Summer Reading English II Honors Antigone and Literary Criticism

English II Honors students are required to complete the posted reading over the summer and come to class prepared to discuss the critical issues raised in the essays about the play Antigone.

A suggested reading order is as follows:

“Antigone Synopsis” “Introduction to Antigone” Antigone (text provided in .pdf form) “Antigone Commentary”

It is recommended that students print out hard copies of the three critical essays for note-taking purposes; a hard copy of the complete text of Antigone will be provided the first week of class, so there is no need to print the entire play.

Student Goals: to familiarize yourself with Antigone, Greek Drama, and literary criticism prior to the first day of class; to demonstrate critical thinking and writing skills the first week of class.

See you in August!.

Mr. Gordon

5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone Bloom's Literature

Introduction to Antigone I. Author and Background

It seems that in March, 441 B.C., the Antigone made Sophocles famous. The poet, fifty-five years old, had now produced thirty-two plays; because of this one, tradition relates, the people of Athens elected him, the next year, to high office. We hear he shared the command of the second fleet sent to Samos.

When the people of Samos failed to support the government just established for them by forty Athenian ships, Athens sent a fleet of sixty ships to restore democracy and remove the rebels. The Aegean then was an Athenian sea. Pericles, the great political leader and advocate of firm alliance, was first in command.

Pericles' political, and Sophocles' poetic, authority had grown during Athens' expansion. Sophocles had been a close friend of the conservative Kimon, Pericles' chief political rival, who died in 449. Before his successful presentation of Antigone, Sophocles had become Pericles' friend.

In 444, when the Athenian people chose Pericles as their leader, they demanded greatness: democracy combined with imperialism. Periclean democracy meant free speech, free association, and open access to power limited by law; for, assuming that intelligence is born in all, law created by all is the best ruler. Imperialism—to which the Samian War is to be referred—meant wealth, the power to enjoy. If, moreover, enjoyment is itself a kind of power, it too must be limited by law: the law which defines enjoyment is beauty. Freedom, justice, and beauty are the components of greatness which the Athenians had chosen for themselves when they granted first literary acclaim, and then imperial duty, to Sophocles.

Sophocles and his fellow-citizens chose to widen democracy and extend imperialism. The alternative for the east-Greek peoples was oligarchy and Spartan influence. This choice—which the Samians tried to make for themselves—involved less exploitation, but far more repression. The inhabitants of oligarchic states lacked freedom and, often, beauty; instead, the principle of justice was rationalized by their apologists, who broadly used terms such as "order" and "stability," in which they claimed to find the essence of good rule. In this world climate, it is not surprising that the Athenians wished the author of Antigone to hold military office. A man who was so skilled was also wise. Sophocles might be expected to judge rightly and govern well should the cargo of free society, legal limits, and the acquisitive and aesthetic instincts shift and clash in the waves of crisis.

https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 1/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone The few details of Sophocles' life that tradition provides combine in brief glimpses. Sophocles, for instance, must have known Anaxagoras and Herodotos; but how he affected them, or they him, is obscure. The sub-theme of custom vs. nature (nomos-physis) in the Antigone indicates that Sophocles was acquainted with contemporary sophistic teaching, but does not show what stand, if any, he took in this debate. An anecdote tells how once, during the Samian affair of 440, Pericles scolded the poet for showing more interest in a certain boy than in his war duties. Then again, in old age, we hear, Sophocles praised his impotence, likening himself to a slave who had at last escaped from a maniacal master. Finally, there is the tale that in 420, when Asclepius was brought to Athens to purify the city, Sophocles kept the god in his own house until a temple was built. From this, it appears likely that Sophocles was an officer of the cult of Asclepius. It is difficult not to believe that the author of Antigone was truly a healer.

With the Antigone, Sophocles began work on material that interested him for the rest of his life. A dozen years later—perhaps in the plague year 429, the year of Pericles' death—he staged Oedipus Rex. His last play, Oedipus at Kolonos, may have busied him up to that clay in 406/5 when, it is said, as he recited from the Antigone to some friends, Sophocles died.

II. Interpretation of the Play

In considering the Antigone, the reader should be aware of three restrictions: first, that the play is our main source for its story; second, that the Oedipus Rex and Kolonos, written at wide intervals long after, cannot be used safely to criticize events or characters in the early work; and third, that Sophocles was not Aristotle's pupil. The first stricture forces us to concentrate attention on the text itself, without precluding comparison with the Theban legends;1 the second frees us from comparison in anticipation. (If I were concerned primarily with the later plays, I should start with Antigone.) The danger of Aristotelian criticism lies not only in its anachronism but in a basic confusion as to the purpose of poetry. Even were we more secure in our assumptions concerning Aristotle's own meaning, we could not understand Sophocles better for this. We would be, at best, seeing the poet through the eyes of one of his spiritual great-great-grandchildren, a less rewarding discipline, probably, than to regard him from our own viewpoint. Worse, we could be confining our judgment of poetry to the requirements of an irrelevant moral philosophy. Sophocles as poet showed what he believed to be actual. In Antigone, he presented the fall of the just and the evil consequences of good acts. The Antigone doubtless disgusted Aristotle (Poetics, 1452b, 4–6)

Until new evidence appears, one must presume that Sophocles invented many events in the story of his Antigone: (1) the form of Kreon's decree; (2) the quarrels between Antigone and Ismene; (3) the double burial of Polyneices by Antigone and the final cremation-burial by Kreon; (4) the love of Antigone and Haimon; (5) the entombment of Antigone; (6) Teiresias' intervention and Kreon's change of mind; and (7) the suicides of Antigone, Haimon, and Eurydice.

Some of these inventions pose problems: What is the poetic or dramatic purpose of the double burial? Why is the love story introduced at all, and then made known only when the action is nearly half over? https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 2/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone Why is Kreon made, contrary to instructions, to bury Polyneices first and then proceed, too late, to try to save Antigone? Is Eurydice introduced merely to add to Kreon's sorrow? These are some of the questions that need to be answered chiefly from internal evidence.

The difficulties of the Antigone are due in large part to thematic complexity; this in turn is due to variety of vision, or duplication of viewpoint, partly inherent in the subject, then intricately schematized in treatment.

The Theban myths are stories of royal families. Such stories are, on the surface at least, necessarily split into public and domestic facts. This double aspect of the activities of its characters is obviously important in the Antigone. But here too it is well to remember that the Athenians believed the city-state was based on kinship. The poet's vision is divided again when he interprets legend for his contemporaries. Sophocles deliberately anachronizes when Kreon is addressed as an Homeric king, and answers democratic arguments like an oligarch, while deporting himself like a tyrant.

Another complicating factor is the purely dramatic splitting of vision between audience and a variety of speakers. The characters do not merely act; far more, they comment on action, criticize motives, and judge ideas; all these moral utterances are astute or foolish, crude or gentle, intentionally or accidentally ironic, just as the author wishes. The vision of each character is limited in such a way as to enable the audience, with its wider perspective, to compare, criticize, and gradually assemble a composite vision. This audience is a viewpoint; like the characters, it is a part of the author's imagination. Sophocles' meaning exists in the ensemble of characters as it affects an audience of the Periclean age, which now, as then, exists in the imagination.

Despite its doublings of vision, the play is extraordinarily moving. Its humanity is never frozen into symbol. It may be taken as tribute to the success of the Antigone that it has been found next to impossible, by those who study the play, not to describe the characters as real people.

Assuming the originality of much of the story of Antigone, we can see that known portions of Theban myth may have been prototypes of the play's persons, events, and themes, and that these could have had clear relevance to the 440s B.C. as well as to general human nature.

Kadmos stoned "sown men" (Spartoi) and so incited them to fraternal war. Lykos imprisoned Antiope. I think it not unlikely that Kreon's decree (39–41)2 and later entombment of Antigone (934–41) reflect those two bits of legend. One remembers too that Kreon, like Kadmos, loses his children, and seems also to abandon his throne. Laios exposed his son Oedipus, that is disowned and left him to die. Kreon disowns Haimon (914) when he calls him a slave, and effectively sends him to his death (918–21). Lykos, like Kreon, was regent before becoming king. Kreon's name—which can mean nothing but "the ruler," "the regent"—is provided by tradition; Sophocles takes advantage of this, for Kreon's rule is, if legitimate, ignoble. https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 3/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone The figures of Amphion and Zethos are also relevant to the Antigone. The brothers personify the arts of peace and of war, respectively; and this dichotomy—certainly a vital one for Athenians of 441 B.C. when the price and rewards of empire were on the scales of conscience—is prominent throughout Sophocles' play. Again, the story of Amphion's Argive wife Niobe is used directly to illuminate the figure of Antigone, who applies the parallel to herself (979–85), then alludes (1017–18) to Argeia and Polyneices, in whom we may again see the misfortune of Amphion, destroyed by his marriage. The fact that Polyneices' name makes him a "fighter in many battles" and at the same time a "party in many quarrels" is noted by the Chorus (139–40) when they reproach him, in retrospect, for bringing war home from Argos.

The names Antigone and Haimon also seem part of the received legend. It appears that Sophocles took their meaning seriously, for he created an Antigone who, "born to oppose," relies on innate courage in facing tyranny, and he devised the manner of Haimon's death, where "blood" is poured wastefully forth.

It is not surprising that Teiresias appears in the Antigone. Any important occurrence in Thebes might demand the use of prophetic power; for any such event would probably attract the attention of those gods whom the Thebans considered their own. In fact, the gods who figure in the play are all participants in the story of Kadmos, where they appear in this order: Zeus, Apollo, Ares, Athena, Aphrodite, and Dionysos. What these gods do and mean in the Antigone will be considered shortly.

The Theban legends, from which Antigone was built, display a double vision of reality: action is divine and human. Human action, as noted, is subdivided into facts of public and of private life. In the human and public aspects there is special relevance to the 440s B.C. Here too the viewpoint is split. An Athenian might enjoy being reminded of ancient enmity between Boeotians and Peloponnesians. It is interesting, in this regard, that Sophocles does not presuppose or prepare the Attic tale of Theseus' intervention in Thebes and enforcement of burial of the Argive war dead. (Teiresias seems to allude to this possibility in 1170–7 and 1257–9. Kreon, however, does in fact bury Polyneices, and so removes the motive for Theseus' famous settlement.) Sophocles suppresses a flattering tale and eliminates Theseus as a potential hero ex machina. His intention in so doing is surely that he wanted his Thebes to represent more than the Thebes of history, and its people to struggle with problems which no clever intruder could solve simply. Here are no tricks of popular appeal.

The Thebes of Antigone is an image of the city-state. As such, it must show some public facts of importance to Periclean Athenians: these facts are ideas in conflict. Kreon (809–18) expounds a tyrannical and oligarchic, Haimon (837–62) a democratic view of law and leadership. The combining of tyrannical and oligarchic in Kreon is a peculiar pairing of different, though logically compatible, concepts of government; though few oligarchs would have admitted the compatibility, many democrats might insist upon it. Kreon's laws are his own; the principle behind them is obedience to power, their alleged purpose is stability, their apparent motive power-hunger. Haimon's principle is reason, his motive love for Antigone. Haimon, democracy, Eros; Kreon, autocracy, Ares—the diagram has appeal. Kreon is a military leader who is not governed by civil norms. An Athenian general, however, had to render an https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 4/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone account of his acts to the people. Athenians associated law with freedom from autocratic rule; laws, to Pericles, were the enactments of the majority of citizens duly assembled.

In this play, Antigone obeys a law which the citizens, as a whole, approve. In order to do so, she must die under Kreon's edict. (It is important to recall that in Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes—the only extant tragedy on this theme before the Antigone—it is a democratically voted interdict which denies burial to Polyneices, though without specifying a penalty for disobedience.) Antigone suffers what any individual risks who asserts freedom under tyranny, or individualism against pressure to conform. For this act of public heroism, her motive is domestic. Never does she give a political explanation of her deed; on the contrary, from the start she assumes it is her hereditary duty to bury Polyneices, and it is from inherited courage that she expects to gain the strength required for the task (42–4). Antigone's public virtue is the product of personal loyalty.

Kreon, by contrast, turns from political to domestic tyranny, then justifies the first with analogies to the second. Declaring (222–3) the worthlessness of anyone who "cherishes an individual beyond his homeland," he denies his nephew burial. Then, refusing to pardon his niece, his son's fiancée, Antigone, he claims (798–807) that he must kill her to preserve public order and to uphold law, which he equates with the rule of the strong. At present, Kreon is a political tyrant; probably he has long been a domestic one. By this time, a modern audience might decide that the dichotomy—public and private—is more apparent than real. The two aspects appear inseparable and interactive. Athenians would have had no doubt: their city-state was assumed to be fundamentally a kinship unit.

