Great tragic poet Sophocles stands on a par with Aescholus and Euripides. He is known for such works as Oedipus the King, Antigone, and Electra. He held government positions, but his main occupation was still composing tragedies for the Athenian stage. In addition, Sophocles introduced several innovations in theatrical performance.
Brief biographical information
The main source of biographical information about the second tragic poet after Aeschylus Ancient Greece- an untitled biography, which was usually placed in editions of his tragedies. It is known that the world famous tragedian was born around 496 BC in Colon. Now this place, glorified by Sophocles in the tragedy Oedipus at Colonus, is a district of Athens.
In 480 BC, at the age of sixteen, Sophocles participated in the choir that performed in honor of the victory at the Battle of Salamis. This fact gives the right to compare the biographies of three great Greek tragic authors: Aeschylus participated in Sophocles glorifying him, and Euripides was born just at this time.
Sophocles' father was most likely a man of middle income, although there are different opinions on this matter. He managed to give his son a good education. In addition, Sophocles was distinguished by his outstanding musical abilities: In adulthood, he independently composed music for his works.
Heyday creative activity The tragedy coincides in time with the period that in history is usually called the “age of Pericles.” Pericles headed the Athenian state for thirty years. Then Athens became a significant cultural center; sculptors, poets and scientists from all over Greece came to the city.
Sophocles is not only an outstanding tragic poet, but also statesman. He held the positions of treasurer of the state treasury, strategist, took part in the campaign against Samos, which attempted to secede from Athens, and in the revision of the Athenian constitution after the coup. Evidence of Sophocles' participation in state life was preserved by the poet Jonah of Chios.
The “Age of Pericles” was distinguished not only by the flourishing of Athens, but also by the beginning of the decomposition of the state. The exploitation of slave labor displaced the free labor of the population, small and medium-sized slave owners went bankrupt, and a serious stratification of property emerged. The individual and the collective, which had been in relative harmony, were now opposed to each other.
Literary heritage of the tragedian
How many works did Sophocles create? What is the literary heritage of the ancient Greek playwright? In total, Sophocles wrote more than 120 tragedies. Only seven works by the author have survived to this day. The list of works by Sophocles includes the following tragedies: “The Trachinian Women”, “Oedipus the King”, “Electra”, “Antigone”, “Ajax”, “Philoctetes”, “Oedipus at Colonus”. In addition, significant fragments of the drama "The Pathfinders" based on the Homeric hymn to Hermes have been preserved.
The dates of the tragedies staged on stage cannot be determined precisely. As for Antigone, it was staged approximately in 442 BC, Oedipus the King - in 429-425, Oedipus at Colonus - after the death of the author, around 401 BC.
The playwright repeatedly participated in tragic competitions and even defeated Aeschylus in 468. What work did Sophocles write to participate in this competition? It was a trilogy based on the tragedy Triptolemus. Subsequently, Sophocles took first place twenty more times and was never third.
The ideological basis of the works
In the contradictions between the old and new ways of life, Sophocles feels doomed. The destruction of the old foundations of Athenian democracy forces him to seek protection in religion. Sophocles (although he recognizes the freedom of man from the will of the gods) believed that human capabilities are limited, there is a power over everyone that dooms them to one fate or another. This can be seen in the works of Sophocles “Oedipus the King” and “Antigone”.
The tragedian believed that a person cannot know what is in store for him every next day, and the will of the gods is manifested in the constant variability of human life. Sophocles did not recognize the power of money, which was corrupting the foundation of the Greek polis, and wanted to strengthen the democratic foundations of the state, protesting against the stratification of citizens by wealth and property.
Innovations of Sophocles in Ancient Greek Theater
Sophocles, being a successor to Aeschylus, introduces several innovations into theatrical performances. Departing somewhat from the principle of the trilogy, the author began to write separate dramas, each of which represented a complete whole. These parts had no connection with each other, but three tragedies and a satyr drama were still staged on stage.
The tragedian expanded the number of actors to three people, which made it possible to make the dialogue more lively and reveal deeper acting characters. The chorus has already ceased to play the role that Aeschylus assigned to it. But it is obvious that Sophocles used it skillfully. The choir parts echoed the action, intensifying all the sensations of the audience, which made it possible to achieve that cleansing effect (catharsis) that Aristotle spoke about.
"Antigone": content, images, composition
Sophocles' work Antigone was not part of the trilogy, representing a complete tragedy. In Antigone, the tragedian places divine laws above all else; the contradiction between human actions and the will of the gods is shown.
The drama is named after the main character. Polyneices, son of King Oedipus and brother of Antigone, betrayed Thebes and died in battle with his brother Eteocles. King Creon forbade the funeral, leaving the body to be torn to pieces by birds and dogs. But Antigone performed the ritual, for which Creon decided to wall her up in a cave, but the girl committed suicide. Antigone fulfilled the sacred law, did not submit to the king, and followed her duty. Afterwards, her fiancé, the son of Creon, pierced himself with a dagger, and in despair over the death of his son, the king’s wife also took her own life. Seeing all these misfortunes, Creon admitted his insignificance before the gods.
The heroine of Sophocles is a determined and brave girl who consciously accepts death for the right to bury her brother according to the established rite. She honors ancient laws and has no doubts about the correctness of her decision. Antigone's character is revealed even before the main action begins - in the dialogue with Ismene.
Creon (as a stern and unyielding ruler) puts his will above all else. He justifies actions by the interests of the state, is ready to pass cruel laws, and considers any resistance as treason. Compositionally, a very important part of the tragedy is the interrogation of Antigone by Creon. Each of the girl’s remarks increases Creon’s irritability and the tension of the action.
The climax is Antigone's monologue before her execution. The drama is enhanced by the comparison of the girl with the fate of Niobe, the daughter of Tantalus, who was turned into a cliff. Catastrophe is approaching. For the death of his wife and son that followed Antigone's suicide, Creon blames himself. In complete despair, he exclaims: “I am nothing!”
The tragedy “Antigone” by Sophocles, a summary of which is given above, reveals one of the deepest conflicts contemporary author society - a conflict between tribal and state laws. The religion, rooted in hoary antiquity, prescribed to honor blood ties and perform all rituals in relation to close relatives, but every citizen of the polis had to comply with state laws, which often contradicted traditional norms.
“Oedipus the King” by Sophocles: analysis of the tragedy
The tragedy discussed below raises the question of the will of the gods and the free will of man. Sophocles interprets the myth of Oedipus, belonging to the Theban cycle, as a hymn to the human mind. The author shows extraordinary strength of character and the desire to build life according to his own discretion.
