When sent Anthony Burgess’ translation of Oedipus
the King to consider for the “Burgess Issue” of Open Letters Monthly, I
envisioned a short piece made up of unedited notes—whatever I wrote in the
margins as I read the play.
For instance, alongside the text on page fifteen I
wrote a description of a dream. Taiwanese twin sisters, very petite, left in my
mailbox a copy of the version of Oedipus they directed for a guerilla
filmmaking collective, along with an essay, its thesis being “you do it to
yourself.” This was an invite to attend a 3am festival where the film would be
shown. I go. The twins carry bags filled with confections for the audience. I
dreamt this shortly after I read Alexander Neville’s 1563 translation of Seneca’s
Oedipus Rex. I thought maybe I’d start my piece for Open Letters Monthly with
that, maybe slightly expanded or psychoanalyzed.
And I thought I’d end the piece with the following
coda: Why translate the word Tyrannus? Tyrannus = king. Everybody who reads
Sophocles either knows this or their professor is about to tell them. Oedipus
Tyrannus sounds right. “The King?” Oedipus thuh is a dull rhyme and Oedipus thee
is all wrong. Rex is okay. Oedipus Rex has a quick, slangy ring to it. Okay
Romans, not bad.
Neither note fit. What happened is a couple of the
notes—on fate and on knowledge—blossomed into the little essay I finally did
submit. Read it here.
Before I began work on Burgess’ Oedipus, I imagined
an essay about the music Bono and The Edge wrote for a stage production of A
Clockwork Orange. A cut from that soundtrack, “ALEX descends into HELL for a
BOTTLE of MILK KOROVA 1,” appeared in 1991 as a b-side to “The Fly”—but that’s
all. The Edge said, in an interview for U2’s fan magazine Propaganda, “There
are no plans to release the soundtrack and I like the idea that this music only
exists in the theatre context—that's what we wrote it for and I don't think it
would make a great record without major reworking.” If anyone knows of a
bootleg, I want to hear it.
In the same interview, The Edge talked about
Burgess’ reaction to the soundtrack, “Anthony Burgess didn't seem to like the
score that we wrote for Clockwork Orange, nor did he like the production
itself. I don't know—he's very old, it would have worried me more if he had
liked it. He's written 17 symphonies, you know—no one has heard them but he
says they are brilliant.”
