Sophocles

“ Mingled with this strong religious feeling in Sophocles was that melancholy supposed to be engendered only in the poets of the north. He is oppressed by his sense of the feebleness of human intellect and the impotence of human foresight, as compared with the omnipotent wisdom of an eternal being. Like some master-spirit, he views the actions and passions of the characters which he has created with a half-contemptuous pity. He heaps upon mankind every epithet of scorn—"phantoms," "shadows," "creatures of a day," "born to misery as the sparks fly upwards." ”

“ The characteristic excellence of Sophocles is, that in his most majestic creations he always contrives to introduce the sweetest touches of humanity.—Philoctetes will not even quit his miserable desert until he has returned to his cave to bid it farewell—to kiss the only shelter that did not deny a refuge to his woes. In the joy of his heart he thinks, poor dupe, that he has found faith in man—in youth. He trusts the arrows and the bow to the hand of Neoptolemus. ”

“ His tragedies, by the universal consent of the best critics, are the perfection of the Greek drama; and they moreover maintain that he has no rival, Aeschylus and Shakspeare alone excepted, in the whole realm of dramatic poetry. It was the peculiarity of Sophocles to excite emotions of sorrow and compassion. He loved to paint forlorn heroes. He was human in all his sympathies, perhaps not so religious as Aeschylus, but as severely ethical; not so sublime, but more perfect in art. His sufferers are not the victims of an inexorable destiny, but of their own follies. ”

“ But what more especially characterizes the tragedy of Sophocles, is the heavenly serenity beside a subject so terrific, the fresh air of life and youth which breathes through the whole. The bright divinity of Apollo, who enjoined the deed, seems to shed his influence over it; even the break of day, in the opening scene, is significant. ”

“ But for one person who receives the entire impress of a play of Sophocles at the first glance there are very many, by no means incapable of understanding him, who pass him by with a disappointed feeling that what is so smooth and finished cannot be otherwise than cold, and who contrast this superficial glimpse of a great poet with the instantaneous thrill which overpowered them at the first reading of the Cassandra scene in the Agamemnon of Æschylus, or the passionate speeches of Medea in Euripides. ”

“ Sophocles is for literature the supreme embodiment of the Athenian spirit at this its purest and highest period. The tragedies of Æschylus have the grandeur and incompleteness of archaic art. He wrestles with the most awful problems of human destiny and divine purpose. ”

“ Irreproachable in private life, distinguished for his skill in every manly exercise, and a rare excellence in the arts of poetry and music, Sophocles was considered by his admiring countrymen as an especial favorite of the gods. The remark of the ancient sage that no man is to be accounted happy before he dies, was verified in the case of this great poet. If the morning of his life was bright in the lustre of national glory and personal renown, the evening was clouded by the misfortunes of his country, and domestic unhappiness. ”

“ As Aeschylus delights in transporting us to the convulsions of the primary world of the Titans, Sophocles, on the other hand, never avails himself of divine interposition except where it is absolutely necessary; he formed men, according to the general confession of antiquity, better, that is, not more moral and exempt from error, but more beautiful and noble than they really are; and while he took every thing in the most human sense, he was at the same time open to its higher significance. ”

“ And, in consequence of this transfiguration, the morality of Sophocles is imperishable. "Not of to-day nor of yesterday, but fixed from everlasting," are his laws. We may all learn of him now, as when Antigone first stood before the throne of Creon on the Attic stage. The deep insight into human life, that most precious gift of the Greek genius, which produced their greatest contributions to the education of the world, is in Sophocles obscured no longer by mystical mythology and local superstition. His wisdom is the common heritage of human nature. ”

“ This instinct for a definite plan first is the essence of the classical spirit; exuberance is rigorously repressed, symmetry and balance are the first, last and only aim. To some judges Sophocles is like a Greek temple, splendid but a little chilly; they miss the soaring ambition of Aeschylus or the more direct emotional appeal of Euripides. Yet it is a cardinal error to imagine that Sophocles is passionless ”

