On Jan 4, 2014, at 5:23 PM, Tom Walker wrote:
I've expanded on my thoughts regarding Oedipus...
"The central intuition of Greek tragedy, as of psychoanalysis, is that there is one, unique fact which each individual anxiously struggles to conceal from himself, and this is the very fact that is the root of his identity." -- Harold Rosenberg, "The Riddle of Oedipus"..."The tension of Oedipus arises from its hero's insistence on continuing the investigation as an aim to be fulfilled after its horrid findings are as predictable as a result in mathematics."
This view is something of a universal platitude, deriving from something like a Cliff Notes summarty of Aristotles "Poetics." If is quite false. If we consider only the protagonists (let alone all the personae) of Greek Tragedy we see that, apart from Oedipos [Tyrannos], there is exactly *one* that fits, Pentheus (Ajax, of course, has gone quite insane). But all the rest--Prometheus, Agammemnon, Oedipos [at Colonos], Elektra, Antigone, Andromache, Orestes, Philoktetes, Medea, Eteocles/Polyneices, Helen, Herakles, Iphigeneia, et. al., are perfectly aware of their identities right down to their ancestral roots. Greek tragedy is about myth, history, and society. "Psychology," let alone psychoanalysis, is among the least of its concerns!
Shane Mage This cosmos did none of gods or men make, but it always was and is and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures. Herakleitos of Ephesos
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