Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus. Lecture 10 by Michael Davis

we're not reading it out of order the dramatic gourd I think Antigone was written first it's the old I mean so these were not a trilogy so maybe that's why they do it but the order the dramatic order is clearly the order were reading in them in because in Oedipus at Colonus Edith pisses blind and has been exiled from Thebes and in and the Antigone he's dead and she's you know responding to the war between her two brothers and so I'm just thinking what if what a big I had argued I still think that the most impressive character in the Oresteia is quite a master and part of the proof of that is that she's the only character that spans all three plays but of course crayons the only character that spans all three plays in this group and he's not the most impressive character I think well I think that there's evidence in the play that we have no reason to believe that she knows knows at the beginning of the play but halfway through it looks as though she's figured it out before he has and that's why she doesn't want to be continued so when exactly that happens that'd be an interesting question to figure out when if you can when in the play she begins to wonder about this but there are certainly grounds I mean we you'll see right he's he walks into town we're told in the play later that he looks a lot like Leia's he limps he comes from well the that that doesn't count with her but so she looks a lot like his father there was an Oracle saying that he was going to kill his father after he came into town his father I mean we'll see a problem with that too but the father dies and either this comes so it wouldn't take much for Jocasta to start putting this stuff together so I mentioned this several times it is in some ways it's not just for us but it's the Greek tragedy there are philosophers who I mean Hegel spends much more time on Antigone Heidegger also on Antigone but Aristotle mentions that I think I told you 19 times and the poetics nothing else comes close their versions by their Frenchburg versions by kornei Voltaire English version by Dryden latin version by seneca french version by g'd not to mention Aeschylus and Euripides they're they're lost but we know that they did right eat up his plays and of course for us there's the in flicks tour Denari influence that Freud had identifying the universe complex and yet for what is maybe the tragedy of the tragic poet in the tragic age one wonders about some of the strange plot glitches that are present in it okay so what's the sequence of action before the play what's it supposed to be so first Oracle the son of Laius will kill of Laius and Jocasta will kill either Laius if you look at line 723 on page 42 or both of his parents if you look at line 1176 on page 63 Jocasta gives birth to Oedipus she and Laius agree to kill him because of the Oracle so they pierce his feet with a pin and give him to a servant to leave out on a nearby hill or mountain mount Catherine notice Jocasta who later expresses such disbelief in Oracle's to eat opposed never has any doubt at all about what they're doing now the servant who is a herdsman can't do it he takes pity on the baby and he gives Oedipus to another herdsmen nearby herdsmen who is a servant to the king of Corinth King paulibus who in turn gives etapas to Polybus and Merapi his wife the Queen that's at 11 you you get that information and line 1178 following so they adopt him and call him we did puse literally swell foot so way to puse Oedipus swell foot now what swell foot so his swollen he of the swollen foot not yes well feed but swell foot so presumably they call him that because of his feet now he Thomas grows up in Corinth and one day he hears a drunk say that he's not the son of paulibus and Moreau P he confronts his parents they deny this so he's still suspicious and goes to Delfy to ask the Oracle and he gets Oracle number two the Oracle that says that he will kill his father and marry his mother Oedipus hearing this flees from Corinth he believes enough to flee but not enough to believe in order to avoid becoming a subject for Freud now he comes to a fork in the road on the way to Thebes where he meets a party of travelers there are five of them were told the herald tells him to get out of the way he won't the person in the cart the leader obviously of the group of five strikes him on the head with the goad that he uses to encourages I'm not sure whether there whatever is pulling the cart so edifice in a fit of anger kills all of them over this traffic dispute the group seems to be Laius and his retinue on the way to Delfy clearly to consult the Oracle interestingly were never told why they need to consult the Oracle meanwhile back in Thebes after Laius leaves but before etapas arrives a monster the Sphinx was part woman in part lion is exacting a flesh-and-blood tribute until somebody solves her riddle her famous riddle is what walks on four legs in the morning two legs at midday three legs in the evening and the answer is the human being walks on crawls as a baby walks that in full health on two feet and then in old age needs to use a staff or a cane so EDA pass arrives solves the riddle gets the kingship and Jocasta as a reward and serves the Thebans well for what's got to be 15 to 20 years he has we're told two daughters and in this play although later it will be specified in other plays but in this play an unspecified number of sons then say 15 20 years into his rule a new plague plague hits Thebes there are no births of any sort in the city and no burials are possible so Edith sends Creon the brother of Joe cast Jocasta his wife and mother sends Creon to the Oracle to ask what to do and it turns out that the cause of the plague is that laces murderers are still at large in Thebes on Crayons advice either pass ends for Tiresias the seer in order to consult him this