Oedipus the King by Sophocles

[Music] Welcome to Zero to Well Read a Podcast with everything you need to know about the books you wish you'd read. I'm Jeff O'Neill. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. Join us today as we journey back to ancient Greece and we attempt to solve the riddle of Etappist the King. Before we jump in though, if you're enjoying the show, we would sure appreciate it if you would share it with friends. And of course, leaving us a reading or review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever your listening is a huge help as the show continues to grow. We are really thrilled with the response that we've had so far. We had a little time on the Apple Podcast homepage. This has been very exciting to us. And as a little incentive to keep the magic going, if we can get to 150 ratings on Apple podcasts, we're going to add a special holiday episode. You know, I'm tempted not to tempt the fates to tempt prophecy and sort of get people to rate and review because here's what we learn from Etappist the King Rebecca's, we don't know what we're doing. We don't. We don't. We don't want it to happen and it goes disastrously wrong if you try to control your fate. And even when you think that you're making good decisions, you can be plagued by the fear that you've been doing it wrong all along and it might turn out that you have been. We were joking a little bit before we started recording this episode that we've had some nice response and we do see some variation based on the the book we're talking about. And I don't know Rebecca where Etappist the King is going to fall. It's an unusual text and we're going to get into a lot of the ways. But I was thinking about this and I wasn't sure to put this in the hot takes or wherever I was going to put it. But of the works that are this famous, like people, if they don't know anything about Etappist, they've heard the story. They know the word Etappist. They've heard maybe edible complex because Freud was just doing so much cocaine. But there is no adaptation to reference. There isn't like a even I've never heard of one. Like that that that's in the cultural consciousness at all. There have been movies and stuff done, but they don't survive into the the current cultural moment. And so it feels when you're reading this almost completely unmediated by current contemporary culture. Because even when a hamlet is coming, I think it will come out already by the time we've done this episode, even the oldest text we've done has been so mediated. Most of the other things have had a movie adaptation or out there in some other kind of way or there's other books by this author. But reading Etappist the King, which is the middle of the three The Even Plays, which are not a trilogy, which will get into it really felt to me like getting back to the source weirdly in a way that other readings we've done so far have not. I think that's a great way to put it. This is one of those that if you have if you've read it, you've read it. You probably have not seen it. Like I don't recall ever seeing, you know, an advertisement for like a local theater doing the performance of Etappist the King. And you're right, there is no like pop culture adaptation of it. This is not like, and this is not a story that lends itself to that kind of adaptation or updating very easily at all. It's not like, oh, you can just spin Emma into clueless or you can spend the taming of the shrew into 10 things I hate about you. This is tough stuff that Sophocles is dealing with here. And I don't know if it's that. If it's just that this is such an old but really foundational way of telling this story and that it's so particular to theater. Like what do you do with the chorus if you try, you know, with this Greek chorus convention, if you try to make a movie out of this, it would be hard to do a live action version that wasn't just a camera on a stage. And I don't know that anybody wants to just do a camera on a stage for this. We don't have, I don't have any cultural touchstones for this play other than having read this play and having read an antigeny, which is another one in the cycle. The thing that probably most endoers is more of I guess I could have put this into takeaways later, but I'll put it here. Is the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy, which there aren't as many examples that I could think of in the Dillon Research. There's not another one that's of this import as an epist like Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars. I mean, not really that comes a little bit later. There's some other things here. But it's even in psychology. Like I don't know if there's any actual clinical evidence that self-fulfilling prophecy is a real phenomenon. But this idea that in order to avoid something that you don't want to happen, you bring about its conclusion, I guess appointment at Samara by John O'Hara. There's these other things where this idea is super interesting to us because as you note in the notes before and we're going to talk about it some length, this text, this play is wrestling with one of. If not the hypothesis question mark, central questions of human understanding, which is, can I control what amount of control do I have over my existence? Is it all left to chance? As the Queen Jacosta says, is it completely a matter of making good informed choices one after another and you will get to where you want to go as the epist of the beginning of the play seems to think? But as a piece, it is almost a perfect plot, which we'll talk about a bit more. I think that's another thing that struck me. This is an air type plot and it has ancient Greek tropes and so far they were inventing the tropes that we know, which is also a fascinating part of this. But it feels like such a monument to itself that it's very hard to say something like, I think, "Editipist should have done this," or I didn't like this character. This is not a new one. It resists that kind of engagement we're so used to now. Yeah, it doesn't lend itself to contemporary book club questions. No, it doesn't. You might find in the back of a paperback. This is a work that is asking real existential questions. This is the kind of book club that I want to attend. If you have already made it this far into this episode, this is probably the kind of book club that you want to attend. That's right. As well, that is not about what did you think when so-and-so did this in the plot and should they have done this other thing? What would you do? Did you like Messenger 1? What would you do in this situation? It's the what does it mean of it all? And if we cannot fully control our destinies, what actions do we take? How do we try to live a good life? What's the point of it all? If there are elements that we can't control? And Etappis is wrestling with like, is it just the gods and fate? Or do I have free will? But those these questions are still applicable today. I think eternally applicable. And that was one of the great pleasures of going back to this for the first time since my formal education. Yeah, I think if you're interested in tackling it either before listening to the rest of the show or after, one thing that's been very helpful to me in a few times I've had a chance to teach it is to reframe your expectation about what the work is trying to do because, you know, in an Aristotelian sense, like, you know, Aristotle says, this is the perfect tragedy. And in fact, it's sort of a chicken in the egg thing where he defines tragedy based on Etappis because he likes Etappis so much. So, Erika, like, it's a strange dynamic here. But one thing, the thing that Ancient Greek theater was trying to elicit in its audience is responses catharsis, right? Which is idea of like, a big, feeling that you sort of have in the moment and then it kind of flows out of you and you sort of feel better, you know, in the day and new mom after the after glow of having this really intense experience. And that's the point of eliciting that experience. Not even to answer a question, not to ask a question, not even to get resolution or to leave ambiguity. The point is to have this feeling of this super intense feeling of recognition of existential dread or joy. But that is what it's trying to produce. So, even saying that, even saying, and I think it does, but even saying that Etappis and Sophocles are asking questions is not actually what they're doing. What Sophocles is trying to do is go to have this big feeling about being alive and not resolve it and hold it for a moment. Confusing it is. Yes. And that other people feel this way. And other people feel this way. So, that's a different I think. I was trying to think of, I guess in something like Romeo and Juliet or Titanic or I'm just something with big feelings, right? That aren't all good. That aren't all pleasurable. I think that's the other thing that is important about this idea of catharsis is that there's it's almost like a it's like castor oil for the soul. Like you're just trying to get it out for a moment. And it's not going to go away forever. Right? There's no sense that you're going to solve anything or like I've read this book and now I understand love or you know that I shouldn't run away from my family when I think I'm going to do something to. It's not even about providing solutions or moral instruction or anything else except for that feeling of that temporary release of the feeling of being inextricably and permanently at least for a while human. Yeah. And the folks viewing this in 5th century BC were experiencing it collectively. They were not sitting reading this play in their living rooms. There were 15,000 of them in a big outdoor theater. They're kind of packed in there and they're having these feelings together. It's like that collective expression when you go to a concert and you kind of feel unified with people because you are sharing the same encounter with art. That's the way that this story was experienced. And I think it's still the ideal way to experience something like this. It's one of the things that makes me love going to the movies. You know, like because you can feel the vibe in the room as everybody laughs together or everybody goes, Oh no! Or whatever it is. And there are moments in this play where you can imagine like folks nudging each other. Like, Oh, did you pick up on that? Because I picked up on that. Like he's doing that thing, isn't he? And that like remembering that that was what