Not unrelated to the theme of autocracy and freedom is that other duality, divine and human. The Theban legends emphasize six major deities; the persons of the Antigone tend to interpret one another and explain phenomena with reference to these gods. Both Kreon (224) and Antigone (550–1) assume the approval of Zeus; to Kreon, he represents power, to Antigone justice. Yet, Antigone attributes her family's misfortunes to him (6–8), and Kreon blames his ruin on an unnamed god (1467; could he be Eros?). The Sentry and Chorus (342–6, 350–1) assign the first burial of Polyneices to the gods; Kreon denies this categorically. The onlooker is convinced the characters believe what they say when they say it, but cannot tell which among them is right. The gods are unreliable, their role ambiguous. Teiresias, presumably representing Zeus and Apollo, appears too late to avert disaster: if the gods do not clearly intervene there, one doubts that they intervened at the beginning. The Chorus twice (first and fifth stasima) pray to Dionysos in vain. Eurydice is prevented from seeking Athena's aid (1363–7).

There remain Ares and Aphrodite. These are, in Antigone, at least as much symbols, War and Love, as gods; but there is no doubt they are personally active in the play. When one thinks, first, that the daughter of these two was Harmonia (Kadmos' wife in the legend), and then hears the central ode (942– 57) where Love "conquers" and drives men mad, the difference between Love and War seems justly minimized by the Chorus; one is tempted to see the two as a pair. Love, which inspired Haimon to speak on behalf of Antigone, and had prompted Antigone to heroic action, also caused their deaths. Love seems no less a destroyer than War. https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 5/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone But this must be nonsense; and, before the play ends, it appears so. Love is blamed by the Chorus while Kreon rules. That is, the very conditions of the play which make it a tragedy are abnormal. It is not normal to deny anyone burial, one's nephew still less, or to bury one's niece, or anyone, alive. Neither is it normal for Love to destroy, or for War only to rescue. In the parodos, the Chorus thank Ares for Ares will return as a destroyer. Kreon is to blame. He knows Ares well, saving Thebes; but Thebes has not been saved. "Harmony" is absent, but Aphrodite not at all, and so separates them. He exposes this ignorance when he says (703) that it makes no difference who marries whom. His thoughts, as his manner of speech shows, are full of Ares; his conception of government is militaristic, "Spartan," one is tempted to say. Kreon made Love seem, to the Chorus, the same as War. The gods, here, seem indifferently to be forces which affect men, and forms of human feeling and action.

Human and divine, like public and private, may be the dual images of an integral object. The Antigone displays schematic pairing and antithesis in structural detail as well as in idea. The Theban myths are well suited to double vision, to curious couplings, and to division of natural pairs. Minos and Rhadamanthys, Zethos and Amphion, the metamorphoses of Teiresias—each a two-in-one relation of a different sort—suggest even more complicated relationships within the legend at the point where Antigone begins.

Eteokles and Polyneices, and their sisters, Antigone and Ismene, are children of Oedipus and his mother Jocasta; the two pairs are the brothers and sisters of Oedipus, their father, and the grandchildren of their mother Jocasta. The two boys have been sundered in rivalry for power, and have killed each other in single combat. Kreon, by decree, has sent Eteokles to the Underworld and kept Polyneices in the upper air; the one, buried, is free, while the other, left exposed, is confined. Similarly, during the war, one of Kreon's two sons, Megareus (or Menoikios), has died by his own hand and temporarily saved the city; the other, Haimon, survives, but will, at the end of the play, also die by suicide, after failing to save Antigone. When the play begins, then, Antigone and Ismene have been parted from their brothers, and Haimon has been separated from Megareus, by death, while Eteokles and Polyneices, united in dying, have been divided in death.

In the first scene, Antigone and Ismene quarrel and part. The Chorus invoke Zeus, Ares, and Dionysos. Kreon enters, hears of the first burial of Polyneices, and accuses and dismisses the Sentry. The Chorus sing an ode about the dual nature of mankind: like the gods in daring, but mortal; and possessing equally great potential for evil and good.

Schematic pairing continues as the Sentry returns to report the second burial and the capture of Antigone. The second and final dismissal of the Sentry is followed by a second and final break between Antigone and Ismene, both of whom Kreon considers guilty. The Chorus sing about the fall of men and the eternal power of Zeus, concluding that when gods destroy a man they cause him to confuse good and bad, one for one. Next, Haimon and Kreon talk. This is the center of the play; at the exact center is Kreon's claim that obedience to leaders saves men's lives in battle. Kreon condemns Antigone and drives his son away. The Chorus sing of Love under two aspects: gentle and inescapable, a playful conqueror https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 6/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone and an eternal law. Antigone also considers Love and War as she goes to her prison, comparing herself to Niobe and further noting that Polyneices died in war because of his marriage in Argos, while because of this she must herself die unmarried. The ensuing ode alludes to the power of Zeus and of Dionysos, and the indifference of Ares to human suffering.

The Teiresias scene also is in two parts. The first part mirrors both the Sentry's report of the first burial and Haimon's interview with Kreon. Like the Sentry, Teiresias is accused of taking bribes, when, using arguments similar to Haimon's in the plea for Antigone, he asks Kreon to bury Polyneices. In the second half of the scene, Teiresias tells Kreon his crime is double.

The Chorus call upon Dionysos for the second and last time. The Messenger, like the Sentry at his second entrance, finds the Chorus alone; then, just as the Sentry was joined by Kreon (468), the Messenger is met by Eurydice (1359). He tells first of the cremation-burial of Polyneices, then of the second and final parting of Kreon and Haimon, that is the death of the latter. He concludes that the dead are joined together. Haimon and Antigone are together, but Polyneices and Eteokles, Haimon and Megareus too, are all now on the same side of the earth. When Kreon returns, Eurydice has died. Kreon is led into the palace, where only Ismene remains.

The Antigone seems compounded of pairs which life sunders: Eteokles and Polyneices, Megareus and Haimon, Ismene and Antigone, Kreon and Haimon, Antigone and Haimon. The last, the most vital pair, never meet during the play. This somber keynote—doomed pairs—is sounded by Ismene (56–72): Oedipus and Jocasta begin the tale, and Kreon may end it with Ismene and Antigone. Parting is the doom life offers. This is the dramatic lesson of the prologue, where Antigone and Ismene disagree almost from the start; there is no hint of such a break in Aeschylus' Seven—it is evidently Sophocles' invention.

Death, on the contrary, unites and reunites. This is a fact of faith for Antigone (1047–51) as she faces death: she will join her father, mother, brothers; though she does not now know it, her tomb will be her wedding chamber (1436–7). Those who die are reconciled. Kreon and Ismene, who alone survive the action of this play, remain separate and solitary.

Why, if death cancels rifts, can life not do so? Surely because, in the world of the Antigone, love is absent from life. Kreon is responsible. It is he who parts what should be inseparable. The Chorus repeatedly see, in the play's grim partings, the operation of the curse of Laios, but attach the hereditary guilt to Antigone. This is doubtful. The same old courtiers blame Love—in the third stasimon—for quarrels. The true heir to Laios' fault is Kreon. The curse is nothing supernatural, but rather a repetition of human evil by a man too foolish to mark the warnings of family history.

Laios first betrayed Pelops, king of Argos, then exposed his own son, Oedipus; in so doing he created enmity with the Argives, and defiled his own home. Kreon, who had abetted Eteokles' treacherous usurpation of the Theban throne, and who allowed his son to die in the course of the consequent war, insulted dead Polyneices along with the Argive dead, then disowned his younger son and buried his niece https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 7/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone alive. Kreon chose two ways to Laios' one, to exacerbate Argive hostility, and five ways to violate his own family's sanctity. Kreon is Laios' ape and his exaggeration. Betrayal of faith and disregard of family bonds are the themes of Kreon's reign. Permeated with hate, life lacks cohesiveness; the polar opposite of life, the anti-world of Hades, must then contain love.

The play begins with a burial, that of Eteokles, and a denial of burial to Polyneices (26–33). The end is similar: Kreon burns and buries Polyneices (1386–97) and opens Antigone's tomb (1398–9; though Haimon had broken in, the entrance was still blocked). Kreon leaves Antigone there, though he has hoped to lead her back living; Haimon, whom he hoped to call away (1422–4), he carries home dead. When Kreon buries Eteokles he begins tragic events; when he exhumes Antigone, he ends them.

In the first third of the play, there are two further burials, of Polyneices. The first, when made known, shows Kreon as a tyrant who attributes an act, which others feel is divine, to greed for money. Kreon's crudity, in this regard, is still clearer later (1193–1209) when he accuses Teiresias—who has asked him, on plain grounds of piety, to bury Polyneices—of the same venality. The second burial of Polyneices shows that Antigone, not conspirators, did the deed, and not for money, but for love. Kreon rejects love when he condemns his niece.

While Antigone was prompted by her love to fulfill a religious duty, Haimon is inspired to political activity, to argument. Kreon rejects with militaristic slogans (798–824) the democratic and humane views Haimon presents. Kreon's speech, again, is the center of the play: love's arguments are opposed by Kreon with notions of statecraft drawn directly (cf. 224–9) from command in wartime. At the close of the episode (934–41) Kreon orders Antigone's burial. Then in the ode which directly follows, when the Chorus hymn Love, one is reminded that Antigone has called Kreon's decree martial (39–41). The defeat of Love—as Eros, Aphrodite, in the family and the state—is central to the play, in meaning as in location.

If the first burial lets Kreon discount the divinity of a reverent act, the second burial lets him argue, again wrongly, against love, and to rout and drive Love from himself and from Thebes. In 625–41, Kreon can only transfer his political cliché, the double duty of rewarding friends and harming enemies, to the case of Eteokles and Polyneices. His public argument has no place for love, since his public acts are in fact dictated by the spirit of enmity. Antigone realized this from the start (12–15). When Teiresias reports bad omens and urges Kreon to relent, his account includes a description (1151–7) of the augural birds attacking each other: they are virtually at war, because of Kreon's policy. As Kreon's suppression of love has created civil disharmony and destroyed his home, it has also interposed strife between men and the normal access to divine knowledge.

Antigone's devotion to her brother is truly a kind of reverence (1020). She, who (642–3) was born to love both her brothers despite the rift between them, has had the sharpest insight into Kreon's error of fission (cf. 210–11). In 515–18, she is compared by the Sentry to a mother bird: such is the nature of her concern for Polyneices. When she leaves for the tomb, Antigone bewails her childless state (1072–5). Does she think, as death approaches, that she has been wrong? This is another double focus on love. The love that https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 8/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone made Antigone bury Polyneices is a moral force; the love she regrets in the kommos is a natural force: both together are the "mandate" of the third stasimon. Antigone is certainly not at "fault." She obeyed love vis-à-vis Polyneices; she did not thereby reject the living love of Haimon. She had no choice in the first, and was prevented by Kreon from choosing the second; Antigone "feels pain" only for the second, though it was for the first that, to avoid pain, she dared and dies.

The question of Kreon's choice in disposing of Polyneices before seeing to Antigone is treated in the note on 1389–98. Kreon cannot understand that the law he has broken is not what tradition, the "established laws" (1292), ordains, but is the force of Love (or of Justice) which moves these laws and makes them sacred. He reverts, instead, to his initial precepts: that the homeland is most important, the individual least (222–3), and that it is the stability of the state that makes hove possible (228–9). Kreon has turned the business backwards. He may obey the letter of traditional law, and bury Polyneices; but the spirit, which is Love, family feeling, and loyalty, he ignores still. Kreon's last error, then, is his first. He learns this in Antigone's tomb. As he hurries there, he still divides love from the law by which he lives.

As to Eurydice, I have hinted in the résumé (p. 11) that she is a kind of double of Kreon. The "marriage in Hades' house" Kreon originally suggested (to Antigone, 644–6, then to Hannon, 794–5) has been consummated (1436–7). The death of Antigone and Haimon has, as its offspring, the death of Eurydice. As I have noted, Kreon's entry early in the play (468) corresponds to Eurydice's (1359). In the first, Kreon returns as the Sentry tells the Chorus that Antigone is guilty of burying Polyneices. The Sentry completes his report to Kreon, who thereupon resolves to execute Antigone. As a result of this resolve, Kreon condemns himself, as well as Antigone, to a living death. When Eurydice enters, at an approximately corresponding position toward the end of the play, the Messenger is telling the Chorus of Haimon's death. He completes the tale, adding Antigone's suicide, to Eurydice, who then consigns herself to death. She dies cursing Kreon, not for Haimon's only, but for Megareus' fate as well. The dual scheme is completed: Kreon cursed himself when he ordered Antigone to be punished.

The original sentence was stoning, but Kreon changed it to immuring in order to avert a curse from the city (934–7). Perhaps the change of sentence also represents a retreat in policy forced on Kreon. (Again note: no penalty is specified in the Seven Against Thebes.) Haimon had said the people of Thebes approved Antigone's deed (839–50). Public stoning, in which the whole community could participate, was punishment for public enemies. If the Thebans would refuse to take part in such an event, Kreon is well advised not to require it of them. But here too the two-in-one scheme is a picture of Kreon's reversed understanding. Teiresias emphasizes the direct reversal of nature (1240–7), which is, however, typical of Kreon's thinking. Kreon's "principles" are themselves blameworthy (1171). Teiresias, moreover, is a technician, an augur; he finds Kreon's wrongdoing formally offensive. By the doubled crime of separation, of keeping Polyneices in the light and segregating Antigone (cf. 55) from the living, Kreon has interfered both with gods of the Underworld and with the Olympians in their respective domains. The mechanical nature of Kreon's offense is characteristic. It is also, in its duality, typical of the whole play. By offense to the gods of the netherworld, Kreon finally offends Zeus (110–7; 1202–5).

https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 9/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone Yet, in a sense, Kreon did not change the sentence. When an outraged community stoned a public enemy, it performed a kind of burial rite, covering and concealing the offender. When Kreon pronounces doom on Antigone (934–5) he has her "hidden . . . in a rock hollow"; when he seeks to exhume her, it is from stone (1398–9). Moreover, we know that the enemy of the people is not Antigone, but Kreon. When he buries Antigone in stone, Kreon is himself, in his estimation, the community, the state (cf. 885–9); but Kreon buries, with Antigone, his better self, and does so in the presence of the horrified citizens. He hopes, by a technicality, to cover guilt; really, he stifles conscience.