is where the Oedipus teranas opens all this information were given retroactive Lea within the play as we go along so when messengers come in or when they're in conversation you get a kind of picture of what had to have happened before the play opened now problems they're always problems first one he claims that he killed all of the company but one of the laces servants apparently survived that servant swears that they were attacked by robbers plural and of course eatables knows very well that he was alone this difficulty is not simply one that we see but it's brought out in the play itself Jocasta convinces Oedipus to send for the servant to sort this problem out by the time he comes that's about 1110 line 11 10 the incest issue has so overwhelmed Oedipus that he doesn't even ask about the discrepancy although the parasite question really turns on it because if he didn't kill them if they were killed by a party of of robbers and not by eateth us then of course he's not guilty of killing his father even if he is guilty of sleeping with his mother no it might be too much to accept the coincidence of to meetings at one crossroads between Thebes and Corinth on the very same day where there are two there are these two bushwhacking x' that's not exactly what it is but you know what I mean but in a way is it any harder to accept that than to accept the Gilbert and Sullivan coincidences that sort of animate this play that's probably a reference you don't get anymore because you know no Gilbert & Sullivan but in in hms pinafore there is the whole story turns on switching at birth between the captain of this ship and refracts straw who is a just a lowly sailor on the ship and refracts trough falls in love with the captain's daughter but again marry her because she's of a higher class and he's on a lower class so they have this terrible problem but then it turns out that there is a nurse maid who nursed the captain when he was a baby her name is buttercup and Buttercup reveals that she inadvertently switched the captain and refracts strong when they were babies and therefore of course he can now marry her because it's perfectly okay for him to decide I don't care about rank I'll marry buttercup even though she isn't really the captain's daughter because I'm the captain because I would you get the whole silliness but the real silly is of course is that the captain is like I don't know 50 years old and refracts draw is maybe 21 or something and so you've got this very strange they just ignore it they they regularly do that in Gilbert Scott O'Sullivan operettas and something like that's going on here because in fact what if we got we've got the strange coincidence of the herdsman when the guy comes from corinth to to the messenger comes from corinth it turns out to be the very same corinthian herdsmen to which the the Theban herdsmen had given Oedipus at birth and lo and behold the witness that we've sent for who was on the road with the king the herald who escaped is the very same herdsmen who act to whom the King Laius gave a tip us to abandon and on Mount Catherine in when he was a baby so is it any harder to accept the possibility that there are two events on the road at one day than to accept this this pile of coincidences we need to see that on this robber robbers issue Oedipus really jumps the gun that he assumes that he was the murderer he acts as though he knows when he doesn't really know it wouldn't ever stand up in court it wouldn't even stand up in Athena's Court it doesn't look like it's a description of the same event the other really interesting thing is of course we buy into it too very we don't even notice it we accept it just like that why well we need a coherent story in order to make our time spent in the theater watching this thing make any sense if he didn't do it the whole thing falls apart and what are we doing sitting here what so we have a kind of vested interest in making things make sense and we buy into it but of course he buys into it for something like the same reason - which means Sophocles is seducing you into doing the sort of thing that the same sort of thing that eatables does second problem we're supposed to believe that although Oedipus knew Laius had died he's lived at least 15 years in Thebes and no one has mentioned any details of this fact to him he doesn't know Laius was on his way to the oracle he doesn't even know Laius was murdered he doesn't know that the Thebans never investigated the death of Laius so when he discovers all of this is it any wonder then he jumps to the conclusion that there's a conspiracy there was a conspiracy in Thebes to kill Laius when you get there you've seen him fly off the handle so many times that you say there you go again you know you're assuming this conspirator but actually when you think about his situation it's not so nutty that he should think something strange otherwise why is all this information been kept from him for twenty years you'd think some of it would have had to come out an ordinary conversation third problem I like this one the best I think the marriage look at Lane 736 on page 42 bottom of the page how long ago is this the news came to the city just before just before you became King and all men's eyes look to you what is it heat abyss that's in your mind so Jocasta's husband is dead for what can only be a day or so at most Edom has come to Thebes looking we're told remarkably like Laius and with swollen feet he solves the riddle of the Sphinx marries Jocasta with no mention of mourning for her previous husband at all so yeah II tipis knows that Laius is dead but he doesn't know that he's dead yesterday this version is a little tight on time but at least the sequence looks right but look on page 44 this is where it gets really bizarre it's plain it's plain who was told who was it told you this the only servant that escaped safe home is he at home now no when he came