OEDIPUS TYRANNUS
A monologue from the
play by Sophocles
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Greek Dramas. Ed. Bernadotte Perrin. New York: D.
Appleton and Company, 1904. |
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- OEDIPUS: I care not for thy counsel or thy praise;
- For with what eyes could I have e'er beheld
- My honoured father in the shades below,
- Or my unhappy mother, both destroyed
- By me? This punishment is worse than death,
- And so it should be. Sweet had been the sight
- Of my dear children--them I could have wished
- To gaze upon; but I must never see
- Or them, or this fair city, or the palace
- Where I was born. Deprived of every bliss
- By my own lips, which doomed to banishment
- The murderer of Laius, and expelled
- The impious wretch, by gods and men accursed:
- Could I behold them after this? Oh no!
- Would I could now with equal ease remove
- My hearing too, be deaf as well as blind,
- And from another entrance shut out woe!
- To want our senses, in the hour of ill,
- Is comfort to the wretched. O Cithaeron!
- Why didst thou e'er receive me, or received,
- Why not destroy, that men might never know
- Who gave me birth? O Polybus! O Corinth!
- And thou, long time believed my father's palace,
- Oh! what a foul disgrace to human nature
- Didst thou receive beneath a prince's form!
- Impious myself, and from an impious race.
- Where is my splendour now? O Daulian path!
- The shady forest, and the narrow pass
- Where three ways meet, who drank a father's blood
- Shed by these hands, do you not still remember
- The horrid deed, and what, when here I came,
- Followed more dreadful? Fatal nuptials, you
- Produced me, you returned me to the womb
- That bare me; thence relations horrible
- Of fathers, sons, and brothers came; of wives,
- Sisters, and mothers, sad alliance! all
- That man holds impious and detestable.
- But what in act is vile the modest tongue
- Should never name. Bury me, hide me, friends,
- From every eye; destroy me, cast me forth
- To the wide ocean--let me perish there:
- Do anything to shake off hated life.
- Seize me; approach, my friends--you need not fear,
- Polluted though I am, to touch me; none
- Shall suffer for my crimes but I alone.
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MONOLOGUES BY SOPHOCLES |
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