Teiresias says (1148) that Kreon is walking "the razor's edge." Kreon's balance, clearly, has failed him more than once. Kreon falls away from love; by his martial statecraft, he wrecks the stability he has sought for the community; he loses his home through tyranny. His domestic and public crimes are complementary and inseparable. To show this appears to be the main purpose of the double confrontation between Ismene and Antigone, Ismene and Kreon (651–718).

Kreon begins the scene, saying he has nursed twin plagues, a pair of traitors, in his home. One wonders what that home is like; and suspects Kreon's understanding of his sons, as well as of his nieces. One may also abstract his words from the immediate context, and think the two girls represent rebellion and submission, positive and negative. Antigone rebels for a reason Kreon fails to understand. Ismene cautiously submits, without approving Kreon's ideas or actions. One thinks that, like the Chorus, Ismene will abandon Kreon at the play's end. Hubris is the tyrant's handicap: the brave rebel, while the prudent stand by to bear witness; the former may actually destroy him, while the rest allow him to corrupt and destroy himself (cf. 837–8, 858–60). Kreon's condemnation of both sisters seems an unconscious act of ironic justice; it shows the tyrant is as deadly to those who permit him to misrule as to those who try to stop him; and it suggests that Kreon may be half aware that the subject loyal to his rule is essentially a traitor to his potential for good. Then Ismene asks Antigone (673–4) what life will be worth without love, the answer points to Kreon. The implication is that Kreon and Ismene are destined to live on, after the play ends, bereft of all they love or should love. Antigone does not know this: Sophocles gives the words weight. Antigone does know, and seems here to mean, that Kreon, by depriving life of love, has emptied it of value. In this episode, Antigone and Ismene are split apart for the second time. The two scenes (47– 125; 657–91) are mirror-images. In the prologue, Antigone invited Ismene to risk death with her; now Antigone rejects Ismene's offer to be her partner in death. Ismene refused then; now Antigone refuses. Antigone chose to risk death rather than live without love, for to abandon Polyneices' need would have been to abandon her love of him; accordingly, the death she risked was meaningful (120–2). But Ismene chose to live on without love (cf. 683), and would now choose a useless, seemingly meaningless death. She feared death, and so would not help Antigone; now that she cannot help, she fears life. The scheme completes itself.

When Ismene pleads for Antigone's life, to Kreon, she starts with the same question (698–9): how can she live without Antigone? Kreon says to forget her. Then Ismene asks about Haimon: if Kreon can despise the girl his son loves, he does not love his son. Kreon does not. But elsewhere Kreon seems to seek love. When Haimon enters, Kreon asks him, "Do you love me" (770–1) "whatever I do and how?" https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 10/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone Kreon has confused love with obedience before this. After the first burial of Polyneices, Kreon contrasted the behavior of discontented citizens with what they should do: "properly shouldering the yoke . . . which is the one way of showing love to me" (369–70). He tested the Thebans' love with his decree, and found it wanting; now, as he sentences Antigone for defying the decree, he finds Haimon's love hollow. Kreon is to be pitied for his incomprehension. What he seeks is the love of beast for human master; he has, himself, no love to give, only commands.

Even cruel Ares loved, though—loved Aphrodite. One should, therefore, not be shocked when Kreon leaves the stage heartbroken. Until Haimon dies, and Eurydice, he seems capable of no emotion but anger. When he condemned Antigone, he said that with her death he had "everything" (606). Now, he prays for his own death, which is everything he still wants (1522). This is convincing; it is disturbing too: the man is a man, and he is to be pitied. One must blame him; but as he blames himself, one wonders. Did he, after all, love his wife and son? He did, and did not know it; he could not know that in which he did not believe.

If we sympathize, at last, with at least the humanity of Kreon, it is less easy to excuse the Chorus. The old courtiers learn wisdom late; perhaps, like Kreon, too late. They, however, are not fools; in their songs they have shown subtlety and learning. Yet these men excused and supported Kreon's folly until Kreon, in effect, gave up his authority (1268–77). Though they knew what law is, and though they worshiped Love as well as Ares and Dionysos, nevertheless, even while they grieved for her, they blamed Antigone for her doom. When they might have used their eloquence to plead with Kreon, they soothed their own conscience with the easy lore of hereditary curses. Kreon puts these men in their place justly when he tells them (713) that they, as well as he, have determined Antigone's death. It was their own free will that they denied, not Antigone's, when they remained so long locked in silence by fear. The play's most alarming double-focus fixes the men of the Chorus, who see truth but do not face it.

When the old gentlemen of the Chorus persisted in regarding Kreon's edict as law, they were not playing the part of conservatives, in the finer sense; they were merely being cautious. "A law," they say in effect (247–52), "is law until it is changed." Ismene, perhaps only because of her proximity to the case, did regard the decree as unjust, but considered it necessary to obey (97–8) as long as others did so. This, then, is the plea of the callous and of the weak: conformity.

Antigone opposed conventional piety to Kreon's edict. Her proposition (550–64) was that a law must not violate morality. Haimon, on the other hand, appealed to the consensus of men: his was a democratic argument, based on the belief that a law must be in harmony with the considered opinion of the citizens. The personal motive of both Antigone and Haimon in opposing Kreon happens to be identical: love. In this play, traditional morality and majority opinion happen to agree; that this is a love match not made daily is shown by the Seven Against Thebes.

We may conjecture that, to Sophocles, the question of democracy vs. autocracy was more basic than piety vs. secular law. In the Antigone, he seems to approve religious tradition as a moral guide because, https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 11/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Introduction to Antigone like consensus, it offers likelihood of truth: tradition is tested temporally, consensus also numerically, the first through changes of custom, the second by diversity of individual ideas. The greater probability that Kreon, in his tyrannical isolation, would be wrong, is demonstrated when be shows himself to be wrong; the advantage of democratic consensus is, here, emphasized by its endorsement of pious tradition.

Sophocles does, however, admit that religion contains troublesome ambiguities: piety may demand right behavior, but the gods themselves are not reliable guides to what is right. Teiresias, one remembers, appears too late. Similarly, Sophocles does not ignore the possibility of mass human error; the majority of Thebans, like Ismene, agree with Antigone, but obey Kreon. Fearing Kreon, the people fail Antigone, who is thereby as isolated in her rectitude as Kreon is insulated in his perversity. Freedom needs strength as well as sensitivity. The popular attitude toward Kreon is that of the Sentry, whose terror neither stifles his disapproval (392–404) nor slows his obedience (408–13, 527–37). From this, one may guess that Sophocles recognized that the rights of the exceptional individual are precious, at least when, as with Antigone, such rights confirm the freedoms which the majority continue, even secretly, to approve.

To us, to whom Kreon's flagrant misdeed is his invasion of personal and conscientious rights, Sophocles says this much: neither should the ordinary individual, who is wrong, rule the majority, who are passive, nor should the extraordinary individual, if right, acquiesce. The tragic problem of popular rule—where free citizens seem to violate by consensus the rights of minorities and of individuals, unusual and ordinary—is only suggested. The Antigone's complacent courtiers abet one tyrant, and become, in effect, a board of tyrants. We know their like in institutions, agencies, departments, and bureaus, which, for the sake of "the law till it is altered," and such generally accepted purposes as health, defense, education, and finance, erode freedom. Until such old men learn wisdom, Antigones will be "born to oppose," who, unless gentleness prevails, will be driven again and again even by the Choruses of democracy, either to civil disobedience or to criminal withdrawal.

Citation Information Braun, Richard Emil. “Introduction to Antigone.” Antigone - Sophocles, Facts On File, 2014. Bloom's Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=101056&itemid=WE54&articleId=362458. Accessed 13 May 2019. Copyright © 2019 Infobase Learning. All Rights Reserved.

https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=362458&assetType=article 12/12 5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone Bloom's Literature

Antigone

Within this single drama—in great part, a harsh critique of Athenian society and the Greek city-state in general—Sophocles tells of the eternal struggle between the state and the individual, human and natural law, and the enormous gulf between what we attempt here on earth and what fate has in store for us all. In this magnificent dramatic work, almost incidentally so, we find nearly every reason why we are now what we are.

—Victor D. Hanson and John Heath, Who Killed Homer? The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom

With Antigone Sophocles forcibly demonstrates that the power of tragedy derives not from the conflict between right and wrong but from the confrontation between right and right. As the play opens the succession battle between the sons of Oedipus—Polynices and Eteocles—over control of Thebes has resulted in both of their deaths. Their uncle Creon, who has now assumed the throne, asserts his authority to end a destructive civil war and decrees that only Eteocles, the city's defender, should receive honorable burial. Polynices, who has led a foreign army against Thebes, is branded a traitor. His corpse is to be left on the battlefield "to be chewed up by birds and dogs and violated," with death the penalty for anyone who attempts to bury him and supply the rites necessary for the dead to reach the underworld. Antigone, Polynices' sister, is determined to defy Creon's order, setting in motion a tragic collision between opposed laws and duties: between natural and divine commands that dictate the burial of the dead and the secular edicts of a ruler determined to restore civic order, between family allegiance and private conscience and public duty and the rule of law that restricts personal liberty for the common good. Like the proverbial immovable object meeting an irresistible force, Antigone arranges the impact of seemingly irreconcilable conceptions of rights and responsibilities, producing one of drama's enduring illuminations of human nature and the human condition.

Antigone is one of Sophocles' greatest achievements and one of the most influential dramas ever staged. "Between 1790 and 1905," critic George Steiner reports, "it was widely held by European poets, philosophers, [and] scholars that Sophocles' Antigone was not only the finest of Greek tragedies, but a work of art nearer to perfection than any other produced by the human spirit." Its theme of the opposition between the individual and authority has resonated through the centuries, with numerous playwrights, most notably Jean Anouilh, Bertolt Brecht, and Athol Fugard grafting contemporary concerns and values onto the moral and political dramatic framework that Sophocles established. The play has elicited paradoxical responses reflecting changing cultural and moral imperatives. Antigone, https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=26529&assetType=article 1/4 5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone who has been described as "the first heroine of Western drama," has been interpreted both as a heroic martyr to conscience and as a willfully stubborn fanatic who causes her own death and that of two other innocent people, forsaking her duty to the living on behalf of the dead. Creon has similarly divided critics between censure and sympathy. Despite the play's title, some have suggested that the tragedy is Creon's, not Antigone's, and it is his abuse of authority and his violations of personal, family, and divine obligations that center the drama's tragedy. The brilliance of Sophocles' play rests in the complexity of motive and the competing absolute claims that the drama displays. As novelist George Eliot observed,

It is a very superficial criticism which interprets the character of Creon as that of hypocritical tyrant, and regards Antigone as a blameless victim. Coarse contrasts like this are not the materials handled by great dramatists. The exquisite art of Sophocles is shown in the touches by which he makes us feel that Creon, as well as Antigone, is contending for what he believes to be the right, while both are also conscious that, in following out one principle, they are laying themselves open to just blame for transgressing another. Eliot would call the play's focus the "antagonism of valid principles," demonstrating a point of universal significance that "Wherever the strength of a man's intellect, or moral sense, or affection brings him into opposition with the rules which society has sanctioned, there is renewed conflict between Antigone and Creon; such a man must not only dare to be right, he must also dare to be wrong—to shake faith, to wound friendship, perhaps, to hem in his own powers." Sophocles' Antigone is less a play about the pathetic end of a victim of tyranny or the corruption of authority than about the inevitable cost and consequence between competing imperatives that define the human condition. From opposite and opposed positions, both Antigone and Creon ultimately meet at the shared suffering each has caused. They have destroyed each other and themselves by who they are and what they believe. They are both right and wrong in a world that lacks moral certainty and simple choices. The Chorus summarizes what Antigone will vividly enact: "The powerful words of the proud are paid in full with mighty blows of fate, and at long last those blows will teach us wisdom."

