472
Homer thought it was, or even could
have wanted it to be. Why, according
to Simone Weil, do the characters in
the
Iliad
suffer? Very simply, because
they overestimate their powers. This
they are tragically induced to do by
having achieved some success in a
prior struggle. Heartbreak, defeat, and
death in the
Iliad
follow from a sin
against measure. Now what has such
a conception of the world to do with
nihilism?
Miss Sontag, still arguing against
my thesis, writes: "The tragedy of
Oedipus is not caused by the fact that
he, or his audience, believed in im–
placable values." Let
us
see. I assume
that Oedipus and the audience for
Sophocles' play believed in the gods;
and the gods in that play are presented
as bent on afflicting the people of
Thebes with plague because a single
crime has gone undetected: Oedipus's
accidental murder of his father, Laius.
What more would Miss Sontag like in
the way of implacability? Apparently,
though, she thinks Oedipus should not
have punished himself for his deed.
Why was
he
so implacable? The fact
is, though, that he was. This is a
difficulty for Miss Sontag, and her
way of meeting it is to confuse her
own, that is, modern viewpoint, with
the Greek view. Miss Sontag asserts
that Oedipus was innocent; but to the
Greeks, a man who killed another,
even by accident, was not innocent;
his crime, however inadvertent, called
for expiation. By the way, had Oedipus
in the first of Sophocles' plays about
him-not in the second play when
Oedipus has already paid, and in full,
for his deed-{:onsidered himself in–
nocent, he would not have exiled and
blinded himself. But then there would
have been no tragedy. Evidently, if
Sophocles had held the views of Miss
Sontag, he could not have written his
play. One does not have to like the
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