3

final version: 31 viij 1948

murder to Labdakos' and Polydoros' child--

as son of Kadmos' and Agenor's line.

And as for those who fail me,
may the gods deny them the fruit of the earth,
fruit of the womb, and may they rot to death!
Let them be wretched as we are wretched, and more.

For you, for loyal Thebans, and for all
who find my actions right, I pray the favour
of justice, and of all the immortal gods.

CHOREGOS: My lord, you know my impotence. I can say little.
I did not do the murder, I can not name
the murderer. Might not the oracle
that has ordained the search tell where to find him?

OEDIPUS: A fair question. But no man in the world
can make the gods do more than the gods will.

CHOREGOS: There is one last expedient--

OEDIPUS: What is it?
Though it seem slight, you must not hold it back.

CHOREGOS: A lord clairvoyant to the lord Apollo,
so we all know
I understand, is the skilled Teiresias.
One might learn much of this from him, Oedipus.

OEDIPUS: I am not wasting time:
Kreon spoke of this, and I have sent for him
in fact
twice; it is strange that he is not here.

CHOREGOS: The other thing--that old report--seems useless.

OEDIPUS: Which one? I am interested in all reports?

4

final version: 31 viij 1948

CHOREGOS: He was said to have been killed by highwaymen.

OEDIPUS: I know. It seems the witness made himself a target. But we have no witnesses to this.

CHOREGOS: If he can feel a particle of fear, your curse will bring him out of hiding!

OEDIPUS: That act will not fear my curse. No.

[enter] TEIRESIAS

CHOREGOS: But there is a man who can detect the criminal. These are his guides, and this is the holy prophet with whom, alone of all men, truth was born.

OEDIPUS: Teiresias: see: student of mysteries, of all that's taught and all that no man tells, secrets of Heaven and secrets of the earth: blind though you are, you know the city lies sick with plague; and from this plague, my lord, we find that you alone can guard or save us.

Perhaps you did not hear the messengers?

At any rate, Apollo, when we sent to him, sent us back word that this great pestilence would lift, but only if we established surely the identity of those who murdered Laios.

They must be killed or exiled.

Can you use birdwing or any art of divination
to purify yourself, and Thebes, and me
from the corruption of this murdered man?
We are in your hands.

Nothing but greatness now

5

final version: 31 viij 1948

can bring relief to men in such distress.

TEIRESIAS: How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be
when there's no help in knowing! I knew this,
but did not think of it: or I should not have come.

OEDIPUS: What is troubling you? Why do you look so stern?

TEIRESIAS: Let me go home. Bear your own fate, and I'll
bear mine. It is better so: trust what I say.

OEDIPUS: What you say is ungracious and ~~sincerely~~ helpful
~~to your native country. Do not refuse us your counsel.~~
~~to speak~~

TEIRESIAS: Since you do not keep your own speech within bounds
~~no oppidan. I prop he to~~
at the time when you should most ~~I'll~~ be more prudent.

OEDIPUS: For God's sake, we all beg you--

TEIRESIAS: an ignorant
You all know nothing.

No; I will never tell you what I know.

Now it is my misery; then, it would be yours.

OEDIPUS: What! You do know something, and will not tell us?
You would betray us all and wreck the State?

TEIRESIAS: I do not intend to torture myself, or you.
~~Keep on~~
Why persist in asking? You will not persuade me.

OEDIPUS: What a wicked old man you are! You'd try a stone's
patience! Out with it! Have you no feeling at all?

TEIRESIAS: You call me unfeeling. If only you could see
the nature of your own feelings...

OEDIPUS: Why,
who would not feel as I do? Who could endure
your arrogance toward the City?

TEIRESIAS: What does it matter!
Whether I speak or not, it is bound to come.

6

final version: 31 viij 1948

OEDIPUS: Well, if 'it' is bound to come, you are bound to tell me.

TEIRESIAS: I would rather not go on. Rage all you please.

OEDIPUS: Rage? Why not!

And I'll tell you what I think:
You planned the crime, you had it done, you all but
killed him with your own hands; and if you had eyes,
I'd say the crime was yours, and yours alone.

TEIRESIAS: So? I charge you then,
abide by the proclamation you made yourself:
From this day forth
never speak again to these men or to me--
for you yourself are the sickness of this country.

OEDIPUS: You dare say that! Can you possibly think you have
some way of going free, after such insolence?

TEIRESIAS: I have gone free. It is the truth sustains me.

OEDIPUS: Who taught you shamelessness? It was clearly not your act.

TEIRESIAS: You did. You made me speak. I did not want to.

OEDIPUS: Speak what? Let me hear it again more clearly.

TEIRESIAS: Was it not clear before? Are you tempting me?

OEDIPUS: I did not understand it. Say it again.

TEIRESIAS: I say you are the murderer whom you seek.

OEDIPUS: That's twice you have spat out infamy. You'll pay for it!

TEIRESIAS: Would you care for more? Do you want to be really angry?

OEDIPUS: Say what you will. Whatever you say is worthless.

TEIRESIAS: I say that you live in hideous love with her
who is nearest to you in blood. You are blind to the evil.

OEDIPUS: It seems you can go on talking like this for ever.

TEIRESIAS: I can, if there is power in truth.

8

final version: 31 viij 1948

what good were they, or the gods, for the matter of that?
But I came by,
Oedipus, the simple man, who knows nothing--
I thought it out for myself, no birds helped me!

And this is the man you think you can destroy,
~~that you~~ may stand close to Kreon when he's king!
Well, you and your friend Kreon, it seems to me,
will suffer most. If you were not an old man,
you would have already for your time plot!

**CHOREGOS:** We can not see that his words or yours
have been spoken except in anger, Oedipus;
and for anger we have no need. How can God's will
be accomplished best? That is what most concerns us.

**TEIRESIAS:** You are a king. But where argument's concerned,
I am your man, as much a king as you.
I am not your servant, but Apollo's.
I have no need of Kreon to speak for me.

Listen to me: you mock my blindness, do you?
Well, I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind:
you can not see the wretchedness of your life,
nor in whose house you live, no, nor with whom.
Who are your father and mother? Can you tell me?
You do not even know the blind wrongs
that you have done them, on earth and in the world below.
But the double lash of your parents' curse will whip you

10

final version: 31 viij 1948

OEDIPUS: But if it saved this town?

TEIRESIAS:

Boy, give me your hand. [to the PAGE

OEDIPUS: Yes, boy; lead him away.

We can do nothing to serious business! Go; leave us alone.

TEIRESIAS:

I'll go without your asking. How can you hurt me? I came here for certain reasons, and you know the truth about them.

How can you hurt me?

And I tell you again:

The man you have been looking for all this time,
the damned man, the murderer of Laios,
that man is in Thebes. To your mind he is foreign-born,
but it will soon be shown that he is a Theban--
a revelation that will fail to please.

A blind man,
who has his eyes now; a penniless man, who is rich now;
and he will go tapping the strange earth with his staff.
To the children with whom he lives now he will be
brother and father--the very same; to her
who bore him, son and husband--the very same
who came to his father's bed, wet with his father's blood.

Enough. Go think that over.

If later you find error in what I have said,
you may say that I have no skill in prophecy.

[exit KREON lead by his PAGE

rsf to df : 12/3/48

11. 464--510

CHORUS:

The Delphic stone of prophecies

Remembers ancient regicide

Unholy, and a still bloody hand.

That killer's hour of flight has come.

He had best be swifter than any riders,

More tireless than a great wind,

For the son of Zeus armed with his father's thunder

Leaps in lightning after him;

And the Furies follow him, the dread Furies.

(strophe 1)

Parnassus' sheet of sacred snow,

Will blind that dark and secret man,

Shining that he may be hunted down;

Though he may roam the forest shade

Like a bull gone wild from the pasture,

Or hide in a cleft of stone.

He is doomed now; his flight will not avail him,

whom the heart of the world calls desolate,

And immortal Furies follow, forever follow.

(antistrophe 1)

But now a wilder thing is heard

From the old man skilled at hearing fate in the wing-beat of a bird;

Bewildered as a blown bird, my soul hovers and can not find

Foothold in this debate, or reason or rest of mind.

But no man ever brought--none can bring

Proof of strife between Thebes' royal house,

Labdacus' line, and the son of Polybus;

And never until now has any man brought word

Of Laios' dark death staining Oedipus the king.

(strophe 2)

Divine Zeus and Apollo hold

Perfect intelligence alone of all tales ever told;

And well though this diviner works, he works in a rough night;

No man can judge that black unknown or trust his second sight,

For wisdom changes hands among the wise.

Shall I believe my great king criminal

At a raging word that a blind old man let fall?

I saw him when the carrion woman came here of old,

Prove his heroic mind! These evil words are lies.

(antistrophe 2)

faced him

2

final version: 31 viij 1948

Tell me, in God's name: am I a coward, a fool,
that you should dream you could accomplish this?

A fool who could not see your slippery game?

A coward not to fight back, when someone saw it?

You are the fool, Kreon, are you not? to hope

without support of friends to get a throne?

Thrones may be won or bought: you could do neither.

KREON: Now listen to me. You have talked; let me talk, too.

You can not judge unless you know the facts.

OEDIPUS: You speak well: there is one fact; but I find it hard
to learn from the deadliest enemy I have.

KREON: That above all I must dispute with you.

OEDIPUS: That above all I will not hear you deny.

KREON: If you think there is anything good about being stubborn
in the face of all reason, then I say you are wrong.

OEDIPUS: If you think a man can sin against his own kind
and not be punished for it, I say you are crazy.

KREON: I agree. But tell me: What have I done to you?

OEDIPUS: You advised me to send for that wizard, did you not?

KREON: I did. I should do it again.

OEDIPUS: Very well. Now tell me:
How long has it been since Laios--

KREON: What about Laios?

OEDIPUS: Since he vanished in that onset by the road?

KREON: It was long ago, a long time.

OEDIPUS: And so will I, And this prophet,

3

final version: 31 viij 1948

was he practising then?

KREON: He was; and with honour, as now.

OEDIPUS: Did he speak of me at that time?

KREON: He never did;
at least, not when I was present.

OEDIPUS: But...the inquiry?
I suppose you held one?

KREON: We did. But we *had* nowhere.

OEDIPUS: Why did the Sage not speak against me then?

KREON: I do not know; and I am the kind of man
who holds his tongue when he has no facts to go on.

OEDIPUS: There's one fact that you know, and you could tell it.

KREON: What fact is that? If I know it, you shall have it.

OEDIPUS: If he had not been involved with you, he could not have said that it was I who murdered Laios.

KREON: If he says that, you are the one who knows it! --
But now it is my turn to question you.

OEDIPUS: Put your questions. I am no murderer.

KREON: Tell me: You married my sister?

OEDIPUS: I married your sister.

KREON: And you rule the kingdom equally with her?

OEDIPUS: Everything that she wants she gets from me.

KREON: And I am the third, equal to both of you?

OEDIPUS: That is why I call you a faithful friend.

KREON: No. Reason it out for yourself, as I have done.
Think of this first: Would any sane man prefer
power, with all a king's anxieties,
to that same power and the grace of sleep?

df on rsf on df on rsf on df

17 xi 1948

587-

Certainly not I.

I have never wanted the king's power--only his rights.

Would any wise man differ from me in this?

As matters stand, I have my way in everything
by your leave, and no responsibilities.

If I were king, I'd be a slave to policy.

How could I desire a sceptre more

that what I now possess--untroubled power!

No, I have not gone mad; I need no honors,
perquisites, profits, more than I have now.

I am welcome everywhere; every man salutes me,
and those who want your favor seek my ear,
since I alone can manage what they ask.

Should I exchange this ease for that anxiety?

Besides, no sober mind is treasonable.

I hate anarchy,

never would I fear a
and I'd steer clear of any man who likes it.

Test what I have said: go to the Oracle
at Delphi, ask if I quoted her correctly;
and as for this other thing, if I am found
guilty of treason with Teiresias,
then sentence me to death! You have my word
it is a sentence I should cast my vote for--
but not without evidence!

You do wrong

632

3

Iokastê, coming from her palace chambers;
and it is time she came, for the sake of you both:
your present quarrel can be resolved through her.

[enter IOKASTE]

IOKASTE: Poor wicked men, what idiot din is this?

With Thebes sick to death, is it not shameful
that you should rake some private quarrel up?

Come into the house--and you, Kreon, go now;
let us have no more of this tumult over nothing.

KREON: Nothing? No, sister: what your husband plans for me
is one of two great evils: exile or death.

OEDIPUS: He is right.

Why, woman, I have caught him squarely,
plotting against my life.

KREON: No! Let me die
accursed if ever I have wished you harm!

IOKASTE: Ah, believe it, Oedipus!
In the name of the gods, respect this oath of his
for my sake, for the sake of these people here!

[note: the KOMMOS (649) follows.]

Andover, 17 May

dear Robert

I've been studying our Alcy, and here are the corrections that I'd like to make.

p. 3, 1. 7: delete 'the' before 'old Wheeleyes'
6, 4: delete the stage direction
21 19: delete CHORUS: the whole passage belongs to the Choragos
29 : delete all the stage directions
30 : delete the stage direction
40 2: for 'in' lege 'into'
40, ad fin: read: Heracles, son of Zeus, of Perseus' line
41 3: read: Why have you shorn your head? Are you in mourning?

Others will occur to you.

One thing still bothers me. On p. 56, we have (under the influence of the Catholic Ritual) done a v. unorthodox thing to the farewell speech of the CHORAGOS. There is no authority for making that 'Daughter of P.' &c passage a 'strophe'—it isn't one. And yet I hate to change it, because of the emotional and other associations. To be fair, we shd kill the antecedent st. dir. and give the whole passage to CHORAGOS. Perpend and solve.

Another worry. The third line from the bottom on p. 53 is non-existent in Gk, was a happy thought of my own to parallel Admetos' remark on p. 52, line 9. The whole of the end of this speech is too free. But that is true of the whole version.

I shd like, 2 yr permission, to change the spelling of various words throughout to follow our style in Antigonê: i.e., ADMETOS, CHORAGOS, and so on. I shd even like to do it in Oedipus Coloneus, but that depends on your consent.

Morley sent the corrections.

This in extreme haste and consequent lack of style.

love,

I AM KEEPING A CARBON OF _THIS_ WAN!

final: 26 Jan: 49

First, tell me how Laios looked, and tell me
how old he was.

IOKASTE: He was tall, his hair just touched
with white; his form not unlike your own.

OEDIPUS: I think that I myself may be accursed
by my own ignorant edict.

IOKASTE: You speak strangely.
It makes me tremble to look at you, my lord.

OEDIPUS: I am not sure that the blind man can not see.
But I should know better if you were to tell me--

IOKASTE: Anything--though I dread to hear you ask it.

OEDIPUS: Was the King lightly escorted, or did he ride
with a large company, as a ruler should?

IOKASTE: There were five men with him in all: one was a herald;
and a single chariot, which he himself was driving.

OEDIPUS: Alas, that makes it plain enough!

But who--

Who told you how it happened?

IOKASTE: A household servant,
the only one to escape.

OEDIPUS: And is he still
a servant of ours?

IOKASTE: No: for when he came back at last

final: 26 Jan: 1949

I contained myself that night, though I felt anger
and a sinking heart. The next day I visited
my father and mother, and questioned them. They stormed,
calling it all the slanderous rant of a fool;
and this response relieved me. Yet the suspicion
remained always aching in my mind;
I knew there was talk of it; I could not rest;
and finally, though it said no more to my parents,
I went to the shrine at Delphi.

The god dismissed my question without reply;
he spoke of other things.

Some were clear:
full of wretchedness, dreadful, unbearable:
as, that I should lie with my own mother, breed
children from whom all men would turn their eyes;
and that I should be my father's murderer.

I heard all this, and fled. And from that day
Corinth for me was only in the stars
descending in that quarter of the sky
as I wandered farther and farther on my way
to a land where I should never see the evil
sung by the oracle. And I came into this country
where, so you say, King Laios was killed.

I will tell you all that happened there, my lady.

There were three highways
coming together at a place I passed;
and there a herald rode towards me, and a chariot

final: 26 Jan: 1949

drawn by horses, with a man such as you describe
seated in it. The groom leading the horses
forced me off the road at his lord's command;

but as he lunched over by the chariot-wheel
*his chariot* was purchased over me,

I struck him in my rage. The old man saw me
and struck me on the head with his double goad
as I came abreast.

He was paid back, and more!
Swinging my club in this right hand I knocked him
out of his car, and he rolled on the ground.

I killed them all.

Now if that stranger and Laios were---kin,
where is a man more miserable than I?
More hated by the gods? Citizen and alien alike
must never shelter me or speak to me--
I must be shunned by all.

And I myself
pronounced this malediction upon myself!

Think of it: I have touched you with these hands,
these hands that killed your husband. What defilement!

Am I all evil, then? It must be so,
since I must flee from Thebes, yet never again
see my own countrymen, my own country,
for fear of joining my mother in marriage
and killing Polybos, my father. Ah,
if I was created so, born to this fate,

final: 26 I 1949

who could deny the savagery of God?