was happening here. That this was written for people who were going to experience not just catharsis but a collective moment of catharsis with a story that they were all already familiar with. Today's episode is brought to you by Flat Iron Books. Publisher of this story might save your life by Tiffany Crumb. Introducing this story might save your life. The highly anticipated debut novel from author Tiffany Crumb. Best friends, Benny and Joy like to say they've been saving each other's lives since the moment they met. Until that is the day joy disappears and Benny is suspected of murder. This is a story where secrets run deep, fame hides fractures and some stories are more dangerous than they seem. It's available now wherever books are sold. Make sure to pick up this story might save your life by Tiffany Crumb. And thanks again to Flat Iron Books for sponsoring this episode. Hey folks, I'm here with a podcast recommendation for you. If you're enjoying what we're doing at zero to well-read, the deep dives, the context, what's really going on here energy? We want to share some friends of our show who have a great podcast of their own. It's called The Secret Life of Books. It's a really smart and deeply engaging weekly podcast hosted by Princeton English professors Sophie G and former BBC Arts Director Johnny Claypool. Each episode they take on an iconic book to ask what's the story behind the story, who shaped it, what were the stakes and what meanings might we have missed. Right now they're in the middle of a special Tony Morrison mini series. Y'all know we love Tony Morrison here at zero to well-read and they're taking four episodes to explore her work with the kind of close reading literary history and sharpened site that we know you'll appreciate. If you like taking great books seriously without taking yourself too seriously, which I assume is true for you because here you are go check out The Secret Life of Books wherever you get your podcasts. You won't be sorry. So maybe that's a good place into what is this all about. Yeah before we get there though, if you don't have a copy of Edipisk The King and you want to pick one up where there are a lot to choose from and let me tell you that you can find one on three books which is sponsoring this first season of Zero to Well-read. I see 423 editions here, 12 of those collectible and that looks like just a translation by Bernard Knox. So maybe that was a super popular one with an introduction by the great playwright Thornton Wilder. There is the three Theben plays that the I don't know did you have the same penguin classics. I know that you did a Fagil's translation. This one's a Fagil's too but I don't know if there's multiple editions. You can get that one for 489 in good condition. I bought mine for a local used bookstore in Goodshave. I think there's something to me to reading one of these classics. I kind of want to use edition with like some other strangers half-hearted notes in the margin that Peter out the third of the way through when they start reading. Collective moment. Yeah. You can get a Cliffs Notes version there. You can get the Oxford edition with Commentaries new and hardback for $212 if that's something that floats your boat. I've done a couple different translations. I like the Ladimor. I like the Fitzgerald. They're all pretty good. I think the Fitzgerald's the one I remember and I'll get to this in the famous quotes because when I was reading this Fagil's translation there's a couple of quotes from the edition I used to teach that I say every now and again and I'll save that for a quotes and they're slightly different and I was very sad about it. So when you go dig up my original we are this is our first is our first week of translation. Yeah it is our first work of translation which we're not really getting into because even though you and I are clearly scholars of ancient Greek that is a gordian not that you have to acknowledge and move on pretty quickly of the problems and possibilities of translation. So order the $15 or more you could buy for all 10 people in your book club you can get them the same edition for less than 50 books have it shipped to you or for free and then that would also get you closer to a free reading rewards from thrift books here. We know what I should do. I should keep a running tally or of how much it would cost you to buy all the books that we've talked about so far and my recommended you know here's my pick for the book. I bought almost all of my books for this season from thrift books because even the ones that we're reading that were already on my personal shelves I wanted like a fresh copy that my my former self had not made notes in. Oh look at you how responsible. I mean responsible particular dealer's choice. But I'll be doing the same thing we're starting to plan our next season which will kick off in January and I'll I will be doing the same thing we love thrift books. I also read the Fagels translation and I thought about asking you you know back in the summer when I was buying my books which translation you were using did we want to sync up on translation but I think that sometimes it's nice when we're reading different versions like we read different versions of Hamlet with different commentary and that can be helpful but I did read the Fagels the pen it's a penguin classic look of the the three thief in place and I really liked it. All right so with that I guess let's give the readers like a five second they could pause the episode themselves what do you know about the story of edipus to think to yourself out there and it could be as little as I know edipus as a word and that's literally it all the way to I'm a scholar and this is what I've studied. What do you think Rebecca if you were to make a reference in your own social circles we can't speak for everyone to speak for ourselves to edipus what do you think the median understanding of someone you might be talking to about a book or books in general would know about edipus. I think that most of the folks I know who tend to be on the nerdy side yeah let's set the context. That's what I said we are. We would recognize edipus or edipus complex from the Freud and would probably be like doesn't this have something to do with wanting to sleep with your mom and that's probably about as far as we would get some of them there's a couple history majors would have read it in college. I mean I read it in college and this was a very different experience than what I remembered from 20 years ago so I also wouldn't count on folks remembering much more than doesn't he sleep with his mom and isn't it bad somehow yeah the answer that is yes for sure it's bad and yes he does but the one thing too is very much a we can get into that that's not that's not that's not yeah I mean as we said Freud was doing a lot of coke so yeah at one point jacosta when edipus is like oh my god she's like you know it's a dream you know everyone has a dream of with their mom and I was like do they but even having said that there at least there is this idea that it's a dream like it's something that's out there but that everyone wants to that edible complex is a real psychological phenomenon is not a thing to my understanding I did a very little bit of googling it's like yeah Freud claimed it was unconscious but still yeah so anyway tell us what it's really it what's the real story at least this story of edipus which is important yes so this is set in ancient Greece it was first performed in 425 BC so many many many I'm so bad with BC because like what's older than is 490 older than 510 I rise five nuts no 510 is older I know it makes me nuts I'm reading softly his biography this guy is aging backward like morgue it's driving me I can't do it the first time morgue and softly has appeared in the same sentence yeah half-baked idea can we start at zero and just this is pick zero like when the reset meteors hit this BCE stuff is not this is for the chickens I don't like go ahead okay so a plague is ravaging thieves which is where the play is set and an oracle has revealed that the plague is punishment that's being wrought on the city because someone murdered the former king leus the current king edipus sets out to find out who murdered leus so that he can end the plague and save the city there's bad news for edipus though because the call is coming from inside the house edipus has unknowingly fulfilled a prophecy that he would kill his mother sorry kill his father and marry his mother and the play follows edipus as he uncovers the truth and if it sounds to you like I have just spoiled the whole thing like chill out because the play was written for an audience that was already familiar with the story of edipus and they knew where it was driving the action of the play doesn't show how he kills his father and marries his mother it knows that he has already done those things and we the audience are supposed to know that he has already done those things the tension of the play is about what happens when he finds out and what it means to him as he goes on the search for truth that begins as this search for leus's murderer and ends as his discovery that it's him mm-hmm yeah and they would have been familiar with the idea of edipus as someone who had this prophecy and then fulfilled it unknowingly there but there are key differences that we're not going to go into all of them here but I want to say that is an adaptation of a story and this is something the ancient Greeks did where they were telling different versions of it even Escalus who is the inventor of tragedy and a older but contemporary peer of Sophocles had his own version and I think that's also something that's hard to remember in these cases is these figures I wish I wish I could I wish I could feel what it felt like for a audience member in this play how what their reaction to this kind of story would be because here's another thing it's super hard to remember and I have this for takeaways later it's like this is a political, cultural, unartistic and religious experience all wrapped up into one so in part and parcel these are real figures but also subject to artistic creation by these playwrights it's there's no artistic moment like it in our in our experience it's very hard to find any kind of analogy but part of it is knowing the story knowing what's going to happen the inevitability of it but also seeing how this particular playwright in this particular interpretation adaptation is going to