"Όταν κάποιος είναι θνητός, περιμένοντας να δούμε την τελευταία μέρα
ας μην τον καλοτυχίζουμε, πριν φτάσει στο τέλος της ζωής του
χωρίς κάτι δυσάρεστο να πάθει."

(εκδ. ΖΗΤΡΟΣ, μετάφραση Θ. ΜΑΥΡΟΠΟΥΛΟΣ)

Tek kelime ile mükemmel. Önsöz kitabın yarısını oluşturuyor ve önbilgi olması adına çok güzel detaylara yer verilmiş. Yalnız geçenlerde okuduğum Zweig eserinin önsözünde yaptıkları gibi yine bütün kitabın hikayesi özetleniyor. Zaten okurken anlayacağımız kısımların neden kısaca özetlendiğine bir türlü anlam veremesem de 2500 sene önce tanrıları ön plana çıkaran bir topluma ait bu eserde tanrıların "keyif",insanların da "kader" dedikleri bu alın yazısı ancak bu kadar güzel yerilebilirdi. Bu vesile ile Tragedya'yı da sevdiğim türler arasına ekledim.

-430 - 2017

فکر کنم هممون تقریبا اسم ادیپ و عقده ادیپ رو شنیدیم و باهاش آشناییم. پدر و مادری که نفرین میشن و برای رهایی از نفرین، بچشون رو میذارن تو کوه تا بمیره ولی بچه نجات پیدا میکنه، نفرین تمام و کمال اجرا میشه و باقی ماجرا. یکی از نکاتی که من خیلی درباره این تراژدی دوست داشتم شخصیت های خاکستریشه. نمیشه گفت شخصیتی خوب یا بد مطلقه. درواقع این ویژگی رو میشه تو همه تراژدی های یونانی و حتی خدایانشون هم دید. همین نکته تراژدی هاشون رو غم انگیزتر می‌کنه و تراژدی ادیپ هم بنظرم از همه تراژدی ها یک سر و گردن بالاتره. از یه طرف خود ادیپ هیچ نقش فعالی تو این بدبختی و نفرین نداشته ولی از همه بدبخت تر شد و از طرف دیگه هم کسانی که میتونستند بهش کمک کنن، هیچ کاری نکردن. بخصوص دوتا پسرهاش!

«تنها کلام ناچیزی کفایت میکرد که مرا از آوارگی برهاند و روزگار سیاهم را پایان دهد...»

و ادیپ بزور تبعید و آواره و بی نوا شد و همش هم بخاطر یه تقدیر از پیش تعیین شده! خیلی جبریه
نسخه‌ای که من داشتم دوتا نمایشنامه اول و دوم رو داره هم ادیپ هم ادیپ در کلنوس. کتاب برای چاپ سال چهل و شیشه و واقعا منو اذیت کرد هم انتخاب کلمات و هم ویراستاری بدش. خیلی از کلمات کاملا بهم چسبیده بودن مثلا جمله به وی بسپارد شده بود به ویسپارد!! خوندنش شبیه حل کردن معما �� پازل بود.
در کل نمایشنامه اول بنظرم بهتر بود. دومی خیلی سریع و کلی پیش رفت نتونستم زیاد باهاش ارتباط بگیرم

أوديب ملكاً - سوفوكليس




لم أتوقع أنني سأتأثر بهذه التراجيديا بعدما سمعتها مرات ومرات وكدت أن أفقد دهشة الحكاية لولا قرائتي لهذه المسرحية , كونها من أكثر القصص والأساطير اليونانية شهرة على الإطلاق, قلت آن لي أن أقرأ هذه المسرحية الشهيرة التي أستوحاها سوفوكليس من الاسطورة اليونانية المذكورة في ملحمة اليونان القديمة المعروفة بالإلياذة ..


جسدها سوفوكليس بعبقرية لا توصف وتراجيدية وفلسفة عميقة يشهد لها التاريخ ومازالت تثير الدهشة في قلب القارئ , وهي قصة أوديب الذي قتل أباه وتزوج من أمه بعد ذلك من دون أن يعلم ذلك , حدث ذلك بعد الوحي الذي أوحاه أبولون لوالد أوديب الذي حاول جاهداً التخلص من أبنه وتفادي المصير المشؤوم الذي قال به الوحي, ولكن ماذا عسى أن ينقذ الأب إذا كانت الأقدار قد سلطت ذلك المصير القاسي على أوديب وكيف يتفادى المرء حدثاً قد كان مكتوباً ..


