Classics and the Western Canon discussion
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Sophocles - Antigone
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Thomas wrote: "Kreon sees Polyneices as a traitor to Thebes, and therefore undeserving of a respectful and lawful burial. Bad things happen as a result of Kreon's principled but impious behavior, but doesn't Kreon have a point? .."I don’t think Kreon does have a point. And I’m not so sure he acts on principles that benefit the state.
Kreon comes up with this edict unilaterally and stubbornly refuses to compromise. His edict violates the laws of the gods that require proper burials for the deceased. As Antigone says, “It was not Zeus who had published that edict; not such are the laws set among men by the Justice who dwells with the gods below.”
Even the chorus doubts the sagacity of Kreon’s edict when it initially suggests the gods, themselves, may have buried Polyneices. Haemon tells him the citizens support Antigone and urges him not to persist with his decree. And Teiresias accuses him of offending the gods.
How can the edict be one of principle when all voices other than Kreon oppose it and when it offends the gods? Polyneices is dead. How does exposing his rotting corpse to animals benefit the state? Kreon's is a man-made law initially and ostensibly made for the benefit of the state. But then it morphs into something else.
Women, as Ismene tells us, were expected to be weak, submissive and obedient. When Antigone is discovered as the culprit, Kreon’s reaction shows him to be offended not simply because she has defied his edict. She has doubly offended him by transgressing her socially defined role as a female. How dare a woman defy him?
Now truly I am no man, she is the man, if this victory shall rest with her and bring no penalty. . . While I live, no woman shall rule me . . . Therefore, we must support the cause of order and in no wise suffer a woman to worst us. Better to fall from power, if we must, by a man’s hand; then we could not be called weaker than a woman.
Antigone must be punished for having the unmitigated gall to appropriate a man’s role for herself. Kreon opposes the chorus of voices until it is too late because he seems to be operating on the principle that an uppity woman must be put in her place.
This play was produced in 442 (13 years before the production of Oedipus Rex and 36 years before the writing of Oedipus at Colonus), so it is an early work of Sophocles. Though it was written earlier than the two other Theban plays, the action of those plays is the backstory for this one. The subject of the play is right and wrong. What is right? Is it what man decrees or what the gods decree? It is written in a very formal manner, with balancing characters, debate-like arguments, and symmetrical songs for the Chorus. The characters are more mouthpieces than actual people. This is also the case for Ismene, the Soldier, and Teiresias. This means that great emphasis is placed on the religious question at the play's core.
I think Tamara's comments are very much to the point. Creon, although painting himself as the upholder of the civic order, does come off as stubborn and somewhat spiteful. The play can really be seen as the tragedy of Creon, a man whose flaw is his devotion to principle to the point at which he becomes blind to anything else.
I find it very interesting that the voice of the gods comes from the mouth of a woman. It is worthwhile to consider that of course not only were the actors all male, so was the audience. I suspect the audience would have had some sympathy for Creon's viewpoint and would in spirit have participated in his downfall. I think Sophocles is warning his audience not to be so sure of themselves, hoping to make them aware that the gods will punish hubris.
I see nothing in the text that makes me think Kreon would have gone easier on a man who gave burial rites to Polyneices than he was on Antigone. He was quite harsh with his son for merely suggesting that that should be done.
Roger wrote: "I see nothing in the text that makes me think Kreon would have gone easier on a man who gave burial rites to Polyneices than he was on Antigone. He was quite harsh with his son for merely suggestin..."Quite possibly, but when Kreon accuses Haemon of “yielding place to woman” and of being “a woman’s slave,” it sounds to me as if his anger toward Haemon is intensified because he sees Haemon as subordinating his status to be beneath that of a woman. If Kreon isn't impacted by the fact he is being challenged by a female, I'm wondering why he couches his anger with Haemon in gendered terms.
Kreon respects law and order above everything, at least at the outset, and the order of Athenian society certainly placed men above women. Kreon expects Haimon to be a good soldier and obey his commands for the same reason: this is the order of things. Regarding a woman's wishes over Kreon's "law" is for Kreon an act of injustice. The law for Kreon is doing good for one's friends and harm to one's enemies (this is also Polemarchus' defiition of justice in the Republic) and Antigone is challenging this -- Polyneices was an enemy, and Antigone wishes to do good for him. The fact that she's a woman adds an additional challenge to the order of things. If she can overrule the king, what else could she do? Kreon is not easy to defend, but his position is familiar and worth considering if only because the "law and order" argument is very much with us today. It's also interesting that he finally relents at the end. He actually learns something and recognizes his error, though it is of course too late. He reminds me of King Lear weeping over Cordelia in that way.
Antigone appeals to a higher, divine law.
