Oedipus: From Man to Archetype Author(s): Martin Kallich Source: Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1966), pp. 33-46 Published by: Penn State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40245775 . Accessed: 06/05/2013 14:18 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Comparative Literature Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MARTIN KALL1CH Oedipus: from Man to Archetype propose to explore the several meanings assigned to the myth of Oedipus by a few of the dramatists who have presented stage versions of this famous Theban saga for over two thousand years. The essence of the myth of Oedipus is the son slaying his unknown father and subsequently marrying his own mother, thereby fulfilling a decree of fate. Such is its unvarying core- and as an anthropologist, the late Clyde Kluckhohn, has pointed out, this myth is universal- perhaps even the prototype of all human myths.1 Although this may be true, many moral meanings are projected into this core of ex- periences. Apparently the creative writers do not agree on the significance of this complex, much less the classical scholars who have carefully studied Sophocles. I In Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus (c. 427 B.C.), the first relatively complete extant version of this myth in drama, the supernatural agency that dominates the action is Apollo. Unfortunately, however, there is no certainty concerning the meaning of the role of the Apollonian god in Sophocles' work. Apollo appears to use a man of noble, innocent, and pious nature to undermine social and religious values, despite his horror of sinning against them. But it is obvious that interpretations of this fundamental conflict between the ir- resistible power of destiny and the sacredness of natural ties will vary, de- pending upon what tone is read into the richly human and ambiguous lines. Here a representatives election from the vast resources of Sophoclean scholar- ship, particularly the work of modern American and English scholars, will be made in order to illustrate the diversity of interpretation and provide a basis for understanding the adaptations of the creative writers. Sir Richard Jebb, taking the traditional position in the nineteenth century, sees in Oedipus a symbol of modern man facing a religious dilemma. Both Oedipus and Jocasta, he points out, do not reject the gods- both are reverent, 33 This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 34 + COMPARATIVLEI TERATUREST UDIES both believe in the wise omnipotence of the gods. But, on the other hand, both also reject the gods' moral ministers- Oedipus the prophet Tiresias, and Jocastat he priests at Delphi. Oedipus, Jebb states, is a rationalist, intellectually self-reliant; Jocasta, likewise, is a sceptic who questions the reliability of the oracles. Considering their views, Jebb feels that they represent a "spiritual anarchy" that not only unbalances the "self- centered calm" of Sophocles' mind but also endangers "the cohesion of society." Thus, through their experience, "a note of solemn warning, addressed to Athens and Greece, is meant to be heard." But Jebb concludes by reading into the drama the nineteenth-century problem of adjusting religious faith to the findings of science: "It is as a study of the human heart, true to every age, not as a protest against tendencies of the poet's own, that the Oedipus Tyrannus illustrates the relation of faith to reason."2 Jebb's view is interesting because it illustrates in scholarship the possibility of accommodating the myth to changing life- in general, the at- titude of the later imaginative critics of the myth. The modern trend in Sophoclean scholarship, however, is historical in orientation, for the scholars look at Sophocles' work not in the light of universal values but in the light of the ancient Greek past, particularly that of Sophocles himself in the Periclean Athens of the fifth century. For example, Sir John Sheppard, the first to demonstrate carefully the possibility of presenting Sophocles' opinions in fifth century terms, relates ancient Greek meanings given to the maxims of the Delphic oracle, "Know Thyself' and "Nothing Too Much," to an understanding of Oedipus' char- acter, and concludes that they provide the final moral of the play.8 Sheppard interprets the philosophical theme of Sophocles' play as a mild agnosticism or neutral fatalism. Oedipus, he declares, behaves normally, commits an error in ignorance, and brings suffering upon himself. "Sophocles justifies nothing. . . . His Oedipus vs tands for human suffering. His gods . . . stand for the universe of circumstances as it is. ... He bids his audience face the facts. . . . Oedipus suffers not because of his guilt, but in spite of his goodness."4 