home again presumably when he came home from initially when he came home from the accident not from the from the the event on the road and saw you King and Laius was dead he came to me and touched my hand and begged that I should send him to the fields to be my shepherd and so he might see the city as far off as he might so I sent him away he was an honest man as slaves go and was worthy of far more than what he asked of me so this version has it that the servant who is reporting the death of Laius comes back to Thebes to find Jocasta and Oedipus already married this version has it that the servant comes back to Thebes finds a murderer on the throne who looks like the former king walks with a limp and comes from Corinth this is the servant of course who gave Oedipus to the herdsman as a baby the servant then runs away and so condones bigamy regicide parricide and incest rather than be known as a liar now all of this brings us to the question of the status of Oracle's in the play and that of course means implicitly the status of the gods either a tip has killed his father and married his mother and the Oracle is true or he didn't kill his father and did marry his mother and the Oracle is false now if it's not true then the third Oracle about the cause of the new plague is suspect in this case Oedipus would have discovered his real crime by unjustifiably having assumed that he committed another crime not the Oracle but his will would be the source of his punishment so some tentative conclusions the the Oedipus teranas seems to allow for two sorts of interpretations one of them turns on his character his anger for example the fact that I'm thinking think about what happens at the crossroads now the plot of the play is really only an instrument to reveal this and so the puzzles the knots in it they don't seem quite so important but the other interpretation way of interpreting the play turns not on the character but the plot and if it turns on the plot it must refuse to ignore the puzzles and knots that show up in the plot for example through Oedipus's ignorance we discover what we would really have to know you know in order to justify what we only assumed to be the case now the question of how these two levels of interpretation it are related is crucial because the first level gives us an Oedipus who is a well-meaning man who through no ambition of his own after all is only running away from what he thinks is a terrible fate through no ambition of his own is made king of Thebes who's trying to avoid the most terrible of crimes he becomes king and he seems to be really quite a good king think about how this play opens they come to him and they beg him for help they treat him almost as though he's a god so it looks as though he's done pretty well for the past 20 years in Thebes the second level gives us an Oedipus who is the doer of all these crimes this tension is really the double meaning of the Greek in the title Torah knows that nothing means on the one hand just the in the time the mythical I think I've mentioned this before in the mythical time when the play is supposed to have taken place it would just mean king it wouldn't mean doesn't have the connotation of tyrant but if you're sitting in the audience in five whatever it was when this was play was produced in Athens it means tyrant so the auditors of the play the spectators have to hear both of those tiranos Oedipus tour knows me means eat a puss the king or eat of us the tyrant and necessarily both of those things at the same time so the tension between the double Turner knows of the title is in a way the same as the tension between the two Oedipus's on the one hand eat a puss the good king and on the other hand either puss the the man who commits the most serious crimes that human beings can commit and it's not just mean Plato picks up on this in his description of tyranny in book nine of the Republic when he makes it clear that my Freud would have loved this the tyrant commits the crimes that the rest of us only dream about but his goal is to show that he can do anything he wants to and that means violating it's fundamentally antinomian not because he wants these things but because he wants to show that he can do it and for that you have to pick out the worst things and that would mean you know for most people's point of view something like incest and parasite those are the worst things you can do so I'll do them and I'll show you can't touch me and I'm above it all and I'm not like I'm not like the rest of you the rest of you have to pay attention to these things but I don't so there's a kind of striving for an autonomy to be more than human there are elements of that all over this that's why turn-ons tyrant is very much there on the other hand he really is the guy they come to and say can you help us you helped us before and you're so smart and we're not as smart as you are and you got that thing about walking in the morning in the midday and the evening and none of us can get that so you might you must be able since you can interpret poetry so well you must be really smart I wanted to say that again in case any of you didn't hear because ok so insofar as the two levels are brought together in the play it will be by way of an act of will on the part of Edith by assuming the many attackers are one despite the fact if you look on page 47 at line 844 he himself says you said that he spoke of a highway robbers who killed Laius now if he uses the same number it was not I who killed him one man cannot be the same as many he articulates that is I mean that's that's his his ultimate defense we'll come back to that now all of this is reflected in in yet another way his language always betrays him in the play Sophocles makes him speak from the start as though he always already knows what he will later find out so for example if you look on page 16 you get this beautiful case he's talking to Creon I