O holy majesty of heavenly powers!

May I never see that day! Never!

Rather let me vanish from the race of men
than know the abomination destined me!

CHOREGOS: We too, my lord, have felt dismay at this.
But there is hope: you have yet to hear the shepherd.

OEDIPUS: Indeed, I fear no other hope is left me.

IOKASTE: What do you hope from him when he comes?

OEDIPUS: This much:
If his account of the murder tallies with yours,
then I am cleared.

IOKASTE: What was it that I said
of such importance?

OEDIPUS: Why, 'maurauders', you said,
killed the King, according to this man's story.
If he maintains that still, if there were several,
clearly the guilt is not mine: I was alone.
But if he says ~~that~~ one man, singlehanded, did it,
then the evidence all points to me.

IOKASTE: You may be sure he said that there were several;
and can he call back that story now? He can not.
The whole city heard it as plainly as I.
But suppose he alters some detail of it:
he can not ever show that Laios' death

DRAFT : 3/27/49

1. 1086

If ever the vistas of God's design
Opened before me,
Now in a sudden clearing of glory I see
Vigil and festival at the rising moon:
Grant it, Apollo!
Then all our Theban choir shall sing
Kithairon, delight of our royal line,
And cradle of our king.

Of the maidens beyond years blossoming,
Tell, child, who bore you,
To Pan of the hills, or was it to Apollo,
Lover of upland lawns or to Hermes, king
Of high Cyllene?
Or did great Bacchus, roamer of mountains,
Receive you from some pleasuring
Nympch of the Muse's fountains?

SHEPHERD: True, yes; but it was all so long ago.

MESSENGER: Well, then: do you remember, back in those days,
that you gave me a baby boy to bring up as my own?

SHEPHERD: What if I did? What are you trying to say?

MESSENGER: The King here, friend, was once that baby boy.

SHEPHERD: Damn you, hold your tongue!

OEDIPUS: No more of that!

It is your tongue needs watching, not this man's.

SHEPHERD: My King, my Master, what is it I have done wrong?

OEDIPUS: You have not answered his question about the boy.

SHEPHERD: He does not know... He is only making trouble...

OEDIPUS: Come, speak plainly, or it will be the worse for you.

SHEPHERD: In God's name, do not torture an old man!

OEDIPUS: Come here, one of you; bind his arms behind him.

SHEPHERD: Uhh... King, may I ask a favor?

OEDIPUS: Did you give this man the child he spoke of?

SHEPHERD: I did.

And I would to God I had died that very day.

OEDIPUS: You will die now unless you speak the truth.

SHEPHERD: Yet if I speak the truth, I am worse than dead.

OEDIPUS: Very well; since you insist upon delaying—

SHEPHERD: No! I have told you already that I gave him the boy.

OEDIPUS: Where did you get him? From your house? From somewhere else?

SHEPHERD: Not from mine, no. A man gave him to me.

OEDIPUS: Is that man here? Do you know whose slave he was?

SHEPHERD: For God's love, my King, do not ask me any more!

OEDIPUS: You are a dead man if I have to ask you again.

SHEPHERD: Then... Then it was a child, from the palace of King Laios...

OEDIPUS: A slave child? or a child of his own line?

rsf to df : 11/18/48

11. 1186--1221

CHORUS:

Alas for the seed of men. (strophe 1)

What measure shall I give these generations
That breathe on the void and are void
And exist and do not exist?

What man has known more joy
Than mist of sunlight shifting in images,
Or who shall make his dream stay on
That down time drifts away?

Your splendor is all fallen.

O naked brow of wrath and tears,
O change of Oedipus!
I who saw your days call no man blest--
Your great days like ghosts gone.

That mind was a strong bow. (antistrophe 1)

Deep, how deep you drew it then, hard archer,
At a dark fearful range,
And brought dear glory down!

You overcame the stranger--
The virgin with her hooking lion claws--
And though death sang, stood like a tower
To make pale Thebes take heart.

Fortress against our sorrow!

Divine king, giver of laws,
Majestic Oedipus!
No prince in Thebes had ever such renown,
No prince won such grace of power.

And now of all men ever known
Most pitiful is this man's story:
His fortunes are most changed, his state
Fallen to a low slave's
Ground under bitter fate. (strophe 2)

O Oedipus, most royal one!
The great door that expelled you to the light
Yielded again in darkness to your glory--
As to the father, to the fathering son.

All understood too late.

How could that queen whom Laios won,
The garden that he harrowed at his height,
Be silent when the act was done?

But all eyes fail before time's eye,
(antistrophe 2)
All actions come to justice there.
Though never willed, though far down the deep past,
Your bed, your dread sirings
Are dragged to the bar at last.

Child by Laios doomed to die,
And doomed to lose that fortunate little death,
Would God you never took breath of this air
That with my wailing lips I take to cry:

For I weep the world's outcast.

Blind I was, and cannot tell why;
Asleep, for you had given ease of breath;
A fool, while those false years went by.

Maestro mio:

Excuse the economy if I go on writing on this sheet;
economy begins to be important. Our ship doesn't sail until December 23rd, instead of December 10th, which is entirely delightful or delightful entirely except for the cost of it all. We'll be in Rome, then, until the 7th or thereabouts, then to Florence for a couple of days and back to Paris for ten before sailing.

We are enfolded here in a lovely old hotel facing the
13th century church of S. Maria Sopra Minerva, with a waggish elephant
by Bernini toting an obelisk in the piazza. Dominican headquarters are
across the way, and the second finest library in Rome (the second to the
Vatican). There is a writing room in the hotel where nobody comes and
where sure enough I have written a little. We have gone through the first
four lessons in Hugo and know how to spell scirocco (you sco and sco),
and the baby happily fattens, happily masticates great fistfulls of
zwiebock, leaving pre-digested smears all over the place. The harness that
Cornelia supplied has been indispensable; I don't know how we could have
done all this without it.

We got to Rome on election day and read the incredible but
I guess quite happy news in the giornali; otherwise we've not been in touch
with American news or publications for six weeks, and feel none the worse
if none the wiser.

With any luck, I'll send you a longer batch of Oedipus
before we leave Rome, and if you will send me a batch I foresee that revising
during the winter and a meeting during your Easter vac will enable us to
put the whole package in Giroux's lap before May.

Are the Fitts's in health? Is Andover wearing? Is great art
appearing in print? Send us a little woid, O phlatt. Love to you all four.

df to rsf: 7 ix 48

1223-

MESSENGER: Elders of Thebes, most honoured in this land,
what horrors are yours to see and hear, what weight
of sorrow to be endured, if, true to your birth,
the venerate the line of Labdakos!

I think neither Istros nor Phasis, those great rivers,
could purify this place of the corruption
it shelters now, or soon must bring to light--
evil not done unconsciously, but willed.

TheGRACE SUFFITS, BUT WE CARRY OUT THE PRINCE.
The worst pain is the pain we inflict on ourselves.

CHOREGOS: Surely, friend, we have grief enough already;
what new sorrow do you mean?

MESSENGER: The Queen is dead.

CHOREGOS: Iokaste? Dead? But at whose hand?

MESSENGER: Her own.

The full horror of what happened you can not know,
for you did not see it; but I, who did, will tell you
as clearly as I can how she met her death.

When she had left us,
in passionate sukce, passing through the court,
raving, as you remember, in her despair,

she was carried to her apartment in the house,
her hair clutched by the fingers of both hands.

She closed the doors behind her then by that bed
where long ago the fatal son was conceived--

that son who should bring about his father's death--

We heard her called upon Laios, dead so many years,
and heard her weep and her tears fell for the double fruit of her marriage,
a husband by her husband, children by her son [child]

2

Exactly how she died I do not know:

for Oedipus burst in moaning
and would not let us
watch the end of the story; it was by
him
as he stormed about the room that our eyes were caught.

From one to another of us he went, begging a sword,
cursing the wife who was not wife, the mother
whose womb had carried his own children and himself.
I do not know: it was none of us who aided him,
but surely one of the gods directed him!

For with a dreadful cry
he hurled his weight, as though torn out of himself,
at the twin doors: the bolts gave, and he rushed in.
And there we say her hanging, her body swaying
from the cruel cord she had noosed about her neck.
A great sob broke from him, heartbreaking to hear,
as he loosed the rope and lowered her to the ground.

I would blot out from my mind what happened next!
For the King ripped from her gown the golden brooches
that were her ornament, and raised them, and plunged them down
straight into his open eyeballs, crying 'No more,
'no more shall you look on the misery about me,
'the horrors of my own doing! Too long you have known
'the faces of those whom I should never have seen,
'too long been blind to those for whom I was searching!
'From this hour, go in darkness!' And as he spoke
he struck at his eyes—not once, but many times;
and as he struck the blood spattered his beard,
bursting from his ruined sockets like red hail.

df on rsf on df on rsf on df 17 XI 48

1297-

KOMMOS

CHORAGOS: I dreadful thing indeed for men too see.
Never have my own eyes
looked on a sight so full of fear.

Oedipus!

What madness came upon you, what daemon
leaped on your life with heavier
punishment than a mortal man can bear?

No: I can not even
look at you, poor ruined one.
And I would speak, question, ponder,
if I were able. No.
You make me shudder.

OEDIPUS: God. God.
Is there a sorrow greater than my sorrow?
Where shall I find harbor in this world?
My voice is hurled far on a dark wind.
What has God done to me?

CORAGOS: Too terrible to think of, or to see.

OEDIPUS: O cloud of night,
never to be turned away: night coming on,
I can not tell how: night like a shroud!
My fair winds brought me here.

[str. 1]

O God! again

O/cap

the pain of the spikes where I had sight,
the flooding pain
of memory, that can not be rooted out. never to be souged out.

3

final 17 XI 48

Lead the great wreck
and hell of Oedipus, whom the gods hate.

CHORAGOS: Your fate is clear, you are not blind to that.
would God you had never found it out!

d/cap

OEDIPUS: Hell take the man who unbound
my feet on that hillside
and delivered me from death to life! What life?
If only I had died,
this weight of monstrous doom
could not have dragged me and the others down.

[ant. 2]

CHORAGOS: I would have wished the same.

OEDIPUS: Oh never to have come here
with my father's blood upon me! Never
to have been the man they call his mother's husband!
Oh accurate! Oh child of evil,
who entered that wretched bed--
the selfsame one!
More primal than sin itself, this fell to me!

/to

CHORAGOS: I do not know how I can answer you.
Surely you were better dead than blind and alive.

/tn

final: 18 I 1949

OEDIPUS: Do not counsel me any more. This punishment
that I have laid upon myself is just.

If I had eyes,

I do not know how I could bear the sight
of my father, when I came to the house of Death,
or my mother: for I have sinned against them both
so vilely that I could not make my peace
by strangling my own life.

Or do you think my children,
born as they were born, would be sweet to my eyes?
Ah never, never! Nor this town with its high walls,
nor the holy images of the gods.

For I,
thrice miserable!, Oedipus, noblest of all the line
of Kadmos, have condemned myself to enjoy
these things no more, by my own malediction
expelling that man whom the gods declared
be in a state of limbo in the house of Laios.
impious and of latest descent.

After exposing the rankness of my own guilt,
how could I look men frankly in the eyes?

No, I swear it,

if I could have stifled my hearing at its source,
I would have done it and made all this body of mine
a tight cell of misery, blank to light and sound:
so I should have been safe in a dark agony
beyond all recognition.

Ah Kithairon!

Why did you shelter me? When I was cast upon you,

why did I not die? Then I should never
have shown the world my execrable birth.

Ah Polybos! Corinth, city that I believed
the ancient seat of my ancestors: how fair
I seemed, your child! And all the while this evil
was cancerous within me!

For I am sick
in my daily life, sick in my origin.

O three roads, dark ravine, woodland and way
where three roads met: you, drinking my father's blood,
my own blood, spilled by my own hand: can you remember
the unspeakable things I did there, and the things
I went on from there to do?

O marriage, marriage!
The act that engendered me, and again the act
performed by the child in the same bed--

Ah, the net
of incest, mingling fathers, brothers, sons,
with brides, wives, mothers: the last evil
that can be known by men: no tongue can say
how evil!

No. For the love of God, conceal me
somewhere far from Thebes; or kill me; or hurl me
into the sea, away from men's eyes for ever.

Come, lead me. You need not fear to touch me.
Of all men, I alone can bear this guilt.

[enter KREON]

CHOREGOS: We are not the ones to decide; but Kreon here
may fitly judge of what you ask. He only
is left to protect the city in your place.

OEDIPUS: Alas, how can I speak to him? What right have I
to beg his courtesy whom I have deeply wounded?

KREON: I have not come to laugh at you, Oedipus,
or to reproach you, either.

--You, standing there: [to ATTENDANTS]
if you have lost all respect for man's dignity,
at least respect the flame of Lord Helios:
do not allow this pollution to show itself
openly here, an affront against the earth
and Heaven's rain and the light of day. No, take him
into the house as quickly as you can.
For it is proper
that only the close kindred feel his grief.

OEDIPUS: I pray you in God's name, since your courtesy
ignores my dark expectation, visiting
with mercy this man of all men most execrable:
give me what I ask--for your good, not for mine.

KREON: And what is it that you would have me do?

OEDIPUS: Drive me out of this country as quickly as may be
to a place where no human voice can ever greet me.

KREON: I should have done that before this--only,
God's will had not been wholly revealed to me.

OEDIPUS: But his command is clear: the parricide

must be destroyed. I am that evil man.

KREON: That is the sense of it, yes; but as things are,
we had best discover clearly what is to be done.

OEDIPUS: You would learn more about a man like me?

KREON: You are ready now to listen to the god.

OEDIPUS: I will listen. But it is to you
that I must turn for help. I beg you, hear me.

The woman in there--
give her whatever funeral you think proper:
she is your sister.

But let me go, Kreon!

Let me purge my father's Thebes of the pollution
of my living here, and go out to the wild hills,
to Kithairon, that has won such fame with me,
the tomb my mother and father appointed for me,
and let me die there, as they willed I should.

And yet I know
death will not ever come to me through sickness
or in any natural way: I have been preserved
for some <u>un speakable</u> fate. But let that be.

As for my sons, you need not care for them.
They are men, they will find some way to live.
But my poor daughters, who have shared my table,
who never before have been parted from their father--
take care of them, Kreon; do this for me.
And will you let me touch them with my hands

a last time, and let us weep together?

Be kind, my lord,

chivalrous prince, be kind!

Could I but touch them,

I'd say they were mine again, as when I had my eyes.

[enter ANTIGONE and ISMENE, attended]

Ah God!

Is it my dearest children I hear weeping?

Has Kreon pitied me and sent me my daughters?

KREON: Yes, Oedipus: I knew they were dear to you,
in the old days, and know you must love them still.

OEDIPUS: May God bless you for this--and be a friendlier guardian to you than he has been to me.

Children, where are you?

Come quickly to my hands: they are your brother's--
hands that have brought your father's once clear eyes
to this way of seeing--

Ah dearest ones,

I had neither sight nor knowledge then, your father
by the woman who was the source of his own life!

And I weep for you--having no strength to see you--,
I weep for you when I think of the bitterness
that men will visit upon you all your lives.

What homes, what festivals can you attend
without being forced to depart again in tears?

And when you come to marriageable age,
where is the man, my daughters, who would dare

risk the bane that lies on all my children?

Is there any evil wanting? Your father killed
his father; sowed the womb of her who bore him;
engendered you at the fount of his own existence!
This is what they will say of you.

Then, whom
can you ever marry? There are no bridegrooms for you,
and your lives must wither away in sterile dreaming.

O Kreon, son of Menoikeus!

You are the only father my daughters have,
since we, their parents, are both of us gone for ever!

They are your own blood: you will not let them
fall into beggary and loneliness;
you will keep them from the miseries that are mine!
Take pity on them; see, they are only children,
friendless except for you. Promise me this,
great Prince, and give me your hand in token of it.

Children:

I could say much, if your minds could understand me,
but as it is, I have only this prayer for you:
Live where you can, be as happy as you can—
happier, please God, than God has made your father!

KREON: Enough. You have wept enough. Now go within.

OEDIPUS: I must; but it is hard.

KREON:                 Time eases everything.

OEDIPUS: But you must promise—

KREON: Say what you desire.

Dudley mio

I. Now here is what I think about spelling: I think it is better to keep familiar proper names in their familiar form, thus:

Corinth      Athena      Cadmus      Polybus
Creon        Bacchus     Parnassus
Jocasta      Dionysus    Chorus

but to keep the names, technical names, of parts of the play in the Greek form, thus:

Parodos      Kommos      Exodos

and to substitute "k" for "c" in any instance where the "c" might
suggest a soft sound where we want it hard, thus:

Kithairon Kyllene Menoikeus

II. Accent marks, I think, should be held to the absolute minimum; we have to have a grave accent on Kyllene to keep it from being understood as two syllables; but we don't have to have it on Athene if we make the name Athena, instead, which is preferable anyway. I am against any accenting of verses.