As the play opens Antigone declares her intention to her sister Ismene to defy Creon's impious and inhumane order and enlists her sister's aid to bury their brother. Ismene responds that as women they must not oppose the will of men or the authority of the city and invite death. Ismene's timidity and deference underscores Antigone's courage and defiance. Antigone asserts a greater allegiance to blood kinship and divine law declaring that the burial is a "holy crime," justified even by death. Ismene responds by calling her sister "a lover of the impossible," an accurate description of the tragic hero, who, according to scholar Bernard Knox, is Sophocles' most important contribution to drama: "Sophocles presents us for the first time with what we recognize as a 'tragic hero': one who, unsupported by the gods and in the face of human opposition, makes a decision which springs from the deepest layer of his individual nature, his physis, and then blindly, ferociously, heroically maintains that decision even to the point of self-destruction." Antigone exactly conforms to Knox's description, choosing her conception of duty over sensible self-preservation and gender-prescribed submission to male authority, turning on her sister and all who oppose her. Certain in her decision and self-sufficient, Antigone rejects both her sister's practical advice and kinship. Ironically Antigone denies to her sister, when Ismene resists her https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=26529&assetType=article 2/4 5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone will, the same blood kinship that claims Antigone's supreme allegiance in burying her brother. For Antigone the demands of the dead overpower duty to the living, and she does not hesitate in claiming both to know and act for the divine will. As critic Gilbert Norwood observes, "It is Antigone's splendid though perverse valor which creates the drama."

Before the apprehended Antigone, who has been taken in the act of scattering dust on her brother's corpse, lamenting, and pouring libations, is brought before Creon and the dramatic crux of the play, the Chorus of Theban elders delivers what has been called the finest song in all Greek tragedy, the so-called Ode to Man, that begins "Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man." This magnificent celebration of human power over nature and resourcefulness in reason and invention ends with a stark recognition of humanity's ultimate helplessness—"Only against Death shall he call for aid in vain." Death will test the resolve and principles of both Antigone and Creon, while, as critic Edouard Schuré asserts, "It brings before us the most extraordinary psychological evolution that has ever been represented on stage."

When Antigone is brought in judgment before Creon, obstinacy meets its match. Both stand on principle, but both reveal the human source of their actions. Creon betrays himself as a paranoid autocrat; Antigone as an individual whose powerful hatred outstrips her capacity for love. She defiantly and proudly admits that she is guilty of disobeying Creon's decree and that he has no power to override divine law. Nor does Antigone concede any mitigation of her personal obligation in the competing claims of a niece, a sister, or a citizen. Creon is maddened by what he perceives to be Antigone's insolence in justifying her crime by diminishing his authority, provoking him to ignore all moderating claims of family, natural, or divine extenuation. When Ismene is brought in as a co-conspirator, she accepts her share of guilt in solidarity with her sister, but again Antigone spurns her, calling her "a friend who loves in words," denying Ismene's selfless act of loyalty and sympathy with a cold dismissal and self- sufficiency, stating, "Never share my dying, / don't lay claim to what you never touched." However, Ismene raises the ante for both Antigone and Creon by asking her uncle whether by condemning Antigone he will kill his own son's betrothed. Creon remains adamant, and his judgment on Antigone and Ismene, along with his subsequent argument with his son, Haemon, reveals that Creon's principles are self-centered, contradictory, and compromised by his own pride, fears, and anxieties. Antigone's challenge to his authority, coming from a woman, is demeaning. If she goes free in defiance of his authority, Creon declares, "I am not the man, she is." To the urging of Haemon that Creon should show mercy, tempering his judgment to the will of Theban opinion that sympathizes with Antigone, Creon asserts that he cares nothing for the will of the town, whose welfare Creon's original edict against Polynices was meant to serve. Creon, moreover, resents being schooled in expediency by his son. Inflamed by his son's advocacy on behalf of Antigone, Creon brands Haemon a "woman's slave," and after vacillating between stoning Antigone and executing her and her sister in front of Haemon, Creon rules that Antigone alone is to perish by being buried alive. Having begun the drama with a decree that a dead man should remain unburied, Creon reverses himself, ironically, by ordering the premature burial of a living woman.

https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=26529&assetType=article 3/4 5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone Antigone, being led to her entombment, is shown stripped of her former confidence and defiance, searching for the justification that can steel her acceptance of the fate that her actions have caused. Contemplating her living descent into the underworld and the death that awaits her, Antigone regrets dying without marriage and children. Gone is her reliance on divine and natural law to justify her act as she equivocates to find the emotional source to sustain her. A husband and children could be replaced, she rationalizes, but since her mother and father are dead, no brother can ever replace Polynices. Antigone's tortured logic here, so different from the former woman of principle, has been rejected by some editors as spurious. Others have judged this emotionally wrought speech essential for humanizing Antigone, revealing her capacity to suffer and her painful search for some consolation.

The drama concludes with the emphasis shifted back to Creon and the consequences of his judgment. The blind prophet Teiresias comes to warn Creon that Polynices' unburied body has offended the gods and that Creon is responsible for the sickness that has descended on Thebes. Creon has kept from Hades one who belongs there and is sending to Hades another who does not. The gods confirm the rightness of Antigone's action, but justice evades the working out of the drama's climax. The release of Antigone comes too late; she has hung herself. Haemon commits suicide, and Eurydice, Creon's wife, kills herself after cursing Creon for the death of their son. Having denied the obligation of family, Creon loses his own. Creon's rule, marked by ignoring or transgressing cosmic and family law, is shown as ultimately inadequate and destructive. Creon is made to realize that he has been rash and foolish, that "Whatever I have touched has come to nothing." Both Creon and Antigone have been pushed to terrifying ends in which what truly matters to both are made starkly clear. Antigone's moral imperatives have been affirmed but also their immense cost in suffering has been exposed. Antigone explores a fundamental rift between public and private worlds. The central opposition in the play between Antigone and Creon, between duty to self and duty to state, dramatizes critical antimonies in the human condition. Sophocles' genius is his resistance of easy and consoling simplifications to resolve the oppositions. Both sides are ultimately tested; both reveal the potential for greatness and destruction.

Citation Information Burt, Daniel S. “Antigone.” The Drama 100, Facts On File, 2007. Bloom's Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index? aid=101056&itemid=WE54&articleId=26529. Accessed 13 May 2019. Copyright © 2019 Infobase Learning. All Rights Reserved.

https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=26529&assetType=article 4/4 CC CLASSICAL GREEK TRAGEDY

Sophocles ANTIGONE SOPHOCLES (496?-406 B.C.)

Antigone

An English Version by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald

Person Represented ANTIGONE ISMENE EURYDICE CREON HAIMON TEIRESIAS A SENTRY A MESSENGER CHORUS

SCENE: Before the Palace of Creon, King of Thebes. A central double door, and two lateral doors. A platform extends the length of the façade, and from this platform three steps lead down into the “orchestra”, or chorus-ground. TIME: Dawn of the day after the repulse of the Argive army from the assault on Thebes.

PROLOGUE

[ANTIGONE and ISMENE enter from the central door of the Palace.]

ANTIGONE: Ismene, dear sister, You would think that we had already suffered enough For the curse on Oedipus:1 I cannot imagine any grief That you and I have not gone through. And now –– 5 Have they told you of the new decree of our King Creon?

ISMENE: I have heard nothing: I know That two sisters lost two brothers, a double death In a single hour; and I know that the Argive army Fled in the night; but beyond this, nothing. 10

ANTIGONE: I thought so. And that is why I wanted you To come out here with me. There is something we must do.

1 Oedipus, once King of Thebes, was the father of Antigone and Ismene, and of their brothers Polyneices and Eteocles. Oedipus unwittingly killed his father, Laios, and married his own mother, Iocaste. When he learned what he had done, he blinded himself and left Thebes. Eteocles and Polyneices quarreled, Polyneices was driven out but returned to assault Thebes. In the battle each brother killed the other; Creon became king and ordered that Polyneices be left to rot unburied on the battlefield as a traitor. [Editors’ note] ISMENE: Why do you speak so strangely?

ANTIGONE: Listen, Ismenê: Creon buried our brother Eteoclês 15 With military honors, gave him a soldier’s funeral, And it was right that he should; but Polyneicês, They fought as bravely and died as miserably,-- They say that Creon has sworn No one shall burry him, no one mourn for him, 20 But this body must lie in the fields, a sweet treasure For carrion birds to find as they search for food. That is what they say, and our good Creon is coming here To announce it publicly; and the penalty –– Stoning to death I the public squarel There it is, 25 And now you can prove what you are: A true sister, or a traitor to your family.

ISMENE: Antigone, you are mad! What could I possibly do?

ANTIGONE: You must decide whether you will help me or not.

ISMENE: I do not understand you. Help you in what? 30

ANTIGONE: Ismene, I am going to bury him. Will you come?

ISMENE: Bury him! You have just said the new law forbids it.

ANTIGONE: He is my brother. And he is your brother, too.

ISMENE: But think of the danger! Think what Creon will do!

ANTIGONE: Creon is not enough to stand in my way. 15

ISMENE: Ah sister! Oedipus died, everyone hating him For what his own search brought to light, his eyes Ripped out by his own hand; and Iocaste died, His mother and wife at once: she twisted the cords 40 That strangled her life; and our two brothers died, Each killed by the other’s sword. And we are left: But oh, Antigone, Think how much more terrible than these Our own death would be if we should go against Creon 45 And do what he has forbidden! We are only women, We cannot fight with men, Antigone! The law is strong, we must give in to the law In this thing, and in worse. I beg the Dead To forgive me, but I am helpless: I must yield 50 To those in authority. And I think it is dangerous business To be always meddling.

ANTIGONE: If that is what you think, I should not want you, even if you asked to come. You have made your choice, you can be what you want to be. But I will bury him; and if I must die, 55 I say that this crime is holy: I shall lie down With him in death, and I shall be as dear To him as he to me. It is the dead Not the living, who make the longest demands: We die for ever… You may do as you like Since apparently the laws of the god mean nothing to you.

ISMENE: They mean a great deal to me, but I have no strength To break laws that were made for the public good.

ANTIGONE: That must be your excuse, I suppose. But as for me, I will bury the brother I love.

ISMENE: Antigone, I am so afraid for you!

ANTIGONE: You need not be: You have yourself to consider, after all.

ISMENE: But no one must hear of this, you must tell no one! I will keep it a secret, I promise!

ANTIGONE: Oh tell it! Tell everyone Think how they’ll hate you when it all comes out 70 If they learn that you knew about it all the time!

ISMENE: So fiery! You should be cold with fear.

ANTIGONE: Perhaps. But I am doing only what I must.

ISMENE: But can you do it? I say that you cannot.

ANTIGONE Very well: when my strength gives out, I shall do no more. 75

ISMENE: Impossible things should not be tried at all.

ANTIGONE: Go away, Ismene: I shall be hating you soon, and the dead will too, For your words are hateful. Leave me my foolish plan: I am not afraid of the danger; if it means death, 80 It will not be the worst of deaths ––death without honor.

ISMENE: Go then, if you feel that you must. You are unwise, But a loyal friend indeed to those who love you. [Exit into the Palace. ANTIGONE goes off, L. Enter the CHORUS.]

PARODOS CHORUS: Now the long blade of the sun, lying [Strophe 1] 85 Level east to west, touches with glory Thebes of the Seven Gates. Open, unlidded Eye of golden day! O marching light Across the eddy and rush of Dirce’s stream, 2 Striking the white shields of the enemy 90 Thrown headlong backward from the blaze of morning!

2 Dirce: a stream west of Thebes. [Editor’s note] CHORAGOS: 3 Polyneices their commander Roused them with windy phrases, He the wild eagle screaming Insults above our land, 95 His wings their shields of snow, His crest their marshaled helms.

CHORUS: [Antistrophe 1] Against our seven gates in a yawning ring The famished spears came onward in the night; But before his jaws were sated with our blood, 100 Or pine fire took the garland of our towers, He was thrown back; and as he turned, great Thebes–– No tender victim for his noisy power–– Rose like a dragon behind him, shouting war.

CHORAGOS: For God hates utterly 105 The bray of bragging tongues; And when he beheld their smiling, Their swagger of golden helms, The frown of his thunder blasted Their first man from our walls 110

CHORUS: [Strophe 2] We heard his shout of triumph high in the air Turn to a scream; far out in a flaming are He fell with his windy torch, and the earth struck him. And others storming in fury no less than his Found shock of death in the dusty joy of battle 115

CHORAGOS: Seven captains at seven gates Yielded their clanging arms to the god That bends the battle-line and breaks it. These two only, brothers in blood, Face to face in matchless rage, 120 Mirroring each the other’s death, Clashed in long combat.

CHORUS: [Antistrophe 2] But now in the beautiful morning of victory Let Thebes of the many chariots sing for joy! With hearts for dancing we’ll take leave of war: 125 Our temples shall be sweet with hymns of praise,

3 Leader of the Chorus. [Editors’ note] And the long night shall echo with our chorus.

SCENE I

CHORAGUS: But now at last our new King is coming: Creon of Thebes, Menoikeus’ son. In this auspicious dawn of his reign 130 What are the new complexities That shifting Fate has woven for him? What is his counsel? Why has he summoned The old men to hear him? [Enter CREON from the Palace, C. He addresses the CHORUS from the top step.]

CREON: Gentlemen: I have the honor to inform you that our Ship of 135 State, which recent storms have threatened to destroy, has come safely to harbor at last, guided by the merciful wisdom of Heaven. I have summoned you here this morning because I know that I can depend upon you: your devotion to King Laios was absolute; you never hesitated in your duty to our late ruler Oedipus; and when 140 Oedipus died, your loyalty was transferred to his children. Unfortunately, as you know, his two sons, the princes Eteocles and Polyneices, have killed each other in battle, and I, as the next in 145 blood, have succeeded to the full power of the throne.