Sophocles' work Oedipus the King tells the story of the life of Oedipus, the son of the Theban king Laius, who was predicted to die at the hands of his own child. When Oedipus was born, his father ordered his legs to be pierced and thrown on the mountain, but the slave, who was assigned to kill the heir, saved the child. Oedipus (his name from ancient Greek means “with swollen feet”) was raised by the Corinthian king Polybus.
As an adult, Oedipus learns from an oracle that he is destined to kill his own father and marry his mother. The prince wishes to avoid such a fate and leaves Corinth, considering Polybus and his wife to be his real parents. On the way to Thebes, he kills a nameless old man, who turns out to be Laius. The prophecy began to be fulfilled.
Upon arrival in Thebes, Oedipus managed to guess the riddle of the Sphinx and save the city, for which he was elected king and married Laius' widow Jocasta, that is, his own mother. During for long years Oedipus ruled in Thebes and enjoyed the well-deserved love of his people.
When a terrible pestilence struck the country, the oracle announced the cause of all the misfortunes. There is a murderer in town who needs to be driven out. Oedipus strives to find the criminal, not assuming that it is himself. When the truth becomes known to the king, he deprives himself of his sight, believing that this is sufficient punishment for the crime committed.
The central character is King Oedipus, in whom the people see a wise and fair ruler. He is responsible for the fate of people, he is ready to do everything so that the pestilence stops, and saves the city from the Sphinx. The priest calls Oedipus “the best of husbands.” But Oedipus also has weak sides. As soon as he began to suspect that the priest was covering up for the murderer, he thought that he himself had participated in the crime. Anger quickly overtakes Oedipus in his conversation with Creon. The king, suspecting intrigue, throws insults. This same trait - lack of restraint of character - was the reason for the murder of old man Laius on the road to Thebes.
Not only Oedipus in the work of Sophocles strives to avoid his predetermined fate. Jocasta, the mother of Oedipus, is sinful from a moral point of view, since she allows the baby to be given to death. From a religious point of view, this is disregard for the sayings of the oracle. She later tells the adult Oedipus that she does not believe in predictions. Jocasta pays for her guilt with death.
Creon in Antigone and Oedipus Rex is endowed with different traits. In Sophocles' tragedy "Oedipus the King" he did not strive for power at all, values honor and friendship above all else, and promises protection to the daughters of the Theban king.
“Oedipus at Colonus”: images, features of the tragedy
This tragedy of Sophocles was staged after his death. Oedipus, accompanied by Antigone, reaches the outskirts of Athens. Ismene, the second daughter of the former Theban king, brings the news of the oracle that her father is destined to become the patron saint of the country where he will die. The sons of Oedipus want to bring him to Thebes, but he refuses and, hospitably received by King Theseus, decides to stay in Colonus.
In the mouths of the choir and characters - the hymn of Colon. The main goal of Sophocles' work was the glorification of his homeland and the atonement of the sin committed by suffering. Oedipus here is no longer the ruler that the viewer sees him at the beginning of the tragedy “Oedipus the King,” but also not the man broken by misfortunes that he became by the end of the above-mentioned work. He is fully aware of his innocence and says that there was no sin or malice in the crimes he committed.
The main feature of the tragedy is the choir parts glorifying the author’s native village. Sophocles shows a person’s lack of confidence in the future, and everyday adversities give him pessimistic thoughts. It is possible that such a gloomy attitude towards the surrounding reality was caused by the last few years of my life.
The tragedy "Philoctetes": a brief analysis of the work
Sophocles is briefly studied in philological departments, but the lack of teaching hours often forces some works to be excluded from the program. Thus, Philoctetes is often ignored. Meanwhile, the image of the main character is drawn in development, which is of particular interest. At the very beginning of the action, he is a lonely person, but has not yet completely lost faith in people. After Hercules appears and hopes for healing, he is transformed. In the depiction of characters one can see the techniques inherent in Euripides. The main idea of the tragedy is that a person finds happiness not in satisfying his own interests, but in serving his homeland.
"Ajax", "Trakhinyanki", "Electra"
The theme of Sophocles' tragedy "Ajax" is the awarding of the armor of Achilles not to Ajax, but to Odysseus. Athena sent Ajax into a fit of madness and he slaughtered a herd of cattle. Ajax thought that this was the Achaean army, led by Odysseus. When main character When he came to his senses, he, fearing ridicule, committed suicide. Thus, the entire action is built on the conflict between the power of God and dependence on the divine will of an individual.
In the work "The Trachinian Women", the wife of Hercules becomes a criminal out of ignorance. She soaks her husband's cloak in the blood of the centaur he killed, wanting to return her love. But the centaur's gift turns out to be deadly. Hercules dies in agony, and his wife commits suicide. The woman is portrayed as meek, faithful and loving, forgiving the weaknesses of her husband. The feeling of responsibility for the crime she committed out of ignorance forces her to punish herself in such a cruel way.
The theme of the tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles “Electra” was the myth of the same name about the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Electra is a passionate person; in Sophocles this image is distinguished by its psychological depth. The girl, together with her brother, kills her mother, fulfilling the sacred will of the god Apollo, the patron of paternal rights. The idea of the tragedy is to punish the crime and protect the religion of Apollo. This is confirmed not only by the finale, but also by many parts of the choir.
General characteristics of creativity
The works of Sophocles reflect issues typical of his time, for example: attitudes towards religion, unwritten and state laws, the free will of an individual and the gods, the problem of nobility and honor, the interests of the individual and the collective. A number of contradictions are revealed in the tragedies. For example, in “Electra” the tragedian defends the religion of Apollo, but he also recognizes the free will of man (“Oedipus the King”).
In tragedies, complaints about the instability of life and the fickleness of happiness are constantly heard. Each work examines the fate of an individual person, not a family. Interest in personality was also reinforced by the innovation introduced by Sophocles into theatrical performance, namely the addition of a third actor.
The heroes of Sophocles' works are strong personalities. In describing their characters, the author uses the technique of contrast, which allows him to emphasize the main feature. This is how the brave Antigone and the weak Ismene, the strong Electra and her indecisive sister are depicted. Sophocles was attracted to noble characters, reflecting the ideological foundations of Athenian democracy.
Sophocles on a par with Aeschylus and Euripides
And Aeschylus, and Sophocles, and Euripides are the greatest Greek authors of tragedies, the significance creative heritage which were still recognized by their contemporaries. Between these authors, who belonged to different generations, there is a significant difference in the field of dramatic poetry. Aeschylus is imbued with the testaments of antiquity in all respects: religious, moral and political, his characters are often given schematically, and the heroes of Sophocles are no longer gods, but ordinary individuals, but distinguished by well-developed characters. Euripides lived already in the era of the new philosophical movement, and began to use the stage to promote certain ideas. Aeschylus and Sophocles differ significantly in this regard. The characters of Euripides are completely ordinary people with all the weaknesses. In his works he raises difficult questions of religion, politics or morality, but there is never a final answer.
