Episode 4: Oedipus the King

 
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  Welcome to Ancient Greece Today. My name is Naomi Weiss. I’m a professor of classics at
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  Harvard University, and I’m your host for this podcast series, which brings together scholars
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  and artists to think about the ancient Greek world and its many afterlives. Each episode,
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  we first look at a piece of ancient Greek literature and then at an example or sometimes
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  a couple of examples of how it’s been used and reimagined in the present day, especially in the
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  US. This season is tragedy today. Last episode, we talked about Prometheus Bound, a play attributed
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  to Aeschylus. Now, we move on from Aeschylus to another Greek playwright, Sophocles. This episode
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  is on Oedipus the King. The next one will be about Antigone. Before we turn to Oedipus,
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  I should introduce you to Sophocles. As I mentioned in episode 2, already by the end of the 5th century
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  BCE, Athenians had a clear idea of who their top three tragedians were, their classics, Aeschylus,
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  Sophocles, and Euripides. Sophocles had a very long life and crossed over with both the other two,
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  with both Aeschylus and Euripides. He had his first victory in the tragic competition in 469-68.
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  He actually defeated Aeschylus and he continued producing plays until his death over 60 years
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  later. We don’t know the date for Oedipus the King. Many scholars think it’s from the 430s,
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  but it could have been earlier or later. I have two guests on today’s episode to help us think
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  about this play and how it can be understood and transformed. Dr. Lindsay Coo from the University
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  of Bristol and Janet Eilber, Artistic Director of the Martha Graham Dance Company. But before we go to
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  those interviews, I should give you a run-through of this play’s plot. So, first, the background.
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  Oedipus is now king of Thebes, but he was brought up in a different city, Corinth, as the son of the
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  king and queen there. He had arrived in Thebes when the city was being terrorized by the monstrous Sphinx,
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  a woman-animal hybrid. The king of Thebes, Laius, had recently been killed, leaving the queen,
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  Jocasta, a widow. Oedipus had come along and saved the city by solving the Sphinx’s riddle.
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  Who walks on four feet, then two feet, then three feet? The answer? Man. Humans. He was made king,
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  and he married Jocasta, Laius’s widow. The play opens years later. We learn that Thebes is in trouble
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  once again. Now it’s afflicted by a plague. Its citizens are dying from disease. Oedipus has sent his
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  brother-in-law, Jocasta’s brother, Creon, to Apollo’s oracle at Delphi to ask what to do. The answer?
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  Find out who killed the former king, Laius, and expel him from the city. This sets Oedipus on a relentless
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  path of questioning. Questioning others, beginning with the prophet Tiresias, and, ultimately, himself.
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  We learn that Jocasta and Laius had a baby, but they received an oracle saying that their son would
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  kill his father. So they bound the baby by the feet and gave him to a shepherd to leave out,
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  expose, on the mountainside. We learn that Laius was killed where the three roads meet. And that was
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  also the spot where Oedipus coincidentally struck down an older man who got in his way shortly before
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  arriving in Thebes. We learn that the reason Oedipus left Corinth in the first place was because he had
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  heard a rumor that he was not his father’s son. He’d gone to Delphi to ask the oracle about it, and he was
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  told that he would have sex with his mother and kill his father. So he decided never to return to his
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  parents in Corinth. We hear from a messenger that the Corinthian king, who has just died, was not,
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  in fact, Oedipus’s biological father. That this same messenger had once been a shepherd, and years ago,
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  another shepherd had handed to him baby Oedipus, his feet pierced and bound together. The messenger,
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  then shepherd, had given him to the royal couple, who had raised Oedipus as their own in Corinth.
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  At this point, Jocasta asks Oedipus to stop. She knows. She knows before he does, and very ominously,
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  she disappears into the palace. But Oedipus must know it all, and he summons the old Theban shepherd,
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  who tells him, under threat of torture, that it had been his task to expose Laius and Jocasta’s baby
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  son on the mountainside, and that out of pity, he had given the baby away instead. Oedipus goes inside,
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  too. He knows as well. As the chorus sings, we dread what is to happen next. A messenger delivers one of
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  the most brilliant, awful, gory speeches in all of Greek tragedy. Jocasta, knowing that she has married
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  her son, Jocasta, has hung herself. Oedipus has found her body, and he has taken the pins from her dress
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  and stabbed his eyes with them, blinding himself. Oedipus then comes on stage himself, blind, miserable,
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  bloody. He tells Creon to look after his children, and then he leaves to go into exile.
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  So, the tragedy shifts from a whodunit to an interrogation of the self, to the question,
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  who am I? It is hard to think of any play in the entire history of theatre with as much
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  excruciating dramatic irony as this one, where we know, we the audience, know the answer to these
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  questions long before Oedipus does. There are various ways to approach Oedipus the King. Most famous,
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  perhaps, is Freud’s concept of the “Oedipus Complex.” Of course, it’s all about secretly desiring your
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  mother. Okay, but that is definitely not the only way to think about this play. To help us understand
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  it differently, I invited Lindsay Coo to join us. Stay tuned for that conversation.
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  I’m delighted to be joined now by Dr. Lindsay Coo. Lindsay is a senior lecturer in ancient Greek
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  language and literature at the University of Bristol and a leading expert on Greek tragedy and satyr play.
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  She has many publications on those topics, but I want to highlight some things that she’s working on right now.
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  A book on sisterhood in ancient thought and literature, a commentary on fragmentary plays of Sophocles,
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  and importantly for us, a volume on Oedipus the King. So, what better person to help us understand some of the
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  complexities of this famous play. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us on Ancient Greece Today. Welcome.
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  Thank you for inviting me. I would like to start by talking about the structure of this play, or the mythos, if we’re going to use
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  Aristotelian terms, the plot. Aristotle famously really liked the plot of Oedipus the King. For him, it was the perfect
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  example of recognition, of self-recognition and reversal, peripeteia, all happening at once, but also resulting from a very
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  carefully constructed series of events. I’d love to know what you think, whether you think Aristotle was
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  right that this play has an especially good structure, especially tight plot. I mean, it seems like a very
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  tight plot. It’s a play where, I would say more than any other, I’m very aware of time, of everything
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  happening in the space of one day, and of course that’s highlighted in the tragedy itself. So, yeah, what do you think?