Sir Maurice Bowra also synthesizes the two Delphic maxims, his point being that Oedipus has learned that he must do what the gods demand, and in his life illustrates what the Platonic Socrates means when he says the commands "Know Thyself" and "Be Modest" are the same. Oedipus finds modesty because he has learned to know himself: "So the central idea of a Sophoclean tragedy is that through suffering a man learns to be modest before the gods." Bowra argues that Sophocles' Oedipus, reflecting such tragic con- temporary events (noted by Thucydides) as a catastrophic plague in Athens and an unsuccessful war with Sparta, as well as current disbelief in the oracles, dramatizes a conflict between gods and men. He concludes that "Sophocles allows no doubts, no criticism of the gods. ... If divine ways seem wrong, ignorance is to blame. . . . For this conflict the gods have a reason. They wish to teach a lesson, to make men learn their moral limitations and accept them."5 But Bowra appears to be too committed to supporting the religious establishment, and as a result misses the subtle and humane ques- tioning;s uggested in the dramatic situation. For example, is not a very critical This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions OEDIPUSF:R OMM ANT O ARCHETYP+E 35 irony intended by the dramatist when Jocasta'so ffering at the altar of Apollo on center stage is seen still smoking at the time the messenger informs us of her suicide by hanging? Another such irony may be intended in the epilogos when Oedipus, blind and polluted, craves to be sent out of the land as an outcast only to have Creon reply that Apollo must first pronounce. This need not only suggest respect for the power of the god; it may also suggest the god's failure at empathy. For it is as if the dramatist were asking Apollo to show a little charity, love, and forbearancet owards erring man. On the basis of such evidence, Cedric H. Whitman takes issue with Bowra. He states that the picture of a pure and pious Sophocles never questioning the oracles and serenely supporting the traditional belief in the Greek theodicy is completely wrong. Sophocles, Whitman believes, appears in the Tyrannus to have suffered a loss of faith; he is bitter, ironic, and pessimistic because of the irrational evil perpetrated by unjust gods on a morally upright man who wishes to be and do good. Whitman's point is that the ancient Greeks used the gods to explain where evil came from, especially that irrational evil which seemed to have no cause or moral meaning. Thus Sophocles was doubting the moral trustworthiness of the Greek gods: "The simple fact is that for Sophocles, the gods, whoever they are, no longer stand within the moral picture. Morality is man's possession, and the cosmos- or chaos- may be what it will." Sophocles dramatizes the theodicy "with a kind of agnostic aloofness.S ophocles was religious rathert han pious."6 Such, briefly, are a few of the more significant prevailing views in American and English scholarship concerning Sophocles' handling of the myth in his masterpiece. They demonstrate, despite differences of opinion about Athenian life and Sophocles' character, that the meaning of the myth in the Tyrannus derives from the society and culture of Athens during the fifth century, and that Sophocles accommodates the basic story not only to his own time but also to his personal ideological and spiritual needs. So, depending upon how the critic reads the complexities and ambiguities of Athenian culture and the author's tenuous character, Sophocles, in this play about King Oedipus, is impious or pious. But whatever the stand on Apollo and his oracles that Sophocles has really taken, there is no doubt about the depth, conviction, and art with which he expresses his credo. These qualities have always been admired, and, as a result, the form in which Sophocles has cast the myth has often been imitated. These imitations, it will be seen, have their unique qualities and are by no means pale reflections of the ancient Greek masterpiece. They, too, like the Tyrannus, speak vigorously for the culture and the personality which gave birth to them. Although imaginative re-creations,t hey are critical in effect, as they invite comparison with Sophocles' work and reveal what meaning the myth might have had to the writer and his audience. They prove that in dramatic art the Oedipus myth is a dynamic organism, that it has a life of its own, because as a particularly vital myth it has the property, as Jebb intimates when he makes Oedipus into a nineteenth century man, of assimilating to This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 36 + COMPARATIVLEI TERATUREST UDIES itself related ideas and thereby becoming an extremely complicated culture symbol. II