Antigonick Read online

  and

  autobeguiled

  Antigone:

  actually no they all think like me

  but you’ve nailed their tongues to the floor

  Kreon:

  you’re not ashamed

  Antigone:

  no shame in honouring one’s kin

  Kreon:

  wasn’t the other brother your kin too

  Antigone:

  same mother same father

  Kreon:

  yet you honour the one disgrace the other

  Antigone:

  my dead do not say so

  Kreon:

  the one a criminal the other a defender of our land

  Antigone:

  Death needs to have Death’s laws obeyed

  Kreon:

  same law for good and evil patriot and traitor

  Antigone:

  oh who knows how these definitions work down there

  Kreon:

  enemy is always enemy alive or dead

  Antigone:

  I am born for love not hatred

  Kreon:

  I will not be worsted by a woman

  [enter Ismene]

  Chorus:

  here’s Ismene

  why is she blushing

  Kreon:

  here’s Ismene

  why is she snaking in here

  Ismene:

  I did the deed I share the blame

  Antigone:

  you did nothing you shared nothing leave my death alone

  Ismene:

  I want to row the boat with you

  Antigone:

  save yourself

  Ismene:

  I’ll be so lonely

  Antigone:

  some think the world is made of bodies some think forces

  I think a man knows nothing but his foot when he burns it in the hot fire

  Ismene:

  quoting Hegel again

  Antigone:

  Hegel says I am wrong

  Ismene:

  but right to be wrong

  Antigone:

  no ethical consciousness

  Ismene:

  is that how he puts it

  Antigone:

  so I wonder

  let’s say my unconscious

  while remaining unconscious

  could also know the laws of consciousness by which I am

  condemned for disobeying them, I mean

  can a person be so completely conscious

  of being unconscious

  that she is guilty of her own repression

  is that what I’m guilty of

  Ismene:

  well we all think you’re a grand girl

  Antigone:

  is this an argument

  Ismene:

  I can help you suffer

  Antigone:

  no

  Ismene:

  I can give you reasons not to die

  Antigone:

  no

  Ismene [to Kreon]: I can give you reasons not to kill her

  your own son for one

  Kreon:

  oh he’ll find other ruts to plough

  you women and your beds make me sick

  [calling]

  GUARDS, TAKE THEM AWAY

  [exit Antigone, Ismene, Kreon]

  Chorus:

  blessed be they whose lives do not taste of evil

  but if some god shakes your house

  ruin arrives

  ruin does not leave

  it comes tolling over the generations

  it comes rolling the black night salt up from the ocean floor

  and all your thrashed coasts groan

  archives of grief I see falling upon this house

  death on birth birth on death there is no end to it

  some god is piling them on

  one last root was reaching up for light in the house of Oidipous

  but the bloody dust of death

  hacks her down mows her down

  all the tall mad mountains of her mind

  Zeus you win you always win

  the whole oxygen of power

  belongs to you

  sleep cannot seize it

  time does not tire it

  your Mt Olympos glows like one white stone around this law

  nothing vast enters the lives of mortals without ruin

  but of course there is hope look here comes hope

  wandering in

  to tickle your feet

  then you notice the soles are on fire

  a wise word

  if evil looks good to you

  some god is heading you on the high road to ruin

  oh here’s Haimon

  here’s Haimon in pain and rage

  cheated of his future bride

  [enter Haimon]

  Kreon:

  in a rage about your future bride

  or are we still friends

  Haimon:

  father, I’m yours

  Kreon:

  good attitude, son

  good heart in your chest

  I need you like that

  we hold the same friends damage the same enemies

  some children are useless

  some are just trouble

  and who would disagree

  this makes people laugh at the father

  a fact of life I’ll say to you now I’ll say it one time

  when you lay yourself under a pleasure female

  you take an open wound into your house and your life

  spit her out

  let her snake her way down and seduce some boy in hell

  you know she disobeyed me

  alone out of all the city

  I will not be made a liar

  I’ll kill her

  let her call on Zeus and blood and kinship who cares

  should I nourish disorder within my own family no I should not

  my public is watching

  Haimon:

