Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles Read Free Book Online

father's and your mother's lash
will whip you out of Thebes
on terrorstruck feet.
Your eyes will then see darkness
which now see life.
Your shriek
will try to hide itself in every cave.
520 What mountain outcrop on Cithairon
won't roar your screaming back at you,
when what your marriage means strikes home,

     

page_34
Page 34
shows you the house that took you in: you sailed
your lucky wind to a most foul harbor.
Evils you can't guess
will level you to what you are,
to what your children are.
Go on, throw muck at Kreon, and at
the warning spoken through my mouth.
530 But there will never be a man
ground into wretchedness as you shall be.
OEDIPUS Shall I wait for him to attack me more?
May you be damned. Go. Leave my doors
now! Turn your back and go.
TIRESIAS I'm here only because you sent for me.
OEDIPUS Had I known the madness you would speak
I wouldn't have hurried to get you here.
TIRESIAS I may seem crazed to you, but your natural
parents thought I had an able mind.
540 OEDIPUS My parents? Wait. Who is my father?
TIRESIAS Today, you will be born. Into ruin.
OEDIPUS You always have a murky riddle in your mouth.
TIRESIAS Don't you excel us all at finding answers?
OEDIPUS Sneer at my mind. But you must face the power it won.
TIRESIAS That very luck is what destroyed you.
OEDIPUS If I save Thebes, I won't care what happens to me.
TIRESIAS I will leave you to that. Boy, guide me out.
OEDIPUS Yes, let him take you home.
Here, you are painfully underfoot. Gone,
550 you'll take away a great source of grief.
TIRESIAS I'll go. But first I must finish
what you brought me to do
your face won't frighten me.
The man you have been looking for,
the one your curses threaten, the man
you had outlawed in Laius' death:
I say that man is here
you think him a foreigner,
but he will prove himself a Theban native,
560 though he'll find no joy in that news.

     

page_35
Page 35
A blind man who has eyes now,
a beggar who's now rich, he'll jab
his stick, feeling the road to foreign lands.
(Oedipus enters the palace.)
He will soon be shown father and brother
to his own children, son and husband
to the mother who bore himshe took
his father's seed and his seed,
and he took his own father's life.
You go inside. Think through what I have said.
570 If I have lied, say of me then
I am a prophet with no mind.
(Exit Tiresias.)
CHORUS Who is the man
who inspires the rock voice
of Delphi to speak out?
This crime that sickens speech
is the work of his red hands.
Now he will need legs strong enough
to outrun wild horses of the storm.
Apollo is ready to strike:
580 armed with lightning,
he and the Fates close in,
grim beings who don't miss.
From snowfields
high on Parnassus
the word blazes out to us all:
track down the man no one sees.
He takes cover in thick brush,
he drives up the mountain
bull-like to its rocks and caves,
590 going his bleak and hunted way,
still struggling to escape the doom
earth from her sacred mouth has spoken:
but that doom buzzes low,
never far from his ear.
Fear is what the man who reads birds
makes us feel, fear we can't fight.
We can't accept what he says,
we have no power to challenge.
We thrash in doubt, we can't see

     

page_36
Page 36
600 even the present clearly,
much less the future.
And we've heard of no feud
embittering the House
of Oedipus in Corinth
against the House of Laius here,
no past trouble and none now,
no proof that would make us accuse
our king's fame, as he works
to avenge this murder
610 done to our royal house.
Zeus and Apollo are infallible,
they know what happens to mankind.
But there is no way to prove
whether an earthbound prophet
ever sees more of the future
than we do, though in knowledge and skill
one man may surpass another.
But never, not till I see
the charges proved against him,
620 will I give my credence
to a man who blames Oedipus.
All of us saw his brilliance
prevail, when the wingéd virgin
Sphinx came at him: his winning
won him the people.
My heart can't find him guilty.
(Kreon