The importance of oracular and prophetic utterances in Sophocles is shown by the simple fact that most of his plots are in some part or even entirely determined by the presence of such utterances; it is furthermore enhanced by all sort of rhetorical images that present edifying aspects of the oracular truth as light, as unconquerable, as an assailing god, etc.
Often the rhetorical means to emphasize the privileged status of these divine utterances are more subtle and almost hidden. In my book, Oedipus and the Fabrication of the Father 1992, I noticed that in the quarrel between Teiresias and Oedipus (OT. 297-462), the text avoids qualifying Oedipus' knowledge by the verbs oida and phroneo, that are exclusively used for Teiresias' knowledge. The only exception constitutes a confirmation of the practice, since it occurs when Oedipus puns on his name (397)-- a clear and underlined form of tragic parody.
Even the terms themselves that qualify the "uttering" of the divine words are special: I notice for instance that in the information scene in OT, 87-132 Creon never uses the mere verb legein to designate the speaking of the god, but emphatic expressions as anôgen emphanôs (96),epistellei saphôs (96), ephaske (110,114, 122), and analogously Oedipus, in the Coloneus, defines the uttering of the divine words avoiding the simple verbs of saying as legein (only one, 88) against 87, 94, 96-97, 102.
Such a care even in the almost invisible details, such large rhetorical devices to extol the power of truth of these divine utterances, such hopes or defiances put on them, all of this contrast with the poor performances of such divine voices: no clarity, no indisputable truth, no timely presence. This voice manifests itself too late to save Antigone and too late to save Thebes from the plague. Is this the meletê theôn ? Apollo's oracle to Creon defining the cause of the plague must be wrong in mentioning plural murderers (OT,106-07); Apollo's oracle to Orestes in the Electra tells him how to proceed and act in killing Clytemnestra and her lover, but not how to shine as a star after the murder (65-66); Apollo's oracle to Oedipus about his destiny as a parrincestual son occurs in a context that leads Oedipus to misconstruct the reality of his own family (787-797). In the Philoctetes, Helenus' oracle is central to the action, but its precise content remains obscure, and is variously interpreted by the characters.
It seems then that the voice of truth, contrary to the image of light that the text attributes to it, may be better defined as a mysterious and enigmatic voice, sometimes more a paradigme of truth for the audience than for the characters, sometimes a riddle for both. It is a "literary" oracular voice and as such it functions as a term and as a device of Sophocles' poetics. In this poetics, "truth" is often obscured, premonitions are often unclear or deceptive: a sort of open, unsettled text to be compared with the "unwritten laws" of the Antigone, with the hupsipodes nomoi of the OT. 865-66, etc. The oracle itself therefore functions exactly as Sophocles says in fr. 771: "And this, I know well is god's nature: to the clever men he is always riddling with his oracles, but to the fools he is a poor and quick teacher."
|
