Athens: Its Rise and Fall Part 37

"For I," continued Oedipus,

"I, who the sceptre which he wielded wield; I, who have mounted to his marriage bed; I, in whose children (had he issue known) His would have claimed a common brotherhood; Now that the evil fate bath fallen o'er him-- I am the heir of that dead king's revenge, Not less than if these lips had hailed him 'father!'"

A few more sentences introduce to us the old soothsayer Tiresias--for whom, at the instigation of Creon, Oedipus had sent. The seer answers the adjuration of the king with a thrilling and ominous burst--

"Wo--wo!--how fearful is the gift of wisdom, When to the wise it bears no blessing!--wo!"

The haughty spirit of Oedipus breaks forth at the gloomy and obscure warnings of the prophet. His remonstrances grow into threats. In his blindness he even accuses Tiresias himself of the murder of Laius--and out speaks the terrible diviner:

"Ay--is it so? Abide then by thy curse And solemn edict--never from this day Hold human commune with these men or me; Lo, where thou standest--lo, the land's polluter!"

A dialogue of great dramatic power ensues. Oedipus accuses Tiresias of abetting his kinsman, Creon, by whom he had been persuaded to send for the soothsayer, in a plot against his throne--and the seer, who explains nothing and threatens all things, departs with a dim and fearful prophecy.

After a song from the chorus, in which are imbodied the doubt, the trouble, the terror which the audience may begin to feel--and here it may be observed, that with Sophocles the chorus always carries on, not the physical, but the moral, progress of the drama [345]--Creon enters, informed of the suspicion against himself which Oedipus had expressed. Oedipus, whose whole spirit is disturbed by the weird and dark threats of Tiresias, repeats the accusation, but wildly and feebly. His vain worldly wisdom suggests to him that Creon would scarcely have asked him to consult Tiresias, nor Tiresias have ventured on denunciations so tremendous, had not the two conspired against him: yet a mysterious awe invades him--he presses questions on Creon relative to the murder of Laius, and seems more anxious to acquit himself than accuse another.

While the princes contend, the queen, Jocasta, enters. She chides their quarrel, learns from Oedipus that Tiresias had accused him of the murder of the deceased king, and, to convince him of the falseness of prophetic lore, reveals to him, that long since it was predicted that Laius should be murdered by his son joint offspring of Jocasta and himself. Yet, in order to frustrate the prophecy, the only son of Laius had been exposed to perish upon solitary and untrodden mountains, while, in after years, Laius himself had fallen, in a spot where three roads met, by the hand of a stranger; so that the prophecy had not come to pa.s.s.

At this declaration terror seizes upon Oedipus. He questions Jocasta eagerly and rapidly--the place where the murder happened, the time in which it occurred, the age and personal appearance of Laius--and when he learns all, his previous arrogant conviction of innocence deserts him; and as he utters a horrid exclamation, Jocasta fixes her eyes upon him, and "shudders as she gazes." [346] He inquires what train accompanied Laius--learns that there were five persons; that but one escaped; that on his return to Thebes, seeing Oedipus on the throne, the surviver had besought the favour to retire from the city. Oedipus orders this witness of the murder to be sent for, and then proceeds to relate his own history. He has been taught to believe that Polybus of Corinth and Merope of Doris were his parents. But once at a banquet he was charged with being a supposit.i.tious child; the insult galled him, and he went to Delphi to consult the oracle. It was predicted to him that he should commit incest with his mother, and that his father should fall by his hand. Appalled and horror-stricken, he resolves to fly the possible fulfilment of the prophecy, and return no more to Corinth. In his flight by the triple road described by Jocasta he meets an old man in a chariot, with a guide or herald, and other servitors. They attempt to thrust him from the road--a contest ensues--he slays the old man and his train. Could this be Laius? Can it be to the marriage couch of the man he slew that he has ascended?