The English Oedipus (1678), the joint work of John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, is an incredibly sensational melodrama, far removed from the classical restraint and sophisticated subtlety of Sophocles' tragedy.7 It is not an under- statement to claim little serious and sustained thought for this noisy English version with its screaming ghost, incantatory rites and oracles, sleepwalking, mad and mob scenes, quarreling, dueling, fighting, and general massacre of all the major and minor characters in the climax. Occasionally, however, in- cidental comments are suggestive of something profoundly meaningful- for example, Dryden's defense of the divine right of kings. When Oedipus learns of the murder of King Laius, he states that the gods are justly offended by "the guilt of Royal Blood": "What, touch annointed Pow'r!/Then Gods beware; Jove would himself be next" (I, i, pp. 366-67, 370). Thus the Tory Dryden suggests a personal political interpretation of the plague ravaging Thebes. Nor are there any strongly sustained protests against the gods and their religious ministers in this play. This serious theme, unlike that of most of the other versions, is minimized. Once Dryden does argue, through Tiresias, for the ultimate justice of the gods in terms of the conventional chain of being (III, i, p. 388); but Dryden does not develop this theme any further. Once again, through Oedipus, he vents his fury at the priests- "O why has Priest- hood priviledge to lye/ And yet to be believ'd!" (Ill, i, p. 393) .8 Here, as Dryden insults the clerical profession (which Sophocles avoids doing, although his Oedipus quarrels vigorously with the prophet in the parallel scene), he an- ticipates the anticlericalism of Voltaire, who pursues this theme with great pleasure. At the end of Act III, Oedipus blames the "good Gods" for his crimes (III, i, pp. 397-98). But his defense of himself and his accusation of the gods are not presented consistently; for, after blinding himself, he submits: " "Gods, I accuse you not. . . (V, i, p. 416). Similarly, Jocasta has no faith in oracular reliability; but in her last scene with Oedipus, she can only weep weakly: "O wretched Pair! O greatly wretched we!/Two worlds of woe!" (V, i, p. 419). Jocasta does, on the other hand, continue to protest the in- nocence of their married love, and Oedipus himself cannot completely suppress his passion, "the pangs of Nature," despite his strong sense of guilt: Oedipus: I feel a melting here, a tenderness, Too mighty for the anger of the Gods! . . . Jocasta: In spite of all those Crimes the cruel Gods Can charge me with, I know my Innocence; Know yours: 'tis Fate alone that makes us wretched, For you are still my Husband. And then Oedipus replies in kind: Swear I am And 1*11b elieve thee; steal into thy Arms, Renew endearments, think 'em no pollutions, But chaste as Spirits joys (cid:10)(cid:9)(cid:9)(cid:9) (V, i, pp. 419-20) This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions OEDIPUS: FROM MAN TO ARCHETYPE + 37 Better than any other portions of the play, this extract from the dialogue exhibits precisely its outstanding quality. For here, it must be remembered, Oedipus is seen blinded, self-mutilated because of the supposed horror of his incest. Yet, unable to suppress his erotic feeling, he persists in glorying in it. Indeed, contrasted with the reserved manner in which Sophocles speaks of incest, this motif is sustained in the Restoration version with such passionate intensity (see, especially, II, i, pp. 377, 380-81; V, i, pp. 425-26) that we suspect decadence- simple, crude, sensual titillation for no other purpose than the pleasures uch gross perversitym ight afford the audience. Undoubtedly, the chief theme of the English Oedipus by Dryden and Lee is tragic love (as we must also include the effect of the supporting sub- plot concerning the frustrations of the noble lovers, Adrastus and Eurydice)- sexuality, not religion or philosophy. The reasons for this emphasis on sensual love are threefold. First, the extraordinary development of the incestuous passion between the protagonists is an attempt to satisfy the expectations of eroticism in the notoriously bawdy Restoration audience. The decadent aristocratica udience needed constant shocks to sustain its interest. Second, the writers simply prefer to palliate the crime by converting incest into romantic love.9 Third, the change in theme has been dictated by a new critical canon, the rule of love. Dryden, in An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668), had put in the mouth of Eugenius a defense in drama of romantic love, "the most frequent of all the passions."10A nd in his Heads of an Answer to Rymer (c. 1678-70), composed approximately the same time