تدور الأحداث وتنقلب الأيام فيقع الأثم وتتحطم مسارات البشر أمام جحيم القدر ويعلم أوديب أنه لم يولد إلا لكي يقع فريسة لتلك النبوءة المشؤومة, يصرخ أوديب , يتألم كأن جنون العالم قد صب على رأسه , يعلم حينها أنه أشقى البشر على وجه الأرض..




" أنظروا, يا أهالي ثيبا , ها هو ذا أوديب الحاذق في حل الألغاز الشهيرة
والذي صار أول بني الإنسان , لم يكن أحد في المدينة يتأمل مصيره إلا ويحسده ..
أما اليوم , فها هو قد وقع في هاوية من الشقاء الرهيب..
فحذار إذن من أن نصف إنساناً بأنه سعيد , قبل أن يكون قد إجتاز نهاية عمره دون أن يكون قد عانى مصيبة !! "




هذه واحدة من أكثر القصص تراجيدية وعبثية التي ستقرأها في حياتك , كيف لا وهي تتعلق بمصير إنسان قد حكمت عليه الأقدار بمصير كالجحيم وحياة شقية أكثر سوداوية من كل تصوراتنا العبثية حتى ..

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.

Ben Kral Oidupus'un Bordo/Siyah Dünya Klasikleri Serisinden çıkan versiyonunu okudum. Eser herkesin okuması, üzerine düşünmesi gereken antik bir kült.
Artık etkisi yalnız tiyatro sahnelerinde değil; sinemada, edebiyatta, şiirde, psikolojide sürekli olarak bize kendini gösteriyor. Bordo/Siyah versiyonunda Versel Atayman'ın yazmış olduğu önsöz nefis. Her açıdan Kral Oidipus'a bir bakış getirmiş. Hepimizin az çok bildiği ve kavradığı bu hikayeye; kısa ama çok yeterli/açıklayıcı bir makale yazmış. Çeviride keyifli ve özenli. Tavsiye ederim.

Edipo Rey es la primera obra de la trilogía de Edipo, de Sófocles, escrita para los concursos de teatro de la antigua Atenas.
Cuándo es joven el oráculo de Delfos anuncia para Edipo un destino atroz, por lo cual sus padres lo envían a vivir a otra ciudad para evitar el cumplimiento del vaticinio.
Pero es difícil escapar al destino, y en este caso, cómo en muchas tragedias griegas, el hombre termina siendo una pieza cuyo destino es decidido por los dioses, a pesar de su intento por evitarlo.
Una buena obra, que me impactó un poco menos, por ser una historia conocida.

“I want a girl, just like the girl, that married dear old Dad”—Oedipus

But, why accept a copy when you can get the real thing?!

I read this because 1) recently I had read (out of order) Antigone and thought I might reread the whole trilogy; 2) I plan to see a local production of the play and 3) I had some vague notion that the play, about a king, might throw some literary light on our current American King and kingly conduct. I listened to it, though I had to start over 3-4 times because the reader was literally the worst reader of a text I have ever encountered; I would have preferred hearing Siri read the text to this play. I thought he was deliberately doing a flat, comic interpretation at times. He made the already formal language especially stilted and dry. I already preferred Antigone, but this experience made me like the play a little less. But hey, it’s still a classical tragedy that has been read for centuries and a good story.

Oedipus is the first in the trilogy, also known as Oedipus Tyrannus. As you maybe know from the fact that even if you haven’t read the play, Freud’s “Oedipus complex” comes from this play: O became king of Thebes after fulfilling a prophecy made by blind Teresias that he would kill his father, Laius, and marry his mother, Jocasta (though he didn’t really know she was his mother, to his credit).

[Let’s pause here and consider this incest question with respect to the presidency; Trump said even if he murdered someone that his base would still vote for him; if he had married his, let’s say, daughter, Ivanka (and you’ve heard what he said about dating her, so this is not so far-fetched), would his base have still voted for him? Consider.]

