The opening scene of the _Oedipus_ serves a double purpose. While
it places the spectators at the exact point in the legend selected
by the poet for treatment, it impresses them with the greatness and
the majesty of the king. Thebes is worn out with plague. The hand of
Heaven lies heavily upon the citizens. Therefore the priest of Zeus
approaches the hero who once before had saved them from the Sphinx,
and who may now--fit representative of God on earth--find out a
remedy for this intolerable evil. Oedipus appears upon the stage, a
confident and careful ruler, sublime in the strength of manhood and
the consciousness of vast capacity, tender for the afflictions of his
people, yet undismayed by their calamity. He is just the man to sustain
a commonwealth by his firm character and favoring fortune. Flawless
in force of will and singleness of purpose, he seems incapable of
failure. To connect the notions of disgrace or guilt or shame with such
a king is utterly impossible. Yet, even so, Sophocles has hinted in the
speech of Oedipus a something overmuch of confidence and courage:
Well I know
That ye all suffer, yet, thus suffering, I
More than you all in overmeasure suffer:
For that which wounds you strikes at each man singly,
At each and not another; while my soul
For Thebes, for me, for you, feels one huge sorrow.
Even here the irony, for which the play is famous, begins to transpire.
Oedipus believes that his grief is sympathy for a vexed people
committed to his charge. Little does he know that, while he is pluming
himself upon his watchful care for others, he himself is the head and
front of all offending. In the word #kame#, almost negligently uttered,
lies the kernel of the future revelation. While he is informing the
suppliants that Creon has gone to Delphi for advice, the prince
arrives. A garland of good augury is on his brow; and in this sign
of an auspicious embassy we discern another stroke of tragic irony.
Phoebus has declared that the presence in Thebes of the hitherto
unpunished, unregarded murderer of Laius is the cause of the plague.
Oedipus, when he fully understands the matter, swears to discover
the offender. The curse which he pronounces on this guilty man is
terrible--terrible in its energy of interdiction and excommunication
from all rites of hospitality, from human sympathy, from earth and air
and water and the fruits of the field--but still more terrible through
the fact that all these maledictions are uttered on his own head. The
irony of the situation--if we are justified in giving this word to the
contrast between what seems and what really is--between Oedipus as he
appears to the burghers and Oedipus as he is known to us--rises in
the emphatic eloquence of his denunciation to a truly awful height.
At the same time his obvious sincerity enlists our sympathy upon his
side. We feel beforehand that the man who speaks thus will, when his
eyes are opened, submit to his self-imprecated doom. It now remains
to detect the murderer. Thinking that his faculty of divination may
be useful, Oedipus has already sent for the blind seer Teiresias.
Teiresias is one of the great creations of Sophocles. Twice he appears,
once in this play, once in the _Antigone_, each time in conflict with
infatuated kings. He is so aged, and the soul within him is so fixed on
things invisible, that he seems scarcely human. We think of him as of
one who dwells apart, not communing in ordinary social ways with men,
but listening to the unspoken words of God, and uttering his wisdom
in dark parable to those who heed him not. The Greek poets frequently
exhibited the indifference of prosperous persons to divine monitions.
Cassandra's prophecies were not attended to; the Delphic oracle spoke
in vain; and Teiresias is only honored when it is too late. Sophocles,
while maintaining the mysterious fascination of the soothsayer, has
marked his character by some strong touches of humanity. He is proud
and irritable to excess. His power of sarcasm is appalling, and his
indignation is inexorable. Between two stubborn and unyielding natures
like the seer and king sparks of anger could not fail to be struck; the
explosion that follows on their meeting serves to display the choleric
temper of Oedipus, which formed the main trait of his character, the
pith of his #hamartia#.
Oedipus greets Teiresias courteously, telling him that he, the king, is
doing all he can to find the murderer of Laius, and that the soothsayer
must spare no pains. To this generous patronage and protective welcome
Teiresias, upon whose sightless soul the truth has suddenly flashed,
answers with deep sighs, and requests to be led home again. This
naturally nettles Oedipus. The hastiness that drew him into his first
fault renders him now ungovernable. Teiresias keeps saying it will be
better for the king to remain ignorant, and the king retorts that he
is only a blind dotard; were he not blind, he, and no other, might be
suspected of the murder. This provokes an oracular response:
Ay! Is it so? I bid thee, then, abide
By thy first ordinance, and from this day
Join not in converse with these men or me,
Being thyself this land's impure defiler.
Thus the real state of affairs is suddenly disclosed; and were Oedipus
of a submissive temper, he would immediately have proceeded to the
discovery of the truth. This would, however, have destroyed the drama,
and have prevented the unfolding of the character of the king. Instead,
therefore, of heeding the seer's words, Oedipus rushes at once to the
conclusion that Creon and Teiresias are plotting to overthrow him in
his tyranny. The quarrel waxes hot. Each word uttered by Teiresias
is pregnant with terrific revelation. The whole context of events,
past, present, and future, is painted with intense lucidity in speech
that has the trenchant force of oracular conviction; yet Oedipus
remains so firmly rooted in his own integrity and in the belief which
he has suddenly assumed of Creon's treason, that he turns deaf ears
and a blind soul to the truth. At last the seer leaves him with this
denunciation:
"I tell thee this: the man whom thou so long
Seekest with threats and mandates for the murder
Of Laius, that very man is here,
By name an alien, but in season due
He shall be shown true Theban, and small joy
Shall have therein; for, blind, instead of seeing,
And poor, who once was rich, he shall go forth,
Staff-guided, groping, o'er a foreign land.