Mention of tragedians in Aristophanes' comedy "Frogs"
When characterizing ancient Greek authors, one cannot fail to mention another outstanding author, but in the field of comedy (tragedies are Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles). Aristophanes glorified three writers in his comedy "Frogs". Aeschylus (if we talk about the time of Aristophanes) died quite a long time ago, and Sophocles and Euripides died almost simultaneously, half a century after Aeschylus. Disputes immediately began about which of the three was better. In response to this, Aristophanes staged the comedy "Frogs".
The work is named this way because the choir is represented by frogs living in the Acheron River (through which Charon transports the dead to the kingdom of Hades). The patron of the theater in Athens was Dionysus. It was he who became concerned about the fate of the theater and decided to descend into the afterlife and bring Euripides back so that he would continue to stage tragedies.
As the action progresses, it turns out that the afterlife There are also poetry competitions. Aeschylus and Euripides read their poems. As a result, Dionysus decides to bring Aeschylus back to life. The comedy ends with a chorus part in which Aeschylus and Athens are glorified.
Ancient Greek tragedy- the oldest known form of tragedy.
Comes from ritual actions in honor of Dionysus. The participants in these actions wore masks with goat beards and horns, depicting Dionysus' companions, the satyrs. Ritual performances took place during the Great and Lesser Dionysias (festivities in honor of Dionysus).
Songs in honor of Dionysus were called dithyrambs in Greece. The dithyramb, as Aristotle points out, is the basis of Greek tragedy, which at first retained all the features of the myth of Dionysus. The latter was gradually replaced by other myths about gods and heroes - powerful people, rulers - as cultural growth ancient Greek and his social consciousness.
From mimic praises telling about the sufferings of Dionysus, they gradually moved on to showing them in action. Thespis (a contemporary of Pisistratus), Phrynichus, and Cheril are considered the first playwrights. They introduced an actor (the second and third were then introduced by Aeschylus and Sophocles). The authors played the main roles (Aeschylus was a major actor, Sophocles also acted as an actor), wrote the music for the tragedies themselves, and directed the dances.
The three greatest tragedians of Greece - Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides - consistently reflected in their tragedies the psycho-ideology of the landowning aristocracy and merchant capital at various stages of their development. The main motive of Aeschylus' tragedy is the idea of the omnipotence of fate and the doom of the fight against it. Social order was thought to be determined by superhuman forces, established once and for all. Even the rebellious titans cannot shake him (the tragedy “Chained Prometheus”).
These views expressed the protective tendencies of the ruling class - the aristocracy, whose ideology was determined by the consciousness of the need for unquestioning submission to this public order. The tragedies of Sophocles reflect the era of the victorious war between the Greeks and the Persians, which opened up great opportunities for trading capital.
In this regard, the authority of the aristocracy in the country fluctuates, and this accordingly affects the works of Sophocles. At the center of his tragedies is the conflict between tribal tradition and state authority. Sophocles considered it possible to reconcile social contradictions - a compromise between the trade elite and the aristocracy.
Euripides motivates dramatic action with real properties human psyche. The majestic but spiritually simplified heroes of Aeschylus and Sophocles are replaced in the works of the younger tragedian by, if more prosaic, then complicated characters. Sophocles spoke of Euripides this way: “I portrayed people as they should be; Euripides depicts them as they really are.”
By the time of the Greco-Persian wars, it had become customary to stage three tragedies (trilogy) on the Dionysian holiday, developing one plot, and one satyr drama, repeating the plot of the tragedies in a cheerful, mocking tone, with pantomime dances. Sophocles already departed from this trilogical principle. True, at dramatic competitions he also performed with three tragedies, but each of them had its own plot. The tragedy of Sophocles is recognized as the canonical form of Greek tragedy. He introduces peripeteia for the first time. He slows down the rapidity of action that characterizes the tragedy of his predecessor Aeschylus.
The action in Sophocles seems to be increasing, approaching a catastrophe, followed by a denouement. This was facilitated by his introduction of a third actor. The classical structure of tragedy (established by Sophocles) is as follows.
Classical structure of tragedy
The tragedy begins with a (declamatory) prologue, followed by the entrance of the choir with a song (parod), then episodies (episodes), which are interrupted by the songs of the choir (stasims), the last part is the final stasim (usually solved in the genre of commos) and departure actors and choir - exod. Choral songs divided the tragedy in this way into parts, which in modern drama are called acts. The number of parts varied even among the same author.
The chorus (at the time of Aeschylus 12 people, later 15) did not leave its place throughout the entire performance, as it constantly intervened in the action: it assisted the author in clarifying the meaning of the tragedy, revealed the emotional experiences of his heroes, and assessed their actions from the point of view of the prevailing morality. The presence of a choir, as well as the lack of scenery in the theater, made it impossible to transfer the action from one place to another. We must also add that the Greek theater did not have the ability to depict the change of day and night - the state of technology did not allow the use of lighting effects.
This is where the three unities of Greek tragedy come from: place, action and time (the action could only take place from sunrise to sunset), which were supposed to strengthen the illusion of the reality of the action. The unity of time and place significantly limited the development of dramatic elements at the expense of epic ones, characteristic of the evolution of the genus. A number of events necessary in the drama, the depiction of which would violate unity, could only be reported to the viewer. The so-called “messengers” told about what was happening off stage.
Euripides introduces intrigue into the tragedy, which he, however, resolves artificially, mostly with the help of special welcome- deus ex machina. By this time, more or less theatrical machinery had already developed. The role of the choir is gradually reduced to only musical accompaniment representation.
Greek tragedy was greatly influenced by Homeric epic. Tragedians borrowed a lot of legends from him. The characters often used expressions borrowed from the Iliad. For dialogues and songs of the choir, playwrights (they are also melurgists, since the poems and music were written by the same person - the author of the tragedy) used iambic trimeter as a form close to living speech (about the differences in dialects in separate parts tragedy, see ancient Greek).
In Hellenistic times, tragedy follows the tradition of Euripides. The traditions of ancient Greek tragedy were picked up by the playwrights of Ancient Rome.
Works in the tradition of ancient Greek tragedy were created in Greece before late Roman and Byzantine times (unsurvived tragedies of Apollinaris of Laodicea, Byzantine compilative tragedy “The Suffering Christ”).