Thomas wrote: "The law for Kreon is doing good for one's friends and harm to one's enemies."I can respect Kreon's position to a certain extent. The problem is harm has already been done to Polyneices. He is dead. Prolonging the "harm" by defying the gods in refusing to give him a burial is short-sighted because Kreon risks incurring the wrath of the gods. His rigid adherence to his interpretation of doing harm to one's enemies is proven to be disastrous.
Law and order may work in the abstract. But it doesn't consider context. There has to be flexibility, compassion, and context in applying the law. Yes, Antigone broke the law. But this is a man-made law that does not consider context and that goes against the requirement to bury the dead that crops up repeatedly in Greek mythology. Just off the top of my head, I can think of Elpenor asking Odysseus to bury him; Priam asking Achilles for Hektor's body for burial.
Antigone is operating with compassion and loyalty. She does not want her brother's corpse exposed to wild animals. She wants dignity for her brother. She wants a proper burial for him so he can have peace in the afterlife. There are no male relatives to do what has to be done. So she steps up. She defies a man-made law because she owes her allegiance to a higher law dictated by the gods, one that requires her to bury the dead. And this is not just any dead. This is her brother.
Tamara wrote: "And this is not just any dead. This is her brother."Antigone makes an argument to the Chorus (at around 890) which I find a little weird. The chorus is telling her that she should respect Kreon's power, "There's reverence in revering him; but power cannot permit transgression..." while Kreon is sending her away, and she says that she would honor Kreon if only it weren't her brother whose body lay unburied. If it were her own child, fine, she can have another. Husband, no problem, find another. But brother, no! She can never get another brother. It's a strange argument because it's strictly logical but unpersuasive. Choose a brother over your own child? I'd like to see a survey on that one. But it does make very clear that Antigone really loved her brother... which in this family might give one pause.
Thomas wrote: "Tamara wrote: "And this is not just any dead. This is her brother."Antigone makes an argument to the Chorus (at around 890) which I find a little weird. The chorus is telling her that she should ..."
This struck me too. I get the feeling Antigone is determined to rebel, and is searching for reasoning to justify her rebellion. Really, the people, the gods, and his son are all against Kreon in this matter. Antigone could have left it to them to make things right.
By the way, if I remember correctly, the argument for the supremacy of brothers appears somewhere in Herodotus, though I forget whom it's attributed to.
Thomas wrote: "she says that she would honor Kreon if only it weren't her brother whose body lay unburied. If it were her own child, fine, she can have another. Husband, no problem, find another. But brother, no! She can never get another brother. It's a strange argument because it's strictly logical but unpersuasive. Choose a brother over your own child?..."It strikes us as weird for her to choose her brother over her own child. But children are viewed as property of the father in Greek mythology and considered his to dispense with as he sees fit. Women had no rights over their own children. Think of Iphigenia, for example. And Zeus parcels off Kore/Persephone to Hades without bothering to inform her mother. He flings Hephaestus off Mt. Olympus. Medea shocks everyone when she appropriates the male role for herself by murdering her own children.
It doesn't surprise me a girl would form a strong bond with her brother. Antigone grew up with Polyneices. They had time and means to bond with each other. A brother will always be a brother, there to help and protect a sister. Antigone's future children, on the other hand, belong to someone else. She has no say on any aspect of their lives. I would imagine it is hard to form a bond with a child when you know that child doesn't belong to you and that at any minute the father can snatch him/her away from you and fling him off mountain tops or send her plummeting to the underworld.
And how could I forget to mention the trial of Orestes? He is found not guilty of the crime of matricide in Eumenides: The bearer of the so-called offspring is not the mother of it, but only the nurse of the newly conceived fetus. It is the male who is the author of its being; while she, as a stranger for a stranger, preserves the young plant for those whom the god has not blighted it in the bud.
The ancient Greeks were unaware of the existence of the female egg. They thought of pregnancy as the man planting his seed in the woman, the same as a farmer plants his seed in the ground. They were unaware of the difference between the fertilized seed of a plant and human sperm.
Donnally wrote: "The ancient Greeks were unaware of the existence of the female egg. They thought of pregnancy as the man planting his seed in the woman, the same as a farmer plants his seed in the ground. They wer..."Thank you, Donnally.
I knew they thought of pregnancy as man planting the seed in fertile soil, but I didn't know they were unaware of the existence of the female egg. I had attributed their attitude to misogyny. It's probably a case of six of one and half a dozen of the other.
So how did the Greeks explain the fact that children often resemble their mother?
Roger wrote: "By the way, if I remember correctly, the argument for the supremacy of brothers appears somewhere in Herodotus, though I forget whom it's attributed to."Following the footnotes led me to Herodotus Book 3, where the story concerns King Darius and how he punishes Intaphrenes, who overstepped his bounds and disrespected the King. Darius arrests Intaphrenes along with his children and all his male relatives and intends to execute them. Darius offers the wife of Intaphrenes the chance to save one of her relatives, and she chooses her brother for the same reasons that Antigone relates. Darius is so delighted with her logic that he frees her eldest son along with her brother.
