Finished: Oedipus the King (Sophocles). Interesting and tragic, of course. I read this in my same old high school paperback, Eight Great Tragedies, from which I read On Baile's Strand. It is so surreal to be reading the book I had in high school, with all the little notations in the margins in my high school handwriting. Obviously the teacher would tell us to underline a line and then write beside it something like "irony", because there it is in the margin. :-) I'm sure we read Oedipus the King both on our own, and in class, but I don't remember it. I couldn't have been at all interested in the words or story back then. I know I liked boys, friends and being on the volleyball team. English Lit? Not a top priority. Though, I always made good grades. So, I must have memorized it well enough back then to do well on tests.

Anyway....I enjoyed the story today. Well, the story is tragic, but the writing was nice, and sometimes similar to the method of Shakespeare's, which I like. In one scene Oedipus is questioning his brother-in-law, Creon, about whether an oracle has spoken of him (Oedipus). Creon said:

"I know not. Where I am not wise, I speak not."

If only we could all follow those words of wisdom. I must say that Oedipus was truly freaked out to find out that his wife was really his mother, and that she had born his children, hence his brothers and sisters. There wasn't any underlying boy loves his mother Oedipus complex that Freud championed. Oedipus didn't even know his wife was his mother until years later, and then he was so despondent over marrying her and killing his real father, that he put out his own eyes and banished himself from his kingdom. I found a tiny bit of humor in these lines and wondered if we were about to get our first glimpse of a bad word back somewhere in the 300 or 400 BC? But...it didn't happen. The messenger speaks of Oedipus and tells the story to the citizens of Thebes:

"He shouts, and bids open the doors, and show
To all his Thebes this father-murderer,
This mother-.... Leave the word. It is not clean.
He would be gone from Thebes, nor stay to see
His home accursed by the curse he swore;"

I love that....Leave the word. It is not clean. :-)

Off to read some Euripides.