He shall be shown to be with his own children
Brother and sire in one, of her who bore him
Husband at once and offspring, of his father
Bedmate and murderer. Go; take now these words
Within, and weigh them; if thou find me false,
Say then that divination taught me nothing."
The next scene is one of altercation between Oedipus and Creon.
Oedipus, full of rage, still haunted by the suspicion of treason,
yet stung to the quick by some of the dark speeches of the prophet,
vehemently assails the prince, and condemns him to exile. Creon--who,
of course, is innocent, but who is not meant to have a generous or
lofty soul--defends himself in a dry and argumentative manner, until
Jocasta comes forth from the palace and seeks to quell their conflict.
Oedipus tells her haughtily that he is accused of being the murderer
of Laius. She begins her answer with a frivolous and impious assertion
that all oracles are nonsense. The oracle uttered against Laius came
to nothing, for his son died on Mount Cithæron, and robbers slew him
near Thebes long afterwards, where three ways meet. These words, #en
triplais hamaxitois#, stir suspicion in the mind of Oedipus. He asks
at once: "Where was the spot?" "In Phokis, where one goes to Delphi
and to Daulia." "What was Laius like?" "Not unlike you in shape," says
Jocasta, "but white-haired." "Who were with him?" "Five men, and he
rode a chariot." "Who told you all this?" "One who escaped, and who
begged me afterwards to send him from the palace, and who now keeps
a farm of ours in the country." Each answer adds to the certainty in
the mind of Oedipus that it was Laius whom he slew. The only hope left
is to send for the servant, and to find out whether he adheres to his
story of there having been more robbers than one. If he remains firm
upon this point, and does not confess that it was one solitary man who
slew his master and his comrades, then there is a chance that he, the
king, may not be guilty. Jocasta, with her usual levity, comforts him
by insisting that he spoke of robbers, in the plural, and that he must
not be suffered to retract his words.
While they are waiting for the servant, a messenger arrives from
Corinth with good news. Polybus, the king, is dead, and Oedipus is
proclaimed his successor. "Where now," shouts impious Jocasta, "are
your oracles--that you should slay your father? See you not how foolish
it is to trust to Phoebus and to auguries of birds? Chance is the lord
of all. Let us, therefore, live our lives as best we can." Awful is the
irony of these short-sighted jubilations; and awful, as Aristotle has
pointed out,[140] is the irony which makes this messenger of apparently
good tidings add the last link to the chain of evidence that will
overwhelm Oedipus with ruin. Oedipus exclaims: "Though my father is
dead, I may not return to Corinth: Merope still lives." "What," says
the messenger, "do you fear her because she is your mother? Set your
mind at ease. She is no mother of yours, nor was Polybus your father.
I gave you to them as a gift, when you were yet an infant." "Where did
you find me?" cries the king. "Upon Cithæron, a shepherd of the house
of Laius gave you to me; your feet were pierced, and I believe that you
were born in the royal household." Terrible word, Cithæron! It echoes
through this tragedy with horror--its scaurs and pastures, the scene
of the first crime. And now those two hinds, who had met there once,
apparently by chance, with the child of doom between them, are being
again, as though by chance, brought face to face, with the man of doom
between them, in order to make good the words of Teiresias:
#boes de tes ses poios ouk estai limen,
poios Kithairon ouchi symphonos tacha?#
Jocasta is struck dumb by the answers of the messenger. She, and she
alone, knows now at last the whole truth; but she does not speak, while
Oedipus continues asking who the shepherd of the house of Laius was.
Then she utters words of fearful import, praying the king to go no
farther, nor to seek what, found, will plunge his soul into despair
like hers. After this, finding her suit ineffectual, she retires into
the palace. The chorus are struck by the wildness of her gestures,
and hint their dread that she is going to her doom of suicide. But
Oedipus, not yet fully enlightened, and preoccupied with the problem
which interests himself so deeply, only imagines that she shrinks from
the possible proof of his base birth. As yet, he does not suspect that
he is the own son of Laius; and here, it may be said in passing, the
sole weakness of the plot transpires. Neither the oracle first given
to him at Delphi, nor the plain speech of Teiresias, nor the news of
the Corinthian messenger, nor the pleadings of Jocasta, are sufficient
to suggest the real truth to his mind. Such profundity of blindness
is dramatically improbable. He is, however, soon destined to receive
illumination. The servant of Laius, who gave Jocasta intelligence of
the manner of her husband's death, is now brought upon the stage; and
in him the Corinthian messenger recognizes the same shepherd who had
given him the infant on Cithæron. Though reluctant to confess the
truth so long concealed, the shepherd is at last forced to reveal
all he knows; and in this supreme moment Oedipus discovers that he
is not only the murderer of his own father, but also that Jocasta
is his mother. In the madness of this revelation he rushes to the
palace. The chorus are left alone to moralize upon these terrible
events. Then another messenger arrives. Jocasta has hanged herself
within her bedchamber. Oedipus, breaking bars and bolts in the fire
of his despair, has followed her. Around him were the servants, drawn
together by the tumult. None, however, dared approach him. Led by an
inner impulse, he found the place where his wife and mother hung,
released the corpse, and tearing from her dress the golden buckles,
cut out both his eyes, crying aloud that no longer should they look
upon the light or be witness to his woe, seeing that when they might
have aided him they were as good as blind. Thus one day turned the
prosperity of Oedipus to "wailing, woe, death, disgrace, all evils that
have name--not one is absent." The speech of the messenger narrating
these events is a splendid instance of the energy of Sophocles, when he
chooses to describe a terrible event appallingly. It does not convey
the Æschylean mystery of brooding horror; but the scene is realized in
all its incidents, briefly, vividly, with ghastly clearness. Meanwhile,
the voice of Oedipus himself is heard. He bids the palace-doors be
opened, in order that all Thebes may see the parricide, the monster
of unhallowed, indescribable abominations. So the gates are rolled
asunder: and there lies dead Jocasta; and sightless Oedipus, with
bloody cheeks and beard, stands over her, and the halls are filled with
wailing women and woe-stricken men.
