Antigonick Read online

  ALSO BY ANNE CARSON

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  the albertine workout

  glass, irony & god

  nox

  the task of the translator of antigone

  dear Antigone:

  your name in Greek means something like “against birth” or “instead of being born”

  what is there instead of being born?

  it’s not that we want to understand everything

  or even to understand anything

  we want to understand something else

  I keep returning to Brecht

  who made you do the whole play with a door strapped to your back

  a door can have diverse meanings

  I stand outside your door

  the odd thing is, you stand outside your door too

  that door has no inside

  or if it has an inside, you are the one person who cannot enter it

  for the family who lives there, things have gone irretrievably wrong

  to have a father who is also your brother

  means having a mother who is your grandmother

  a sister who is both your niece and your aunt

  and another brother you love so much you want to lie down with him

  “thigh to thigh in the grave”

  or so you say glancingly early in the play

  but no one mentions it again afterwards

  oh you always exaggerate! my father used to tell me

  and let’s footnote here Hegel calling Woman “the eternal irony of the community”

  how seriously can we take you?

  are you “Antigone between two deaths” as Lacan puts it

  or a parody of Kreon’s law and Kreon’s language — so Judith Butler

  who also finds in you “the occasion for a new field of the human”?

  then again, “an exemplar of masculine intellect and moral sense”

  is George Eliot’s judgment, while to several modern scholars you

  (perhaps predictably)

  sound like a terrorist

  and Žižek compares you triumphantly with Tito

  the leader of Yugoslavia saying NO! to Stalin in 1942

  speaking of the ’40s, you made a good impression on the Nazi high command

  and simultaneously on the leaders of the French Resistance

  when they all sat in the audience

  of Jean Anouilh’s Antigone

  opening night Paris 1944: I don’t know what color your eyes were

  but I can imagine you rolling them now

  let’s return to Brecht, maybe he got you best

  to carry one’s own door will make a person

  clumsy, tired and strange

  on the other hand, it may come in useful

  if you go places that don’t have an obvious way in, like normality

  or an obvious way out, like the classic double bind

  well that’s your problem

  my problem is to get you and your problem

  across into English from ancient Greek

  all that lies hidden in these people, your people

  crimes and horror and years together, a family, what we call a family

  “one of my earliest memories,” wrote John Ashbery in New York magazine 1980,

  “is of trying to peel off the wallpaper in my room,

  not out of animosity

  but because it seemed there must be something fascinating

  behind its galleons and globes and telescopes”

  this reminds me of Samuel Beckett who described in a letter

  his own aspirations toward language

  “to bore hole after hole in it until what cowers behind it seeps through”

  dear Antigone: you also are someone keeping faith

  with a deeply other organization that lies just beneath what we see or what we say

  to quote Kreon you are autonomos

  a word made up of autos “self” and nomos “law”

  autonomy sounds like a kind of freedom

  but you aren’t interested in freedom

  your plan

  is to sew yourself into your own shroud using the tiniest of stitches

  how to translate this?

  I take inspiration from John Cage who, when asked

  how he composed 4'33", answered

  “I built it up gradually out of many small pieces of silence”

  Antigone, you do not,

  any more than John Cage, aspire to a condition of silence

  you want us to listen to the sound of what happens

  when everything normal/musical/careful/conventional or pious is taken away

  oh sister and daughter of Oidipous,

  who can be innocent in dealing with you

  there was never a blank slate

  we were always already anxious about you

  perhaps you know that Ingeborg Bachmann poem

  from the last years of her life that begins

  “I lose my screams”

  dear Antigone,

  I take it as the task of the translator

  to forbid that you should ever lose your screams

  cast

  Antigone

  Ismene sister of Antigone

  Kreon king of Thebes

  Haimon son of Kreon and Eurydike

  Eurydike wife of Kreon, mother of Haimon

  Teiresias blind prophet of Thebes [led by a boy]

  Boy

  Guard

  Messenger

  Chorus of old Theban men

  Nick a mute part [always onstage, he measures things]

  set

  Palace of Kreon at Thebes

  antigonick

  [enter Antigone and Ismene]

