This was by far one of the most entertaining books I've read for school.
Anything written about ancient Greece has all my attention, so considering Oedipus the King is the OG murder mystery and greek tragedy, I loved it. Short, and (not) sweet!

تراچيديا ممتعة لسوفوكليس.. واحدة من النصوص القديمة المشهورة برغم مرور الزمن
يظن أوديب انه هرب من أقداره لكنه في كل خطوة يخطوها يقترب من مصيره المكتوب
وتتحقق النبوءة التعسة... يعرض سوفوكليس حتمية مأساة أوديب ولا جدوى الهرب منها
ويرسم صورة للإنسان الحائر بين البحث عن الحقيقة والخوف من إدراكها ومواجهتها

What a dark story. Some of the biggest taboos are explored: incest and parricide. Some important existential questions are asked: are we masters or victims of our fates and to what extent? Do we have a destiny? Is there such thing as God’s (or the gods’) plan for us? Can we fight and escape it?

The real culprits are Œdipe’s natural and adopted parents’. The first pair ordered the killing of their child to escape the fate announced by The Oracles. The second pair never told their child that he was adopted.

Œdipe just tried to live a good life and never meant to harm anyone unless in self-defence. He was a victim... until he became paranoid and threw around insults and threats, and pronounced unfair punishments to anybody who crossed him.

The dialogues are superb (wasn’t expecting that!) and helped to digest the sadness of the play.

n  THE EYE THAT DIESn

I have not read Sophocles’ text recently, but listened to
this  exceptional audio edition. Powerfully acted out, with an eerie chorus and dramatic music, it has been a superb experience.

I have come back to this play now in a roundabout way. As part of a Seminar on Aesthetics, The Eye that Thinks, imparted in the Prado Museum, we were prompted by our Professor Félix de Azúa to read Oedipus in a Hegelian framework. We had been discussing the contributions of Hegel to Aesthetics, and he wanted us to visit the play and think of the role of Sphinx and the significance of Thebes.

In Hegel’s aesthetic system he identified Greek sculptures as the apex of what art could achieve in its quest of perfect and supreme beauty. Earlier architecture and art were still immature attempts. For example, the large Egyptian monuments were undertakings in which matter still prevailed over Geist. When Hegel saw some Kouroi in Munich (now in the Glyptotech), specimens of very early Greek art, he was struck by the significance of the step in this walking man.




In Egyptian representations of humans, legs are seen in profile. They depicted stability, while the Greek marble in Munich man was striding forward. The Kouros, although still using Egyptian conventions presented something very new. It embodied gesture. And Hegel thought that art should strive to represent movement.

The conceptual step of the Kouros, an awakening out of immobility, separated the worlds of the two Thebes: the one in Boetia in ancient Greece from the one up the Nile in ancient Egypt. In Greece Geist was finally on the move.





If Hegel favoured Greek sculpture, he found that Greek drama could offer an additional dimension to sculpted beauty as the unfolding of time could be represented as well. For him Greek tragedy had invoked the greatest aesthetic power.



Hegel had also understood the Egyptian Sphinx as the first instance of the representation of human emerging out, liberating himself, from his animal nature. In this reading of Oedipus Rex as I have tried to keep on some sort of Hegelian glasses (and forget about the pervasive Freudian interpretation), I have seen the solution of Oedipus to the riddle of the Sphinx, and the consequent dissolution of the curse on Thebes and the destruction of the monster, as the emergence of humanity over its previous servitudes and imprisonment.

And yet, this conquered freedom also brought the possibility of unwilled intention or of the unintended will and the impossibility of unlearning what one already knows.

Trapped in this situation Oedipus attempt to escape his knowledge by doing away with his eyes, could only bring death.

As the chorus chants: it is the only liberation.





---

I'd say "spoiler alert" but it seems ridiculous . . .

I've taught this play for years, and I think this year I finally decided what makes this play great. My students never feel sympathy for Macbeth, but they do for Oedipus, and that always used to bother me. They whine in their teenage attitudinal voices, "But he didn't know that was his father." I always respond, "So it's ok to KILL PEOPLE if they're not your father?!"

In identifying with Oedipus, they forget the nature of the atrocities he committed, and that is where the greatness of this play lies - in creating a character who does horrible things, but who never seems like a monster to his audience: to them, he's just a human with human failings. He is essentially a good man, one who tries to help people, who makes tragic mistakes. In this sense my students mirror the feelings of the people of Thebes: the chorus defends Oedipus to the end, unable to believe evil of this great man who saved them once and is trying to save them again. When Oedipus is revealed as not being the son of Polybus and possibly the son of slaves, the chorus believes then that he must be the child of a god, for who else could spawn such a great man?