I am aware, of course, that no Ruler can expect complete

loyalty from his subjects until he has been tested in office.

Nevertheless, I say to you at the very outset that I have nothing but 150 contempt for the kind of Governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State; and as for the man who sets private friendship above the public welfare, ––I have no use for him, either. I call God to witness that if I saw my country headed for ruin, I should not be afraid to speak out plainly; and I need 155 hardly remind you that I would never have any dealings with an enemy of the people. No one values friendship more highly than I; but we must remember that friends made at the risk of wrecking our Ship are not real friends at all. 160 These are my principles, at any rate, and that is why I have made the following decision concerning the sons of Oedipus: Eteocles, who died as a man should die, fighting for his country, is to be buried with full military honors, with all the ceremony that is usual when the greatest heroes die; but his brother Polyneices, who broke 165 his exile to come back with fire and sword against his native city and the shrines of his fathers’ gods, whose one idea was to spill the blood of his blood and sell his own people into slavery–– Polyneices, I say, is to have no burial: no man is to touch him or say the least prayer for 170 him; he shall lie on the plain, unburied; and the birds and the scavenging dogs can do with him whatever they like. This is my command, and you can see the wisdom behind it. As long as I am King, no traitor is going to be honored with the loyal 175 man. But whoever shows by word and deed that he is on the side of the State,––he shall have my respect while he is living and my reverence when he is dead.

CHORAGOS: If that is your will, Creon son of Menoikeus, You have the right to enforce it: we are yours. 180

CREON: That is my will. Take care that you do your part.

CHORAGOS: We are old men: let the younger ones carry it out.

CREON: I do not mean that: the sentries have been appointed.

CHORAGOS: Then what is t that you would have us do?

CREON: You will give no support to whoever breaks this law. 185

CHORAGOS: Only a crazy man is in love with death!

CREON: And death it is; yet money talks, and the wisest Have sometimes been known to count a few coins too many. [Enter SENTRY from L.]

SENTRY: I’ll not say that I’m out of breath from running, King, because every time I stopped to think about what I have to tell you, I felt like going 190 back. And all the time a voice kept saying, “You fool, don’t you know you’re walking straight into trouble?”; and then another voice: “Yes, but if you let somebody else get the news to Creon first, it will be even worse than that for you!” But good sense won out, at least I 195 hope it was good sense, and here I am with a story that makes no sense at all; but I’ll tell it anyhow, because, as they say, what’s going to happen’s going to happen, and––

CREON: Come to the point. What have you to say?

SENTRY: I did not it. I did not see who did it. You must not punish me for what someone else has done.

CREON: A comprehensive defense! More effective, perhaps, If I knew its purpose. Come: what is it?

SENTRY: A dreadful thing… I don’t know how to put it––

CREON: Out with it!

SENTRY: Well, then; The dead man––– Polyneices–– [Pause. The SENTRY is overcome, fumbles for words. CREON waits impassively.] out there–– someone, –– 205 new dust on the slimy flesh! [Pause. No sign from CREON.] Someone has given it burial that way, and Gone … [Long pause. CREON finally speaks with deadly control.]

CREON: And the man who dared do this?

SENTRY: I swear I 210 Do not know! You must believe me! Listen: The ground was dry, not a sign of digging, no, Not a wheel track in the dust, no trace of anyone. It was when they relieved us this morning: and one of them, The corporal, pointed to it. There it was, 215 The strangest–– Look: The body, just mounded over with light dust: you see? Not buried really, but as if they’d covered it Just enough for the ghost’s peace. And no sign Of dogs or any wild animal that had been there. 220

And then what a scene there was! Every man of us Accusing the other: we all proved the other man did it, We all had proof that we could not have done it. We were ready to take hot iron in our hands, Walk through fire, swear by all the gods, It was not I! 225 I do not know who it was, but it was not I! [CREON’s rage has been mounting steadily, but the SENTRY is too intent upon his story to notice it.] And then, when this came to nothing, someone said A thing that silenced us and made us stare Down at the ground: you had to be told the news, And one of us had to do it! We threw the dice, 230 And the bad luck fell to me. So here I am, No happier to be here than you are to have me: Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.

CHORAGOS: I have been wondering, King: can it be that the gods have done this? 235

CREON: [Furiously.] Stop! Must you doddering wrecks Go out of your heads entirely? “The gods!” Intolerable! The gods favor this corpse? Why? How had he served them? 240 Tried to loot their temples, burn their images, Yes, and the whole State, and its laws with it! Is it your senile opinion that the gods love to honor bad men? A pious thought! –– No, from the every beginning There have been those who have whispered together, 245 Stiff-necked anarchists, putting their heads together, Scheming against me in alleys. These are the men, And they have bribed my own guard to do this thing.

Money! [Sententiously.] There’s nothing in the world so demoralizing as money. 250 Find that man, bring him here to me, or your death Will be the least of your problems: I’ll string you up Alive, and there will be certain ways to make you Discover your employer before you die; And the process may teach you e lesson you seem to have missed 260 The dearest profit is sometimes all too dear: That depends on the source. Do you understand me? A fortune won is often misfortune.

SENTRY: King, may I speak?

CREON: Your very voice distresses me.

SENTRY: Are you sure that it is my voice, and not your conscience? 265

CREON: By God, he wants to analyze me now!

SENTRY: It is not what I say, but what has been done, that hurts you.

CREON: You talk too much.

SENTRY: Maybe; but I’ve done nothing.

CREON: Sold your soul for some silver: that’s all you’ve done.

SENTRY: How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong! 270

CREON: Your figures of speech May entertain you now; but unless you bring me the man, You will get little profit from them in the end. [Enter CREON into the Palace.]

SENTRY: “Bring me the man” ––! I’d like nothing better than bringing him the man! 275 But bring him or not, you have seen the last of me here. At any rate, I am safe! [Exit SENTRY.]

ODE I CHORUS: [Strophe 1] Numberless are the world’s wonders, but none More wonderful than man; the stormgray sea Yields to his prows, the huge crests bear him high; 280 Earth, holy and inexhaustible, is graven With shining furrows where his plows have gone Year after year, the timeless labor of stallions.

[Antistrope 1] The lightboned birds and beasts that cling to cover, 285 The lithe fish lighting their reaches of dim water, All are taken, tamed in the net of his mind; The lion on the hill, the wild horse windy-maned, Resign to him; and his blunt yoke has broken The sultry shoulders of the mountain bull.

[Strophe 2] Words also, ant thought as rapid as air, 290 He fashions to his good use; statecraft is his, And his the skill that deflect the arrows of snow, The spears of winter rain: from every wind He has made himself secure––from all but one: In the late wind of death he cannot stand.

[Antistrophe 2] O clear intelligence, force beyond all measure! 295 O fate of man, working both good and evil! When the laws are kept, how proudly his city stands! When the laws are broken, what of his city then? Never may the anarchic man find rest at my hearth, Never be it said that my thoughts are his thoughts. 330

SCENE II

[Re-enter SENTRY leading ANTIGONE.]

CHORAGOS: What does this mean? Surely this captive woman Is the Princess, Antigone. Why should she be taken?

SENTRY: Here is the one who did it! We caught her In the very act of burying him. ––Where is Creon?

CHORAGOS: Just coming from the house. [Enter CREON, C.]

CREON: What has happened? 305 Why have you come back so soon? SENTRY: O King, A man should never be too sure of anything: I would have sworn That you’d not see me here again: your anger Frightened me so, and the things you threatened me with; 310 But how could I tell then That I’d be able to solve the case so soon?

No dice-throwing this time: I was only too glad to come!

Here is this woman. She is the guilty one: We found her trying to bury him. 315 Take her, then; question her; judge her as you will. I am through with the whole thing now, and glad of it.

CREON: But this is Antigone! Why have you brought her here?

SENTRY: She was burying him, I tell you!

CREON: [Severely.] Is this the truth?

SENTRY: I saw her with my own eyes. Can I say more? 320

CREON: The details: come, tell me quickly!

SENTRY: It was like this: After those terrible threats of yours King. We went back and brushed the dust away from the body. The flesh was soft by now, and stinking, 325 So we sat on a hill to windward and kept guard. No napping happened until the white round sun Whirled in the center of the round sky over us: Then, suddenly, A storm of dust roared up from the earth, and the sky 330 Went out, the plain vanished with all its trees In the stinging dark. We closed our eyes and endured it. The whirlwind lasted a long time, but it passed; And then we looked, and there was Antigone! I have seen 335 A mother bird come back to a stripped nest, heard Her crying bitterly a broken note or two For the young ones stolen. Just so, when this girl Found the bare corpse, and all her love’s work wasted, She wept, and cried on heaven to damn the hands 340 That had done this thing And then she brought more dust And sprinkled wine three times for her brother’s ghost. We ran and took her at once. She was not afraid, Not even when we charged her with what she had done. She denied nothing. And this was a comfort to me, 345 And some uneasiness: for it is a good thing To escape from death, but it is no great pleasure To bring death to a friend. Yet I always say There is nothing so comfortable as your own safe skin!

CREON: {Slowly, dangerously.] And you, Antigone, 350 You with your head hanging––do you confess this thing?

ANTIGONE: I do. I deny nothing.

CREON: [To SENTRY:] You may go. {Exit SENTRY. To ANTIGONE:] Tell me, tell me briefly: Had you heard my proclamation touching this matter?

ANTIGONE: It was public. Could I help hearing it? 355

CREON: And yet you dared defy the law.

ANTIGONE: I dared. It was not God’s proclamation. That final Justice That rules the world below makes no such laws.

Your edict, King, was strong, But all your strength is weakness itself against 360 The immortal unrecorded laws of God. They are not merely now: they were, and shall be, Operative for ever, beyond man utterly.

I knew I must die, even without your decree: I am only mortal. And if I must die 365 Now, before it is my time to die, Surely this is no hardship: can anyone Living, as I live, with evil all about me, Think Death less than a friend? This death of mine Is of no importance; but if I had left my brother 370 Lying in death unburied, I should have suffered. Now I do not. You smile at me. Ah Creon, Think me a fool, if you like; but it may well be That a fool convicts me of folly.

CHORAGOS: Like father, like daughter: both headstrong, deaf to reason! 375 She has never learned to yield. She has much to learn. The inflexible heart breaks first, the toughest iron Cracks first, and the wildest horses bend their necks At the pull of the smallest curb. Pride? In a slave? This girl is guilty of a double insolence, 380 Breaking the given laws and boasting of it. Who is the man here, She or I, if this crime goes unpunished? Sister’s child, or more than sister’s child, Or closer yet in blood––she and her sister 385 Win bitter death for this! [To servants:] Go, some of you, Arrest Ismene. I accuse her equally. Bring her: you will find her sniffling in the house there.

Her mind’s a traitor: crimes kept in the dark 390 Cry for light, and the guardian brain shudders: But now much worse than this Is brazen boasting of barefaced anarchy!

ANTIGONE: Creon, what more do you want than my death?

CREON: Nothing. That gives me everything.

ANTIGONE: Then I beg you: kill me. This talking is a great weariness: your words 395 Are distasteful to me, and I am sure that mine Seem so to you. And yet they should not seem so: I should have praise and honor for what I have done. All these men here would praise me Were their lips not frozen shut with fear of you. 400 [Bitterly.] Ah the good fortune of kings, Licensed to say and do whatever they please!

CREON: You are alone here in that opinion.

ANTIGONE: No, they are with me. But they keep their tongues in leash.

CREON: Maybe. But you are guilty, and they are not. 405

ANTIGONE: There is no guilt in reverence for the dead.

CREON: But Eteocles––was he not your brother too?

ANTIGONE: My brother too.

CREON: And you insult his memory?

ANTIGONE: [Softly.] The dead man would not say that I insult it.

CREON: He would: for you honor a traitor as much as him. 410

ANTIGONE: His own brother, traitor or not, and equal in blood.

CREON: He made war on his country. Eteocles defended it.

ANTIGONE: Nevertheless, there are honors due all the dead.

CREON: But not the same for the wicked as for the just.

ANTIGONE: Ah Creon, Creon, 415 Which of us can say what the gods hold wicked?

CREON: An enemy is an enemy, even dead.

ANTIGONE: It is may nature to join in love, not hate.

CREON: {Finally losing patience.] Go join them, then; if you must have your love, Find it in hell! 420

CHORAGOS: But see, Ismene comes: [Enter ISMENE, guarded.] Those tears are sisterly, the cloud That shadows her eyes rains down gentle sorrow.

CREON: You too, Ismene, Snake in my ordered house, sucking my blood 425 Stealthily––and all the time I never knew That these two sisters were aiming at my throne! Ismene, Do you confess your share in this crime, or deny it? Answer me.

ISMENE: Yes, if she will let me say so. I am guilty. 430

ANTIGONE: [Coldly.] No, Ismene. You have no right to say so. You would not help me, and I will not have you help me.

ISMENE: But now I know what you meant; and I am here To join you, to take my share of punishment.