Here, if this had been a modern tragedy, the play of _Oedipus Tyrannus_
might have ended; but so abrupt and scenical a conclusion did not suit
the art of Sophocles. He had still further to develop the character
of Oedipus, and to offer the prospect of that future reconciliation
between the fate and the passions of his hero which he had in store.
For this purpose the last two hundred lines of the drama, though they
do not continue the plot, but rather suggest a new and secondary
subject of interest, are invaluable. Hitherto we have seen Oedipus
in the pride of monarchy and manhood, hasty, arrogant, yet withal a
just and able ruler. He is now, through a #peripeteia#, or revolution
of circumstances, more complete than any other in Greek tragedy,
revealed in the very depth of his calamity, still dignified. There is
no resistance left in the once so strong and stubborn man. The hand
of God, weighing heavily upon him, has bowed his head, and he is
humble as a little child. Yet the vehemence that marked his former
phase persists. It finds vent in the passionate lucidity wherewith he
examines all the details of the pollution he has unwittingly incurred,
and in the rage with which he demands to have his own curse carried out
against him. Let him be cast from the city, sent forth to wander on
the fells of Cithæron--#houmos Kithairon houtos#. It was the highest
achievement of tragic art to exhibit so suddenly, and by so sharp a
transition, this new development of the king's nature. Saul of Tarsus,
when blinded by the vision, was not more immediately converted from
one mood into another, more contrite in profound sincerity of sorrow.
Still in the altered Oedipus we see the same man, the same temperament;
though all internal and external circumstances have been changed, so
that henceforward he will never tread the paths of life as once he
did. The completeness of his self-abandonment appears most vividly in
the dialogue with Creon, upon whose will his immediate fate depends.
When Creon, whom he had lately misjudged and treated with violent
harshness, comes and greets him kindly, the wretched king tastes the
very bitterness of degradation, yet he is not abject. He only prays
once more, with intensest urgency of pleading, to have the uttermost
of the excommunication he had vowed, executed upon his head. Thinking
less of himself than of the miserable beings associated with him in
disaster, he beseeches Creon to inter the queen, and, for his boys, to
give them only a fair chance in life--they will be men, and may carve
out their own fortunes in the world; but for his two poor girls, left
desolate, a scorn and mockery to all men, he can only pray that they
may come to him, be near him, bear the burden of their misery by their
father's side. The tenderness of Oedipus for Ismene and Antigone, his
yearning to clasp them, is terribly--almost painfully--touching, when
we remember who they were, how born, the children of what curses. The
words with which the king addresses them are even hazardous in their
directness. Yet it was needful that humanity should by some such strain
of passion be made to emerge from this tempest of soul-shattering woes;
and thus, too, a glimpse of that future is provided which remained for
Oedipus, if sorrowful, assuaged at least by filial love. In reply to
all his eloquent supplications Creon answers that he will not take upon
himself the responsibility of dealing with his case. Nothing can be
done without consulting the oracle at Delphi. Oedipus has, therefore,
to be patient and endure. The strong hero, who saved Thebes from the
Sphinx and swayed the city, is now in the hands of tutors and governors
awaiting his doom. He submits quietly, and the tragedy is ended.
The effect of such a tragedy as _Oedipus the King_ is to make men feel
that the earth is shaken underneath them, and that the heavens above
are big with thunder. Compassion and fear are agitated in the highest
degree; old landmarks seem to vanish; the mightiest have fallen, and
the most impious, convinced of God, have been goaded to self-murder.
Great, indeed, is the tragic poet's genius who can make the one sure
point amid this confusion the firmness of its principal fore-destined
victim. That is the triumph of Sophocles. Out of the chaos of the
_Oedipus Tyrannus_ springs the new order of the _Oedipus Coloneus_; and
here it may be said that perhaps the most valid argument in favor of
the Æschylean trilogy as a supreme work of dramatic art is this--that
such a tragedy as the first Oedipus demanded such another as the
second. The new motives suggested in the last act were not sufficiently
worked out to their conclusion; much that happened in the climax of the
_Tyrannus_ seemed to necessitate the _Coloneus_.