tweak it a little and give us a little difference here and the signal difference in my reading about how this version of edipuses different from others is that the there's much more of edipuses own will that brings about his like his search for truth his rival self-revelation is the thing like I need to know the truth I need to find what's going out jacosta his wife slash mother says just turn away from this don't look at it and we'll get to my quotes a little bit later one of the key ones is like I can't I don't care what's going to happen I have to know the truth and that's true seeking rather than Odysseus is pride you know we can get in we're going to talk about hubris and fatal flaws that is the thing that leads him to towards his own destruction but the plot itself has a switch watch like perfection and the prophecy that he gets as a kid and he's told so that he leaves his home was the same one his biological parents got that got them to get rid of him and so everyone is trying to get around this prophecy and in doing so they bring it about and so you know what I've talked this before the students are tempted to be like well if they just hadn't had done that then this prop is like well that's it but you see they did and like wait a minute like and you get into that cycle so I would just encourage people to leave all of that just push all of your like what people should have done just push that desire back don't you think like it I think so yeah it's not fun or helpful and then we don't get to do any of the other things that we get to do with this work of art if edipus never leaves home and if his family never if his original parents never try to get rid of him also that doesn't resonate with human nature like what kind of new parent gets a prophecy that like this terrible thing is going to happen with your child and what kind of person grows up hearing that they're going to do a terrible thing and doesn't attempt to do something to avoid it or control right like this seems a very fundamental part of human nature to me that if we are told it's likely that this thing is going to happen to you or in edipus's case it is foreseen like the gods have declared this is your fate we're not great as a species at being like okay yep at just accepting it of course there's going to be some kind of resistance this is a really extreme example of both what the prophecy is and what the response would be but it makes sense to me that everybody we meet here was trying to avoid it in some way they did really extreme things to try to avoid it but then they were trying to avoid a very extreme thing right I think if there's anything to if you can get outside of it just for a second I think one interesting perspective to think about in this regard is not what they should have done with their prophecy but the again I'm going to use post-Christian language here if there is an original sin here it's the desire to ask the oracles about the future right the desire to go beyond their contemporaneous limited human and saying to to have a kind of access to dip their cup briefly into a well that they don't really get to have access to in a full way it's funny I was showing my kids back to the future the first time the other day and I think the closest thing to the danger of prophecy in contemporary culture is you know sort of this mythology we've built around time travel it's like you don't want to know too much about the future because you can get yourself erased your photographs gonna get erased in the past it's a similar kind of idea that knowing having a little access to knowledge that is normally outside the realm of human understanding is more unwinding than butressing like it's gonna go bad more often than it's gonna go well but in each case we see people trying to intervene on their own behalf and that's something that struck me this time that it's much more collective right it's not just edipus it's also jacasta and leus it's also the king and queen of Corinth it's also the shepherd um who gives the kid away and like several people take pity on this child that's been left to die on the hillside which is a super human emotion that is not seen in this book in this play as lamentable it's natural right so this conflict between human emotion and experience and knowledge with super human knowledge and when those two things to come together and when you mistake one for the other that's when everything goes sideways in a real fundamental way yeah it resonates for me with that question people ask today sometimes of like would you if you could know when you're gonna die yeah right yes would you want to know and if you would want to know what what is it that you think you could do with that information like would it give you a greater sense of control maybe but would you actually have more control no yeah right you're still gonna die you still don't have control and that fundamental like that's I think the deep fear the deep truth in this work is like we don't have control that's I think one of the things Freud is drawn to here we're afraid of death we're afraid of all of the things we can't control and we will go to pretty extreme lengths in service of helping ourselves feel like we have some kind of control and this and and it's great hubris and very risky to think that we can control almost anything in the universe and you know as you were saying like the audiences would have been familiar with a bunch of different versions of this one and it is this like trying to exercise free will and that edipus goes on the search for truth and that differentiates this performance like that's the thing that Fagel says makes this version of edipus universally recognized as the dramatic masterpiece of the Greek theater like that's a huge deal and when it debuts in 425bc that's in this moment of intellectual revolution like knowing what's happening in the culture then was really powerful to me as I was reading up for this that this is right as the idea of history like history as a thing is developing like people are just becoming conscious of history like herodotus had just invented the word history basically yeah in that century like someone had to invent the idea of theater someone had to invent history political theory is new democracy is new philosophy is just developing like Aristotle has read and seen this play and these ideas and questions of the play like also might seem kind of basic or fundamental but it's because these are the very first questions humans were asking about what the hell we're all doing here when they figured out that we could do these things that we could track history that we could ask philosophical questions about what it all means that we could use art to explore things and to have a collective catharsis and the plays were also highly political they were like in many like many instances plays in this era were used to criticize government officials and public figures in ways that were super sharp that we would even like Jimmy Kimmel would shy away from you know from like how sharp the critique was but it's that like this moment of intellectual revolution is important but that it's kind of the first moment of intellectual revolution is also an important piece of grounding information yeah at least in the West and it's so hard to I've thought my dad and I have played this game of like if you could go be in like five concerts of all time which concerts do you go to and I've since expanded that to cultural moments right and I would I think I would use one of my five picks on going to see the well that we haven't talked about this how the scene of these plays performed once yes yes the soffically these plays were part of this Dionysian festival that happened in late March or early April there was a very formal competition three playwrights each submitted a suite of plays a comedy a tragedy in a sadder play the tragedies were first in the morning which is you you really got to get your coffee and wake up what darling we're going to a nine a.m. showing of edipus I hope you're ready well this is how you get your catharsis you get all the big feelings out and then you have a comedy I mean in this maybe obvious except it's so obvious that it's worth saying is that they didn't have electric light so if you're going to get nine plays in a day you got to start at daybreak because the thing is going down like you may have torches and something but very difficult for 15,000 people to see three playwrights were invited and then it was judged there was a panels of judges who were elected there was first second and third and this was a this was the big deal and the cultural life of Athens which was the center of Greek development at this particular time we have seven extent plays from Sophocles those are historical record of at least 123 of them having been produced even how we have the text that we do have is a story and worth its own multi part mini series on PBS but suffice it to say the transitory nature of this were part of what made this powerful because these plays came out of earlier rights of singing and dancing like very basic singing and dancing stuff the chorus chorus the Greek word means dancer right so that's choreography is where we get the root for that there's going to be a lot of roots like Thespis who invented acting essentially like let's have one person stand outside the chorus and do some talking at us and like that's an actor oh show what you call actors Thespian see invented that's crap a guy invented acting like yes invented the idea back this was one of my intrusive thoughts while going back to this was like right we haven't always had these things someone had to invent like what if we added to this singing and dancing a person delivering performed lines yeah and then we could call it a thing and then what what now that we have this form what do we do with it how new and exciting this what can it do yeah very exciting an Eskolas added a second actor so what I have two people that we talked about inside was wait a minute I'm going to be like Gillette adding blades to the razor what about three and suddenly get into the three body problem where that three that three actors usually two of which were on stage at the same time but sometimes they were they were all because as you imagine there's more than three characters so you've got to go behind this scheme SKE and E which we call scene they'd go behind it to change their outfits they would wear masks that were heightened