- High School
- Oedipus PART FOUR
Oedipus PART SIX
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[Enter SERVANT, an old shepherd]
OEDIPUS: Stranger from
is this the man you mentioned?MESSENGER: Yes, he is—
he’s the man you see in front of you. [1120]OEDIPUS: You, old man, over here. Look at me.
Now answer what I ask. Some time ago
did you work for Laius?SERVANT: Yes, as a slave.
But I was not bought. I grew up in his house.OEDIPUS: How did you live? What was the work you did?
SERVANT: Most of my life I’ve spent looking after sheep.
OEDIPUS: Where? In what particular areas?
SERVANT: On
OEDIPUS: Do you know if you came across this man
anywhere up there?SERVANT: Doing what?
What man do you mean?OEDIPUS: The man over here—
this one. Have you ever run into him? [1130]SERVANT: Right now I can’t say I remember him.
MESSENGER: My lord, that’s surely not surprising.
Let me refresh his failing memory.
I think he will remember all too well
the time we spent around
He had two flocks of sheep and I had one. 1360
I was with him there for six months at a stretch,
from early spring until the autumn season.
In winter I’d drive my sheep down to my folds,
and he’d take his to pens that Laius owned.
Isn’t that what happened—what I’ve just said? [1140]SERVANT: You spoke the truth. But it was long ago.
MESSENGER: All right, then. Now, tell me if you recall
how you gave me a child, an infant boy,
for me to raise as my own foster son.SERVANT: What? Why ask about that?
MESSENGER: This man here, my friend, 1370
was that young child back then.SERVANT: Damn you!
Can’t you keep quiet about it!OEDIPUS: Hold on, old man.
Don’t criticize him. What you have said
is more objectionable than his account.SERVANT: My noble master, what have I done wrong?
OEDIPUS: You did not tell us of that infant boy, [1150]
the one he asked about.SERVANT: That’s what he says,
but he knows nothing—a useless busybody.OEDIPUS: If you won’t tell us of your own free will,
once we start to hurt you, you will talk. 1380SERVANT: By all the gods, don’t torture an old man!
OEDIPUS: One of you there, tie up this fellow’s hands.
SERVANT: Why are you doing this? It’s too much for me!
What is it you want to know?OEDIPUS: That child he mentioned—
did you give it to him?SERVANT: I did. How I wish
I’d died that day!OEDIPUS: Well, you’re going to die
if you don’t speak the truth.SERVANT: And if I do,
there’s an even greater chance that I’ll be killed.OEDIPUS: It seems to me the man is trying to stall. [1160]
SERVANT: No, no, I’m not. I’ve already told you— 1390
I did give him the child.OEDIPUS: Where did you get it?
Did it come from your home or somewhere else?SERVANT: It was not mine—I got it from someone.
OEDIPUS: Which of our citizens? Whose home was it?
SERVANT: In the name of the gods, my lord, don’t ask!
Please, no more questions!OEDIPUS: If I have to ask again,
then you will die.SERVANT: The child was born in Laius’ house.
OEDIPUS: From a slave or from some relative of his?
SERVANT: Alas, what I’m about to say now . . .
it’s horrible.OEDIPUS: And I’m about to hear it. 1400 [1170]
But nonetheless I have to know this.SERVANT: If you must know, they said the child was his.
But your wife inside the palace is the one
who could best tell you what was going on.OEDIPUS: You mean she gave the child to you?
SERVANT: Yes, my lord.
OEDIPUS: Why did she do that?
SERVANT: So I would kill it.
OEDIPUS: That wretched woman was the mother?
SERVANT: Yes.
She was afraid of dreadful prophecies.OEDIPUS: What sort of prophecies?
SERVANT: The story went
that he would kill his father.OEDIPUS: If that was true, 1410
why did you give the child to this old man?SERVANT: I pitied the boy, master, and I thought
he’d take the child off to a foreign land
where he was from. But he rescued him,
only to save him for the greatest grief of all. [1180]
For if you’re the one this man says you are
you know your birth carried an awful fate.OEDIPUS: Ah, so it all came true. It’s so clear now.
O light, let me look at you one final time,
a man who stands revealed as cursed by birth, 1420
cursed by my own family, and cursed
by murder where I should not kill.[OEDIPUS moves into the palace]
CHORUS: O generations of mortal men,
how I count your life as scarcely living.
What man is there, what human being,
who attains a greater happiness [1190]
than mere appearances, a joy
which seems to fade away to nothing?
Poor wretched Oedipus, your fate
stands here to demonstrate for me 1430
how no mortal man is ever blessed.Here was a man who fired his arrows well—
his skill was matchless—and he won
the highest happiness in everything.