III. Pls note that after the kommos there is a new episode which should be marked and numbered III.

IV. Pls note that after Ode II the next episode should be numbered IV and should begin with Jocasta's entrance and prayer to Apoło. Then the episode with the shepherd is V.

V. Most of the changes I've made in the text should speak for themselves. A few I remember: "Oedipus' house" sounded like "Holland House" or "Carlton House". "Couriers"(of untiring wind) is too close to the sightless couriers of the air in Macbeth.

VI. All that remains, eh, is the second strophe and antistrophe of Ode II? Submissions coming up. NOTE that I've included Ode III in this manuscript.

VII. I dunno about Quintanilla. Picasso would be better? But before saying more I'd better look at his Gulliver. His notion, an etching of Jocasta touching Oedipus, is a good one. I'll talk to Giroux abt it?

SSQBSM

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1086 sqq.

4/3/49

THIRD STASIMON

If ever the coming time were known
To my heart's pondering,
Kithairon, now by Heaven I see your glory
At the festival of the next full moon,
And see the dance, and hear the choir sing,
Praising your kindly shade:
Mountain where Oedipus was found,
O mountain dear to a noble race,
May the god who healing us lend his aid,
And let that feast-day come to pass
For our king's cradling-ground!

(strophe 1

Of the girls who flower beyond the years,
Who bore you, royal child,
To Pan of the hills or the timberline Apollo,
Cold in delight where the mountain clears,
Or Hermes for whom Kyllene's heights are piled?
Or flushed as evening claud
Great Dionysus, roamer of mountains,
He--was it he who found you there,
And caught you up in his own proud
Arms from your mother's arms--a fair
Nymph of the Muses' fountains?

(antistrophe

upland?

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4/3/49

SECOND STASIMON

Let me be reverent in the ways of right,
Lowly the paths I journey on;
Let all my words and actions keep
The laws of the pure Universe
From open Heaven handed down.
Heaven is their bright nurse,
Those generations of the realms of light;
For never of mortal kind were they begot,
Nor are they slaves of memory, lost in sleep;
Their Father is greater than Time, and ages not.

(strophe 1

The tyrant is a child of Pride,
Who drinks from his great sickening cup
Recklessness and vanity,
Until from his high crest headlong
He plummets, beyond cast of hope;
That strong man is not strong.
But let not just ambition be denied,
And God protect the wrestler for the State
In government, in comely policy,
Who will fear God, and on His ordinance wait.

(antistrophe 1

FINAL

df on rsf &c&c: 2 II 49

1-

OEDIPUS: My children, last begotten generations
in descent from Kadmos of the ancient time,
why have you thrown yourself down before these altars
in supplication, with your boughs and garlands?
The whole city
is loud with the sound of lamentation mingled
with prayer and incense rising. O my sons,
there is no need of messengers between us!
See, I have come myself to hear you speak;
and all men know the fame of Oedipus.

You, there, since you are eldest in the company,
speak for them all, tell me what troubles you.
Are you afraid? Or do you crave some blessing?
You know that in all things I wish to help you;
how heartless I should be
were I unmoved by such petitioners!

[to PRIEST]

PRIEST: Oedipus, King, ruler of our land:
you see us, young and old, with one desire
clinging to your altars. Here are some who barely
stand alone; others, by weight of age,
are priests, as I am a priest of God; and some
are chosen from the young men yet unmarried.
As for the multitude, both men and women,
they are all waiting in the public squares,
at Pallas' two shrines, and where the god
Apollo speaks in the glowing embers. Surely

2

final version: 31 viij 1948

that Thebes has pitched and rolled in a mortal fever
and can not lift her head from the deep dark.

A rust consumes the buds and fruits of the earth;
the herds are sick; and unborn children die
in the failing womb. The god of plague and pyre
raids like detestable lightning through the city.

He makes the Kadmeian house an empty house
and dark; and dark Death richer for our weeping.

We do not pray to you as to one of the gods,
these children and I, but judging you the man
most capable in the common course of things
and wisest in the ways of God.

You saved us
from the Sphynx, that flinty singer, and the fee
we paid so long. Yet you were not forewarned,
you had no knowledge from us: no, some god
gave you the power to free us.

O my King,
we turn to you:
we beg you, help us, find relief for us,
whether you catch some hint from the gods or men!
A ruler tested in trials past can do
the things he plans, and what he plans is best.
Noblest of men,
help your city now! Think: you are called
Leverator for your triumphs long ago;
ah, when your years of kingship are remembered,
let them not say 'We rose, but later fell'—

3

final version: 31 viij 1948

No: keep the State from drifting to disaster!
Once, long ago, with happy augury
you brought us fortune: be the same again!
No one questions your power to rule the land:
but rule over men, not over a ghost city!
Ships are only hulls, citadels are nothing,
when no life moves in the empty passageways!

OEDIPUS:
Ah, poor children! You may be sure I know
all that you longed for in your coming here.
I know that you are deathly sick; and yet,
sick as you are, not one is as sick as I.
Each of you suffers in himself alone
his anguish, not another's; but my spirit
groans for the city, for myself, for you.
I was not sleeping. You are not waking me.
No; I have been in tears for a long while,
and in my wandering thought have walked so many
ways. I have searched them all, and found but one
that offered hope.

I took that. I sent Kreon,
Menoikeos' son, the brother of the Queen,
to Delphi, Apollo's place of revelation,
to learn there, if he could,
what act or pledge of mine might save the city.

I have counted the days, andn it troubles me:
What is he doing? He has been gone too long.
Whenever he comes, though, I should do wrong indeed

4

final version: 31 viij 1948

to scant anything that the god reveals.

PRIEST: Your promise is timely: at this very moment
they tell me that Kreon is coming.

OEDIPUS: O Lord Apollo!
May his news be fair as his face is radiant!

PRIEST: I think it will be: his head is crowned with bay,
and the garland is made thick with many berries.

OEDIPUS: We shall soon know; he is near enough to speak to.

[enter KREON]

Prince: brother: Menoikeos' son:
what answer do you bring us from the god?

KREON: A fair one. . .although there is harshness in it.
If we can meet its terms, we shall be free.

OEDIPUS: What did the god say?

What you have said
moves me neither one way nor another.

KREON: Do you think I should speak out here, before these people?
If you do, I will. But should we not go in?

OEDIPUS: Say what you have to say before them all.
They are the ones I care for.

KREON: As you like.
I will tell you, then, what I heard Apollo say.

In plain words

The god commands that we drive from cover here
a corruption that we have kept among us.

We must shelter it no longer: it is deathly.

OEDIPUS: What corruption? And how shall we get rid of it?

5

final version: 31 viij 1948

KREON: By exile or death, blood for blood. It was
murder that brought this plague upon the city.

OEDIPUS: What murder? Whose fate does Apollo mean?

KREON: My lord: long ago Laios was our king,
before you came to govern us.

OEDIPUS: I know;
I learned of him from others; I never saw him.

KREON: He was murdered; and Apollo commands us now
to take revenge upon whoever killed him.

OEDIPUS: Upon whom? Where? Where shall we find a clue
to that unsolved crime after so many years?

KREON: Here in this land, he said. We shall find it only
by inquiry. Crimes are unsolved if we let them be.

OEDIPUS: How did it happen? Was Laios killed at home,
or in the fields, or in some foreign country?

KREON: He left to go on a pilgrimage, he told us,
to the shrine at Delphi. He did not come home again.

OEDIPUS: And was there no one,
no witness, no companion to tell what happened?

KREON: They were all killed but one, and he got away
so frightened he could remember one thing only.

OEDIPUS: What was that? It might be the key to everything.
At least let us take it as some occasion for hope.

KREON: He said that a band of highwaymen attacked them
and killed the King.

OEDIPUS: Strange, that a highwayman
could be so daring, unless some conspiracy
here in Thebes had paid him well to do it.

6

final version: 31 viij 1948

KREON: We thought of that. But with Laios gone,
troubles arose; and no one was here to help us.

OEDIPUS: Troubles? Your king had been murdered. Could you not investigate it?

KREON: The Sphynx, with her riddling presence,
blinded us to all mysteries but her own.

OEDIPUS: Then I must solve this, just as I solved the other.
Apollo is right, and so are you, to desire
this effort for the sake of the dead man.
I will stand by you--and you will see how well--
in avenging Thebes and honouring her god.
It is not as though I did it for some lost friend,
but for my own sake I will crush this evil.
Whoever killed King Laios might--who knows?--
decide at any moment to kill me too.
By avenging Laios I protect myself.

Come, then, my children: leave the alter steps,
lift up your olive boughs.

One of you go
and have the people of Kadmos gather here.
I will do all that I can, you may tell them that.

So, with the help of God,
we shall be saved—or else indeed we are lost.

II FINAL

rsf on df etc : 3/14/49

1/87--

CREON: A fair answer. I can tell you, great afflictions
will turn out well, if they are taken well.

OEDIPUS: What was the oracle? These hinting words
leave me still hanging between hope and fear.

CREON: Is it your pleasure to hear me, with all these
gathered around us? I am prepared to speak,
but should we not go in?

OEDIPUS: Let us all hear it.
It is their suffering, not mine, I care for.

CREON: Then I will tell you what I heard at Delphi.
In plain words the god our lord Apollo
commands us to expel from the land of Thebes
an old defilement that it seems we shelter.
It is a deathly thing;
we must not let it feed upon us longer.

OED: What defilement? How shall we cleanse ourselves?

CREON: By exile or death, blood for blood. It was
murder that brought the plague wind on the city.

OED: Murder of whom? The god has named him, surely?

CREON: My lord: long ago Laios was our king,
before you came to govern us.

OED:
I know;
I learned of him from others; I never saw him.

CREON: He was murdered; and Apollo commands us now
to take revenge upon the men who killed him.

OED: And where are they? Where shall a clue be found
to solve that crime, after so many years?

CREON: Here in this land, he said--if we make inquiry,
we may touch things that otherwise elude us.

OED: Was Laios murdered here in his own house,
or in the fields, or in some foreign country?

CREON: He left us, so he said, to make a pilgrimage;
he never came home again.

OED: And was there no one,
no witness, no companion to tell what happened?

! ♀ !

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187--

FINAL

CREON: A fair answer. I may say that great afflictions will turn out well, if we but use them well.

CREON: Is it your will to hear me, with all these gathered around us? I am prepared to speak, but should we not go in?

OEDIPUS: Tell all of them. It is their suffering, not mine, I care for.

CREON: Then I will tell you what I heard at Delphi. In plain words the god our lord Apollo Commands us to eject from the land of Thebes An old defilement that it seems we shelter. We must not keep it longer: it is deathly.

OED: What is this thing? How shall we cleanse ourselves?

CREON: By exile or death, blood for blood. It was murder that brought the sick wind on the city.

OED: Murder of whom? Surely the god named him?

CREON: Here in this land, he said--if we make inquiry, apprehend what otherwise eludes us.

PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED

Dear Dudley

OK: we'll be at the Rockhaven from Wednesday the 25th to Wednesday the 1st of September, and you and Cornelia and Dan and Deb must come over from Stonington to swim or chase starfish. I have (yuh) read the new Jeffers and ahm gunna say a few words abutt it.

Consider, Onax, the device of swelling out to a six beat line for the whole passage of Ed's imprecation. Like the prose of our previous versions, it marks the formal announcement or decree. I wouldn't care to do the whole play in six best: Bro: Lattimore can have it.

It's hot, and Hugh is saying so, too. I'm disgruntled because TIME denuded my De La Mare of all I had to say about him, leaving the piece naked for the sake of printing a Beerbohm drawing and not a very good one. Well, let us triumph over Ed.

Give, give.

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11. 1297 sqq

1/10/49

CHOREGUS:
Dreadful indeed for men to see.
Never have my own eyes
Looked on a sight so full of fear.
Oedipus!
What madness came upon you? Or what daemon
Leaped on your soul with heavier
Punishment than a mortal man can bear?
No: I can not even
Look at you, poor ruined one.
And I would speak, question, ponder,
If I were able. No.
You make me shudder.

OEDIPUS:
God. God.
Is there a sorrow greater than my sorrow?
Where shall I find harbour in this world?
My voice is hurled far on a dark wind.
What has God done to me?

CHOREGUS: Too terrible to think of, or to see.

OEDIPUS:
O cloud of night
Never to be turned away: night coming on,
I can not tell you how: night like a shroud!
My fair winds brought me here.
O God. Again
The pain of the spikes where I had sight,
The flooding pain
Of memory, never to be gouged out.

CHOREGUS:
This is not strange.
You suffer it all twice over, remorse in pain,
Pain in remorse.

OEDIPUS:
Ah, dear friend,
Are you faithful even yet, you alone?
Are you still standing near me, will you stay here
Patient, to care for the blind?
The blind man!
Yet even now I know who it is attends me
By the voice's tone--
Though darkness, darkness hide the comforter. C my news

CHOREGUS:
Oh, fearful act!
What god guided the hand that pulled this black
Night on your eyes?

OEDIPUS:
Apollo. Apollo. Dear
Children, the god was Apollo.
He brought my sick, sick fate upon me.
But the blinding hand was my own!
How could I bear to see
When all my sight was horror everywhere?

CHOREGUS: Everywhere: that is true.

OEDIPUS:
Yes, and now what is left?
Images? Love? A greeting even,
Sweet to the senses? Is there anything?
Ah, no, friends: lead me away,
Lead me away from Thebes.

Lead the great wreck
And hell of Oedipus, whom the gods hate.

CHOREGUS: Your fate is clear, you are not blind to that.
Would God you had never found it out.

OEDIPUS:
Hell take the man who unbound
My feet on that hillside,
And delivered me from death!

If only I had died,

This weight of blood and breath . . .
Could not have dragged me and the others down.

CHOREGUS: I would have wished the same.

OEDIPUS: Never to have come here
With a father's blood upon me! Never
To have been the man they call his mother's husband!
Oh, cursed! Oh, child of evil,
To enter that wretched bed--

CHOREGUS: How can I say that you were right to do this?
You were better dead than alive and blind.

12 Jan: 1949

dear Bob

Herewith 1] my meditations on your 700 ff.; 2] a sketch of 1478 to the end. Brood
and return, onax.

Urgent query: I have marked 1124 ff. done, but can find no copy of it--this is the
agon with the Therapon. Have you a version in your notebook? If so, the dialogue is
just about finished, at least in one version or other. The remarks of the Priest
just before the parodos have not been done; so is Iokaste's speech 911-924; these
are the only non-lyric passages IF 1124 exists & is not merely a fittsian canard. I
will get these fragments to you immediately. There seems to be a funny inconsistency
in Iokaste's account of the groom escaped from the murder: she says that he came
back to report the death of L., took a gander at Ed on the throne, and immediately
departed for East Bridgeport. But the whole sphimx-episode had to come between, &
besides, how could Jo marry Ed before she knew that Lafe was dead? I am afraid that
Soph nodded, and that there's no way out of it. These Greeks. A nation of
fruitstore proprietors.

It would be long to enter upon a discussion of all the suggestions I have made with
regard to your 720-plus. Throw them all out, if you like. But I do think the idea
of Corinth's being only a reflection in the stars, as it were, is a striking one,
however weak my rendering of same.

Tut. It was three versions of Alas for Ad: two preliminary ones, and your final
one. They came in one envelope, too.

No trip to NY during term: I get through set noon, must be back sun night: when
the mystick moment strikes, couldna ye come up here for a day or 2? Meanwhile, I
shall work at your Odes, revise your revisions, and look forward with revolving
eyes ad fabulam terminandum.

ANTIGONE is being played at Wellesley on the evenings of 21st and 22nd Jan., and
I am going over. I've never seen it done—you did at S. Sarah's, no?

Yrs,

CREON McMenessy

4

CHOREGUS:

We too, my lord,
Are troubled by the coincidence. But until
You hear the shepherd's tale, you are not sure.

OED: Indeed, no other hope is left for me.

IOK: What do you want from him?

OED: Don't you understand?
If his account is like your version of it,
Then I am cleared.

IOK: What did I say
That is so important?

OED: Why, "marauders", you said,
Killed the king, according to this man's story.
If he sticks to that, if there were in fact a number,
Clearly I did not kill him; I was alone.
But if he says, "One man, single-handed, did it"
Then the evidence all points to me.

IOK: Well: you may be sure he said "marauders",
And how can he take back that story now?
The whole city heard it as well as I did.
But even if he alters some detail of it
He cannot ever show that Laios' death
Fulfilled the oracle; for Apollo said
My child was doomed to kill him, and my child--
Poor little baby--perished long before.
If this is all that prophecies are worth,
I would not give a second thought to any.