ANTIGONE: The dead man and the gods who rule the dead 435 Know whose act this was. Words are not friends.

ISMENE: Do you refuse me, Antigone? I want to die with you: I too have a duty that I must discharge to the dead.

ANTIGONE: You shall not lessen my death by sharing it.

ISMENE: What do I care for life when you are dead? 440

ANTIGONE: Ask Creon. You’re always hanging on his opinions.

ISMENE: You are laughing at me. Why, Antigone?

ANTIGONE: It’s a joyless laughter, Ismene.

ISMENE: But can I do nothing?

ANTIGONE: Yes. Save yourself. I shall not envy you. There are those who will praise you; I shall have honor, too. 445

ISMENE: But we are equally guilty!

ANTIGONE: No more, Ismene. You are alive, but I belong to Death.

CREON: {To the CHORUS:] Gentlemen, I beg you to observe these girls: One has just now lost her mind; the other, It seem, has never had a mind at all. 450

ISMENE: Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver, King.

CREON: Yours certainly did, when you assumed guild with the guilty!

ISMENE: But how could I go on living without her?

CREON: You are. She is already dead.

ISMENE: But your own son’s bride!

CREON: There are places enough for him to push his plow. 455 I want no wicked women for my sons!

ISMENE: O dearest Haimon, how your father wrong you!

CREON: I’ve had enough of your childish talk of marriage!

CHORAGOS: Do you really intend to steal this girl from your son?

CREON: No; Death will do that for me.

CHORAGOS: Then she must die? 460

CREON: [Ironically.] You dazzle me. ––But enough of this talk! [To GUARDS:] You, there, take them away and guard them well: For they are but women, and even brave men run When they see Death coming. [Exeunt ISMENE, ANTIGONE, and GUARDS.]

ODE II

CHORUS: [Strophe 1] Fortunate is the man who has never tasted God’s vengeance! 465 Where once the anger of heaven has struck, that house is shaken For ever: damnation rises behind each child Like a wave cresting out of the black northeast, When the long darkness under sea roars up And bursts drumming death upon the windwhipped sand. 470

[Antistrophe 1] I have seen this gathering sorrow from time long past Loom upon Oedipus’ children: generation from generation Takes the compulsive rage of the enemy god. So lately this last flower of Oedipus’ line Drank the sunlight! but now a passionate word 475 And a handful of dust have closed up all its beauty

What mortal arrogance [Strophe 2] Transcends the wrath of Zeus? Sleep cannot lull him, nor the effortless long months Of the timeless gods: but he is young for ever, 480 And his house is the shining day of high Olympos. All that is and shall be, And all the past, is his. No pride on earth is free of the curse of heaven.

The straying dreams of men [Antistrophe 2] 485 May bring them ghosts of joy: But as they drowse, the waking embers burn them; Or they walk with fixed eyes, as blind men walk. But the ancient wisdom speaks for our own time: Fate works most for woe 490 With Folly’s fairest show. Man’s little pleasure is the spring of sorrow.

SCENE III

CHORAGOS: But here is Haimon, King, the last of all your sons. Is it grief for Antigone, that brings him here, And bitterness at being robbed of his bride? 495 [Enter HAIMON.]

CREON: We shall soon see, and no need of diviners. ––Son, You have heard my final judgment on that girl: Have you come here hating me, or have you come With deference and with love, whatever I do?

HAIMON: I am your son, father. You are my guide. 500 You make things clear for me, and I obey you. No marriage means more to me than your continuing wisdom.

CREON: Good. That is the way to behave: subordinate Everything else, my son, to your father’s will This is what a man prays for, that he may get 505 Sons attentive and dutiful in his house, Each one hating his father’s enemies, Honoring his father’s friends. But if his sons Fail him, if they turn out unprofitably, What has he fathered but trouble for himself 510 And amusement for the malicious? So you are right Not to lose your head over this woman. Your pleasure with her would soon, grow cold, Haimon, And then you’d have a hellcat in bed and elsewhere. Let her find her husband in Hell! 515 Of all the people in this city, only she Has had contempt for my law and broken it.

Do you want me to show myself weak before the people? Or to break my sworn word? No, and I will not. The woman dies. 520 I suppose she’ll plead “family ties.” Well, let her. If I permit my own family to rebel, How shall I earn the world’s obedience? Show me the man who keeps his house in hand, He’s fit for public authority. I’ll have no dealings 525 With law-breakers, critics of the government: Whoever is chosen to govern should be obeyed–– Must be obeyed, in all things, great and small, Just and unjust! O Haimon, The man who knows how to obey, and that man only, 530 Knows how to give commands when the time comes. You can depend on him, no matter how fast The spears come: he’s a good soldier, he’ll stick it out.

Anarchy, anarchy! Show me a greater evil! This is why cities tumble and the great houses rain down, 535 This is what scatters armies!

No, no: good lives are made so by discipline. We keep the laws then, and the lawmakers, And no woman shall seduce us. If we must lose, Let’s lose to a man, at least! Is a woman stronger than we? 540

CHORAGOS: Unless time has rusted my wits, What you say, King, is said with point and dignity. HAIMON: [Boyishly earnest.] Father: Reason is God’s crowing gift to man, and you are right To warn me against losing mine. I cannot say–– I hope that I shall never want to say! ––that you 545 Have reasoned badly. Yet there are other men Who can reason, too; and their opinions might be helpful. You are not in a position to know everything That people say or do, or what they feel: Your temper terrifies them––everyone 550 Will tell you only what you like to hear. But I, at any rate, can listen; and I have heard them Muttering and whispering in the dark abut this girl. They say no woman has ever, so unreasonably, Died so shameful a death for a generous act: 555 “She covered her brother’s body. Is this indecent? She kept him from dogs and vultures. Is this a crime? Death? ––She should have all the honor that we can give her!”

This is the way they talk out there in the city.

You must believe me: 560 Nothing is closer to me than your happiness. What could be closer? Must not any son Value his father’s fortune as his father does his? I beg you, do not be unchangeable: Do not believe that you alone can be right. 565 The man who thinks that, The man who maintains that only he has the power To reason correctly, the gift to speak, to soul–– A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.

It is not reason never to yield to reason! 570

In flood time you can see how some trees bend, And because they bend, even their twigs are safe, While stubborn trees are torn up, roots and all. And the same thing happens in sailing: Make your sheet fast, never slacken,––and over you go, 575 Head over heels and under: and there’s your voyage. Forget you are angry! Let yourself be moved! I know I am young; but please let me say this: The ideal condition Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct; 580 But since we are all too likely to go astray, The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.

CHORAGOS: You will do well to listen to him, King, If what he says is sensible. And you, Haimon, Must listen to your father. ––Both speak well. 585

CREON: You consider it right for a man of my years and experience To go to school to a boy?

HAIMON: It is not right If I am wrong. But if I am young, and right, What does my age matter?

CREON: You think it right to stand up for an anarchist? 590

HAIMON: Not at all. I pay no respect to criminals.

CREON: Then she is not a criminal?

HAIMON: The City proposes to teach me how to rule?

CREON: And the City proposes to teach me how to rule?

HAIMON: Ah. Who is it that’s talking like a boy now? 595

CREON: My voice is the one voice giving orders in this City!

HAIMON: It is no City if it takes orders from one voice.

CREON: The State is the King!

HAIMON: Yes, if the State is a desert. [Pause.]

CREON: This boy, it seems, has sold out to w woman. HAIMON: If you are a woman: my concern is only for you. 600

CREON: So? Your “concern”! In a public brawl with your father!

HAIMON: How about you, in a public brawl with justice?

CREON: With justice, when all that I do is within my rights?

HAIMON: You have no right to trample on God’s right.

CREON: [Completely out of control.] Fool, adolescent fool! Taken in by a woman! 605

HAIMON: You’ll never see me taken in by anything vile.

CREON: Every word you say is for her!

HAIMON: [Quietly, darkly.] And for you. And for me. And for the gods under the earth.

CREON: You’ll never marry her while she lives.

HAIMON: Then she must die. ––But her death will cause another. 610

CREON: Another? Have you lost your senses? Is this an open threat?

HAIMON: There is no threat in speaking to emptiness.

CREON: I swear you’ll regret this superior tone of yours! You are the empty one!

HAIMON: If you were not my father, 615 I’d say you were perverse.

CREON: You girlstruck fool, don’t play at words with me!

HAIMON: I am sorry. You prefer silence.

CREON: Now, by God––! I swear, by all the gods in heaven above us, You’ll watch it, I swear you shall [To the SERVANTS:] Bring her out! 620 Bring the woman out! Let her die before his eyes! Here, this instant, with her bridegroom beside her!

HAIMON: Not here, no; she will not die here, King. And you will never see my face again. Go on raving as long as you’ve a friend to endure you. 625 [Exit HAIMON.] CHORAGOS: Gone, gone. Creon, a young man in a rage is dangerous!

CREON: Let him do, or dream to do, more than a man can. He shall not save these girls from death.

CHORAGOS: These girls? You have sentenced them both?

CREON: No, you are right 630 I will not kill the one whose hands are clean.

CHORAGOS: But Antigone?

CREON: [Somberly.] I will carry her far away Out there in the wilderness, and lock her Living in a vault of stone. She shall have food, As the custom is, to absolve the State of her death. 635 And there let her pray to the gods of hell: They are her only gods: Perhaps they will show her an escape from death, Or she may learn, though late, That piety shown the dead is pity in vain. 640 [Exit CREON.]

ODE III

CHORUS: Love, unconquerable [Strophe] Waster of rich men, keeper Of warm lights and all-night vigil In the soft face of a girl: Sea-wanderer, forest-visitor! Even the pure Immortals cannot escape you, And mortal man, in his one day’s dusk, Trembles before your glory.

Surely you swerve upon ruin [Antistrope] The just man’s consenting heart, 650 As here you have made bright anger Strike between father and son–– And none has conquered but Love! A girl’s glance working the will of heaven: Pleasure to her alone who mock us, 655 Merciless Aphrodite.4

SCENE IV

CHORAGOS: [As ANTIGONE enter guarded.] But I can no longer stand in awe of this, Nor, seeing what I see, keep back my tears. Here is Antigone, passing to that chamber Where all find sleep at last 660

ANTIGONE: Look upon me, friends, and pity me [Strophe 1] Turning back at the night’s edge to say Good-by to the sun that shines for me no longer; Now sleepy Death Summons me down to Acheron,5 that cold shore: 665 There is no bridesong there, nor any music.

4 Goddess of Love. [Editors’ note] 5 A river of the underworld, which was ruled by Hades. [Editors’ note] CHORUS: Yet not unpraised, not without a kind of honor, You walk at last into the underworld; Untouched by sickness, broken by no sword. What woman has ever found your way to death? 670

ANTIGONE: [Antistrophe 1] How often I have heard the store of Niobe,6 Tantalos’ wretched daughter, how the stone Clung fast about her, ivy-close: and they say The rain falls endlessly And rifting soft snow; her tears are never done. 675 I feel the loneliness of her death in mine.

CHORUS: But she was born of heaven, and you Are woman, woman-born. If her death is yours, A mortal woman’s, is this not for you Glory in our world and in the world beyond? 680

ANTIGONE: You laugh at me. Ah, friends, friends, [Strophe2] Can you not wait until I am dead? O Thebes, O men many-charioted, in love with Fortune, Dear spring of Dirce, sacred Theban grove, Be witnesses for me, denied all pity, 685 Unjustly judge! and think a word of love For her whose path turns Under dark earth, where there are no more tears.

CHORUS: You have passed beyond human daring and come at last Into a place of stone where Justice sits 690 I cannot tell What shape of your father’s guilt appears in this.

ANTIGONE: [Antistrophe 2] You have touched it at last: that bridal bed Unspeakable, horror of son an mother mingling: 695 Their crime, infection of all our family! O Oedipus, father and brother! Your marriage strikes from the grave to murder mine. I have been a stranger here in my own land:

6 Niobe boasted of her numerous children, provoking Leto, the mother of Apollo, to destroy them. Niobe wept profusely, and finally was turned into a stone on Mount Sipylus, whose streams are her tears. [Editors’ note] All my life The blasphemy of my birth has followed me. 700

CHORUS: Reverence is a virtue, but strength Lives in established law: that must prevail. You have made your choice, Your death is the doing of your conscious hand.

ANTIGONE: [Epode] Then let me go, since all your words are bitter, 705 And the very light of the sun is cold to me. Lead me to my vigil, where I must have Neither love nor lamentation; no song, but silence. [CREON interrupts impatiently.]

CREON: If dirges and planned lamentations could put of death, Men would be singing for ever. [To the SERVANTS:] Take her, go! 710 You know your orders: take her to the vault And leave her alone there. And if she lives or dies, That’s her affair, not ours: our hands are clean.

ANTIGONE: O tomb, vaulted bride-bed in eternal rock, Soon I shall be with my own again 715 Where Persephone 7 welcome the thin ghost underground: And I shall see my father again, and you, mother, And dearest Polyneices–– dearest indeed To me, since it was my hand That washed him clean and poured the ritual wine: 720 And my reward is death before my time!

