Speak plainer, that my thoughts be task'd no longer.
Uncertainty in ever-thickening folds
Waves her dark pinions round my beating head[1].
I am not sure that different ideas may not have been associated with the wings of Sleep. I do not however make this remark on account of the passage in the Philoctetes, since Sophocles as a poet was not confined to the sphere of plastic art. Or may we expect to find winged Muses in sculpture or painting, because in Pindar the Victor is born aloft on the wing-s of the Pierides? or shall we believe that Dice and Themis or Ædos were painted with wings, because various poets designated the rapidity of their operation by a like image. It is possible that Sophocles, in speaking of the gentle breath with which Sleep is invoked to approach and bless Philoctetes (εὐαίων), may only have been thinking of the burning pangs which Sleep, as he floated over the sufferer, was to fan away with the cooling motion of his wings. This is very delicately intimated. But it is a peculiarity of Sophocles, that he not unfrequently half conceals his images in this manner under the conciseness of his diction, and compels the imagination to supply them, as other writers make a like demand on the logical or grammatical understanding. In many passages of this difficult poet, which might serve to shew how far we are from having brought the interpretation of his works to its full maturity, this peculiarity constitutes the knot which still awaits a satisfactory solution.
- ↑ Act III. Sc. 1. Sprich deutlicher, dass ich nicht laenger sinne.
Die Ungewissheit schlaegt mir tausendfaeltig
Die dunkeln Schwingen um das bange Haupt.
C. T.