Is this a peculiarly Persian logic? Would have Sophocles' audience have recognized it as such? I'm not sure.
It also occurred to me that Kreon is in power because he is himself a brother -- he is not a direct descendant to Laius, he is the brother of Jocasta, and he comes to power through his sister.
Tamara wrote: "Donnally wrote: "The ancient Greeks were unaware of the existence of the female egg. They thought of pregnancy as the man planting his seed in the woman, the same as a farmer plants his seed in the..."Notably, Aristotle did not believe this. He proposed that the male provides the moving cause while the female provides the material cause. The strength of the moving cause is responsible for the sex of the child and the characteristics it inherits. His theory was not quite right either, and it was highly sexist in its own way -- stronger semen results in male gender and qualities inherited from the father, while weak semen results in female gender and maternal resemblances -- but it at least tried to account for characteristics inherited from both mother and father. (Aristotle wrote more about biology than any other subject. The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science is a fun book if this subject strikes your fancy.)
None of which of course explains Antigone's feelings for her brother.
I haven't read the book Thomas mentions, but this seems to refer to Book VII of The History of Animals where Aristotle says, "Thin seminal fluid is barren. That which is lumpy begets males; what is thin and not clotted, females." He also states, "For the most part the girls resemble their mother and the boys their father." I wonder if he did any research of his own, or was just quoting some other authority. He did write a lot about biology, but someone who is only identified as Schneider, in an interesting appendix to my copy of Aristotles History of Animals in Ten Books speculates that Artisitotle could not possibly have compiled all his observations of animals himself, and instead relied to a great extent on the records of those who were in the business of providing livestock and fish and game for the tables of the Athenians.
Donnally wrote: "I haven't read the book Thomas mentions, but this seems to refer to Book VII of The History of Animals where Aristotle says, "Thin seminal fluid is barren. That which is lumpy begets males; what is..."The inheritance reference is primarily to On the Generation of Animals, Book 4. I'd rather not think too much about how he did his research on this stuff.
I haven't reread it since school, and can't say it feels different from what I remember from then (I suppose it is a compliment for our teacher). Your discussion keeps it quite close to what we can call a synchronous understanding of the tragedy, whenever I encountered Antigone discussion before, it always goes to a hot topic of the day. The main difference is that for Sophocles and Athenians gods' law was real and objective, while for the present day people it is generally a question of ethical law against state law. So now the position of Antigone is quite less stable and more subjective, so to say, personality against the state, which is quite different from the original position.
In Russia, it has a specific theme of conflict between two understanding of the law: law (jus), represented by Antigone, and law (lex), represented by Kreon. There is a big question how well the jus can be defined and if it is objective.
Interestingly, the law of gods could produce another interpretation: once I encountered a man at web, he interprets Antigone as a religious fanatic who defied the law issued by the state to protect the lawful citizens.
Sorry for giving up to the sin of modernising the literal conflict, but the variety of ways how very specific conflict depicted by Sophocles can be interpreted in the quite different time is astonishing.
Alexey wrote: "Interestingly, the law of gods could produce another interpretation: once I encountered a man at web, he interprets Antigone as a religious fanatic who defied the law issued by the state to protect the lawful citizens..."Perhaps the difference between Antigone and a religious fanatic is the following:
A religious fanatic claims God or the gods speak directly to him and urge him to perform a course of action. The voice or voices he claims to hear violate what is considered religiously and legally acceptable by the rest of society. In other words, a religious fanatic goes against the norm. His course of action based on this "private" interpretation is condemned by society both religiously and legally.
This is not the case with Antigone. Her action is based on an understanding of religious/moral law that she shares with the rest of society and which is consequently endorsed by the rest of society. It is actually Kreon who is the outsider in this case. He subordinates religious law to a unilaterally created man-made edict designed to satisfy his thirst for revenge. He goes against the norm and is condemned for doing so by family, by the chorus, and by the prophet Tiresias who interprets the word of the gods.
Tamara wrote: "Alexey wrote: "Interestingly, the law of gods could produce another interpretation: once I encountered a man at web, he interprets Antigone as a religious fanatic who defied the law issued by the s..."I do agree with you, I used this as an example for the breadth of interpretations, and also how modernisation change the meaning of the text. He interpreted Antigone in the context of American Cultural War, and I found his arguments flawed, in both analysis of the play and of the current situation. In this interpretation, a religious fanatic is anyone who put religious law above laws of the state; for me, it is the road to the authoritarian state, which could be represented by Kreon, but it would also be a strong modernisation of the tragedy. It is a very clear example of hubris, but hardly today it can be read without political parallels with modern state.
