In this new translation, Sophocles early masterpiece
comes boldly to life. In Greek tradition, Aias is the
outmoded warrior whom time passes by. In Sophocles play,
he becomes the man who moves resolutely beyond time.
Most previous versions and interpretations have
equivocated over Sophocles bold vision. This version
attempts to translate precisely that transformation of
the hero from the bygone figure to the man who stops
time. In Homer, Aias is the immovable bulwark of the
Achaians, second only to Achilles in battle prowess and
size. But when Achilles dies, his armor is given to the
wily Odysseus, not Aias. Shamed, and driven to madness,
Aias dies a dishonorable death by suicide. He becomes,
in death, the symbol of greatness lost; his death
signals the end of a heroic age; in the visual arts,
draped hideously over his huge sword, he becomes a
momento mori. Sophocles plays upon his audiences
expectation of all this. In the first scene Aias appears
as the Homeric warrior turned mad butcher. It is harder
to imagine a more degraded image of the hero.But with
each scene, Aias moves from darkness into greater and
greater light, and speaks, contrary to the audiences
expectations, more like a Heraclitean philosopher of the
worlds flux than the laconic figure known from Homer. In
fact, Sophocles Aias clearly sees his madness and the
betrayal by the Greeks as merely symptomatic of a world
in which nothing remains constant, not loyalties, not
oaths, not friendship, not love. Not content to live in
a world where nothing lasts, he resolves to live and
therefore to die in accord with the more absolute law of
his own inner nature. He thereby transforms his death
into destiny, dying with his grip on the absolute rather
than living on in a world of uncertainties. In death, he
thus becomes the paradigm of permanence, of the human
possibility of snatching the eternal from the
desperately fleeting. This version embodies, and the
introduction and notes hope to elucidate, how Sophocles
brings this tragic vision of human greatness powerfully
to life. |
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