as the Oedipus, Dryden advanced two other arguments typical of the time for introducing the love theme into tragedy: love is "heroic," and therefore admirable; and second, it is "the best commonplace of pity."11I n general, that is to say, the neo- classical justification for introducing love into tragedy rests upon the psy- chological need to reinforce the soft emotion of pity. Owing to near kinship, the "soft passion" of love easily arouses the emotion of pity, its "gentleness" thereby "tempering," as Dryden states, the black passion of fear and terror. That Dryden and Lee have succeeded in producing an unusual sentimental reinterpretation of the classic myth cannot be denied. In its day at least, their romantic Oedipus was a resounding success, and (what is surprising) at least one perceptive contemporary, John Dennis, took it seriously enough to give it careful consideration in his dialogue, The Impartial Critic (1693). Ill Written when the author was but nineteen years old, Voltaire's Oedipe (1718) contains a good deal of talk about honor, courage, fame, virtue, love and passion, all earmarks of the fashionable heroic tragedy of the neoclassic period in France and England. The rule of love particularly irritated Voltaire. For example, the almost motiveless return of her former lover Philoctetes causes Jocaste dismay and heartache. Wretched because she had been twice com- pelled to marry without love, to King Laius and then to King Oedipus, she confesses to her confidante Aegina her true feelings, her frustrations, and the conflict of virtue and passion within her (II, ii, p. 72) .12 The pathos is This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 38 + COMPARATIVLEI TERATUREST UDIES painful. Clearly, as he himself complains in his prefatory letter to his former classics teacher, Father Porée, the young Voltaire was at the mercy of the Parisiana ctorsw ho would not play an Oedipus without love. Yet it is this pathetic and sentimental Jocaste who competes with the tragic hero Oedipus for audience attention. Thus the psychology of love, a legacy of the seventeenth century theory of tragedy, becomes a major problem of Voltaire's play- at least for the first half of the action; and, naturally, Voltaire had to describe his version of the curious nature of her feelings for Oedipus in order to satisfy the romantic expectationso f his audience: Je sends pour lui quelque tendresse; Mais que ce sentiment fut loin de la faiblesse! Ce n'était point, Égine, un feu tumultueux, De mes sens enchantés enfant impétueux; Je ne reconnus point cette brûlante flamme Que le seul Philoctète a fait naître en mon âme. . . . Je sentais pour Oedipe une amitié sévère. . . . (II, ii, p. 73) But after these false starts that continue up to the middle of the play, the direction suddenly shifts. Voltaire puts the romantic hurdle, the insipid and sentimental amour between middle-aged Jocaste and her old flame Philoctetes, behind him so that he can turn to the real business of the austere Oedipus story. Immediately we sense a notable change in point of view, tone, and intellectual energy. For Voltaire focuses intensely upon the religious theme; and unhesitantly, almost shrilly, expresses an anticlerical bias. Of course, for the sake of dramatic irony, he, like Sophocles, makes the suffering Oedipus pious and reverent. But nothing like the rationalistic Voltairean advice given to Oedipus appears in the Greek version, when the pathetic hero, disappointed at his failure to have the gods cease punishing the hapless Thebans with the pestilence, listens to his confidant Araspe who urges him to trust only himself, to forego the ritual of the priests: Ces dieux dont le pontife a promis le secours, Dans leurs temples, seigneur, n'habitent pas toujours. . . . Ne nous endormons point sur la foi de leurs prêtres; Au pied du sanctuaire il est souvent des traîtres, Qui, nous asservissant sous un pouvoir sacré. . . . Ne nous fions qu'à nous; voyons tout par nos yeux: Ce sont là nos trépieds, nos oracles, nos dieux. (II, v, pp. 79-80) This rationalism is exactly like that maintained by Gide in his Oedipe two hundred years later. Nor does Sophocles' Oedipus, when suddenly accused of regicide, use such strong language as does Voltaire's Oedipus in the parallel scene. Voltaire's Oedipus responds angrily, as we should expect, and charges the High Priest (Voltaire's vacuous version of Tiresias) with disloyalty to the monarchy: Voilà donc des autels quel est le privilège! Grâce à l'impunité, ta bouche sacrilège, Pour accuser ton roi d'un forfait odieux. . . . (III, iv, p. 88) This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions OEDIPUSF:R OMM ANT O ARCHETYP+E 39 However, as in Sophocles' play, Oedipus' fury here may simply be the result of