Sophocles

I re-read Antigone (translated by Richard Emil Braun) today June 17, 2020, before giving my copy to my 16 year old granddaughter to read. Must be the third or fourth time I've read it. It'll be her first.

How remarkable that a 2,500 year old play should still speak to us. Words from Ancient Greece, from a time when that funny old god Zeus was supreme and war was waged as an unthinkable face-to-face brutality of swords, down to our time, our high-tech-global-speed-of-light world with things show more like DNA and drones. Will there be meaning for my granddaughter's first reading? I think so.

When I first read it at age 14, in another long ago time of the 1970s, I related to it from a budding feminist perspective. Today I see its parallel lessons in the massive Black Lives Matter protests. Protesters of thousands and thousands of Antigones (and Antigonuses) buck against a stubborn power that has lost its moral code, refuses to budge, and fights against the divinely inherent rights of humanity. Makes me wonder what parallels my granddaughter might find with the world when she's my age. I can't imagine. But, they will be there.

What I didn't understand in my youth but see clearly now, is that this is a cycle that will -- and must be -- played out by all the generations, all over the world.

At the end, Kreon is personally demolished. Of the pain of his folly and result of his stubbornness, he cries out, "It leaps on me, it crushes." In all these intervening years since the play was written, there have been thousands of Kreons, some also crushed. But even more Antigones, locked in the clash with the powerful by the empowered still willing to fight face-to-face brutality.

The play ends with advice for leaders, "To be sensible and to be pious are the first and last of happiness." The message is from the chorus, the story is of Kreon, but the title is Antigone. show less

Third time read, and I couldn’t resist after reading Anne Carson’s translation of Iphigeneia Among the Taurians. The story is shocking in how a daughter wants to murder her mother, she is righting a wrong; the mother and her lover, now her step-father, murdered her father and got away with it. Electra is appalled that she is crying out for justice, here it will be her brother who will be the vengeance that she has waiting and waiting for.

What unravels is shocking, the fiery exchange show more between mother and daughter shows that there is no love between these two, their anger and resentment towards each other have erased their connection. Here, they behave like bitter enemies, giving as good as they can get, and both believing each are right.

This will also be a scene that Electra replays again with her sister, but a milder version. Electra, in wanting justice has alienated herself from her family. The way this play speak to us me is how far does a person go to show they are right? show less

What more can be added to this clever but intensely sorrowful story? I will limit myself to a few things that struck me.
First of all, the ingenious construction: no 2-part division, as we saw in Sophocles' previous plays (which did not always connect perfectly), but a deliberate step-by-step build-up in which, just as for Oedipus himself, the full impact of the drama only becomes clear very gradually. In addition, the author has cleverly added half-sentences in the earliest phase that show more suggestively foreshadow what is to come.
Oedipus is the central figure from beginning to end, and that is not self-evident (once again: the titles of ancient tragedies were sometimes assigned much later), for this is not the case in Ajax, Antigone, or Electra. He is the binding element, and we receive the unsettling revelations together with him, and endure their emotional impact together with him (a small exception for his wife/mother Jocasta, who realized what was happening a little earlier). Only the final section seems a bit tacked on to a modern reader, with Oedipus’s remarkably long lament and the fuss with his children. I read among experts that this does indeed have a purpose: Oedipus, who was previously literally seeing but actually blind, now becomes literally blind through his own doing, but actually seeing—namely realizing the impact of the (horrific) deeds he has committed. This will later enable him (in Sophocles’ play *Oedipus at Colonus*) to close the entire chapter of the curse resting upon his family.
Just as in *Antigone*, Sophocles portrays his protagonists in a layered, multifaceted manner: they are (in most cases) both guilty and innocent. Oedipus wants to be an excellent, righteous, and responsible leader of his city, but he turns out to have unknowingly caused great harm; although it also becomes clear that he made mistakes by not investigating certain wrongdoings sooner. Incidentally, the latter also applies to his wife/mother Iocaste, his brother-in-law Creon, the blind seer Teiresias, and a few other minor characters. By extension (philosopher Ben Schomakers pointed this out to me), it is actually the entire city-state that swept stinking affairs under the rug in the past. In short, just as in Antigone, it is not possible to place the blame on a single person; it is the ambiguity of reality that, as I read in Simon Critchley, is perfectly illustrated here by Sophocles.
And yet another evident lesson, explicitly addressed in the final verses: happiness and prosperity are very relative things; no one can definitively revel in them until he or she has reached their final day: “No mortal should be called happy until he has passed the end point of life without having had to suffer pain.” (there’s an echo of this in Plato). For me, this, along with Antigone and Euripides’ Medea, is the best that the Greek tragedians have to offer.

Disclaimer: As an exception, because this can still be appreciated so much, I am giving this a rating. show less

There are so many things to say about this most famous play by the ancient Greek writer Sophocles, I actually do not know where to begin. Let me start by addressing the most significant point: every single character is characterized in a remarkably ambiguous way.
Naturally, the focus lies on Antigone herself (but do not be misled, it was not Sophocles who gave the title). She is often portrayed as the heroine of resistance against blind state power, the defender of a more respectful, humane show more approach, and she is that of course, but she is not only that. The way Sophocles depicts her can lead you, with just as many arguments, to see in her a case of extreme stubbornness—in the negative sense, that is—someone who is unable or simply unwilling to see the other point of view, and who even wallows in her role as a martyr (when her sister Ismene suddenly joins her, she becomes angry that she is taking over her role). Incidentally, she is the only one in the entire play who does not doubt, who never changes her point of view; even the fate of her fiancé Haemon leaves her cold.
Then there is Creon, in whom we like to see the hard-hearted tyrant, and naturally there are arguments for that too. Many of his pronouncements are also downright condescending and misogynistic. But Sophocles succeeds just as well in portraying him as the responsible leader who keeps the collective interest in mind and realizes that to cook, one simply has to break eggs. Even he eventually changes his mind, albeit too late and somewhat out of self-interest.
Then Ismene, Antigone's sister, embodies the viewpoint of the woman who wavers, who wants to be pragmatic, bows to power, and is ultimately persuaded by her sister. She perhaps comes across slightly less convincingly.
And then there is Haemon, the son of Creon and thus also Antigone's fiancé. Sophocles first presents him as the voice of reason. Haemon even uses cunning and rhetoric to convince his father to be accommodating, but resolutely chooses the path of radicalism when pointing out his opposition, and in this he is no less adept than Antigone.
Antigone and Creon naturally stand out, but Sophocles makes it quite difficult to determine exactly which side he is on, and that is cleverly done. Or rather: I get the impression that Sophocles takes neither side, for he makes it clear that he condemns both of them for their obtuse radicalism. Both Antigone and Creon go astray in their stubbornness; in that sense, the moralizing lesson in the final lines of this play is clear: “Wisdom is by far the greatest Condition for happiness. One must never be impious towards gods. Great arrogance Pays for its boastfulness With great misfortunes. Wisdom is acquired with age.” Amen.
And with all that, Sophocles also skillfully demonstrates that there are multiple sides to a situation, that there are, as it were, multiple truths that might be equally legitimate from a certain standpoint. This will be music to the ears of postmodernists. And that is without even mentioning the tight composition, the sharp dialogues, and the choral reflections. This is rightly still *the* classic of Antiquity.
You can find a few reflections on historical aspects of this piece in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/8550160708.
As an exception, I give this play a rating, because of its qualities and ever-relevant message. show less