  father, the gods grow minds in men

  as the most precious equipment they have

  yet I could not would not do not know how to

  say you are wrong

  it may be

  some other way

  I don’t know

  might turn out

  I delete this line

  I am your defender

  I’m yours

  I keep watch

  no one says or does or disparages any of, why your dread eye your displeasure no one

  yet I hear

  there is talk

  there are shadows

  this girl

  here I posit a lacuna

  this girl does not deserve to die the town is sad most glorious of deeds most

  terrible of deaths (they say) she only chose

  to keep her brother’s body from raw dogs

  and eating birds this sort of talk

  I don’t know

  night’s coming

  oh father

  when you ride uphill

  got to shift your weight

  pedal to pedal

  side to side

  ride the rhythm

  don’t hoard your own custom don’t haul old anger up over your tongue and your mind

  they go blind

  trees bend

  ships loosen the rigging

  no single human being has perfect knowledge

  Chorus:

  I like a good argument

  marrow versus marrow

  you two could learn from each other

  Kreon:

  me at my a
ge go to school and get wisdom from this stripling

  Haimon:

  you would learn nothing unjust

  Kreon:

  nothing unjust to honour anarchy

  Haimon:

  I do not honour anarchy

  Kreon:

  is the girl not tainted with that malady

  Haimon:

  Thebes says otherwise

  Kreon:

  shall Thebes prescribe to me how I should rule

  Haimon:

  listen to yourself you sound like a boy dictator

  Kreon:

  whom else should the government depend on

  Haimon:

  no city belongs to a single man

  Kreon:

  surely a city belongs to its ruler

  Haimon:

  why not find a desert and rule all alone

  Kreon [to the Chorus]: this fellow it seems is the woman’s toy

  Haimon:

  if you are the woman

  it’s you I care for

  Kreon:

  O shameless thou utter miscreant

  to prosecute thine own father

  Haimon:

  yes for I see you doing wrong

  Kreon:

  wrong to respect mine own prerogatives

  Haimon:

  you don’t respect you trample on the prerogatives of the gods

  Kreon:

  O polluted O dastard nature O subject to a woman

  Haimon:

  but not subject to injustice

  Kreon:

  all thy words plead for her

  Haimon:

  and for you and me and the gods below

  Kreon:

  thou canst never marry her this side the grave

  Haimon:

  then she’ll die and take another with her

  Kreon:

  doth thy boldness push thee even to threats

  Haimon:

  threats what threats

  Kreon:

  thou shalt rue the day of thy witless teaching

  Haimon:

  if you weren’t my father I’d say you were mad

  Kreon:

  thou woman’s chattel seek not to tickle me

  Haimon:

  you talk and talk and never listen

  Kreon:

  sayest thou so, well now well now I say

  thou shalt revile me to thy cost

  fetch out the loathéd creature

  let her die hard against her bridegroom now this very instant before his eyes

  Haimon:

  never

  [exit Haimon]

  Chorus:

  well he’s gone

  in anger and pain

  Kreon:

  let him go

  Big Man

  I have deaths to do

  Chorus:

  both girls

  Kreon:

  no just the loud one

  Chorus:

  how

  Kreon:

  I’ll find her a desert

  in the neighbourhood

  I’ll bury her alive

  with a bit of food

  sacred closet, terrible leisure

  no doubt the god of death will save her life

  [exit Kreon]

  Chorus:

  Eros, no one can fight you

  Eros, you clamp down on every living thing

  on girls’ cheeks on oceans on wild fields

  not even an immortal can evade you

  certainly not a creature of the day

  why

  they go mad

  you change the levels of a person’s mind

  this Haimon crisis is all your doing

  you shook his blood

  you glow on girls’ eyelids

  who cares about the laws of the land

  Aphrodite, you play with us you

  play

  deeply

  [enter Antigone]

  Chorus:

  I can no longer restrain the stream of tears

  when I see Antigone here passing

  to the room where we all

  go in the end

  Antigone:

