Quotes About Tragedy

Seven matched with seven, at each gate one, Their captains, when the day was done, Left for our Zeus who turned the scale, The brazen tribute in full tale: - All save the horror-burdened pair, Dire children of despair, Who from one sire, one mother, drawing breath, Each with conquering lance in rest Against a true born brother's breast, Found equal lots in death.

You are the curse, the corruption of the land!

No, but I came by, Oedipus the ignorant

All unknowing you are the scourge of your own flesh and blood, the dead below the earth and the living here above, and the double lash of your mother and your father's curse will whip you from this land one day, their footfall treading you down in terror, darkness shrouding your eyes that now can see the light!

Soon, soon you'll scream aloud—what haven won't reverberate?

Your great good fortune, true, it was your ruin.

One modern oratorio adaptation, The Gospel at Colonus (by Lee Breuer and Bob Telson, 1989), based on Robert Fitzgerald's translation in our series, has been acclaimed by critics and audiences as a high point of twentieth-century adaptation of Greek tragedy.

Oh how she wept, mourning the marriage-bed where she let loose that double brood—monsters— husband by her husband, children by her child.

SOPHOCLES (born ca. 496 B.C., died after 413) was one of the three major authors of Greek tragedy. Of his 123 plays, only seven survive in full. Antigone, written and first performed in the late 440s B.C., is among his most often revived plays; its strong roles, and its conflict between individual morality (championed by a brave young woman) and the overbearing political needs of the state, have never lost their compelling interest through the generations.

But the heart inside me sickens, dies as the land dies and now on top of the old griefs you pile this, your fury—both of you!

But now to hear your story—is there a man more agonized? More wed to pain and frenzy? Not a man on earth, the joy of your life ground down to nothing

You, you'll see no more the pain I suffered, all the pain I caused! Too long you looked on the ones you never should have seen, blind to the ones you longed to see, to know! Blind from this hour on! Blind in the darkness—blind!

Now, in this one day, wailing, madness and doom, death, disgrace

Now he'll tear himself from his native earth, not linger, curse the house with his own curse.

But surely they will shroud my corpse with Theban dust?

Fate works most for woe With Folly's fairest show. Man's little pleasure is the spring of sorrow.

cast me away, my friends— this great murderous ruin, this man cursed to heaven, the man the deathless gods hate most of all!

If I'd died then, I'd never have dragged myself, my loved ones through such hell.

What grief can crown this grief? It's mine alone, my destiny—I am Oedipus!

All men must cast away the great blasphemer, the curse now brought to light by the gods, the son of Laius—I, my father's son!

and now a plague has struck the city.

Enter OEDIPUS, blinded, led by a boy.

ÖDIPUS. Wie packt mich, da ich eben dich gehört hab, Frau, der Seele Irrlauf und Erschütterung des Geistes!

IOKASTE. So ging das Gerücht und ist noch nicht verstummt.