The interest of the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ centres in its plot, and that
is my only excuse for having dwelt so long on the structure of a
play familiar to every student. That of the _Oedipus Coloneus_ is
different. It has, roughly speaking, no plot. It owes its perfect,
almost superhuman, beauty to the atmosphere which bathes it, as with
peace after tempest, with the lucid splendors of sunset succeeding
to a storm-vexed and tumultuous day. The scene is laid, as the name
indicates, in the village birthplace of the poet. Years are supposed
to have elapsed since the conclusion of the former tragedy; Oedipus,
after being detained in Thebes against his will at first, has now
been driven forth by Creon, and has wandered many miles in blindness,
led by his daughter's hand. The ethical interest of the play, so
far as it is not absorbed by Oedipus himself, centres principally
in Antigone, whereby we are prepared for her emergence into fullest
prominence in the tragedy which bears her name. Always keeping in mind
that these three plays are not a trilogy, I cannot but insist again
that much is lost, especially in all that concerns the unfolding of
Antigone's character, by not reading them in the order suggested by the
fable. At the same time, though Antigone engrosses our sympathy and
attention, Sophocles has varied the drama by a more than usual number
of persons. The generous energy of Theseus forms a fine contrast to
the inactivity forced upon Oedipus by the conditions of the subject,
and also to the meanness of Creon; while the episodes of Ismene's
arrival, of Antigone's abduction, and of the visit of Polyneices, add
movement to what might else have been too stationary. It should also
be said that all these subsidiary sources of interest are used with
subtle art by Sophocles for enhancing the dignity of Oedipus, for
arousing our sympathy with him, and for bringing into prominence the
chief features of his character. None can, therefore, be regarded as
superfluous, though, strictly speaking, they might have been detached
without absolute destruction of the drama, which is more than can be
said about the slightest incidents of _Oedipus Tyrannus_. As regards
Oedipus himself, that modification of his fiery temperament which
Sophocles revealed at the end of the first tragedy has now become
permanent. He is schooled into submission; yet he has not lost the old
impetuosity that formed the groundwork of his nature. He is still quick
to anger and vehement in speech, but both his anger and his vehemence
are justified by the occasion. Something, moreover, of fateful and
mysterious, severing him from the common race of men and shrouding him
within the seclusion of his dread calamity, has been added. The terror
of his dreadful past, and the prospect of his august future, environ
him with more than kingly dignity. The skill of Sophocles as a dramatic
poet is displayed in all its splendor by the new light thrown upon the
central figure of Oedipus. The effect of unity is not destroyed: those
painful shocks to our sense of probability so frequent when inferior
dramatists--poets of the rank of Fletcher or of Jonson--attempt
to depict a nature altered by internal reformation or by force of
circumstance do not occur. The Oedipus of both the tragedies remains
one man; we understand the change that has been wrought in him; and
while we feel that it is adequate and natural, we marvel at the wisdom
of the poet who could vary his design with so much firmness.
The oracle, which continues to play an important part in this tale
of Thebes, has warned Oedipus that he will end his days within the
precincts of the Semnai Theai, or august goddesses of retribution.
In his new phase the man of haste and wrath is no longer heedless of
oracles; nor does he let their words lie idle in his mind. It is,
therefore, with a strong presentiment of approaching death that he
discovers early in this play that his feet, led by Antigone, have
rested in the grove of the Furies at Colonus. The place itself is
fair. There are here no harpy-gorgons with bloodshot eyes, and vipers
twining in their matted hair. The meadows are dewy, with crocus-flowers
and narcissus; in the thickets of olive and laurel nightingales keep
singing; and rivulets spread coolness in the midst of summer's heat.
The whole wood is hushed, and very fresh and wild. A solemn stillness
broods there; for the feet of the profane keep far away, and none may
tread the valley-lawns but those who have been purified. The ransomed
of the Lord walk there. This solemnity of peace pervades the whole
play, forming, to borrow a phrase from painting, the silver-gray
harmony of the picture. In thus bringing Oedipus to die among the
unshowered meadows of those Dread Ladies, whom in his troubled life he
found so terrible, but whom in his sublime passage from the world he
is about to greet resignedly, we may trace peculiar depth of meaning.
The thought of death, calm but austere, tempers every scene in the
drama. We are in the presence of one whose life is ended, who is about
to merge the fever of existence in the tranquillity beyond. This
impression of solemnity is heightened when we remember that the poet
wrote the _Coloneus_ in extreme old age. Over him, too, the genius
of everlasting repose already spread wings in the twilight, and the
mysteries of the grave were nearer to him and more daily present than
to other men.
A country fellow, who perceives Oedipus seated by his daughter on a
marble bench within the sacred precinct, bids them quit the spot,
for it is hallowed. Oedipus, however, knowing that his doom shall be
fulfilled, asks that he may be confronted with the elders of the place.