but not grotesques because you've got to play to the 11th thousandth person up there and your facial expression acting wasn't a thing because most people couldn't see it so you had these you know these these masks so when edipus spoiler alert no we're not doing that what am I doing when when edipus years 25 hundred years old we know the horrible truth about his existence and blinds himself that happens behind the scheme and all the violence of these plays happens off stage some of that is thought to have been we don't know exactly why apparently some of thought to have been like that sacrilege to show violence in this cultural historical religious setting and some of it I think is frankly practical because you don't have that many people you got to switch your masks right so you got to go from cited Odysseus to bleeding eyes not Odysseus pardon me edipus and then you could move people around they could do costume changes men were playing all the roles here the other thing that I looked up is the great amphitheater of Athens was rebuilt after a fire and was expanded with stone seating 15,000 people there were only 50,000 people living in Athens at the time so a third of they would release people from prison on bail so they could go see the play like it's remarkable it's really remarkable there's really nothing like it I'll give away one of my takeaways I was like this would be like if the super bowl and the 4th of july and Christmas were all the same thing so really remarkable really cannot grasp how important this was and how fast the art form was changing at the same time that's really important sophically's himself this is not a Homer worry it's weird that we have more we some people have more faith that sophically's existed than Shakespeare which kind of blows my mind given the historical record but he was seemingly a normal participant in an Athenian life this is another thing that's kind of hard to wrap your head around too because the world were so small and certainly democracy was not available to anyone in a really serious way like sophically's was also the greatest playwright but also served in the military as a 15 year old and then also was in political life to help sort some things out like all just a really enormous figure in the cultural life of the day I don't there's not a lot else to know about I think it's also helpful to remember when you're reading really any text but certainly text from the ancient world that are contemporary formulations of cultural categories break down in a seriously right race breaks down gender breaks down sexuality breaks down sophically's had at least some interest in having romantic relationships with men just was the case you know that's one of the rightly or wrongly that's sort of one of the cliffs notes thing people remember from ancient Greece is that homosexual relationships especially among men were not frowned upon really in any way that I understand maybe it wasn't the same as having a family and everything but you weren't persecuted for it yeah there wasn't the stigma that has been kind of stigma way contemporary western cultures and you know ancient Greece we used to describe a melange of city states Athens being predominant that sort of dotted the a G and C and that includes places out you know includes cities off Asia Minor Elym or Troy was on the coast of Turkey and so that really did that really fades our east west black white colored non-colored constructions that we have today that are real but also temporary and culturally determined and other things like that and I think that's one of the great pleasures of reading things that are very different at a very different time is it helps give some perspective on the contingency it doesn't say they're not impactful but the contingency and malleability of these categories that feel to us so fixed that's around times yes and while you're talking about you know having perspective on the context of this work like I really can't say enough how important it is to go into this knowing that the audience would have been familiar with the story that the play is drawing on so you as a reader or you as a viewer if you manage to find a performance of edifice the king to go see it's expected of you that you know that this was the prophecy he has already done it how what he's about to find out about himself is not the surprise how he finds it out is what the play is all about and read the intro material like the figure was very good yeah the figure's one is great like but you know with the hamlet translations that we were using in that episode like read the intro material to this stuff that is not contemporary to our time because we don't have we don't share cultural context with the people who created this work or the people that were the intended audience for it and it is not just helpful but I think really necessary like if you're going to invest your time in doing this kind of reading give the extra hour to reading all of the introductory material it's it is super helpful to be reminded of here is what was happening here's who softly as was here's how people would have encountered this story and it it really does enrich the reading of the play as well because that's the that's the stuff where somebody delivers a line and you're like oh that's foreshadowing and the audience would have known it was foreshadowing and there's real pleasure in being like oh I know where this is going and because we all know where this is going and so everybody's leaning forward on their seats at the same time and when you have that experience and can imagine these ancient audiences having the same experience I think that's very helpful for encountering this as closely as we can get to what the intended experience was but it's still very far away still very far away and you know I think this is a case where you can get something from just reading the text you know downloading a PDF of project Gutenberg and just reading the play as it is again that's always going to be a subject of translation unless you're reading some ancient Greek but the more context you give the more depth there is to your experience right it becomes a historical inquiry and investigation as much as as a cultural and artistic one which has it's I certainly find helpful I think they reinforce each other right because in reading this bagel's introduction one thing that I was either either learned for the first time or is reminded of is that the Oracle at Delphi the source of these prophecies was still in business in 425 BC you could go there open yes it's open and the priest there would you know scroll out some stuff for you if you asked it a question super influential it might it might be said probably something that would be taken over by the state pretty quickly in today's political environment you can't have it's kind of like the press or the fourth estate subject the bridge between the divine and the human but in the moment of the play the idea of getting profusers in the Oracle and taking them seriously was not a it was not a conceit right it was not sort of a suspension of disbelief proposition that you needed to enter into like it was there and in the century as the Greeks are working on political democracy and philosophy and history the tension between human understanding and non-human reality is very much up for grabs what can we create how can we are we subject to the Olympians what are we subject to anything that isn't us and if so what is it and if not then what do you do those questions were very much fomenting at the time and the answers that have come out and still get asked are very much like you know have a little bit more been parlayed into the realm of sort of nature versus nurture we're not wondering if it's Afro-didi and Dionysus we're wondering if it's neurons in DNA but the idea is similar like am I me and just a collection of whatever and subject to the whims or just a bunch of neurons firing or is there a core consciousness in free will that is independent autonomous flawed and consequential and still resonates in many it does it does yet these ancient playwrights were often wrestling with humans relationship to the gods and to fate like they are as you said they're consulting oracles and they're doing that in the plays because people are doing that like in real life fates are fulfilled like prophecies are given and it's notable that in Etappist the king there are no supernatural events someone goes and talks to the oracle but there is no intervention by the gods there is no like deus as smokina kind of moment this is all human stuff and that was a pretty significant shift that's also happening at this time of cultural revolution in ancient Greece where it's not just like public life is not just centered around religious life anymore the this like rise of philosophical thought and history and individual inquiry is leading people to question whether the gods are a thing and if they are a thing how influential are they how influential should we allow them to be in our lives and here this play is one man entirely dealing with what if it's all on me and I can't help but fuck it up no matter how hard I try yeah and then the primacy of the city state too right there's a lot of talk in in the play edifice the king about the the king's ruler the king's responsibility to the city the primacy of the city as the political unit an unusual political arrangement between jacosta krian and edifice that I didn't do I should have done some follow up reading around where there's sort of this tripartite thing but not really because krian is accused by edifice of like fomenting discord by soliciting this prophecy that you know there's this plague because of who killed leas and krian's like why would I do that I've got a good baby I've got all that I've got all the rewards of being king but I'm also not the one that wears the crown some of my favorite quotes there uh so that that's also very much at play let's see what else is worth um well this is the actual scene of it this is either the first or the middle of these three three things in place which is important to talk about um they were like historically presented in the order in which the events happened which is edifice the king then edifice a colonist then antigene but fagels and a lot of contemporary translators actually encourage breaking them into the order in which they were written which is antigene then edifice the king and then edifice a colonist because that