may have to change it a little bit okay line one twenty following Oedipus what was it if we could even find a slim beginning in which to hope we might discover much this man said that the robbers they encountered were many and the hands that did the murder were many it was no man single power and then II depe says how could the robber dare Adid like this where he not helped with money from the city money and treachery you see what he's just done he slid from robbers to robber which is what he's got to do in order to assume the guilt later even though everybody's telling him it was robbers what's robbers he slides so easily in his language he doesn't know that he's done that Sophocles just made him do it in order to show that in a weird way he already knows what he will later what he will later find out line 260 265 he says since I am now the holder of his office and have his marriage bed and wife and had his line not been unfortunate we would have common children fortune leaped upon his head because of all these things I fight in his defense as for my father and everybody in the audience is here there gasping or sort of chuckling Andy Tibbitts doesn't actually know what he said he can't speak metaphorically even when he wants to yeah without realizing it he always speaks the literal truth the overall problem then of the play is in a way this Oedipus is a Torah knows who is extraordinarily respected and a model of public spiritedness a real king in the best sense and etapas is someone who kills his father marries his mother and brings a terrible plague on his city he's a tyrant how are these two connected why is e to piss the good singled-out to commit parasite and incest and if you look at a line 1193 it gets even more interesting because there the chorus say what it what a man what man what man on earth wins more of happiness then it's then a seeming and after that a turning away Oedipus you are my paradigmatic asyou and your fate he's the paradigm of the it's even more pronounced in the Greek the paradigm of the human so why is he to piss the good singled out to commit parasite and incest is connected to the fact that Oedipus is meant to be the paradigmatic for our humanity so in a way we are in a way singled out to commit parasite and incest and we need to figure out what he means by that no of course not and in fact he could be lying as you might expect him to do that I mean how many times do you see this in the movies you know we were oh my god we were attacked by thousands of people when in fact it was you know one particularly agile kung fu II woman who read you know attack and in you know so you're embarrassed by the fact that there were five of you and there were one of him and so you say we were attacked by robbers so it's perfectly you can give a perfectly ordinary explanation for that or you could say he might have he you know it's harder to say that he necessarily recognized heat up as because after all he didn't know that he was Corinthian he probably could see that he lived he saw he could have seen that he looked somewhat like Laius but it's not clear that he would have necessarily put all that together but when he comes home and sees eat up is on the throne eat up is married to Jocasta they don't even know Laius is dead yet this is weird beyond belief and he sees that all of that has gone wrong and he the only thing has to say to her is get me out of here I don't want to have to deal with it you can understand that you could argue that sheer cowardice on his part but it's also a kind of acknowledgment that we don't you can put it in this way you can put it together but you have to write another play to put it together and that undermines your understanding of what is going on in this play it shows you that the details of this play don't fit together in the way everybody assumes they fit together and Sophocles has picked out this one thing that he's willing to talk about he says oh my gosh look robber robbers oh and need APIs at one point says well it can't be me because plural can't equal singular there if one can't be many there for it's out of the question so softly shows you this plot glitch but once you see that he sees it and sees it as a problem you realize that all these other things that you see his problems are also problems and they're not being acknowledged and they're not being put together now he's a master of plotting he doesn't make mistakes like that he shows you he doesn't make mistakes like that by pointing out such a mistake in his own play so at least at the beginning what we have to ask is why is he shown these what's the point of showing us these obvious plot difficulties okay so let's look at some text let's turn to the prologue first speech I'll change I'm going to change a few things but not too much children of old Cadmus newest brood why do you sit here with your suppliant crowns the city is heavy with a mingled burn burden of sounds and smells of groans and hymns and incense I did not think it just that I should hear of this from messengers children but came myself I eat a puss whom all men call renowned speak old one since it is suitable by nature for you to speak for them what do you fear or want that you sit here supplant indeed I am willing to give all that you may need I would be very hard should I not pity supplements like these so we've done this before need to do it again first word is technology offspring children and your first question is of whom well he tells you of Cadmus but your first impression when you just see the first word does it eat APIs is calling them his children and indeed in the place that actually green leaves out on line seven and elsewhere of this from messengers comma children come so in fact he does call them his children but if they're cab missus children of course that means that they that he's making a reference to the the founding myth of Thebes where Cadmus slew the