Classics and the Western Canon discussion

The question: is Myatt's translation consistent with the tragedy itself?

Since I'm busy I'll be brief, but the matter of my post isn't small... at all.

About an year ago I read an Oedipus Rex translation from D.W. Myatt. I got it from Great Books Index. The point of interest is this passage:

D.W. Myatt's translation:
JOCASTA:
"What is there for mortals to fear, for it is chance
Which rules over them, and who can clearly foresee what does not exist?
It is most excellent to live without a plan - according to one's ability.
You should not fear being married to your mother:
For many are the mortals who have - in dreams also(2) -
Lain with their mothers, and he to whom such things as these
Are as nothing, provides himself with a much easier life. "

Jocasta states that many man have slept with their mothers, virtually AND actually, and find it pretty natural. It also scares me how easily she suggests Oedipus not to worry about it. Now, comparing it to another translation you'll find just the opposite:

Francis Storr's translation:
JOCASTA
Why should a mortal man, the sport of chance,
With no assured foreknowledge, be afraid?
Best live a careless life from hand to mouth.
This wedlock with thy mother fear not thou.
How oft it chances that in dreams a man
Has wed his mother! He who least regards
Such brainsick phantasies lives most at ease.

Here there's no suggestion of the naturalness of actual son and mother intercourse, she just says, in a natural way, that man often dream about it.

By the end of the book Myatt explains his unusual translation:
(2) This is one of the crucial lines in understanding how Sophocles - and the Greeks themselves - viewed what we call the 'incest' of Oedipus with his mother (the Greeks had no word for 'incest'). On a first reading of the Greek text, it gives the impression that what is meant is: "many are the mortals who already - in dreams also - have lain with their mothers..." That is, while it is disrespectful and a disgrace, it is nothing to seriously concern oneself with.

Of course, this is far too 'amoral' for most translators and scholars to even consider, and so the line is taken as meaning: "many are the mortals who in dreams (and also in prophecies) have lain with their mothers..." This sense is rather strained, and not apparent on first reading the Greek.

However, if moral Christianized abstractions are not read into the Oedipus Tyrannus - as nearly all previous translators have done, often from laziness and sometimes from misunderstanding what the Greek means - then what emerges is that the incest is not that important. What concerns Oedipus most is his killing of his father - all he says about the incest is that he "should not" have slept with his mother and it is disrespectful (for example, qv. v.1184f and v.1441). What has brought about the plague which is devastating the clan of Thebes, is the killing of Laius. Furthermore, the offender has not given tributes to the gods to clean his hands of the bloodstain (qv. v.1445 - which is often overlooked or misinterpreted). That is, the pollution caused by the killing has not been purified by offerings to the gods - and thus the offender has offended the gods.

Again, is Myatt's translation consistent with the tragedy itself?

I already tried to answer this, and I will post some of my notes as soon as I find then, but we already have a good starting point here.

PS.: I'm not used to writing in english, and wrote it all in a hurry, so there might be some errors.

That's an excellent question. Unfortunately, my days of reading Greek with any fluency are long behind me. But if the Greek really translated that way, maybe some of the earlier translators would have shied away from it, but I don't think modern translators would have. So I suspect that it's a variant reading. But that's just my guess, not based on a close reading of the text.

Hi Caio,
I was wondering, was there any particular reason for choosing the Myatt translation over the others offered on the great book index?
From what I have read, Storr takes a Spiritualist approach,
http://books.google.com/books?id=4usx...
while Myatt's unusual background which is a mixture of islam and national socialism may account for his unusual interpretation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Myatt

thewanderingjew, I wasn't conscious of Myatt's polemical translation (and life...), only after my whole “fight” against him, which I'll describe bellow, I felt free to read Storr's translation.

I started reading to Myatt's translation innocently, but as soon as I read the mentioned passage I took a step back. Then the rest of the reading was a multi-level paranoia exercise. Since I can't read greek, and Myatt's argument seemed to refute other translations as an alternative, I had to search for inconsistencies of his suggestion within the tragedy itself, in his own translation.

What I found (taken from my one year old notes):
- Whenever Oedipus laments the parricide , he also talks about the incest.
- Whenever Oedipus lamentations are directed to the fate of Antigone and Ismene, he talks only about the incest.
- Oedipus never laments only the parricide.

These observations were a good starting point. They gave me a sensation that Myatt was indeed wrong about the naturalness of the incest in ancient Greece, but alone they were only cold mathematical reasoning. So I tried to find the answer in the content of Oedipus laments, specially when he is explaining the burden he imposed to himself.

After the chorus question Oedipus why the took his eyes instead of his life, he answers (in Myatt's own translation):
"For, if I had eyes, I would not know where to look
When I went to Hades and saw my father
Or my unfortunate mother, since to both
I have done what is so outstanding that a strangling is excluded."

And then he gets to the outstanding deed:
"Those deeds that I did there, and then, when here,
What I also achieved? You - those rites of joy
Which gave me my birth and which planted me anew
By the same seed being shot up to manifest fathers,
Brothers, sons - the blood of a kinsman –
Brides, wives, mothers: as much shame
As can arise from deeds among mortals."

There, the outstanding deed, his attack against the natural flow of a family line, his incestuous mixing of the blood of his kin. That was my conclusion an year ago, and that set me free to read something else.

Later, reading Violence and the Sacred, I've found my point reinforced by René Girard. He sees Oedipus Rex as a tragedy about the “crisis of degree” (crise do diferencial, in the portuguese translation I read – due to my lack of english higher vocabulary I might fail to explain it properly), Oedipus is guilty of thinning the line of hierarchy in society, leading it to a decline (symbolized by the plague). In light of the crisis of degree the parricide is surely a crime, but at this point Oedipus had the darkness only upon himself, he's the man who spat on the hierarchy of society, a murderer of his father, the man who attacked his own predecessor, but he's the only one who's guilty by now. The greater crime would be indeed the incest, that's the point where he brings the darkness upon his whole bloodline, each member of his family becomes a living insult against the hierarchy, brothers and sisters who are sons of the same, a wife who's also mother, and so on, they all become living crimes against the degree. That's what curses Oedipus' whole bloodline, making brother fight against brother (Polynices and Eteocles), and dangerously brings the whole society to a collapse.

I hope my english wasn't bad enough to make the whole point incomprehensible.

you were magnificent!

Caio wrote: "thewanderingjew, I wasn't conscious of Myatt's polemical translation (and life...), only after my whole “fight” against him, which I'll describe bellow, I felt free to read Storr's translation.

I ..."

Great analysis, Caio. Thanks.

An interesting and useful analysis, Caio. Thanks for that.

I have never read the Myatt translation, and after your comments on it, I think I will leave it unread. :)