They come and gaze with mingled feelings of distrust and awe on the
blind hero, august in desolation. Before they can converse with him,
Oedipus has to quit the recesses of the grove, and gain a spot where
speech and traffic are permitted. Then, in answer to their questions,
he informs them who he is--Oedipus. At that name they start back in
horror, demanding that he shall carry the abomination of his presence
from their land. This affords the occasion for a splendid speech
from the old man, one of the most telling passages of eloquence in
Sophocles, in which he appeals to the time-long hospitality and fame
for generosity of Athens. Athens was never known to spurn the suppliant
or expel the stranger, and the deeds of Oedipus they so much dread are
sufferings rather:
#epei ta g' erga mou
peponthot' esti mallon e dedrakota.#
The Chorus, moved by the mingled impetuosity and sound reasoning of
their suitor, perceive that the case is too grave for them to decide.
Accordingly, they send a messenger for Theseus; but, before he can be
summoned, Ismene arrives on horseback with the news that her brothers
are quarrelling about the throne of Thebes. Eteocles, the younger, has
usurped the sovereignty, while Polyneices has fled to Argos to engage
the chiefs of the Achaians in his cause. Both parties, meantime, are
eager to secure the person of Oedipus, since an oracle has proclaimed
that with him will victory abide. Oedipus, hearing these tidings,
bursts into a strain of passionate denunciation, which proves that
the old fire of his temper is smouldering still unquenched. When he
was forlorn and in misery, his unnatural sons took no thought of him.
They sent him forth to roam a pariah upon the earth, leaving to his
daughters the care and burden of supporting him. Now, basely anxious
for their selfish profit, they come to claim possession of his old,
world-wearied flesh. Instead of blessings, they shall meet with curses.
Instead of the fair land of Thebes to lord it over, they shall barely
get enough ground to die and be buried in. He, meanwhile, will abide at
Athens, and bequeath a heritage of help and honor to her soil.
The Chorus now call upon Oedipus to perform the rites of purification
required by the Eumenides--rites which Sophocles has described with
the loving minuteness of one to whom the customs of Colonus were from
boyhood sacred. Ismene goes to carry out their instructions, and in her
absence Theseus arrives upon the scene. Theseus, throughout the drama,
plays towards Oedipus the part of a good-hearted hospitable friend. His
generosity is ethically contrasted with the meanness of Creon and the
selfishness of Polyneices, while, artistically, the practical energy
of his character serves for a foil to the stationary dignity of the
chief actor. Sophocles has thus contrived to give weight and importance
to a personage who might, in weaker hands, have been degraded into a
mere instrument. Oedipus assures the Attic king that he will prove no
useless and unserviceable denizen. The children of Erechtheus, whose
interests rank first in the mind of Theseus, will find him in the
future a powerful and god-protected sojourner within their borders.
His natural sympathy for the persecuted and oppressed having been thus
strengthened by the prospect of reciprocal advantage, Theseus formally
accepts Oedipus as a suppliant, and promises him full protection. At
this point, forming, as it were, a halting-place in the action of the
play, Sophocles introduced that famous song about Colonus, which no
one has yet succeeded in translating, but which, for modern ears, has
received new value from the music of Mendelssohn.
What follows, before the final climax of the drama, consists of the
efforts made by Creon, on the part of Eteocles, and by Polyneices, to
enlist Oedipus respectively upon their sides in the war of succession
to the Theban throne. Creon displays his heartless, cunning, impudent,
sophistical, and forceful character, while Oedipus opposes indignation
and contempt, unmasking his hypocrisy, and stripping his specious
arguments of all that hides their naked selfishness. In this scene we
feel that Sophocles is verging upon the Euripidean manner. A little
more would make the altercation between Creon and Oedipus pass over
into a forensic wrangling-match. As it is, the chief dramatic value
of the episode is to exhibit the grandeur of the wrath of Oedipus in
its righteous heat when contrasted with the wretched shifts of a mere
rhetorical sophist.
After Creon, by the help of Theseus, has been thwarted in his
attempt to carry off Antigone, Polyneices approaches with crocodile
tears, fawning intercessions, and fictitious sorrow for his father's
desolation. Oedipus flashes upon his covert egotism the same light of
clear unclouded insight which had unmasked Creon. "What," he asks,
"is the value of tears now, of prayers now? Dry were your eyes, hard
as stone your heart, dumb your lips, when I went forth from Thebes
unfriended. Here is your guerdon: Before Thebes's walls you shall
die, pierced by your brother's hand, and your brother by yours." The
imprecation of the father upon the son would be unnatural, were it
not for the son's falseness, who behaved like a Regan to Oedipus in
his calamity, and who now, when the old man has become a mysteriously
important personage, seeks to make the most of him for his own uses.
The protracted dialogues with Creon and Polyneices serve to enhance
the sublimity of Oedipus. He, all the while, is seated, a blind,
travel-stained, neglected mendicant, upon the marble bench of the
Eumenides. There is horror in his very aspect. Hellas rings with the
abominations connected with his name. Yet, to this poor pariah, to this
apparent object of pity and loathing, come princes and warriors capable
of stirring all the States of Greece in conflict. He rejects them,
firm in his consciousness of heaven-appointed destiny. Sophocles seems
bent on showing how the wrath of God may be turned aside from its most
signal and notorious victims by real purity of heart and nobleness of
soul; how, from the depths of degradation and affliction, the spirit
of man may rise; and how the lot of demigods may be reserved for those
whom the world ignorantly judges worthy of its scorn. Oedipus of
late stood like the lightning-blasted tree that travellers dread--the
_evitandum bidental_ of Roman superstition. His withered limbs have now
more health and healing in them than the leaf-embowered forest oak.
