Jean Anouilh's Antigone

chapter 5 Jean Anouilh’s Antigone: A Free “translation” of Sophocles

Maria de Fátima Silva

When, in 1942, Jean Anouilh1 wrote his Antigone he was following a principle which Bertolt Brecht, also the author of a new Antigone (1948), summarized

1 As is well known, the availability of biographical information on Jean Anouilh is deliberate ly limited – as the author explicitly confesses (apud Monférier (1947) 3), “Je n’ai pas de bio graphie et j’en suis très content” (“I have no biography and I am very happy for that”). That being said, some biographical data can however be mentioned. After pursuing Law studies, it was the theatre that engaged a good part of Jean Anouilh’s (1910–1987) intellectual energies. Reading Shaw, Claudel, and Pirandello was critical for his training as a playwright and a man of theatre, and Pirandello was especially important for the definition of his conception of the atrical creation. Giraudoux and Cocteau are also close influences, especially important for his return to the ancient Hellenic myths, which came to mark, amongst his plays, those described as Nouvelles Pièces Noires (New Black Plays), including his Antigone and Médée. The author was also very much influenced by the course of World War ii, and his experience of the painful events taking place in Europe at the time certainly had an impact on his theatrical creation. Anouilh’s Antigone premiered in Paris at the Théâtre de l’Atelier, under the direction of André Barsacq, in 1944, precisely during the Nazi occupation. Although Antigone is not exact ly, or at least not openly, a politically engaged or a “protest” play, it does nevertheless portray a certain kind of reaction to the German presence in France. In fact, that was exactly how cer tain critics and reviewers saw it, identifying Creon as Pierre Laval, the collaborationist face of the German Occupation, and Antigone as the Resistance (see Monférier (1947) 27; García Sola (2009) 256–257; Guérin (2010) 101). It is nonetheless evident that the psychological factor takes on renewed importance in Anouilh’s play. Given those two different components, the same text was able to inspire such different Portuguese rewritings as António Pedro’s politi cal version and Hélia Correia’s psychological recreation. The play was first published in 1946, after the Liberation, by Table Ronde, in Paris. Its popularity in Europe in the 1950’s had a very clear impact on the Portuguese scene, which, under Salazar’s dictatorship, used Antigone as a protest symbol. In Portugal, Anouilh’s Anti- gone was probably first staged privately, for a reserved audience, in 1945, in the gardens of the Embassy of France (Diário de Lisboa 19. 10. 1946; Silva (1998) 45). This was followed by a sec ond performance at the Teatro da Trindade (Lisbon), in 1946, by Le Rideau de Paris. The fact that the country was under a repressive regime probably explains a number of other per formances of Anouilh´s play, now by Portuguese companies, both professional and ama teur: Teatro Experimental de Lisboa (1957), Companhia de Teatro do Nosso Tempo (1965), Primeiro Acto (1969), Associação Recreativa “Plebeus Avintenses” (1971), Grupo Experimental

Jean Anouilh’s Antigone 73 as follows: “If I chose Antigone for this attempt at a drama it was only because its theme can give it a certain contemporary character and its form can raise some interesting problems”.2 The path was therefore open to transforming Greek tragedy, in all its solemn dignity, into human drama.3 This was the com mon perspective of two European citizens who looked around themselves at a continent in ruins: from the French angle, Anouilh, in the imminence of the liberating conclusion of the Second World War; Brecht, on German territory, in the aftermath of the same devastating conflict. For both authors, it was a case of reformulating a theme that they found potentially interesting as a stage “translation” of their contemporary circumstances through the reshaping of a Greek original which was paradigmatic of the personal and social corrosion that comes with the exercise of absolute, tyrannical power. A similar para digmatic conflict thus simultaneously invited a re-visitation of the Antigone myth, resulting in the production of two versions which, in parallel with the Sophoclean text, became a sort of “original” in their own right. Given its relevance for the Portuguese Antigone productions, this essay will focus on Anouilh’s text, emphasizing the new aspects introduced in the play’s rewriting, in line with those that appear to be its two main objectives: first, to adopt a dramatic strategy that could transcend the barriers of both time and place, ensuring that a 20th century (1944) French audience understood and adhered to a Greek original dating back to the 5th century bc; second, adjust ing the meaning of a play written for the Athenians, precisely in a post-bellum period where a new social order was being established, to the simultaneously similar and distinct conditions present in Europe during the 1940s.4 As far as dramatic structure is concerned, Anouilh adapted two formal elements – the prologue and the Chorus intervention –, a tradition deeply rooted in ancient Greek drama, to the specific demands of the context wherein its production takes place. Insofar as the prologue’s function has always been

de Teatro de Paço de Arcos (1972); see Silva (1998) 47–53. Manuel Breda Simões, one of the founding members of Teatro Experimental do Porto, was the author of the Portuguese trans lation, which was decisive for those performances. 2 Brecht, Antigonemodell, apud M. Breda Simões, in his preface to the Portuguese translation of Anouilh, Antígona: 7. 3 For Pianacci (2008) 67, Anouilh was in truth “midway between an adaptation and an aggior namento within the essential conflict in Sophocles’ work”. 4 The publication of a critical edition and the translation of Sophocles’ Antigone in Paris, by Paul Masqueray, was key for the dissemination of the Greek original, both among the audi ence and dramatists, i.e., it generated a connivance between a potential author and his/her audience. Anouilh could therefore count on some degree of empathy from the audience for whom he wrote his Antigone.