prevents readers from viewing them as a trilogy they they're not intended to be a trilogy to the best analogy I have for this is that you can watch all the marvel movies in the order that they came out in theatrical release or you can watch them in the order of like how the story lines unfold and he's saying read these or engage with them in the order that they were written because that allows you to see how the questions softacles was asking and the ways that he was approaching the stories evolved over time yeah and I think the three of them are best thought of like three character stories orbiting around a central myth which is a cool way and taking these amazing to by the way if anyone's that I think that was the first one that I read when did you first read this I you know I I wrote down in our notes that I think it was for western sieve and I read it right before taking a test on it I actually think I read it in high school as part of a western literature course I don't I don't remember it's lost to the sands of time I've taught it a couple times but yeah I don't I think I think either western said but again I was either 17 or 19 so it's pretty close either way yeah I was mine was in a an this honors seminar my freshman year of college that you got credit for literature philosophy history and theology and it was six hours a week like three hours of lecture three hours of discussion per week this was I think the first semester was like antiquity to the middle ages and then the second semester was the middle ages up into more contemporary work it was unbeknownst to me in 2001 like the signal experience of my college education formative in ways that continue to have interesting impact on me like shout out to the Jesuits for putting together a class like that but also this work makes so much sense in that context because you can encounter it as literature philosophy history and theology all rolled into one and I hadn't touched it since then interesting so speaking of what was it like to incal what like describe your own reading experience of like eyes going over the words yeah this was a lot more fluid and compelling than I expected it to be or than I remembered I think this felt challenging and hard and weird when I read it in college because I had never read anything like this before I was new to reading stuff by the ancient Greeks I have no idea which translation we read like that and that probably matters quite a bit like how difficult someone wants to make the language I found Robert Fagel's this translation to be like very readable very straightforward especially coming off of our recent read of Hamlet like this is shorter first of all like you can do this in basically one sitting but I found this to be easier like there were no I didn't have to go you know trying to figure out what the language meant you're not having to do your own acts of translation the way that you often need to do with Shakespeare of like what is that a reference to and what is the joke here like the language is not working on multiple levels this is very straightforward and I like I really enjoyed it it was kind of it was exciting I was telling my husband like Sophocles is really hitting for me this weekend that's a thing I didn't expect to be saying what about you we hadn't talked about this yeah I said it's straightforwardness is almost shocking and some of it's the translation but some of us the plot and character are bold coloring you know painting with really bold strokes there's not a lot of shading here I think both in spirit form and effect it is playing to an amphitheater of 15,000 citizens yeah and you want to use brighter colors with more delineated elements because that shows up at at distance you aren't left wondering about wait what actually happened there's no ambiguity about motivation like all the things that come with modernity that sort of post Shakespeare frankly when we talked about hamlet we got into some of the stuff that hamlet was creating you get none of that here so you're left with something more directly and simply powerful and odd and disconcerting and I say question mark satisfying I still and I guess that we have the word cathartic because that's the right word for it is cathartic and it describes attention as satisfying a displeasure all wrapped up into one that's unlike other kinds of artistic or really emotional experience you're likely to have yeah and it I'm just realizing this as you're talking about it but this is one of my favorite ways to encounter a story where it opens with either here's the thing like here's who done it I love a this is how it happened or where we're not trying to find out like oh my god he married his mother but where the where the whole point is how how did this happen and how do we figure it out like we will have an upcoming episode as a preview for folks on the secret history by Donna Tarte which is made one of my favorite contemporary examples of this on page one you find out who's dead and who did it and then you spend 500 and some odd pages getting to like doing the rewind of but how I find that to be so much more satisfying and like there's just more depth to that experience than a straightforward like okay something bad is going to happen to edipus what's the bad thing going to be and how does it unwind I liked the the audience knows and we're supposed to know when we begin what the thing is that happened and that you get to dwell more in the process of uncovering and his trying to make sense of it I really appreciated that like I was kind of like am I going to read the other two just for fun now you might I mean edipus a clone is a colonist that's like after he's blinded himself and has been exiled and sort of wandering around yeah I think the pleasures of different art is of course different and none none is better than the other but like the mystery where you're trying to figure out what happened has sort of the pleasure of a jigsaw puzzle this is going to sound very strange and I apologize but it's real and authentic and I'll say it here the thing I was thinking about when I got to the end of this and what I was feeling reminded me of a recent trip my family took to the zoo and we were watching deer carcass to get fed to the condors there and row and my daughter was like looking at it and she was like this is terrible and interesting and I can't look away and it's like feels very I was like yeah I get that like it's not it's very very elemental and it's it's hard to describe kind of a feeling it now I find it frankooner looking at reallikes down though I didn't have a lot that were I did yeah and there were I guess Romeo and Juliett frankly has a similar kind of and there are moments in this like just to what does it feel like to read it where edipus is talking to someone and he's trying to get information from them about what happened in his past or what they know about how all of this came to be and the person starts to tell the story and then pauses and is like oh my god I can't believe I'm gonna tell you this I said I was gonna do it. I fear him on the ring of frightful speech that's the one of the quotes I say yeah that's from my old trans like I'm about to say something terrible that stuff is ready that stuff is so elemental the like oh my god I never thought I would have this conversation I can't believe I'm gonna tell you this but are you sure that you want to know because once I say it I can't unsay it like once you know this you can't unknow it and they're you know that's not the exact language they're using but that's what they're saying to each other and that stuff was so recognizable that's what made one of the things that made this an exciting thing that still felt fresh and to go back to that catharsis feeling for me was that like yeah this is what it is like when you have found out that something bad has happened and you you just have this unshakeable need to know how it happened or what the details were or something and I think we've all had the experience of being on both sides of those equations of either you're the asker and you've got to brace yourself or you're the one who's going I cannot believe I'm actually gonna like say this thing and then we're gonna be in the moment where I've said the thing and you're gonna know it. Yeah and that that human personal understanding and human understanding is a one way street you can't go back right I think that's true both on the individual level for edipus but it's very much at stake in the development of Greek philosophy and intellectual life it's like once we figured out the Pythagorean theorem there's no going back from there like we now have to live with this particular knowledge and so jacastic keeps saying don't turn away turn away even as that is sort of practically right in might it would work if you could do it we also know it's impossible at the same time one thing that's hard to remember for me as well we were joking about spoilers before this is an artistic world in which spoilers were impossible because all of these stories were known already every single one of these plays functioned under an element of dramatic irony which is when the audience knows more about what's happened and is going to happen than the characters do because they already know they have heard in whatever the equivalent of kindergarten was for Athenians they're they're just always already in circulation so the how and why and the permutations and combinations that get us to the place where no we're going is what's interesting at stake rather than the creation of a novel I mean literally novel story right which is I can understand that in my head but I sort of can't feel that in my heart I don't know what that would be like to encounter stories like that let's see what's it all about the big ideas we talked about a lot of these it's interesting that we haven't talked about hubris or tragic flaws really because I think in a high school reading that's the thing that's really brought about but it's certainly at stake here which is you know the classic sort of I don't know if it's simplistic is certainly true but the drive by reading is that edipuses tragic flaw is his hubris which is an overconfidence right like he thinks he can contend with divine knowledge and master it and that way lies disaster disaster comes from the Greek for against the stars so there you go we're all gonna go the Greeks all the way around and then knowing thyself the it's it's so one of the