Bloom's Literary Themes - ymerleksi - home

144
Sophocles
the dialogue is a copy of the Hellene, whose nature reveals itself in the
dance, because in the dance the greatest energy is merely potential,
but betrays itself nevertheless in flexible and vivacious movements.
The language of the Sophoclean heroes, for instance, surprises us by
its Apollonian precision and clearness, so that we at once imagine
we see into the innermost recesses of their being, and marvel not a
little that the way to these recesses is so short. But if for the moment
we disregard the character of the hero which rises to the surface and
grows visible—and which at bottom is nothing but the light-picture
cast on a dark wall, that is, appearance through and through,—if
rather we enter into the myth which projects itself in these bright
mirrorings, we shall of a sudden experience a phenomenon which
bears a reverse relation to one familiar in optics. When, after a
vigorous effort to gaze into the sun, we turn away blinded, we have
dark-coloured spots before our eyes as restoratives, so to speak; while,
on the contrary, those light-picture phenomena of the Sophoclean
hero,—in short, the Apollonian of the mask,—are the necessary
productions of a glance into the secret and terrible things of nature,
as it were shining spots to heal the eye which dire night has seared.
Only in this sense can we hope to be able to grasp the true meaning
of the serious and significant notion of “Greek cheerfulness”; while of
course we encounter the misunderstood notion of this cheerfulness,
as resulting from a state of unendangered comfort, on all the ways
and paths of the present time.
The most sorrowful figure of the Greek stage, the hapless Oedipus,
was understood by Sophocles as the noble man, who in spite of his
wisdom was destined to error and misery, but nevertheless through
his extraordinary sufferings ultimately exerted a magical, wholesome
influence on all around him, which continues effective even after his
death. The noble man does not sin; this is what the thoughtful poet
wishes to tell us: all laws, all natural order, yea, the moral world itself,
may be destroyed through his action, but through this very action a
higher magic circle of influences is brought into play, which establish
a new world on the ruins of the old that has been overthrown.
This is what the poet, in so far as he is at the same time a religious
thinker, wishes to tell us: as poet, he shows us first of all a wonderfully
complicated legal mystery, which the judge slowly unravels, link
by link, to his own destruction. The truly Hellenic delight at this