The treatment of Polyneices in the _Oedipus Coloneus_ supplies a good
example of the Sophoclean tendency to humanize the ancient myths of
Hellas. The curse pronounced by Oedipus formed an integral element
of that portion of the legend which suggested to Æschylus the _Seven
against Thebes_. By its force, the whole weight of the doom that
overhangs the house of Laius is brought to bear upon the suicidal
brethren, both of whom rush helplessly, with eyes open, to meet
inevitable fate.
#o Zeu te kai Ge kai polissouchoi theoi,
Ara t' Erinys patros he megasthenes#
are the opening words of the prayer of Eteocles in that tragedy; while
phrases like these, #o ponoi domon neoi palaioisi symmigeis kakois# and
#o melaina kai teleia geneos Oidipou t' ara#, form the burden of the
choric songs. Sophocles does not seek to make the wrath of Oedipus less
terrible; he adheres to the old outline of the story, and heightens the
tragic horror of the curse by framing for it words intense by reason of
their very calculated calmness (1383-1396). At the same time he shows
how the obstinate temper of Polyneices, and his sense of honor, are
necessary to its operation. After the dreadful sentence, dooming him
to self-murder by his brother's spear, has been pronounced, Polyneices
stands before his father and his sister like one stunned. Antigone,
with a woman's instinct, entreats him to choose the only way still
left of safety. He may disband the army, and retire from the adventure
against Thebes. To this her brother answers:
#all' ouch hoion te. pos gar authis an palin
strateum' agoimi tauton eisapax tresas?#
when she persists, he repeats #me peith' ha me dei#. Thus, instead of
bringing into strong relief the operation of blind fate, Sophocles
places in the foreground the human agencies which contribute to the
undoing of Polyneices. His crime of unfilial egotism, his dread of
being thought a coward, and his honor rooted in dishonor, drive him
through the tempest of his father's curse upon the rock of doom. The
part played by Antigone in this awful scene of altercation between her
father and her brother, first interceding for mercy, and then striving
to break the stubborn will of the rebellious youth,[141] prepares our
minds for the tragedy in which she will appear as protagonist. Hitherto
she has been remarkable for filial love. She now shows herself a gentle
and tender sister to one who had deeply wronged her. The absolute
unselfishness which gives to her the beauty as of some clear, flawless
jewel shines forth by anticipation in the _Coloneus_, enlisting our
warmest sympathies upon her side, and tempering the impression of
hardness that might be produced by a simple study of the _Antigone_.
When Polyneices, with the curse still ringing in his ears, has fled
forth, Cain-like, from the presence of his father, thunder is heard,
and the end approaches. The chief actors, led by the blind hero, move
from the stage in order suited to the processional gravity of the Greek
theatre, while the speech of the Messenger, conveying to the Chorus
the news of the last minutes in the life of Oedipus, prepares the
spectators for the reappearance of his daughters on the scene. As in
the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, so now a new motive of interest is introduced
in the last act of the drama. The _Antigone_ is imperatively demanded
as a sequel. Our attention is riveted upon Antigone, who in losing
her father has lost all. Her first thought is that he died nobly,
peacefully, at one with God. Her next thought is that she shall never
see him again, never more bear the sweet burden of anxiety and pain
for him, never even have access to his hidden tomb. Her third thought
is a longing to be dead with him, enfolded in oblivion of the fate
which persecutes her kith and kin. Life stretches before her boundless,
homeless, comfortless, nor has she now a single memory for him whose
love might have consoled a woman of less stubborn soul--for Hæmon. It
is characteristic of his whole conception of Antigone that Sophocles
introduced no allusion to that underplot of love at this point. When
Theseus reproves her for despair, she awakes to fresh unselfishness:
"Send me to Thebes," she cries, "that I may stay, if possible, my
brothers' strife." Throughout this final scene the single-hearted heat
and firm will of Antigone, her desire for action, and her readiness to
accept responsibility are contrasted with Ismene's yielding temper and
passivity. We are thus prepared for the opening of the third drama,
which, though written first by Sophocles, is the artistic close and
climax of the tale of Thebes.
The most perfect female character in Greek poetry is Antigone. She is
purely Greek, unlike any woman of modern fiction, except perhaps the
Fedalma of George Eliot. In her filial piety, in her intercession for
Polyneices at the knees of Oedipus, in her grief when her father is
taken from her, she does, indeed, resemble the women whom most men
among us have learned to honor in their sisters or their daughters or
their mother. Of such women the Greek maiden, with her pure calm face
and virginal straight lines of classic drapery, is still the saint and
patroness. But what shall we say of the Antigone of this last drama, of
the sister who is willing, lest her brother lie unburied on the Theban
plain, to lay her own life down, disobeying the law of her sovereign,
defying Creon to the face, appealing against unjust tribunals to the
judgment-seat of powers more ancient than the throne of Zeus himself,
and marching to her living tomb with dauntless strength in order that
the curse-attainted ghost of Polyneices shall have rest in Hades? To
the modern mind she appears a being from another sphere. A strain of
unearthly music seems to announce her entrance and her exit on the
stage. That the sacrifice of the sister's very life, the breaking
of her plighted troth to Hæmon, should follow upon the sprinkling
of those few handfuls of dust--that she should give that life up
smilingly, nor ever in her last hours breathe her lover's name--is a
tragic circumstance for which our sympathies are not prepared: we can
neither divest our minds of the fixed modern prejudice that the first
duty of a woman is to her husband, nor can we fully enter into the
antique superstition of defrauded sepulture. Yet it is necessary to do
both of these things, to sequester Antigone from the sphere of modern
obligations, and to enter hand in hand with her the inner sanctuary of
antique piety, in order to do justice to the conception of Sophocles.
