Luís's Reviews > Oedipus at Colonus

It was read before the wise men of Athens by the old Sophocles himself, very old and whose children, these raptors, wanted to question his intellectual faculties to seize the management of his goods.
Superbly, the old playwright, by way of pleading, only read, it is said, his tragedy, Oedipus at Colonus, the last of his plays, which has as its subject the apotheosis of an exile. And a cursed Oedipus, who finally gains rest on the threshold of his life and regains lost grandeur and glory.
That alone would inspire respect, but respect for Oedipus at Colonus is not enough: you must also love this magnificent tragedy! And how strong are the reasons for loving him?
The Greek landscape, cities, sanctuaries, and temples are so intensely present in no other tragedy.
Oedipus ran worldwide, chased everywhere after his incest and involuntary parricide. Only little Antigone, with a dark destiny, accompanied him. She is his eyes, which he put out to punish himself; she is his stick of old age. And now they are both at the gates of Athens, a young city then governed by a young king, still unknown. His name is Theseus. In the Athens suburbs, a sanctuary is forbidden to incursion by the fierce law of the Erynnies. So, no one would dare set foot there.
Not Oedipus: he enters. He knows that it is there that the gods, finally appeased, will carry him off and remove him far from the hateful or horrified gazes of men. He feels that it is there that he will eventually find peace, that of death, which is limitless.
The places are of exceptional strength: we see the sanctuary. We see through the eyes of the messenger the apotheosis of Oedipus in a tremendous clap of thunder.
The characters also have a seriousness, a strange aura: Oedipus, Antigone, and Theseus are legendary beings whose true mythical greatness is measured here by comparison with the too-human smallness of an Ismene, a Polynice, or even a Creon.
The third reason to love Oedipus at Colonus resides in a language of strength and purity, almost detached from all contingencies, ethereal and yet profound like Greek wisdom.
Oedipus at Colonus is a poetic and inspired song, with almost no more rupture between episodes and stasima—the alternating action and choral singing phases of Greek tragedy.
It's a swan song to be read and reread. And for the Hellenists, in the text, so wonderful is the language.