But Oedipus' humanity lies in his course of action which spirals out of his control - and that, I think, is the element in Oedipus with which my students identify. Oedipus becomes a victim of the unforseen consequences of his own actions. These actions, of course, are fueled by his own pride - arrogance to think he can avoid Apollo's prophecy, and pride turned to anger in being pushed off the road when he feels the other driver should be giving way to his own great self (Ancient Greek road rage!). He may have been doomed since before birth by Apollo's curse on his family, but Oedipus creates his own problems. In believing he can avoid Apollo's prophecy, he shows us that he thinks he has outsmarted the gods, that he is greater than the gods. This, then, is the ultimate hubris and his ultimate undoing.

“How dreadful the knowledge of the truth can be. When there’s no help in truth.”

The Oedipus complex gives rise to the theory that children can possess a desire for a parent of the opposite sex while seeing the parent of the same sex as a rival, and of course its origin is to be found in Greek mythology where all great tragedies come.

Prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother. The natural parents of the infant Oedipus, Laius, king of Thebes and Jocasta give the child to a shepherd to leave at the side of the mountain. Taking pity on the baby the shepherd instead gives the young Oedipus to the childless King Polybus of Corinth and his wife.

Having consulted the Oracle, years later, Oedipus learns of the prophecy that he will kill his father and marry his mother. To break the curse and avoid such tragedy Oedipus flees his home for fear of killing his adopted father Polybus. However, upon entering Thebes he clashes with a man driving a chariot which results in the death of his natural father, thereby fulfilling the first part of the doomed prophecy.

Unknowingly he then solves the riddle and enters Thebes to marry the recently widowed Jocasta, fulfilling the final part of the prophecy he had desperately tried to avoid.

Tragic, intense and dramatic, and the source of much debate about whether we really do possess free will or is our future predetermined and predestined in some way?

A familiar story. A nice opportunity to explore the ancient myths that have provided some wonderful entertainment over the years.

“Alas, alas, what misery to be wise When wisdom profits nothing!”

henüz oyunlara alışık bir okur değilim. bu türe, en iyi örneklerini barındıran antik yunan tragedyasından başlamak istedim. kral oedipus'u seçmemdeki amaç ise yazıldığı dönemden binlerce yıl sonra bile ilham kaynağı olmayı başarmış olması oldu.

the doors'un "the end" isimli müthiş şarkısında, her dinleyenin merakını ve ilgisini çeken; jim morrison'ın meşhur;
-father
-yes son...
repliğini içinde barındıran bölümü dinledikten sonra öğrenmiştim zaten, freud'un zamanında "oedipus karmaşası" olarak psikoloji literatürüne kattığı bu antik anlatıyı.

yirmi beş yüzyıl önce yazılmış, "insanın kaderinde ne yazıyorsa o olur" temalı eserde, insanlara, durumların ne kadar kolay değişebileceği, kimseyi sonuna kadar görmeden, o kişiyle ilgili peşin yargıya varmamak gerektiği anlatılıyor. rüzgarın ne kadar kolay ve hızlı yön değiştirebileceği, olabilecek en trajik ve çarpıcı bir örnekle gözlerimizin önüne seriliyor.

bu kadar basit bir şekilde özetlediğim için yanlış anlaşılmasın, tabi ki yirminci yüzyılın metafor fışkıran eserleri gibi değil ancak kesinlikle edebi kaygı barındıran ve dilin ustalıkla kullanıldığı bir eser.

Well that was awesome.

What can I say about Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex that has not already been said? Apart from the patricide and the infamous incest, this is an ancient tale of angst and overall calamity. But since I recently revisited it, this legendary tragedy hasn’t left my mind.

n  "Look and learn all citizens of Thebes. This is Oedipus.
He, who read the famous riddle, and we hailed chief of men,
All envied his power, glory, and good fortune.
Now upon his head the sea of disaster crashes down.”n

I felt after reading the play that there was not really anything that Oedipus could have done to get himself out of his destiny. In fact, it seems that the more he attempts to get out of it, the deeper he is immersed in its inevitability. It is simply that there was no way for him to avoid doing it all and facing his fate. After hearing of the prophecy he flees because he doesn't want it to come true, but there is a lot that he does not know and a lot that he is not being told. His parents, when told by the oracles decided to sacrifice him. But he was saved by the compassionate nature of humanity. Later on, his step parents also leave him in ignorance, and in hiding the truth they are also making the prophecy come true.

