Soufflé

“ Without thine edict;—if before the time,
I count it gain. Who does not gain by death,
That lives, as I do, amid boundless woe?
Slight is the sorrow of such doom to me.
But had I suffered my own mother’s child,
Fallen in blood, to be without a grave,
That were indeed a sorrow. ”

“ And bitter wrath have felt; but they, with spells
Of friends' good counsel, charmed their souls to peace.
Look not upon the present but the past,
Thy father's and thy mother's woes, and thou,
I know full well, wilt see that evil mood
An evil issue finds for evermore;
For strong the proofs thou hast within thyself,
In those poor sightless eyeballs. Nay, but yield—
Yield thou to us. It is not good to meet
With stiff denials those who ask for right ”

“ For when he hath seen youth go by, with its light follies, what troublous affliction is strange to his lot,1230 what suffering is not therein?—envy, factions, strife, battles and slaughters; and, last of all, age claims him for her own,—age, dispraised, infirm, unsociable, unfriended, with whom all woe of woe abides. ”

“ Leave me to sleep, me, miserable one.
⁠Where dost thou touch me? Say,
⁠Where lay to rest?
⁠Ah! thou wilt slay me, slay:
What slumbered thou hast roused to life again;
It seizes me, it creeps, this weary pain.
⁠Where are ye, who, of all
⁠That Hellas hers doth call,
Are found most evil, reckless of the right?
⁠For whom I wore my life,
⁠In ceaseless, dreary strife,
Slaying by land and sea dread forms of might ”

“ Thou child of misery!
No mightier power hath this decreed,
But thine own will and deed
Hath bound thee thus in grief,
Since, when kind Heaven had sent relief
And shown the path of wisdom firm and sure,
Thou still hast chosen this evil to endure.
PHI. O hapless life, sore bruised with pain!I 2
No more with living mortal may I dwell,
But ever pining in this desert cell
With lonely grief, all famished must remain
And perish ”

“ For with these streaming eyes, father, I bewail thee;1710 nor know I, ah me, how to quell my sorrow for thee, my sorrow that is so great.—Ah me! 'twas thy wish to die in a strange land; but now thou hast died without gifts at my hand.
Is. Woe is me! What new fate, think'st thou,1720 awaits thee and me, my sister, thus orphaned of our sire?
Ch. Nay, since he hath found a blessed end, my children, cease from this lament; no mortal is hard for evil fortune to capture. ”

“ Ha! ’tis some knavery. Are ye come to add
Some monster evil to my mountainous woe?
NEO. Fear not, but hearken to what now I speak.
PHI. I needs must fear thee, whose fair words erewhile
Brought me to bitter fortune.
NEO. May not men
Repent and change?
PHI. Such wast thou in thy talk,
When thou didst rob me of my bow,—so bright
Without, so black within.
NEO. Ah, but not now,
Assure thee! Only let me hear thy will,
Is ’t constant to remain here and endure,
Or to make voyage with us?
PHI. Stop, speak no more!
Idle and vain will all thine utterance be.
NEO. Thou art so resolved? ”

“ Proclaim me what thou wilt,—evil in soul,
Or loud in cursing, or devoid of shame:
For if I am infected with such guilt,
Methinks my nature is not fallen from thine.
CH. (looking at CLYTEMNESTRA) .
I see her fuming with fresh wrath: the thought
Of justice enters not her bosom now.
CLY. What thought of justice should be mine for her,
Who at her age can so insult a mother?
Will shame withhold her from the wildest deed?
EL. Not unashamed, assure thee, I stand here,
Little as thou mayest deem it. ”

“ And if thou find me plotting with the seer,
In common concert, not by one decree,
But two, thine own and mine, put me to death.
But charge me not with crime on shadowy proof;
For neither is it just, in random thought,
The bad to count as good, nor good as bad; ⁠610
For to thrust out a friend of noble heart,
Is like the parting with the life we love.
And this in time thou'lt know, for time alone
Makes manifest the righteous. Of the vile
Thou may'st detect the vileness in a day.
Chorus. To one who fears to fall, his words seem good ”