For, Zeus, he slaughtered the hook-taloned Sphinx
and stilled her cryptic song. For our state,
he stood there like a tower against death, [1200]
and from that moment, Oedipus,
we have called you our king
and honoured you above all other men, 1440
the one who rules in mightyBut now who is there whose story
is more terrible to hear? Whose life
has been so changed by trouble,
by such ferocious agonies?
Alas, for celebrated Oedipus,
the same spacious place of refuge
served you both as child and father,
the place you entered as a new bridegroom. [1210]
How could the furrow where your father planted, 1450
poor wretched man, have tolerated you
in such silence for so long?Time, which watches everything
and uncovered you against your will,
now sits in judgment of that fatal marriage,
where child and parent have been joined so long.
O child of Laius, how I wish
I’d never seen you—now I wail
like one whose mouth pours forth laments. [1220]
To tell it right, it was through you 1460
I found my life and breathed again,
and then through you my eyesight failed.[The Second Messenger enters from the palace]
SECOND MESSENGER: O you most honoured citizens of
what actions you will hear about and see,
what sorrows you will bear, if, as natives here,
you are still loyal to the house of Labdacus!
I do not think the Ister or the Phasis rivers
could cleanse this house. It conceals too much
and soon will bring to light the vilest things,
brought on by choice and not by accident.* 1470 [1230]
What we do to ourselves brings us most pain.CHORUS LEADER: The calamities we knew about before
were hard enough to bear. What can you say
to make them worse?SECOND MESSENGER: I’ll waste no words—
know this—noble Jocasta, our queen, is dead.CHORUS LEADER: That poor unhappy lady! How did she die?
SECOND MESSENGER: She killed herself. You did not see it,
so you'll be spared the worst of what went on.
But from what I recall of what I saw
you’ll learn how that poor woman suffered. 1480 [1240]
She left here frantic and rushed inside,
fingers on both hands clenched in her hair.
She ran through the hall straight to her marriage bed.
She went in, slamming both doors shut behind her
and crying out to Laius, who’s been a corpse
a long time now. She was remembering
that child of theirs born many years ago—
the one who killed his father, who left her
to conceive cursed children with that son.
She lay moaning by the bed, where she, 1490
poor woman, had given birth twice over—
a husband from a husband, children from a child. [1250]
How she died after that I don’t fully know.
With a scream Oedipus came bursting in.
He would not let us see her suffering,
her final pain. We watched him charge around,
back and forth. As he moved, he kept asking us
to give him a sword, as he tried to find
that wife who was no wife—whose mother’s womb
had given birth to him and to his children. 1500
As he raved, some immortal power led him on—
no human in the room came close to him.
With a dreadful howl, as if someone [1260]
had pushed him, he leapt at the double doors,
bent the bolts by force out of their sockets,
and burst into the room. Then we saw her.
She was hanging there, swaying, with twisted cords
roped round her neck. When Oedipus saw her,
with a dreadful groan he took her body
out of the noose in which she hung, and then, 1510
when the poor woman was lying on the ground—
what happened next was a horrific sight—
from her clothes he ripped the golden brooches
she wore as ornaments, raised them high,
and drove them deep into his eyeballs, [1270]
crying as he did so: "You will no longer see
all those atrocious things I suffered,
the dreadful things I did! No. You have seen
those you never should have looked upon,
and those I wished to know you did not see. 1520
So now and for all future time be dark!"
With these words he raised his hand and struck,
not once, but many times, right in the sockets.
With every blow blood spurted from his eyes
down on his beard, and not in single drops,
but showers of dark blood spattered like hail. [1280]
So what these two have done has overwhelmed
not one alone—this disaster swallows up
a man and wife together. That old happiness
they had before in their rich ancestry 1530
was truly joy, but now lament and ruin,
death and shame, and all calamities
which men can name are theirs to keep.CHORUS LEADER: And has that suffering man found some relief
to ease his pain?SECOND MESSENGER: He shouts at everyone
to open up the gates and thus reveal
to all Cadmeians his father’s killer,
his mother’s . . . but I must not say those words.
He wants them to cast him out of
so the curse he laid will not come on this house 1540
if he still lives inside. But he is weak
and needs someone to lead him on his way.
His agony is more than he can bear—
as he will show you—for on the palace doors
the bolts are being pulled back. Soon you will see
a sight which even a man filled with disgust
would have to pity.[OEDIPUS enters through the palace doors]
CHORUS LEADER: An awful fate for human eyes to witness,
an appalling sight—the worst I’ve ever seen.
O you poor man, what madness came on you? 1550
What eternal force pounced on your life [1300]
and, springing further than the longest leap,
brought you this awful doom? Alas! Alas!
You unhappy man! I cannot look at you.
I want to ask you many things—there’s much
I wish to learn. You fill me with such horror,
yet there is so much I must see.OEDIPUS: Aaaiiii, aaaiii . . . Alas! Alas!