No, his fears are too credulous! he clings to a straw; the herdsman who had escaped the slaughter of Laius and his attendants may prove that it was _not_ the king whom he encountered. Jocasta sustains this hope--she cannot believe a prophecy--for it had been foretold that Laius should fall by the hand of his son, and that son had long since perished on the mountains. The queen and Oedipus retire within their palace; the chorus resume their strains; after which, Jocasta reappears on her way to the temple of Apollo, to offer sacrifice and prayer. At this time a messenger arrives to announce to Oedipus the death of Polybus, and the wish of the Corinthians to elect Oedipus to the throne! At these tidings Jocasta is overjoyed.

"Predictions of the G.o.ds, where are ye now?

Lest by the son's doomed hand the sire should fall, The son became a wanderer on the earth, Lo, not the son, but Nature, gives the blow!"

Oedipus, summoned to the messenger, learns the news of his supposed father's death! It is a dread and tragic thought, but the pious Oedipus is glad that his father is no more, since he himself is thus saved from parricide; yet the other part of the prediction haunts him.

His mother!--she yet lives. He reveals to the messenger the prophecy and his terror. To cheer him, the messenger now informs him that he is not the son of Merope and Polybus. A babe had been found in the entangled forest-dells of Cithaeron by a herdsman and slave of Laius --he had given the infant to another--that other, the messenger who now tells the tale. Transferred to the care of Polybus and Merope, the babe became to them as a son, for they were childless. Jocasta hears--stunned and speechless--till Oedipus, yet unconscious of the horrors still to come, turns to demand of her if she knew the herdsman who had found the child. Then she gasps wildly out--

"Whom speaks he of? Be silent--heed it not-- Blot it out from thy memory!--it is evil!

Oedipus. It cannot be--the clew is here; and I Will trace it through that labyrinth--my birth.

Jocasta. By all the G.o.ds I warn thee; for the sake Of thine own life beware; it is enough For me to hear and madden!"

Oedipus (suspecting only that the pride of his queen revolts from the thought of her husband's birth being proved base and servile) replies,

"Nay, nay, cheer thee!

Were I through three descents threefold a slave, My shame would not touch thee.

Jocasta. I do implore thee, This once obey me--this once.

Oedipus I will not!

To truth I grope my way.

Jocasta. And yet what love Speaks in my voice! Thine ignorance is thy bliss.

Oedipus. A bliss that tortures!

Jocasta. Miserable man!

Oh couldst thou never learn the thing thou art!

Oedipus. Will no one quicken this slow herdsman's steps The unquestioned birthright of a royal name Let this proud queen possess!

Jocasta. Wo! wo! thou wretch!

Wo! my last word!--words are no more for me!"

With this Jocasta rushes from the scene. Still Oedipus misconstrues her warning; he ascribes her fears to the royalty of her spirit. For himself, Fortune was his mother, and had blessed him; nor could the accident of birth destroy his inheritance from nature. The chorus give way to their hopes! their wise, their glorious Oedipus might have been born a Theban! The herdsman enters: like Tiresias, he is loath to speak. The fiery king extorts his secret. Oedipus is the son of Laius and Jocasta--at his birth the terrible prophecies of the Pythian induced his own mother to expose him on the mountains--the compa.s.sion of the herdsman saved him--saved him to become the bridegroom of his mother, the a.s.sa.s.sin of his sire. The astonis.h.i.+ng art with which, from step to step, the audience and the victim are led to the climax of the discovery, is productive of an interest of pathos and of terror which is not equalled by the greatest masterpieces of the modern stage [347], and possesses that species of anxious excitement which is wholly unparalleled in the ancient. The discovery is a true catastrophe--the physical denouement is but an adjunct to the moral one. Jocasta, on quitting the scene, had pa.s.sed straight to the bridal-chamber, and there, by the couch from which had sprung a double and accursed progeny, perished by her own hands. Meanwhile, the predestined parricide, bursting into the chamber, beheld, as the last object on earth, the corpse of his wife and mother! Once more Oedipus reappears, barred for ever from the light of day. In the fury of his remorse, he "had smote the b.a.l.l.s of his own eyes," and the wise baffler of the sphinx, Oedipus, the haughty, the insolent, the ill.u.s.trious, is a forlorn and despairing outcast. But amid all the horror of the concluding scene, a beautiful and softening light breaks forth. Blind, powerless, excommunicated, Creon, whom Oedipus accused of murder, has now become his judge and his master. The great spirit, crushed beneath its intolerable woes, is humbled to the dust; and the "wisest of mankind" implores but two favours--to be thrust from the land an exile, and once more to embrace his children. Even in translation the exquisite tenderness of this pa.s.sage cannot altogether fail of its effect.