[Another kingly reflection: Oedipus means “swollen feet,” as his feet had been tightly bound by Laius. Trump is known for having tiny appendages; write a 3-5 page paper reflecting on the implications of appendage size regarding kingly pride.]

So one serious theme the play takes up is the relationship of the individual to the state (as happens in Antigone, too, with King Creon). Each king makes a decision that his subjects question or disobey; each king misconstrues disagreement as rebellion. While Creon saw his mistake, Oedipus refuses to listen to anyone who disagrees with him. Question: Is listening a useful property in a leader?

The blind prophet Tiresias “sees” more than Oedipus, who cannot “see” the truth because his excessive pride has made him “blind.” I leave it to you whether this insight into political leadership from roughly two dozen centuries ago has trickled down to any political leaders we know, but “pride” is Oedipus’s tragic flaw (see Aristotle), which “goeth before his fall.” Discuss.

This play really builds up a lot of steam by its (tragic) end. And it's probably the greatest classical tragedy, by reputation, so in spite of the fact that I connected a bit better to Antigone (because I like that character in the play) better, I still this is a play well-worth reading about politics and human nature.

As a student in a Greek high school I was more or less forced to read this, translate it from the ancient Greek text for my exams to "prove" I deserved to go to the next educational level (where we did Homer), do assignments on it, listen to my professors as they spoke of its "meaning" and ask myself why Sophocles wrote it to begin with. And I HATED the damn thing. I hated Oedipus just as much as I hated Sophocles.

However, when I left high school, I realized that people - not only in Greece, but around the world - praised it as a masterful writing. Even though a Greek tragedy - with the always heavy hovering Fate over the heroes and their family tree - it's so much more than what my high school teacher told us it was. I wasn't mature enough to understand it then (I viewed Oedipus as a incestuous, poor bastard at the time!) I'm old enough to do so now. And not many things can be said about its vastly horrific grandeur.

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.
Mortality is man’s burden. Keep your eyes fixed on your last day.
Call no man happy until he reaches it, and finds rest from suffering."n

I believe that in one way or another, everyone - at least to some extent - has heard of the story of Oedipus and Jocasta. It's one of those tales that's been on our collective consciousness forever even though we may not even be able to assertively answer about its origins. The same might be said, for example, of Odysseus and Don Quixote: they've been so used and re-used, adapted and re-adapted throughout so many generations and in so many different formats that one might as well state they were simply born within us, for they're public and common knowledge. I, for one, believed Oedipus and Jocasta's tale came from the Bible! As I was never a religious person and therefore never payed much attention to it - and unfortunately never decently studied Greek mythology -, I used to unconsciously attribute to the Bible the origins of all stories which seemed to me as too ancient to properly date. I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed about that, Sophocles. I stand corrected now.

Every time I read an ancient text I recurrently find myself to blame because of the same mistake: being surprised by its quality despite being written so long ago. It turns out more and more I agree with an analysis I've read somewhere that states that, unlike science, there is no progress, no discovery in art. An artist, while he creates, is not helped by the efforts of all the others - like scientists are - and depends upon his own individual truths. The ancient art is in no way a primitive version of the art created by our contemporaries. So it should not be astonishing to me that a text written thousands of years ago possesses the same qualities or refinement of awarded pieces that only now cracked their fifty years of age mark.

Putting the story itself a little aside, it's precisely this refinement, this brilliance in the construction of the narrative that impressed me so much. The pace, the development of the action and disentanglement of this intricate plot was written so masterfully that it requires little investigation in discovering the reasons why it became so influential to the subsequent generations. Now, I'm not knowledgeable enough to affirm that Sophocles himself wasn't influenced by other works that preceded him, so I'm not claiming unprecedented originality to his name here, but merely(!) talent in using the most appropriate techniques to write so many wondrous predicates into this marvelous play. The ability with which he created, sustained and solved the various mysteries that surround this classical tragedy is very remarkable, as well as a striking mixture of pity and horror that the themes developed here successfully imposes on the reader.