dragon took the teeth of the dragon planted them in the ground and out from the ground grew the original Theban citizens so in fact he's identifying them all as brothers and sisters except there are any women there so he's identifying them his brother's right now know that he calls them his children not only in line seven but look at I mean yeah line seven but also line fifty-eight where's that I pity you children and in line 142 where he says to them come children take your suppliant boughs and go so yes he calls them children of Cadmus but he also calls him his own children when he calls them children of Cadmus he's identifying them as Thebans and identifying them as something that he is not you are children of Cadmus I'm not a child of cabinets because I came from Corinth or he's identifying them as his own children but in either case he's suggesting that there's a huge difference between him and them so each of us could solve the riddle of the Sphinx because he didn't fit into it he was a middle-aged man who walked with a staff he didn't fit the riddle he somehow stands apart from it and apart from men remember they come to him say as though you are a god but knowing that he's not a god or think about if you look at line 729 when he first he makes his first remark about where the where the the killing occurred he says this of course doesn't say this in your version but I'll change it I thought I heard you say that Laius was killed at trick lies amongst a toys a triple rode a parting of three ways he's the one who calls it that Jocasta for example in the sequel says focuses the country and the road there splits one of two roads from Delfy she calls it a fork in the road so it looks as though he understands himself not to be I mean he doesn't even know he's doing it but in a way it it shows up and everything he says ordinary mortals come to a place where the road splits and they think of it as a fork in the road because they're on their way somewhere and they're not simply going to turn around and go back but he on the other hand in picturing it pictures himself somehow above it as though he can look down and the way a God would look down and say well the road breaks into three there are three three three possibilities so he always sees three ways where the others see to the sign of the problem here is of course in fact he is the offspring of Cadmus and so he's both father and brother to them his fatherhood is in fact identical to his Brotherhood and he doesn't know it so the incest problem is encoded in his very first word Tecna spring that's all well and good but what does it mean I mean it's nice and you know wonderful to see this incredible irony at the very first word of the play but it surely it must mean something more than just it's there not just it sort of pleased us with our own intelligence what does it mean now look at the various ways in which he identifies himself with the city with the polis green sometimes translates poulos's town line for line 28 in both of those cases it's City colons so look for example at line 58 we get this wait I pity you children you have come full of longing but I've known this story before you told it only too well I know you're all sick yet there's not one of you sick though you are that is as sick as I myself you your several sorrows each have single scope and touch but one of you my soul groans for city and myself and you at once or line 93 should be more or less the following page for you where he says speak to all the grief I bear I bear it more for these than for my own soul or a couple of pages later line 135 he says and justly you will see in me an ally a champion of my earth and the God for when I Drive pollution from the land I will not serve a distant friends advantage but I the defilement myself will disperse and line 269 those who do not obey me may the gods grant no crops springing from the ground they plow nor children or their women you see how funny this is after a long speech and which he's described what he's going to do in order to find out who killed Laius and he says if you don't obey me may the gods grant no crops spring from the ground they plow nor children till he calls a curse down on them but you see what's weird about that do you go back to the beginning he acts as though he here he acts as though he's gonna punish them but in fact all of this has already happened that's the problem he's supposed to be solving back on line 25 they they announced that look Edom is can you help us because the earth won't bear any fruits and there are any births and there are any burials so you know says you better watch out and if you don't obey me there won't be any births there won't be any so it's a very see he somehow assumes that he's responsible and notice also the discrepancy that each of us is aware of in the play the robber robbers problem that one cannot be many you you know the it's still there I think the Latin phrase on the dollar bill the pluribus unum what does it mean out of many one and what's a description of a country right you make one so either but says one cannot be many in the dollar bill says Oh contrary you can have one made out of many and that's what political society is so that's interesting given that he's constantly assuming I mean when they come to they they come down with this problems and say boy you think you feel it but listen I feel it for all of you I really am the city in a way that none of you are so his problem is really the problem of the polis the polis always presents itself as on the one hand something altogether apart from its citizens to which loyalty is owed and the fate of which is more important than the fate of any particular that's in a way eita pizzazz father on the other hand the polis is nothing but its citizens a collection of people who are in a way in this way equal to one another brothers and sisters siblings in the first instant instance