"For my fate, let it pa.s.s! My children, Creon!

My sons--nay, they the bitter wants of life May master--they are MEN?--my girls--my darlings-- Why, never sat I at my household board Without their blessed looks--our very bread We brake together; thou'lt be kind to them For my sake, Creon--and (oh, latest prayer!) Let me but touch them--feel them with these hands, And pour such sorrow as may speak farewell O'er ills that must be theirs! By thy pure line-- For thin is pure--do this, sweet prince. Methinks I should not miss these eyes, could I but touch them.

What shall I say to move thee?

Sobs! And do I, Oh do I hear my sweet ones? Hast thou sent, In mercy sent, my children to my arms?

Speak--speak--I do not dream!

Creon. They are thy children; I would not shut thee from the dear delight In the old time they gave thee.

Oedipus. Blessings on thee For this one mercy mayst thou find above A kinder G.o.d than I have. Ye--where are ye?

My children--come!--nearer and nearer yet," etc.

The pathos of this scene is continued to the end; and the very last words Oedipus utters as his children cling to him, implore that they at least may not be torn away.

It is in this concluding scene that the art of the play is consummated; the horrors of the catastrophe, which, if a last impression, would have left behind a too painful and gloomy feeling, are softened down by this beautiful resort to the tenderest and holiest sources of emotion. And the pathos is rendered doubly effective, not only from the immediate contrast of the terror that preceded it, but from the masterly skill with which all display of the softer features in the character of Oedipus is reserved to the close.

In the breaking up of the strong mind and the daring spirit, when empire, honour, name, are all annihilated, the heart is seen, as it were, surviving the wrecks around it, and clinging for support to the affections.

VII. In the "Oedipus at Coloneus," the blind king is presented to us, after the lapse of years, a wanderer over the earth, unconsciously taking his refuge in the grove of the furies [348]--"the awful G.o.ddesses, daughters of Earth and Darkness." His young daughter, Antigone, one of the most lovely creations of poetry, is his companion and guide; he is afterward joined by his other daughter, Ismene, whose weak and selfish character is drawn in strong contrast to the heroism and devotion of Antigone. The ancient prophecies that foretold his woes had foretold also his release. His last shelter and resting-place were to be obtained from the dread deities, and a sign of thunder, or earthquake, or lightning was to announce his parting hour.

Learning the spot to which his steps had been guided, Oedipus solemnly feels that his doom approaches: thus, at the very opening of the poem, he stands before us on the verge of a mysterious grave.

The sufferings which have bowed the parricide to a premature old age [349] have not crushed his spirit; the softness and self-humiliation which were the first results of his awful affliction are pa.s.sed away.

He is grown once more vehement and pa.s.sionate, from the sense of wrong; remorse still visits him, but is alternated with the yet more human feeling of resentment at the unjust severity of his doom [350].

His sons, who, "by a word," might have saved him from the expulsion, penury, and wanderings he has undergone, had deserted his cause--had looked with indifferent eyes on his awful woes--had joined with Creon to expel him from the Theban land. They are the Goneril and Regan of the cla.s.sic Lear, as Antigone is the Cordelia on whom he leans--a Cordelia he has never thrust from him. "When," says Oedipus, in stern bitterness of soul,

"When my soul boiled within me--when 'to die'

Was all my prayer--and death was sweetness, yea, Had they but stoned me like a dog, I'd blessed them; Then no man rose against me--but when time Brought its slow comfort--when my wounds were scarred-- All my griefs mellow'd, and remorse itself Judged my self-penance mightier than my sins, Thebes thrust me from her breast, and they, my sons, My blood, mine offspring, from their father shrunk: A word of theirs had saved me--one small word-- They said it not--and lo! the wandering beggar!"