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  Well, I think I agree that the structure of the play is brilliant. It’s tight, as you say, and it’s really
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  propulsive. And I think in terms of the way that the series events is constructed, what’s so clever about
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  the way that Sophocles chooses to do it is that those major events that are so important, that fulfill the
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  oracle, so the killing of the father, the marrying of the mother, they’ve already happened, right? They’ve
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  happened years ago. The play isn’t about those events. It’s about the discovery of them and the true
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  meaning of them and the identification of those involved years and years later. And so the structure
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  is then set up as an investigation where the characters know this key fact, the murder of the
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  king, but no one on stage understands what that really means and the true significance. And so from a
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  structure perspective, as we get more and more information released, we move, I think, through three distinct stages of this
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  investigation. So the first question is, who killed Laius? Right? And that kind of structures the events and the
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  conversations that characters are having. Then that shifts as Oedipus becomes worried that, you know, he might have killed
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  Laius. That shifts into the question, did I kill Laius? He knows that he killed an old man, therefore he may be the cause of
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  the plague, but he doesn’t yet know that the old man was Laius or that Laius was his father. And in that final stage of the
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  investigation, once people start to raise questions about his parentage, we get the big question, who am I? Right? So we get this
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  movement as the questions get more and more closely centered on Oedipus himself. And that kind of stretches the way that that
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  investigation is driven forwards. And each scene gets us closer and closer. Now, in terms of how the play treats time, as you
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  mentioned, you’re absolutely right, that what we get from it, as we pursue these investigations, is basically the
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  unfolding of the whole backstory of Oedipus. So we get this in dribs and drabs, as the play goes on, and not in order. So each
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  character, as they come on reveals a little bit more about Oedipus’s past. And we, as the audience or the reader, need to put those bits of information together in order to reconstruct the past. Right? So we hear about his defeat of the Sphinx. We learn from Jocasta about the oracle that came to Laius saying he’d be killed by his son. We learn that they then abandoned that baby. We hear from Oedipus about the oracle that he received, saying that he would have children with his own mother, kill his father. We learn that he killed an old man at the crossroads.
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  We discover from the Corinthian messenger that Oedipus is actually a foundling and not the son of the parents he thought he had. And that he’s given that child by another shepherd. And then finally, the very last piece in the puzzle, we hear from that very shepherd that the mother of that child was Jocasta. So as we move through, we get all these bits kind of moving around and moving backwards. That, as you say, is released slowly throughout the play. So that in terms of the timeframe, we actually find out about all of Oedipus’s
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  life, not just this one day. And in doing that work, connecting those dots, we’re kind of mirroring what Oedipus himself is doing, as he slowly fits together all of these moments from throughout his life. So we build up this picture of the meaning of his whole past, his birth onwards. But then again, thinking about time and structure, one of the things that I think also comes through really strongly, is just the sense of like, the sheer number of things that had to happen in the past, for all of these events to happen.
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  to lead to this one day, so that this investigation can take place. And a lot of these things are actually what we’d call quite random or quite coincidental, right? So Laius and Jocasta just happen to never actually check that their baby is dead.
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  in Corinth, Oedipus just happens to be very vexed that someone has insulted him. And then he goes
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  to the oracle and asks about his parentage. Laius and Oedipus just happen to set off exactly the
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  right time, which means they coincide at the crossroads. The sole survivor of that massacre
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  just happens to be the only man in the world. He can confirm that that abandoned baby is Oedipus,
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  is the son of Lyus and Jocasta, et cetera, et cetera. So I think absolutely we get this sense
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  in terms of this construction of the plot, of this really tight series of events. But I think not
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  just within the play itself, but actually extending backwards throughout the whole of Oedipus’ life,
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  maybe even before his birth in terms of when that oracle came to Laius and Jocasta. And for me,
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  at least, there’s this real sense of inevitability as we converge on that moment of truth, the revelation
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  of Oedipus’ parentage. And then all the time we need to think about both the knowledge that the
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  audience has because of their familiarity with the myth and the characters, the knowledge that the
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  characters on stage have as this evolves and how different that is too. So, you know, Jocasta
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  realizes the truth way before Oedipus does. So you’re holding all these different levels of knowledge
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  in your head as you’re watching the characters move through this tightly band together, knit together,
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  stages of the investigation. And then I think at the end, there’s almost a bit of a surprise because
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  after Oedipus blinds himself, and that’s an outcome which the oracle does not predict, it’s not inevitable,
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  it’s not something which absolutely has to be part of the myth, then things kind of flip in terms of
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  who knows what, because now Oedipus is the only one who knows how he’s going to react, right, what he’s
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  going to do next. We as the audience think that this tightly structured play is going to end up
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  with the killer of Laius going into exile, because that’s what everyone has said throughout the play,
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  but that doesn’t happen. So there’s this wonderful kind of subversion at the end,
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  where everything that seems so inevitable that it’s led towards this point,
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  we as the audience are perhaps slightly wrong-footed too. So yeah, you know, I think I agree with
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  Aristotle in terms of just the sheer intricacy of all of those different things going on at once,
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  and this sense of the structure of events not just being confined to this one day in the life of
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  Oedipus, but this is the culmination of events that have, this chain of events that’s been set up
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  throughout the whole of his life so far.
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  I love the way that you put that, this much larger series of events that have to happen in a very
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  particular way, often apparently in a very chance way, that’s there in the backdrop, and then all come
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  together just in this short space of time. Yeah, that’s great. Well, this leads me to the next
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  question, because actually one of the riddles in the play is about the day, right? Tiresias says,
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  this day is going to give birth to you and destroy you. So yeah, the play is full of riddles, and we,
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  if we know of any of them, we think of the one that’s actually in the background of the play,
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  the Sphinx’s famous riddle that Oedipus solved, which I mentioned earlier in my introduction to the
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  play on this episode. But there are other riddles, not just the one I mentioned. You could think of the
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  place where the three roads meet as a riddle, a sort of riddle. The question of Oedipus’s name,
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  that’s certainly a question and could be a riddle too. Why are there all of these riddles in this play,
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  do you think? What do you think the riddles do, or what role do they play in this tragedy?
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  That’s a great question. I think, yeah, let’s start with Oedipus’s name. So that is definitely a riddle,
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  as you say. And the reason it works as a riddle is it can mean several different things in Greek.