And yet, as men’s hearts know, I have done no wrong, I have not sinned before God. Or if I have, I shall know the truth in death. But if the guilt Lies upon Creon who judged me, then, I pray, 725 May his punishment equal my own.

CHORAGOS: O passionate heart, Unyielding, tormented still by the same winds!

7 Queen of the underworld. [Editors’ note] CREON: Her guards shall have good cause to regret their delaying.

ANTIGONE: Ah! That voice you no reason to think voice of death!

CREON: I can give you no reason to think you are mistaken. 730

ANTIGONE: Thebes, and you my fathers’ gods, And rulers of Thebes, you see me now, the last Unhappy daughter of a line of kings, Your kings, led away to death. You will remember What things I suffer, and at what men’s hands, 735 Because I would not transgress the laws of heaven. [To the GUARDS, simply:] Come: let us wait no longer. [Exit ANTIGONE, L., guarded.]

ODE IV

CHORUS: All Danae’s beauty was locked away {Strophe 1] In a brazen cell where the sunlight could not come: A small room, still as any grave, enclosed her. 740 Yet she was a princess too, And Zeus in a rain of gold poured love upon her. O child, child, No power in wealth or war Or tough sea-blackened ships 745 Can prevail against untiring Destiny!

{Antistrophe 1] And Dryas’ son 8 also, that furious king, Bore the god’s prisoning anger for his pride: Sealed up by Dionysos in deaf stone, His madness died among echoes. 750 So at the last he learned what dreadful power His tongue had mocked: For he had profaned the revels, And fired the wrath of the nine Implacable Sisters9 that love the sound of the flute. 755

8 Drays’ son: Lycurgus, King of Thrace. [Editors’ note] 9 The Muses. [Editors’ note] [Strophe 2] And old men tell a half-remembered tale Of horror done where a dark ledge splits the sea And a double surf beats on the gray shores: How a king’s new woman, 10 sick With hatred for the queen he had imprisoned, 760 Ripped out his two son’s eyes with her bloody hands While grinning Ares 11 watched the shuttle plunge Four times: four blind wounds crying for revenge, [Antistrophe 2] Crying, tears and blood mingled, ––Piteously born, Those sons whose mother was of heavenly birth! 765 Her father was the god of the North Wind And she was cradled by gales, She raced with young colts on the glittering hills And walked untrammeled in the open light: But in her marriage deathless Fate found means 770 To build a tomb like yours for all her joy.

SCENE V

[Enter blind TEIRESIAS, led by a boy. The opening speeches of TEIRESIAS should be in singsong contrast to the realistic lines of CREON.]

TEIRESIAS: This is the way the blind man comes, Princes, Princes, Lock-step, two heads lit by the eyes of one.

CREON: What new thing have you tell us, old Teiresias?

TEIRESIAS: I have much to tell you: listen to the prophet, Creon. 775

CREON: I admit my debt to you. But what have you to say?

TEIRESIAS: Listen, Creon: I was sitting in my chair of augury, at the place Where the birds gather about me. They were all a-chatter, As is their habit, when suddenly I heard A strange note in their jangling, a scream, a 785

10 Eidothea, second wife of King Phineus, blinded her stepsons. (Their mother, Cleopatra, had been imprisoned in a cave.).Phineus was the son of a king, and Cleopatra, his first wife, was the daughter of Boreas, the North Wind; but this illustrious ancestry could not protect his sons from violence and darkness. [Editors’ note] 11 God of war. [Editors’ note] Whirring fury; I knew that they were fighting, Tearing each other, dying In a whirlwind of wings clashing. And I was afraid. I began the rites of burnt-offering at the altar, But Hephaistos 12 failed me: instead of bright flame, 790 There was only the sputtering slime of the fat thigh-flesh Melting: the entrails dissolved in gray smoke, The bare bone burst from the welter. And no blaze!

This was a sign from heaven. My boy described it, Seeing for me as I see for others. 795

I tell you, Creon, you yourself have brought This new calamity upon us. Our hearths and altars Are stained with the corruption of dogs and carrion birds That glut themselves on the corpse of Oedipus’ son. The gods are deaf when we pray to them, their fire 800 Recoils from our offering, their birds of omen Have no cry of comfort, for they are gorged With the thick blood of the dead. O my son, These are no trifles! Think: all men make mistakes, But a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, 805 And repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

Give in to the dead man, then: do not fight with a corpse–– What glory is it to kill a man who is dead? Think, I beg you: It is for your own good that I speak as I do. 810 You should be able to yield for your own good.

CREON: It seems that prophets have made me their especial province. All my life long I have been a kind of butt for dull arrows Of doddering fortune-tellers! No, Teiresias: 815 If your birds––if the great eagles of God himself Should carry him stinking bit by bit to heaven, I would not yield. I am not afraid of pollution: No man can defile the gods. Do what you will, Go into business, make money, speculate 820 In India gold or that synthetic gold from Sardis, Get rich otherwise than by my consent to bury him. Teiresias, it is a sorry thing when a wise man

12 God of fire. [Editors’ note] Sells his wisdom, lets out his words for hire!

TEIRESIAS: Ah Creon! Is there no man left in the world–– 825

CREON: To do what? ––Come, let’s have the aphorism!

TEIRESIAS: No man who knows that wisdom outweighs any wealth?

CREON: As surely as bribes are baser than any baseness.

TEIRESIAS: You are sick, Creon! You are deathly sick!

CREON: As you say: it is not my place to challenge a prophet. 830

TEIRESIAS: Yet you have said my prophecy is for sale.

CREON: The generation of prophets has always loved gold.

TEIRESIAS: The generation of kings has always loved brass.

CREON: You forget yourself! You are speaking to your King.

TEIRESIAS: I know it. You are a king because of me. 835

CREON: You have a certain skill; but you have sold out.

TEIRESIAS: King, you will drive me to words that––

CREON: Say them, say them! Only remember: I will not pay you for them.

TEIRESIAS: No, you will find them too costly. No doubt. Speak: Whatever you say, you will not change my will.

TEIRESIAS: Then take this, and take it to heart! The time is not far off when you shall pay back Corpse for corpse, flesh of your own flesh. You have thrust the child of this world into living night, You have kept from the gods below the child that is theirs: 845 The one on a grave before her death, the other, Dead, denied the grave. This is your crime: And the Furies and the dark gods of Hell Are swift with terrible punishment for you.

Do you want to buy me now, Creon?

Not many days, 850 And your house will be full of men and women weeping, And curses will be hurled at you from far Cities grieving for sons unburied, left to rot Before the walls of Thebes.

These are my arrows, Creon: they are all for you. 855 [To BOY:] But come, child: lead me home. Let him waste his fine anger upon younger men. Maybe he will learn at last To control a wiser tongue in a better head. [Exit TEIRESIAS.]

CHORAGOS: The old man has gone, King, but his words 860 Remain to plague us. I am old, too, But I cannot remember that he was ever false.

CREON: That is true… . It troubles me. Oh it is hard to give in! but it is worse To risk everything for stubborn pride. 865

CHORAGOS: Creon: take my advice.

CREON: What shall I do?

CHORAGOS: Go quickly: free Antigone from her vault And build a tomb for the body of Polyneices.

CREON: You would have me do this?

CHORAGOS: Creon, yes! And it must be done at once: God moves 870 Swiftly to cancel the folly of stubborn men.

CREON: It is hard to deny the heart! But i Will do it: I will not fight with destiny.

CHORAGOS: You must go yourself, you cannot leave it to others.

CREON: I will go. ––Bring axes, servants: 875 Come with me to the tomb. I buried her, i Will set her free. Oh quickly! My mind misgives–– The laws of the gods are mighty, and a man must serve them To the last day of his life! 880 [Exit CREON.]

PAEN 13

CHORAGOS: God of many names [Strophe 1]

CHORUS: O Iacchos son of Kadmeian Semele O born of the Thunder! Guardian of the West Regent of Eleusis’ plain O Prince of maenad Thebes

13 A hymn here dedicated to Iacchos (also called Dionysos). His father was Zeus, his mother was Semele, daughter of Kadmos. Iacchos’ worshippers were the Maenads, whose cry was “Evohe evohe.’ [Editors’ note] and the Dragon Field by rippling Ismenos:14 885

CHORAGOS: God of many names [Antistrophe 1]

CHORUS: the flame of torches flares on our hills the nymphs of Iacchos dance at the spring of Castalia: 15 from the vine-close mountain come ah come in ivy: Evohe evohe! Sings through the streets of Thebes 890

CHORAGOS: God of many names [Strophe 2]

CHORUS: Iacchos of Thebes heavenly Child of Semele bride of the Thunderer! The shadow of plague is upon us: come with clement feet oh come from Parnasos down the long slopes across the lamenting water 895

CHORAGOS: [Antistrophe 2] Io Fire! Chorister of the throbbing stars! O purest among the voices of the night! Thou son of God, blaze for us!

CHORUS: Come with choric rapture of circling Maenads Who cry Io Iacche! 900 God of many names!

EXODOS

[Enter MESSENGER, L.]

14 A river east of Thebes. From a dragon’s teeth (sown near the river) there sprang men who became the ancestors of the Theban nobility. [Editors’ note] 15 A spring on Mountain Parnasos. [Editors’ note] MESSENGER: Men of the line of Kadmos 16you who live Near Amphion’s citadel: I cannot say Of any condition of human life “This is fixed, This is clearly good, or bad.” Fate raises up, And Fate casts down the happy and unhappy alike: 905 No man can foretell his Fate. Take the case of Creon: Creon was happy once, as I count happiness: Victorious in battle, sole governor of the land, Fortunate father of children nobly born. And now it has all gone from him! Who can say 910 That a man is still alive when his life’s joy fails? He is a walking dead man. Grant him rich, Let him live like a king in his great house: If his pleasure is gone, is would not give So much as the shadow of smoke for all he owns. 915

CHORAGOS: Your words hint at sorrow: what is your news for us?

MESSENGER: They are dead. The living are guilt of their death.

CHORAGOS: Who is guilty? Who is dead? Speak!

MESSENGER: Haimon. Haimon is dead; and the land that killed him Is his own hand.

CHORAGOS: His father’s? or his own? 920

MESSENGER: His own, driven mad by the murder his father had done.

CHORAGOS: Teiresias, Teiresias, how clearly you saw it all!

MESSENGER: This is my news: you must draw what conclusions you can from it.

16 Kadmos, who sowed the dragon’s teeth, was the founder of Thebes; Amphion played so sweetly on his lyre that he charmed stones to form a wall around. [Editors’ note] CHORAGOS: But look: Eurydice, our Queen: Has she overheard us? 925 [Enter UERYDICE from the Palace, C.]

EURIDICE: I have heard something, friends: As I was unlocking the gate of Pallas’ 17 shrine, For I needed her help today, I heard a voice Telling of some new sorrow. And I fainted There at the temple with all my maidens about me. 930 But speak again: whatever it is, I can bear it: Grief and I are no strangers.

MESSENGER: Dearest Lady, I will tell you plainly all that I have seen. I shall not try to comfort you: what is the use, Since comfort could lie only in what is not true? 935 The truth is always best. I went with Creon To the outer plain where Polyneices was lying, No friend to pity him, his body shredded by dogs. We made our prayers in that place to Hecate And Pluto, 18 that they would be merciful. And we bathed 940 The corpse with holy water, and we brought Fresh-broken branches to burn what was left of it, And upon the urn we heaped up a towering barrow Of the earth of his own land. When we are done, we ran To the vault where Antigone lay on her couch of stone. 945 One of the servants had gone ahead, And while he was yet far off he heard a voice Grieving within the chamber, and he came back And told Creon. And as the King went closer, 950 The air was full of wailing, the words lost, And he begged us to make all haste. “Am I a prophet?” He said, weeping, “And must I walk this road, The saddest of all that I have gone before? My son’s voice calls me on. Oh quickly, quickly! Look through the crevice there, and tell me 955 If it is Haimon, or some deception of the gods!”

We obeyed; and in the cavern’s farthest corner We saw her lying:

17 Pallas Athene, goddess of wisdom. [Editors’ note] 18 Hecate and Pluto (also known as Hades) were deities of the underworld. [Editors’ note] She had made a noose of her fine linen veil And hanged herself. Haimon lay beside hers, 960 His arms about her waist, lamenting her, His love lost under ground, crying out That his father has stolen her away from him.

When Creon saw him the tears rushed to his eyes And he called to him: “What have you done, child? Speak to me. 965 What are you thinking that makes your eyes so stranger? O my son, my son, I come to you on my knees!” But Haimon spat in his face. He said not a word, Staring–– And suddenly drew his sword And lunged. Creon shrank back, the blade missed; and the boy, 970 Desperate against himself , drove it half its length Into his own side, and fell. And as he died He gathered Antigone close in his arms again. Choking, his blood bright red on her white cheek. And now he lies dead with the dead, and she is his 975 At last, his bride in the houses of the dead. [Exit EURDICE into the Palace.]

CHORAGOS: She has left us without a word. What can this mean?

MESSENGER: It troubles me, too; yet she knows what is best, Her grief is too great for public lamentation, And doubtless she has gone to her chamber to weep 980 For dead son, leading her maidens in his dirge.

