Another Tragedy
And they do mount up
Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone by Sophocles, translated by Francis Storr
Students are told to expect that the three Theban plays, so called, by Sophocles share themes. Of course they do. They tell us about the caprice of the gods, the doomed nature of all life on earth, the inevitability of tragedy. But there’s also some contrivance in that label. These plays, all of them written by Sophocles to be performed at the city’s dramatic festivals (and there was only one city, so far as this kind of drama was concerned), were in fact separated — and possibly by many years.
They concern the same characters, but a great gulf might come in time between Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone. Of course, they share ideas; but the plays are not one complete story, told in three distinct but interwoven parts. At least, that is what classicists now tell us. And when have they ever proven wrong?
I’d like for a moment to think about the kinds of suffering classical authors, the interpreters of mythic and legendary and religious tales, expected their audiences to be au fait with. In the character of Oedipus, almost all the tragedies comingle that can befall a man. Not only the tragedies of his own life, twin terrible tragedies of his inheritance, but tragedy also of his stock and bloodline. Tragedy for son and daughter alike. No redemption, no salvation possible; the only good — hollow laugh intended — of the whole story being an act of brave defiance. Defiance of fate, defiance of the gods, defiance of the evil done and transmitted and persisting. Defiance of King Creon, and a willingness to destroy his dynasty, as the house of Oedipus was destroyed by fate. Is this justice? Is mere defiance of this kind justice?
That’s all Antigone, daughter of Oedipus, condemned to die, ever got from this world: the need to show defiance of terrible things she had no part in, but which doomed her regardless. It’s a hard thing, fate.
And think of it from the perspective of Oedipus. Where once he was king, at one brief moment able to think happily of the children who would take after him, bear his burdens when he grew old, attain his mantles, continue his legacy — none of it lasted. Reality — cruel reality — would take even that from him. Think of what he had to imagine. The near entirety of his issue wiped out as if pursued by an avenging angel. The kindly ones do not take kindly to what Oedipus did. What it was foreordained that he must do.
Those kings, the gods happily send them mad. Is there justice in that madness? Where is there the free will upon which the aptness of punishment hangs?
Storr’s translations here are quite interesting. I have read many a rendering of Greek drama into very simple English, the English of the street and (it was once appropriate years ago) the marketplace. Vulgar English, one might say. There is always a good reason for modernising the Greek of these old plays, if the translator hunts for one.
After all, they were, in their own day, an art of the people. Men, almost all of the men of the city if some reconstructions of Athenian theatres can be trusted, would watch them. They would watch them at festival time. The plays had to be understood by as many as possible. Hence simplicity, hence making the poetry and the conventions possible to understand.
Many Greek comedies can be very, very funny if treated with this approach. Many tragedies especially stark to modern ears.
But this is not Storr’s approach. His view appears to be that the poetry of Sophocles is sufficiently profound, its subjects weighty enough, that it must be rendered in a kind of elevated English. The English of the more Latinate poets of Britain’s late nineteenth century. The stuff that won the Greek prizes at the public schools and the universities. Yes, both of them.
On occasion, Storr’s writing sets the faintest foot even into the Shakespearean. That’s unsteady ground and writers and translators must be very careful if they want to survive venturing onto that territory. Especially when the slightly less ornate and original poesy of someone like Marlowe, who was himself obsessed with the classics and constantly translating them, also exists as a model from the same period. I am not sure, although it is not up to me, that Storr entirely succeeds.
It’s a difficult business, this tragic game. How can you convey something so awful it is difficult to imagine? How can it seem to contain any truth when given, no matter how straight, to an audience that has not experienced the things on stage? An audience whose lives’ own tragedies are unknown, unpredictable, and yet to come. How can they know? How can they learn?