This effort of the imagination may be facilitated by remembering,
first, that Antigone inherited her father's proud self-will--
#deloi to gennem' omon ex omou patros
tes paidos; eikein d' ouk epistatai kakois#--
and, secondly, that disaster after disaster, the loss of Oedipus,
the death of her two brothers, has come huddling upon her in a storm
of fate, so that life is, in a manner, over for her, and she feels
isolated in a cold and cruel world. This combination of her character
and her circumstances renders her action in the _Antigone_ conceivable.
Without the hardness she inherited from Oedipus, she could not have
gone through her tragic part. Without the vow she registered above her
father's grave, to bring help to her brethren, seeing that they alone
were left, the sentiment of her last speech would sound rhetorical.
Moreover, the poet who breathed into her form a breath of life so
fiery has himself justified us in regarding her act as one removed
from the plain path of virtue. Antigone was no Hindoo widow to die
upon a husband's pyre. Her heroism, her resistance offered to the will
of Creon, had in it a splendid criminality. It was just the casuistry
of the conflict between public and private obligations, between the
dictates of her conscience and the commands of her sovereign, that
enabled Sophocles to render the peculiar stoicism of her character
pathetic. In spite of all these considerations, it is probable that she
will strike a modern reader at the first as frigid. Especially, if he
have failed to observe the _nuances_ of her portrait in the _Oedipus
Coloneus_, he will be inclined to wish that Sophocles had softened
here and there the outlines of her adamantine statue. Yet, after long
contemplation of those perfect lineaments, we come to recognize in
her a purity of passion, a fixity of purpose, a loyalty of kinship, a
sublime enthusiasm for duty, simply conceived and self-justified in
spite of all conventions to the contrary, which soar above the strain
of modern tragic sentiment. Even Alfieri, in the noble drawing he has
sketched from the Sophoclean picture, could not abstain from violating
its perfection by this sentimental touch of common feeling:
Emone, ah! tutto io sento,
Tutto l' amor, che a te portava: io sento
Il dolor tutto, a cui ti lascio.
No such words are to be found in Sophocles upon the lips of the dying
Antigone. She is all for her father and her brothers. The tragedy of
Hæmon belongs to Creon, not to her. Her furthest concessions to the
sympathies which might have swayed a weaker woman are found in this
line,
#o philtath' Haimon, hos s' atimazei pater#,
and in the passage of the Kommos where she bewails her luckless lot of
maidenhood. For the rest, Sophocles has sustained her character as that
of one "whom, like sparkling steel, the strokes of chance made hard and
firm." This steely durability, this crystalline sparkle, divide her not
only from the ideal raised by romance for womanhood, but distinguish
her, as the daughter of Oedipus, from the general sisterhood even of
Greek heroines.
The peculiar qualities of Antigone are brought into sharp relief by the
milder virtues of Ismene, who thinks it right to obey Creon, and who
has no spirit for the deed of daring, but who is afterwards eager to
share the punishment of her sister. Antigone repels her very sternly,
herein displaying the force of her nature under its less amiable
aspect: "Have courage! Thou livest, but my soul long since hath died."
The glory of the act is hers alone. Ismene has no right to share it
when the risks are past, the penalty is paid. Antigone's repulsion of
her sister seems to supply the key to her own heroism. "Oedipus," she
says, "is dead; my brethren are dead: for them I lived, and in their
death I died to life; but you--your heart is not shut up within your
father's and your brother's grave; it is still warm, still eager for
love and the joys of this world. Live, then. For me it would be no more
possible to live such life as yours than for the clay-cold corpse upon
the bier."
The character of Creon, darkened in its tone and shadow to the utmost
with a view to affording a foil of another species for Antigone, was
thought worthy of minute and careful treatment by Sophocles. In the
_Oedipus Tyrannus_ he is wronged rather than wronging. While suffering
from the unjust suspicion and hasty language of the king, he pleads
his cause with decent gravity and shows no sign of either arrogance
or cowardice. At the end, when Oedipus has fallen, his own behavior
is such as would not disgrace a generous as well as prudent prince.
The neutrality for good or evil which distinguishes Creon in this
play, marking him out in contrast with the fiery heat of Oedipus,
the impious irony of Jocasta, is, to say the least, respectable. In
the _Oedipus Coloneus_ he plays a consistently mean and odious part;
his pragmatical display of rhetoric before the burghers of Colonus,
when tested by his violent and cruel conduct towards Antigone, proves
him to be a hollow-hearted and specious hypocrite. The light here
reflected back upon his respectability in the _Tyrannus_ is decidedly
unfavorable. In the _Antigone_ Creon becomes, if possible, still
more odious; only our animosity against him is tempered by contempt.
