1 PUBLISHED IN Sergei Averintsev, “Toward an Interpretation of the Symbolism of the Oedipus Myth (1972),” in Arion 29.2 (2021): 99-123. Introductory note and translation by Boris Maslov. Sergej Averintsev Toward an Interpretation of the Symbolism of the Oedipus Myth (1972) Translator’s Note Sergej Averintsev (1937-2004) was a Classicist whose research interests ranged from the Hebrew Bible to modernist poetry, and his characteristic breadth of vision is already in evidence in this early essay on the Oedipus myth. A brilliant as well as venturesome piece, it combines several methods: traditional Altertumswissenschaft, which grants its practitioners a license to salvage evidence from across centuries of Greek and Roman antiquity; structuralism, concerned with the myth’s deep syntax rather than its particular, historically embedded instantiations; and cultural criticism, which in the article’s last pages—in a reversal of the author’s opening pledge to bypass the myth’s “universally human” aspects— assumes an almost allegorical dimension. Moreover, both the philological core and the essayistic finale of the article are permeated with an implicit political intentionality. A product of post-Thaw Soviet culture, Averintsev’s take on Oedipus still stands—fifty years after its publication and at a critical moment in the development of global capitalism—as a valid critique of an insidiously persistent nexus of power and knowledge. Sergej Averintsev is known to scholars principally as the author of two magisterial monographs: a study of Plutarch’s Lives in the context of the history of the genre of ancient biography (1973) and A Poetics of Early Byzantine Literature (1977). 1 A poet and a translator (perhaps most notably, of Christian poets such as Ephraim the Syrian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Romanos the Melodist 2 ), he was also a significant force in the Russian religious revival at the end of the 20 th century. During the transformative period of the late eighties and early nineties, Averintsev intervened in public debates and was even, for a brief stint, an elected MP. In 1994, he assumed the post of Professor of Russian Literature at the University of Translated and edited by Boris Maslov. The original article was published in Antichnost’ i sovremennost’: k 80-letiiu F. A. Petrovskogo (Moscow 1972), 90-102. The footnotes that belong to the translator, and other significant additions, are placed in brackets. The translator thanks Pavel Yushin for procuring electronic copies of the first editions of Losev’s books cited in the article. 1 Sergej Αverintsev, Plutarkh i antichnaia biografiia: K voprosu o meste klassika zhanra v istorii zhanra (Moscow 1973); Poetika rannevizantiiskoi literatury (Moscow 1977; reprinted in 1997, 2004); Sergej Averincev, L'anima e lo specchio: l'universo della poetica bizantina, Ghini Giuseppe, ed. and trans. (Bologna 1988). 2 Sergej Averintsev, Mnogotsennaia zhemchuzhina. Perevody (Kiev 2004).