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Owen Bennett Jones recently wrote on the Islamic State in the LRB. "Every time a Jihadi movement has won power it has lost popularity by failing to give the people what they want: peace, security and jobs." When I read that I thought about poor King Creon. I have always felt disturbed by the vice of fate in this play which steadily traps and crushes. It was Creon's hubris which caught my attention this time. Doesn't he have a mandate? I imagine him simply incredulous. Why this dissent? Subsequen...
**4.5 stars**“A man, though wise, should never be ashamed of learning more, and must unbend his mind.” The conclusive note to the three plays, it kind of makes you feel a bit desolate, deep down. If you think about it, you can find the impression of this play in particular on several of Shakespeare’s plays. To voice back pessimism, Tiresias is also back from Oedipus Rex, and this time we can’t suspect him of antagonism. However, what may strike as a bit odd is the almost null involvement of E
This was a reread for me. The first time I read this play was in my sophomore year or high school and I remember liking it but I LOVED it this time around. It's fabulous and now I want to read the rest of the Theban plays.
I first read Antigone when I took a course in college dedicated to the early Greek plays. I find it weathers well, but then that should be no surprise since it has already weathered more than 2000 years. Twice I was taken by the presence of phrases we still use commonly today. Is this the possible first use of “bit the dust”?Here, there, great Ares like a war horse wheeled;Beneath his car down thrustOur foemen bit the dustAnd this of “stand your ground”?Such a man would in the storm of battle st...
I am not well-schooled in tragedies--the Greek tragedies, that is--but when I learned that one of the books I intended to read for the Man Booker award this year was based on the story of Antigone, I thought now was a good time to have a look.This is the first I have encountered of the play, I loved it. It is filled with terrific emotion and common responses to tragedy, as well as wisdom unbound. The personalities are strong and salty...and act on their promises.Those of you who know the story w...
11/21/21: I recently saw a production of Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus who defied King Creon to bury her brother, knowing that to obey divine law in this moment was the right and just thing to do. It's a little complicated from her on in, but what follows is a review of a kind of adaptation of the Antigone story set in Nazi Germany. Antigone is about family, pride and its difference from arrogance, about the assumption of political (and male) dominance, and about love. I reflect in the follo...
Wait, no, THIS is my favorite of the Oedipus cycle. My love is fickle. How did I not remember how good this was? The extended speeches are just as incredible as those in the other two plays, but what Antigone has over them is lightning-quick back-and-forth arguments that made my heart pound just from how good they were. I’d also forgotten how interesting the character of Antigone is (she milks that walk to her death for everything it’s worth), and how much Sophocles plays with gender stereotypes...
This drama highlights the differences between state and divine law. Especially interesting is the language. Sophocles has done very well to portray this conflict. Even after 2500 years still a worth reading, profound text.
Of all the Greek theatre, few works remain. Among the short pieces we still have, Antigone is one of the most famous. It must say that it is deserving: this tragedy is a powerful, deep, immense, great work: you had to be Sophocles to do this to us. It's enormous; it's beautiful, it's intense!
Antigone is surprisingly insightful and beautiful. The Odes were especially stunning. Antigone is a bold, daring character and I respect her humor and strength 🙇♀️Shakespeare? No. Sophocles? Yes.
"Your soul is blowing apart."The chorus in Anne Carson's translation of Sophocles ANTIGONEI love Antigone. I think it is one of the very best of the Greek tragedies ~~ no one of the very best of all tragedies ever written.Random thought ~~ I suspect there is a play that is part of this cycle that is missing ~~ a play that focuses on the brothers.This review will not focus on the play itself, but on the wonderful translation by Anne Carson. Anne Carson is a poet. She is a wordsmith in the highest...
Suck on that, Creon. They named the play after her.
Book Review 4 out of 5 stars to Antigone, the third in a trilogy of Theban plays written around 441 BC (yes, almost 2500 years ago) by Sophocles. In my junior year of high school, our Advanced Placement English teacher assigned all three Theban plays. This is a mini-review on the final one, Antigone, which was my second favorite -- Oedipus Rex was of course, my favorite. In this Greek tragedy, Antigone, Oedipus Rex's daughter, fights to have a proper burial for her brother. She is str
The family or the state6 May 2012 This is probably the closest of all of the Greek tragedies to a Shakespearian tragedy. This is due to the end of the play having a huge bodycount and the action of the play is driven by one person's fatal flaw (not that I actually believe in the fatal flaw argument, but that is beside the point). However it is not Antigone who has the fatal flaw in this play but rather Creon, the king of Thebes. Unfortunately we cannot really look to Oedipus at Colonus to see th...
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”I have always found this play, and any of Sophocles’ tragedies, as comedies. Apparently I have a very bad sense of humour. But there is nothing more hilarious in literature than poetic justice. It is not as funny as Oedipus Rex, but it is quite funny still, since Antigone sticks it up to Creon. Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, and she has also now lost h...
Antigone is a real heroine; she stands up for what she believes in. She was faced with a strong dilemma. The law of man, the word of her uncle the king, demands that her brother's body remains unburied in the open with no funeral rights, to be savaged by animals. For King Creon, this is a symbolic justice for a traitor and a rebel, but the laws of the God’s, and the ruling of Antigone’s own mind, demands that she gives him libations (death rights) that all men deserve. She buries the body and fa...
Antigone is a strong contender in the Plays That Keep You Awake at Night competition. The background of the story reads, no surprise, like a Greek tragedy: Antigone is the orphaned daughter of Jocasta and Oedipus (the mother and father/brother team from Oedipus Rex) who has now lost both her brothers as well — they killed each other fighting over who got to rule Thebes. Uncle Creon, the new king, decreed that the “traitor” brother is to go unburied. The conflict is that Antigone plans to ignore
Ἀντιγόνη = Antigone, SophoclesAntigone is a tragedy by Sophocles written in or before 441 BC. It is the third of the three Theban plays chronologically, but was the first written. The play expands on the Theban legend that predated it and picks up where Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes ends. In the beginning of the play, two brothers leading opposite sides in Thebes' civil war died fighting each other for the throne. Creon, the new ruler of Thebes, has decided that Eteocles will be honored and Po...
I read this in preparation for reading Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie from this year's Man Booker longlist.And I read in a different translation to the edition shown here, one sticking more literally to the original Greek, including not translating terms where it felt there was no satisfactory equivalent. This was important in clarifying some of the key themes, but rather puts the onus of interpretation back on the reader (and this reader is no expert in ancient Greek philosophy).A number of things...