A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days: Book Review: The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus The King, And Oedipus at Colonus

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Book Review: The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus The King, And Oedipus at Colonus

Posted by Pejman Yousefzadeh on Thu May 03, 2007 at 09:44:25 PM EST

Since I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Fagles's translation of The Aeneid, I was delighted to rediscover amongst my old books from high school his translation of Sophocles's Theban plays. It was an especially valuable rediscovery in that I was able to compare Fagles's facility with prose translation in dealing with Sophocles's plays with his facility in translating verse in dealing with Virgil's most famous work.

The verdict? Well, of course, Fagles and Sophocles triumph. The agony and the tragedy that haunt Oedipus and his descendants shines through the work and the prose is masterfully presented. As always, Fagles succeeds in both maintaining the integrity of the original text while making that text accessible to modern ears. The man is a master at that and I am not sure that there are many translators who can match his gift.

The only real objection I have is that the plays are presented out of order. Instead of having Oedipus Rex come first, with Antigone and Oedipus At Colonus following, we have Antigone first, with Oedipus Rex and Oedipus At Colonus bringing up the rear in that order. This is more than a little jarring and no good explanation is offered. But as far as critiques go, this doesn't count for much and it does nothing to ruin in the slightest the overall majesty of Sophocles's creation and Fagles's translation of it.

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Book Review: The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus The King, And Oedipus at Colonus | 2 comments (2 topical, 0 hidden)

The Theban Plays (none / 0) (#1)
by Rich0116 on Fri May 04, 2007 at 07:04:26 AM EST

The reason Fagles put the plays in the order he did - Antigone, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus - is that that is the order in which they were most likely composed and presented. We don't have any way to exactly date the Theban plays but Antigone is almost surely from early in Sophocles' career, while Oedipus Rex is commonly dated to his middle period and Oedipus at Colonus is probably the last of the plays written and performed. It's a common misconception that these three plays form an actual trilogy in the modern sense of the idea but in reality these plays were never performed together and never intended to be taken as a unit.

: I love my readers (none / 0) (#2)
by Pejman Yousefzadeh on Fri May 04, 2007 at 04:19:54 PM EST

Many thanks for the comment. I must say, I would have preferred it still in the order I gave, but perhaps that is my modernistic trilogy-addicted mindset talking.

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid." --Friedrich Nietzsche
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