Oedipus Rex

Vision/Blindness Imagery

Your eyes / Must tell you (25-26)

Teiresias: See: student of mysteries (287)
Of all that’s taught and all that no man tells,
Secrets of Heaven and secrets of the earth:
Blind though you are, you know the city lies
Sick with plague; and from this plague, my lord,
We find that you alone can guard or save us. (287-292)

You planned it, you had it done, you all but
Killed him with your own hands: if you had eyes,
I’d say the crime was yours, and yours alone. (331-333)

Why, he is no more clairvoyant than I am! (375)

We can not see that his words or yours
Have been spoken except in anger, Oedipus (390-391)

You mock my blindness, do you?
But I say that you, with both your eyes, are blind:
You cannot see the wretchedness of your life,
Nor in whose house you live, no, nor with whom.
Who are your father and mother? Can you tell me?
You do not even know the blind wrongs
That you have done them, on earth and in the world below.
But the double lash of your parents’ curse will whip you
Out of this land some day, with only night
Upon your precious eyes. (398-407)

Out of this place! Out of my sight! (419)

A blind man,
Who has his eyes now; a penniless man, who is rich now;
And he will go tapping the strange earth with his staff.

No man can judge that rough unknown or trust in second sight,
For wisdom changes hands among the wise. (479-480)

A friend so sworn should not be baited so,
In blind malice, and without final proof. (619-620)

You do not know me; but the city knows me,
And in its eyes I am just, if not in yours. (638-639)

I am not sure that the blind man can not see. (703)

Sirs: though I do not know the man,
I think I see him coming, this shepherd we want:
He is old, like our friend here, and the men
Bringing him seem to be servants of my house.
But you can tell, if you have ever seen him. (1051-1055)
Come here. No, look at me. You must answer
Everything I ask. – You belonged to Laios. (1058-1060)

This man standing here. Have you ever seen him before? (1068)

But all eyes fail before time’s eye,
All actions come to justice there. (1163-1164)

I was blind, and now I can tell why:
Asleep, for you had given ease of breath
To Thebes, while the false years went by. (1173-1175)

Elders of Thebes, most honored in this land,
What horrors are yours to see and hear . . . (1176-1177)

The full horror of what happened you cannot know,
For you did not see it; but I, who did, will tell you
As clearly as I can how she met her death. (1188-1190)

It was by him
As he stormed about the room that our eyes were caught. (1203-1204)

He is calling for someone to open the doors wide
So that all the children of Kadmos may look upon
His father’s murderer, his mother’s—no,
I cannot say it! (1237-1240)

But you will see:
Look, the doors are opening; in a moment
You will see a thing that would crush a heart of stone. (1244-1246)

Dreadful indeed for me to see.
Never have my own eyes
Looked on a sight so full of fear. (1247-1249)

No: I cannot even
Look at you, poor ruined one. (1254-1255)

The pain of the spikes where I had sight,
The flooding pain
Of memory, never to be gouged out. (1269-1271)

He brought my sick, sick fate upon me.
But the blinding hand was my own!
How could I bear to see
When all my sight was horror everywhere? (1287-1290)
Your misery, you are not blind to that.
Would God you had never found it out! (1298-1299)

I do not know what words to offer you.
You were better dead than alive and blind. (1313-1314)

If I had eyes,
I do not know how I could bear the sight
Of my father, when I came to the house of Death,
Or my mother: (1317-1320)

Or do you think my children,
Born as they were born, would be sweet to my eyes? (1322-1323)

No. For the love of God, conceal me
Somewhere far from Thebes; or kill me; or hurl me
Into the sea, away from men’s eyes forever. (1358-1359)

They would be mine again, as when I had my eyes. (1415)

Come quickly to my hands: they are your brother’s –
Hands that have brought your father’s once clear eyes
To this way of seeing –
Ah dearest ones,
I had neither sight nor knowledge then, your father
By the woman who was the source of his own life!
And I weep for you – having no strength to see you – (1424-1429)

Men of Thebes: look upon Oedipus (1467)

No mortal eyes but looked on him with envy (1470)

Light/Darkness Imagery

Then once more I must bring what is dark to light (134)

What oracle for Thebes, the sun-whipped city? (156)

Will you send doom like a sudden cloud, or weave it
Like nightfall of the past? (159-160)

The fires of our grief, the fires of darkness (168)

Like sparks that fly when a fire soars,
To the shore of the god of evening (178-179)

Let him be riven by lightning from heaven! (195)

Phoibos Apollo, stretch the sun’s bowstring (196)
Artemis, Huntress,
Race with flaring lights upon our mountains! (198-199)

For the son of Zeus armed with this father’s thunder
Leaps in lightning after him (455-456)

How strange a shadowy memory crossed my mind,
Just now while you were speaking; it chilled my heart. (685-686)

Let all my words and actions keep
The laws of the pure universe
From highest Heaven handed down
For Heaven is their bright nurse,
Those generations of the realms of light; (821-826)

Zeus, if indeed you’re lord of all,
Throned in light over night and day,
Mirror this in your endless mind (858-860)

Else he would consider
The new prophecies in the light of the old. (871)

I think neither Istros nor Phasis, those great rivers,
Could purify this place of all the evil
It shelters now, or soon must bring to light –
Evil not done unconsciously but willed. (1180-1183)

My voice is hurled far on a dark wind.
What has God done to me? (1262-1263)

If I could have stifled my hearing at its source,
I would have done it and made all this body
A tight cell of misery, blank to light and sound:
So I should have been safe in my dark mind
Beyond external evil. (1334-1338)

Do not allow this pollution to show itself
Openly here an affront to the earth
And Heaven’s rain and the light of day. (1371-1373)

Mixing of the Two Dominant Images

Come with blinding torches, come in joy! (203)

You child of total night! I would not touch you;
Neither would any man who sees the sun. (359-360)

Holy Parnassos’ peak of snow
Flashes and blinds that secret man,
That all shall hunt him down (458-460)

O Light, may I look on you for the last time! (1120)

For the king ripped from her gown the golden brooches
That were her ornament, and raised them, and plunged them down
Straight into his own eyeballs, crying, “no more,
No more shall you look on the misery about me,
The horrors of my own doing! Too long you have known
The faces of those whom I should never have seen,
Too long been blind to those for whom I was searching!
From this hour, go in darkness!” And as he spoke,
He struck his eyes—not once, but many times;
And the blood spattered his beard,
Bursting from his ruined sockets like red hail. (1218-1228)

Ah dear friend
Are you faithful even yet, you alone?
Are you still standing near me, will you stay here,
Patient, to care for the blind?
The blind man!
Yet even blind I know who it is attends me
By the voice’s tone –
Though my new darkness hide the comforter. (1275-1281)

Oh fearful act!
What god was it drove you to rake black
Night across your eyes.