In Memoriam: Bernard Knox

This morning's New York Times brought news of the death on July 22d at the age of 95 of the renowned classicist, Bernard Knox, author of Oedipus at Thebes: Sophocles' Tragic Hero and His Time (1957). Knox also translated a 1959 edition of our reading this month, Oedipus the King.

According to the Time obituary, Knox was deployed during the Second World War by the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) for service in Northern Italy. He found himself in an abandoned villa and chanced upon a copy of Virgil's Georgics. "As we ran and crawled through the rubble I thought to myself, 'If I ever get out of this, I'm going back to the classics and study them seriously."

To remember Knox, here is his translation of the Chorus's enigmatic musing on mortality -- which some claim was not written by Sophocles but rather added at a later time -- contained in the last lines of Oedipus the King:

Citizens who dwell in Thebes, look at Oedipus here, who knew the answer to the famous riddle and was a power in the land. On his good fortune all the citizens gazed with envy. Into what a stormy sea of dreadful trouble he has come now. Therefore we must call no man happy while he waits to see his last day, not until he has passed the border of life and death without suffering pain.

Questions re: "Oedipus the King"

Do we know why is Thebes suffering a pestilence at the beginning of the play? (p.12)

Why does the chorus say (p. 21):

I neither killed the king nor can declare
the killer, but since Phoebus set the quest
it is his part to tell who the man is.

Why is Teiresias consulted? Why is he led in by a little boy?

Why does Oedipus think Creon put Teiresias up to telling Oedipus that he, Oedipus, was Laius's murderer? Oedipus says Creon wanted to "keep his own mouth free of any guilt," but could there be other reasons?

Why does Jocasta say to Oedipus, upon hearing of the death of Polybus, "Still in your father's death there's light of comfort."

Interpret Jocasta's line (p.52), "O Oedipus, God help you! God keep you from the knowledge of who you are."

Why does the sole survivor on the attack on King Laius's entourage say they were attacked by a band of robbers?

Why does Jocasta kill herself?

Why does Oedipus gouge his eyes out?

Why does Oedipus tell Creon at the end of the play he wants to go to live in Cithaeron, where his parents once sent him to die?

Can we be punished for our actions even if we did them without knowing they were wrong?


For Textual Analysis

From p. 22, "Teiresias, you are versed in everything," to p. 27, the end of Teiresias's speech"

Creon's speech, pp. 34-35, beginning "Not if you reflect on it as I do."

Oedipus's speech, beginning p. 41, "Polybus was my father, king of Corinth" to the end (p. 43)

His interchange with Jocasta and the First Messenger beginnig p. 47, "Ha! Ha! O dear Jocasta to p. 50, "So that from this you're called you present name."

Pages 57 to 58, starting with Oedipus "O O O, they will all come" and then segueing into the choral ode and ending with "my mouth to sleep with your name."