  Antigone:

  we begin in the dark

  and birth is the death of us

  Ismene:

  who said that

  Antigone:

  Hegel

  Ismene:

  sounds more like Beckett

  Antigone:

  he was paraphrasing Hegel

  Ismene:

  I don’t think so

  Antigone:

  whoever it was whoever we are, dear sister

  ever since we were born from the evils of Oidipous

  what bitterness pain disgust disgrace or moral shock

  have we been spared

  and now this edict

  you’ve heard the edict

  Ismene:

  I’ve heard no edict

  that our two brothers are dead by one another’s hands

  and the Argive army gone from this city

  is all I know

  Antigone:

  that’s what I thought

  that’s why I called you out here

  Ismene:

  what’s the matter

  you have your thunder look

  Antigone:

  Kreon is resolved

  to honour one of our brothers with burial

  the other not

  Eteokles he has laid in the ground in accordance with justice and law

  Polyneikes is to lie unwept and unburied

  sweet sorrymeat for the little lusts of the birds

  noble Kreon draws our attention to this edict

  yours and my attention

  whoever transgresses it gets death

  so what do you say

  Ismene:

  what co
uld I say

  what could I do

  Antigone:

  if you join me

  if you join my action

  Ismene:

  at what risk

  where is your mind

  Antigone:

  if you help me

  help me lift the corpse

  Ismene:

  Kreon says unlawful to do so

  Antigone:

  Antigone says unholy not to

  Ismene:

  O sister, don’t cross this line

  Antigone:

  dear sister, my dead are mine

  and yours as well as mine

  Ismene:

  whoever we are

  think, sister —

  father’s daughter

  daughter’s brother

  sister’s mother

  mother’s son

  his mother and his wife were one!

  our family is doubled tripled degraded and dirty in every direction

  moreover

  we two are alone

  and we are girls

  girls cannot force their way against men

  Antigone:

  yet I will

  Ismene:

  sweet sister, you aim too high

  Antigone:

  true sister, yet how sweet to lie upon my brother’s body thigh to thigh

  Ismene:

  your heart so hot, thou sister

  Antigone:

  O one and only head of my sister whose blood intersects with my own in too many ways

  the dead are cold

  they’ll welcome me

  Ismene:

  you are a person in love with the impossible

  Antigone:

  and when my strength is gone I’ll stop

  Ismene:

  it’s wrong

  Antigone:

  don’t say that or I’ll have to hate you

  he will hate you too

  just let me go

  for I’ll not endure anything so grievous as what robs me of a noble death

  Ismene:

  go then but know

  you go as one beloved although

  you go without your mind

  [exit Antigone and Ismene]

  [enter Chorus]

  Chorus:

  the glories of the world come sharking in all red and gold

  we won the war

  salvation struts

  the streets of sevengated Thebes

  the man from Argos fled

  the one who

  swung above our land on snowhite screams

  the one who

  overweened our walls

  seven spears in his mouth instead of teeth

  that one fled

  before filling his cheeks with blood

  before any fire

  the noise of war was stretched along his back

  the boaster

  fled

  Zeus hates a boaster

  saw an ocean of them coming at us

  raised his hand

  they hit the ground

  they were

  the man from Argos

  war

  made them all insane

  seven gates

  and in each gate a man

  and in each man a death

  at the seventh gate

  two brothers grew into each other’s hearts as pain

  now victory is ours

  let

  there be forgetting

  let

  Thebes shake with joy

  here comes Kreon

  rowing his new powerboat

  [enter Kreon]

  Kreon:

  here are Kreon’s verbs for today

  Adjudicate

  Legislate

  Scandalize

  Capitalize

  here are Kreon’s nouns

  Men

  Reason

  Treason

  Death

  Ship of State

  Mine

  Chorus:

  “mine” isn’t a noun

  Kreon:

  it is if you capitalize it

  [enter Guard]

  Guard:

  well

  Kreon:

  well what

  Guard:

  well we

  Kreon:

  well we what

  Guard:

  well we saw someone

  Kreon:

  saw someone what

  Guard:

  or actually no one

  Kreon:

  was it someone or no one

  Guard:

  well hypothetically

  Kreon:

  you goat’s anus, tell me who buried that body I said was unlawful to touch

  Guard:

  don’t know

  Kreon:

  so find out

  [exit Kreon and Guard]