“ No study of the life of Sophocles would be complete which did not take into account the influence probably exercised upon his mind by that wonderful genius, daring in its choice of subjects, its startling figures, its bold imagination, daring even in its use of the adjuncts of stage effects, of masks, and machinery, and dress, yet more daring in the way in which he dealt with the traditional religion of his countrymen. ”

“ Sophocles is indeed so human, so penetrated with the great primary emotions and universal experience of the race, that he may find a sympathetic audience even amongst those who have given but little attention to his surroundings, just as, without technical preparation, one who has an eye for beauty may admire the Venus of Melos, or the Sistine Madonna. ”

“ The gods of Sophocles are not, like those of Homer, spiteful, vindictive, mean, below the level of heroic, or even of average human worth. They are not, like those of Euripides, sententious, rhetorical declaimers.
It is difficult enough, in any case, to throw ourselves into the religious life of those whose lot has been cast under a different system from our own; but the difficulty rises to its height when we ask ourselves with what thoughts and emotions the word God, as distinct from any special names, Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, was connected in his mind, and that of other thinkers of his time. ”

“ Hæmon and Antigone, as we have seen, are lovers, and, even in introducing them at all, Sophocles had gone a step beyond Æschylus, with whom Love is simply the divine and eternal principle of fecundity—a law, and not a passion. [7] But there is little romance or sentiment about these Greek lovers; and modern criticism at once decides that Sophocles has lost his opportunity, for he does not even once bring them on the stage together. ”

“ Call thou all those that name thee brother here,
And call the poor Alcmena (all in vain
The bride of Zeus) that ye may hear, and learn
The last of all the oracles I know.⁠1150
Hyllos. Thy mother is not here, for so it chanced,
She dwelleth now on Tiryns' further shore;
And of thy children some she rears with her,
And some, know thou, dwell under Theban towers.
But we, my father, that are present here,
Will hear and do whatever thou shalt bid.
⁠Hera. Hear then what presses. Thou hast reached an age
When thou must show what mould of man thou art,
That thou art called my son. ”

“ He lived just when this religion had shed upon it the greatest strength of intellectual light which it could bear without fading; he is, perhaps, the highest type of its votary—the man for whom, more than for any other who could be named, the old national religion of Greece was a self-sufficing, thoughtful, and ennobling faith. Sophocles was, indeed, the perfect Greek ideal of a man who loved the gods and was loved by them—one, the work of whose life was their service under their direct inspiration ”

“ The tradition of a fore-determined doom is used by the poet as an instrument for evoking fear and pity; the blindness of the agents makes us feel doubly for their fate, and gives a deeper impression of the feebleness and nothingness of man. And yet this Man, who is nothing, a shadow passing away, is the central object of our sympathies, and this life of his, so feeble in the sight of heaven, yet seems with every drama of Sophocles that is seen or read, more rich in noble possibilities. ”

“ Many improvements are said to have been introduced by Sophocles on the Athenian stage. We are told that he raised the number of actors present at once upon the scene from two to three; that he attired them in splendid dresses—robes of saffron and purple, falling in long and graceful folds,—jewelled chaplets, and broad embroidered girdles. But above all, he increased the number of the Chorus, and gave a new form and spirit to the music which accompanied their odes. We, in our cold climate, can hardly appreciate the effect which music produced on the enthusiastic Greek temperament. ”

“ In the person of Sophocles was represented the ideal of Greek perfection. He was very beautiful; he excelled in gymnastics, music, and dancing; in temperament he was calm and contented; in disposition kind and cheerful; he had a ready wit, a serene piety, and intellectual grandeur. His tragedies have an advantage over those of Æschylus, in being essentially human; they appeal to the feelings of an auditory, and are written in a less magniloquent style than that of the sublime father of Greek tragedy,—to whom, however, Sophocles lay under the obligations of a pupil to his instructor. ”

