Antigone Article 10

7 ,. Guide to Sophocles) Creon's Lament

Q

'-----.

A Student Edition with Commentary,

( 1284 - 1353 ]

i

I

Grammatical Notes, & Vocabulary I

JOAN V. O'BRIEN

Southern Illinois University Press CARBONDALE AND EDWARDSVILLE

FejJer & Simons; Inc. LoNDON AND AMSTERDAM

INTRODUCTION

IN

play (for which Commentary and Grammatical Notes are provided below), the focus is entirely on ~ing Creon..!'nd his responsibility for the corpse that he carries (i.e .• his son's) and for the corpse that soon confronts him (i.e., . his wife's). Significantly, Cr. returns without An.'s body, and no one mentions her either in this final kommos or in the earlier scene when the messenger reports the deaths of Hae. and An. The poet and his characters enter into a remarkable conspiracy of silence about An. during the last two episodes. The spectator has to infer that the person who dies with Hae. is An. Only feminine modifiers of a suppressed antecedent identify the second victim as An. (1221 ff.). And the audience is left to surmise that her body suffers the same indignity as her brother's. Such is the supreme irony in a play whose whole action grows out of An.'s refusal to leave her brother's body unburied. She lies at play's end in a climate of total neglect. I What led the poet to allow this strange neglect? What madc him focus all eyes on Cr.'s disintegration instead of alternating the focus as he did in the first three quarters of the play? I suggest that the poet's ironic imagination" induced him 'to take the gamTHE FINAL portion of the

114

c

's Lament

~~\~

(~'"e~' ~'n-t'; -rno-v~ ,

Guide to Sophocles'

ble-a successful one, 1 believe-!.hat the inspiration of the heroine would dominate the conclusion despite his characters' utter neglect of her body, her memory, and the principle for which she died. The gamble succeeds because An.'s integrity in her catastrophe is continuously heightened in the spectator's imagination by its contrast with the ki?g's unmasking. Both An. and Cr. suffer catastrophe that entails external event and internal despair. It is in their respective manners of coping with their .despair that~ \ ~ wholeness inspires, whereas his emptiness mere,iy instructs and

r~c..\;:S

c.... \V":;l

evokes the sympathy one reserves for a moral midget. In the case of An., her brother's rotting body elkits from her the act which results in her living death, entombment in "the ever-guard.ing prison" (892?(fnt~rnal.despairfollows external event. (\ She expenences that terrible isolation of one with no .external nil support: famil~ ?ead,. Ism., rejected, fiance silent, finally even the oj'
rt-I one.

j

o city of my fathers a

\if

I

favors that sense. Yet, this is admittedly against the n . . . onnal Ii reading of the line. Soph. avails himself of the ambigu't rtIt I Y of I a ge An. IS freely taking herself away-these gJJard. 'h 'Ill. \ gu . . aVe no power over her-and yet there IS a transcendent power th . I h . b at d..... She knows that In one very rea sense s_ e IS eing led aw ay S ..II1~e... OIJ is led away by that power she alludes to in her last line (t;;, 'nurbj""t sebisiisa, "revering reverence," 943)· The final movement to I<:~ recovery seems to have come from those very gods whose aid ."" could not feel (9 23- 24).
(J

,
ANTIGONE

.

.

Y;

AS

I~

r

or;;;

in the land of Thebes

ancestral gods! I go forth now and brook no more delay.

Look at me, you princes of Thebes, Observe the last daughter of the king's household. Sec what I suffer-and from whose handsbecause I revered reverence!

of inauthentic pome,. ""'So, Hae.'s metaphor of the writing tablet which, when opened. . devoid of contents (707-9) becomes the perfect symbol for hi. IS ' , II father. We have seen its aptness in Cr.'s relationshIp with -rae. and ;;"ith his nieces (see .Intro., chap. 5). Why does It apply til his other relationships? Precisely, I believe, because his words, and actions, throughout the play have shown him to be so ~CVOI~ IIf the human dimension extolled in the Ode on Man. 1 he Clio. IY boasted there that Man has taught himself the tempe.r that make- on . . ( 56) ThIS crowns h.. Nl communal hfe possible asrynomous orgas, 355- . ' h h \,!Q(\ other achievements over the animal world (34 1 ~.).\Dyt Cr. ~ hi " th lorics of communI ~ reversed the direction. Far from ac ievrng e g h 'IY ; fOI'l life he has destroyed the fundamental balance between umam and the animal. His inhumane neglect ~f th~ putrif~~~~:r~: gives domination back to the carrion-eatmg blrdslM sied ib f bi d "( f) as the Cho. sugge . . "ensnare the nimble tn e o rr s 34 2., but birds mangle the remains of a :nan., . . h the divine So it is hardly surprising that hIS relatIOnshIp ":It. I 0 awry, . ' f Delphi IS a s world in the person of Tireslas, the pnest 0 '

I1de.

She has regained her pride in the fullness and integrity of her being. She does not exemplify the eternal feminine figure who foregoes the political for the human and religious. She is the true citizen. male or female, whose phil;a leads her to sec and perform her moral duty despite the consequences. She is in charge of her own destiny and yet submissive to the greater power of the gods. The line "I go forth now and brook no more delay" (939) elucidates this. The usual translation of this line ("I am, led forth now and am no longer (merely) about to be led away") docs not convey the ambiguity inherent in the sentence. Commentators take ago/hoi dl in its normal passive sense but it can also have a middle sense: "I go away." The second half of the line, with its proud assertion,

At&·

II6

.

's Lamen l

-

...

0VIllf arns him that he has sinned, Cr. responds with ,~ ') charges of bribery that he used earlier (294 ~r \O"S ......... Ihe ICer dWI .. ~,. groun e55 d d h d' ~ , c.. Guide 10 Sophocles' ANTIGONE I Iht .. rne b tious guard. He caul not en ure t e guar s ~\ 1.1 apilU~ 'I~di~:~ to his edict; still less can he face the priest's So ing corpse" greatly illuminates the tragic grandeur of the dead, ..... of dl,? I both cases, with arms flailing, he reduces a un buried heroine. ...,od
i

r

','