As the musicians play an overture, Œdipus comes forth.
Woe is me! Alas! Wretched, wretched! Where am I moving now? Oh!
Destiny, what a leap on me!
Chorus. Awful, unbearable, unspeakable!
Œdipus. O darkness unaidable enshrouding me, irresistible, unutterable, horrible. Woe is me! and woe again! Oh how my soul is pierced by the stings and the pangs of the sorrows I never can forget!
Chorus. Yea, small wonder if you moan the twofold anguish now.
Œdipus. Oh, my friends, you are still loyal and true, patiently caring for the poor blind man. You are there, I know it well, for I hear your voice despite the darkness of these eyes.
Chorus. O horrible deed! How could you blot out the vision of your eyes? Prompted by what power above?
Œdipus. Apollo, my friends, Apollo it was that brought upon me this terrible, horrible sorrow. But no other hand struck the blow save mine alone. Why should I see when there was nothing sweet for me to see?
Chorus. Too true—even as you say.
Œdipus. What, pray, was I to look upon, to care for, or to listen to with pleasure now? Take me out of the land as quickly as you can, O my friends, take me, the damned, disgraced, accurst, and hatefullest of all mortals to God.
Chorus. Wretched both for thy fortune and for thy feeling. Would God that I had never known thee!
Œdipus. Curses on the man, whoever he was, that loosed the cruel fetters on my feet and delivered me and kept me back from death! I thank him not. No! For if I had died then, I would not now be such a burden of woe to myself and to my friends.
Chorus. I too wish that that had been.
