Oedipus Rex :: Oedipus Rex Poem Essays

Oedipus Rex Sophocles Awake ye men of earth; remove thy shackles from thy body and acquaint yourself with the mother as you pass through creation in the manner of a tragedian romance, embodying nature and spirit. And in your night crusade, you will perceive a revelation of the most superlative feelings that come not from words or form, but from light. Hope Saphos DeVenuto A vaporous energy passes before us as a wave which carries us through the categories of the mind of an ancient past in Aristotelian truth. Aristotle's cool objective eyewhich ascends from his deductive logic, introduces to the arts a canvas of inner landscapes that becomes an expedition of mans human instinct for imitation, harmony and rhythm. Aristotle's observation of the human experience becomes a psychological basis of modern learning by accumulating the facts and causes of an existing world. In his poetics, life is poetic. Everything written has its own style and rhythm which concludes that poetry arose from an inborn gift that developed into two directions. Comedy which is the pillory of the meaner actions of life and tragedy which stages a nobleman's vulnerabilities into full blown out drama from the simple and continuous fundamental questioning of his moment to moment solitary acts. What can be more wonderful than a man and woman who are painted as descendant characters from fables and myths of a culture and at the same time dissect their humanness, interweaving human idiosyncrasy with the power of fate? This depicts the poetic art form of Sophocle's Oedipus Rex ,which possesses an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain immensity that expresses language with creative adornments and dramatic action. According to Aristotle, plot is the most crucial aspect of tragedy and to achieve this dimension of space, the plot must have a beginning, middle and an end. Just as a living organism has a biorhythm, so does the plot through the emotional, intellectual, and physical activity of the events from "calamity to good fortune or from good fortune to calamity." Complication, unraveling and surprise are the components of the best living tragedy, along with the noble individual who brings about his own downfall through his own debilities. Through Oedipus Rex there is a definite movement of the adult and child experience where the affair may or may not happen. As history deals with our particular past, poetry is more philosophical with a higher and more universal meaning. If one were to be the child of Oedipus and Jocasta, there would be no feelings of shame, only the feelings of suffering a great loss of both parents and a misunderstood sexuality.