It is the basis of Greek tragedy, which at first retained all the features of the myth of Dionysus. The latter was gradually replaced by other myths about gods and heroes - powerful people, rulers - as the ancient Greek grew culturally and his social consciousness.
From mimic praises telling about the sufferings of Dionysus, they gradually moved on to showing them in action. Thespis (a contemporary of Pisistratus), Phrynichus, and Cheril are considered the first playwrights. They introduced an actor (the second and third were then introduced by Aeschylus and Sophocles). The authors played the main roles (Aeschylus was a major actor, Sophocles also acted as an actor), wrote the music for the tragedies themselves, and directed the dances.
These views expressed the protective tendencies of the ruling class - the aristocracy, whose ideology was determined by the consciousness of the need for unquestioning submission to a given social order. The tragedies of Sophocles reflect the era of the victorious war between the Greeks and the Persians, which opened up great opportunities for trading capital.
In this regard, the authority of the aristocracy in the country fluctuates, and this accordingly affects the works of Sophocles. At the center of his tragedies is the conflict between tribal tradition and state authority. Sophocles considered it possible to reconcile social contradictions - a compromise between the trade elite and the aristocracy.
And finally, Euripides - a supporter of the victory of the trading stratum over the landowning aristocracy - already denies religion. His Bellerophon depicts a fighter who rebelled against the gods for patronizing treacherous aristocratic rulers. “They (the gods) are not there (in heaven),” he says, “unless people want to madly believe old fairy tales.” In the works of the atheistically inclined Euripides actors drama is exclusively people. If he introduces the gods, it is only in those cases when it is necessary to resolve some complex intrigue. His dramatic action is motivated by the real properties of the human psyche. The majestic but spiritually simplified heroes of Aeschylus and Sophocles are replaced in the works of the younger tragedian by, if more prosaic, then complicated characters. Sophocles spoke of Euripides this way: “I portrayed people as they should be; Euripides depicts them as they really are.”
In Hellenistic times, tragedy follows the tradition of Euripides. The traditions of ancient Greek tragedy were picked up by the playwrights of Ancient Rome.
Works in the tradition of ancient Greek tragedy were created in Greece before late Roman and Byzantine times (unsurvived tragedies of Apollinaris of Laodicea, Byzantine compilative tragedy “The Suffering Christ”).
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- Ancient Greek tragedy is the oldest known form of tragedy.
Comes from ritual actions in honor of Dionysus. Participants in these actions wore masks with goat beards and horns, depicting Dionysus' companions - satyrs. Ritual performances took place during the Great and Lesser Dionysias (festivities in honor of Dionysus).
Songs in honor of Dionysus were called dithyrambs in Greece. The dithyramb, as Aristotle points out, is the basis of Greek tragedy, which at first retained all the features of the myth of Dionysus. The latter was gradually replaced by other myths about gods and heroes - powerful people, rulers - as the ancient Greek grew culturally and his social consciousness.
From mimic praises telling about the sufferings of Dionysus, they gradually moved on to showing them in action. Thespis (a contemporary of Peisistratus), Phrynichus, and Kheril are considered the first playwrights. They introduced an actor (the second and third were then introduced by Aeschylus and Sophocles). The authors played the main roles (Aeschylus was a major actor, Sophocles also acted as an actor), wrote the music for the tragedies themselves, and directed the dances.
The three greatest tragedians of Greece - Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides - consistently reflected in their tragedies the psycho-ideology of the landowning aristocracy and merchant capital at various stages of their development. The main motive of Aeschylus' tragedy is the idea of the omnipotence of fate and the doom of the fight against it. Social order was thought to be determined by superhuman forces, established once and for all. Even the rebellious titans cannot shake him (the tragedy “Chained Prometheus”).
These views expressed the protective tendencies of the ruling class - the aristocracy, whose ideology was determined by the consciousness of the need for unquestioning submission to a given social order. The tragedies of Sophocles reflect the era of the victorious war between the Greeks and the Persians, which opened up great opportunities for trading capital.
In this regard, the authority of the aristocracy in the country fluctuates, and this accordingly affects the works of Sophocles. At the center of his tragedies is the conflict between tribal tradition and state authority. Sophocles considered it possible to reconcile social contradictions - a compromise between the trade elite and the aristocracy.
Euripides motivates the dramatic action with the real properties of the human psyche. The majestic but spiritually simplified heroes of Aeschylus and Sophocles are replaced in the works of the younger tragedian by, if more prosaic, then complicated characters. Sophocles spoke of Euripides this way: “I portrayed people as they should be; Euripides depicts them as they really are.”
By the time of the Greco-Persian wars, it had become customary to stage three tragedies (trilogy) on the Dionysian holiday, developing one plot, and one satyr drama, repeating the plot of the tragedies in a cheerful, mocking tone, with pantomime dances. Sophocles already departed from this trilogical principle. True, at dramatic competitions he also performed with three tragedies, but each of them had its own plot. The tragedy of Sophocles is recognized as the canonical form of Greek tragedy. He introduces peripeteia for the first time. He slows down the rapidity of action that characterizes the tragedy of his predecessor Aeschylus.
The action in Sophocles seems to be increasing, approaching a catastrophe, followed by a denouement. This was facilitated by his introduction of a third actor. The classical structure of tragedy (established by Sophocles) is as follows.
Greek tragedy developed several centuries later than the finished Greek epic. At this time, the slave-owning polis system achieved significant development, and at the same time, that personality, which only in polis times emerged more or less independently, also developed. True, it is impossible to say that the death of mythology and epic has already begun here. The slave-owning polis was still powerless to part with mythology, both in its pure form and in its epic modification. What this gave for philosophy, we will say further in its place. But what resulted from this for the tragedy, we can already say now.
With all the enormous mythological and epic traditions, the polis individual nevertheless gradually strengthened and ceased to lose his famous epic calm. In what follows we will make use of very valuable observations about the representation of time in Greek tragedy in the work of Jacqueline Romilly.
Epic elements in Greek tragedy. First, let us give some examples of a clear epic tradition in tragedy, which still do little to illustrate its cultural and social novelty.
First of all, in Greek tragedy, time is also inseparable from events. For Sophocles Philoctetes, who suffered from loneliness and illness on his island, time, unfilled with events, moved slowly, and he literally says: “This is how time after time passed for me.” This passage can hardly be translated from the Greek literally, because “time”, chronos, in this context means “event time”, “filled time”, or simply “a piece of life”, a time inseparable from life. In "The Petitioners" of Aeschylus
Winged ships
They fly, and time also flies, flies
(Art. 734 - 735, lane S. Apta)
In other words, it turns out that “there is no duration in the middle of time,” i.e. time moves as quickly as the action. Time must be filled with action, if not filled with it. In Aeschylus's "Persians", time drags on along with the expectation of news from the army ("Persians" 64). Time ages along with the world (Prometheus 980). Historical “time” can be more or less “worthy,” “honorable,” “glorious” (Eumenides 853).