  Hegel says people want to see their lives on stage

  look at me

  people

  I go my last road

  I see my last light

  look

  Death who gathers all of us into his old bent arms in the end

  is gathering me

  but I am still alive

  no wedding

  no wedding song

  no wedding chamber

  yet I shall lie in the bed of the river of Death

  while I am still alive

  Chorus:

  yes but won’t you win glory

  won’t you be praised

  it’s not as if you’re dying of disease or war

  you chose to live autonomous

  and so you die

  the only one of mortals to go down to Death alive

  Antigone:

  are you mockers of me

  you grabbing old men

  are you laughers at me

  though I’m not yet gone

  O springs of the rivers of Thebes

  O reaches of the plains of Thebes

  bear me witness

  no one shed a tear for me

  as I went to my strange new grave

  for I’m a strange new kind of inbetween thing aren’t I

  not at home with the dead nor with the living

  Chorus:

  you’re clumsy it’s true

  clumsy as your father

  remember how Brecht had you do the whole play with a door strapped to your back

  Antigone:

  oh I don’t want to talk about him

  or him

  or him

  all that plowing in the dark

  I go to them now

  one final intersection

  O my brother you have despoiled me

  Chorus:

  you despoiled yourself

  piety is nice but authority is authority

  why must you always make your own laws

  Antigone:

  unwept

  unwed

  unloved

  I go

  [enter Kreon]

  Kreon:

  take her

  we are clean of this girl

  Antigone:

  O tomb

  O bridal chamber

  O house in the ground forever

  I was an organized person and this is my reward

  I organized your deaths, my dear ones

  all of you father mother brother when you died

  you ask would I have done it for a husband or a child

  my answer is no I would not

  a husband or a child can be replaced

  but who can grow me a new brother

  is this a weird argument

  Kreon thought so

  but I don’t know the words go wrong they call my piety impiety

  I’m alone on my insides

  I died long ago

  who suffers more

  I wonder who suffers more

  Chorus:

  your soul is blowing apart

  Kreon:

  get a move on

  Antigone:

  next word

  is death

  Kreon:

  DEATH

  Antigone:

  O Thebes

  O gods

  O look

  I go

  I’m the last one left in a line of kings

  I was caught />
  in an act of perfect piety

  [exit Antigone]

  Chorus:

  how is a Greek chorus like a lawyer

  they’re both in the business of searching for a precedent

  finding an analogy

  locating a prior example

  so as to be able to say

  this terrible thing we’re witnessing now is

  not unique you know it happened before

  or something much like it

  we’re not at a loss how to think about this

  we’re not without guidance

  there is a pattern

  we can find an historically parallel case

  and file it away under

  ANTIGONE BURIED ALIVE FRIDAY AFTERNOON

  COMPARE CASE HISTORIES 7, 17 AND 49

  now I could dig up those case histories

  tell you about Danaos and Lykourgos and the sons of Phineus

  people locked up in a room or a cave or their own dark mind

  it wouldn’t help you

  it doesn’t help me

  it’s Friday afternoon

  there goes Antigone to be buried alive

  is there

  any way

  we can say

  this is normal

  rational

  forgivable

  or even in the widest definition just

  no not really

  here comes Teiresias

  EPISODE FIVE

  [enter Teiresias led by a boy]

  Teiresias [to the Chorus]: hail, you kings of Thebes

  I begin by addressing the wrong person

  because I’m blind

  is that what you think

  because I’m blind

  Kreon:

  what’s up, Teiresias

  Teiresias [to Kreon]: you’re standing on a razor

  I hear the birds they’re bebarbarizmenized they’re

  making monster sounds

  the fires won’t light

  the rites go wrong

  you know my technologies you know

  the failing of the sign is in itself a sign

  from you a sickness

  from you a suppuration

  from you a surfeit

  comes out upon the city

  this pile of rot that was the son of Oidipous

  the boy is dead stop killing him

  Kreon:

  you fake

  Teiresias:

  Kreon:

  you profiteer

  Teiresias:

  Kreon:

  you entrepreneur

  Teiresias:

  Kreon:

  you’re too quiet

  Teiresias:

  watch out Kreon

  watch out I see the future plunging toward you

  and it contains the corpse of your own son

  you’ve made a structural mistake with life and death my dear

  you’ve put the living underground

  and kept the dead up here

  that is so wrong

  that is so wrong

  [exit Teiresias with boy]

  Chorus:

  I hate to mention it but