Since I mentioned it, I found the article, so if anybody is interested… https://eidolon.pub/no-other-gods-bef...
Thank you for the link to the article, Alexey. I found his argument interesting but somewhat simplistic. Your point is well taken: viewing the play with a modern lens can open it up to a variety of interpretations that go against the grain of the time, place, and culture which gave birth to it. But I think that's what makes it so interesting. We can interpret the play within the context of its time and place. But we can also see what light it sheds--if any--on our own time and place. It's not an either/or proposition as the play can speak to us on many levels. That's what makes it a classic.
Antigone and Kreon share the same failing, and I think that is the point of the play. They are both narrow-minded and focused purely on their own principle, and neither will give way. They think the same way, but they don't recognize this, or the danger of thinking this way. Kreon says around 473, Know well that over-rigid purposes most often
fall; the iron that is most powerful, that's baked
in fire until it is exceptionally hard,
you'll see most often shattered into litte bits...
He is speaking about Antigone, of course, but he is unwittingly speaking about himself as well. Sophocles loves this kind of irony. At the end I'm not so sure that Antigone and Kreon revere anything -- the gods, the law -- more than their own egos.
One way of thinking about this play is that it stands at a cusp in the evolution of ideas of law: between the idea that the laws are made by God, as reflected, for instance, in the Ten Commandments Moses brought down from the mountain, and the modern idea that laws are made by the state.
This was an engaging read as it was hard to completely be on Antigone’s / Croen’s side, and for that I would read this again.
I puzzled for awhile over whether it was only Polyneices or all the dead from his army who were left unburied. From the notes, I guess it was all the enemy dead. But Antigone’s focus is only her responsibility to Polyneices, so although she quotes the gods as her authority, it is also very personal. Oedipus and his family’s relationship to Thebes as citizens is complicated to say the least, and maybe that makes it easier for Antigone to decide which law she owes greater allegiance to. Also because she is still unmarried, she has no other family yet. Perhaps she would have decided differently if she had. (She says she wouldn’t, but unlike the woman in Herodotus, she is comparing an actual situation to a hypothetical situation. The person who says how children should be raised before they have any comes to mind).Antigone as a character doesn’t seem to change throughout the play, while Creon is slowly forced to. I was struck that he does reluctantly listen to Tiresias unlike Oedipus. But should the play be titled Creon? Or Creon and Antigone? I’d still vote for Antigone.
There's a good argument that Creon is the more tragic figure, in the sense that as king he takes a greater fall, and so the play could easily be titled Creon. I think he has more in common with Oedipus as well. His lack of vision and understanding is similar. Where Oedipus unwittingly kills his father, Creon unwittingly kills his son. His last words in the play: Lead me away, a worthless man.
I killed you, my son, without intending to,
you too, my wife...
Creon blames the "errors of my mistaken mind, obstinate and death-dealing" (phrenon dusphronon harmatemata -- harmatia is what is commonly referred to as the "tragic flaw".) Creon understands at last the mistake in judgement that he has made, just as Oedipus comes to the understanding that he has killed his father and bedded his mother. The chorus' fourth stasimon (944) is difficult to interpret, but it speaks of a Thracian king who taunts Dionysus and is subsequently punished by him: "He did not recognize the god until he attacked him in madness." It goes on to sing of the wife of Phineas, who gouges out the eyes of Phineas' sons. The disrespect for the gods (hubris), images of blinded eyes, and the lack of recognition and understanding suggest parallels with Oedipus.
Antigone is related to Oedipus and she is the more sympathetic character, so I suspect that why she gets the title. But Creon is also related to Oedipus, thematically. His "tragic flaw" is similar.
The play is balanced in a way that shows Antigone and Creon as mirror images. They both act rationally, even admirably, when seen from their viewpoint alone, but are unbalanced when seen from a more comprehensive viewpoint that includes both sides. Antigone breaks the law of the state and is punished by the state. Creon breaks the law of the gods and is punished by the gods.
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Aristotles History of Animals in Ten Books (other topics)The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science (other topics)
Antigone, on the other hand, has the gods on her side. Nevertheless, Ismene says she is "in love with the impossible." It isn't literally impossible, but it is unimaginable: the price that Antigone will pay for doing the right thing is her own destruction. Antigone succeeds morally when she illegally carries out the rites of burial for Polyneices, but she pays with her life. Is the price worth it?
In broad terms, Sophocles presents us with a dilemma that pits patriotism versus piety. In this case it isn't possible to find a middle ground. Isn't this a dilemma that modern societies still struggle with today?
https://chs.harvard.edu/primary-sourc...