The theme as I see it, therefore, is of fate versus freewill. However, there really does not seem to be any freewill here. Every decision that Oedipus makes only brings the revelation closer to being fulfilled.

But to fully understand Sophocles work, you have to know that for the ancient Greeks the word "tragedy" didn't mean “a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair; calamity; disaster.” For them the idea of such a play, that had a certain and defined theme and structure, is about a person that because of a single tragic flaw becomes the victim of the gods. The specific purpose was called "catharsis", the audience watching the play should gain an emotional release that made your own trivial issues fade into insignificance. According to Aristotle’s Poetics “the complexity of the plot is established through reversal, recognition and suffering.” The tragedy is created, in part, by the complexity of its plot which leads towards the catharsis. The Chorus is crucial; its speeches are revealing. It is the cautious voice of collective wisdom. And from the very beginning of the play, the Chorus revealed the omen of disaster. This can all be summed up in the following lines:

n  "O god-
All come true, all busting to light!
O light- now let me look my last on you!
I stand revealed at last-”n

Oedipus is a passionate man, who asks questions and takes risks. Despite his flaws and his sins, Oedipus is good and always seeks the truth no matter how devastating. In the end, he accepts the responsibility for his actions, his fate and punishment. Does he have free will or the ability to choose his own path or is everything in his life been predetermined? Indeed, despite the prophecy, it can never be denied that Oedipus and his parents had made the choices, not the oracle or the Gods. Is the very idea of carving out your eyes, after discovering your wife is your mother in this incredibly packed tragedy that alleviates so much the enormous pain that seems so causeless? Is the existential angst finally satisfies by the human need to identify the guilty that alleviates our human sensation of utter, senseless and chaotic misery?

This is what torments us, being humans: we have free will but we can never control everything. Oedipus’s specific life events aren’t exactly relatable to any of us, but the sensations are not less pertinent. Aren’t we used to impending unconquerable doom? I ask myself, could ignorance lead us through hell? Oedipus Rex doesn’t make us only question the role of the gods (or whatever may decide our fate nowadays: politicians, the economy, the news, and even our own expectations!), but above all the argument of fate and destiny, and whether we are able to live without external powers deciding our chances. It also makes us question who we are; whether our personalities, or other personal characteristics, are a kind of destiny in itself.

Where's our human freedom? More important: do you feel a prevailing sense of inevitability, no matter what you do?! Why are we always being judged, by ourselves and by the world? If we try to transpose the play to today, many questions are still left with no definite answers. For certain, we can choose what we want to become. The curse is that our capacities are finite; we are not gods. What happened to Oedipus was the torture of being human, can we escape this curse?

Oedipus Rex is a literary masterpiece! Highly recommended!

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

Thebai halkı hastalık, kıtlık, ölü doğan çocuklar gibi büyük felaketlerle boğuşmaktadır. Thebai'nin Kral'ı Oidipus güçlü, dürüst ve adil bir adamdır. Sarayının önüne gelip ondan çare bulmasını bekleyen halka elinden geleni yapacağını söyler, öyle de yapar. Öğreneceklerinin başına ne belalar açacağını nereden bilsin? Tam bir facia!

Kitabı hala okumamış olanlar önsözü kitabı bitirdikten sonra okursa çok daha iyi olur, yoksa kitabın sonunu okumuş olmak keyfinizi epey kaçırabilir. Epeydir okumayı düşündüğüm Henry Bauchau'nun Oedipus ve Antigone serisini okumadan önce bu seriyi tekrar tazelemek istedim.

"From these hands of mine you drank my own, your father's blood."

this play is so good. i do not like it :(

plays that feel like biting electrical wires. plays that feel like eating glass. the tragedy of this play is the dramatic irony--the Knowing the entire time & having to watch the truth unfold, with slow horror-movie inevitability, for oedipus himself--a man who wants nothing more than to find the truth, to untangle this riddle like he did with that of the sphinx. and it's that curiosity and sense of noble duty that undoes him. plays that make you have to draw a little :{ face in the margins three or four times

(talk about bad breaks. can you imagine being the guy who solved the sphinx's riddle, and all anyone ever wants to talk about is how you fucked your mom?)

translations read: whichever one i read on genius.com that time, frank nisetich