According to Romilly, “this semi-personification helps us understand how complete personification occurs: the unstable rhythm of events, the hopes and fears in our hearts, all of this is transferred to a living but indefinite being who causes events or who inspires certain feelings. And this being is animated by the life of that of which it is the cause."
Time was felt in Greek tragedy, according to Romilly, “as something internal, participating in our intimate life". And yet, compared with the modern sense of time, although "the forces of time did approach man and merge with his inner life, they did not penetrate into him and did not become a true part of his inner life. Time lives side by side with us; it preserves its own existence, which invades our existence and takes our place - as if subject and personality had not yet acquired full rights"[ibid].
We would say here, complementing Romilly, that time in Greek tragedy, being identified with our life process, is identified with any other actually occurring objective process, and then, of course, receives an existence independent of us. Time “invades” our lives when our life itself becomes something external to us. This is exactly how we interpret the following passages cited by Romilly.
In Agamemnon, Aeschylus Clytemnestra dreamed of more experiences “than the time that slept together” (toy xyneydontos chronoy, 893). In Euripides’ “The Petitioners,” the chorus lives not “for a long time,” but “with a long time” (polloy chronoy meta). In Aeschylus in Agamemnon, the power of speech is bestowed upon the elders by a “grown age” (symphytos aiAn, 106). “Time has grown old” since the army went to Ilion (985 - 986). However, as Romilly notes, all these expressions do not contain anything particularly mysterious and are quite possible not only in epic, but also in our modern literature [ibid., p. 48].
New features. However, one has only to raise the question whether in Greek tragedy it was still possible, at least in some form, to separate time from the events that take place in it, as we already become witnesses to the emergence of much more intense moments when depicting the passage of time in tragedy.
The time of Greek tragedy, in the order of abstraction, can indeed be thought of separately from the events. In this case, those new features arise that almost reach the personification of time, not to mention its independent existence in an abstract form. So, time seems to stand above events. Time, which sees and hears everything, will ultimately reveal everything (Sophocles, Fr. 280 Nauck - Snell), time “reveals” everything (Fr. 832). “Time is a witness,” says Romilly, “and time is the highest power; when these two properties are combined, it becomes a judge, and the most terrible of judges” [ibid., p. 55]. Time has caught up and is judging Oedipus.
Now the all-seeing time has caught up with you
And condemned a marriage that should not be called marriage
("Oedipus the King", art. 1213, trans. S. Shervinsky)
All-seeing time has a “sharp gaze”; it always sees.
However, if we think of time separately from events in this way, we will also have to attribute to it various functions of influencing events, coloring them. Time “gives birth to thousands of disasters,” time “erases,” wears out, mixes, soothes.
Fulfill all your wishes
Doesn't think. The day comes, and its burden
("Hercules", art. 506 - 507, trans. I. Annensky)
In any case, this is not our mechanical or mathematical time, which would flow completely independently of events. Time here, in any case, becomes some kind of personified being, which can hardly be understood only metaphorically. Let us not impose any necessarily mythological functions on this time in Greek tragedy. But in any case, this is not just a metaphor. Metaphor in this case would produce some kind of artistic reassurance and would allow us to move away from tragedy in its integral essence. This is a kind of underdeveloped myth, just as the polis individual is also far from being the entire human individual in general, but only one of his, albeit essential, details. But neither the tragic individual of the Greek classical period nor the concept of time in that era can in any case be reduced to mere poetic metaphor.
Let's look in a little more detail at what materials can be found on the issue that interests us from each of the three great tragedians.
Aeschylus. The fact that time and events are inseparable from each other is also clear from Aeschylus, for whom the mythological sequence of the results of the curse is also a temporal sequence, although interrupted by deviations to the side. J. Romilly recalls that the gradual rise of Athens in the era of Aeschylus should have taught the latter to believe in the meaningful passage of time. Even the proud statement of Aeschylus that he “dedicates his work to time” has been preserved.
We must conclude from his use of the words pan or panta (all) that time is inseparable from the things and events that fill it, and that time itself is understood by Aeschylus as a closed and meaningful whole. The concept of “all”, “whole” is used by Aeschylus in a religious meaning and corresponds to “faith in an all-encompassing deity”. This deity for Aeschylus is Zeus, omnipotent, all-producing, all-perfect and all-seeing. “Truth” - Dike is thought of as inseparable from Zeus. In fact, Zeus and Dike have the same attributes in Aeschylus. Zeus “shines everything,” “enlightens everything.”
Zeus's will, it is always
Elusive, incomprehensible,
But even in the darkness of the night
Black fate before the eyes of mortals
She burns like a bright light!
("Petitioners", art. 89 - 90, trans. S. Apta)
The truth shines.
Truth shines in homes too,
Where the walls smoke black smoke
("Agamemnon", art. 773 - 774, trans. S. Apta)
According to V. Kifner, Aeschylus conceives of Dike as a mediator between the gods, Zeus and people [ibid., p. 136].
How long does the omnipotence of Zeus and the dominance of his “truth” among people extend? Aeschylus has the expression "all the time", embracing the "age" of the gods hapant" ap?mAn ton di" aiAnos chronon. Athena says in the Eumenides that she will establish a court (thesmon th?sA) for “all time” (eis hapant... chronon), that is, apparently, for all the time that can be in history Orestes also swears allegiance to Athens “for all time.” In Aeschylus, “everything” (pan) related to time or simply “everything” (pan) can mean eternity in the expression es to pan (forever), or in the expression dia pantos. According to V. Kiefner, what is meant here is “duration, which is limited not only by the future, but embraces all times together (die ganze Zeitlichkeit), past, present and future” [ibid., p. 79].
The main feature of human time for Aeschylus is that it brings with it the fulfillment of the divine will. Time is necessary for belief in the inevitability of divine judgment to be possible, because only time can explain why justice is not carried out immediately after a crime. How vividly Aeschylus felt the need for later punishment is shown only by the word hysteropoinos (later punished), which indicates punishment postponed indefinitely.
A crime is usually not isolated, but gives rise to new crimes that form a connected chain.
Ancient wine will give birth
Human new guilt.
One day the time comes
And a terrible sin, an invincible demon,
Coming from the mother's womb
("Agamemnon", art. 763 et seq.)