“ I have said, then, and I say it once again—let the maidens be brought hither with all speed, unless thou wouldst sojourn in this land by no free choice;—and this I tell thee from my soul, as with my lips.
Ch. Seest thou thy plight, O stranger? Thou art deemed to come of a just race; but thy deeds are found evil. ”

“ I wish to ask, unhappy Œdipus,
Why thou sitt'st here, a suppliant to my state,
And to me also,—thou, and that poor girl
Who still attends thee? Tell me; dread indeed
The suffering thou should'st tell, for me to hold⁠560
Myself aloof from it. Right well I know
That I myself was reared away from home,
As thou; and, more than most men, struggled through, [12]
In a strange land, full many a risk of life.
So from no stranger, coming as thou com'st,
Would I draw back, or fail to help and save;
I know that I am man, and I can count
No more than thou, on what the morrow brings. ”

“ I claimed the right of rendering ill for ill,
[For headstrong wrath knows no old age but death;
The dead are callous to the touch of pain.]
Wherefore do what thou wilt, for though I speak
With justice on my side, yet, being alone,
But little power is left me. Yet thy deeds
Old as I am I 'll strive to render back.
⁠Œdip. Ο shameless soul! on which, think'st thou, thy scorn⁠960
Will fall most heavily, my age or thine? ”

“ Come hither,—hither to the hands of him whose mother was your own, the hands whose offices have wrought that your sire's once bright eyes should be such orbs as these,—his, who seeing nought, knowing nought, became your father by her from whom he sprang! For you also do I weep—behold you I cannot—when I think of the bitter life in days to come which men will make you live. ”

“ I am dead in regard to thee; thou thyself hast perished: our foes exult; that mother, who is none, is mad with joy,—she of whom thou didst oft send me secret messages, thy heralds, saying that thou thyself wouldst appear as an avenger. But our evil fortune, thine and mine, hath reft all that away, and hath sent thee forth unto me thus,—no more the form that I loved so well, but ashes and an idle shade. ”

“ Who, plotting death to all the host at once,
Came on by night that he might slay with sword;
And were it not some God had quashed the scheme,
We should have fallen, and, in shameful plight,
By chance which now is his, had lain there dead,
And he had lived; but now a God has turned⁠1060
His wanton rage to fall on flocks and herds;
And, therefore, there is no man strong enough,
Be he who may, this body to entomb,
But, cast forth here upon the yellow sands,
It shall be prey for birds that haunt the shore.
Therefore, I bid thee, keep from furious wrath ”

“ 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. ”

“ But if this stranger had any tie of kinship with Laïus, who is now more wretched than the man before thee? What mortal could prove more hated of heaven? Whom no stranger, no citizen, is allowed to receive in his house; whom it is unlawful that any one accost; whom all must repel from their homes! And this—this curse—was laid on me by no mouth but mine own!820 And I pollute the bed of the slain man with the hands by which he perished. ”

“ Beyond redemption impious, O my sire,
Thy vengeance still would be unnatural.
Oh let him!—Others have had evil sons
And passionate anger, but the warning voice
Of friends hath charmed their mood. Then do not thou
Look narrowly upon thy present griefs,
But on those ancient wrongs thou didst endure
From father and from mother. Thence thou wilt learn
That evil passion ever ends in woe.
Thy sightless eyes are no light argument
To warn thee through the feeling of thy loss.
Relent and hear us! ’Tis a mere disgrace
To beg so long for a just boon. The King
Is kind to thee. ”

“ I was predestined to some awful doom.
So be it. I reck not how Fate deals with me
But my unhappy children—for my sons
Be not concerned, O Creon, they are men,
And for themselves, where'er they be, can fend. ”

“ He knew the exact details of the scourging, the scoffing, the taunts, the torture, the crucifixion; and to a sensitive soul the hour of approach to a great untried agony is often the hour of bitterest trial. It is when we foresee a great trouble in the dimness of to-morrow that our undisciplined hearts grow faint and fail us. But he who had long foreseen—who had counted in advance—every humiliation, [164] every sorrow, and every pain, spoke at the same time of his joy as an overflowing fullness. ”

