Sentence from a Letter written to Prof. Norton Feb. 22/80.
‘I cannot yet get the 2nd Part (Coloneus) to fit as I wish to the first: finding (what I never doubted) that nothing is less true than Goethe’s saying that these two Plays and Antigone must be read in Sequence, as a Trilogy.’
To C. E. Norton.
Woodbridge. March 4, 1880.
My dear Norton,
Herewith you will receive, I suppose, Part I. of Œdipus, which I found on my return here after a week’s absence. I really hope you will like it, after taking the trouble more than once to ask for it: only (according to my laudable rule of Give or Take in such cases) say no more of it to me than to point out anything amendable: for which, you see, I leave a wide margin, for my own behoof as well as my reader’s. And again I will say that I wish you would keep it wholly to yourself: and, above all, not
let a word about it cross the Atlantic. I will not send a Copy even to Professor Goodwin, to whom you can show yours, if he should happen to mention the subject; nor will I send one to Mrs. Kemble, the only other whom I had thought of. In short, you, my dear Sir, are the only Depository of this precious Document, which I would have you keep as though it were very precious indeed.
You will see at once that it is not even a Paraphrase, but an Adaptation, of the Original: not as more adapted to an Athenian Audience 400 years b.c. but to a merely English Reader 1800 years a.d. Some dropt stitches in the Story, not considered by the old Genius of those days, I have, I think, ‘taken up,’ as any little Dramatist of these Days can do: though the fundamental absurdity of the Plot (equal to Tom Jones according to Coleridge!) remains; namely, that Œdipus, after so many years reigning in Thebes as to have a Family about him, should apparently never have heard of Laius’ murder till the Play begins. One acceptable thing I have done, I think, omitting very much rhetorical fuss about the poor man’s Fatality, which I leave for the Action itself to discover; as also a good deal of that rhetorical Scolding, which, I think, becomes tiresome even in its Greek: as the Scene between Œdipus and Creon after Tiresias: and equally unreasonable. The Choruses which I believe are thought fine by Scholars, I have left to old Potter to supply, as I was hopeless of making anything of them; pasting,
you see, his ‘Finale’ over that which I had tried.
I believe that I must leave Part II. for the present, being rather wearied with the present stupendous Effort, at Ætat. 71. If I live another year, and am still free from the ills incident to my Time, I will make an end of it, and of all my Doings in that way.