Free Oedipus the King by Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles Page B

own sickness
how could my eyes look calmly on my people?
They could not! If I could deafen my ears
1590 I would, I'd deaden my whole body,
go blind and deaf to shut those evils out.
The silence in my mind would be sweet.
Oh Cithairon, why did you take me in?
Or once you had me, why didn't you
kill me instantly? My birth would have left no trace.
O Polybos and Corinth, I thought you
were my ancestral strength, the house of my fathers.
I was their glorious boy growing up,
but my life there was a fair skin
1600 over a festering disease. My vile self
now shows its vile birth.
You,
three roads, and you, darkest ravine,
you, grove of oaks, you, narrow place
where those three paths drank blood from my hands,
my fathering blood pouring into you.
Do you remember what I did while you watched?
And when I came here, what I did then?
O marriages! You marriages! You made us,
1610 we sprang to life, then from the same seed

     

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you burst fathers, brothers, sons,
kinsmen shedding kinsmen's blood,
brides and mothers and wivesthe most loathsome
atrocities that strike mankind.
I must not name what should never have been.
If you love the gods, hide me out there,
kill me, throw me into the sea,
anywhere I will be lost from your eyes.
Come take me. Don't shrink from touching
1620 this ruined man. Believe me. Don't fear me.
I am the only man in all the world
who can carry these sorrows.
LEADER Kreon will help you. He's come when we need him.
He can act, he can advise you.
He is the only ruler we have left
to protect Thebes in your place.
OEDIPUS Do I know words that he will listen to?
What would make him believe me?
I wronged him so deeply.
1630 I proved myself so false to him.
(Kreon enters.)
KREON I don't come to mock you, Oedipus.
I won't dwell on the wrongs you did me.
Men, even if you are not sensitive
to human feeling, keep some awe
for the nurturing light flaming from the Sun.
Don't leave this stark defilement in the open.
The earth, the holy rain, the light, all hate it.
Take him quickly back to the palace.
If these sorrows are shared
1640 only by our bloodkin,
it will spare us impiety.
OEDIPUS I feared worse from you. I thank god
you show your noble kindness to me,
who am worthless. I have one thing to ask.
It is for your sake, not mine.
KREON What do you want, that makes you ask it like that?
OEDIPUS Expel me quickly to some place
no living person will find me.
KREON I would have done that. But now I must first
1650 ask the god what I should do.

     

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OEDIPUS He's given you his command already.
I killed my father. I am unholy. I must die.
KREON The god did say that. But what has happened
to us is so desperate, we must be
absolutely sure before we act.
OEDIPUS What else is there to know about me? I'm lost.
KREON This time, I think even you will trust the god.
OEDIPUS I will. But there is something I charge you,
yourself, to do. I beg it! Bury her
1660 who's lying inside as you think proper.
Give her the rites due your kinswoman.
As for me, don't doom my father's city
by having me haunt it while I live.
Let me live out my life on the mountain,
on Cithairon, my own famous mountain,
which my father and mother while they lived
had chosen as my rightful tomb. Let me die
out there, just as my parents decreed I die.
And yet, I know this now:
1670 no sickness can kill me, nothing can.
I was saved from that death
to face an evil awesome and unknown.
Let my fate take me now, where it will.
My children, Kreon.
My sons will not need help from youthey're grown.
They'll find a way to live anywhere.
But my poor wretched girls, who never
ate anywhere but at my table
they've never been without me.
1680 I fed them with my own hands.
Care for them.
If you can do it, let me touch them now,
let me give in to my grief.
Grant it Kreon, from your great heart.
Touching them with my hands, I would
imagine them as my eyes once saw them.
(The gentle sobbing of Oedipus' two daughters is heard offstage. Soon two small girls enter.)
Is