September 11

Dear Dudley

This evening I'll go over everything you've
sent this week and confirm the feelings of joy that I've had
on first reading a lot of it. But now let me briefly eat crew
in your honor and Alston Chase's. I didn't know that you had
done all that work on the Pisans, and I didn't know that
so much remained despite your questioning. I remember what
a mess the cantos seemed to me when I read them in typescript two
years ago. You should both be mentioned in the book for clearing
it as far as you have. I do think it a pity that there wasn't time
for a thorough proofreading. The reader (e. g. me) finds "scirocco"
for "sirocco" on page one, and thereafter he may be pardoned,
perhaps, for making such mistakes as I made. Certainly the Greek
is on the whole in better condition than in some past cantos, where
apparently Otis was right enough; but if you had proofread you could
have fixed up the typos that remain--I kaka phargak' for kaka pharmak'
on p. 15 is an example. I am not entitled to sneer at any man's
Greek or Latin, for certainly I long ago proved exhaustively that I
could write neither with precision. I didn't object to some of the
mistakes you mention because I didn't recognize them, period. Bedad,
though, I think you are wrong about *ac ego in harum*; I find I have
penciled on the margin there "conventu", i. e. *supply* conventu...
I've re-read your Hound & Horn piece, and again I bow; And I'm inclined
to agree that the musical stuff *is* definitive, (adding, of course,...
my discovery of the hint about hexameters...) here are some photographs
for you both, and pax, pax, pax.

df to rsf: 9 ix 1948

1369-

OEDIPUS: Do not counsel me any more. This punishment
is just that I have laid upon myself.

If I had eyes,

I do not know how I could bear the sight
of my father, when I came to the house of Death,
or my mother: for I have sinned against them both
villainly
so horribly that I could not make my peace

by changing myself. Or do you think that my children,
born as they were born, would be sweet to my eyes?
Ah never, never! Nor this town with its high
walls,
nor the holy images of the gods—

for I,
thrice miserable! Oedipus, noblest of all the line
of Kadmos, have condemned myself to have enjoy
these things no more, by my own malediction
driving out the criminal whom the gods have declared
impious and of Laios's descent.

No, I swear it,

if I could stifled my hearing at its source,

so I should have been safe in the dark silence
all '收集in.
beyond the range of sorrow.

Ah Kithairon!

3

may fitly judge
the rightness of what you ask. Only he
is left to protect the City in your place.

OEDIPUS: Alas, how can I speak to him? What right have I to beg his courtesy whom I have deeply wronged?

You, standing there: [so ATTENDANTS
if you have lost all respect for man's dignity,
at least respect the flame of Lord Helios:
do not allow this pollution to show itself
openly here, an affront against the earth
and Heaven's rain and the light of day. No, take him
into the house as quickly as you can.

For it is proper that only he whose close kindred should feel a kinship's grief.

OEDIPUS: I pray you in God's name, since your courtesy
ignores my dark expectation, visiting
with mercy this man of all men most execrable:
Drive me what I ask, for your good, not for mine.

OEDIPUS: Drive me out of this country as quickly as may be
to a place where no human voice shall ever greet me.

KREON: I would have done this already, except that God - only the gods will know it had not been wholly revealed to me.

OEDIPUS: But his command is clear: you must destroy the污染物, most viz, dogs, and I am that evil one; I am the pariah, the polluted one; I am the son of the pariah.

KREON: That is the sense of it, surely; but as things are,
we had best discover clearly what is to be done.

Dear Dudley

You'll like this better, ah
do hope an truss. The entrance of Iokasta should
be--and is in the play--one of the most stunning
moments in dramatic literature--partly, I think,
because the stage has been full of <u>men</u> up to
that point, nothing but men; both the oratoric
and the Habimah production made the most of
this; she appears as the very incarnation of
womanhood, wife, mother, everything; and it is
also a <u>surprise</u>, because nothing said up to the
chorus's introductory speech has even suggested
that she was going to appear at all.

Last week I went to Washington
to read poems for a Library of Congress recording
and also read the parados from Alkestis and the
messenger's speech from Telonus. Lowell is going to
send us a record of this. The voice, aside from
intolerable whistles, came out amazing clear, and the
lines good and strong. --Went to dinner with Edith
Hamilton, bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle.
Vaya su Studebaker...our Ford has been crumpled stem
to stern until it looks like something from the Grapes
of Wrath... Love from us

rsf on df : 1/16/49

1369 usque ad fin.

OEDIPUS:

Do not counsel me any more. This punishment
That I have laid upon myself is just.
If I had eyes,
I do not know how I could bear the sight
Of my father, when I came to the house of Death,
Or my mother: for I have sinned against them both
So vilely that I could not make my peace
By strangling my own life. Do you think my children,
Born as they were born, would be sweet to my eyes?
Ah, never, never! Nor this town with its high walls,
Nor the holy images of the gods--

for I,
Thrice miserable! Oedipus, noblest of all the line
Of Kadmos, have condemned myself to enjoy
These things no more, by my own malediction
Expelling that man whom the gods declared
Impious and of Laios's descent.
After exposing the rankness of my own guilt,
How could I look men frankly in the eyes?
No, I swear it,

If I could have stifled my hearing at its source,
I would have done it, and made all this body of wine
A tight bell of misery, blank to light and sound:
So I might have been safe in a dark agony
Beyond all recollection.

Ah Kithairon!
Why did you shelter me? When I was cast upon you,
Why did I not die? Then I should never
Have shown the world the damnation of my birth.
Ah Polybus! Korinth, city that I believed
The ancient seat of my ancestors! How fair
I seemed, your child! And all the while this fate
Was cancerous within me! For I am sick
In my daily life, sick in my origin.
O three roads, dark ravine, woodland and way
Where three roads met: you, drinking my father's blood,
My own blood, spilled by my own hand: can you remember
What unspeakable things I did there, and what things
I went on from there to do?

O marriage, marriage!
The act that engendered me, and again the act
Performed by the child in the same bed--
ah the net
Of incest, mingling fathers, brothers, sons
With brides, wives, mothers! The last evil
That can be known by men! No tongue can say
How evil!

No; for the love of God, conceal me
Somewhere far from Thebes; or kill me; or throw me
Into the sea, away from men's eyes forever!
Come, lead me: you need not fear to touch me;
Of all men I alone can bear this guilt.

2

CHOREGOS: We are not the ones to decide, but Kreon here
May fitly judge of what you ask. He only
Is left to protect the City in your place.

OEDIPUS: Alas, how can I speak to him? What right have I
To beg his courtesy whom I have deeply wronged?

KREON: I have not come to laugh at you, Oedipus,
Or to reproach you, either.

You, standing there: (to Attendants)
If you have lost all respect for man's dignity,
At least respect the flame of Lord Helios:
Do not allow this pollution to show itself
Openly here, an affront against the earth
And Heaven's rain and the light of day. No, take him
Into the house as quickly as you can.
For it is proper
That only the close kindred feel his grief.

OEDIPUS: I pray you in God's name, since your courtesy
Ignores my dark expectation, visiting
With mercy this man of all men most execrable:
Give me what I ask, for your good, not for mine.

OEDIPUS: Drive me out of this country as quickly as may be
To a place where no human voice shall ever greet me.

KREON: I should have done that before this--only
God's will had not been wholly revealed to me.

OEDIPUS: But his command is clear: the parricide
Must be destroyed, and I am that evil man.

KREON: That is the sense of it, yes; but as things are
We had best discover clearly what is to be done.

OEDIPUS: Yes, I will listen. But it is to you
That I must turn for help. I beg you, hear me.
The woman in there--
Give her whatever funeral you think proper;
She is your sister. But let me go, Kreon;
Let me purge my father's Thebes of the pollution
Of my living here, and go out to the wild hills,
To Mount Kithairon, that has won such fame with me,
The tomb my mother and father appointed for me,
And let me die there, as they willed that I should.
And yet I know
Death will not ever come to me through sickness
Or in any natural way: I was preserved
For indescribable fate. But let that be.

Some inspicious

3

As for my sons, you need not care for them.
They are men, they will find some way to live.
But my poor daughters, who have shared my table,
Who never before were parted from their father,
Take care of them, Kreon; do this for me.
And will you let me touch them with my hands
A last time, and let us weep together?
Be kind, my lord!
Chivalrous prince, be kind!

Could I but touch them,
I should say they were mine again, as when I had my eyes.

(center Antigone and Ismene, attended)

Ah! God!
Is it my dearest children that I hear weeping?
Has Kreon pitied me and sent me my daughters?
Can it be?

KREON:

Yes: I knew they were dear to you
In the old days, and know you must love them still.

OEDIPUS:

May God bless you for this--and be a friendlier
Guardian to you than he was to me.

But children, where are you?
Come quickly to my hands; they are your brother's--
Hands that have brought your father's once clear eyes
To this way of seeing--

Ah dearest ones,
I had neither sight nor knowledge then, your father
By the woman who was the source of my own life!
And I weep for you--having no strength to see you--
I weep for you when I think of the bitterness
That men will visit upon you all your lives.
What homes, what festivals can you attend
Without being forced to depart again in tears?
And when you come to marriageable age
Where is the man, my daughters, who would dare
Risk the bane that lies on all my children?
Is any evil wanting? Your father killed
His father; sowed the womb of her who bore him;
Engendered you at the fount of his own existence!
This is what they will say of you. Then, whom
Can you ever marry? There are no bridegrooms for you,
And your lives must wither away in sterile dreaming.

O Kreon, son of Menoikeus!
You are the only father my daughters have,
Since we, their parents, are both gone for ever.
They are your own blood: you will not let them
Fall into beggary and loneliness;
You will keep them from the miseries that are mine!

4

Take pity on them; see, they are only children,
Friendless except for you. Promise me this,
Great prince, and give me your hand in token of it.

Children:
I could say much, if your minds could understand me;
But as it is, I have only this prayer for you:
Live where you can, be as happy as you can:
Happier, please God, than God has made your father!

OEDIPUS: I must, but it is hard.

KREON: Time eases everything.

OEDIPUS: But you must promise--

KREON: Say what you desire.

OEDIPUS: Send me away from Thebes!

KREON: God grant I may.

OEDIPUS: But since God hates me...

KREON: No, he will grant your wish.

OEDIPUS: You promise?

KREON: I can not; I am not sure.

OEDIPUS: Then lead me in.

KREON: Come now, and leave your children.

OEDIPUS: No! Do not take them from me!

KREON: Think no longer
That you are in command, but rather think
How, when you were, you served your own destruction.

CHORUS: Men of Thebes: look upon Oedipus.

This is the man who solved the great enigma
And towered up, most powerful of men.
In his eyes no man's lot seemed enviable,
But, in the end, ruin swept over him.
Let every man who knows mortality
Look forward to his last day, and let none
Presume on his good fortune until he find
Life, at his death, a memory without pain.

rsf to df : 12/29/48

11. 720 sqq

IOKASTE:

Clearly, Apollo never brought that child
To kill his father, and Laios' fate was not
To die at his son's hand, as he had feared.

This is the quality of prophets' prophecies,
So feel no dread of them.

God himself
Can show us what He wills in His own way.

OEDIPUS:

Ah, wait. Something said just now has taken
My mind a long way back. I have had a shock.

IOK:

Tell us - what kind of us? What is it? What did I say to disturb you so?

OED:

If I understood you, Laios died by violence
At a meeting of three highways?

IOK:

Lai was killed on a plane when 3 roads meet
So it was said,
And we have learned nothing to the contrary.

OED:

Lai was

Where was it?

IOK:

In Phokis, where the road forks where the roads
From Delphi and Daulis join the road to Thebes.

OED:

When?

IOK:

We had the news not long before you came
And proved your right to the succession here.

not have you been weaving

OED:

Ah Zeus, what can you do for me?

IOK:

Oedipus! Why does this affect you? What is the matter?

OED:

First I must hear from you how Laios looked,
What his age was.

IOK:

He was a big man,
Just turned grey; in feature not unlike you.

OED:

I think that I may be accursed
By my own ignorant edict.

IOK:

OED:

I fear the blind man is a man with sight. --
On better ground, if you tell me one thing more.

IOK:

Anything - yes, though I am afraid to hear you ask it.

OED:

Was the king lightly escorted, or did he go
With a large company, as a king should?

2

IOK: There were five men in all; one was a herald;
And a single chariot, driven by Laios.

OED: God, that makes it plain enough.
Who brought this tale to you?

IOK: A household servant,
The only one who got away.

OED: Is he
Still in our service?

IOK: No. When he returned
And saw you ruling here, and found that Laios
Had indeed been lost, he came to me,
Touched my hand, begged me to send him out
Into wild country where the shepherds go,
As far as I could send him from the city;
And I consented, for him, as a slave, he learned
More than this as a favor at my hands.

OED: Can we get him back here quickly?

IOK: Yes, we can;
But why?

OED: I have taken too much upon myself
Without inquiry: therefore I wish to see him.

IOK: He shall be here.
Am I not also one
With whom you might discuss what troubles you?

OED: That is your right and will not be denied you,
Now least of all; for I have reached a point
Of great foreboding. Is there any soul
To whom I should sooner speak at such a time?

Polybus of Corinth was my father,
My mother was the Dorian Merope.
I grew up chief among the townsmen there.
Then something happened to be wondered at,
Not an important thing, perhaps, but strange.

At a feast a drunken man, maundering in his cups,
Cries out that I am not my father's son!
I contained myself that night, though I felt anger
And a sinking heart. Next day I visited
Father and mother, and questioned them. They stormed,
Calling it all a slander by a fool;
And this response relieved me.
But the thing said stuck like a thorn in my side!

3

I could not rest; and through I said no more of it
To either of my parents, I went to Delphi.

The god dismissed my question without reply.
He spoke of other things—and some were clear,
Clear, dreadful, not to be borne, incredible!
As, that I should make love to my mother, breed
Children from whom all men would turn their eyes,
Become the murderer of my own father—such things.

When I had heard, I fled. Reckoning by stars
I put earth's bulk between myself and Corinth,
And kept the flight up until I should come
Where I could never see that evil happen
Of which my oracle had sung to me.
And on my way I came into this country
At that time when, so you say, the King was killed.

I shall tell you the truth, lady. There were three
Highroads joining at a place I passed;
A herald there came toward me, then a chariot
Drawn by horses; one such as you describe
Rode in the chariot. The man who led the horses
Tried to force me from the road, and the old man,
He, too, tried. The equerry swung over
By the chariot wheel, and in my rage I struck him.
The old man saw me. Then, as I came abreast,
Watching his chance, he hit me on the crown of the head
With his double goad. For this he swiftly paid.
Swinging my club in this right hand I knocked him
Clean out of his car, and he rolled on the ground:
And then I killed them all!
I killed them all.

Now if there is any connection between that stranger
And Laios, where is a man more miserable
Than I am? What fate could be worse?
Neither the alien nor the citizen can receive me
Into their homes, or even speak to me—
I must be ostracised. And I myself
Pronounced this malediction upon myself!

Think of it—when I touch you with these hands,
These hands that killed your husband—what defilement!

Am I all evil then? It must be so.
Is this why I have had to flee my country
And cannot even see my parents? Is it
That I am capable of incest, capable
Of killing Polybus, my dear father?

If I am given such nature and destiny,
Who would deny the savagery of God?
O holy majesty of heavenly powers!
Never, never let me see that day!
Let me vanish from the race of men
Before I see it!

df on rsf: '11 I 1949

4

It is not a question of fleeing from his own country. He means 2 things: flee from Thebes, & never return to Corinth (his own country) lest he commit the crimes of patricide & incest.

since I must flee from Thebes and never again
see my own land again, my own countrymen,
lest I be joined in marriage with my mother
and kill my father Polybos!

If this is my fate,
who would deny the savagery of God?
O holy majesty of heavenly powers,
never, never let me see that day!
Rather let me vanish from the race of men
than know myself destined to such an end!

CHOREGOS: We, too, my lord, are troubled by these things;
but there is hope: you have yet to hear the shepherd.

IOKASTE: What do hope from him when he has come?

OEDIPUS: This: if his account is like your own,
then I am cleared.

IOKASTE: What was it I said
of such importance?

OEDIPUS: Why, 'marauders', you said,
killed the King, according to this man's story.
If he maintains that still, if there were several,
clearly I did not kill him: I was alone.
But if he says, 'One man, single-handed, did it',
then the evidence all points to me.

IOKASTE: Well: you may be sure that he said 'marauders'.
And can he call back that story now? He can not:
the whole city heard it as plainly as I.
But suppose he alters some detail of it:
he can not ever show that Laios' death
fulfilled the oracle; for Apollo said
my child was doomed to kill him, and my child—
poor baby!—it was my child that died first.

No; from now on, where oracles are concerned,
I would not waste a second thought on any.

OEDIPUS: You may be right. --- But let some one go
to bring the man here: this matter must not rest.

IOKASTE: I will send at once. But let us go into the house:
I will do nothing except as you desire it.

STASIMON II

2

OED: Where did it happen?

IOK: Phokis, it is called; at a place where the Theban Way
Is joined by the roads from Delphi and Daulia.

OED: When?

OED: Ah, what net has God been weaving for me?

IOK: Oedipus! Why does this trouble you? What is the matter?

OED: Do not ask me yet. First, tell me how Laios looked,
And how old he was.

IOK: He was tall, his hair just touched
With white; his form not unlike your own.

