The Issue of Blindness Between Oedipus and Teiresias: A Dramatic Dialogue
- The Issue of Blindness Between Oedipus and Teiresias: A Dramatic Dialogue
OEDIPUS: . . . This power, however, is not within you, because your ears, and mind, and eyes are blind.
TEIRESIAS: Shame on you for accusing me of these failings, of which you will soon be accused by everybody.
—Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus
What follows is my response to Roderick Beaton’s commentary, “W(h)ither the Neohellenic?” (1998). It is intended to show that Beaton’s negative comments about me and my paper (Constantinidis 1997) are unwarranted. Beaton classified my paper with some other papers which, in his opinion, are plagued by “revealing blindness.” It is proper that I should allow the other authors to protest their case as they deem fit, and that I should speak only for myself. In my case, Beaton misread and misrepresented my essay. In accusing me, he put himself in a role similar to that of Oedipus Tyrannus, who accuses Teiresias of blindness in Sophocles’s tragedy.
Every one of the contributors to the new debate, whose overall tone is markedly less intransigent this time, attributes the perceived “crisis” to external, unforeseeable factors. But why is there not the slightest recognition—not even a reflexive flicker of self-doubt—that the instigators of the last “paradigm shift” might themselves share part of the blame for the state of affairs they all now bewail?
Beaton’s statements are false in my case for the following reasons: (1) I am not one of “the instigators of the last paradigm shift” which, according to Beaton, took place eight years ago in the study of modern Greek literature. I am an avid reader of Greek literature, and a specialist in Greek drama and film. Modern Greek drama and film have not been studied sufficiently yet to cause a paradigm shift (Constantinidis 1996:4). (2) Nowhere in my paper do I mention the word “crisis,” or endorse “crisis” as a concept or metaphor, or assign it to “unforeseeable” factors. (3) I am not “bewailing” any state of affairs. I simply gathered some numbers which indicate that the dissemination of modern Greek drama in the English-speaking world in the form of published translations and published research was very limited from 1824 to 1996. Beaton is unfair in asking me to share part of the blame for the state of affairs in the study of modern Greek literature (dramatic or not) at any point during this period. (4) In my paper, I depart from the premise submitted to participants by Gregory Jusdanis, Vassilis Lambropoulos, and Artemis Leontis, [End Page 185] the conveners of the conference-workshop—namely, that interest in Greek culture has been waning since the mid-1970s. As I announced at the conference-workshop and later wrote in my paper, the data that I gathered falsified my two hypotheses and the premise of the conveners as far as the study of modern Greek drama is concerned. Anyone can see in my graphs and conclusion (Constantinidis 1997:181) that the study of modern Greek drama has improved (however modestly) during the second half of the twentieth century in terms of published research and translations.
Another form of blindness is an understandable consequence of the North American (not to say “Ohioan”) focus of the debate. But some contributors (notably Stratos Constantinidis ) explicitly, and others implicitly, refer more widely to the English-speaking world—as rightly they should, given that the MGSA has an international membership.
Beaton’s statements about my paper are false for the following reasons: (1) The focus of my debate is neither “North American” nor “Ohioan.” My focus is the appeal of modern Greek drama and its future in the English-speaking world. I caution my readers that, owing to the fact that not all aspects of Greek culture are controlled by the same kind or number of factors, I limited my focus to
one aspect of Greek culture, Greek drama; to one period, the modern period; and to one international language, English. For this reason, my contribution to this investigation will be restricted in the sense that my observations and conclusions about modern Greek drama may not be applicable to classical...
