Antigone and her sisterIsmene are seen at the end ofOedipus Rex as Oedipus laments the "shame" and "sorrow" he is leaving his daughters to. He then begsCreon to watch over them, but in his grief reaches to take them with him as he is led away. Creon prevents him from taking the girls out of the city with him. Neither of them is named in the play.[2]
Antigone serves as her father's guide inOedipus at Colonus, as she leads him into the city where the play takes place. Antigone resembles her father in her stubbornness and doomed existence.[1] She stays with her father for most of the play, until she is taken away by Creon in an attempt to blackmail Oedipus into returning to Thebes. However,Theseus defends Oedipus and rescues both Antigone and her sister who was also taken prisoner.
At the end of the play, both Antigone and her sister mourn the death of their father. Theseus offers them the comfort of knowing that Oedipus has received a proper burial, but by his wishes, they cannot go to the site. Antigone then decides to return to Thebes.[2]
In her eponymous play, Antigone attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brotherPolynices. Oedipus's sons,Eteocles and Polynices, had shared rule jointly until they quarreled, and Eteocles expelled his brother. In Sophocles' account, the two brothers agreed to alternate rule each year, but Eteocles decided not to share power with his brother after his tenure expired. Polynices left the kingdom, gathered an army and attacked the city of Thebes in the war of theSeven against Thebes. Both brothers were killed in the battle.
KingCreon, who has ascended to the throne of Thebes after the death of the brothers, decrees that Polynices is not to be buried or even mourned, on pain of death by stoning. Antigone, Polynices' sister, defies the king's order and is caught.
Antigone is brought before Creon, and admits that she knew of Creon's law forbidding mourning for Polynices but chose to break it, claiming the superiority of divine over human law, and she defies Creon's cruelty with courage, passion, and determination. Creon orders Antigone buried alive in a tomb. Although Creon has a change of heart, due to a visit from soothsayerTiresias, and tries to release Antigone, he finds she has hanged herself. Creon's sonHaemon, who was engaged to Antigone, kills himself with a knife, and his mother QueenEurydice also kills herself in despair over her son's death. She had been forced to weave throughout the entire story, and her death alludes toThe Fates.[2] By her death Antigone ends up destroying the household of her adversary, Creon.[1]
Antigone leads the blind Oedipus away on a mural fromDelos, 1st century BC.
In the oldest version of the story, the burial of Polynices takes place during Oedipus' reign in Thebes, before Oedipus marries his mother, Jocasta. However, in other versions such asSophocles'tragediesOedipus at Colonus andAntigone, it occurs in the years after the banishment and death of Oedipus and Antigone's struggles against Creon.[citation needed]
The dramatistEuripides also wrote a play calledAntigone, which is lost, but some of the text was preserved by later writers and in passages in hisPhoenissae. In Euripides, the calamity is averted by the intercession ofDionysus and is followed by the marriage of Antigone and Hæmon.[3] Antigone also plays a role in the Phoenissae.[citation needed]
Antigone tied on an Apulian red-figure amphora by theDarius Painter, ca. 350-320 BC, Altes Museum
Different elements of the legend appear in other places. The 4th century tragedianAstydamas wrote a play about Antigone that is now lost. A description of an ancient painting byPhilostratus (Imagines ii. 29) refers to Antigone placing the body of Polynices on thefuneral pyre, and this is also depicted on asarcophagus in theVilla Doria Pamphili inRome. And inHyginus's version of the legend, apparently founded on a tragedy by a follower of Euripides, Antigone, on being handed over byCreon to her lover Hæmon to be slain, is secretly carried off by him and concealed in a shepherd's hut, where she bears him a son,Maeon. When the boy grows up, he attends some funeral games at Thebes, and is recognized by the mark of a dragon on his body. This leads to the discovery that Antigone is still alive.[3] The demi-godHeracles then intercedes and unsuccessfully pleads with Creon to forgive Hæmon. Hæmon then kills Antigone and himself.[4] The intercession by Heracles is also represented on a painted vase (circa 380–300 BC).[5][6]
Antigonai (2009), opera based on fragments by Sophocles and Hölderlin for three choirs and a women's trio by Argentine composerCarlos Stella
Antigone (1948), byBertolt Brecht, based on the translation byFriedrich Hölderlin and published under the titleAntigonemodell 1948[11] An English translation of Brecht's version of the play is available[12]
Antigonick, play byAnne Carson (2012) which is a free and poetic adaptation of the Sophocles play.[13] Carson and her colleagues presented a reading of Antigonick in 2012 at the Louisiana gallery in Denmark.[14]
In the works ofHegel, in particular in his discussion ofSittlichkeit in hisPhenomenology of Spirit and hisElements of the Philosophy of Right, Antigone is figured as exposing a tragic rift between the so-called feminine "Divine Law," which Antigone represents, and the "Human Law," represented by Creon. The Catholic philosopherJacques Maritain considers Antigone as the "heroine of the natural law:"
she was aware of the fact that, in transgressing the human law and being crushed by it, she was obeying a higher commandment—that she was obeying laws that were unwritten, and that had their origin neither today nor yesterday, but which live always and forever, and no one knows where they have come from.[16]
The psychoanalystJacques Lacan writes about the ethical dimension of Antigone in his Seminar VII,The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Others who have written on Antigone include theoristJudith Butler, in their bookAntigone's Claim, as well as philosopherSlavoj Žižek, in various works, includingInterrogating the Real (Bloomsbury: London, 2005) andThe Metastases of Enjoyment (Verso: London, 1994).
A new translation ofAntigone into English by the Canadian poetAnne Carson has been used in a production of the play (March 2015) at theBarbican directed byIvo van Hove and featuringJuliette Binoche as Antigone. This production was broadcast as a TV movie on April 26, 2015.[17] The play was transferred to the BAM Harvey Theatre at theBrooklyn Academy of Music, running from September 24 to October 4, 2015.[18]
^abcSophocles (2009).The Theban plays : Oedipus the king, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone. Fainlight, Ruth; Littman, Robert J. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.ISBN978-0801895418.OCLC608624785.
^Eliot, George (1998). Carroll, David (ed.).Middlemarch (Oxford World's Classics ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 795.ISBN9780192834027.Antigone: In her defiance of the state she is often seen as a model of courage and heroism.
^True Detective and Philosophy A Deeper Kind of Darkness. Wiley. 2017. p. 148.
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