The Three Theban Plays by Sophocles - Translated by Robert Fagles; Introductions, Notes - Bernard Knox

The Three Theban plays are - Antigone, Oedipus the king, and Oedipus at Colonus, and all three were by Sophocles, and are based histories of the saga of Thebes.

Sophocles is said to have lived in 5th c. B.C, and is said to have won the annual festival of Dionysus, no lesser than 18 times. The award was given to three dramatists, annually. These plays were very important in democratic Greece, as they made use of incidents from mythical times, but yet managed to reflect the contemporary reality. The myths had the recognition of all those who viewed the plays:

"These myths were the only national memory of the remote past, of a time before the Greeks invented the alphabet, so that, shifting and changing though they might be, they had the authority, for the audience, of what we call history."

Sophocles is credited with 123 plays, of which only seven have survived. It is said in this book that the production of these plays follow that order chronologically as presented in this book, although the mythical events has the sequence of Oedipus the king, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.

Sinhala tanslation of Antigone by Ariyawansa Ranaweera

 My first experience with drama of Sophocles, was watching the first staging of අද වගේ දවසක ඇන්ටිගනි (  Antigone - A day like Today), by Sri Lankan Dramatist Priyankara Rathnayake, attached to the University of Kelaniya It made such an impact, especially the acting of Prasadini Atapattu as Antigone, the play has a special place in my heart even after a period of  more than ten years of seeing it. Rathnayake used the translation of renowned Sinhala poet and translator, Ariyawansa Ranaweera for his work.

From the Sinhala Production by Rathnayake

Antigone: Antigone rebels against a law set by her uncle, the king that her brother, labelled a traitor be denied the final rights for the dead. She pays a very heavy price for this, as does the king, Creon. Creon holds that.

"And whoever places a friend
above the good of his own country, he is nothing;
I have no use for him."

Most modern interpretations bring to prominence, that the importance of  someone's personal relations are so important to that person, that political declarations ( which have the political leaders thinking behind them at times, over the constitution of the land ), play a secondary role. In Sri Lanka this was first shown in November in post-2009, after the LTTE was defeated, and the suggestion that I read into it was the denial of certain ceremonies to mark the death of the rebels, in the north ( terrorists, to us in the South). ( November is their month of remembering their "heroes", or more naturally,  the dead by their loved ones).

In the play, Antigone hardly gets any comfort from the elders, till it is too late. For most of her play, she is treated as a head strong girl. In fact there is actual text in the script, which suggests a will to counter the stubbornness of Antigone. Says, Creon:

"I am not the man, not now: she is the man
if this victory goes to her and she goes free."

To her credit, her late brother Polynices's last request was the granting of final rights, upon his death ( which was prophesied ), in Oedipus of Colonus.  That Gods behaved in mysterious ways and could bring a man down from great heights at a moment, is illustrated across all three plays. Antigone, believed that she'd be saved if she was in the right - yet, she wasn't; still Creon suffered, which was tantamount to admission of his error. Of Creon,

He is revealed as a disastrous failure, both as head of a family and head of state, an offender against heaven and a man without family or friends, without the respect of his fellow-citizens. He may well describe himself as “no one. Nothing” (1446).

And, Antigone,

she is the embodiment of the only consolation tragedy can offer—that in certain heroic natures unmerited suffering and death can be met with a greatness of soul which, because it is purely human, brings honor to us all.

The introduction to each of the plays ( from which the extracts are taken), give a sociopolitical, philosophical,  and moral insight of the play, of the times, as well as how some of these sentiments have changed over the last 2500 or so years.

Oedipus the King:  Oedipus has been treated very unfairly by fate, and for all his heroics in Thebes, for Thebes, and finds himself as the cause for a plague that hits Thebes. The play is universally regarded as a classic example of the "tragedy of fate". In the introduction of the play, Freud is quoted with his own interpretation of the destiny of Oedipus.

Oedipus Rex is what is known as a tragedy of destiny. Its tragic effect is said to lie in the contrast between the supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of mankind to escape the evil that threatens them. The lesson which, it is said, the deeply moved spectator should learn from the tragedy is submission to the divine will and realization of his own impotence.

...

His destiny moves us only because it might have been ours—because the oracle laid the same curse upon us before our birth as upon him. It is the fate of all of us, perhaps, to direct our first sexual impulse towards our mother and our first hatred and our first murderous wish against our father. Our dreams convince us that this is so.

Besides Freud's interpretation, the terror of our unknown futures, how correct or fruitful would be our so called calculated risks and decisions, is the main focus that this play has offered to modern man.

An important point that this introduction argues upon is that, while modern poets like Yates conjure up " mystic romantic visions", for the then spectators the fatalism of the gods was but an ipso facto, and the tragedy of the human condition was the main focus. But by the last half of the 5th century, B.C., the belief in prophecy and religious tradition was under attack, with philosophers and sophists looking at things with a more critical eye.

