nIl est un être à deux pieds, trois pieds, quatre pieds sur la terre, mais une seule voix: il est seul à changer de nature parmi les êtres qui vont sur la terre, dans l'air, dans les vagues: lorsque prenant appui sur le plus de pieds il chemine, c'est alors que la rapidité de son corps est la moindre.
(Anthologie Palatine, XIV, 64)

Juste une petite relecture rapide d'Œdipe (prononcé édipe) Roi de Sophocle avant d'en traduire plusieurs passage, histoire de bien avoir l'histoire en tête.

Œdipe (littéralement en grec, pied enflé) est sollicité par la population de Thèbes, car la population est frappée par un mal mystérieux: les dieux annoncent qu'une souillure infecte la cité.

Le pauvre Œdipe ignore qu'il est lui-même la victime des imprécations qu'il lance contre le responsable, et le dénouement est bien évidemment, tragique!

Cette édition a la charité de bien vouloir faire goûter au lecteur les merveilles du rythme du grec, en indiquant sur les voyelles à quantité variable si elle est longue ou brève: une excellente initiative!

Este día te dará la vida y te traerá la ruina.

El tiempo es lo único que muestra al hombre justo; pues al malvado se le puede conocer en un solo día.

"[...] Θα το νιώσεις
με τον καιρό καλά,τι ο χρόνος μόνο
τον τίμιο άντρα φανερώνει· όμως
το φαύλο σε μια μέρα τον γνωρίζεις."

honestly, I feel bad for Oedipus. He left his house to do the right thing and try to avoid killing his dad, just to come across his real dad and kill him anyway. It's really unfortunate and it really sucks for him. And then he had to go and skewer his eyeballs like yikes he's not having a good time, is he ?

RIP Oedipus eyes, I'm sorry this happened to you. Honestly, I know this play is super tragic, and it actually is interesting how he tried to avoid his fate which led to him fulfilling it anyway but you can't not laugh at his misfortune. Or maybe I have to laugh to avoid thinking about the fact his siblings are his children

n  I now have a YouTube channel that I run with my brother, called 'The Brothers Gwynne'. Check it out - The Brothers Gwynnen

Oedipus Rex is a fantastic play from around 430BC that is evidently timeless, as it has been popular during the entirety of its long life. It is twisted, clever, shocking, sickening and mind provoking.

By studying this piece, it showed how much depth there really is to this play, and the colossus amount that can be said about any number of subjects it tackles and portrays.

The characters are diverse and intricate, with Oedipus featuring as the major character. His fatal flaw is his blindness. This hamartia leads the character through a journey of destruction and realisation, resulting in catastrophe and extreme reactions. It was impossible to predict how each cast member would react to the horrifying events that unfolded. and how the play would conclude.

Oedipus Rex was a very interesting and gripping short play. It is obvious to me why it is recognised as such a seminal work. I would recommend to any who enjoy phycological ideals portrayed in plays, and those who enjoy theatre and ancient literature.

n  “Mock me for that, go on, and you’ll reveal my greatness.”n

I was, quite frankly blown away by the entire story of the three Theban Plays. And by the amazing story that it narrates. The first one, Oedipus Rex, or simply as Penguin translates it: Oedipus the King is hors d’oeuvre to the extreme vigor of the three consecutive plays, not as much great as the latter ones, probably for being so short. It finishes almost as soon as it begins to intrigue, which can prove a bit infuriating, undoubtedly.

n   “How could kingship
please me more than influence, power
without a qualm? I’m not that deluded yet,
to reach for anything but privilege outright,
profit free and clear.
Now all men sing my praises, all salute me,
now all who request your favors curry mine.
I am their best hope: success rests in me.
Why give up that, I ask you, and borrow trouble?
A man of sense, someone who sees things clearly
would never resort to treason.”n

The exceptional aspect is that, we know now that the myths of Oedipus were even more popular, plausibly from a time much before Sophocles started writing the play. And it never fails in its tragedy even after everyone can foresee where and how the tale is going to end. And some striking relevance to the world we live in too, which we may call modern but in truth is just as hypocritically orthodox as it was, quite apparently, in 425 BCE. Most evident is undoubtedly the theme of ‘hubris’, but that’s not salient to this play alone, however.