How miserable I am . . . such wretchedness . . .
Where do I go? How can the wings of air 1560 [1310]
sweep up my voice? Oh my destiny,
how far you have sprung now!CHORUS LEADER: To a fearful place from which men turn away,
a place they hate to look upon.OEDIPUS: O the dark horror wrapped around me,
this nameless visitor I can’t resist
swept here by fair and fatal winds.
Alas for me! And yet again, alas for me!
The agony of stabbing brooches
pierces me! The memory of aching shame! 1570CHORUS LEADER: In your distress it’s not astonishing
you bear a double load of suffering, [1320]
a double load of pain.OEDIPUS: Ah, my friend,
so you still care for me, as always,
and with patience nurse me now I’m blind.
Alas! Alas! You are not hidden from me—
I recognize you all too clearly.
Though I am blind, I know that voice so well.CHORUS LEADER: You have carried out such dreadful things—
how could you dare to blind yourself this way? 1580
What god drove you to it?OEDIPUS: It was Apollo, friends,
it was Apollo. He brought on these troubles— [1330]
the awful things I suffer. But the hand
which stabbed out my eyes was mine alone.
In my wretched life, why should I have eyes
when nothing I could see would bring me joy?CHORUS LEADER: What you have said is true enough.
OEDIPUS: What is there for me to see, my friends?
What can I love? Whose greeting can I hear
and feel delight? Hurry now, my friends, 1590 [1340]
lead me away from Thebes—take me somewhere,
a man completely lost, utterly accursed,
the mortal man the gods despise the most.CHORUS LEADER: Unhappy in your fate and in your mind
which now knows all. Would I had never known you!OEDIPUS: Whoever the man is who freed my feet,
who released me from that cruel shackle [1350]
and rescued me from death, may that man die!
It was a thankless act. Had I perished then,
I would not have brought such agony 1600
to myself or to my friends.CHORUS LEADER: I agree—
I would have preferred your death, as well.OEDIPUS: I would not have come to kill my father,
and men would not see in me the husband
of the woman who gave birth to me.
Now I am abandoned by the gods, [1360]
the son of a corrupted mother,
conceiving children with the woman
who gave me my own miserable life.
If there is some suffering more serious 1610
than all the rest, then it too belongs
in the fate of Oedipus.CHORUS LEADER: I do not believe
what you did to yourself is for the best.
Better to be dead than alive and blind.OEDIPUS: Don’t tell me what I’ve done is not the best.
And from now on spare me your advice. [1370]
If I could see, I don’t know how my eyes
could look at my own father when I come
to Hades or could see my wretched mother.
Against those two I have committed acts 1620
so vile that even if I hanged myself
that would not be sufficient punishment.
Perhaps you think the sight of my own children
might give me joy? No! Look how they were born!
They could never bring delight to eyes of mine.
Nor could the city or its massive walls,
or the sacred images of its gods.
I am the most abhorred of men, I,
the finest one of all those bred in Thebes, [1380]
I have condemned myself, telling everyone 1630
they had to banish for impiety
the man the gods have now exposed
as sacrilegious—a son of Laius, too.
With such polluting stains upon me,
could I set eyes on you and hold your gaze?
No. And if I could somehow block my ears
and kill my hearing, I would not hold back.
I’d make a dungeon of this wretched body,
so I would never see or hear again.
For there is joy in isolated thought, 1640
sealed off from a world of sorrow. [1390]
O Cithaeron, why did you shelter me?
Why, when I was handed over to you,
did you not do away with me at once,
so I would never then reveal to men
the nature of my birth? Ah Polybus,
and
my father’s ancient house, you raised me well—
so fine to look at, so corrupt inside!
Now I've been exposed as something bad, 1650
contaminated in my origins.
Oh you three roads and hidden forest grove,
you thicket and defile where three paths meet,
you who swallowed down my father’s blood [1400]
from my own hands, do you remember me,
what I did there in front of you and then
what else I did when I came here to
Ah, you marriage rites—you gave birth to me,
and then when I was born, you gave birth again,
children from the child of that same womb, 1660
creating an incestuous blood family
of fathers, brothers, children, brides,
wives and mothers—the most atrocious act
that human beings commit! But it is wrong
to talk about what it is wrong to do,
so in the name of all the gods, act quickly—
hide me somewhere outside the
or slaughter me, or hurl me in the sea,
where you will never gaze on me again.
Come, allow yourself to touch a wretched man. 1670
Listen to me, and do not be afraid—
for this disease infects no one but me.CHORUS LEADER: Creon is coming. He is just in time
to plan and carry out what you propose.
With you gone he’s the only one who’s left
to act as guardian ofOEDIPUS: Alas,
how will I talk to him? How can I ask him
to put his trust in me? Not long ago [1420]
I treated him with such contempt.[Enter Creon]