delicious I don't know if it's a contradiction but sort of oraboruses the snake eating its tail of the oracle of delphy is the know thyself is the inscription at the oracle but also knowing thyself leads to the disaster and like you can't get away from it right there is no getting outside of this snow globe it's built in and sort of the trap doors are are all around and self-referential it's like kind of dizzying to think about it it is in that way dizzying is a really good word for and I think I'm just like there are a lot of levels to this and there's certainly there's stuff about the hubris and his tragic flaws that feels really present and relatable today there are moments where edipus is making declarations about I'm gonna save the city and I'm the great man who's gonna do it and you're all gonna thank me and I thought boy I saw that on the news last night yeah I didn't feel that old very much about good kings and bad kings even in a proto emergent democracy the acknowledgement that whoever we elect still has an awful lot of power and the goodness or badness of their actions will have you know I mean it's obvious to say now but serious ramifications for the bali politics in here it's metaphorized into this idea of the plague right I guess that if there's one supernatural element that is in the background like literally in the background here is this this plague that's been brought about by the gods because of this sin of less having been killed and we need to figure this thing out a very quick overview of Aristotle six elements of tragedy they are in rough descending order plot character diction thought spectacle or scenic effect and song plot and character being the most important less emphasis on the diction or ideas but I think to have a big spectacular cathartic moment you need dramatic plots and big bold characters that you care about and then those other things are secondary the the idea of the plot being I this is one of the things that struck me is like we just don't get plots like this where the plot is just on rails and it isn't even really subject to scrutiny it's so tightly wound I mean I read the whole thing in an hour yes and it just goes like you jump right in page one someone is telling him this is why the plague has happened and then he's off of like well we better figure out who killed leus and then I can stop the plague and I'm the great man who can do it even as everyone he encounters along the way is like buddy you are not going to like what you find out here just insists on proceeding he can do it and it really does like on rails is the right way to put it it's it just remains wild to me remembering that somebody had to invent theater as a form and that this is one of the earliest expressions of it yeah faggels makes the point you have the note here of fate versus free will and that's clearly at stake here but faggels does a good job in the introduction that I read saying that the Greeks didn't like have a term for free will right but they sort of defined it negatively by well if you're if it's all fate that's one thing but if it's fate plus something else what is that something else um and how can it be fate plus something else and it's a helpful formulation Heraclides you know only have fragments of his work from the ancient world but one of them is character equals fate or character is fate so the idea that who you are and what happens to your intertwined like this only happens to edifice because of who edifice is it's not so much written in the stars as written into who he is like he is going to get this prophecy and because edifice is who he is he will bring about his own fate so it's like not a script that's written that you can't avoid it's almost like a personality DNA where you are going to you are going to respond to this these things in this way because of who you are and the great question of liberal education and frankly the great question of you know Aristotelian thought and Plato is can you do anything about that? Yeah I can use change. Like can you get outside of yourself to change even who you are enough and it's it's the great warrant of liberal education that sometimes I wonder about like can you get around yourself enough to get around yourself which is hard to hard to formulate as well what else I'm what it's about Rebecca before we go into our I think we I think we nailed it all telling you about your intrusive thoughts. I was trying I was trying to you read what I put here I did I was trying to imagine what an equivalent cultural moment to the first performance of Sophocles's new tragedy the Dinees infestible like at the height of Sophocles fame right the most important Greek Tragean of its age at the most important venue telling one of the great stories and I did people know what the plays were they would you get titles I don't know what kind of that's a great show up and you didn't know is it going to be just Sophocles is on first let's see what arrestees or is it going to be you know something else here's what I here's where I could come up with imagine that we got word that in March Taylor Swift was going to be performing her new album only once live at I don't know I don't what's the biggest stadium when we what can fit I don't know how many people to be the clothing of Athens at the Africa 3 million person stadium in London that was it was big Asian arenas where BTS perform yeah that's what we're talking about think of what the energy would be like yeah bananas we've never seen anything like it we've never seen anything like it so that's my interest I appreciate that that's a good one and should we do that would that be more talk about monoculture wow the ticket master possibilities are really stunning there wow my god yeah I was trying to look at the I was trying to do some research about the economics of this like you didn't get rich writing these plays because there was only one performance and they had to be affordable enough that and yeah nobody has a proof there none of them are professional playwrights here as you were saying like they've all served in the military they're involved in public life this is just like the side hustle the thing they're doing for fun somewhere in there yeah it sounds like the rich some of the rich citizens of Athens under wrote these productions like it was a form of like de facto you know altruistic taxation of some kind of sort of expected that if you were the great wine merchant or whatever that you were gonna under brought to you by um Cleoneses's red wise that you mixed one part to three or whatever I don't know if they're branding or whatever it's like that that's what the reality it was so embedded into the cultural life that it wasn't even extricable from it like it just it just seems like it was put together that way is it for you Rebecca is it it's for you if what this is the hardest episode for me to answer these on yet because like it's kind of hard to make a pitch to anybody in 2025 about just go spend an hour reading Sophocles but at the same time that like there are so many worse ways to spend an hour this was really enjoyable so I have a lot of like man just go give it a shot like I think a lot of folks probably have a ton of reasons for just not being interested and you know if you're interested in the history of this kind of stuff if you want to have your mind blown a little bit by right drama was new at some point this is what it looked like when it was new what what are the origins of how we think about dramatic theater and all of the you know everything that we've spent the last hour talking about it's worth reading but this this is a doesn't lend itself as easily to the like who's it for who's it not for recommendations anti recommendations as anything else and it's not a taste at this point like yeah this is a great way to put it yeah this isn't about personal taste like if you're curious at all and you haven't read these since school or if you've never read them I do think it's a really good use of a couple of hours it was fun yeah I think you could make a night of it read the introduction maybe get jump on Wikipedia read a little about the Greek theater like I found myself feeling very grateful to have had to have a few hours yeah to journey back and imagine myself and remind myself of these moments and these dynamics these cultural artistic and historical forces colliding at this moment there was a it was sort of a way of like artistically touching grass I feel like that was very very much yeah and we talked in the hamlet episode about how Shakespeare was writing in another big moment of cultural revolution and intellectual revolution and what was happening in Shakespeare's moment was that a bunch of these ancient works were finally being widely disseminated and like that they were the catalyst for this whole new level of thought and of creation so I also I do think that if you are interested in drawing those lines between like the major forces of western art this is the starting place or one of the starting places and it's really satisfying from that perspective it's time for immortal questions but before that I realized that I should have in when I first introduced the immortal questions I should have put in brackets at the front that most of these works that we're going to talk about have the question of who am I built into them very few of them don't have that built into them so we'll take that as our RSTL and E of the immortal questions who am I but that's very much the primary one here but here's the thing I would also say is in these moments this is when the idea of who am I is invented like for the first time that's really at stake which that's balkers yeah mine and the idea that you could ask that but then also maybe create it right that you are not subject to the eye that's been laid out for you that maybe you can do something about it but that humans have not we don't know that we have not just always sat around wondering that is just a mind blowing reminder a reminder of what the questions that we have here that we consider what is the good life what do I owe my neighbor how do I know what I know is this all there is how to deal with a certainty of death what else might there be and what's the deal of good evil Rebecca which jump out to you oh boy I mean how do I know what I know is the big one that's a big one I think that's a big one but there is some what is the good life there is some what do I know what do I owe my neighbor or in edipus's