In the mean while, during the exile of Oedipus, strife had broken out between the brothers: Eteocles, here represented as the younger, drove out Polynices, and seized the throne; Polynices takes refuge at Argos, where he prepares war against the usurper: an oracle declares that success shall be with that party which Oedipus joins, and a mysterious blessing is p.r.o.nounced on the land which contains his bones. Thus, the possession of this wild tool of fate--raised up in age to a dread and ghastly consequence--becomes the argument of the play, as his death must become the catastrophe. It is the deep and fierce revenge of Oedipus that makes the pa.s.sion of the whole. According to a sublime conception, we see before us the physical Oedipus in the lowest state of dest.i.tution and misery--in rags, blindness, beggary, utter and abject impotence. But in the moral, Oedipus is all the majesty of a power still royal. The oracle has invested one, so fallen and so wretched in himself, with the power of a G.o.d--the power to confer victory on the cause he adopts, prosperity on the land that becomes his tomb. With all the revenge of age, all the grand malignity of hatred, he clings to this shadow and relic of a sceptre.

Creon, aware of the oracle, comes to recall him to Thebes. The treacherous kinsman humbles himself before his victim--he is the suppliant of the beggar, who defies and spurns him. Creon avenges himself by seizing on Antigone and Ismene. Nothing can be more dramatically effective than the scene in which these last props of his age are torn from the desolate old man. They are ultimately restored to him by Theseus, whose amiable and lofty character is painted with all the partial glow of colouring which an Athenian poet would naturally lavish on the Athenian Alfred. We are next introduced to Polynices. He, like Creon, has sought Oedipus with the selfish motive of recovering his throne by means of an ally to whom the oracle promises victory. But there is in Polynices the appearance of a true penitence, and a mingled gentleness and majesty in his bearing which interests us in his fate despite his faults, and which were possibly intended by Sophocles to give a new interest to the plot of the "Antigone," composed and exhibited long before. Oedipus is persuaded by the benevolence of Theseus, and the sweet intercession of Antigone, to admit his son. After a chant from the chorus on the ills of old age [351], Polynices enters. He is struck with the wasted and miserable appearance of the old man, and bitterly reproaches his own desertion.

"But since," he says, with almost a Christian sentiment--

"Since o'er each deed, upon the Olympian throne, Mercy sits joint presider with great Jove, Let her, oh father, also take her stand Within thy soul--and judge me! The past sins Yet have their cure--ah, would they had recall!

Why are you voiceless? Speak to me, my father?

Turn not away--will you not answer me?" etc.

Oedipus retains his silence in spite of the prayers of his beloved Antigone, and Polynices proceeds to narrate the wrongs he has undergone from Eteocles, and, warming with a young warrior's ardour, paints the array that he has mustered on his behalf--promises to restore Oedipus to his palace--and, alluding to the oracle, throws himself on his father's pardon.

Then, at last, outspeaks Oedipus, and from reproach bursts into curses.

"And now you weep; you wept not at these woes Until you wept your own. But I--I weep not.

These things are not for tears, but for Endurance.

My son is like his sire--a parricide!

Toil, exile, beggary--daily bread doled out From stranger hands--these are your gifts, my son!

My nurses, guardians--they who share the want, Or earn the bread, are daughters; call them not Women, for they to me are men. Go to!

Thou art not mine--I do disclaim such issue.

Behold, the eyes of the avenging G.o.d Are o'er thee! but their ominous light delays To blast thee yet. March on--march on--to Thebes!

Not--not for thee, the city and the throne; The earth shall first be reddened with thy blood-- Thy blood and his, thy foe--thy brother! Curses!

Not for the first time summoned to my wrongs-- Curses! I call ye back, and make ye now Allies with this old man!

Yea, curses shall possess thy seat and throne, If antique Justice o'er the laws of earth Reign with the thunder-G.o.d. March on to ruin!

Spurned and disowned--the basest of the base-- And with thee bear this burden: o'er thine head I pour a prophet's doom; nor throne nor home Waits on the sharpness of the levelled spear: Thy very land of refuge hath no welcome; Thine eyes have looked their last on hollow Argos.