Luces de Bohemia: Inversion of Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus

Abstract

I ALLE-Inclan often endows blindness with mythical dignity by associating it with ancient Greek culture. For instance, in Flor de santidad, E as Quirk has observed (42), Valle's blind beggar , X Electus evokes the figure of an old faun amidst 69nymphs in the Greco-Roman bucolic tradition. Then too, in La ldmpara maravillosa (644-45), the author praises the blind rhapsodist Homer for initiating Greek poetry into the mysteries of universal knowledge, symbolized by the sun. In Luces de Bohemia (1920), links abound between the blind poet Max Estrella and the Greeks. He is arrested when he sarcastically attributes Grecophilia to a police captain (196). Indemnifying Max for police brutality with funds earmarked for the police, the corrupt Minister, once Max' schoolmate, cynically pronounces the Greek word, iEironeia! (230). Stage directions note Max' classical comeliness: Su cabeza rizada y ciega, de un gran caracter clasico-arcaico, recuerda los Hermes (164). El poeta saca el brazo por entre los pliegues de su capa, y lo alza majestuoso, en un ritmo con su clasica cabeza ciega (169). When asked about his blindness, he compares himself, in an echo of Victor Hugo (224, n 261), with the famous blind men Homer and Belisarius. Max' Hellenism runs deeper, enabling him to define his own person. Just as the protagonist of Oedipus at Colonus describes himself as illfated (3baitopos 1. 227, from bv3a-badly and Motpa-fate, allotment),