case what do I owe these people that I'm leading what are the city what are my you know right is this all there is is kind of integrated into am I faded to something is there a bigger plan not so much on the certainty of death no not so much on what else might there be yeah a little bit with good in evil but I mean he's not pretty good evil it's yeah it is he's not deciding between doing good things and bad things when the play starts he has already done the bad things and he doesn't know the full context in which he's done them he doesn't even know that one of them was bad he knows that he killed a man he doesn't know that that man was leus he doesn't know that the woman he's married to is also his mother a lot of immortal questions count on the Greeks to be doing a lot of it if it's been a while since you've had a reason to think about Greek mythology I think it's helpful to remember that unlike in sort of a Judeo Christian worldview which is one I know better than other religious systems the gods are a source of power and you were supposed to honor them but they're not paragons of behavior they're not sort of like here the ten commandments do good things to please the gods it's much more like they're they are mercury well literally mercuria because mercuria is the Roman name for hermys they have quicksotic almost human-like characteristics they are horny and deceitful and wrathful and jealous and so to please them is not to do right action by your fellow man or to fulfill these commandments it is to pay obedience to them you know sort of sacrifice your oxes and pour out the wine and don't do things they don't want but it's not about good and evil that those though I don't even know what the word I don't know what the word evil comes from like literally the entomology of that would be are we sure this isn't about art and writing I'm pretty sure yeah like edipus is not naval gazing here about all right and Sophocles is not naval gazing through edipus about like what it means to be a writer what it means to create art this is pre that stuff I mean that's what he said this is the kind of thing that got people thinking about art and writing rather than thinking about art writing itself which is a weird thing to say could you get most of the gist from watching the signal adaptation who knows who were there one I mean if you want to go see a production I'm sure like colleges and stuff do this from time to time you would get it you would get it maybe even more than just certainly more than just reading on the page yeah maybe apple tv we'll do this since they're just investing in big gorgeous adaptations of things that no one watches go for it yeah okay let's go to your muppet question um would this be watchable as a muppet version where a human plays the main character I have the most disturbing question of this yet yeah this is upsetting but a muppet chorus would be one of the chickens the chickens be the chorus with like the guy who is the chickens being the leader yeah a sub question would be okay I know it's disturbing and it never gonna happen but were it to happen which muppet plays the main character or which human plays the main character I think Gonzo as edipus here would be I like that I was gonna the most obliviously confident of the muppets is Gonzo I was gonna run back my Adam driver selection they're not many they're not many moments in which I don't want Adam driver to be on stage with a bunch of muppets but I know Gonzo as edipus and then I guess you get to pick a human for something else so maybe like I don't know he's like what are you doing Gonzo calm down anyway that would be funny um so let's see what's next uh miscellaneous trivia adaptations rumors mr. Tres misertributed quotes etc I said a couple mine already about 15,000 people attended these at the peak out of an Athenian population of 50,000 that's why I also have can be thought of as an adaptation of the edipus story so maybe we can chill about a sexy withering heights or whatever we've been doing this for 3,000 years and not only to find but sometimes the adaptation survives longer yeah it's gonna be okay and then you just have so Freud and the edible complex and like I just need to remind us all once again that Freud was doing a lot of coke and his like Freud's reading of the edible complex basically comes straight from what jacosta says here it doesn't actually come from edipus' actions because edipus doesn't know that jacosta is his mother he's not having some unconscious drive to have sex with the person he sees as his mother he just happens to have married the woman who is his mother but he doesn't know that she's his mother and that's very different from what jacosta claims most men have the experience of wanting and then what Freud bases the edible complex on so it's really like if anything it's the jacosta and Freud working together on what it should be called something other than the edible complex because it's really not about edipus' desire to even know that jacosta was his mother right right right not for nothing like he kind of came with the throne that he got when he solved the riddle it's the last thing he finds out he finds out that leus was that this man he killed was leus and then he finds out that leus was his father and that jacosta his wife was his mother is the last one of the big discoveries to tell for the reminder self with Freud that he got the big thing right which is there's more going on in there than we think but literally everything else was wrong which is you know you could do worse but the specifics are really tough all right let's do favorite notable lines Rebecca what do you want to okay I mean I've said earlier in the show that I really love that you can imagine what the audience is experiencing here and I like that you can tell that Sophocles is having fun with all of the foreshadowing like there's a line that the man drag out his life in agony step by painful step edipus says this and the audience would have seen edipus limp on stage that he has this chronic and pretty pronounced limp edipus says so I will fight for him as if he were my father stop at nothing search the world to lay my hands on the man who shed his blood and he says this to an audience of people who know that leas was his father like that stuff is just fun but then also all the moments with tyracias the seer are are great tyracias tells him I say you are the murderer you hunt I pity you flinging at me the very insults each man here will fling at you soon and that read to me like what we say today about certain presidents for whom every accusation is actually a confession krian has this moment of going I don't know and when I don't I keep quiet and that the italics on I keep quiet are like the italics mine I think my mind was italicized no like an ancient Greek did they tell us come from verbal italics I at least I keep quiet yeah get imagine very let's see I've got a couple here count no man happy until he is dead that's an inline from the chorus that's also something that solan says in herodotus is the histories and this was a big idea in the ancient Greek world is like it's not over yet so you do not count your chickens until you're dead because disaster could still find you here and that itself I think that you don't know you're happy until you're dead is this kind of contradiction that the Greeks were interested in like that's a it feels like it might be a platitude but it's so deep and weird and discomforting that it's hard to hard to wrap your mind around the word strange comes up quite a bit in this book in this text and I don't know if it's the same Greek word that fagals is interpreting us just using a strange but I guess my intrusive thought here like with hamlet I always kind of like to think about if there's like a breaking of the fourth wall at some point where I have been saved for something terrible and great something strange the idea that in that moment that could speak for edipus his story being the subject of other people's understanding like I've been saved to be a character in a play at some point is a fascinating idea to me I'm right at the end of horrible truth I've got to say at the shepherd I believe that's where I got I fear I'm at the brink of frightful speech from which I say from time to time I fear I'm at the brink of frightful speech is better it's more Shakespearean yeah and and I think one reason that the fagals translation read so smoothly is I think that's intentional I think there's a version of that's a feels more stentorian that feels more I don't know that amps up the floweryness or the complexity of the language and there could be a virtue of that but getting through it is one of them and then krayon what if you're wholly wrong edipus says no matter I must rule and I think there's something to that and probably for the own the most sane response to the truth of you can't know everything and yet we must live is somewhere not no matter it's like yes I know I could be wrong but I've got to do something anyway and to walk into any situation or into your life with well could I attenuate if I if I am wrong is there a way to make it not as disastrous as it could be because one of the edipus does as soon as he hear about the truth he just goes full speed 100% into I'm gonna kill this guy where this is gonna be you can't believe how quickly I'm gonna get this and how bad it's gonna be like is there a version of this where he had heated krayon's warning and says and as was you know you're right there's something else going on here let's let's investigate but tread carefully but the truth is gonna be the same whether he tries carefully or not so it doesn't really help you in that room yeah yeah my last favor it is the chorus and you're the very end and we were talking yesterday about are we gonna call this edipus the king or edipus rex and you know the connection between rex and tyrant pride breeds the tyrant violent pride gorging crammed to bursting with all that is overripe and rich with ruin clawing up to the heights headlong pride crashes down the abyss sheer doom no footing helps all foothold lost and gone and here's the kicker but the healthy strife that makes the city strong I pray that god will never end that wrestling and like sitting here in 2025 with a six-simper-terranous tattoo on my body and a protest to attend tomorrow but the healthy strife that makes the city strong I pray that god will never end that wrestling like this stuff is still