In the end, it happens that the distant descendants of the criminal are punished. Aeschylus therefore requires a multi-generational view of history. In Prometheus, the action of fate extends even across 13 generations. Darius in The Persians was always sure that the punishment would be accomplished, although perhaps not soon.
To describe the inevitability of future punishment, Aeschylus often uses the expression “goal” (telos). Thus, he says that crime “gives birth” to a new crime (“Choephors”, 865), that it sows seeds that will grow in a harvest of grief.
Ears of wine are the fruits of arrogance,
Blooming magnificently. The harvest is so bitter
("Persians", art. 821, trans. S. Apta)
Thus, says Romilly, “time, by allowing justice to be done, becomes a kind of positive and creative force: it brings in due order the punishment caused by ancient misdeeds. And it truly gives meaning - their only meaning - to the various disasters that make up human history" .
The concept of “goal” (telos) in Aeschylus, in addition to various everyday, technical and phraseological uses, expresses, according to W. Fischer, faith in fate, and in in the highest sense- into divine power and perfection.
Events in Aeschylus have a natural “outcome”, telos. Such an “outcome” is, for example, the defeat of the Persian army (“Persians”). Orestes prays for the “fulfillment”, “fulfillment of the dream” (“Choephori”). Prometheus speaks of a “fulfillment” in which both his prediction and his desire will be fulfilled.
The “goal” also refers to the fulfillment of a curse that takes place after several generations. This “accomplishment” is associated with the final liberation of a person from the fate that weighs on him (“Choephora”). Above the “goal” of fate, the oracle, the Erinyes or the Eumenides in Aeschylus rises the “divine goal” realized by Zeus. The fulfillment of the “goal” is attributed to all the gods (“Seven Against Thebes”) or to Zeus (“The Petitioners”), but never to any of the other gods separately. In "Agamemnon" (973) Zeus the finisher, Zeus the beginning, Zeus the middle are called upon, from Zeus "everything is accomplished" (panta teleitai). In this capacity of “accomplisher”, according to W. Fischer, all moments of the power of Zeus are combined - “all-ruler”, “omnipotent”, “all-empowering”. Power and right are combined in Zeus the Accomplisher, and thus he becomes, according to Fischer, an “Omni-God,” which can no longer be imagined in images. Zeus “rises to spiritualized heights, into which Plato will later settle his ideas” [ibid., p. 136].
So, according to Fischer, time for Aeschylus is nothing more than Zeus fulfilling his will, i.e. time here, too, is in no way separated from the events taking place. However, in one more respect, time is deprived of its own specific substance in Aeschylus.
It is time in Aeschylus that gives a person moral lesson. From Aeschylus, a person “learns in grief,” he learns to respect power and obey. People can become wiser over time. Even the gods become more tolerant over time; the entire Oresteia is built on this idea. Time accomplishes the religious purification of Orestes. “It turns out, therefore,” says Romilly, “that the whole teaching is unusually strong and systematic and that it is central to the thought of Aeschylus.” In the very construction of Aeschylus's dramas, the idea of the interconnection of events is expressed by the characteristic detail that many of them are interrupted by huge digressions into the past and predictions about the future. Of the 1673 lines of Agamemnon, according to Romilly's calculations, only about 300 have direct relation to the action taking place, everything else is descriptions of the past, memories, predictions. These digressions are not a simple ornament, but a consistent implementation of the main idea of Aeschylus’s teaching about time, that past crimes determine modern and future troubles [ibid., p. 82].
Although this teaching of Aeschylus is dominated by pure mythology, it can still be compared, as Romilly does, with the philosophy of history of Thucydides [ibid., p. 82 - 84]. The only difference between them is that Aeschylus views everything on a divine plane, while Thucydides sees the same chain of historical causality in the actions of people. There is even a formal similarity between them in that just as Aeschylus interrupts his dramas with historical digressions, so Thucydides in the 1st book of his History makes a long digression about the Peloponnesian War and even briefly reviews early history Greece.
Here we would like to linger a little to explain the presented materials showing the understanding of time in tragedy, in particular in Aeschylus. In Romiya, not everything is clear here and much requires special interpretation.
Firstly, it is clear that in tragedy there is, among other things, a complete lack of distinction between time and the things that fill it. But we must also formulate more clearly than Romilly those points in which time in tragedy differs both from the things that fill it and from the eternity expressed with its help, in particular, the world of the gods and fate. The individual who entered the historical arena with the emergence of the slave-owning polis, although he did not have complete freedom of individual thinking (we will not find this freedom in any of the socio-economic formations known to us), nevertheless he turned out to be strong enough to distinguish the originality of the time flow from mythological time. If he switched to the position of theoretical thinking, as we already find in pre-Socratic philosophy, then this thinking, no matter how naive, still turned out to be sufficient for the interpretation of the special sphere of time, and precisely in contrast to mythological and epic time. Therefore, when in Aeschylus we find the idea of time as a certain independent element, this is fully consistent with the position of theoretical thinking that arose along with the slave-holding polis. Let us emphasize that Aeschylus already has enough materials about the independent role of time in existence and, consequently, about its organic vitality and direction.
However, secondly, could a polis person maintain such an understanding of the independent role of time? It turns out that the polis individual could not hold on to this position for a fairly long period of its existence. It turns out that the polis individual, having recognized the slaveholding polis as absolute authority instead of the previous tribal community, thereby still far from abandoning mythological ways of thinking and had to, contrary to his own basic philosophical orientation, one way or another use mythology in those cases when the question was raised about the absolute foundations of the existence of the polis. In surprising images, it turns out that the absolutization of the slave-owning polis also required its own mythology; and the polis individual was powerless to reject this kind of mythology. True, this mythology could no longer appear in its primitive and untouched form. She performed here already in a reflective, full of reflections, internal concentration, form.
But even as a matter of reflection, it was necessary, one way or another, to move from this independent role of time to its connections with the absolute mythology of ancient times. Pallas Athena, for example, no longer admitted her simple and naive, original popular form. But when Aeschylus wanted to exalt his Athenian polis with its new, previously unprecedented state, civil and democratic tendencies, he still had to put at the head of Athens none other than Pallas Athena; and Aeschylus should have attributed the establishment of the Areopagus as the most just court to Pallas Athena, whom he even made its first chairman. And we will not be so frivolous as to reduce the concept of Aeschylus's Eumenides to just one poetic and completely arbitrary metaphor. Here the real Pallas Athena was thought of, and not a metaphor based on her. But this Aeschylus Pallas Athena was already the result of reflection on the past and centuries-old Pallas Athena, and a reflection of a classically polis ideological nature.
