Agonistes Prizes

Dear Friend of Colonus:

If you Google the saying: “One must wait until the evening to see how splendid the day has been,” you will find it is universally attributed to Sophocles. The saying’s references on the Web are most often to its employment by President Nixon.

The saying seems so properly “Greek,” so obviously ancient and tragic. During the Vietnam War Garry Wills even wrote a book, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, which had that very Oedipus Rex feel to it.

The Googled, popular perception is that Nixon made this remark upon his resignation in his farewell speech. Sometimes the popular perception works fine for me. I had no doubt that just before Nixon stepped into the helicopter on the lawn of the White House in August of 1974, he turned to face the crowd, and quoted Sophocles while waving his wooden double V for victory.

As I began researching and writing the material for the Colonus Publishing, Inc. Web site, the saying didn’t sound quite right to me. It didn’t sound exactly Sophoclean, did not have that stark clarity that one would expect from Sophocles. In any case, I wanted to see for myself what word Sophocles had used for splendid, whether it was aglaos, klutos, or perhaps phaeinos or kalos. I wanted to know what word he had used for day, whether it was hêmera or one of a number of metaphorical expressions involving light. I wondered if he’d really used hespera for evening, if perhaps he had not used nux for night.

I wanted to find the original Greek. I didn’t trust, at the time, a writer whom I thought to be one of Richard Nixon’s speechwriters. Last spring I contacted an old classmate of mine who teaches Greek at Wabash College, and asked him if he could find the source of the saying. He thought it would be easy enough. “It sounds familiar,” he said. But in the end, even he gave up and left to summer in Greece.

In The American Presidency Project of the University of California at Santa Barbara, I eventually found Nixon’s actual remark where he quoted Sophocles. It was in June of 1971, and in an address to a convention of retired people he attributed Sophocles’ saying to a conversation with Charles de Gaulle in 1963. Nixon had just lost the gubernatorial election in California, and he described to the retired gathering how de Gaulle had alluded to Sophocles to comfort him.

But to know that de Gaulle was a big fan of Sophocles has put me no closer to the original source of Sophocles’ remark. My search has merely unearthed the information that if you’re in a state park in California (you can check CA.GOV for this), California insists that you attribute authorship to Will Rogers. So, until I can ascertain the ownership of this saying so variously attributed, I am happy with my version. I find evening to be mushy, think that “night” strikes a Sophoclean clarity against the day. And splendid, I think, has too much of “distinguished” in it. Until I find the original Greek, I think Sophocles would have used a word to describe the day that connotes beauty.

My search through the speeches of Richard Nixon for this saying of Sophocles has given me the idea for the Agonistes Prizes. Colonus Publishing, Inc. intends to award a series of prizes for essays on Richard Nixon. The First Agonistes Prize in the amount of two hundred dollars will be awarded to the best essay, in the sole judgment of the editor, about Richard Nixon as a Greek tragic hero.

Colonus Publishing, Inc. will award Agonistes Prizes until it has obtained, in the sole judgment of its editor, enough essays for a book of creative nonfiction on Richard Nixon. The themes will vary, will be chosen by the editor. We are hoping to draw submissions from sources as diverse as writers who were not born when Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974 and from Nixon scholars who might find some relief in being released from the obligation of the footnote to explore their feelings about the President.

View Agonistes Rules

Sincerely,
Rich Skalstad
Editor, Colonus Publishing, Inc.