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  So you can pull it apart in different ways. So the first element, oid, in Greek is the root for both
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  the verb to know, oida, but also to swell, oideo. The second bit, pous in Greek, means foot. In certain
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  grammatical inflections, the name becomes oida pou, and the second syllable now suggests the word for
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  where, and that becomes quite important at one point where people are wondering, you know, where are
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  various characters. We can also think, you know, origins and provenance are so important in the
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  search for Oedipus’s identity. And you can also divide the name in a different way so that you get
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  dipous out of it, which means two-footed, which again recalls the riddle of the Sphinx that you’ve
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  talked about earlier. So all of these different elements suggest something about Oedipus’s identity,
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  which we can come back to in a moment. As you said, the Sphinx’s riddle is so interesting because
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  it’s never actually mentioned in the play. So no one ever articulates it. But we know that it’s
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  quite an old part of the story. And so I think, you know, we can assume that the audience or at least
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  a good proportion of the audience know what it is. And in a way, then the audience themselves need to
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  become riddle solvers, both to remember it, but also to figure out why it’s such a rich,
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  an important riddle to lurk in the background of this tragedy. And what we realize as the play
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  progresses is that all of the stages of that riddle are going to be reflected in the life of Oedipus
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  himself. So the question of what happened to him as a baby, a baby that crawls on four feet,
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  although actually we learned that his feet were pinned together. So maybe he was also kind of
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  three-footed at that point. That’s central to solving the mystery. We see him in that central adult
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  stage walking on two feet, but by the end of the play when he’s blinded and he needs assistance to walk,
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  he’s kind of prematurely become the old man stage of the riddle who needs a walking stick.
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  So that riddle, even though it’s never actually articulated in the text, it kind of provides the
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  solution to all of the things that we’re going to concentrate on in the life of Oedipus.
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  And then if we go back to Oedipus’s name, which also has that foot element, we can see that this idea of
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  the riddle of the feet, right, is so central to both Oedipus’s identity and the riddle of the Sphinx.
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  So Oedipus is able to solve this incredibly intricate riddle about human feet. But what he doesn’t know,
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  what he doesn’t realize is that his own feet and his name are intertwined because we learn from the
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  Corinthian messenger that his name, Oedipus, actually means swollen foot. That is the reason he was given
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  that name because as a baby his ankles were pinned together. So all along that clue about his identity
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  was on his own body, but he couldn’t see it. And yet he’s able to solve this really complicated riddle
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  of the Sphinx. So I think there’s something really nice going on there about riddles highlighting
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  different levels of human knowledge and the gaps in that knowledge as well. And again, it all
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  interestingly comes back and centers on Oedipus himself and his identity.
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  Then another, you mentioned the crossroads as well, the place where three roads meet, and that sense of
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  mathematical riddles and numbers folding into each other or expanding out of each other, again, is really
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  prominent throughout the play. So the Sphinx’s riddle is a maths puzzle, right? So there’s one being
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  that can have four feet or three feet or two feet. How is that possible? And that sense of numbers collapsing
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  into each other is central to some of the other mysteries and riddles in the play as well.
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  Because in that first stage of the investigation, when characters are trying to work out what happened
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  with the killing of Laius, one of the central questions is how many people were involved.
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  Creon says that the Oracle has told them to find killers, plural. And also according to Creon,
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  that sole survivor says that there were many people who attacked them. And then when Oedipus thinks about
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  the event where he killed a party of travelers at the crossroads, he says, oh, I killed all of them.
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  But then he continues to be worried that it was the same event as the one with the killing of Laius.
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  So we have this kind of confusion, like what’s going on here? Was there one killer? Were there many?
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  Is there one survivor? Were there no survivors? How are these two things the same? And ultimately,
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  we find that they’re both talking about the same event, but there’s this haziness, this kind of riddle
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  of how do these two things fit together? And I think, as you said, Naomi, it’s no coincidence that this
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  all takes place at the crossroads, right? Where we have three roads becoming one, one becoming three,
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  that sense of the collapsing and converging again. And I think the way that I would link it back to
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  those riddles about Oedipus’s identity is to say that the sense of how one thing can be many and many
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  things can be one is a really nice way of thinking about Oedipus’s identity. So he is a husband,
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  but also a son to the same figure, to Jocasta. He’s a father and also a brother to his children.
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  He’s son, but also killer to Laius. So he’s Corinthian and he’s even, he’s a native and he’s adopted.
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  He’s all of these things that seem like contradictions, but actually these multiple identities are held in
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  the one figure of Oedipus. And it’s that complexity of his identity that the play takes us towards
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  discovering. I really like that you pointed out the riddle that Tiresias says to him as well,
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  the day will both give birth to you, engender you and destroy you. And that sense of Oedipus’s
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  identity being the key to all of these things when he discovers that inevitably his life is never going
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  to be the same again. So yeah, I think all of these riddles are doing something really interesting around
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  human knowledge, but also they keep coming back to the identity of Oedipus himself and thinking about
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  all the contradictions in his character.
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  Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And especially this sense of these multiple things being in the
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  one person, the one body and these multiple things being in the one play and the one short space of
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  time. That’s great. And you already touched on the role of sort of measurement and numbers and
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  mathematics in the play. And that’s a nice segue to the next question I wanted to ask, which is that
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  that sort of language is often part of this sort of relentless questioning on the part of Oedipus,
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  of questioning and self-questioning. And that is what takes up a lot of the play, right? And a lot of
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  this language that he uses, this questioning resembles that of contemporary intellectuals. So that’s where
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  sort of the mathematics comes in, but also there’s medical language. There’s language that sounds quite
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  philosophical, scientific. And we heard in episode one of this podcast from Josh Billings, who was giving
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  us a sense of the contemporary intellectual climate and how tragedy in general engaged with it. So this is a
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  great play for that, to demonstrate that sort of thing. But as a result, it seems like it’s a very
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  human play, a play about human knowledge and what men can do. And it doesn’t seem to be very much to do
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  with the gods necessarily, at least for a modern audience, maybe. It’s like Oedipus thinks that he
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  can get past them. But of course, the gods are still there. And I think, obviously, maybe they’re most of
24:46 –> 24:53
  all there in the chorus’ songs. They’re there through the chorus. So I would love to hear what you think
24:53 –> 25:01
  about, you know, where is the divine in this tragedy, maybe in relation to what I was saying about this
25:01 –> 25:11
  very human questioning. And what role does the chorus play in this respect, in terms of the divine?