OED: I think that I myself may be accursed
By my own ignorant edict.

IOK: You speak strangely.
It makes me tremble to look at you, my lord.

OED: I am not sure that the blind man cannot see.
But I should know better if you were to tell me--

IOK: Anything--though I am afraid to hear you ask it.

OED: Was the king lightly escorted, or did he ride
With a large company, as a ruler should?

IOK: In all, there were five men with him; one was a herald;
And a single chariot, which he himself was driving.

OED: Alas, that makes it plain enough!
But who--
Who told you how it happened?

IOK: A household servant,
The only one to escape.

OED: And is he still
Our servant?

IOK: No: for when he returned at last
And found you ruling in the place of the dead King,
He came to me, touched my hand with his, and begged
That I should send him away to the frontier district
Where only the shepherds go--
As far away from the city as I could send him.
I granted his request. The man was a slave,
But he had earned more than this favor at my hands.

3

OED: Can he be summoned quickly?

IOK: But why? Easily.

OED: I have taken too much upon myself
Without inquiry; therefore I wish to see him.

IOK: Then he shall come.
But am I not one also
With whom you might discuss these troubling things?

OED: That is your right; it will not be denied you,
Now least of all; for I have reached a point
Of wild foreboding. Is there anyone
To whom I should sooner speak at such a time?

Polybus of Corinth was my father,
My mother was the Dorian Merope.
I grew up chief among the men of Corinth,
Until a strange thing happened--
Not worth my passion perhaps, but strange enough.

At a feast, a drunken man maundering in his cups
Cries out that I am not my father's son!

I contained myself that night, though I felt anger
And a sinking heart. Next day I visited
Father and mother, and questioned them. They stormed,
Calling it all the slanderous talk of a fool;
And this response relieved me. Yet the suspicion
Remained always aching in my mind;
I knew there was talk of it; I could not rest;
And finally, though I said no more to my parents,
I went to the shrine at Delphi.

The god dismissed my question without reply;
He spoke of other things.

Some were clear:
Full of wretchedness, dreadful, unbearable,
As, that I should lie with *my* own mother, breed
Children from whom all men would turn their eyes;
And that I should be *my* father's murderer.

I heard all this, and fled. From that day on
I saw no more of Corinth than the stars
Descending in that quarter of the sky,
As I *put* earth between us, and made my way
To a land where I should never see that evil
Of which the oracle had sung to me.
On that journey I came into this country
Whereon, so you say, King Laios was killed.

increased my distance

4

There were three highways
Coming together at a place I passed;
And there a herald rode towards me, and a chariot
Drawn by horses, with a man such as you describe
Seated in it. The groom, riding the lead horse,
Forced me off the road at his lord's command;
But as the guard at the chariot wheel swung over
I struck him in my rage. The old man saw me,
And as I came abreast he watched his chance
And struck me on the head with his double goad.
He was paid back, and more!
Swinging my club in this right hand I knocked him
Out of his car, and he rolled on the ground. I killed him.
I killed them all.

Now if that stranger and Laios were--kin,
Where is a man more miserable than I?
More hated by the gods? Citizen and alien
Alike must never shelter me nor speak to me--
I must be shunned by all.
And I myself
Pronounced this malediction upon myself!

Think of it: I have touched you with these hands,
These hands that killed your husband--what defilement!

Am I all evil, then? It must be so,
Since I must flee from Thebes, yet never again
See my own countrymen, my own country,
For fear of taking my own mother in marriage
And killing Polybus, my father!

Ah,
If I was created so, given such fate,
Who would deny the savagery of God?
O holy majesty of heavenly powers!
Never let me see that day! Never!
But let me vanish from the race of men
Rather than know this for my destiny!

CHOREGUS: We too, my lord, have felt dismay at this;
But there is hope: you have yet to hear the shepherd.

OED: Indeed, I fear no other hope is left me.

IOK: If he were here, what would you want of him?

OED: This:
If his account is like your version of it,
Then I am cleared.

IOK: What could I have said
Of such importance?

5

OED:
Why, "marauders" you said,
Killed the King, according to this man's story.
If he maintains that still, if there were several,
Clearly I did not kill him: I was alone.
But if he says, "One man, single-handed, did it",
Then the evidence all points to me.

IOK:
Well, you may be sure he said there were several,
And can he call back that story now? He can not:
The whole city heard it as plainly as I.
But suppose he alters some detail of it:
He can not ever show that Laios' death
Fulfilled the oracle; for Apollo said
My child was doomed to kill him, and my child--
Poor baby--it was my child that died first.

No: from now on, where oracles are concerned,
I would not waste a second thought on any.

OED:
I suppose you are right. But come, send for the shepherd;
This matter must be settled.

IOK:
I'll send at once;
I want you to be satisfied in this
As in all other things. Let us go in.

SECOND STASIMON

3

Ships are only hulls, citadels are nothing
when no life moves in the empty passageways!

OEDIPUS:

Ah, poor children! You may be sure I know
all that you longed for in your coming here.
I know that you are deathly sick; and yet,
sick as you are, not one is as sick as I,
~each of you suffers in himself alone
his anguish, not anothers; but my spirit
groans for the city, for myself, for you.

I have counted the days, and it troubles me:
What is he doing? He has been gone too long.
Whenever he comes, though, I should do wrong indeed
to scant the slightest thing that the god reveals.

PRIEST:

Your promise is timely: at this very moment
they tell me Kreon is coming.

OEDIPUS:

PRIEST:

rsf to df : 7/5/48

11. 216--248

OEDIPUS:

This is your prayer? It may be answered. Come:

listen to me, act as the crisis demands,
and you shall have relief from all these evils.

I had not known the story until now--

no more than I had known the victim; could I

track it down, without a word to go on?

But now, my friends, as one who became a citizen
after the event, joining the rest of you,
I make this proclamation to all Thebans?

If any man knows by whose hand Laios, son of Labdakes,
met his death, I direct that man to tell me everything,
no matter what he fears for having long withheld it.
Let it stand as promised that no further trouble
will come to him, but he may leave the land in safety.

Further: if anyone knows the murderer to be foreign,
let him not keep silent; he shall be rewarded.

However, if you do keep silent,' if any man

In fear for his friend or for himself disobeys this edict,
in that case what do I propose to do? Listen:

I hereby solemnly forbid the people of this country
where power and throne are mine, ever to receive that man
or speak to him, no matter who he is, or let him
join in sacrifice, lustration, or prayer;
but I decree that he be driven from every house,
being, as he is, corruption itself to us: the Delphic

rsf to df 7/11/48

11. 249--315

OEDIPUS:

And, let me add, this solemn curse applies no less
if it should turn out that the culprit is a guest here,
known to me, sharing my hearth; you heard the penalty.

I lay it on you now to attend to this,
for my sake, for Apollo's, for the sick
sterile city that heaven has abandoned.
Suppose the oracle gave you no command,
should this corruption go uncleansed forever?
You should have found the murderer: your king,
a noble king, had been destroyed.

Now I,
having the power that he held before me,
having his bed, begetting children there
upon his wife, as he would, if he lived--
their son would have been my children's brother!
if Laios had had luck in fatherhood,
but surely bad luck rushed upon his reign--
I say, I take the son's part, just as though
I were his son, to press the fight for him
and see it through! I'll find the hand that brought
murder to Labdakes' and Polydorus' child--
son of Kadmos and Agenor's line.

And as for those who fail me,
may all the gods deny them fruit of the earth,
fruit of the womb, and may they rot to death!
Let them be sick as we are now--but worse.
For you, for loyal Thebans, and for all

["df on rsf: 2 VIII 1948", "11. 216 sqq.", "Robert: To save time, I'll revise only those lines that bother me. Otherwise, stet stet stet. df", "220: xénos dè toû prachthéntos: I like yr idea abt the <u>victim</u> v. much, but can't the irony be kept just as well by a closer approximation to the Greek? I think it means 'a stranger to the <u>act</u>"—i:e., the act of murder.", "231: let him not keep silent: he shall have his reward from me.", "233: However, if he does keep silent; if any man, fearing for his friend or for himself, disobeys this edict—in that event what do I propose to do? Hear this: I solemnly forbid the people &c &c", "248: I pray his life be consumed in evil and in wretchedness.", "249: epeúchomai certainly is one of the hair-raising words: does it not mean self-imprecation? Jebb cites <u>Kritias</u> 120 B. How abt: And so far as I am concerned, this curse applies no less &c", "250: if it shd turn out that the culprit [?] is my guest here, sharing my hearth. You have heard the penalty. [This is partly to ease back into the 5-stress; partly to get rid of ξηκηκηκηκηκηκη 'You heard', wch is too much like <u>You</u> heard me!]", "MORE LATER: must sign off for dinner"]

3

OED:

Hiding

means fear; he who will not hide need have none.

CHO:

But here is the man who may detect the criminal:

these are his guides, and this is the holy man
with whom, alone of all men, truth was born.

OED:

Teiresias: seer: student of mysteries;

of all that is taught and all that no man tells,

the things of heaven and the things of earth--

At any rate, Apollo, when we sent to him,
sent us back word that this great pestilence
would lift, but only if we established surely
the identity of those who murdered Laios;
they must be killed or exiled.

Can you use
birdsong or any xart of divination,
to purify yourself, and Thebes, and me,
from all corruption of the murdered man?

We are in your hands.

Nothing but greatness now
can bring relief to men in such distress.

TEIR:
You are the madman. There is no one here
Who will not curse you soon, as you curse me.

OED:
You
Child of endless might! You cannot hurt me
For any other man who sees the sun.

TEIR:
True. It is not from me your fate will come:
That lies within Apollo's competence,
As it is his concern.

OED:
Tell me:

Are you speaking for Kreon, or for yourself?

TEIR:
Kreon is no threat; you weave your own doom.

OED:
Wealth, power, and craft of statesmanship!
Kingly position, everywhere admired!

What savage envy is stored up against you!

If Kreon, whom I trusted, Kreon my friend,
For this great office which the city once
Put in my hands unsought--if for this power
Kreon desires in secret to destroy me!

He has bought this many a fortuneteller, this

Collector of dirty pennies, this prophet for profit.

He is no more clairvoyant than I am!

Come on, tell us:

Has your focus focus ever approached the truth?

When that bitch the Sphinx was performing here,
What help were you to these people?

Her magic was not for the first man who came along,
It demanded a real exorcist. Your birds--

What good were they, or the gods, when it comes to that?

But I came by,

df & rsf: 20 III 1948

512-585

KREON: Men of Thebes:
I am informed that serious accusations
have been brought against me by King Oedipus.
I am not the kind of man to bear this in silence.

If in these present difficulties of his
he holds me accountable for some harm to him--
some thing I've said or done--, and the story catches:
then I do not care to live any longer.

It
it is not as though this rumour touched some private
indiscretion. No; the matter is grave.
I am, after all, being called disloyal a traitor
to the State, to my fellow citizens, to my friends.

CHORUS: Let us hope it was anger, not the mind, that spoke.

KREON: But did you not hear him say I was the one
who corrupted the old prophet into lying?

CHORUS: The thing was said. I do not know what he meant.

KREON: But you saw him! Were his eyes shifty? Did he look
like a man out of his wits?

CHORUS:
I do not know.
How can I judge the behaviour of great men?
But here is the King himself.

[enter OEDIPUS]

OEDIP:
So you are here.
Why? So brazen! How can you come to my house,
you ~~bloody~~ murderer! -- Is it not known to all men
that you plotted to kill me, plotted to steal my throne?
Tell me, in God's name: am I a coward, a fool,
that you should dream you could accomplish this?
A fool who could not see your ~~slithering~~ game?
A coward not to fight back when once he saw it?
You are the fool, Kreon, are you not?, to hope
without support of friends to get a throne?
Thrones may be won or bought: you could do neither.

KREON: Now listen to me. You have talked; let me talk, too.
You can not judge this case till you have the facts.

OEDIP: You speak well: that is a fact; but I find it hard
to go to school to my deadliest enemy. I have.

OEDIP: That above all I will not hear you deny.

rf to df : 6/9/48

11. 634--649

JOKASTA:

Wretched men:

why do you make this idiot dim of voices?

Thebes being close to death, it is not shameful
to bandy your bad temper so? Go in--

and you, too, Kreen, go: go to your rooms--

will you bring new agony to us over nothing?

KREON

Not nothing, sister, but a dreadful thing
your husband plans for me: one wickedness

or another, exile or death: this is what he---
red

OEDIPUS

Yes, it is. Woman, I caught him huxdhanded
in a vicious plot against my life--

KR:

No!

I hope I may not live but die accursed
if I did, ever, anything against you
such as you charge me with!

JOK:

Oh, do believe it!

In God's name, Oedipus; respect his oath,

think of me, think of your duty to your people!

df to rsf: 12 I 49
911-923

[re-enter IOKASTE]

IOKASTE: Princes of Thebes:

It seems good to me that I should carry these jars
of incense and lay them on the altars
of the most holy gods, bearing in my right hand
the suppliant branch braided with wool.

Our King

is not himself: his noble soul is torn
this way and that by fantasies of dread;
his words are the words of a man out of his mind,
as though his present perplexities were new,
not to be weighed by things past. He will listen
to any man who will preach disaster to him.
And my advice goes for nothing.

To you, then, Apollo,

to you, O Lycean lord, I turn in prayer.
Receive these gifts, and grant us deliverance
from all pollution. Our hearts are heavy with fear
when we see our leader distracted, as helpless sailors
are terrified by the confusion of their helmsman.

df to rsf: 12 I 49
147-151

PRIEST: Let us rise, children. It was for this that we came here,
and now the King has promised it himself.

It was Phoibos who sent us this oracle: may he descend
among us, our Saviour, and free us from the plague.

(62)

CHORUS:

If ever the coming time were known
To my heart's pondering,
Kithairon, now by Heaven I see the torches
At the festival of the next full moon,
And see the dance, and hear the choir sing
A grace to your gentle shade:
Mountain where Oedipus was found,
O mountain guard of a noble race!
May the god who healing us lend his aid,
And let that glory come to pass
For our king's cradling-ground.

Of the nymphs that flower beyond the years,
Who bore you, royal child,
To Pan of the hills or the timberline Apollo,
Cold in delight where the upland clears,
Or Hermes for whom Kyllene's heights are piled?
Or flushed as evening cloud,
Great Dionysos, roamer of mountains,
He--was it he who found you there,
And caught you up in his own proud
Arms from the sweet god-ravisher,
Who laughed by the Immortal fountains?

(strophe

(antistrophe

rsf to df

10/2/47

1165

The generations of men
Are dust.
Even as they live their day
They come to nothing.
Has any man known
Joy that a man could trust?
It is all dreaming, all
A seeming that sinks away.
Oh, Oedipus!
Now I call no man blest,
Ever, no, not one,
Seeing your fall--
Seeing your dreadful ghost
And your ghostly glory gone.

rsf on df: September 11, 1948

1297

KOMMOS

CHOREGUS:

This is a dreadful thing for men to see.
Never have my own eyes looked on
a sight so full of fear.
O you that suffer!

What madness came upon you? What daemon
leaped on your life with heavier
damnation than a mortal man can bear?

No: I cannot even
look at you, poor, ruined one.
And I would speak, question, ponder,
if I were able. No, I cannot shudder!
You make me shudder.

OEDIPUS:

God. God.

Is there a sorrow greater than my sorrow?
Where shall I find harbour in this world?
My voice is hurled far on a dark wind.
What has God done to me?

CHOR:

Dreadful, too dreadful to think of or to see.

OED:

O cloud of night,
never to be turned away--might coming on
I cannot tell you how--might like a shroud,
My fair winds brought me here.

O God, again!

The sharp pain of the spikes where I had sight,
and the sick pain
of memory that cannot be gouged out.

2

CHOR:
It is not strange:
your suffering is double, pain and remorse.

OED:
My dear friend,
you are faithful even yet, you here alone,
you are still with me and will stay here
patient, to care for the blind.

The blinded one!

Yet even in this might I know my friend,
I remember the tone
his voice had in the old days, speaking clear.

CHOR:
Oh, fearful act!
How could you blind yourself? What daemon drove you?

OED:
Apelle! Apelle!
Dear people, it was Apelle,
who brought this sick, sick incredible fate upon me.
But the blinding hand was my own.
How could I bear to see
when there was nothing but horror everywhere?

CHOR:
What you say is true.

OED:
And now what is left?
Images? Love? A solution even,
sweet to the senses? Is there anything?
Ah, no, friends; lead me away.
Lead me away from Thebes.

df & rsf: 29 viii 48
649-696

final version

CHOREGOS: Open your mind to her, my lord. Be ruled by her, I beg you! [str. 1

OEDIPUS: What would you have me do?

CHOREGOS: Respect Kreon's word. He has never been one to speak foolishly, and now he has sworn an oath.

OEDIPUS: You know what you ask?

CHOREGOS: I do.

OEDIPUS: Speak on, then.

CHOREGOS: A friend under oath should not be exposed to charges based only on blind conjecture

OEDIPUS: You are aware, I hope, that this request means death for me, or exile at the least.