if you push it all the way the polis becomes like a god something that's worshipped and so when the way disappears as anything directly in front of you in the second instance if it becomes if you push it to its extreme and in a way the city is nothing other than the people in it it also disappears because it becomes nothing it's just you know the real thing is just the people is just the people in the room in order for political life to exist it has to be both of these things it can't be if if it's simply the people and there's nothing more than the people then what would it mean to - Oh royal tea - it on the other hand if it's it's the thing to which you all LT to the complete exclusion of your your humanity well what that's not a country that's a Torah knows that's a tyranny right so it's got to be both on the one hand it points to tyranny Oedipus says God either pisses father and on the other hand it points to parasite incest killing authority absolute egalitarianism no distinctions make a difference we're all absolutely equal and you know that ultimately the the mantra of absolute equality means among other things Plato saw this so beautifully and in Republic book 5 it means that you know incest doesn't mean anything it's not we're all individuals and doesn't matter where we came from that individual individual individuality trumps everything means incest and incest as possible in parasite is no worse than any other form of murder so Oedipus reveals then in his crime the attack on legitimacy that underlies the legitimacy of all political lives he's both Theban and not Theban he's both brother and father he's one among equals but prayed to as though he were a god now one last thing both Korean and tiresias characterized him as the angry man so what does all of this have to do with anger apart from killing people on the highway however angry however far anger gets from its origin in particular slides and that happens think about the way ordinary fights between you and another begin and where they end up I mean they begin with very small particular things and by the end it looks as though the whole world is at stake they get generalized so you know if you don't happen to weigh I will use person so if you don't happen to like the the toothpaste in the in the sink in the morning that never gets washed down you know and you just get annoyed at it one day and you very politely you know requests that somebody might do and then somebody says well you know you do and then well I'm not so I mean that's the sort of thing you always do and well that's the sort of thing you also it has anger as its way of generalizing itself so it turns into this huge cosmic thing but as long as he remain aware of at some level of the particular place where it began you are in a way constantly aware that you know it might have something to do with your own your own self-interest but and therefore you're aware that it's not potentially not altogether objective let's just think about how easily embarrassed you can become when you remember what a fight was really about when you actually get away and you and you calm down and you start thinking oh my god I can't believe I did that but pure anger gets to show itself and either this precisely because in speaking for the polis he's allowed the illusion that he doesn't speak for himself so perfect rule is for us impartial selfless rule the rule of law according to the amenities but of course law doesn't really rule because it can't enforce itself it has to be enforced by a human being and so you have to ask the question what motivates a human being to rule Creon we'll give us one answer he says well private gain that's why when a tipis accuses him of plotting this whole thing Creon says are you kidding I'd get all the advantages now and nobody thinks that I'm ruler because you're the rulers so I get all the advantages I have none of the responsibilities why on earth would I want to be you so Creon says private gain Oedipus on the other hand represents a more interesting answer Oedipus is the man who takes his greatest private satisfaction in suppression of the private Edom is somehow represents morality the way in which you behave in a way that is constantly aware of its own selflessness and you take enormous satisfaction in that selflessness so he is meant to represent the danger of a man who is satisfied with being virtuous and Sophocles has identified this sort of satisfaction with anger he points to political life as the outlet for it so the Oedipus Taranis seems to be about the way in which perfect devotion to the public sphere to the exclusion of the private sphere leads to tyranny it's because Oedipus is so good that he can't see himself his swollen feet is going to poos which detaches him from human beings and allows him to solve the riddle of the Sphinx gets in the way of his knowing where oh I need his Wade who no knowing where he stands Sophocles knows this pun look at line 9:25 it won't be as clear to you from the translation but let me read it to you in Greek I said 9:25 right I should have Aphrodite read it to you because it sounds so much more like a language when she reads it but I won't are on par a moan oops annoy math oh I hope you tattoo t renew doumitt s teen I did pappu molesta doubt on a pot de cat is oku so what he's done in three lines as he said essentially straight this is the messenger coming can you tell me do you know where the house of the tyrant is Oedipus and once again tell me if you know where so in the pun he's indicated that he's very much aware of the pun on e de Paz and he just substituted another word for two now you get way too boy depuis so in a general sense this has to do with either versus crimes because right by replacing his father in his mother's bed he lives a metaphor for self generation for autonomy and therefore for objectivity he always he's the man who always sees three ways