The classic Greek play where we get the name for the Oedipus complex from. I actually thoroughly enjoyed reading this play and found the macabre in it truly delightful. Who can forget someone tearing out their own eyeballs? The theme of the inability to escape fate is more terrifying than almost any modern horror tale. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1217764...

It's really good. This is a play dating from about 430 BC, and we all know the story in advance, so I wondered how fresh it could possibly seem, but I really enjoyed reading it and would love to see it on stage.

The interest is the interplay between the three main characters, Oedipus himself, Jocasta and her brother Cleon, as the story is unfolded to them by a succession of walk-ons (Tiresias, the messenger, the shepherd, etc) - although the plot covers the whole of Oedipus' life, the setting of the play respects the unities and takes place over a few hours or possibly days.

Sophocles uses the plot as a framework to meditate on fate and predestination (where his argument if largely of historical interest) and also to speculate on different kinds of sight and blindness (and here I think his thoughts are timeless; we can substitute all kinds of dogmas about planning and professionalism for the way he writes about prophecy).

I was reading the 1909 translation by Sir George Young, which is decent enough, though I can imagine it being done more fluently in today's idiom. ( )

Briljantno vođena radnja. Užas ljudi nevinih uhvaćenih u vrtlog sudbine. Brilliantly lead plot. Innocent people fall into the horror of their destinies. ( )

Somehow I skipped having to read the Greek tragedies as a student; I missed a year of high school and perhaps that was when they came around on the curriculum.

Obviously, I'm no Greek scholar and I don't really feel qualified to comment much upon the quality of the play beyond saying that I enjoyed it quite a bit. It was interesting to watch the inexorable march toward the prophecy's fulfillment and to follow the various metaphors around "sight". I'm so used to prose that I found the verse difficult at the beginning, like picking up Shakespeare after a long absence, only more so. Still, by slowing down and reading each line at a deliberate pace, I found myself becoming immersed in it.

At first, my mind rebelled against what I expected to be a rather harsh fate laid upon Oedipus. I guess I was expecting the prophecy to be fulfilled due to gods interfering with mortals. As the play progressed, however, I realized that nothing was being forced upon him. Each action that occurred was the outcome of Oedipus' own choices. The results may seem somewhat overwhelming by modern standards of justice, but they were the natural consequences of his own actions.

I found myself wondering how the original audience would react to this play. The modern reader, simply through osmosis of a minor amount of literary history, is aware that Oedipus is doomed—that the very act of trying to avoid the Oracle's prophecy brings it to fruition. Was that in the "collective knowledge" of the time?

This is recommended and perhaps I'll try "Antigone" next. ( )

I have read this play a few times, and most recently I rented an audio version because I thought it might be more useful to listen to the play instead of merely reading it again. If you get assigned this book in class but think you'll be too busy to read it properly, the Naxos Audiobooks version had good actors and they spoke clearly, but the recording itself was very quiet and sometimes difficult to hear.

The actual text? Excellent as ever. Sophocles truly wrote a tight, suspenseful masterpiece in Oedipus Rex. ( )