momentary passion. Therefore this detail may not represent Oedipus' fixed opinion regarding priests or religion. But, on the other hand, when noble Philoctetes generously comes to Oedipus' defense we feel the gratuitousness of Voltaire'sb ias: Mais un prêtre est ici d'autant plus redoutable Qu'il vous perce à nos yeux par un trait respectable. Fortement appuyé sur des oracles vains, Un pontife est souvent terrible aux souverains. . . . (III, v, p. 89) Furthermore, Voltaire's Jocaste, following Sophocles' development of this motif, defends Oedipus against the High Priest and vigorously challenges the reliabilityo f superstitiouso raclesa nd fallible mortal ministers: Cet organe des dieux est-il donc infaillable? Un ministère saint les attache aux autels; Ils approchent des dieux, mais ils sont des mortels. Pensez-vous qu'en effet, au gré de leur demande, Du vol de leurs oiseaux la vérité dépende? . . . Non, non: chercher ainsi l'obscure vérité, C'est usurper les droits de la Divinité. Nos prêtres ne sont pas ce qu'un vain peuple pense, Notre crédulité fait toute leur science. (IV, i, p. 93) Voltaire, it is clear, makes more of the problem of religion, especially the rites of the priests, than did his predecessors. Except for the distracting dis- cussion of love in the first half of the play, he uses the Oedipus story for religious commentary. But he goes further than the ironic ambiguities of Sophocles and evidently betrays in his straightforward language his hostility towards the priests. What of the larger philosophical question of moral guilt, free will, and divine responsibility for sin? Does Voltaire take up this problem of the role of the gods who, despite man's virtuous intention, yet compel him to pollute himself and society? Yes, briefly, but very significantly in two crucial scenes- the first because it is the only soliloquy of the play, and the second because it occurs at the last curtain. In great anguish Oedipus confesses to incestuous parricide, but he very definitely absolves himself from moral guilt. It is not difficultt o sense the power and pathos of Voltaire'sc omplaint: Impitoyables dieux, mes crimes sont les vôtres, Et vous m'en punissez! . . . (V, iv,p. 108) Unlike Sophocles, Voltaire does not in the conclusion draw any simple moral from the action. Certainly, he need not insist that a noble and pious man is being unjustly treated by the gods. We get the point. But in order to make sure that we do, Voltaire drives it home in the finale. As soon as Oedipus is forced to confess his sins, the plague miraculously ceases, for, as the High Priest announces, the wrath of the gods is appeased. Then, to add to the drama of the climax (as if Jocaste'ss uicide off stage were not effective enough, because bloody and blinded Oedipus docs not appear in Voltaire's version), Jocaste stabs herself, insisting upon her innocence and This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 40 + COMPARATIVLEI TERATUREST UDIES the guilt of the gods for her calamitous marriage. Her complaint, the very last words of the play, indubitably demonstrates a certain degree of religious bias: . . . songez à jamais Qu'aum ilieu des horreursd u destin qui m'opprime, J'ai fait rougir les dieux qui m'ont forcée au crime. (V, vi, p. ni) Unfortunately, because this statement obviously parallels Oedipus' self-defense and rounds out the theme of the play and because Voltaire had not previously developed or dramatized richly enough the religious thought of his Jocaste, we cannot help feeling that these lines lack imaginative conviction. They fail to spring from the depths of Jocaste'sc haracter. Yet despite this criticism and for precisely the same reasons, it is possible for us to say that they do exhibit the author'sp ersonalc onviction. Therefore we may well speculate upon the impression produced by these powerful last words gasped out by the dying Jocaste, even if they are not spoken entirely in character. They represent an earnest and poignant, if obvious, protest against thoughtlessly maintained religious belief. Taken to- gether with all the other adverse comments on religion and divinity, they cast aspersions upon the unremitting cruelty of primitive gods who force pious mortals to commit abominable crimes, and they challenge the authority of their barbarous priests who blindly and inhumanely practice superstitious rites. Thus in stressing the failure of reason in religion, in priests and the gods, Voltaire challenges conventional belief. Unlike the dramatists who precede him in the treatment of the Oedipus story, he protests man's innocence to the end of his thoughtful problem play. He asserts the moral guilt of the cruel gods and rejects their irrational omnipotence. He is unwilling to admit that man's tragic defeat