instead of two because he doesn't see that he is what he is by virtue of already haven't taken one of these ways he doesn't understand that he comes from somewhere he didn't just pop into existence now at the end of the play in various ways we'll come back to this he repeats the problem because his self blinding is an attempt to give himself nowhere no place so that in Greek is this ooh dad puh so you get swell foot his dis form he's this deformity know where and know where and in a way the point of the play is that these is to understand how these things go together that and they're a variety of places in which that becomes crystal clear the beautiful one is once again this the fact that for him to understand the place where the crime took place in the way that he understands it means to assume that in some way he's above it and doesn't take a part in it that he's not on the road the way everybody else is but floating above and looking down that there's nowhere that characterizes him and the interesting thing is that a man who believes that that he's nowhere in a way is not characterized by being nowhere and therefore objective because he's not looking at things from a point of view but he's a man who doesn't know where he is he's characterized by a fundamental self ignorant ignorant which in either pissah's case you could say the very thing that allowed to solve the riddle of the Sphinx because he doesn't he doesn't fit it's in a way it's confirmation of the fact that he's not like everybody else he somehow doesn't fit into the very categories that human beings are supposed to fit into the very wound that he has looks as though it gives him a kind of detachment but there's a place in the text I'll try and find it for next time where it turns out that it's an impediment that he can't see in a way what's at his feet because of his swollen feet he can't see where he is because the thing that is supposed to allow him to have this perfect vision is in a certain way skewing his vision without his knowing it in a peculiar way so in a way Creon is quite content to be selfish and knows that he's selfish and therefore doesn't presume to be objective but a tip is try so hard in a way to be objective that that it has allowed him to rule magnificently in Thebes for some 15 to 20 years and the interesting thing is that Sophocles is thinking through the possibility that the very thing that allows him to rule so magnificently guarantees a blind spot that will be his downfall that's why it's called tragedy right if he were just somebody who gets angry and you know punches people in traffic disputes he wouldn't really be interesting he just avoid him but he wouldn't be interesting but he's interesting because he's it's because he's so good much better than almost anybody that he can be that he's in a way destined to make this to make this kind of mistake now in the back of our mind should be this always in the back of our mind should be this Oedipus is not Sophocles we should always be curious about the person who can write about this who's I mean you could say you've put in this way tragedies are not designed they are in a way designed to make you want to be Antigone you can come away and say my god what a mega gnar quite a mess or what a magnificent woman I'd like to be her and then you immediately say well no I really want to be her because I don't want to be killed by thy son and I don't want to actually die the way Antigone dies either so maybe I should rethink that but there's a part of you that really wants to be the tragedy so it doesn't work unless both of those are true but there's another character here operating that we need to think through and that is when you get out of when you when you're finished with Hamlet when you're finished with with Oedipus the King do you want to be Shakespeare do you want to be what does it mean to want to be Sophocles and not either those that's interesting it's by the way what makes it really interesting whenever however however delicately and indirectly does it when Shakespeare or any of these tragedians pull poets into their plays and ask you to think about the status of the poet if any you seen this up above nothing I'm just stopping now but have any of you seen what's it called the it's the the British thing on the it's almost Monty Python asked it's about Shakespeare at some the upstart crow it's really wonderful I mean I don't know if it's wonderful you get through one season of it it's yeah and then it's sort of a one-trick pony and you're not so happy with it but it's it's it's a spoof a farce about Shakespeare creating the plays which uses references constantly to them but he's sort of dumb and he just keeps picking up things from his smart wife and the woman who who owns the house where he lives and in London and his his servant who his named because I'm really dumb today bottom right so it's just very if any of you know Shakespeare at all find the upstart crow and watch a couple of them be fun oh there are many different versions yeah so you want to be they do with these characters whatever they want to it's like the many versions of Elektra so you want to be careful you sometimes does that you know you even it's the both the benefit and the danger of looking up Tiresias right you end up with a whole bunch of references to him you got to be very careful to see you get a lot of stuff for example about mythical characters and antiquity that comes out of Ovid of the metamorphosis and of course that's no good because it's Roman so you need to make sure that everything that you use comes prior to the text that you're trying to interpret and sometimes hard to do that I think there's not too much that we have that's prior to this there's some stuff it might be in Homer but you know we need to be careful about details you get a story about it in your ribbon ease but of course that's coming after Sophocles so the safe