Note
Translator's Preface: Greek Tragedy, the Greatest Embodiment of the Greek Spirit
The structure of Greek tragedy

Oedipus the King
Antigone
Oedipus at Colonus
Ajax
The Women of Thrace
Electra
Philoctetes

annotation
Translator's Note: The World of Sophocles' Tragedy
References
Main names

In search of the origins of the Western spirit...
The origins of modern theatre or drama can be traced back to Greek tragedy, as the basic forms of theatre as we know it today were established in the 5th century BC, during the golden age of Athens, Greece.
Greek tragedy, the essence of Greek culture, the home and soil of Western culture.
The 5th century BC is called the golden age of Greek history.
Westerners constantly yearned for the Athens of that time and wondered how they could recreate the lifestyle of that era in their own time.
Athens in the 5th century BC was such an exemplary era, and as a result of its golden age, it gave humanity Greek tragedy, the greatest embodiment of the Greek spirit.
Greek tragedy was the premise upon which Plato and Aristotle perfected Greek philosophy, and over the course of 2,500 years, it has had a profound influence on human art, thought, religion, and history, including Shakespeare's tragedies, Eugene O'Neill's plays, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Even today, it is a living issue that is still performed and read on stages around the world, providing material and themes for countless works of art.
There are 33 Greek tragedies that have been handed down to the present day: 7 by Aeschylus, 7 by Sophocles, and the remaining 19 by Euripides.
In Korea, for the first time, the Complete Tragedies of Aeschylus and the Complete Tragedies of Sophocles (published by Soop) were published simultaneously, translated by Professor Cheon Byeong-hee (Professor Emeritus, Dankook University).
Aeschylus is the creator of Greek tragedy, and Sophocles is the perfecter of Greek tragedy.
With the upcoming publication of Volumes 1, 2, and 3 of the Complete Works of Euripides (January of next year), Korea will be one of the few countries that has a complete set of Greek tragedies translated from the original text.
This can be said to be a great achievement achieved through Professor Noh's tireless passion, who devoted many years to translating the original texts of Greek literature.


The foundation of Greek tragedy is a thorough understanding of human suffering.
Greek tragedy was performed at the Great Dionysian Festival, a festival honoring Dionysus (aka Bacchae).
It was a national event where the works of three tragedians (each a trilogy of tragedies and a satyr play) who had already passed the preliminary examination several months before were staged on the outdoor stage of the Theatre of Dionysus in front of an audience of over 17,000 people.
Five judges evaluated the entries, and the winner was given a great honor.
There are still records that tell us who won which year.
How can we understand that, even in a golden age, entire cities were captivated by tragedy, flocking to theaters to witness the suffering of life? What is the true nature of tragedy, as portrayed by the Greek tragedians?
Tragedy does not take a narrative form, but unfolds its story in the form of a drama, and drama is a noun that indicates the result of the verb 'to act' (dramo).
As befitting an era in which human freedom was perfected in the most classical and most astonishing way, it is not the tragedy of the victim as we commonly think, but the tragedy of the doer.
The object or event that causes the sadness is not as important as the person who feels the sadness.
What is important is that the sadness is each person's own, a sadness about something that cannot be achieved, and a sadness based on the affirmation of the value of that something that cannot be achieved.
Nevertheless, the suffering that follows those who act on their own initiative and make their value known even at the risk of their lives.
The question of how the tragic protagonist faces his fate.
In a word, Greek tragedy is a literary depiction of suffering, an art form that shows the magnitude of the spirit in tragic things.

To understand what Greek tragedy is is also to question the Greek spirit.
The essential nature of the spirit is the sensitivity to suffering and tragic realization that the spirit of an era and a people displays, and the way in which suffering is understood is the core that essentially reveals the spirit of an era.
So, in Greek tragedy, we can discover the activity, subjectivity, and universality of the Greek spirit, and the concept of human sublimity.

(Aristotle was the one who completed the precise theorization of the characteristics of Greek tragedy, and the theories on tragedy he developed in Poetics still serve as the starting point for the theory of literature and drama.)

Sophocles, the 'perfecter of tragedy' , is a representative poet of the Periclean era and is highly regarded among his contemporaries and after the Renaissance.
After defeating Aeschylus in the tragic competition in 468 BC at the age of 30, he won the Dionysian competition a total of 18 times.
Of the 123 tragedies he wrote, only 7 have survived, and among them, Oedipus the King is considered the best tragedy. Aristotle's Poetics praised Oedipus the King highly, calling him the epitome of tragedy.

"Oedipus the King" deals with the fate of Oedipus, who hears an oracle that he will kill his father and marry his mother, and wanders in a foreign land to avoid this.
He arrives in Thebes, solves the Sphinx's riddle, becomes king, marries Queen Jocasta, and lives happily with two sons and two daughters.
Meanwhile, when a plague breaks out in the country, Oedipus shows his determination to catch the murderer of his former king, Laius, in order to purify the country as the oracle had said.
However, what Oedipus discovers as he digs into the case is the secret of his birth, and it is revealed that he is the son of Jocasta and Laius, whom he had previously killed at the crossroads.
Jocasta commits suicide and Oedipus blinds himself with his own hands.
This tragedy deals with human cognitive abilities, that is, 'how' Oedipus comes to understand the process and meaning of his own actions, and further 'how' he responds to this desperate situation.
This work faithfully displays the Sophoclesian theme of the conflict between human will and divine destiny.