relevant and that's one of the reasons I mean that we're doing this show but also one of the reasons to go back to these old works and to have these moments of like yes we have been doing this for thousands of years yeah my my favorite line is the chorus trying to wrestle with the truth of tri-terrecious as a being but also what kind of knowledge he represents which is this imperfect not access to imperfect knowledge the chorus says the skilled prophet scans the birds and shatters me with terror I can't accept him can't deny him and don't know what to say I mean the boy that feels really like I just don't know I don't know what you here we are here we are you have any hot takes you want to get off you know I think these ancient works only seem hard when you're a kid if you first encounter them as a young student because they are totally different from anything you've seen before or you don't have the grounded like full context of what's happening maybe you have one of the more stintory and translations but my experience with this text was I don't know I don't even remember what made me think that this was intimidating like I had a little I don't think I told you I had a little hesitation when we were looking at the lineup for the season and you were like there's nothing we don't have anything for antiquity in this first season and we should find something and I remembered kind of struggling with these and I was like do I really want to do that maybe some of it too is I've got 20 more years as a reader under my belt than I had at the time but this was right but this was not not challenging at all and I really felt like okay it was only that because I had never encountered anything this old and I didn't have the context and so I read the introduction and give yourself the context but man this was it was so much more fun and that's been my experience with almost everything that we've gone back like really old stuff that we've picked up for this season like go back and read these old books like my heart take forever is some of the old stuff sticks around because it's actually it does stand the test of time for a reason I have a couple here boy did they know how to plot when you hadn't when you hadn't run through all the story possibilities you could really just hit it hard nobody was on good reads marking down their favorite tropes and remixing they didn't have 3000 years of stories to contend with like we were just sort of inventing some of the great arcs of all time I also have a that kreon rules this is the one that struck me as a character there's more complexity to kreon here his his again not a monologue because he's talking to edipus but his long speech about why I wouldn't be you know trying to usurp the thrown is because I have a good it's really about it's really about the good life and proximity to power because one of the quotes you made you what related before was about the more power you have the more possibility there's to get over your skis about your confidence and your certainty and the more you do that you get over leveraged on your position and that is something that can crumble quite quickly whereas kreon because he's proximal to power but doesn't wield it sees it with greater clarity than edipus does he's more careful to see as to negotiate edipus where if edipus doesn't have to go negotiate anyone he can run into these titanic forces because the only thing between him and that kind of calamity is human nature the reality of death the limits of understanding it's not sort of political or cultural also I've just got a shoe prophecies if you have a prophecy just no zoltars no Chinese fortune cookies like Han Solo says in Star Wars never tell me the odds just never I can't think of one story where someone got a prophecy like you know that was a great idea I'm so glad let's run it back just get out of prophecies don't want them good life advice coming out of you today further reading I mean there's not really read a likes I don't think you can do more Greek theater you could do the or style you could do and I guess you could do like edipus shows up in places of the Odyssey right so you could go back and see some of that or just do this just read this one just do this yeah cocktail party crypt sheet I already did mine about this is like the super bowl the fourth of July the Oscars and Christmas all rolled into one and it's also that thing that's being performed as Taylor Swift's new album that's going to be performed I think that's just the best way but also like this is ancient and it's timeless like the dynamics from this moment when this was written when politics was new are all present in today's landscape the characters are archetypes that are recognizable today that have probably been recognizable forever and then I think the real cocktail party drop is just this is about the fact that we have been and will always be afraid of what free will means and equally afraid of not having any and of what the hell to do with it if we have it what are the consequences can we even know right at one point jacquoise is like it's all chance we just live by chance and everyone's like yeah but that's that's that's not right either right have it all be fate or all be chance both of those ends of the spectrum feel diminishing and also not they don't feel true I guess and most people doesn't feel true to but it nor does it also see that it's all free will all fate it's somewhere in the messy middle I guess a dialectic if we're going to get all 19th century philosophical about it um the final beat a zero to well red score each one gets a score from one to 10 with 10 being the highest of five categories are historical importance readability current relevance of central questions book nerd read cred and oh damn factor historical importance obvious 10 a 10 yes yeah readability interesting what do you think this probably varies with translation but I found it to be in the nine to 10 range it was very beautiful for me what about you I'd say nine or 10 or maybe eight or nine I mean 10 nine 10 is like a real page turner where it's there's no friction at all for me but we do it in nine yeah we'll give it a nine the current relevance of central questions for this one we can almost just strike out current yeah but like just preferment it's forever permanent relevance I can't really be a 10 I don't think because we have central questions that aren't at all at stake here but the central questions have not gone away so eight I think an eight is fair there this one I have no sense of for book nerd read cred yeah it's so this is I think more than anything else we're talking about this season this is a work that if you encounter it you probably only encounter it for school like how many copies of Sophocles are selling in a given year that people are just reading for fun and so there's it's a great point like there's a way where this has high read cred because if you go out and seek it on your own that's a pretty book nerd thing to do but you're probably not doing it for engagement with book nerd read cred which makes it higher somehow yeah maybe so maybe maybe we're just talking ourselves is this an 11 yeah right this is a giraffe it's off the scale I'd say I'd give it at least an eight all right I'm gonna give it a nine okay oh damn factor this one is so hard to know because it's impossible for me well say why it's impossible I'm thinking along the same lines because we know basically how everything is going to unfold going through the story there's not really an oh damn moment or like there's not an artistic surprise and also we can't experience this the way that Sophocles's audience experienced it where they did know all of these other versions of the story so I was trying to think about this for myself like what if like I grew up knowing I don't know little red writing hood and somebody took me to see a production of it that blew you away yeah that blew my mind because they they took this familiar story and they told it in a completely new way what would that be like and so that it could be and invented a whole new art form at the same time right like it's I guess this is theoretically a 10 on the oh damn factor to me but as a reader in 2025 who can't possibly engage with this yeah the way it was meant to be experienced 24 hundred years ago I don't I don't even know how to put a number on this yeah it's it's hard I mean I think the only way from the oh damnness of it because we know this story we're not reading the original Greek and the idea of theater is so baked into our understand art and culture to work in the west there's it there's a version of this it's 10 when I think of when I get my mind blown about thinking about the actual scene of what this month like yeah yeah the whole scene is like a 10 but as an actual reading experience I think it's only like a six yeah I think that's fair edipus is not too dissimilar from other myths where you sort of know them it's hard to give you can give softies of course much amazing credit for what he does what he already has but this is not hamlet soliloquy a thing of almost pure invention right like he's he's moving around pieces but the Lego pieces he's selecting him and or deselecting them based on a relatively finite set and it's always impossible to be as a person who a large part of what I read for is the language to not have access to the Greek I don't know what I'm missing and I guess there's a dimaret for it there's just hard for me to get Suekberg cited and on the on the level of the line it's not super exciting there's some moments clearly there's some moments but it's not exciting yeah it's not like you're not reading this one for the pleasure of the sentences certainly well we still arrived at a 42 out of 50 that's respectable that I mean you should right I mean it should be extremely high it should be extremely high let's see Rebecca show notes are bookriot.com/listen you can email us at zero to well read at bookriot.com zero to well read is a proud member of the airwave podcast network and if you do have a moment to rate and review the show on apple podcasts especially this is behind the scene stuff but more than 80% of our listens happen through apple devices and software that really helps people find the show and we want to keep the good momentum going to find people who are willing and eager even Rebecca to listen us to talk for 90 minutes about 3000 year old plays that everyone knows the end to Rebecca thank you so much.