thing to do is to use only the information that you're given in the in the play but your instincts are I mean there are two things going on here one is that you're looking at a detail and you want to use that to make a point but you also have an instinctive sense that independent of that the that there's something peculiar about his attack on Tiresias it's much too harsh and I think that's right and what's interesting is what he accuses Tiresias of by the end of the play it looks as though Oedipus thinks that by blinding himself he can turn himself into someone who's nowhere rather than someone who just doesn't see where he where he is at the beginning of the play he doesn't think that Tiresias is that kind of objective in fact what he accuses him of is precisely the kind of selfishness that he accuses Creon of so everybody else with me says etapas is subject to self-interest and Tiresias you come from that tribe of profits are always taking bribes and who bribes you did your part of a larger conspiracy no we want to be critical of that on the one hand on the other hand you know what he Oedipus has just said listen you guys are con men I know how this works in cities you don't have any more connection to the gods anybody else does and so when we put it in that way we're not so it's not so off-putting you know it's like the Rainmaker somebody comes into town is I can make rain and the sensible people say yes sure you can make rain you're just trying to get our money out of us and and in a way that's what either piss is saying and we don't credit him with that because we think oh these Greeks really believed all that stuff well you know peace has just shown you he doesn't believe it on the one hand on the other hand he's conflicted because he clearly believed the Oracle and he's being pulled back to see that he to believe that he was unable to avoid the Oracle so it's complicated it's and the status of our connection to the gods and of tiresias knowledge that's that's all in play I think and this is meant to put it in play partly in a legitimate way and partly to show you that the man who thinks he's absolutely selfless is not absolutely selfless when it comes to defending his claim to be absolutely selfless this is the moral man who tries so hard to be moral that he can't believe that he's anything but selfless well I mean literally of course it's Thebes Corinth and Delfy there's a point at which there's a road to each of them and they meet at a point it'd be interesting to try and work out what that means in terms of what Thebes Corinth and Delfy point to but the general point seems to be that it's a very awkward way to talk about a crossroads because it's it's not very awkward it's perfectly but it's not the natural way the natural way is you're walking down the street and you say Oh which way should I go because it never occurs to you to turn around and go back it's not that you can't go back but in fact if you change the meaning of it and you're talking about roads as unfolding in time of course the crucial thing about about this temporal these temporal choices that you can't go back you can't undo where you came from you are what you are because of where you came from so the you who's making the choice has been constituted by where you came from the idea that now you can go back and undo that is impossible for a human being to to act as though it is possible places you so in control of your fate that it looks as though you can make yourself who you are and in fact although we tell ourselves that all the time it's just poppycock the person who's making the choice has been formed on the basis of past experiences it doesn't mean that we're all enslaved to that experience and indeed we will do we will you know people with similar experiences will choose differently but the idea that you can sort of lift yourself up and pretend that you're a completely independent free being who can be whatever you want to is so that's nothing to do with who you were where you were born what language it's like I hope there no I'm Randy and Simba in this but I remember reading her when I was young and for a little while being caught up in it it's so perfect the way she lets sets out the virtues of selfishness and then I thought well wait a minute what about language where did that come from I didn't make that up I mean I need I'm born into a language I have it where does that language come from it's not created by me I can learn new languages and I can change my understanding of my own language but by the time I'm old enough to know what language is I mean in order to think at all I have to be thinking and I have to be thinking in a language that's the road I walk down and get in order to get to the point where I can make a choice and it looks as though Oedipus is longing to be autonomous generally above it all and generally objective and as decent as he can possibly be forces him to assume that it's possible for him to want to in a way generate himself well the metaphor for that is kill your dad sleep with your mom and then your self-generated you're not of course doesn't work but it's as close as you can get in the temporal world to to doing that yeah I think the crucial that's the one time every other reference to it in and the need the one directly after it you say you could say the genitive the the appropriate generalization is this etapas always refers to it as a parting of three roads Jocasta once refers to it as that and I think two or three other times refers to it as a parting of as a fork in the road so that makes that instance particularly interesting and you know we're thinking about I don't have an answer for that question but I think it's a really good question

Channel: The Philosophy of Tragedy

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Id: UAFSmWRMx34

Length: 69min 58sec (4198 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 14 2019