As we see, the slave-owning polis individual, who managed, by way of reflection, to separate the time flow both from the eternal immobility of all things, and from the things themselves in their chaotic fluidity and scatteredness, was powerless to part with the former mythology, although, we repeat again and again, this mythology was polis-reflected.
Thirdly, the enormous progress in the understanding of time and history, which marked the era of Greek tragedy, already led to both the complete need to understand time in its independent fluidity with all the chaos of things that were in this time, but also to the need to go back to mythological explanations . Here we should highlight the fact that if time acquired one or another independent role, then it thereby acquired the independent organicity required for the development of things in time, i.e. the ability to explain things through themselves, without necessarily going back to a mythological explanation.
That is why the historiography of Thucydides became possible on the basis of such a relatively independent role of time. This historian for the first time began to explain things from themselves, without necessarily resorting to mythology. But we must, from the point of view of modern science, say that with all his factual and pragmatic explanations, Thucydides is still not averse to references to fate and chance. And this is understandable, because classically polis Greek historicism was still powerless to break with mythology completely, and if it broke with it, then this happened conditionally and only due to the specific interests of this or that historiographer, and not due to a fundamentally anti-mythological understanding of time and history.
It is also interesting to note that this convention of separating time with its historical flow from mythology and the mythological richness of the epic could take very intense forms in classical Greece and try to interpret the human individual in his complete independence and independence from mythological presets. True, here too the polis individual eventually returned to mythology when he was looking for one or another explanation of what was happening. From this, the tragedy only became more intense, and the sense of personality, along with its history, became very acute and tragic. Nevertheless, mythology again won, and ancient thought, at least in the classical period, could not do without it. It is for outlining this progress of the individual, together with the fatal need for him to return to mythology again, that the tragedies of Sophocles are very indicative, which we will begin to explain.
In Sophocles, with very strong mythologization, a more abstract idea of time progresses as the passage of events and as an eternal alternation of suffering and joy. The events in his tragedies are not viewed as an interconnected chain. Although Sophocles nowhere contradicts the idea of lawfulness and the omnipotence of punishing gods, Sophocles’ attention is shifted to something else, namely to how a person acts in the flow of time. Therefore, Sophocles views fate in a different aspect, namely as bringing with it changes, vicissitudes, and misfortunes. Time can destroy the greatest wealth in a short time (frg. 588).
Any mortal can in one hour
Fall and rise again
("Ajax", art. 131 - 132, trans. S. Shervinsky)
As I.K. says Opstelten, Sophocles "is more concerned with the heroes' reaction to their suffering than with the cause of it."
Time appears to Sophocles' heroes either as a raging storm or as the measured movement of the heavenly bodies.
Like countless waves
Under Boreas or Noth
They'll run across the open sea,
They will fly in and leave again, -
So is the son of Cadmus
It will either sink or carry out
The bottomless sea of life -
Difficult swell
("Trakhinyanki", art. 114 - 118, trans. S. Shervinsky)
Today is grief, tomorrow is happiness -
Like the celestial bear
Circular eternal course
(ibid., art. 131 et seq.)
These two contradictory images time, Romilly considers it possible to easily reconcile. Namely, time in itself may be lawful, but for a person it signifies only disordered change. Only the gods are not subject to the vicissitudes of time,
Only gods
They know neither old age nor death
("Oedipus at Colonus", art. 608 - 609, trans. S. Shervinsky)
This point of view greatly distinguishes Sophocles from Aeschylus. Instead of the pattern of fate, inconstancy is put forward as a way of human existence in time. Human life is such that time “confuses” everything in it or “extinguishes” or “destroys”. Romilly finds it possible to compare such a philosophy of time with Heraclitean philosophy. In her opinion, “Sophocles’ point of view stands in the same relation to the philosophy of Heraclitus as the point of view of Aeschylus - to the old belief of pious times.”
Sophocles' heroes often call upon one to submit to the erasing effects of time, learn wisdom from it and pacify oneself. This is what Ajax says, for example:
Immeasurable, above numbers (anarithmCtos) time
Hides reality and reveals secrets.
You can wait for everything... Time crushes
And terrible oaths of power, and strength of spirit.
That's how I am, amazingly resilient,
Suddenly softened
("Ajax", art. 646 - 651)
The chorus in "Electra" says:
Do not forget about your enemies, but moderate your hatred, remember:
Time smoothes everything, playful god
("Electra", art. 176 - 179, trans. S. Shervinsky)
But, as Romilly notes, if Sophocles’ heroes had followed such advice, no tragedy would have resulted. In fact, these heroes act in the opposite way and, with their unbending will, resist the smoothing and depersonalizing effect of time. There is an unchanging rule for the actions of the heroes, which they firmly follow. Sophocles' people choose not the fluidity of life as the norm, but the eternal law. Antigone, justifying her action, explains why she neglected Creon's command.
It was not Zeus who announced it to me, not Truth,
living about the underground gods
and prescribed laws for people.
I didn’t know that your order was omnipotent,
And what dare a person violate
The law of the gods, not written, but strong
("Antigone", art. 450 - 455, trans. S. Shervinsky)
No matter what happens, Sophocles' true heroes refuse to change. Even Ajax, who seemed to have resigned himself and abandoned his decision, actually retains an unbending resilience. Heroes retain their "I", their true nature, in spite of everything. The real misfortune for them is not what time brings with it, but abandonment of their moral path.
Yes, everything is disgusting if you change yourself
And you do it against your soul
("Philoctetes", art. 902 - 903, trans. S. Shervinsky)
No, even in a miserable life
A pure heart will not want to stain
Your good name
("Electra", art. 1182 - 1184)
Thanks to willpower, a person emerges from the historical order of things and lives forever.
It's sweet for me to die having fulfilled my duty...
After all, I will have to
Serve the dead longer than the living.
I'll stay there forever
("Antigone", art. 72, 74 - 76)
“This choice,” writes Romilly, “which always amounts to denying the influence of time and which often means death or the danger of death, in fact gives the action of Sophocles’ plays a tragic character and rules the internal structure of the dramas... The action is always centered around one hero, whose events and personalities try to convince or break; and this hero or heroine endures all threats and dangers, even death, if death is involved - all this in increasing loneliness, which can lead to despair, but never to humility."
Here is a huge difference between Sophocles and Aeschylus, Romilly continues. “For Aeschylus, the tragic quality of action came from the fact that people were aware that the eyes were blindly obeying the inevitable divine plan leading to the triumph of justice. For Sophocles, the source of tragedy was that they consciously and boldly refused to adapt to changing life circumstances” [ibid. ].