n   “Anything, afraid as I am-ask, I’ll answer, all I can.”n

نمايشنامه ى مشهور اديپ شهريار، يكى از بزرگترين تراژدى هاى يونان باستان.
از لحاظ داستان، واقعاً اعجاب انگيزه. داستان ابتدا با معمايى شروع ميشه كه نجات شهر "تِبس" از نابودى به حل اون بسته است، ولى هيچ كس جوابش رو نميدونه. بعد كم كم كه معما حل ميشه، پاسخ وحشتناك و تراژيكش آشكار ميشه و نجات شهر از نابودى، به بهاى بسيار سنگينى حاصل ميشه. اين روش طرح معما و حل مرحله به مرحله ش، بسيار شبيه به داستان هاى جنايى امروزيه، و از خيلى از اين داستان ها به مراتب بهتره.
اما اثر، طبعاً به مقتضاى زمان نگارشش، مشكلات خودش رو هم داره. از جمله اين كه تمام نمايشنامه فقط با ديالوگ روايت ميشه و چيزى "نمايش" داده نميشه.
حتا خودكشى و کور شدن ادیپوس هم، که اوج تراژيك داستانه، فقط از قول يه خادم نقل ميشه و ما چيزى نمى بينيم.

“Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.”

I actually like this one better than Antigone, the subject is very disturbing, but I liked the writing a lot.

n  n    talihsiz oidipus! nasıl oldu da böyle çılgınlığa kapıldın?
hangi intikamcı tanrı kara bahtını büsbütün kararttı?

yazık oldu, ah yazık!

çok isterdim seninle konuşmak, seni dinlemek, ama bakamıyorum yüzüne; dehşetten ürperiyorum!n  n

ufaktan edebiyatla, kahve ve kitaplarla iç içe olan bir yılı geride bırakıyorum.

birçok farklı tür eser okudum, araya bir de oyun sıkıştırmak istedim.



kral oidipus'a başladım, resmen eski türk filmlerindeki bizanslı kötü adamların ortasına düştüm.

olum, aklıma geldikçe gülüyorum, tüm mahalle tren yapmış gibi, hale bak: çocukken terk edilen oidipus, kral polybos'a götürülür ve onun tarafından büyütülür. delikanlı oidipus, bir gün bir dağ yolunda at süren bir soyluya rastlar. aralarında kavga çıkar ve oidipus soyluyu öldürür. sonra kraliçe epikaste'nin kocası ve thebai kentinin kralı olur. oysa dağlarda öldürdüğü adamın babası, yatağına girdiği kadının ise anası olduğundan haberi yoktur. bu arada kader, halkına veba hastalığını musallat eder ve bu salgın hastalık nedeniyle onlara büyük acılar çektirir. oidipus halkının çektiği acıların nedeninin kendisi olduğunu anlayınca gözlerini kör eder ve o kör haliyle thebai'den çıkar gider

hey yavrum hey... neler dönmüş, görüyor musun?

tabii milattan önce beş yüzlü yıllar, telefon yok bişey yok, tragedya tavan.

iyi ki bu eserlerin yazıldığı yıllarda yaşamamışız yemin ediyorum.

şöyle düşün bir de, oidipus'un hikayesinin üzerinden iki bin yıl geçmiş, şimdiki krallar onun kadar şerefli olamıyor.

ay sözcü gazetesi duyarı yaptım, kaçıyorum hemen.

Nakon povratka ovom djelu... Ovo djelo staro dva tisućljeća je genijalnost. Ne dajem pet zvjezdica samo zato što imam kriterij da moram biti baš oduševljena i da imam osjećaj da ću se knjizi često vraćati i da je nešto posebno dotaknula unutar mene.
Ali da je ovo klasik vrijedan pet zvjezdica... Itekako jest.

The Ultimate of Greek Tragedies
8 April 2012

ttThis play is so messed up that a part of me says that it has to be based on true events. It is sort of like one of the arguments that people use regarding the authenticity of the Bible: every character (with the exception of Jesus Christ) is so flawed that one cannot consider that the stories have been made up. In particular we see the heroes of the Israelite nation, that being Abraham, Moses, and David, warts and all. However when us consider the Grecian myths we suddenly discover similar things here.

tThe story of Oedipus is that his parents received a prophecy that their child would kill his father and marry his mother, Laius, Oedipus' dad, and king of Thebes, pinned the child's legs together and left him to die on Mount Cithaeron. However, unbeknownst to him a shepherd found the boy, took him into his care, and then sent him to the city of Corinth to be raised by the king and queen there. However, years later when Oedipus had come of age, during a feast a man got too drunk and blurted out that Oedipus' parents weren't his true parents. Despite their pleading Oedipus left Corinth and travelled to Delphi to ask the oracle the truth. The Pythian Oracle, as usual, did not give him a straight answer and simply repeated the prophecy to Oedipus. As such, he decided not to return to Corith but to flee so as not to kill whom he believed where his parents.

