In Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky we face a paradox. Contrary to the usual process aiming at clarifying a text via translation into a language understandable to the greatest possible majority, Stravinsky asked a poet, Cocteau, to tend to a 'translation' into Latin, that is to make it incomprehensible to a 20th century listener. As an exiled Russian composer, Stravinsky was not in a position to play upon melodic and semantic subtleties in his own language. Hence, in this oratorio via recourse to a dead language, he seeks to achieve hieratic summits and conveys the plot's dramatic elements solely by virtue of the music. The declaimed and sung text, furthermore devoid of meaning on account of the syntactic disarticulation of the Latin language, takes on greater expressivity and thereby assumes a novel role, that of guiding the listener's attention along the dramatic and semantic channels of the music.