Another interesting point that took my notice was whether Jocasta, actually knew, or at least guess who Oedipus was, and didn't want to "upset the apple cart"; for, what had happened, had happened. It suggested to me a cautious foresight of the woman, as against "fools rush in - where angels fear to tread" kind of courage of man. She scorns the prophesies of Zeus, and attempts to brush away the suspicion from mind of Oedipus, not withstanding certain scars which he would've got as a child. I looked up on the strength of this suspicion, and it appears that a minority does have it. 

The beauty, and the tragedy of the man is presented quite precisely in the introduction, as follows:

The catastrophe of the tragic hero thus becomes the catastrophe of fifth-century man; all his furious energy and intellectual daring drive him on to this terrible discovery of his fundamental ignorance—he is not the measure of all things but the thing measured and found wanting.

The argument for, and against the existence of a free will is discussed at length. Not only religious beliefs, even Marxism is evaluated in that context, in these pages. These interpretations are what I admire most about this book.

There are two obvious ways of avoiding the contradiction, both of them extreme positions and at opposite poles to each other; one might call them, to use a political metaphor, the right and the left. The right is all for order and pattern; it escapes the dilemma by dispensing with freedom altogether.... view, whether Christian with St. Augustine—that all history is God’s providential preparation of two cities, one of God, one of Satan, and that certain souls are predestined for salvation ...or materialist and atheist with Marx and Engels, denying the freedom of history to all classes but the proletariat—“Freedom,” wrote Engels, “is the recognition of necessity” - if you take either of these determinist views, you have no anatomy, no contradiction. But you have no freedom, and, unless you happen to be one of the Christian or the Marxist elect, you have no future either.
...

What we have called the left, on the other hand, is all for freedom; to the devil with pattern and order, this party is for anarchy, the human will is absolutely free and nothing is predictable; there is no pattern of order in the universe, which is merely the operation of blind chance. If you deny the possibility of prediction and the existence of order, whether as an “atomic” theorist like Democritus, or out of sheer desperation, as Jocasta does in the play—“What should a man fear? It’s all chance, / chance rules our lives” (1069-70)—you have abolished the logical contradiction. But you accept a blind, pointless, meaningless universe—the universe of the absurd.

The argument for, and against the absurd, the latter (identified from a very early stage) which came up for deep philosophical discussion from 19th century on wards, is the platform that I was searching for, when digging deep into these interpretations of the plays. 

In hind sight, one freedom was allowed Oedipus - the freedom to find, or not find the truth. Jocasta, with cautious womanly foresight discouraged him. The courage, intelligence, and the perseverance, all contribute to his downfall - qualities that make a human, great. 

Oedipus at Colonus:

Athenians didn't see this play till, 4-5 years into the passing of Sophocles, who is believed to have died in his early 90s, around 406-5 B.C.  Between the years of his passing, and the performance, Athenians went through tough times due to civil war, and the introduction suggests, seeing this play in 401 B.C., would've been "a valedictory celebration of Athens as it was in its time of greatness."

An important observation in this play is that Oedipus has recovered from his initial shock, guilt, and self rejection, and has come to terms with the cruelty of fate, as played out to him. He vehemently rejects that there was anything criminal inside him, and his defense is not contested by Creon, Theseus, or anyone else. He is still stained and considered polluted - but he's not guilty of a crime, they all agree.

But as for me alone—
say my unwilling crimes against myself
and against my own were payment from the gods
for something criminal deep inside me ... no, look hard,
you’ll find no guilt to accuse me of—I am innocent!

Oedipus, tired, beggarly, comes to Athens for his last rest, and the chorus hints that a man must concur, that he must leave, when his time comes.

Show me a man who longs to live a day beyond his time
who turns his back on a decent length of life,
I’ll show the world a man who clings to folly.
For the long, looming days lay up a thousand things
closer to pain than pleasure, and the pleasures disappear,

The play details on the bitter sentiments he has towards his two sons, his curses upon them, and his love for his daughters, who had never rejected him despite his polluted state, and rejection from Thebes.

As previously stated, the introductions for each of the plays is invaluable. Besides this, there is "A Note on the text of Sophocles", and how they came to survive. Alexandrian editions - work of scholars and poets at the libraries in Alexandria, in the new city founded by Alexander, but after his brief time, ensured that commentaries were made and manuscripts compared, to result these editions -set a standard to protect these texts. Any major corruptions, additions or omissions could've taken place between the time of Sophocles' death and the law Lycurgus ( in 330 B.C. the leading Athenian statesman, Lycurgus, proposed legislation designed to ensure that in Athens, if not elsewhere, the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides would be staged in correct versions.). Further notes on translations are available to explain where lies ambiguities in texts, which text was preferred where, which interpretation was selected and the reasons why. All this suggests that this is possibly the most complete work on the Three Theban plays by Sophocles.

It has been a project of sort, spanning more than two months - but a totally rewarding one - and the kind of reading exercises, I tell myself I should spend more time on, compared to certain works of fiction, am trying distance from ;  or rather been trying to distance from, over the last 1-2 years.

Rating: *****
Genre: Drama
Related Genres: Greek History / Philosophy