CHOREGOS: No, I swear by Helios, first in Heaven!

May I die friendless and accursed,
the worst of deaths, if ever I meant that!

It is the withering fields
that hurt my sick heart;
and now, with all that I have suffered,
my two masters must quarrel!

OEDIPUS: Then let him go. And let me die, if I must,
or be driven in shame by him from the land of Thebes.
It is your unhappiness, and not his talk,
touches me. As for him—
wherever he is, I will hate him as long as I live.

KREON: Hate, yes. It is yielding that you hate.
You will be sick with remorse when you come to yourself.
Natures like yours chiefly torment themselves.

[2] kommos: final version

**KREON:** Hate, yes. It is the yielding that you hate.

You will be sick with remorse when you come to your senses.
Natures like yours chiefly torment themselves.

**OEDIPUS:** Will you not go, and leave me in peace?

**KREON:** I will go.

You do not know me; but the City does,
and in its eyes I am just, if not in yours. **[exit KREON**

**CHOREGOS:** Lady Iokaste, did you not ask the King to go to his chambers? **[ant. 2**

**IOKASTE:** First tell me what has happened.

**CHOREGOS:** There was suspicion without evidence: even so, it stung
as baseless charges will.

**IOKASTE:** On both sides?

**CHOREGOS:** On both.

**IOKASTE:** But what was said?

**CHOREGOS:** Oh let it rest, let it be done with!
Have we not suffered enough?

**OEDIPUS:** Are you beginning to see what you have done,
thwarting my will—in your desire to be fair?

**CHOREGOS:** Oedipus: King: time after time I have told you:
You must know that I hold myself unique
and think that I am mad, and think that
Achilles up cold money to
that I am so witless that I could forsake you?

[ant. 2]

As once gale-battered Thebes
Our Man land'd in deserts,
sailed out under your hand,

so now, with you at the helm again,
she may ride out this storm.

df & rsf: 30 viij 1948

697 sqq.

final version

IOKASTE: In God's name, Oedipus, inform your wife as well:
why are you so set in this <u>hard</u> anger?

OEDIPUS: I will tell you, for none of these men deserves
my confidence as do you. It is Kreon's work,
his treachery, all that he has plotted against me.

IOKASTE: If you can make that clear to me, then do so.

OEDIPUS: He charges me with the murder of Laios.

IOKASTE: Has he any facts? or does he speak from hearsay?

OEDIPUS: He himself speaks only the usual cant;
but he has coached that damnable soothsayer
in a story--

IOKASTE: Then set your mind at rest.

For I can tell you, speaking of soothsayers,
that you will find no man whose art gives knowledge
of the unknowable.

And here is the proof:
An oracle was brought to Laios once
(I will not say from Phoibos himself, but from
his appointed ministers, at any rate)
that <u>death should come to him</u> at the hands of his son--
his son, born of his own flesh and of mine!

Now, you remember the report of how he was murdered
by <u>foreign marauders</u> where three highways cross:
but <u>after the birth of his child</u>, not three days passed
before the King had pierced the <u>head</u>'s ankles and
had him exposed on a barren mountain to die.

rf to df : 6/1/48

11. 587--597

Never in all my life has the name of king
seduced me, since my privilege is royal.
Could any man see it otherwise?
As matters stand, I have a power like yours,
no fears like yours, though; and if I were king
I'd have to act, *sometimes* against my will.
Tell me, then, why a throne should be more sweet
than this authority and rank untroubled?
I have not gone mad! I need no honors
more than I own, and want none that are painful.
Now I am popular, everyone gives me greeting,
and those who wish a favor ask to see me,
thinking their suit, through me, should turn out well.

df on rsf: 13 VI 48

11 587—

As long as I have lived the name of king has never
seduced me, since my privilege is kingly.
Could any sane man see it otherwise?

As matters stand, I derive my good from you,
and this without fear; whereas if I were king,
how much I'd be forced to do against my will!

Do you think that a sceptre is more desirable
than authority without the pains of ruling?
I have not gone mad! I need no honours
more than my own,...

Now I am well liked; every man salutes me,
and people looking for your favour come to see me
because I am the only one who can bring them luck.
Why should I, then, exchange these things for those?

Moreover, no sober mind is treasonable.
I have no liking for anarchy,
and I should keep clear of any man who has.

Well, you say, but where is the proof of this?
Go to Delphi, ask the Oracle at Delphi:
see if I brought you a true report; and then,

[kingly gets the túrannos-
túranna repetition]

[628. df rev. 13 6 48]

KRE: Not if you do it badly.
OED: O City city!

KRE: I too have an interest in the city.

CHO: Be quiet, lords: I see Iokastâ coming
out from the palace. She will help resolve your quarrel.

IOK: Wretched men: Oedipus! Kreon!
why do you raise this idiot din of voices?
With Thebes sick to death, is it not a shame
that you should bandy your bad temper so?
Come into the house—and, Kreon, you go home:
let us have no more agonizing over nothing.

KRE: Not nothing, sister, but a dreadful thing
your husband plans for me: one wickedness
or another, exile or death; this is what he—

[I don't like this break-off]

OED: Yes, it is. Woman, I caught him redhanded
in a plot against my life.

KRE: No! Let me die
accurst if I ever plotted harm against you.

IOK: Ah believe it, Oedipus!
In the name of the gods, respect the oath he took!
Think of me, think of your duty to the people!

KOMMOS BEGINS

[605: df rev.: 13 6 48]

if you find me guilty of treason with Teiresias,
sentence me to death! You have my word
it is a sentence I myself should concur in—
but not on unproved guess-work!

You do wrong
when you misjudge good and bad, taking one for the other.
A true friend thrown away—why, life itself
is not more dear.

[I don't follow yr
'nor more disp.'—
you mean 'less'?]

But you will learn this in time:
for time, and time along, will prove the just man,
while scoundrels are discovered in a day.

[O shaksperian line!]

CHO: This is well said, Oedipus, ponder it well:

judgments too quickly formed are dangerous.

OED:

But he is quick in his duplicity,
and shall I not be quick to parry him?
Shall I stand still and leave him free to move?

KRE:

What do you want, then? To drive me out of Thebes?

OED:

Not at all. I want your death, not your exile.
I want to make you a public example of treason.

KRE:

You will persist, then, you will not believe me?

OED:

You treat me like a child.

KRE:

You are a fool.

OED:

To save my own life?

KRE:

You should think of mine.

OED:

Your life is false.

KRE:

But supppse you are in the wrong.

OED:

I rule, and must rule.

df on rsf 16:VI:48 (the third revision)

587—

Certainly not I.
I am not the man you think me.

a king's power - his rights.
I have never wanted to be king-only to be kingly. [esto no me agrada

would any man
How could a sane man see it another way?

As matters stand, I have my own way in everything
by your leave, and no fear of consequences;

if I were King, I'd be tied down by policy.

Then why should I desire a sceptre more
than this that is mine already, with untroubled power?

I have not gone crazy! I want nothing more
than will bring me honor, perquisites, and profits.

As it is, I am well-liked. Every man salutes me,
and people who want your favor come to me first
since I alone can be of help to them.

Why should I exchange this ease for anxiety? [tampoco, tampoco

I hate anarchy,
and I'd steer clear of any man who likes it.

Test what I've said: go to the Oracle
at Delphi, ask if I quoted her incorrectly.

If you find that I have,
that I am guilty of treason with Teiresias,
then sentence me to death! You have my word

2

df on rsf 16:VI:48 (the thirs revision)

607—

it is a sentence I should cast my vote for—
but not without evidence!

You do wrong
when you take good men for bad, bad men for good!
A true friend thrown away—why, life itself
is not more dear.

But you will learn this in time:
for time, and time alone, will show the just man,
though scoundrels are discovered in a day.

CHO: This is well said, and a prudent man would ponder it.
Judgments too quickly formed are dangerous.

OED: But is he not quick in his duplicity?
And shall I not be quick to parry him?
Would you have me sit still and leave this man free
to win whatever he wants through my inertia? [Ah Feets, Feets! quem Dii perdunt...

KRE: What do you want then? To drive me out of Thebes?

OED: No; not your exile. What I want is your death
so that all the world may see what treason means.

KRE: You will persist then? You will not believe me?

OED: You treat me like a child.

KRE: You are a fool.

OED: To save my life?

KRE: In justice, think of mine.

OED: But you are evil. [I see how you arrive at 'monster', but think the word too
strong for éphus kakôs; you are reading éphus kakôs. Ed means what Churchill
meant when he used to refer to Hitler as 'That bad man'.]

KRE: But suppose that you are wrong.

rsf on df on rsf : 6/16/48

11 587--

KREON:

I am not that kind of man. In all my life
I never wanted to be king--only to be kingly.
Would any wise man differ in this from me?
As matters stand, I have my way in everything
by your leave, without the slightest worry;
if I were king, I'd be constrained by policy.
So how could I desire a scopter more
than this I now possess--untroubled power?

I have not gone mad! --I need no honors,
perquisites, profits, more than I have now.

I am welcome everywhere, every man salutes me,
and those who want your favor seek my ear,
since I alone can bring them all good fortune.
Why should I change this ease for that anxiety?

Besides, no sober mind is treasonable.
I have no liking for anarchy, no liking
for anarchists--indeed, I can not bear them.

Test what I have said: go to the oracle
at Delphi, ask if I quoted her correctly;
as for this other thing, if I am found
guilty of treason with Teiresias, then
sentence me to death! You have my word
it is a sentence I should cast my vote for--
but not without evidence!

2

You do wrong

when you believe that evil things are good--
how futile!--or that good things are evil.
A true friend thrown away--why, life itself
is not more dear.

In time you will know this well,
for time, and time alone, will show the just man,
though scoundrels are discovered in a day.

CHO: This is well said, a prudent man would ponder it;
judgments too quickly formed are dangerous.

OED: But has he not been quick in his duplicity?
and shall I not be quick to parry him?
Shall I stand still, hold my peace, and let him
win what he wants--through my own failure?

KR: And you want--what is it, then? to banish me?

OED: No: not your exile: I want your death
so all the world may see what treason means.

KR: You will persist then, you will not believe me?

KR: You are a fool.

OED: To save my life?

KR: In justice, think of mine.

OED: You were born a monster.

KR: But suppose that you know nothing?

OED: I rule, and must rule.

KR: Not if you rule badly.

OED: O city, city!

Rf to df

6/5/48

11

622--633

KR: What will you do then, send me into exile?

OED: Do you think I would let you go? I want your death,
Whenever you are ready to confess your malice.

KR: You will persist, then, you will not believe me?

KR: You are a fool.

OED: To save my own life?

KR: You must think of mine.

OED: Your life is evil.

KR: But you know nothing, nothing.

OED: I rule, and must rule.

KR: Not if you do it badly.

OED: O city, city!

KR: I, too, love the city.

CHO: Now, my lords, be still. I see the queen,
Dekasta, coming from her rooms--a blessed sight,
just at the right time to compose your quarrel.

rsf on df on rsf on df on rsf etc.

September 11, 1948

## PAKODOS

What is the god murmuring in his profound
Delphi of gold and shadow?

nosp.

What song will come to Thebes, the sunwhipped city?

Fear unjoins me, the roots of my heart tremble.

Delian Apelle, I remember your power and wonder,
and how doom comes on the sum--
how you breathe doom like a sudden cloud or weave it
like mightfall of the past.

Ah, no, be merciful, issue of holy sound!
Dearest to expectation's ear, be tender!

Let me pray to Athena, the tall daughter of Zeus,
and to Artemis her sister

who keeps her fine throne in the market ring,

and to Phoibos, who shoots at the far butts of heaven--

Descend, O gods, cool in your grace descending,
like three streams leap against
the fires of our grief, the tides of darkness--
Oh, spring to bring us rest!

As in the old time from the brilliant house
of air you stepped to save us, be ours again!

[stv. 1]

[ant. 1]

df on rsf: 7 ix 1948

## PARODOS

CHORUS:

Murmuring word of God from that profound
Delphi of gold and shadow,
what is your meaning for the city of sunlight?
Fear unjoints me, the roots of my heart tremble,
for I remember, O power of light and wonder,
doom comes on the sun
like a sudden cloud or like nightfall of the past.
Smile on us, Healer of Delos, holy sound!

[str. 1]

I pray to the tall immortal daughter of Zeus,
Athenê, to Artemis her sister
keeping her fine throne in the market ring,
and to Phoibos, bowman at the far butts of Heaven--
Descend, O gods, be beautiful in your mercy,
leap thrice strong against
the fires of our grief; as in the old time
you stepped from the splendid air, come, come again.

[ant. 1]

Now our afflictions have no end,
now all our frail host is struck down
and no man fights off death but in his mind;
the noble plowland bears no grain
and groaning mothers can not bear;

but see, their lives like birds take wing,
like flames that catch when a fire soars,
to the shore of the god of evening.

[str. 2]

2

The plague burns on, it is pitiless,
though tender children laden with death
lie unwept in the stony ways

and old grey women by every path
flock to the strand about the altars

there to strike their breasts and cry
worship of Zeus in wailing prayer:
Be kind, God's golden Child.

[ant. 2]

There are no swords in this attack by fire,
no shields, but we are ringed with cries.

[str. 3]

Oh hurl the besieger down, away from our homes
as far as the grey waste of the Atlantic
or into the black sea foaming east of Thrace--
for the day ravages what the night spares--
and blast our enemy, lord of the thunder,
let him be riven by lightning from Heaven!

Apollo, god of the sun's bowstring of gold,
that singing cord, may it spring for us
and the long arrows fly.

[ant. 3]

O huntress
Artemis, race with lights upon our mountains!

O scarlet god, O golden-banded brow,
be near us, Bacchos, in a storm of maenads

df on rsf: 2 ix 1948
151-215

PARODOS

CHOROS:

Murmuring word of God from the golden deep

[str. 1]

glades of the Pythian shrine : O whisper :

what will you say to Thebes that famous city?

Fear disjoints me : my soul shivers with dread.

Healer of Delos : weaver of light indwelling :

what fresh net do you

spread or lift again from the whirl of years?

Speak oh speak deathless Voice of golden Hope!

First let me pray to the immortal Daughter of Zeus

Athenê : to Artemis her sister

keeping her fine throne in the market ring :

and to Apollo bowman at the far butts of Heaven :

come O gods : be beautiful in your mercy :

leap thrice strong against

the fires of our despair : as long ago

you plunged from the splendid air oh come again!

[ant. 1]

but see their lives like birds take wing:

like flames that catch when a fire soars:

[str. 2]

2

The plague burns on : it is pitiless
though tender children laden with death
lie unwept in the stony ways

there to strike their breasts and cry
worship of Zeus in wailing prayer :
be kind, God's golden Daughter!

[ant. 2]

There are no swords in this attack by fire
no shields : but we are ringed with cries

[str. 3]

Oh hurl the besieger down : away from our homes
as far as the grey waste of the Atlantic
or into the black sea foaming east of Thrace

for the day ravages what the night spares.

Blast our enemy O Zeus lord of the
lightning!
Let him be riven by lightning from Heaven!

Apollo god of the sun's bowstring of gold
that humming cord : may it spring for us

and the long arfows fly!

O huntress

Artemis : race with lights upon our mountains!
O scarlet god O golden banded brow

be hear us Bacchus in a tempest of maenads

[ant. 3]

2

(strophe 3)

Oh hurl the besieger down, away from our homes,
as far as the grey waste of the Atlantic
or into the black sea foaming east of Thrace--

and blast our enemy, lord of the thunder,
let him be riven by lightning from heaven!

Rhoibos, god of the sun's bowstring of light,
that golden cord, let it sing for us
and the shining arrows fly!

(antistrophe 3)

Artemis huntress
swiftly come with flares upon our mountains!

O scarlet god, O golden-banded brow,
be near us, Bacchos, in a storm of maenads,
to fight back Death, basest of the Undying--
Oh, come with blinding cressets, come in joy!

FINAL 9/26/48

PARODOS

What is the god murmuring in his profound
Delphi of gold and shadow?
What song comes to Thebes, the sunwhipped city?
(strophe 1)

Fear unjoints me, the roots of my heart tremble.

Delian Apollo, I remember your power and wonder,
and how doom comes on the sun--
how you breathe doom like a sudden cloud or weave it
like nightfall of the past.

Ah, no, be merciful, issue of holy sound:
dearest to our expectancy: be tender!

Let me pray to Athena, the talldaghter of Zeus,
and to Artemis her sister
keeping her fine throne in the market ring,
and to Phoibos, who shoots at the far butts of heaven--
(antistrophe 1)

Descend, gods, cool in your grace descending,
like three streams leap against
the fires of our grief, the tides of darkness--
Oh, spring to bring us rest!

As in the old time from your brilliant house
you stepped into the blue air, be ours again.