25:11 –> 25:18
  Yeah, so the role of the divine in this play is a huge, complex question. And I think it’s worth saying
25:18 –> 25:23
  that it’s had quite a contested history as well, the ways that people have seen the gods that work
25:23 –> 25:29
  in this play or not. And I think that isn’t helped by the fact that the play itself doesn’t give you
25:29 –> 25:33
  any nice, clear answers, right? So it’s not like one of those tragedies where at the end, the god
25:33 –> 25:38
  comes on stage and says, this is what I’ve done, and this is why I’ve done it. And he kind of helpfully
25:38 –> 25:44
  explains it in that way. And actually, one of the central themes of this play is just how difficult it is,
25:44 –> 25:50
  or maybe impossible it is for humans to really grasp what the gods are planning. So that, I think that
25:50 –> 25:57
  fits the fact that it’s had such a complex interpretative history. And on the one hand, as you’ve said,
25:57 –> 26:04
  absolutely, it’s all about the human, right? Oedipus kind of characterizes that very human drive to do well,
26:04 –> 26:11
  to gain knowledge, even when we know it might hire us. The role of human ignorance, that human quality
26:11 –> 26:15
  of having a limited perspective that doesn’t quite get the bigger picture. And we can see how much he’s
26:15 –> 26:20
  driven by that. But at the same time, I do actually think the divine is quite pervasive in this play,
26:20 –> 26:25
  even when it’s not being explicitly talked about. And there’s a couple of ways I think that comes
26:25 –> 26:31
  through. So the first would be about the staging and the arrangement of space. So we think about the
26:31 –> 26:36
  way this play opens, a crowd of people come on stage, identified as suppliants to the gods,
26:36 –> 26:40
  and they go and sit at the gods’ altars, and they’re led by a priest. So right from the very
26:40 –> 26:45
  beginning, we’re aware of the importance of the gods and the way that they can influence human life.
26:45 –> 26:51
  And in terms of that staging, we have those altars of the gods that are present, that become a fixed
26:51 –> 26:57
  point in the drama. And then we have that kind of echoed later on in the play, when Jocasta enters
26:57 –> 27:02
  with the offerings to Apollo, and she gives those to either the same altars as at the start, or perhaps a
27:02 –> 27:07
  statue of Apollo that might be by the house. So in the very space itself, we have these physical
27:07 –> 27:13
  reminders of the gods and of their relationships with humans. And then when characters come on stage,
27:13 –> 27:18
  you know, when Creon first arrives, he’s of course coming as a messenger of the gods, bringing the
27:18 –> 27:24
  oracle from Delphi. When Tiresias arrives, he’s very explicitly coming as someone who represents the
27:24 –> 27:32
  gods. But even in less clear cut cases, we might start to sense something of the god’s plan at work
27:32 –> 27:38
  behind it. So I’m thinking in particular, of the arrival of the Corinthian messenger. So if you think
27:38 –> 27:42
  about what happens just before this, Jocasta puts her offerings on the altar and says, Apollo, give us a
27:42 –> 27:48
  solution, give us a release from this. And then immediately the Corinthian arrives, and he brings
27:48 –> 27:53
  news that he thinks is going to be really welcome, but actually turns out to be another piece in the
27:53 –> 27:58
  puzzle towards the terrible revelations. So this sense that the gods might be there, even when we
27:58 –> 28:02
  don’t want them to be, even when we’re not thinking about them or explicitly mentioning them, I think
28:02 –> 28:09
  is something that runs throughout. And as you say, Oedipus himself is so insistent on his own human
28:09 –> 28:14
  intelligence. He’s really proud of the fact that he solved the Sphinx’s riddle without divine help.
28:14 –> 28:21
  And he says to Tiresias, you know, I did it because of my own intelligence, not all this, but signs from the
28:21 –> 28:26
  birds that you rely on. He’s quite dismissive of that. But as we said earlier, I think we can’t
28:26 –> 28:31
  really overlook the fact that all of the chain of events that have led to this day has so many
28:31 –> 28:37
  random things and coincidences in it that we might start to think, you know, what has been the role
28:37 –> 28:41
  of the gods? Is there something that has been guiding this? And really what it boils down to is
28:41 –> 28:46
  that there have been four oracles, or there will be four oracles, that are so important in shaping
28:46 –> 28:53
  Oedipus’s life. The oracle that came to Laius, which led to his exposure as a baby. The oracle
28:53 –> 28:58
  that Oedipus got, which led him to leave Corinth. The oracle that Creon brings within the play itself,
28:58 –> 29:02
  saying, you need to find the killer of Laius. And then at the end of the play, Creon says,
29:02 –> 29:07
  I’m going to send again to the oracle to find out what we do next with you, Oedipus. So actually,
29:07 –> 29:10
  all these movements of his life have been shaped by these interventions from the gods,
29:10 –> 29:18
  even though he says, I rely on my own intelligence. And that kind of coexistence of Oedipus
29:18 –> 29:24
  being in control, and also very much not being in control, I think is really exemplified at that
29:24 –> 29:28
  pivotal moment when the chorus at the end of the play, they say to Oedipus, why have you blinded
29:28 –> 29:35
  yourself? Which of the gods made you do it? And he says, it was Apollo, Apollo who brought these
29:35 –> 29:41
  things to pass, but no one struck the blow with his own hand except me. So we have that absolutely,
29:41 –> 29:47
  that kind of dual existence there of him saying, everything has been Apollo all along. But this
29:47 –> 29:51
  action, these things that I’m responsible for, this is just me, I’ve decided to blind myself,
29:51 –> 29:56
  and I’m taking personal responsibility. So I think we absolutely have those two things existing
29:56 –> 30:02
  together. You also asked about the chorus, and I think they’re absolutely crucial in this as well,
30:02 –> 30:09
  because as you say, they are the ones who in their choral odes invoke the gods. They pray to them
30:09 –> 30:16
  from their very first song onwards, when they mention this whole series of gods, and entreat them to
30:16 –> 30:22
  come and help the city. But also, I think really importantly, they’re the ones who explicitly imagine
30:22 –> 30:30
  or articulate what it would mean if the oracles don’t work, if they’re not valid, like how that leads to a
30:30 –> 30:36
  breakdown in human-god relations. So after Jocasta reveals what she thinks is proof that the oracles lie,
30:36 –> 30:42
  right, she says, you know, the gods said that our son would kill his father, but that’s not true,
30:42 –> 30:46
  because our son’s dead. I mean, the chorus in the following ode, they’re quite shaken by that. And they say,
30:47 –> 30:51
  if this is the case, if the oracles don’t work anymore, then what is the point of us going to holy
30:51 –> 30:57
  places? What is the point? And they even say at the end, the things of the gods are perishing,
30:57 –> 31:01
  which is quite a strong statement. So they’re this really powerful voice who remind us of just how
31:01 –> 31:07
  important it is that those channels should be open, that oracles should mean something, that you should
31:07 –> 31:12
  be able to rely on the gods. Because if you don’t, then the whole religious system kind of breaks down.