“ The greatest achievement of Sophocles was, however, reserved till the close of his life. The messenger’s speech, [410] narrating the last moments of Œdipus, is the culmination in Greek of whatever miracles human language can compass in exciting awe and delight. The poet has bent all his mastery of tense idiom, of varied and haunting rhythm, all his instinct for the pathos of life and the mystery of fate, to produce one mighty uplifting of the hearer into the region where emotion and intellect are no longer opposed but mingle into something for which we have no name but “Life”. ”

“ Philoctetes, first rejoiced by the arrival of the Greeks on his island,—then suspicious,—then reassured,—then frenzied with anger,—then finally conciliated; Tecmessa, agitated successively by fear, by hope, by despair concerning Ajax; Electra, at first heroically patient in the hope that her brother will return as an avenger, then broken-hearted at the news of his death, at last filled with rapture by his sudden living presence; Deianeira, by turns anxious, elated, jealous, horror-stricken—these are examples of the power with which Sophocles could trace a chapter of spiritual history. ”

“ Trusting to whom thou did'st it. And for me,
I must look well to this: nor leave my state
By one man conquered, weak and powerless.
Regard'st thou aught of this, or seems it vain,
Both now, and when thou planned'st these thy schemes?
Creon. While thou speak'st here, I fault with nothing find;
When we reach home, we shall know what to do.
Thes. Go on and threaten. Thou, Ο Œdipus,
Stay here in peace and comfort, trusting me
That I, unless I die, will never rest,⁠1040
Before I give thy children to thy hands. ”

“ Go to the winds. For thee I bid thee, I,
Be base to others, but to me be true.
Chor. Yes, hearken thou to her considerate speech,
And then in time to come thou shalt not blame⁠470
This woman, and from me shalt favour win.
⁠Lichas. Well, then, dear mistress, since I see that thou,
Being human, hast a human heart, and know'st
No stubborn purpose, I will tell thee all,
The whole truth, nought concealing. All is so
As this man tells thee. Strong desire for her
Did seize on Heracles, and so her land,
Œchalia, was laid waste by armed host,
And brought full low. ”

“ So strong was the feeling even in actual history, that after the battle of Arginusæ (fought in the same year that Sophocles died) we find the Athenian people condemning ten victorious generals to death for having allowed the seamen of sinking vessels to be drowned unrescued, and so be deprived of a grave. Hence, without question, the tragedies which must have excited the keenest sympathy in a Greek audience were those in which the interest turned on the violation of funeral rites—as in the 'Ajax' and 'Antigone' of Sophocles, and in the 'Suppliants' of Euripides. ”

“ III. Ethical ideas of Sophocles.—In Sophocles also the sense of divine justice is one of the inspiring notes of tragedy. With him it is already a tradition, but a tradition that has a living power. His manner of regarding the divine order is, however, different from that which characterised Æschylus. According to him, Right is all the while supreme, only men are unconscious of it, whence comes the sadness of their lives. ”

“ A poet who is uncompromisingly earnest in his realism, or unreserved in his imagination, is apt to jar upon his audience or to make them laugh. Sophocles avoids these dangers. He accepts throughout the traditional conception of heroes and saga-people. The various bits of criticism ascribed to him—"I draw men as they ought to be drawn; Euripides draws them as they are"; "Æschylus did the right thing, but without knowing it"—all imply the 'academic' standpoint. Sophocles is the one Greek writer who is 'classical' in the vulgar sense—almost in the same sense as Vergil and Milton. ”

“ Yet amidst the darkness which surrounds the human lot, Sophocles is possessed by the conviction that obedience to the "eternal laws" of equity, piety, and mercy contains the assurance of blessedness, and that no lasting harm can happen to the noble soul that holds fast its integrity. ”

“ Sophocles’ sympathy for undeserved suffering, his understanding of the weakness of men, of their liability to error, and his faith in the gods, all led him to try to take the larger view of the ills of life, to which the philosopher Heraclitus had already given expression when he said that god does all things for the harmony of the whole; and that while men regard some things as right and others wrong, to god all things are fair and good and right. ”