“ I doubt not but he is trailing his painful steps somewhere near this spot, in quest of food. For rumour saith that in this fashion he lives, seeking prey with his winged shafts, all-wretched that he is; and no healer of his woe draws nigh unto him.
str. 2. Ch. I pity him,170 to think how, with no man to care for him, and seeing no companion's face, suffering, lonely evermore, he is vexed by fierce disease, and bewildered by each want as it arises. How, how doth he endure in his misery? Alas, the dark dealings of the gods! Alas, hapless races of men, whose destiny exceeds due measure! ”

“ How often have I doubted the misfortunes of others, that I might with justice harden my heart against them.
With what satisfaction have I sometimes verified the vices of the poor man, in order to show that his misery is the punishment he deserves!
Oh! let us not go farther—let us not go farther! I interrupted the doctor's examination, but how much sadder is this one! We pity the diseases of the body; we shudder at those of the soul.
I was happily disturbed in my reverie by my neighbor, the old soldier. ”

“ Cr. Woe for the sins of a darkened soul, stubborn sins, fraught with death! Ah, ye behold us, the sire who hath slain, the son who hath perished! Woe is me, for the wretched blindness of my counsels! Alas, my son, thou hast died in thy youth, by a timeless doom, woe is me!—thy spirit hath fled,—not by thy folly, but by mine own!
str. 2. Ch. Ah me, how all too late thou seemest to see the right!1270 ”

“ The thought of a Divine discipline, ordering men's lives aright, is brought out yet more clearly in the way in which the dramas of Sophocles deal with another great element of tragedy, the mystery of suffering, apparently undeserved by him on whom it falls, of an evil destiny transmitted from generation to generation, of crimes into which the criminal falls unconsciously, but which, in spite of that unconsciousness, entail a tremendous punishment. ”

“ Reveal my woe;—mine, that I say not, thine.
OED. So, then, thou hast the knowledge of the crime
And wilt not tell, but rather wouldst betray
This people, and destroy thy fatherland!
TI. You press me to no purpose. I’ll not pain
Thee, nor myself. Thou wilt hear nought from me.
OED. How? Miscreant! Thy stubbornness would rouse
Wrath in a breast of stone. Wilt thou yet hold
That silent, hard, impenetrable mien?
TI. You censure me for my harsh mood. Your own
Dwells unsuspected with you. Me you blame!
OED. Who can be mild and gentle, when thou speakest
Such words to mock this people? ”

“ Groundless complaints and clamorous phrases loud,
And vanity, with its envenomed darts—
Whatever of harm life, like a viewless plague,
Sows ’mid us all, e’en in the noblest hearts—
All these grew calm, and only one desire,
One impulse in us all blazed into fire—
To suffer and to strive with all our souls
To scatter the surrounding darkness dire. ”

“ Why, hapless one, should I look to the gods any more,—what ally should I invoke,—when by piety I have earned the name of impious? Nay, then, if these things are pleasing to the gods, when I have suffered my doom, I shall come to know my sin; but if the sin is with my judges, I could wish them no fuller measure of evil than they, on their part, mete wrongfully to me.
Ch. Still the same tempest of the soul vexes this maiden with the same fierce gusts.930
Cr. Then for this shall her guards have cause to rue their slowness.
An. Ah me! that word hath come very near to death. ”

“ Such was the mystical explanation of that election of suffering, the raison d’etre of that being who was so harshly separated from her fellows, weighed down by disease, transformed into the pitiable field of every human affliction. ”

“ Nay every grief and every fear,
Thou dost devour, unless thy stamp it bear.
Thy presence, like the crowned basilisk's breath,
All other serpents puts to death.
As men in hell are from diseases free,
So from all other ills am I ”

“ Pour out the impious prayer, that fain would change
The unchangeable’s decree, surrounding friends
Sob round the sufferer, wet his cheek with tears,
And all he loved in life embitters death!
Such, Maiden, are the pangs that wait the hour
Of calmest dissolution! yet weak man
Dares, in his timid piety, to live;
And veiling Fear in Superstition’s garb,
He calls her Resignation!
Coward wretch! ”

“ Never before did I witness such sad, and heart-affecting sorrow: a gloomy Religion is always increased by scenes of melancholy, hence the horrors of my mind were beyond description. Every thing I had done, every word I had uttered, not strictly conformable to the rule of right, returned upon my mind with redoubled terror, and in the midst of these agonizing fears, I was violently seized by the same fever, which had destroyed my friend. ”