31:12 –> 31:18
  So I think they are a really powerful voice in reminding us why it’s so crucial to believe in
31:18 –> 31:25
  those things within the world of the play. Yeah, I completely agree. And again, I really like how
31:25 –> 31:37
  you’ve combined that element with Oedipus’s taking on human responsibility at the same time.
31:38 –> 31:44
  That’s great. We are unfortunately running out of time, much though I would love to go on
31:44 –> 31:50
  talking about this play for much, much longer. So I might just ask you a final question, which is a
31:50 –> 32:00
  little bit different. As you know, for this podcast, I’m talking to artists about their use of ancient
32:00 –> 32:10
  plays as well. And I would love to know from you as a scholar of Sophocles and of this play right now in
32:10 –> 32:17
  particular, are there any particular adaptations that you have especially enjoyed?
32:17 –> 32:21
  Yeah, I think there are quite a few. I’ve been working on this play for a long time. And in the
32:21 –> 32:27
  course of that, I’ve come across so many different surprising variations of it. I think just to pick out a
32:27 –> 32:32
  couple, one of my absolute favorites is Night Journey, which I know you are talking about elsewhere
32:32 –> 32:39
  on this podcast. And what I love so much about that is the way that it focuses on Jocasta and on her
32:39 –> 32:44
  experience and particularly her kind of physical experience and the way that it takes those scenes
32:44 –> 32:48
  which are offstage in Sophocles and makes them central. I think that that’s just wonderful.
32:48 –> 32:54
  Another adaptation I’ve really enjoyed is Pasolini’s film, Edipo Re, from 1967.
32:54 –> 33:00
  And the way it just splices together different time periods, history, myth. It’s very autobiographical.
33:00 –> 33:07
  It’s very Freudian. I think it’s just such an interesting way of approaching it. And even as
33:07 –> 33:12
  someone who knows the ancient text really well, I’m always kind of spotting new things every time I
33:12 –> 33:18
  watch it in terms of the way it’s weaving together the ancient text and the author’s, the filmmaker’s own
33:18 –> 33:23
  experiences. And then finally, in like a really different vein, an adaptation I really love is
33:23 –> 33:31
  Stephen Berkoff’s Greek from 1980, which takes the story of Oedipus and sets it in like Thatcher era
33:31 –> 33:37
  Britain. And it shows the possibilities for turning this story into like a dark comedy. And you wouldn’t
33:37 –> 33:42
  naturally think of Oedipus the King being a comedy, but actually that line between, you know, the absurd and
33:42 –> 33:50
  the tragic and the darkly comic is so thin. And what this does is it centers on this figure of Eddie, Oedipus.
33:50 –> 33:56
  It’s really dark. It’s really coarse, really vulgar. It has this incredibly subversive ending where he decides to
33:56 –> 34:02
  just stay married to his mother because, you know, they’re in love. So why not? And I think it really shows the
34:02 –> 34:08
  possibilities for taking that story and rethinking it in such a different genre. I think it’s really refreshing,
34:09 –> 34:17
  really eye-opening. That’s great to hear about that. When I teach this play, I often introduce my
34:17 –> 34:27
  students to Luis Alfaro’s Oedipus El Rey. And there are many reasons why that recent adaptation is
34:27 –> 34:35
  interesting and important. But one of the things that we talk about is its tone and the amount of comedy
34:35 –> 34:43
  that is in it, even as it is incredibly dark and makes a very important political statement. And sometimes
34:43 –> 34:51
  the students like that, sometimes they don’t. But it’s really great to think about what tragedy is
34:51 –> 34:58
  actually as a genre, what it can be, what types of things it can encompass. But anyway, thank you so much.
34:59 –> 35:05
  All of this was incredibly enlightening. And I’m so grateful to you for joining us on the podcast.
35:05 –> 35:06
  Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
35:19 –> 35:26
  Thanks to Lindsay, we now have a better understanding of the structure of Oedipus the King, its tightness
35:26 –> 35:32
  as a play, its multiple riddles and how central they are to the uncovering of Oedipus’s identity,
35:32 –> 35:39
  its exploration of human knowledge and its limits, and the central role of the gods, the divine,
35:39 –> 35:46
  in the tragedy. Lindsay also mentioned that one of her favorite adaptations of the play,
35:46 –> 35:54
  or maybe better, responses to the play, is Martha Graham’s Night Journey, which tells the story
35:54 –> 36:01
  through the body of Jocasta. I was very fortunate to be able to speak with Janet Eilber, Artistic Director
36:01 –> 36:07
  of the Martha Graham Dance Company, about this remarkable piece and her own experience of dancing
36:07 –> 36:12
  it under Graham’s direction. Stay with us for that interview.
36:12 –> 36:32
  So I’m delighted to be joined by Janet Eilber, the artistic director of the Martha Graham Dance Company
36:32 –> 36:41
  since 2005. Janet joined the company long before then and danced with Graham herself for a decade,
36:41 –> 36:46
  I believe. Janet has really done extraordinary work in curating Graham’s oeuvre for modern audiences,
36:46 –> 36:53
  rediscovering and reviving numerous dances, remixing them in modern theatre and dance productions.
36:53 –> 36:58
  So I’m really happy to be speaking with you. Thank you, Janet, for being here today.
36:59 –> 37:04
  That’s my pleasure. My pleasure. Night Journey is one of Martha Graham’s greatest work, if not her greatest.
37:04 –> 37:10
  And so it’s really a pleasure to talk about it and do some comparison.
