Post #10: Greek Tragedy Festival
Greek Tragedy Film Festival
Oedipus Rex: The Detective of Truth
Typed Original REVISED Open Question:
Typed Original Prose Passage & Individual Essay:
Original Passage:
“Oedipus: Teiresias, all things are known to you--the secrets of heaven and earth, the sacred and profane. Though you are blind, you surely see the plague that rakes our city. My Lord Teiresias, we turn to you as our only hope. My messengers may have told you--we have sent to Apollo and he has answered us We must find Laius’ murderers and deal with them. Or drive them out. Then--only then will we find release from our suffering. I ask you not to spare your gifts of prophecy. Look to the voices of prophetic birds or the answers written in the flames. Spare nothing. Save all of us--yourself, your city, your king, and all that is touched by this deathly pollution. We turn to you. My Lord, it is man’s most noble role to help his fellow man the best his talents will allow.
Teiresias: O God! How horrible wisdom is! How horrible when it does not help the wise! How could I have forgotten? I should not have come.
Oedipus: Why? What’s wrong?
Teiresias: Let me go It will be better if you bear your own distress and I bear mine. It will be better this way.
Oedipus: This city gave you life and yet you refuse her an answer! You speak as if you were her enemy.
Teiresias: No! No! It is because I see the danger in your words. And mine would add still more.
Oedipus: For God’s sake, if you know, don’t turn away from us! We are pleading. We are begging you.
Teiresias: Because you are blind! No! I shall not reveal my secrets. I shall not reveal yours.
Oedipus: What? You know, and yet you refuse to speak? Would you betray us and watch our city fall helplessly to her death?
Teiresias: I will not cause you further grief. I will not grieve myself. Stop asking me to tell; I will tell you nothing.
Oedipus: You will not tell? You monster! You could stir the stones of earth to a boiling rage! You will never tell? What will it take?
Teiresias: Know yourself, Oedipus. You denounce me, but you do not yet know yourself.
Oedipus: Yes! You disgrace your city. And then you expect us to control our rage!
Teiresias: It does not matter if I speak; the future has already been determined.
Oedipus: And if it has, then it is for you to tell me, prophet!
Teiresias: I shall say no more. Rage, if you wish.
Oedipus: I am enraged. And now I will tell you what I think. I think this was your doing. You plotted the crime, you saw it carried out. It was your doing. All but the actual killing. And had you not been blind, you could have done that, too!
Teiresias: Do you believe what you have said? Then accept your own decree! From this day on, deny yourself the right to speak to anyone. You, Oedipus, are the desecrator, the polluter of this land!
Oedipus: You traitor! Do you think that you can get away with this?
Teiresias: The truth is my protection
Oedipus: Who taught you this? It did not come from prophecy!
Teiresias: You taught me. You drove me, you forced me to say it against my will.
Oedipus: Say it again. I want to make sure I understand you.
Teiresias: Understand me? Or are you trying to provoke me?
Oedipus: No, I want to be sure, I want to know. Say it again.
Teiresias: I say that you, Oedipus Tyrannus, are the murderer you seek”
Oedipus: So! A second time! Now twice you will regret what you have said!
Teiresias: Shall I tell you more? Shall I fan your flames of anger?
Oedipus: Yes. Tell me more. Tell me more--whatever suits you. It will be in vain.
Teiresias: I say you live in shame with the woman you love, blind to your own calamity.
Oedipus: Do you think you can speak like this forever?
Teiresias: I do, if there is any strength in truth.”
Oedipus: There is--for everyone but you. You--you cripple! Your ears are deaf, your eyes are blind, your mind--your mind is crippled!
Teiresias: You fool! You slander me when one day you will hear the same . . .
Oedipus: You live in night, Teiresias, in night that never turns to day. And so, you cannot hurt me--or any man who sees the light.
Teiresias: No--it is not I who will cause your fall. That is Apollo’s office--and he will discharge it” (Sophocles ln. 302 - 383).Individual Essay:
Typed Original Poem & Individual Essay:
Original Poem:
O generations of men, you are nothing!
You are nothing!
And I count you as not having lived at all!
Was there ever a man,
Was there ever a man on this earth
Who could say he was happy,
Who knew happiness, true happiness,
Not an image, a dream,
An illusion, a vision, which would disappear?
Your example, Oedipus,
Your example, your fate, your disaster,
Show us that none of us mortals
Ever knew, ever felt what happiness truly is.
Here is Oedipus,
Fortune and fame and bliss
Leading him by the hand,
Prodding him on to heights
Mortals had never attained.
Zeus, it was he who removed
the scourge of the riddling maid,
Of the sharp-clawed, murderous Sphinx!
He restored me to life from the brink
Of disaster, of doom and of death.
It was he who was honored and hailed,
Who was crowned and acclaimed as our king.
Here is Oedipus;
Anyone on this earth struck by a harder blow,
Strung by a fate more perverse?
Wretched Oedipus!
Father and son alike,
Pleasures you took from where
Once you were given life.
Furrows your father ploughed
bore you in silence. How, how , oh how could it be?
Time found you out,
All-seeing, irrepressible time.
Time sits in judgement on
The union that could never be;
Judges you, father and son,
Begot and begetter alike.
Would that I never had
Laid eyes on Laius’ child!
Now I wail and I weep,
And my lips are drenched in lament.
It was you, who offered me life;
it is you, who now bring me death.
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