Now our afflictions have no end,
now all our frail host is struck down
and no man fights off death in his mind;
the noble plowland bears no grain,
and groaning mothers can not bear--
(strophe 2)

The plague burns on, it is pitiless,
though pale children laden with death
lie unwept in the stony ways,
and old grey women by every path
flock to the strand about the altars--
(antistrophe 2)

there to strike their breasts and cry
worship of Zeus in wailing prayers:
Be kind, God's golden child!

rsf on df on rsf on df 9/24/48
11 1297 sqq

KOMMOS

**CHOREGUS:** A dreadful thing for men to see.
Never have my own eyes
looked on a sight so full of fear.
O Oedipus!
What madness came upon you? What daemon
leaped on your life with heavier
punishment than a mortal man can bear?
No: I can not even
Look at you, poor ruined one.
And I would speak, question, ponder,
if I were able. No.
You make me shudder.

**OEDIPUS:** God. God.
Is there a sorrow greater than my sorrow?
Where shall I find harbour in this world?
My voice is hurled far in the dark on a dark wind.
What has God done to me?

**CHOREGUS:** Dreadful, too dreadful to think of, or to see.

**OEDIPUS:** O cloud of night,
never to be turned away: night coming on,
I can not tell you how: night like a shroud!

(strophe 1)

O God! again
the pain of the spikes where I had sight,
the sick pain
of memory that can not be rooted out.

**CHOREGUS:** It is not strange: you suffer it all twice over, remorse in pain, pain in remorse.

**OEDIPUS:** Dear friend,
you are faithful even yet, you alone,
you are still standing near me and will stay here
patient, to care for the blind.
The blind man!
Yet even now I know who it is attends me
By the voice's tone--
though my new darkness hide the comforter.

**CHOREGUS:** Oh fearful act!
What god was it that drove you to plunge black
night into your eyes?

**OEDIPUS:** Apollo! Apollo! Dear
children, the god was Apollo.
He brought my sick, incredible fate upon me.
But the blinding hand was my own!
How could I bear to see
when there was nothing but horror everywhere?

(strophe 2)

df to rsf: 8 ix 1948

1297-

KOMMOS

**CHOREGOS:** Is there any man whose eyes
have looked upon a more dreadful thing than this?
Unhappy Oedipus! What madness
has seized upon you? or what daemon
has cursed you with a heavier damnation
than mortal man can bear?

O my King!
No, I can not even look at you,
though my eyes, lips, and brain
are challenged by your plight to question you--
I am sick with dread when I think what you have suffered.

**OEDIPUS:** God. God.
Is there a sorrow greater than my sorrow?
Where shall I find harbour in this world?
My voice is hurled far on a dark wind.
What has God done to me?

**CHOREGOS:** A punishment too hateful to think of, to see.

**OEDIPUS:** O dreadful night shrouding me,
ineffably drawing closer, unconquerable
destiny! My heart is split
with the spear of memory, the darts of my folly.

[str. 1]

**CHOREGOS:** It is a double pain that you must bear.

**OEDIPUS:** Dearest friend, you are faithful
and patient with the blind man. I know you,
even from this darkness; your voice

[ant. 1]

2

is one that I remember from the old days.

CHOREGOS: What god was it that drove you to blind those eyes?

OEDIPUS: Apollo, Apollo, friend! It was Apollo
that brought this evil, all this evil, upon me.
But the blinding hand was my own. How could I bear
to see, when there was nothing but bitterness?

[str. 2]

CHOREGOS: What you say is true.

OEDIPUS: All true. And what is left
me now? what love? what friendly salutation?
No; lead me away,
lead me away from Thebes, the lost man, the
triply damned, the detestation of all the gods!

CHOREGOS: Your fate is heavy, and your knowledge of it.
I wish from my heart that I had never known you!

OEDIPUS: Hell take the man, whoever he was,
who loosed the bonds from my feet on that hillside
and delivered me from death to life! What life?
If I had died then, you and I would be happier.

[ant. 2]

CHOREGOS: That would have been my wish.

OEDIPUS: Them, I should not
have killed my father, or been--what they say--to my mother.
It is my damnation
to have entered his bed who made me, his wretched son!
Is there a sorrow as great as the sorrow of Oedipus?

CHOREGOS: I do not know how I can answer you:
surely you were better a dead man than alive.

finitur KOMMOS

df on rsf on df: 13 ix 1948

1297 sqq

KOMMOS

CHOREGOS: This is a dreadful thing for men to see.
Never have my own eyes

O Oedipus!

You make me shudder.

OEDIPUS: God. God.

What has God done to me?

CHOREGOS: Dreadful, too dreadful to think of, or to see.

OEDIPUS: O cloud of night,

O God! again

flooded
the pain

[str. 1

df on rsf on df on rsf on df

17 xi 1948

587-

Certainly not I.

You do wrong

(37)

OEDIPUS: No, not exile. It is your death I want,
So that all the world may see what treason means.

KREON: You will persist, then? You will not believe me?

OEDIPUS: How can I believe you?

KREON: Then you are a fool.

OEDIPUS: To save myself?

KREON: In justice, think of me.

OEDIPUS: You are evil incarnate.

KREON: But suppose that you are wrong?

OEDIPUS: Still I must rule.

KREON: But not if you rule badly.

OEDIPUS: O city, city!

KREON: It is my city, too!

CHORAGOS: Now, my lords, be still. I see the Queen,
Iocaste, coming from her palace chambers;
And it is time she came, for the sake of you both.
This dreadful quarrel can be resolved through her.
(enter IOCASTE)

IOCASTE: Poor foolish men, what wicked din is this?
With Thebes sick to death, is it not shameful
That you should rake some private quarrel up?
Come into the house.
(to OEDIPUS)

--And you, Kreon, go now:

Let us have no more of this tumult over nothing.

(38)

KREON: Nothing? No, sister: what your husband plans for me
Is one of two great evils: exile or death.

OEDIPUS: He is right.

Why, woman, I have caught him squarely
Plotting against my life.

KREON: No! Let me die
Accurst if ever I have wished you harm!

IOCASTE: Ah believe it, Oedipus!
In the name of the gods, respect this oath of his
For my sake, for the sake of these people here!

CHORAGOS: Open your mind to her, my lord. Be ruled by her, I beg you! (strou)

CHORAGOS: Respect Kreon's word. He has never spoken like a fool,
And now he has sworn an oath.

CHORAGOS: I do.

OEDIPUS: Speak on,

CHORAGOS: A friend so sworn should not be baited so,
In blind malice, and without final proof.

OEDIPUS: You are aware, I hope, that what you say
Means death for me, or exile at the least.

(39)

CHORAGOS: No, I swear by Helios, first in Heaven!
May I die friendless and accurate,
The worst of deaths, if ever I meant that!
It is the withering fields
That hurt my sick heart:
Must we bear all these ills,
And now your bad blood as well?

(strophe 2)

OEDIPUS: Then let him go. And let me die, if I must,
Or be driven by him in shame from the land of Thebes.
It is your unhappiness, and not his talk,
That touches me.

As for him--
Wherever he is, I will hate him as long as I live.

KREON: Ugly in yielding, as you were ugly in rage!
Natures like yours chiefly torment themselves.

OEDIPUS: Can you not go? Can you not leave me?

KREON: I can.
You do not know me; but the city knows me,
And in its eyes I am just, if not in yours.

(exit KREON)

CHORAGOS: Lady Iocaste, did you not ask the King to go to his chambers?
IOCASTE: First tell me what has happened.
CHORAGOS: There was suspicion without evidence; yet it rankled
As even false charges will.

IOCASTE: On both sides?

CHORAGOS: On both.

IOCASTE: But what was said

(40)

CHORAGOS: Oh let it rest, let it be done with!

Have we not suffered enough?

OEDIPUS: You see to what your decency has brought you:

You have made difficulties where my heart saw none.

CHORAGOS: Oedipus, it is not once only I have told you-- (antistrophe 2)

You must know I should count myself unwise

To the point of madness, should I now forsake you--

You, under whose hand,

In the storm of another time,

Our dear land sailed out free.

But now stand fast at the helm!

IOCASTE: In God's name, Oedipus, inform your wife as well:

Why are you so set in this hard anger?

My confidence as you do. It is Kreon's work,

His treachery, his plotting against me.

IOCASTE: Go on, if you can make this clear to me.

IOCASTE: Has he some knowledge? Or does he speak from hearsay?

OEDIPUS: He would not commit himself to such a charge,

But he has brought in that damnable soothsayer

To tell his story.

IOCASTE; Set your mind at rest.

If it is a question of soothsayers, I tell you

(41)

That you will find no man whose craft gives knowledge
Of the unknowable.

Here is my proof:

An oracle was reported to Laios once
(I will not say from Phoibos himself, but from
His appointed ministers, at any rate)
That his doom would be death at the hands of his own son--
His son, born of his flesh and of mine!

Now, you remember the story: Laios was killed
By marauding strangers where three highways meet;
But his child had not been three days in this world
Before the King had pierced the baby's ankles
And had him left to die on a lonely mountain.

Thus, Apollo never caused that child
To kill his father, and it was not Laios' fate
To die at the hands of his son, as he had feared.
This is what prophets and prophecies are worth!
Have no dread of them.

It is God himself
Who can show us what he wills, in his own way.

OEDIPUS: How strange a shadowy memory crossed my mind,
Just now while you were speaking; it chilled my heart.

IOCASTE: What do you mean? What memory do you speak of?

OEDIPUS: If I understand you, Laios was killed
At a place where three roads meet.

(42)

IOCASTE: So it was said;
We have no later story.

OEDIPUS: Where did it happen?

IOCASTE: Phokis, it is called: at a place where the Theban Way
Is joined by the roads from Delphi and Daulia.

OEDIPUS: When?

IOCASTE: We had the news not long before you came
And proved the right to your succession here.

OEDIPUS: Ah, what net has God been weaving for me?

IOCASTE: Oedipus! Why does this trouble you?

OEDIPUS: Do not ask me yet.
First, tell me how Lafos looked, and tell me
How old he was.

IOCASTE: He was tall, his hair just touched
With white; his form was not unlike your own.

OEDIPUS: I think that I myself may be accursed
By my own ignorant edict.

IOCASTE: You speak strangely.
It makes me tremble to look at you, my King.

IOCASTE: Anything--though I dread to hear you ask it.

(43)

OEDIPUS: Was the King lightly escorted, or did he ride
With a large company, as a ruler should?

IOCASTE: There were five men with him in all: one was a herald;
And a single chariot, which he was driving.

But who--

Who told you how it happened?

IOCASTE: A household servant,
The only one to escape.

OEDIPUS: And is he still
A servant of ours?

IOCASTE: No; for when he came back at last
And found you enthroned in the place of the dead king,
He came to me, touched my hand with his, and begged
That I would send him away to the frontier district
Where only the shepherds go--
As far away from the city as I could send him.
I granted his prayer; for although the man was a slave,
He had earned more than this favour at my hands.

OEDIPUS: Can he be called back quickly?

IOCASTE: Easily.
But why?

OEDIPUS: I have taken too much upon myself
Without enquiry; therefore I wish to consult him.

IOCASTE: Then he shall come.

But am I not one also

(44)

To whom you might confide these fears of yours?

OEDIPUS:

That is your right; it will not be denied you,
Now least of all; for I have reached a pitch
Of wild foreboding. Is there anyone
To whom I should sooner speak?

Polybos of Corinth is my father.

My mother is a Dorian: Merope.

I grew up chief among the men of Corinth
Until a strange thing happened--

Not worth my passion, it may be, but strange.

I contained myself that night, though I felt anger
And a sinking heart. The next day I visited
My father and mother, and questioned them. They stormed,
Calling it all the slanderous rant of a fool;
And this relieved me. Yet the suspicion
Remained always aching in my mind;
I knew there was talk; I could not rest;
And finally, saying nothing to my parents,
I went to the shrine at Delphi.

Some were clear,
Full of wretchedness, dreadful, unbearable:
As, that I should lie with my own mother, breed

(45)

Children from whom all men would turn their eyes;
And that I should be my father's murderer.

I heard all this, and fled. And from that day
Corinth to me was only in the stars
Descending in that quarter of the sky,
As I wandered farther and farther on my way
To a land where I should never see the evil
Sung by the oracle. And I came to this country
Where, so you say, King Laios was killed.

Coming together at a place I passed;
And there a herald came towards me, and a chariot
Drawn by horses, with a man such as you describe
Seated in it. The groom leading the horses
Forced me off the road at his lord's command;
But as this charioteer lurched over towards me
I struck him in my rage. The old man saw me
And brought his double goad down upon my head
As I came abreast.

He was paid back, and more!
Swinging my club in this right hand I knocked him
Out of his car, and he rolled on the ground.

I killed him.

I killed them all.

(46)

Where is a man more miserable than I?
More hated by the gods? Citizen and alien alike
Must never shelter me or speak to me--
I must be shunned by all,

Think of it: I have touched you with these hands,
These hands that killed your husband. What defilement!

Am I all evil, then? It must be so,
Since I must flee from Thebes, yet never again
See my own countrymen, my own country,
For fear of joining my mother in marriage
And killing Polybos, my father,

Ah,
If I was created so, born to this fate,
Who could deny the savagery of God?

O holy majesty of heavenly powers!
May I never see that day! Never!
Rather let me vanish from the race of men
Than know the abomination destined me!

CHORAGOS: We too, my lord, have felt dismay at this.
But there is hope: you have yet to hear the shepherd.

IOCASTE: What do you hope from him when he comes?

OEDIPUS: This much:

(52)

IOCASTE: Princess of Thebes, it has occurred to me
To visit the altars of the gods, bearing
These branches as a suppliant, and this incense.
Our King is not himself: his noble soul
Is overwrought with fantasies of dread,
Else he would consider
The new prophecies in the light of the old.
He will listen to any voice that speaks disaster,
And my advice goes for nothing.

(she approaches the altar
To you, then, Apollo,
Lycean lord, since you are nearest, I turn in prayer.
Receive these offerings, and grant us deliverance
From defilement. Our hearts are heavy with fear
When we see our leader distracted, as helpless sailors
Are terrified by the confusion of their helmsman.

(enter MESSENGER)

MESSENGER: Friends, no doubt you can direct me:
Where shall I find the house of Oedipus,
Or, better still, where is the King himself?

(enter IOCASTE)

CHORAGOS: It is this very place, stranger; he is inside.
This is his wife and the mother of his children.

MESSENGER: I wish her happiness in a happy house,
Blest in all the fulfillment of her marriage.

IOCASTE: I wish as much for you: your courtesy
Deserves a like good fortune. But now, tell me:
Why have you come? What have you to say to us?

(53)

MESSENGER: Good news, my lady, for your house and your husband.

IOCASTE: What news? Who sent you here?

MESSENGER:
I am from Corinth.
The news I bring ought to mean joy for you,
Though it may be you will find some grief in it.

IOCASTE: What is it? How can it touch us in both ways?

MESSENGER: The people of Corinth--so the story goes--
Intend to call Oedipus to be their king.

IOCASTE: But old Polybos--is he not reigning still?

MESSENGER: No. Death holds him in his sepulchre.

IOCASTE: What are you saying? Polybos is dead?

MESSENGER: If I am not telling the truth, may I die myself.

IOCASTE: Go in, go quickly; tell this to your master. (to a MAID SERVANT)
O riddlers of God's will, where are you now!
This was the man whom Oedipus, long ago,
Feared so, fled so, in dread of destroying him--
But it was another fate by which he died.

(enter OEDIPUS, C.)

OEDIPUS: Dearest Iocaste, why have you sent for me?

IOCASTE: Listen to what this man says, and then tell me
What has become of those old prophecies.

OEDIPUS: Who is this man? What is his news for me?

IOCASTE: He has come from Corinth to announce your father's death!

(54)

OEDIPUS: Is it true, stranger? Tell me in your own words.

MESSENGER: I can not say it more clearly: the King is dead.

OEDIPUS: Was it by treason? Or by an attack of illness?

MESSENGER: A little thing brings old men to their rest.

OEDIPUS: It was sickness, then?

MESSENGER: Yes, and his many years.

OEDIPUS: Ah!

Why should a man respect the Pythian hearth, or
give heed to the birds that jangle above his head?
They prophesied that I should kill Polybos,
Kill my own father; but he is dead and buried,
And I am here--I never touched him, never,
Unless he died of grief for my departure,
And thus, in a sense, through me. No. Polybos
Has packed the oracles off with him underground.
They are empty words.

IOCASTE: Had I not told you so?

OEDIPUS: You had; it was my faint heart that betrayed me.

IOCASTE: From now on never think of those things again.

OEDIPUS: And yet--must I not fear my mother's bed?

IOCASTE: Why should anyone in this world be afraid,
Since Fate rules us and nothing can be foreseen?
A man should live--and live with all his heart.

(55)

Have no more fear of sleeping with your mother:
How many men, in dreams, have lain with their mother!
No reasonable man is troubled by such things.

OEDIPUS: That is true; only--

If only my mother were not still alive!
But she is alive. I can not help my dread.

IOCASTE: Yet this news of your father's death is wonderful.

OEDIPUS: Wonderful. But I fear the living woman.