tHowever on his way out of Delphi he is confronted by a rather arrogant man who demanded that Oedipus move out of the way. Oedipus tells him to bugger off and a fight ensures resulting in Oedipus' victory. He then arrives at Thebes while the city is being tormented by a sphinx who has a riddle that nobody knows the answer, but Oedipus correctly guesses it, kills the sphinx, and when word is brought about Laius' death Oedipus marries Jocastra, and lives happily ever after.

tActually they don't because without realising it the prophecy has been fulfilled. Further a great crime has been committed, and since a father murderer is living in Thebes the entire city is struck with a plague. Oedipus, who has become king, and is the hero of the city, decides to investigate. However his investigations quickly uncover a truth that is hidden from him and upon learning of this truth, namely that he killed Laius, who turns out to be his father, and married his wife, Jocastra, who turns out to be his mother, he is struck with the guilt of what has come about, Jocastra kills herself and Oedipus rips out his eyes and exiles himself from Thebes.

tWell, I have just told you the plot of the play without actually saying anything about the themes in the play. Well, there are two reasons why I outlined the plot, one being that it is a very complicated plot, and secondly to demonstrate how messed up everything is. This is not a simple Hollywood plot where everything is resolved in the end and everybody goes away happy. In fact it does not seem that there was really anything that Oedipus could have done to get himself out of the mess that he found himself in. In fact it seems that the more he attempts to get out of it the deeper the hole that he digs for himself, but it is not as if he could avoid doing it. He flees because he doesn't want the prophecy to come true, but there is a lot that he does not know and a lot that he is not being told. His step parents are not telling him the truth, and in hiding the truth, they are also making the prophecy come true. As for Laius, once again, everything that he does only serves to make the prophecy come true. While he attempts to kill his son, this fails because of the compassionate nature of humanity. It is the shepherd's compassion that prevents him from leaving Oedipus alone on Cithaeron.

tThe essay question that I answered on this play involved the question of fate and freewill. However there really does not seem to be any freewill here. Every decision that Oedipus makes only brings the revelation closer to being revealed. As a good king he simply cannot ignore the plague, and as a good king, he cannot do anything but seek justice and cleanse the city, despite the fact that he is the root cause of the problem. Despite the curse that he calls on the perpetrator, he must suffer the punishment himself, despite the pleas to the contrary. Oedipus is a just king, but despite his actions it is only when the fog is cleared and the truth comes out that he discovers that he is the perpetrator. Hey, he didn't even realise that the guy that he encountered at the crossroads was the king of Thebes, and his father.

tAristotle in his Poetics writes that characters in a drama should have a fatal flaw, but nobody seemed to have told Sophocles that. Granted Ajax may have had a fatal flaw, but Ajax is not Shakespeare, and is dealing with an issue that has nothing to do with his character. Ajax is dealing with PTSD (though not by that name) and Oedipus does not seem to have that fatal flaw. In reality, other than killing Laius at the crossroads (though some could argue that he did so in self-defense), Oedipus has done nothing wrong. In fact, if he had not investigated the cause of the plague then he would have been negligent. No, it is not Oedipus that has done anything wrong, but rather his ancestors. Laius is cursed and I believe that going up the ancestral chain further we come to a situation where an ancestor fed human flesh to another human, mostly as payback (I can't remember off hand who it was, it could have been Thyestes, but it could have been somebody else - one of Agamemnon's line is also guilty of a similar offense). In a sense then it is not the actions of Oedipus that brings about his suffering and downfall, but that of his father, and of his father's father. Poor Oedipus is only caught in the middle.

tOne might wonder what was so appealing about a story that everybody knows. Well, it is the same with us. When we look through the video store at all the movies available we discover that the plots of each and every one of those movies are pretty much the same. It is not the question of the plot, but how we get to the ending, and how the movie ends. We pretty much know that in around 90% of the movies available the good guys win and the hero gets the girl. We know that so we don't watch the movie for that, but rather how they get there, and how the good guys win. This was the same for the Greeks, and it is fortunate that we have versions of the Electra from the three great playwrights. In this we can see how the actual event differs and how each of the playwrights treated the subject. No doubt with Oedipus, both Aeschylus and Euripides would have explored different themes, and painted Oedipus in a different light, so that despite knowing the outcome, we arrive there through a different method.