37:10 –> 37:19
  Thank you. Yeah, I’m very excited to hear what you have to say. So I’ve already explained to our listeners
37:19 –> 37:31
  that Night Journey was originally performed in 1947. Graham’s version of the Oedipus story told in Sophocles’ play,
37:31 –> 37:38
  here told through Jocasta, through the body of Jocasta. And we should definitely get on to that.
37:38 –> 37:46
  But maybe first, might you be able to give our listeners sort of a brief introduction to Martha Graham,
37:46 –> 37:54
  her company and her legacy. I guess the company was founded 100 years ago. This year is the centennial.
37:54 –> 38:03
  That’s right. Yes. In 1926. That’s the first concert that Martha Graham gave of her own work with a group of dancers.
38:03 –> 38:06
  So we consider it to be the birth of the Martha Graham Dance Company.
38:06 –> 38:16
  In the years just before 1926, Graham had become a star as a dancer, starring in American Dance of that era,
38:16 –> 38:23
  which was very escapist, decorative, imaginary gods and goddesses, swans and princesses.
38:23 –> 38:28
  And Martha was quite dissatisfied with that. This was America between the wars.
38:28 –> 38:44
  And you can think this is the era when the greats of American jazz come into being and Copland and Gershwin in classical music
38:44 –> 38:50
  and Frank Lloyd Wright and Hemingway and Faulkner and Georgia O’Keeffe.
38:50 –> 38:56
  You know, what all of those artists were doing in their forms, Martha was doing for American dance.
38:56 –> 39:08
  She was looking for a vocabulary, a physicality, a vocabulary that would describe real human emotions.
39:08 –> 39:20
  She called revealing the inner landscape and she stripped away all decoration, all facade and got down to the essence of being a human being.
39:20 –> 39:33
  I like to say the simplest way of putting it is that she borrowed natural gesture, body language, and she turned it into a style of dancing.
39:35 –> 39:38
  So that was her beginnings in the 1930s.
39:38 –> 39:48
  She was experimenting with modernism in dance, the stark geometry on stage of the patterns of dancers who in the 30s were all women.
39:48 –> 40:01
  She wove in social political ideas, the power of numbers, the rallying cry against oppression in 1936 when she declined to dance at the Olympics in Berlin.
40:03 –> 40:10
  And then when she added men to her company in the late 1930s, this expanded her talent into narrative.
40:10 –> 40:21
  And within a few years of that, she began to transform some of the great Greek stories.
40:22 –> 40:23
  And we arrive in 1947.
40:23 –> 40:27
  In 1946, she borrowed Medea.
40:27 –> 40:33
  In 1947, she borrowed Theseus and the Minotaur and Oedipus and Jocasta.
40:33 –> 40:46
  Really kind of at the height of her powers as a modernist, as a revolutionary, and as a great, great theatrical presence.
40:46 –> 40:49
  Of course, she created the role of Jocasta for herself.
40:49 –> 40:56
  And it’s a remarkable transformation of the story.
40:57 –> 40:58
  It is.
40:58 –> 41:08
  And I should say for our listeners that you can actually see a video of Graham performing that role on YouTube if you’re interested.
41:08 –> 41:16
  What was it about these Greek stories that led her to come back to them over and over again?
41:16 –> 41:21
  Because even after the ones that you mentioned, there were more.
41:21 –> 41:22
  There was Clytemnestra.
41:22 –> 41:23
  There was Alcestis.
41:23 –> 41:30
  Circe, the Cortege of Eagles, which is about Hecuba grieving the slaughter of her family.
41:31 –> 41:39
  I realize that this is just a small number of a much larger set of dances.
41:39 –> 41:43
  But still, over a long period, they seem to have appealed to her.
41:43 –> 41:45
  Can you speculate on why?
41:45 –> 41:47
  I think there are a number of reasons.
41:47 –> 41:56
  I think the idea that Martha Graham was trying to get down to the essences of the human experience, so were the Greeks.
41:56 –> 42:15
  When you’re looking at a Greek tragedy, the essence of human pain, of joy, of jealousy, of anger, all of these things, I think, were inspiring to the Greek dramatists.
42:15 –> 42:20
  And that was what Martha was trying to do, get down to human essences.
42:20 –> 42:25
  She was also looking for great roles for herself.
42:25 –> 42:39
  So when she borrowed Medea or she borrowed Jocasta and transformed them from that character’s point of view, it was to provide herself with a great vehicle.
42:39 –> 42:53
  And with that as inspiration, she transformed how women were represented on stage, that they could be complex, they could be ambitious, they could be flawed, which made great roles for herself.
42:54 –> 43:04
  And the other important thing at the time of her development in the 1940s, she wanted audiences to come in with foreknowledge of the characters.
43:04 –> 43:10
  She didn’t want to spend time rolling out a narrative and explaining who these people were or anything.
43:11 –> 43:19
  She wanted them to come in knowing the story so that she could manipulate it from the moment that the curtain went up, which is what she did.
43:19 –> 43:32
  That’s really interesting and must be a challenge for performing them today in terms of that expectation of audience knowledge.
43:32 –> 43:39
  Well, we should focus on Night Journey, which I’ve very briefly described.
43:39 –> 43:54
  The only thing I might add is that for me, it seems to be Jocasta’s silence in the play, in Sophocles’ play, becomes this dance.
43:55 –> 44:07
  It’s such profound silence when she realizes who this person really is, who she has married, and then disappears off stage.
44:07 –> 44:13
  Somehow for me, the silence was given a voice, a bodily voice through the dance.
44:13 –> 44:22
  But I would love to hear your initial description of the dance so that our listeners can have a sense of what it involves.
44:24 –> 44:33
  Yes, I think one of the brilliant techniques that Martha uses in Night Journey is the chronology.
44:33 –> 44:40
  She really tells it all through Jocasta’s memories in a stream of consciousness way.
44:40 –> 44:50
  So as the curtain goes up, we see that Jocasta has arrived in her chambers, having left the play, disappeared from the play.
44:50 –> 44:51
  We now see the next moment.
44:52 –> 44:58
  The curtain goes up on Jocasta with a holding rope above her head, about to end her life.
44:58 –> 45:10
  And the entire 26, 27-minute dance takes place in that moment between lifting the rope over your head and tightening it around your neck.
45:10 –> 45:16
  So it’s as if her life is flashing before her eyes before death.
45:18 –> 45:27
  There’s an opening solo in which we get to see what Jocasta must have been feeling as she realized the truth.