implies complete pessimistic despair. In his early Oedipe, Voltaire expresses his personal philosophy and thereby anticipates his later uncompromising rationalism. IV In André Gide's Oedipe (1931), the drama develops around a debate over the measure of being and the source of authority. The question posed is as follows: Is God or Man the measure and authority for policies implemented in the world? A subordinate but closely related question concerns man's goal in life: Should it be earthly happiness, progress through invention and dis- covery, or grace and eternal salvation? As we should expect, occasional sorties against the established church are made in the course of the action. For ex- ample, near the opening, Gide has the Chorus state cynically, "Certes, il est bon de mettre les dieux de son côté. Mais le plus sûr moyen, c'est de se ranger du côté du prêtre" (I, p. 254) ,18 An ironie epigram like this immediately es- tablishes the tone, as it goes to the heart of the matter concerning human conduct on earth. It is just such a paradox- the possibility of irreligious priests- that creates the ambiguity of the philosophic theme of Sophocles' play. But while we cannot be sure of Sophocles' position on the question, This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions OEDIPUS: FROM MAN TO ARCHETYPE + 41 we arc very sure of Gide's position.14H is is, indeed, the kind of play in the tradition of the sceptical Voltaire: its free thinking is unmistakable. "Le peuple préfère toujours à l'explication naturelle l'interprétation mystique: rien à faire à cela" (I, p. 260) . For Gide's answers to his questions posed above come through incisively. It is made thoroughly clear that some men wish to have the freedom to experiment, socially and morally, even to the extent of committing incest; or, as Gide says, the freedom to behave indecently- "l'approbationd e l'indécence" (II, p. 279). To complicate these shocking matters, the irrepressible Gide has in mind two varieties of incest: the Oedipal mother-son as well as the brother- sister type. But other men, their prototypes symbolically represented by Creon and Tiresias, the politician and the priest, are equally assertive in their con- servative checks upon freedom on the basis of divine sanctions and order and tradition. Written at a time when he was moving closer towards communism in the late twenties and early thirties, his Oedipe demonstrates that Gide does not wish to place any brakes on human thought. He wants freedom for men at any price. Thus, as his Oedipus declares in a powerful speech, there can be only one answer to the riddle of the Sphinx, no matter what questions she might have asked: Man or Oneself- by which he means Man's Reason (II, pp. 283-84), 16 In essence, Gide makes a kind of Faustian morality play out of the Oedipus legend. His hero is a twentieth-century, self-confident radical and rationalist who, in his debates with the guardians of society, the cautious and conservative politician Creon and the shrewd but rigidly orthodox Tiresias, contemptuously denies the past, religion and the gods. He is Oedipus, the forward-looking intellectual who, because he knows nothing of his parents, his past, shows initiative and can invent, discover, and build civilization anew without the restraintso f tradition. His individualism looks forward to the goal of civiliza- tion when "la terre couverte d'une humanité désasservie" (II, p. 283). Eventually, of course, Oedipus is made to pay for his daring rationalism, his atheistic blasphemy and secular happiness. Such is his tragedy. His knowl- edge, proved to be incomplete, is in effect ignorance; trapped by God to commit crimes against his will, to kill his father and marry his own past in his mother, he learns in anguish that he is a cruel god's puppet. At the conclusion of the action, however, the buoyant optimism of Gide's hero is restored.T rue, he has blinded himself; but it was in grief and exaspera- tion- an error in judgment, Gide implies. True, he is an outcast; but he is spiritually undefeated. At the very end he is once more intransigent and un- submissive. He confidently reasserts his humanist philosophy and reaffirms the superiority of earthly happiness over heavenly salvation, of his light over Tiresias' night. So as Oedipus becomes an emblem of a humane, secular, and rational individualist who has been temporarily defeated by superstition, even the pious Antigone comes to believe that her tormented father is a far more sacred figure than the priest: "En m'échappant de toi, Tiresias, je resterai fidèle à Dieu. Même il me semble que je le servirai mieux, suivant mon This content downloaded from 165.111.2.149 on Mon, 6 May 2013 14:18:32 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions