 |
 |
Eliot, quoted by Peter: "The tension within the society may become also a tension within the mind of the more conscious individual: the clash of duties in Antigone, which is not simply a clash between piety and civil obedience, or between religion and politics, but between conflicting laws within what is still a religious/political complex, represents a very advanced stage of civilisation: for the conflict must have meaning in the audience's experience before it can be made articulate by the dramatist and receive from the audience the response which the dramatist's art requires." Eliot's pre-1910 education in history and philosophy stuck with him for a long time. This is pretty pure Hegelianism, and since Hegel there has been both enormous advances (some quite recetnly) in the knowledge of ancient Greek history and considerable change in the understanding of _Antigone_. Hegel's views on Antigone were so powerful in the 19th century that they even led scholars to question lines in the poem which conflicted with the Hegelian Antigone. Whatever we think of Hegel's view of history in general (it has much to recommend it) or of his dialectics (also highly admirable in many ways), his interpretation of Antigone, echoed here by Eliot, was profoundly wrong, in almost every detail. The assumption is that there is a conflict of religion and law, an assumption which requires that we see Antigone as being _obliged_ by religious conviction to bury her brother. That is obviously untrue. At her extremity, Antigone says (quoted from memory but quite accurate), I would not have done this if it had been my husband or my son, for had it been my husband, I couldf marry again, and had it been myson, I could have had other sons, but all my brothers are dead and my parents are dead and I will never have another brother. Quite pious this! One can get some grasp of Antigone's motives from a heroine of a much later tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi: Faced with certain death, and responding to her murderer's attempt to cajole her into accepting death, she replies, "I am the Duchess of Malfi still." That is, You can kill me and I cannot stop you, but I wouild not be me if I went to death willingly. Antigone says in effect: What ami I? I am a sister. What does it mean to be a sister? It means to bury one's brother. You can kill me but you cannot make me not be Antigone. I am Antigone still! More. The tragic protagonist of _Antigone_ is not Antigone but Creon, and it is Creon who occupies the stage almost uninterruptedly through out, while Antigone has only relatively few scenes, and much happens after her death. She has no tragic flaw; she represents no tension. She is not the central character but, rather, the conditition of Creon's tragedy, the reality which he defies and which detroys him. And she is not a martyr, not, that is, one who dies to bear witness a truth, for when the Chorus tries to comfort her with thoughts of how she will be viewed by others like other tragic figures from myth, she replies angrily, Don't mock me, you fools, I'm being murdered and you dare to try to comfort me. (Not a quote but a paraphrase of the feeling in her words.) Creon and his son Haemon clash, and when Haemon points out that the people are on Antigone's side, Creon affirms that his word is what counts, and Haemon replies (differing translations, but one at least catches the feeling here), "It is no city where one man rules." Not, "It is a bad city where one man rules" but it is no city at all: Creon would be a fine ruler on a deseret island Haemon tells him. It is Antigone not Creon that stands for law and order; it is Creon wh destroys order, who threatens the very being and nature of the Polis, that public space in which men meet to persuade and be persuaded (Hannah Arendt). The tragedy is the tragedy of the hubris of Creon attempting to control the future. Near the end of the play a character who has not even been mentioned suddenly appears, gives one short speech, disappears and kills herself: Creon's wife and Haemon's mother, who kills herself on learning of Haemon's death. If you follow the action and do not read the play as a 19th-c novel you will see his sucide as not a private affair of a despairing lover but as a political act directed against Creon, as is the suicide of Creon's wife. Creon says to the Chorus, i.e. to the people of Thebes whose opinion he had despised, I want to die. He wants to die because his future has been destroyed through the death of his son and of his wife. (Cf. Antigone's earlier reference to husbands, sons, brothers.) And the chorus replies (in effect) Shut up you old fool; don't wish to die; don't wish to live - you have lost the right to choose your future. Sophocles was not as committed to Athenian democracy as Aeschylus had been, but he was committed to it, and he dramatizes in Antigone the tragedy of the would-be Tyrant, the enemy of the demos. Carrol