45:27 –> 45:28
  It’s frantic.
45:28 –> 45:29
  It’s frantic.
45:29 –> 45:33
  There’s a bed on stage created by Isama Noguchi.
45:33 –> 45:41
  And she keeps going over to it and remembering something else that happened there and being horrified and running in another direction.
45:42 –> 45:53
  When I was dancing, rehearsing the role of Jocasta with Martha Graham, I was racing from one point to another in the room.
45:53 –> 45:59
  And she stopped me and she said, you know, you really have to talk to yourself the whole time.
45:59 –> 46:02
  And I said, what do you mean?
46:02 –> 46:09
  And she said, well, when you come over here, you remember this is where he took you as a lover and you can’t stay.
46:09 –> 46:15
  And when you reach this point in the room, you realize this is where you weaned him as a babe and you can’t stay.
46:15 –> 46:28
  So she was really talking about a complex inner monologue for the dancer portraying that moment when Jocasta realizes the truth.
46:29 –> 46:32
  After that solo, a Greek chorus enters.
46:32 –> 46:33
  It’s all women.
46:33 –> 46:40
  I think they represent what the Greek chorus usually represents, the audience.
46:40 –> 46:42
  You’re more expert in that than I am.
46:42 –> 46:52
  But they also represent Jocasta’s interior, her angst and her disbelief, her agony.
46:52 –> 46:57
  It’s a remarkable, remarkable choreography for a group of seven women.
46:59 –> 47:07
  They bring in Oedipus as Jocasta begins to remember his return to the city.
47:07 –> 47:10
  He’s quite arrogant.
47:10 –> 47:18
  There’s a moment where he takes his cloak and has it over his head and he’s struggling with something.
47:18 –> 47:23
  This represents his solving the riddle of the Sphinx.
47:24 –> 47:31
  And then there’s a beautiful, beautiful duet, which is a love duet between Oedipus and Jocasta.
47:31 –> 47:39
  We also see their marriage, very formal, structured parading around the stage.
47:39 –> 47:54
  And then we see the consummation of their marriage on stage, which brings the Furies, the chorus, back in to reject that happening.
47:56 –> 48:01
  And in the end, Jocasta winds up.
48:01 –> 48:10
  The Oedipus grabs the brooch off of her costume and blinds himself and exits.
48:10 –> 48:17
  She returns, picks up the rope and ends the ballet where it began.
48:18 –> 48:24
  And I should mention there’s one other character, probably the most important character of this work, who’s woven throughout.
48:24 –> 48:26
  And that is Tiresias.
48:27 –> 48:34
  And the blind seer who has a large staff that he’s leaning on.
48:34 –> 48:39
  And yet it is a constant drumming.
48:39 –> 48:51
  The inescapable truth is represented through that character, through his movement and through the pounding, relentless pounding of his staff on the floor.
48:52 –> 48:55
  Yes, he’s sonically very, very important, isn’t he?
48:55 –> 48:56
  Yes.
48:56 –> 49:06
  You mentioned already that you regard this as Graham’s greatest work and most complex work.
49:06 –> 49:08
  Why is that?
49:08 –> 49:15
  As both the Artistic Director of the company and as a dancer who has danced this piece yourself.
49:15 –> 49:16
  Yeah.
49:16 –> 49:19
  It’s many reasons.
49:19 –> 49:20
  The elements that came together.
49:20 –> 49:36
  This is probably the most evocative set that Isamu Noguchi created for her with that remarkable bed on stage, a shaft of white fabric coming down, representing light of truth coming onto the stage.
49:36 –> 49:42
  The score that was created by William Schuman under her direction.
49:42 –> 49:50
  We have the letters in the scenario that she sent the composer describing what she wanted in the piece.
49:50 –> 49:54
  And it’s a wonderful piece of mid-century American music.
49:55 –> 50:01
  And then there is her relationship with time, as I mentioned.
50:01 –> 50:15
  The extraordinary retelling, breaking of time and retelling it in switching from reality to memory.
50:15 –> 50:31
  And for the most part, the lead role of Jocasta, when she goes back into her memories, she participates in them, but she’s not completely free of the truth.
50:42 –> 50:43
  It’s a wonderful role for any dancer to play.
50:43 –> 50:44
  So she has to be involved in this courtship and marriage and consummation.
50:44 –> 50:46
  And every once in a while she knows that something is not quite right. 
50:48 –> 50:51
  So it’s just multi-layered.
50:51 –> 51:01
  As I mentioned, the chorus, the movement for the Greek chorus is, I think, really some of Martha’s greatest choreography.
51:01 –> 51:11
  And Tiresias, who’s enveloped in a huge cape, difficult to see his arms and legs, really.
51:11 –> 51:21
  And yet, such a huge presence on the stage as the truth is in this play.
51:21 –> 51:23
  And then there’s another prop.
51:23 –> 51:37
  The rope that she holds over her head at the beginning transforms later in the piece to represent the umbilical cord between Jocasta and Oedipus.
51:37 –> 51:49
  And then they’re wrapped in it and bound by it in several different poses as the chorus dances, representing, I think, being bound by fate.
51:49 –> 51:50
  Mm-hmm.
51:50 –> 51:53
  So it’s just so layered.
51:53 –> 52:01
  Every time I watch it, and now I’ve been watching it for, I danced it 50 years ago, and I’ve been watching it for the ensuing 50 years.
52:01 –> 52:08
  Every time I watch it, I see something different, or a new cast member discovers something new.
52:08 –> 52:14
  And it’s really one of those works of art that is bottomless.
52:14 –> 52:15
  Yeah.
52:15 –> 52:25
  When I was watching it, maybe one of the most striking bodily movements for me, or that has stuck with me, is this sort of contraction.
52:25 –> 52:37
  It’s like a, as if giving birth, but also sort of orgasmic, as she, I guess, is beginning to remember fully.
52:37 –> 52:39
  Yeah, I don’t know how to describe it.
52:39 –> 52:51
  You will be able to describe it much better than I, but it’s something that maybe, especially as a female, I could just immediately feel myself.
52:51 –> 53:03
  And that itself, that just one movement itself is, in terms of time, so complex because it can represent the complicated relationship with Oedipus.
53:03 –> 53:14
  Yes, well, as you say, the contraction can mean so many different things, and it’s the essence of Graham’s famous technique, the contraction and release.
