O holy majesty of heavenly powers!
My I never see that day! Never!
Rather let me vanish from the race of men
Than know the abomination destined me!
My I never see that day! Never!
Rather let me vanish from the race of men
Than know the abomination destined me!
O holy majesty ......... abomination destined me!
REFERENCE
(i) Drama: Oedipus Rex
(ii) Dramatist: Sophocles
CONTEXT
(i) Occurrence: Scene II (Lines 304-307)
(ii) Content: Thebes is struck by a plague and the oracle of Apollo says the sickness is the result of injustice: the old king's murderer still walks free. The blind seer Tiresias tells Oedipus that he is the murderer and is living incestuously. Jocasta says an oracle said her husband, the old king, would be killed by his child, but that never happened since they abandoned the baby and her husband was killed by robbers. Oedipus begins to suspect that he was the abandoned baby. A messenger and a servant confirm the tale. Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus stabs out his own eyes.
EXPLANATION
In these lines Oedipus is praying to holy God to save him from seeing the day when he will be declared the murderer of his father and the husband of his mother. He wishes to vanish from the midst of human beings before such an abomination devolves on his shoulders. He has just told his wife Jocasta when he passed Phokis, a place where the Theban road bifurcates into Delphi road and Daulia road, he came across a herald and a royal chariot whose driver when ordered by his lord to force him off the road leaned out towards him to beat him but he himself hit him with his stick. The old man sitting in the chariot could not tolerate it and flogged him at his head. In exasperation, he pulled the old man down from the chariot and killed him on the spot. Now if the old man was his father, then he unknowingly perpetrated parricide. In that case, he is the man hated most by the gods. So Oedipus fears that this cruel fate has created him for all his misfortunes emerging him from unintentional parricide and incest. If his fate is cruel, none would deny the savagery of gods. To remove all these fears, Oedipus is in these lines praying to God to keep him safe from such misfortune.
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