My best friend’s voice is ethereal. When she opens her mouth, my heart is lifted as high as the notes she sings. Walking in a garden on a summer morning is ethereal. It is still quiet, no one else is awake, and it is beautiful. The miracles of art and nature, these things are ethereal.
Is Oedipus, the main character from a series of plays by Sophocles, ethereal? Stanley Diamond writes in his article “The Beautiful and Ugly Are One Thing, The Sublime Another” that “Sophocles etherealizes him [Oedipus] in a beam of light.”
Before reading Diamond’s article, all I knew about Oedipus was that he killed his father and married his mother. I thought Oedipus was reprehensible, not ethereal.
Is Oedipus quite as bad as I assumed he was?
I learned that Oedipus’s mistakes were due to a difficult and unavoidable situation and he was not wholly to blame for them. Still, I would not describe the incestuous murderer Oedipus as ethereal.
But, there is more to Oedipus’s story than unfortunate scandals. Towards the end of his life, Oedipus, even with his stained record, is accepted by Zeus, the king of the Ancient Greek gods. In this acceptance, Oedipus is released from his earthly problems and honored. He ceases to be cursed and becomes ethereal.
Perhaps, Oedipus is even more ethereal than my best friend’s voice, a garden at sunrise, or the miracles or art and nature could ever be.
Sources:
www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Oedipus/oedipus.html
www.ancient-literature.com/greece_sophocles_oedipus_colonus.html