To the faults of egotism, hardness, and hypocritical prating, are
now added the infatuation of self-will and the godless hatred of a
dead foe. There is, indeed, a show of right in the decree published
concerning the two brothers, one of whom had brought a foreign army
against Thebes; but it would be sophistry to maintain that Creon was
actuated by patriotic motives. The defeat and death of Polyneices were
punishment enough. By pursuing his personal spite beyond the grave
Creon insults the common instincts of humanity, the sympathies of the
people, and the supposed feelings of the gods, who cannot bear to gaze
upon abominations. The pathetic self-devotion of Antigone, the voice
of the city, the remonstrances of Hæmon, and the warnings of Teiresias
are all thrown away upon his stubborn and conceited obstinacy. He shows
himself, in short, to be a tyrant of the orthodox sort. Like a tyrant,
he is, moreover, absurdly suspicious: the guardian has, he thinks, been
bought; Ismene must be hatching treason; Hæmon prefers a woman to his
duty; Teiresias is plotting for the sake of gain against him. When it
is just too late, he gives way helplessly and feebly, moved to terror
by the dark words of the seer. Creon is, therefore, a mixed character,
great neither for good nor for evil, weak through wilfulness, plausible
in words and wavering in his determinations, a man who might have
passed for excellent if he had never had to wield a kingdom's power.
His own description of himself--#mataion andra#--suits him not only in
the utter collapse of his character and rain of his fortunes, but also
in the height of his prosperity and fulness of his seeming strength.
Sophocles might fairly be censured for having made the misery of Creon
the climax of a drama which ought to have had its whole interest
centred in Antigone. Our sympathies have not been sufficiently enlisted
on the side of Hæmon to make us care much about his death. For
Eurydice it is impossible to rouse more than a languid pity. Creon,
we feel, gets no more than he deserves; instead of being sorry for
him, we are only angry that he was not swept away into the dustheap
of oblivion sooner. It was surely a mistake to divert the attention
of the audience, at the very end of the tragedy, from its heroine to
a character which, like that of Creon, rouses impatient scorn as well
as antipathy. That Sophocles had artistic reasons for not concluding
this play with the death of Antigone may be readily granted by those
who have made the crises of the _Ajax_, the _Oedipus Tyrannus_, and
the _Oedipus Coloneus_ the subject of special study. He preferred,
it seems, to relax the strained sympathies of his audience by a
prolongation of the drama on an altered theme. Yet this scarcely
justifies the shifting of the centre of interest attempted in the
_Antigone_. We have to imagine that the inculcation of a moral lesson
upon the crime of #asebeia# was the poet's paramount object.[142] If
so, he sacrificed dramatic effect to ethics.
It should be noticed that Antigone, in whom the fate of the family of
Laius is finally accomplished, falls an innocent victim. Her tragedy is
no immediate consequence of the Oedipodean curse. While her brethren
were wilfully involved in the doom of their house, she perished in the
cause of divine charity. Finding that the immutable ordinances of
Heaven clashed with the arbitrary volition of a ruler, she preferred to
obey the law of conscience and to die at the behest of a pride-maddened
tyrant. She is technically disobedient, morally most duteous. Thus the
_Antigone_ carries us beyond the region of hereditary disaster into the
more universal sphere of ethical casuistry. Its tragic interest depends
less upon the evolution of the law of ancestral guilt than on the
conflict of two duties. By suggesting the casuistical question to his
audience, while he freed his heroine from all doubt upon the subject,
Sophocles maintained the sublime simplicity which distinguishes
Antigone above all women of romance. The retribution that falls on
Creon furnishes a powerful example of the Greek doctrine of Nemesis;
but over Antigone herself Nemesis exerts no sway. In her action there
was nothing unconsidered; in her doom there was nothing unforeseen.
FOOTNOTES:
[129] "Fain would I be a fair lyre of ivory, and fair boys carrying me
to Dionysus's choir."
[130] "Soul of mine, in due season it is meet to gather love, when life
is young."
[131] _De Aud. Poet._, p. 16 C.
[132] _De Subl._, xxxiii. 5.
[133] See above, p. 378.
[134] Notice the phrases #beltiones# in _Poet._, cap. ii., as
compared with #kath' hemas#, and again #homoious poiountes, kallious
graphousin#, in cap. xv., together with the whole analogy of painting
in both of these places.
[135] Cap. xxvi.
[136] _Oed. Tyr._, 863; _Ant._, 450. The first translation is borrowed
from Mr. M. Arnold.
[137] See what Goethe says about the importance of Creon and Ismene in
the _Antigone_. (Eckermann, vol. i.)
[138] Our imperfect knowledge of the Attic drama prevents our forming
any opinion as to the employment of the _deus ex machina_ by the
earlier tragedians.
[139] English Translation, vol. i. p. 371.
[140] _Poetics_, xi.
[141] See especially 1181-1203, 1414-1443.
[142] The last six lines spoken by the Chorus seem to justify this
view. A couplet from the _Pheræi_ of Moschion might be inscribed as a
motto upon the _Antigone_:
#kenon thanontos andros aikizein skian;
zontas kolazein ou thanontas eusebes |
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