  Chorus:

  many terribly quiet customers exist but none more

  terribly quiet than Man

  his footsteps pass so perilously soft across the sea

  in marble winter

  up the stiff blue waves and every Tuesday

  down he grinds the unastonishable earth

  with horse and shatter

  shatters too the cheeks of birds and traps them in his forest headlights

  salty silvers roll into his net, he weaves it just for that,

  this terribly quiet customer

  he dooms

  animals and mountains technically

  by yoke he makes the bull bend, the horse to its knees

  and utterance and thought as clear as complicated air and

  moods that make a city moral, these he taught himself

  the snowy cold he knows to flee

  and every human exigency crackles as he plugs it in

  every outlet works but

  one

  Death stays dark

  Death he cannot doom

  fabrications notwithstanding

  evil

  good

  laws

  gods

  honest oathtaking notwithstanding

  hilarious in his high city

  you see him cantering just as he please

  the lava up to here

  [enter Guard with Antigone]

  Chorus:

  this, this

  oh I don’t know

  let’s not mention gods

  let’s not mention Oidipous

  here’s Antigone

  please don’t say she’s the one

  Guard:

  she’s the one she did it she did I got her

  Chorus:

  oh perfect

  here’s Kreon

  [enter Kreon]

  Kreon:

  here’s Kreon

  nick of time

  Guard:

  well miracles do happen

  I swore I wouldn’t come back but I did

  because I got her she’s the one she did it and I got her

  she was fiddling with the grave

  I’m off the hook

  Kreon:

  fiddling what do you mean fiddling

  Guard:

  I’m a free man I’m free I’m off the hook

  Kreon:

  explain how you caught her

  Guard:

  she was burying him

  Kreon:

  how where when are you sure tell me more

  Guard:

  the corpse

  the illegal

  she was burying him

  what more do you wan
t

  Kreon:

  burying him how and where did you see her and how did you catch her I want details

  Guard:

  details okay

  you threatened me I went back wiped off all the dust left that body bare

  sat up on the hill was it hot yes

  was there putrefaction and vermiculation yes

  was there noonsunstink yes

  did I doze off no I did not I kept me awake then

  all of a sudden

  a storm came up

  a wind tore the hair off the trees lofted the dust with fear I

  shut my eyes and

  when I sneaked a look there she was

  the child

  in her birdgrief the bird in her childreftgravecry howling

  and cursing she poured dust onto the body with both hands

  she poured water onto the body with both hands

  I seized her I charged her it made me sad

  but still that’s less than my own safety

  you like nouns here’s some

  Dustlibation

  Donedeal

  Deadreckoning

  Kreon:

  actually I prefer verbs

  Guard:

  got her

  Kreon [to Antigone]: and you with your head down you’re the one

  Antigone:

  bingo

  Kreon [to Guard]: go

  [exit Guard]

  Kreon [to Antigone]: you knew it was against the law

  Antigone:

  well if you call that law

  Kreon:

  I do

  Antigone:

  Zeus does not

  Justice does not

  the dead do not

  what they call law did not begin today or yesterday

  when they say law they do not mean a statute of today or yesterday

  they mean the unwritten unfailing eternal ordinances of the gods

  that no human being can ever outrun

  of course I will die

  Kreon or no Kreon

  and death is fine

  this has no pain

  to leave my mother’s son lying out there unburied that would be pain

  Chorus:

  raw as her father isn’t she

  Kreon:

  you think you are iron but I can bend you

  I’m the man here

  Antigone:

  yes you are

  Kreon:

  I’ll bend your sister too

  Antigone:

  can we just get this over with

  Kreon:

  no let’s split hairs a while longer

  I’d say

  you’re the only one in Thebes who sees things this way wouldn’t you

  you’re autonomous

  autarchic

  autodidactic

  autodomestic

  autoempathic

  autotherapeutic

  autohistorical

  autometaphorical

  autoerotic