Further, in Sophocles, the very time that, in the specific circumstances of the action, is hostile to the hero and destroys him, ultimately turns out to be true, it brings the truth to light. This, one might say, is the common Greek idea of time. Time reveals everything in Thales. Solon hopes for time to “show” that he is sane. In Theognis, time “reveals” the true nature of lies. Finally, for Pindar, time is generally the only means of discovering truth. This idea is also found in minor places in Aeschylus. But in Sophocles it acquires paramount importance. It is no coincidence that his most famous tragedy, “Oedipus the King,” is a tragedy of discovery, when “all-seeing time” finally “discovered” (ephCyre) Oedipus. “Whether time is accepted in order to build on such foundations a humanism acceptable to all, or it is rejected in furious self-affirmation, or it is attracted as a witness to human virtues - time for Sophocles only provides the background against which man’s own action and personality appears in his doomed greatness" [ibid., p. 110].
In general, according to Romilly, Sophocles, unlike Aeschylus, introduces us to moral issues time. And he can no longer find that broad view beyond generations, which is inseparable from Aeschylus’s idea of time. "The duration of time became more subjective" in Sophocles. In fact, about Ajax, for example, it is said that he lingers “too long” in inaction and that only gradually and over time (syn chronAi) “reason returned to him”; and yet we are talking only about a few hours.
Thus, time in Sophocles begins to approach uniform fluidity, in contrast to the pure mythologism of Aeschylus, but this uniform fluidity is still endowed with enormous moral authority and therefore has very little in common with modern European time.
In Euripides, time almost completely loses its mythological meaning when mythology receives not so much factual as mythological comparison of phenomena with a very noticeable psychologization and subjective understanding of time processes.
Aeschylus's belief in the inevitability and regularity of divine punishment is also expressed by Euripides. In the tragedy "Antiope" (fr. 223, Nauck - Snell), which has not reached us, it is argued that justice may come late (chronios), but as soon as it finds a criminal person, it unexpectedly attacks him. However, such judgments are found in Euripides only as banalities. One can also find in Euripides the Sophoclean idea about the lessons of time, but it is put into the mouths of low characters or expresses a vague and confused lesson (chronoy didagma poicilAtaton). Little remains in Euripides and the faith expressed in Sophocles in the unbending dignity of people in the face of history. In Sophocles, a short time is enough for a radical change in life; For Euripides, “one day” is enough. " Human time"(aiAn) can bring anything with him.
How much does Moira have in her hands?
Yarn, and how much with it
Son of Time Vek (aiAn)
The threads are winding...
("Heraclides", art. 898 - 900, trans. I. Annensky)
This "age" is extremely unstable (aiAn polyplan?tos)
In the changing lives of sad
Not a single moment is true
("Orestes", art. 980 - 981, trans. I. Annensky)
“Chance” runs rampant in life, and it can, like a feather, “in one day” take away human happiness. In Euripides one can come across the idea that vicissitudes pursue the evil, but steadfastness is blissful. But it turns out that the gods do not distinguish between people “in wise providence”:
There is no sign of God on people;
The wheel turns us: it will tilt us,
It will lift you up the mountain, and only
The rich stay at the top
("Hercules", art. 656 - 672)
“If the transition from Aeschylus to Sophocles,” writes Romilly, “could be explained by the fact that time was first considered from the point of view of the gods, then in its effect on man and as part of a dialogue in which man had no answer, then we can accept , that the same evolution continues in Euripides... Time is now considered only from the point of view of human sensitivity. Therefore, it is now impossible to mention its impermanence without adding that it is a tiresome and oppressive disorder. Time is judged by the standard of our suffering. emotions" [ibid., p. 122].
Euripides often emphasizes the tension of expectation, the contrasts between past and present, and joy at the arrival of the long-awaited moment. There are many surprises and twists and turns in his dramas; time is experienced emotionally and psychologically.
For Euripides, salvation from the vicissitudes of time is time itself, which reconciles contradictions and ultimately brings deliverance. "The years will heal the wound." "The sorrow that is now in bloom will be softened by the years." The art of living is to allow time to heal the wounds of the present through its actions.
Euripides also knows another way of salvation from time: in eternal memory. Macaria in "Heraclides", knowing that a joyless existence awaits her, goes to a glorious death. Iphigenia dies “gloriously.” Unlike Sophocles' heroes, who die in struggle, Euripides' men are often "saved" by death. And time, which has no mercy on anyone, turns out to be fair only here, preserving the glorious memory of the heroes.
Even the remains
Time cherishes the good:
They are also on the coffin
Valor shines like a torch
("Andromache", art. 775 - 778, trans. I. Annensky)
A similar trust in the memory of the heroes of time can be found in other Greek authors (Thucydides, especially Pindar).
“Homer knew,” Romilly writes, summing up his comparison, “only fragmentary and disorderly time, where, according to G. Frenkel, “day” was the main concept. Then the idea of continuous time arose, including a whole sequence of events. This idea culminated in tragic time of Aeschylus. In the changing shifts of Sophocles, time, as we have seen, dissolves into an indefinite stream, after which in Euripides the “day” again becomes everything we know about time. However, there is a difference. This new “day” has now become tragic. precisely because it feels like an isolated fragment of a broken “chronos”; it is not that a person does not think about “chronos” as a whole, but this “chronos” ultimately turns out to be irrational and eludes human calculations. The same reason explains. why the new “chronos” is now loaded with psychological pathos. For we are left alone with our emotions, which leads to both a feeling of tragedy and an increase in new interests” [ibid., p. 141].
Thus, time, which has acquired an independent role in the eyes of the polis individual, can either be conditionally considered in fact in its independent existence, or it leads us to a deeper understanding of the eternal dictates of fate standing above time, or, finally, under the conditions of progressive subjectivism, it can be decomposed into separate sensations time, which are assessed either as a creative or as a forced beginning, but no longer leads to the restoration of mythological time. It is clear that Euripides’ sense of time testifies to the disintegration of both the classical slave-owning polis and the individuals composing it. In the latter case, mythological time, of course, loses its absoluteness, but Greek classical historicism gains nothing from this in the sense of its natural and organic fluidity.
The individual rejected mythology; but the whole tragedy of such a supposedly free individual lies in the fact that, along with mythology, he also lost consciousness of any organic fluidity of time. Therefore, the individual of a classically slave-owning polis never reached the point of constructing historicism in its complete and independent form, in its organic and at least immanently natural fluidity. But this already reflects the original limitations of both the slave-owning polis of classical times and the individuals included in it.