53:14 –> 53:25
  The contraction being sort of the folding of the torso and the exhale, and the release being the inhale and the expansion of energy through the arms and legs.
53:25 –> 53:30
  So the contraction, the exhale can mean so many things.
53:30 –> 53:31
  It can be a scream.
53:31 –> 53:32
  It can be a sob.
53:32 –> 53:34
  It can be, it’s very recognized.
53:34 –> 53:37
  It can be birth, life-giving.
53:37 –> 53:40
  It can be erotic.
53:40 –> 53:53
  It’s just that impulse from the very center of the body that is so recognizable, shockingly recognizable to Martha’s early audiences.
53:53 –> 54:10
  And it’s throughout Night Journey, not just for Jocasta, but watch that chorus, because they are just driven by this strength of the power of the torso undulating and driving their movement.
54:10 –> 54:32
  It’s amazing that with that she captured something that I myself have been interested in for Greek tragedy for a long time, which is how the chorus, but also the audience is encouraged to respond bodily, kinesthetically to the words, but also the movements of the individual actors.
54:32 –> 54:43
  So she’s captured that in a way that very few modern productions of Greek tragedies do, that sort of bodily relationship, which is amazing.
54:43 –> 54:45
  Yeah, fascinating.
54:45 –> 54:50
  I was also, I keep thinking about her hair.
54:50 –> 54:54
  And the, I don’t know how you would describe it.
54:54 –> 55:02
  It’s like an enormous pin, which seems very relevant for this story, given how Oedipus blinds himself.
55:02 –> 55:17
  But also, I guess the fact that you can’t easily describe, you know, even the prop, the big bit of metal in her, in her hair can mean multiple things.
55:17 –> 55:18
  Yes, and I’m sure it did.
55:18 –> 55:38
  And I can’t remember what it means at the moment, but she and the jewelry that she wears, the brooch on her chest that he blinds himself with, and this golden sort of arrow that is through her bun, were also designed by Isama Noguchi.
55:38 –> 55:44
  So they’re quite beautiful and evocative.
55:44 –> 55:45
  Yeah.
55:45 –> 55:46
  Wow.
55:46 –> 55:59
  I wondered if you might be able to, as we gradually bring this to a close, talk about the experience of producing this dance now.
55:59 –> 56:12
  And maybe more generally, how you combine sticking to the choreography of Graham, first set in 1947, with modern audiences.
56:12 –> 56:21
  You know, this podcast has mostly focused on contemporary adaptations of Greek tragedy.
56:21 –> 56:26
  And something like Night Journey is sort of both contemporary and not.
56:26 –> 56:29
  It’s performed by new bodies over and over again.
56:29 –> 56:32
  And so in some ways must become new each time.
56:32 –> 56:38
  But there’s also an element of it that’s more than an element of it that is fixed.
56:38 –> 56:41
  So I’d love to hear your perspective on that as the Artistic Director.
56:44 –> 56:45
  Yes, you’re right.
56:45 –> 56:53
  We have 21st century athletes dancing this 20th century masterwork, which does change it.
56:53 –> 56:54
  There’s a new tempo.
56:54 –> 56:58
  There’s a new energy in the world and in these bodies.
56:59 –> 57:05
  And so, unfortunately, Martha lived so very long until 1991.
57:05 –> 57:09
  So she ran into this problem herself.
57:09 –> 57:21
  As each generation came and danced these roles again, she saw that the facility of the dancers, the sensibility of the dancers was changing.
57:21 –> 57:24
  And she would incorporate it into the choreography.
57:24 –> 57:33
  She loved the fact that dancers were jumping higher, that they were contracting more deeply, that they were turning faster.
57:33 –> 57:36
  She loved that and she incorporated it.
57:36 –> 57:45
  But her cardinal rule, her core belief was that the emotional message had to be maintained.
57:45 –> 57:52
  So she never just allowed legs to go high and turns to be fast in order to impress the audience with physical tricks.
57:52 –> 57:58
  It all had to serve that emotional message that Night Journey delivers.
57:58 –> 58:06
  So that is what I use as my guidelines, as today’s dancers can do more and more and more.
58:06 –> 58:15
  We maintain the choreography as simply as possible.
58:15 –> 58:19
  Martha wanted it to be very spare, very direct.
58:19 –> 58:21
  That was her style.
58:21 –> 58:26
  Dancers like actors sort of find embellishments and things that they like.
58:26 –> 58:40
  And we work very hard to strip those away and give the sort of cleanest, simplest, modernist statement on the stage.
58:41 –> 58:50
  And then the theme of the work also changes with time, although, I mean, the theme stays the same, but the reception of it changes.
58:50 –> 58:59
  And certainly the acceptance and exploration of the truth is a worthy theme for any era.
59:00 –> 59:01
  Definitely, especially today.
59:02 –> 59:03
  Yes.
59:03 –> 59:06
  I think that’s all we have time for.
59:06 –> 59:16
  But thank you so much for enlightening us on this extraordinary piece, which I hope more classicists will pay attention to.
59:16 –> 59:17
  Thank you.
59:17 –> 59:18
  It was my pleasure.
59:18 –> 59:19
  Thank you.
59:19 –> 59:35
  I really enjoyed both interviews for this episode.
59:35 –> 59:45
  Lindsay so brilliantly and precisely expanded our ideas about Oedipus the King itself, our ways of approaching it.
59:45 –> 59:57
  And Janet showed us how the offstage scene of Jocasta’s suicide, described by the messenger in Sophocles’ play, could be staged through a different medium, dance.
59:57 –> 01:00:05
  Yet this medium also connects Graham’s production to the ancient tragedy with its singing and dancing chorus.
01:00:05 –> 01:00:13
  And we talked about the choruses of tragedy and their forms of performance in episode one with Rosa and Duha.
01:00:14 –> 01:00:21
  Next episode, we will stay in Thebes, but focus on Oedipus’ famous daughter, Antigone.
01:00:21 –> 01:00:24
  That episode will be a little different in structure.
01:00:24 –> 01:00:43
  I’ll be joined by Dr. Andres Carrete, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies, for both a discussion of Sophocles’ Antigoneand for interviews with two Mexican playwrights, each of whom has produced an adaptation of that tragedy:
01:00:43 –> 01:00:46
  David Gaitán and Perla de la Rosa.
01:00:46 –> 01:00:47
  Do join us.