CHORAGOS: It may be so: but I fear this deep silence.

MESSENGER: [Pause.] I will see what she is doing. I will go in. [Exit MESSENGER into the Palace.]

[Enter CREON with attendants, bearing HAIMON’S body.]

CHORAGOS: But here is the King himself: oh look at him, Bearing his own damnation in his arms. 985

CREON: Nothing you say can touch me any more. My own blind heart has brought me From darkness to final darkness. Here you see The father murdering, the murdered son–– And all my civic wisdom! 990

Haimon my son, so young, so young to die, I was the fool, not you; and you died for me.

CHORAGOS: That is the truth; but you were late in learning it.

CREON: This truth is hard to bear. Surely a god Has crushed me beneath the hugest weight of heaven, 995 And driven me headlong a barbaric way To trample out the thing I held most dear.

The pains that men will take to come to pain! [Enter MESSENGER from the Palace.]

MESSENGER: The burden you carry in your hands is heavy, But it is not all: you will find more in your house. 1000

CREON: What burden worse than this shall I find there?

MESSENGER: The Queen is dead.

CREON: O port of death, deaf world, Is there no pity for me? And you, Angel of evil, I was dead, and your words are death again. Is it true, boy? Can it be true? 1005 Is my wife dead? Has death bred death?

MESSENGER: You can see for yourself. [The doors are opened, and the body of EURDICE is disclosed within.]

CREON: Oh pity! All true, all true, and more than I can bear! 1010 O my wife, my son!

MESSENGER: She stood before the altar, and her heart Welcome the knife her own hand guided. And a great cry burst from her lips for Megareus 19 dead, And for Haimon dead, her sons; and her last breath 1015 Was a curse for their father, the murdered of her sons. And she fell, and the dark flowed in through her closing eyes.

CREON: O God, I am sick with fear. Are there no swords here? Has no one a blow for me?

MESSENGER: Her curse is upon you for the deaths of both. 1020

CREON: It is right that it should be. I alone am guilty. I know it, and I say it. Lead me in, Quickly, friends. I have neither life nor substance. Lead me in.

CHORAGOS: You are right, if there can be right in so much wrong. 1025 The briefest way is best in a world of sorrow.

CREON: Let it come, Let death come quickly, and be kind to me. I would not ever see the sun again.

CHORAGOS: All that will come when it will; but we, meanwhile, 1030 Have much to do. Leave the future to itself.

CREON: All my heart was in that prayer!

CHORAGOS: Then do not pray any more: the sky is deal

CREON: Lead me away. I have been rash and foolish. I have killed my son and my wife. 1035 I look for comfort; my comfort lies here dead. Whatever my hands have touched has come to nothing. Fate has brought all my pride to a thought of dust.

19 Megareus, brothe of Haimon, had died in the assault on Thebes. [Editors’ note] [As CREON is being led into the house, the CHORAGOS advances and speaks directly to the audience.]

CHORAGOS: There is no happiness where there is no wisdom; No wisdom but in submission to the gods. 1040 Big words are always punished, And proud men in old age learn to be wise.

5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone Bloom's Literature

Antigone

The story of Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus by his wife and mother, Jocasta, tells the final episode in a series of events also treated by Aeschylus in The Seven against Thebes. (See below for a critical commentary on Antigone.) As the legend has it, the sons of Oedipus by Jocasta, Eteocles and Polynices, were reared by their uncle Creon and succeeded to his power while he was still living. Although they were supposed to rule by turns, the brothers fell out and ended up hating each other. When Eteocles became king, he exiled Polynices. Enraged, Polynices gathered a military force in Argos and besieged his native city. Aeschylus tells the story of that battle and how the war between the brothers fulfilled a curse upon them that they would die by each other's hands. As that play ends, the elders of Thebes have decreed that Polynices' body cannot be buried because he had invaded his native city. His sister, Antigone, disobeys their edict.

As Sophocles handles the same material, after the battle in which the brothers die at each others' hands, Creon reassumes the city's throne. He issues an edict granting a hero's funeral to Eteocles, but decrees that Polynices' body must remain unburied. Without the benefit of a proper funeral, the Greeks thought, a dead person's spirit could not find rest in the underworld but would be condemned to wander as a forlorn ghost for all eternity. Unswerving in her view of her sisterly duty, therefore, Antigone opposes her will against that of her uncle and king, confident in the god-ordained justice of her cause. This situation is further complicated by Antigone's love for her cousin, Creon's son Haemon, and Haemon's for her.

The play opens as Antigone and her sister Ismene discuss their brother's announced funeral arrangements, and Antigone announces her determination to disobey Creon. Ismene vainly tries to dissuade Antigone and convince her of the folly of defying the state.

The sisters exit, and the chorus fills in the audience on the background of the situation as they remind their hearers of the material that appeared in Seven against Thebes. Creon then enters, fills in the material from Oedipus Tyrannus that the audience needs to follow the current play, and reasserts his decision vis-à-vis the burials.

A guard rushes onstage and, after excusing himself as well as he can, reports that someone has disobeyed Creon's prohibition and performed the burial ritual by sprinkling dust on Polynices' corpse. The guards have no clue as to who the perpetrator might be.

https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=30249&assetType=article 1/5 5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone The credulous chorus suggests that a god may have done it. Creon scornfully rejects that theory and dismisses the guard with threats. The chorus gossips about the goings-on, and a guard reenters, dragging along Antigone, whom he has caught attempting to bury the body after the guards had cleaned off the dust of her first effort. After a discussion of the apparent conflict between human and divine law in this case, Creon condemns Antigone to death. Ismene comes forward, and though she has not disobeyed Creon's edict, she asks to die as well rather than be bereft of her sister.

As Creon and Ismene discuss Creon's sentence, Ismene asks him if he will slay his own son's betrothed. Creon is inflexible, and Antigone cries out to Haemon that his father wrongs him in depriving the young man of his bride.

Haemon enters and respectfully attempts to dissuade his father from executing Antigone, not on the grounds of the young man's love for her, but rather on the grounds of the dark rumors that have been circulating among the citizens. The citizens are displeased with Creon's judgment, says Haemon, and wisdom should heed that displeasure. Creon asserts the authority of high office and disregards his son's good advice. He repeats his determination to execute Antigone. Haemon responds that Antigone's death will destroy another, and Creon, interpreting his son's words as a threat, calls for Antigone to be executed before Haemon's eyes. Haemon promises that his father will see him no more and exits.

Creon announces his intention to deal with Antigone by imprisoning her in a cave with only as much food "as piety prescribes." As Antigone is led away, the chorus weeps for her and tries to comfort her by reminding her that, as mistress of her own fate, her death will be glorious—even godlike. Antigone perceives these well-intentioned but ill-conceived remarks as mockery. She reviews her own behavior and that of Creon and concludes that she has done the proper thing. Creon orders her led away, and the chorus draws analogies to similar fates suffered by predecessors from the annals of Greek mythology.

The blind prophet, Teiresias, now enters, led by a boy. He tells Creon that the city of Thebes has been polluted by carrion from the unburied corpse of Polynices. He warns Creon that he stands on the edge of a fatal decision, and advises him to allow the burial. Creon pridefully refuses and insults Teiresias. The seer foretells the death of one of Creon's children as the exchange of a corpse for a corpse.

Teiresias exits, and the citizen chorus advises Creon to release Antigone and bury Polynices. Finally he agrees to accept their advice, orders Polynices' burial, and rushes to release Antigone. The chorus prays to the gods, but a messenger arrives bearing sad tidings. Creon's wife Eurydice appears, and the messenger makes his report.

The body of Polynices was buried, but as the soldiers finished that task, they heard a loud voice wailing at the blocked entrance to Antigone's cavern prison. When the guards entered the prison, they found that Antigone had hanged herself and that Haemon was embracing her suspended body. Creon entered and called out to Haemon. Furious with his father, Haemon drew his sword and rushed at Creon, who fled to

https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=30249&assetType=article 2/5 5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone avoid its stroke. Desperate, Haemon fell on his sword and committed suicide. As he died, he once again embraced the corpse of Antigone.

Haemon's mother, Eurydice, reenters the palace. The chorus imagines that she wishes to grieve in private, but they hear no keening and send the messenger to investigate.

Creon reenters, bemoaning his own folly. The messenger returns with the news that Eurydice has also committed suicide, and the palace doors swing open to reveal her corpse. Creon continues grieving and is led away. The chorus ends the play with advice: "Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness." The gods must be strictly reverenced, the boasts of prideful men are punished harshly, and in old age those who have been chastened like Creon may finally learn wisdom.

The fates of Antigone, Haemon, Eurydice, and Creon must have instilled in the Athenian audience the tragic emotions of pity and fear that Aristotle described in his Poetics. Whether or not this play also takes the next step in the emotional progression that Aristotle attributes to successful tragedy—that is, catharsis, an emotional cleansing that drains the audience of pity and fear—the reader will have to decide.

Commentary

The major theme of Sophocles' Antigone is the limits of the polis (city-state). Antigone's uncle Creon (whose name means, generically, "ruler") decrees that the dead Eteocles represented Thebes, and that Polynices was the enemy of Thebes; therefore, no one may offer Polynices burial rites. His decree, as Antigone insists, cuts heedlessly across family ties and dishonors the laws of the gods of the underworld. Here then is the conflict between the family as an integral unit and the polis that, in its extreme form, recognizes only citizens and laws that apply to citizens.

Antigone's perspective suggests that the laws of the polis can go only so far in ignoring the ancient ties of kin. By offering burial rites to her brother, she insists that the city cannot deny her the right to honor her dead kin—something more primal and essential than the polis's decrees, just as the laws of the gods of the underworld represent a primal power that must not be disregarded by the polis. It is important here that Antigone is female, especially connected with the family and less so with the polis, that is, the public sphere of government. Not only Antigone but Tiresias also is connected with those more primal powers, and he understands the need to honor them. Sophocles thus recasts the old conflict between the ruler's and the prophet's authority (a motif as old as Homer) to fit the present conflict between polis and kinship ties, a ruler's decree and the laws of the dead. The central irony of the play is that when his own son dies, Creon will learn the value of kin, but by then it is too late.

As Antigone comes into conflict with her community's ruler, she affords yet another example of the Sophoclean hero, whose chief characteristic is refusal to concede or give in: an unconquerable stubbornness that typically leads to his or her (magnificent) destruction. The suitable character for https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=30249&assetType=article 3/5 5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone comparison is Oedipus, who persists in learning his own origins, relentlessly seeking this object until it destroys him. Likewise, Antigone is so uncompromising that she will not renounce the actions demanded by her convictions, even when threatened with death. This refusal to compromise is the quintessential heroic, but also antisocial, trait. The hero, as also in the case of Sophocles' Ajax, refuses to accept the communis opinio, the reasonable viewpoint of consoling, moderating influences around him or her, but presses on unbendingly to his or her self-chosen doom. This is the hero's autonomy: to control the conditions of his or her own death. Antigone's sister Ismene serves as an effective foil to her sister's unbending nature: She does not wish to stray into madness and continually urges compromise.

What goes counter to the heroic paradigm in Sophocles' tragedy is the simple fact that Antigone is a woman: Heroes tend to be men. In a certain sense, Creon should be the tragic hero: He is the one left at the end utterly shattered, destroyed by his own perversely stubborn actions, his royal household imploded. It is a tragedy with two closely related tragic figures, and, despite the strong romantic prejudice in favor of Antigone, it is not clear that either one of them is fully in the right. Antigone goes obstinately against her own community, not listening to reason, ultimately destroying herself and the man she expects to marry. Ruthless as he is, Creon is attempting to establish policies that defend the integrity of the polis.

Given Antigone's focus on death, her own death is therefore appropriate: She will be entombed alive, enclosed in a space of death. This is in some sense the logical outcome of her actions. She was always devoted to the rites of the dead, perhaps even perversely focused on death and the dead body of her brother, and so finally ends up being enshrouded in a living death. Her story falls under the rubric of myths of "failed transitions." As a young woman of marriageable age, engaged but not yet a married women, she is at a liminal stage between girlhood and womanhood. Many Greek myths represent instances of failed transition, where the central figure dies before moving from one condition to another. Antigone's end is at the same time a version of the "perverted ritual" motif in tragedy, e.g., not a normal sacrifice, but a human sacrifice. Here her entombment is a ghastly travesty of the rite of marriage: Her tomb is a marriage chamber.

Further Information Bloom, Harold, ed. Sophocles' Oedipus Plays: Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. New York: Chelsea House, 1996.

Nardo, Don. Readings on Antigone. San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 1999.

Sophocles. The Complete Plays. Translated by Paul Roche. New York: Signet Classics, 2001.

Citation Information Cook, James Wyatt. “Antigone.” Encyclopedia of Ancient Literature, Second Edition, Facts On File, 2014. Bloom's Literature, online.infobase.com/Auth/Index?aid=101056&itemid=WE54&articleId=30249. Accessed 13 May 2019. https://online.infobase.com/HRC/Search/Print?assetId=30249&assetType=article 4/5 5/13/2019 History - Print - Antigone Copyright © 2019 Infobase Learning. All Rights Reserved.

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