دارد.اما در کل نویسنده در شخصیت سازی به خوبی عمل کرده همان طور که در کتاب آمده«یک شاعر بزرگ هرگز به طراحی یک شخصیت ممتاز نمیپردازد.وجود او در هر یک از آفریدگانش است.»و این که سوفوکلس در عین زشتی هر شخصیت زیبایی ها وظرافت شخصیت ها را نشان میدهد نشان دهنده قدرت نویسندگی نفس گیر اوست.

I was prompted to reread Antigone by my reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, and it's a good thing I took the time - the influence of Sophocles' play on that work can hardly be overstated. After a reading, one is tempted to opine that Hegel's book on one level constitutes a kind of philosophical criticism of the play in a manner anticipating Walter Benjamin.

In any case, it is a towering work of literature and poetry, and very profound, and very moving. I should really read a Greek play every three or six months. They are simply among the greatest poetical achievements in the repertoire of human literature.

Roche's translation is very fine, and is marred by only one defect - he uses a now-dated method of translating the Greek of commoners into a contemporaneous slang, in this case rendering the dialog of a sentry with many lines into a kind of pastiche of Attic high speechmaking and what I take to be a kind of Cockney slang. Doing so produces such improbable juxtapositions as:

Watching we were, till the midday sun
a great blazing ball
bashed down on us something fierce....

Just no.

One problem with this approach is that slangs are quite regional, so it makes the language proximate in time, but also highly localized in space. There is substantial dissonance in hearing the East End while seeing ancient Thebes.

Other than that, Roche's translation is superb.

Read for University!

I read Oedipus the King and Antigone earlier this year, but it was worth a revisit.

This time round I read the Penguin translation by Robert Fagles, it included Oedipus at Colonus, the three together make the Theban plays.

In this edition, each play starts with an essay by Bernard Knox, which I enjoyed reading as much as the plays, and more so, because this time I could follow all the points made without the need to Google anything or refer to any of my other books. Just being able to do this feels good.

I also found the two Oedipus plays left me with a slightly better sense of fate and suffering. I have always struggled with how these concepts are rationalised, especially fate. In my own experience fate is used to justify poor behaviour, where when you stand up to it there are repercussions. So, although I don’t fully appreciate the positives of fate and suffering (the latter being the deal that’s been handed down), reading the two Oedipus plays gives me a glimmer of a different perspective.

Of Antigone, her determination for justice doesn’t win me over completely to her side, especially in how she rejects her sister Ismene. Though, out of the three plays, it has the most comedy with the scenes between a sentry and Creon. These are brilliantly timed and breaks up the tension that is otherwise a very tragic drama.

Looking back, these plays have not been an easy read but with each attempt I have come away with more understanding than before. This is thrilling for me, and encourages me to keep coming back to these plays to read again and again.

Most English translations of, say, the Greek New Testament are shepherded by a conviction that the original words had divine inspiration and so are best rendered verbatim wherever possible. At the same time, there generally is a concession (for good or ill) to the reality that if what results is not sufficiently lofty and reverential in tone, the faithful are unlikely to accept it. Attempts at classical Greek drama and poetry tend to be guided by rather different considerations: The translator's audience may consist of fellow scholars, reluctant undergraduate students, or an adventurous minority of the general public; and each of these groups will have particular demands. Too often work thus emerges which is precise but lifeless, or loosely interpreted to conform to the structures of 19th-century-style Anglo-American poetry, or so liberally seasoned with present-day colloquialisms as to jar the reader repeatedly out of the proper period and setting.

For the most part, Paul Roche navigates skilfully through these hazards in trying his hand at Sophocles's Oedipus trilogy, and has produced a rendition that is readable, yet preserves classical distinctiveness. Once or twice in the first play a turn of phrase does feel awkwardly modern, but such flashes are rare and soon either disappear or blend into the overall arc of the stories. That Roche is himself a poet clearly enriched the labour, and his reflections, in the Introduction, on the essence of poetry and the challenge of its transmission across lines of language, era, and culture border on the profound. '... Poetry lies somewhere between meaning and music, sense and sound ...,' he writes; and in this region he attempts to set Sophocles's work. He echoes the meter of the original without imitating it exactly, and preserves more of the Greek dramatic structure (complete with `strophes' and `antistrophes') than do many other translations available. Yet Roche remains mindful that this is also a PLAY, and manages the formalized dialogue with an eye (or ear) to the possibility of his version itself turning up on stage. He also provides an afterword outlining principles to guide such performance.

The reader of this translation whose only prior encounter with the Oedipus legend was some now-vaguely-remembered lesson in school, or perhaps Edith Hamilton's summary, may be surprised at how effectively one is drawn in. Roche, like Sophocles before him, succeeds in bringing the remote and legendary close enough to touch, while allowing it to remain sufficiently mysterious to stir the imagination.