MESSENGER: Tell me, who is this woman that you fear?

OEDIPUS: It is Merope, man; the wife of King Polybos.

MESSENGER: Merope? Why should you be afraid of her?

OEDIPUS: An oracle of the gods, a dreadful saying.

MESSENGER: Can you tell me about it? or are you sworn to silence?

OEDIPUS: I can tell you, and I will.

Apollo said through his prophet that I was the man

Who should marry his own mother, shed with his father's blood

With his own hands. And so, for all these years

I have kept clear of Corinth, and no harm has come--

Though it would have been sweet to see my parents again.

MESSENGER: And is this the fear that drove you out of Corinth?

OEDIPUS: Would you have me kill my father?

MESSENGER: As for that

You must be reassured by the news I gave you.

(56)

OEDIPUS: If you could reassure me, I would reward you.

MESSENGER: I had that in mind, I will confess: I thought
I could count on you when you returned to Corinth.

OEDIPUS: No: I will never go near my parents again.

MESSENGER: Ah, son, you still do not know what you are doing--

OEDIPUS: What do you mean? In the name of God tell me!

MESSENGER: --If these are your reasons for not going home.

OEDIPUS: I tell you, I fear the oracle may come true.

MESSENGER: And guilt may come upon you through your parents?

OEDIPUS: That is the dread that is always in my heart.

MESSENGER: Can you not see that all your fears are groundless?

OEDIPUS: How can you say that? They are my parents, surely?

MESSENGER: Polybos was not your father.

OEDIPUS: Not my father?

MESSENGER: No more your father than the man speaking to you.

OEDIPUS: But you are nothing to me!

MESSENGER: Neither was he.

OEDIPUS: Then why did he call me son?

MESSENGER: I will tell you:
Long ago he had you from my hands, as a gift.

(57)

OEDIPUS: Then how could he love me so, if I was not his?

MESSENGER: He had no children, and his heart turned to you.

OEDIPUS: What of you? Did you buy me? Did you find me by chance?

MESSENGER: I came upon you in the crooked pass of Kithairon.

OEDIPUS: And what were you doing there?

MESSENGER: Tending my flocks.

OEDIPUS: A wandering shepherd?

MESSENGER: But your saviour, son, that day.

OEDIPUS: From what did you save me?

MESSENGER: Your ankles should tell you that.

OEDIPUS: Ah, stranger, why do you speak of that childhood pain?

MESSENGER: I cut the bonds that tied your ankles together.

OEDIPUS: I have had the mark as long as I can remember.

MESSENGER: That was why you were given the name you bear.

OEDIPUS: God! Was it my father or my mother who did it?
Tell me!

MESSENGER: I do not know. The man who gave you to me
Can tell you better than I.

OEDIPUS: It was not you that found me, but another?

MESSENGER: It was another shepherd gave you to me.

(58)

OEDIPUS: Who was he? Can you tell me who he was?

MESSENGER: I think he was said to be one of Laios' people.

OEDIPUS: You mean the Laios who was king here years ago?

MESSENGER: Yes; King Laios; and the man was one of his herdsmen.

OEDIPUS: Is he still alive? Can I see him?

MESSENGER: These men here
Know best about such things.

OEDIPUS: Does anyone here
Know this shepherd that he is talking about?
Have you seen him in the fields, or in the town?
If you have, tell me. It is time things were made plain.

CHORAGOS: I think the man he means is that same shepherd
You have already asked to see. Iocaste perhaps
Could tell you something.

OEDIPUS: Do you know anything
About him, Lady? Is he the man we have summoned?
Is that the man this shepherd means?

IOCASTE: Why think of him?
Forget this herdsman. Forget it all.
This talk is a waste of time.

OEDIPUS: How can you say that,
When the clues to my true birth are in my hands?

IOCASTE: For God's love, let us have no more questioning!

(39)

Is your life nothing to you?
My own is pain enough for me to bear.

OEDIPUS: You need not worry. Suppose my mother a slave,
And born of slaves: no baseness can touch you.

IOCASTE: Listen to me, I beg you: do not do this thing!

OEDIPUS: I will not listen; the truth must be made known.

IOCASTE: Everything that I say is for your own good!

OEDIPUS: My own good
Snaps my patience, then; I want none of it.

IOCASTE: You are fatally wrong! May you never learn who you are!

OEDIPUS: Go, one of you, and bring the shepherd here.
Let us leave this woman to brag of her royal name.

IOCASTE: Ah, miserable!
That is the only word I have for you now.

That is the only word I can ever have. (exit into the palace)

CHORAGOS: Why has she left us, Oedipus? Why has she gone
In such a passion of sorrow? I fear this silence:
Something dreadful may come of it.

OEDIPUS: Let it come!
However base my birth, I must know about it.
The Queen there, like a woman, is ashamed
To think of my low origin. But I
Am a child of Luck; I can not be dishonoured.
Luck is my mother; the passing months, my brothers,

(64)

OEDIPUS: Sirs: though I do not know the man,
I think I see him coming, this shepherd we want:
He is old, like our friend here, and the men
Bringing him seem to be servants of my house.
But you can tell, if you have ever seen him.

(enter SHEPHERD escorted by servants)

CHORAGOS: I know him, he was Laíos' man. You can trust him.

OEDIPUS: Tell me first, you from Corinth: is this the shepherd
We were discussing?

MESSENGER: This is the very man.

OEDIPUS: Come here. No, look at me. You must answer
I ask. --- You belonged to Laíos?

SHEPHERD: Yes: born his slave, brought up in his house.

OEDIPUS: Tell me: what kind of work did you do for him?

SHEPHERD: I was a shepherd of his, most of my life.

OEDIPUS: Where did you go mainly for pasturage?

SHEPHERD: Sometimes Kithairon, sometimes the hills near-by.

OEDIPUS: Do you remember ever seeing this man out there?

SHEPHERD: What would he be doing there? This man?

OEDIPUS: This man standing here. Have you ever seen him before?

SHEPHERD: No. At least, not to my recollection.

MESSENGER: And that is not strange, my lord. But I'll refresh

(65)

His memory: he must remember when we two
Spent three whole seasons together, March to September,
On Kithairon or thereabouts. He had two flocks;
I had one. Each autumn I'd drive mine home
And he would go back with his to Laios' sheepfold.--
Is this not true, just as I have described it?

MESSENGER: Well, then: do remember, back in those days,
That you gave me a baby boy to bring up as my own?

MESSENGER: King Oedipus was once that little boy.

SHEPHERD: Unhappy king! What more do you wish to learn?

OEDIPUS: Did you give this man the child he speaks of?

(66)

OEDIPUS: Very well; since you insist upon delaying--

SHEPHERD: Then... Then the child was from the palace of Laos.

SHEPHERD: Ah, I am on the brink of dreadful speech!

OEDIPUS: And I of dreadful hearing. Yet I must hear.

SHEPHERD: If you must be told, then...

They said it was Laos' child;
But it is your wife who can tell you about that.

OEDIPUS: My wife! -- Did she give it to you?

SHEPHERD: My lord, she did.

OEDIPUS: Do you know why?

(67)

SHEPHERD: I was told to get rid of it.

OEDIPUS: An unspeakable mother!

SHEPHERD: There had been prophecies...

OEDIPUS: Tell me.

SHEPHERD: It was said that the boy would kill his own father.

OEDIPUS: Then why did you give him over to this old man?

SHEPHERD: I pitied the baby, my King,
And I thought that this man would take him far away
To his own country.

He saved him--but for what a fate!
For if you are what this man says you are,
No man living is more wretched than Oedipus.

OEDIPUS: Ah God!
It was true!

All the prophecies!

--Now,
O Light, may I look on you for the last time!
I, Oedipus,
Oedipus, damned in his birth, in his marriage damned,
Damned in the blood he shed with his own hand!

(he rushes into the palace)

(69)

CHORUS:

Alas for the seed of men.

(strophe 1)

What man has known more joy
Than mist of sunlight shifting in images,
Or who shall make his thought stay on
That time drifts away?

Your splendour is all fallen.

That mind was a strong bow.

(antistrophe 2)

You overcame the stranger--

Fortress against our sorrow!

Divine king, giver of laws,

(70)

Majestic Oedipus!

And now of all men ever known

(strophe 2)

Fallen to a low slave's

Ground under bitter fate.

O Oedipus, most royal one!

Gave at night--ah, gave night to your glory:

All understood too late.

How could that queen whom Laíos won,

Be silent when that act was done?

(antistrophe 2)

Your bed, your dread sirings,

Are brought to book at last.

Child by Laíos doomed to die,

Then doomed to lose that fortunate little death,

Would God you never took breath in this air

(73)

(enter, from the palace, SECOND MESSENGER)

2nd MESSENGER: Elders of Thebes, most honoured in this land,
What horrors are yours to see and hear, what weight
Of sorrow to be endured, if, true to your birth,
You venerate the line of Labdakos!

I think neither Istros nor Phasis, those great rivers,
Could purify this place of the corruption
It shelters now, or soon must bring to light--
Evil not done unconsciously, but willed.

The greatest griefs are those we cause ourselves.

CHORAGOS: Surely, friend, we have grief enough already;
What new sorrow do you mean?

2nd MESSENGER: The Queen is dead.

CHORAGOS: Iocaste? Dead? But at whose hand?

2nd MESSENGER: Her own.

The full horror of what happened you can not know,
For you did not see it; but I, who did, will tell you
As clearly as I can how she met her death.

When she had left us,
In passionate silence, passing through the court,
She ran to her apartment in the house,
Her hair clutched by the fingers of both hands.
She closed the doors behind her; then, by that bed
Where long ago the fatal son was conceived--
That son who should bring about his father's death--
We heard her call upon Laíos, dead so many years,

(74)

And heard her wail for the double fruit of her marriage,
A husband by her husband, children by her child.

For Oedipus burst in moaning and would not let us
Keep vigil to the end: it was by him

As he stormed about the room that our eyes were caught.

From one to another of us he went, begging a sword,
Cursing the wife who was not wife, the mother

Whose womb had carried his own children and himself.

I do not know: it was none of us who aided him,
But surely one of the gods was in control!

For with a dreadful cry

He hurled his weight, as though wrenched out of himself,
At the twin doors: the bolts gave, and he rushed in.

And there we saw her hanging, her body swaying

From the cruel cord she had noosed about her neck.

A great sob broke from him, heartbreaking to hear,
As he loosed the rope and lowered her to the ground.

That were her ornament, and raised them, and plunged them do

Straight into his own eyballs, crying, 'No more,

'No more shall you look on the misery about me,

'The horrors of my own doing! Too long you have known

'The faces of those whom I should never have seen,

'Too long been blind to those for whom I was searching!

'From this hour, go in darkness!' And as he spoke,

He struck at his eyes--not once, but many times;

(75)

And the blood spattered his beard,
Bursting from his ruined sockets like red hail.

So from the crimes of two this evil has sprung,
A curse on the man and woman alike. The old
Happiness of the house of Labdakos

Was happiness enough: where is it today?

It is all wailing and ruin, disgrace, death--all

The misery of mankind that has a name--

And it is wholly and for ever theirs.

CHORAGOS: Is he in agony still? Is there no rest for him?

2nd MESSENGER: He is calling for someone to lead him to the gates
So that all the children of Kadmos may look upon
His father's murderer, his mother's--no,
I can not say it!

And then he will leave Thebes,
Self-exiled, in order that the curse
Which he himself pronounced may depart from the house.
He is weak, and there is none to lead him,
So terrible is his suffering.

But you will see:
Look, the doors are opening; in a moment
You will see a thing that would crush a heart of stone.

(the central door is opened; OEDIPUS, blinded, is led in.)

CHORAGOS: Dreadful indeed for men to see.
Never have my own eyes
Looked on a sight so full of fear.

(76)

CHORAGOS:

Oedipus!

What madness came upon you, what daemon
Leaped on your life with heavier
Punishment than a mortal man can bear?

OEDIPUS:

God. God.

Is there a sorrow greater?
Where shall I find harbour in this world?
My voice is hurled far on a dark wind.
What has God done to me?

CHORAGOS:

OEDIPUS:

O cloud of night,
Never to be turned away: night coming on,
I can not tell how: night is like a shroud;
My fair winds brought me here.

(strophe 1

CHORAGOS:

(79)

By strangling my own life.

Or do you think my children,
Born as they were born, would be sweet to my eyes?
Ah never, never! Nor this town with its high walls,
Nor the holy images of the gods.

For I,
Thrice miserable!—Oedipus, noblest of all the line
Of Kadmos, have condemned myself to enjoy
These things no more, by my own malediction
Expelling that man whom the gods declared
To be a defilement in the house of Laios.
After exposing the rankness of my own guilt,
How could I look men frankly in the eyes?
No, I swear it,

If I could have stifled my hearing at its source,
I would have done it and made all this body
A tight cell of misery, blank to light and sound:
So I should have been safe in a dark agony
Beyond all recollection.

Ah Kithairon!
Why did you shelter me? When I was cast upon you,
Why did I not die? Then I should never
Have shown the world my execrable birth.

Ah Polybos! Corinth, city that I believed
The ancient seat of my ancestors: how fair
I seemed, your child! And all the while this evil
Was cancerous within me!

(80)

O three roads, dark ravine, woodland and way
Where three roads met: you, drinking my father's blood,
My own blood, spilled by my own hand: can you remember
The unspeakable things I did there, and the things
I went on from there to do?

Ah, the net
Of incest, mingling fathers, brothers, sons,
With brides, wives, mothers: the last evil
That can be known by men: no tongue can say
How evil!

No. For the love of God, conceal me
Somewhere far from Thebes; or kill me; or hurl me
Into the sea, away from men's eyes for ever.
Come, lead me. You need not fear to touch me.
Of all men, I alone can bear this guilt.

(enter KREON)

CHORAGOS: We are not the ones to decide; but Kreon here
May fitly judge of what you ask. He only
Is left to protect the city in your place.

KREON: I have not come to mock you, Oedipus,
Or to reproach you, either.

--You, standing there: (to ATTENDANTS)

(81)

If you have lost all respect for man's dignity,
At least respect the flame of Lord Helios:
Do not allow this pollution to show itself
Openly here, an affront to the earth
And Heaven's rain and the light of day. No, take him
Into the house as quickly as you can.
For it is proper
That only the close kindred see his grief.

OEDIPUS: I pray you in God's name, since your courtesy
I ignores my dark expectation, visiting
With mercy this man of all men most execrable:
Give me what I ask--for your good, not for mine.

OEDIPUS: Drive me out of this country as quickly as may be
To a place where no human voice can ever greet me.

KREON: I should have done that before now--only,
God's will had not been wholly revealed to me.

OEDIPUS: But his command is plain: the parricide
Must be destroyed. I am that evil man.

KREON: That is the sense of it, yes; but as things are,
We had best discover clearly what is to be done.

(82)

The woman in there--

Give her whatever funeral you think proper:

She is your sister.

--But let me go, Kreon!

Let me purge my father's Thebes of the pollution
Of my living here, and go out to the wild hills,
To Kithairon, that has won such fame with me,
The tomb my mother and father appointed for me,
And let me die there, as they willed I should.
And yet I know

Death will not ever come to me through sickness
Or in any natural way: I have been preserved
For some unthinkable fate. But let that be.

But my poor daughters, who have shared my table,
Who never before have been parted from their father--
Take care of them, Kreon; do this for me.

And will you let me touch them with my hands
A last time, and let us weep together?

Be kind, my lord,
Great prince, be kind!

Could I but touch them,
They would be mine again, as when I had my eyes.

(enter ANTIGONE and ISMENE, attended)

Ah, God!

(85)

Is it my dearest children I hear weeping?
Has Kreon pitied me and sent my daughters?

KREON: Yes, Oedipus: I knew that they were dear to you
In the old days, and know you must love them still.

OEDIPUS: May God bless you for this--and be a friendlier
Guardian to you than he has been to me!

Children, where are you?

Come quickly to my hands: they are your brother's--
Hands that have brought your father's once clear eyes
To this way of seeing--

Ah dearest ones,
I had neither sight nor knowledge then, your father
By the woman who was the source of his own life!
And I weep for you--having no strength to see you--,
I weep for you when I think of the bitterness
That men will visit upon you all your lives.
What homes, what festivals can you attend
Without being forced to depart again in tears?
And when you come to marriageable age,
Where is the man, my daughters, who would dare
Risk the bane that lies on all my children?
Is there any evil wanting? Your father killed
His father; sowed the womb of her who bore him;
Engendered you at the fount of his own existence!
That is what they will say of you.

(84)

O Kreon, son of Menoikeus!

You are the only father my daughters have,
Since we, their parents, are both of us gone for ever.

They are your own blood; you will not let them
Fall into beggary and loneliness;

Great Prince, and give my hand in token of it.

(KREON clasps his right hand

Children:

I could say much, if you could understand me,

Live where you can, be as happy as you can--

KREON:                                     Time eases all things.

KREON:                                     Say what you desire.

OEDIPUS: Send me from Thebes!

KREON: God grant that I may!