Themes such as fate, free will, interference in human life by the Gods (for some that hasn't changed much, has it?) and its inflexible exploration of human nature and suffering are skillfully written in the form of intense dialogues and shocking revelations that could even prove too disturbing had not been Sophocles accurate treatment, much like the reader likely pities Phedre's actions instead of automatically blaming her for her fate. The ever so mesmerizing battle between destiny and logical consequences also plays a big role here: does fate completely control Oedipus's actions - is it all predetermined? -, or is he simply a victim of his own doings, even if unknowingly?

Oedipus Rex (also known as Oedipus the King and Oedipus Tyrannus) tells the story of Oedipus, a man that's respected and loved in Thebas, where he is King after solving the riddle of the Sphinx and marrying Jocasta, the widow of the previous king. After a plague threatens his kingdom, he is begged by a chorus of Thebans for help and Oedipus sends for an oracle in order to find some guidance. As it turns out, Tiresias, the blind prophet, believes the King is the only one to blame for his malady. At first outraged and, because of it, incensed into proving his innocence, he starts connecting the clues that he receives from various bits of information gathered by different sources. As it turns out, Oedipus, after leaving his home in Corinth due to a prophecy which stated he would murder his father and sleep with his mother, entered a fight with some men at a crossroads and ended up killing them, before arriving in Thebes. One of these men was Laius, Jocasta’s husband and previous King. In order to escape the prophecy, Oedipus fell into it, as he was Laius’s son who was sent away to be killed many years ago exactly because he received an oracle that he would be murdered by his own son. Oedipus’s life ended up being spared and, unknown to him, he was adopted by the King of Corinth. Now it was clear to him that, besides murdering his father, he has slept with his own mother and fathered children that were also his brothers and sisters. Jocasta, upon finding out this complex imbroglio, can't deal with the unimaginable situation and kills herself. Completely horrified and ruined by everything he found out, Oedipus blinds himself (ironically at the precise moment when he sees the whole truth) so he wouldn't ever again need to see his own feelings of shame and humiliation mirrored in the faces of the others.

I've read some criticism stating that some of the drama in the play is a bit over the top, and while I wouldn't agree and, more importantly, couldn't possibly begin to imagine myself in the same situation, I guess it was in vogue at the time that the heroes would suffer so much when they'd find their worlds turned upside down that they would impose on themselves severe sentences such as mutilations or death. Part of their heroism is exactly accepting to endure serious consequences, not once pleading blamelessness. Even later, in Shakespeare, we were still to find six or seven characters dying just like that, entire families decimated because of the belief that there could be no way out once the universe had programmed their fates.

Film adaptation: as influential as this story was everywhere, of course it wouldn’t lack adaptations in film. When I found out there was one Edipo Re (1967), directed by Pasolini, I instantly picked it to watch as I imagined that controversial material filmed by controversial director could only result in very interesting movie - to say the least! Much to my surprise, the ick factor was greatly downplayed and this time the Italian director focused more on the emotional aspects of his narrative than on the sexual ones. His rendition was very faithful to the story, although the linear narrative lacked the sophistication employed by Sophocles that chose to slowly reveal details of the plot by making use of different characters referring to past events. The power of the prophecy and the influence in human lives by the Gods were also not as active as in the original story. The intro Pasolini used though was very interesting: it begins in modern days where a father is very jealous of his son's connection with his mother and decides to get rid of him, as if he was anticipating an Oedipus complex situation; after that, time goes back to the ancient days.

Rating: I can't wait to read more from Sophocles and if my anticipation for the remaining plays in this trilogy (Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone) means anything, is that it's a great testament of Oedipus Rex's qualities and how highly I enjoyed this short but intense reading experience: 5 stars.

Τι φοβερό να ξέρεις την αλήθεια και να σου είναι ανώφελη.

"Cuadrúpedo en la aurora, alto en el día
y con tres pies errando por en vano
ámbito de la tarde, así veía
la eterna esfinge a su inconstante hermano,

el hombre, y con la tarde un hombre vino
que descifró aterrado en el espejo
de la monstruosa imagen, el reflejo
de su declinación y su destino.

Somos Edipo y de un eterno modo
la larga y triple bestia somos, todo
lo que seremos y lo que hemos sido.

Nos aniquilaría ver la ingente
forma de nuestro ser; piadosamente
Dios nos depara sucesión y olvido."
— n  Jorge Luis Borgesn (Edipo y el enigma)



(Francis Bacon - Sphinx)